[Deaths] on campaign
Title: spin me a tale
'Verse/characters: Deaths; a Council-leader, Julian De'Ath
Prompt: goshawk: "lazy awakening"
Word Count: 723
Notes: this falls between escalation and wake up, and is just as pointy as you'd expect it to be. No gore, though.
He woke slowly, far more slowly than he usually did, an unfamiliar room blurring into focus as he blinked gummy eyes. When he reached up to try to rub them, he found his hands bound, not with shackles--which would have been useful--but sturdy hemp rope, thick enough to be difficult as Hell to chew through but thin enough to hold him securely. The bed would not have been entirely comfortable even without the ropes holding him there, but the bedclothes were recently washed and smelled sweet.
Faintly scented oil lamps--built of nothing but glass and string--were scattered in the corners of the room, casting bright light that was refracted by the pale paint of the walls, made it seem the room had windows and it was morning, in the summer.
Someone had put in a fair amount of thought to it; the bed was mortise-and-tenon, the short chair by the bed the same, the room empty aside from the bed, the chair, a door. Nothing near him was metal--except the door's fittings, and something that felt chisel-sized, coming closer to the door.
When Engeltod's daughter walked through the door and sat down by the bed on the chair, her knees spread man-wide in her trousers, memory crashed in, too, the vision of her uncle falling in the field, her scythe coming at his head, darkness.
He flinched when she reached over, brushed calloused fingertips across his bare forearm, drew out a blue-tinged thread from his skin, which she touched to the base of the thing in her other hand, then flicked one of the curved arms below the metal prongs, let the thing spin freely, speeding its progress with occasional pushs with close-trimmed nails, the edge of her thumb. She'd had yet to look him in the face, and somehow that was nastier than meeting his eyes with hate.
A general feeling of lethargy swept through him, and it was with a fading feeling of horror that he watched the near-spindle begin to fill with the threads of his life, his energy, in the hand of his enemy.
"What is that thing?" he managed eventually, and the De'Ath glanced up, gave him a mirthless smile.
"Azrael's idea. He's spent time in spinning mills--and maybe his father knows why but the rest of us sure don't--and since you were here anyway, I figured I'd give it a try."
" . . . I won't tell you anything."
"You have already," she told him, gave him a wolf's-head's smile. "I know where the other bullets are, and a handful of names for the people who helped design and build it. I also know it wasn't your idea direct, but that you were the lead voice supporting the notion once it was presented. I don't know whose blade it was, but given your past tendencies, I'd bet the blade was my father's, once. Kali likes things like that, and so the rest of you tend to, too."
The lassitude was spreading, the glow of the spindle growing in the room, near outshining the lamps. He tried to hold to her, the distant hate, the worry of what she'd do, if her uncle was fully dead, because this had to mean he wasn't, not yet, not if he himself was still breathing, all pieces still attached.
After a time, she stuck the handle of the spindle between her thigh and the seat of the chair, propped her chin in her hands, looked at him directly, and terror raged behind the distance.
"Tell me, Gustaf," she said conversationally, and when had she found out his first name, the one he'd worn while human? "What was the plan if you'd succeeded?"
"Doesn't matter," he mumbled, tongue thick behind his teeth, words coarse and unwilling. "With the failure, they'll go to the roman roads."
"Why?" she asked gently, tone soft, and he found himself smiling, watching the maps in his head melt at the edges, burn bright with the words of where and when, lies and ideas and plans all mixed together.
He hadn't been a first for nothing, after all. He'd give this damned woman what she asked for, not what was truth.
A deep, amused laugh followed him down into darkness as he fell, taking memory with it, the feel of his life being threaded from him a length at a time.
'Verse/characters: Deaths; a Council-leader, Julian De'Ath
Prompt: goshawk: "lazy awakening"
Word Count: 723
Notes: this falls between escalation and wake up, and is just as pointy as you'd expect it to be. No gore, though.
He woke slowly, far more slowly than he usually did, an unfamiliar room blurring into focus as he blinked gummy eyes. When he reached up to try to rub them, he found his hands bound, not with shackles--which would have been useful--but sturdy hemp rope, thick enough to be difficult as Hell to chew through but thin enough to hold him securely. The bed would not have been entirely comfortable even without the ropes holding him there, but the bedclothes were recently washed and smelled sweet.
Faintly scented oil lamps--built of nothing but glass and string--were scattered in the corners of the room, casting bright light that was refracted by the pale paint of the walls, made it seem the room had windows and it was morning, in the summer.
Someone had put in a fair amount of thought to it; the bed was mortise-and-tenon, the short chair by the bed the same, the room empty aside from the bed, the chair, a door. Nothing near him was metal--except the door's fittings, and something that felt chisel-sized, coming closer to the door.
When Engeltod's daughter walked through the door and sat down by the bed on the chair, her knees spread man-wide in her trousers, memory crashed in, too, the vision of her uncle falling in the field, her scythe coming at his head, darkness.
He flinched when she reached over, brushed calloused fingertips across his bare forearm, drew out a blue-tinged thread from his skin, which she touched to the base of the thing in her other hand, then flicked one of the curved arms below the metal prongs, let the thing spin freely, speeding its progress with occasional pushs with close-trimmed nails, the edge of her thumb. She'd had yet to look him in the face, and somehow that was nastier than meeting his eyes with hate.
A general feeling of lethargy swept through him, and it was with a fading feeling of horror that he watched the near-spindle begin to fill with the threads of his life, his energy, in the hand of his enemy.
"What is that thing?" he managed eventually, and the De'Ath glanced up, gave him a mirthless smile.
"Azrael's idea. He's spent time in spinning mills--and maybe his father knows why but the rest of us sure don't--and since you were here anyway, I figured I'd give it a try."
" . . . I won't tell you anything."
"You have already," she told him, gave him a wolf's-head's smile. "I know where the other bullets are, and a handful of names for the people who helped design and build it. I also know it wasn't your idea direct, but that you were the lead voice supporting the notion once it was presented. I don't know whose blade it was, but given your past tendencies, I'd bet the blade was my father's, once. Kali likes things like that, and so the rest of you tend to, too."
The lassitude was spreading, the glow of the spindle growing in the room, near outshining the lamps. He tried to hold to her, the distant hate, the worry of what she'd do, if her uncle was fully dead, because this had to mean he wasn't, not yet, not if he himself was still breathing, all pieces still attached.
After a time, she stuck the handle of the spindle between her thigh and the seat of the chair, propped her chin in her hands, looked at him directly, and terror raged behind the distance.
"Tell me, Gustaf," she said conversationally, and when had she found out his first name, the one he'd worn while human? "What was the plan if you'd succeeded?"
"Doesn't matter," he mumbled, tongue thick behind his teeth, words coarse and unwilling. "With the failure, they'll go to the roman roads."
"Why?" she asked gently, tone soft, and he found himself smiling, watching the maps in his head melt at the edges, burn bright with the words of where and when, lies and ideas and plans all mixed together.
He hadn't been a first for nothing, after all. He'd give this damned woman what she asked for, not what was truth.
A deep, amused laugh followed him down into darkness as he fell, taking memory with it, the feel of his life being threaded from him a length at a time.