Trapped with the Enemy | Elevator | Pushed Beyond Breaking Point - Riven and Das of your choice for @editoress
Choking, Riven coughed out the sand and gravel from her throat, her eyes blinking rapidly and painfully. Disoriented, she rubbed at the grit stuck in them but was forced to stop as her coughing fit intensified. She rolled over onto her stomach, each sharp breath fanning out the sand underneath.
But there was no sound of ocean waves, only the empty echoes of her misery bouncing around her. The sand wasn’t fine and golden but strewn with pebbles and stones, and it was too dark to discern its color. No, not just dark. Everything was in monochrome. Where was she? What had happened?
“Silence her, Erosen, before she brings every duergar down on top of us.”
That sharp command in Undercommon drove such fear and rage into Riven that she found herself unable to get enough air as she fought to rise to her hands and knees. She felt around blindly for her weapons, only for a hand to brace itself against her back, large, warm, and reassuring.
“It’s alright, Riven. Be still, be still.” Her da spoke in soothing elvish, but she knew without looking that he hadn’t taken his eyes off Avenzi. “Are you hurt? Is anything broken?”
As if that mattered. Erosen’s hand slid from Riven as she brought herself to a crouch, glaring daggers at the drowess who would’ve been her mother. In elvish, she hissed back, “Why is she still alive?”
“Is that any way to speak of your dam?” Avenzi replied, her accent thick but no less discernible as she replied in their language. “Well, at least you didn’t raise her too soft. I was beginning to wonder if you’d left me anything to work with.”
Erosen shifted to stand tall in front of his daughter, rapier poised to strike. Riven frowned as she realized his shield was missing. “We will both die before I let you get the chance.”
Holy light flared from him, spreading out in a dim halo. With a raised hand, Riven shielded her eyes, momentarily blinded.
Avenzi laughed, low and amused. “We certainly will, and Riven’s corpse will rest alongside us, if you’re determined to be so unfailingly stupid. Look around, Erosen, my sweet. Do you have any idea where you are?”
As Riven’s eyes adjusted to the light, she lowered her hand and saw the truth of their situation only a beat behind her da. Each of them sported cuts and wounds from the fight—a fight that had ended with the ground giving way underneath them. They’d fallen into stone and darkness, how deeply Riven couldn’t say. The knot making itself known at the back of her head spoke to a loss of consciousness, and the deep shadows of the cave ensured they couldn’t make heads or tails of any direction. And Avenzi had mentioned duergars. Was that what had made the sadistic carvings of warfare and torture on the wall? The splashes of rust-colored red didn’t seem like paint.
Coldly, Erosen took a threatening step toward Avenzi, this woman whose features looked like an inverted mirror against Riven’s own. The same face, except hardened with malice and cruelty. The same curve of the eye, except the irises were as red as embers. And then there was the blue tint to her gray skin, the tight ponytail of white hair, the axes in both hands, so similar to the way Riven preferred a dagger in one hand and a hand crossbow in the other. Was this what Riven looked like under the glamour? Riven’s growing despair was unknown to Erosen as he declared, “I found the way home for us once. I can do so again.”
“Ah, but you had help last time, didn’t you?” Avenzi raised her brow by the scantest inch, otherwise keeping her weapons at the ready. “And you have never been so deep as this. Do you think the duergar clans are the only things you have to fear? Do you know what lives in the lakes you’ll stop at for a drink? Do you know which tunnels the driders keep their nests?”
“Just kill her, Da,” Riven insisted because she recognized that look of grim resignation on his face.
“What do you propose then?” he asked the drowess. “A truce?” His face darkened. “Or do you honestly think I’ll drop my guard long enough for you to kill me and abscond with my daughter?”
“We all have to sleep sometime, don’t we?” Avenzi replied silkily. “Face it, Erosen. I know the way out. If you want her to live, you need me.”
“Aye, sure,” Riven agreed sarcastically, rising and stepping in line with her da. “But last I looked, ya don’t need your tongue ta walk. So ya better choose which of us ya feel comfortable takin’ a watch while you sleep because one o’ us won’t be so honorable.”
But rather than looking unsettled, as Riven intended, Avenzi only fixed an appraising gaze on her, smile gone. When the drowess nodded, it was with an air of approval. “Yes,” Avenzi drew out in Undercommon. “There you are.”
Riven felt a chill travel down her spine and settle in her stomach. Avenzi, however, seemed done with taunting Erosen and making proclamations of her daughter, becoming that steel-forged commander once again. “The Fjorzin clan sends patrols through here to clear out any opposition, whether it be drow, monster, or aberration. We need to move, lest they decide to make necklaces out of those unusually pale ears of yours.”
Avenzi left the halo of light. Riven’s pulse jolted, and she realized she was terrified of being left so far down in the dark. She rushed to follow, but her da stopped her with a firm hand on her shoulder. “Stay close to me,” he whispered, letting the light dim until it faded completely. “Our eyes will adjust in a moment, just breathe.”
“She’s leaving us.”
“Riven—”
“Da, she’s leaving us down here to die!”
“If there’s one thing I know about that monster, it’s that she won’t readily abandon anything she can use,” he said, adding darkly, “And she sees potential in you. Listen to me, Riven. No matter what happens to me, you will get out.”
“No, not without you.”
“You will!” His hand squeezed her shoulder. “You must.”
Riven shook as they walked, unsteady on her feet. It was too terrible an outcome to consider. She withdrew a dagger and readied her hand crossbow in preparation to take down anything that lunged their way. The sounds of her breathing and heartbeat in her ears became a rhythm that anchored her but didn’t calm her. Soon, they caught up to Avenzi, finding her outline in the gray dark. The only light in the cave came from bioluminescent fungi and certain minerals Riven couldn’t identify.
And then Riven remembered something. She reached for her Da’s shoulder, tugging him down to murmur in his ear, “Krelyss.”
It was so faint and hard to see clearly in the dark, but Riven could swear she saw in her Da’s gaze a glint of understanding and newfound resolve. Krelyss knew they were here. Krelyss had been there as they’d fought Avenzi for her life, for his freedom, and he blessedly hadn’t plunged farther underground with them.
They would only need Avenzi for as long as it took for Krelyss to find them. Until then, all they had to do was survive.
@editoress asked: A kiss to prove a point for Yuna and Seymour.
Yuna’s return to Bevelle was no homecoming. The holy city of Yevon had stopped being home the moment her father, Lord Braska, left for his pilgrimage to defeat Sin. Her father, who she loved but knew better through other’s stories and memories than her own. A father who had brought the Calm but never returned.
A father whose footsteps she tried walking alongside rather than step-for-step. Yuna wanted to defeat Sin forever, to bring the Eternal Calm, one where no more summoners and their guardians had to die for a hollow victory. She wanted to end the spiral of suffering in Spira.
She felt farther away from achieving that future than she’d ever been. She couldn’t see her father’s steps. He had never walked this path before.
“Bevelle has never known such a lovely bride,” said a deceptively soft voice as its owner entered the room. “Nor will it again.”
Yuna’s attendants scattered, fleeing the room wordlessly as Maester Seymour approached. The train on Yuna’s wedding dress swept across the dark, marbled floor as she turned to find him in striking black robes, his chest covered and a white cravat at his throat. Her groom. “Please,” she said, with all the kindness and authority she had as a summoner, “let me send you.”
“There is no need for that.” As Seymour raised his hand, the sleeve of his robe exposed how his fingers were a little too long to be fully human, his nails talon-like but well-kempt. “I don’t plan on remaining as an unsent for much longer.”
If she had her staff, Yuna would begin her dance, fruitless though it would be. Defiance rose like a pyrefly’s glow within her, but the only show of it she could make was to ball her fists. The silk gloves she wore didn’t even give her the satisfaction of friction. “Nor will our marriage last. So why…?”
Why go through with this farce? Why abduct her from the heart of the Bikanel Desert, from her guardians? Why dress her like a blushing bride, in pure white with wings of freedom upon her back, if what she would marry was a patricide and undead malice personified?
“I told you,” Seymour responded. “To give the people of Spira hope.”
Yuna might’ve trusted the answer more if he’d displayed any hints of irritation, but he was as serene as when he’d first proposed to her. Her heels clacked too loud against the stone floor. “How will you give them hope,” she asked, soft but firm, “when you have none yourself?”
Seymour’s eyes met hers, and it took everything Yuna had not to recoil. Was it because he was unsent that his eyes appeared so devoid of life, of feeling? Had that spark she’d seen when he’d talked of Lady Yunalesca and Lord Zaon in Guadosalam been real, or had he always feigned at life? “You have enough,” he replied bluntly, “for us all.”
“No,” Yuna replied, on the cusp of hopelessness herself. “This isn’t about hope. Not for you.”
“If I tell you I love you, will that make it easier?”
“Only the truth will do that.” Yuna squared her shoulders, the action built of a quiet but dogged resolve she had always possessed. For a long time, she believed it had come from her father. Now, she believed it was born from the tenacity of her mother’s people, the heretical Al Bhed. “Why did you murder Lord Jyscal?”
Seymour’s mouth slanted into a mockery of a smile. “Didn’t his sphere tell you? You killed me over it, as I recall.”
“Yes.” What did you call an emotion that was neither all pity nor all rage? Yuna didn’t know. “But I’m asking you.”
“Yuna.” He said her name so wistfully, so futilely. “What does it matter?”
“He said he couldn’t protect you or your—”
“Protect me?” Seymour’s soft tenor dropped dangerously low. “What a curious interpretation, considering he never once tried to.”
There was no mistaking his eyes for being lifeless now. Their purple depths gleamed with an unholy wrath, a mixture of pain, hatred, and bitter amusement. But his face… The skin had gone so pale it was close to translucent. The Guado veins arching down from his forehead were to blame. They were so shockingly blue against his bloodless skin, Yuna almost believed if she were to reach out and touch one, they’d prick her finger.
“He confessed to his failing, and—”
“No,” interrupted Seymour, advancing a step. Then another, gliding ever closer. “No, Yuna, I do not believe he confessed to anything.”
Forgetting her surroundings, Yuna’s back collided with the floor-length mirror behind her, crushing the tiny angel’s wings sewn into her dress. The glass was shockingly cold against her skin, but at least it was a natural cold. Yuna went very still as Seymour loomed over her, giving off no warmth. His hand cupped her cheek, sending a chill down her spine.
“My father foolishly brought a child into the world that no one wanted. An abomination.” Seymour brushed his thumb along Yuna’s cheek to soften the cruel worlds, but Yuna was all too aware of the sharp tip of his nail. “Instead of condemning the people’s hatred, he succumbed to it. I grew up in exile with my mother, whose only crime was bringing that abomination into the world. Both of us shunned because he chose them over those he should’ve loved.”
His breath was a cool mist as he leaned his face toward hers. For a wild, frightening moment, Yuna thought he’d kiss her. “It was my mother who took me to Zanarkand. My mother, who made a sacrifice of herself for my sake. She became a fayth, so I would use her as an aeon. So that when I defeated Sin, the people would finally love me.”
“Anima, yes. In a way, you and I have upheld a long-standing marriage tradition. You’ve gotten to meet my mother.”
Yuna shook her head, unable to process the events at Macalania Temple all over again. Of what was happening now. The maester seized her, his touch becoming biting in keeping her still. “Surely, Lord Jyscal didn’t—”
Seymour’s haunted, grief-stricken expression hardened into deepest loathing. “My father knew of the whole affair, and still he did nothing. He let her die, let her take part in the world’s endless suffering. And still, still, I could not go home, remaining at Baaj alone. So tell me, Yuna. To a summoner who fights to give all for Spira’s sake, does that sound like protection to you?”
Yuna didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The images Seymour painted were too horrific to contemplate, and yet she did. The events played out in her mind, and she saw what a child would see and felt what a child would feel at watching the only parent he knew sacrifice herself. Yuna didn’t know when it happened, but at some point, she didn’t see the child Seymour had been and his human mother anymore. In their place was Yuna, as she’d been at seven years old, and Braska, his broad back the last thing of him she’d ever see.
Seymour brushed away Yuna’s tears, his touch tender and his voice a soothing coo.
“Yes, a part of you understands,” Seymour continued, a hair above a whisper. “I see it there, shadowed in your beautiful eyes. You don’t want to acknowledge it, but you do.” His mouth curled ruefully. “In another life—no, in another world, perhaps, we would have been a good match. We might have learned to be happy.”
“We still can,” Yuna tried, “if my pilgrimage continues.”
“Your pilgrimage ends here, my love. Be grateful. Nothing awaits you in Zanarkand but death. I’ve seen it firsthand. Even if you survived it, it would never let you go.”
Seymour did, but it was only long enough to reach for the gossamer fabric that would serve as her veil. He worked with sure, gentle hands to pin the veil to the tiara fashioned on the crown of her head, the rest of her hair pinned in an elaborate up-do. It was all gone, the emotion that had shattered his tranquil expression and inflamed his speech. Now, he was a groom breaking the most sacred of traditions, seeing his bride before the wedding. Worse, he was adding the finishing touch himself without the slightest hint of joy, anticipation, or lust.
Yuna would take lust if it meant being free of this sudden lifelessness.
He’d taken the edges of her veil to pull over her face when she stopped him, her hands catching each of his wrists. “Is this,” she challenged, “to save Spira?”
“There is no saving Spira,” Seymour answered at last. “Its spiral of suffering will continue unless someone brings it to an end. Not just Sin, but life. The world. Everything.”
“You truly believe that’s the only way?”
“I know it is. And which is more merciful? Letting the world’s pain continue, or bringing it to a peaceful end?”
Yuna’s eyes, one Al Bhed green and one blue like her father’s, flashed. “I cannot accept those choices.”
“I know that, too. But your fire, as beautiful as it is, is why you suffer.”
“And yours,” she rebutted, “is because you can’t see why any of it matters. Why we fight. Why, even now, my friends are coming for me. Seymour, life is about so much more than suffering.”
Yuna let go of his wrists, burying her hands instead into his robes and the fabric of his cravat. She pulled him down fast, closing her eyes. Seymour gave no resistance as her mouth found his. Yuna kissed him, tentative and scared at first, but he was right. Her fire was never far, and she reached for it now. Finding her nerve, she slid her mouth deliberately against his, her tongue darting out to brush his lips.
It changed everything. Seymour moaned into her mouth, sending a deep vibration straight through her. Defenses broke down and their lips moved together, an unspoken question meeting its forbidden answer. Seymour’s hand clutched the back of her head over the veil while his other found the curve of her waist, bringing her flush against him. It didn’t matter anymore that his body gave off no warmth when his mouth was so hot. The kiss—the need it had uncovered in them both—turned desperate. Yuna found herself willing to succumb to its sweet poison if she could just—
With a surge of strength that would make Kimahri proud, Yuna broke the kiss and shoved herself away from Seymour. “No!”
They both stumbled back, Yuna out of breath but with Seymour fairing no better. His eyes were wild with want, but all too soon, they narrowed with suspicion and resentment. Seymour looked alive, felt it, and that realization brought him to his full height, a hand upon his mouth. He was torn between wiping Yuna’s kiss away or pressing the remnants of it there to immortalize forever. Instead, he did neither, remaining frozen to watch Yuna’s next move, the summoner proving she was less prey than predator, one biding its time for a day like today.
But where the flush of desire clouded his face and caused him to hesitate, righteous anger hardened her features and strengthened her resolve.
“It’s only suffering, remember?” Yuna said coldly into the quiet space between them. “That’s all life is. You don’t get to have more. You don’t want to have more.”
Outside, Bevelle’s temple sounded the hour, signaling that it was time for the wedding to proceed.
No. 19 - JUST A SCRATCH
bitten | bleeding | stabbing
Damen and Laurent requested by @editoress
*
An affair of nobles, courtiers, and pets enlivened the gardens of Arles with various acts of sexual play. Damen stood with his back parallel to the wall as he had been doing for the past two hours, a living statue among the shrubs and flowerbeds listening to soft sighs and eager moans. He kept trying to determine where Laurent was, why he had brought Damen here only to leave him as an unwilling voyeur under guard. But Damen couldn’t see any motive other than the prince’s sadism at work.
It was a hot day in Vere, and sweat beaded on his broad shoulders and rolled down his bare chest. The gold cuffs around his wrists and neck were hot under the sun, becoming more intolerable than their inherent nature as slave manacles. If Damen’s skin hadn’t been such a rich brown and well-accustomed to heat, he would have burned by now standing well out of the way of the shaded areas claimed by the nobles.
Damen couldn’t even look or move around because, if he did, his guard had leave to discipline him, per Laurent’s orders. So far, that had entailed Damen enduring hard hits to the back of his skull and, once, a blow under his shoulder blades, the entire area still tender and healing from the lashes he’d taken. As a result, Damen was fighting to remain still before he did something very unwise, and the effort was beginning to strain his stiffened neck, back, and leg muscles. The urge to move was as distracting as an itch and twice as difficult to ignore.
Fortunately, the other nobles—despite their interested, assessing gazes—gave Damen a wide berth, engaged in various acts of debauchery with their pets. The sight of Ancel on his knees, his red hair spilling down his back and his moans aggressively loud, had only just left Damen’s mind.
So it surprised Damen when Nicaise rushed into his line of sight, the boy drawing short with a sneer as he noticed Damen.
It was unusual to see Nicaise rushing anywhere. As the Regent’s pet, he had more excuses than most to be lackadaisical; only one person could take him to task for being late. That must mean a plan was afoot, one of his cat-and-mouse games with Laurent.
Judging by the mean little smile spreading across Nicaise’s face, Damen just became a new pawn to play and sacrifice. After giving his own cursory look for Laurent, Nicaise primly noted, “Your master’s abandoned you.”
“Seems that way,” Damen neutrally replied.
“Poor, dumb brute. I don’t know why he doesn’t just kill you and be done.”
“Do you want him to?”
Nicaise scowled, as if Damen had asked a terminally stupid question. Before the boy could debase Damen further, Damen asked, “What calls you in such a hurry?”
The question took Nicaise aback. It occurred to Damen that perhaps Nicaise had thought he was being subtle or that he wasn’t being watched closely. A mistake born from the arrogance of youth, if nothing else.
Damen also remembered that Laurent had something of a soft spot for the boy, as much as a snake could have a soft spot for a fellow snake. Laurent had spoken up once to caution Nicaise, not with vitriol but with well-meaning diplomacy, and Nicaise had reacted then as he reacted to Damen’s curiosity now.
“That blond Akielon slave knows how to hold his tongue,” Nicaise snapped. “Maybe if you lost yours, the prince would like you better.”
“That’s likely,” Damen agreed.
In the sunlight, Nicaise’s brown curls glinted as gold as the jewelry draped in his hair and the belled collar around his neck. The bell jingled as he shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and disgust. “There is something wrong with you. You don’t act like a slave.”
For the first time today, Damen was glad he was already sweating. But there was no possibility that a Veretian pet as young as Nicaise would recognize Prince Damianos of Akielos. “My training,” he said carefully, “wasn’t meant to be endured by anyone with a prince’s standing.”
Nicaise’s blue-eyed gaze fell to Damen’s bare chest—no, his scarring back. “Clearly,” he responded with a smug smile.
The boy was unpleasant, and it was likely he would grow up to be an unpleasant man. But Damen couldn’t entirely bring himself to hate him.
“You’re going to be late,” Damen reminded him.
Nicaise’s smile disappeared. “Don’t act like you care, whore.”
Given that Nicaise was more painted and bejeweled than Damen was, the insult didn’t land. It wouldn’t have, regardless. Nicaise seemed to realize that as an angry blush spread across his pale face and he turned quickly away, no longer enamored by this game. As he did, something shiny and blue dropped from his person. Unconsciously, Damen stepped forward, intent on picking it up.
The guard’s hand came down. Damen pivoted, catching the guard’s wrist in a crushing blow. The man yelped in pain as Damen twisted it and shoved him bodily away. “I’m only retrieving what he dropped,” said Damen, and though it was unwise, he turned his back on the guard. He’d had enough of this contest of wills, especially when he wasn’t sure who he was competing against.
Nicaise stood a few feet away, frozen mid-retreat. His big eyes lingered on the dissolved altercation and grew wider as Damen approached.
Damen lowered himself on one knee so he had to look up at Nicaise. Between thumb and forefinger, he found the trinket Nicaise had dropped: that curious earring with a pair of sapphires that dangled so long from his left ear. Wordlessly, he offered the earring back to Nicaise.
Damen thought he was being non-threatening, but it was the wrong thing to do. As Damen’s hand came closer, Nicaise’s eyes flooded with fear. Behind him, the guard also reacted, now recovered and brandishing a golden rod with a thin, golden chain. Damen wasn’t sure what shocked him more: when rod and chain scorched his back or when Nicaise’s teeth sunk into Damen’s hand hard enough to draw blood.
*
“He thought you were about to pin him to the grass and rape him among the azaelas, obviously,” Laurent said of Nicaise in a bored voice. “A pretty lure for a brutal act.”
The Prince of Vere lounged on a divan in his quarters, looking as pristine and well-kempt as Damen had last seen him, utterly unaffected by the vices of the Veretian court. Even the cold mien he directed at Damen was the same, as if Damen wasn’t bleeding on his carpets from a nasty, human bite on his hand and a new, open lash upon his back.
After the joint attack, Nicaise had fled into the gardens, the sapphire earring clutched fast to his small chest. The commotion had summoned a crowd, including Radal, one of Damen’s normal guards, who declared that the prince wanted Damen’s attentions in his rooms immediately. The guard who had struck Damen had been escorted out by two others, dismissed, but Damen wasn’t quite sure what it all meant. He had the strangest feeling, judging by how Radal had talked about the guard as they walked the palace halls, that Damen wouldn’t see that man ever again.
To Laurent, Damen explained, “I was trying to help him.”
“He doesn’t want your help. He doesn’t even want mine.”
“I don’t see how you arguing with him and antagonizing him every chance you get is helping him.
“No. You don’t,” said Laurent. “But I must be. He hasn’t bitten me yet.”
Damen felt blood trickle down his spine, his back on fire, and found he wasn’t at all amused. Today, Laurent wore a small dagger around his narrow waist, and Damen imagined closing the distance. Imagining plunging the blade into this wasp of a man over and over again.
Aloud, Damen asked, “Why did you order me from my room?”
It still didn’t make any sense to Damen, why he’d been summoned to meet Laurent in the gardens for only the briefest of times before the new guard had appeared to keep watch over Damen. Why all he had done was stand there for hours, the guard’s attacks on him escalating with Laurent completely absent. Would he still be out there if Nicaise hadn’t shown up when he did?
Laurent responded, “The problem had to be dealt with early.”
“What problem?”
Laurent straightened in his seat and took Damen in with the slightest distasteful curl of his lips. “Because of you, my uncle has already robbed me of what, by rights, belongs to me.” Damen wanted to argue that he hadn’t forced Laurent to almost whip him to death, but it was a moot point. Laurent didn’t sound like he particularly cared either way. “Any further mistreatment of you I doubt will be tolerated, by my hand or otherwise. That guard was not mine but my uncle’s, a watchdog to ensure I behave. But who was to watch him behave?”
“You told him he could discipline me,” accused Damen.
“And disciplining a slave always entails a beating? I was vague enough that he had leave to treat you with leniency. I just knew that he wouldn’t. All my men and I had to do was wait.”
“You knew he was going to—” Damen gestured at his back, wincing with renewed pain.
“Not precisely. But I knew he would try to bring you lasting harm and report privately to my uncle that it was all my doing, giving him the last excuse he needed. He proved my suspicions right, but unfortunately for him, I got to you both first. After all, your care,” Laurent continued, blank-faced, “is so very important to me.”
Schemes upon schemes, and lies upon lies. Damen’s surge of disgust made it clear to himself that he was no longer surprised by the depths these Veretians could sink. Judging by how short of a time he had been here, that lack of surprise should be cause for concern, but his problems were so much bigger. “So what role did Nicaise play?”
“He didn’t. I thought, docile as you aren’t, that you would react sooner than you did.” Laurent’s icy gaze was dissecting. “You do care for the other slaves.”
“I told you I did.”
“Yes. But I didn’t believe in the honesty of a barbarian.”
Strangely, the insult sounded more like an admission. As if a previously-held belief of Laurent’s had been proven irrefutably wrong, and he was willing to adjust that belief.
Laurent stood and made his slow way to Damen. For one wild moment, Damen thought that Laurent was about to take up his bleeding hand between his own immaculate ones to inspect it. Instead, his pale fingers hovered over the wound, lazily pointing at the bite marks.
“Clean that mess before you attend me,” he said, turning his back on Damen to expose the series of laces that stretched from the shirt’s neck to its hem. “Then get out.”
@editoress asked: @zacksfairest and Lemuel on a rooftop, please.
*
“They’ll have to come out sometime,” Cassie said to Lemuel, who was pacing behind her. Stalking, really, but at least he had the courtesy to do so far enough away from the edge of the roof without blowing her own cover.
“We wouldn’t have to do this at all if we were in the air, Theron,” he snapped, some of the first words he’d spoken since joining her.
“Diva’s a bit easy to spot,” the Semon woman pointed out neutrally. He was being irrational, and they both knew it.
Lemuel released an impatient scoff, but he didn’t argue the point. He’d been stonily silent and in a foul mood from the start, but Cassie hadn’t pressed his buttons on why. This was more of a stake-out than a reconnaissance mission, meaning at least one of them needed to pay attention while the other was bored to tears. Or fuming up a storm.
That’s what she told herself, but she also wasn’t in a hurry to discover the truth.
Cassie shifted into a more comfortable position on her stomach, a pymaric lens magnifying her vision, so she could see into the windows of another building farther down the street. A popular Soud eatery in the district even at this late hour. Its interior was lively with lamplight and people, all with matching golden hair. It was also where a couple of March sympathizers had begun to frequent over the past week, and this night was no exception. Two hours ago, Cassie had watched the pair of Laurent siblings enter while looking over their shoulders, the worry clear in the furrows between their brows, but that wasn’t what had identified them.
It was the fact that their eyes were not green like most Souds but a rare gold, like those of the man suddenly crouching beside her.
“Is this really,” Lemuel said, bitingly sharp, “how you want us to spend the night together, Cass?”
Lowering the lens, she shot him an alarmed look, followed by a glare to mask her racing heart. “There are traitors down there.” And because she thought it would remind him of both their places, as soldier and commanding officer and within separate castes to boot, she added, “Sir.”
“Not even if I was quick?” But Lemuel exhaled, his strange mood abating. His keen gaze turned to the eatery, and devoid of any humor, he said, “They’ll all be corrupted at this rate. We should just raze the building.”
He said it so simply that it had to be a joke. Gooseflesh broke over her skin anyway. “Our orders are only to capture the siblings, quietly. We’re not here to make a statement.”
“Everything is a statement,” he argued but fell silent.
Cassie returned to her task, but her mind was only half in it, her thoughts turned to the captain beside her. He had been acting odd and restrained for awhile, but now, he was being downright erratic. He wasn’t shaving as often, and his eyes were more bloodshot than not. He also wasn’t trimming his golden hair anymore, allowing it to creep past his shoulders.
She would chalk it all up to grief for his brother’s murder, if he hadn’t been behaving unusually even before then.
“How is Mikaila?” Cassie ventured. “Now that she’s walking again?”
“Aye, she’s a fighter, that one. Doctor had to practically hold her down the whole way, the poor sod.” Lem smiled for the first time that night, full of pride, but that was all he said.
“And Leysa?”
His smile vanished. At last, he replied, “What do you think? She misses her husband.” His mouth twisted. “And doesn’t deserve enduring the one she’s going to get.”
So the Adelier family’s period of mourning was officially over, by legal standards. Cassie asked, “Who did they decide?”
“Oh, Theron! Did I not tell you? I’m getting married.”
Her stomach might’ve dropped less if someone kicked her off this roof right now.
Before she could string together a response, Lemuel tensed and barked, “Eyes up!”
Cassie scrambled for the lens and refocused it on the eatery’s door, where two people were coming out.
“Is it them?”
Nondescript working class clothes, but that same white scarf tied around the woman’s hair. When the woman glanced up at the darkened sky, Cassie adjusted the lens further, until she saw the golden glint of the Laurent sister’s eyes. “Yes!”
And madman that he was, Lemuel leapt off the roof.
*
“Damnation!” Cassie cursed as she hurtled down the street. Her boots weren’t silent against the stone ground by any means, and her sword clanked against her armor, which pinched something fierce where she was pumping her arms. She rounded the corner of an alley in a skid, desperately trying to catch up to where she’d seen Lemuel’s green half-cloak disappear. When he and their targets were nowhere to be found, she cursed again.
They were supposed to be doing this together! She trusted her captain, but if they lost the two Souds, Cassie would face even more consequences than he. One slip-up large enough, and the powers-that-be could decide the Lions of Mercy was no place for a woman at all.
Little light filtered into the alleyways between buildings. Cassie was halfway down one when she could finally make out that it was a dead end. She gritted her teeth and turned back, taking a new route, but there was still no sign of Lemuel or anyone else.
Seeing no other option, she opened her mouth to call his name when she heard a wet, guttural scream. She was pulled to the sound like it was an irresistible Silver who’d gazed at her a beat too long. Her pounding heart had little to do with running and adrenaline, though she could’ve sworn her limbs were lighter, her legs moving faster.
She trusted her captain, aye, but Lemuel wasn’t entirely himself tonight.
When Cassie rounded the next corner, she tripped over the body. Her legs sank into pliant flesh, and her hands caught her fall, landing in wetness that was a hair too viscous to be water. Her stomach roiled, and with a disgusted cry, she tore herself away from blood and body—male, Soud, dead. Even though her bulldozing into him had turned his face into the ground, Cassie absorbed all these facts in a snap. What she was struggling to understand was the rest of the scene before her.
Lemuel had the Soud woman pinned to the wall, one sword—Kossaul—through her shoulder, the other—Ataret—through her stomach, which he currently held fast. At some point, he had ripped the scarf from her hair and stuffed it into her mouth, muffling her screams. Cassie watched in horror as the woman’s gaze found Cassie over Lemuel’s shoulder, her golden eyes pleading and full of hate. Then the light in them faded, and her body went completely limp. She, too, was dead.
“C… Captain?”
When the only living Soud in the vicinity didn’t so much as twitch, Cassie took a tentative step forward and tried, “Lemuel?”
Nothing, and then… Lemuel expelled a long breath, though it didn’t cause him to look at all diminished. He reached up and yanked Judgment from the woman’s shoulder. Last Word followed, blood spurting as the body slumped to the ground. Cassie saw that the woman’s eyes were still open, her face stained by tears and blood. The end of the scarf in her mouth trailed down to graze her chest.
“What took you so long, Theron?” Lemuel said unperturbed as he produced a cloth to clean his blades. He was practiced at this, tucking one sword under his arm as he cleaned and sheathed one blade before attending to the other. “All that meticulous preparation and you missed the main event.”
That snapped her attention to him. “All that,” she agreed sharply, “because our orders were to capture them. Remember?”
“Had to be done,” Lemuel countered with a blasé shrug of his shoulders. “Unless you’d rather your captain had gotten Core Leeched tonight. Fucking pymary.”
“What?”
“The man could cast. Bit of crucial intel you forgot to tell me.”
That’s because there hadn’t been any indication that the Laurent brother was a wright. If he had ever been Rited, that information would have bypassed Cassie and gone straight to her commanding officer. “Even so. They were meant for interrogation. If anything they said could’ve led us to the main group—”
Lemuel released a bitter laugh. “If only the rats were that stupid. But I do admire your unfailing optimism.”
“Don’t condescend to me, sir.”
“Well,” he said, lips curling. “It’s better this way. Let any who think to join the insurrectionists know that we’ll give no quarter to traitors. No chance for escape or bargaining. Just a horrible end that amounts to less than shit in a gutter.”
It wasn’t that she disagreed, but… Cassie clenched her fists at her sides, holding her tongue.
Lemuel noticed. He raised an eyebrow that challenged as much as it inquired. “Think you could’ve done better, Miss Lion? Should I not have defended myself, so you could have the glory of avenging me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then wipe that look off your face before I do.”
He strode past her like two dead Souds weren’t even there. Like she and him were back on the training grounds, merely fencing with words after a friendly spar. But that was a long time ago, and there was nothing friendly about the atmosphere now.
Cassie stared long after his back had faded into shadow and his footsteps had receded. She would corroborate his account to their superiors, of course she would. She had no other account to give, and she trusted her captain.
And yet…
Did I not tell you? I’m getting married.
She clenched her eyes shut, willing her tears back. When she was certain the fit of sentiment had passed, she opened them again and saw that the world had finally slowed down, allowing her to process everything.
The man she loved was marrying his brother’s widow. Of course he was. That was expected of Lemuel, as it had been of countless other men before him whose brothers had left behind grieving wives and children. Cassie didn’t know why she had ever expected any differently. This would be the best move possible for the Adelier family, the best way for them to adjust without Duane Adelier in the picture.
Yet a part of her was heartbroken, again. And a part of her knew that Lem preparing to marry Leysa was not what had set him on edge tonight. He understood his duties as well as Cassie. She had the sense that, once again, he was keeping something from her, something dark and dangerous.
Cassie regarded the Laurent sister, not quite with grief in her heart but certainly regret. She was a traitor, and Lemuel had treated her with extreme prejudice after her brother had reached for sloppy pymary to attack him. Cassie couldn’t say she wouldn’t have done the same thing as her captain; she wasn’t ready to meet Ssael yet.
If only this woman had chosen a different route, she would be alive now and maybe, impossibly happy. If only Cassie had risen as a guiding star to her earlier, a woman warrior glorifying Ssael with sword and deed, then maybe Laurent would have seen the March wasn’t her only option. That there were ways to change one’s country without betraying it.
And maybe her brother would not have led her so astray. Cassie walked past his body when she abruptly paused, thoughtful. Not about the body cleanup or their funeral rites, if they would even receive either. Rather, she examined the man lying prone atop street trash, having choked on his own blood. Prodding with her foot, she kicked him until his empty eyes beheld the night’s distance stars.
No. 21 - THAT’S WHERE THE BLOOD’S SUPPOSED TO BE
bleeding through the bandages | pressure | blood-matted hair
Zaeed Massani/Fem!Shepard
“C’mon, Shepard,” Zaeed Massani said, a touch of strain bleeding through his mocking tone. “All the bloody hits you’ve taken, and you’re going down after one little shot?”
“What’re’ya talking about? ‘m fine,” joked Shepard, but her words were slurred. “You’re not... walkin’ straight.”
He wasn’t because he was busy dragging Shepard across the field, trying to avoid getting them both blown up before they could reach cover. On top of Shepard being all but useless, her body a leaden weight and her gun nowhere in reach, Zaeed walked with a terrible limp, his leg fucking killing him.
But he’d had worse in his time. It was Shepard who was trailing blood behind them, a chunk of her chestplate blown away by an expert shot through her shields. Or a lucky one. All around them, the sounds of gunfire barely paused for breath. Garrus Vakarian was having a field day, using the remaining Collectors as little more than target practice as he bought them time.
“Here now, I know a thing or two about battlefield medicine,” Zaeed said once he’d stopped cursing and set Shepard’s back against a tall crate. If he were being honest, both of them practically collapsed in the dirt, Shepard near her limit and Zaeed’s leg finally giving out on him. “Mostly how to plug a hole.”
Shepard snorted, which turned into a grimace of pain. “Yeah. Now’s’a good time… for that talk.”
“You’re bloody delirious.”
“I’m bloody serious,” she responded in a horrible imitation of his accent. “But mostly very blood—ow!” Shepherd exclaimed, her eyes shooting open when Zaeed pressed hard on her shoulder wound with a bandage.
“Keep pressure on it,” he ordered, making her hold her own bandage while he inspected his leg. Goddamn Collectors had a particle beam that had managed to sear through his armor and scorch a nasty line across his thigh. If it had gone any higher, he would’ve told Shepard to put him out of his misery.
For now, he was content looking at charred flesh and dark blood. Utterly, boringly familiar. Zaeed clenched his jaw and wrapped a bandage tight around his leg. Get the bleeding to stop, let Solus and Chakwas worry about the rest later on the Normandy. “Think we need to look into those shield upgrades, Commander.”
“No… kidding. Bastards’re tougher than they look.”
A minute passed as Zaeed triaged his own wounds. Other than his leg, blood ran from a gash on his forehead into his good eye. He swiped at it, ignoring the stinging and dampening his silver hair with red, giving it a rusty sheen. Nothing else in particular happened during that time. No enemies appeared to finish them off. But call it what you want—battlefield instincts or cold, hard experience—because all of a sudden, Zaeed knew that something was wrong.
His mismatched eyes flew to Shepard just as her body listed to the left, her balance and remaining strength abandoning her. She landed on her injured side, her hand still pressing on her shoulder wound, though without any real force. Blood had completely soaked through the bandage, staining her glove. Even worse was the puddle of it in which she now lay.
Zaeed’s heart pounded with renewed adrenaline. He rushed to her side, ignoring the scream of protest from his leg. “Vakarian!” he yelled into the comm. “The Commander’s down. Lawson, where is that fucking shuttle? Unless you think the Illusive Man’s going to rebuild her a second time!?”
The mercenary didn’t wait for a response from either of them, their voices drowned out as he pressed his hand over Shepard’s. He examined her more closely. What had he missed? The hole in the front of her armor didn’t have a matching one in the back, but—
“Goddamn son of a bitch, Shepard,” Zaeed half-yelled, half-pleaded with her. His hands were already moving, trying to get her armor off her torso. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a fucking exit wound?”
“I can’t… feel it,” Shepard said, barely audible. She couldn’t even raise her head. “S’like my arm’s gone.”
“Don’t talk, you idiot.” He had seen this before, many times with countless different men and women on countless different missions. Shepard was going into shock, and depending on how much blood she had lost and pure fucking luck, he could lose her at any moment.
And of course, even now, she didn’t have the sense to follow anyone else’s orders. “Did you mean it… when you said I could…”
Dammit, don’t say it, he inwardly begged her. Now wasn’t the time to remember their talks in the Normandy that were starting to go on too long. How closely she would be standing to him by the end. How her beauty was no longer something he noticed but something he wished he could tell her and see where it went.
Instead, he had a job to do. To save his—no, their commander. He wrested the armor plate from her back, saw the river of darkness running down her black body suit that wasn’t entirely sweat, and heard her say nothing else. Had he spoken aloud without realizing it? And she’d actually listened? When he found her face again, he saw that her eyes were open and staring away from him, utterly, horrifically blank.
Zaeed screamed, her name lost in the roar of the Kodiak drop shuttle as it hovered overhead, arriving far, far too late.
No. 29 - ALL WORK AND NO PLAY
“You’re still not dead?” | too weak to move | overworked
Riven/Delethil requested by @zacksfairest
Including a special guest star~
*
Even coughing hurt, but how else was Delethil going to shake loose the blood in his mouth? He spat, the coppery glob landing a few inches away from his prone form on the floor of the cell, yet the metallic taste remained. This time, his drow captives had left him with no water, no bandages, no food, and even if he had them, he was too weak to reach for them.
His back was bleeding with five open lashes, at least one rib was broken, and bruises were blooming on his face, torso, arms—
“You’re still not dead?” a sharp, surprised voice said in heavily-accented elven from outside his cell. There was a quality of sweetness to the voice that only Delethil heard. Maybe even he was imagining it simply because he liked the sound of this drowess.
Delethil cracked his eyes open.
It was the daughter of his torturer. Delethil felt a hint of surprise himself that she’d returned again, even as he gave her a barely-there smile. She was not lording over him, giving him a view of polished boots and nothing else, but rather was crouched down so their eyes could meet.
Avenzi would not like that if she saw, which meant Riven had dismissed or distracted the guards. They were alone.
“Come to check on me, lass?” Delethil spoke a bit slower than normal, his voice gravelly, but he could manage.
“No,” Riven denied too quickly, too vehemently. “Just… If you were dead, we’d have an open cell, is all.”
“Ah!” Delethil said with a sprightliness he didn’t feel. “So she’s efficient along with being kind and beautiful.”
Even though the effort of speaking pained him, it was worth it to see a drowess blush. This drowess in particular. Despite her white hair and red eyes, she was paler than her mother and her other countrymen, her skin a unique shade of lavender with gray undertones. When she blushed, it turned her cheeks and pointed ears an interesting shade of mauve.
She also looked at him like his flattery was equivalent to spewed acid. “Maybe you are broken, if you think that about her after what she’s done to you.”
Merciful Forest Father, she thought he was talking about Avenzi. He would laugh if the sensation didn’t make him feel like he was dying. His expression turned flinty. “No, lass, I’d never believe her capable of benevolence. You, on the other hand, I think more highly of.”
Riven rocked back on her heels, a full retreat as her entire face turned mauve. Her fingers clung around the iron bars, which she peered past to glare at him. “Making fun of me won’t win you any favors.”
“Did I sound insincere? Forgive a poor, injured man, milady.” His green eyes held hers as he smiled a rueful smile to blunt his sarcasm. “I’d do more, darling, but I can’t rightly move.”
He didn’t have to add why. Riven had been there when Avenzi had ordered the beating, then the lashing, Delethil’s limbs restrained the whole time so he couldn’t flee or fight back. Riven hadn’t spoken up in his favor, which Delethil had learned earlier was a form of kindness on the young drowess’ part.
Riven bared her teeth and stuck her face between the bars. “I told you to stop it with the names. Do you want your tongue cut out?”
Even now, Delethil wasn’t sure if Riven was warning him against what she was capable of or of what Avenzi would do if she ever overheard how he was talking to her daughter.
“So much culture shock between us, aye? If we were in Aeranth, I’d trip over my own nimble feet to tell ya what a gorgeous lass ya are. While here, your mother has me whipped just for lookin’ too long at ya, and then ya threaten me with more bodily harm besides.” He clicked his still-working tongue. “None of the great romances covered the two of us, did they?”
“There is no us,” she hissed. “I’m only here because—” She stopped, clenching her jaw shut.
Delethil waited, hoping she would finally reveal her hand. He knew she hadn’t started to covertly visit him, to sneak him items to keep him alive for his own sake. Riven wanted something from him, just like he wanted something from her and was working hard to stay in her good graces. Regardless of the fact that most of the flattery he paid her was true, it was all aimed at one goal: his freedom out of Cicecta. If she happened to fall for him in the process, well, he’d gladly have her before he left.
But whatever Riven’s end goal was, it continued to elude Delethil to his immense frustration. All she said was, “Pour this down your back, so those don’t get infected.” The drowess passed a glass bottle of clear liquid through the bars.
He couldn’t lift it, but it was in eyesight. The liquid was so clear that, when it stopped moving, the bottle appeared to be empty. “I take it this isn’t alcohol.”
“I’m sure I’ll regret saying it, but thank ya.” Their conversation was reaching a clear end, but Delethil sought to delay her departure, asking, “So when is Avenzi going to begin interrogating me properly?”
Her eyes flickered over him, taking in the state of his injuries. His dirty, tangled auburn hair. Lingering on his tattered, bloody shirt. “When you do finally break.”
“She’s wasting her time. There really isn’t much I can tell her about Luntower’s plans.”
“Don’t let her know that,” Riven advised him, then her eyes narrowed. “But… If that were really true, you wouldn’t still be alive.”
“Not one for wasting time, she.” Darkly, Delethil wondered how long he had been watched, and how many drow operatives were still in Lunhaven.
“You should have a few days to recover at least,” Riven said, rising to her full height. “Mother has business with the empress, and I… might be able to stretch it out longer.”
“What are ya planning, lass?”
Riven didn’t answer. Her boots left his line of sight.
He raised his voice to call after her. It was scratchy after all the screaming he’d done. “Ya have a look of moon elf about ya, y’know.”
Her footsteps came to an abrupt stop. When she replied, her voice was strained. “What makes you say such stupid things?”
“Not as they are now,” Delethil clarified, “but as they once were. A long, long time ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure, lass. All we have are stories, but… Us elves were all once fae, just spawned from different kinds. Moon elves in particular were described as being celestial.” He paused for effect, counting five bricks on the far wall of his cell before continuing. “Once, they all had hair either black as night or pale as starlight. Skin in shades of pale blue or purple, glowing with the reflected light of the moon. I thought it when I first saw ya, that ya look just like how they used to. Their goddess Sehanine, reborn.”
Shocked silence met his bold claim, then Riven snorted. “Bet none of them had red eyes, though. Especially not some fancy moon goddess.”
“Aye, maybe not, if the Circle has any say in their history.” Delethil closed his eyes, fatigue setting in at last. “But maybe they’re wrong about that, too.”
As Riven left, Delethil told himself that that particular come-on hadn’t been too much too soon, that he hadn’t scared her off. But days passed with no word from her. He regained the strength to move and nearly passed out again when he treated his back with the mystery concoction Riven had left him, his back experiencing renewed agony for an entire day as it healed. He survived on the meager once-a-day rations the guards threw at him, which didn’t seem to be on any schedule. Mentally, he prepared himself for Avenzi’s next summons, for her next round of torture.
Yet more days passed, and he was not summoned.
Riven had planned something, and she must have carried it out. Instead of being relieved at the extra time to rest, Delethil found he was growing restless with increasing anxiety.
When a male drow with dark skin, long white hair, and shocking blue eyes appeared at his cell, Delethil’s stomach flipped with foreboding and nerves both. Riven’s descriptions of her stepbrother had not done him justice. Zaresh was as attractive as Szez was cold, and he leveled Delethil a look of disgust that so far only Avenzi could match. But whereas Avenzi’s disgust had been pure, Zaresh’s was laced with anger.
“If I discover this has all been your influence,” Zaresh threatened with clipped precision, “there will be nothing left of you for Riven or my bitch of a stepmother to find.”
Delethil wasn’t in the mood for such pleasantries. He approached the bars. “Enough riddling. You lot are worse than sphinxes. What’s happening?”
Maddeningly, Zaresh remained reticent, giving him a cool, cruel smile. “Why don’t you come and see for yourself?”
Then, in a move that rendered Delethil speechless, Zaresh produced a set of keys and deftly unlocked his cell. Delethil understood then that this was some sort of trap, and he didn’t want to know what was beyond these four, tight walls. Zaresh didn’t give him the choice. The drow drew a hidden dagger and introduced the sharp blade to Delethil’s back, threatening to cut open the scabs there or create new wounds from which to bleed.
At this moment, the two of them were breaking so many stringent Cicectan laws that if they were caught, everything would be over. At the same time, Delethil recognized the quiet step and clever hand of a fellow rogue, if not by profession then by necessity. Stealth would not be an issue between them. The problem would be how perceptive the remaining drow in Avenzi’s estate were. Either Zaresh earnestly cared about Riven to do all this, or there was some other play at work; likely, it was the latter.
Not seeing a way out, Delethil walked where Zaresh bade, death only ever a shadow away.
No. 27 - I’M FINE. I PROM…
passing out | vertigo | collapse
Me/John Silver requested by @editoress
This is absolutely a scene from Stowaway that I haven’t gotten to yet.
*
Space battles were eerie things. At one moment, the RLS Legacy was on a steady course, utterly alone in the vast, dark emptiness with no other company but the distant stars. The next, a ship appeared on their starboard side and fired its cannons. Even that had been silent with no warning cry from Onus, all six of his eye stalks closed in sleep in a gross negligence of duty. Then, the enemy ship’s laser fire breached the RLS Legacy’s atmosphere, and the air positively roared without stopping.
Captain Amelia, alive with rage and a rifle in the shrouds, shouted orders to open fire that somehow carried over the cacophony of the attack. Yet most of the crew hesitated a beat too long, flying into action only after the ship’s cook echoed the captain’s orders.
Melody Westfire didn’t notice. She was ducked down below the railing, attempting to get across the deck to the last place she’d seen Jim and Doctor Doppler. Not trained fighters, them. Oddly, she didn’t feel near the concern towards the ship’s medical doctor and her homicidal robotic assistant, but she also didn’t know if they were caught in the fray or below—
Laser fire hit the side of the ship just in front of her, the railing exploding inward in a shower of broken wood. She cried out and fell to the deck, eyes screwed shut and stinging from debris. Fine dust and the sharp stench of burning ozone made her cough, and tears fell down her face from the grit stuck in her eyes. If she’d taken another step, that hole in the railing could’ve been her.
It pissed her off.
The lack of preparedness she had, both mentally and physically, towards a pirate attack pissed her off. Her father’s insistence of keeping her away from proper military training pissed her off. She should be in the shrouds with Amelia, jumping from mast to mast and firing her guns and rallying the crew. Amelia truly was worlds above her, in captaincy and so much more.
Melody managed to open her eyes, and they locked on the laser rifle resting a few feet from her. A dead crewman lay beside it, his green skin turned ashen and his yellow eyes staring dully into the vastness of space. She barely saw him, snatching up his gun and extra power cells. She then placed her back against the railing, breathing deeply, getting accustomed to the weight of the weapon in her hands.
Cabin boys weren’t supposed to be armed with anything beyond a sword. As a known stowaway, she wasn’t supposed to have any kind of weapon, the privilege taken from her after the launch. She didn’t care. Neither, it seemed, did the rest of the crew, who were all preoccupied with the space battle, of using their own weapons to stay alive.
She rose from cover just enough to get her sights aimed on a target, and once she found it, she braced the rifle in the pocket of her shoulder and fired. The first shot was low, the white laser fire connecting with the side of the pirate ship and returning the hole they’d delivered. Not good enough. She adjusted, looking for the stance that was the most steady, the most accurate.
The enemy ship was drawing up closer to them. The pirates that weren’t firing from the deck or the fighting tops were preparing ropes and a long plank. They were looking to board. Melody honed on them and fired again. This time, her shot took a pirate in the stomach, which was as broad as Turnbuckle’s. He fell atop the ropes clutched in his hands, and the other pirates took notice. They fired upon her immediately.
She dove and rolled across the deck, avoiding shots until she scrambled behind a mast. A laugh escaped her, hysteric and euphoric both. Melody had thought it would be harder to fire at another living being, to take a life. Turned out, in the heat of battle, it couldn’t be easier, and it had been a pirate’s at that.
Melody Westfire was a general’s daughter. She was born to kill pirates.
Familiar with the rifle model, her hands moved fast to expel the used power cell and replace it with a fresh one. Then, she slung the rifle over her shoulder and climbed the shrouds. Another crewman was dead in the top, and she shoved his body aside as respectfully as a life or death situation would allow.
Being up high like this gave her an advantage on viewing the fight on deck more clearly, but the Legacy was not flying steady by any means. Turnbuckle manned the helm, attempting frantically to prevent the pirates from hooking onto the ship and boarding. So far, he was failing. Melody took aim and fired as she could, but pirates in the other ship’s tops saw her as fair game, forcing her to take cover. The closer the other ship got, the more she realized it was not only larger than the Legacy but also its masts were taller. She was about to be a sitting duck if she didn’t do something.
She spotted it the next time she’d peeked over the top’s railing. The other ship’s mizzenmast had taken a stray hit, a chunk of wood missing from almost halfway up, yet still it stood strong.
Melody gritted her teeth.
Not for long.
She must look mad, she thought as she popped up to fire at that spot in the mizzenmast before retreating down again. More of her shots missed than connected with her target, but she knew all it would take was just a few more. Just a few more, and the mizzenmast would break, taking the sails with it.
The pirate trying to kill her from the top of that very mizzenmast realized what she was doing too late. Melody heard him call down to his crew some indecipherable warning, but she couldn’t make it out over the cannon fire, over her own crew’s shouts, over the roar of the gun by her ear as she pulled the trigger again and again.
But she heard when the mizzenmast cracked, the snap of the wood louder in that moment than a supernova. Their ships were side by side, their atmospheres converged. Everyone heard and watched with mixed horror and glee as the mizzenmast snapped, the shroud and white sails falling like a flag waved frantically in surrender. Part of the mizzenmast crashed into the mainmast, tangling shrouds and sails together and jostling the ship’s colors: a red, right-facing skull over crossed swords on a black background. Though the mainmast remained standing, the hit caused any crewman upon it to fall to the deck, some fatally.
The crew of the Legacy crowed in delight, George Merry’s voice rising to shout crude insults to the pirates concerning their mothers. Melody caught Captain Amelia’s gaze on her. The captain was perched on the Legacy’s mainmast, a hand on the ropes, and she was glaring. Not out of anger, but calculation. Melody wrenched her attention away, heart pounding harder now than at any time during the firefight. Her skin pricked with heat. She felt she had just made an unfixable mistake.
It dawned on her then that, strategically, she had made a mistake. Instead of convincing the pirates that the fight wasn’t worth the cost and forcing them to flee, she’d broken their ship. They would want a new one, which meant their only option was to—
“Captain!” she called, but Amelia was already moving with feline speed, her gun stowed away and her sword unsheathed. She fell upon the pirates who had boarded her ship with deadly grace, the clash of steel on steel rippling across the ship as the fight turned into a short-range conflict.
Melody didn’t join them. She didn’t have a sword on her. She would pick off the vultures one by one.
By the steps to the galley was Silver. He looked no worse for wear, appearing rather to be in his element. His cybernetic arm whirred in flashes of metal, disarming and maiming the pirate who thought to challenge the cyborg with nothing but a measly sword. She didn’t have time to be surprised that her and Jim’s mentor could back up his rare bark with bite. Instead, her heart lurched for a very different reason.
“Silver!” screamed Melody when she saw a pirate raise a laser pistol to shoot him in the back.
Somehow, he heard her, or perhaps he sensed the threat behind him. Silver dispatched his attacker and turned right as Melody’s shot fried the pirate. He dropped at Silver’s feet, and Silver’s expression was oddly blank, as if this weren’t the first time he’d come close to death or just as quickly been saved. His cybernetic eye flared red as his gaze followed to where the shot had come from, shock appearing on his face when he saw her, rifle in hand.
Alarm suddenly replaced shock. “Get down, lad!”
In her panic to save him, Melody had stood up completely to shoot, leaving herself exposed from the hip up. The force of his order made her drop faster than anything else, including the returned shots that came her way. Head back in the fight, she paid no further attention to Silver, Amelia, or anyone else beyond bringing the pirate attack to a swift close, pulling the trigger until all the power cells were used and lay clustered around her feet.
When the laser fire quieted and swords returned to sheaths, the remaining crew of the RLS Legacy got busy with clean-up. Captain Amelia oversaw disposing of the dead pirates and locking up any survivors in the brig. Doctor Anderson—Elizabeth, Melody reminded herself—and Cutter tended the wounded. Jim helped them by running back and forth above and below deck for supplies. Doctor Doppler, shaken, was sent to his cabin, so he could stay out of the way.
As soon as Melody climbed down from the ropes, Silver was upon her. “By the powers, lad!” he cried merrily. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“Um,” she hedged, clutching the rifle strap. She thought about the hours she’d spent watching the academy cadets, studying their movements. She thought about the afternoons running drills in between school lessons. She thought of the nights she’d picked the lock on her father’s gun safe when he was away from home. Of the books and manuals she’d spread out that taught her what each part was for as she took each gun apart and put it back together again. “Around,” she answered. “I missed a lot.”
“And modest as well,” Silver replied. “Been wastin’ your talents as a cabin boy, haven’t we? I reckon, should any more pirates think to ruin our voyage, the Cap’n will have ya manning the guns, she will!” He chuckled, giving her a good-natured clap on the shoulder.
The force of it had surprised her at the start of the voyage, but she’d always weathered it fine. This time, her knees gave out from under her, and she collapsed to the deck.
“Mel!”
She registered Silver’s fear, but what she didn’t understand was why she’d fallen in the first place. Some unconscious part of her knew. Her hand flew to her side. When she brought her hand up to examine, she found it covered in red.
“Stars, you’ve been hit!” Silver’s hand found her other side, his arm slung across her back as he helped her to her feet. A whimper of pain escaped her at the movement, as if by acknowledging the wound, it had given her brain permission to allow her to feel the pain. “Ya need the medic, lad.”
Melody felt Silver inhale—likely to shout for Elizabeth. She clamped down on his flesh and blood arm as hard as she could and said fiercely, “No.”
Silver’s face darkened. “This is no time for—”
“I’m fine, Silver.” She found her footing and pushed herself out of his arms. She had to favor her right side, but she remained stubbornly standing. It wouldn’t last long, not if she didn’t get moving. “I can treat it myself. The others need the doc more. I think Morgan got skewered pretty bad.”
The Ursid didn’t even acknowledge her attempts at deflection. “Aye, lad, treat it you will, and I’ll be assistin’ ya until our fine doctor can see to you, you can be sure of that.”
Her whole body was starting to shake, from blood loss, fatigue, or fear, she didn’t know. He couldn’t find out. None of them could find out. “No,” she said weakly, backing away towards the galley. “I can—”
In two strides, Silver caught up to her, and this time he swept her up, preventing any more retreats. The movement made her hiss, her side burning. The darkness of space was soon replaced by the shadows of the galley as Silver carried her downstairs.
“I wonder when it happened,” Melody spoke into the quiet room as Silver laid her upon an empty table. “I didn’t even know.”
“Was when you saved me, I fear.” Silver’s voice was gruff as he rummaged through the galley. She heard the cutting of cloth and the gears of his arm moving. There was a faint slosh of liquid in a container. “You managed the rest of that skirmish well, all quick-footed as you are. I was hoping that—” He cut himself off, his tone forcibly bright. “Well, never mind. You’ll be right as stars and back on those quick feet soon, or I’m not John Silver, finest cook this side of Terran space.”
“And what does a cook know about dressing wounds?”
“With this pretty arm and leg of mine? Plenty, lad.”
Breathing hurt. Every inhale aggravated the wound in her side, and her shirt was sticking to her skin, a red stain spreading slowly across the fabric. She kept pressure on it as best she could. As Silver approached, she struggled to her elbows. “You can leave everything here. I—”
Silver set down the supplies with more force than usual. He looked down at her with displeasure. “Not on your life, Mel Dawson. That ain’t no little cut. You’ll need more hands to tend a hurt such as that.”
Melody had never gotten the impression that Silver meant to loom over her; it was just the natural state of things. Now, she felt the acute pressure of it, his will clashing with hers to keep her still and let him help her. She shook her head, frantic, but he ignored it. His hand caught the hem of her shirt, fingers brushing against her stomach.
She struggled, trying to stop him by pushing his hand away, but the room was starting to spin. She was lightheaded. “No, don’t.”
A series of snips. A gentle tugging. Silver was cutting her shirt away from the wound, exposing more and more of her to his gaze. It wouldn’t matter how baggy the cloth was once the trimness of her waist was exposed, and if he saw the wrappings around her chest… He wasn’t stupid. He would know she was a woman, that the identity she’d created to stay incognito on this ship was a false one, and the questions would start. There would be no more hiding.
Heart pounding in her ears, Melody kicked out and thrashed. Her side stung in fiery agony, and the bowl of water fell off the table, shattering on the floor. But she couldn’t stop. She had to get away from him.
Her vision went black momentarily as Silver retrieved a flask from his person and poured alcohol on the wound. The area practically felt like hellfire after that. She wasn’t sure if she screamed through the black or if she simply passed out. Faintly, through the rush of pain and vertigo, she felt him pressing a dressing on the wound. Her sight returned, and she flinched, trying to squirm away. It was his cybernetic arm that made her freeze at last, the gears in motion before something sharp came down, plunging into the table beside her head.
“Don’t fight me,” Silver ordered, his voice thick with anger. But worry lined his face, and the way he was looking at her finally made her realize how serious the wound must be. “You’ll die if you keep this up, lass.”
Lass.
Not “lad.” Melody blinked up at him, stunned. Had she misheard him? Did he really say—?
The cybernetic arm withdrew. Silver got to work, his movements practiced but infinitely careful. There were no rough nudges, no jokes, no more shows of camaraderie he offered to the male crew members. They had been replaced by a gentle touch and a sense of urbanity that he normally only showed Captain Amelia or Doctor Anderson.
“It’s good ya have fighting spirit,” he said against her tense silence, “but it’s always a shame when something like this happens.”
“Something like what?” Melody slowly asked.
“For a lady to be surrounded by able-bodied men yet still come away with a scar on her fine skin. Just isn’t proper.” He paused in his work, expression dry. “Did you really think you’d fooled ol’ John, lass? I’ve seen all sorts in my time, I have, and no cabin boy ever managed to look so fair as you.”
Her side suddenly wasn’t the only thing on fire. He’d known? Yet all this time, he hadn’t treated her any differently from Jim and the others. He’d been warm to her in the way that men sometimes were. Clapping her on the shoulder. Ruffling her hair. Urging her on with a push of her back.
But hadn’t there also been times when she thought his touch had lingered a tad too long? Where sometimes he’d spoken to her or looked at her in a way that made her feel she wasn’t fully in on the joke?
Whatever blush had appeared across her cheeks, fury now took its place.
“How long have you known?” When Silver didn’t immediately answer, she set her jaw, forced herself to sit back up amidst his protests, and snarled, “Damn you, answer me! How. Long.”
Silver started to speak, but before he could, a new voice interrupted them.
“Hmmmm. Now where did all this blood come from?”
The doors to the galley were pushed open, and Cutter shuffled in, his optics following the obvious blood trail on the floor. When he discovered them—Melody noticeably prone on the table with her bloody shirt pushed up and Silver’s hand resting on her bandaged stomach—Cutter drew up short. “Oh. Am I interrupting something? You fleshbags have so many mating rituals, I can never tell.”
Melody would have answered, wouldn’t have stalled or evaded like Silver had moments ago. Instead, Cutter’s appearance seemed to sap away the last of her strength. Her vision darkened around the edges. Her head fell back as she passed out on the table, the wood smooth and cool against her cheek. This time wasn’t a momentary escape.
The last thing she heard was Silver howling at Cutter to retrieve his master.
No. 2 - TALKING IS OVERRATED
garotte | choking | gagged
Delethil/Riven/Eravin requested by @editoress
DnD prompts are for me and my five closest friends.
*
Delethil knew claiming Aeranth for his own would mean inheriting her enemies. He also knew he would make new ones, some of which would already be inside the walls.
“You’re mad for doing this,” Eravin had told Delethil years ago when he’d trusted him enough to share his plans for revolution. He said the same thing a few days ago, too, when Delethil told him how he was going to lure the remaining dissident moon rabbits from their dens.
The difference between then and now was that Riven had been in the Circle tower with them. She’d sat perched on the edge of his desk, worry furrowing her brow, unusually silent. Always a sign that she wasn’t sure or happy about what she was hearing.
To Eravin, reasonable: “The sooner we deal with the problem…” To Riven, wheedling: “The less we’ll have to watch our backs in our own home.”
He would follow through with the plan regardless of their feelings, but he wanted them both on his side. Survival, if nothing else, would be more likely.
Eravin had sighed roughly and stormed halfway across the room before the fight gave out. There wasn’t time to waste arguing but to start making contingencies. As for Riven, she didn’t uncross her arms, didn’t move from the desk. But she said, “If you die, I won’t forgive you, Del.”
He smiled, satisfied. “I can’t have that! So I won’t, love.”
In the present, Delethil worked at loosening the ropes binding his hands behind his back, willing them both to get here, now. A masked elf walked purposefully toward him, a length of damp linen in his hands. The cloth wouldn’t break once it was wrapped around his throat. Delethil knew because all the attempts to chew through the cloth in his mouth hadn’t made the slightest difference. He could barely make any noise without the gag choking him.
So many times, he’d seen the shadows in the room move just so. So many times, he’d thought it was Riven, his wild lass coming to his rescue. It never was. Just the shift of the leaves through the high window or the slow, slow arc of the moon in the sky. He would need to assume everything had gone wrong, that he was on his own.
His wrists were chaffed, but he kept moving them. A bit of blood and stinging pain barely balanced against the value of his own life. Then, he’d kill this would-be avenger who thought his wood elf blood wasn’t good enough for Aeranth’s seat of power. He wouldn’t make the mistake of ignoring rebellion festering right in front of him as Lunhaven had.
The eyes that glared down at Delethil were full of hatred and sorrow. They were black in the dark, the slightest glint of light the only feature Delethil could make out from the elf’s masked face. But Delethil didn’t have to question the man’s allegiance. The cultured, haughty accent bared all.
“This is for Cetan Lunmina, you bastard,” the elf half-snarled, half-sobbed, and they were not the words of vengeance Delethil had expected to hear. He stalled, and in the next second, he couldn’t breathe.
Delethil’s lungs seized uselessly. His throat burned as he thrashed in the chair he was tied against, welts forming where the garrote rubbed his skin raw. A slight creaking noise, and the elf before him was pulling the cloth tighter, tighter. His attacker’s body was shaking with effort, his eyes taking on a glassy sheen. He was so close, yet Delethil couldn’t do anything to him. Only struggle fruitlessly as the moon elf strangled him to death. Or perhaps, he would break Delethil’s neck first.
Stars scattered across Delethil’s vision, and his head felt like it had been removed from the rest of him already. Floating, floating…
I think I’m floating, actually, Riven had said to him once he’d finally, finally kissed her, those teal eyes of hers he loved so much dazed yet overjoyed.
You’re far too pleased with yourself. What d’ye need me for? Eravin. His plain, provincial, perfect Eravin.
He wouldn’t see them again if he didn’t…
“You’re just a thug, a killer,” another voice was saying. “I can’t let forest muck ruin this country any—ack!”
The garrote fell away, and the gag in his mouth was ripped out. Delethil coughed violently, his head falling forward. Strands of auburn hair clung to his face as he inhaled desperate gulps of air. He thought he felt a light pressure touch his chest, but then it was gone.
“You…” That voice from before was speaking again, but this time his words sounded wet. “You traitor!”
Delethil raised his head.
Riven stood between him and the moon elf. She was winded as if she’d just sprinted a mile. Enough of her face was turned toward him that he caught the wideness of her eyes, the indignant curl of her mouth. Her favorite dagger was in her hand, and the blade was slick with blood from its pointed tip to its opalescent hilt. In her other hand was the linen that had been in his mouth. It dropped from numb fingers.
Sprawled on the floor, the moon elf clutched near his ribs, his robes and hand becoming stained with red.
“How dare you hurt him,” snarled Riven, taking a threatening step forward.
“How dare I?” Blood flecked the moon elf’s trembling lips. Trembling not with fear, but rage. “I’m not the one who threw my country away and spread my legs for a Forest Father worshipper.”
“He’s agnostic, ya fuckin’ loon!” She brandished the dagger irritably. “And I slept with him after the hostile takeover, so get your facts straight.”
“Ye don’t need to tell him that, Riv,” Delethil rasped, but he couldn’t stop the rush of affection for her.
“Shut up. Don’t talk.” Ah, she was furious. Erry would be worse.
“I can’t imagine,” the moon elf continued as if they hadn’t spoken, “how ashamed Erosen is of you.”
Riven went completely still. “Don’t,” she warned, “act like ye give a shite about me da.”
Delethil found he’d had enough as well. “Kill him, and let’s be done with this act.”
She gripped the dagger harder but otherwise didn’t move. Just watched blandly as the moon elf labored to his feet. He threw one last look of purest loathing at both of them before stumbling out of the door.
“Riven, what are ye doing? Dammit, lass, he’s runnin’ free!”
“He won’t get far,” she told him, and then she cut him loose.
It was still dark once they emerged from the small storehouse. Delethil didn’t need support to walk, but Riven refused to leave his side, fussing over the bruises forming around his neck and the blood crusting his wrists.
But Delethil’s temper was flaring. He swore he could still hear the moon elf bastard fleeing through the brush. “Enough!” He pulled his hands from hers and bore down on her. “If he makes it back to the city, this will all have—”
She shoved him back. “I didn’t find ya alone!”
That was when he heard the release of an arrow. The woods, seeming so loud before, abruptly went silent.
When Eravin emerged from the trees, he had to drop down several limbs before he found ground level. A longbow was slung across his back along with a quiver missing quite a few arrows. He took in Riven’s eyes, shiny with unshed tears, and Delethil’s damaged body, and glowered.
“Did I say ye were mad before? What I meant was right barmy, even for you!” He poked Delethil hard in the chest, expression turning thunderous. “This wasn’t the plan!”
“The plan,” Delethil said smoothly—or would have if almost being choked to death hadn’t roughened his speech, “was to get rid of anyone bold enough to contest my rule.” He continued with a sly grin, “And we did.”
“We did.” Eravin gestured between himself and Riven. “You decided to get captured and tortured like ye don’t know your arse from your elbow.”
“The burdens of leadership!” Delethil explained with a grand air, which was ruined by his scowl. His damned throat hurt. “Sometimes peace talks don’t go according to plan.”
“Not much talkin’, though, was there?” At Eravin’s incredulous look, Riven supplied, “They had him gagged.”
That part hadn’t left a mark, but Eravin’s gaze flew to Delethil’s face all the same. He knew what it meant, Delethil robbed of his greatest and final weapon. His hand came up to run a finger, feather-light, across Delethil’s tender neck. Just as quickly as it started, Eravin jerked his hand back and turned away.
“Ack, well, gag him again, Riv. I dinnae want to hear any more shite spew from his gob tonight.”
