'Just another shift, Absolom. Hold still, I'll get you back to a medicae station later.' Grimacing at the pain in his arms, Titus kept a hand near his blade. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was very,<span style="font-style: italic">very</span>wrong. The veil threatened to burst here. Already, the chittering and scratching of ethereal visitors nagged at his mental barriers, scrabbling for purchase in the materium. At the edges of his vision, phantoms faded in and out of vision, twisted into unrecognizable forms by the tides and winds of the aether. The paladin suppressed a shudder as he turned on the other legionnaire. Not an officer, judging by the kit. No crested helmet adorned her head and she wore the standard chain of the Legion rather than the banded lorica segmentata provided to centurions and above. He called for medicae staff.<br/><br/>'And you, soldier, why the hell haven't you called for a--' Titus' words died in his throat. The legionnaire turned to him, looking him dead in the eye. What he saw was, for a few hellish moments,<span style="font-style: italic">not</span>a legionnaire. What he saw was most definitely not<span style="font-style: italic">human</span>. Squamous, gibbering things wriggled towards him, tongues encrusted with eyes dangling from drooling, beaked maws. Screaming, malformed entities materialized, forced into the shape of a single massive, constantly shifting ethereal teratoma, a cancerous stillbirth of souls. Coiled, serpentine horrors trailing hooves and tentacles plied the aetheric tides as a collection of ever-turning golden wheels orbited by a flaming sword grew ever larger. He realized it was approaching him. Reddened eyes opened on the wheels as they neared, weeping blood and pus. As one, the eyes regarded him.<br/><br/>He wanted to scream. He wanted to claw at his eyes and drive his dagger into his throat. Anything to stop seeing what he was seeing right now. Things which were and yet were not. Things which should not be. Horrible, impossible visions. Alien geometries, paradoxes upon paradoxes, and with each passing second, a new abomination to behold.<br/><br/>Sa tash wej Haj, uttered a disembodied mass of voices, their sound like the grind of a glacier on rock.<span style="font-style: italic">Do not be afraid</span>, whispered a small voice in his head. It was the old tongue.<br/><br/>Just as madness threatened to overtake him, the vision halted, cutting him off from the sanity-shattering depths of that which lay beyond the veil. His eyes once again saw normalcy. The undercity. A burnt, injured comrade. A legionnaire.  The comforting stink of rot, pyre smoke, and cookfires.<br/><br/>'Optio, are you alright?'<br/><br/>No. No, he was not. His head felt like it had been split open by an axe murderer. Blood began to leak from his nostrils, ears, and tear ducts. He grunted, half in pain and half in denial, as he channeled a trickle of healing energies to staunch his wounds further. Dabbing the blood from his eyes, he sheathed the sword. 'I'm fine,' he growled. 'Veil anomaly playing hell with my head is all--<span style="font-style: italic">Medicae!</span>Get over here, damn you! Bah.' He turned back to the unknown legionnaire. 'Why the hell haven't you called for medics yourself, trooper?'<br/><br/>'As I said, to the sorceror, Optio--' Titus noted that her voice was unnaturally monotone, somehow lacking even the cadences necessary to sound human. '--the First Centurion and the Ancient believed him too far gone. I elected to keep a vigil until he passed.'<br/><br/>'Likely story, but a load of crap. Any legionnaire worth their salt would have moved the body back to the medicae tent for last rites and disposal according to protocol, even in this outfit. If he<span style="font-style: italic">was</span>irredeemably injured, legion policy dictates mercy kill in the event of unconsciousness, a few brief words and<span style="font-style: italic">then</span>the mercy kill in the event of consciousness. '<br/><br/>To do any less would deprive the dead of their due and the living of a precious resource. The souls of the magically gifted were akin to intangible elemental reactors, providing a massive and incredibly versatile source of life energy that could be channeled into necromancy, triage, and enchanting, but they could only be captured and harnessed before or shortly after said souls left their host bodies. There was no way any sane commander would allow a spell-slinger's corpse to sit in the open away from a Legion's spellcaster cabal, even in the Damned XIV. 'You also failed to call medical staff to attend to the sorceror's needs immediately after discovering he was alive. Instead, you decided to sit here and offer talk instead of medicine. State your name and posting, legionnaire. Your centurion needs to hear of this.'<br/><br/>The veil continued to stir at his frayed senses. The aura of wrongness continued to pervade the very air around the three. Titus' fingers rested atop the grip of the spatha.