The Faerie Queen

Faerie tales from beyond the veil to the streets of RhyDin

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Post by JewellRavenlock »

Isuelt was late, mostly because she had missed out on the group text. She had never gotten the hang of technology and that was just fine with her. However, upon getting the note that Jewell needed help, Isuelt set out immediately. Once at the Rhydin Grind, she spotted the group in the corner between the front door and the kitchen. From her frenzied pace, she came to a standstill behind one of the couches and nodded deeply to Jewell in apology before she took a quick glance around at the mostly familiar faces.

While Jewell seemed genuinely pleased to see Issy, going so far as to actually smile despite her misgivings about how the conversation had gone, Mallory took the old grimoire -- currently open to facing pages depicting magic circles and dissected bodies -- and flipped it shut as soon as she saw the Scathachian, heaving it into the lead-lined box in her lap with effort. If the vigilante had not been there to hear anything about the ritual they planned to perform, she saw no need to enlighten her now.

The only thing that Isuelt had a more difficult time trusting than technology was magic. And to her, what was important was how her weapons might be used, how Jewell needed her to help. The actions that had occurred nearly a year ago, which started this unraveling of the Empress, bothered her only slightly. And most of her regret had come in not to undermine the witch or the others that helped that night, but that Isuelt herself had not been able to act more quickly to prevent what Kal had done. Mallory had little to fear from this warrior; her blade was sworn to Jewell and to all who would defend her. She was already privy to some of the information that Jewell had shared with her. Isuelt was simply awaiting her orders.

“Remember when I said we were going to steal something, Is?” the faerie asked her friend. This at least was familiar: planning trouble with Issy.

The witch followed Issy’s gaze to Jewell, trying to transmit a silent question to the faerie with that look, at which Jewell looked to Mallory and the others. “Someone else catch her up,” a regal command from the Empress coupled with a boneless sink into the chair. She was already at her limit for the day it seemed.

“Tch.” That little sound was as openly annoyed as Mallory was willing to be with Jewell, at the moment. She looked down at the lead box in her lap, locks still unclasped, and back up at Isuelt. “What do you know about Belladonna?”

Isuelt blinked to Mallory. She knew that the witch couldn’t be talking about the herb. Isuelt swallowed and floated her gaze quickly over the faces gathered before it rested back on Mallory and shook her head, but softly.

“It’s the name adopted by the evil version of Jewell, from another version of RhyDin, who’s set herself up as the Faerie Queen of Little Elfhame. It’s her heart we’re planning to steal — to rid our Jewell’s of its iron.” The witch leaned forward, steepling her fingers beneath her chin, waiting for dispute or question from Jewell or Isuelt before continuing. The Empress smiled at that but let Mallory tell her tale.

Soberly, Isuelt nodded. “Along with the knight’s relic…” Her voice barely impacted the air around her. Jewell had already told her some of the ideas a short while back. But she was still unclear as to the particulars, which frankly could be none of her business. She chanced a glance to Jewell as she wondered if Ishmerai was back yet.

That perked Jewell up, but only a little. “Which he hasn’t produced yet.” Her tone implied that she did not believe he would anytime soon and that this was all a big waste of time. She had apparently dropped the pretense of hope and faith she had affected at the start of this little pow-wow.

Isuelt chewed that over for a moment before she spoke again, “He’ll do his part. We will do ours.” She was looking directly at Jewell, and held her gaze for a long moment before she nodded once and returned her attention to the witch. Somewhat ashamed, Jewell went back to studying her shoes.

Mallory’s own expression seemed troubled over the subject of the knight’s absence, but when Isuelt’s attention shifted back to her, she composed herself quickly. “Right now, the plan is that Salvador kills Belladonna -- the sooner, the better -- and brings us her still-beating heart. Then I just wait until Ishmerai returns with the relic, and…” She hesitated for a moment. “…use it to ritually switch the heart with Jewell’s. Everyone’s big worry right now is about the aftermath of killing Belladonna. I don’t know what her followers might do, and there’s a vampire court involved in this mess, too. They’ve aligned themselves with her, so I don’t know what they’ll do when she’s gone… but they might try to kill everyone involved, like Belladonna’s own goons have been trying lately,” she added with a growl.

There may have been a tremor of her expression when Mallory reported on killing Belladonna; however, it could also be said that Isuelt’s eyes narrowing slightly may have been more of an eagerness rather than an objection. However, the talk of vampires did give the warrior cause to sigh. “Well,” she began, “It seems to me that we will have our work cut out for us.” She locked eyes with Mallory. “I will be ready.” While Mallory may not have trusted Isuelt, Isuelt did at least give the witch the courtesy of hearing her out. Jewell trusted her, which meant quite a lot as it turned out. So the least Isuelt could do was back her. For now. After all, she backed Kalamere once upon a time, too.

And they all knew how that ended.


((The February 6, 2018 events co-written with the lovely Team Awesome gang <3))
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

February 8, 2018

“Oh. Hey, Jewell? Are you a god? And not in a ‘oh, I’m such a goddess,’ preternatural confidence way, but like... literally.” The Empress was slumped in her seat, head tilted back as she daydreamed and Mallory pored over books she kept in her collection. The question had her sitting up, and she frowned, shaking her head. “No? Then we need Belladonna alive.”

“What? But you said at the coffee place--”

“I fucked up.” It was an open admission of guilt, though not one the witch dwelt on for long. “We can tether the ritual to a source, but only one. That source can either be the still-beating heart, with another sacrificial body as the stand-in for Belladonna… or the Starlight Basin, which we need. So unless you’re actually an ancient forest deity and you’ve been holding out on us, we need that sociopath alive.”

“Well…” Jewell slouched back in her chair again, exhaling a bit of profanity, “Shit.” Biting the inside of her cheek, she looked across the table to the witch. “Maybe we should wait for Ishmerai to come back to grab her then…” she left the thought hanging, asking for her advice from the witch without asking, still unsure as to what to do. If they grabbed Belladonna this evening, there was likely no chance of surviving if Ishmerai didn’t make it home because Jewell did not think it likely the Night Court would still want her after this blatant act of war. If they did, they would make her suffer for it.

Mallory bit her lip as she thought, then shook her head faintly. “Cane’s right,” she said. “Containing her won’t be any easier than it was containing you, but that’s the only downside I can think of.”

Jewell sighed, thinking of Sin’s question: “Are you sure there is no other way?” She was pretty sure there was only one way forward, but she’d damn herself anyway and dash that dark hope to pieces to make them happy because she loved them. She reached for her phone.

Text to Sin: Change of plans for tonight. Mallory says we can’t kill her yet
Text to Sin: Still in the mood to cause a stir and capture a faerie annnnd what are the chances we can pull it off alone?

Text to Jewell: absolutely

“I don’t think I’m going to need my favorite fae killer now,” she mumbled to herself, fingers raced over the phone’s surface as if she had been doing this tech nonsense for years.

Text to Canaan and Sal: Change of plans for tonight. Capture, not kill
Text to Canaan and Sal: Resident witch says it won’t work otherwise because I’m not a fucking goddess (little does she know…)
Text to Canaan and Sal: I think I can handle this

((Co-written with Mallory and Sinjin))
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

She fixed his bowtie on the elevator ride up the rooftop atrium, her hands incredibly steady despite the tremulous nature of her heart, driven to beat at a frenzied pace that it could only be maintained by the rush of adrenaline that arrived before a fight. “It should be a sin to look so good,” Jewell teased.

The plan was a simple grab-and-go tactic: infiltrate the party as guests, grab Belladonna, leave. There was no need for unnecessary heroics or bloodletting tonight. They had even dressed the part to mingle at the masque--she in a long backless gown with a slit scandalously high up her thigh and he in suit he was born to wear.

The elevator dinged.

The doors opened.

Belladonna stood on the other side, flanked by her giant knight in chitinous armor, a retinue of unseelie fae, and several members of the Night Court. “Ah Jewellsie!” she smiled. “You know, I told the Earl you would come. I knew you’d never concede to the Embrace quietly. And here you are!”

Jewell did not glance aside at Sin as she pulled off her feathered mask, letting it flutter to the floor as a spark of magic kindled to life in her right hand.

“Well then…”

* * * * *

The tear in the Veil spit the three of them out onto a cold, quiet street in Old Temple, far from the bloodbath of their own making in Dockside. Jewell started to fall forward, but Sin threw down the unseelie faerie queen and caught the other by the arm. She pivoted to crash into him instead of the snow dusted cobblestones, covered in the blood of her enemies, and laughing--breathless, helpless, and maybe just a little insane. “That was… that was…”

Foolish. Stupid. Wreckless.

“Amazing?”

“Yes.”

Then her lips were on his, her hand curling around the back of his head, the other tangled in the blood stained shirt of his suit, to pull him closer. Every moment, she was closer to death but Jewell Ravenlock hadn’t felt so alive in months.

* * * * *

“My lord… they’ve taken Belladonna.”

The Earl of the Night Court did not look up from his goblet of freshly spilled blood when the injured messenger addressed him, paying him as much mind as the mewling mortal draped across his lap, whose last drops of vital essence had filled his cup. “And yet you stand before me of your own free will, unlike the faerie whose protection I charged you with. What does that say about you?”

His vibrant eyes met the lesser vampire’s, alight with fury and a thirst to indulge it… a thirst restrained by how thin his ranks had become in this over-protracted war, and how much he needed this otherwise worthless kindred and dozens more like him.

“My lord -- ” he stammered, and his elder pushed the dead weight of the blood-drained mortal out of his lap and raised a hand for silence.

“I would have heeded this prediction more carefully if she had not spent months filling my ears with her unhinged ranting and raving,” the Earl snarled, rising to grip the edge of his desk. “But we need Belladonna as much as we need her iron-sick whore of a counterpart. Do you know why that is?”

Whatever reply his underling was stumbling through was choked off when his better child, Célestine, stepped out of the shadows to curl a hand around the messenger’s cheek and whisper past him: “Loose threads.” She flashed a toothy smile and pushed the poor man aside, prowling around the room to her father’s side, her high heels squelching in the thick pool of blood behind his desk. “The portal to Faerie is still open. The errant knight could return. It would take a fae creature as powerful as Jewell Ta-Neer to seal it…”

She tucked a few strands of gray hair behind his ear, and he chuffed at her attention to the minor imperfection, though her words assauged him: “And I know the Earl Ténèbres leaves nothing to chance.”

The Earl gave her a fraction of a thin-lipped smile, as much admission of her rising esteem in his eyes, especially since his idiot son’s tryst with the fae, as he was willing to reveal. “Keep our people off the streets, find any deserters, and bring them back into the fold by any means necessary. I will reach out to our mercenary kin, and increase our depleted numbers until we can delay no further.

“Now go.”

((Co-written with Mallory and Sinjin. Posted in semi-unfinished form))
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

February 9, 2018

Betelgeuse stood on the cobblestone streets of Little Elfhame, warhammer in hand. A scrawny bogie grovelled at her feet, “We--we put them to the question, Lady Knight. No one knows how to get to where the seelie bitch is hiding our queen.”

“You questioned all of them?” Betel looked loathingly down the once cheerful streets of the fae community in the heart of Old Market. The windows on all the shops and homes were broken, the glass spread across the cobblestone streets to mingle with the rubbish collecting there. Curious, fearful eyes observed their meeting behind doors left slightly ajar and the veil of pulled curtains. There was no laughter or joy. The glamour of Little Elfhame had been broken.

“Yes--yes we did. All of them. Many times over.”

Her heart constricted in her chest. Traitors, all of them!. Belladonna was her queen. She was her everything, yet these pathetic fae and faeries did not see her greatness. They chose the side of the false queen. The pretender. The broken. Jewell Ravenlock. “We will find her,” she swore to herself.

“Yes Lady Knight! We shall.” A hungry light entered the bogie’s eyes, “But what, pray tell, shall we do with all these people?”

“Cleanse them,” she growled in disgust. “Cleanse them all.”
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by Mallory »

February 10th, 2018

Ishmerai's beacon home was lost, and with it, Jewell and the remaining Summer girls seemed to have given up any hope of victory. But in spite of this, Mallory came to the sanatorium as soon as she heard that Belladonna had been captured. There was work to do, and if and when Ishmerai finally came home?

The witch would have to be ready to perform the Rite.

She followed Almast down a long, narrow stone staircase into the sanatorium's lower level, following closely on the heels of the petite Summer girl. It was cold down here, colder than the witch had imagined, and her foggy breath lit up as the string of faerie lights flickered to life along the cramped brick corridor ahead of them.

Despite the gravity of their situation, Allie blew out a little puff of breath just to watch it condense in the air. "We're basically inside the mountain now. It helps keep it cold and Jewell has other ways, but I don't know that it's ever this cold."

That elicited a frown from the witch. "It feels like a tomb," she breathed in reply. Her gaze sought out the doorways to either side of the hall, little alcoves of impenetrable blackness cut into the slick, time-worn bricks. There were torches resting in sconces to either side with recent scorch marks on the walls, but every one of them was damp and unlit, which only deepened Mallory's unease.

"This one," Allie nodded to a solid, iron door that looked fairly new. "Ishmerai laughed at her when she said she wanted this installed. Asked who she planned on locking up." She jangled a set of keys and unlocked the door, grunting as she pushed it open, "Careful. She's batshit crazy."

Mallory's eyes flickered to Allie's fingers as they touched the door, and back to her face with concern, but whatever the iron did to bother her, the Summer girl was too tough to let her discomfort show. "I won't be long," she whispered, and paused by the door to give her a nervous smile. "And if I am, punch me in the tits as hard as you can. That should knock out any glamour." Never mind that last time had been an (alleged) accident.

"I might just do it anyway... just to be safe," the girl grinned through her nervousness.

"Tch." The witch stepped through the entrance and pressed her hand against the heavy door. It was uncomfortably cold, painful to touch for more than a moment. She pressed it shut, replacing the iron barrier between what little magic Belladonna might still muster and the world outside her cell, sealing herself in the darkness with the evil queen imprisoned within.

She held her breath, catching in her throat in a soft gasp, and listened.

Belladonna's breathing was a raspy, labored thing in the dark but her voice was still like honey, "Ahhh I was hoping you would come, darling."

Mallory narrowed her eyes but did not utter any reply. Instead, without warning, she flexed her fingers, drawing a lambda in the air, and a blinding golden light appeared at the apex of the small, circular chamber. Its brilliance dimmed in the space of the single breath the witch finally released, casting long shadows around Belladonna and the three heavy iron chains that wound around her body and bound her to the floor.

The faerie flinched back initially at the brilliance, but was otherwise sitting as comfortably as she could. In fact, her demeanor was of a person completely at ease and in control of her surroundings. "That's much better. I did so want to see your pretty face."

"Why?" The witch indulged her baiting words with a one-word question as she stalked over, dropping her bookbag just outside of the loose circle formed by the three points where the chains were bolted to the floor. She tugged her gloves off with her teeth as she came to a kneel by Belladonna's side, only a few feet away from her at most.

She smiled, all sharp teeth. "Because I want us to be friends, of course!"

"Friends with the nameless mortal girl who's going to oversee your doom?" the witch murmured, doing her very best to mind those teeth as she pulled Belladonna's long blue hair back from one side of her neck.

Bella didn't snap at her. Not yet. She was still smiling, though it had a pitying quality to it. "Oh little Nadya Volokhov, you think much of yourself."

Mallory's fingertips paused on Belladonna's neck, just as she located the faerie's pulse. Potent and powerful, moreso than she anticipated. Oh, the magic she could work with such blood flowing through her veins... Her gaze moved to Belladonna's. "Who told you that name?"

"Did she tell you I wasn't that dangerous, darling?" With Mallory so close, she whispered now. "Did she tell you that I was crazy? That I don't know things? I know things."

The witch scowled, shifted her eyes to her wristwatch as Belladonna's veins moved subtly underneath her pale skin, and counted heartbeats silently to stop inwardly chastising herself. It wouldn't do to let this woman into her head, literally or figuratively. "I'm so very happy for you." The words came tersely, through her teeth, as soon as she had her heartrate pinned down.

Belladonna's wicked laugh echoed off the walls of the small room. "I knew we would get on if we could just sit and chat with each other. We're going to be good friends when this is all over. I can tell. I won't even let that nasty old demon play with you again. Oh no no. It'll be just me and you," she sighed dreamily.

"I don't like to keep up relationships with the dead." She adjusted the simple shift Belladonna had been given to check her unglamoured chest for any signs of scars. "Nothing personal." Whether she meant invading her privacy like this, or their future non-friendship, she left unclear.

"Don't you, though? How is little Larkin? And dear Beckett?"

There was a single wince from the witch, an expression she did not mean to reveal to the prying faerie. She turned away quickly, rifling through her bookbag for something.

"That good, huh? Oh love is hard, dear Mallory!"

The knife came down quick across Belladonna's arm, the copper blade biting deeper than needed to spill blood into the little glass vial Mallory kept pressed to the base of the fresh wound. "I'll be taking some hair, too," she added, deciding to warn her about the less painful of the two samples.

The faerie hissed at the unexpected wound, but not much could deter her. "You going to keep a little for yourself? Maybe take a little taste?"

"Not really my style," Mallory said as she took a small lock of her hair with help from the same knife, dropping the little cluster of wavy blue strands into a second vial. She replaced both in her bag, zipping it shut, and turned to stare at the faerie, squatting at the edge of the circle a few feet away from her. She studied her face, the line of her bones, the fine features that reminded her of the Jewell she knew, and silently wondered at Belladonna's state.

She tilted her head and studied her right back. "Shame you chose the wrong side in all this. I could have made you great."

"You're an unmoored sociopath stranded far from home, with such poor impulse control that you can't possibly foster the relationships or hoard the resources necessary to bring you anything of real value." Mallory gave her a pitying look and a slow shake of her head, not unlike the one turned on her earlier. "There's nothing you could have offered that would have put me on your side."

Bella pouted a little, "Such cruel words. But come now, darling. You know that's not really true. You dream of the things I could offer you." Her grey eyes were sharp in the dim light. "You know... you call me a sociopath, but I prefer to think of myself as enlightened. You're still playing their games. Playing by their rules. Stuck by their rules. Limited by their rules. I make my own rules. I play my own game."

The dim golden light of Mallory's cantrip went out, plunging them both into darkness. The witch swore and tore her glass pendant away from her necklace as the horrible sound of wrenching iron filled the tiny space. Chains rattled along the slick, freezing floor and snapped taut, and the fire that leapt from her fingers illuminated the narrowed grey eyes and sharp, pearly teeth of Belladonna, stopping just short of the witch's face. The iron door clanged open, silhouetting Almast in the entrance, but Belladonna paid her no mind.

She only had eyes for the witch, holding her gaze as she backed out of the cell, gracing her with a wicked grin, paired with a promise:

"And I only ever play to the death."

((Written in collaboration with Belladonna's player, with thanks!))
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

February 14, 2018

Eri stopped for a moment beside the ruined pumphouse in the courtyard to shift the bags she was carrying. They were filled with extra components for Mallory’s casting as well as her own equipment. The delinquent was weighed down with the variety of weapons she had been carrying on her person at all times for the past week as well. Once the weight was adjusted she took a moment to look at the witch to try to interpret Mallory’s mood. Even if she had been upbeat today, the previous days the witch had been somber enough to rub off on the delinquent and add to her growing unease throughout the week.

Mallory found a smile for the delinquent when she felt her eyes on her, somewhere between reassuring and apologetic, though the witch herself did not feel reassured in the least. Ishmerai was far away, on a deadly errand Mallory herself had largely devised, and the doom of Jewell’s heart was almost at hand. While the Sight sometimes veiled or obscured the truth, it had never lied to her: the fae’s heart would beat its last at the stroke of midnight.

She curled an arm around Eri’s for a gentle squeeze and broke a few steps ahead, stopping to kneel before the portal to Faerie in the dry, frozen grass. Her head was heavy with guilt and sorrow, too clouded by the emotions to sense even the potent ebb and flow of magic through the brick archway right in front of her. She shut her eyes and counted to ten, and when she was done, her eyes were brimming with tears but her head was clear.

Katto,” she murmured to Eri with a soft smile, opening her left hand.

Eri nodded, managing to form a smile as she reached for the witch’s left hand. She had been in the habit of keeping the same small knife she had used in the Samhain fight on hand for the purpose, and now used it to make the needed cut on Mallory’s palm.

The witch didn’t even wince at the pain, too used to it now after so many castings. She cupped her palm to pool the blood, holding it up to the diminishing rays of the sunset as she peered through the archway. Then she blew out a long breath, rippling the surface of the little crimson pool and sending one, two, three glimmering drops sliding along her fingers, ready to carry her messages into the realm beyond.

* * * * *

Inside the sanatorium, the mood was forcibly cheerful, aided by the alcohol spread across the dining room table. Sapphire had poured her emotions into an elaborate dinner that none of them really touched, opting instead for the stores of fae spirits Jewell had pulled from somewhere, rescued from the ruins of Beyond the Veil before Belladonna swept into Little Elfhame perhaps.

As they drank and swapped stories and jests, Jewell’s gaze strayed again and again towards the clock. “The last heartbeat of the very last second of the Feast of Saint Valentine.” Her hand flitted over the spot beneath her ribs where Kalamere had stabbed her. The year of grace her half-elf lover had bought her was almost at its end.

Jewell Ravenlock had escaped the reaper long enough and had paid the price for the chase she had given him. The remaining moments of her life bled away with the ticking of the clock as she lifted her glass for another drink and enjoyed the company of those she held dear.

They had arrived in staggered order. Jewell had stolen as much of Sinjin’s time as she could over the last few days and coaxed him into staying the night with her. “Let us drink and fuck for tomorrow I may die,” wasn’t quite how that old saying went, but it seemed like a good motto all the same.

Sapphire had arrived this morning, undeterred and defiant in the face of Jewell’s threats to kick her ass and send her right back home again, adamantly refusing to leave Jewell alone on Valentine’s Day of all days. “I wasn’t here for you last year and look what happened!” She was also absolutely certain that Ishmerai was going to arrive any moment. While she cooked, she kept glancing towards the door as if the knight was going to burst in: hale, healthy, and with the Starlight Basin in hand.

Isuelt had come at Jewell’s request. This was her friend who had seen her at her absolute worst, who had seen what the Temple of the Divine Mother had done to her and had not turned away. Instead, she had pulled the Namekeeper’s intestines from his body inch-by-inch so that Jewell could sleep a little sounder at night, knowing that some vengeance had been served in her name. She had been less of a friend lately and more scattered in her thoughts than usual, but the Judge was here tonight. There was no way she was going to let Jewell out of her sight for more than a few minutes. Isuelt wanted to wring every drop of time from the evening and savor it slowly like a fine wine. She couldn’t bear the thought of Jewell actually dying; moreover she couldn’t bear the thought of not helping the Empress. She would stay as long as Jewell would allow and her blades were always sharp are ready to defend, more so tonight than any other night.

As the sun finally set and Jewell wandered around the room, turning on the mage lights with a touch and creating a warm, rosy glow to chase away the night, their conversation began to flag and wane. None of them had the energy to maintain the cheerful affect when facing the reality that the day was almost done and the knight had not come as promised.

The faerie sighed, looking out the window at the snow capped mountain.

“Maybe you should lay down for a bit mama? You know, while we wait. You seem tired.”

Jewell smiled back at her, shaking her head, “I’d rather not. Maybe you could grab the guitars? I’ll play the song I’ve been--” She paused, her brow furrowed.

“What is it?” Sapphire leaned forward, reaching for her. “Is it your heart? Do you need your medicine?”

She shook her head head, getting back up off the couch. She did not correct Sapphire and remind her that the time for medication was through. “Someone’s at the front door.”

* * * * *

“I’m telling you, it’s Ishmerai!” Sapphire called after Sin and Jewell as they headed out the door, leaving her and Issy to the spread of vittles and drink. Jewell shook her head, speaking quietly aside to Sin as they descended the broad, main staircase of the sanatorium. “It’s not Ishmerai.” There was no way the knight would knock on the front door so insistently--whoever it was had been pounding away on the wood for five minutes now--or at all. This was his home.

“Everything okay?” Lavanya called out to them from the third floor hallway.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” she assured her despite the unease curling in her stomach which grew as they continued downstairs and whoever it was persistently banged their fist against the front door. Sinjin was forced back a step when she pulled the door open to reveal an agitated Théodore Ténèbres on the front landing of the sanatorium.

“Teddy,” she observed dumbly. “What--”

“Angel!” He reached for her and she instinctively flinched back, but it didn’t matter. He could not easily cross the threshold even if he had somehow been able to get through the wards. Her wards were based on intent; Theo clearly meant her no harm. That did not mean she was going to let him inside. “Let me in. We have to--” He saw Sinjin standing there behind her, and his pleading turned into a low growl at the back of his throat.

That hardened her against him. Her hand curled around the edge of the door to shove it closed in his face. “Go away, Teddy.”

His glance at Sin was murderous, but he softened when he looked at her, green eyes filling with tears. “But you promised. You promised to come to me today. You have to let me do the Embrace. I can’t let you die. You said we could be together forever.”

Jewell clearly hesitated, lips pressed together. This had been the plan, but once they captured Belladonna, she had been sure this route was off the table. Now Teddy was standing there, holding her one chance of survival out to her, and Ishmerai was not coming. He was gone. Dead. Never to return. And her heart was struggling to beat. Every minute it came closer to failing.

When she glanced back to Sin, Theo urged her angrily, “There’s no time to waste. They’re going to do it whether you choose it or not!” He reached for her again, pushing through the threshold barrier with some difficulty. “Let me--”

There was a large crack and snap before a rush of magic backlash washed over them. Jewell gasped, hand to her heart as she fell forward, catching herself on one knee. Glass shattered as the Night Court smashed through the windows on every floor, entering the sanatorium.
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

The ripples of a horrible tear vibrated across the Weave and flooded Mallory’s senses with its violent disruption, and the rose-tinted fireflies fluttering near her hand turned an angry shade of red. Glass shattered up and down the halls of the sanatorium, on every story, but the witch’s gaze was on the rooftops, where dark shapes prowled towards the courtyard, barely visible in the fading orange light of dusk.

When she heard the sound of shattering glass Eri moved defensively to stand back to back with Mallory. Her eyes, scanning the roof line were already showing telltale yellow lantern glow. One hand caught the length of chain of the meteor hammer she carried, the other closing on the sharpened stake attached to the end opposite the iron ball. Watching the figures, the delinquent set the heavy iron swinging in repeated circles.

Mallory caught the fireflies with a swipe of a hand, breathing whispered words into their wings. Lorelei. Ishmerai. Find them! Warn them!

By the time Mallory had released her messengers, sending them fluttering through the portal to Faerie, several of the dark shapes were loping across the courtyard. One bounded ahead of the others, rolling its head as it called its kindred on with a feral shriek. Its long, pale fingers lengthened into claws, and it used them to find purchase in the ground and leap off, pouncing at the witch with preternatural speed.

Eri was nearly caught off guard by the speed with which the loping attacker pounced, but was able to check the motion of the chain she held further up to suddenly shorten the swing of the iron. The inertia sent the weapon hissing through the air and crashing into the head of the leaping assailant. The moment it was knocked down Eri sprang on it, pulling the chain through her hands quickly to seize the sharpened stake. She drove this into the downed monster’s chest and straightened, getting the weapon in motion once more. “We have to find some cover!” she exclaimed.

As Eri’s final blow turned the vampire into a cloud of grave dust, Mallory scattered a spray of blood across the ground, and three crimson hounds sprang up to defend them, snarling and snapping at the approaching vampires. The witch did not wait to see how her summons would fare against these creatures; the spell would buy them precious moments and little more.

“This way!” she cried, grabbing at the delinquent’s shoulder to turn her before bounding for the nearest way out of the courtyard, racing against the half dozen vampires crawling spiderlike towards the doorway from above…

* * * * *

Teddy grabbed Jewell’s arm as she half-knelt on the floor, desperately trying to push aside the pain from the spell backlash. He pulled her to her feet roughly. “Jewell, come with me! I can save you from this.”

“Get off me,” she summoned a dagger to her hand and swiped at him, scoring a shallow cut across his chest. He released her, backing up a step, stunned. There was no time to deal with him further. A half-dozen kindred were coming for them. They were running up the stairs behind Theo and had come crashing through the windows on either side of the door. Jewell pulled a second dagger from the air as she stepped forward to meet them.

They were fast but the faerie was light on her feet. Her heart raced in a continuous, shrill scream inside her chest as she opened the abdomen of the first one she met, pivoting in her bare feet and shoving the vampire aside while she put the point of her dagger through the throat of the next one and left it there, pulling another from the air, drawn from the ridiculous collection in her closet upstairs.

At her back, Sin grinned as he faced the Night Court.

* * * * *

Mallory and Eri hid together in the cramped confines of a servants’ staircase. The witch was backed into a corner, hidden protectively behind the delinquent, faintly illuminated by the glow of her phone in the darkened space. Eri pressed close to the nearby doorway and listened to the sounds of cracking doors and shattering glass, the arrhythmic thump of their loping footsteps and the deep huffing breaths of their trackers attempting to pick up the scent of mortal flesh. The blood was still flowing from Mallory’s left hand, albeit slowly. They wouldn’t remain hidden for long.

Mallory texted as quickly as her shaky fingers would allow.

Text to Team Awesome from Mallory: sanatorium vampire attack
Text to Team Awesome from Mallory: help


The witch shared a nod with the delinquent and they broke from cover together, racing down the corridor towards the living quarter and their allies, pursued by the wraith-like shrieks of the undead behind them. They’d been made.

* * * * *

Isuelt and Sapphire were sitting in the living room, nursing glasses of whiskey, when Sapphire shot upright on the couch with a gasp. “The wards!” She felt the breaking of the powerful magic her mother had crafted around the grounds of the sanatorium only seconds before vampires crashed through the windows of Jewell’s quarters.

“Hold them off!” she shouted at Issy whose blades were already drawn, heading for the stairs and instantly proving herself the daughter of Harris D’Artainian by punching the first vampire she encountered so hard in the stomach that the man doubled over, giving Isuelt enough time to take off his head in one quick, clean slice.

Sapphire dashed up the remaining stairs to her room, snapping on a pair of bracelets and anklets, which activated into light, flexible gauntlets and shin guards. The hoodie sweatshirt she pulled on and up over her hair hardened into a helmet, and she slid on her bar ring, letting it expand into a shield. The techno battlemage hooked her mana-blade to her belt before snatching up her iron-tipped axe just as one vampire came through the door. The energy blade hummed to life and she spun it around, feeling like a badass. “Let’s go.”

By the time she rejoined the Judge, Isuelt had dispatched several vampires across the living room. Wordless, the pair jogged out the door, the Scathachian warrior taking point before waving the younger girl on as they headed down the stairs. They could hear the clash of weapons from below but were unassailed until they reached the second floor where they found Abene and Lavanya fighting off an onslaught of fae pouring in from all the portal doors scattered across the city.

“Scathach’s blades…” Isuelt muttered under her breath as she threw herself into the path of two of the arriving vampires. There was no way for her to fully comprehend the nature of these vile creatures and just how they had invaded Jewell’s private sanctuary. As she took up her blades and worked them with honed precision and sharpened experience, there was one thing she was certain of: the flesh of these unholy beings were no match for her blessed Scathachian swords. Still, even as she kicked her own path free of a head and two arms, they kept coming. Her dark eyes darted about, trying to keep tabs on her compatriots, namely Sapphire. All the while, her mind wondered if Jewell was still downstairs at the door and how many they would have to cut down before they got to her. “We have to get downstairs!” Isuelt called aloud, then grunting as she was hit from behind and driven into a nearby wall. She wasted no time turning around, instead she kicked out at the wall to distance herself from it in order to gain the room she needed to lift her left blade before her and rotate it in her hand so that with a strong pull of her arm toward her body, she stabbed the vampire behind her. Then finally turning around, her right blade swung and landed his head on the floor beside his feet. Isuelt claimed her first skewering blade an instant before her victim’s body joined its head in a heap on the floor.

Sapphire and Isuelt then ran past Cane once they had reached the second floor corridor; he was already streaked with the shimmering blood of the fallen faerie crumpled at his feet.

“Reinforcements!” Sapphire cheered, though the smile she flashed the Cajun was grim.

Cane tossed the bloodied iron spike he was holding into a reverse grip, scowling in Sapphire’s wake. “Hey!” he demanded, knowing full well Jewell’s daughter wasn’t supposed to be here. “What are you doing here?” Naturally, she ignored him; there was death all around them. He glowered at her back, watching the two women as Issy carved a path with her blades through the mayhem. If anything happened to Sapphire, Jewell would be devastated.

His attention fractured away from the fight as he gathered his will to send a spell of protection with expert aim at the girl’s back. Thin and flexible, the invisible shield spread like a liquid when it hit her, moulding itself over the layers of armor she already wore. She shot him a look over her shoulder at the feel of the magic, but didn’t have time for anything else as a wiry little redcap tried to shorten her by swinging an axe at her shins.

Cane might have done more, but was distracted by a burst of fiery pain as a knife was embedded to the hilt between his ribs. He caught the offending faerie by the hair and yanked her off balance, driving the heavy weight of his boot into her side as she tumbled to the floor. With the knife still protruding from his side, Cane dropped to one knee over the faerie and hammered the iron spike into her chest with enough force to crack the breastbone.

He reached for the knife to pull it out, but was beaten to the punch as Salvador rushed past him. The Spaniard ripped the knife from his body, hurling it across the room to find a new home in the head of an unfortunate Bogie. Cane hissed, rising to his feet as he rounded on Sal.

“That was mine!” He pointed the tip of the iron spike at the Spaniard in accusation, whose wildly glowing eyes and cruel smirk were the last thing Cane saw before he slipped away into the shadows. A monstrously wicked smile stretched across the Cajun’s face as he turned, heading in the opposite direction, toward the terrible sound of crumbling brick and glass where a hideous troll had just plowed its way into the sanatorium through the wall.
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JewellRavenlock
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

Lorelei peered into the flickering light of the firefly clutched in her fingers, where she beheld an image of the witch’s vivid green eyes within her own. She had seen what her cousin was truly capable of. She knew not to trust her. And now this mortal girl was begging for her aid.

“My Queen.”

Sir Alwyn and Dame Alynna stood before her in her study, their emerald-haired heads bowed in deference to their Queen, hands on the hilts of their matching silver swords. She gave the pair an expectant look and Alynna stepped ahead of her twin brother to speak.

“Our Seekers followed the other messengers, and found him at Coldwater Crossing.”

Lorelei bent her thumb to the firefly tickling her palm with its little legs, stroking its luminous shell as she spent a few precious seconds thinking about all that she held in her hand. She gave the creature a sad smile, one she shared with her two trusted knights as she looked up at them.

“Call our guards to the garden portal, then take the six best and cross over.”

“My Queen -- ” Alwyn began with a frown.

“If a man stands on my doorstep with a knife in his hand, is it not more prudent to kill him than lock the door?” Alwyn stepped back again with his head bowed, and Lorelei dismissed them with a simple, graceful nod. As soon as they left she deflated, thin shoulders falling under the weight of the choice she had made.

She strode over to the small desk in the corner, opened its single drawer, and tipped the crimson firefly into a crystalline jar with more than twenty others. “Should have been more trusting,” she chided herself quietly. Then she stepped up to the window, threw it open, and stepped out.

A blast of cold air howled down from the mountains in the Far Lands and across Queen Lorelei’s demesne, but the headwind was no match for the powerful wingbeats of the massive crane swooping away towards Coldwater Crossing…


* * * * *

Célestine Ténèbres, daughter of the Night Court, quickly narrowed in on the blue haired Empress when she entered the sanatorium. “Out of the way little Theo,” she pushed her brother aside as he tried to get between her and Jewell, who was holding off three other vampires and a sluagh single-handedly while laughing--of all things!

If the Empress had to die, this was how she wanted to go. Not in a house fire as she had been forced to feign so long ago. Not by her lover stabbing her in the heart with an iron shiv because she had so foolishly sold her name. And not by her heart giving out after a long struggle, pointless struggle.

“No! You can’t,” Theo grabbed his sister’s arm before she could take another step. “Don’t touch her!”

She rounded on him, slashing her elongated nails across his face. “Unhand me you fool! Father will be here any moment now.” Theo might have been a failure, but Célestine would have the faerie in hand when their father arrived, even if she had to take out her brother in the process.

It wasn’t necessary. Théodore Ténèbres was not of the same ilk as his sibling or his father. He was a coward by nature and the pull on his loyalty from the blue-haired faerie (and his desire for her) and the demands of his family were too much for him. He neither stood by Jewell’s side nor aided his sister in taking her.

Instead, Théodore ran.

Célestine did not run. This was her night. After this, she would forever sit at her father’s right hand. She stalked across the foyer towards where Jewell had been cornered near the solarium. The frail woman had somehow managed to dispatch two of the vampires and was holding off the third while she took care of the sluagh.

Isuelt came to a skidding halt as she came down the stairs and rounded the corner into the foyer. Somehow she had lost track of Sapphire and Cane; she was half expecting them to be already in the foyer. Instead, she saw a woman she did not readily recognize. Célestine held herself like a powerful woman would; her chin high and her eyes sharp. Isuelt had unknowingly managed to cut off her pathway to the solarium and the two women stared at each other for a long moment; sizing each other up.

“You reek of mortal and undead,” Célestine arched a slender brow and peered down her nose at Isuelt’s entirely battle-soaked appearance. She had blood smeared along her forehead and cheek, her blades were dripping, proudly displaying their prowess.

“Who are you?” Isuelt already knew half of the answer to that question was someone who is no friend of Jewell’s.

“No one that the likes of you need to worry about.” Célestine was ready to dismiss the Scathachian, were it not for the blades she held. The heat she felt coming off of them was the only thing about Isuelt that gave the daughter of the Night Court any cause for pause.

“We’ll see about that.” Isuelt shook her blades and let the blood spatter across the floor, renewing her weapons for the next trial. The warrior looked over the blonde woman, who didn’t look like much. Though as Isuelt raised her blades in attack and charged at Célestine, she found that the woman’s hand was already on Isuelt’s wrists, holding her blades at bay. Isuelt grunted, Célestine’s strength was deceptive, not to mention her speed. Both women took a moment to regard the other once again.

Célestine’s nostrils lightly flared as she inhaled, still keeping her sharp emerald gaze on Isuelt. “You’re a little different, aren’t you?”

Isuelt struggled to free her wrists from Célestine’s grasp as it tightened, the blades held in suspended animation above their heads. The Scathachian gritted her teeth and decided it was time for a bit of dirty pool. She planted all of her weight on her back foot and kicked out with her front. It was just enough of a surprise so that Isuelt managed to wrangle on of her wrists free. Célestine was not impressed, she snarled slightly and bared her teeth. To be sure, Isuelt didn’t really know what she was expecting or what she was up against. Isuelt’s dark eyes widened as she began to realize how much she’d actually bitten off. This was the signal Célestine was waiting for; she pushed forth at Isuelt before the warrior could reset herself and the two of them crashed into the wall behind them. Isuelt felt the air push from her chest so she had little else to expel as Célestine’s jolt to her abdomen connected. The back of Isuelt’s head bounced off the wall and the world was instantly spotty before her eyes.

“Peasant,” Célestine sneered at her. She arched a brow and took a half step back to give herself better range of movement as she raised her hand to rid herself of the coughing warrior.

Even as Isuelt fought to catch her breath and steady her vision, she saw what was coming. In an instant, as Célestine moved to strike, Isuelt fell to a knee and swung her blade from her underneath position, undercutting the daughter of the Night Court’s side.

The shriek echoed through the foyer. Célestine held her side and the glower that she shot at Isuelt was enough to make the Scathachian actually fear. Isuelt swore under her breath and clamoured to her feet, both blades before her in a defensive stance.

“How dare you!” Célestine spewed at her just before she bolted toward the Scathachian, who this time, was ready for her.

“Let’s go,” the Scathachian whispered under her breath as she lowered her chin and met Célestine in mid-clash.

* * * * *

Mallory and Eri were fighting their way to the grand foyer from the second floor, blasting and bludgeoning their way through a wave of fae emerging from one of the doors to RhyDin, and dogged by the vampires still chasing them from the courtyard. Betelgeuse simply strode with purpose past the stairwell where they fought, down the hall to where the House of Summer girls were making a valiant stand in front of the basement door.

The strikes of Betel’s heavy warhammer were much faster than any of them expected. She swung right past Philomena’s first strike, catching her in the chest and collapsing it inwards with a sickening crunch. Janel cried out, dashing to her fallen sister’s side, but the hammer slammed into her side, sending her badly off-balance and into the wall. A final blow of the hammer ended Philomena’s life before the fae knight changed her trajectory, leaving the wounded Janel behind. Her path was now clear. Allie was caught up fighting two redcaps, her short sword singing through the air to keep their axes at bay as they backed her into a corner. The rest of the sídhe’s defenders were elsewhere: fighting the unseelie fae on the second floor or the Night Court in the foyer.

The knight descended the stairs to the basement. Her mistress awaited.

Moments later, Sapphire’s shout from the top of the grand foyer staircase cut through the din of the fighting. “Mama!” Jewell didn’t need to hear the warning. She felt Belladonna enter the room. They were akin, and she called to Jewell. Literally, she was shouting her name: “Jewellsie! Jewellsie! Jewellsie needs a new heart!” she sang, taunting her. “Come and get it, Jewellsie!” But Bella was coming to her, pushing friend and foe out of the way to get to reach her twin.

Allie got in her way first. She had failed to keep Betel from freeing the Mad Queen, but she came after her now, her short swords dripping with redcap blood. She dropped them to tackle the faerie to the tile floor. Theirs was a quick scuffle. Belladonna was stronger than the petite House of Summer girl, and although Almast was well trained, Bella soon had her pinned to the ground with her knees on her chest and her hands on her arms. Starting at her toes, she slowly froze the blood in Allie’s body all the way up to her head until her skin broke all over.

Sapphire saw Belladonna hop up off Almast, looking around for her next victim, and Allie wasn’t moving anymore. The young faerie set her shield on the stairs and dropped onto her knees upon it, riding it like a sled down to the first floor and skidding to a stop right in front of Belladonna. In a fluid motion, she rolled off the shield and then popped up, grabbing the shield off the ground and swinging up, smashing the faerie in the face with it.

Belladonna’s head snapped to the side. The faerie slowly turned her head back, licking the blood of her lips and grinning at the young woman as she ignited her mana-blade (her axe having been lost somewhere up on the second floor) and took firm hold of her shield in her left hand. “Oh little poppet! You want to play, do you?”

Sapphire gave no answer, feinting with another attack of her shield before sweeping the mana-blade at Bella’s legs. The faerie deftly avoided her, laughing as she narrowly missed cutting Sapphire’s throat with the claws of blood she had formed from one of her victims this evening. That laughter turned to a hiss of anger when the girl cut her arm with a skilled high cut. “Been dueling with daddy, have you poppet?” When she swung at Sapphire this time, it was with a fistful of mana energy to blast her in the chest.

The young faerie got her shield up just in time and was shoved back when the shield reflected the attack at Bella as it was built to do. The surprise on Bella’s face as she was shoved was sweet to Sapphire, who tasted momentary victory. Heedless, the young woman followed after her. She had no intention of killing the sídhe, but she felt certain in subduing her. Angry now, the Mad Queen was waiting, a whip of water in her hand that she snapped in the air. “Come to mama, darling.”

* * * * *

Jewell tried to make her way towards where Sapphire and Belladonna fought, but with every foe she cut down, two rose in its place. Or one really really big one. With a silver halo of energy around her hand, she put her fist through the unbeating heart of a Night Court lackey, crumbling the creature to dust with her light. Turning, she looked for Sapphire and came face-to-face with the naked abdomen of something big and greenish gray. A wood troll. Jewell ducked the large fist he swung at her face easily, darting around behind the creature and hamstringing it. The troll roared in fury, twisting about to try and catch her, but Jewell darted out of its reach again.

Then Sapphire cried out. Distracted, her attention snapping to the side to look for the girl, Jewell suffered a hammer blow to the back of her head from the troll. She hit the ground, her chin smashing into the tile floor and filling her mouth with blood. The troll pinned her there, placing his big, meaty foot on her back and slowly grinding her into the floor. “I got eeeerrr! I got eeerrr!” he roared.

The lord of the Night Court appeared in the shadows, broken glass crunching beneath his well-polished shoes. He glanced around, taking in the state of affairs.

Mallory and Eri had finally reached the wide staircase into the grand foyer, but their progress was slow and hard-fought. The witch held an undead creature aloft with writhing black vines, clutching her glass pendant as she willed fire to rise from his grave linens and engulf his head. A vampire darted in to take her out from behind, but Eri’s powerful grasp caught him by the arm, whirled him to face her and plunged her stake into his chest, turning him to dust.

Célestine soon rejoined the fray, looking a little worse for wear; her clothing was slashed at her side and her right arm, blood staining the fabric. Her snarl was well in place, though like her pride, it was a bit bruised.

Jewell’s other allies still stood destroying the minions of the Night Court and the unseelie brood like so much fodder, but so too did Betelgeuse, his daughter Célestine, and dear Belladonna. She was the important one. Lavanya and Abene had stepped in to assist Sapphire against her since Jewell was currently underfoot with a troll, but the elder faerie had the upper hand. A strike at Sapphire’s chest would have likely been fatal but for Cane’s protective spellwork on her. Instead, she fell to the floor and Abene jumped in front of her, preventing Bella from finishing the young woman off.

The Earl waited impatiently until Abene’s intestines were spilled across the floor and Lavanya had fallen before calling out to his ally. “Bella,” her grey eyes snapped up from the blonde at her feet. Lavanya was attempting to crawl away and grab a weapon just out of reach. “Finish the girl later. For now? If you would be so kind as to take care of your cousins at the portal please.”

The promise of killing her own kin all over again was too hard to resist, but just to spite him, Belladonna kicked Lavanya in the ribs hard enough to make her cry. Then she dashed across the floor littered with bodies and blood, shoving Sapphire (who was just getting back to her feet) into the way of a monstrous fae--who knocked her off her feet again--before skipping through the broken double doors of the sanatorium and out into the night.
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

Having resorted to tearing the troll to pieces with blood bending, Jewell stood unsteadily, her head pounding, unable to catch her breath, and her mouth full of her own blood. The last bit of magic she had performed had taken a lot out of her, so she just stood there as the fighting raged around her, staring steadily across the hallway to where Earl Ténèbres stood unharmed and untouched, watching her. She could end this right now. She could walk over to him and end this world of pain. She took several steps forward. Ishmerai wasn’t coming, the portal was closed, but that was fine. She could rescue herself.

The sob building in her chest was cut off when one of the Earl’s people launched himself at her. Jewell shrunk back as the creature latched onto her, gangrel claws digging into her arms. He leaned forward, his mouth open wide and his teeth gleaming. She waited until he was so close she could feel his breath on her face, gathering a mouth full of saliva and blood. Wait for it… he turned his head, ready to latch onto her throat, and Jewell spit her blood into his mouth. The reaction was instantaneous: a moment of ecstasy at the taste of faerie blood before the creature’s stomach turned and his head whipped to the side as he released her and started retching blood violently onto the floor.

The faerie shoved him easily aside and started for the Earl. She would not let some minion touch her, but to be sired by the lord of the Night Court willingly--and then turn around and destroy him--was the only way she could see to fulfill her promise to Sapphire.

“Jewell!” The witch’s voice was hoarse, strained by the shallow bite near the base of her neck as she extricated herself from the remains of the undead lackey Eri had just sundered. Célestine snarled and snapped her teeth at the sound of the witch’s voice, but the delinquent growled in kind, holding her in her lantern-like gaze as she stood in the vampire’s path. “Jewell, is the portal blood-bound?!”

The Empress slowed her steps, blinking as if waking from a dream as she looked to Mallory. She could see the Earl just standing there, patiently waiting for her to come to him, but the witch’s question was filtering through her brain. What did it matter? What did any of this matter? “Yes.”

Mallory snatched the glass pendant from her necklace, deepening its stress fractures as she squeezed it in her right hand where it dug deep into her skin, and she strode over to Jewell. “Thought so,” she croaked, and swiped her left through the air -- three thorny black vines erupted from the floorboards, two to wrap up around her legs to stop her in her tracks, while the third lashed out and pierced her right shoulder, sending blood cascading down her back.

The faerie’s sharp cry of pain mingled with the Earl’s roar of rage as he realized a moment too late what the witch was playing at, “No!” His rapid progress across the room was cut short when she hurled the cracking glass pendant into his path. It broke apart right in front of him, roaring into a fireball that set the grand foyer’s massive rug ablaze.

It bought her only a few moments, but it was all the time she needed. She pressed her hands around Jewell’s wound, soaking them in her blood, and hissed into her ear to be heard over the din: “He is coming. Keep alive.” Then she stepped back, casting a look between the two powerful vampires pacing rapidly across the grand foyer, searching for a path through the rising wall of flames… and called out to Eri: “Ready to take Belladonna head-on?!”

Eri’s glowing eyes reflected the flames of the blazing rug with particular ferocity. She looked over when Mallory called to her, and hurried over clutching her weapons. “I’m ready!” she said firmly, nodding and stepping close for the spell.

Mallory clapped a blood-soaked hand to the side of her face, and in a flash of crimson light, the pair of them vanished from the foyer.

The vines disappeared along with Mallory, leaving Jewell free to move. The witch’s quick explanation that Ishmerai was on his way--that her knight had not forgotten nor forsaken her--gave the faerie a second wind. This wasn’t over.

Despite the blood pouring down her shoulder and the way the room spun dangerously, she sprung up. Swaying dangerously, her chest heaving as each breath was labored, she looked to the Earl with deadly intent. He was coming towards her still, forcing a path through the fire. In a rare act of pure self-preservation, Jewell turned to run instead of standing to fight. This was not the time to take her enemies down with her dying breath in some glorious last stand. She needed to hide or shout for help so she could survive long enough for Ishmerai to reach her. She had to survive long enough.

The lord of the Night Court made a gesture, and just as Jewell’s right foot left the ground so she could spring away, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Her weakened, wasted body was still trained to react, and she pivoted in time to catch the kidney punch Célestine aimed at her side with both her blood slick hands. “Don’t you dare touch me, you bitch,” she hissed out breathlessly before planting her bare foot in the woman’s stomach and kicking her away.

There was no escape. The Earl joined them at that moment, narrowly missing her with a knife-hand aimed at her ribs. Jewell twisted, catching his wrist with her left hand and sweeping her leg out behind him before shoving him back so he fell. But that still gave her no reprieve because Célestine was on her again.

So that’s how it’s gonna be. The woman who had fought a perfect season in IFL this year despite her declining health fell into a hand-to-hand battle against both vampires.

* * * * *

The bodies of fae, both Belladonna’s and Lorelei’s, littered the overgrown gardens around the portal to Faerie, along with a trio of newly slain ghouls and a fine coat of grave dust over everything. Alwyn was slumped over, his olive throat and mithril shirt both coated in his blood, and Alynna cried out in sorrow from the loss, and pain from the widening tear in her gut, as she dragged her brother’s body away from the carnage.

And in the middle of it all was Belladonna, standing before the brick archway, the faint shimmer that marked the passage to Faerie now stained the same shade of violet as the energy that coalesced between her outstretched hands. The way was shut. If Lorelei dared to send any more reinforcements to their doom at her hands, they couldn’t make it through. Pity. “Lynn-lynn,” she crooned, “won’t you pleeeease come back and play with me?” She took her eyes off the portal to bat her eyelashes at Dame Alynna as the knight screamed her wordless rage at the Mad Queen.

She missed the moment when the violet shimmer turned a deep, angry shade of red.

The energy coalescing between her hands exploded violently as the opening of a brand new portal inside the archway disrupted the thread of Belladonna’s spell, and Eri and Mallory came staggering out of a jagged tear in the Veil before it snapped shut behind them. The witch was up to her elbows in blood with more besides, much of it dripping from the fresh wounds in her left arm used to power her Veilstride, still wreathed in a thorny belladonna vine. The potent mix of the witch’s magic and Belladonna’s still crackled across the archway, its influence slowly fading from the portal to Faerie.

“Ahh the little witch,” Belladonna growled playfully at Mallory as she picked herself up out of the snow. And she was not alone: there were several of her surviving minions in the courtyard and more of the Night Court’s undead soldiers and hirelings that hadn’t perished in the fight, already moving to encircle the strange pair that had just appeared in their midst.

Mallory’s eyes ticked away from the dangerous faerie and the circling minions to meet Eri’s lantern-like gaze, and her lips curled into a fond smile for the delinquent. “The one with less kills has to buy dinner,” she said.

Lengthened and misaligned canines flashed in the delinquent’s return grin to Mallory as she heard the challenge. It seemed her eyes flashed a bit brighter and her head nodded. “You’re on,” she accepted with a high pitched and slightly unbalanced sounding giggle. That sound soon mingled with the hiss of the chain as she got it swinging, checking its momentum after a moment and reversing the course of the iron sphere to launch straight forward at a minion that had darted in. With that foe struck down, the chain finally gave way and snapped. The half oni was undeterred, drawing the old cavalry trooper’s sword she liked to wear and charging forward. “Burgers -- definitely burgers!” she shouted, still giggling. In spite of the maniacal appearance, her sword work showed competent defense and precise lunging footwork, not becoming reckless in spite of her competitive claims. Nonetheless the bodies were beginning to stack up around her feet.

Belladonna kept her distance from the witch while Eri tore through the minions surrounding them. Instead, she struck out with vibrant, purple bursts of energy crafted into spells meant to bite and cut the witch bit by bit into shreds.

Mallory rolled forward as the first blast disintegrated a brick in the archway, and the pair that followed were met by the shadowy mantle that flared up from her shoulders to deflect them, guided by a quick swipe of her hand.

The next bolt hit home, a lightning-fast spell that crackled across the witch’s side, seared her skin and threw her off balance, but she did not let it slow her momentum. “Vindicta,” she hissed as she pushed off from the snowy ground with one hand, and a matching wound flashed into place on Belladonna, leaking steaming blood down her ribs.

The witch followed up on the sídhe’s unexpected shock of pain by blowing a blast of icy shards into her face, though only a few left razor-thin slices along her face and throat before she managed to bend the rest away from herself.

Then Belladonna reached out to seize control of all of the blood in her body. Mallory winced in pain as the sídhe grit her teeth in a sadistic grin, pulling the blood away from her heart… until the next mighty bass-drum beat pulled it away from her grasp.

Mallory didn’t give her foe a chance to counter, capitalizing on Belladonna’s surprise immediately with a quick quaff of the glowing orange vial in her back pocket and a long, bellowing, roaring breath. Fire rippled out of her mouth in waves, searing through Belladonna’s defenses in places, augmented by the snow the faerie bent defensively into its path, dissipating in a roiling cloud of steam.

The witch’s next strike was malicious, another icy breath once the last of the fire had erupted from her mouth, but these frozen shards stopped mid-flight… melting into water that commingled with the gathering steam clouds, joining the long, watery tendril that had already curled around her.

The sídhe was done toying with her prey.

The massively powerful tendril squeezed her limbs painfully together as it lifted her up off the ground, and wound its way around her neck to squeeze the life out of her. It inched its way around her, slowly but painfully cutting off her air, and Belladonna circled her like a cat with its quarry to enjoy every itty bitty moment of her suffering.

Eri saw what was happening to Mallory, and was rushing over double time to try to reach the witch and her attacker. Before she could cross half the distance the delinquent found herself lifted into the air by a column of water that rose out of the melting snow, stopping her only a few feet from Belladonna, just shy of her sabre’s reach. Her struggles were violent, but without footing on the ground her strength was of little use.

“Let… let her…” The witch’s words were cut off with a desperate gasp as the tendril tightened around her throat.

“What was that, little witch?” Belladonna crooned, stepping into Mallory’s darkening field of view, heedless of the shimmering portal to Faerie at her back and the tall figure emerging from it.

Her eyes widened and her breath left her in a deep, winded huff, as Ishmerai’s face came into focus over her shoulder. The short sword in his right hand was plunged into her back with its razor-sharp tip protruding from her belly.

The sídhe gasped and her hold on the two girls broke as she writhed on the end of his blade. The knight began to twist it and paused, looking to the fallen witch— “Do we still need her alive?”

He was a fearsome sight to behold. His face was gaunt, his hair long and tangled, his clothes weather worn and stained with his travels, and there was an angry light in his green eyes.

Mallory coughed violently, on her hands and knees at Belladonna’s feet, and found herself face to face with the blade protruding out of the sídhe. She looked over at her girlfriend, visually confirming that Eri was still alive before she answered: “Yes.”

Ishmerai nodded and cleanly withdrew the weapon, and Belladonna fell to the ground with a sharp scream, passing out from the shock of pain. He wasted no time in wiping down the sword, merely sheathing it at his side before reaching down to grab a fistful of blue hair to drag the beaten faerie behind him. “Come,” he said to Eri and Mallory as they picked each other up off the ground, already starting for the broken doors of the sanatorium. “My lady is still in danger.”
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JewellRavenlock
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

Jewell tentatively held her own against the combined forces of Célestine and the Earl. They wanted to take her by force, Embrace her against her will, but Jewell was a wild thing buoyed and invigorated by hope. Kept alive by faith. She could not be caught. Again and again they reached for her, but they could not grasp the spinning, whirlwind dervish who was, for the first time, truly fearless in the face of her own death.

So they chipped away at her instead. They isolated her, relentlessly driving her back step-by-step through the broken hallway doors towards the solarium and away from those who would aid her. They beat her down knowing that she could only keep this up for so long. The Earl slammed his fists into her arms, raised to protect her face, until they went numb. The sharp edge of Célestine’s hand cracked against her exposed ribs. She kicked Jewell in the small of the back. He chopped her in the shoulder where her wound still bled freely.

It hurt. It hurt so bad. At first, she had managed to hit them back. Now, as she retreated further away from the din of fighting in the foyer, it was just defend: defend defend defend. Block an incoming kick. Redirect a punch. Dodge and duck and weave, anything so they would stop hitting her. Stop hurting her. She could do nothing more as the minutes of her life ticked away ever faster in this furious battle. There was nothing left to her: no glamour, no strength to draw on the ley lines humming beneath her feet, no fortitude to bend the water underground or the blood within their bodies or even her own dripping down her back. There was nothing but her fists and her wits and a lifetime of training to keep her on her feet and alive long enough for Ishmerai to come.

And so he did. The shout of the fae knight’s return rippled through the foyer of the sanatorium before him, signalling a retreat of many of Belladonna’s followers on the main floor. They dropped their weapons and ran for the stairs and doors on the second floor that would scatter them safely throughout the city and from there? Wherever they could go to hide from a vengeful sídhe’s wrath should the Empress survive this night.

“Cowards!” Betel screeched, swinging the warhammer in a fit of rage at a retreating redcap which sent it sprawling against the nearest wall with a sickening thud. Without warning, she found herself within the bloom of flame as it billowed around her. She whirled within the fire to hiss at the hulking spellcaster across the room.

For one split second, Cane appeared legitimately surprised that the jet of fire had had no effect on the fae knight. It was long enough for Betel to fling a spell at him, which he narrowly dodged. While doing so, he grabbed a pike from the body of one of the fallen and hurled the weapon in the fae knight’s direction with so much force that it buried itself in the wall after the bloodied tip glanced off her glittering carapace armor.

Betel’s derisive laughter piqued wary curiosity within Cane. He cast three short bursts of hellfire at the knight as she sprinted toward him, warhammer raised and cocked back with intent to kill. She raced through the fire as though it had not been there, swinging at his chest. The hammer smashed against an invisible shield instead of the Cajun, creating a shower of volatile, purple sparks upon impact. Up close now, Cane watched as the fae knight’s carapace armor rippled and hardened, the sparks cascading harmlessly off the shell; it was similar to Sal’s and he knew fire itself would be of no use.

He dropped the shield a split second before throwing a mighty fist into Betel’s face. A mottled scream tore from her freshly mangled mouth as the trio of sharpened iron spikes positioned between his knuckles carved deep gouges into her face. The knight pivoted on one foot, turning to both shield herself and kick the other leg at Cane to create distance. He was sent tumbling back, off-balance for several seconds before he managed to turn the fall into a controlled roll that was cut short as Betel’s hammer smashed into the floor next to his face with only millimeters to spare.

Cane grabbed it with both hands, not to take it from her, but to melt that sucker into the floor. Fire may not work on her, but it would work on just about everything else. The broken tile surrounding them ignited, tiny wisps of harmless, flickering flames erupting from their cracks and crevices as the supernaturally heated metal spread like hot glue beneath the Cajun’s hands. In the second it took Betel to realize the warhammer was nothing more than a molten puddle at her feet, Cane was well on his way to finding his feet.

He threw himself at her, ramming a broad shoulder into the hardened shell covering her abdomen. Betel was easily driven backwards, the hammer’s handle sliding free of the liquified sludge fused to the floor. They fell together, Cane scrambling to pin her to the ground. Shrieking, Betel abandoned the useless weapon handle and buried talon-like claws into the Cajun’s chest.

In a last ditch effort of defense, Betel hardened the carapace shell over every inch of her body like a cocoon. Though her body fought to heal itself, the damage of the iron was damning; living carapace failed to close over the gaping wounds to her face. She issued another scream as Cane, ignoring the razor-edged hooks embedded in his sides, pushed the fat tip of an iron spike into her open mouth. Betel thrashed wildly beneath him, tearing her claws free so she could slash at him but went slack instead as spike was driven cleanly upward into her skull.

Triumphant, Cane relaxed, limbs sagging as he exhaled forcefully. He gave the fae knight’s head a shove to the side, wrenching the iron spike from her head. A frightened selkie bolted from her hiding spot as Cane got to his feet and ran for the door in blind terror.

Across the room, Salvador stood over the body of a freshly fallen bugbear, its blackish ichor dripping from the ends of twin hook swords. However many bodies the Spaniard dispatched was unclear as he left no bodies in his wake. The unfortunate goblin at his feet would meet the same fate as all the others. Dark red bloodfrost, vein-like in the way its greedy fingers branched and sprawled, crept over the fae creature’s body until it was obscured from view. Soon there would be nothing more of his body than so much dust.

The sinister Autumn prince looked up from his latest kill to narrow bright, hostile eyes at the selkie’s retreating back. He took one step into the Between, exiting in the next second to reappear on the other side of the room where the selkie met her death before ever reaching the door. A cold, predatory smile spread across his face as he looked over her now headless shoulders to the Cajun beyond.

“Dibs on the ones who ran,” said Cane.

Salvador snorted his disagreement, dropping the fae while taking a step back into the Between Spaces and disappearing from view.

The Cajun’s basso laugh echoed in the empty antechamber as he charged after Sal, leaping neatly over the selkie’s swiftly decomposing, bloodfrost covered body on his way out the door.

Isuelt had survived her head to head with Célestine, and she had located Sapphire. The two now fought back-to-back against the mixed remnants of the Night Court and a few unseelie fae, those too stupid or foolish to run or perhaps just eager to die. The Scathachian heaved an unseelie toward Sapphire, who was ready to impale and shuck them to the side. The two women, both running on sheer adrenaline, were moving through the retreating horde like a windstorm. They dispatched them one after another with deadly efficiency despite their injuries and the tears running unchecked down Sapphire’s face for those who had given their lives for her. Only Ishmerai’s return could lift her spirits and give her the energy to go on, and she cut down the next five enemies with a song in her heart and on her lips, “He’s back! He’s back! He’s back!”

Isuelt, her breaths now coming in swift gasps, turned her blood-spattered face toward Sapphire. It was the best thing she’d heard all night! “We gotta find a way to your mother!” She wasn’t sure how much backup Ishmerai would need, or even where the others were at this point. But she knew that once they cut down the remaining rabble here, they would have to go to where they were needed the most.

* * * * *

Sadly, it was the news of the knight’s return that lent greater impetus and urgency to the vampires’ task and allowed Célestine to finally find the opening they had been looking for in Jewell’s unrelenting defense. Hearing the frantic shout of the knight’s name and the rush of claws against the tile floor as fae desperately fled, Jewell indulged in a costly moment of elation and relief that blinded her to everything else for one blissful second, allowing Célestine to get below her flagging guard and drive her fist into the faerie’s chest, right where her poisoned heart was struggling each moment to beat. Jewell reeled backwards, and Lord Ténèbres gallantly caught her. His left arm curled around her, pinning the faerie’s arms to her side while his right hand yanked her hair back painfully, exposing the slender curve of neck and shoulder.

His bite was vicious and tore a scream from her raw throat. There was no endorphine-laced Kiss to ease her pain into the next life or warm her dying body as her blood spilled freely. Instead, the Earl tore at her flesh, rushing to bring about her death before Ishmerai and the damnable witch could save her.

Unfortunately for him, he had forgotten about the Ravnos. He dropped the Empress to the floor, her lifeblood staining his mouth as he locked eyes with Sinjin standing just feet away. He stepped over Jewell, sure that nothing could save her now, and went to test his mettle against the sinner. Alone. Célestine abandoned her father to his cruel fate, fleeing in the face of certain defeat, because it was at that moment that the fae knight stepped inside the sanatorium for the first time in months, dragging the bleeding Belladonna behind him like a piece of roadkill he had picked up somewhere.

The battered witch was at his side, the oni a step behind them, and slung over his shoulder was a backpack that contained the fabled Starlight Basin.


((The last five posts, including this one, were a collaborative effort between: Jewell, Mallory, Eri, Isuelt, Sinjin Fai, Canaan, and Salvador. I am extremely grateful for all their help and beautiful writing to make these scenes happen! They are being posted in a slightly unfinished state.))
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JewellRavenlock
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

Mallory was unsteady on her feet, waves of exhaustion crashing over her after the adrenaline of the fight, and a few minutes of steady blood loss since Veilstriding into the courtyard. The coppery smell of her own wounds, the thick smoke from whatever remained of the rug she’d set ablaze, and the stronger odors of the dead and injured strewn about the grand foyer filled her nostrils and compounded her dizziness.

Abene’s body lay at the foot of the stairs, sundered by a fatal swipe of Belladonna’s claws, her organs spilled around her. Almast was not far away, her skin ruptured by ice that had grown from within, the frozen crystals reflecting the moonlight like her dull, glassy eyes. Lavanya cradled her ribs as she slid up on the banister, casting a weary look between her two fallen sisters, and the source of uneven footsteps coming from down the hall: Janel, bruised and battered but not quite broken, struggling under the weight of Philomena’s lifeless body in her arms.

The witch scrubbed her face, thoughtlessly smearing her and Jewell’s blood across her cheeks, as her gaze ticked to the others in the room. Ishmerai, lugging both the Starlight Basin and Belladonna’s unconscious form in hand. Eri, bruised by the sídhe’s hydromancy and scraped by the claws and knives of a dozen undead and fae minions, but mercifully alive. Isuelt was quickly behind Sapphire, bringing up the rear while the young woman wiped tears and blood from her face before gasping--“Mama!”

Without Sinjin’s assistance, it was unlikely that Jewell would have made it the few steps down the hallway into the foyer. She leaned heavily against the sinner, her hand the only thing keeping her blood from spilling freely to the floor from the messy wound on her shoulder (courtesy of the Earl). She ignored the carnage and ruin scattered across the foyer and the young, blue haired woman suddenly flitting about her anxiously, staring at the knight at the door with her salvation in hand.

“You…” It was a struggle to catch her breath, and her lips formed the words without sound once before she managed to get them out, “You’re late.”

Ishmerai shook his head. “I told you I would be back. I did not say when.”

Her breathless laugh was part sob and cut short as her legs gave out beneath her. “Whoah!” “Easy!” Between Sin and Sapphire, they got Jewell seated on the floor with her back against the wall to hold her up before he left to take care of any remnants of the Night Court and she stayed, hovering at her mother’s side.

There was no fight the witch had been in that had turned out like this before: with friends and allies ripped away from them, and conscious for the terrible aftermath. She heard herself asking Eri, “Can you get my bag? It’s in here somewhere… it has the sedatives for Belladonna, if, um… if you could administer them.”

Eri looked around the litter and wreckage from the fight, spotting Mallory’s bag in the foyer and jogging over to retrieve it. She opened it to search inside and located the sedative. Fortunately the injection was already prepared, since the half oni was exhausted and looking worse for the wear while waiting for her regeneration to do its slow work on her injuries. She cast a worried look at Mallory’s expression but the witch’s gaze was already elsewhere; she refocused on the job at hand, approaching the unconscious Belladonna to administer the shot.

The witch slid past Eri and Ishmerai wordlessly and grabbed her bag off the floor where the delinquent had left it. She paused before Jewell, Sinjin, and Sapphire, staring at the elder sídhe and assessing the extent of her wound and her ability to remain conscious.

Jewell rested her head back against the wall, her eyes closed. Ishmerai was back. He had brought her the Basin as promised. She had not resorted to the truly terrible Plan B. She had not been forcibly sired. Everything was going to work out just fine--though the cost was too great to contemplate at the moment--and some of the damage done last year could finally be undone. Without opening her eyes, she seemed to know the witch was standing there. “What do you think, Mal? Better or worse than last Valentine’s Day?”

“Nnh.” It was difficult for Mallory to come up with an answer for that question, so she didn’t. Sanctuary was one of the many things her brain had decided that it wasn’t going to process right now. She cast a long look over her shoulder at the rest of the grand foyer, gaze ticking away, quietly assessing. “Sapphire…” She looked at her friend. “Do you have enough mana left to heal anyone?”

“What? Oh--oh yeah.” The younger faerie deactivated her armor and wiped her hands off on her jeans. It was a pointless gesture; her hands were stained with blood now. Forever. “I’ve been practicing. Who first?”

“Belladonna, Jewell, myself, Janel, Lavanya.” The names came out mechanically, in order of importance to the ritual and least to most likely to die; with a second glance, she confirmed that Eri’s were already regenerating, a blessing of her father Roka’s demonic blood. “We can move into the atrium and start the ritual as soon as we stop bleeding.”

“Got it. Worry not!” She affected a bravado she did not feel. “You are all in the capable hands of Sapphire Ravenlock D’Artainian.” She made the rounds in order, giving of what energy she had to her friends to soothe their hurts and patch their wounds. Her magic was like her mother’s: cool like water but warming to the soul with a little touch of fire that was all her own.

Jewell barely let her do anything, “I’m alive enough. Hurry up and tend to the others.” But she managed to at least stem the gush of blood from her shoulder to more of a trickle and left Isuelt to keep the compression bandage she had dug up under Ishmerai’s directions in place.

As one tired, haggard, bloody unit, buoyed by their victory but anchored by their losses, the survivors made their way into the large, empty atrium. One of Ishmerai’s first commands in the sanatorium was the restoration of the massive windows that lined this space, shattered once more by the Night Court’s invading vampires as they had been when Jewell had first taken up residence. Tiny shards of glass commingled with the ashes of a slain vampire, but there was no blood to be seen. “Tch.” Mallory unstoppered a small glass jar from her pack, and a howling wind erupted from it and whipped along the floor, sweeping the debris away to the walls and out the open windows.

Her gaze wasn’t on any of the others, though she spoke distractedly as she sighted the moon and stars in the span between her thumb and forefinger. “Put her here,” she said, tapping her foot in place, “eleventh row from the window, center tile… and Jewell… stand on the opposite tile.” They moved to obey as the witch orchestrated the ritual. Ishmerai dragged Belladonna to the first tile and Sapphire momentarily stood with Jewell opposite them to make sure she didn’t just fall over.

“And I’ll take this…” It was a shame she was handling the relic under these circumstances, because in any other situation, she would have been awed and breathless to have the Starlight Basin in her hands; instead she simply wiped her hands clean with an alcoholic cloth from her backpack before prising the basin out of the knight’s bag.

It was beautiful in its crudeness, tarnished copper hammered by a smith, uneven in places, adorned by row after row of hand-etched runic inscriptions so lost to the aeons that even the royal libraries of Faerie could not begin to decipher them. But it held no luster, nor did it spark when the witch’s bare fingertips first touched it; the only hint of its power was the hum that set her nerves alight and filled her heart with an uneasy lightness as soon as she held it. She set it carefully in the exact center of the room, within reach of both Jewell and Belladonna’s dazed, drugged form, and then spread her hands as she backed away from it:

“No one step any closer than three tiles from the wall until I say so. Also, take their shirts with you when you go,” she added. She passed her backpack to Eri and shared a single, minute nod with her as she withdrew a pair of simple obsidian blades from her pack.

Both knight and lady stared at Mallory with similar expressions and despite the gravity of the situation, Sapphire snickered when Jewell muttered, “Oh you have got to be ****ing kidding me.” She elbowed Sapphire away when she tried to help her pull her dress up over her head--“I’ve got it!”--but ended up needing her assistance in the end when she made her shoulder started bleeding more. Ishmerai wisely kept his distance, relieving Belladonna of her shirt instead with a swipe of a knife before exiting the ritual space. Unsurprisingly, Jewell was wearing nothing beneath her dress. Without her glamour and pretty dresses, it was clear how badly the iron had laid waste to her body--she was all sharp angles and protruding ribs now, pale and shivering uncontrollably but standing tall.

“There is no shame in nakedness,” Mallory echoed Ishmerai as she passed him and Sapphire on their way out of the circle. Her smile was slight and short-lived, her expression no less solemn as she returned to the center of the space. “Place your hand like hers,” she commanded Jewell gently as she took Belladonna’s hand and set it, palm up, over the edge of the basin. The violent sídhe could only murmur in protest, beyond both the necessary physical strength and mental faculties to fight her doom any longer. The Empress followed Mallory’s directions, though she struggled to stay upright as death nipped at her heels.

“This will hurt,” the witch whispered, her voice still soft, though she slid the black glass blade into Belladonna’s palm first so that Jewell could see what to expect.

That provoked a sharp cry from Belladonna, one that dissolved into mad laughter as she rolled her head from one shoulder to the other, giving an unhinged grin to Jewell. When Mallory dabbed her right thumb in the blood welling from her hand and into the basin, she fixed all of her malice on the mortal girl who thought to preside over her death. “We could have been such friends… but too late. I curse you, little girl. May you--”

Tenebris,” Mallory hissed, and the nascent curse returned to oblivion as she pressed her thumb to the center of the sídhe’s brow. With an unearthly croak Belladonna rolled her head back, her eyes went white, and she spoke no more. Then the witch withdrew the second knife and, after a brief look at Jewell’s eyes, pressed the blade into her palm.

She couldn’t help the way she jumped back as the sharp pain, but Jewell smiled at Mallory through her wince. “Don’t know what she was complaining about,” she remarked weakly. “It’s not so bad.” Her heart pounded incessantly in her ears.

The witch returned her smile, however faintly, and pressed her blood-soaked red thumb into the center of her brow. “Lux,” she whispered, and Jewell’s vision was filled with the shape of her magic.

Faint, windblown lines flickered away from a brilliant emerald star that could only be the Starlight Basin, surrounded by rippling, dueling coronas of the bright silver of Jewell’s magical essence, and the striking shade of violet that could only be Belladonna’s, as both faeries’ blood slowly but surely began to fill the basin. And as the witch dabbed blood from each of them and began the tedious, hour-long process of intricate linework away from the center of the circle, stretching away from each of them, across both the short distance of the atrium and the vastness of the Forest of the World, over house-sized roots and under a canopy higher than the sky as their amorphous shadows bled in and out of Jewell’s vision.

And each line inevitably circled back, Belladonna’s to a brilliant diamond, bright white like crackling ice, shining at the center of her being; and Jewell’s to a rapidly growing darkness, its searing tendrils poisoning her dying body.

Within the shattered atrium, Jewell was just a child in the Forest of the World and felt both awed and chilled to the core by what she saw--the blight that was slowly eating away her pure light and life; the brilliant diamond of Belladonna’s heart (had her own been that bright once or perhaps even more vibrant?) that she wished to take for her own; and this power that her little mortal friend harnessed and possessed. As the lines circled back again and again, connecting the three of them more and more, she saw the fast-approaching moment where they would become one, and Jewell felt Belladonna’s pain and loss as clearly as her own.

The witch saw only glimmers, snatches of sound and image through the gargantuan trees that erupted out of the darkness surrounding the atrium to tower over it, her head dutifully bent to the intricate linework that mapped the vital essence of Jewell and Belladonna across the atrium floor and intertwined them; even to Jewell, with her Sight opened to the magic that would reshape and redefine her, the images were innumerable and dizzyingly fast, all of the experiences of her lifetimes compressed into a single hour. The blood-soaked cellar of Sanctuary flashed by in an instant, but other images repeated: the Ta-Neer estate in Faerie, the old scarred bar at the Red Dragon Inn, the caller’s couch and the rings of the Arena; her old home; her old lovers; her children. Stephen Kidd singing a song, Amanda running through a field of fireflies, Kalamere offering her a branch of magnolias, a house on the cliffs aflame. There were alien images, too, of her children lost by more violent means than Jewell had experienced, and of the rest of her kin torn and sundered by her own hands in a night of bloody vengeance; of a cell in Gulshan, and the ruined glory of La Mer, and orgies of flesh and murder that were never easy to tell apart. But as time dragged on, the line between the two participants and their diverging timeline became less and less distinct…

…and when a needle-sharp belladonna vine struck through the witch’s outstretched hand with a strangled scream, all boundaries vanished. The moment had arrived.

Samuel Adder, sneering while Patrick Richie twitched and writhed, dangling in the middle of a small library. Betel, filthy and naked, falling to her knees and sobbing tears of joy in a lonely iron cell. Ishmerai frowning uncertainly at the music on the radio as Sapphire laughingly pulled him away from the kitchen wall to dance. Tara happily explaining her day to her friend while perched atop her favorite barstool, surrounded by friendly and half-remembered faces. Stirring a pot of macaroni and cheese in a dirty old kitchen, and turning to shout at a familiar gaggle of teenagers sprawled out in the living room. Beltane, its younger trees dwarfed by the Forest looming over everything, but far brighter for its light and love and merriment. A withered vampire, supported on either arm by mortal women, shuffling across a green glass floor to reach his claw-like hands into a mother’s arms, with a smile of wonder on his wisened face. A treehouse. A smoky lounge. An unlit hearth. Home.

Every image vanished when the obsidian blade that had tasted Belladonna’s blood pierced her chest.

Jewell screamed and the sound echoed, torn from the throats of the other two. The pain of being remade was both unbearable and beautiful, as an iron knife tore a jagged path as it left her chest, and the aching hollow that remained filled with the blinding light that emanted from the center of her being: the beautiful and terrible power that burned in the heart of every sídhe. The Forest of the World writhed in anger and ecstasy, its roots plunging ever deeper into the earth, tearing massive crevasses into the ground until there was nothing left for Jewell to stand on, and she fell, and Belladonna plummeted beside her, screaming her way through the abyss.

Ahead of the mad sídhe, centuries ahead but racing closer in seconds, was a faint and flickering violet light, enveloped in a deepening shadow that threatened to consume it. As she drew closer she could see her cell in Gulshan lurking in the dark place in her heart, and chains of cold iron whipped out of the walls to sear and bind her as the tower’s sadistic guards advanced on her, knives in hand…

But Belladonna and Jewell and Mallory, a momentary trinity bound by the magic of the old gods, were diverging once more, and Belladonna’s path vanished from her, and the witch’s power could no longer be felt. She was alone, naked in the dark, plummeting through oblivion with nothing but a pinprick of silver light aeons ahead of her and countless stars fading into the far distance around her; and the deep, building drumbeat of a rhythm thudding away ahead of her, impossibly far into the future, keeping time even as the last of the stars went out.

* * * * *

The Forest was gone, the atrium stood in its place, and Jewell was no longer alone. Belladonna curled onto her side a few feet away from her, afflicted by deep, wracking coughs that drove iron-blackened blood out of her lungs and onto the cold stone floor. Mallory knelt in between them, a pile of tiny obsidian shards in either hand, taking deep, gulping breaths as she stared wide-eyed into nothing, her gaze ticking back and forth wildly as she grappled with the building evidence that she was back in the mortal realm, where time was a straight line.

The Starlight Basin was empty. Faint burns along the tiles hinted at the labyrinthine ritual circle that had been there moments ago, mirrored by the star-shaped scars that had burned their way into the chests of both sídhe; but the blood itself had vanished, save for the poisonous essence that Belladonna vomited onto the floor.

Dying. Dyingdyingdyingdyingdyingdyingdyingdyingdyingdying.

Not dying.


Jewell knelt on the floor, greedily eating up deep, gasping breaths of air as she listened to her heart beat whole inside her chest for the first time in a year. The steady, even thump thump thump beneath her hand pressed consumed her. This was her heart. It belonged to her now and it always had. This was the heart that beat inside her chest when she was born. The heart that broke when Kalamere said “I don’t feel the same” and fluttered when Sinjin first called her mi salvaje two years ago. It was the heart that was at its fullest when she was a mother, that remembered the first time she held her firstborn in her arms, and the heart that loved the girl kneeling in front of her, calling her name, more than anyone.

“Mama? Jewell? Jewell? Are you alright? Can you hear me?” Despite Ishmerai’s warning, Sapphire had ducked around him and dashed to Jewell’s side when the ritual seemed to be over. She restrained from touching her though, nervous about ruining something… everything!

The Scathachian stood near to the wall with her mouth agape, her breathing now at a less frantic rate. Though what she had watched was nearly more amazing than all the battles she had ever witnessed. Isuelt remained practically rooted in place as she gazed from Jewell to Mallory and back, with an expression of arrant awe on her face. It seemed as if magic may have had some merit in it after all.

Eri had forgotten the warnings too, seeing the witch with the wide-eyed and vacant stare. She charged forward to her side, calling out: “Mal? Mal! Are you alright?”

The witch reached out and latched a hand around Eri’s arm, fixing her with a desperate, wide-eyed look for the span of two breaths… and broke into a relieved smile for the delinquent. “Yeah… yeah, I’m alright,” the witch managed, the voices and faces around her finally anchoring her in the here and now. “It’s alright,” she muttered, shaking her head at the others’ concerns as she climbed back to her feet.

It’s alright. Am I alright? Jewell tried to merge what had been her reality up into a few minutes ago with this new one. There was a hole in her heart and now there wasn’t a hole in her heart. There had never been a hole in her heart. She had been dying from iron poisoning for a year. Iron had never touched her. Kalamere has stabbed her in the heart. Her heart had never suffered such a wound. But it had. She had. She remembered.

Sanctuary. The Namekeeper. How do you want it done? Protect the priests. Kill the intruders. Take out the witch! Kill him! Listen ta yer heart, darlin', fight 'em off an come 'ome. A kiss on her forehead. An iron shiv. Nothing.

Am I alright? Am I alright? Alright… alright… alright

She wasn’t sure.

“Ow,” was all she finally managed to articulate. The girl, the knight, the Scathachian all looked expectantly at her. “My shoulder is killing me.”

Sapphire groaned--“Ma-ma!”--and Ishmerai shook his head. “Your heart, Mira,” he reminded her impatiently. “How is your heart?”

Jewell’s grey eyes sought out Mallory’s green ones. “It’s fine.”


((Co-written with Mallory, Issy, and Eri with many thanks!))
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

They gathered in the foyer in the hour before midnight. Despite the dire nature of Belladonna’s condition--what with an iron filled heart inside her chest and the wound Ishmerai had so graciously bestowed upon her earlier in the night--the knight still insisted on retrieving the iron chains from the basement and wrapping the sídhe in them once more.

Jewell had not disagreed with the decision. In fact, she had not said much at all. She had been silent as the small group tended to each other’s wounds, wordlessly agreed that they would call Eva the next morning, and had quietly bundled up against the cold wind whipping in through the broken windows of the sanatorium before settling down on the stairs to watch her enemy die.

There was nothing to disagree with anyway. Had she not just held off two vampire lords single-handedly in a similar condition? Belladonna was still dangerous, even as she coughed up another lungful of thick, black blood onto the broken tiles of the foyer that only hours ago had been a scene of mayhem and death.

Isuelt had taken a seat not too far from Jewell. Her blades had been replaced in their scabbards, and she was frankly in awe that she wasn’t as bloody or banged up as she was. Still, she would give proper thanks to Scathach later. Tonight was about giving thanks for Jewell. Jewell out of danger, Jewell alive. And those that had tried to hinder the efforts to save her? Well, Isuelt only had disgust left on her tongue for the likes of the Night Court and Belladonna who lay prone not far from them. Isuelt’s sharp, dark eyes were boring a hole right through Belladonna; and if looks could kill...well, they didn’t need to. Belladonna’s evil crimes were about to catch up with her. And the Scathachian was all too eager to watch and make sure that the deed was done. She had not let her blades slip from her mind, either. She understood now that Celestine and the other vampires and creatures of magic did not abide by their blessed steel. And if Jewell said so, she would be all too happy to cleave Belladonna’s head from her body.

But that was not necessary. The only time Jewell had really spoken up since the ritual had been complete and they had all been reassured that her heart was fine was when the subject of what to do with Belladonna had arisen. Sapphire and Isuelt seemed eager for her death immediately, but Jewell had agreed with Mallory when the witch had pointed out quietly: “We’re already killing her. We could kill her sooner… but portents like these find new ways to transpire when thwarted. I’d rather not fuck with Fate twice in one night. Let her die at midnight.”

The last heartbeat of the very last second of the Feast of Saint Valentine.

Yes, that was how it should be.

They passed a bottle around. Jewell had dug out something special from Faerie that spread a pleasant warmth to their fingertips, eased their pain, brought to mind happier times and sweet memories, and tasted like summer on the tongue.

It made Jewell think of Beltane: the verdant green grass beneath her bare feet, laughter on the air, fireflies dancing between the stars, and a branch of magnolia flowers in hand as she danced around the fires.

The branch of magnolias Kalamere had left at her bedside last year after he had ended her life. Her twin’s death was not as kind as the half-elf had been to her, but Jewell still thought it was likely better than she deserved.

At half past eleven, her breathing became shallow and more labored.

At a quarter to midnight, her eyes fluttered closed.

At five minutes to twelve, her chest ceased to rise and fall.

In the last minute before midnight, Jewell could feel her old heart--now trapped inside Belladonna’s chest--beat sixty-six times before finally stopping.

And all she could think was: That was supposed to be me.


((Co-written with Issy!))
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

February 15, 2018

Ishmerai lead Doc Eva up from the second floor of the sanatorium to the living quarters above. The place was still a mess and although no bodies were in evidence, there were plenty of blood stains on the floors and walls to paint a fairly accurate picture of what had taken place just last night.

“Thank you for coming on short notice. She has reassured me that she is fine, but we thought it best that you at least do a cursory check up.”

Eva shifted her bag on her shoulder, stepping around the blood stains as they passed. Her brow furrowed, half-wondering if they needed a referral to a cleaning team. “Her reassurances aren't that valuable.” She looked aside at him, a faint smile. “I suspect you know that already.”

The knight was tired and weather worn, he had yet to rest after his travels in Faerie, but the doctor made him laugh. “She is rather predictable in that way, yes?”

Jewell’s personal apartments were more intact. They quietly avoided the living room, where several people (including Sapphire) had taken over the couch for a post-fight sleepover, and went up one last flight of stairs to the bedrooms.

When Ishmerai showed Eva into Jewell’s room, the faerie was sitting upright in bed expectantly. Somehow, she looked better than she had in weeks despite the bruises that seemed to cover the majority of her skin and the Badsider Brawler’s t-shirt that didn’t manage to hide the heavy bandages on her neck. “Eva,” she smiled, standing to hug her friend.

“Hey, babe.” She tried to stop her from standing, but even Eva knew the futility of trying to stop her friend once she was in motion. She shifted her bag to rest beside the bed, and offered her a gentle hug. When she stepped back, she gave her a good looking over, as she tried to gesture her back into a sitting position on the bed. “How are you?”

Jewell wasn’t so very stubborn, not when she felt like she had just been re-born and run over by a lorry all at once. She sat back down as Ishmerai stepped out of the room, closing the door. “I'm okay... I mean, relatively,” she added on quickly before Eva could even give her that look. “They fixed my heart.”

“I was starting to worry. About what you had decided.” Eva leaned around her, starting to adjust the pillows so Jewell could sit back on the bed with her legs stretched out. “Are you hiding anything with um... magic?” Once Jewell had started to settle, she positioned herself at the edge of the bed, unzipping.

“I'm sorry. I should have told you more.” She shifted against the pillows to get more comfortable, but it was difficult when her whole body was one big bruise. “And I’m not,” Jewell's smile was a bit crooked. “Too tired and seems silly to hide it from you.” The truth was it was probably too difficult even without the iron in her system. Aside from the bruises and cuts here and there, there was the deep wound on her shoulder from where Mallory had stabbed her and the ruin the kindred lord had made of the curve between neck and shoulder on the same side.

And the small, multi-pointed star burned into the skin of her breast right above her heart.

“Looks like a pretty good fight you had.” Eva gently tugged the neck of her shirt aside so she could note the locations of her worst injuries. Then she started withdrawing items from her bag---blood pressure cuff, heart monitor, hand-held ultrasound. “I want to see how your heart is doing first, okay?”

“Had them on the ropes the whole time,” she laughed quietly. “Clearly.” Jewell held out her arm for the blood pressure cuff, “It should be fine. We did this ritual you probably do not want to hear about, but it got rid of the iron. All of it.”

Eva pressed her fingers to her wrist to take her pulse, recording her notes in the data pad, then leaned forward to tug down the neck of her shirt again so she could place the heart monitor sensors. Eva looked at her, that inscrutable look of doctorly concentration. “You sound fairly certain.”

Jewell’s brow furrowed. “I am. It feels... different. I’m lighter. All this time? I could feel the iron burning away at me. It was like having a constant fever, a cold fire inside my skin. And it wasn’t just my heart. It was everywhere. And now?” She shook her head. “I feel like I did before... like I could go for a run or fight a whole field in the Diamond Quest. I’m tired, but it’s the tired of having just gotten my ass kicked by three Jake Thrashes.”

Eva chuckled softly, eyes lifting to look from her devices to her friend. “Well your readings look pretty good here.” She swapped some of the items from her bag. “I’d like to give you a shot of contrast this time before I take a picture of your heart. It’s a dye that goes into your blood. It will give me a clearer image.” She looked at her as she readied the shot.

She wrinkled her nose but still braced herself. “Sure sure... didn’t get poked and prodded enough last night. Will it turn my hair blue by any chance?”

“Probably not.” Eva smiled faintly. She prepared the injection, gentle as always. “Little pinch.” Then gave the injection. “We’ll give this a second.” Eyes lifted to Jewell’s again as she continued running through the steps of the physical. Checking her reflexes, her eyes, her temperature. “Did you lose anyone? In the fight?”

She flinched more at the question than that pinch of the injection. “Yes.” There was something interesting over Eva’s shoulder that she watched as she ran through the usual check-up procedure. “They were supposed to leave weeks ago, but they insisted on staying.” Her smile was a fraud, “I’m a rather terrible Empress if my empire keeps crumbling.”

“It’s a heavy burden, being responsible for so many people.” Her voice quiet and even. “And when you’re at the top, you're always a target.” Hand-held ultrasound in her hand, she nodded to her. “I’m going to lift up your shirt, okay?”

“It is. And I’m tired of it,” she admitted as she reached down and tugged her shirt up enough for Eva to use the device. Her joke was a little lame, but she couldn't resist, “Just don't go gossiping about how I’m as flat as a pancake now.”

Her eyes lifted for a wry smile. Eva was always discreet. “If that’s all I got to gossip about, I need a new social life.” She watched the image that appeared on the hand scanner. Then placed it side by side with the image she'd taken before from her records. Her expression stayed the usual carefully-schooled blank. But it was strange. It was her heart, but not her heart. Her heart, but not her heart. A little furrow found its way to her brow.

Jewell made no attempt to crane her neck and look at the image. She thought she knew what she would see, so she was watching Eva instead. “Even the hole Kal made, the one they patched up last year, is gone, right? I still have the scar, but otherwise it should be like it never happened. Except…” she hesitated and gave a half-shrug, looking away again. “I still remember it,” she added quietly.

“It’s perfect.” Eva nodded. Then she looked up at her. There was a beat of hesitation, as if she might ask what they had done. But instead she just nodded. “I’m not seeing what worried me so much before.” She set the devices aside. She withdrew her stethoscope and shifted towards Jewell, warming the disc between her palms. “Let me hear your breathe.”

Even looking away, she seemed to sense her friend’s hesitation because when she looked back at her, it was with a smile once more. “If you want to know what happened, I’ll tell you.” Then she fell quiet and just focused on breathing. It felt fantastic, aside from some bruising to her ribs, to be able to breathe in deeply, to not feel like she was constantly out of breath.

Eva listened, quiet and thoughtful, then leaned back. “No, thank you.” She had long learned that not-knowing was better than knowing. That’s what a blackmarket doctor was best at. Not knowing. The tests were enough to tell her how Jewell was doing. And as far as she could tell, Jewell was doing well. “I want to follow-up in two weeks. But I want you to look out for shortness of breath, unexplained tiredness, dizziness. Okay?”

She nodded. That was fine. Jewell didn't really want to talk about it. “Right. Two weeks and look out for all that.” She took another deep breath of relief not necessity. “This is just so... weird.”

“You've been through a lot.” She didn’t need to know the details to know that. Eva started preparing what she needed to address the more superficial wounds, putting on gloves, leaning forwards to peek under the dressing at her neck. “Have you slept at all?”

“That one is bad,” she warned despite knowing very well that Eva was a doctor in RhyDin of all places and was likely used to such things. It looked more like something had tried to take a piece of her neck with it than a clean vampire bite. “I slept a little. Probably nap later too. It’s just easier when the sun is up.”

Eva recognized the handiwork and she hissed at it. “Tangle with a vampire?” She considered whether stitches were necessary. Decided they weren’t. “You having nightmares?”

“Several,” Jewell expression was grim. “And yes.” It seemed silly to hide it from Eva of all people. Eva who knew the majority of her medical history. “They’re not as bad during the day. The apothecary gave me some stuff, but sometimes it’s worse to use because it’s harder to wake up from them.” And then she was trapped in a world of nightmares.

“I use bourbon, but that’s not all that helpful either.” She moved from one wound to the next. Eyes kept going up to meet hers. “When’s the last time you saw a therapist?”

“Least it tastes good.” The other wound on her shoulder--where Mallory had stabbed her to gain her blood--was cleaner at least. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, thinking. “August? September? I went with my friend Lucy to hers more recently, but that was mostly to discuss guy trouble. You know, the truly pressing matters of my life.”

Eva smiled, glancing up at her. Then she leaned back. “I see a priest sometimes.”

“Really? A priest?” Her stomach twisted at the word priest, but there was nothing judgmental about the questions, merely surprise and then curiosity. “Does it help?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t lying. She wouldn’t. “I go to meetings when things get bad. Narcotics Anonymous.” She turned her attention to the burn next.

“Meetings?” Jewell wrinkled her nose. “Other people are there then, right? Other than the priest?” The burn was situated directly over her heart, deep and precise. “Also, what kind of priest is this? I had some run-ins with some priests.” It was a relief that despite the dark turn her thoughts took, her heart did nothing more unusual than beat a little bit faster.

“Roman Catholic.” She nodded that other people were at the meetings. “I don't always talk. Hearing the echoes of my own problems in other people’s is surprisingly helpful.” She treated the burn carefully, frowning at it.

“Magic made,” she explained the burn distractedly as she thought about this group meeting idea. “Wouldn’t be surprised if that one left a scar.” So many of her other injuries didn’t, but she remembered them all the same. “Do you think…” she asked quietly, hesitatingly, “are there people who’ve gone through some of the stuff I’ve gone through?”

Eva raised her eyes, “I know there are.” Then she smiled a little. “Though maybe not the exact same stuff.” A little playfulness in her smile.

There was a relief in knowing that somehow, even if Jewell didn’t act on that knowledge, even if she never sought these people out, they were there. Somewhere. I am not alone. “Well of course not. I have to be unique, you know. Can’t ruin my life the same way as everyone else.”

“Jewell.” Her smile sobered. She pulled off the gloves, placed them in the sealed bag with the rest of the hazmat trash. Then she reached a hand to gently rest against her wrist. “You haven’t ruined your life.”

Her smile was tremulous in response before it failed completely. She wanted to ask Eva how she could be so sure. “You know, yesterday I wanted nothing more than to live. That’s all I wanted. But I woke up this morning and… and now my body is fine but my head is a mess. It’s still such a mess, and I have to figure that out because otherwise…” Otherwise, why had they bothered to save her?

“You’ve been through more than your fair share of traumas Jewell. If your head wasn’t messed up, you’d be a sociopath.” She put all of her things away, then looked back up at her. She nodded towards the side of the bed. “Scoot over.” She stood and stepped out of her shoes

Jewell didn’t need further encouragement, awkwardly shifting over in the large bed without jarring her shoulder. “This is what they call a good bedside manner, huh?” she teased.

“Are you complaining?” Eva smiled faintly. “Take it up with management.” Shoes off, Eva sat back on the edge of the bed, then swiveled to get up on the bed beside Jewell. But she didn’t settle immediately. She reached over Jewell to adjust the pillows and blankets, making sure her friend was well cushioned and snug. Then she sat back beside her, her shoulders against the headboard, legs stretched out, and she reached for Jewell’s hand. “I’m just going to sit here for a little while.”

There was a heartbeat of hesitation before Jewell tucked her hand in Eva’s, fingers wrapping around hers. “Okay.” She didn't say anything else. She didn’t really need to. She didn’t even look at her friend. It was enough to know that she was there while she cried.

((Adapted from live play with the best ever Doc Eva!))
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Re: The Faerie Queen

Post by JewellRavenlock »

February 18, 2018

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” The knight shook his head, unsure. Sapphire had left them earlier in the evening. She needed to go home. She wanted to. She had done an exceptional job in the fight against the Night Court and Belladonna’s people, but she had seen things as a result: friends and allies dying. Dying to protect her. The Empress may have courted death regularly, but it was a new companion for the blue haired wonder.

Jewell turned to look at him. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Of course. I fulfilled my promise to you, I obtained the relic, you are healthy once more. Why would I not be okay?”

She looked pointedly at his left hand. The scales, his skin, even the nails on his fingers were an inky black. Blighted. Whatever it was had already progressed up past his wrist and the veins of his arms were turning black as well, yet the knight refused to discuss it. He had only spoken briefly about what had caused it when she pressed him insistently. There were dangers in the Far Lands that Ishmerai did not wish to speak of even to his lady, and the living were not meant to leave the Eye of Sorrow.

“A small price to pay for your life, Mira.”

She nodded although she did not agree with the sentiment. Could not. How much was her life truly worth? The life of Allie, Abene, Philomena, Aella, Calla, Samantha, and Haizea in exchange. Strife, worry, and stress for her friends and family.

And now Ishmerai’s health? His wholeness? Possibly his life too?

They sat quietly, companionably for some minutes before she finally admitted to what was on her mind. “I want you to go back to Faerie to have that cared for.”

It would be one more thing she owed Lorelei, one more debt she would have to pay. She knew the faerie queen would come to call one day. Payment would be exacted. The price would surely be steep, but Jewell would pay it. She would pay it for Ishmerai.

When the time came.

He thought about it for a moment before asking, “And if I go, will you be okay?”

They had fixed her body so that it didn’t even remember the damage done to it, but Jewell remembered. She remembered the slow, cold burn of the iron that never went away. It ate at her day and night, a reminder of what Kal had done and why he had done it. A reminder of the things that had been done to her.

A reminder that there was always a price to be paid.

“I will be okay.”

She had to be.
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