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{{DEFAULTSORT:Summoning, The}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:Summoning, The}} | ||
[[Category:Anthropomorphic]][[Category:Cervine]][[Category:Mythical]] | [[Category:Anthropomorphic]][[Category:Cervine]][[Category:Mythical]] | ||
− | ''' | + | '''November, 707 CR''' |
− | + | Yvarra was used to waking up with pain. Great burning stabbing pain. But then, pain was better than being dead. Even when each breath was a study in agony. At least it didn’t take long until the screaming pain was swallowed up by a pleasant burning warmth as her alicorn did its work. | |
+ | |||
+ | Closing her eyes she sniffed the air with gentle inhales, slowly puzzling out the clues from the salty stench of her own blood. There was stone-- cold, wet. A stench worse than the mud, the shit, the waste dumped out of upper story windows. A stench of ancient death, putrid and decaying, filling the air with a heavy cold that made her almost gag as she took shallower and shallower breaths. And-- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Almost she screamed. It was a-- a ''nothingness'' that scraped against her soul again and again, rubbing it raw with its ''wrongness''. | ||
+ | |||
+ | She found herself curling up in a ball to try and hide. The physical pain was easy, but this-- Grasping the ''Sword of Songs'' for its support, she found that it was gone! On her back was an empty scabbard. And her daggers-- gone! All she had left was the tattered remnants of her clothing, the battered fedora, and the necklace she’d found that reminded her of those blue eyes-- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Those trusting blue eyes that would be destroyed if she failed. | ||
+ | |||
+ | From somewhere deep within herself she forced her soul to uncurl from its sobbing state, forced her body to relax. She was alive, and that meant there was hope. Without anything, just herself. A unicorn. | ||
+ | |||
+ | She prayed to Klepnos that that was enough. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Clasping the fedora to herself, she hid the blue stone beneath it. Her ears flicked as she heard the sound of movement, booted feet and-- and the irregular heavy thump of paws on stone. And a clang-clang of something banging against the stone with each thump. It wasn’t armour, it wasn’t anything light, instead something heavy. There were-- three? She sniffed, forced her way past the cloying ancient death, picking out hints nearly overwhelmed by the stench that surrounded her. A hint of the blood and warmth of a female human. And a male badger nearby. And-- and-- a rabbit? | ||
+ | |||
+ | Why not, around this damn place! | ||
+ | |||
+ | The two approaching stopped. The rabbit panting from exertion. His scent was tinged-- no, not tinged, overwhelmed with hatred. Hatred and soul burning ''pain''. A faint tinkle came from the rabbit -- the ''Sword of Songs''? | ||
+ | |||
+ | “Wake her!” The voice was cold, naked, filled with pain and anger. And high pitched, almost a squeak. If not for the gravel rubbing undertones she’d have laughed out loud. Instead, it terrified her even more. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Someone, the human, walked over. She was wearing boots of some kind, and the heel thudded on the wet stone. Something rattled, and then icy muddy water poured onto her. It drained into the still healing wounds reawakening their stabbing pain. It oozed along her fur, between her breasts, down her legs. Slimy coldness oozed down her nostrils and she coughed and gagged and sneezed, struggling to get the dirty water out. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “You wanted to kill me,” the rabbit squeaked. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Yvarra needed information. She stopped moving, let her body sag into apparent unconsciousness. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “Cut the crap! You’re conscious. I can smell it, and I can see it!” | ||
+ | |||
+ | So much for that idea. With a moan, Yvarra raised her muzzle and looked at him. He was indeed a rabbit, thin, scrawny, almost nothing but flesh and bones. His eyes were sunken into his skull and they glowed with a preternatural hatred. His fur, it may have been a rich tan once, was wet, matted with calcium and dirt. His ears were limp along his bank. And in his hand, battered, abused, bent but not broken, was the ''Sword of Songs''. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And yet-- All that paled beside the dim blue-purple light. Not steady, and swirling pulse of colour slowly turning, rotating. The light was alive-- no, not alive. It hated life. Hated existence with a screaming insanity so beyond mortal knowledge that it seemed sane. Looking up, she felt herself, her ''soul'' falling towards then slowly swirling-- gate? It had to be, there was nothing else it could be. It was an irregular circle, the edge formed from twisted and cracked rock that glistened with crystal deposits. Rock that seemed to scream in agony, that seemed to twist and try to flee even though it was cold and wet and solid. The gate-- | ||
+ | |||
+ | It looked solid, looked like patterned marble of glistening, shining, blue and purple. It was solid, carved and patterned rock. And yet-- and yet it ''moved''. It turned, it twisted, it spun, it rotated around and around. And not a single motion. Each fraction of the irregular disc swirled in its own pattern, some in the opposite direction of that around it. All curdling and twisting, like thick tar pulled together and stirred endlessly, flickering with-- hot coals of the deepest black. And-- and there were-- hints? Patterns that suggested a face of inhuman beauty and age and wisdom. Utter and complete kindness and saintliness that screamed ''evil'' into her soul. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “Damn you! Damn you to all nine of the hells!” The rabbit’s squeaky grating voice pulled her, dragged her soul back from the abyss it has been falling into all unaware. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Turning her head slightly, she looked at him. And then ignored him as unworthy. Her eyes turned away as she stretched and flattened her fedora, slowly bringing it back into semblance of its original shape. Looking at it critically, she worked out some of the mud and dirt, forcing it back to what it should look like. Only when she was satisified, well, more resigned that it was the best she could do, did she slip it back on her head, fitting the slot over her alicorn. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Holding out a hand, he felt Hani put his whip into his paw. It wasn’t like the whip ''The One'' had carried, but a cruel thing tipped in glass and shards of metal. Kane took a step back and snapped the whip inches from the unicorn’s ear. | ||
+ | |||
+ | A whipped snapped through the air just away from her ear. Instinctively she flicked it away. The whip was not hers, it was a cruel thing. A thing of black leather tipped in glittering glass and shards of shattered metal. A thing that ''hated'' as much as its master. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “Face me, Eli damn you! ''Face me''!” its master squeaked. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Yvarra turned away. She was naked, no weapons, no tools, imprisoned. She was in ''their'' power. And that meant that her only hope was for ''them'' to make a mistake. Mistakes were more often made when emotions overwhelmed common sense. This was going to hurt, but she was certain they weren’t going to kill her. If they were, she’d already be dead. If she could even die. And that meant her best hope was to invite the pain, to ''feed'' the hatred that created it. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Screaming, the rabbit slashed the whip across her arm, its edge digging into the fur, into the flesh, splattering her body with fresh crimson. It was a fresh pain, a cruel pain. It was like the whip was alive, laughing, taunting her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that his other hand was still holding the ''Sword of Songs'' and she could hear it whimpering in a clattering tone of high pitched harp strings. | ||
+ | |||
+ | She closed her eyes, turning her head as far away from the rabbit as she could. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ''Face me''! | ||
+ | |||
+ | She let his hatred shape her voice, let her pain fill it with sorrow and agony. “Klepnos take you,” she whispered. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The rabbit coiled the whip. “We have all the time in the world, you and I. All the time we can ever need.” Holding the sword in one hand and the whip in the other, he struck her again and again. Each strike was the caress of a cruel lover. Each strike caused a fresh wound, and made sure to caress an existing one, peeling back her flesh, splattering her blood, tearing her muzzle. Her alicorn glowed, her stomachs growled, all she could taste was bile and blood. Almost she whimpered, but she clenched her hands, one around itself, one around the blue gem that was all she lived for, and kept her silence. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He snapped the whip and knocked the fedora from her head. Letting go of the gem, she grabbed for it, but wasn’t fast enough. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The rabbit stared. Then he squeaked out in a loud voice that grated around the cavern. “You said you’d searched her! Stripped her!” | ||
+ | |||
+ | Her hand whipped back to grab the gem, but he was too fast. The glass and metal tipped leather snapped against the necklace, digging into her neck, laying bare her windpipe. And knocking the necklace off where it clattered and slid across the floor. Gasping for breath, the air gurgling out the wound as it healed, blood tinting the dark flesh around her lips, she tried to crawl towards the necklace. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Too late. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The rabbit threw the ''Sword of Songs'' away towards the gate, the whip fell form his grasp, and his hand grabbed the necklace, yanked it out of reach. | ||
+ | |||
+ | All she could do was glare her hatred at him. All she could do was grab her fedora from the wet floor and put it back on. A last act of defiance. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “But-- we checked for magic--" the woman said. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “You didn’t check hard enough.” He picked up the necklace by its chain and looked at the blue teardrop it held. | ||
+ | |||
+ | She couldn’t stop one hand from making a futile grab in its direction, as she stared at him with complete and utter hatred. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “You want this, don’t you?” | ||
+ | |||
+ | She spit a glob of blood towards him. It landed on the damn stone just in front of one of his large, scratched and bloody, rabbit paws. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “You’ve lost it. Like you’ve lost the game.” She watched as he put the chain around his neck. “Do you know how much I hate you? Do you ''know''?” | ||
+ | |||
+ | Oh, she ''knew''. This had started as a tactic to make him make a mistake. But, not any more. Before she’d worked because she was being paid. She’d kept going for her own pride, for a promise to protect an innocent. And now-- now it was personal. She glared at him. | ||
+ | |||
+ | “Oh-- I’ll teach you. By Eli I’ll teach you what hate ''really'' means.” | ||
+ | |||
+ | <nowiki>*</nowiki>snap* *snapsnap* | ||
+ | |||
+ | If she had thought she’d been whipped before, she’d have been wrong. The ''instrument of pain'' rose again and again, snapping across her body like the caresses of a lover. Enough to cause pain, so very ''very'' much pain. But never ''ever'' enough to kill her. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And that was fine. It fed her hatred. It kept her alive. By Klepnos, the rabbit would ''pay''! | ||
{{series bar | {{series bar | ||
|previous=[[User:Michael Bard/On the Hunt|On the Hunt]] | |previous=[[User:Michael Bard/On the Hunt|On the Hunt]] | ||
|next=[[User:Michael Bard/The Last Trial|The Last Trial]]}} | |next=[[User:Michael Bard/The Last Trial|The Last Trial]]}} |
Revision as of 07:07, 5 October 2008
The Summoning
This story is a work in progress. |
Author's Notes: New additions will start with a few words of green text. Keep in mind that significant revisions are possible, and sometimes necessary. The entire text is therefore in flux. |
Add new comment |
November, 707 CR
Yvarra was used to waking up with pain. Great burning stabbing pain. But then, pain was better than being dead. Even when each breath was a study in agony. At least it didn’t take long until the screaming pain was swallowed up by a pleasant burning warmth as her alicorn did its work.
Closing her eyes she sniffed the air with gentle inhales, slowly puzzling out the clues from the salty stench of her own blood. There was stone-- cold, wet. A stench worse than the mud, the shit, the waste dumped out of upper story windows. A stench of ancient death, putrid and decaying, filling the air with a heavy cold that made her almost gag as she took shallower and shallower breaths. And--
Almost she screamed. It was a-- a nothingness that scraped against her soul again and again, rubbing it raw with its wrongness.
She found herself curling up in a ball to try and hide. The physical pain was easy, but this-- Grasping the Sword of Songs for its support, she found that it was gone! On her back was an empty scabbard. And her daggers-- gone! All she had left was the tattered remnants of her clothing, the battered fedora, and the necklace she’d found that reminded her of those blue eyes--
Those trusting blue eyes that would be destroyed if she failed.
From somewhere deep within herself she forced her soul to uncurl from its sobbing state, forced her body to relax. She was alive, and that meant there was hope. Without anything, just herself. A unicorn.
She prayed to Klepnos that that was enough.
Clasping the fedora to herself, she hid the blue stone beneath it. Her ears flicked as she heard the sound of movement, booted feet and-- and the irregular heavy thump of paws on stone. And a clang-clang of something banging against the stone with each thump. It wasn’t armour, it wasn’t anything light, instead something heavy. There were-- three? She sniffed, forced her way past the cloying ancient death, picking out hints nearly overwhelmed by the stench that surrounded her. A hint of the blood and warmth of a female human. And a male badger nearby. And-- and-- a rabbit?
Why not, around this damn place!
The two approaching stopped. The rabbit panting from exertion. His scent was tinged-- no, not tinged, overwhelmed with hatred. Hatred and soul burning pain. A faint tinkle came from the rabbit -- the Sword of Songs?
“Wake her!” The voice was cold, naked, filled with pain and anger. And high pitched, almost a squeak. If not for the gravel rubbing undertones she’d have laughed out loud. Instead, it terrified her even more.
Someone, the human, walked over. She was wearing boots of some kind, and the heel thudded on the wet stone. Something rattled, and then icy muddy water poured onto her. It drained into the still healing wounds reawakening their stabbing pain. It oozed along her fur, between her breasts, down her legs. Slimy coldness oozed down her nostrils and she coughed and gagged and sneezed, struggling to get the dirty water out.
“You wanted to kill me,” the rabbit squeaked.
Yvarra needed information. She stopped moving, let her body sag into apparent unconsciousness.
“Cut the crap! You’re conscious. I can smell it, and I can see it!”
So much for that idea. With a moan, Yvarra raised her muzzle and looked at him. He was indeed a rabbit, thin, scrawny, almost nothing but flesh and bones. His eyes were sunken into his skull and they glowed with a preternatural hatred. His fur, it may have been a rich tan once, was wet, matted with calcium and dirt. His ears were limp along his bank. And in his hand, battered, abused, bent but not broken, was the Sword of Songs.
And yet-- All that paled beside the dim blue-purple light. Not steady, and swirling pulse of colour slowly turning, rotating. The light was alive-- no, not alive. It hated life. Hated existence with a screaming insanity so beyond mortal knowledge that it seemed sane. Looking up, she felt herself, her soul falling towards then slowly swirling-- gate? It had to be, there was nothing else it could be. It was an irregular circle, the edge formed from twisted and cracked rock that glistened with crystal deposits. Rock that seemed to scream in agony, that seemed to twist and try to flee even though it was cold and wet and solid. The gate--
It looked solid, looked like patterned marble of glistening, shining, blue and purple. It was solid, carved and patterned rock. And yet-- and yet it moved. It turned, it twisted, it spun, it rotated around and around. And not a single motion. Each fraction of the irregular disc swirled in its own pattern, some in the opposite direction of that around it. All curdling and twisting, like thick tar pulled together and stirred endlessly, flickering with-- hot coals of the deepest black. And-- and there were-- hints? Patterns that suggested a face of inhuman beauty and age and wisdom. Utter and complete kindness and saintliness that screamed evil into her soul.
“Damn you! Damn you to all nine of the hells!” The rabbit’s squeaky grating voice pulled her, dragged her soul back from the abyss it has been falling into all unaware.
Turning her head slightly, she looked at him. And then ignored him as unworthy. Her eyes turned away as she stretched and flattened her fedora, slowly bringing it back into semblance of its original shape. Looking at it critically, she worked out some of the mud and dirt, forcing it back to what it should look like. Only when she was satisified, well, more resigned that it was the best she could do, did she slip it back on her head, fitting the slot over her alicorn.
Holding out a hand, he felt Hani put his whip into his paw. It wasn’t like the whip The One had carried, but a cruel thing tipped in glass and shards of metal. Kane took a step back and snapped the whip inches from the unicorn’s ear.
A whipped snapped through the air just away from her ear. Instinctively she flicked it away. The whip was not hers, it was a cruel thing. A thing of black leather tipped in glittering glass and shards of shattered metal. A thing that hated as much as its master.
“Face me, Eli damn you! Face me!” its master squeaked.
Yvarra turned away. She was naked, no weapons, no tools, imprisoned. She was in their power. And that meant that her only hope was for them to make a mistake. Mistakes were more often made when emotions overwhelmed common sense. This was going to hurt, but she was certain they weren’t going to kill her. If they were, she’d already be dead. If she could even die. And that meant her best hope was to invite the pain, to feed the hatred that created it.
Screaming, the rabbit slashed the whip across her arm, its edge digging into the fur, into the flesh, splattering her body with fresh crimson. It was a fresh pain, a cruel pain. It was like the whip was alive, laughing, taunting her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that his other hand was still holding the Sword of Songs and she could hear it whimpering in a clattering tone of high pitched harp strings.
She closed her eyes, turning her head as far away from the rabbit as she could.
Face me!
She let his hatred shape her voice, let her pain fill it with sorrow and agony. “Klepnos take you,” she whispered.
The rabbit coiled the whip. “We have all the time in the world, you and I. All the time we can ever need.” Holding the sword in one hand and the whip in the other, he struck her again and again. Each strike was the caress of a cruel lover. Each strike caused a fresh wound, and made sure to caress an existing one, peeling back her flesh, splattering her blood, tearing her muzzle. Her alicorn glowed, her stomachs growled, all she could taste was bile and blood. Almost she whimpered, but she clenched her hands, one around itself, one around the blue gem that was all she lived for, and kept her silence.
He snapped the whip and knocked the fedora from her head. Letting go of the gem, she grabbed for it, but wasn’t fast enough.
The rabbit stared. Then he squeaked out in a loud voice that grated around the cavern. “You said you’d searched her! Stripped her!”
Her hand whipped back to grab the gem, but he was too fast. The glass and metal tipped leather snapped against the necklace, digging into her neck, laying bare her windpipe. And knocking the necklace off where it clattered and slid across the floor. Gasping for breath, the air gurgling out the wound as it healed, blood tinting the dark flesh around her lips, she tried to crawl towards the necklace.
Too late.
The rabbit threw the Sword of Songs away towards the gate, the whip fell form his grasp, and his hand grabbed the necklace, yanked it out of reach.
All she could do was glare her hatred at him. All she could do was grab her fedora from the wet floor and put it back on. A last act of defiance.
“But-- we checked for magic--" the woman said.
“You didn’t check hard enough.” He picked up the necklace by its chain and looked at the blue teardrop it held.
She couldn’t stop one hand from making a futile grab in its direction, as she stared at him with complete and utter hatred.
“You want this, don’t you?”
She spit a glob of blood towards him. It landed on the damn stone just in front of one of his large, scratched and bloody, rabbit paws.
“You’ve lost it. Like you’ve lost the game.” She watched as he put the chain around his neck. “Do you know how much I hate you? Do you know?”
Oh, she knew. This had started as a tactic to make him make a mistake. But, not any more. Before she’d worked because she was being paid. She’d kept going for her own pride, for a promise to protect an innocent. And now-- now it was personal. She glared at him.
“Oh-- I’ll teach you. By Eli I’ll teach you what hate really means.”
*snap* *snapsnap*
If she had thought she’d been whipped before, she’d have been wrong. The instrument of pain rose again and again, snapping across her body like the caresses of a lover. Enough to cause pain, so very very much pain. But never ever enough to kill her.
And that was fine. It fed her hatred. It kept her alive. By Klepnos, the rabbit would pay!
Preceded by: On the Hunt |
This story is part of a series | Succeeded by: The Last Trial |