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zillyeh · 1 year ago

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Turned Tides

Technically an immediate precursor to this drabble. only cws i can really give is talks of bombing towards the end, lmk if i need to add anything here<3 Synopsis: Around 150 sweeps ago, Heiress Halosa Delhon discuss what to do with the den of rebels in the north of Delhon city, with the added input of some unfortunate guests.

Your heavy footsteps echo across the marble castle floors. The mere sound of your approach had always been enough to quiet a room, but since the execution? A pin could drop upstairs and you could hear it. You almost miss her air headed giggling as she draped herself over the throne.However.

You admit that you prefer what it's done to Heiress Halosa.

She sits motionless on her throne. Hollow. She is a shell of the Delhon you knew. You'd behead Bridal again just to watch the light leave Halosa's eyes.

The heiress did not wear her mourning whites for long. She was already back to her caped fleet uniform. The golden rank pauldrons sat spiky and and important on her shoulders. They glinted with the rest of the gold inlaid in her uniform in the jade and pink moonlight. Even this subtle combination of colors bouncing on her lap seemed to be grimming her already sour expression.

You greet her with a kneeling bow.

"Your highness," you say. She hardly moves but to flick her wrist- an instruction to stand.

"Steris," she says, the gravel of her voice deeper than you've ever heard it. "Approach. We don't have time for a round table. Visitors."

"Visitors?" you ask incredulously, climbing the short few steps to her side. "Now?" A quiet Delhon castle is a Delhon castle in shambles. To bring in others before you get a moment with her is… inconvenient. For you.

"They have a solution for me." Her voice is robotic. Halosa is running low on willpower. Anyone but you would think she’s just as hard as ever, but you can see her foundations beginning to crack. Mentioning Bridal in just the right way could break her, bend her to your whims, but you need her alone.

She hums, shifting in her seat. With an unenthusiastic flourish, she bangs her serpentine scepter on the ground. The ornate main doors of the throne room open, and the quartet of trolls that enter makes your thin lip curl.

They aren't clowns of yours, but they are clowns. Masked laughsassins with Enfaris' signature gaudy frills, all except for the tall elder in the front of them. He was certainly as Enfarian as the rest, but he had the decency to mute his colors and show his face. His paint was obnoxiously intricate- they have so much time for it don't they?- and did work to fill the deep lines of his face. His hair fell around his face in thin, tight braids, beaded in green and red at the ends.

"Your 'ighness," he greets. The phlegmy yet airy dust of his accent on those two words alone make your skin crawl. The beads in his hair clatter softly as he shifts. He bares his throat in place of bowing. Whatever ailment requires his cane seems to prevent his fellows from dropping to the floor as well. Disrespectful.

"Father Jortis, I take it?" Halosa asks, not looking for an answer. "I apologize for having no announcer to your entrance. It is no secret that my court is in unacceptable disarray. Please, speak."

"It is quite alright, Madame Delhon," Jortis says, gripping the cane in front of him. You do not hide your grimace when you realize it has a honking horn at the handle.

"My church received most disturbing news from someone in zis province," he continues, "A rather eloquent plea for assistance. I 'ave an embarrassment of my own you see: in short a few, shall I say incorrectly zealous of our church stole some of our‐ qu'est que ce- 'idden members. I am to believe their fleeing brought zem 'ere, based on my informant's descriptions."

"This should be our priority why exactly?" You can't see his angle. You don't like that. "What do you mean by hidden-"

Halosa puts up a hand again.

"You will be addressed when you are addressed, Steris." She can't make her voice sound as scary as it used to be. Regardless, you shut your mouth, narrowing your eyes at the clowns in front of you.

"My advisor does make a fair point, Father. You bring this to me now for the reasons I hope you do, yes?"

Jortis nods once.

"Not zat I would be so brazen as to peek into your mind, but I believe so. My informant claims to 'ave been abducted by rebels and forced to labor for zem- ones zat match ze description of my missing flock."

"Fascinating," you say, having never shut up for long before this. "Is your little informant with us tonight, Enfarian?"

"'E should be," Jortis says easily, catching you off guard. His aloofness to your own disrespect annoys you. Enfarians are so difficult to rile. "If 'e manages to-"

The doors behind the troupe open again, spilling in the last person you'd ever thought you'd see in Delhon's throne room. The guards who escort him in look like they can't get their hands off him fast enough.

"Ninefingers?" You almost can't believe your eyes. He looks genuinely afraid in a way you've never seen the Exacerbator look. He wrings his lopsided hands, warily moving beside the quartet of clowns before dropping to a bow for the Heiress.

"Your highness," he says with a shake in his voice. Closer you can see barely healed scars on his arms, and a bruise under his eye. His first finger has been replaced with something made of… wood? How barbaric. His curly hair had been pulled back tight. He looks even smaller than he already is without his mane. Crushable underfoot or under ax.

Halosa signals for him to get up, casting a wary eye at you. You step forward. He winces.

"I should strangle whatever information you have out of you, Aarika." You crack your knuckles, but Jortis and Halosa both put their arms out to keep you two from each other.

"Vionyi, fucking behave or I will force you to leave."

"Yeah, okay."

Halosa stands. She strikes you across the mouth hard enough to reverberate through the high-ceilinged hall. You swallow the bit of blood in your mouth, clenching your fists. Oh how you hate fighting the urge to do something back. Tears sting at your eyes, but you are well practiced in biting back pain. Closing your clear false lids also helps.

"We can have this conversation over your corpse if need be," she says, some of the real danger in her voice back. You grit your teeth, the hand shaped print on your face stings. Hard.

"I apologize for my insolence, your highness," you say through tight lips. "I shall not let my emotions get the better of me again."

For a split second, you think you catch a smug little smirk on Aarika's face.

"If I may-," Aarika speaks up with the well practice shake of a fearful child. Halosa seats herself again. "I apologize as well for my- everything. My unacceptable transgressions against the Empire, what I assume is a nasty scar on the back of your leg-" You want to kill him. Never in your life have you had to contain it quite this much. Cleaving him in two would only be the start. "-all of it is my fault. After those pirates took me from- kept me under the deck until I was so wound up and starved that I-" he interrupts himself with a sob. Jortis places a hand on his shoulder. Pathetic. This was what had become of Exacerbator Ninefingers?

"I- sometimes I feel like I'm still not fully come to. I'm sorry. That's not what I'm here for. Please forgive me." He clears his throat, shaking as he finds his composure. "When they landed last they took me here. Taking to the rebel groups. The Underground practically found him- us first."

"The Underground?" Halosa seems interested. That was your pet project for sweeps. He's going to take this from you, right under your nose. Or lack thereof.

He nods. "There’s a church, on the north side of the city. They call it the-" he shudders, as if remembering something terrible, "-the church of the Reverent. That's what they call their leader. He and a handful of others are Enfarian. You can hear it- and I've overheard things-"

Jortis seems to think that Aarika's frantic ramblings are enough.

"I would like your permission to retrieve ze 'eads of my missing flock, your 'ighness," he says, gesturing back to his laughsassins. Ah. That's what they were there for.

"Infiltration is incredibly difficult," Aarika interjects. "There are tunnels they will use to evacuate at even the slightest hint of smoke, the-"

"Old snake tunnels, I am familiar," Halosa says, more lively than you've seen her in weeks. Ugh. "Do you know them well enough to block them off?"

He hesitates, but nods.

"They could be… encouraged to certain routes."

Halosa turns her gaze to Jortis.

"How much time would it take you, Jortis?"

"Twenty minutes if we linger," he says. His little trio of freaks nod in unison. Aarika looks just as uncomfortable as you feel with them. The welts he came in with are slower to fade than you thought they'd be. Exacerbator Ninefingers had been rumored to heal as fast as you could cut him, but you suppose not all pirate tales are true.

You are very aware of the chunk he cut out of your thigh as you stare him down. He balks under your scrutiny, reluctantly leaning towards the subjugs. You want to find something, anything about him that you can use to get him dead. His crimes against the Empire are enough, but if he uses this leverage to beg for his life now? After giving up the location to the biggest thorn in Delhon’s side?

Halosa was far too weak not to let him have it.

"If you intend to do this, I would suggest you do it soon," he says, freaky teeth moving as he speaks. "They are intending to mobilize somewhere- I'm unsure where, I would assume further north to disperse into the woods, or south to integrate into the city."

"Two very different directions," Halosa hums.

“That is by design, your highness,” Aarika says with a solemn nod. “They listen to me about… tactics. They know who I was, not who I am. I will do anything in my limited power to make sure that the one who stole your m-”

He stopped himself with a hand over his mouth, looking like he fully expected Halosa to strike him down. You wish she would. She sits up straighter in her seat, the hardness of a several thousand year old war-ender back in her eyes. When she speaks again it is a demand.

“Who stole my...”

“The unspeakably blooded rebel who stole your beloved, your highness.” Aarika dropped to the floor again in another bow. He was really laying it on thick, though you must begrudgingly admire his commitment to keeping his neck and his head attached. “You must know she is one of the Enfarians in that church. It’s where-”

“Enough.” Now Halosa Delhon’s voice was a thundercrack, reverberating off the walls louder than when she’d slapped you. “Father, you can personally see to the unmerciful, gruesome end of your ex flock?” Jortis nodded. Aarika looked up, still frightened, but for a moment the mask slipped to unfettered glee. You would see his teeth pulled out of his face and reintroduced into his eyesockets if you could.

“Unmercifully shall tack on an ‘andful’s worth of minutes, but it can be done, easily. One of our riders has a vested interest in seeing at least one of zem dead. If I understand correctly, it is the very same.” Riders. They would have taken one of their noodly, violent dragons here. Enfarians have them to spare for every law enforcer over there. You wonder which of his troupe it is. If they aren’t out tending to it.

The shadow of a smile finds itself creasing the severe lines around Halosa’s mouth. This is bad for you. If they can just kill their leaders and get the few spies stationed to get the more egregious mutants, your position as her tactician is practically-

“Steris,” she says, alive. You stiffen. “You had plans for the city north, did you not?”

Is she serious?

“Your highness?”

“To simply kill the perpetrators of so much strife against my city is not enough,” she says cooly, rehearsing words you’d spoken to her already almost verbatim. “The rats nest must be wiped out, lest more vermin crop up. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Something in the way you shift almost makes Aarika snort. You feel almost lightheaded. Is this truly happening? This is one of the best nights of your life. Aarika and the foreign clowns at the edge of your vision be damned, she’s actually going to go through with it.

“Of course, your highness,” you say breathlessly, “An example should be made to the rest of the city- rest of the province that you-”

“Won’t stand for this behavior from our citizens,” she finishes for you. “Contact Felzee and the other two, tell them they’ll have thirty minutes. Anyone else you find terribly important as well. Everyone else figures it out when the drones come.”

You give her a short nod.

“Shall we be walling off the rest of the city then?” She nods in return. Her control over Delhon’s drones could rival even the Empress. Shielding off just the north side would be nothing.

“Get Ninefingers to mark a map for you and Jortis.” You grimace, and he winces at being mentioned by name. “I will offer you one singular favor, Amillo Aarika, aside from sparing your life.”

Of course she would.

Fucking of course she would.

That won’t sour your mood. Aarika could ask for a room in the castle and you’d still be over the moons. This is your idea, she’s listened to you, you are getting everything you wanted to do to that hole and more.

“A floor of the greenhouse tower in the center city,” Aarika says as if he’d been expecting this. “If you would be so generous. I- I want my life to be simple, all I’ve ever really wanted is to make-”

“I don’t care. It will be done. All of you come with me. This must be done now.”

When she stands, turning her back to your company, something in Aarika changes, shifts ever so slightly that you barely catch it. His shake stops. He seems more relaxed. He catches your eye and flashes you a smile, which you meet with a sneer. You know then that he’s also just gotten exactly what he wanted. Even if it doesn’t seem like much, you and he are united in this one desire- to see north Delhon torched.

That doesn’t sit well with you, but you have to ignore it. Right now you have a city to raze.

#Zilly drabbles #BY POPULAR POLL DEMAND!!#Grotesque tag #SHE tag #Smiles tag #Mr. Smiles #Jortis tag #Jortis Immacu #Turned Tides

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zillyeh · 2 years ago

Text

To Asphalt

cw: murder, thats just really the whole thing that happens here

The air in the church of the Reverent was heavy, hard to breath. And it hadn’t even been set ablaze yet. Azveja’s shaking hands struggled to tend the wound on Kerath’s shoulder. Reverent, revered Kerath Baclef, who was nothing but another set of arms that held her too close to the Messiahs, and too far away from freedom.

No, lack of freedom was never his fault. He was many things, but not blameworthy. Her fate was only ever the fault of Alternia. The law. The Gods.

Azveja pressed her lips together. The slit across his shoulder was deep. Painful. The metal of her hands couldn’t conduct her powers if she wanted them to. To help. To heal. To ease that pain. They could barely hold the fucking needle.

He placed a cool hand over her free, shaking fingers.

“Azveja, chère," he said softly. “Might I have your permission to calm you so you do not rip my shoulder further?"

“You don’t trust me,” she said, her voice too shaky to hide how close her tears were.

“Could you forgive yourself if you made it worse?” he asked, soft still. A harsh question coming from anyone but the Reverent. Of course not. He knew that. He knew her like no one ever bothered to.

No one still alive, anyway.

The moment the word “fine” hissed out of her mouth, she felt calm. Clear of mind. But not calm enough to forget her urgency. The tremors of her miserable cybernetic hands were at least bearable when not compounded by nerves.

“We can’t make it out of here,” she said simply, binding his wound with swift stitches. She dressed his wound just as quickly, buttoning his robe back up.

“Azveja, your pessimism is truly the least charming thing about you, have I ever told you that?”

“I am realistic. We have fifteen minutes.”

Kerath sighed, not moving to stand. He preferred her here at eye level, though she wouldn’t allow him to see hers through her mask. He took her hands, releasing some of the hold he had on her emotions, but not all. Hers were always so much stronger than he could handle, even on her bad nights.

“Amillo, Bruice, and Domnik will return for us, Azveja. If we have to take the tunnels out, we will. We have time. I cannot leave until I know everyone else is out of here.”

“That’s stupid,” Azveja said, standing. He was still almost to her chin sitting down. What a silly, silly angle people looked like from underneath, he thought. “You should have gone first. With the young.”

“Funny, I was about to say the same about you.”

Azveja pressed her lips together, turning away from him.

“I cannot fight with them. My primary purpose is to tend the wounded,” she said. “That’s you.” Kerath smiled, standing to his full height. It was one of the rare moments that this small action didn’t make Azveja flinch. Kerath, however, winced at the motion his shoulder made.

“I understand,” he said, taking in the room of his church, seemingly for the last time. Red illuminated the walls of the small building, bright enough that the rainbows of stained glass were nothing to it. The empire carapaced drones above, the blazing sun just beginning to dip under the ocean waves. Red. It was all so red. Azveja sighed and pulled the mask from her head, looking up to him.

She was like a stranger to him, for how little he saw of her face. One thing he could never forget, and never truly bring himself to fully describe were her eyes. That color she couldn’t stand to see, those teardrop pupils. He once thought it poetic in a way, given her melancholic disposition.

Right now she just looked sad.

“Kerath, I-”

Her ears twitched, and in that split second she barrelled into him with all the weight her body had, throwing him to the ground with enough force to split his shoulder again. In that same instant, the church roof fell directly where they had been standing. The whirring of drones was distant above, nearly impossible to hear over the beating of the dragon wings directly outside that newly gaping hole.

The long, serpentine thing snarled, smoke at its nostrils, more debris in its claws as it found purchase to land. More roof shattered until the two could see its rider, masked and severe but unmistakably from the church. The old church. Le Corps.

The shape of her horns told Azveja it was her old ex lover. The pounding on the barricaded church door told her this was not a coincidence.

Kerath’s groaning told her neither of them would make it out of here alive.

“Vennen!” Azveja coughed, attempting to pull up a man nearly two feet her superior.

“Don’t you dare address me, salope!” the rider shouted. The Firebringer’s lusus snarled underneath her. The door snapped all the way off the hinges. Kerath and Azveja scrambled back to the podium as a quartet of familiar faces from their old church poured in. The final purple stopped Azveja in her tracks. With Kerath’s arms around her, she felt fear shoot through him like lightning.

“Père Jortis,” Azveja breathed, shaking now that Kerath’s calm was gone. He silently stalked through the broken pews, scowl on his painted face, cane in hand.

“A travesty I find only two and not the six who left me,” he said in their home tongue, the disappointment in his voice enough to make Azveja feel nauseous. Kerath straightened himself, wincing as he attempted to put himself between the much smaller troll and the array of enormous purplebloods. Jortis scoffed. All three other clowns and the jade above looked to him for instruction. He ignored all of them in his approach, stopping just at the rubble Vennen had made.

“Where are the rest?”

Azveja gripped Kerath’s robes, bullying herself out from behind him.

“Fuck you!” she spat, eyes wide and wild. Jortis regarded her with a disgust more intense than could possibly be put to words. It made her shrink, even with Kerath’s hand on her shoulder.

“My my, lost your obedience and your arms then, duckling? Fine. I don’t have time for this. Seize them both and kill anyone you can find before our twenty is up. Heiress Halosa has granted us that right.” He rolled his head around his shoulders, casting his gaze to Kerath. “I want Baclef’s head. Do with her what you will.”

The speed with which his clowns moved was astonishing. Nauseating. Kerath, in what new adrenaline he’d been able to muster, he shoved Azveja toward the side door, the one to the basement. It was a sweet thought, but the laughsassins of La Corps du Serpent Mourant were better than that. Faster.

One caught Azveja before she fell, throwing her unguarded face into the back wall of the church.

“Kerath!” she shouted through the blood in her mouth, dizzy but more resilient than one of her stature should be. The other two had caught him by the arms, the taller of the two forcing him to his knees. Jortis drummed his fingers against his cane, ascending the rubble and the stairs to meet him.

Azveja jabbed her metal elbows wherever they would find purchase, her struggle nearly useless against the clown who held her face. The purple reared back her head again, but this time Azveja twisted her head just right to rip the hood off of her horns, losing her cloak as she escaped her grip. In the split second between realizing that worked and having to decide where she would go, that clown caught her around the middle. She crushed the wind out of her, blood still spilling down her face. She had a perfect view of the horror about to take place in front of her.

Kerath did not fight back. He couldn’t. He was weak for his caste. Nothing against three well trained purplebloods- especially not the patriarch of Le Corps.

Azveja may have been strong for her caste once, before her arms fell to disrepair. Powerful. A touch that could calm or cause pain as she felt like, just from skin contact-

Her upper arms were free. Real. In contact with that purple’s cold clammy arms. Azveja struggled, digging her fingers into her skin, loosing whatever pain she felt through her shoulders, through the nerves of her captor’s hands. The clown shouted, distracting her companions, but only loosened her grip. Azveja’s teeth in her arm did the rest.

She dropped to the floor, her desperate struggle to reach Kerath brought her close, but her body was not made for fighting, not like this. Not gushing blood from her head the way she was.

“Kerath!” she shouted again, hoarse and miserably dragging herself along the stone. The sickle Jortis had around his throat was close to drawing blood. Tears ran freely down his face, but he was otherwise silent. Kerath made a brief eye contact with Azveja, but only to offer her one final reassuring smile. The monster. The idiot. The only person who never gave up on her, who’s reverence for life extended even to the lowest, unworthy caste.

The Reverent, Kerath Baclef.

The corpse.

Jortis pulled Kerath’s horn and his sickle in opposite directions. Funny how such a clean cut causes so much blood. Funny if you are perhaps a subjugulator, to which that type of horrific violence is entertaining. Not so much if you are a miserable, abused healer watching your best friend be beheaded. Your best friend who you’ve been a miserable wretch to your entire life, who most certainly did not deserve your pessimism or your agony, but received it anyway because he chose to stay close. Because he cared. Cared enough to smile at you before his execution, when all you could do was cry.

To spare you- no you are not the Slitbinder in her final breaths. A cruel, cruel thing to put on you, that would be.

Jortis called his clowns to him, wingbeats from above growing loud and impatient. Azveja could hardly hear them. She could hardly hear what he shouted upward as he and his trio fled, Kerath’s head in hand. She was left unable to move, his body the only thing in her sight, that body she had tried so hard to fix mere moments ago. So they could leave. Be safe.

In those last few moments there was more shouting from above: her name, her caste, the misery she had put Vennen through. Another thunderous growl from her lusus before everything went hot. Bright. Suffocating.

Red.

#Zilly drabbles #tee hees and sobs #Slitbinder tag #Reverent tag #Jortis Immacu #i couldve sworn i posted this. guh #also why diesnt fhe app gave readmores anymore. excuse me

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