Shadow and Blood

TW: graphic violence

The boat meandered down the coiling river, heading towards the Vaharan camp that Lantuven was at. He had sent word that he was unable to meet them halfway as promised, and that he was busy training a new unit of recruits.

There were Vaharans toiling about the deck, their amulets glittering in the dark and their feathered wings pinned against their backs as they weaved around the small deck. All were mumbling about being on the boat and not up in the skies on such a clear night—however, between each little speck of starlight, there were swathes of darkness where Vaharans flew overhead, scouts to keep watch for trouble.

They'd had little warning, nothing but wet thumps as bodies tumbled from the stars, their bodies heralding the raining of blood.

And the screaming began.

Tall, winged shadows were thrown over the deck as grotesque, leathery-skinned faeries dropped down with mighty crashes, their silvery fangs glinting in the moonlight. Each beat of their wings brought the scent of rotting flesh, their black eyes flashing with malicious delight.

Mother and daughter were below, in the Captain's Quarters readying for sleep. Eblis had been peering out of a window on the starboard side, watching the white capped waters shiver under the wind right as a body splashed into the surface and disappeared beneath the dark depths. Eblis screamed. Her mother rushed over and pulled her from the window.

"What? What's wrong?" she frantically asked, hands clasping either side of the frightened girl's face. Thundering could be heard overhead as more forces clattered on deck, as more bodies fell.

"Someone was thrown overboard, but they were already dead--they just sunk-- oh gods," Eblis whispered, eyes of violet wide with disbelief. But her mother wasn't listening anymore. She was staring at the floor boards above them right as something thick seeped through and dripped onto her cheek.

She removed a hand from her daughter's face and wiped it off her fair skin, revealing crimson life-blood. The fair-haired female's wings rustled for a moment before both of their Fae hearing caught the shouts and ringing screams of the dying. Eblis's heart stuttered.

She gripped her mother's arms with pale hands that were already going cold with fear. "We have to go, we have to fly away, now!" As she said it, her own wings flared as if to shoot straight through the ceiling into the night. The long night gown she wore did little to hide the shaking of her legs. Her mother urgently brushed her fingers through her daughter's long hair, trying to calm her.

"No, no we need to hide. Do the trick, Eblis, make your wings disappear," her mother said quickly, patting her daughter's cheek as more blood dripped down. Both were frantic, and Eblis was near trembling with fear.

"I can't! It takes a lot of focus and even then I struggle--"

"Do it!" her mother cried, looking upward once more. Eblis's breaths stuttered as she saw more bodies flying into the waters, and listened for the singing sound of her magic, of her shadows and night. She sobbed, only able to hear the screaming of the dying, listening to her kin turn silent. She was a Vaharan, she reminded herself. Her people were dying right above her head, and she was doing nothing about it--

Her wings were at once swathed in darkness and disappeared, the little triumph doing nothing to ease Eblis's pounding heart.

Her mother merely nodded and shoved Eblis towards the bed--beneath it.

"No!" Eblis shrieked, shoving against her mother. "I am a Vaharan, I am trained in fighting and-and killing! I need to help them!" She sobbed, watching more fall from the sky, their wings bent at awkward angles and never to fly again.

"Eblis, you and I both know you could never stomach killing, and what you're seeing right now is people who are skilled in fighting, and they are being cut down like stalks of wheat. You wouldn't stand a chance, you would die instantly. I will go and help them, stay here, hide under the bed or in the closet, wherever is fine just as long as you are hiding."

But as soon as she said it, reverberations flowed through the floor, alerting them to incoming intruders. Her mother's hands became urgent again, and she was shoved beneath the bed.

Her mother turned to the face the door, wings ruffling as she lunged for a knife from one of their many packs. An Illyrian blade, curved and wicked in the moonlight. Eblis took in her mom, the perfectly straight blond hair and the light grey eyes, as she dropped into a ready stance.

Though she wore little more than a nightgown, all of the warrior that oozed out of her made it seem like she wore armor instead of simple clothes; iron instead of silk, a sword instead of a knife.

Tears leaked from her eyes as the door banged open, the scent of death like a signal for the faerie who walked in. Their skin was gray, the wings behind them leathery and wretched-looking. It's ears were wide and long, face reminiscent of a withered bat's. She shoved herself further beneath the bed, until all she could see was her mother's slippered feet and the clawed ones of the beast.

"Crow," her mother hissed, and the faerie grinned, revealing silvery fangs that dripped blood to the Illyrian woman. A tongue snaked out and licked it from the tips, slurping the blood up with pure delight on his face.

"You are the mother, no?" His voice was low and shifting, like sands in the desert during a storm. "Where is the child?" he hissed.

Mother growled, a sound that was purely feral and unlike anything Eblis had ever heard from her mouth. She clasped a hand over her own mouth to prevent herself from breathing too loudly, shivering beneath the bed as she felt the wall behind her.

"You don't want to talk? That is fine, that just means you are of no use." There was a beat of silence, and she saw her mother's feet lunge forward. She heard the slice of flesh under a blade, then another one that sounded more like a rip before those legs crumpled.

She screamed. Screamed beneath her hand, screamed over the same hand she then shoved into her mouth as a fist, muting herself, as her mother tumbled to the ground.

The mother sprayed blood from either end of her neck, her head lolling on the ground feet from her body. Her wings twitched beneath her body before she went completely limp.

"MOTHER!" she cried, pulling her hand from her mouth to reach for her mother's body, tears cascading over her face. Grey eyes stared at her blankly, that same shining blond hair speckled with blood and dull as if it had lost an inner light. A hand had fallen near her, and she reached for it without thinking, only for it to be caught in the rough grip of the Attor.

It shoved her wrist into the floorboards, and Eblis scuttled as far back beneath the bed as she could, wincing with pain. She would break her own arm off if she had too.

But her mind went completely blank as that wretched face filled her view, gazing beneath the bed as if from the end of a tunnel. A tunnel she had no back route out of.

She screamed with pure terror as those thin lips pulled back from it's teeth, baring it to her as if in a grin.

"Found. You," it said in a sing-song voice that was like no lullaby or song ever before. And she was shrieking as another hand reached back, grabbing onto her struggling body with claws that dug into her skin. 

She sobbed as she was dragged from beneath the bed, her other hand digging into wood and earning herself several splinters as she tried to stop herself.

But she was wrest from the confines of the bed, and was hoisted up up up, onto the shoulder of the crow faerie, a thing from nightmares. The bat-like faerie then bent over and picked up her mother's limp body. And then her head.

"Can't forget that," the faerie hissed, voice dark and cold. Her throat was ravaged from screaming so hard, eyes puffy and red from the tears still streaming down. But she shouted again, hoping the large ears of the attor would bleed from how loud she yelled, and she pounded her fists against the back of the faerie. She was raging then, a wrath unlike any other unleashed from her as she reached forward, gripped the wing of the crow, and ripped like it had her mother's head.

It howled with pain, the unearthly shriek ringing in her ears. Those claws dug into her back and around her spine, barely missing vital organs and arteries. But the beast dropped her mother, releasing her and her head. So she clawed at it's leathery back, she scrabbled against skin until silvery blood slipped around her fingers, and her own red blood was then falling around her from the claws piercing her back. She pulled the now-limp wing to her teeth and bit in like it was a feast, enjoying the feeling of bones snapping under her teeth and hands, that silvery blood tasting like sun-dried flesh.

The faerie dropped her, and she gasped as she collided with the cold, hard floor, breath rushing from her chest. But she couldn't move anymore, and such pain wrapped around her lower half she could've sworn she were in the darkest of hells. She kept on gasping, spitting out blood and sinew and skin, hands clawing into the floor as if to drag herself away. Her vision swam, tunneling until she could only see one thing.

Her mother's head--she gripped it and pulled it to her chest, ignoring the blood of her mother that seeped into her nightgown. The attor was howling in the background, it's wing nearly torn in half. From her. From her mouth, her hands, her anger. They had almost torn the wings off of another faerie.

She sobbed again, hands trembling as she closed her mother's eyes, the face pale and serene and splattered with blood. Her throat felt as if it were bleeding, and she was coughing and sobbing and trying so hard to not throw up at the silvery-ness in her mouth.

"I'm so sorry—I'm so sorry, mom. You were killed so easily and I did nothing," she rasped, words low and quick. But even as she said it, her mother would be proud. She would be proud for defending herself and avenging her killer.

That crow's hand gripped her once more, vengeance upon its ugly face. And she erupted.

Pure shadows ripped from her, engulfing the room and her mom and the attor. And she was reaching blindly for the discarded knife of her mother, the Vaharan blade. Her hand found something cold and hard, and she begged it were the knife and not something else. The crow had stumbled away from her, but she ignored it as her hand wrapped around the blade, the sharp metal biting into her palm. She hissed and flipped it around, gripping the handle through her own slippery blood. But through the dark, silence had fallen, and through the dark, the attor spoke like a demon from the rips of the world.

"I will find you, half-breed," it said, rasping through the darkness as if borne on a death-drenched scent. "You were only supposed to be Vaharan, like your Vaharan mother. But you are half-breed."

Do your trick, her mother had said. Because it were merely that, a small display of her power that had come from her father. Eblis had only inherited a small bit of it while her brother, Lantuven, had grown to be stronger than their own Lord Father.

Though she shook with terror, though she meant to fight for her life like she had never had to before, she felt a sense of calm settle over her. If she died, her brother would make a great Lord. If she died, she would be missed, yes, but her brother had such a great cabal of friends to push him forward and past her death. Even Tamu, the little demon of bedtime stories, would help him.

But even as she thought that, she felt that raging need to live, to fight just to breathe another day. She needed to fight to see her friends again, to see Harken and Allhelm and Aniase and Lantuven and even Tamu, though they had their disputes. But arguing meant she was alive, and arguing meant she had something to fight over.

That blade felt light in her hand, the pommel easily fitting into her grip. Her fae heritage was working to patch her up, however, that darkness was slowly slipping from her fingertips as she lost focus, as she lost that pure anger and was only filled with a lethal sort of calm.

Something chuckled, a low and rough sound. "I will kill you."

It spoke into her ear, and her arm swung around to slash it's face or whatever was closest to her. The blade swung wide, and on her other side: "Your death will be commended."

She jerked away and jabbed her Vaharan blade forward, hoping to catch anything--

A hand gripped around her neck right as the darkness completely dissipated from the room, and she saw its wrinkled and ugly face.

"Your mother was so easy to kill," it whispered, as if sensually talking to a lady. The words were almost silken despite the torn wing and bloody gashes across its chest and back, the timbre of it dropping dangerously low.

She struck blindly, her gaze narrowing to those beady black eyes. She needed to winnow--

Eblis gasped as the grip tightened, closing her eyes as her airways were cut off. She stuttered for breath, tears getting past her eyelids. But her eyes flew open at the last second, revealing bright violet irises that were ablaze with pain. She brought the knife forward, and severed the hand of the faerie with one determined stroke.

It's grip remained hard upon her throat, though it no longer felt as if she were struggling for breath. But the crow howled to the roof and the skies above it with a pain that made her blood sing. For her mother--for her she could finish this kill.

Eblis removed the limp hand from her pale neck, the claws still grotesquely curved as if clutching her still. Her breathing stuttered as she brought the knife and severed its index finger, a gag already in her throat. She gripped it as if it were a lifeline amidst the raging seas, and reached forward.

She impaled it between the floorboards, her fist keeping its joints straight even as her other hand coiled forward and slammed the knife into the wooden floors.

Eblis dragged herself forward.