A tall red figure stepped out from the town's cave-like front entrance. Not stopping to take in the dark scenery, Cypress strode in, pace the same as it had always been. Hurry did not exist for her. Althyk ensured that she would arrive exactly when she meant to.
The bright big blue maw that held Ulanan and Antimony opened. It started to shrink, most of its mass becoming a tongue that emerged from below them and rolled them out with strange precision, barely disturbing them. It deposited them on the ground in front of it. When it was done, it was smaller than its original size and was missing an eye. It floated around them in circles.
The stream of aether Ulanan was casting waned for a moment before regaining its strength. "I need help! Over here!" she shouted out. Antimony didn't notice the strange tongue deposit them. She didn't notice anything. Ulanan's rudimentary healing magic kept neurons firing, but the skin around her lips and extremities had grown a cyanotic blue.
Cypress took in the frozen baalzephons and the body that lay on the ground at the foot of an elezen. So she walked to the voice that cried out for help. She would take care of the voidsent in a moment. It would seem that she was meant to help this woman if she could.
Stumbling his way to the fountain in the middle of town, somehow failing to sense anything else around him, D'hein paused. He leaned heavily on the edge of the fountain, and then he sat down on it, with his hands joined in his lap, leaning forward and staring at the ground.
Approaching the woman that had named her a monster, Cypress kneeled down next to her and the tiny woman. "What is the matter with her?" Even as she asked that though, she laid a large hand on the woman's chest, feeling for the spark of a soul buried deep within.
"I don't know. She was enveloped in some kind of blanket spell!" Ulanan explained rather fast. The stream of magic ceased completely, making her close the book and prepare another incantation.
In the moments after Ulanan's first spell broke, Antimony faded fast. When Cypress sought out that soul, she would find only tenuous, wispy connections, teetering on the edge of falling away completely.
The roegadyn nodded, not actually listening even though she'd asked the question. It was enough, what she felt inside the woman. She hadn't crossed to the void yet. Cypress breathed inward, pulling on her aether as she leaned forward. With her free hand, she pried the woman's jaw open, dipping her head downward to cover open lips with her own. Expelling her own wind-ridden aether into the woman's body through her breath.
Breath filled smothered lungs just as aether rushed into her body, spreading along oxygen-starved vessels and racing across flickering nerves. The breath brought a living energy to Antimony's body that had been so easily wrung from it, and her body drank it in with a metaphysical desperation. Her chest rose with the breath and then fell.
Illira finally looked up from the body, having stood in a strange sort of vigil over it for a few minutes. She saw people hovering over Antimony. D'hein was off on his own though, wallowing at the town fountain, entranced by the ground next to it. She sighed, stepping over D'aijeen and walking towards the girl's adoptive father.
Coming in front of him, she turned her head downward to see him better. The bloody wire still hung from where it was wrapped around her right hand. "Its done."
Ulanan stopped her incantation, though it remained over the book in the shape of a glowing orb. She let the Roegadyn do her healing.
D'hein Tia lifted his gaze to stare at the wire in the woman's hand. His eyes followed a drop of blood running along it. "Yes. I have nothing left in this world to care about at all. That's fine. It was necessary. Thank you."
Illira answered him coldly, "You'll find other things to care about. And keep hope they won't turn out like her."
Feeling the breath return to the Miqo'te and her soul re-anchoring itself, Cypress stood up, stepping back. "I should take care of those voidsent now."
The lalafell nodded and pointed her book towards Antimony, the open pages facing her. The spell released, washing over the woman's body to help her wake up.
"That is shockingly warm, coming from the woman who would see me dead." D'hein raised his gaze to Illira.
Several seconds passed before Antimony's body seemed to recall its function, Cypress's influx of aether surging through her heart and sparking beats that had previously stilled. When Ulanan's spell washed over her, her chest rose and fell with a second breath, and then a third. Her eyes shifted behind closed lids, then fluttered open, at first unfocused and confused.
Ulanan let out a sigh of relief. "You are alive!" she cheered. She dropped her hands, suddenly quiet. She casted a glance towards D'aijeen's corpse, and then to K'airos, who was still curled down in the middle of the street.
Cypress didn't actually turn to the baalzephons though. Instead, she walked to body that lay not far away, finally reaching the end of the trail that she had followed for so long.
"Yes, well don't get used to it," replied Illira. Realizing that the wire was still in her hand she stepped around D'hein to rinse it in the fountain. "You'll remember that family is important to me. And I understand it is to others as well."
D'hein smiled up at Illira as though she were bathing him in lavish praise. "Important. Yes. It is... of singular importance. To so many. Unparalleled."
The corpse beneath the Roegadyn was thin and immobile, face clean but neck and chest stained deeply with blood. Blue eyes lay open and thoughtless, staring. It was the corpse of a child dressed like a woman, painted the colors of the executed.
With impossible suddenness, D'aijeen snapped upright, back, like her corpse had been knocked into the air or pulled by some distant chord. Her feet stumbled as she tried to get up, and her head rolled about on the end of her neck, showing off the massive wound beneath her chin. Her voice, however, burst from her body. "Why are you familiar? I know you! I know you!" The voice had an echo to it, as though it were coming from a great ways off.
When her head fell forward, her face coming to bear, the shell of green energy lay over it. The shell conformed to her features, floating just in front of them, with an imitation of chin and lips and nose and brow. There were eyes holes, but through them was just black. It was as though D'aijeen's face had been erased behind the mask. "I know you from fire. Fire. You made me sick. You left me sick after the fire. I remember!"
Ulanan cringed at the suddenly speaking and moving body, springing up to her feet with the book open and in front of her. Her expression reflected how disturbing she found that. Even more than the Baalzephons.
Antimony shifted weakly on the ground. She thought she'd heard something familiar, but thought still took incredible effort as her body worked to recover. Instead her head lolled towards Ulanan and she watched the lalafel's expression with a confused one of her own.
It wasn't a surprise to see the body string itself back up, there was nothing the voidsent wouldn't do to scrape their way back and keep their hold in this world. Cypress let her aether sink down into her hands, creating fiery fissure in her skin as it traveled. Reminiscent of where she had come from. A laugh almost tugged at lips, "You broke my gate, voidsent. So I've had to bring the fiery pits to you."
"What are you... Who..." D'aijeen hands went to her throat, and her body sagged, knees buckling, as she took on her own weight again. She groped hideously at her own wound. Then seemed to accept it, and her bloody hands feel limp at her sides once more. "How do I know you? Tell me who you are!"
Ulanan reached with one hand to her white hat, taking it off and shaking it upwards. The magical yellow envelope hidden within flew upwards and in front of her, unfolding until it had taken the shape of her other constructs .
"You and K'airos need to leave." she said, pointing one finger to the paper golem. Aether sparked out of her into its side, and the maw inflated and moved, placing itself between Antimony and D'aijeen.
The more the voice spoke, the more familiar it became. She'd heard it right before the shadows had come rushing in from every direction, crushing the breath from her body. She recalled the way her lungs had burned and how everything had flickered, slowed, faded. "Aijeen," she breathed, voice shaking, her ears and tail limp against the ground beneath her. She recalled the last words she'd heard from her daughter, and they made her wish for her heart to stop again. One hand struggled weakly against the ground to push her upper body up.
Hands caught aflame as the roegadyn roared, "I am your keeper. You cannot hide behind the body of a little girl. I'll burn your body just as I threw my grandfather in the pit."
"NO!" D'aijeen grabbed her head, felt her fingers lay against the green-glowing mask, and then pulled them away as though burned. She backpedaled raggedly, desperately. Though she spook in an ephemeral voice, her tone was ragged and desperate. "No. No. Why do I feel afraid? I'm not afraid. I'm never afraid. Fear is what other... I'm not... Why are..." Shadows moved in her wake as her desperation increased.
D'hein stood slowly from where he'd been sitting, watching.
"I'm afraid. I'm afraid." D'aijeen spoke quickly, her words cutting in to one another. "Why is she lying? He face. I remember. But I can't. I'm afraid... Airos. Mom... Airos!"
K'airos did not want to hear. Some sound reached her, but all she did was yell as loud as she could, burying her head as far as she could between her arms. "Stop! Stop! Stop..." Her voice ran out of air, and was left breathing unsteadily where she was.
Ulanan helped Antimony rise up how she could. Being small, that basically meant pulling her clothes and then letting the big woman hold herself up. "Go to K'airos and leave!" she urged her.
Her limbs felt impossibly weak, sapped of strength from both her brush with death and the sick realization that had fallen over her. "Aijeen.. she..." Antimony's head dropped forward as she struggled to stand. That voice called out again, desperate, in need, and Antimony feared it. She feared her daughter. Her hands moved to her face as she staggered upright, feeling as though she might topple over again any minute. Ulanan was a small presence next to her, and though she heard the lalafell's pleas for her to leave, she couldn't seem to get her limbs to move to obey.
Cypress followed D'aijeen in her desperate backwards steps, reaching her burning hand out hand out to the girl. The flames that licked from the hand came from the molten cracks that had formed on the Roegadyn's skin, fueled by her aether and memories of her post. "You're scared? No more than the fear you've created yourself."
"Deception! I've never seen you before!" D'aijeen pitched her hands up as she stumbled backwards, her skulls clattering between her fingers, and the air thickened in front of her. Simple conjury. "Airos! Where are you? Airos!"
The girl lifted her head, hands still clenched against her ears. She saw her sister without the hideous shadows that had covered her before. She released her grip and, for a moment, thought D'aijeen had come back to her senses.
Then she noticed the blood and the wound on her throat. All she could do in response to that sight was scream and bend over to the ground again
Ulanan headed to the side of the Roegadyn walking briskly past her giant pet, book open in front of her.
Antimony turned her head to follow Ulanan's movements but did nothing but sway slightly on her feet, a faintness still laying over her thoughts. She could hear Aijeen's voice, hear the fear in it, and she wanted to look for her, to calm those fears as best she could. But the feeling of the life choking out of her, in complete, liquid blackness, of her mouth and nose filled with cold dark and her ears echoing with her daughter's words - these things kept her in place. They kept her from seeking out D'aijeen, despite recognizing that something was wrong.
"You do not remember the gate that you crawled from? The trail you've left bears remants. Scant. But there. Underneath all the death and fear and emptiness." The air was thick as Cypress stepped closer, drawing smoke from the flames into a light fog.
Illira touched D'hein's shoulder, "If there is nothing we can do here, we should leave as Antimony's pet suggested."
"I don't know... why... An old man's hollow corpse, burned in fire. Pathetic man. Why...?" The closer the Roegadyn came, the faster D'aieen retreated, until her feet were on the steps of the inn once more. Her shoes, having trailed through her own blood, left dark footprints.
D'hein shifted and glared up at Illira. "Ulanan is trying to protect you. Use her name with respect."
The lalafel stopped next to Cypress with a little hop. There was a purple triangle of light hovering and snapping with aether over the pages of her tome. Her free hand was over it, fingers spread as much as they could. "Can we get the voidsent out of her body?" she asked, eyes anchored on her incantation.
Cypress only bares the lalafel the briefest of glances, a look of near incredulity before facing the voidsent again, "An old man? Was that who you were before? Found your way into your one?"
The elezen snorted, "I don't owe her anything, but I will admit, voidsent are not my specialty."
"I guess that's a 'no'." Ulanan grumbled under her breath.
"Shut up! Liar. Liars. Telling lies about me! There's nothing inside of me don't do that. Don't do that!" She missed a step and fell backwards, landing crookedly on the stairs of the inn. For a moment, she lay there and tried to breathe, making a strange sound with her clogged windpipes. Her chest shook. And then she screamed, the sound louder and stronger than anything she could have managed with her own chest, but still undeniably her voice.
Antimony cringed at the shriek, ducking her head, her knees nearly buckling and taking her back to the ground. It was a sound no mother would ever wish to hear, even after what her daughter had done. On instinct she spun weakly towards it, opened her mouth to call for her daughter but found herself too breathless with fear to form words. Instead she staggered around Ulanan's golem until the felled form of D'aijeen was in view. A roegadyn woman painted in the colors of fire stood above her, Ulanan nearby. She lifted one hand in silent protest.
"Whatever you are going to do, do it quickly." the lalafel said in a grumpy voice to the other woman. "There's no need to prolong this."
Her golem seemed to remember what it was inflated for and moved in front of Antimony, blocking her view and offering the saddest face a creature made of paper could offer.
"Don't hurt her!" K'airos shouted, half crawling towards the inn before raising and turning it into a full sprint.
D'hein pulled himself up to his feet and ran out to intercept K'airos. "Stop, K'airos! Don't get in the way!"
The roegadyn closes the last few steps between her and the wretched creature that was slumped over the inn steps, placing her hands on the sternum. No heartbeat and naught but a scrambling that was being forced through the lungs. Even as the overwraught red dress caught flame though, Cypress could feel the hum of the passenger within. It was disconcertingly familiar though. She had felt this footprint before as she had dragged the wasted remains of her screaming grandfather into the pit. "You." She hissed, voice cracking, "You descrated my forebear."
K'airos was blocked by succesfully by D'hein, being too distracted to notice his approach. "She can't defend herself! She's not a danger anymore!" she protested.
Antimony stared back at the sad, blue face for several seconds, not entirely sure what she was looking at. Then she let out a faint, "No, please," and tried to move around the golem again. She smelled ash, a strange, unexpected scent, and her daughter's fear mingled with something dark and oily.
The mask and its black eyeholes snapped up to the Roegadyn, her hands lifting, skulls dangling between her fingers. The smell and heat of fire rose around her, and she hung immobile much like she had hung from the Elezen's garrote. She hung as though in the moment of death, frozen in it, trapped in it. Her voice began silently. "I don't... want... to burn again. You can't."
Magic burst from her hands, cold, washing over her body and the fires lit upon it, chilling her skin. The weak girl writhed in the massive woman's hands, kicking and struggling, trying desperately to get away. "You won't burn me! You won't burn me! Airos! Help me!" She was screaming frantically, her movements chaotic, the mask floating near her face flashing with green light. "Airos! Mom! Help me! Help me!"
"Aijeen!" Antimony finally found her voice, shrill and thin as it was, a desperate cry.
Cypress fanned the flames with her aetheric reserves, sending the flames cascading upwards around her, burning her own clothes just as she sought to override the summoned chilly winter, "You are no one's daughter!"
Finally stirred to movement by the mother's cry, Illira crossed the courtyard towards Antimony, grasping her shoulders. "She is dead. I killed her, Antimony."
Ulanan grimaced. She released the spell prepared over her tome, the triangle vanishing as the aether moved to take hold of D'aijeen's limb to immobilize her.
D'aijeen continued to try and summon magic to counteract the fire, but the fire overwhelmed it, and Ulanan's spell made the fetish in her hand drop to the ground. Her limbs were fixed in place, and though she still writhed, it was a tired and weak motion. "Stop it! I don't want to die! I want to go home! I want to back to the desert! Someone help me!"
Antimony sagged against Illira's hands, eyes widening as her whole body shuddered. She leaned forward, tried to push past the elezen. "No--" Her voice broke, and her daughter's cries dragged on her body like a physical weight. "No, Aijeen! Aijeen, I forgive you, come back!"
Ulanan moved away from the inn, facing the golem that was blocking Antimony's view. "It's not your daughter! It's a voidsent using her body!" As soon as she was done shouting, she felt she was being incredibly and unnecessarily mean, if perhaps accurate.
K'airos let all her strength leave her, collapsing against D'hein and staying crouched on the ground, crying.
D'hein crouched with K'airos. "It's okay. Don't look. You don't need to listen." He put his hands over her ears.
Illira had to practically take on Antimony's weight in her hysteria and desire to reach what was left of her daughter, "Think of it simply as a death throe."
Although the well of aether within Cypress was deep she had let a considerable amount burn off into the atmosphere stoking the flames as a blacksmith would in his smithy. Not normally a showy person, the Roegadyn was angry, letting that energy channel through the molten embers of her skin. She dug down now though, forcibly channeling it into the body below her. Willing the part of her that was very much a part of her volcanic post to take back the unruly ward.
The fire burned into D'aijeen's body vividly, gruesomly. It burned a hole into her chest and traced lines along her ribs, making her thin form glow internally, making her body arch. Where she had been writhing like a desperate woman a moment earlier, noe she writhed like an insect, limbs mad and thoughtless even to the point of damaging themselves. She slammed her arms numbly against the Roegadyn's limb and body, heedless of the fire, kicking her legs behind and beside and in front of her. Behind her, her tail writhed like a worm lifted from the ground.
"Help me! Airos! Mom! Dad! Airi!" Her hair caught fire, her eyelashes burning visibly behind the mask. "Help me! Help! Help!"
As her mouth hung open to scream, her words were interrupted by a vomiting of bones and darkness. It began at her mouth, then seemed to tear open her jaw, her neck opening, her collar bursting open, her ribs cracking and her belly splitting. Shadow and bone poured out. Not her own. With the sound of a shout of fear and fury, translucent shadow and expansive gore exuded from D'aijeen's body, crashing against the Roegadyn.
Antimony shrieked against her daughter's cries and shoved violently against Illira. "Don't hurt her! Don't hurt her!!"
K'airos placed her hands over D'hein's and pushed them as strongly as she could against her ears.Â
The lalafel turned around at the scream. The gruesome display made her raise one hand to hide her face and stand there, paralyzed and horrified.
The red figure, much of her clothing burned away to within an inch of usefulness, was tossed from D'aijeen like a ragdoll despite her considerable size. An ocean tide of darkness it was, a powerful wave crashing into its unprepared victim. Thrown against a column a few feet away, the thing cracked though it somehow stood still, a chunk of it knocked out as it did the same to Cypress; her head having smashed up against it.
The bright big blue maw that held Ulanan and Antimony opened. It started to shrink, most of its mass becoming a tongue that emerged from below them and rolled them out with strange precision, barely disturbing them. It deposited them on the ground in front of it. When it was done, it was smaller than its original size and was missing an eye. It floated around them in circles.
The stream of aether Ulanan was casting waned for a moment before regaining its strength. "I need help! Over here!" she shouted out. Antimony didn't notice the strange tongue deposit them. She didn't notice anything. Ulanan's rudimentary healing magic kept neurons firing, but the skin around her lips and extremities had grown a cyanotic blue.
Cypress took in the frozen baalzephons and the body that lay on the ground at the foot of an elezen. So she walked to the voice that cried out for help. She would take care of the voidsent in a moment. It would seem that she was meant to help this woman if she could.
Stumbling his way to the fountain in the middle of town, somehow failing to sense anything else around him, D'hein paused. He leaned heavily on the edge of the fountain, and then he sat down on it, with his hands joined in his lap, leaning forward and staring at the ground.
Approaching the woman that had named her a monster, Cypress kneeled down next to her and the tiny woman. "What is the matter with her?" Even as she asked that though, she laid a large hand on the woman's chest, feeling for the spark of a soul buried deep within.
"I don't know. She was enveloped in some kind of blanket spell!" Ulanan explained rather fast. The stream of magic ceased completely, making her close the book and prepare another incantation.
In the moments after Ulanan's first spell broke, Antimony faded fast. When Cypress sought out that soul, she would find only tenuous, wispy connections, teetering on the edge of falling away completely.
The roegadyn nodded, not actually listening even though she'd asked the question. It was enough, what she felt inside the woman. She hadn't crossed to the void yet. Cypress breathed inward, pulling on her aether as she leaned forward. With her free hand, she pried the woman's jaw open, dipping her head downward to cover open lips with her own. Expelling her own wind-ridden aether into the woman's body through her breath.
Breath filled smothered lungs just as aether rushed into her body, spreading along oxygen-starved vessels and racing across flickering nerves. The breath brought a living energy to Antimony's body that had been so easily wrung from it, and her body drank it in with a metaphysical desperation. Her chest rose with the breath and then fell.
Illira finally looked up from the body, having stood in a strange sort of vigil over it for a few minutes. She saw people hovering over Antimony. D'hein was off on his own though, wallowing at the town fountain, entranced by the ground next to it. She sighed, stepping over D'aijeen and walking towards the girl's adoptive father.
Coming in front of him, she turned her head downward to see him better. The bloody wire still hung from where it was wrapped around her right hand. "Its done."
Ulanan stopped her incantation, though it remained over the book in the shape of a glowing orb. She let the Roegadyn do her healing.
D'hein Tia lifted his gaze to stare at the wire in the woman's hand. His eyes followed a drop of blood running along it. "Yes. I have nothing left in this world to care about at all. That's fine. It was necessary. Thank you."
Illira answered him coldly, "You'll find other things to care about. And keep hope they won't turn out like her."
Feeling the breath return to the Miqo'te and her soul re-anchoring itself, Cypress stood up, stepping back. "I should take care of those voidsent now."
The lalafell nodded and pointed her book towards Antimony, the open pages facing her. The spell released, washing over the woman's body to help her wake up.
"That is shockingly warm, coming from the woman who would see me dead." D'hein raised his gaze to Illira.
Several seconds passed before Antimony's body seemed to recall its function, Cypress's influx of aether surging through her heart and sparking beats that had previously stilled. When Ulanan's spell washed over her, her chest rose and fell with a second breath, and then a third. Her eyes shifted behind closed lids, then fluttered open, at first unfocused and confused.
Ulanan let out a sigh of relief. "You are alive!" she cheered. She dropped her hands, suddenly quiet. She casted a glance towards D'aijeen's corpse, and then to K'airos, who was still curled down in the middle of the street.
Cypress didn't actually turn to the baalzephons though. Instead, she walked to body that lay not far away, finally reaching the end of the trail that she had followed for so long.
"Yes, well don't get used to it," replied Illira. Realizing that the wire was still in her hand she stepped around D'hein to rinse it in the fountain. "You'll remember that family is important to me. And I understand it is to others as well."
D'hein smiled up at Illira as though she were bathing him in lavish praise. "Important. Yes. It is... of singular importance. To so many. Unparalleled."
The corpse beneath the Roegadyn was thin and immobile, face clean but neck and chest stained deeply with blood. Blue eyes lay open and thoughtless, staring. It was the corpse of a child dressed like a woman, painted the colors of the executed.
With impossible suddenness, D'aijeen snapped upright, back, like her corpse had been knocked into the air or pulled by some distant chord. Her feet stumbled as she tried to get up, and her head rolled about on the end of her neck, showing off the massive wound beneath her chin. Her voice, however, burst from her body. "Why are you familiar? I know you! I know you!" The voice had an echo to it, as though it were coming from a great ways off.
When her head fell forward, her face coming to bear, the shell of green energy lay over it. The shell conformed to her features, floating just in front of them, with an imitation of chin and lips and nose and brow. There were eyes holes, but through them was just black. It was as though D'aijeen's face had been erased behind the mask. "I know you from fire. Fire. You made me sick. You left me sick after the fire. I remember!"
Ulanan cringed at the suddenly speaking and moving body, springing up to her feet with the book open and in front of her. Her expression reflected how disturbing she found that. Even more than the Baalzephons.
Antimony shifted weakly on the ground. She thought she'd heard something familiar, but thought still took incredible effort as her body worked to recover. Instead her head lolled towards Ulanan and she watched the lalafel's expression with a confused one of her own.
It wasn't a surprise to see the body string itself back up, there was nothing the voidsent wouldn't do to scrape their way back and keep their hold in this world. Cypress let her aether sink down into her hands, creating fiery fissure in her skin as it traveled. Reminiscent of where she had come from. A laugh almost tugged at lips, "You broke my gate, voidsent. So I've had to bring the fiery pits to you."
"What are you... Who..." D'aijeen hands went to her throat, and her body sagged, knees buckling, as she took on her own weight again. She groped hideously at her own wound. Then seemed to accept it, and her bloody hands feel limp at her sides once more. "How do I know you? Tell me who you are!"
Ulanan reached with one hand to her white hat, taking it off and shaking it upwards. The magical yellow envelope hidden within flew upwards and in front of her, unfolding until it had taken the shape of her other constructs .
"You and K'airos need to leave." she said, pointing one finger to the paper golem. Aether sparked out of her into its side, and the maw inflated and moved, placing itself between Antimony and D'aijeen.
The more the voice spoke, the more familiar it became. She'd heard it right before the shadows had come rushing in from every direction, crushing the breath from her body. She recalled the way her lungs had burned and how everything had flickered, slowed, faded. "Aijeen," she breathed, voice shaking, her ears and tail limp against the ground beneath her. She recalled the last words she'd heard from her daughter, and they made her wish for her heart to stop again. One hand struggled weakly against the ground to push her upper body up.
Hands caught aflame as the roegadyn roared, "I am your keeper. You cannot hide behind the body of a little girl. I'll burn your body just as I threw my grandfather in the pit."
"NO!" D'aijeen grabbed her head, felt her fingers lay against the green-glowing mask, and then pulled them away as though burned. She backpedaled raggedly, desperately. Though she spook in an ephemeral voice, her tone was ragged and desperate. "No. No. Why do I feel afraid? I'm not afraid. I'm never afraid. Fear is what other... I'm not... Why are..." Shadows moved in her wake as her desperation increased.
D'hein stood slowly from where he'd been sitting, watching.
"I'm afraid. I'm afraid." D'aijeen spoke quickly, her words cutting in to one another. "Why is she lying? He face. I remember. But I can't. I'm afraid... Airos. Mom... Airos!"
K'airos did not want to hear. Some sound reached her, but all she did was yell as loud as she could, burying her head as far as she could between her arms. "Stop! Stop! Stop..." Her voice ran out of air, and was left breathing unsteadily where she was.
Ulanan helped Antimony rise up how she could. Being small, that basically meant pulling her clothes and then letting the big woman hold herself up. "Go to K'airos and leave!" she urged her.
Her limbs felt impossibly weak, sapped of strength from both her brush with death and the sick realization that had fallen over her. "Aijeen.. she..." Antimony's head dropped forward as she struggled to stand. That voice called out again, desperate, in need, and Antimony feared it. She feared her daughter. Her hands moved to her face as she staggered upright, feeling as though she might topple over again any minute. Ulanan was a small presence next to her, and though she heard the lalafell's pleas for her to leave, she couldn't seem to get her limbs to move to obey.
Cypress followed D'aijeen in her desperate backwards steps, reaching her burning hand out hand out to the girl. The flames that licked from the hand came from the molten cracks that had formed on the Roegadyn's skin, fueled by her aether and memories of her post. "You're scared? No more than the fear you've created yourself."
"Deception! I've never seen you before!" D'aijeen pitched her hands up as she stumbled backwards, her skulls clattering between her fingers, and the air thickened in front of her. Simple conjury. "Airos! Where are you? Airos!"
The girl lifted her head, hands still clenched against her ears. She saw her sister without the hideous shadows that had covered her before. She released her grip and, for a moment, thought D'aijeen had come back to her senses.
Then she noticed the blood and the wound on her throat. All she could do in response to that sight was scream and bend over to the ground again
Ulanan headed to the side of the Roegadyn walking briskly past her giant pet, book open in front of her.
Antimony turned her head to follow Ulanan's movements but did nothing but sway slightly on her feet, a faintness still laying over her thoughts. She could hear Aijeen's voice, hear the fear in it, and she wanted to look for her, to calm those fears as best she could. But the feeling of the life choking out of her, in complete, liquid blackness, of her mouth and nose filled with cold dark and her ears echoing with her daughter's words - these things kept her in place. They kept her from seeking out D'aijeen, despite recognizing that something was wrong.
"You do not remember the gate that you crawled from? The trail you've left bears remants. Scant. But there. Underneath all the death and fear and emptiness." The air was thick as Cypress stepped closer, drawing smoke from the flames into a light fog.
Illira touched D'hein's shoulder, "If there is nothing we can do here, we should leave as Antimony's pet suggested."
"I don't know... why... An old man's hollow corpse, burned in fire. Pathetic man. Why...?" The closer the Roegadyn came, the faster D'aieen retreated, until her feet were on the steps of the inn once more. Her shoes, having trailed through her own blood, left dark footprints.
D'hein shifted and glared up at Illira. "Ulanan is trying to protect you. Use her name with respect."
The lalafel stopped next to Cypress with a little hop. There was a purple triangle of light hovering and snapping with aether over the pages of her tome. Her free hand was over it, fingers spread as much as they could. "Can we get the voidsent out of her body?" she asked, eyes anchored on her incantation.
Cypress only bares the lalafel the briefest of glances, a look of near incredulity before facing the voidsent again, "An old man? Was that who you were before? Found your way into your one?"
The elezen snorted, "I don't owe her anything, but I will admit, voidsent are not my specialty."
"I guess that's a 'no'." Ulanan grumbled under her breath.
"Shut up! Liar. Liars. Telling lies about me! There's nothing inside of me don't do that. Don't do that!" She missed a step and fell backwards, landing crookedly on the stairs of the inn. For a moment, she lay there and tried to breathe, making a strange sound with her clogged windpipes. Her chest shook. And then she screamed, the sound louder and stronger than anything she could have managed with her own chest, but still undeniably her voice.
Antimony cringed at the shriek, ducking her head, her knees nearly buckling and taking her back to the ground. It was a sound no mother would ever wish to hear, even after what her daughter had done. On instinct she spun weakly towards it, opened her mouth to call for her daughter but found herself too breathless with fear to form words. Instead she staggered around Ulanan's golem until the felled form of D'aijeen was in view. A roegadyn woman painted in the colors of fire stood above her, Ulanan nearby. She lifted one hand in silent protest.
"Whatever you are going to do, do it quickly." the lalafel said in a grumpy voice to the other woman. "There's no need to prolong this."
Her golem seemed to remember what it was inflated for and moved in front of Antimony, blocking her view and offering the saddest face a creature made of paper could offer.
"Don't hurt her!" K'airos shouted, half crawling towards the inn before raising and turning it into a full sprint.
D'hein pulled himself up to his feet and ran out to intercept K'airos. "Stop, K'airos! Don't get in the way!"
The roegadyn closes the last few steps between her and the wretched creature that was slumped over the inn steps, placing her hands on the sternum. No heartbeat and naught but a scrambling that was being forced through the lungs. Even as the overwraught red dress caught flame though, Cypress could feel the hum of the passenger within. It was disconcertingly familiar though. She had felt this footprint before as she had dragged the wasted remains of her screaming grandfather into the pit. "You." She hissed, voice cracking, "You descrated my forebear."
K'airos was blocked by succesfully by D'hein, being too distracted to notice his approach. "She can't defend herself! She's not a danger anymore!" she protested.
Antimony stared back at the sad, blue face for several seconds, not entirely sure what she was looking at. Then she let out a faint, "No, please," and tried to move around the golem again. She smelled ash, a strange, unexpected scent, and her daughter's fear mingled with something dark and oily.
The mask and its black eyeholes snapped up to the Roegadyn, her hands lifting, skulls dangling between her fingers. The smell and heat of fire rose around her, and she hung immobile much like she had hung from the Elezen's garrote. She hung as though in the moment of death, frozen in it, trapped in it. Her voice began silently. "I don't... want... to burn again. You can't."
Magic burst from her hands, cold, washing over her body and the fires lit upon it, chilling her skin. The weak girl writhed in the massive woman's hands, kicking and struggling, trying desperately to get away. "You won't burn me! You won't burn me! Airos! Help me!" She was screaming frantically, her movements chaotic, the mask floating near her face flashing with green light. "Airos! Mom! Help me! Help me!"
"Aijeen!" Antimony finally found her voice, shrill and thin as it was, a desperate cry.
Cypress fanned the flames with her aetheric reserves, sending the flames cascading upwards around her, burning her own clothes just as she sought to override the summoned chilly winter, "You are no one's daughter!"
Finally stirred to movement by the mother's cry, Illira crossed the courtyard towards Antimony, grasping her shoulders. "She is dead. I killed her, Antimony."
Ulanan grimaced. She released the spell prepared over her tome, the triangle vanishing as the aether moved to take hold of D'aijeen's limb to immobilize her.
D'aijeen continued to try and summon magic to counteract the fire, but the fire overwhelmed it, and Ulanan's spell made the fetish in her hand drop to the ground. Her limbs were fixed in place, and though she still writhed, it was a tired and weak motion. "Stop it! I don't want to die! I want to go home! I want to back to the desert! Someone help me!"
Antimony sagged against Illira's hands, eyes widening as her whole body shuddered. She leaned forward, tried to push past the elezen. "No--" Her voice broke, and her daughter's cries dragged on her body like a physical weight. "No, Aijeen! Aijeen, I forgive you, come back!"
Ulanan moved away from the inn, facing the golem that was blocking Antimony's view. "It's not your daughter! It's a voidsent using her body!" As soon as she was done shouting, she felt she was being incredibly and unnecessarily mean, if perhaps accurate.
K'airos let all her strength leave her, collapsing against D'hein and staying crouched on the ground, crying.
D'hein crouched with K'airos. "It's okay. Don't look. You don't need to listen." He put his hands over her ears.
Illira had to practically take on Antimony's weight in her hysteria and desire to reach what was left of her daughter, "Think of it simply as a death throe."
Although the well of aether within Cypress was deep she had let a considerable amount burn off into the atmosphere stoking the flames as a blacksmith would in his smithy. Not normally a showy person, the Roegadyn was angry, letting that energy channel through the molten embers of her skin. She dug down now though, forcibly channeling it into the body below her. Willing the part of her that was very much a part of her volcanic post to take back the unruly ward.
The fire burned into D'aijeen's body vividly, gruesomly. It burned a hole into her chest and traced lines along her ribs, making her thin form glow internally, making her body arch. Where she had been writhing like a desperate woman a moment earlier, noe she writhed like an insect, limbs mad and thoughtless even to the point of damaging themselves. She slammed her arms numbly against the Roegadyn's limb and body, heedless of the fire, kicking her legs behind and beside and in front of her. Behind her, her tail writhed like a worm lifted from the ground.
"Help me! Airos! Mom! Dad! Airi!" Her hair caught fire, her eyelashes burning visibly behind the mask. "Help me! Help! Help!"
As her mouth hung open to scream, her words were interrupted by a vomiting of bones and darkness. It began at her mouth, then seemed to tear open her jaw, her neck opening, her collar bursting open, her ribs cracking and her belly splitting. Shadow and bone poured out. Not her own. With the sound of a shout of fear and fury, translucent shadow and expansive gore exuded from D'aijeen's body, crashing against the Roegadyn.
Antimony shrieked against her daughter's cries and shoved violently against Illira. "Don't hurt her! Don't hurt her!!"
K'airos placed her hands over D'hein's and pushed them as strongly as she could against her ears.Â
The lalafel turned around at the scream. The gruesome display made her raise one hand to hide her face and stand there, paralyzed and horrified.
The red figure, much of her clothing burned away to within an inch of usefulness, was tossed from D'aijeen like a ragdoll despite her considerable size. An ocean tide of darkness it was, a powerful wave crashing into its unprepared victim. Thrown against a column a few feet away, the thing cracked though it somehow stood still, a chunk of it knocked out as it did the same to Cypress; her head having smashed up against it.
![[Image: AntiThalSig.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179079766/AntiThalSig.png)
"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
