Roht Redaction

[Roht Mirage]

Raylene gasped as Astarelle grabbed her hair, fingers digging into the back of her scalp. Her tricorner hat fell upside down -its lilac plume crushed underneath- upon the table biting into her back. There was a surprised rumble from others in the room, precursor to either protest or action, but the moment froze on the first rays of fiery dawn light breaking through the windows. The light glowed golden on the sand-formed blade encasing Astarelle's hand. She glared over its sliver edge, forcing Raylene into a stare-off even as the blade twitched in the miniscule distance between their sweat-glistened faces.

The pinned woman's eyes, once fidgeting, stilled. With a gradual rising heat -in the scope of that single dawn-stained moment- her eyes began to burn as if reincarnating the fire that had, long ago, left her upper brow scarred and barren.

“You wouldn't,” she sent wordlessly from her scowling, furnace-hot eyes.

Astarelle's grey irises were as cold as steel under Salvar snow. With the haunted voice of a memory, she responded.

“I will do what is necessary.”

... as the desert teaches.



Roht Redaction


http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs28/f/2008/144/0/e/Workshot_Alley____by_Raphael_Lacoste.jpg

Closed. Solo start to pull in all the threads.

[Roht Mirage]

Approximately thirty years before that dawn-stained moment...

He ran as if in a dream; each step a struggle, each push ineffectual. The sand just slipped between his toes with a mocking laughter that he had to imagine, because a bitterly cold wind filled his ears with an undulating, ominous wail. His tears flowed freely, for the night was too dark for them to be a hindrance, and because the visions refused to be washed away. With one small hand holding up his beltless pants, he waved the other ahead at an encroaching shadow. It was only visible because it was a space devoid of faint stars. And it was solid. He wormed his fingers into a fissure in the stone rise and pressed his blood-splattered forehead against it. He could smell the iron in the stone, like a broken bone jutting from the desert's skin. He clung to it...

... and prayed that he was still asleep, having a nightmare.

He had woken to shouts. Every direction. Camp guards and guides, and Ma and Pa very close. When he staggered through the tent flap, he crashed face-first into Pa's hip.

“Stay behind me,” his father ordered as he filled his flintlock with powder. The boy peeked around him to see his mother standing near the oasis. Firelight bounced off the water behind her, casting her face in wavering shadow. He tried to step toward her, but his father gripped his head roughly and pushed him back. “Down!” he shouted, the word more desperate and worrying than the boy had ever heard from him.

Pa ran toward Ma, who gripped one of the strange stone poles that surrounded the oasis. On their arrival, the boy had been entranced by the patterns carved into them; long gouges that combined like the rivers on Pa's maps, but then separated and joined a dozen times over as if confused. Ma had been uninterested. Now, her soft arms ripped the spike free and held the pointed end toward dark shapes at the other side of the oasis.

The boy could barely make them out as they stalked closer; skin dark as if they brought the night with them, flickering spears as the stars. There was suddenly a clash of weapons and pop of powder somewhere in the camp, heralding two shirtless men that erupted into the firelight. The younger of the two -as his face looked less like a rocky plateau- saw the engraved spike in Ma's hand, and he lunged with a bloodthirsty scream that made the boy cower back in the tent entrance.

Pa gripped Ma's shoulder in one hand and levelled the other at the savage. The powder went, obscuring them in smoke. The scream was ended by the blast, for the dark man fell backward, clutching at his chest. His spear skittered to the side and fell into the fire-lit pool.

“Run!” he heard his father bellow from the dissipating smoke. One hand jutted out into the night, then frantically went back to working the powder. “You two hide until it's clear.”

A funeral wail interrupted him. The older dark man was standing over the the body of the younger, now still. “Kaleidha! Kaleidha!” he howled. From the screams and darkness, another man appeared; middle-aged, thinner. The flickering light -some tents were alight now- made the marks all over his arms seem to ripple. They were the same as the spike that Ma still held in her indecision.

He said something to the warrior. A question. The warrior demanded again, “Kaleidha”. Quickly, like a heron snapping for fish, the tattooed man thrust his fingers into the dead man's chest wound, spreading and milking it. Then, he lifted his arms, each wearing a sheath of gore that filled the confused rivers. Before the old warrior's eyes, he clapped. Blood spattered, making them both blink. When the warrior opened his eyes again, there was nothing but rage there. He snarled and spit like an animal. The tattooed man stepped back into the shadows as he charged, howling inhumanly. His spear lay, abandoned, in the sand.

The boy's parents turned as one, gripped the long spike together, and braced it at the beast-man's torso. He took it -melded with it- only slowing a step. His howl rose to a new octave. With one hand, he dragged himself along and around the spike to reach for the two Coronians. Though they were taller than him, he easily seized the mother's shoulder and wrenched her off her feet. She splashed into the oasis as he grabbed the father, birthing a different, more crimson spray that was no less violent.

And so the boy ran. He ran and cried until he met a jutting bone of the desert that whispered of iron. Despite his prayers, he did not wake.

[Roht Mirage]

There was a strange, living warmth to the stone. It seemed alien against his cold fingers as he felt along the fissured face. He was sheltered from the wind, at least, and his tears were slowing, if only because he had no more tears to cry.

He found cracks and wrinkles, some large enough to stick his whole arm into and soak up the collected heat of the day. His pants began to slip again. Reluctantly, he gripped them with one hand and let the other search. Each step was a tiny, tentative probe of the border between sand and stone. Then, one large step as he fell halfway into an opening. It was wide enough that he could just barely touch the opposing walls. He whimpered in relief and gripped the stone to drag himself in.

A hand seized his ankle roughly, smearing him away from the fissure. He screamed -high and frantic and horrified- as he rolled onto his back. His eyes had adjusted somewhat, enough to see the marks on the man's arms. They were dark -darker- and splotchy with dry blood. The scream turned to a wheeze, and the boy choked in a breath. In the relative quiet, a blade hissed into the man's hand. Starlight mirrored and warped off its crude edge. The other hand reached down slowly to grip the boy's shirt. The old blood made his stomach turn. The blade made his throat close. He tried so hard to scream again.

A surrogate obliged him with a shrill, anguished scream among the stars. The savage jumped, flipping his knife as if to stab at the sky. The shriek -close, feral, and very hungry- came again with the promise that maybe this really was a nightmare, and its monster had discovered his trespass. The Fallien man seemed to share the same fear, for he quickly turned from the boy, who on instinct grabbed at the hide bag that bounced against the man's hip and tried to stand. To follow. He feared the blade, but he feared that sound far more; and whatever terrible creature could voice it.

The man cursed and kicked, catching the boy under the ribs. He gagged on what would have been another scream, then reeled backward. His shoulders thumped into the sand, sinking enough that he imagined it might swallow him. In the next moment, he wished it had.

A dark shape blanketed out the stars. It smelled like an uncovered camp latrine; it moved with the shlick shlick of grimy feathers; and it had weight. Two points of weight. He felt the desert bow and run to either side of him, and he sensed the creature's body above. It breathed rapidly and wetly as it fidgeted -feathers rasping instead of ruffling- in a tentative, predatory lean. The boy knew when it opened its mouth, because its breath smelled as if every meal it had ever eaten simply rotted within. He curled his arms up to his ears, because his vision was already lost in darkness and a newly-sprung reservoir of tears, and because -powerless- all he could do was try to block out the inevitable scream. It wasn't a scream, though, but a soft, warbling coo. It still had the edge of teeth, the strain of desperate hunger, and a sickly note of cruel pleasure. But, there was something familiar underneath. A woman long ago devoured, yet living on in the monster's rotting core. In every shriek, there had been a trace of pain. Her pain.

The boy thought of his mother suddenly, and the tears became a torrent.

The she-monster screamed, making him wail in surprise. It wasn't the same sound that had hunted him from the air. It was panic; frenzied, heaving panic. The wails between each desperate breath became wetter, burbling as if she screamed under water. Talons staggered and lashed around his body, peeling from his arms both cloth and skin even as he dragged himself out from below the writhing monster. A wet blade flashed starlight, then plunged once more into the monster's back.

With a final gurgling wail, the monster collapsed at the boy's feet. Her dark wings slapped down, no less sickly in their sudden stillness, but he was out from under their shadow. With a facsimile of vision returned to him, he could see the Fallien man's bare chest -a different dark than the night- heaving in breathless triumph. The savage reared back his head, snorted loudly, and spit upon the monster's corpse, then kicked it.

As quietly as he could, the boy continued to creep away on his elbows. The desert whispered in betrayal under him, and the savage lunged forward. One bare foot slapped down on the boy's leg, pinning it with force that would have broken bone if not for the yielding desert. The blade flickered again, drooling from its crimson meal, yet still not satiated. Weakly, the boy tried to struggle free. His attacker didn't move. He looked up, watching for the shine of the savage's single fang, but instead saw starlight glinting off hesitant eyes.

Where his father told him (in so many bedtime stories) could only be found animal rage and cruelty, the boy saw a patch of humanity. “Please,” he pleaded, unmindful that the word would be meaningless. The desperation in his voice, and the guttering flame of hope underneath, would be clear if the savage was truly more than an animal in human skin.

A familiar scream answered him. Then another, and another. They were far off, but each voice in the nightmarish chorus drew closer. Rapidly.