Under normal circumstances, it took a very long time for a simulacrum to bleed to death. The partial decentralization of their circulatory systems, with various secondary cardiac nodes situated throughout the body rather than a single easily-compromised pump, kept blood pressure low and utilized pulmonary intake much more efficiently. During the process of exsanguination, this staved off irrecoverable hypotension for some time, while also assuring a fairly steady—albeit diminishing—supply of oxygen to the brain. Inside the Wall, the energetic instability lingering from its flawed construction and subsequent displacement slowed the process even further, the aftershocks of the temporal facere increasing the rate of self-regeneration of flesh just as surely as it drove the metaphysical materials that made up the Wall itself to rearrange after every breach, slowly moving boards up and down the damaged segment to better fill the gap left behind.
Unfortunately, just as redistributing pieces of the Wall to fill in spaces left when fragments shook loose could never fully close the barrier, there was no way to self-regenerate a damaged cardiac node, and those that remained could never fully pick up the slack. The spaces between slats grew with each subsequent breach, and the extended timeframe before critical blood loss was a stopgap measure at best.
That was, however, under normal circumstances. In the unlucky event where two or more nodes were damaged, the whole process progressed much more quickly, shortening what could be a two or three day window to seek assistance into a day at most. If he was counting properly, if his reckoning of the placement of the deep-set injuries peppering his body was accurate based on the highest concentrations of pain, he was down at least three, with a fourth teetering on the edge of collapse.
Spoiler-free(?) snippet from a short piece that takes place during the course of The Lucifers' Wall, but isn't actually included in the story itself. I gotta find some way to fit more about simulacrum biology into the book proper. #OriginalFiction #WriteSky
![Leah [Comms Open]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/avatar/plain/did:plc:f5axvpxb7xzqesynxnbnpzhm/bafkreielgapbm7byd3rkkkf3tzeypb3vunive2qp6rlnkc7wcgix3vk5lu)
