She Treaded Heaven

[Ruby]

She Treaded Heaven (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI_pPEysgYQ)


2551


Closed to Jack Callahan.

Fallen tumbling run down spires,
Connected by stake, bound by nail.
Upon the dockland spider webs
The awing sea recounts a tale.

Distant shores on vibrant floors,
Illuminated with ochre light,
They call to me with mariner's song,
And I go without a fight.

For the tale they tell is perfect,
They have beauty in its care,
Oh for a life upon the waves,
To see distant shores so fair!

Cydney Oliver.

[Ruby]

Thirty years hence, the deeds of one Ruby Winchester will have been forgotten. Fate would wager they will have been buried in the continuum of reality, pushed aside, buried and lost to the ebb and flow of time. A hundred years, Duffy too will have fallen from the limelight. It is thus a heroine’s duty to endeavour to do all she can whilst fame is hers and infamy is kept at bay by the example she leads. With a careful, lusting patience, today is the first day of many that she has vowed to dedicate to this cause. Ruby Winchester for too long has been a leading woman without a leading role; no more, goodbye obscurity, hello provincial adoration.

“This is not the image I pictured when I asked the monks for a slice of heaven.” The red headed spell singer curled her lips into a wry smile, tracing the patterns of the clock tower that stood on the far side of the dark, sluice like water as she considered her predicament. The river she stood on was unfamiliar to her, but it was impressively wide and noticeably stank with stagnation and squalor. It reminded her of home, in a surprisingly endearing fashion.

The clock tower extruded from a large gothic building with too many windows to count, which was surrounded by trees and the hubbub of a busy city. On her side, she stood on a wide broad walk which seemed to run along the entirety of the water way. It came to a head at a bridge to the north, and disappeared along with the contour of the river to the south. On either side of her, tall spires and erratic, alien architecture jutted up into the horizon, breaking any hope in the woman’s mind of seeing the distant world the pious keepers of the Citadel had created.
She sighed, a slow, heavy exhale of regret. Whatever world this was, it was part of a distant land she would never see. Her ties were in Scara Brae, her history faded, her allegiance as solid as a rock to the people she cared for on the small island nation. Her jaunts to the Citadel were the only time she allowed herself to embrace flights of fancy, required as they were to break the illusion of safety that the slumbering dockland city she called her home created.

“I guess I failed to specify the monks create an image of my heaven,” she said gingerly, finally shedding her doubt and reservation and annoyance. As she spoke, the clock tower started to chime. Its heavy tolls vibrated through the air, threatening to shatter the very fabric of the universe with each declaration of time’s turning.

Ruby flicked her hair back behind her ears and arranged the various feathers that laced her red mane into a respectable fashion. The succour air, which drifted between swamp sheen and a heavy night’s debauchery slowly, began to seem natural, and her noise ceased to wrinkle in disgust between breaths. Able to enjoy her environment more as she adjusted to its oddities, she examined the world to her left, the bank of the river she longed to know the name of.

Everywhere there was to see their were benches, thick heavy pine stained with liquor and piss. In between each seating length rose tired looking willows and gnarled, ancient oaks. Their bases, little circlets of iron grated soil were covered in decade’s worth of pigeon droppings and refuse from lazy, disrespectful passers-by. The juxtaposition between the dirt and the tall and grandiose designs of the glass panelled buildings and old, market town mansions created a patch work tale that spoke to Ruby some of the city’s history. Unlike Scara Brae, which remained constant in its design and approach and culture, this city was old.

“I can feel its age in the air, its whispering tales and secrets on the wind.” She bounced on her heels, the black polished leather of her new boots creaking with lack of use.

Ruby continued her observation until the wind changed, a shift in the atmosphere that she knew all too well. Somewhere in the arena, a door had opened. She pictured all the many possibilities that approached her, shifting from Orkish brute covered in furs and faeces to tall, slender mages hoping to excavate secrets from innocent minds with their sorcery. So far, only one of her imaginings her turned out to be true, and it had ended with her neck being torn open and her giblets spattering over a salty, barnacled deck.

She caught sight of a sign stuck to the wall which separated the wide path along the river from the raised grass bank that kept the waters at bay from the myriad buildings tall and imposing. Though the pale sun shone from behind whispery clouds and made a hazy veil form beyond thirty feet or so, what it said was immutably obvious.

“This city is called London, north Westminster Lane.” She ignored the small numbers and mention of a grand wise ‘district council’, focussing instead on the name of her environment with the sort of innocent wonder a child found themselves struck with when they were told a fairy tale at bed time. Of course, if Ruby Winchester had ever been to the far off world called Earth, she would have lost any notion of fantasy there and then, and cursed the day she ever set foot in the capital city of a similarly obscure and backwards island that was tied to a larger, more powerful nation.

As she waited, her heart pounding in her chest, tightened ribs and muscles straining against the wrappings and pressure of her tight and well-worn red dress, she watched several small ships float up and down the river. The people on their decks seemed oblivious to the striking girl wielding a sword amidst a strange world, but she knew that was down to the magic at work in the fabric of the stone and the flow of the water, and nothing telling of London’s citizens.

“Let’s see what you have to offer me then stranger,” she stopped bouncing, withdrew her silver sliver of a sword she called Lucrezia and struck it against the flagstones of the riverbank’s wide road. Sparks flickered to life before they faded to embers and then nothing. The blade sang a melody without words as it rushed through the cold, early morning air, and Ruby’s body seemed to shine with a passionate fire – it burnt with anticipation, smouldered with excitement, raged with fear.

[Jack Callahan]

Jack was furious.

It wasn’t as if it took much to get him there. Over the past hour or so the Vault Knight had been through a veritable emotional gauntlet. At first he’d been awestruck -- marveling at Radasanth’s ziggurat, shrouded in mystery and mysticism even as he scaled its steps. Next came elation; the purest joy, excitement, and relief imaginable all comingling to make his heart thunder, his spirits soar: Big Ben! Shortly thereafter came the bitter realization that he was where he wanted to be, just not in the correct when; that abrupt understanding bringing with it shattered hopes, his sailing spirits plummeting back to the here and now in the most dramatic, violent manner possible. And with his reservoirs of curiosity, happiness, and depression all spent, Jack reverted to the only emotion he had left. It was his safety net, his comfort zone, his default.

It was pure, unabashed rage.

“Fucking shit!” he roared, crying out to the very sky itself. The vocal eruption sailed out and across the River Thames, bounced off of the walls of Westminster, and ricocheted along obscure lanes and alleyways; threatening to shake shingles free of their homes – mansions that had become little more than aged and decrepit shanties with the passing of time and tenants. Every edifice, every brick, every board, and every stone in London had heard Jack Callahan’s profane outburst. Each had their own response, be it mimicking the shout with lifeless echoes or trembling in fear. No man, woman, or child would do the same.

Jack was mentally preparing his apology to the crowd that was swarming about him when he had noticed their lack of response. At first it didn’t register, the ocean of drably-dressed Victorians crested with top hats and parasols distracting his mind. Then it hit him like a brick, shocking him in a manner comparable in scale to the way the smell did. The nauseous miasma the nearby river propagated was only enhanced by the strangling sea of people, utterly unaware of Jack’s personal space – or any of their own. Combining that with the perpetual, debilitating humidity which the river city was known for left Jack with only one thought:

I need to get the fuck out of here.

Since the hoard of Brits was utterly unaware of Jack’s existence common courtesy became a casualty of necessity. The Vault Knight pushed, shoved, and threw his way through the pulsing, raucous amoeboid, battling his way towards the river’s banks – towards breath and life. Within the span of a few minutes he’d made it, instinctively reaching over his shoulders and tearing his sweat-soaked shirt over his head. His chest rose, swelling as it greedily inhaled something other than body odor.

With callousness born of anger Jack discarded his shirt, the thin white cotton so drenched that it made audible contact with the nearby bench. I bet they’d shit, he thought, if these people could see me. The notion brought a smirk to his lips and brightened his green eyes as they traced the cityscape. His short-shorn muss of auburn hair wasn’t long enough – nor well enough organized – for the bygone era. The only substantial piece of clothing he wore at that moment were the jeans that clung to his hips – the same pair that had seen too many days in the Althanian sun and been on too many forays through the woods of Corone. No, Jack Callahan in no way modeled the image of the Victorian Englishman. He rolled a shoulder, glancing down and admiring how the moisture in the air clung to his flesh and caused the black of his tattoos to shine like obsidian. At least they haven’t faded, he sighed, casting a forlorn glance at sneakers which could not boast the same.

With a measure of comfort regained and senses gathered the Vault Knight turned, walking along the cobbled street that paralleled the Thames. His trek was brief, peridot gaze settling upon an oddity – his prize – not twenty some feet along: a beautiful, fiery-haired woman in a scarlet dress. Her image forced him to halt, eyes affixed to her frame long before she noticed him. At that moment two things reflexively flickered through his mind. The first was unintentionally vulgar. The second was a bit more poignant, prominent enough to sneak its way past his vocal cords:

“I don’t fight girls,” he muttered.

[Ruby]

“Excuse me?” Ruby’s words rang out like peals of a gong in a silent courtyard.

There were three things Ruby Winchester could not stand. They were, in order of disgust; ignorance, chauvinism and tomatoes.

“I am not a girl, and I will have you know this now good sir, I have every intention to hit you without the same reservations.” By hit of course she meant stab, by same reservations she meant ‘without the stubborn nature of a man’. She saved herself introductions, and stepped forwards seductively, hips swaying, head rocking.

London, the strange tapestry of style and squalor heaved and pulsated around the woman’s chest as it puffed up with the movement of her sharp intake of breath. As she exhaled, the people on the barges, boats and bridges all seemed to stop and stare at her. For a brief second, the magic became real, her words commanding the fabric of The Citadel and chaining the monk’s mettle to her might. She imagined them all and felt their adoration, and with it, she drew on her penchant for a dramatic entrance, and sang.

“I am a woman scorned yet mellow, strangely drawn to this city succour,” her eyes began to sparkle as her rage and the indignation she felt to this strange and abrupt braggart came to fore, “with my mettle and my majesty, I smite the weakened state of man.”

It did not take much effort on her part to incite the mystical nature of the world in her mind to life. The Aria, something entirely incomprehensible to this man swirled and rocked and rolled. The silver mercury sea called on all the powers of every bard and citadel of creativity that ever existed and channelled their creative might into her petite figure and her figure hugging dress. Her eyes glowed, her skin tingled, and the quay by the Thames, as it was known to its indigenous people shook gently with tremors of admiration.

If Ruby had mastered the art of worldly travel, she would have started to sing cockney shanties.

“With my fire and with my anger, I conjure flames that scour mankind, with the flames and with the emotion; I rupture skies and strike men blind.” Feminism started to ooze from her pores, dropping to the sand stone and weathered floor of the river’s great quay with reckless abandon. “With pales unspoken and weakened soul, I fight for all that a woman loves,” and with her love, a solid sphere of air, dense, packed, tight, formed before her chest at the tip of her outstretched blade.

Lucrezia sang a melody unspoken, in a dialect of elven even Ruby was too innocent to understand.

The Rampant Requiem, a form of spell song older than Scara Brae and much older than this strange city in the minds of the monks shattered a tile three foot in front of the spell singer. It bounced up into the cold autumn air and suspended itself with its own manifold destiny.

“Learn your place,” she said with a snarl, which heralded the forward momentum of the invisible sphere of energy. It bounced forwards and as the spell singer spread her legs without needing a man’s attention; the orb bounced twice before it sprang up into the air and propelled itself towards her opponent.

He would learn to address her properly, even if it meant that the city took a back step from her attention.

Ruby assumed that even in a place as wondrous and odd as this, nobility commanded the respect it deserved. With hair eschew, heart racing and arms flailed wide, she let the remnants of her song fade into the chill air and watched with keen interest to see how the man would react to the oncoming projectile.