From Ashes Resplendent (Open) [Archive]

Ruby

02-26-14, 11:46 AM

Grief oft makes monsters of men, and witches of women. It consumes the happiness focus and joy. Withering, like an incurable disease, a long march to a death metaphorical. Atop the pinnacle of her grief, Ruby Winchester had a decision to make. Either she let it consume her, and undo all her good deeds over centuries long. Alternatively, she could channel it like a blanching flame and cleanse her enemies from the world.

“I’ll burn them all…,” she whispered in trepidation.

It would not be the first time. During the war of the tap, from whence her namesake, Phoenix arose, she had summoned a flame storm unrivalled in aeons. Her heart itself ablaze. Her wrath, scintillating. Her anger, conflagration of sorrow. That fire and the symbolism behind it attracted another to her side. Since that day, they inseparably shaped the world. Rook and Phoenix, Leopold and Delilah, Ruby and Mr Winchester.

“Let your rage consume you, my dear, and the only thing burning here is your shoes.” Leopold’s rebuff was precise and dry. He looked up from his newspaper, a Corone Chronicle, and rolled his eyes. “You are here to focus, not flambé.”

Clenching her knuckles, white diamonds on red skin, the spell singer composed herself. He was right, though she would never admit it. Balance between them shifted. Power transposed into passive aggression. Her dress danced with embers. Her hair, bedecked with crimson plumes glowed. Eyes sparkled. Nose twinkled. Deep heat enshrouded her in readiness.

“I am beyond focussed,” she retorted. She did not believe her words.

Three days prior, they buried Duffy Brandybuck beneath a grand white oak in Market Square. Lacklustre words mixed with arias and psalms echoed still in Scara Brae’s alleyways. Exists and entrances had never, nor never would be so grand. Lifting her spirits had been the goal, for there was no body to bury and no memories to forget. Denied true release for the shell of their friend still walked the earth, the day seemed worthless.

“Show me that, then. Show Tantalus that, above all.” Leopold pointed across the dance hall to the debonair and brooding man leant casually against a colonnade. “Until we’re certain you’re not going to throw everything to the dogs, you’re going nowhere near Sei Orlouge.”

The men in Ruby Winchester’s life often liked to they think controlled her. Truth is, and truth would always be, nobody could take her. If she wanted to kill somebody, and she truly believed she did…then she would. Hell would descend onto the Mystic line, with or without their interference or aid.

“Try and stop me…,” she smirked.

“I do not need to.” He did not. Whoever was about to enter the Citadel would do that on his behalf. “I only asked you to be here. You came, willingly, so you must doubt your own ability to need to test blade and bond herein.”

As her husband sipped from a hipflask, eternally in his greasy palms of late, Ruby thought long and hard. Her leather bodice seemed tight, though not ill fitting. Her hair seemed a burden, though immaculate. Eyes focussed. Heart and nerves calm. Lucrezia singing in her scabbard on her right hip, violin lingering in the Aria ready to reclaim. What was amiss, to make her feel so odd at ease?

“Ever the quickening in a moment, aren’t you dear?”

Leopold smiled. He folded the newspaper, set it onto the table and rose. Matching Tantalus’ demeanour, he leant against the colonnade opposite and folded his arms across his chest.

“I guess you’re done chastising?” she heckled. He nodded. “Well, let him in!” she roared.

The dance hall was two hundred feet long, north to south. Fifty feet wide, and marked by five colonnades down each of its lengths that rose into the infinite bleakness of somewhere above. Constructed out of granite, polished to within an inch and left to the advance of time it reminded Ruby of a tomb. Dwarves ran rampant here in days of yore. She stood dead center, a queen of nothing. Only torchlight gave her foresight, and the pain of dying beneath the cold earth of yesterday would bring her hindsight.

With a certainty that started wars to her motion, Ruby unsheathed her blade. It sang vibrato and in tongues forgotten in praise. Her heart skipped a beat, relishing the reconnection to her kindred-sister-spirit in a sword. She spread her legs, to balance her stance. She cleared her throat. She dredged one last peaceful breath into her lungs and out through her nostrils. Her diaphragm was clear. Her ears were ringing only with joy. Her lyrical content aspirational.

“Let me show you focus iridescent, and focus flickering.” A snarl, a smile, a grimace of wickedness and purpose hotter than any fire formed on the crimson matriarch’s face.