The Warden’s Return Arc 2: The ‘Twixt Author’s Notes: This is the WORK IN PROGRESS DRAFT of the second arc of the Warden’s Return by Rose Zemlya (http://rosezemlya.tumblr.com/) - i.e., me. Generally speaking, the most recent stuff is at the end. I will post notice to Tumblr when I fin...
For those who are confused by my useless organization system here on Tumblr, or prefer to read things in a logical order as opposed to according to my working process, I’ve posted Arc 1: Lucity (version 2, which is the most up to date) on Google Docs:
Do you know what I realized today? November is in like three weeks.
Who wants some Hunter and Neesha?
Writing after the jump!
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“We have to do something!” Neesha said. She was angry and frustrated and maybe a little bit scared, though Hunter knew well enough by now not to comment on that part, and he didn’t even disagree with her, it was just that it was the fiftieth time she’d said it.
The entire bench above them - their only shelter from the Biggest Bar Brawl Ever - shuddered and jumped alarmingly as someone landed hard on the far end of it. There was a loud, splintering sound, not that it was easy to hear over the rest of the cacophony. “I’m open to ideas,” Hunter said, trying to keep the desperation from his own voice.
They were still where the large Fae woman had left them, roughly, and their attempts to move from the spot - sketchy though that idea seemed given the number of creatures with frightening shapes and sizes and implements beating each other with such gusto all around them - had all failed. There were shackles on each of their wrists, and though they couldn’t see or feel or otherwise identify any chain, they were tethered somehow. Hunter could think of a dozen mage spells that could cause such an effect, but he had a sinking feeling in his gut that this wasn’t anything he’d read about in his books.
(Not that Hunter would have had any better ideas about how to deal with those spells, it was just that there was magic he understood and could classify, and there was whatever this was, and he had discovered in the last few hours that he had a clear and present preference.)
“Aren’t you Makan supposed to be all about contortion and escaping and trickery?” Neesha demanded, then squeaked in alarm as a giant spike cracked right through the bleachers over their head, before dragging itself free again and disappearing.
I’ve invented a new game I’ll have to tell Lije about, Hunter thought. I’ll call it Weapon or Limb. Deciding to keep the more-than-a-little hysterical thought to himself, he said instead: “First off, what do they teach you in the desert about us? And second off,” and this he added grudgingly, “I would need lockpicks to do anything, and I don’t have any right now.”
“Well why not?!” Neesha demanded, and he couldn’t tell if she was offended because he was useless, or because he was messing with her preconceived notion of what Makan were for.
“Because the last time I had a chance to change my clothes,” he snapped in reply, “I was thinking I was going to have a nice day at the fair! What was I gonna do with lockpicks?! Steal a pie?!”
She opened her mouth to reply, but had to interrupt herself to drag her exposed foot back under the ruins of the bench before it could get caught up in the mass of bloodied tentacles slithering past. Looking vaguely ill at the sight, she rounded on him again and snapped, “Well what do you have?”
He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Nothing!” he cried, and twisted awkwardly to shove one of his bound hands into his pocket to prove his point. The chains made it harder than he expected and the moment dragged on a little longer than his dignity appreciated, but there was no turning back now. He finally managed to get a couple fingers on the lining and turned it inside out, opening his mouth to snarl something cutting, when they heard, just barely audible under the din, a soft thud and a gentle clink.
Hunter worked his mouth for a minute, refusing to look down and acknowledge what he knew he had heard. Because it was impossible. He remembered, as clear as day, debating whether to bring his lockpicks with him, or hide them somewhere in the house. Given the state in which he had so recently met Lije, he had decided arrest was a definite possibility, and the guards would definitely frisk him and they would definitely take his lockpicks away and then he’d get lectured about not taking better care of his stuff. So he hid them in Lije’s laundry basket, because it honestly didn’t look like she used it much, and had gone on his way.
And yet…
When he finally looked down at the ground…
There they were. A small black velvet pouch, inside which were nestled a set of basic lockpicking tools.
“Are you going to waste time questioning it,” Neesha said slowly, eyeing him with a deep frown, “or are you going to pick those up and get us out of these shackles?”
“I hate this place,” Hunter whispered, and bent down to start the latter.
I changed the end of the last part I posted because I thought of something more useful to do instead! Revised ending to 23 after the cut, as well as the new scene (24)!
Writing after the jump!
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23
By the time the stars clear, I’m on the ground with a mouthful of blood and dirty sand, and she’s crouched nearby, just out of (my) reach. She’s taking her sweet time studying me, stroking her cheek with one long finger, uncaring of the thick wetness that seems to be seeping into the scarf she wears around her face. It’s honestly more frightening than anything she’s done up to this point.
I make the mistake - and it is a mistake. I know it’s a mistake, even as I’m doing it, because while I don’t, you know, believe in jinxing, I do believe the Goddesses do - of thinking to myself, Please, oh Holy Three, please let Argent and the others get out of-- and then I think a few expletives, because as I roll over onto my stomach, groaning as I do so, I catch a glimpse of him. He’s moving at breakneck speed across the sand, making a beeline for the exit-looking hallway closest to where we spotted Hunter and Neesha. But that’s not all I catch a glimpse of.
Waiting for him in the shadows of the hall, wearing an Irae-calling grin, is the Ringmaster.
That slimy, foul faced, thrice-damned cheater! Rage clears my head faster than the freshest breath of air, and I start to push myself up, violence in my shout and murder in my heart, but the Stalker is still here - I forgot, just briefly, about her - and I her foot slams into my back and sends me back down into the sand.
“Now, now,” she purrs, and starts pulling my arms back behind me so she can bind them. “I don’t like him either, but we haven’t finished here, have we?” I can see so many teeth in the outline of her mouth under her scarf.
Argent has bolted into the space under the bleachers and I can’t get a good look from my angle, but his movement suddenly changes trajectory and I know the Ringmaster’s on him. Lousy son of an oathbreaker is going to grab him and wait. Wait until I’m dead and then take Argent’s Tale back. Maybe Hunter and Neesha’s too for good measure.
I almost despair, and I can feel it echoed back to me through the Tales of the other three, as we all collectively realize just how sealed our fate is, and the echo and its implications hit me so hard I stop fighting the Stalker.
Aiyet, Irae and Kyn, how could I have forgotten?
I’m a cheater too.
24
Argent made it as far as the gaping exit from the arena floor before he hit his first obstacle - or rather, before his first obstacle hit him. A pale thing with too many joints and not enough skin slid out from shadows that shouldn’t have been there, and as fast as his reflexes were, Argent still wound up slammed up against the opposite wall. The coppery taste of his own blood brought him back to his senses, dripping down from somewhere above his eye. Some part of him that lived in a dream world where none of this was happening wondered idly why bleeding always seemed to be involved somehow when he hung out with Lije.
The rest of him - very much so in the moment - called on so many, many hours of martial training to snap his head back into the face of the thing holding him, using the extra room this provided to get his foot up on the wall and push them both back. The arms around him loosened their grip just enough for him to twist like a cat and scatter back and away from it.
He should have bolted down the hallway the instant he was free - that had been his plan, even - but then the thing laughed and he had heard that laughter before and his blood ran first very cold, and then very hot in his veins.
Argent’s memory of that least hour or so was alarmingly fuzzy, but some deeper-than-thought part of him remembered the spider-web feel of strings being bound across the nameless corners of his self by a creature laughing that laugh. Strings that tugged and pulled at all of his secrets, all of his hims (and hers, and thems).
Stay focused, warned the voice in his head.
But the thing was talking, moving in a slow, lazy circle, as though sizing Argent up, and it was very hard to shut out what he was saying. “Well aren’t you a puzzle.” Beneath its dirty tunic, its body twisted and turned with sickening motion. “Arms” and “legs” disappeared through one part of its tunic and reappeared in another, giving it a rolling sort of locomotion. “Not an ounce of Telling in you, but more names and shapes than a new Fae overwhelmed by their own sudden potential.” It smiled a smile that could have been hungry, if it had actually cared more than idle curiosity warranted. “Who’d you steal all those faces from, boy? You may as well tell me. Your friend will be dead soon, and I’ll have my answer one way or another.”
It’s baiting you, warned the voice. Temper won’t solve this.
Argent tried. He really did. But he could feel the ghost of the fear, both the little girl’s fear and his own, when it grabbed her at the bottom of the stairs, and he could feel his pride, so much more solid than that ghost, burning with the need for retribution, and there was still blood on his hands, and it was Lije’s – Lije’s – and some injustices could not be born.
My cycle, he told the voice with cold, vicious rage. My way.
But as he reached for a new form - one of the big ones. The ones who would be at home in an arena like this, the ones with grudges to bear against people like this thing, the ones schooled in a violence more direct and brutal than Argent’s shadows could offer - the voice cried, Wait! with enough urgency to startle the switch out of his grasp. It’s Lije! She’ll see!
What are you talking about? Argent demanded, confused. She’s over there getting the stuffing beat out of her, she can’t see--
She’s doing something strange to you, probably something Fae. She’ll know if you--
But whatever it was she would know (not that it was hard to guess) was lost, because the disturbing creature staring him down moved in a lunge that was sort of like a spider leaping at its prey, and sort of like a snake slithering through the grass, and also so alien that bile rose in Argent’s throat just watching it. He had his knives out and raised them to slash at the limbs of the creature as it reached for him, but they suddenly weren’t where he expected them to be, and before he could reorient the creature hit him so hard he flew up into the air and crashed down into the lowest rungs of the stands.
More precisely, he crashed down into the crowd of Fae, hitting a few of them with various limbs on the way, and landing roughly in the lap of one smaller than him. He couldn’t tell if he was seeing double, or if they really did have that many eyes, and he didn’t have time to figure it out, because the Fae stood up, throwing him with more strength than it looked like it could possibly have, down a level of benches.
He never did see who he kicked on the way down, and he didn’t wait to find out, either. He could hear them roar with rage at the affront and he didn’t intend to be in line of sight of it when it turned around. Without even waiting for his breath to come back, he started crawling along the floor behind the benches, dodging (poorly) boots and hooves and the occasional tail as the entire level seemed to devolve into a brawl.
Oh yes, he thought viciously as something large and heavy and suspiciously chair shaped flew over his head and smashed into an even higher tier of benches. The roaring of the crowd grew louder and angrier.
*Grumbling and whining and crying like a child who doesn’t want to do their homework, but won’t get dessert until they do*
Writing after the jump!
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There is a moment of disorientation as the Telling fades and reality (well… the ‘Twixt’s version of it, anyway) reasserts itself. The noise doesn’t help: the crowd is tumultuous, shrieking and stomping, and howling in a voice more divided than I’ve heard it yet. There are, of course, sensible Fae up there who will undoubtedly be unhappy and concerned about the implications of a mortal like myself having a strong enough grasp of Telling to beat a Fae on his own turf and at his own game (never mind that it’s not unheard of, but it’s been my experience that there are people like this among every population in Qaensgate, so). But there are also those who find the prospect exciting and who maybe aren’t fans of the proprieter of this fine establishment and aren’t too broken up about a public embarrassment for him. And then, of course, there are the ones after my own heart, who know a good show when they see it and don’t really care much beyond that. If I’m really lucky, one or two of them might even be fans by this point.
If I wasn’t so focused on keeping this from going to Round Three, aka Round We All Die, I’d be smug about that.
Argent lays a hand on my shoulder –politely ignoring my choked off shriek at the unexpected contact – and points up at the bleachers. It doesn’t take me long to pick out what he’s trying to highlight. If, in a kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, in the kingdom of the Fae, the regular ol’ mortal is a sore thumb.
The sight of Hunter and Neesha immediately sparks a war between relief and dread in my chest. They’re both there and they’re alive. That’s good. But they’re bound. That’s bad. I can see who’s holding their chains, which is good. But even just the edges of her Tale tell me that she’s a far sight above some second-rate, cheating ringmaster in a cheap people circus. That’s bad. And she and said second-rate, cheating ringmaster are shaking hands, all while it shoots me an angry, spiteful, petty glare. That’s absolutely terrible.
She releases its hand then turns to look straight at me, and honestly? That’s just the worst.
I have time to say, “Get the others,” and shove Argent away toward the other side of the bleachers, before the Fae leaps into the air, high enough that I lose sight of her briefly in the shadows clinging to the roof above, and then crashes back down onto the arena floor. Her impact sends a wave of sand and dust into the air and I can feel the vibrations through the soles of my boots.
Argent makes a conflicted noise, as his eyes do that thing that makes it look like there’s an awful lot of math going on in his head. He looks at me and hesitates. “You don’t have to do this alone,” he says. Brave words from someone who clearly doesn’t have enough information to define all his variables.
“No duh,” I reply, more sharply than he deserves given he’s offering to stand here and die with me. It’s just that he’s overestimating the degree of heroism I am displaying here. I’m not planning to make my Glorious Last Stand, I’m planning to mouth off and buy time until a convenient exit presents itself. You know, like usual. It’s so hard not to roll my eyes, just in case he’s not grasping my point yet, but the new Fae is stalking towards us across the sand, all liquid grace and a truly impolite level of confidence, and I don’t think taking my eyes off her will go well. “Get the others and get back here before she kills me, so we can get the Hell out of here.”
Maybe he listens to me (what a novelty that would be), maybe he doesn’t. I don’t know, because I’m not even done that sentence before the lanky woman transforms from a prowling Fae to a charging Fae. The Sentinel Sword is ringing an alarm – maybe because it thinks I don’t know what’s happening, and maybe because it’s as unhappy as I am and this is the only way it has to express it – and the combatting voices in the crowd unit in an excited, bloodthirsty roar.
She’s on me before I can do anything more than raise the Sentinel Sword and yelp a sound that can’t decide if it’s crying for help, crying out in rage and petty insults, or just plain crying. I’m not ashamed to admit I close my eyes as I brace for impact and probably death, and maybe, if I give myself just a little too much credit, that’s why I don’t realize what she’s actually doing.
The Sentinel Sword does, of course, but it speaks in bells, and this is a stressful situation, so what do you want from me?
While I’m flinching and trying to protect my face, she snaps the hilt of her blade down onto my wrist, sending a wave of terrible numbness through it. The sword falls from my nerveless fingers. It bursts into angry, but useless, blue flame on its way down to the bloody sand, and a well-timed, carefully aimed kick sends its clattering away across the floor.
Why did she do that? I wonder as I twist and try scramble back and away from her.
To stop me from giving the Sword control of Tale again and maybe actually winning this fight, I answer myself as she demonstrates her unfortunately long reach by casually backhanding me anyway.
Why didn’t I do that? I demand shrilly.
I don’t really have a good answer for myself, though, consumed as I am by the sudden explosions overtaking my vision and the ringing in my head that has nothing to do with my magical sword.
By the time the stars clear, I’m on the ground with a mouthful of blood and dirty sand, and she’s crouched nearby, just out of (my) reach. She’s taking her sweet time studying me, stroking her cheek with one long finger, uncaring of the thick wetness that seems to be seeping into the scarf she wears around her face. It’s honestly more frightening than anything she’s done up to this point.
Well, Argent, I think with more than a tinge of desperation. It’s up to you now…
