Fine Women. Sleep Women.
There was fire, and cold stone under her feet and hands. Her side hurt, terribly, in a way that she knew only too well that it had let death in. That a creeping end to this life time. The last torrent of ice and fire the young witch had used hadn't been enough. She couldn't summon the strength to fly away. The elementals were all dispelled. The daemon sent back to it's abyss. Cabal was dead as well. Slowly, the dark haired women looked up to her attackers, in all likely hood, they'd gotten to the rest of the Circle already, there wasn't any reason, or means, to fight anymore.
"How did you know?"
"Because -he- told us." One of them sneered, taking great pleasure in the look of horror that settled in her beaten and bleeding face. "Any last requests demoness?"
As if they'd do it. ".....Tell him I don't blame him." The jade armored leader stepped forward and lifted his sword.
She hadn't been innocent in all of it. She knew that now. She'd been just as eager to rob from the dead. She had been just as willing to kill, to do what ever it took to get things she wanted. In fact, at times, in her chilly detachment from almost everyone, she'd been downright cruel. How many men had she outright broken their hearts, just to see if she could? Just to feel the power of that kind of sway over a sentient being. And this was her punishment. To have her own heart broken just so. Just so... That's just what he'd say right now. Just so, if this is my punishment, Oh Sun. Your priestess offers herself up to your pity. May we never do this again.
And then there was blackness.
And for a long long time there was nothing.
And then there was light. Blinding light. And Lucritia was dancing again, only she wasn't Lucritia anymore....
Adele's eyes snapped open, but she dared not to jerk too suddenly, and risk waking the sleeping Mountain beside her. She could have killed Quin at that moment. Since her Exaltation Adele had danced. Carefully danced around the memories of death and fire. She couldn't put names to the places... She couldn't put a place to the hot and cold place in her dreams. But Quin had fixed that... Hadn't he?
"I'm not guilty of those things." She whispered to her pillow. The Mountain shifted.
"Women fine. Women sleep."
She went still then, waiting till he went all the way back to sleep. Now, she envied Arbat. He seemed to have managed to detach himself from his past so well. It was that demeanor of chill that he kept about him. It worried her, and yet she envied it. Now, she knew of course, that he'd die for her... That he'd die for any of them. But that he could seem as if none of this touched him...
Verseyr looked up to the older witch quizically. "...But if I have the power... Why shouldn't I use it?"Verseyr looked up to the older witch quizically. "...But if I have the power... Why shouldn't I use it?"
Lucritia looked up from her book cooly. "Any fool can toss his power around, young wizard. It takes skill to conserve the energy."
That couldn't have been right. She shook her head into the pillow. Surely it had been she throwing around her powers. She must have gotten it backwards. 'That's why I can't stand this' She crept carefully from the bed to prevent a landslide. 'None of it make any sense.'
She pulled a robe on over herself and stepped out onto the little balcony at her window. She shut the door behind her and looked up to the night sky. It was black with storm clouds.
A storm was coming.
Her eyes drifted to the moon, it conformed those fears nicely for her. A vibrant halo floated around the over filled moon, making it look bloated somehow, and ready to spill down misfortune on any who dared exist below it. Blood on the moon. That's what the heathens called that ring around the moon.
Blood on the moon -always- meant the same thing.
It was time, Adele thought, to invest in some armor.
Like a warning from the sky, thunder cracked, ripping an ugly yellow swath across the sky for just a moment. Then the downpour came. The rain pouring down so hard it had to fall at a slant just so it would all fit in the sky. It pounded down on Adele and pushed her up agenst the window to her back. It had been raining like this when Sabain had died...
"NO!" She tilted her head up and shrieked back up at the sky. "No! Nothing is going to happen to them this time! I'll protect them this time!" As she screamed, she stepped forward towards the rain, hands gripping the wrought iron railing. Screaming, as if, if she yelled loud enough, she could drive back the rain. Screaming, banshee like, as if she could frighten the blood from the moon and make things normal again.
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