View Full Version : Bitches, Bastards & Broken Things (Closed)
Bitches, Bastards & Broken Things (Closed) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2LodCjpzEY)
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His royal self-personified,
Her regal flame edified,
Together entwined in friendship,
They are forever inclined to war.
Her love of gin so elegant,
His love of life resplendent,
Eternal they dance across the heavens,
Despite the fact they’re poor.
Their lives endearing happily,
Their woes connected pleasantly,
The troupe king and the troupe queen,
Woe the bitch and bastard to broken things.
Ruby & Duffy's Drinking Song
Before Duffy could respond Ruby’s hand slapped across his cheeky face. It carried with it the bluntness of a divorce paper being signed in blood, or a comet ploughing into a brittle mountain range. Though their engagement in the Citadel was supposed to be a friendly opportunity to vent tension between the pair, one party was clearly keener to take up the opportunity than the other. Duffy had clearly misread the signs which declared Ruby Winchester was mightily pissed off with him indeed.
“What the devil was that for?” He said with surprise as he stumbled back. He hid the red mark across the right side of his suddenly succour expression with a shaking hand, clearly embarrassed.
“You could say ‘ello first or summat!” Amongst friends he spoke with his true accent. It was a heady and slang riddled speech, which few except the inhabitants of Scara Brae’s streets would understand without having to repeat the words to work out the meaning.
His question echoed throughout the grand chamber the monks had constructed for their engagement. Though the bard had inspected it upon entry, he had not realised where it was in relation to Scara Brae, and what the significance of it was. From the look of fury on his best friend’s face, that fact alone had caused more anger than all the underlying struggles and niggles that kept their relationship emotional and fresh, onstage and off. He strongly regretted not taking the whole thing more seriously.
“Oh,” he mumbled. He began to bounce from toe to toe and shake his hips. With his usual monkey like energy he tried to ready himself for the engagement that was clearly now long passed being unavoidable. He might have been able to talk his way out of another round with Jensen Ambrose, or wound up his opponent into making a mistake like he had done with Sei Orlougne long ago but here, there was nothing left to be said.
“Still ain’t forgiven me for that, huh?” He cocked his head to the left, and took in the detail of Ruby’s mithril chest plate with the sort of look that suggested puzzlement, but hid analysis in a cloak of innocence. He had seldom seen her wear it, never mind thought about he might get past its defence.
Her silence spoke a thousand words which echoed and bounced from the sunken audience pit at the centre of the grand chamber. Torches burned fiercely at the four compass points, set into the heavy granite walls with rusted iron brackets. It was a perfect circle at the centre of a grand castle, the very same stronghold the Tantalum had fought Lucian Lahore from. It was in this very room that Duffy had told the troupe and its allies about their origins. Ruby had been hurt most by the revelation that her sister was alive, and that they were potentially going to lose their loved ones to the flames of war once more.
“I guess there ain’t anything for it then. Let’s forgive and forget the only way we know how.” There was certain bitterness to Duffy’s acceptance, but it was a sorrow they both knew all too well. Scattered leaves of ancient books fluttered like ghosts over the tiles of the amphitheatre, and occasional pigeons and owls flew back and forth from one roof loft nest to the other. As they crossed overhead, they spattered the well-worn floor with excrement and clumps of discarded, gnawed upon rodent bones.
Ruby did not need permission to vent her anger on those foolish enough to tempt her to wrath. There was an old saying about a woman scorned that she repeated in her thoughts to steel herself against the coming engagement, and it worked with the sort of bolstering effect that Duffy got from strong liquor, or a mage did from the flow of ether into his fingertips. Duffy had commented on her changed demeanour after her trip, but she had ignored his ramblings. They were one of the many slights she had suffered from his brotherly smothering over the last month, one of the many boiling insults to her person that she longed to resolve.
She had delivered the first blow and in her mind, that meant she was already ahead. She was one step out of reach and already she held the best hand of cards in her white gloved fingertips. The smell of dust, dry and undisturbed by fresh air for decades clung to her nostrils, mingling with her own rose water scent and lavender talc. It was a strange yet comforting combination, the familiarity of their past mingling with the allure of an uncertain future.
“No, there is not. You asked me what we could do to alleviate the tension that has formed between us since I returned from my engagement with Sei in Corone, and you agreed to come here to see the opportunity through.” She straightened her armour and set the folds of her short skirt neatly apart so that she could bend her knees. Happy with her stance, she drew the Lucrezia from its simple, leather scabbard with a satisfying ring. It had called out to her the very second she had stepped through the heavy oak doors into the fighting dome, singing a song in her ears of vengeance and splendour.
“I’ve wanted to wipe that fucking smirk off your face for so long I’m struggling not to sing you a whirlwind of hurt right here and now.” She saw his reaction, a flutter of blinks accompanying a blank expression of horror and felt the rise of excitement in her stomach.
She was firmly in command, her audience encapsulated.
“So prove to me that we’re still friends for a reason Duffy.” She turned her right shoulder towards him, setting her blade level with his chest in a defensive posture she had been taught by the war stricken blade singers in Raiaera’s last academy of art.
“Show me why I put up with your loud snoring, drunken rants and pathetic attempts at innuendo!” With quick movements, she danced forwards.
It did not take her long to close the two hundred foot gap Duffy’s bouncing had made between them. All the training brought to life in Beinost, all the hereditary memories of her past lives surged into the present to carry her on metaphorical wings towards her foe. The Aria in her mind did not need to sing or empower Ruby to see the blade strike home. Such was her rage; she held every belief that she could deliver a thrust to the bard’s pathetic excuse for a heart on her own merit.
“A little carnal therapy is good for the soul, you said so yourself!”
Pages practically leapt out of the way in her wake. Her red hair trailed behind her in shimmering flows that almost seemed to be made of fire. A single red feather fell from her mane and spiralled down behind her. It fell to the floor without a sound just as she trusted the blade, her clenched teeth silencing the grunt of exertion from her slender form.
Tooth and Nail emerged from their scabbards with such speed Ruby gasped as they clashed against Lucrezia and knocked it to the right. She stumbled awkwardly into Duffy, battering his armour-less form with a thud and a shudder. He breathed heavily into her ear and held her close, a menacing embrace to drive his point home. He took on the guise of a jilted lover, or a murderous rogue about to make a kill.
“You ain’t gonna feel good about yourself rushin’ in all hot headed,” he spoke through tightly clenched teeth before deciding to push her away. He cleared a gap of thirty feet or so and started to bounce higher and higher. His movements accelerated until he cleared ten inches or so with every foot swap. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, giving his drab black clothing and his haggard matted hair a sudden sheen of youth he only found in those moments were death came calling. His senses sharpened, his eyes narrowed, his soul screamed for momentum.
He waited whilst Ruby wiped the sweat from her forehead and removed the stray hair from her eyes. Clearly she had not expected to stumble; at least not so soon. There was no attempt from her to hide her bemusement, and she looked visibly confused as to why Duffy had not simply stuck a dagger up beneath her shoulder blade and into her rapidly beating heart.
“You know why I did it, don’t you?” He cocked his head to the right. Without spending any energy on concentration he spun his daggers in time with his movements. He started to lift one arm up then the other, so that he became difficult to judge between the slight adjustments to height, position and speed.
She shook her head piously and tight lipped.
Duffy took it upon himself to write her a detailed ode or a long winded poem detailing it further one of these days. Right now, there were more pressing and simpler truths to reveal. He licked his lips free of the last drops of whiskey that he had downed feverishly at the door to the fighting dome. With relish he savoured the spicy after taste which countered the stagnant air and dry mouth caused by the amphitheatre. He gave her the once over, tracing the delicate stitching in her dress and the floral décor of her armour with a loving affection that might have been considered perverted or insidious by an unbeknown onlooker.
“Caus’ I love you,” he said softly, not caring that they both had an audience, potentially of hundreds.
Leaving her gobsmacked he ran forwards without any reservation. He cackled with laughter that even the Enigmatic Immortal would have been jealous of. Though he had initially felt bad about agreeing to fight and resolve their differences in such a brutal, childish manner, he had fallen for the thrill already. The Citadel offered many men a chance for fame, glory and providence. He had never looked at it as a place to resolve differences, vent frustration amongst family and learn more about your friends in the process.
It truly was a marvel of the modern age, a gleaming jewel in Radasanth’s tyrannical crown.
He wondered which of the many ways he had learnt to kill in this very building would result in the Phoenix and the Bard finally being at peace again. He wondered even more if Ruby Winchester could ever forgive him for being everything she loved him to be, and everything she loathed.
“Oh get over yourself would you?”
She span back into a full rotation before bum rushing into Duffy’s advance with another thrust with her sword. It sang a little falsetto note as it advanced, almost as if it were whistling in agreement with its master’s insult. With the clash of steel on steel and the retreat of both parties back to a safe distance it ceased its cry, disappointed and bereft of its kill. Ruby thought up quick witted retorts and kept several in reserve at the front of her mind, to keep her blade satisfied.
“The only person you love is yourself.”
If ever there was a woman whose words could cut deeper than steel, it would be Ruby. She smiled, licked her lips and teetered on a precipice between giving in entirely to her rising rage and pulling herself back into composure. Duffy was a far more seasoned veteran of The Citadel, and was perhaps numb to the sensation of fear the mind and body instilled in you when it thought it was going to die. Exhilarating as it was, Ruby was thankful that it would be short lived, however this fight were to end.
“It’s sickening how much highly you regard your own opinions!” Allowing her nerves the few brief seconds between word and reaction to catch her breath Ruby broke into a run. Her working boots, strapless buckled and well-worn purchases from Salvar rattled over the dirty floor. Used to ploughing through heavy snow drift, they propelled their mistress over the unhindered stone into the unknown with ease. The once brilliant steel clasp had started life shaped like a rose, but it resembled nothing more than a dull petunia or wilting, bruised geranium now.
Ruby felt her blade connect with Duffy’s daggers once more but this time, it slipped like a needle into soft satin through his guard. She clenched her teeth, an action she had started to use as a composing tool in difficult times, much to the discomfort of her secret dentures. At the same time, the insults in her mind slipped, replaced instead with a torrent of thanks to her matron for those long and gruelling hours of needle work tutelage.
“I thought I was bad spending hours in front of the stage-rooms mirror wall!” Lucrezia’s tip glinted in the torch light and threatened to pierce the upper torso of the plucky bard, but fell short as he twisted into a roll away from their exchange. She felt her weight resisted momentarily and slammed her foot down to prevent herself from stumbling into empty air. That particular counter-weight step was from Duffy’s own book, stolen like a plagiarised line without any regret.
“If I had known you would have turned out to be such a bastard Duffy Bracken, I would never have agreed to let you join the Tantalum all those years ago. You’re not worth the trouble at all,” with each insult, Ruby forgot what was true and what part of her battle cry was. This time however, she knew she had far overstepped the mark.
Duffy bounced back ten feet or so and roared with anger.
She hesitated for a moment, her eyes losing all of their energy and her lips loosening into a circle of surprise. Despite all her anger, all her frustration, all the pent up doubt in her body, it would be her care and affection for Duffy Bracken that once again served as her undoing.
In her brief show of emotion and in Duffy’s eyes, her weakness, she revealed the other side of her womanhood. Though fiery when scorned, and resplendent in the flames war could ignite about her person, Ruby Winchester still possessed a spring thaw in her cold, ageing heart. Somewhere beneath the metal exterior ran icy waters which shone in the sun of the bard’s happiness and sickening enthusiasm.
“You’re gonna fucking regret that, you little bitch.”
Duffy Bracken surprised himself. He could not remember the last time he had sworn, never mind at sworn at Ruby. Whilst not a particularly nice word, it felt even dirtier and more perverse coming from his lips. He wasn’t even sure if he was angry at his near-skewering, or her insults. In any respect he was pissed, and for once, it was not due to excessive consumption of alcohol.
“You drag me ‘ere to tear me apart, yet I saw that glimmer in yer eye!”
He pointed Tooth’s sharper end at her gullet and drew several erratic patterns of inception over her protected breasts, like a butcher mentally carving out cuts in a prime cow.
“Tell me what’s really goin’ on. I ain’t going to kill you without you spitting it out; too much has been and gone for us to be fightin’ over your” he spat in protest, hanging his sentence into the gobbet and rubbing it into the dry stone with his heavier, cracked suede boots for effect, “damned insecurities.”
Tired of exchanging feather weight blows, Duffy gunned for a championship strike. He burst forwards, arms flailing in concentric but well controlled circles to create a killing field to the front and rear of his body. In the twilight of the torch flames his black clothing shimmered like obsidian wet with moisture. Though a few scattered beams of light broke through the great dome overhead, striking great illuminations onto the crumbling walls, they fought in the unnatural half-light of mankind’s attempt to light the unseen.
Undeterred by Ruby’s stance he broke into her guard with two well-timed downward strikes against Lucrezia’s polished and unfettered beauty. The steel clashing echoed up into the rafters, bouncing around the spherical shape of the council chamber like the great peels of an ancient bell. She dissolved backwards out of the way his vertical upward strike. Using his own momentum against him, she leant back in to his reach with a third and better prepared thrust.
A cold spark kindled in the space just above his left kidney.
“In the Thayne’s name…” he spat blood, which rose up through the lower lungs and dribbled in two thin streaks down either side of his chin. “Ya got me!”
Duffy did not wait for his opponent to unsheathe her sword from his gut, taking it upon himself to clasp the blade with his gloved hands and pull it from his body with a guttural roar of agony. He stumbled backwards, casting life on the solitary stone for the first time in centuries.
“Is this, how, you really feel about me?” He looked into Ruby’s eyes, his own pupils glistening with the first swell of tears. His daggers fell to the ground with a clamour and bounced like seesaws before falling silent. Tooth pointed to the left, Nail to the right, crossed over one another as if they could not bear to be apart whilst their master slipped from their reach.
“What did I do, tell me?” Duffy liked to think himself intuitive, empathic and a people sort of person. From the wound in his side and the warm sensation of death rearing up over his shoulder to politely attract his attention for the long walk into the dark, he would appear to have been very much mistaken. With both his hands cupped over his wound, trying feebly to staunch the injury with his absorbent wool mitts he hoped she could shed light on his mistake.
“You have had months to think about it, yet you still have to ask…” She hung her head, almost in shame, but in truth, it was more through fatigue and strain.
Duffy had asked her what he had done to upset her so much at the start of summer. It was almost winter now, and he had still not figured it out. Things came to a head, and now here they were. She traced the blood as it flowed down the bard’s waist line and trickled down his baggy trousers.
“I’m starting to wonder if you really know me anymore,” she hesitated. His discomfort stood in stark contrast to her rage, and she was fighting the tear between matriarchy and tyranny. “I’m wondering if I know you anymore…”
Once, she would have flinched at the sight, but blood and death were part of her lady’s repertoire now; alongside needlework, cooking pigeon pie and curtsying at court.
“You made me believe my sister was dead, and used my emotions for your own gain.” She rasped the first reason between clenched teeth, but followed up with a second before Duffy could interject, “you dragged us all into a war you wasn’t even sure we could win.” A war, Ruby thought to herself, that she wasn’t sure was over. She stepped forwards slowly, raising Lucrezia cheatingly like a school mistress pointing a chalk at an unruly or stupid pupil. “Most disgustingly of all, Duffy Bracken…”
When the distance between them was no more than thirty or so feet, she trailed off her sentence and darted forwards. Her zenith of anger drove her heels into the dry stone, and she brought Lucrezia upwards and back like a raised needle about to plunge back into the fabric to tie off a knot.
“You told me you loved me…”
She thrust forwards, her feet flapping noisily against the stone and the folds of her skirt waver in the breeze created by her movements. She seemed to come alive, and felt her excitement kindle flames in her heart, limbs and clavicle.
When she realised, in a moment of confusion, that her blade had once again missed its mark she stepped back.
Duffy was gone.
Blue ribbons spiralled through the air like confetti caught in a spring breeze. A little stoic melody, reminiscent of the Salvar national anthem pounded over the stone and echoed up into the dome overhead.
“Then you jumped off a cliff…” she mumbled, all the tension in her body fading as she stepped back and let Lucrezia fall harmlessly to her side.
Duffy landed on the jetty at the heart of the mercury sea. A pain rose up from the pit of his stomach and struck his forehead and eye sockets with an intense, self-loathing neuralgia. If he had known no better, he would have mistaken it for an injury of the flesh. He might have thought her wounds were getting the better of him.
The bard knew otherwise.
She had dealt a fatal blow with her words, which were an altogether deadlier weapon in the right woman’s hands.
He had jumped off a cliff to prove to her that he loved her, which in turn had ensured they would never be together as long as they lived out their current lives.
He guessed that had hurt her more than he had anticipated.
“I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, recognising the futility of apologising to her when she was left bereft on another world.
“I didn’t know how to tell you the truth.” He felt the swell fade, only to be replaced by the familiar sensation of vomiting which portended a return to Althanas proper through the veil between worlds.
As he rose at speed through the grey skies to his home, Duffy made amends with himself for all the things he had done wrong in the past three years. The second he stepped back into the Citadel’s dusty arena, he would make amends with Ruby in the only way she knew how. He would die at the tip of her blade, and with his dying breath, he would make a promise.
“I promise to never leave your side…” the wind dragged the rest of his words right from his mouth and scattered them to the horizon. As he slipped through the veil an returned to the arena in a swirl of sudden lights, blue ribbons and stoic fanfares, he forgot all about what he planned to say.
He drove the Katarhna up in a sudden thrust, using his surprise over his subdued opponent to slip through her guard and strike her where it would hurt the most. He unsheathed it so quickly it did not even get to sing it's arrival.
With the lights still shining in her eyes, the dehlar tip of his blade pierced the mithril hauberk she relied on so foolishly to protect her from his weapons and slipped between her third and fourth ribs. The symmetry of his strike would have pleased even the most devilish of ordered killers. The blood ran down the hilt and warmed his cold, aching fingers.
“I meant every word I said,” he snarled.
“Duffy…” she whimpered, trying to convey that she understood, and that he didn't need to waste his breath.
“I meant every damned word,” which was a truth universal to the snappy bard’s way about the world. When he said something, he meant it. It was as binding as a Thayne’s command.
He stepped back, leaving his blade in Ruby’s torso as a painful reminder that he was not to be under estimated.
“I don’t love you because Lucian wrote it down in some fucking book,” which had perhaps once been the case.
“I love you because of who you are, who you are becoming, and all the many wondrous things you’ve done and continue to do.”
Ruby would have cried out in pain once. She had gone through too much to do so again.
“I know…I know you do.” She mumbled, blood spluttering between her teeth with every badly enunciated syllable. Her porcelain whites turned a light pink, before the crimson shade darkened into thick ichor.
She could feel her life slipping away from her. For Ruby to admit defeat so readily however, would require a more forceful end to their encounter. She had pent up all her rage and frustration at Duffy’s curious ways for so long if she didn’t vent it now, it would consume her.
“Why don’t we call it a-” Duffy tried to soften her defeat by an offer of a draw, but Ruby snapped the words right from his mouth and threw them back at him like razor sharp verbs.
“Shut up!” Her eyes flared. “You will not badger me into subservience now; we are going to finish this!”
Her stance broke as she gave in to the pain. Her back slumped forwards and her hair fell over her eyes, but she remained ever vigilant and with Duffy firmly in her sights. She tried to contain the swirl of emotion that threatened to make her vomit and keel over where she stood by imagining the tip of her blade piercing his gullet over and over and over again.
“You don’t just get to apologise,” she spat a gobbet of blood onto the cold stone tiles of the amphitheatre, and promptly missed.
Ignoring the blood on her pert polished leather boots, the crimson mistress waved her blade in front of her with a sudden reprisal of the skills she called on through her ancestral recall of the elf blade singer Liana. Duffy edged away nervously, eyes set on Lucrezia, heart set on a quick escape.
Ruby knew that she did not have long to turn the tide of the conflict around in to her favour. She called on lyrics with the desperation that rocked her nerves to new heights and dropped Lucrezia suddenly. Its tip sheathed itself into the floor with ease, and the sound of stone being cut asunder by steel echoed about the old council chamber with a haunting melody.
“Love me early love me true, tender heart ache is what I am to you,” the very second she opened her mouth a swirl of flam burst up from the ground about her blade. It wavered as if it were an arrow newly embedded in a post as the thermal threatened to carry it into the air. “No more my friend shall I recommend that we remain anything but true.”
“Ruby…what are you doing?” Duffy raised an eyebrow, amazed to see that his best friend had such strength and courage in her to carry on in her time of need. He had clearly been away for too long, and she had clearly learnt a lot more than he could have expected whilst being taught in Raiaera.
She stomped her foot.
Instead of a faint echo, the steel capped toes of her boots shattered the tile with ease. The sound of broken architecture and magical energy fading from the control of the monks who formed the arena filled the air with a zenith of sound even a master musician could not adequately describe.
“We are nothing more than bitches, we are nothing more than bastards, but aflame shall scour our sees from bones, in the phoenix’s cry we’ll find new homes.”
Ruby gave in to the inner creature that powered her very being. She had wanted to sing The First Song on her own merit for so long; she half rushed the verses and cast them to the dry air with chapped lips. She watched Duffy as he slowly retreated, gangly arms and battered, torn clothing flapping as the thermal expanded from the sword to encompass the lower circle of the arena.
“Ruby…please,” he almost sounded sincere.
She cocked her head back and her hair, long and red grew longer and golden than it ever had before. Feathers grew, withered and fell lifeless from her scalp to the broken marble. The thermal exploded into two spirals of fire, one orange, one bright red about her torso. It swirled up from Lucrezia and gathered into a sphere above her head, powered by the echoes of her lyrics as they were sung into the sun’s very heart.
The golden light danced over the far walls, illuminating the ominous columns with spectral dancing faeries that frolicked in their momentary life. Great firebirds swung through the rafters, threatening to rain lava down over the ruins.
“You made me resort to this Ruby!” Duffy snapped, brought his hands together with a bang of the Tinder Gear’s flint leather gloves and set his sights on mounting the only defence he knew how to rely on.
“Do not even try,” Ruby’s voice sounded hollow and tinny, as if she were being used by something else.
She used the strength of the flames to pull his blade from her body, blood poured freely from her wound until a lash of fire sealed it shut wit a painful pang of agony. The Phoenix started to heal itself under it's own scrutiny, it's own heat, it's own passion.
She lowered her head and at the same time, the sphere of flame exploded. It washed over the entirety of the arena, filling the air with a thick golden mist that warmed the skin, but did not burn it.
With a strange smile, Ruby listened to Duffy’s opening line and wrinkled her lips. With her arms held out aloft and the fire still raging overhead, she felt invincible. She felt like she was the immortal being of fire that she knew herself to be. All it took was a little rage.
“In the ashes at the end there is nought but regret, so I sing now to reclaim the payment on my debt.” The last line of the second verse of the First Song conjured new shapes in the flames, only to be shattered and reformed as Duffy’s own power; part of Ruby’s own soul began to work against her.
She gritted her teeth and drew her arms inwards, so that the flames encircled her.
“You always take from your friends Duffy, never give!” She dropped the blade to the ground with a clatter.
“I take only to survive my dear, I take only to rest, I take to give you the life you desire, I take to pass the test.”
The spell song duel began at the height of both combatant’s anger, and from those emotions, something altogether more dangerous and wonderful was born.
The first furlongs of flame lapped up around Ruby’s feet, born from her own words and wielded against her like a mocking blade. Duffy was singing with such anger and conviction that the crimson mistress struggled to keep up the pace with her own singing. She had never seen him so aggressive, in nearly twenty years of being in one another’s delectable company.
“Before mine eyes I see a shadow of bliss, a graceless and angry depiction of schism…” the slow paced lull in her verse brought all the flames together in front of her, and they formed into a kite shield shape that grew so dense she half disappeared behind it’s incandescent glow.
He was alive, fiery, eclipsing everything she strived to be and portray.
She stopped to catch her breath, her palms crossed over her clavicle as if she were keeping something locked away beneath the curves of her ribs. When Duffy returned with a vigorous reprise, she glared at him through her flaming defences and prayed he did not find his voice now of all the times.
“I am lost in the limelight of living with you, torn between lifestyles of poverty and hue, castrated by fear of losing my love, I pray to the Thayne that reside up above.” A tear rolled down his cheek, which inspired Ruby to not be defeated so easily at her own game. Duffy's voice inspired her to reply.
“With this fiery shield I burn away gestures, I contest malice will and enflame all that hurts, with this shield I repel your inappropriate pleasures”, she turned in a full a circle and cast her arms wide. The shield remained in place, but grew brighter when she came fully about. “With this shield you shall have not your desire!” Her vocals hit a new height, rising to a top c before descending into a mournful b flat.
The lethargy of conflict started to take its toll as soon as Ruby stopped. She had to stomp her heel hard onto the enraged flagstones to keep her senses righted, to prevent the spinning sensation that would have cut her connection from the song she was forming into a real and living thing all around her shaking body. The very fabric of the arena, though formed of magic started to shake in rebellion against the immense build-up of emotion which heated the air and clashed against the circle of columns that lined the audience chamber.
“You dare to wield my spell singing against me Duffy, but do you dare hurt me with it? Do you dare turn your words into a weapon, pervert and contort your own legacy into something sick and twisted?” She played her hand, and it was delivered wonderfully. It was a strong trump, one which would serve her well. All self-conscious notions of personal appearance vanished the second she laid her cards on the table. She no longer cared about her sweaty back, her beaten brow or her dry lips. She no longer cared about anything, except finally getting through to her male counterpart about how much of an ass he was.
“I’ve only ever wanted the best for my wife, a loving caress and a home to adore, I’ve always strived to provide and suffice, but here I am knocking down my own home’s door!” The fact that Ruby had dared to play the humility game with him enraged Duffy to the point where he lost all sense of connection with reality. This engagement had long gone beyond a simple vent and remedy to their long standing relationship issues.
This was war.
With a slow movement he pulled back both his fists and with it, two pillars of fire burst up from the ground like subterranean serpents and drew their heads backwards. In the burning, rolling heat two pairs of eyes appeared, burning in the burning heat with an intense and almost solar light. The fire fangs dripped lava to the ground, which glowed even brighter for just a second before it cooled into gobs of an earth giant’s spit.
“I will tear down her walls just to get to her heart, I will cut out her tongue to be silent in fear, I will not let her push me away for no reason, I will kill all the worlds just to make myself clear!” He punched both fists forwards, both hands clenched tightly into meteors of aggression. Under his command and the providence of the spell singing he had drawn from Ruby’s own soul, the fire snakes lunged with quicksilver speed towards the flame shield.
The monks of the Citadel clenched their teeth, but remained silent as was the tradition and tenet of their order during a battle.
The fire snakes collided with the shield and an array of colour and light and patterns of eruption exploded outwards with such creativity, splendour and awe that for a moment, both Duffy and Ruby forgot all their troubles. They forgot that they were trying to kill one another. They forgot that they were liars, beggars and vagabonds masquerading as gods and kings. They forgot that they were tired, only recently freed from centuries of war with an enemy that would not stop to stare at pretty coloured lights.
The bard knew the nature of Ruby’s spell singing, so he did not flinch when the eruption grew so big it engulfed them both. The whole of the chamber soon became filled with an array of swirling gas clouds, licks of flame and glimmering clusters of embers.
“Look what we’ve made through our attempts to destroy…” Duffy’s poetic license made his tongue form the words before he could think about what he was saying.
He could see Ruby’s expression, her shaking fingertips splayed out to her sides and her beating chest. It meant that she had finally seen the same light he had seen.
“It’s…” he tried to describe it, but failed. His chest seemed empty and hallow, his eye sight blurry, his head throbbing as the feedback from the spell song took its toll on his unfettered body. He was not used to the cost of wielding such a powerful magic. He was not used to being stricken with ecstasy with but a single utterance of a sentence.
Perhaps he felt sick because the wounds Ruby’s needle like thrusts had inflicted on his body were finally getting the better of him. Perhaps he just stopped caring about being right.
They stood in silence a hundred or so feet apart, surrounded by maelstroms of heatless fire, swarms of comets spiralling through the cosmos and the beauty of the galaxy that Althanas was but a small, insignificant part of.
Ruby was not entirely sure how, or why, but they were staring in awe at the universe. They had, in their attempts to end one another’s lives created a new form of life altogether. In her chest and in her head she felt two things, both conflicting and both unusual to be so strong in her cold and usually composed self.
“This is radiant,” she said with the adoration of a school girl.
The first was fear. Though used to fear of something, this was a fear of the unknown. She was scared of her own power, and scared that she had misused the intentions of her own words and somehow created this from an unconscious desire to live. Maybe she did not want to hurt Duffy as much as she thought she did after all?
Slowly but surely the cosmos began to sink to the ground, forming little piles of dust which soon turned into mountain ranges of debris, ash and decadence all about the combatants. They slowly dropped their gazes along with the illusion, until they stood opposite one another and arms dropped loosely to their sides in silence.
The second was happiness. Though she felt that strangest of emotions often when in the company of her husband, or indeed, when she was with Duffy, Lillith or Arden in any number of compromising circumstances or states of inebriation, she seldom felt happy because she was afraid.
She felt mortal, weak, and morbid.
She felt so horribly, fully alive.
“Do you still think I’m a bitch?” Her sharp tone cut through the atmosphere like a razor sharp carving knife. The dust at her feet pulsated and the little mountains toppled as if her question had sent out a shockwave through the soles of her boots.
She watched Duffy very carefully as he secured all of his weapons and folded his demi-scarf neatly over his shoulders so that is was no longer eschewed. He did not look at her when he replied, which only confirmed that he was guilty, as well as telling the truth.
“Yes.”
Ruby smiled.
“I still think you’re a bastard, so at least that’s something settled.” She rested her hands on her hips, her right hand close to the tip of Lucrezia’s pommel just in case Duffy dared to try and level the score.
“Do you know what though, Ruby?” He finally looked up at her. She saw the sadness in his eyes and swallowed a lump in her throat.
“What?” She snapped her lips shut the second she replied. Her lips pursed with tension.
“You might be a bitch, and I may well be a bastard, but there is something we both have in common that is sadder still.” Ruby failed to see what was worse than the worst insult he could throw at her. She tapped her right toe and let the rhythm speak on her behalf.
“When it comes down to it, what is sadder still, is that we are both broken things. We are both half empty vessels for half formed souls, struggling to rebuild bridges and bonds after centuries of neglecting our own selves.”
Duffy’s words carried so much weight with them that Ruby had to stride forwards, arms held wide and smile plastered on her face. It was a pleasant expression kept in place by two streams of tears which scoured make up from her face in two symmetrical but chaotic lines down her cheeks. The cracked columns, enflamed flagstones and dusty beams of sunlight which broke through the cracks in the dome that had formed in the storm of songs cast a melodic and idyllic scene around the two best friends.
“There is so much truth to that statement I think I can finally see why you did all the things you’ve done.” Her arms coiled around Duffy, who turned rigid and white as a ghost in the discomfort of being touched, and the awkwardness of a woman showing him endearing affection. He squirmed as she hugged him tighter and tighter stull. Her red hair nuzzled beneath his chin and left strands of crimson on the lapel of his shirt when she stepped back.
“I am sorry to say that just because I understand; it does not mean that I forgive you.”
Her boot rose so quickly and with such might that when it connected squarely with Duffy’s groin; even the monks broke their vow of silence to curse her cowardice and deviant nature. They turned away in sympathy as Duffy fell to the ground clutching his genitals, and flinched as a gob of spit fell like a meteorite from Ruby’s triumphant lips into his flamboyant hair.
As she turned on her heel and started to walk towards the large oak doors that lead out of the chamber and it's dusty, derelict hollow she smiled with wry satisfaction at having been given the chance to work out some issues between the pair.
She smiled brighter still as Duffy mumbled the immortal words she would remember for a long, long time.
"Oooohhh, you've only gone and buttered me crumpets guv'nor!"
Silence Sei
10-10-11, 02:55 PM
The issues with this thread were discussed with its author via IM (any naysayers are free to read the IM log, courtesy of me), and as such is only getting its scoring here. Also being by request, judging as a quest.
Story (7/10):
Continuity (5/10):
Setting (4/10):
Creativity (6/10):
Character (8/10):
Interaction (9/10):
Strategy (7/10):
Mechanics (8/10):
Clarity (4/10):
Wildcard (10/10):
Total: 68
Duffy gets 900 Exp, 200 GP
Ruby gets 550 Exp, 200 GP.
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