There was something sick, something so abnormal, in the way that Mendax lounged in his chair, scowling sourly at the door as if they'd just passed through the first time without introducing themselves. Worried forehead crinkles and winking crow's feet battled against a, seemingly forced, neighbourly comportment. As if he were waiting to greet a much more
whole Redeemer group. Perhaps, he'd been waiting for one who'd waggled fingers, presented threats, and refused his unwelcome advance because they were in such a damn hurry to see this Litatio-figure. Now, they were hollow-boned, brittle-eyed, and heaving with a melancholy that couldn't be stifled with kindness or cordial how-do-you-do's. Their limbs were like mile-long ropes rubbing against each other, moments away from bristling and letting go of the ships that held their patience. It was being shifted overboard, anyway. They were flightless birds. They were wingless creatures. What
did being a Redeemer mean? He didn't know anymore. Mendax's growing smile offended him. It did not belong there. Although Fallon's injured arm was bound around his chest, the Elf certainly felt that he'd be capable of wringing his finger's around the man's thick neck – to constrict, to choke, to strangle that expression clear of his face. It did not belong there. He hadn't noticed Manon slowly drawing near, but even if he had, he wouldn't have migrated away. There was something in the press of his companions that kept him anchored. It kept him from drifting off completely, hopelessly. Then, Fallon sensed movement, glanced in Mendax' direction, then quickly to Manon, who'd tensed like a stricken animal: straight as a board.
“Stand away. We are not here for you.” He curtly rumbled, motioning with a flick of his wrist, suggesting that he remain seated. He did not wish to be touched by the
likes of him.
Fortunately, Nica had no plans to simply
have a drink with Mendax as if nothing had happened. He respected such vigilance, such tenacity to move things forward. The little girl scuffled towards the trap door, busying herself, quickly, with it's iron latch, until it finally heaved open. The darkness swallowed her, silhouetting her receding form. No longer were there any rabbits crouched, hesitantly, in his tangled hare-veins, begging him to think before he acted instead of foolishly leaping ahead. He wasn't sure if he cared anymore. He wasn't sure whether or not it would've mattered if he stepped into anyone's needle-point jaws. He, too, ignored Mendax. He wished he'd known how things would have panned out when they'd first arrived in Litatio's forsaken chamber. It was a foolish thought, like the majority of those that passed as of recent, unhampered, like flitting insects rising from a stinking corpse. He wished he'd read the constellations, or known ahead of time. He wished his abilities weren't uselessly limited to his sight – as if he could flick through the pages of their fates and pick apart the unpleasantness of loss, the tragedy of having something important stripped away from them. Perhaps, then, Lilith would still be idling at their sides, skipping books like stones across Mendax' desk because he was being inappropriately jubilant. He
missed her wings.
It was only a matter of minutes, of seconds, until they'd face Litatio, again. Furthermore, Fallon didn't have Ezekiel here to ease away the worries, to apply a mollifying salve to the bitterness swelling against his ribs, to temporary nullify the murky thoughts clouding his judgement. His injured brother-in-arms that taught him how to tie knots in his fishing line, and to keep it from catching against clusters of grass. He couldn't bring himself to look at Amaryliss. He couldn't. Even the sweat beading on his lip
tasted bitter, as if his pores were shedding sunless gloom. As if his goodness had run dry, mere dirt-puffs swirling at the bottom of a well. The quiet could not soothe him. The registered chest-falls of his companions did not offer peace of mind. His heart beat loud and long and slow, seemingly stuttering before beginning once more. As they neared the large, parchment-paper occupied chamber, Fallon's stomach knotted and cramped. He was heavy-handed, heavy-lidded, and red-rimmed with exhaustion. His fingertips brushed across Lilith's flask, swinging softly by his side like a seam-ripping, heart-destroying reminder of
why they were here in the first place. It was empty. They'd all drunk from it – those who were conscious, those who needed some small, significant, ceremony for the dead without speaking any words.
There were no whistling tones of complacency from Lucas, who'd been the first to doggedly follow after Nica into the open hallway. He paused, then gently placed two fingers against Manon's elbow, applying even pressure, to direct her forward. It was a quick, almost imperceptible, action. His hand dropped, and he, too, followed their heterochromia-eyed guide back into Litatio's chambers. He'd react with the same indifference, with the same kind of infuriating callousness that would make the coldest of shoulders smolder with warmth. How would they fare against those attitudes this time around? Certainly not well. His shoulders tensed as they passed the threshold of the looming gateways, iron wrought double-doors swinging open to reveal the miserable wretch hunched over his papers and parchment, wicked hands scrawling away as if his life depended on finishing his work and
not supplying the Redeemers a way in saving his own people. He'd rather damn them. So, it came to a surprise when the demigod's upper torso arched, much like a perturbed cat who'd been prodded with a stick, and looked at them with such malice that Fallon couldn't help but gawk in surprise. Who was he to tell them to get out? His face relaxed, muscles easing. It was not hate that was there, not loathing, not vengeance; but unadulterated disgust. The demigod's repeated mantra dug it's talons through his cerebrum, grating beyond exasperation at such an inappropriate response given how much they'd just been through because of
him. Because of where he'd decided to send them without explanation, without heeding any warnings. Strangely enough, as Litatio stared at them with those swirling peepers, he'd still had enough focus, or obsessive compulsions, to continue signing and shuffling papers. Perhaps, Lilith
had been right about burning the entire damn place around him. At least, then, they'd have his complete attention.
Lucas' heavy boot flung papers haphazardly on the floor, the stacks teetering and spilling like an avalanche. Litatio grew bug eyed and frantic and he jolted as if his heart had literally stopped for a second. His hands darted out to catch them, snatching at the articles with uncanny speed fueled by pure panic. His many hands whipped about, collecting nearly all of the papers before they'd ever touched the ground and organizing them instantly. Almost as quickly as they'd fallen, they'd been placed back in their spots again- yet there was still something- something not quite -
He froze before snapping his head at the parchment that now lay on the floor, dirtied, soiled, unusable. A rage whirled inside him, coming out in increasingly heavy breathing that soon turned into huffs. Wild eyes abhorred Lucas and he rocketed forward with uncontrollable rage towards Lucas. A massive hand struck out and firmly held Lucas by the throat, thin fingers digging into the
flesh and squeezing as if he intended to pop his head right off. He might as well have, too.
Her focus was comparable to a razor's edge. Sharp, without much room for extraneous
anything, and certainly not inclined to leave one's fingers uncut and unblooded. Snow had always been intelligent; even
she didn't bother to question that. The difference between this and her ordinary state-of-mind, however, was otherwise much like comparing the noontime sun to the dead of night. There was no
drifting to be had here, and though her trains of thought moved at the same speed, they seemed now all the more directed, and somehow, this was causing her limbs, her body, to come alive as well. Smell, hearing, taste... everything was clearer, more crystalline and more like glass than fog.
But she was not glass, she was ice. Cold, brittle, and still even more brutally dangerous when shattered.
Her upper lip curled, just a bit, when Mendax made himself known again. He was a nuisance, a
buzzing fly, and she did not wish to waste her time here. Perhaps fortunately, Nica seemed almost to share the sentiment, and through his ineffectual hand-fluttering and his words that
did not matter, progress still continued inexorably forward. The lights were still blinding, she still had to squint against them, but this went nearly unnoticed, filed away in some cabinet in her mind rarely-used, not given the considerations due important things, and this was perhaps extraordinary in itself, that here was in this moment at least a difference at all between important things and other things that she would not devote as much attention to. The time for idle observation had passed, though she sensed it would return in time. This fervor, this
quickening in her insides, could not last forever, but it would last long enough.
Her teeth set themselves together in her jaw, and Snow bit down hard, wishing very much that the power of her voice could return to her just long enough to say what she needed to. She'd happily be mute for weeks on end if she could but express this one thing, something she
knew to be important but could not quite understand how. Amaryllis was trying to reason with an overgrown, spindle-armed spider-child, but Snow was done with it.
What, though, to do if she could not speak?
The answer was as obvious as Lucas could make it, and in the wake of his blow to the desk, there were several heartbeats of dead silence, until Litatio's arms shot out in all directions, seeking to retrieve his precious papers, the pieces of parchment and ink that this
foul thing valued more than what they'd just sacrificed, what they would sacrifice still. Snow's lips pursed, her eyes flickered, and her hands curled almost absently into white-knuckled fists. She knew what she needed to do now, to get her point across, but the question remained: who else would be willing to
act, for whom else did words fail, and who even so would understand what her face, her clenched jaw and flinty eyes and furrowed brow, was asking of them?
For once, she went with her instinct, turning to Fallon and placing a hand on the hilt of a saber. As soon as his keen eyes had picked out the direction of her quiet entreaty, she darted hers towards the desk.
Are you with me?
He transfixed his sight on the back of his Amaryliss' neck. She was a few paces ahead of him – and he vaguely, helplessly, wondered whether or not this was the distance they would keep themselves at. Or if he'd keep this distance himself. Litatio's mouthed commands rocked the very foundations of the building, sending electric pulses and sordid vibrations through his fingertips and toes. He watched as Amaryliss moved towards the desk, presumably rejecting their dismissal. The demigod had taken things too far, so that even
she could not merely accept things as they were and move on to kinder prospects. Her patience had run dry. Initially, Fallon simply stood his ground in front of Manon until he spotted movement over his shoulder, revealing itself to be the scruffy Sensor, who casually gallivanted towards Litatio's desk and administered a righteous, if not impressive, kick to it's underbelly. Tidy stacks of paper shuffled down like rainfall, flitting, fluttering and fluctuating on an unseen breeze, while errant quills spilled from glass vials, and black ink appropriately splattered across any remaining sheets in front of Litatio. Ugly, incorrigible smudges. Spatters of permanent ink, uncorrectable. He might not have known it, or felt it, but Lucas was strong, and brave, and something else he couldn't put his finger on. The small swell of pride had been quickly quelled when Litatio's many-arms snatched out of the darkness, grabbing desperately at the fallen papers, and honing in on it's intended target. Spidery fingers groped around Lucas' neck, thin fingernails digging against his tendons, which seemed so impossibly small compared to the creature's hands. He found his voice with a quick, parch-mouthed: “
Lucas!”
He saw the slightest movement in the arm that held the pommel of her sabre. Even the chamber seemed to sense the enormity of the moment – lights seemed dimmer, the vibrations abruptly stopped, and the faint torchlight’s behind them seemed to cast impossible shadows across the floor. He didn't even need to confirm Snow's silent question, her suggestion. It was there, clear and true, in his mind, in his heart. With the speed only Elves could truly emulate, his forearm blades hissed from their mechanisms, and with a hearty yell, Fallon moved alongside Snow. It pained him how he immediately thought she'd bump him out of the way and sacrifice herself, again – but they did not face Orpheus, and they were not back in the forest. He leapt upwards, soaring high in the air, before planting himself on Litatio's wooden desk with a promising
thunk – succinctly in unison, two threats terrifyingly combined. His blade idled in front of the man's bulging eyeball, foot balanced on his shoulder and hand gripping the last stubborn frizz of hair sticking up from the demigod's skull. No doubt, Snow's own blades would be poised on another vital part of his person. “
Let him go.” It came out as a hiss, spoken firmly from between his teeth. “
If my blade does not score, then hers surely will.”
It was a promise.
His movement was hers, and she matched the stride of her powerful legs to his. It was almost a callback, to a moment from long ago, a time when such orchestrated motion-poetry had been her sole proveneance, a swirling, slashing dance of two things made one by an easy singularity of purpose, the whole thing designed to dazzle, to startle, to coax hearts into throats and ragged gasps from between lips agape as the performers moved in tandem with the patterns sketched in sound by drumbeats, the staccato rhythm of footsteps complimented by metronome hearts and the fluttering of gossamer and silk. This was not exactly the same, but for all that it might have had a similar effect, were the audience a bit different and the mood a bit lighter.
The
thing that had been building in her insides, stoking the smolder of emotion in the pit of her stomach to a true burn, had ignited her in earnest now, and perhaps she wasn't so much ice as she had thought. Or perhaps she'd simply chilled to that temperature when the two no longer felt so very different, because both
burned. She didn't know, she didn't much care, and indeed the feeling wasn't one that required contemplation or reflection or even a name; all that it demanded from her was that she move to it. And move she did, her feet falling in perfect tandem with Fallon's, and her singular drawn sword resting at the hollow of the spindle-man's neck. Perhaps, if she were lucky, his heart might come to reside there after all.
She had no ability to speak, but she certainly knew something that she needed to say. A rasping hiss, inelegant and very much unlike her, whistled between her teeth and over barely-parted lips; her narrowed eyes calculated the exact moment when she drew his attention. Deliberately, pointedly, she raised her empty hand to the level of her chest, tracing it slowly in a X-shape over her heart.
You promised, the gesture admonished.
Now keep it, before I keep it for you.
Litatio tremored in what you could imagine to be anxiety and rage mixed into one, flicking his eyes between the two elves on his desk- his desk- his desk - their boots - dirty boots on his desk. His mouth opened as if he were being exorcised, his eyes now closing. This had been the first physical contact he'd had in at least a hundred years. His muscles grew stiff and for a second, when his involuntary shaking ceased, he seemed dead. He proved his immortality quickly, for in the next instance, he swung one of his hands forward and into the blade pointed at him, gauging into his wrist with incredible force, splattering glimmering blood on his table, on the two elves, down his arm, everywhere. He locked eyes with Nica. She held his gaze as if it came naturally, eyes burning as if daring him to defy her. He didn't say another word after, simply pushed the two elves lightly to signal them to get off his desk and let the arm rest on the table, flowing his thick red blood onto the floor, away from the papers. He continued with his papers lackadaisically now, almost carefree, like he'd found salvation in the stacks after understanding how terrible life and its endeavors could be after the Redeemers came into town.
Ama quickly grabbed a chalice from her bag and did her best to collect the seeping red liquid in an attempt to avoid wastefulness. Nica was impatient, though, snatching the gold sheened goblet before it was barely half full. Ama made a sound in protest but Nica had already sprinted out the door and now flew down the hallway. Without understanding why, Ama followed the pale little girl's urgency and skirted through the door after her. How could a little girl be so fast? By the time she'd flung the doors open, Nica was pouring the tiniest bit of blood into Lilith's mouth.
"Nica?" It was a question, her fiery brows knitting together in confusion. What was the meaning of this? The girl needn't answer, for Lilith sputtered a single gasping breath, chest rising violently before it fluttered back down. She did not open her eyes, nor make a hot remark. She did not guzzle whiskey nor did she flash a cheeky smile. She appeared to be unconscious, damp hair cascading down Nica's thighs as her head lolled back onto her lap, but she was alive. Ama sighed with relief. Alive. Lilith was alive. Her cautious eyes tried to study Nica's to spot little spindles of malice or ill-play, as if the Asian woman in her hands were some illusion, but she couldn't find anything. Nica held out the goblet towards Ama.
With an innumerable power now in her hands, she handed it to her comrades first and poured into the mouths of those too injured to do it themselves. She finally took a sip herself. It felt wonderful. It felt as if Sapentia herself had sung, a chorus resonating deep inside. Ama felt as if the hushed lullaby of the ocean- a sound she'd only heard once in her life- tenderly kissed her. A warmth spread. It was impossible to be worried or foul with the blood of the demigod vibrating inside her. As if the battle before and the coldness she'd received last time had never occurred, she wrapped her arms around Fallon and hugged him. It came naturally. The embrace ended shortly, quickly enough that she didn't have time to calculate a mishap it might have been, as Ama turned back around at the sound of Lilith's voice, eyes bright and excited. Lilith groaned and made an ugly face, still laying on Nica. "Well, fuck."