Onecount - Sour Apple #11, + fresh blueberries
Author: Thai
Challenge: Sour Apple #11 - such a pity
Extra: Fresh Blueberries - Thou whose deep ways are in the sea, / Whose footsteps are not known, / To-night a world that turned from Thee / Is waiting - at Thy Throne. / The towering Babels that we raised / Where scoffing sophists brawl, / The little Antichrists we praised - / The night is on them all. - Alfred Noyes
Rating: R - blood, violence, character death, shameless artistic tense change
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc, right after this piece and just before this one hurr.
Word Count: 845
It was quick, a fleeting strike that no one had been expecting. They couldn't have timed it better if they tried; none of the Rocs gathered were expecting an attack, much less an all-out slaughter.
It began with the cut-off cry of a male as the blade went through his back. He'd half-changed as the doors opened, and the image of his body on the cold stone floor was one that haunted her - the feathers, slicked with the blue blood, that stuck to the floor even when the humans' boots trampled them... and the hands that had half-changed to claws...
There was no music, no ceremony about this. This was no planned hunt. Asma was on uneven footing, caught off-guard and afraid, and still the queen clutched her crown with white knuckles even as their people fell.
No, she thought, and then "No!" she screamed, and when a man with brown eyes lunges for her she leaps for him. She knows this, this unexpected and overpowering bloodlust - it took her once, and when she woke from it then a golden-haired girl was dead. When she woke from it then the queen (who was then her mother) threw her a feast, celebrated for her - congratulations, darling, you've stolen a life. Why don't we throw a party?
It's less a blur now than a dizzy rush of images, quick and harsh and difficult - a woman with bared teeth, a man pale as ash, a girl who can't be more than a teenager. They all fall, one two three four, and even as she revels in the discord she knows that they can't win, they're taken by surprise and they've grown so weak and without the Rocmother they're helpless -
She paints her skin as red as the dress she wears (and wasn't that a long time ago? it seems so, she was so proud of herself and wasn't that a foolish dream?), shoes torn from her feet by a grasping human hand long ago. Asma fights barefoot, and though she cuts her feet on fallen swords she doesn't stop - she can't stop, there is not enough time to stop and assess the damage, this is all she can do.
Men and women and half-children fall under her onslaught, but even as they die she knows it isn't enough.
The next thing she knows is rope, wrapping around her wrists and cutting deeply into the skin there; Asma was jerked back into waiting human arms, and though she struggled and bit, there was nothing she could do. There were too many, too many, and where was Haytham? Where was Janan? They should have protected her. She was their first priority. Despite the carnage going on around her she felt a nonsensical rage towards her so-called guardians; for abandoning her, for forgetting her.
Then she saw the body, the way Janan was crouched over it, and it's Haytham she knows, in the way that people know of disasters just before they happen. It's Haytham and I loved him and he's dead.
It's been years since she mourned anyone or anything, and the shrieking cry that echoes through the room is harsh and unforgiving in its mad grief. Only the Rocs know what it is, and their screeches are echoes of Asma's own, a sort of We know what it is like. We grieve for you, too - but the humans take it for a signal, and before she knows it her head was yanked back, and a dirty, thick cloth shoved into her mouth to serve as a primitive gag. Then the room went black, the dark fold of cloth rough against her eyelids.
There was still noise though, and horror, and she heard the cry of fallen Rocs over and over and over again. Each sharp shree sent another bolt of pain through her - her people were dying, her people were falling, and this was her fault. This was all her fault.
They didn't kill her. She heard them murmuring to each other, and their fingers were painfully tight on her shoulders, but there was no blade waiting for Asma, and she couldn't help but feel cheated. Why should they have to die? she wished she could ask. I'm the princess. I killed Oriana; I killed your kinsmen; why kill them? Just kill me.
Please, for them, just kill me.
There was a last, desperate cry, one that Asma found heartbreakingly familiar, and then there was only silence. Silence and the sound of hearts beating; she counted at least a dozen humans, and easily twenty or so fading heartbeats. Even as she listened two faded to nothing.
Yet there was one, strong and calm, and Asma tensed.
"You let yourself be captured, dearest?" came the Rocmother's voice, in a tone that suggested great disappointment. "How... lamentable."
Then there was a great noise of tearing, and a shrieking, raging call, and Asma allowed herself to hope - there was no chance of saving her people, but perhaps she could escape from this alive.
Challenge: Sour Apple #11 - such a pity
Extra: Fresh Blueberries - Thou whose deep ways are in the sea, / Whose footsteps are not known, / To-night a world that turned from Thee / Is waiting - at Thy Throne. / The towering Babels that we raised / Where scoffing sophists brawl, / The little Antichrists we praised - / The night is on them all. - Alfred Noyes
Rating: R - blood, violence, character death, shameless artistic tense change
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc, right after this piece and just before this one hurr.
Word Count: 845
It was quick, a fleeting strike that no one had been expecting. They couldn't have timed it better if they tried; none of the Rocs gathered were expecting an attack, much less an all-out slaughter.
It began with the cut-off cry of a male as the blade went through his back. He'd half-changed as the doors opened, and the image of his body on the cold stone floor was one that haunted her - the feathers, slicked with the blue blood, that stuck to the floor even when the humans' boots trampled them... and the hands that had half-changed to claws...
There was no music, no ceremony about this. This was no planned hunt. Asma was on uneven footing, caught off-guard and afraid, and still the queen clutched her crown with white knuckles even as their people fell.
No, she thought, and then "No!" she screamed, and when a man with brown eyes lunges for her she leaps for him. She knows this, this unexpected and overpowering bloodlust - it took her once, and when she woke from it then a golden-haired girl was dead. When she woke from it then the queen (who was then her mother) threw her a feast, celebrated for her - congratulations, darling, you've stolen a life. Why don't we throw a party?
It's less a blur now than a dizzy rush of images, quick and harsh and difficult - a woman with bared teeth, a man pale as ash, a girl who can't be more than a teenager. They all fall, one two three four, and even as she revels in the discord she knows that they can't win, they're taken by surprise and they've grown so weak and without the Rocmother they're helpless -
She paints her skin as red as the dress she wears (and wasn't that a long time ago? it seems so, she was so proud of herself and wasn't that a foolish dream?), shoes torn from her feet by a grasping human hand long ago. Asma fights barefoot, and though she cuts her feet on fallen swords she doesn't stop - she can't stop, there is not enough time to stop and assess the damage, this is all she can do.
Men and women and half-children fall under her onslaught, but even as they die she knows it isn't enough.
The next thing she knows is rope, wrapping around her wrists and cutting deeply into the skin there; Asma was jerked back into waiting human arms, and though she struggled and bit, there was nothing she could do. There were too many, too many, and where was Haytham? Where was Janan? They should have protected her. She was their first priority. Despite the carnage going on around her she felt a nonsensical rage towards her so-called guardians; for abandoning her, for forgetting her.
Then she saw the body, the way Janan was crouched over it, and it's Haytham she knows, in the way that people know of disasters just before they happen. It's Haytham and I loved him and he's dead.
It's been years since she mourned anyone or anything, and the shrieking cry that echoes through the room is harsh and unforgiving in its mad grief. Only the Rocs know what it is, and their screeches are echoes of Asma's own, a sort of We know what it is like. We grieve for you, too - but the humans take it for a signal, and before she knows it her head was yanked back, and a dirty, thick cloth shoved into her mouth to serve as a primitive gag. Then the room went black, the dark fold of cloth rough against her eyelids.
There was still noise though, and horror, and she heard the cry of fallen Rocs over and over and over again. Each sharp shree sent another bolt of pain through her - her people were dying, her people were falling, and this was her fault. This was all her fault.
They didn't kill her. She heard them murmuring to each other, and their fingers were painfully tight on her shoulders, but there was no blade waiting for Asma, and she couldn't help but feel cheated. Why should they have to die? she wished she could ask. I'm the princess. I killed Oriana; I killed your kinsmen; why kill them? Just kill me.
Please, for them, just kill me.
There was a last, desperate cry, one that Asma found heartbreakingly familiar, and then there was only silence. Silence and the sound of hearts beating; she counted at least a dozen humans, and easily twenty or so fading heartbeats. Even as she listened two faded to nothing.
Yet there was one, strong and calm, and Asma tensed.
"You let yourself be captured, dearest?" came the Rocmother's voice, in a tone that suggested great disappointment. "How... lamentable."
Then there was a great noise of tearing, and a shrieking, raging call, and Asma allowed herself to hope - there was no chance of saving her people, but perhaps she could escape from this alive.