Shrike's Heart (#4)

[idolpro]

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

Comments

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[forgottenmercy]

[just going to be busy with the bandaging. once he's out of bandages from the one petticoat, going to start ripping up his other petticoat.]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[inspiteful]

[ Oh this man is not going to survive. ...Perhaps he should have seen that coming, though. ]

Do you think we can carry him there, or...?

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[handpuppets]

[ the man's breathing is labored, but he's at least still conscious. ]

Where did you all—[another fit of coughing]—where did you come from, anyway. I thought, at first, you must have come with the soldiers...

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

[ answering smoothly, as she sheathes the glaive and begins to arrange the wounded man in her arms, as careful of his injuries as she can manage ]

We are travelers. My son and I are from Tsubaki Province; Skylark is a visiting scholar from Wu Jían.

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[forgottenmercy]

[and just going to keep working and singing. maybe he will die anyway, but every moment is another moment and another moment-

but he knows that name. The Walker in Darkness. he knows that name.]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[inspiteful]

[ 'Visiting scholar' let's roll with that. He follows after Amaranth -- all the questions he has are perhaps better not being asked in the midst of someone dying. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[handpuppets]

[ The man lies easily in your arms; he isn't so heavy, which perhaps speaks to the hardscrabble existence of this town. he winces and grunts in pain as you pick him up, and his leg swings freely, jostling broken bone.

The smoke has largely gone by the time you reach the village. It's clearly seen a bit of a hardscrabble existence, which has just now more or less come to an end. The thatch roofs of most of the buildings have collapsed, although a few still stand only singed, and a few civilian corpses lie in the main thoroughfare. Someone has closed the corpses' eyes. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

[ before they go, Amaranth asks Eclipse Skylark and Persephone her son to carry the body of the dead youth.

She looks for one of the more structurally sound houses to set the man down in. ]

...I am sorry for the pain of the journey.
[ dipping her head ] I am General Amakura. What is your name?

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[handpuppets]

[ He starts to answer, but is then interrupted by a violent fit of coughing that propels him forward; blood spatters onto his shirt. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[forgottenmercy]

[meanwhile, is going to...help carry the dead boy, though given his Strength 1 Eclipse will definitely be more useful there.

But before they start, will close the boy's eyes and gently trace a necromantic symbol that he remembers on his forehead, to ensure him passing into Lethe. it has no power here, but it's...symbolically something.]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[inspiteful]

[ Tmw you have Strength 2. Once Persephone is done, he reaches to help Persephone carry the body -- tries to do so gently, given he can do this much. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

[ good job sons.

and. well fuck. she leans forward to catch his shoulders, trying to steady him against the wracking cough. ]

Ah—alright, no more words, for now. We will say a prayer for your brother; you are our leader in it, with or without speech.

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[handpuppets]

[ he nods, weakly, as soon as he can get the coughing to mostly abate. ]

Th—thank you.

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

[ btw, what's in the rest of the house ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[handpuppets]

[ oh right yeah

Someone seems to have put this house out with a bucket of water, because the roof is mostly intact but also things are kind of wet. It's sparsely decorated, devoid of luxuries. A common farmer's house; a few things have been knocked over messily onto the floor, perhaps in the original occupants' haste to get out of here. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[gigadevilbreaker]

[Griffin catches up with them, running from a different part of the village.]

Hey! Here, the only useful thing I could find was some booze for the pain. And, uh, flowers for the boy.

[He tucks the small doll of the boy into the dying man's hand, and clasps the man's fingers around it, firmly.]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[forgottenmercy]

...I can, ah, do the rites for...all of them. [but lead a prayer? no]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[inspiteful]

Unless any of us know how to, I think rites are about all we can do.

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

The closest we can manage, then.

[ noticing the doll and flowers (those aren't amaranths, perchance...) ]

Griffin, where did you find these?

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[handpuppets]

[ they might just be!!

the man closes his hands around the doll, and weeps between coughs. he seems to want to curl in on himself, but can't, for all his injuries. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

[ After the funeral, she takes a moment to look for the shrines Griffin mentioned. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[softlyfalling]

[ From the outside, it looked like an ordinary house, but—there's something odd going on inside here. There's a handful of ink drawings on paper set out standing up, each with a sort of... strange little shrine with its own offerings. In the middle is one for avante en garde's Cardigan; laid out in front of it is a few sprigs of amaranth, a golden spear, and a bottle of sake.

The rest of the room is filled with artifacts—lost dolls, dried flowers, notebooks, keepsakes, roughly sorted into piles. Pinned to some of them are notes that seem like names, though most of them bear question marks. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[gigadevilbreaker]

[They're definitely amaranths]

There were these little shrines to people Shrike's killed? These were from Cardigan's.

I figured they'd be more useful to the living than the dead. 'Sides, Cardigan said it was fine t'take.

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

—They're here too?

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[forgottenmercy]

[in the background, then, will just quietly settle into a familiar stance, a familiar rhythm, as he gracefully begins to dance, a practiced ritual. bending all his grace, all his superlative skill, to this purpose, and at the proper moment in the dance, will also start to sing.

he will dance and sing them all to their rest. the proper due to the dead.]