100 word of Fighting - Orion & Nine
May. 12th, 2020 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_naturesSomething's making Orion anxious; Nine takes matters into her own hands.
Orion hasn’t been acting right since they last expanded his territory.
Nine takes a seat in the crook of an ancient tree, and settles in to wait while he compulsively checks his borders yet again - only this one point, he’s fine with the rest, it’s just here where something is nagging at him. Something he can’t seem to ignore.
An average human would only see a strange-looking youth prowling back and forth across a field, but she sees all of him: her brother is a seething mass of tentacles at the best of times, but right now he’s roiling, shivering in and out of dimensions so quickly that the local reality is vibrating. A gathering storm, ready to spill. The air’s heavy with it. The birds and insects are silent. The nature spirits have fled.
Nine frowns. She may not be able to understand the deeper nuances of genius loci behaviour, but she’s seen this before: when she dared to set foot in her brother Phoenix’s territory. His manifestation had been flaring yellow and red and sparkling copper, not like Orion’s familiar violet, indigo and pewter, but it was the same. Phoenix had been scared of her: the crazy, quarter-angel monster who’d helped kill two of her batch-mates; reduced eleven siblings to nine. He’d wanted her gone. She’d been a threat...
Something is making Orion feel unsafe.
Her Orion, who took her in and made her welcome. Who looks after her. Who believes in her ability to be who she wants to be, instead of the force of death and destruction that she is.
The thought makes her burn inside.
She slips out of her tree and approaches the border: it’s invisible to any eye not attuned to magic, but to hers it’s a shimmering veil of purples and pewter that curves over the space Orion’s managed to claim as his own. When a genius loci settles they take root in the landscape, becoming so deeply enmeshed that leaving means tearing themselves apart. Her brother's kingdom is also his cage. All he can do is stay alert, and make sure he’s ready when, or if, the threat comes for him. And hope the waiting doesn’t drive him mad in the meantime.
But Nine is not a genius loci.
*
She finds it just over a mile away, skulking in the shadows beneath the brooding lump of an ancient howe. An old, old thing. Connected to the land, but not like Orion and the others; it’s something else. Something lost... and forgotten. It stinks of regret and bitterness and fury, mixed with old blood and rot; foetid in the air, saturating the earth itself.
Nine takes a deep breath and slides through the echo of a long-lost door, sending eyes ahead to watch for any sign of the monster within.
There are bones here. Small ones. Human. Far fresher than those the howe-builders intended their monument to house. Sacrifices taken rather than gifted, and less nourishing for it. The old one must be hungry. And weak. Good. Nine swallows and pokes a scrap of bloodied pink fabric with one toe. She’d come to chase it off so that Orion would feel safe, but forcing it to relocate won’t solve this. If it moves closer to vulnerable humans then Orion will get upset; she knows that much from past behaviour, even if she can’t quite follow his thought process.
Frowning, she nudges the scrap of fabric again. It looks like her small friend Maisie’s dress. If Maisie had come this way... The heat burning in Nine’s centre flares: Maisie is her friend. Hers. But this is not the little girl who giggles and blows bubbles at her, that child is safe in Orion’s territory. Nine frowns: the knowledge doesn't soothe the rage. Why not? She trails after the thought, hunting down her answer...
This was somebody else’s Maisie.
She's still trying to work out why that matters when a glimpse of movement drags her attention away from intangible connections: a gathering darkness shifts in the centre of the mound, resting on a hoard of gold and silver, its multitude of shadowy limbs coiled through the dried out bones of an ancient king. Nine hides her eyes in any available nook and cranny: it hasn’t seen her, and she wants it to stay that way. She furls her wings, wishing that her raised hackles didn’t cause them to puff up so, and edges her way through the tunnel. Surely it can hear her hearts battering at her rib-cage? Or sense the heat of her hunger for its destruction? But it doesn’t acknowledge her; there’s no movement in its physical form, or ripple in its unrealities, even as she creeps soundlessly to the door of the burial chamber. Nine scarcely dare breathe as she crouches, drawing in her power. Still no sign that it’s noticed her. Grinning, she braces herself for impact, and lunges at her prey.
It senses her at the very last millisecond and dodges, slashing at her with its multitude of limbs. She feints and darts backwards, but too slow: three of her eyes pop with bright flares of pain, forcing a hiss from her throat. First round to the old one. In her head Nine can hear Eight’s jeers: how pathetic; you never could fight; what fucking good are you?
She pushes the thought away and watches her enemy: ancient shadows, pulsating darkness. A long forgotten Presence, ravenous for the sacrifices of the past. Old, and tired, but cunning. When it comes for her she barely sees it move: one moment it’s there, the next it connects. Her cheekbone shatters, sending an arc of pain through her skull, exploding through her manifestation. She crumples, too stunned to react. The earth is soft and gritty in her mouth, scratchy as it rubs over her teeth; it tastes of mulch and rotting blood.
Oh, Eight would never let her live this down... but why is she thinking about Eight, the sister who abandoned her? She needs to think about Orion. Nine spits out dirt and rolls clear of the next blow, catches the attacking limb and digs her talons into it, then lashes out with her feet and wings. Her foot hits something soft. It gives with a surprised whuff, then a satisfying crunch. The shadows retreat. For now.
Nine furls her wings around herself and sends her eyes out to watch, a tumble of glimpses filling her mind with information while she takes a moment to knit her cheek back together. Even among the dozens she feels the loss of the three injured ones; a blind spot that aches and throbs. They’ll grow back, but that’s not the point: she was careless.
Whispers sound in the darkness. Nine whirls in place, trying to get a fix on it, to predict where the next attack will come from, but there’s no clue to be had. She can hear the thing, can taste its funk in the air, but she can’t see it in any reality she can perceive. It’s invisible to her; she’s out of her depth, should never have come here alone. Swallowing, she backs towards the door; she’ll help Orion guard the perimeter until next full-moon, then they can extend their boundaries this way; continue to detour until they can take this creature on together... but when will it next eat?
Picturing Maisie, she tells the darkness, “If I go you have to stay in here, okay? No children while I’m gone.”
Her feathers ruffle as if struck; she spins all her eyes in that direction but sees nothing, feels nothing but the flurry of air and a blankness. Then the pain comes, a delayed reaction screaming along the nerves where it’s torn into her flesh. It hits her again; this time she feels the claws sharp against her manifestation, tearing in ragged jags. Her ichor spatters the surrounding stone with glowing silver-blue droplets. The serrated edges of its claws catch on muscle as they carve through her meat; she screams, flaps frantically to dislodge it, throws herself against the wall.
The whispers start again; she feels what can only be a tongue trail over her shoulder. It tastes her, and she thinks of the small bones mouldering in the dark. Why did she think she could kill it alone? She’s not a fighter, Eight always told her that; and she’s no good as a maker, no matter how much encouragement Orion gives. The best she can do is encourage rot and ruin...
Unless.
She slumps to the ground, face in the dirt among the old blood and bones, feels the creature revel in its victory even as she brings her eyes around to watch. It’s not completely fooled: it clings still, claws gouging deeper as it mouths at her silvery hair, the back of her neck. She waits, hoping it won’t start to nibble, until finally she sees a flicker of a shadow against her glowing wing as it rears back to strike.
Nine twists in place to meet it and shoves her fist down its throat. She gives it everything she has to get good and deep, limbs trembling with the effort. Then she sags, trying to catch a moment of rest to steel herself.
In the following silence she feels it chuckle around her arm, then its teeth slowly start to squeeze down. It thinks that was her only move.
“I'm here because you're scaring my brother,” she tells it, quietly. “I don’t like it when he’s scared. He believes in me. Everyone else thinks I can’t change, but Orion...” She pauses, licks her own ichor off her lower lip. “He says I don’t need to change what I am, I only need to change what I do with what I am until I’m happy with who I am. Does that make sense to you?”
The pressure pauses, but does that mean it's confused, or that it understands? Nine unclenches her fingers slightly, working her fist inside the beast’s gullet until the sharp piece of bone she’s holding pricks at its insides. It tenses around her arm, then relaxes again - she doesn't have the leverage to stab it; what can she do with a mouldy old shinbone?
“He talks in riddles sometimes. He doesn’t mean to, but... It took me a while to work it out: I can only break things down, or help things that break things down, but... that’s not bad. If old things don’t break then there’s no room for new ones, right? Just because I’m doing the breaking part doesn’t mean I’m not helping with the making part... It’s a big circle. There’s a song about it.” She twists her wrist, scoring a shallow groove across the inside of the thing’s throat. Too small a wound to be dangerous under normal circumstances, but beneath her fingertips a trail of mould branches out from the bone; it blooms into the scratch, glowing silver blue with gifted power, and begins to spread.
Nine leans in close, strokes the creature’s face with her free hand, and gently murmurs, “You should make room now.”
*
Orion watches her approach, his eyes glowing pewter flames. If anything his tentacles are even more frenzied than when she left: a fractal nightmare that would drive a human insane with one glimpse.
“Stay!” she snaps as he starts to push through the thick membrane of his territorial boundary. If he hurts himself coming to rescue her then he can’t run her a hot bath, and that would suck.
“Damn it, Nine, what is that thing?” he says, prowling back and forth. “What happened to you?”
“Bad thing bit me,” she mutters, not adding ‘du-uh’, even though she really wants to. The creature begins to stir again, but she doesn’t stop to subdue it - home is right there; she can make it. She gathers up her strength, steels herself against the jagged pain of moving, and teeters towards Orion. So tired. She’s left a trail of ichor all the way from the howe, bright in the dew-soaked grass, but she’s close to home, and help. Her brother will tut and fuss over her wounds, but he’ll look after her, and there’ll be lots of hugs, and tea and biscuits. Maybe even cake. “No cake for bad thing,” she tells Orion, firmly.
“No argument here,” he replies, leaning both of his hands against the glowing wall of his boundary and peering out at her. “Be careful, okay? It looks like it’s waking up.”
She’s about to tell him to suck eggs when the shadow flickers to life and flings itself back towards the howe. The brutal jerk reopens the wounds along her back and arm; white heat burns through her manifestation, blinding her, ripping her breath from her lungs. So close. She’s so close. It’s not going to win now. Nine snarls like a thunderclap and lashes out, throwing all the power she has left into it.
The creature falls flat in the grass, choking and clutching at the mushrooms and toadstools that spill from its many mouths.
“Stupid head,” Nine mutters. It should have noticed how many fresh spores they’d gathered on their journey here. She grabs it by one spindly limb and starts to drag it again, refusing to give in to the shakes, until finally she’s close enough for Orion to catch her without doing himself too much damage. “Had to bring it back. In case it's still... oogy,” she tells him as she slumps into the familiar warmth of his tentacles. She sighs and makes herself comfortable. Her brother gives the best hugs.
“Oogy?”
“Can't let it get strong again...”
“It did this to you?” Orion asks.
She nods into his shoulder, then grins in satisfaction as he grasps the creature in his glowing tendrils and drags it close. It has enough consciousness to claw at the ground and screech before it’s engulfed in tentacles. Whether it’s crushed or ripped apart in the morass she doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. It won’t survive. Outside his territory Orion might be as helpless as a snail torn from its shell, but she brought the threat inside.
A few dark streaks mar his pretty scales as the screech chokes off, then even those burn away against his inner flame, leaving behind no more than a foetid smell that’s gone with the next breeze. Orion pets her hair, and murmurs, “Come on, let’s get you home, see how bad the damage is - what were you thinking, taking that thing on by yourself? We could have gone together in a few months.”
“There’s lots of Maisies. They’re not all Maisie.”
He stares at her as though she’s not making any sense. Nine frowns at him, then decides not to dwell on her brother’s inability to follow such a simple piece of logic. He can be really dumb sometimes. Instead she pats his cheek with a filthy hand, and says, "I want a bath."
"Maybe after I've finished stitching you up."
"And a cup of tea."
"That you can have before I start stitching you up."
"And cake?"
"Before or after the bath, not during. I'm not spending another afternoon digging the bits you didn't like out of the drain."
"They didn't float," she points out. She can hardly be blamed for a cake's failings.
Orion shakes his head and hugs her tighter, and Nine can't help but smile: her brother's paying attention to her again, no longer distracted by the monster beneath the hill; no more Maisies are going to vanish into that darkness, be they hers or somebody else's; and the nature spirits are already back, a bold one even snuffling at her tangled hair like a happy dog. Her little world is returning to normal.
Not bad for a night's work.
https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/385245.html?thread=2260253917#cmt2260253917
Orion hasn’t been acting right since they last expanded his territory.
Nine takes a seat in the crook of an ancient tree, and settles in to wait while he compulsively checks his borders yet again - only this one point, he’s fine with the rest, it’s just here where something is nagging at him. Something he can’t seem to ignore.
An average human would only see a strange-looking youth prowling back and forth across a field, but she sees all of him: her brother is a seething mass of tentacles at the best of times, but right now he’s roiling, shivering in and out of dimensions so quickly that the local reality is vibrating. A gathering storm, ready to spill. The air’s heavy with it. The birds and insects are silent. The nature spirits have fled.
Nine frowns. She may not be able to understand the deeper nuances of genius loci behaviour, but she’s seen this before: when she dared to set foot in her brother Phoenix’s territory. His manifestation had been flaring yellow and red and sparkling copper, not like Orion’s familiar violet, indigo and pewter, but it was the same. Phoenix had been scared of her: the crazy, quarter-angel monster who’d helped kill two of her batch-mates; reduced eleven siblings to nine. He’d wanted her gone. She’d been a threat...
Something is making Orion feel unsafe.
Her Orion, who took her in and made her welcome. Who looks after her. Who believes in her ability to be who she wants to be, instead of the force of death and destruction that she is.
The thought makes her burn inside.
She slips out of her tree and approaches the border: it’s invisible to any eye not attuned to magic, but to hers it’s a shimmering veil of purples and pewter that curves over the space Orion’s managed to claim as his own. When a genius loci settles they take root in the landscape, becoming so deeply enmeshed that leaving means tearing themselves apart. Her brother's kingdom is also his cage. All he can do is stay alert, and make sure he’s ready when, or if, the threat comes for him. And hope the waiting doesn’t drive him mad in the meantime.
But Nine is not a genius loci.
*
She finds it just over a mile away, skulking in the shadows beneath the brooding lump of an ancient howe. An old, old thing. Connected to the land, but not like Orion and the others; it’s something else. Something lost... and forgotten. It stinks of regret and bitterness and fury, mixed with old blood and rot; foetid in the air, saturating the earth itself.
Nine takes a deep breath and slides through the echo of a long-lost door, sending eyes ahead to watch for any sign of the monster within.
There are bones here. Small ones. Human. Far fresher than those the howe-builders intended their monument to house. Sacrifices taken rather than gifted, and less nourishing for it. The old one must be hungry. And weak. Good. Nine swallows and pokes a scrap of bloodied pink fabric with one toe. She’d come to chase it off so that Orion would feel safe, but forcing it to relocate won’t solve this. If it moves closer to vulnerable humans then Orion will get upset; she knows that much from past behaviour, even if she can’t quite follow his thought process.
Frowning, she nudges the scrap of fabric again. It looks like her small friend Maisie’s dress. If Maisie had come this way... The heat burning in Nine’s centre flares: Maisie is her friend. Hers. But this is not the little girl who giggles and blows bubbles at her, that child is safe in Orion’s territory. Nine frowns: the knowledge doesn't soothe the rage. Why not? She trails after the thought, hunting down her answer...
This was somebody else’s Maisie.
She's still trying to work out why that matters when a glimpse of movement drags her attention away from intangible connections: a gathering darkness shifts in the centre of the mound, resting on a hoard of gold and silver, its multitude of shadowy limbs coiled through the dried out bones of an ancient king. Nine hides her eyes in any available nook and cranny: it hasn’t seen her, and she wants it to stay that way. She furls her wings, wishing that her raised hackles didn’t cause them to puff up so, and edges her way through the tunnel. Surely it can hear her hearts battering at her rib-cage? Or sense the heat of her hunger for its destruction? But it doesn’t acknowledge her; there’s no movement in its physical form, or ripple in its unrealities, even as she creeps soundlessly to the door of the burial chamber. Nine scarcely dare breathe as she crouches, drawing in her power. Still no sign that it’s noticed her. Grinning, she braces herself for impact, and lunges at her prey.
It senses her at the very last millisecond and dodges, slashing at her with its multitude of limbs. She feints and darts backwards, but too slow: three of her eyes pop with bright flares of pain, forcing a hiss from her throat. First round to the old one. In her head Nine can hear Eight’s jeers: how pathetic; you never could fight; what fucking good are you?
She pushes the thought away and watches her enemy: ancient shadows, pulsating darkness. A long forgotten Presence, ravenous for the sacrifices of the past. Old, and tired, but cunning. When it comes for her she barely sees it move: one moment it’s there, the next it connects. Her cheekbone shatters, sending an arc of pain through her skull, exploding through her manifestation. She crumples, too stunned to react. The earth is soft and gritty in her mouth, scratchy as it rubs over her teeth; it tastes of mulch and rotting blood.
Oh, Eight would never let her live this down... but why is she thinking about Eight, the sister who abandoned her? She needs to think about Orion. Nine spits out dirt and rolls clear of the next blow, catches the attacking limb and digs her talons into it, then lashes out with her feet and wings. Her foot hits something soft. It gives with a surprised whuff, then a satisfying crunch. The shadows retreat. For now.
Nine furls her wings around herself and sends her eyes out to watch, a tumble of glimpses filling her mind with information while she takes a moment to knit her cheek back together. Even among the dozens she feels the loss of the three injured ones; a blind spot that aches and throbs. They’ll grow back, but that’s not the point: she was careless.
Whispers sound in the darkness. Nine whirls in place, trying to get a fix on it, to predict where the next attack will come from, but there’s no clue to be had. She can hear the thing, can taste its funk in the air, but she can’t see it in any reality she can perceive. It’s invisible to her; she’s out of her depth, should never have come here alone. Swallowing, she backs towards the door; she’ll help Orion guard the perimeter until next full-moon, then they can extend their boundaries this way; continue to detour until they can take this creature on together... but when will it next eat?
Picturing Maisie, she tells the darkness, “If I go you have to stay in here, okay? No children while I’m gone.”
Her feathers ruffle as if struck; she spins all her eyes in that direction but sees nothing, feels nothing but the flurry of air and a blankness. Then the pain comes, a delayed reaction screaming along the nerves where it’s torn into her flesh. It hits her again; this time she feels the claws sharp against her manifestation, tearing in ragged jags. Her ichor spatters the surrounding stone with glowing silver-blue droplets. The serrated edges of its claws catch on muscle as they carve through her meat; she screams, flaps frantically to dislodge it, throws herself against the wall.
The whispers start again; she feels what can only be a tongue trail over her shoulder. It tastes her, and she thinks of the small bones mouldering in the dark. Why did she think she could kill it alone? She’s not a fighter, Eight always told her that; and she’s no good as a maker, no matter how much encouragement Orion gives. The best she can do is encourage rot and ruin...
Unless.
She slumps to the ground, face in the dirt among the old blood and bones, feels the creature revel in its victory even as she brings her eyes around to watch. It’s not completely fooled: it clings still, claws gouging deeper as it mouths at her silvery hair, the back of her neck. She waits, hoping it won’t start to nibble, until finally she sees a flicker of a shadow against her glowing wing as it rears back to strike.
Nine twists in place to meet it and shoves her fist down its throat. She gives it everything she has to get good and deep, limbs trembling with the effort. Then she sags, trying to catch a moment of rest to steel herself.
In the following silence she feels it chuckle around her arm, then its teeth slowly start to squeeze down. It thinks that was her only move.
“I'm here because you're scaring my brother,” she tells it, quietly. “I don’t like it when he’s scared. He believes in me. Everyone else thinks I can’t change, but Orion...” She pauses, licks her own ichor off her lower lip. “He says I don’t need to change what I am, I only need to change what I do with what I am until I’m happy with who I am. Does that make sense to you?”
The pressure pauses, but does that mean it's confused, or that it understands? Nine unclenches her fingers slightly, working her fist inside the beast’s gullet until the sharp piece of bone she’s holding pricks at its insides. It tenses around her arm, then relaxes again - she doesn't have the leverage to stab it; what can she do with a mouldy old shinbone?
“He talks in riddles sometimes. He doesn’t mean to, but... It took me a while to work it out: I can only break things down, or help things that break things down, but... that’s not bad. If old things don’t break then there’s no room for new ones, right? Just because I’m doing the breaking part doesn’t mean I’m not helping with the making part... It’s a big circle. There’s a song about it.” She twists her wrist, scoring a shallow groove across the inside of the thing’s throat. Too small a wound to be dangerous under normal circumstances, but beneath her fingertips a trail of mould branches out from the bone; it blooms into the scratch, glowing silver blue with gifted power, and begins to spread.
Nine leans in close, strokes the creature’s face with her free hand, and gently murmurs, “You should make room now.”
*
Orion watches her approach, his eyes glowing pewter flames. If anything his tentacles are even more frenzied than when she left: a fractal nightmare that would drive a human insane with one glimpse.
“Stay!” she snaps as he starts to push through the thick membrane of his territorial boundary. If he hurts himself coming to rescue her then he can’t run her a hot bath, and that would suck.
“Damn it, Nine, what is that thing?” he says, prowling back and forth. “What happened to you?”
“Bad thing bit me,” she mutters, not adding ‘du-uh’, even though she really wants to. The creature begins to stir again, but she doesn’t stop to subdue it - home is right there; she can make it. She gathers up her strength, steels herself against the jagged pain of moving, and teeters towards Orion. So tired. She’s left a trail of ichor all the way from the howe, bright in the dew-soaked grass, but she’s close to home, and help. Her brother will tut and fuss over her wounds, but he’ll look after her, and there’ll be lots of hugs, and tea and biscuits. Maybe even cake. “No cake for bad thing,” she tells Orion, firmly.
“No argument here,” he replies, leaning both of his hands against the glowing wall of his boundary and peering out at her. “Be careful, okay? It looks like it’s waking up.”
She’s about to tell him to suck eggs when the shadow flickers to life and flings itself back towards the howe. The brutal jerk reopens the wounds along her back and arm; white heat burns through her manifestation, blinding her, ripping her breath from her lungs. So close. She’s so close. It’s not going to win now. Nine snarls like a thunderclap and lashes out, throwing all the power she has left into it.
The creature falls flat in the grass, choking and clutching at the mushrooms and toadstools that spill from its many mouths.
“Stupid head,” Nine mutters. It should have noticed how many fresh spores they’d gathered on their journey here. She grabs it by one spindly limb and starts to drag it again, refusing to give in to the shakes, until finally she’s close enough for Orion to catch her without doing himself too much damage. “Had to bring it back. In case it's still... oogy,” she tells him as she slumps into the familiar warmth of his tentacles. She sighs and makes herself comfortable. Her brother gives the best hugs.
“Oogy?”
“Can't let it get strong again...”
“It did this to you?” Orion asks.
She nods into his shoulder, then grins in satisfaction as he grasps the creature in his glowing tendrils and drags it close. It has enough consciousness to claw at the ground and screech before it’s engulfed in tentacles. Whether it’s crushed or ripped apart in the morass she doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. It won’t survive. Outside his territory Orion might be as helpless as a snail torn from its shell, but she brought the threat inside.
A few dark streaks mar his pretty scales as the screech chokes off, then even those burn away against his inner flame, leaving behind no more than a foetid smell that’s gone with the next breeze. Orion pets her hair, and murmurs, “Come on, let’s get you home, see how bad the damage is - what were you thinking, taking that thing on by yourself? We could have gone together in a few months.”
“There’s lots of Maisies. They’re not all Maisie.”
He stares at her as though she’s not making any sense. Nine frowns at him, then decides not to dwell on her brother’s inability to follow such a simple piece of logic. He can be really dumb sometimes. Instead she pats his cheek with a filthy hand, and says, "I want a bath."
"Maybe after I've finished stitching you up."
"And a cup of tea."
"That you can have before I start stitching you up."
"And cake?"
"Before or after the bath, not during. I'm not spending another afternoon digging the bits you didn't like out of the drain."
"They didn't float," she points out. She can hardly be blamed for a cake's failings.
Orion shakes his head and hugs her tighter, and Nine can't help but smile: her brother's paying attention to her again, no longer distracted by the monster beneath the hill; no more Maisies are going to vanish into that darkness, be they hers or somebody else's; and the nature spirits are already back, a bold one even snuffling at her tangled hair like a happy dog. Her little world is returning to normal.
Not bad for a night's work.
https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/385245.html?thread=2260253917#cmt2260253917
