are you afraid to die?

ashen wolves resident at the officers academy

[dueth]

DOLLHOUSE.

[dueth]

Rumour has it that a rogue mage had once fled to the Abyss, suffering fatal wounds from his pursuers. He had succumbed to death alone in the dark depths, and now his soul haunts the unexplored and untravelled catacombs of the Abyss, where he uses his magic to play elaborate tricks on unsuspecting passersby. It is said that he warps the dimensions around you, trapping you until you fulfill his impish requests. Most of the denizens now simply wave it off as an old wives’ tale, a story simply meant to discipline children, but some still warn against going down desolate halls alone… 

When Eir opens her eyes, she finds herself in a dimly lit room.

How she comes to find herself here escapes her. She remembers a quiet voice, a dull hum– the trace of death leading her down a path she has never walked. Curiosity begets its rightful punishment. The final glow of the torches behind her had danced against worn walls before disappearing entirely. The voice went quiet. Darkness swallowed her whole.

Now, she stands in a place she cannot recognise. Casting a cursory glance around, her gaze lands on someone else– a woman with dark blue hair, a face Eir cannot claim she has seen. There is comfort, somewhat, in realising she is not alone. The princess does not know if it will last.

“Where…” Her voice trails off. There were no entryways or exits; cobble stretched out between all four walls, sealing them in completely. Only two torches adorned the room, placed high on opposite walls– a height neither of them would likely be able to reach. Grout grows between the cracks in the floor. 

The air is dank, unpleasantly warm. It felt laborious to even breathe in the space. 

Something in it shifts. 

“Hello.” A voice, seemingly from nowhere, reverberates throughout the room. “I’d like to play a game.”

Let's play touys, @crowsbite!

[crowsbite]

In her dream it had been the figure of a woman, familiar in all of the ways that Ursula's own shape is. Something to recognize anywhere, something to know better than even herself. A shadow that has always been cast over her, one she is meant to fill the shape of just enough to still remain within its borders. One that defines her, that she does not know herself in the absence of.

And in her dream, she had chased it.

Ursula wakes— or perhaps merely comes to— in a place she does not know. The room is small and the air within it is heavy, the only thing in the room to take up any space at all. It unsettles her instantly, and she pushes herself to stand with an air of disgust at having touched even the barren floors or vacant walls.

Her eyes find a woman, a girl. Porcelain carved and uncanny just enough that Ursula's eyes narrow, but she does not bother with a response to a question that she herself is above asking. She smooths at the fabric of her skirt, begins in a slow stride around the room's perimeter. Observing, inspecting. Flinching when someone ( something? ) speaks suddenly.

"Clearly," she mutters back. The fabric of her glove catches and snags on the stone wall, a fact that makes her lip twitch in irritation, but the hope for something hidden in its texture outweighs her ache for the damage she knows will linger well after whatever this is. "And what game could possibly be played in a stone box with two trapped women?"

[shinebow]

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

[shinebow]

"Shit, I…"

Tanya's eyes widened. The active stance she had taken on now fell apart, limbs going slack and her bow clattering to the floor. Fuck… fuck! She swore she fired into the ground next to her, but clearly, she missed her mark. The shame she tried so hard to fight back now boiled over, threatening to melt her into the very floor. 

Her heart ran circles in her chest. Unable to think of anything better, Tanya untied the bandana from her forehead and pressed it against the wound. The fabric drank up the blood, orange turning into sickly brown. She tied off the end as tightly as she could, then turned away and sighed.

"L-Look, I can admit I was wrong to shoot you but…"

Tanya swallowed. Though her eyes were drawn down to the floor, the image of the wound seared itself into her mind, and she could see it dancing around her vision. An ugly mark against such pure pale skin brought about by her delivery of justice. Above that haze of guilt, too, was the visage of the woman who she had hurt—hauntingly beautiful, mature in ways that Tanya might never grow into. Was there any fighting against that?

Still, Tanya could not let this woman hold dominion over her. The petty matters of aesthetic differences and spur-of-the-moment mistakes were not justice. She took a deep breath.

"But I still don't believe you. Good people just don't talk like you."

She'd learned that over years of hearing people like her belittle her, or underestimate her, or taunt her into changing. Her intuition had to be worth something, more than a miserable encounter in a lonely church in a continent so far from her home. Gods, she had to be right—this woman had to be evil. Tanya picked her bow up from the floor, but did not return to that stiff, active stance. But she turned to this woman, chin angled slightly upward, the small sliver of spirit she had left in this moment brought forward.

"Just tell me: what are you doing here? Why do you act the way you do? You still haven't answered any of my questions properly. All you've done is just insult me and my womanhood at every damn turn!"

[crowsbite]

Good people just don't talk like you.

Ursula's nose wrinkles, her gaze piercing on that band of fabric that has been sacrificed for her wound as though it offends her. It does, frankly. A piece of fabric from this girl that goes against everything she expects of one. Something that lived just beneath those too-short layers of hair, against skin that knew the sweat of a soldier and not just a hot summer's day.

It had to offend her, she decides. It has to. For her to be anything other than appalled by this, by her, would be to deny every carefully placed piece in the definition of perfection that has bent and determined her every whim since Lady Sonia's hand first came beneath her chin. If Ursula was this way to be perfect, then what excuse had anyone else to be different? Certainly not this different.

"Act what way, girl?" She tears her gaze away at last, resigns herself to flexing the fingers of her wounded arm and tensing the lean muscle beneath the makeshift bandage. Anything to ensure that she is still in some way rejecting it, opposing it. "You keep up with these demands, and yet you don't once ponder hypocrisy. Good people don't shoot at strangers for the sin of a midnight walk. Good people don't others of being a way by characteristics alone."

Ursula was not a good person, she knows this. Lady Sonia had taught her that there was nothing desirable in being a good person, that there was nothing desirable in being a person at all. Good is merely an idea made up by foolish creatures to soothe themselves. That is all this child is doing, soothing herself by calling herself good and someone else bad. It's hilarious.

She does not question why she does not simply admit to her that she is bad. That she is all of the things she is accused of.

"Though it brings me no joy at all to consider us such, perhaps it is best that you look at me as your equal. All of the things you see in me come from nowhere and nothing other than what you see in yourself. What you don't want to see." Her gaze lowers, meets the stubborn glint of eyes in the endless dark. "I have answered your question, the only one that is fair to ask of a person. I am here because I prefer the company of the nighttime and its quiet to people and their noise. I am here because sleep often evades me. I am here for only reasons your small mind will not allow to be true because you have already decided me cruel."

A step towards the cathedral's grand doors, past the girl and her bow, with her hair now falling just above her eyes. A shame. In another life, she may have been pretty. "I may well be, but it is for none of the crimes you accuse me of."

[crowsbite]

@bigbadbaltie asked:

You only ever hear about the whole stereotype of tall, dark, and handsome. What about tall, dark, and beautiful? Gorgeous, even? A stare so piercing that even his blood chills a little, a shiver running down his spine-- except that shiver ain't got nothin' to do with fear. He might as well be skipping along like a schoolgirl having the best day of her life before he comes to a halt; a quick tousling of wavy locks, a run of his hand over his chin as if he's a man in thought... "Sorry to interrupt you, miss. But I gotta say, didn't expect I'd find someone as gorgeous as you down in these tunnels." Abyss certainly wasn't for the faint of heart, but something about her demeanor told him that she'd get along just fine here. "Lucky for you, the King's in town. Name's Balthus-- say, why don't you make a deal with me?" With his hand extended, he flashes a wink alongside a lopsided grin. Those roguishly good looks can't possibly fail him now. "Let me show you around some. Maybe chat a little. Some dinner, perhaps?" Well, that part's more complicated. Dining and dashing sounds just fine, and if she's slow, he can throw her over his shoulder, surely. "I'll bet ya anything I can make you have fun. Anything you want!"

Storm-blue scrapes him from extended hand to dopey grin, down then to the toes of his boots and then back. Ursula wears one brow quirked in an expression like amusement, the sort of glance saved for a puppy let off of its leash. "The King?" She echoes the word slowly, serpent's venom softening where her tongue enunciates the final consonant. "My, isn't that a sweet idea?"

She does not reach for or accept that hand, leaves her own folded over her arms with no intention of being elsewhere. Lady Sonia was a woman to regard men as pets in a particular way something unlike that which she did any other humans. They possessed a weakness to her that women didn't, one that made them amusing to play with in entirely different ways. It was a thing of knowledge that she imparted upon Ursula only in such a way for her to use herself where it might never outshine Sonia's own prowess.

"You speak of a deal," she hums, gaze returned to study all the sharp edges in his face, "but it seems I've only heard half of it."

Perhaps she can understand why her Lady would find a creature like this amusing. He certainly is that much, with his loud voice and blindly confident candor, but then Ursula thinks that he would make a rather tiresome pet.

"Unless you are suggesting that your end of such an arrangement is merely my presence," the tilt of her chin curtains her irises in dark lashes, her lips curl in a rather bemused smirk. "That's quite the sweet thought, Balthus. Are the men of Abyss truly so easily amused?"

Ursula doesn't care to hear his answer. It's all a part of a pretty little scene in her mind, one where she leaves him wondering for nights. Her smirk collected once more into a smile that drips in faux politeness, she turns on her heel and makes to stride away.

"Quite charming, though." She calls over her shoulder, a laugh in her voice. "May your luck be better with your next target."

[peerlessscowl]

i wake from this dream

(to see the sun has already set for me)

[peerlessscowl]

A strange orb has been seen around the monastery, said to be from the world of Zenith. Rumors say that it can show another facet of yourself in another outfit, from another timeline, or even another world. Of course, not every rumor is to be believed, but you suddenly find the possibility very real when you happen across this orb for yourself— and find yourself living that very facet out. [Grants Any Skill +1] (starter for @crowsbite)

It was unseasonably warm in Tintagel. The rains had ceased a fortnight ago, and the skies had remained a clear and gossamer grey, light reflecting so high in above the clouds that they seemed illuminated by St Elimine herself. It was not such a blessing, though, despite his peoples’ delight at the dryness of the air, the peek of sunshine that warmed their cheeks. They had stores enough that it would not become an issue, that the earth harboring the roots of their crop would not go thirsty, but when he looked at the sky and all that he saw was blue and the sun, it brought a gentle frown to his face.

Nevertheless, Raymond had dressed himself in the furs of his station, 

They had stores enough that it would not become an issue, that the earth harboring the roots of their crop would not go thirsty, but when he looked at the sky and all that he saw was blue and the sun, it brought a gentle frown to his face.

the heavy quilt and gambeson that despite a lack of armor made him look larger than his nineteen years, and all the fully grown man that he had needed to be when he had taken over after his father’s fall.

His hands stilled, lightly, in adjusting his collar, the drape of cape and broach across his broad shoulders, and his eyes fixed on the rider that appeared in the distance, neither hurried nor slow, but taking deliberate steps towards his castle.

“Connor,” he called softly, one of the few household members that had been permitted to remain after the incident, fingers working to complete his toilette, affixing the circlet around his head. “Ensure that our guest has a welcome ready.”

“Sir? My lord?” He wasn’t used to calling him that, the farrier’s son brought up into the household who had known him merely by his name without titles for longer than he’d known he was to become marquess.

Raymond’s eyes remained fixed on the road for a moment long, until Connor peered over his shoulder to see the rider approaching, and the boy nodded.

“Right, uh. This is the envoy from Bern, innit?”

Envoy was a kind word. The letter had come for him, tucked amongst other notices, and he had needed to read it thrice over before deciding the best course of action, not merely for himself or his people, but for his family’s name.

Raymond turned from the window, thoughtfully silent before answering.

"We still have boar, don’t we? Tell the kitchens to prepare a meal for us.”

[crowsbite]

Around her the air is stagnant, leaving skin uncomfortably warm beneath her traveling cloak. For an arrival, Ursula might have preferred something more foreboding. A storm, perhaps, rain enough that her hair might cling to her cheeks, her bodice to her chest, and the young marquess may find the image of a shivering woman in need of his hospitality an appealing one.

Instead she is to arrive in weather perhaps better suited to the truth of her cause. Warm and still and out of place, promptly unsettling. Reprieve from an uncomfortable season only to promise another soon to come, obscuring that honesty beneath the relief of all those who had waited out the last. Dry grass crunches beneath her gelding's hooves, her movement towards the castle seemingly the only thing moving about the world at all.

It is all routine from there, a series of steps that make every different castle feel the same. Ursula dismounts, reins already relinquished to some stablehand she glances only once at. She lowers her hood with both hands as the shadow of the structure envelops her and offers a closed-lipped smile to the serving boy that remains. The weight of her cloak slips neatly from her shoulders and into his arms, and she does not bother to ask him to speak up and repeat the muffled greeting he gives. Her eyes roam appraisingly about the manor as she is guided through it, an air of superiority about her expression.

The place reeks of vulnerability. In everything she can see the circumstance, the boy-marquess come into power too soon. Luxuries sold by his former to repay debts she is certain now weigh upon his shoulders instead. A pitiful fate to be left in the husk of a noble home without even the ornaments to make it feel noble. It's a wonder he has any attendants to see to her at all, likely on contracts that pay in something other than coin. She wonders idly at what generosity this particular boy may be here on behalf of, assessing him as he stops before a door.

"Thank you," she says before he can speak to instruct her forward, "that will be all."

Head ducked, he shuffles off. Ursula's gaze lingers on his back, thoughtful. He had been young still, younger even than his new master. And would the late Marquess Cornwell not have preferred a girl of the same age instead? Her lip curls, amused. Had the father a taste for boys, then? Does the son?

The door groans beneath her palm as it opens and she steps through. Immediately her gaze falls to him, Raymond, not even twenty years of age and draped in the garb of older, uglier men. He does not suit it at all, still too young around the eyes for attire better tailored to drinking one's weight in ale and barking at wives and sons and servants all the same. Ursula moves to stand before him, presents herself with shoulders straight and hands folded in front of her.

"My lord," she greets with a smile and a respectful dip of her head, "it is a pleasure to meet you. I am Ursula, though I imagine I need not remind you for whom I come on the behalf of." A cant of her head. "I admit I am delighted to be meeting the young marquess so soon, you are the subject of much talk."

With that, she moves to be seated without invitation, folding one leg neatly over the other. "How are you faring in your new responsibilities?" A glance from his russet hair down to his worn boots and then back. "They appear to suit you well," she lies.

[shinebow]

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

[shinebow]

"Hands off me!"

A vigorous shake was all the effort Tanya could put towards sending the woman away, though. For in truth, her senses were weakened by her. There was a sick joy in feeling her wrap her fingers around her bicep, giddiness in the attention she now kept all to herself, even if she knew its source came from some wickedness beyond her comprehension. Her heart, in lieu of beating, squeezed. How could she feel this way knowing what she came here to do, hearing what this woman said to her? What sick and twisted sorcery was this?

Tanya screwed her eyes shut. The light from this woman's spell was not bright, but it was overwhelming. She had hoped that by blinding herself she might have stopped the fire in her chest from spreading further throughout her body, but what thrived in darkness thrived in the imagination, too. That was to say, the less Tanya saw of this woman, the more bewitching a figure she seemed to cut. Her curves bent at different angles, her voice grew lilting in its cadence. She was surely the woman of someone's dreams—maybe Tanya's own. Breathing heavily, she opened her eyes, but kept her gaze trained to the ground.

Tanya had been right to go after her. Because good people did not move like predators, slithering throughout the night. Even if she was not a dark mage, she was certainly some other kind of evil. Tanya was right, she had to be right.

"I have a hard time believing you're unarmed and unassuming, n-not when you've got your weird spell pointed at me right now." Tanya swallowed. Her bow trembled in her hands, and the arrow she had so firmly nocked on its body had slid off to the side. "The knights would for sure believe me over you. So stop trying to pretend you're innocent because you're clearly not."

Not much changed in the letter of her words, but it was clear that she had been utterly defanged. Indignity and doubt swirled into a noxious elixir and trickled down into the depths of her stomach, tempering the tongue that had grown so sharp over these years. But she was a fighter by nature. She wouldn't let anything stop her, not even her own shame. She bit down on her lip, and her senses tried grounding itself onto that pain over everything else.

"Women like you don't scare me." She spoke through gritted teeth, "You can try putting me down all you want. I don't care. All I need to do is stop you."

[crowsbite]

"Would they?"

The way she asks it, Ursula sounds to be genuinely considering. A shove is enough only to cause her to reposition, to wind readily to the girl's other side and investigate it just the same. She leans close, wrinkles her nose as if the proximity alone is enough to disgust her, never mind that it is of her own volition.

"I'd wager the word of your victim, a woman they do not know from any other, might seem a bit easier to believe than a hotheaded deviant who would rather chase ghosts than do as she is told." It's a guess, but it's an easy one. No knight would send someone on her tail for such a superstitious matter, certainly not without trailing her a while before shooting. And to attack unprovoked without trial, interrogation? Ursula snorts. Every card laid bare without her even asking, it's adorable even.

Satisfied with her inspection, she pulls away. The light from her magic dims, whittles away into mere murmurs at her fingertips, and she turns her nose with a hum. Not much of a threat at all, this sniveling little thing. It is in this moment that Ursula decides she does not like her and all of her wrongness, the scratch of her voice against her throat and the sun warmth in her skin that not even all of this darkness can erase. They are nothing alike, not even with all of these layers of dust and ash over Ursula's once flawless skin.

Still flawless skin.

"See? Not a hair on that head of yours has been harmed." There's that venom again. Her fingers twitch for her own hair, for where time has let it grow just past where she once kept it so perfectly even. She wants to pull on its ends and drag it as far down her cheek as it will go before it tears, wipe the layer of dirt she cannot seem to truly escape from her face and shout: Look at me and all of the ways that I am not you. "But myself..."

Instead she reaches for her arm, illuminates it with milky, arcane light and turns skin until the bubbling crimson of a flesh wound can glare at its maker. Ursula hums. "It seems there is evidence right here of exactly your bullheadedness."

[shinebow]

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

[shinebow]

"What?" Tanya quickly nocked another arrow on her bow, "What did you just say to me?!"

Her heart pounded in its cage, and she could feel a heat rushing up from her stomach towards her head. She'd heard these remarks before in her childhood, from little brats in villages who found it fun to light up her short-fused temper by taunting her about her boyish appearance, or from her dad's bandits who snort at her roughness, posturing that a man would never marry a woman with shorter hair than him. Tanya's jaw clenched. She'd successfully evaded ever hearing them again by snapping at anyone who dared even speak of her tomboy tendencies, and this time is no different.

"You think that just because I look like this, that gives you the right to talk to me that way?" Well if she was a dark mage, which Tanya was certain she was, this woman was surely capable of worse things than bullying. But at this moment, where she is still tender from her own need for attention, it feels as though this woman could stab Tanya and it would hurt less. She puffed out her chest.

"I-I'm as much of a girl as you are, got that?"

But the retort was toothless. The lady's shift in posture, as well as the near-imperceptible glow of her spell had added some contrast to the form of her shadow, and Tanya could see it had curves in places her own body had yet to fill out. Tanya's eyes flickered briefly upward, and the heat in her head made its way to her cheeks, too. This woman's body was… Needless to say, she would have silenced all those village brats and ensnared those churlish bandits in ways Tanya could only dream she could do.

She sucked in a breath. It wasn't just her superiors that she needed to prove herself to—it was this woman too. Which felt wrong, because Tanya was supposed to be the powerful knight whose arrows were ready to enact justice. Instead here she stood in the dark, discomfort in how light and bony her body was all of a sudden. She didn't like it one bit. Tanya growled, a vain effort to dispel the tension that was now building in her throat.

"And don't be stupid." The words were practically spat out, which left Tanya breathless, "You haven't done a good job covering up, you know. There are traces of your work everywhere! Animal corpses drained of blood, random splatters of red and black strewn about, and most damning of all: sightings of you wandering the monastery at night. You have magic—" she flicked her head towards it, "—so you're obviously a mage, and I know what you people are capable of, okay? Next, you'll tell me you've been sacrificing kids, too. Just! Don't talk anymore. I'm taking you to the Knights and you can defend yourself there."

[crowsbite]

And she had been right to like her odds, staring down the point of an arrow that does not come loose of its string. They are close enough now that she can curl her fingers along the bow's curved body, reach until they snag that feeble arrow. Tendrils of arcane dance from fingertip to polished wood, writhe around the length of the weapon poised before her face like a challenge. Ursula's smile is closed-lipped and cruel, disbelieving.

"Do you hear yourself?" Her moment's ago venom has turned from searing heat to blistering frost. Beneath the heavy cloak of night there is silence in everything but them, the sound of breathing deafening. "Animal carcasses, children? You are so thick-skulled as to take the first mage you see and pin such a claim upon her? Come on, brat, I'd much like to hear this."

She steps easily out of the bow's way, turns about this short stranger as a snake coils around its prey. Her hand surrenders its hold on the weapon if only to grasp a bicep, nails digging in every tender spot they can manage. Strength has never been where she excels, and the archer's muscle beneath her grip tells her that she is outmatched in this regard, but she knows she has won in another. She's gotten a reaction, she's found a vein without even looking.

"Are you afraid of magic?" Poised now at the knight's flank, she raises the hand not currently burying itself in a sleeve. Pale light spreads from her palm in the shape of wispy sigils, writing their way outward as Ursula brings them nearer and nearer to the girl's face. A lazy threat, the usage of something so easily made violent for something as simple as studying the face of her assailant. "Did some great mage harm your family, your friends? Maybe it was a woman, one who unsettled you as I do?"

To the questions there is a strange humanity, a sincerity to the curiosity that blends itself within what is otherwise saccharine. Ursula clicks her tongue. "Tell me, do you believe yourself right to accuse me of such things because of how I look? I do make quite the nice candidate for the sort of villain you are trying to conjure in your mind, don't I? One who does heinous things to innocent creatures beneath the veil of nighttime... Perhaps there is a girl in you after all, buried beneath all these unsightly edges of yours. A joke of one, no doubt."

A breath through her nose, disgusted, though her hold does not loosen nor does the threat of her magic wane.

"How would your knights take to knowing you attacked an unarmed, unassuming woman in the dead of night over some carrion? Not well, I must imagine..."

[shinebow]

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

[shinebow]

It was a starless night. The monsoon had ushered in thick stormclouds that drew thick curtains over the sky, obscuring the light that Tanya normally relied on to hunt. But she refused to let that stop her—this was the closest she'd been to cracking her case, and she knew that once she did, her knight superiors would finally believe her. 

For there had been rumors of something wicked wandering about. Nothing tangible, just a lot of isolated incidents. Animal carcasses, mysterious traces of blood and ink and, most notably, a woman who moved only in the shroud of shadow. Her superiors had dismissed it all as hearsay, and assigned her to cases they deemed more important, but Tanya refused to let it go. She'd seen this all before.

Tanya tracked her target all the way to the Cathedral, quietly following her in before the doors could turn completely shut. Careless of her to leave an opening. Now Tanya crouched behind the pews, watching with all the hunger of a starved vulture. The woman's movements revealed little about her intentions, for Tanya was not knowledgeable enough in the art of dark magic to know what was ritual and what was trite. But she knew that this woman must have been evil. She brought her the same gut-wrenching feeling that the Loptr church had, that same acridness, same metallic taste that ripped straight to her throat. Eventually, Tanya could no longer bear just watching and leapt to action.

"Stop right there!" 

She emerged from her place by the pews, fingers pinched around an arrow that was already on its way out of her quiver. Her eyes narrowed. The dimness made the woman's shadows all the more sinister. The edges of her silhouette blurred so deep into the night that Tanya could not tell where the darkness stopped and the woman began. But that was precisely the nature of wickedness—incomprehensible and unnameable until one actually stood face to face with it. And Tanya was determined to dispel the veil.

"You're not here to pray, are you?" 

Her voice held all the tense anticipation of a drawn bowstring. The only thing left was to send her volley flying towards her target, which she did so without hesitation.

"Don't answer that. Because I know what you've been doing, sneaking around trying to perform your sick rituals. Well, I'm not letting that happen anymore! You're coming with me."

@crowsbite

[crowsbite]

In the night's heavy quiet, Ursula's footfalls are slow and deliberate. Walk with pride, she reminds herself, you still matter. The withering muscle of her back protests at the roll of her shoulders and sets them just so, the dust in her lungs is agitated by the deep breath she takes to puff out her chest. It's dark and miserable and there is not a soul to see such a heretical display to a god these pews know not the name of. A dry laugh seems to echo in the stillness, no more alive than the rest of the marble and stone.

It comes as a surprise to her that nobody prays in the shadows here. Perhaps that is evidence of peacetimes and a society more loving such that no soul brandishes a sin so shameful that it may only be uttered at such an hour. Or perhaps it is proof of a place less honest in its hate, one where the only prayers offered so near to the heart of their so called Goddess are the ones deemed worthy of sunlight. She supposes it doesn't matter, for it means the cathedral stands empty for all but her.

With a frustrated sigh for nothing and no one, her shoulders drop in the same breath as they had raised. The endless ceilings and impenetrable dark make it as though the sky is above her despite the walls and shelter; an open maw considering her, never deeming her worth descending upon to swallow whole. Only haunting, lingering, reminding her that it sees her but does not want her. It's when Ursula lets her head loll to gaze back at it, to try and level its taunting, that a voice rings out from behind her.

Startled, Ursula staggers to turn. Her fingers reach instinctively for a tome she does not have, magic hot beneath her skin. The only light is its faint glow— the open cathedral doors empty of moonlight to spill through— and the glitter of a metal edge as it whistles towards her. A sneer pulls at her lip, torn into a hiss of pain as an arrow drags like a knife along her arm.

"What manners!" The words are spat from her lips like poison, taunting and ugly as a crow's laugh. "Who dares attack a lone woman in such a holy place as this? What rituals do you speak of, girl?"

She stalks forward, hands raised. Thin light can do nothing to pierce this endless dark, but it can show her the figure before her as the distance between them closes. The curl of her lip turns from snarl to sneer, if this woman wishes to loose another arrow than so be it, but she doesn't mind her odds. Especially not as the only space between them becomes that of the bow's curve.

"Ah," sun-dark skin and boy short hair greets her, "hardly a girl at all, are you? Speak." It's a command. "Explain yourself, lest it be me to bloody these hallowed floors."