Andas - eat sleep kill repeat - Sorrel Darkfire 7/6
Jul 8, 2022 7:41:14 GMT
Jaezred Vandree, Wixspartan, and 5 more like this
Post by stephena on Jul 8, 2022 7:41:14 GMT
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge.
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, for I am your god.
CW: violence, torture, despair, body horror, the futility of existence
The stone walls were still warm from dragon breath as Sorrel stalked through Daring Heights. She could taste the bitter acrid smoke and hear the soft moans of those the clerics hadn’t reached. But she could also hear the angry murmuring – that the Gith had fled, that they had got away, that someone would have to make them pay.
She pushed into a tavern she’d never seen before, shouldered her way up to the bar half hoping someone would challenge her and threw a few glasses of raw spirit down as she let the growling voices soak into her. The Gith had fled north. No-one had chased them. The city wanted revenge. At least, these angry drunks did. And fuck, she was one of them.
She checked her weapons, unwrapped the fine stiletto knives, spring loaded gaucherou and serrated blades plucked from the cold dead fingers of Ras Nsi’s head torturer and applied a little oil to preserve their gleaming edges.
Over her shoulder she heard a male voice – “what the fuck is she doing with those?”
She spun round and spotted the man, tall, muscular, standing with two friends and half way through a bottle of something. She met his gaze and felt him quail as he caught the madness in her eyes.
“I go hunting Gith, my cowardly little friend. Come with me, shut your fucking mouth or draw your fucking weapon.”
The tavern fell silent.
All eyes on her, ducking away as she turned her head. She held up the gaucherou and looked at her critic. “You know this?”
He nodded.
“Remind me.”
He shrank back but her dagger was in her hand.
“You… put it in the mouth or the… and you release the spring… and it shoots open,” he was pale.
“That’s right,” she spat. “It’ll tear the guts apart, but you can live for days as you bleed to death. I’m impressed. Old campaigner. New coward.” She turned to the barman. “He’s paying for my drinks.”
And she started for the Angelbark.
You cannot hide
She hunted well that day. She moved like a ghost, and her sense were keen. Her skin was so raw she could almost feel the Gith through it. There was the constant bitter taste of blood in her mouth, although all her cuts had healed.
By nightfall she had killed three fleeing Gith. An arrow in the leg or the shoulder. She gave them a chance – answer one question and they would live.
They didn’t live.
The fourth she toyed with, gliding through the darkness making just enough noise that he kept on running, blindly, the branches cutting his skin, the potholes trapping his legs.
As she caught him, she saw a flash of an officers uniform off in the distance, so cut this animals throat slowly enough that the officer could hear the scream and the slow death rattle.
She circled the fifth target, but he was wily. He caught her a blow to the jaw and the pain made her feel so alive she laughed. As she did, he fled and almost left her behind so she wearily strung her bow and pinned him to a tree with an arrow through the shoulder blade.
She took her time walking towards him. His eyes glinted in the dull light of the cloudy night.
“Answer me this question,” she began.
“Fuck you,” he coughed in guttural common.
“Answer me this question and you live.”
“Do it. Kill me.”
“Do you know what the disintegrate spell does?” she looked him up and down, noting where muscle met bone. “It tears your atoms apart all at once. But my knives can do that one atom at a time.”
“Fuck you. I was following orders.”
“Don’t give me the last defence of the truly guilty,” she sighed, disappointed. “I’ve followed orders. It’s always a choice. Answer me.”
The Gith spat blood in her face, which she smeared across her cheeks.
“You should not waste blood,” she reproved him, pulled out the finest stiletto and cut three slices of skin and muscle from around the vagus nerve in his stomach, feeling him shiver with pain.
“You will need nourishment. We have a long night ahead.” She forced the three lumps of flesh into his mouth and down his throat with the barbed edge of the Scriveners Daughter until he was forced to swallow, his muscles closing on the broken edges of the rusty tool.
He started screaming.
Her head was deep under water, the sounds of the world so distant and slow that she could barely hear him. Those cries she heard didn’t sound like the pain of another living creature. They were the screams of rock on metal. Nothing that made sense.
She stepped back to watch him writhe and pulled the bone saw from her leather sack, eyeing his form for the best point of entry.
The screaming grew louder and louder and meant less and less until a single word cut through her haze.
“Enough.”
The Jackal.
Tears are not enough
“What are you doing, Darkfire?” he voice rasped.
“What I do best.”
“End it.”
“Kill him?”
“If that’s how it ends.”
She stepped forward and drew the bone saw across the Gith’s throat as he spasmed and screamed and his lifeblood flowed away.
“I bet you wish you’d answered me now,” she whispered in his ear as he jerked towards oblivion.
She stepped back. The Jackal caught the falling body and laid it down on the forest floor.
“What is this?” he turned to her in disgust.
“This is what I do.”
“Why?”
“I want to understand.”
“What can this teach you?”
“Why they came.”
“You know why they came.”
“Not Coll, the city… the reason. Why… did they attack?”
“You mean why did she die?”
Sorrel said nothing.
“Say it – why did she die?”
Sorrel stared at the ground angrily, refusing to meet his eyes.
“You can swim through rivers of blood, and you will never find the answer,” the Jackal assured her. “I have walked this earth for a thousand years and there is no answer. She’s dead.”
“Everyone has come to me feeling guilty…”
“But only one person is guilty, right?”
She paused, took a deep breath, looked up. “Yes, me. It’s my fault.”
Jackal moved in until his face was inches from hers.
“Did you love her?”
“Maybe I can’t love.”
“Poor little Sorrel Darkfire,” he sneered. “We are the only ones who decide Her grace, she is pouring her power into you, I can feel it and this is how you use it? Hunting down fleeing defeated soldiers?”
He held her gaze.
“Say it – she’s dead.”
Sorrel looked deep into his eyes, and for a brief second glimpsed eternity, stretching out beyond comprehension across a chaotic, senseless void that has no purpose unless… unless there is love.
The thick, dull shell surrounding her cracked and fell away. She drew a long, slow shuddering breath and whispered - “Silvia is dead.”
And finally, she wept.
Do not question angels
Her shoulders convulsed as sobs tore through her body,
Jackal held her. She had always known he was strong, but his arms were like bands of marble, strength that would hold back forever, lift worlds and push away the stars – and yet they envelop her with such tenderness that she felt she might break.
She clung to him like a child, the pain howling out of her like a storm at midnight and it was all she could do to hold on to her heart as it screamed a lifetime of mourning and loss.
“It’s not fair,” she sobbed. “It’s not fair.”
“It never is,” his voice was soft.
“But the goddess… Why did she not help?”
“She did, but not a way that you can see,” his understanding and compassion was as deep as his anger.
She cried until there were no tears left and she was empty, nothing inside her but a low, painful throb of grief.
Eventually he let her go and her legs buckled. She slumped to the ground just as the clouds parted and moonlight flooded into the Angelbark.
In its soft light she could she his sword was no longer strapped to his back. In its place was Silvia’s trident.
Fear caught her as he lifted it from his shoulders and laid it on the ground before her.
“I need you to hold on to this,” he said gently.
“I can’t take it,” she shivered. “It is her. It’s all that’s left. The string wrapped around its handle is the string wrapped around her fingers when she first took my hand.”
“It is not her, but it is part of her, and you need to hold on to it. There’s someone who needs a word.”
She heard soft footsteps padding across the forest floor behind her until a familiar dog curled its warm body around her and Jackal. The same dog that had carried her through the streets of Daring Heights a year ago when she was called to protect the High Diviner. A celestial being with the soft coat, limpid eyes and damp nose of an earthly hound.
It gave a soft whine which sounded like he was crying but carried what could have been a question.
Jackal cleared his throat. “Before I fell, I was a big deal, a big shot angel, chosen of the goddess. I was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above my head; my face was like the sun, my eyes like flaming torches, my arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of my words like the sound of a multitude. Even now, I have fulfilled the prophecy, silenced the unending word and wrestled believers from the pit of Hell. And yet today I’m basically an interpreter for a dog. Lathander has plans ideas for Silvia and I have to translate this dickhead.”
The dog whined.
“No, you are a dickhead, everyone says,” Jackal sighed.
The dog growled.
“Case in point,” Jackal was triumphant. “Azrael was telling me the other day. Total dick move.”
A rumble from the dog. Jackal turned to Sorrel. “Bit of a one-sided conversation for you,” he shrugged apologetically. “Also, side note, you tell anyone I hugged you…”
“No,” Sorrel said hastily. “I don’t hug. You don’t tell anyone I hugged you. And if you tell anyone at any point in all eternity that I cried…”
It’s not that they smiled. Their faces were still glowering like storm clouds massing above mountains. But there was something, a flash of joy that passed between them, a signal between souls when they find understanding from one just like them.
“Well alright then,” Jackal nodded.
The dog pulled out a water skin and washed the blood from Sorrel’s hands.
“Keep these clean,” Jackal told her. “You decided to be worthy. So be worthy. Now, jump on. We have to get to Daring Heights quickly – you know the drill.”
Sorrel did indeed know the drill. She clambered onto the dogs back, which seemed to have grown to tower above the mightiest stallion and clung to its fur as it soared through the night air towards the city.
Leaving the frying pan
The temple of Ilmater was empty save for three people – Father Cai, his daughter Cassima asleep by the altar and a wizard she had a sense she had seen before.
There was the same spark between Jackal and Cai but Sorrel couldn’t stop staring at the wizard. What was it about him?
“We’ll try one of your spells Pentaghast,” Jackal was saying.
Pentaghast… Veridian Pentaghast? A thrill of fury tore through Sorrel.
This was the wizard who had threatened to disintegrate Silvia. Why were they turning to him?
She loosened her sword discretely. Would she have to kill again tonight?
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, for I am your god.
CW: violence, torture, despair, body horror, the futility of existence
The stone walls were still warm from dragon breath as Sorrel stalked through Daring Heights. She could taste the bitter acrid smoke and hear the soft moans of those the clerics hadn’t reached. But she could also hear the angry murmuring – that the Gith had fled, that they had got away, that someone would have to make them pay.
She pushed into a tavern she’d never seen before, shouldered her way up to the bar half hoping someone would challenge her and threw a few glasses of raw spirit down as she let the growling voices soak into her. The Gith had fled north. No-one had chased them. The city wanted revenge. At least, these angry drunks did. And fuck, she was one of them.
She checked her weapons, unwrapped the fine stiletto knives, spring loaded gaucherou and serrated blades plucked from the cold dead fingers of Ras Nsi’s head torturer and applied a little oil to preserve their gleaming edges.
Over her shoulder she heard a male voice – “what the fuck is she doing with those?”
She spun round and spotted the man, tall, muscular, standing with two friends and half way through a bottle of something. She met his gaze and felt him quail as he caught the madness in her eyes.
“I go hunting Gith, my cowardly little friend. Come with me, shut your fucking mouth or draw your fucking weapon.”
The tavern fell silent.
All eyes on her, ducking away as she turned her head. She held up the gaucherou and looked at her critic. “You know this?”
He nodded.
“Remind me.”
He shrank back but her dagger was in her hand.
“You… put it in the mouth or the… and you release the spring… and it shoots open,” he was pale.
“That’s right,” she spat. “It’ll tear the guts apart, but you can live for days as you bleed to death. I’m impressed. Old campaigner. New coward.” She turned to the barman. “He’s paying for my drinks.”
And she started for the Angelbark.
You cannot hide
She hunted well that day. She moved like a ghost, and her sense were keen. Her skin was so raw she could almost feel the Gith through it. There was the constant bitter taste of blood in her mouth, although all her cuts had healed.
By nightfall she had killed three fleeing Gith. An arrow in the leg or the shoulder. She gave them a chance – answer one question and they would live.
They didn’t live.
The fourth she toyed with, gliding through the darkness making just enough noise that he kept on running, blindly, the branches cutting his skin, the potholes trapping his legs.
As she caught him, she saw a flash of an officers uniform off in the distance, so cut this animals throat slowly enough that the officer could hear the scream and the slow death rattle.
She circled the fifth target, but he was wily. He caught her a blow to the jaw and the pain made her feel so alive she laughed. As she did, he fled and almost left her behind so she wearily strung her bow and pinned him to a tree with an arrow through the shoulder blade.
She took her time walking towards him. His eyes glinted in the dull light of the cloudy night.
“Answer me this question,” she began.
“Fuck you,” he coughed in guttural common.
“Answer me this question and you live.”
“Do it. Kill me.”
“Do you know what the disintegrate spell does?” she looked him up and down, noting where muscle met bone. “It tears your atoms apart all at once. But my knives can do that one atom at a time.”
“Fuck you. I was following orders.”
“Don’t give me the last defence of the truly guilty,” she sighed, disappointed. “I’ve followed orders. It’s always a choice. Answer me.”
The Gith spat blood in her face, which she smeared across her cheeks.
“You should not waste blood,” she reproved him, pulled out the finest stiletto and cut three slices of skin and muscle from around the vagus nerve in his stomach, feeling him shiver with pain.
“You will need nourishment. We have a long night ahead.” She forced the three lumps of flesh into his mouth and down his throat with the barbed edge of the Scriveners Daughter until he was forced to swallow, his muscles closing on the broken edges of the rusty tool.
He started screaming.
Her head was deep under water, the sounds of the world so distant and slow that she could barely hear him. Those cries she heard didn’t sound like the pain of another living creature. They were the screams of rock on metal. Nothing that made sense.
She stepped back to watch him writhe and pulled the bone saw from her leather sack, eyeing his form for the best point of entry.
The screaming grew louder and louder and meant less and less until a single word cut through her haze.
“Enough.”
The Jackal.
Tears are not enough
“What are you doing, Darkfire?” he voice rasped.
“What I do best.”
“End it.”
“Kill him?”
“If that’s how it ends.”
She stepped forward and drew the bone saw across the Gith’s throat as he spasmed and screamed and his lifeblood flowed away.
“I bet you wish you’d answered me now,” she whispered in his ear as he jerked towards oblivion.
She stepped back. The Jackal caught the falling body and laid it down on the forest floor.
“What is this?” he turned to her in disgust.
“This is what I do.”
“Why?”
“I want to understand.”
“What can this teach you?”
“Why they came.”
“You know why they came.”
“Not Coll, the city… the reason. Why… did they attack?”
“You mean why did she die?”
Sorrel said nothing.
“Say it – why did she die?”
Sorrel stared at the ground angrily, refusing to meet his eyes.
“You can swim through rivers of blood, and you will never find the answer,” the Jackal assured her. “I have walked this earth for a thousand years and there is no answer. She’s dead.”
“Everyone has come to me feeling guilty…”
“But only one person is guilty, right?”
She paused, took a deep breath, looked up. “Yes, me. It’s my fault.”
Jackal moved in until his face was inches from hers.
“Did you love her?”
“Maybe I can’t love.”
“Poor little Sorrel Darkfire,” he sneered. “We are the only ones who decide Her grace, she is pouring her power into you, I can feel it and this is how you use it? Hunting down fleeing defeated soldiers?”
He held her gaze.
“Say it – she’s dead.”
Sorrel looked deep into his eyes, and for a brief second glimpsed eternity, stretching out beyond comprehension across a chaotic, senseless void that has no purpose unless… unless there is love.
The thick, dull shell surrounding her cracked and fell away. She drew a long, slow shuddering breath and whispered - “Silvia is dead.”
And finally, she wept.
Do not question angels
Her shoulders convulsed as sobs tore through her body,
Jackal held her. She had always known he was strong, but his arms were like bands of marble, strength that would hold back forever, lift worlds and push away the stars – and yet they envelop her with such tenderness that she felt she might break.
She clung to him like a child, the pain howling out of her like a storm at midnight and it was all she could do to hold on to her heart as it screamed a lifetime of mourning and loss.
“It’s not fair,” she sobbed. “It’s not fair.”
“It never is,” his voice was soft.
“But the goddess… Why did she not help?”
“She did, but not a way that you can see,” his understanding and compassion was as deep as his anger.
She cried until there were no tears left and she was empty, nothing inside her but a low, painful throb of grief.
Eventually he let her go and her legs buckled. She slumped to the ground just as the clouds parted and moonlight flooded into the Angelbark.
In its soft light she could she his sword was no longer strapped to his back. In its place was Silvia’s trident.
Fear caught her as he lifted it from his shoulders and laid it on the ground before her.
“I need you to hold on to this,” he said gently.
“I can’t take it,” she shivered. “It is her. It’s all that’s left. The string wrapped around its handle is the string wrapped around her fingers when she first took my hand.”
“It is not her, but it is part of her, and you need to hold on to it. There’s someone who needs a word.”
She heard soft footsteps padding across the forest floor behind her until a familiar dog curled its warm body around her and Jackal. The same dog that had carried her through the streets of Daring Heights a year ago when she was called to protect the High Diviner. A celestial being with the soft coat, limpid eyes and damp nose of an earthly hound.
It gave a soft whine which sounded like he was crying but carried what could have been a question.
Jackal cleared his throat. “Before I fell, I was a big deal, a big shot angel, chosen of the goddess. I was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above my head; my face was like the sun, my eyes like flaming torches, my arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of my words like the sound of a multitude. Even now, I have fulfilled the prophecy, silenced the unending word and wrestled believers from the pit of Hell. And yet today I’m basically an interpreter for a dog. Lathander has plans ideas for Silvia and I have to translate this dickhead.”
The dog whined.
“No, you are a dickhead, everyone says,” Jackal sighed.
The dog growled.
“Case in point,” Jackal was triumphant. “Azrael was telling me the other day. Total dick move.”
A rumble from the dog. Jackal turned to Sorrel. “Bit of a one-sided conversation for you,” he shrugged apologetically. “Also, side note, you tell anyone I hugged you…”
“No,” Sorrel said hastily. “I don’t hug. You don’t tell anyone I hugged you. And if you tell anyone at any point in all eternity that I cried…”
It’s not that they smiled. Their faces were still glowering like storm clouds massing above mountains. But there was something, a flash of joy that passed between them, a signal between souls when they find understanding from one just like them.
“Well alright then,” Jackal nodded.
The dog pulled out a water skin and washed the blood from Sorrel’s hands.
“Keep these clean,” Jackal told her. “You decided to be worthy. So be worthy. Now, jump on. We have to get to Daring Heights quickly – you know the drill.”
Sorrel did indeed know the drill. She clambered onto the dogs back, which seemed to have grown to tower above the mightiest stallion and clung to its fur as it soared through the night air towards the city.
Leaving the frying pan
The temple of Ilmater was empty save for three people – Father Cai, his daughter Cassima asleep by the altar and a wizard she had a sense she had seen before.
There was the same spark between Jackal and Cai but Sorrel couldn’t stop staring at the wizard. What was it about him?
“We’ll try one of your spells Pentaghast,” Jackal was saying.
Pentaghast… Veridian Pentaghast? A thrill of fury tore through Sorrel.
This was the wizard who had threatened to disintegrate Silvia. Why were they turning to him?
She loosened her sword discretely. Would she have to kill again tonight?
