(no subject)
Quick 1500 word snapshot of what's happening in Keeping Faith.
Our Lady of Virtue Magical Hospital
For one long moment, she was conscious only of smoke with the iron-copper scent of blood, of sunlight that snapped under her fingers like crisp lettuce, of the salt-loam taste of sand in her mouth. She felt her mouth shape words she'd begun to learn when she was three years old. Hazy memories of her mother's feather-soft whisper and the rising and falling inflections of her mother's accent echoed around her.
In the next instant, Bellatrix Mythen rolled onto her side, curled her knees to her chest, and didn't even think about opening her eyes. She concentrated on breathing in, slow and deep, with the steady, inexorable breath of trees that her mother had taught her to mimic. When she could inhale smoothly, without shaking or shuddering, she sat up.
The room was austere. She saw no furniture save the bed she was sitting on. A single heavy door barred entry in the south wall, while a large window, double-paned, dominated the east wall. The window had neither curtains nor blinds. The room was entirely bare to any sunlight that might break through the cover of smog and tall buildings.
She looked down, saw a flimsy hospital smock, a smooth stone hanging on a braided hemp rope, her thighs stained with blood. She closed her eyes immediately, took more deep breaths and tried to revel in the warm winter sunlight.
The door hissed as it swung inward. A woman with dark gold skin--a deepness of color only emphasized by her white lab coat--brushed into the room.
"Doctor Anreth," she said, clenching her fist beside her leg. Hopefully Anreth wouldn't see it.
"Dragoon Mythen. Awake and clear-headed, I see. Do you have any memory of what happened?"
"A nine-nine-nine in a subway," Bella replied. "I used the song of Remembered Sensation to terminate an encounter with a malicious occultist."
After that, though--
"And how are you feeling now?"
"Tired," she said. "Forcibly relaxed from the healing talisman."
"Nothing unusual by Dragoon standards, then." Anreth's eyes narrowed. "I assume the focal sensation was your most recent miscarriage?"
Bella said nothing.
"You scared the ER badly enough to call me in, Dragoon Mythen, and I nearly called in Doctor Lanthez."
Bella clenched her fist harder. She felt the metal of the steel and moonstone ring bite into her hand. "That wouldn't have been necessary."
"I beg to differ. Your medical history may have been at the root of it."
A hot, sharp flash went through her palm, circling fire around her ring finger. She relaxed her hand, but said nothing.
Anreth's face went tight. "You're not even going to try to defend your decision?"
"I don't see anything to defend," she replied.
Anreth's eyebrows drew down. "Between magical backlash and forcing your body to experience a complicated and physically traumatic miscarriage when you're not pregnant, you could have died."
Bella inhaled, closed her eyes. Smoothed any of the fear that might have revealed itself from her expression, wrestled the emotion itself into submission. There was no use in being afraid. What had happened had happened. She had survived it. What she needed to worry about now was what would happen next.
"It's the duty of a Dragoon to protect citizens from occult threats, even at the cost of his own life."
"And if you had died, who would have protected Cazgo from that idiot?"
Her eyes snapped open. The honeysuckle in her hair bloomed, clouding the air around her with a heavy burst of its sugar-sweet scent, before sprouting thorns. She forced herself to focus on the tiny scratches on her scalp.
"My husband--ex-husband--would never hurt her."
The room went silent for a long moment. Bella breathed in, relaxing. The thorns shrank. A few fell off, scattering on the bed and the floor.
"How are the others?"
"Dragoon Favre is in critical condition. The unidentified patient you brought with you has stabilized and is under heavy sedation."
Bella nodded absently, leaving her face blank while she tried to place the name to a face. Favre? She'd heard that name before, somewhere entirely apart from Dereth's quick shouted word in the subway.
Ah, the water-cooler, a conversation with Maria Santosa and Michelle Ducret some weeks past. Gossip painted Dereth's latest partner as a highly professional, nigh-emotionless careerist. An odd combination for a black magician, to be sure.
"If you're feeling up to moving around, I suggest you look in on Dragoon Yare. He seemed..." Here Anreth paused, eyes glinting, as she searched for a word, "anxious for a report."
Bella nodded. She reached out to test the heailng talisman. The smooth stone was cool against the back of her hand, felt almost gelatinous under her fingertips. Touching it was like pressing her palm against the surface of a pond.
She gripped the braided rope, slipped it over her head, and lay the necklace on the thin pillow.
Her body tensed in automatic response. She felt dizzy, sick. She leaned forward, rested her head close to her knees.
"You'll need a lot of water for the next few days, of course. They wound up giving you a transfusion."
"What happened? How long have I been out?"
"About two and a half hours. We suspect it was backlash from attacking a powerful black magician."
"Backlash?" She felt her eyes narrow. Anreth was talking and not making sense--or, rather, she was making sense, but her story wasn't adding up to anything resembling what Bella knew.
"Unconsciousness. Seizures. Not to mention the uncontrolled bleeding from being trapped inside your own spell."
"Are you talking about clerical backlash?"
Anreth fluttered her left hand in a dismissive gesture. Her nails were unpainted, blunt. "It seems likely."
"The target isn't a declared cleric of any of the Vabren pantheon. She'd be on a registry."
Anreth raised an eyebrow.
Bella looked down, turned facts over in her head. Which made more sense? A psychotic non-cleric working black magic who was somehow able to inflict a clerical backlash against an enemy practicioner, or an undeclared cleric fully willing and able to kill indiscriminately?
Or, more specifically, a cleric of a murderous deity whose worship was outlawed in Balreqiea and the rest of the European Union?
"What happened to my clothes?"
Anreth pointed. Bella slid off the bed, turned to look.
There, on a shelf built into the bedframe, lay her clothes, neatly wrapped.
"I don't think you'll be wanting to wear those anytime soon. There's a monitored shower in the next room--"
Anreth cut herself off as the room went dark. It was almost as if a cloud had passed over the sun, but the desert sky was as cloudless as usual.
The door swung open once again. This time, it was Roth who stepped through, carrying a wrapped parcel. His shadow flickered and dripped along the parcel, falling to the floor to create swiftly vanishing puddles.
"I took the liberty of teleporting some supplies from your emergency closet. We don't have time for any other niceties, unfortunately."
He stopped moving before he could reach her.
The room went even darker. Anreth shivered, and part of Bella missed the sunlight, but the rest of her relaxed in the warmth of familiar magic.
"Come here," he said. "I need a better look at you."
She felt her honeysuckle grow thorns again. Some of it began to twine through her hair. If it had been her mandragora, the blossoms would have been open and hissing.
She kept her voice chilly. "I'm going assume you meant that metaphorically, Roth."
He paused. There was no better word for it: Vinseth Roth simply stopped. There was a moment where he almost didn't seem to be breathing.
Genuine anger flickered across his features. Anger that she didn't rush to obey? Anger that she'd considered an alternate meaning to his words? There was no telling.
"Mythen," he said at last, his voice smooth. "I meant your magic."
He sounded wrong. He usually played up the stereotype of a desert-born Vabren accent, making his words halting and his voice rough, but the way he was talking now was almost slurred, a liquid flow of one drawled syllable into another, with neither pause nor lilt.
His next words came extremely slowly, even slower than a drawl would account for. "I need you to move into the light so I can see your shadow."
Our Lady of Virtue Magical Hospital
For one long moment, she was conscious only of smoke with the iron-copper scent of blood, of sunlight that snapped under her fingers like crisp lettuce, of the salt-loam taste of sand in her mouth. She felt her mouth shape words she'd begun to learn when she was three years old. Hazy memories of her mother's feather-soft whisper and the rising and falling inflections of her mother's accent echoed around her.
In the next instant, Bellatrix Mythen rolled onto her side, curled her knees to her chest, and didn't even think about opening her eyes. She concentrated on breathing in, slow and deep, with the steady, inexorable breath of trees that her mother had taught her to mimic. When she could inhale smoothly, without shaking or shuddering, she sat up.
The room was austere. She saw no furniture save the bed she was sitting on. A single heavy door barred entry in the south wall, while a large window, double-paned, dominated the east wall. The window had neither curtains nor blinds. The room was entirely bare to any sunlight that might break through the cover of smog and tall buildings.
She looked down, saw a flimsy hospital smock, a smooth stone hanging on a braided hemp rope, her thighs stained with blood. She closed her eyes immediately, took more deep breaths and tried to revel in the warm winter sunlight.
The door hissed as it swung inward. A woman with dark gold skin--a deepness of color only emphasized by her white lab coat--brushed into the room.
"Doctor Anreth," she said, clenching her fist beside her leg. Hopefully Anreth wouldn't see it.
"Dragoon Mythen. Awake and clear-headed, I see. Do you have any memory of what happened?"
"A nine-nine-nine in a subway," Bella replied. "I used the song of Remembered Sensation to terminate an encounter with a malicious occultist."
After that, though--
"And how are you feeling now?"
"Tired," she said. "Forcibly relaxed from the healing talisman."
"Nothing unusual by Dragoon standards, then." Anreth's eyes narrowed. "I assume the focal sensation was your most recent miscarriage?"
Bella said nothing.
"You scared the ER badly enough to call me in, Dragoon Mythen, and I nearly called in Doctor Lanthez."
Bella clenched her fist harder. She felt the metal of the steel and moonstone ring bite into her hand. "That wouldn't have been necessary."
"I beg to differ. Your medical history may have been at the root of it."
A hot, sharp flash went through her palm, circling fire around her ring finger. She relaxed her hand, but said nothing.
Anreth's face went tight. "You're not even going to try to defend your decision?"
"I don't see anything to defend," she replied.
Anreth's eyebrows drew down. "Between magical backlash and forcing your body to experience a complicated and physically traumatic miscarriage when you're not pregnant, you could have died."
Bella inhaled, closed her eyes. Smoothed any of the fear that might have revealed itself from her expression, wrestled the emotion itself into submission. There was no use in being afraid. What had happened had happened. She had survived it. What she needed to worry about now was what would happen next.
"It's the duty of a Dragoon to protect citizens from occult threats, even at the cost of his own life."
"And if you had died, who would have protected Cazgo from that idiot?"
Her eyes snapped open. The honeysuckle in her hair bloomed, clouding the air around her with a heavy burst of its sugar-sweet scent, before sprouting thorns. She forced herself to focus on the tiny scratches on her scalp.
"My husband--ex-husband--would never hurt her."
The room went silent for a long moment. Bella breathed in, relaxing. The thorns shrank. A few fell off, scattering on the bed and the floor.
"How are the others?"
"Dragoon Favre is in critical condition. The unidentified patient you brought with you has stabilized and is under heavy sedation."
Bella nodded absently, leaving her face blank while she tried to place the name to a face. Favre? She'd heard that name before, somewhere entirely apart from Dereth's quick shouted word in the subway.
Ah, the water-cooler, a conversation with Maria Santosa and Michelle Ducret some weeks past. Gossip painted Dereth's latest partner as a highly professional, nigh-emotionless careerist. An odd combination for a black magician, to be sure.
"If you're feeling up to moving around, I suggest you look in on Dragoon Yare. He seemed..." Here Anreth paused, eyes glinting, as she searched for a word, "anxious for a report."
Bella nodded. She reached out to test the heailng talisman. The smooth stone was cool against the back of her hand, felt almost gelatinous under her fingertips. Touching it was like pressing her palm against the surface of a pond.
She gripped the braided rope, slipped it over her head, and lay the necklace on the thin pillow.
Her body tensed in automatic response. She felt dizzy, sick. She leaned forward, rested her head close to her knees.
"You'll need a lot of water for the next few days, of course. They wound up giving you a transfusion."
"What happened? How long have I been out?"
"About two and a half hours. We suspect it was backlash from attacking a powerful black magician."
"Backlash?" She felt her eyes narrow. Anreth was talking and not making sense--or, rather, she was making sense, but her story wasn't adding up to anything resembling what Bella knew.
"Unconsciousness. Seizures. Not to mention the uncontrolled bleeding from being trapped inside your own spell."
"Are you talking about clerical backlash?"
Anreth fluttered her left hand in a dismissive gesture. Her nails were unpainted, blunt. "It seems likely."
"The target isn't a declared cleric of any of the Vabren pantheon. She'd be on a registry."
Anreth raised an eyebrow.
Bella looked down, turned facts over in her head. Which made more sense? A psychotic non-cleric working black magic who was somehow able to inflict a clerical backlash against an enemy practicioner, or an undeclared cleric fully willing and able to kill indiscriminately?
Or, more specifically, a cleric of a murderous deity whose worship was outlawed in Balreqiea and the rest of the European Union?
"What happened to my clothes?"
Anreth pointed. Bella slid off the bed, turned to look.
There, on a shelf built into the bedframe, lay her clothes, neatly wrapped.
"I don't think you'll be wanting to wear those anytime soon. There's a monitored shower in the next room--"
Anreth cut herself off as the room went dark. It was almost as if a cloud had passed over the sun, but the desert sky was as cloudless as usual.
The door swung open once again. This time, it was Roth who stepped through, carrying a wrapped parcel. His shadow flickered and dripped along the parcel, falling to the floor to create swiftly vanishing puddles.
"I took the liberty of teleporting some supplies from your emergency closet. We don't have time for any other niceties, unfortunately."
He stopped moving before he could reach her.
The room went even darker. Anreth shivered, and part of Bella missed the sunlight, but the rest of her relaxed in the warmth of familiar magic.
"Come here," he said. "I need a better look at you."
She felt her honeysuckle grow thorns again. Some of it began to twine through her hair. If it had been her mandragora, the blossoms would have been open and hissing.
She kept her voice chilly. "I'm going assume you meant that metaphorically, Roth."
He paused. There was no better word for it: Vinseth Roth simply stopped. There was a moment where he almost didn't seem to be breathing.
Genuine anger flickered across his features. Anger that she didn't rush to obey? Anger that she'd considered an alternate meaning to his words? There was no telling.
"Mythen," he said at last, his voice smooth. "I meant your magic."
He sounded wrong. He usually played up the stereotype of a desert-born Vabren accent, making his words halting and his voice rough, but the way he was talking now was almost slurred, a liquid flow of one drawled syllable into another, with neither pause nor lilt.
His next words came extremely slowly, even slower than a drawl would account for. "I need you to move into the light so I can see your shadow."