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Taking a deep draft of wine, you set about your task. Probing along the side of your ankle, you still detect no outward changes. For lack of a better option, you settle on a long incision down the joint itself, hoping that visual inspection will identify the issue. With the assistance of your staff, you contort yourself so that your right ankle is laid flat against the cot, and your leg is lashed into position upon the cot. One woman does nothing but brace you steadily, and the other prepares the tools needed. The warmth of the wine spreads through your interior, and with your father’s blade, you begin to part your skin.
To your deep frustration, your careful incision along the side of your right angle does not immediately reveal the nature of your ankle’s defect. Your household servant, continually dabbing at the welling blood with boiled water and clean linens, say nothing as you prize apart the tough membranes of your ankle. You briefly feel faint as you inspect the surface of the bones themselves, but you brace yourself mentally, and continue. After a minute’s investigation though, you concede defeat. Whatever issue is present must be internal to the ankle itself, and therefore most likely out of reach to you. You will need to journey to Tricca and seek out the wisdom of the Asclepian disciples to resolve this, you suspect. If you are very lucky, perhaps one of the sons of Asclepius, Machaon or Podalirius, will take on your case.
Sighing, you recognize that a prolonged exploration of your joint would be ill-advised - every second of air exposure risks the blocking of humors and a potentially dangerous illness. You swiftly stitch the incision shut with your bronze needle, apply healing salves of honey and ground herbs, and with the assistance of your staff, bind your angle tightly and brace it well with small wooden rods. You already feel the faint itchings of your divine biology mending the flesh together - you suspect that the scar itself will be quite minimal, perhaps not even noticeable to others.
You send your staff to fetch you a training spear, a δόρυ, with the spear point removed - a staff upon which you can lean and hop with over the next few days. You suspect you’ll find it useful even afterwards - it may help mitigate your hobble, at least in social settings.
In the late afternoon, you stand in the courtyard of your palace, bright azure sky above, the vaulted domain of Ουρανος. The mood of the oikos is black - household staff beating their breasts and wailing at the loss of Iudas. You cannot blame them their grief and share in their distress, but you must be stalwart until the funeral procession - it would be unbecoming to lose control in front of the staff.
Iudas was well-loved in the house of Hippomedon - sometimes sardonic, but always kind to the commoner folk. Some hidden sympathy must have motivated him to treat them well - but of course, now you will never have a chance to learn his thoughts.
