Snippet #1511923

| witch's House
| Off the market

"And after that well," she offered, her voice toned by the same smile that graced her face, "well we really had to get married" she chuckled, "once we dried off at least"

From his seat opposite Chris couldn't help but laugh, the open, easy humour of his company about as far from the idea of 'Witch' that he had grown up with as the idea of working real runes had been. But in the last while, as he had been chatting with her there had been no denying either fact. Agatha had taken a bowl of her own and joined him at the table, and then almost immediately launched into an unashamed and more than a little racy retelling of how she had met her husband, leaving out neither the rather unintentional mud-wrestling nor the chill of the waterfall they had 'washed off' in afterwards.

And at the same time she had been gently leading him through the most basic forms from which the simplest 'true' runes were crafted, her fingers seemingly idly tracing them in spilled water on the table, then challenging him to follow on. Much to her apparent surprise he had initially suffered some serious trouble with that, only able to regain the form she clearly believed he should have had when she moved on to the slightly 'truer' of the basics. Chris made absolutely no attempt to try and explain his alexia, or share the pain surrounding the circumstances that had thrown him into it's until now merciless grip.

And she made no move to ask, instead seemingly content, happy to be sharing her own story with him; that happiness only minorly tainted by a lingering sadness that Chris put down to still existent feelings for the man who filled the lion's share of the subject matter. later he would know better.

"Now" she offered, clearing away the bowls before they were completely finished, "I think you had best fetch down the blade from atop that dresser" she urged, her voice losing all it's gentle playfulness, "and prepare yourself" she declared.

Chris of course opened his mouth to ask what had changed, but the steel-sharp gaze that Agatha fired back left no room for doubt about the urgency of her command, so he shut his trap and did as he was told, reaching up to the dusty recess atop said dresser, and fetching down a belted scabbard with a heavy carved bone grip and brass pommel protruding from it.

As he once again turned to ask what was going on the first crash came, a calamitous splintering noise that announced the death of Agatha's back door. A heartbeat after that it was echoed by a only slightly less violent end given to the front door through which she had welcomed him.

Chris fired a glance to her and saw that steel tone had now become a grim jaw-set expression, her expressive hitherto twinkling eyes now closed off and flinty. Instead of replying she set her own gaze at the front and clawed a hand.

Chris could have sworn he saw a glow there.

A moment after that though he had far more pressing things to worry about than this fresh evidence of a world he didn't know the rules of, because through the splintered door came the rush, a duo of black clad men, their faces obscured by night hued scarves under dark hoods and their hands accented by bright blades of their own. Their eyes were neither laughing nor hard, instead wordlessly expressing a violent intent that was somehow more menacing still than the blades in their hand.

The first of them though had no time at all to follow through on that intent, whatever his plans were rudely instead interrupted by a half hundred small items from about the room, including the kitchen knife and burning hearth-wood, launched themselves at him and his friend in a furious barrage. The 'friend' was fast enough to duck back around the splintered doorframe, the first was not, instead blasted into a bleeding tumbling heap against the suddenly blood splattered wall.

Which is about when the man from the rear made himself known, throwing some hex of his own at Agatha. The air seemed to compress, ripple and suddenly crack, the old woman was thrown hard into another of her walls, her aged bones audibly cracking as the fierce impact spread spiderweb tracings through the once lovingly applied plaster.

Chris had been on the edge of the spell, and caught only a whiff of it, but it was enough to throw him bodily into the dresser, crashing through the handmade doors of the lower cabinet with his suddenly pain-blossoming left arm, and rattling his spine off the more solid edging. His cry of pain echoed Agatha's only differing in the octave that it registered from.

Even as he was pulling himself up though Agatha was proving herself to be made of sterner stuff still, rolling onto injured ribs to throw another hex of her own at the same black clad attacker that had got them both. Followed by an inhuman cry of words that blazed across the earthman's mind but left no memory of their passing, she tore the very shadows from the room and cut them at the caster that hit them.

Once again bright scarlet arcs splashed through the air, darkening even as they rattled off the window and wall in their own sibilant splash. A second of the attackers went down, half his face, three of his fingers and a good number of his ribs suddenly no longer connected as their maker had intended them to be.

The effort however had clearly taken it's toll on Agatha, the cry that had birthed the hex trailing off into a ragged moan that had all too much wetness of its own in it, and clearly precipitated another fall to the increasingly discoloured floorboards. Without any conscious through, and with the edges of his vision still fuzzed by what was probably a concussion Chris forced himself to his feet to head to her.

Just in time to see the second of the two from the front re-enter, eyes even more afire with the red-promise of violent death.

Their eyes met across the ruin of Agatha's home, the murder and the misplaced, and Chris suddenly knew without a shade of a doubt that only one of them would leave this room alive.

In all his years he had never been in such a situation, one where he could honestly say he was looking into the face of a man intent on his death, no amount of films, novels or computer games could have genuinely prepared him for that moment, for the bone chilling reality of an honestly lethal intent; and no amount of rationalisation could have ever prepared him for his own reaction.

Chris wanted to kill the guy, hated him with a bonfire blaze in his own chest, a roaring inferno in his head that eclipsed his fear and even his concern for Agatha. The blade she had told him to get was naked in his hand and he hurled himself at the scarf-masked intruder, not caring for one single moment that he was a bare novice to this other man's cruel efficiency.

For once that Novitiate paid off, the killer expecting a far more rational, measured response. Which meant in turn that even as Chri's wild thrust passed through garment, skin flesh and organ, the killer's feint towards his attacker's eyes cut an unintended line of red hurt through Chris's cheek and brow, missing the eye itself only by virtue of the fact the cut had never been truly intended to go home.

Unlike the blade now in the intruder's chest, buried to the suddenly slick hilt and wrenched into a lethal turn by Chris's too late attempt to turn aside form the cut he himself received. The blade came free as the earthman slapped his other hand to his face and backed up. But by then the third would be killer was already falling, eyes glassing over to match those of his colleagues, body tumbling to lie athwart the door he had kicked to bits to gain entry.

Chris, knuckles white on the red-blade, was sorely tempted to stab him again, to make sure, but another cry through that temptation to the wind, a ragged sound torn from Agatha's throat as she tried once more to ease herself from the floor she had fallen to.

In a rush Chris was back to her, everything he had learned about first aid suddenly seeming shallow indeed, pointless in the face of the obvious breaks and raw pain he was seeing. Instead he cast about for the burin, a rough idea of using the rune he had seen on Marlina's chest to save this most generous of hosts forming into his mind

Only to be stilled by her gentle touch.

"No my lad" she whispered, "I'm gone" she told him, without a hint of fear or bitterness, instead her tone laced only with that same gentle sorrow and quiet joy that she had used when talking of her husband earlier, "and he's waiting for me" she insisted, something in her pain hazed eyes telling Chris that she had known this too was coming to her door today. "Take the blade, take the books" she urged, voice becoming steadily more distant, "do what you have to do" she breathed.

And then she died, the last of her strength leaving her body in a silent rush and rendering that strong, generous frame of hers a suddenly old and collapsed withered doll. Only a free an honest smile remained of the woman that had first welcomed him to this alien world.

With blood stained fingers he reached up and closed her eyes, gently lying the body down and shakily settling her grey framed head to the floor, before at last turning about and beginning to wonder what the hell he was going to do about the red stuff leaking from his own face.