[[ This is a reflection of events that happened sometime in the past, standing separate from the current Old Ghosts storyline. It is a one-shot, there will be no follow-ups. Details of this post are NOT to be used ingame in any meta-form. Thank you. ]]
The night was quiet, bearing the sort of stillness to the air that could never truly be trusted for long. Along Runewick's far east coastline, the windows of one of the large flats sat propped open to coax in a chill breeze off of the ocean yet so still the night was that not a flutter, nor hint of stirring came to pass. The only exception was the crackling heat and light cast by a low-burning fire within the hearth intended to keep away the chill of the coming winter. At the large dining table that sat before the fire, her back to the sputtering embers, sat a figure alone in the near darkness. Slender, much-scarred and calloused fingers played with the set of dice there upon the table's surface, eyes narrowed as she watched one of the dice repeatedly clatter to the number three.
Eleanor had visited and gone, ever a ghost that passed through Kaelyn's life on a whim with some expert opinion or another. Drathe, she had left him in the bed, presumably asleep as her side grew cold. She had not yet parsed just what his reaction to the flat had meant beneath the surface of it all, but for the time being there was peace between them - an ease she had thirsted after like a soul lost in the desert with no water in the skins. They had played and flirted like lovers would, recalling times so long ago when life was easier, when they were just them. It was a peace she couldn't help but distrust.
Drathe and Eleanor. The Rogue and the Priestess, they stood like markers to the strange pendulum of Kaelyn's life. Both of them anchored her when she needed it most, in ways too complicated to put to word. Both of them drove her to mad impulses the moment they turned their backs, be it for love or vengeance. Both of them, she had marked in some way permanently, a selfish child leaving brands upon their toys so others knew not to play with them. They were a testament to her, to how she broke or twisted or poisoned everything she touched in some way, and they took their punishment in stride.
The Rogue, he was her oasis that she would walk the worst of the desert for. A constant companion that could, would match her stride for stride, wit for wit while bearing unending patience for her fickle ways. The embodiment of her heart and soul, the piece of her puzzle she was trying so terribly hard to learn how to fit in, to walk in tandem with rather than constantly race ahead of. He had finally confessed to her that night, the hope that she would change, slow down - that it had felt like she was chasing a death wish, a swan's song since her return. He hadn't been wrong, not entirely.
The Priestess, her unanticipated ally and friend that she would never truly trust. She had coaxed truths and secrets from Kaelyn since the first time they had spoken, there beyond the Necktie inn under a cherry tree, an oncoming storm racing toward them. Eleanor knew in so many ways the truths of Kaelyn's demons - figurative and otherwise. It was a strange spell the priestess had woven around her, begging the desert woman to confess. Confess her insecurities, bare her heart's festering wounds - Eleanor acting the role of lance, allowing her to heal in so many ways. That the woman still came around, still lay her head upon Kaelyn's lap and spoke of trivial and trying things was a wonder, after Kaelyn had betrayed her so deeply.
How many times in her life had she ended with the blood of friend and lover upon her hands? Kaelyn had lost track, truth be told. She was the walking embodiment of disaster, and every single soul that had ever drawn close to her had ended up spilling blood, be it by her hand or her actions. Neither Drathe nor Eleanor stood as exceptions, particularly with events that had unfolded in the past months.
The dice clattered across the table as the woman absently fiddled with them, her attention elsewhere, staring off across the way to the wall as the fire's light at her back played with the deep shadows. A bottle of barely-touched mulled wine sat forgotten upon the table, though after a moment she reached for it and slumped back in the padded chair as it settled to her lips. The wine was sweet but sharp across her tongue, and she indulged on a slow drink as her mind played back to a memory.
◦ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀❖⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ◦ ⠀
Ushara's Glade was a sight to behold, a sanctuary of peace and regrowth with its trees of fire hues and perpetual dusk. She had lingered in the glade, body and soul sated in so many ways when Eleanor had appeared, not wholly unwelcome though unexpected. She had caught Kaelyn in a state of afterglow, riding the high of the pendulum's swing, and Kaelyn was loathe to let the moment go.
They spoke, the two women, as they had a habit of doing when left alone together. It was idle talk at first, until Eleanor took a chance to speak her own confessions. Every word that slipped from the other woman was like a weight upon the fulcrum, downward, pushing downward and dislodging the pendulum until it fell like a guillotine blade.
"The Old One would have me birth... well. Death."
The Old One. Did she mean Cherga? Prea, Jefferson's demonic mistress? What did she mean, to birth death?
As the priestess continued on, it became evident that she held a place upon the chess board at play, commandeered by Jefferson as it had been. What place she held truthfully - pawn or Queen? - was unclear even as she gave herself a succinct label. It mattered little as Kaelyn listened in silence, taking in all that Eleanor would tell her. A chill stole through her as she sat there perched upon the bench within Ushara's Glade, Eleanor a breath away from her.
What drove her to do what she did next was anyone's guess. Some distant, maddened series of thoughts trailed through her mind, beginning with the sight of Drathe beaten nearly to his death and ending with... Eleanor. Eleanor, the Priestess that so many feared or distrusted. Eleanor, who held some corner of idle importance upon Jefferson's field of play.
The want for vengeance trailed like a lover's scratching nails down her spine, coaxingly familiar yet edging just this side of painful. She echoed that caress with fingers that wove slow and sinful into Eleanor's hair. It was that touch, a warning wrapped in the cloak of tenderness, that sealed the moment's fate. Kaelyn had wanted to leave Gray a message since the first moment she had seen Drathe, her heart embodied, broken and bent upon Runewick's bed. Perhaps, she decided as she regarded the woman at her side, this would be enough to get his attention.
She owed Cherga a life anyhow.
Forgive me.
All that happened next unfurled almost in a form of slow motion. Kaelyn had been quietly caressing fingers through Eleanor’s hair when her hold tightened. She had utilized an age-old, tried and true technique of hers in the way she straddled the other woman and pulled her close. She had kissed her with a passion she’d long ago learned to mimic, a heat meant to lure and distract as her other hand went for the slender little blade ever tucked at the small of her back.
How many times had she done this, she wondered distantly? It was almost as easy as breathing, the realization that her intent was to take a life in that moment allowing her to shut out the rest of the world. Eleanor gasped words that fell on empty ears -- There is another -- but to Kaelyn it was just another hollow plea. Steel edge kissed pale throat, and one motion would have been enough. Damn their friendship, the confidential truths spilled between them, it did not matter in that moment to a woman hell-bent on blind and sudden vengeance.
One move. One motion she had perfected as easily as breathing. Yet the moment she came to that irreversible act, she paused. No, she hesitated.
She hesitated.
To hesitate was death to her kind as it gave their victim a chance for retaliation. Eleanor didn’t take the chance though. Instead she spoke of that other, of another piece upon the chess board, of drawing this other out. Kaelyn listened, yet never relented her hold or her aim. Yet suddenly, as if aware of whom she had in her hands and of where they were in so sacred a Glade, she could not finish the act. A cold chill played its way down her spine, and in a moment of fickle indecision, she turned the hilt of the blade just so and took its blunted end sharply to the woman’s temple.
It was enough to knock the woman out. As Eleanor slumped, Kaelyn made quick work of filching rope and cuffs from a bag thrown at the base of the nearby log - a curious twist of fate, as she and Blue had ended up with the lot just earlier amid a particular series of adventures. She bound and gagged the woman, her hands shaking. Gods, why were her hands shaking?
Silence engulfed the glade as Kaelyn finished off the tethering of slender, pale wrists under rope. She looked over Eleanor, and some frantic part of her mind was begging the question, what now?
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀What now, you idiot child? What do you do next, you mad fool? Leave her? Hope she is found? No. No, that’s not a good enough message. Queen for king.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Queen for king.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Queen for king.
The dagger that had been brandished at Eleanor’s throat with every intent to kill was taken up again. The hilt felt hot in Kaelyn’s hand, the twisted viper that wound around it searing scale and fang into her palm as her other hand reached out to tenderly, even affectionately brush Eleanor’s hair aside. She exposed the woman’s neck, the collar of her blouse and a finger hooked beneath material to drag it down until she could see collarbone.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀If you do not finish your task, you mark it. Lest it ever come back around behind you, at least you will know it is there.
As the tip of the blade was set beneath Eleanor's collarbone, Kaelyn murmured a quiet oath in the old tongue of the southern deserts. The heat that radiated from the blade's hilt soaked deep into flesh, into bone until it ached. Then, like a ripple it fed back down iron and edge to the blood that now flourished like a blooming flower against pale skin. Against the bone of sternum and rib, the dagger could not go deep. It went deep enough though, and the old, divine, blood magic settled. For a moment, Kaelyn's head throbbed in time to the pulse of Eleanor's heart, and then it quieted.
Marked.
She left the woman tied well beyond the glade, drug her half across the northern reaches until she was posted up just outside the Necktie. It was a coward's way out, a sudden aching desire to have no more of the priestess' blood on her hands, so instead she left her friend, her confidant, her priestess to the mercy of the craven, undead things that crawled through the wastes of the marsh. Did she hope Eleanor would be slain by the hands of the very things the decayed prince claimed to command? A small part of her did, yes.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Understand this is not personal.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Not in regards to you, at least.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀I quite like you.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀You always had the choice, Kae.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Mm. No.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The dice are cast, whether I say no or not.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Pray to your Goddess, Eleanor.
◦ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀❖⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ◦ ⠀
The fire had sputtered its last breath, only the most stubborn of embers left smoldering in the depths of the ash. Kaelyn blinked and lowered her gaze to the dice that she had been absently toying with as they clattered once more, landing upon snake eyes. Two ones. Threes and ones haunted her of late, trying to tell her something, and for once she found she was struggling to read them. Eleanor had come back to her, had survived the ordeal of Kaelyn blindly shoving her over the edge of the proverbial abyss -- perhaps in hopes that the woman would take her down with her.
"I always though you had a death wish of sorts. Jumping into things that flirted all too heavily with that aim." Drathe's voice echoed distantly in her memory as she nudged one of the dice with a finger and then pressed slowly to her feet, turning to bank the last of the fire with the metal hook that sat aside the hearth.
"I thought this time, the way you talked about marrying you so soon, never leaving me again... This was going to be your swan song."
A small, sick part of her had hoped for that when she had dragged Eleanor under, perhaps. That, and then placing herself quite literally at Gray's feet for a game of dice that ended on an ever so fortunate draw. She had been tripping toward the edge of darkness since she had returned, a diseased voice in the back of her mind constantly pushing for the high of playing at death's side. Hoping, perhaps, that she would finally slip up and put to rest the person she had learned to hate most among them all.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀It's us, it's my one and only thing I have left of any worth of meaning. My heart, in there with you.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Be better, Kaelyn. You give yourself every excuse in the world to toy and destroy and run from consequences. Playing so coy and pretending you can just dance above it all.
The Rogue and the Priestess. Her anchors, her fulcrums, all in the same breath. Blood they had shed, by her hand or her actions and still they stood upon her horizon, begging her to wash her hands of the ichor she had let coat them. With a final breath, she left the cold coals in the hearth and abandoned the bottle of wine aside the dice upon the table, and turned for the door of the bed chamber, her place of solace in the chaotic storm she called life.
Your Blood On My Hands
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