Starflame13
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Rshhhh-shhhhh
Her rattle sails away, its song fading even as her now-empty hand falls to clutch the dagger. Fingers slip against seeping blood, pinching to stem the tide without cutting herself further. Spots flicker at the edges of her vision, moving with her as she sways.
It’s not… over.
The insect plucks her rattle from the air, staggering as it takes on the weight. It turns it over in its hands, then raises its face back to meet hers, blood weeping from the stem of one antenna across its bulging eyes. Which emotion fills them, Délaila cannot read. It clicks at her, words soft, barely a murmur over the once-thundering river. Words that wind through untrodden trails in the priestess’ mind, that catch with sharp edges against the smooth tread of her thoughts.
Délaila’s lips tilt, unsure, even as the dancer slips to its knees in the river; as it extends a single hand to her. It bows its head to her - then stills. Silent. Waiting.
For her.
The river recedes, crimson seeping away until the insect kneels upon dry silt. Her breath echoes, ragged in her ears. So still that even her cymbals do not shiver as the blood seeps out past her fingers, as the last of the river runs dry. As life whittles itself away to naught.
Oh, how could she have forgotten.
“Do you not know, oh, paramour?”
Her lips tilt, smile growing wide until it hurts her cheeks, until her temples stretch and the nearly-dry wound reopens to drip into her teeth. She pulls the dagger from her side, tossing it lightly to its owner. Blood pours forth unstaunched, flowing in a futile attempt to refill the riverbank. The moonlight around her grows brighter, grows blinding - alighting on every single mote of dust with glints that stabs at her eyes even as the lids slide close. And when she speaks the words leave as a whisper, a gentle nothing that tear through the air itself as a sweet, sonorous roar.
“The only way to live is to die.”
And there is only pain and blackness.
The pain fades.
The blackness does not.
Délaila blinks - once, twice, but sight remains absent. Her toes curl, leather bending beneath her soles, but finds no ground beneath them. Copper presses warm and tight against her wrists and ankles, but while she can feel the vibrations of the chimes striking with each movement, no sound echoes forth. She raises her once-shattered hand, flexing the fingers carefully without repercussions, and draws her palm across her unblemished cheek until she feels her eyelashes flutter against her palm. And still - no sight, no sound.
Only blackness.
Hands rub slowly down her side, pressing hard against repaired ribs, lingering on undented copper. Her beads shift against her neck, wood bumping against metal, as she twists her head first this way, then that. Fingertips slip past untorn leather covering smooth, unmarred skin and find their way to her waist, tracing their way along the thick cord. And there they still, finding the first break. Rawhide, cut sharp and clean, scarcely a handspan away from her torso.
Untethered.
She can feel the weight of something’s gaze, now. Whether that of her Maîtresse, from some other Ioa, or from the unknown power that yanked her here in the first place, she cannot tell. Not alien, not familiar, merely there, heavy and solid. Attention - but with neither assessment nor judgement. No warm curl of approval - and no chill of lack thereof.
Just a presence, waiting.
For her.
Délaila’s thoughts turn over in her mind, slow and honeyed, unhurried by the serpents that so often nip at its corners. The garden, the tower, the battlefield… life and death and life again. All alone, but for the scant moments her adversary held her tight and close. The first gentle touch she’s had since...
Since I began to walk the path of the Caplata.
Since she let the cycle take precedence above all, since she became a bystander as it flowed over and around and through her. Since she began to wield divine power, to bridge the gap that a moral must never fully cross.
Life and Death. Blessing and Curse.
She never had a choice, before. Not when she was first offered, not when she was last taken. She walked the path before her, the path expected of her - and she walked it well. But here, the world waits for her.
For me to choose the next path.
Her hand passes in front of her - and bumps into something heavy. Something familiar. Rssshrshrsh-rssssssh. The patter of raindrops, the whispers of dry grass. Rssshrshrsh-rssssssh. It reverberates out through the nothingness, a single echo forever tracing its mark on an empty world. Begun by her.
She has made an impact, in this life, in keeping the cycle for her people. She drove change into it, guided it, from one shape into another until the old melted away to form something entirely new. With nothing but her own will.
Her lips tilt up in an unseen smile.
The balance must be maintained in this world. How many in this life can truly claim to sustain it?
I can.
Feet tilt downwards, finding solid ground beneath them once more. The cycle is needed. Fingers tilt, close tighter around her rattle. But I am not lost to it. Throat moves, and her words roll forth from her, voice deep and carrying. They come slow, their beat uneven. Pulled from her own soul rather than passed to her along the path.
Something that is hers.
My choice. My story. My part within this play.
The end is set and the start has passed us,
But in between, I guide the way.
The Caplata slashes, jagged glass clatching at the eternal darkness and shredding it in its wake. Voices pour forth through the tear, screaming and laughing and singing, in time and entirely out of beat. Swirls of color surge forward, the vortex condescending into the rush of a newborn world.
She is Délaila nan Koulèv. Her choices are her own.
The myriad of colors resolve itself into a river that spans the entire sky even as the black coalesces to form alternating patterns against white beneath her knees. Délaila cautiously raises a hand chnk-chnk and flicks her braids back behind her shoulders. A new path - and a new trail. Fitting. She tilts her head up cautiously, eyes scanning the field before her. Voices laugh in her ears, declaring the three foes who stand across from her, three who seek to break the cycle, to stand outside it and see it shattered without caring for the damage caused. And three figures that she recognizes from the initial challenge of survival.
The silent warrior, who passed from one foe to another, now named Aggendrest. Who can spot where the end of a circle falls? Each step only brings forward yet another curve.
The dancing insect, named for what Kazimíra had struggled so hard to achieve in their bout. Best choose your dance partner wisely, oh paramour. A forced connection will not give credence to their chosen.
And as for the mad reveler, well. Délaila knew that bit all too well already. Perhaps the kindest mercy she can have is to ensure Prillyi indeed succumbs upon the field, in order to rise sane in a different life.
She needs more than divine intervention to achieve that.
The same foes - and this time, Délaila does not face them alone. A single voice that sets her tambourines trembling names the two who stand near at hand. Spirit, her silvery hair mottled like moonlight, the same glow flickering across her skin, there and gone and back in a blink. Any creature of the hunt knows death as well as life. A worthy ally. And so too is Admete, the woman tall and glimmering, the same moonlight that dances against Spirit coalesced into an ethereal arm, the other resting on a serpentine whip curled at her side. For each action a reaction; for each desire, a consequence. Hopefully the fate-chaser knows that well enough to tell when to call off the hunt.
Délaila lets her smile remain, mask cast aside in the presence of her companions. She rises evenly to her feed, taking a single step chnk forward. Let life and death come for her- she knows her place in between. Knows that there is space for her own path in this dance of mortality and divine. Waters plnk-plnk-wooooooosh fall from the scales above, the gentle droplets fast swelling to a roaring deluge. Reminiscent of the highest of tides brought by the rivers of blood. But water, pure and clear, flows here instead. The giver of life.
Her eyes fall on the three across the field. And its taker.
She dealt too much with one hand while within the last battle. Time to even the scales.
Délaila pulls the rattle close to her chest, back of her fist pressing close to her heart. “Come once more, oh Kalfu!” The red ink curls, twin serpents rolling across her body, one encircling her chest tightly as the other curls around her extended hand. Her body shivers, cold chill seeping as she stumbles chnk-chnk and catches herself, knees trembling. She reaches to her nearest ally, the armed and armored Admete, serpent glowing with gifted power. “Let my strength bear you forward.” The Caplata will accept the consequence for its Knight to ensure favor in their first engagement.
“Let it see us strike the first blow true.”
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