[Deaths] the Morrigan
Title: blood in the water
'Verse/characters: Death be not Proud; the Morrigan, Eduard De'Ath
Prompt: 42C "breathless"
Word Count: 516
Notes: She's a piece on his board and they both know it. During the arc of the main story as I'm aware of it, while he's campaigning.
"Hold the bridge," he said, started to turn away, then paused, looked back at her. Crossed his arms over his chest, obviously thinking, and she did her best to look innocently attentive.
"Don't die doing it," he added, "and give me something you'll recognise if I send a runner to tell you to move."
She didn't even have to think, just reached and pulled an earring-box out of the harness on her back, took off her enameled earrings and put them inside, then held the box out. "Best send a messenger I know or tell them to yell your name or title loud."
He accepted the box, put it away in a pocket of his coat, nodded to her. "Good hunting."
"Make it count," she told him, soft, as the crows started calling over their heads, circling up in a spiral towards the slate-gray sky from perches on fire escapes and rooftops.
He gave her a slow, dark smile, sketched a bow to her that she grinned at, teeth sharp and white and hungry. His smile didn't falter, though he didn't drop his eyes far.
Her stomach rolled briefly, then, hands full of the skirts she wasn't wearing, she curtsied, her head bowing. After their eyes met, she straightened, and went out to arrange her battlefield.
---
The bridge traffic snarled horribly that afternoon, horses spooking for no visible reason, overturning carts and breaking the bones of human passerby, but it wasn't until a mason's truck broke an axle and two granite blocks landed on the span itself that the city aldermen closed traffic across it entirely until the mess could be cleared.
The river it crossed was deep and fast enough that simple fording was impossible. The boats available for use most days were found amateurly vandalized, bilges blocked with canvas, ropes stripped to threads. One boat had been holed just below her waterline, with a sledgehammer or a strong man's boot.
There were a lot of crows hanging around, chattering to one another and yelling warnings as humans went by. They were noisy enough, distracting enough, that people didn't notice that the debris on the road road leading up to the bridge and onto the span formed a bottleneck, right before it opened up into enough space to move.
There was no need to wash clothes; her audience either knew what was coming or they were too young to understand, so instead she dressed in black and a scrap of a tartan skirt, her hair tied up out of her way, and stripes of woad on her face and arms.
One of the sentry birds called a warning, cut off midway through by a thrown loop of power, and the others rose into the air in a mass of cawing feathers.
Too young to understand, she knew when the first came through the gap between the granite blocks, saw her, and only yelled when they saw the no longer blue light coming off the sickles in her hands.
The crows were screaming by the time the tenth apprentice went down, steel falling from fading fingers, and she was breathless, bloody, laughing high and sharp and exulting, power welling up through her almost dark enough to fly.
'Verse/characters: Death be not Proud; the Morrigan, Eduard De'Ath
Prompt: 42C "breathless"
Word Count: 516
Notes: She's a piece on his board and they both know it. During the arc of the main story as I'm aware of it, while he's campaigning.
"Hold the bridge," he said, started to turn away, then paused, looked back at her. Crossed his arms over his chest, obviously thinking, and she did her best to look innocently attentive.
"Don't die doing it," he added, "and give me something you'll recognise if I send a runner to tell you to move."
She didn't even have to think, just reached and pulled an earring-box out of the harness on her back, took off her enameled earrings and put them inside, then held the box out. "Best send a messenger I know or tell them to yell your name or title loud."
He accepted the box, put it away in a pocket of his coat, nodded to her. "Good hunting."
"Make it count," she told him, soft, as the crows started calling over their heads, circling up in a spiral towards the slate-gray sky from perches on fire escapes and rooftops.
He gave her a slow, dark smile, sketched a bow to her that she grinned at, teeth sharp and white and hungry. His smile didn't falter, though he didn't drop his eyes far.
Her stomach rolled briefly, then, hands full of the skirts she wasn't wearing, she curtsied, her head bowing. After their eyes met, she straightened, and went out to arrange her battlefield.
---
The bridge traffic snarled horribly that afternoon, horses spooking for no visible reason, overturning carts and breaking the bones of human passerby, but it wasn't until a mason's truck broke an axle and two granite blocks landed on the span itself that the city aldermen closed traffic across it entirely until the mess could be cleared.
The river it crossed was deep and fast enough that simple fording was impossible. The boats available for use most days were found amateurly vandalized, bilges blocked with canvas, ropes stripped to threads. One boat had been holed just below her waterline, with a sledgehammer or a strong man's boot.
There were a lot of crows hanging around, chattering to one another and yelling warnings as humans went by. They were noisy enough, distracting enough, that people didn't notice that the debris on the road road leading up to the bridge and onto the span formed a bottleneck, right before it opened up into enough space to move.
There was no need to wash clothes; her audience either knew what was coming or they were too young to understand, so instead she dressed in black and a scrap of a tartan skirt, her hair tied up out of her way, and stripes of woad on her face and arms.
One of the sentry birds called a warning, cut off midway through by a thrown loop of power, and the others rose into the air in a mass of cawing feathers.
Too young to understand, she knew when the first came through the gap between the granite blocks, saw her, and only yelled when they saw the no longer blue light coming off the sickles in her hands.
The crows were screaming by the time the tenth apprentice went down, steel falling from fading fingers, and she was breathless, bloody, laughing high and sharp and exulting, power welling up through her almost dark enough to fly.