*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
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The woman seems to sense it in the small, finite seconds before. He can see it written, like the slow opening of a book, across her tan features as they descend on her horde from the canopy above.
The sudden drop of the figures spooks her horse; it rears up, tossing long hair and swatting its hooves as smoke and flame ripple amongst the crowd. And then the smell of burning intensifies.
All the horses are screaming now, screaming between the hoarse sounds of shouting, panic. The caravan has descended into chaos and Iaves slips amongst it all.
She is still on her horse, guiding it around the burning wood and cinder, and he moves forward, angling, aiming. But even as he moves her companion, that fair-haired golden boy from their little posse, steps between them, crouched down, pulling stone up from the earth.
Fine, Iaves thinks as one of the other Cabal rushes past, engaging the woman. You first.
Iaves runs forward and the golden-haired man lifts his makeshift sword, something steely in his expression. It's a look harder than his hands, because this one is well-fed, well-groomed—the Solveig one, Iaves remembers, a vision coming to mind of Ben's twisted face in firelight as he counted out Allayria's little troupe after the breakout. The noble man, with his golden crown of hair and silver spoon. Just like Allayria, just like Fae Urilong—
Iaves kicks up dust, intimates a lunge, laughs—dark and wild—when the man draws back. Silver flashes between Iaves' hands—a sly, thin blade, light and dangerously quick.
I'm going to carve you up, Iaves thinks, and there's far more anguish in the thought than he likes, not near enough fury. This, at least, I can do.
But even as he moves something leaps out from the flames behind the man. At first Iaves thinks it a man, because it is in shape, but then he senses it, and then he spies the frozen, porcelain leer.
Allayria's creature. He knows this, knows with sudden certainty there is no person behind the mask, just a familiar echo, an impression that he would have never been able to conjure from memory but immediately recognizes.
It's an echo of what she felt like before it all, but... not. That bright, blue-tinted lens of glowing, refracted light has been dirtied—darkened not just by muck and grime, but something else. Something inside. That refraction of a refraction, dim and growing something dark and insidious, sits in this vessel like a phantom, a ghost.
What nightmare is this, Iaves thinks in disgust, settling down, knees bent. The thing is looking at him, or whatever its version of that is— he can feel it focusing on him, feel its intent as the head turns slowly, like the tick of a clock hand, like a silent query.
There's a chill in Iaves' blood, quite at odds with the roaring heat and flames around them, and something, old and ancient, whispers in his ear:
