Never to Let Go [Memory]

Sat Jul 27, 2019 8:53 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
Berret Park, Old Rose Harbor

Penley. Niccolette marked the name, and wrote it onto the list in her heart. It was not only Breda’s brother who should pay in blood for every bit of Uzoji’s suffering; all who had kept him hidden needs must as well. By sheltering him, they had thrown their lot in with his, and if they had not known vengeance would come and swift – they were fools.

Tom moved forward in front of her, taking the lead for reasons of his own - reasons Niccolette didn't particularly understand, not that she paid it much mind. Niccolette had noticed it before, marked it in some corner of her mind: how quiet he was against the dimly lit streets – like a shadow himself, for all his size. Niccolette let him get a few steps ahead then followed, her boots soft but clicking steadily against the cobblestones. Let them know she was coming, she thought. They would not know to fear, for how could they? But soon they would know regret.

The wooden deck outside was a disgrace, and the room inside not much better. Niccolette ignored it all; she didn’t flinch at the faint scurrying sounds of rats and cockroaches against the walls and floor nor the echoes of opium smoke that still seemed to hang in the hair. She followed Tom deeper into the pathetic excuse for an inn, her gaze sweeping over the three men: the one who knew this was not the place for him, the one with the knife, and the one with the glamour.

Niccolette ignored the banter; they would tear this place apart, if need be. If Breda’s brother fled again, like the coward he was, than they would track him through the city – she would rip the Rose apart and scatter its petals to the wind, if that was what it took.

Niccolette listened to the beginnings of the wick’s spell, grimacing faintly. It was almost painful to listen to them cast, but she understood the gist of it almost immediately despite the spell's ugly inelegance. A sleep spell, a powerful one to gauge from what he was asking the mona: to sink them deep into a slumber from which even the touch of his companion’s knife would not awaken them.

Niccolette began to cast herself as well, whispering to the mona, a complex prayer, building in two spells at once. It was a careful operation, slow and delicate, even if neither spell on its own was more than a student could cast. Niccolette didn't want to push the mona too hard, didn't want to draw on power that she knew might well not be there. But she had all her technical skill still, even without her usual raw strength, and she wove the two spells together with an ease that no beginning castor could hope to achieve, tempering the two spells to mesh together.

There might well have been an easier way. She could, Niccolette knew, cast quickly and force the wick to brail - but that was a risk. If he was powerful enough for a true sleep spell, than even his glamour might be enough to disturb the mona if his spell went awry – and, so, better to let him finish his cast.

And yet, Niccolette thought, she had no intent of laying down to sleep, nor of letting anyone open her throat.

They would both feel the air grow thick and heavy around them, visible energy flowing out from the wick and hanging in a heavy cloud around the two of them. The feeling wasn’t like exhaustion; the spell didn’t demand sleep in that way. It was subtler, much subtler; it called to them, beckoning like a cup of soothing tea and a warm wrapped blanket, promising that the world would be better if they closed their eyes – slow and seductive. A heaviness crawled over them, thickening their limbs. Niccolette felt her shoulders slump; felt her legs soft. She couldn’t hold the weight anymore; she dropped to her knees, hands catching on the filthy ground.

But Niccolette never stopped casting.

The monite of her spell built and flowed; Niccolette managed the dual homing with flawless ease. Energy flowed from her field as well, a faint stream dispering into the air around her and Tom, a second crawling from her field, flooding towards the wick – streaming between his open lips to fill his mouth.

The wick stopped speaking – the air hung heavy around them, and for a moment Niccolette even felt her eyes close – but then her spell finished too. At once, both she and Tom would feel a bright, sharp rush of wakefulness, physically painful, as if someone had pinched all their skin at once. It hurt – it hurt much worse than the soft welcoming sleep spell – but it would banish the feelings of sleepiness instantly, jolting them both back to being fully awake.

Niccolette lurched back to her feet, looking at the wick and leaving the knife-wielder for Tom. Blood dribbled from both corners of his mouth, a faint stream of it, and Niccolette grinned. It wasn’t as powerful as she’d hoped for – not nearly – but let him try to cast with a cut tongue.

Rolls

Sat Jul 27, 2019 10:43 pm

Berret Park • Old Rose Harbor

during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716

Tom Cooke had known Barnabas Penley.

Penley was no galdor, but he wasn’t a spoke, and his magic wasn’t a spoke’s. It was a hodgepodge, somewhere in-between, cobbled together from a life on the streets and a livelihood dealing in illicit grimoires. He hadn’t been Hawke’s man, but he’d worked with the Bad Brothers from time to time, sold to anybody who had the birds and couldn’t make it all the way to the Turtle. He’d made his own sort of poetry, cut out and pasted together, a path that ran all the way to the present from the first words he’d ever spoken to the mona: a command to push, table-scraps from the drunk Red Crow vreska who’d conceived him.

He’d told Tom all this on their third night together, after they’d finished, and then he’d put him to sleep. Barnie was a good hand at a sleep spell; he was the best Tom’d ever known, seeing as Tom hadn’t known a lot of gollies. He’d always had trouble sleeping, and even more trouble staying asleep, but if Barnie asked the mona to help him, they did.

Even as the poetry dropped from his tongue, Tom knew what he was doing – he recognized the words, even if he didn’t know their meaning – but, natt he was, there was nothing much he could do. He felt it, too, sure enough: something soft as cotton was wrapping itself round his bones and making all his limbs twice as heavy. He was strong, but not strong enough. Not by half. Not by a quarter.

He swayed on his feet, struggling to keep his eyes open. The knife at his belt seemed a million miles away as he fumbled for the pommel with too-thick fingers. There was just so much going on. So fucking much, when all he could do was breathe in a heady blanket of opium smoke.

Tom heard a thump behind him, and a second voice joined the first. It startled him, but he slid back into the sleepy haze just as quickly. Penley was moving around the bar, the tips of his long fingers tracing the old wood counter, his lips still moving, his eyes still on Niccolette. The other man, the tall man with the knife, wasn’t sitting on the table anymore. Where was he? Tom couldn’t think.

Then he felt it – like he’d been doused with cold water, or twisted hard by the ear.

Penley’d stopped cold in his tracks, shaky hands fumbling at his mouth. He blinked and his eyes squeezed shut behind the lenses of his glasses, budding with tears; then they went wide and filled with rage. Blood bubbled around his lips. Something garbled came out of his mouth, something like bifffff, and then he hissed in the back of his throat like a cat, spraying spittle.

Tom wasn’t on the edge of sleep anymore, but this sudden wakefulness wasn’t pleasant, and he felt as if he’d been torn out of a slumber that’d lasted for years. He blinked once, twice, his eyelids like heavy shutters. He took out Ish’s knife, but he felt tipsy. He felt a breeze behind him, movement, something sharp and hot, and halfway-turned.

The man’d aimed a thrust at his lower back, and as Tom turned, he’d fumbled. Still, the knife had hit: it’d gone straight through his coat and grazed his lower left side before he’d yanked it free. In the pause that followed, Tom stumbled forward, reached out, and grabbed the skinny arm that held the knife.

He was clumsy, again, and he felt thick-fingered, felt like the air was water, and he couldn’t think straight. His grip wasn’t as strong as he meant it to be. A sharp pain split his arm, followed by the patter of something warm down to his elbow. The sound of tearing cloth. But he threw himself into the motion, shoving the smaller man back, back, squeezing and twisting that sinewy arm until he heard a crunch, pop –

The man’s back cracked, too, as it struck the wall behind, the old wood creaking and cracking. With a yelp, he nearly let go of the knife, but managed to hold on. His other hand went to Tom’s throat, and Tom made a decision. With one last agonizing twist of his arm, the bigger man bore down on him, hissing between his teeth, and then the blade of Ishma’s knife was cutting through the air between them, and then a mouth of hot blood yawned at his throat.

A gurgle and then a quiet little almost-breath flapped out of his lips. There was blood on his face, too, as he slumped to the ground, and blood on Tom’s knife, and blood on Tom’s hands and arm and coat. No time to think of it. Tom whirled, looking to Niccolette and Penley, dark eyes wide.

Penley had showed Niccolette his hands, palms up, back to the bar. He opened his mouth; more dark trickled out, and he tried to speak. It was lisping and indistinct, but what he said sounded like upstairs, and he jabbed a finger at the ceiling, waved toward the stairs. Then he shook his head, waved his open hands again, stared at Niccolette and Tom in utter horror. Take him, take him, he mouthed, then gestured at himself, then waved his hands again.

Not me.

Rolls

Sat Jul 27, 2019 11:29 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
Berret Park, Old Rose Harbor

The wick tried to speak. Niccolette grimaced in something that might – might – have been sympathy, if not for the cruel twist at the edge of it, the faint light glittering in her eyes. He failed – of course – and something that might’ve been spit or blood sprayed from his mouth, drops falling heavy and dark against his papers.

Niccolette watched, curiously. He wasn’t the first to try to speak after this particular spell, of course. Usually, the tongue was much more badly injured; she was somewhat relieved to discover that it seemed just as effective with a less brutal cut. Better chance, of course, that he would heal. In time. Perhaps. Tongues were so very… sensitive. There were tears behind his eyes, and anger too. Niccolette grinned a little wider, and raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t close enough for him to feel her field – and she didn’t flex either, choosing to let the wick use his imagination.

The wick didn’t move; he held, shaking – furious - lips pressed together, bloody drool streaking slowly down his chin. He held behind the counter.

There was a sound like a knife through cloth, and Niccolette turned her head from the wick to look at Tom. He and the other man were struggling; there was a new cut in the back of Tom’s coat, the sharp crunch of bone breaking – a heavy thud as the human’s body smacked against the wall – and then a wet gurgle of bloody surrender. Niccolette shifted a little to be able to watch both; she had thought of casting to help Tom, but he seemed to have it well enough in hand.

The wick was holding his hands up now, palms flat towards her. He gestured – frantically – towards the stairs – he begged.

Niccolette made a little face. “It is too late for that,” she told him, coldly. “It was too late for that the moment you let him here.”

The Bastian inhaled, deeply, and began to cast. Her voice was still calm – the air around her never shifted with any color. At Brunnhold, human-focused living conversationalists spent a good deal of time studying anatomy as well. It was one of the few classes at Brunnhold where there were true exams, where memorization of anything other than Monite was considered absolutely essential. Niccolette, like all the rest, had poured over books and diagrams, practiced again and again – on paper and people both – until she could find and name not just the body’s bones, but muscles too – and, of course, ligaments and tendons.

There were so many tendons in the legs. All essential, naturally, and some particularly important for things like climbing stairs. The bone inside the heel, known as the calcaneus, was attached to the calf muscle by a particularly large tendon – one very prone to rupture, in fact. It wasn’t a typical student ailment, but it was common enough in older adults, particularly humans or wicks who had spent a lifetime on their feet – like an innkeeper with a second story, one who must have walked up and down those stairs with wonderful regularity.

Energy hovered in the air around Niccolette and streamed forward, sinking into the back of the wick’s lower calf, passing through clothing and skin as if it was nothing to her. As Niccolette finished casting and quiet settled over the inn, all three of them would hear two snaps, almost on top of one another, like rubber breaking from being pulled too hard.

The wick let out a choked gurgle of pain, gripping the counter with his hands, his face white beneath its cloud of freckles. He shuddered – heaved, as if he might be sick from the pain.

“It is possible you will still be able to walk,” Niccolette said, as casually as if they were discussing the weather. “It will hurt, of course. I would not try the stairs.”

Niccolette glanced over her shoulder at Tom, gave him that same arched eyebrow as if to ask whether he was ready, and strode across the room, her boots clicking neatly across the wooden floor. She lifted her skirt and cloak in her small hands as she strode through the human’s blood, never hesitating, leaving little footprints behind her against the wood, trailing up after her on the stairs.

Niccolette stopped at the top of the stairs. There was a single hallway – lit, unsteadily, only by faint moonlight creeping in through the boards, one big hole that might once have been a deliberate window – eroded away, now – and the shaft of light that shone through the gaps in the ceiling here and there. There were four doors, two on each side of the hallway, leading back – all closed.

Niccolette pressed her lips together, firmly, making a hard line in the center of her small face. She turned to the first door, and opened it, shoving it into the room.

A man sat on the floor, a filthy cot next to him. His eyes were wide and blank, and only the faint movement of his matted beard gave away that he was breathing. He held a long straight pipe in one hand, and the syrupy incense-like smell of opium was evne thicker here.

Niccolette stepped forward into the room.

The man looked up at her, slowly, no fear – nothing in his face but a distant blankness. Niccolette scowled, and grabbed a fistful of his beard, yanking his chin up into the light and studying him. After a moment, she let go, and wiped her hand on her cloak, turning and leaving the room, shutting the door behind her. Not Breda’s brother, this one – just another filthy human.

Niccolette pushed past Tom, crossed the hallway, and tried the second door.

Rolls

Sun Jul 28, 2019 2:07 pm

Berret Park • Old Rose Harbor

during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716

Tom felt he was fully awake now, pulled back over the brink of sleep body and soul. Wasn’t a good feeling; it felt like he’d been jarred awake from a pleasant dream. Felt like those mornings where he woke up with a fistful of blanket, only now he did have a knife in his hand, and the smell of blood was real, and he had a reason for the rush of blood in his ears and the awful sinking fear in his stomach.

He saw the look on Niccolette’s face when Barnie started begging, and for a space, he thought she was going to kill him. It wouldn’t have been unfair. Make an example. Whatever he was feeling, tonight didn’t have room for it. There was no point trying to stop her, anyhow.

Tom’d tried to prepare himself mentally for more of that bone-twisting, backwards-healing poetry of hers, but he reckoned you couldn’t ever completely prepare yourself for something like this. The sound of the snaps was almost a relief, if a mixed one. It was almost like the pop of a tendon, he thought, and a wince flickered across his face as he watched the wick wobble and lean heavily on the counter. Watched him retch, biting down hard like he was trying to push down bile.

Niccolette’s boots click, click, clacked past him toward the dingy stairwell, and he noticed she thought to lift up her cloak and skirt so they didn’t drag in the blood. The dead kov’s, maybe some of his. Blood all over the floor, really. Made him want to laugh, even though it wasn’t too funny. Benny, he thought absently, benny, good for her. It’d take forever for his coat to stop smelling like blood.

Penley gagged again, and there was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Tom felt a flare of something he shouldn’t, and pushed it down, down under the lump in his throat, the pit where Penley’s gentle hand and lover’s whispers lived. Instead, he shrugged his broad shoulders and said, “I’d listen to her, if I was you, kov.”

The wick’s frown deepened. He gathered the blood and spittle in his mouth and spat in Tom’s direction. Silent, shrugging again, Tom went up the stairs after Niccolette.

Took his eyes a little to adjust to the dark, the only light pale and thin and leaking through the hole at the end of the short hall, gaps in the roof. He made out the first door on the left, already open, a gaping dark, but when he reached it, Niccolette was already in the doorway and shoving past him. The man inside didn’t spare him a glance; he’d already leaned back, unfazed, though his lips were slightly parted now. They moved as if engaged in some private poetry of his soul. Tom watched him for a moment, then turned to follow Niccolette.

This time, she’d chosen correctly.

There wasn’t much light, just whatever reached in from the hallway, whatever cold slivers shone through the cracks in the wood. It took Tom’s eyes a moment to adjust, but he didn’t need it. There was a messy shuffle, a series of thumps in the dark, then a voice: “Don’t come no closer, you freak!” The confined space was thick with the sour reek of sweat and things less pleasant.

Tom saw the faint moonlight lick over his lumpy, stubbly cheeks, his lumpy shaven head, glisten in the pale twists of scars. There was a poor, sagging excuse for a cot shoved up against the wall, but that was it. Now he was up, his chest heaving, his eyes glittering as they flicked from Niccolette to Tom.

Tom let himself fill up the narrow doorway. He shifted his grip on the knife, fingers clammy and slick with blood; he kept it down by his side, hidden in the folds of his torn coat. “Shut your head an’ come easy, hey?” he said, shouldering his way just a little into the room. “Ain’t a hard choice, nanabo.” Still blocking the door, still tensed and at the ready.

Arno’s eyes flicked from Niccolette to Tom, then back to Niccolette, then back to Tom. He kicked himself into motion, throwing himself past Niccolette and toward the door. It’d been a fool move, and Tom was poised to catch him, but somehow he didn’t think he’d have to.

Sun Jul 28, 2019 4:03 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
Berret Park, Old Rose Harbor

Arno told himself he hadn’t known. He swore it up and down in his head, and then aloud in soft, whimpering mutters, quiet grumbles. Sometimes it was the last thing he thought of before he slept; sometimes it was the first thing he thought of when he woke. He was afraid to stay in the little room – he was afraid of Barnabas Penley, not sure how long the stash of coins he’d dug up would last. He was more afraid of leaving, more afraid of being seen. In the long lonely blended together days he had a lot of time to himself, a lot of time to sit and think.

Over and over, he repeated the words like a prayer. He hadn’t known. He couldn’t have known.

That fucker, Snell – that darkness spell of his – how the clocking fuck had Arno been supposed to see shit in all that mess? He couldn’t barely see his own hands – he couldn’t’ve known that the human, the big one, had gotten Breda. Breda was supposed to get out; that’d been the plan all along, Breda would get out and he and Snell and Ekene, that godsdamn Mugrobi with his godsdamn knives, and that little red-headed golly– they should’ve been able to handle a golly and a human. Except there hadn’t been one golly, there’d be two, and the second one –

Sometimes when the inn creaked, when the wood snapped and groaned, it sounded like the way Snell’s leg had broken. More than once he’d been sick from it, vomited up whatever half-rotten food Penley bothered to bring his way.

If that freak hadn’t broken Snell’s leg – if Snell hadn’t cast that clocking godsdamned darkness spell – Arno’d never have left Breda, never. The only way it made sense was that he hadn’t known, and he hadn’t known because of Snell. He couldn’t’ve known; he couldn’t’ve seen through that darkness. He couldn’t remember if he’d looked back, couldn’t remember if he’d seen Breda and the human struggling against the crates, the human’s arm locked around Breda’s neck – he hadn’t, if he’d seen that he’d’ve known and if he’d known he wouldn’t’ve left.

Some days he was too afraid to go out to the back of the inn even to piss; if he went outside, Arno told himself, if he went outside they’d see him, they’d know, they’d find him. Before long he stopped smelling it in the room anyway. Some days the smell seemed to come out of nowhere and he couldn’t stand it, and he’d give Penley some extra coin to air out the filthy mattress and get some fresh water, shave his head and face and feel like a man again. In the filthy black-spotted scraps of mirror he could see his cheek hadn’t healed right, but what the fuck did it matter, anymore?

What the fuck did any of it matter anymore?

Some days Arno’d thought of surrendering himself to Hawke, but then, just as quick, he’d think better of it. They’d gone too far and there wasn’t any hope, not now, and Breda’d been the one with the contacts. Arno’d found the stash of coins, enough to buy himself Penley’s annoyed tolerance just a little while longer, but he didn’t know shit about the rest of it. Maybe he could tell Hawke that – he didn’t know. He’d only done what Breda told him. He didn’t know shit. That thought laid him lower than he’d been, even lower.

But whatever the hell this was – it was living. He was alive, and when Arno went too far along that path – he remembered he wanted to stay that way. Alive. Didn’t he?

He’d get out, Arno told himself. Mugroba, maybe. He’d find passage out of the Rose, one way or another. There had to be some ships that could sneak under Hawke’s radar. In a few weeks, maybe they wouldn’t be searching for him anymore. Maybe – maybe – maybe Breda’d died, and it was all forgotten already. A few times Arno thought that, thought maybe he could just stroll down the streets of the Rose like he used to, but he’d never made it further than Penley’s front door. Barely even made it to the stairs, half the time.

This was one of those days when life didn’t feel worth living, or at least so Arno’d felt before that door flung open. He saw her, silhouetted in the light from the hallway – he didn’t need to see that face, the heavy line of the cloak and the glint of long brunette hair – he’d never forget that silhouette. And – in that moment – Arno knew, with a certainty he hadn’t felt in weeks: he did want to live. He wanted it, desperately, more than anything he’d ever wanted in all his miserable, hard-lucked life.

“Don’t come no closer, you freak!” He scrabbled to the side, falling off the low mattress to the floor, using the wall to pull himself up to his feet. He’d get out past her, Arno told himself, get out past her, get downstairs – get out – get out!

The room smelled foul – like sweat and fear and piss and shame. Niccolette’s eyes glittered, and she knew even before her eyes adjusted that she’d found him. She stepped, shifted to the side to let Tom fill the doorway behind her.

What had been a cut on his cheek had healed messily, a swollen lump of scar tissue that stick out like an angry red crest along his face, oddly shiny in the dim light. He spat something that Niccolette was sure had been intended as an insult at her, broke – broke without a second of hesitation to it – and ran, charging towards Tom.

He was pathetic.

Niccolette felt aflame with fury - how could someone like this - how could a man so pathetic, so utterly useless - have had anything to do with Uzoji's pain? How could she have let this happen? The feeling burst from her. Her tight, ramscott field sigiled – slanted – red-shifted, filling the entire room with an odd, deep red glow, heat pulsing outwards from her. She shuddered; her hands tightened into fists at her side. Whatever control she’d had was gone, washed away, but her words were still precise as she called on the mona, furious and tense –

And the air around her crackled and broke. Niccolette shuddered – once – dropped to her knees, doubling forward, both hands gripping her head, and she screamed. The mona in the air around her were angry and buzzing, hotter than before, hot and tense. Her whole body was bucking back and forth with the pain, shaking, as if she were trying to throw something off.

The pain spell she’d meant for Arno had backfired – it was racing through her, crawling through her veins. Tears dripped from her eyes – blood trickled from her nose – and it was all Niccolette could do to keep from spilling her guts on the floor. She was useless – utterly useless – helpless, unable even to focus her eyes to watch as Arno charged towards Tom.

Rolls

Sun Jul 28, 2019 7:16 pm

Berret Park • Old Rose Harbor

during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716

Tom braced himself, but he didn’t expect the poor laoso to make it all the way to the door. Moment he’d dusted back in the warehouse in Ophus, he’d been marked, and Tom didn’t think the breadth of the Tincta Basta would’ve been enough to keep him safe. Tom didn’t understand a whole lot about Niccolette Ibutatu, but if it’d been Ishma bleeding out in the snow that night, he knew he’d’ve been on Arno like a bloodhound. Arno and everybody he loved, too, and Breda might not’ve made it back to Hawke. Not in one piece, anyway.

But it was Tom’s job tonight, insofar as he was able, to get Arno back to King’s Court alive. If you could kill with stares, Niccolette’s would’ve already pierced Arno’s heart; Tom hoped you couldn’t kill with poetry, not right away, but he didn’t know for sure. Her lips were moving, shaping out precise, well-enunciated words in Monite, distinct words. Words Tom didn’t think would miss their target.

In the confined space, he felt her field go tight, and he felt the air warm up like a kitchen. Then, something went wrong. The woobly feeling went haywire, and Niccolette was on her knees, something dark trickling from her nostrils.

Tom caught this only in a breathless glimpse. Then, the collision. Being honest, he wasn’t sure what the kov’d been trying to do. Did he think he’d get around Tom? He’d gone down and to the side like there was room, like he could slip in beside him like a mouse. He wasn’t that quick, and he sure as hell wasn’t that small, and Tom wasn’t that fucking mung.

But it was a feint. Must’ve been the sleep spell, or that bizarre, swarming feeling in the air, but Tom fell into it. When he went left, Arno went right, and Tom didn’t even see it before he felt it: an odd pressure against the outside of his right thigh, a bloom of warmth and wetness, and then a dull, distant ache. He didn’t have time to think, barely had time to react. Arno threw all his strength into shoving the bigger man to the right. As Tom’s leg took his weight, a sharp pain lanced through the muscles of his thigh. He grabbed the door-frame for support and felt it shift under his weight – heard a groan, and then a loud pop from the old wood.

He saw the whites of Arno’s eyes in the dark. The man’s face contorted in an awful grimace, the twisted-rope scar on his cheek writhing. It was like he’d lost control of his limbs, like he’d lost all his balance, like the room’d started turning round and round for him and no one else; Tom saw him flail back, empty hands grasping in the dimness. Tom felt a fist knot in his coat, and he heard a heavy, husky, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” between hoarse, greedy breaths.

Arno was close, now, close enough for Tom to feel hot, moist breath on his face. The smell was pungent. He resisted the urge to shove him away. Instead, one of Tom’s hands found his shoulder, tightening around it. “Wo chet,” Tom hissed, wincing and trying to ignore the pain in his leg. There was still something buried there, he thought, but he couldn’t tell what, or how big, or where exactly it was buried.

“What’s she done?” slurred Arno. “What’s she broke? What’d she do?” His voice cracked, and then he gagged, looking like he was about to hurl his guts.

Swallowing bitter spittle, Tom muttered, “Fuckin’ moony,” catching him and trying to hold him upright. The muscles of his shoulders were tense as rock, knotted. He caught a glimpse of Arno’s hands, trembling so violently they might as well’ve been useless. What had gotten into him? “Wo chet, wo chet,” Tom went on more softly, “no more mung shit, hey?” He shifted his weight back to his leg, fighting to keep Arno steady.

Arno’s eyes met his. His lips moved, tongue slapping pointlessly at his teeth, stammering out nothing but panicked breaths. Then, more audibly, he whispered, “Don’t let her have me, kov, don’t let her, don’t, I got to see what she broke, I can’t feel it, I got to see,” dissolving into a husky, unintelligible babble.

Tom blinked, taking a shuddering breath. “I ain’t. I ain’t, jus’ –” Behind Arno, Niccolette was still a doubled-over shape in the dark. His eyes moved back to Arno’s pale, terrified face. “Easy, now, easy,” he grated, hand tightening on his shoulder, fingers digging in deep. His other hand knotted in Arno’s shirt, yanking him upright again; a rush of words came out in a low snarl. “Worse where that came from. Ye chen? Should see what she’s done to Barnie downstairs. You stay where you are, you keep your fuckin’ head shut, you keep those legs of yours. Ye chen?”

Mon Jul 29, 2019 2:20 am

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
Berret Park, Old Rose Harbor

Niccolette’s hands were shaking against the ground; she tried to dig her fingers into the filthy wood, nails scraping against it. She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t speak; she couldn’t focus her gaze on anything but the blackness of the floor in front of her, faint uneven lines tracing their way across it. There was nothing in her head but the pain; it felt as if she had lit every drop of her blood on fire, as if she were burning up from the inside out. Any moment it would consume her - any moment -

The pain faded. Niccolette shuddered, her body convulsing one final time against the ground, hands slowly loosening their grip.

Her field. Niccolette reached for the mona, a frantic, panicked groping. For a moment she felt nothing - less than nothing - swaddled in some invisible cloth once more, cut off from the world, from everything. Panic rushes through her, and it was all she could do not to scream again. Calm, Niccolette told herself, squeezing her eyes shut. Calm. She had backlashed before; she would again. It wasn’t like the last time; it couldn’t be like the last time.

Niccolette took a deep breath, slow and steady and even. She thought of coming back to herself on the lawn at Brunnhold, the first time she had ever backlashed, dizzy and aching - of being sick on the dry grass as onlookers laughed. She thought of headaches, blurred vision, sharp shooting pains, muscle aches - she thought of waking up, not knowing if Uzoji was alive or dead, of reaching for the mona and finding them missing.

Alive. He was alive. Niccolette took another deep breath, still slow, still steady, still even. So was she.

The galdor reached out once more. Slowly, slowly, the faint hum of sensation returned. She couldn’t summon the mona just yet, she knew that; she knew better. But it would come, it would come, she only needed to be patient. It would be minutes, not hours. The mona were flowing back into her field, with each breath a little more, and the aching in her head no more than a gentle warning.

Niccolette licked her lips, once, tasting the metallic tang of blood. Her head was still clearing, slowly; she didn’t know how long the pain had lasted. She couldn’t tell. It might have been seconds; it might have been days. There were sounds from the door; she glanced up to see Tom gripping Breda’s brother, both of them just barely visible in the dim light.

Niccolette pushed herself to her feet and wiped her nose, leaving a swipe of too-bright red blood on the back of her hand, glinting in the moonlight.

Tom’s fist was tangled in the other man’s filthy shirt.

Niccolette shuddered - a wave of red washed through the air around her - and she gritted her teeth and pulled the emotion from her field, calming herself. Not anger, she told herself. Anger had no more place with the mona than love did; to cast in anger was always a mistake.

Not vengeance, then; not bloody and hot and furious, not sharp spurting blood and desperate, twisting pain. Control, Niccolette told herself. Control and conquest. No matter that he was already afraid; he wasn’t afraid enough. He and Penley, the human with the knife - all who dared to stand against Hawke, all who dared to threaten her beloved. Let this conquest be a lesson to them; let them know fear.

“Keep him,” Niccolette’s voice rasped on her own blood, harsh in her throat. She grimaced, and spat on the filthy floor, clearing her throat. She closed her eyes, and fell into an even, steady pattern of breathing, made familiar again and again through endless nights of repetition. Life flowing through her - in from the world around her, through her lungs, through her body - flooding her blood with bright oxygen - back out, the remnants of herself joining the world.

Niccolette centered herself, slow and careful. Her field was pulsing back to life, bright around her. She stretched, slowly, finding the new edges of it, pulsing it until the sharp edges washed and flickered over Tom and Breda’s brother both.

No fear, no doubt, Niccolette told herself. The pain she had suffered was nothing, weighed against the hard fact of Uzoji’s suffering. It was not anger she brought to the mona but purpose, glowing and glorious. She knew what she needed to do.

Niccolette began to cast again, slow and smooth and steady. She focused her gaze on Breda’s brother, eyes dropping to his chest. Niccolette inhaled, exhaled again, never losing the rhythm of her breath as she spoke her prayer. Energy streamed in the air around her, flowed free - sunk into Breda’s brother’s chest.

There were many spells she had found for him, ones she had searched for in all her forbidden grimoires, memorized every word of. At first, when she had not known how her recovery would be, when she had thought she might be left in weakness a long time - too long - still she had known this would come. This was the spell she had found then; not bright furious anger, but careful, planned conquest.

The crack of his ribs fracturing echoed through the captive man’s chest, out through the room, isolated on one side of his chest, a deep wet crunching.

Niccolette exhaled, slowly, carefully, and spoke one more single word.

Push.

A rush of energy streamed from her - cracked, powerfully, into the same spot where her living spell had just poured itself.

Breda’s brother twisted in Tom’s arms, screaming in pain. Niccolette watched, calmly, as the side of his chest deflated, slowly - watched only half of it rise and fall.

“Quiet him,” she told Tom, gesturing with one hand to Breda’s brother’s now bloody mouth. Her eyes were cold and hard, glittering.

“The body has many more parts than it needs,” Niccolette said, once Tom had stopped the screaming. She spoke slowly and carefully, drawing out the words until Breda’s brother was listening. She was smiling a little, faintly, her face still smeared with her own blood, eyeliner tracks streaming down her cheeks. “Like eyes. You do not need both to see something, but a man with one eye does not see so well as he did with two.”

“So it is with lungs,” Niccolette’s voice was barely more than a whisper now. She had stepped closer, close enough to put them both in range of her indectal field, as sharp as ever. “You will live,” Niccolette made a face. She did not think him smart enough to understand most of what she said, but she told him anyway, in a tone oddly like that of a healer delivering news. “For now.”

Rolls

Mon Jul 29, 2019 7:17 pm

Berret Park • Old Rose Harbor

during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716

Tom was supporting most of Arno’s weight by now, and despite the numbness adrenaline’d given him, the pain in his leg was starting to hit his brain. He’d got stabbed with a sharp, and good, too, he reckoned. Arno’s boots scuffled on the floor, and his shaky hands fumbled in Tom’s coat, and Tom screwed his face up at another wave of that laoso smell. Arno’s eyes met his, well as they could in the dark, flicking back and forth, bulging. But the kov wasn’t talking anymore; his mouth was open and he was puffing for breath, but fear – and Tom’s warning – had won over, which was better than nothing.

Couldn’t hold him up for much longer, though, and Tom figured the thinking part of his brain’d catch up eventually. He’d try to dust again, and Tom didn’t know if he could hold him back. He kept looking over his shoulder, chewing the inside of his lip, shooting desperate glances at Niccolette’s bent form in the dark.

Slowly, she got to her feet, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Tom watched her. That woobly feeling came back into the air around them, surging with a heat and anger that seemed red as blood – and then subsiding. As she came closer, he felt it wash over them, organized and tight like a golly’s ought to feel. He swallowed thickly.

Arno was still looking up into his face with something like pleading. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but the rasp of Niccolette’s voice cut him off.

Then poetry.

This time, though he heard it too – couldn’t unhear it – Tom felt the crunch under his hand. It slithered through Arno’s body, wet and strange. Tom grit his teeth, forcing himself to keep that calm he always had in tough situations, but it was hard, maybe the hardest thing he’d ever done. Could’ve been she cast a spell to make time slow down, too, ’cause it seemed like the moment lasted forever, the moment between that crack and everything that was about to happen. The moment where Tom saw Arno’s face, confused and pale, his eyes just starting to bud with tears.

Caterwaul came next, an animal howl that reminded Tom of the wick’s on that awful night in Ophus. Words couldn’t describe it, and he wouldn’t’ve been able to think of any, anyway. Then came the screaming, Arno yowling his throat raw, stopping only to gasp for more air to fuel another volley of hysteric shrieks. He writhed in Tom’s arms, nearly falling to the floor, but Tom caught him around his middle, hauling him up.

With a sick sinking in his belly, Tom felt something give underneath the muscle of his arm. Circle clock it, he thought, and gagged down a wave of nausea. He could feel Arno’s chest filling up with his struggling breath, but only on one side.

Get a fucking hold of yourself. It’s just another job.

Leaning heavily on his left, Tom hauled Arno the rest of the way to his feet, then clapped one big hand over his mouth. The sound of muffled screaming went on. Tom leaned forward, hissed in his ear, “Shut your fuckin’ head, you hear me? You fuckin’ hear? Shut it or she’ll take the other one.”

With a whimper, he tried to stifle his screams. He half-succeeded: the air rasped, squealing, in and out of his throat, and he let out gasps in little spasming paroxysms, but he’d stopped the screaming.

“You done, Arnie?”

Arno nodded his head once, twice, thrice. Fast little nods.

Grunting, Tom took his hand away. Arno wheezed for air like a landed fish. He was staring at Niccolette, wide eyed. When she said you will live, all matter-of-fact and doctor-like, Arno let out a breathless shred of a laugh. There were tears streaming down both sides of his face now. “Thank you,” he whispered, words slurring so bad they were almost unintelligible, “thank you, thank you.”

“Said shut it,” snapped Tom, grip tightening around his middle.

He yelped, clamping his mouth shut and snorting his breath in and out of his nose. Wincing, he seemed to resist the urge to let out another scream; he whimpered a little, then fell silent again.

Tom shot a glance at Niccolette, one heavy eyebrow raised. His lip curled. “Real fuckin’ inconspicuous, we’ll be, gettin’ back to King’s Court.” He spoke quietly, but he bit off the word inconspicuous, half husking through grit teeth. “Got any suggestions, madam?”

Mon Jul 29, 2019 7:46 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
Berret Park, Old Rose Harbor

The human thanked her, and Niccolette’s lips twitched, her smile broadening faintly. Idiot, she thought. It would be kinder to kill him now.

It was very interesting when Tom squeezed his stomach; Niccolette could see the side of his chest with a working lung bulge, could see that even just that bit of strain was enough to leave him breathless and winded. Very interesting. She hadn’t seen many people with collapsed lungs. What she had told the human was true, of course, but it was mostly based on her reading. With Uzoji – she would never know if it had been the blood loss or pressure in the chest cavity which had brought him so close to the edge. If her quantitative cast had worked –

Well, she had almost certainly told the human the truth. There was, of course, a chance that the spell would kill him, but – watching him breathe, Niccolette did not think so. So. He would live a little longer, until Hawke, too, had taken what he wanted from the pathetic, crawling thing. But… Niccolette’s eyes went back to the scar, and she pursed her lips. Left to fester, she thought, there was a good chance the infection would reach his jaw – if it hadn’t already.

Tom spoke to her, and Niccolette lifted her gaze to his, raising an eyebrow. “He cannot run,” she said, shrugging. “But his legs still work.”

Niccolette turned her gaze back to the human, tilting her head to the side, slightly. She reached forward, up, tangled her fingers in his dirty beard and tugged his head down, forcing him to meet her eyes. She smiled again, slowly. “He will not run,” she said, almost gently. Her fingers released his beard – reached up, and stroked the angry red ridge of the scar that ran down his cheek. She pressed, lightly, feeling the angry heat beneath the skin, sending a shock of pain through the human; Tom would feel his body jerk, sharp, with it.

Delicately, Niccolette stepped back. Then, after a moment, she took another step back, and two to the side. After a last moment of consideration, she took a third step to the side.

“This will smell,” she told Tom, wrinkling her nose. She took a deep breath, and began to cast again, ramscott field pulsing in the air around her. This was an easy spell, a short one, and hazing energy collected around the Bastian, streamed forward, sinking slowly into the long, horrible scar on the human’s face.

It grew swollen – slowly – pressure building up beneath the skin – and then, as if she’d taken a scalpel and drawn a line down it, the two halves of the scar split apart, and a horrible flow of pus shot from the wound. This too, would hurt – the human screamed, horribly, writhing against Tom again, and Niccolette made a little face as the gore splattered worse. She had stepped far enough to the side, at least, not to get his mess on her cloak. The pus reeked, as promised; it smelled a thousand times worse than the filthy room – it spewed forward for seconds that seemed to last hours, until the last of the white pus was gone and blood flowed freely instead – a hot gush at first, although it slowed to a trickle almost immediately.

Niccolette stepped forward again, took the human’s beard in her hand once more, grasping the side not matted with blood and pus. “Shhh,” she murmured, looking at him. “Shhh,” she patted his uninjured cheek, gently. He was sobbing, moaning, and Niccolette raised an eyebrow, holding his gaze until he quieted. “You have many scars,” Niccolette told him, smiling again. “Shall I split them all open?” She gave his uninjured cheek a firmer tap with the flats of her fingers, like the precursor to a slap.

The human was still crying, quieter now, flinching in pain every time his tears washed over the open, weeping wound on his face.

“I do not see the problem,” Niccolette said, calmly, stepping back to look at Tom. Inconspicuous. Why would she want to be inconspicuous? Let them see what happened to those who crossed Hawke; let them all know where she and Tom and this pathetic, miserable excuse for a human went.

Rolls

Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:24 pm

Berret Park • Old Rose Harbor

during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716

Being honest, Tom wasn’t sure if Arno could walk. Niccolette was right about one thing, though: no way in hell, no way in all of Vita, was this kov going to run.

She was up close and personal now, and both Arno and Tom were staring at her face, Tom with a deepening scowl and Arno with wide, animal eyes. When she traced her fingertips over that nasty scar, Tom felt all his muscles tense, and he braced himself in case he decided to do anything mung. When her fingertips pressed down, a jolt ran through him, and Tom shifted his weight to keep him still. He sucked the breath in through his teeth at another twinge in his left leg.

The galdor’d taken a step back, looking at him with a shark’s eyes – then a step to the left, then another. He felt his own eyes narrow. He didn’t like this.

He didn’t like it as she started speaking poetry, and he sure as hell didn’t like it once she stopped.

Couldn’t keep himself from flinching, head jerking as he looked abruptly away. He’d caught the briefest glimpse of something jetting out of Arno’s face, something that didn’t look like blood. He strained to keep his head away, but he was too close at hand not to breathe in the stench. A sickbed smell, that. Worse than Arno, worse than all the blood and piss and fear, worse even than anything you could come up with after a few hours’ tour of the worst parts of Voedale. It turned his stomach; he gagged. His already-aching nose was on fire, but he managed to keep his mouth clamped shut.

Arno wasn’t so restrained. He let out of a few more hoarse shrieks, then gasped and panted with the pain. By the time the golly’s godsawful spell’d finished, he was quiet save for a few pitiful whimpers, but Tom could feel the jittery breaths trembling in and out of his one good lung.

You have many scars. Shall I split them all open?

Tom swallowed a bitter lump. A chill prickled down his spine like the tapping tips of fingernails on parchment, and he seemed to feel every scar he’d ever got pulling, stinging. He had the sudden, wretched feeling that they were only held together by something as feeble as time. For the first time, they didn’t make him feel so strong.

He didn’t argue. Wouldn’t argue, even if there was a knife sticking out of his leg, and there wasn’t a chance of him letting her know about it. If he played his cards right – and he usually did – that’d be the only thing wrong with him by the time he left them at the Court. Setting himself to the task at hand, he turned his attention back to Arno.

What else could he do but what he always did? So it was.

“You stand on your own right fuckin’ now,” he hissed, leaning so close the kov’d feel his breath whistling against his ear, “or I snap both your legs the good old-fashioned way.” He stayed there, arm still locked tightly underneath Arno’s ribcage. When he didn’t feel any movement, he tightened his arm again, and Arno, again, wheezed. Hacked a couple of times, watery-sounding. But his feet scuffled on the floor, and Tom felt his weight shift.

“Understand, love? You ready to go?”

Arno’s head jerked up and down once, twice, a messy nod. Tom eased him off slow and easy-like, muttering, “There you go, kov,” holding him under his arms even when he’d managed to take all his weight back onto his shaky legs. He was having trouble catching his breath even now, and Tom didn’t know if it was from the shock, or the pain, or the fact that he was out one of his lungs. All three, maybe. Probably all three.

After a few tense moments, the poor sod was keeping his feet without Tom’s help. “An’ there we are,” he breathed, mock-proud, “jus’ like a natural, you are, nanabo.” His lip curled; the air was still thick with the smell of pus. “Let’s go, hey? Got a ways to walk, an’ it’s late enough.”

Arno’s head turned to look at him, and he couldn’t help but wince as he saw that glistening mess of blood and pus busted all across his cheek, dribbling laoso yellowish-white into his ragged beard. Hard to tear his eyes away from that, but he managed to meet Arno’s gaze steadily, the man’s eyes bulging to the whites, something unreadable in what Tom could see of his face.

Tom whistled, raising both his brows, but he didn’t say anything else. He gave Arno a rough little shove, got him turned around and staggering out the door. He was walking all right, though he tottered worrisomely, and Tom could still see his face twitching and spasming. Could still hear the little catches in his throat.

With one last glance at Niccolette, he followed. What a fucking awful parade they’d be, all the way back through Castle Hill, he thought, dizzied – and didn’t say.

An Unexpected Victorian Fantasy

Never to Let Go [Memory]

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