Blood Pact: Event Para | Luna & Alekto
CW: murder, blood
Neve had known she was going to kill the russet haired halfling since she had spied him in the The Golden Lute an hour before. It had been three years since she'd seen that face, with that distinctive scar that ran from his chin to the corner of his right eye. He was a muscular but slight man, a mere few inches taller than Neve. Jaques Ortolan. He was a Fox Clan thief, known to those in the fae cities to buy valuable stolen items too risky to sell within city limits. The last time Neve had seen that face, he had stolen everything she had on her person at knifepoint - including her shoes. Since she had closed her hands around that cursed ring in the Night Market, the question of who to kill to summon the amount of blood magic needed for her permanent glamour spell had haunted her. It was as if the universe had gift wrapped it's answer. Neve had always been one to hold a grudge.
That is how she found herself in the dead of night, stalking through the camp after a stumbling, drugged halfling. She wore her own old tattered indigo cloak and an embroidered black velvet jerkin and breeches that Luna had likely worn to some costume party. It was unfortunately the most practical thing in the entirety of the court lady's vast closet. So, Neve had to make due. She could not understand how Luna had had such a penchant for choosing the most uncomfortable and impractical clothing, with all of those cumbersome layers of petticoats and poof.
Neve's twin daggers were warm and familiar in her hands. Her thumbs traced the ornately carved bone hilts of the daggers as she snuck through the dark camp, a nervous movement so often done that her fingers had worn grooves into the bone. They had been a particularly lucky bit of loot, found in a purse she had stealthily cut from the shoulder of a distracted court lady many years before. Despite the hefty price she could have fetched for them in The Night Market, Neve hadn't been able to bear to part with them. Since then they had proven more valuable than any amount of gold she could have traded them for. They felt like an extension of her limbs now.
She was growing impatient now. The powdered belladonna slipped into the halflings absinthe should've immobilized him by now - just enough of a dose to paralyze without stopping the heart. But, Jaques had charged for last 10 minutes like a drunken bull, seeming to want to push through the poisons effects out of pure stubbornness. It did not even seem he had the ability to locate his tent any longer. Just when Neve had begun to doubt she knew the proper dose of poison to incapacitate a halfling, he dropped to his knees.
Another long night had brought Alekto to the fringes of the camp with a restless energy coursing in her veins. She stood near the Veil, staring at its rip until her head began to hurt. Not to mend it, she had certainly spent enough time lately focusing her efforts on that, but to study it. Alekto focused on every detail, probed at its magick sensations and the ways in which her own magick felt in response. There was power here, dripping beyond the surface. If Alekto could learn to harness it, control it…
Alas, that night she was left with nothing but frustrations and exhaustion. She drifted back through the camp while it slumbered, drawn up in glamour simply to avoid unwanted attention. Quiet, peaceful, it was a comforting stroll, in its own way. Alekto took the long way back to her tent, allowing herself to breathe the night air and release some of her pent-up energy through the walk. The tension in her shoulders relaxed slightly and her ever-clenched jaw loosened. The promise of her soft bed and a warming talisman grew ever more enticing.
Then she heard the sputtering and stumbling of a drunkard. Alekto’s attention returned to reality as the man collapsed a short distance ahead of her path. He was too far for her to recognize him, or for her to see the face of the hooded figure which approached, and in another world Alekto would have simply continued on her way. Whatever business the two strangers had, it was not her concern here, so far from the Unseelie encampment. Alekto had bigger worries to deal with at the moment.
Then she sensed blood magick in the air. At once, her magick crooned in her veins in recognition. Alekto shifted, a silencing glamour concealing the sound of her footsteps as she began to approach. The power lingering from the hooded figure was unfamiliar, vague enough that Alekto could not place it with someone she knew. The mystery only intensified her desire to uncover who was behind the hood.
She recognized the clothes first. A smile crept across her features as memories of court brought her the knowledge she sought after. Alekto allowed the glamour over her appearance to drop and pulled the hood of her cloak down. The facade of a lowly squire vanished and she was the Archmage once again, standing tall and proud in her gleaming armor as the dark, suffocating storm of her magick stretched its intensity out through the air, laying its presence thick and heavy in the small section of the encampment in which the other woman and the newly made corpse were.
Alekto merely stood there, a few feet away, watching. Luna certainly had the magickal ability and familiarity to know that the extension of Alekto’s power was enough of a greeting in of itself. Besides, the sorceress was far too invested in examining the siphoning spell before her to wish to interrupt now.
Neve smelled Alekto’s magic before she heard her. It was instinct that brought Neve to a crouching fighting stance, her dagger extended in front of her in warning and her teeth bared. But at the sight of the Archmage she blanched. Ten vials of blood still incriminatingly hung in the air around her, now filled to the brim with their precious cargo. Every instinct Neve possessed told her to attack, despite the absurdity of it. But even she, an irrefutable risk taker, knew better. She slowly lowered her blade, wiping the blood off on her cloak with a practiced nonchalance. But, she knew the other woman had seen the moment of terror on her face.
“It’s rude to stare, Archmage” she drawled. With a swirl of her finger the small hovering corks popped back into each vial and fell around her. Neve looked down at Jacque’s still form, still unable to summon much regret. If anything she felt annoyed at the intrusion. Archmage Bone seemed to have a habit of showing up at the most inopportune moments, always dripped with smug superiority. Had Alekto Bone been nearly anyone else, Neve would have cut her down the minute she felt her presence. She was still dangerously tempted to try, despite her rising fear. Instead, Neve collected the vials around her, making effort not to appear remotely frantic as she did it. When she had, she rose.
“It’s a nice evening we’re having,” Neve continued, not bothering to take a glance at the body still sprawled behind her. She could feel the warm blood spatter on her cheeks. Her words were a challenge, daring the Archmage to question the strange situation laid out in front of them. It was, from reading hundreds of pages of Luna’s diaries, what Neve thought Luna would do. There had always been a strange confidence in the court ladies writing that implied she felt she was doing the right thing, even at her most horrible. Luna Crow had been able to justify just about anything if it pleased her.










