The Ties that Bind
Cross posted to
tenebrae_nostro rp/writing community
Magyarország, 1200 AD
The sulfurous looking sky belches out snow as the fires that consume villages try to set the sky on fire. The very image should clash like the bloodied swords grating against each other on the battlefield, but somehow, it mixes uncomfortably like blood in mud. Her war horse neighs, its hot breath steaming through its nose in short bursts of smoke as it gallops over the bodies of her fallen comrades, who led a path to the monsters like a trail of bread crumbs in the woods. It was sight of ripped flesh that the monsters gorged themselves on, which drew her attention away from the lycan that lunged at her horse and knocked the crossbow out of her hands. With the monster's fowl breath came its jaws snapping mere inches from her face. Drawing the sword at her side, she let out a walloping war cry that reverberated angrily through the air.
Poor wretch, you used to be someone. Now it was this thing. Uncontrollable, feral, with an unbridled lust for flesh and blood. Her sword cut through the air and met its midsection in an unkind touch. Only when it fell did she notice the injured mortal lying on the ground some distance behind it.
Andrias!
Amelia ran to him, knee's sinking into the snow as she knelt next to him, propping him up against her chest as her hand cradled his face. Soot, ash and blood stained her hands and left a trial over his soft cheek. The skin in between her nails were blackened with war. "Andrias! Can you hear me?"
His armour had absorbed most of the hit he had taken from the wretched beast. Dark full lashes fluttered open to meet the thick dark brows that rested on tan skin that had yet to feel the gentle touch of an amorous woman, but yet knew war intimately. Still, he had yet to grow into his armor. Andrias looked confused as he focused on her face. Chain mail hair swept down her shoulders and a face that should have graced a painting and not a battlefield looked down at him. "Who are you and how do you know my name?"
She blinked then, not ready to answer him truthfully.
You are descended from my mortal family. I have been keeping watch over you all through the ages. You are my only link to the mortal world and I find comfort in watching your lives tell a story .
She never stepped in. Not even when sickness and death embraced them. Amelia was an observer in lives she told herself she would not touch. Well, most of the time.
"My dearest Andrias, that matters very little now. We must get you back to Vitka. It is not safe for you here." She began lifting him up, quite easily despite the heavy armor he wore. As bleary brown eyes searched her face a dawning swept across them. Ah, but she did grace a painting. One hanging in his fathers estate on castle grounds, which used to belong to a monarch who was quite beloved...once. History spoke strangely of those whose bodies seemingly vanish. Silly town gossip turned laurels of victory and love to hushed whispers of deceit and deals with the devil made purely to preserve vanity. Ah, but a 'condemned' soul always became legendary and gave them something to discuss over the banqueting table that she used to entertain foreign guests around.
"Amelia." He whispered under his breath in awe, even though she still heard him clearly as if he had yelled. A warm thin smile tugged at her mouth as she opened it to say something. The words died in her throat as the sound of air being cut by a swift weapon silenced her. An arrow. It pierced Andrias expertly between one fold in the armor and the bend of the neck guard.
His brown eyes grew wide as he began choking on the blood welling up in his mouth from a burst artery, where the nose of the arrow struck and then plunged forward through the soft tissue to the hollow of the throat. Amelia went down with the body, cradling it before delivering him along to his new mother-death. Her neck snaps in the direction that the arrow was fired from causing the chain mail head dress to ripple in waves. Determined eyes quickly turned from a hard brown to a piercing frigid green, like the unnatural changing of the seasons. The expression on her face was like that of a great Demeter, who would rip the world apart to find out who did this to her mortal family. There was no one there. Her eyes walked down to the shaft of her arrow. Confusion. She plucks it out of his neck like a flower from the ground and holds the point up to the light of the moon. Blood runs sluggishly down the shaft, uncovering the silver arrow itself. Her brows knit in between her forehead. The arrow was her own.