Fantasy Tethered ( ellarose & Syntra. )

[ellarose]

“Well, granny. Time takes all of us eventually.” Faline mused, patting the soft patch of soil over the grave she dug in the garden. It had taken hours. She sighed gently from the exertion, passively noticing the dirt caked under her fingernails. All right. That takes care of that. She brought herself to stand and awkwardly brushed her hands over her skirt, at a loss for profound parting words. As she considered what to say, one of the chickens strutted into view over the grave and promptly began taking care of his… unmentionable business. “Now, now, Hector. That is rather disrespectful to granny.” She chided on principle alone, lifting the chicken to peer at it sternly. And yet she could not be cross with such an endearing face for too long. “Oh, sweet creature. She did threaten to cut your head off.” Nodding empathetically, she set her feathered friend back down on the ground. “Quite a few times, in fact." Or perhaps hundreds. It must have been hundreds. ('Faline!' Granny had screeched, 'If you bend time itself to spare that idiotic chicken one more time I swear I will--' well, ahem. She did not care to remember the rest of the threat and so she would not. Needless to say, ever since the chicken tore granny's favorite quilt apart their rivalry was a sight to behold. But Hector did not mean the old bat any harm. Hector was a chicken.) "I suppose it is only fair.” Unfazed, the chicken clucked and proceeded to peck aimlessly at the dirt around her boots. The black cat perpetually coiled around Faline's ankles, Endymion, watched it carry on with a glower that suggested they thought the clueless bird a horrible mistake of nature.

“You were the only one who ever knew me. And now you are gone.” Faline addressed granny sensibly, gazing at the patch of dirt. Hm. It was rather strange to associate the soil with a person, wasn't it? But she supposed that was what all mortal creatures amounted to in the end. (That was what Natos always said, anyway.) Even with the power she possessed to turn the hands of time, she could not stop death. She could stall it, yes. But eventually the body gave up and there was nothing she could do about that. Tilting her head, she took a moment to consider the fact that the only human being who ever knew her was now dead... and then that moment ended without much fuss. Indifferently, she decided she had said quite enough and spun around on her heel.

“And what am I? Chopped liver?” The cat drawled, darting after her like a shadow as she made the short trek to the cottage gate.

“You do not count.” Faline teased with a fond little smile, taking the trunk she'd packed earlier into her hands. Then her attention panned up to the only home she ever knew. Inside her chest, dueling emotions swelled in a crescendo that she could not make much sense of. To put it as simply as possible, this was her past. And she was about to leave it all behind.

“You wound me, Miss Kairos.” Endymion played along, matching her tone. Then the cat stared up at her staring at the cottage. "Are you ready?"

Faline already said a proper farewell to each of the rooms individually as she gathered things from each to pack in her trunk. Essentials only, she had decided as a rule, severing her sentimentality to all of the things she ever owned. They were just things, after all, and she intended to carry herself as light a feather on the path to her future. She would leave the past behind, buried just like granny in her grave. But she swore not a tear would come to her eye because she was ready. She had been ready for a very, very long time.

Death and time often went hand in hand. (Natos said so.) Faline could sense that death had moved on from her granny and set its unwavering gaze upon someone else. When the visions of blood kept her awake all through the night and she found granny dead in her bed the next morning, she knew it was time. The world had beckoned for her in the only way it could, inviting her to make a move against death. And she had to, lest she wanted to lose her only remaining tether to her ancestry and the answers that came with it. And the Kairos magic would die with her.

"Yes." Faline nodded and began to walk down the lane towards the forest. "I must find auntie. My vision suggests that she will be murdered. And murder can be prevented." Right. Unlike old age, as was the case with granny.

"Of course, Miss Kairos. I will assist you to the best of my abilities."

Faline paused instinctively at the wooden sign that indicated that it was unsafe for her to proceed any further. That may have been the case once, but the magical boundary that stood around this place died with granny. She could finally venture out beyond it. With her heartbeat picking up in her chest, she took a small step forward and-- wow. She laughed breathlessly as her boots touched upon earth they had never touched upon before. Unable to believe that it was truly happening, she took another step to convince herself. Lifting her gaze skyward, she admired the towering trees all around her with fascination. Then surprisingly, despite the promise she made with herself not to cry, tears began to stream down her face. "Oh." She blinked and brought her hand up to rub them away.

"Are you all right?" The cat asked.

"I will miss the chickens." Faline admitted, looking over her shoulder. She said farewell to the birds earlier, wishing that mother nature might treat them kindly in her absence. "And the ducks."

"They will not miss you." Endymion supplied pragmatically, rolling their eyes. They rubbed their body affectionately against her ankles all the same.

"I know." Faline sniffed. It was the truth, after all, seeing as they were only birds. They would not miss her. That did not change that she would miss them, though. Their soft feathers, their noises. The way they pecked at her hair... the sounds of their feet clicking on the cabinets. Twisting the end of her raven braid around her finger, she nodded towards the path and began walking with longer strides. "I do imagine they will miss feeding time, though." The poor creatures. But there was no much else she could do but leave a note for the delivery boy who would arrive in three days time, explaining the situation.

"You make a fair point, Miss Kairos." The cat conceded with a nod. Their expression suggested they could not care less if all of those birds died horrible deaths back there. Kindly paying mind to their mistress's feelings, however, they opted not to voice their violent thoughts. Endymion proceeded to follow and then eventually guide Faline Kairos down the path... taking her closer and closer to death.

 

[Syntra]

"The witch is a sinner. Do you know what that means, Cyrra Eiréal?"

A dark shroud was hiding most of the woman's features, but still, still you could make out the edge of her smile-- a smile so sharp that it could cut, like a dagger made of black glass.

"Of course, Father. Have I ever failed you?"

"I can't say you have. Let's not make this the first time, alright?" Gently, like a true parent might, he lowered her cape, and ran his thumb across the star-shaped scar on her face. ('Don't fucking touch me,' a part of Cyrra wanted to say. 'Not there.' The thing about defying their Father, though? Well, let's just say that those who did it did not tend to die of old age. They didn't die prettily, either.) "I would hate to have to... hmm, question the depth of your faith. Always a tragedy when that happens, really."

(Heh. Yes, indeed, Cyrra did agree with that! Surely, the gleam in his eyes was but a trick of light, and the pleasure etched in his features just a figment of her imagination. Nothing suspicious to be seen there! ...not that she judged him, of course. What was a wolf that didn't use his teeth, after all? A mere dog, filthy and pathetic, with its instincts dulled by comfort. An instrument without a purpose. No, the sinners were his to punish, and so that was what he had to do! Otherwise they would drown the world in filth, crushing innocence beneath.)

"Am I to take my leave now?"

"If you would."

***

The marketplace was overflowing with life, and Cyrra wanted to die. It wasn't enough that it was blistering hot, causing her to shed most layers-- no, her torment also had to be deepened by the fact that most people hadn't bothered to do that. And, considering that 'soap' was apparently considered a swear word among them? Yes, that was a problem! Not even all the precious spices from her stall could mask the stench, and that for sure was saying something. (Should she perhaps inhale some of the pepper? Drastic as that would have been, the assassin still felt the metaphorical kick would have been less painful.)

All of that, however, Cyrra could ultimately forgive. It wasn't like they could control the basic functions of their miserable bodies, now could they? All of them were stuck in their fleshy prisons, waiting for the day when they were granted something better-- something more deeply evolved, like a butterfly crawling out of its chrysalis. What she couldn't get over, though? The damn chatter. Words, words, words, words everywhere you looked! They flowed like a river, and just like with a river, the droplets of individual conversations could no longer be differentiated. Everything just blended together, and... aaargh!

Rein in your anger, the assassin reminded herself. An impatient hunter will not catch her prey. Do you wish to put blindfold over your own yes? Indeed, falling victim to such vice would have been foolish-- weeks of research would be lost, for one. (No, not even locating the snake had been an easy task. The footprints had been faint, more felt than seen, and Cyrra... well, Cyrra was half-convinced the gods themselves must have led her there, otherwise the sands of confusion would have swallowed her. Yet another good omen, really. And as for figuring out the witch's routine? Why, pulling that off without spooking her was nothing short of miracle!)

"Can I buy some thyme?" a wide-eyed girl, no older than ten, asked. "Mommy would like a pouch or two!"

"Piss off. Don't you see that I have better things to do? I'm waiting for someone important."

The child's tears were entirely unwarranted if you asked Cyrra, but it was probably for the best that she left. Better for her not witness this, right? (The witch, Elaine Kairos, loved to shop for her spices there. Luckily for the assassin, the former owner of the stall had been more than happy to hand it over! ...after she'd slit his throat, and drowned him in his own blood. Heh. Ah, the things one wouldn't do for justice! Soon enough, the stain will be removed from the face of the earth. That much I promise.)

Cyrra recognized Kairos the moment she stepped into her field of vision, through some kind of instinct she didn't fully comprehend. Call it the gods' guidance, maybe? Yes, something like that. Undoubtedly. Either way, the woman headed towards her, and once their eyes met, Cyrra could see a hint of hesitance. A hint of... fear? (A delicious emotion, even if it only appeared for a split second. The truest, most faithful reflection of her deepest self-- her animal instincts, telling her to pay attention. To anticipate death, in other words. In moments like this, Cyrra would freely admit that she loved her job!)

"Good morning. I... Do you know where Sayrus is? I believe I was supposed to meet him here today." Ah, Sayrus. So that was his true name, wasn't it? Good to know, the assassin supposed. Not that the way his sorry mother had named him ultimately meant anything, but it could embellish the story a little bit! And, as every assassin worth her salt knew, a good narrative was crucial.

"I'm afraid that Sayrus couldn't come today," she batted her eyelashes coquettishly. "A terrible illness claimed him. Still, if you wish to do business, I believe I can serve you just as well? The name's Cyrra. I know all the secrets Sayrus does, and perhaps even more of them."

"Even more of them?" the suspicions in her voice were almost tangible now, and it took all of her self-control for Cyrra not to smile. "Such as?"

"Such as," the assasin's lip twitched, "the day of your death. It is today. Bye." And, with that? With that, Cyrra threw her knife, faster than you could blink! The blade glimmered in the afternoon sun, but only shortly. Mere moments later, you see, it was already drinking blood-- eagerly, the way only steel could. The woman fell on her knees, an act that was accompanied by the screams of hysteria, and... well. At least nobody was talking, per se? Yes, Cyrra did consider that to be a bonus.

 

[ellarose]

It was nightfall when Faline came upon the body. Endymion had hissed, warned her to be cautious, and there it was.

There was no need to check for a pulse. Although the silver light lent by the moon was quite dim through the clouds, the dark red stains coating the woman's neck and the front of her dress were plainly visible. And if that wasn't enough of an indicator, she was hung up against an old gnarled tree, crudely impaled against the bark through the heart. A corpse. A woman. A stranger in every single sense of the word. Yet she had long, dark hair that bore a striking resemblance to Faline's. Appearance aside, she still did not need to see the woman's face from up close to know who she was. (Not that she'd have recognized it, anyhow.) Time had all of the answers. And when time decided it was right, it whispered them in her ear. In the future, there were countless versions of her who had traveled beyond the point she stood at that precise moment in the present. Those versions supplied her with the vital information that she needed to know.

"...Auntie? It's me, Faline." Faline said softly, as if the woman was not dead and she was meeting her for the first time. With a decisive set to her eyes, she reached for her locket clock. "I think I need you." She grazed her thumb over the center clasp. Yes, she knew what she would have to do. It would be worth the sacrifice, would it not? And surely the doorman would not ask too much of her. (The doors, hm. Hours ago, she felt a shift within her soul, as if the hinges had loosened in some way. Perhaps that was when auntie...) "This does not have to be your fate. I will make things right."

"No. It's too late. This cannot be reversed." Endymion strode ahead, smearing a paw through the blood that had pooled onto the ground. They gazed back at her, eyes glinting in the dark. "She surrendered the magic. It has already taken another host."

"Surrendered the magic." Faline echoed back, uncomprehending. Surely the woman must have seen for herself that their paths would cross. That she could have been spared. How confounding. "Why would she..."

Just as there was no need to check for a pulse, there was no need to ask questions that she would never receive the answers to. Because by surrendering the magic, auntie essentially also surrendered her soul. It was gone and no amount of traveling would ever allow her to retrieve it.

So auntie did not carry any desire in her heart to meet her niece after all. Indifferent to Faline's existence, she must not have played a role in swaying the woman's decision to begin with. After all, why would she go to such lengths to consider the feelings of a stranger who shared nothing with her but her blood and name? (A stranger whom she had never bothered to visit, at that!) Perhaps the woman sought the permanence of death as a release. Perhaps she thought the Kairos gift a curse. Faline did not know. Because they did not know one another... and she certainly was not going to mourn a woman she never knew.

Even so. Faline stood perfectly still, feeling nothing but her heart. It's rhythm and the ache that settled within it. To her admittedly limited knowledge, she was now the only remaining soul of Kairos blood remaining on the mortal plane. The Kairos magic, however... She reached for her locket once more.

"Miss Kairos?" Seeing the locket, Endymion padded over to her side. "What do you intend to do?"

"Death must be searching for a new victim by now..." Faline observed. She clicked the center of the locket and in response, the hands of the clock spun round and round as wisps of glowing silver thread sprawled out around her in every conceivable direction. Each of the threads outlined the future, containing fragmented details of every path she could take from her current position. Touching one flooded her mind with limited snapshots from each. Amidst them, there was always one pathway that shone brighter than all of the rest. Upon finding it, she clung to it and absorbed all of the information it had to lend. More knives. More bloodshed. "As I suspected. They are in grave danger, Endymion."

"Who is?" The cat asked, as if it couldn't decide whether it was disaffected or curious.

"The new host. I must find them before it is too late." Faline snapped the locket shut and the threads slipped away. She had to. Or else she would truly be alone. Endymion nodded. Without needing any further instruction, the 'cat' slipped into the forest floor like a shadow and maneuvered further than their mistress to gather intel.

 

[Syntra]

Cyrra remembered it all, in vivid colors-- just how sweet the witch’s screams were, and the pretty shade of her blood. The chaos of the marketplace, with its peace shattered in one fell swoop. The pure, distilled intensity of that moment, powerful enough to be etched into all witnesses’ minds! Wasn’t that how god himself must have felt when he decided to bring justice to sinners? When he showed them how ridiculously small they were, compared to the greatness of creation itself? (Of course, that was a heretical thought. Impure one, guided by hubris. In hindsight, the assassin should have known it would lead her to a dark, dark abyss, but… well, it was easy to see a prophecy in threads that had already been spun. When the pattern was still emerging, however? Oh, that was a different story.)

Taking care of the corpse was a charming little ritual, and one that she performed with great gusto. Heh! There was nothing quite as invigorating as sending a message to your enemies, wouldn't you agree? As letting them know that they had been seen, and that you were coming. That whatever sense of safety that they treasured so was a lie, lie, lie, and that, soon enough, it would be shattered. At least nobody could accuse her of having no manners, hmm? For she always, always made sure to announce her grand arrival in time!

As with all of her victims, Cyrra removed the tongue first. Was it not the sweetest poetic justice, after all? With that tongue, the snake had whispered the vilest of secrets-- countless minds may have fallen prey to it, seduced by the empty promises. 'Turn away from Father,' she might have said, 'and watch the ashes in your hearth turn into gold.' Or, even more foolishly, 'The ones that you lost may see the sunlight again, if only you accept my truth.' Pfft! Cyrra knew their tricks, perhaps better than they themselves did. (Lies were her first language, you see? The assassin had mastered the art, to the point that it was sometimes hard for her to tell when she was telling untruths herself. Of course, that was a good thing-- insisting on even knowing what the truth was was a sign of arrogance in itself. The gift of the narrative belonged to the good Father! ...heh. The bastard.)

Once the tongue was removed and tucked safely in her pocket, Cyrra lifted the woman's shirt. She intended to carve the symbol of their order into her exposed flesh, but then-- uh, then something obscured her view? A whole geyser of stars, similar to the one she bore on her cheek, infesting the skies like a swarm of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Excuse her, but what the fuck?!

'Ah, there you go again. Did you think that you'd escape? My, my, but that wouldn't be fun at all! No, trust me, you'd hate it. Let's see how far you can push her this time, huh?'

"What?!"

Darkness embraced her before she could even think of resisting, and perhaps for the first time since her childhood, Cyrra slept a calm, undisturbed sleep. (More or less).

***

...the witch must have cursed her, that much she could tell. With her dying breath, she had uttered more poisonous words, and now Cyrra was paying the price!

(At first, the assassin had denied it. When she had woken up, everything had felt exactly the same, and so she had had no real reason to suspect anything. Perhaps the heat had claimed its toll? In addition to all the little annoyances, it was known for bending minds, and making people see things. Surely, Cyrra was no exception to that rule! Father must be waiting for me, she had thought then. Better return before he decides to chop off my damn fingers. Respectful leader this, holy man that-- all of that might have been true, but for Cyrra's tastes, he saw too many daggers in each freaking shadow. For that reason, and many others, she couldn't be late! ...when the assassin had seen her own reflection in a nearby pond, though? Her own reflection, distorted by dark forces? "Shit," she'd muttered. Shit, indeed.)

That was how Cyrra ended up in a cheap tavern, staring stubbornly into a mirror. Don't fuck with me, dammit! Return to normal! Her own reflection rippled, as if to laugh at her, and then... proceeded to do nothing. Of course. Duh. Why had she tried, even? Things going her way for once would have been far too beautiful to be true! I've been tainted. Somehow, she forced her disgusting nature onto me. Everyone would notice, too, which... no, Cyrra didn't want to think about the implications of that. 'Hey, I'm kind of everything you despise now, but no hate' probably wouldn't be received too well, now would it? The idea of that impure force growing inside of her was nauseating, too! Nauseating enough for her to grab her knife, sitting conveniently on the bedside table.

"I'll cut you out," she said to the source of corruption. "I will never let you have me."

 

[ellarose]

"Arrogant of you to think that will make any difference. This magic is not something that you can cut with one of your knives." Endymion laughed darkly at the woman as they emerged from the floor, a black cat once more. They slithered about the tavern room furniture more like a serpent to avoid immediate detection. They tracked bloody prints over the floorboards, retaining information to relay to their mistress with every object they brushed up against. They could not speak with everyone like this. Only those who possessed the gift could hear. "It already has you. You are one and the same... and there is nothing you can do about it."

The cat watched on from the far corner of the room they chose to settle in momentarily, shifting their gaze left and right as if to search for someone else in the vicinity. When that effort rendered no results, they released a long sigh and quickly grew bored of the scene.

"Do as you please, however. I will not stop you." Endymion noted casually. They leapt deliberately behind the woman to cross the warped mirror's reflection, melting into the floor as they landed and took on the shape of a shadow again. "My mistress is coming. And it will not matter either way."

The shadow slipped beneath the crack under in the door and then disappeared entirely from sight.

***

She surrendered the magic. Faline listened to the symphonies of insects in the trees, wondering what she was meant to do now. Oh well. For as long as she could remember, the consensus was that she would find auntie when granny died. The corpse hanging before her was meant to act as her mentor. She was to guide her as she navigated this mysterious world she never knew with the Kairos family magic. (Granny told her years ago that it did not choose everyone. In a rare show of decisiveness, however, it selected Faline as a vessel when she was only a baby. It decided she was a comfortable place to rest and nestled itself much deeper within her than most. Apparently that made her dangerous. Unspeakably so. So much that the woman she might have called her mother in another life left her with granny long ago. Or at least that was how the story went. Granny's memories were often inaccurate and she had been so small herself that she did not remember a thing.) Either way, she did everything she within her control to counteract that burdensome 'dangerous' label that stood as a wall between herself and the outside world. Always spoke in the softest, dulcet tones and treaded lightly on the ground as if to be courteous of every individual blade of grass slumbering beneath her boots. She doted on the farm animals... cared for them singlehandedly once granny claimed she was too tired to leave her old rocking chair.

"My, my. What would you do in my shoes, Hector?" Faline asked politely into the night, tilting her head to the side. With a little smile, she closed her eyes and pictured the chicken coop. She immediately felt better by posing a question that she knew the answer to. "First of all... you would not be wearing shoes. Because you are a chicken. And you would not flinch, would you? You would continue to exist precisely as you are."

Nothing Faline could have done would have convinced granny to let her leave. She realized this when she was six.

However, it was also when she was six that she decided it was not such a bad thing to be dangerous. Natos told her that people thought he was dangerous, too. She never flinched when he showed his face, nor did he flinch at her own. So he invited her to tea and told her how easily humans were frightened. He told her how some feared mice, insects, and even their own shadows. When she giggled, he laughed along with her. Their laughs sounded quite different comparatively. Faline's sounded like a baby bird in the trees while Natos's sounded like an earthquake or perhaps a rumbling volcano. Ever since, she liked to do whatever she could to make her friend laugh. He had the most splendid laugh she ever heard! Or perhaps the only laugh she ever heard. Granny never laughed. Neither did the chickens. Because they were chickens. 'Do not take it to heart, little lady.' He informed her. 'You are a pleasure to have around. If you weren't, I would have eaten you already.'

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her.

"I will do the same." Faline nodded decisively. Exist as she was. That did not seem too difficult to do. The silver threads that unraveled before her promised infinite possibilities waiting ahead. When one was cut, it did not effectively shut down all of the rest. And for once in her life, she was free to take whichever road she pleased.

This notion was so exhilarating that it was also quite paralyzing. For she had not experienced nearly enough of this world to know precisely what it was that she wanted.

"Well, I will do the responsible thing first. Perhaps auntie took on an apprentice. Someone who knows what they are doing." Faline thoughtfully lifted a finger to her chin.

"Miss Kairos. This woman has no idea what she is doing." Endymion startled her as they materialized around her ankles. The cat wound around her three times, their soft tail brushing her calves, before they proceeded to dart ahead of her on the path. "She is a danger to herself and will undoubtedly need your help. Follow me."

 

[Syntra]

Cyrra wasn’t a seer. Never had she desired to glimpse the future, nor had she tried to-- that was a domain of weaklings, for it was that much easier to latch on vague hints and symbols than it was to actually fucking do something about it. (It just wasn’t that deep, no matter what other people said. Want someone dead? Well, then be the knife in the darkness instead of waiting for someone else to do it! The gods could do the dirty work for you, but why would they? Were your wishes important enough to travel directly into their ears, bypassing everything else? Most likely not, and in such cases, the assassin believed it was only right to take the matters into your own hands. Divine, even. Was it not good, after all, to save your creators some effort? Was it not holy? Oh, it had to be! The world was teeming with unnecessary people-- with imperfect copies of the original code, distorted through the messy realities of birth. Who was going to cut them down, if not her? Who would grant them the chance to start anew?) …anyway, the point was that she didn’t really believe in any of that hocus pocus nonsense. When a cat materialized out of thin fucking air, though? A fucking talking cat? Even Cyrra knew to take it as a sign that she was straight up doomed. “There’s nothing in this realm that my knife cannot cut,” she snarled, trying her hardest not to seem half as shocked as she truly was. (It worked out, mostly. Her face, too, was an instrument, and so her muscles bent to her thoughts. How not? The training she had undergone had turned her into a diamond, with edges sharp enough to cut steel! …of course, that she talked with the creature at all instead of ending its pathetic existence for trying to talk to her might have given her away. That, and also the way she gripped her weapon tighter.)

“It ended your beloved witch, and now I will end her legacy as well. I wonder, could it do the same with you? D-don’t tempt me, demon.” (Don’t tempt me. Don’t tempt me! Were threats not like spices? Like spices, in that they were to be used sparingly? An assassin in particular shouldn’t resort to them at all-- the only thing you were to hear before she struck was the whisper of the wind carried by her blade! Ugh.) Determined to win her self-respect back, Cyrra stood up. (The knife felt heavy in her hands, but reassuringly so. ‘I’m there for you,’ it might have said, had it had the gift of speech. In an irrational sort of way, it did help.) “Coming here was your first and final mistake, you maggot,” she spat out. The creature seemed to realize it on some level, too, because it… proceeded to poof out of existence? Good. Good! Cyrra wasn’t quite sure how she had done it, but apparently, she had banished a demon. A demon, who, come to think of it, had spoken about its mistress… Another witch? Pfft! I hope she comes, then. I hope she comes, so that I can teach her what steel tastes like. They were all the same, you see? Boasted of great power of this great power they supposedly possessed, and then squealed like fucking pigs. Heh. Somewhere in there, there was a deep commentary about expectations vs. reality, wasn’t there? Not even they could escape their fleshy prison, regardless of what they’d done to violate it.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The steps weren’t particularly loud, but in the dead of the night, they might as well have been a thunderstorm. Eh? Perhaps thanks to some half-forgotten instinct, Cyrra looked outside of the window, and what she saw there did not please her. (Dark horses, tied to the fence. The remains of her own horse, mauled so thoroughly that one could suspect a pack of wolves had torn it apart. The problem was, Cyrra knew that no animal was behind this, you see? Because she recognized the signature all too well.) “Shit,” the assassin muttered. “Fucking hell. Bitches!” (How had they found out so fast? Had the innkeeper sold her? The bastard had been looking at her with those suspicious eyes, now that she thought of it. Just you wait, Cyrra promised internally, I won’t forget about this. You will regret the day you decided to cross me, you piece of shit!

Her door shook in its hinges, and the assassin cursed. Not even trying to approach this in stealthy ways, eh? That… that wasn’t good. As in, on a scale from ‘stubbed toe’ to ‘being stabbed in the back,’ this was a solid ‘mass murder.’ (Had Father issued a warrant, then? Did he want her head? Oof, the rumor mill must have worked far, far more efficiently than she had ever expected it to. Than she had wanted it to, really.)

“Oi, Cyrra! You home?”

She was, but not for much longer. When picking between a certain death and a probable one, the choice was rather obvious, wasn’t it? So, without waiting for the cavalry to barge in, she forced the shutters open. (It was high, high enough to make her head spin, and the cold had probably turned the earth to stone. Ugh, was there no other way? For real?)

“Don’t even want to greet your old friends, Cyrra? How cruel of you!”

(There wasn’t.)

Cursing the dead witch’s name, the assassin stepped out into the emptiness.

 

[ellarose]

This was the third body Faline had come upon that day. (What rotten luck! At this point, she had met more corpses on her travels than people. How simply unpleasant. She supposed that might not have been the case had curiosity persuaded her to abandon her senses and peek within the tavern windows. She had never seen a tavern before! Perhaps she would have also said a polite hello to the horses at the gates had Endymion not recommended that she stay true to her objective. And now she supposed it was a good thing she listened to the cat's advice. The longer she let this tragedy sit, the higher the expense would be.) She remained at a safe distance from the corpse, angling her gaze from the open, illuminated window above to the shape of the woman's broken form down below. Endymion bounded ahead, nosing at the body and confirming with a nod the fact that the woman simply could not have survived that fall. Her heart gave a gentle clench and not much more. For this dead woman was a stranger and she would not remain that way for very much longer. Soon enough, she would be neither dead or a stranger. "...My! How unfortunate."

"You see?" If Endymion possessed a human hand to slap their forehead with, they would likely be doing that right about now. "A danger to herself! Just like I said."

"Do you suppose she was dancing and fell through?" Faline asked wonderingly. Endymion would have slapped their forehead again if they could... but the answer soon provided itself faster and clearer than the cat could supply with cutting words.

The answer in question being a particularly jarring bang from up above. Oh! Oh no. 'No time for skylarking, Faline. Better do this sooner rather than later.' She automatically reached for her locket and clicked the notch on the side. The dim colors of the moonlit world grayed out as time itself crawled to a stop. A pitch-black door appeared and when she touched the knob, it reflected a marble sheen of starry night skies. She could feel the breath of the other realm brushing against her mind. Once she let it in, she would have the power to change this. Stand in the reaper's path and wave it elsewhere, for it was not welcome here anymore!

"Are you sure about this, Miss Kairos?"

"I must be. I've got no other choice in the matter." Faline nodded. The Kairos magic needed to survive. It had to, if she was ever to learn what she was to do with it. She opened the mysterious door and closed her eyes, her physical body falling slack in a world where time was held still. At the same time, an intangible version slipped through to the other side.

***

"Death's been on your heels all evening, eh Faline?" The doorman did not take any form in particular. To her he has always been no more than a friendly, disembodied voice. Perhaps he did exist somewhere and simply preferred not to show his face. The entities in this realm all had different preferences in the shape they took and who they chose to expose themselves to. This was simply their way and she respected their boundaries enough not to ask them to do anything they were not comfortable with.

"Not necessarily. It would be more accurate to say that death has been one step ahead of me." Faline replied simply, flicking her eyes skyward. For some reason, she believed the doorman to be very, very tall. Like a giant from a storybook. Perhaps because the ground she stood upon now resembled clouds high up in the night sky. "It has taken too much from me in one day. And now I would like to change that."

"I suppose you'd like to pass through, then?" A second door appeared at his beckoning, grander and starrier and more mysterious than the first.

"Yes." She gazed at the door longingly, rocking on her heels as she was unable to keep still. The door of time. The pull it had on her was simply magnetic.

"You know you must pay a price." The doorman cautioned. "An expensive one where death's concerned."

"Yes." Faline said again. She memorized the rules when she was six years old. "I understand."

"Well, all right. I hope she's worth the trouble." The doorman conceded. "Now, here are my terms..."

***

Time spun backward. When she returned to her position at the tavern's side, the woman's corpse was no longer lying there. The window was no longer open. But the latch sounded into the night and Faline knew that she needed to act fast. She quickly positioned herself where she had discovered the woman's body before, opening her arms and...

Faline caught the falling woman in her arms. "Oof!" Though work on the farm lent her a decent amount of upper-body strength, the impact was forceful enough that it threw her off her feet, causing her to tumble backward into an ungraceful heap of shirts. Ouch. Aside from a bruised back and scraped elbows, however, she supposed she would be fine. (And truly, it was nothing compared to the fact that she had cushioned a woman's fall to what would have been her death.) Lying underneath her, she peered inquisitively up at the other woman's face. She did not get a particularly good look at her earlier, but now that she could see...

"Wow. You're quite pretty." Faline observed innocuously. Their bodies pressed against each other felt rather nice, too. Soft and warm. But she decided not to voice that particular thought right at this moment. "...Are you running away from someone? We really ought to get up soon if we want to outrun them."

 

[Syntra]

...too fast. Way too fast.

(What was? Everything.)

The hands of gravity were pulling her down, down, down, with this stubborn eagerness, and, perhaps for the first time that night, Cyrra considered that this might not have been the best idea. Ha! Who would have thought, right? Big whoop, humans couldn't fucking fly.

Even so, it was for the best. Infinitely better than becoming another notch in that dreadful ledger, wasn't it? A quill would be made from her bones, and ink from her blood-- forever, her name would be tarnished, and scratched from all the records that mattered. From the Litany of Creation. No, Cyrra wasn't going to let them do that! Anything, anything but that, she thought, as the ground approached. And, boy, did it approach! Its kiss wouldn't be the worst thing the assassin had ever tasted, surely, and so there was nothing to be afraid of...

(A premonition flashed before her eyes, as predictable as it was painful. A heap of bones and flesh, hopelessly broken-- a thing that had once used to be her, lying in a dark pool of blood. An enchantment, Father would have called it. Can't you see how beautiful you are now, Cyrra? And, in a way, she could. There was nothing quite as stunning as the sight of devastation, was there? Of undoing the gods' creation, and fucking seeing with your own eyes the threads from which everything had been spun. ...if they could ever get even remotely close to divinity, it had to be through this. Through getting your hands dirty, stained with life itself. Innocence was just a fucking excuse, you see? A rejection of consequences, via refusing to partake in anything at all.)

The vision came and went. Cyrra closed her eyes, in a sudden fit of cowardice, but then-- then-- uhhh, then it turned out that the ground was surprisingly soft? Soft and warm, and capable of imitating human speech with surprising accuracy. Wait, what? A few heartbeats passed before the assassin dared to look, though when she did, she found herself staring into some of the most striking eyes that she'd ever seen. (Eyes that were, as it tended to be, attached to a human. A woman, if you were a stickler for details. A woman who was calling her pretty...!) "Eh?" It wasn't the most intellectual responses, but it was the most Cyrra could manage at the time. Although, perhaps more needed to be said? It certainly did feel that way, because being saved from certain death did deserve a richer commentary than that. "I mean, thanks? You are as well." Aaargh, no, not like that! It kind of was true, Cyrra had to admit, but that did not mean she should just go and say it. It was irrelevant, and utterly inappropriate, and why was the girl even evaluating her physical appearance in the first place, hm? It wasn't like she was a piece of meat to be bought, on display for everyone to ogle! She was a sister to death, and they ought to treat her the part.

(The shouts coming from the upstairs were getting more and more intense, with more curses woven into them-- this had to be the part where they discovered she wasn't there, Cyrra supposed. Heh! Sad to be them, really, but if she didn't hurry up, the roles could be very easily reversed. The girl's arrival had bought her a chance, so let's not waste it, eh? Only fools squandered gods' gifts. This is it! The proof that I must live. The parasite that binds me will be removed, and all will be as it once was.)

"Thanks," Cyrra uttered before dragging herself back on her feet (ouch, ouch, ouch), "but there is no we. There never will be, either. Now get lost, whelp. Oh, and a friendly piece of advice? Don't risk your life for strangers. Romantic as it is, you never know who you end up saving." That should have been the end of it, too, but apparently, fate had a queer sense of humor. Cyrra had never doubted that notion before, though she also hadn't expected... well, for it to go so far? And it did go very far, indeed, when she felt a metaphorical chain click around her wrist-- when an intangible something yanked her back, closer to the girl. Ugh! What kind of dark magic was that?! ...it didn't matter now, however, because the source of commotion was swiftly approaching them. Shit.

"Alright, I guess it is 'we'," Cyrra sighed. "For the time-being." Without waiting for the weirdo's input, she grabbed her by the hips-- a mere moment later, she was seated on one of the horses, and the assassin followed the suit. "Hug me," she instructed her, a strange nostalgia gripping her heart. How long had it been since...? "If you fall, I'll make sure you get crushed by the hooves." (What? That ought to be one way of severing their strange connection! Luckily for the girl, it was also time-consuming, and the outcome struck her as way too uncertain. No, she better try without pursuers in tow!)

"Cyrra. Cyrra, you bloody traitor! I always fucking knew there was something rotten in you!"

The aforementioned bloody traitor kicked the horse, and it flew forward like a dart from a crossbow. "Care to explain what you fucking did to me, you witch?" she shouted. (An arrow sped past her ear, missing her by a few millimeters only. Damn. Damn, they really were serious about this!)

 

[ellarose]

“Goodness. This is the first time I’ve hugged anyone.” Faline noted, speaking her exact thoughts aloud. The goddess-tier strength of her own heartbeat pulsing against the woman’s back was quite a surprise. It might have been the thrill of the chase, but she imagined her proximity to a stranger-- and a pretty one at that-- was also part of the reason why. When the horse hurtled off into the night, she instinctively fastened her arms tighter around the woman's waist, seemingly unfazed by the threat. She was not used to hugs. She was used to threats. And she prattled on regardless, caught up in the whirlwind of thought and sensation at the newness of it all. “I tried to hug Hector once. But Hector is a chicken and it is not very easy to hug a chicken. And it did not feel quite this warm, either. I think I quite like it! Would you mind hugging me later? I have never been hugged before and I should think it would be—”

--Witch? Oh. The woman did call her a whelp before, too. And then there was the undeniable threat. The pounding of her heart eased and then sank in her chest. This was such a familiar ache that Faline had made friends with it a long time ago. In it's familiarity she does not succumb and her impassive expression does not falter in the slightest. Disheartening as it was to realize, she was well prepared for this possibility. She had never met another human who liked her before. But then again, she had never met anyone aside from granny. She was equipped to handle this with her head held high, like a true lady.

“I have done nothing but catch you.” Faline said, raising her voice so the volume was loud enough to be heard above the hooves. Her tone was effortlessly polite nonetheless. (Well that and she bent time to save her life. But she would not hold something quite so dire over this woman’s head. It wasn’t fair when she hadn’t asked to be saved in the first place.) And although she was a stranger, that did not mean she did not deserve her courtesy and respect. The accusation jam-packed into her words was clear as a sunny day, though, and it did not settle right in her chest. “Hm. I suppose granny did say the people outside would call me a witch.” So why did auntie choose to surrender her magic to a woman who would? Confounding. Her dark brows furrowed slightly. “I wonder if auntie hated me? Unless you know the answer, I suppose I never will. Granny is dead and now auntie is too. I have no family left.” Adjacent to the grave words she spoke, she was perfectly unbothered about all of this, as if she were reciting tasks off a list of household chores. “I do not know what I am going to do now.”

This was not an ideal setting for a serious conversation, was it? Faline sighed and clicked her locket, graying out the world once more and freezing it in place. The horse, their pursuers, the swaying branches… everything halted with the exception of herself and the woman. She plucked an approaching arrow out of the sky with one arm, released the woman's waist with the other and then slid off of the horse. Curiously, she examined the tip of the arrow and then stuck the weapon onto her belt. Who was to say it wouldn't come in handy later?

“...It is abundantly clear that you know nothing of magic. It is also abundantly clear that you do not like me very much. I suppose I should be on my way.” Faline observed with the tilt of her head, unbothered. Granny always said that she could not force others to like her. This was usually when she made misguided efforts to make granny smile. Oh well. At least she can say that she tried. “Goodbye! This should give you a head start from your pursuers.”

With a big wave goodbye, she began to skip off in the direction in which she left her trunk, interlocking her fingers loosely behind her back as she went. One last thing crossed her mind, however, and she whirled around on her heel, dirtied skirts flowing in a whimsical whirl around her legs.

“Oh! Would you mind answering my question first? What does ‘fucking’ mean, if you please? I must admit I have never heard that word before.” Faline tapped her chin. “Is it a common phrase to use among the folk here?”

“Miss Kairos!” Endymion cautioned, emerging from a strange shadow on the path. “Where do you think you are going? As unfortunate as it may be, it is too late for the two of you to separate now.” The cat cast a glare at the other woman. “…Rest assured, she will know the sting of false accusations soon enough. In fact, it seems she is already getting a taste.”

“…That does not reassure me in the slightest.” Faline admitted, scooping the cat into her arms. Why would she wish such an unpleasant feeling on someone she hardly knew? “What do you mean we cannot separate?”

“Try taking another step forward.”

Faline did and felt the pull of an invisible string, yanking her in the general direction of the other woman. She tried again only to receive the same tug, but stronger. She sensed it would be painful to keep testing it, so she stopped.

“Oh.” Oh indeed.

Edymion gave a long exasperated sigh. They had their work cut out for them, didn't they? They considered it would be nice to have help… but when their eyes scoured the location, they could find no sign of their other half.

“I will explain more later. We need to get out of the open first, before the magic wanes.”

“Right.” Faline smiled and then turned to address the woman. “I suppose you will have to tolerate me for a while longer, then. I’m sorry.” She tilted her head. “My name is Faline Kairos. How do you do?” Then she cupped her cheek in her hand and peered down at the cat in her arms, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I have never introduced myself to anyone before! So many firsts in one day.” She curled her toes tightly in her boots. How exhilarating! Her blue and brown eyes flickered in the dark as she lifted them to gaze at the woman again. “...And you are?”

 

[Syntra]

Hector. Who the fuck was Hector? Cyrra couldn't quite resist wondering about that, even if the girl was trying to drown her in pointless chatter-- the whole chronic hug denier aspect was interesting, and most likely proved that the guy was of sound mind. Did it not prove, after all, that he couldn't be fooled by a pretty face? By a snake, with the voice of a songbird? A rare breed of man, judging by all the fools she had met! (Simpering, loud-mouthed idiots, begging for breadcrumbs of affection. So strong and manly and composed, of course, till you tingled that one insecurity of theirs and they fell to pieces. Made murdering them all the more fun, didn't it? Heh! There was nothing quite like that, really-- like watching them realize, slowly, that their mothers had lied about them being special. That a knife, regardless of who wielded it, could easily tear them apart.)

...except that Hector also might have been a rare breed of chicken, as it turned out. Was this woman mocking her? What in the seven hells was even going on?! (Cyrra could sense the faintest ghost of a headache forming somewhere behind her eyes, and somehow, she had a feeling that it was going to become a regular guest very soon. As in, starting now. You know what, though? First things first, and the pursuers were distinctly first in their current hierarchy of needs! Thus, addressing bullshit had to wait for a bit.) "Silence," the assassin commanded, her eyes fixed firmly on the road. "Break my concentration and I'll feed you your own entrails, whelp." (Faster, faster, faster! The clapping of the hooves told her that her beloved comrades weren't nearly close enough to giving up, and knowing Father's... hmm, unique brand of persuasiveness... getting them to that point would be difficult. Maybe if I lead the horse to that forest? Might be able to shake them off there.) "And no, you won't get more hugs. Hugs have to be earned. Give me a fucking reason and I might!" Again, what? Better to chalk it up to her being distracted, Cyrra supposed, because all the other possible explanations just made that headache worse. Aargh, witches and their accursed sorcery! Toying with her mind must have been a part of it, surely-- Father had always said that they liked to guide you through all those twisted paths and corridors, so that you lost your sense of self. So that you couldn't tell the right from wrong. The idea, the assassin believed, was to get you to lower your defenses. Wasn't it oh so convenient, after all, for you to become this disoriented? For you to be willing to accept any explanation at all, even if it came from those rotting lips?

(It was not so with Cyrra, though. Never Cyrra. The truth had been revealed to her, and since then, it had been her torch.)

Needless to say, when the time around them literally halted, Cyrra almost fell off her horse. This was sorcery! A sin! A very helpful sin, she had to admit, but a sin nonetheless, and the gods were sure to disapprove. How many curses would rain down on her head solely due to being an accomplice, hmm? "You... you..." she pointed an accusatory finger at the girl, all the words escaping her. "You are not normal." An insightful analysis to be sure, even if that really didn't need to be pointed out. Just, seriously? Ripping the time-space continuum apart without so much as a blink and then wondering about the connotations of 'fucking'? "It's what people say when they're confronted with bullshit, you absolute fool!" Some part of her, and it was not an insignificant part, was convinced by that point that she was dreaming. The thing about this particular dream, though? It fucking refused to end. The presence of the demon cat from before also suggested some unfortunate implications, and...

"Can you shut up for a second? I'm trying to hear my own thoughts," Cyrra all but growled, observing the frozen world with the curiosity of a child. (The curiosity of a murderous child, of course! For there was nothing miraculous about this distortion of the natural order at all, regardless of what anyone else might think. Nothing.)

"Cyrra Eiréal," she offered her own name, perhaps as an olive branch of sorts, "and if you want to learn another cute tidbit about me, it's that I despise the word later. You will fucking explain it now!" ...alright, so it wasn't an olive branch. Not even remotely. The gesture that accompanied the outburst couldn't be described that way, either-- you see, the assassin grabbed Faline by the collar and yanked her closer, so that their noses were almost touching. "Kairos, you say? I have an inkling why your auntie is dead, whelp. I killed her myself. She squealed like a pig! How do you feel about that, I wonder?" And then, contrary to all expectations, the assassin pressed one of her knives into the girl's hand, almost reverently. "No need to worry about the magic waning, either," she smirked. "Why don't we carve the way to our privacy together? Help me, and I might hug you just yet." ...what? Yeah, buying herself some time might have been nice, but removing the threat entirely struck her like the obvious choice! (That, and maybe she also wanted to see what Faline's reaction to all of that would be. What better remedy to chaos than introducing more of it, after all? Show me what songs you can sing, little bird. I want to hear them.)

 

[ellarose]

“Cyrra.” Faline rolled the name on her tongue, savoring the first human introduction she would ever receive like a delicious pastry. Before she could add anything more, however, Cyrra yanked her by her collar and effectively yanked all of the thoughts from her head along with it. (Endymion gave an offended hiss at the action, but she could hardly hear them over the sound of her galloping heartbeat. Each thump was nearly as loud as their dear horse’s hooves had sounded earlier.) Perplexed, she blinked rapidly as she adjusted to the view of the woman’s pretty face, so unimaginably close to her own. What was this? Whatever it was, this gesture was warm as well. But distinctly not in the same way hugging had been. Their noses nearly touched, their lips were quite close as well and a distinctly unfamiliar warm, simmering sensation dropped down her body… “Um, excuse me? Do you want me to kiss you?" She had only heard about this gesture in her books. The touch of lips upon lips, in instances when two people pulled each other close very much like this. "Although you should know I have never done that before either. And if hugs need to be earned, shouldn’t kisses be the same in that sense? Then again, you did say you disliked the word later. I must say, you’re rather persnickety, Cyrra.”

Except Cyrra began talking of a matter which replaced the ‘ss’ from kiss with an ‘ll’ and Faline tilted her head confusedly. (Truth be told, she was somewhat relieved. She was not sure she could cope with kissing on a day already so full of firsts. And she figured she would be a rather disappointing kisser in her inexperience and it might cause this woman to dislike her even more than she already did.) So she killed auntie, hm? That was an interesting tidbit to be sure. It was still rather hard to think in this position, though. And really, what did this woman care what she felt about anything if she clearly did not care about her?

“It is fucking inconvenient, I suppose.” Faline tried applying the new word for herself, gently testing the feel of it on her lips a second time. Although she believed she would still need clarification later on what ‘bullshit’ entailed. Whatever it was, she supposed Cyrra believed a good very many things were in fact bullshit given how often she used it. “But I have no place in auntie’s personal affairs, nor in yours. Or in anyone else’s, for that matter. So why must I feel anything at all? It is what it is.” She shrugged and continued to speak in the same gentle manner, “And what it is is fucking inconvenient. Does that suffice as an answer?” She softens her voice to a whisper then, her mismatched eyes glimmering with a hint of excitement. Using the word for the third time was like magic. Decidedly, 'fucking' was fun to say. “…Did I use the word correctly?”

“Anyways. I told you before that auntie was the only family I had left. She was meant to tell me what to do next once I left the cottage… but I suppose she chose to surrender her magic to you instead. I do not know why she has done this, considering what a waste it is. Especially seeing as you have nothing of note to teach me. So I’ve decided to use my newfound freedom to go wherever I please for a change.” Faline smiled. “I want to see the ocean! One of my very good friends comes from the ocean. I’ve heard it smells of salt and fish.”

Faline jumps with surprise when the knife is pressed in her hand. Squinting, she peers inquisitively from it to the woman who handed it to her.

“I’m sorry. Carve what?” Faline asked for clarification. She brushed a hand over her collar, smoothing out the creases from where she had been grabbed so forcefully. It did hurt a bit. “Also, I do not think I want to hug you anymore. You keep calling me a whelp and I do not like that very much. So… no thank you.”

“The fool is implying that you should kill your pursuers before they catch up, Miss Kairos.” Endymion’s eye-roll could be heard plainly in the sound of their voice.

“Oh.” Faline said thoughtfully, twirling the knife in her hands and admiring the way the steel shines in the moonlight. “That’s fucking silly! You see, we cannot do that here. The magic does not work that way." She wagged her finger, repeating the phrase she had been taught long ago. "Thou shall not kill while time is still.”

To make her point, Faline approached their getaway horse and unblinkingly struck the creature with the knife she was handed. It does not cut through the animal’s skin. The tip does not even leave a scratch. In that sense, it was very much like trying to cut through solid rock with a butter knife.

“When dealing with life and death, you must first pass through the door of time. And entry through the door requires a toll.” Faline explained patiently. She rubbed the horse’s stiff back affectionately as if to apologize for striking it with the knife. The gray world flickered, for a moment the horse felt warmer under her hand, and her head gave a dull throb. The magic was waning. The world could only be held still for so long before it got to be too much. “We’d best be on our way. If we do not leave soon we will be ducks.”

“Sitting ducks.” Endymion corrected. Ah. Her familiar was most clever!

“Yes, that. Exactly.” Faline nodded sensibly, as if she knew the phrase all along. (But she did not. She had completely forgotten it. Endymion's expression suggests they know this, too.) “Come along! If we locate my things, I will share the apple tarts I made this morning and we can discuss this furth—“ She swayed on her feet and fell to the ground when her head gave another violent throb. The world flickered violently as well, shifting in a tug-of-war of grayscale and color. The magic was waning.

“Miss Kairos!” Endymion was at her side in an instant. Faline gave a nervous, pained little laugh in response. The cat turned a sneer towards Cyrra. “A word of advice, whelp. When it comes to magic, it is wise to shut up and listen to those wiser than yourself. I certainly hope that you are as tough as you act, Cyrra Eiréal. Otherwise you’re dead.”

The cat turned then to Faline. “…And you. Do not give this woman your apple tarts! She does not deserve them.”

“Silly kitty. You just want more for yourself, don’t you?” Faline grinned in spite of her headache and tapped Endymion on the nose.

The cat frowned, most likely at being pegged so accurately, and melted into the ground. The world began moving around them in slow motion for an instant before it launched back to life in full force.

 

[Syntra]

“Kiss me?!” Faline was most fortunate that Cyrra wasn’t drinking anything at the moment, because if she had… well, it was all but certain that the contents would have ended up directly in her face. “Do you have worms in your brain? Of course that I don’t want you to kiss me! Now is not the time for… I mean, you are not the person for that,” she corrected swiftly, her ears burning. (Cyrra to Cyrra’s brain: ‘Hey, what the hell?’ The response, however, amounted to ‘…’, so the results of the investigation were rather inconclusive. Sigh.) “I’d rather kiss a fucking frog!” And, in case you were interested, the assassin was ready to defend that choice-- some frogs’ skin had strong hallucinogenic properties, you see, and through them, gateways to new dimensions were opened. Wasn’t that an experience infinitely superior to soiling yourself with a witch? A witch, who didn’t even have enough loyalty in her to mourn the death of her relative?! (No, she wasn’t normal. Not even remotely. As someone who had spent most of her life in the company of people who, for the lack of a better word, were distinctly not normal, the assassin felt supremely qualified to pass that judgement. Even Fat Pyrrton, who took great pride in collecting his victims’ fingers, was a shining picture of normalcy in comparison!)

“You don’t even… no, forget it. You know what? It’s not my fucking business.” (That, too, was a skill that Cyrra had honed to utter perfection over the years. Sticking your nose where it didn’t belong often resulted in you losing it, you see? Along with your hands, and arms as well, and many other body parts that she very much intended to keep using. Within the tangled structure of the order, secrets thrived undisturbed-- that was a good thing, too, for the assassin herself had more than a few of them.) “Dance on her grave for all I care.” Of course, if Cyrra hoped that that would shut the girl up (she had), she was in for a nasty surprise. Seriously? Does she not need to breathe? (Briefly, the assassin imagined wrapping her hands around Faline’s pale throat and just pressing, till her eyes bulged and her heartbeat grew weak. Ah, the soothing images of death! Unlike her so-called friends, they were always there to lift her spirits.) “It was passable, I guess, but…” But why was she rating her pathetic attempts in the first fucking place?! The witch’s voice must have contained some hypnotic spell as well, because she couldn’t possibly imagine any other reason behind that. (Blah blah blah, fish, blah blah blah, the sea. Did this Faline exist without any sense of urgency at all, just floating on a cloud of ignorance?) “The fish will eat you if you do,” Cyrra uttered absentmindedly, giving up on making any sense at all. To reach a fool, after all, you had to communicate in a fool’s language-- that, too, had been one of her precious lessons. Possibly the earliest one. “I’ve heard that they go after whelps called Faline specifically. Wouldn’t risk it, really.” Without wasting any more of her precious time, she turned towards the frozen figures, and…

…and nothing, as it turned out, because of course that magic couldn’t be actually helpful. Duh. No, it existed specifically to antagonize her personally! Centuries ago, when it had escaped from the divine confinement, it had only done so with the knowledge that Cyrra Eiréal would one day be born, and that magic would piss her off.

“Why do you even bother, then?” Cyrra hissed. “Might want to spend your fucking energy on something more useful-- you know, such as counting the blades of grass.” Too bad that, satisfying as it was, snarky commentary wasn’t going to save her, either. Damn, damn, damn! There’s gotta be something, the assassin thought, as the world around her was slowly coming to life. Its frozen heart began pulsating anew, much like flowers awakened after each winter, which… …huh. I can at least set the fucking stage, can’t I? No fancy rules about that. The dreadful cat’s words didn’t even reach her ears, because by that point, Cyrra simply wasn’t listening. Quick, I need something! Anything would do! Ask and ye shall receive, they said, and so it was. Near the edge of the dark, sleeping forest, she spotted a log, not too large but bigger than the average stick. Normally, a horse would jump over it with ease, but if it oh so conveniently materialized in its way? Yeah, not bloody likely. C’mon, just a little bit more! By the time she was done, every single muscle in her arms hurt, and her face was redder than a tomato. What did that matter, though? When the time resumed its eternal march, the horses straight up fucking collapsed, in this broken heap of limbs. (One of the riders perished there and then. Cyrra didn’t check, but she didn’t have to-- being crushed by almost a ton of meat didn’t tend to be too conducive to one’s survival. Se’rus, possibly? Eh, that one had never been worth a damn, anyway.)

“What the… you really a witch,” Terstan snarled, dragging himself to his feet. “You will pay for this betrayal, and you will pay dearly.”

Cyrra drew her sword, almost as short as her temper. “Yeah? Then stop fucking lecturing me about it and make me, you little bitch. Come, I have enough steel to feed you all!”

Meanwhile, however, some other assassin’s attention switched to none other than Faline. “It’s her,” she pointed a shaky finger at the girl. (In her other hand, she was… holding a drawing? A drawing of a woman’s likeness, bearing a striking resemblance to her new companion. The only meaningful difference was a scar on her cheek, oddly enough a mirror to that old wound of Cyrra’s. Huh?!) “Get her!”

 

[ellarose]

Faline clambered backwards where she'd fallen on the path, her wide-eyed gaze flitting from Cyrra to their pursuers. There was simply too much going on to keep track of. Or rather more than she was accustomed to keeping track of. She had never seen so many people gathered in one place before! (It was a shame it couldn't have been under merrier circumstances... like one of those festivals she had read about. With music and delicious food and firelight!) Get her, a woman exclaimed. Get who? 'Get me?!' Apparently so, because the woman who had said that was unquestionably staring at Faline. She approached with the careful gait of a predator who was exceedingly cautious of what their mysterious prey was capable of. Two more people pulled themselves up from the ground and joined her in this pursuit.

"What if we simply talked this out instead...?" Faline mused, knowing her anxious voice was too small to reach anyone's ears and that it would not make any difference. Granny complained often that she could not hear her when she mumbled. Weapons had already been drawn and they had used the term 'witch' in the same accusatory fashion that Cyrra had before. They were not friends. (Then again, how often was it that Faline met friends who did not exist in the other realm? Not very often. Never, in fact.) Oh, they really should have left while they still had the opportunity to do so. The magic had a use, if one used it correctly. Unfortunately, her temporary companion had yet to realize that. If they made it out of this, she supposed that the other would have time to learn. While it was resourceful (although very tragic) to incapacitate the horses, hiding would have been preferable. Now, however, it was too late for that. "Oh bother."

Up and at 'em, then. A mess of tangled limbs on the ground, Faline scrambled to set herself right and push herself up to her feet. That meager movement caused her pursuers to pause... almost as if they were frightened of her for some silly reason? She held her hands up, optimistically taking that as a sign that they could be reasoned with.

"Hello there." Faline tried with a polite smile, "Maybe there's been a misunderstanding? You all use the term 'witch' with such hate... but you see, I do not mean any of you any harm--"

"There's no mistake about it. It's the missing Kairos girl." A man behind the woman talked over her, his gruff voice barreling over her soft tones like a lamb caught up in a stampede of raging bulls. Hm. Faline had never met a man before. She wondered if they were all this impolite. Although she supposed issuing that snap-judgement to all of the men in the world would be the same as them labeling her a 'witch' before getting to know her.

"Yes, Faline Kairos. How do you do?" Faline dipped into a clumsy little curtesy and then brought her hands in front of her to fidget with the end of her braid. "But I do not believe I was ever missing. I have always been..."

"Where've you been hiding all this time, witch?!" The woman at the front of the pack interrogated her. Then she wore a razor-sharp smile. "Doesn't matter. We've got you now." A chill dropped down Faline's spine. They were all very rude. They were also getting closer now and she finally began to process the fact that they were not, in fact, going to be reasoned with. This was especially apparent when the woman lunged towards her! "Come on! We need her alive!"

Faline hopped backward before the woman's arms could snare around her like a rabbit trap, lifted her skirts and then turned to run. "Please leave me be. Has no one ever told you that hugs must be earned!?" She exclaimed over her shoulder. It was a good thing that she liked to run, because she was both swift and spry. However, it never mattered how fast one's feet could carry them when a magical boundary stood firmly around a place. Or rather, when a tether connected her to a bossy-boots woman named Cyrra, who was in the middle of a standoff further down the road. Feeling the distinctive tug in her chest, she whirled around. Rather than stand there and wait for the hunters to converge, she took a sharp left and stumbled towards the dark forest. If she could not run in a line, she would go in a circle! Or... she noticed a rather climbable tree towards the clearing entrance. Ah ha!

"Excuse me, madam." Faline said with a polite giggle as she hugged the tree, found the proper footholds and began to climb. (She was quite proud of her curated ability to climb the trees around the cottage. There was little else to do but perfect her technique in the summers. And although she had broken her arm twice in her attempts, she was nothing if not persistent when it came to matters she set her heart to.) Winded from the run, she huffed to catch her breath, holding the base of the tree as she perched herself down upon a sturdy branch.

"Get down here, you witch!" Faline heard voices below. She hastily brought her dangling feet up onto the branch so that they could not be yanked down.

One of the men aimed an arrow at the branches and the woman irritatedly swatted it down. "We need her alive, remember? You dumbass." Dumbass? That was a new one. "Besides. What goes up must come down eventually. We've got her."

 

[Syntra]

Fall not victim to your hubris, the gods taught their disciples. Forget not that you are but a speck of dust, floating in the endlessness of the universe. You are not better than your brothers and sisters.

In theory, Cyrra could sort of agree with the sentiment. It did make sense that they’d all be the same, after all, given that they’d been formed from the same stardust-- from the same stardust, and watered with the same life-giving blood. But, to be completely, unflinchingly honest? Over the years, she had also become convinced that she was surrounded by total fucking idiots.

One would have said, for example, that when you were hunting two (2) targets, you would focus your attention on the one who could defend herself. That was just basic logic, wasn’t it? To slaughter the wolf before the doe, under the unfortunate circumstances that had you targeting a wolf in the first place. Even a child who had barely crawled out of her mother’s womb knew this! That a) you should never show your back to a predator, b) the rule went double for Cyrra, whose best friend’s name was death. (Her colleagues should have known, too. Better than anyone else, you could argue, for they’d seen her work-- with their own eyes, over and over, they had witnessed why Father had allowed her to sit by his right hand. ‘Cyrra Eiréal,’ he had smiled his cruel smile, ‘come. The gods have granted you their favor, so I should like to bask in it.’ …heh, as if. So much concentrated bullshit that Cyrra wondered how it hadn’t insulted his delicate nose! It had proven something, though, and that something could be surmised as her being pretty fucking good. So, hopefully, that might translate into her receiving some hard-earned respect…? In a normal world, it definitely would have! In the version of the world that they inhabited, however, most of the assassins seemed to forget that she existed at all. It was… hmm, a little anti-climactic? Honestly, Cyrra did contemplate feeling offended.)

“Your friends aren’t going to help you?” she offered a rare supportive smile. (The weight of her sword in her hands was pleasant, in this oddly grounding way, and once that registered, the assassin just knew that the gods had her back. How not? None other than her had sent them so many corpses, carefully picked clean-- for their pleasure, she had removed the nasty parts, leaving only the good meat behind. The fattest, juiciest pieces. Heh! So, so many feasts, doubtlessly fresh in their memory.) “Believe me, my man, I do sympathize. I, too, have to deal with idiots.”

“Silence, traitor,” he spat out, gripping his own weapon tighter. “For you, I alone will be more than enough.”

To put it bluntly, he wasn’t.

The attempt was valiant, Cyrra did acknowledge that, but many would-be heroes had learned the hard way that bravery did not save you from an unplanned trip to the local cemetery. Not unless it was also accompanied by some fucking skill, you see? Which was something this greenhorn sorely lacked. The botched footwork told her that, and more eloquently than words possibly could-- so, when their blades clashed again, the assassin let her sword glide towards his heart, as effortlessly as a boat might sail on a calm lake. Splash! “I wish I could say I’d honor your memory,” Cyrra smirked before kicking the body down, “but I’ve already forgotten your fucking name. I’ll call you Trevor, I think. Bye, Trevor.”

Meanwhile, the rest of her (former) pursuers were trying to get Faline to climb off her tree.

“Get down, witch, or you’ll face the gods’ wrath!”

Gods’ wrath? Something tells me you’d be more successful if you offered her some fucking candy, mate. That, or maybe some fish.

Hilarious as it was, she couldn’t afford to stay back watch the spectacle play out to its inevitable conclusion-- the degenerates mentioned wanting her alive, but the same presumably didn’t apply to Cyrra. Now, what were the chances that they’d just let her tag along, due to that fancy tether of hers? She could tell that right away, and the answer was zero. Big, fucking zero. Ugh, why do I need to be shackled to her like that? Except that, you see, her being shackled to that Faline girl meant that Faline was also shackled to her. An obvious conclusion, maybe, but it did carry some interesting implications, didn’t it?

So, instead of running right into the arms of eager enemies, Cyrra turned around and ran. The tether protested, clawing at her flesh to make her stay, but the assassin only pulled harder in response. Come on, you fucking piece of shit, let me go! …and, eventually, it did. As expected, the momentum also pulled Faline down her tree, and for the second time in the last fifteen minutes, the two found themselves lying on the ground, nothing but a tangled mess of limbs. Oof. Oof, indeed! (Also, no, the assassin wasn’t going to acknowledge how absurdly nice this felt-- that was a thought to be buried under the sands of guilt, never to be unearthed again.)

“On your feet, come on, hurry the fuck up!” she chided the girl. “Apple tarts are fucking forbidden where they want to take you, so best run.”

…maybe that wasn’t necessary, though. Not entirely. A fucking door emerged from the ground, you see, and while Cyrra would have loved to say that she was shocked, it did sort of fit in with the general pattern of chaos her life was slowly but surely devolving into.

“I might be repeating myself here, but what the actual fuck is this? Got anything to do with it, whelp?” (The time around them didn’t freeze this time, but it sure as hell slowed down, keeping the pursuers in check. For the time-being, anyway.)

 

[ellarose]

Faline shut her eyes and held the tree tighter, foolishly wishing the action itself might transport her elsewhere. Foolishly because she knew that her pursuers were correct about one thing. She would need to come down eventually. That begged the question-- where did they want to take her, anyways? She supposed it wouldn't be a very fun place, what with the way they called her a 'witch' in such a derogatory way. Oh. How very disheartening. She had only just gotten a taste of freedom and already there existed a group who threatened to snatch it away from her. (There were several other questions whirling around her mind as well. Why were they searching for her in the first place? Missing, they'd gone as far as to say. Missing from where? For as long as she could remember, she lived with granny. Their life was a secluded one to be sure, but she never thought that it was a secret.) But of course Faline's whereabouts were not a secret to Faline. Because she was Faline. And she tended to have an idea of where she was. Most of the time, at least.

For instance, Faline knew that she was in a tree. Well, until she wasn't. Because suddenly, her body was tossed in an arc that defied the mortal realm's written laws by an unseen force that landed her squarely into Cyrra. "Oof!" She gave a pained little giggle at the shock and overall awkwardness of the situation. "My. That was..." With a sharp breath, she set a hand to the side of her head as if that might keep it from spinning round and round. Before she could finish the thought, Cyrra gave her the shocking fucking news pertaining to apple tarts.

"Forbidden!" Faline echoed incredulously, wide-eyed and appropriately scandalized by this revelation. "Goodness. They must have very poor taste. I almost feel sorry for them now."

Faline would have considered offering to call a truce and share the ones she had made with them had the door not materialized when it did. Cyrra pointed it out and she immediately found it rather odd to hear someone else acknowledge its existence for a change. Granny could never see the doors. It invited a new kind of warmth in her, the sensation that for once she was not alone with the symptoms of her magic. Well, of course she can see the door. She has auntie's magic now. Perhaps this door was a byproduct of auntie's magic as well? Faline had just used her door, after all, and it wasn't often that they emerged twice within the same hour.

"That is a door, Cyrra." Faline said patiently, as if that was the part that warranted explanation. (Were all houses not equipped with doors? She did not know, for she had never ventured in any other house. And she would certainly would not judge her temporary companion if she had never been exposed to doors before.) "The doors appear when they need to appear. I suppose we ought to go through."

"Blasted witches! You won't get away!" And soon, too, considering her would-be captors had begun running towards them!

Ouch. Faline gasped out lightly when she brought herself to feet, pressing her weight down to find sharp knives of pain shooting up her left leg. The fall must've done it. Limping forward, she pushed her weight against the door as she opened it. The other side appeared to be an endless void of blackness. This did not faze Faline in the slightest, however, and she casually slipped through into the other realm. When Cyrra went through as well, their counterparts in reality disappeared seemingly as if out of thin air before a very confused group of assassins.

Instead of stepping upon the clouds that typically carpeted the other realm, Faline felt that she was falling endlessly through the black space. Hehe! What a thrill! She laughed as she turned somersaults in the air and her skirts ballooned around her. It seemed that the door had spawned somewhere far above the clouds this time around... and fortunately for them, they still existed below to cushion their landing. In fact, the impact felt much, much softer than their other two landings on the forest floor had.

"That was fun!" Faline decided as rolled herself out to sit upright, eager to share the experience with someone for the first time ever. "Wasn't it, Cyrra?"

Endymion manifested, then, dragging her trunk by their teeth. "I fetched your belongings, Miss Kairos."

"Oh!" Faline smiled fondly, giving the cat a delighted little scratch behind the ears as thanks. Then she clicked the trunk open, reaching inside of it for the clothed bundle in which she'd packed the apple tarts. "Would you like an apple tart for the road?" She offered, "Then I can introduce you to some of my friends!"

 

[Syntra]

A door. A fucking door! Throughout her relatively short albeit very eventful life, Cyrra had seen some shit-- between murderers begging for mercy, wicked sorceries invading good folk’s minds, and holy men wallowing in filth, she had genuinely thought that nothing could surprise her anymore. This girl, though? This girl was a walking question mark, a gift box wrapped in opaque paper, and at this point, the assassin didn’t even dare to guess what its contents were. Is she making a fool of me? Maybe, but it was just as likely that Faline was just… well, like that. (Deep down, that option terrified her more than anything else. No, really. The idea of a witch trying to manipulate her through her evil, evil mind games just felt more familiar to the assassin, you know? It was a comfort zone, much like sticking a dagger in someone’s spleen was. Something dear to her heart. A favorite theater play of hers, perhaps? For she had seen it over and over, and could recite the lines before the actors even opened their mouths.)

“Thank you, Faline, for this earth-shattering revelation,” Cyrra deadpanned, deciding to go with the flow for now. “Who would have fucking guessed? I think I’m going to have to process this for a while. You see, I come from a doorless land-- whenever we wanted to enter someone’s house, we had to be invited by their dead grandmother’s spirit specifically. Things got messy when she wasn’t home, or when you managed to spite her. Do you know how many couples got torn apart because she didn’t approve of a suitor? It was fucking tragic. We were all slaves to ancestors that some of us hadn’t even met.” …shockingly enough, that part wasn’t even a lie. You know what they said about art, though? That it imitated life, and so it probably wasn’t that strange that Cyrra’s mind had gone there for inspiration. Oh well! Gotta be more careful with her fairy tales in the future, she supposed. Wait, what future? I’m slitting her throat the moment I confirm that it won’t fuck me over. Which, duh! The thought had come to her uninvited, like a thief in the dead of the night, and thus meant nothing. A mere reflex, cultivated over the years of working with others. (You didn’t forget things easily, you see? Like a bandage, it sort of grew into your wound, and to tear it off, you had to rip your own flesh apart as well. …heh. Fortunately, Cyrra happened to be particularly good at this. Would you, after all, trust a cook who refused to sample his own meals? No? In that case, it made no sense to hire an assassin who had tasted no pain, either!)

The little intermezzo had an interesting side effect, though, in that that it helped to eliminate her fears. No, Cyrra Eiréal would not have normally entered a suspicious, doubtlessly cursed portal-- she would have run, as far as her feet would have taken, for she knew better than to spit on the gods’ most holy creation. It still would have been the smartest thing to do, don’t get her wrong, but… well, let’s say that annoyance sometimes overrode her sense of self-preservation. “Ugh. They really don’t know that no means no, do they? Such an ugly fucking trait. I don’t think they’re too popular with the ladies.”

Perhaps she would have added more than that, too, but when the ground fucking disappeared beneath her feet, the assassin suddenly had a plethora of different things to worry about. So much that her head was spinning, even! (Keeping her lunch where it belonged was the most prominent of her worries, just below ‘staying alive’ in her hierarchy of needs. …what? Not all understood it, but an assassin lived by her reputation. Dying on the job was neither uncommon nor too shameful, but vomiting all over yourself under literally any circumstances would result in a stain that no soap could ever remove. Just, no. Entirely too aware of that fact, Cyrra did her best to keep her mouth shut, but---)

“Aaaargh!” …thud.

Was that all?

Carefully, the assassin opened one eye, and when she assessed that all of her limbs were still attached to the correct places, the other eye followed. “Fun,” she spat out, her tone downright vengeful. (Everything was the blasted witch’s fault! In her heart of hearts, Cyrra knew that to be true, and she would be damned if she didn’t make her pay.) “I’ll show you so much fucking fun that you won’t ever fucking recover, whelp,” the assassin growled, once again grabbing her by the collar.

“What is your angle here? Trying to shake me, huh? Well, better try harder, because I am not fucking impre--”

A strange sensation gripped her then, though, and when Cyrra looked down, she saw a shadowy snake wrapped around her leg.

“Wha--” Immediately, all color drained from the assassin’s face. She tried to kick the creature off, flailing wildly, but all that accomplished was her losing her balance and falling straight on her ass. Ooof.

“This is most disappointing,” the creature sighed, in the tone of a fencing mentor whose pupil had failed to even draw their sword out of their scabbard. “I cannot believe that I’m stuck with her out of all people. Miss Kairos, can’t you do anything about that? Your auntie was the most exquisite master, and this makes this transition rather jarring. I bet she doesn’t even know that she has to offer me her blood, either!”

“I am not fucking getting involved in any shady blood magic,” Cyrra exploded. “Begone, fiend!”

 

[ellarose]

Faline blinked with surprise when Cyrra wrested her once again, holding their faces mere inches apart from one another. Endymion hissed with annoyance, catching the bundle of apple tarts before it could scatter into the abyss. Once again, it hurt. And once again, it also dropped that strangely warm, tingling sensation over her body. (Warm, the way Cyrra's breath felt warm against her. Her lips were close. Fun could be synonymous with kissing in her books. Did she change her mind about that? Except she was still not quite certain whether or not she was ready for that--) She shivered with the thought. Why was she reacting that way? She was not quite certain what it meant precisely. It was not a bad feeling, per se, but she didn't understand it a single bit and... well, her companion seemed rather passionate. It was rather overwhelming to bear all of this heat. (She supposed this woman was indeed the strangest person she had ever met for that reason. The prettiest too, undeniably. But, perhaps, that was only because granny was the only other person she had ever been exposed to. And technically granny wasn't even--) Angle? Goodness. This whole affair was very confounding.

"What? I have never once tried to shake you." Faline claimed, furrowing her brows with confusion. Was there perhaps another timeline where she had? Although that did not sound like something she would do. She tried to remember a time where she did, she even consulted with the whisperings from the depths of her mind and could not place it. Really. To grab someone by the shoulders and shake them seemed quite rude. (In fact, it seemed closer to the way that Cyrra here had treated her thus far more than anything, constantly grabbing her collar this way!) "And I will not in the future, if that is what you are worried about. That sounds rather impolite, after all, and I was raised better than to shake strangers. I do not see what good could come of that. Except perhaps making you nauseous? And I can assure you that I do not want to make you sick, so..."

That was when the snake appeared. This development did not surprise Faline in the slightest, for it was a matter of time before they were greeted by the dwellers of this realm.

"Oh. Hello there." Faline said kindly as Cyrra released her in her attempts to kick free of the creature. Smoothing the creases in her dress, she watched the other woman's flailing display curiously before sitting herself cross-legged on the ground to speak to the snake on their level. As far as she was concerned, the creature was only giving the other woman a hug. Not, well, trying to trip her. Ah, this was auntie's familiar! Of course. "I'm afraid not. I haven't a clue why auntie made this decision myself."

Faline tilted her head when Cyrra piped up about blood magic and fiends.

"It's all right, Cyrra. Why, that was only a joke!" Faline affirmed with a little smile. "In this realm, apple tarts are not forbidden. And apple tarts are generally preferable to human blood." She paused. Well, perhaps that was not entirely true. Some of the creatures who lived here quite liked the taste of human flesh. Like Natos. On the contrary, others became rather offended when people assumed that they wanted to eat them. 'They do not even taste that good! Those arrogant humans.' Her friend Marvin had confided in her once. "Well, in some cases. There are others here who do enjoy the taste of human flesh. But as long as you are of the agreeable sort, that does not pose much of an problem." She lowered her voice to give an extra tidbit of advice. "You may not want to grab anyone by their collars, though."

"And this is a familiar, not a fiend." With that stated, Faline fetched the bundle of apple tarts and found one to offer the snake. "That said, would you care for an apple tart... ah--" This was auntie's familiar, that much she knew. (And Cyrra's familiar now, she supposed.) But they had never been formally introduced... primarily because auntie had never come to visit her.

"Atropos." Endymion filled in the blank with the appropriate timing, weaving elegantly around Faline. They licked their paws, clearly having treated themselves to an apple tart or three amidst all the chaos. "And here I thought you were going to abandon me to babysit these ninnies all by my lonesome."

"What was that...? Ninnies?" Faline hugged Endymion close and tight as a gentle reprimand and the cat slunk with guilt. With her other hand, she reached for an apple tart and set it in front of the snake just in case they wanted one.

"Ahem. You are not a ninny, Miss Kairos. You make delicious apple tarts and are an excellent mistress."

That was better. Faline smoothed her fingers in the cat's fur and they instinctively purred against her.

"Atropos. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Faline addressed the snake again. "I believe you would know more than I about auntie's intentions. Do you have any idea why she surrendered her magic to Cyrra of all people?" She drew her voice down to a whisper again. "She says she comes from a rather tragic, doorless land. Teaching her about the doors will certainly take some time."

 

[Syntra]

Had Cyrra been just a little more naïve, perhaps she would have come to the conclusion that this was a mere dream-- a nightmare trapping her in her worst fears, summoned by her own mind. Something that was distinctly not real, for it just couldn’t be. Because, hahaha, there was no way that this was actually happening, was there? (Reality had firm rules, etched in stone. Paper-like boundaries were for documents and laws and all things drafted by humans, but the gods’ word was absolute! …except that their magic had been stolen, too. Once a thing of beauty, it had been bent, twisted far beyond recognition, and re-forged in the cursed fires of Entyr’ia. What had once been a stalwart shield was a sword now, pointed directly at their necks! Heh. Honestly, Cyrra could appreciate the irony, as depraved as it was. In a way, she was even glad for it. Their enemy was a resourceful one, the assassin did admit it freely, and wouldn’t that make driving the metaphorical dagger through his heart all the more satisfying? All the more interesting, too? There was little pleasure in hunting rabbits, but to tear out a wolf’s teeth as he was pursuing you, thinking that it would get to rip your throat to bloody ribbons… ah, that was an entirely different kind of thrill, alright. Concentrated adrenaline running through her veins, more potent than the best wine!)

It was safe to say, however, that Cyrra wasn’t fucking running on adrenaline now. If she cared about describing her emotions at all, the phrase she would most likely go with would be ‘spicy annoyance’-- you know, the kind of emotion you felt when a mosquito was buzzing around your ear, somehow always just outside of your reach. (Well, it was and wasn’t like that. To understand her feelings better, just imagine that the mosquito could transform into a three-headed dragon at any given time, without a single warning! …yes, that was too fucking accurate for her liking.) “A familiar or a fiend, who fucking cares? There’s a reason why both start with an F.” So far, it seemed that there also was a reason why Faline and fuck both started with that very same letter, but in a rare bout of mercy, the assassin decided to keep that tidbit to herself. (See? From time to time, even Cyrra could be sort of… uhh, pleasant would be a strong word, but definitely something adjacent to that. Not a total asshole, perhaps?)

“The point is, I’m not fucking involving myself with anything that wants my blood. I am usually the one to shed it, so piss off.”

The fiend, apparently named Atropos, just sighed. “I am too old for this, Miss Kairos,” they whined, sounding shockingly pathetic for what Cyrra assumed had to be a demon. “I have seen this world’s birth, its subsequent destruction, and also the way it rose from its own ashes, but never before have I met someone this painfully non-shapeable. I’d call her soul a rock, but that would be an insult to rocks. How am I supposed to guide her on her path to magic when it demands so much flexibility from you?”

Needless to say, Cyrra wasn’t all too impressed with that. “Uh, hello? I’m still fucking here.”

“But your auntie chose her because she had to, I’m afraid,” Atropos continued, apparently all too fond of employing the good old ostrich strategy. “It was her fate, Miss Kairos. It really, truly was, just like it is your fate to be bound to her. Some fates are certainly heavier than others, however, and so I do sympathize. If she ever gets too much for your sensibilities, I recommend using a gag. The flow of time itself shall not be disrupted if she is rendered incapable of speech, I think!” The flow of time itself? A gag?! Alright, that was the final of the last straws. Right there and then, the assassin decided that she was going to find out for herself whether snake soup really was such a fucking delicacy or not!

“You want to try your luck, mate? Because it has run the fuck out.” Intending to teach the creature some manners, Cyrra reached for her blade, but… well, then she proceeded to drop it, both from the pain and shock. (The teeth sank into her flesh, all sharp and eager. The assassin had received many wounds in her life, but none quite like this-- none nearly so vast, piercing not just herself, but also the earth and the oceans bound to it.)

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way, Miss Cyrra,” Atropos complained. “The covenant is most sacred, and to have to take it from you like a common thug pains me deeply. Still, you have to do what you have to do, right? Surely, you of all people understand that.”

The blood was flowing down her calf, drip, drip, drip, and the ground drank it with great gusto. With, um, gusto that actually may have been too great? Swiftly, the soil was turning not red, but the darkest shade of black, like a rotting stain upon the face of the earth.

“Uh oh,” Atropos winced. “I was afraid of this. It appears that you are too much.”

That was something that Cyrra had heard before, but not quite in that context. “What the fuck do you mean, you piece of shit?”

“Too many cycles,” the snakes grimaced, their shadowy body phasing in and out of existence. “Need to… tether myself…”

Except that then, then the ground shook, sending wild vibrations all over Cyrra’s body. Ugh, what was that?!

 

[ellarose]

“My. Is a covenant truly required? I don’t recall you ever drinking my blood.” Faline addressed Endymion, watching with mild curiosity when Atropos sunk their teeth into Cyrra’s leg. (When the creatures in this realm spoke of feasting on blood, it was usually an attempt to be make fun of the humans and their outlandish fears about that which they did not understand. Generally, humans tended to squirm when they were met with such gruesome claims and a good many of them simply enjoyed to watch their reactions. She did not understand the pleasure they took in this... but then again, she was human herself.) Finding that she was rather hungry herself, she nibbled on the apple tart the snake ignored.

“You were three, Miss Kairos. You would not have remembered.” Endymion supplied.

“I was three.” Faline repeated, gulping down the rest of the tart as she thought very hard about it. Still she found that she still could not call such a memory to mind. Hm. It sounded like a rather important event for her to have forgotten it altogether. Perhaps it had simply happened far too long ago, then? The human mind was fickle and could only retain so much information, after all. (And apparently Faline was the kind of human who forgot more than most. A great deal of her childhood was like this, wherein it essentially resembled an endless desert of black sand.) That said, it was rare that Endymion told her stories of this sort altogether. “I see.” She didn’t though. Not really. But there was no use fussing over the things that one could not remember. "Then it happened when I was quite small. Did I cry?"

"Yes, you were a very small lady indeed." Endymion bobbed their head in a nod. "And perhaps a tear or two was shed. Even so, I would say you took it with much more grace than Cyrra Eiréal."

Endymion hissed upon noticing Atropos's reaction and vanished as well. Familiars often went wherever they pleased that way. They would be back and would explain whatever needed to be explained when the time was right. Until then, they just needed to wait. Wait or perhaps find another doorway out, as the one they had used to enter had long since vanished.

Despite everything, Faline was human. She knew that she did not like it very much when she bled, so she suspected the same would be true for Cyrra. There were some things that would be universally understood between them this way, she supposed. Preoccupied with this and paying no mind to the way the ground trembled around them, she grabbed the soft floral fabric her apple tarts were tucked in and deftly shook out the crumbs before smoothing it flat over her skirts. There!

At the same time, the shaking stopped and a gigantic clawed hand lowered near the blackened pathway. The creature it belonged to disappeared within the black sky, blending in entirely too well with the environment.

“You may use this to bandage your fucking leg if you like.” Faline said gently, offering the piece of fabric to Cyrra. Without waiting to see whether or not the other woman would accept it, she excitedly sprinted towards the hand and unhesitatingly climbed up onto the monstrous palm very much like a child might climb onto her mother's lap. "Blunk! Hello there!"

"Faline." The voice boomed from above like thunder. The monster lifted her once she was tucked safely inside his hand, bringing her high up into the air like an elaborate elevator out of some kind of nightmare. (Or a dream, depending on one's perspective. Faline, for example, thought of this scene like a dream. She quite liked heights!) The ascent stopped at last when Faline was able to peer into the creature's eyes, staring at her like a million sharp shards of ruby in the depths of the darkness. "Blunk heard about your granny. Ever so sorry. Did you save corpse for me?"

"No, silly! I buried her in the ground, for that is what humans do with their dead relatives." Faline replied, giving a chastising click of her tongue. "It was a rather messy affair. Lots of slime." Because, of course, granny did not leave behind a human corpse. That made the process all the more complicated, really.

"Oh. Guess that's fair." Blunk conceded nonchalantly, dipping his large head in a slow nod that seemed to shake the entire realm again. "Faline left cottage, yes? Seen any other corpses 'round?"

"Well... yes, in fact. But you cannot have auntie either. That would be in poor taste, I think." Faline shook her head. For that was another relative... a relative who left behind a true human corpse. "Oh! Lower me down, if you please."

Blunk did just that and Faline poked out from behind one of his oversized claws to wave the other woman over. "Cyrra, come say hello to Blunk!" They were just chatting, after all, and it seemed quite rude to keep her out of the loop. She craned her neck to peer at her friend's face above. "She's the one who killed auntie." She mentioned, providing the needed context before looking at Cyrra again. "You're the only murderer I know." The only human murderer, that was. "Do you think you could you direct my friend to any corpses in the other realm?"

 

[Syntra]

The earth was drinking, drinking, drinking, every precious droplet of blood that fell from her wound, and Cyrra couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene. Just... it was mesmerizing, wasn't it? Those liquid rubies, twinkling oddly in the moonlight. ('Cyrra. Cyrra Eiréal. Won't you listen for once? This melody we composed for you, spinning it out of the finest threads. The ones that you both lost and gained.' Which, what? Cyrra sure as fuck didn't remember losing any threads, nor had she come into possession of such things. In case you failed to notice, she was no damn seamstress! ...in her footsteps, terror followed, the quiet, overwhelming kind. The kind that put a hand over your mouth, to muffle those inconvenient screams. If there were threads involved at all, then surely only those she had cut? 'People's lives are not too dissimilar to yarn, Cyrra,' Father had once said. 'Colorful, delicate, and so, so easy to sever. Do you like that feeling, I wonder? The one that comes with knowing that you hold the biggest scissors.' Heh! For all the foolishness that had left his mouth, there also had been grains of wisdom, like golden nuggets hiding in the sand. Like a diamond ring that you dredged out of a corpse's stomach, after its owner had swallowed it. There genuinely were people who thought they'd protect their assets like this, you know? Instead, they'd signed their own death sentence.)

Stuck in this strange trance, with her mind both reeling and frozen in place, she accepted the piece of cloth. "My fucking leg?" the woman snorted. "Man, you really are weird. That's not how you use words. That's not how... not how you fucking do any of this." It also wasn't how you approached an assassin who had threatened to kill you multiple times at that point, though Cyrra wasn't exactly complaining about that. No, not her problem! If Faline wanted to be a fucking fool, then that was her prerogative-- far it be from her to try and make her see that, no, the world didn't exist for it to revolve around her wishes. (It existed to grind them down, till nothing remained. The bodies were but an obstacle, you see? Bloated, fleshy, disgusting blobs, happy to succumb to rot. Pathetic shells, within which their spirits were trapped. Wasn't it merciful, then, to break the bars of that prison? To help them see beyond the fear in a handful of dust? In that aspect, at least, the gods were merciful-- as merciful as an executioner could possibly be, wielding a sharp axe instead of a dull one.)

The stain beneath her continued to spread, despite the blood no longer flowing. Like a tumor, it grew and grew and grew, oh so ravenously, and wasn't that fucking funny? Something in Cyrra wanted to laugh, although the million other voices captured within her were shedding tears so bitter that she could taste it on her tongue. (Familiar, the assassin thought. The very tea that my own sister used to drink, and later poured down my throat. Why the hell didn't it work? Everything would have been that much easier.)

Faline, being the kind of Faline that she most likely always had been, did what she did best-- namely, got fucking side-tracked again. Sigh. "Blunk?" Cyrra blinked a few times, entirely disoriented. (How had losing this little blood led to this? Her entire head was light, light and full of feathers, and the birds that had lost them were currently in the process of tearing her brain to shreds.) "Should have fucking called him Hand," she mumbled. "At least that doesn't resemble the sounds you make when you choke on your own vomit." (...was the stain supposed to taint her as well? Because it reached her fingertips, consuming more and more of her flesh, and Cyrra could only watch with morbid fascination. Hah! Interesting, wasn't it? And had she known that Faline's skin alike was rapidly turning ashen, it would have inspired amazement even greater than that.)

'Too many cycles,' Atropos warned, but his voice was distant, as if he spoke to her through a thick wall of glass. Where was he, anyway? 'Familiar' her ass! 'Child, listen to me. You must--'

"I'm not a fucking murderer," the assassin said, mainly to overpower that annoying voice. Couldn't everyone just shut the fuck up, for once in her entire life? No? No, then. Alright! It wasn't like the hope blooming in her heart had been anything other than a delusion in disguise, anyway. "I don't... don't kill people for fun. It's my job. That's called being an assassin, whelp. An honorable fucking profession, in case you weren't aware!" Certainly that made small difference to a witch, but Cyrra still had her pride, you see? (When few other things remained to you, you clung to it that much more fiercely. That, too, was a concept she had grasped with ease.) "Corpses don't fucking grow on trees, either. Pay me, and I shall craft more of them for you. I will..."

Well, what would she do? Faline would have found out if not for the countless other Cyrras that emerged from the infected ground, their forms shadowy, their sockets hollow. (Instead of eyes, there were stars inside, burning brighter than any ordinary flame could. Brighter than just about anything, come to think of it. Within them, you could spot a glimpse of eternity, reflected in the vastness of the universe.) "No, not her," one of them moaned. "Choose me, Faline," a different Cyrra piped up. "I will not fail you this time!" And, with that? With that, obsidian daggers materialized in their ghostly hands. Uh oh.

 

[ellarose]

"Honorable you say? Okay." Faline said, mildly miffed. Her hands fell to her hips as she was righteously offended for her friend's sake. (It occurred to her someplace deep down that this meant someone else wanted auntie dead... enough to put a monetary value on ending her life. However, Blunk took precedence in the moment.) The presence of the sparks waking up beneath her skin were certainly new-- sizzling just like the heat she felt before. Except this was distinctly different in some way she could not define. Despite her microscopic size in comparison, she found herself defending the gigantic monster like a child might protect their best friend from a bully in a schoolyard. "Except I do not believe it is very fucking honorable to say such unkind things for no reason! You use your weapons to hurt people, as well as your words. And I am afraid I do not see the honor in that. Say whatever you like about me, but I will not hear of you slandering my friends. And if you hurt Blunk's feelings--" Except whatever undoubtedly creative threat she might have come up with came out more like a cough. She was white as a sheet at this point, perhaps as light as one as well, and swayed on her legs before collapsing into a crumbled heap in the monster's hand. Oof. That was when the shadowy doppelgangers appeared.

"Fail me? What do you mean?" Faline asked groggily. Goodness. Why did she feel so very ill all of a sudden? The apple tarts were fresh, so it couldn't have been something she ate. Her vision blurred and doubled, making the crowd of Cyrras around her appear even larger than before. Overwhelming. Her eyes flit closed and she sighed, melting against Blunk's hand. She was overcome with the desire to fall asleep but kept talking nonetheless. "Why must I choose one of you? While we're all here, perhaps if we simply talked this out instead of figh--"

That wasn't to be, however, when she peeked to see their response and saw the glint of their daggers. They were all so beautiful with their pretty, sparkly eyes and Faline knew she would not stand a chance against them. "Oh." Well. She supposed there were worse ways to die.

"Faline!" Blunk's voice roared as he watched the spectacle unfold with his millions of eyes up above. As the copies of Cyrra raised their daggers, the monster placed his other hand in front of her, effectively shielding her from harm. Chink, chink, chink. From the outside, they looked like splinters in his rough skin. Once that was done, he cupped his hands entirely around Faline, creating a protective shell around her as he hoisted her high up into the air. She blinked her heavy eyelids to adjust her sight to the darkness, only glimpsing speckles of light through the tiny spaces between Blunk's clawed fingers. She couldn't see what was going on anymore and no longer possessed strength to ask to see or be put back down.

The rotten platform trembled when the monster turned his massive body to leave. This effectively knocked two of the Cyrra clones closest to the edge off, plunging them into the endless abyss down below. Silver stardust ate their bodies up beyond a certain distance. Who even knew where they disappeared to after that? It was a mystery.

"Faline not whelp. Faline deserve better." Blunk thundered, content to leave the scene and the assassin altogether. "Perhaps Blunk come back later for Cyrra's corpse."

The ground continued to shake with each step he took off into the unknown landscape waiting ahead. The Cyrras turned, unfazed by this turn of events, to converge on the real Cyrra. "She does deserve better." One of them agreed. A new set of daggers manifested in their hands. "You're only going to hurt her again. And again." They drew closer, closer, closer...

"Wait! Blunk, please..." The tether still existed, it was the sort of magic that could not be broken by even the most ferocious monster's claw. With each step, Faline could feel the magnetic pull in her chest becoming more and more persistent that she stay put. Unfortunately, though, her quiet voice could not be heard over the battling Cyrras and the monster's booming footsteps. She could not request that her friend stop walking before--

The same magic that pulled Faline from the tree dragged her quite violently out through the spaces between the monster's claws, flinging her up into the air like a rag doll before she plunged down, down, down into the waiting darkness below. This fall was decidedly less fun than the first, the uncertainty of her fate sending a sharp shiver through her bones... but she did watch with wonder as the pretty stardust began to eat away at her boots. It reflected in her mismatched eyes as it traveled up, up, up her body until it swallowed her whole.

Hm. Would this sever the thread that tied them together?

Or, perhaps, was Cyrra going to be yanked along with her?

Faline did not know for certain as a velvety black curtain was thrown over her whole world.

 

[Syntra]

The shadows were closing in on her, circling her much like a pack of wolves would have, and perhaps for the first time in her life, Cyrra Eiréal felt genuinely afraid. Fucking do something, she tried to convince herself. Anything! And, hey, that did make sense, didn’t it? When surrounded by daggers, the least you could do was to reach for your own weapon-- to cut, hack, and slash your way out of the mess, one swing at a time. If nothing else, you should definitely leave some nasty scars behind. The more the better, really. In your enemies’ own flesh, you’d get to etch your life’s story, and wasn’t that better than sinking into oblivion? Than becoming one of the fading faces in the sea of corpses? …except that her instincts, carefully cultivated, weren’t fucking listening. No, not at all. Cyrra tried to grab her sword, but she might as well have attempted to catch lightning with her bare hands, or grasp water with her fingers-- it felt like her hands were submerged in honey, and every signal from her brain took ages to reach them. It’s those fucking eyes, the assassin realized, through a leap of logic that somehow bypassed her normal thought processes entirely. Somehow, those eyes are fucking doing this! “Why… the hell do you care?” she managed to make herself say, squinting into the darkness. (The moonlight was flickering, as if it was a mere torch, and the stars in their eyes were not helping. Quite the opposite. Their fires felt feeble to her eye, wrapped in a pale shade of rot and decay-- just looking at them made her sick, deep down to her core. …heh. Kind of like when she was checking out her own reflection in the mirror? At least there was some sense of familiarity in this mess, Cyrra supposed! A rare anchor for her to ground herself with, even if it had to go through her fucking heart. …those tended to work the best, anyway. ‘See, Cyrra?’ Father had used to say, back in much simpler times. ‘With some… hmm, personal motivation… you can reach the stars. There is no greater path to walk. There also isn’t no greater burn to bear, but you will do it gladly, won’t you? For you have always known your duty.’)

“Because she’s everything,” one of the Cyrras replied. “Everything, everything, everything!” the others agreed. The consensus would have been moving, almost, if it hadn’t been for the fact that they had just decided to fucking murder her. “You don’t understand. You never will. Eternity is too long.” Which, well, maybe she didn’t want to understand! While her standards may have suffered a bit in the past few hours, Cyrra hadn’t quite sunk so low yet as to be in any rush to join a crowd of insane witch worshipers. (Many, many members of her order were dancing too close to madness, but they had nothing on… on… uhh, herself? On the supremely fucked up versions of herself, summoned from the deepest pit of hell? Look, it was fucking complicated.) “Leave me the fuck alone, you cheap, eyeless, disgusting-- aaaargh!”

Aaaargh, indeed. If there was a better reaction to being yanked into a bottomless abyss via a tether that had somehow spawned in your guts, Cyrra hadn’t discovered it yet-- and, honestly, if you had, you should probably send her a letter or something because it seemed that this was going to be a persistent fucking theme. (Briefly, the assassin considered praying for swift death. She hadn’t really flirted with the thought before, but wouldn’t everything be fucking easier for it? Wouldn’t it be plain nicer than being bound to that witch, to be both hunted and annoyed for all eternity? Of course, the mere fact that she dared to wish for it ensured their survival, just like warm spring always resulted in plentiful crops. Fucking sigh.)

The stardust coalesced at their feet, looking like distant cousins of snowflakes, and when Cyrra came to… well, she realized she was fucking holding Faline. Like, in her own arms. (Not that the assassin had any other arms to hold her in, but the situation was absurd enough that it deserved to be fucking emphasized. You know what, though? Unlike the rest of her ruined existence, that was the kind of situation that could be easily remedied.) Thud! …yes, she did just drop her like a pile of trash. What about it? Life itself had dropped her pretty hard just a few hours ago, so Cyrra felt justified in paying the favor back. “Does this happen often to you, whelp? Do you just fucking fall off the edge of the world for fun? Do you also drag unsuspecting people into it, hmm?”

(Although, come to think of it, it didn’t seem as if they had necessarily fallen anywhere. Rather, they’d fallen into some other time-- the scenery looked much the same, you see, but wild flowers were blooming in the formerly barren places, and the trees in the background seemed smaller. Younger, by many years.)

Afterwards, Cyrra’s eyes suddenly narrowed in suspicion. “Do you fucking want to eat me here?” Because she had heard of witches doing that, in a bid to increase their power. Supposedly, they lured their victims out, and infused them with the blasphemous magic-- within them, they let the substance grow, and then reaped the bitter fruits of their efforts. (…shudder. Of course, the assassin wasn’t afraid! She was just, um, cautious. Ever vigilant, like one who ended lives should be.) “Because that won’t go over easily for you, I promise. I will… I will fucking eat you first.”

“This is what I was afraid of,” Atropos, who now was a much smaller snake, sighed. “As usual, Cyrra here is the reason why we cannot have nice things.”

“Say fucking what?!”

“The flow of your family magic has been fragmented, Miss Kairos,” they turned to Faline, now ignoring their supposed mistress entirely. “To re-wire it, you both will need to drink from Well of the First Spark. You understand what I’m getting at, I assume?”

 

[ellarose]

Warmth. Faline could only process the all encompassing warmth of two arms wrapped around her and the beat of another heart pumping in such close proximity to her own. For the first time it felt like she was anchored to something, that she had a place in the universe, reminded she was alive and it was... wonderful. And over all too soon when she was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Oof! (Ah, yes. There it was. The disappointment she felt was tangible but it was also familiar.) When she landed in a heap she stayed there on the ground for a while, unable to find the will to spring up right away the way she normally did. Everything ached and Cyrra was calling her a whelp again. After claiming her first hug. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted... I suppose.

"...No? For it would be quite impossible for me to drag people into anything when I do not know any people." Faline answered matter-of-factly, sitting up slowly and brushing her hands distractedly over her dirtied skirts. "Truly, I would have parted ways with you when I stopped time if I had any choice in the matter. I wanted to go to the ocean. But now it would seem I am stuck here with you." Hm. Where was 'here', anyway? She gazed around with wonder when she considered this, brushing her hand gently over the blades of grass around her. Then she tapped the plush yellow center of a nearby daisy and smiled softly to herself when the flower bobbed under her touch. Seeing a fresh change of scenery in the daylight was wonderful too. Almost as wonderful as hugging was and she held to that thought for comfort. Happiness could be found if one only looked hard enough for it.

Then, of course, Cyrra's accusation caused Faline to blink incredulously. She might be offended at the accusation if it wasn't so... well, ridiculous.

"Eat you? Why... that must be the silliest thing I've ever heard!" Faline giggled. Then she snorted and giggled some more, practically keeling over in the grass. Her insides bubbled up with it and she couldn't recall a time she had ever laughed quite like this before, in endless little peals until her stomach ached and she could hardly breathe. "Are you secretly a carrot cake in disguise, Cyrra? That is the only scenario in which I could see myself eating you. You best start running if you are! I am positively ravenous for carrot cake."

Faline blinked, surprised to realize that tears were forming in her eyes. Quickly, she caught one on the pad of her thumb before it could fall.

"Oh." Faline had once heard the expression of 'laughing until you cry', or 'crying tears of joy'. She had never experienced it herself, however. It always seemed rather strange to her that someone could cry when they were joyful. But if it was capable of overwhelming her to this degree, perhaps it was possible after all. That realization somehow made her inclined to cry harder... and for the sake of staying on task, she held it all in.

Atropos appeared then and spoke of their next matter of business. Then Endymion followed. The cat wore a perplexed expression upon seeing the look on her face.

"Miss Kairos, are you..."

"Yes, I'm listening. Fragmented... A well. Yes, indeed." Faline nodded vigorously, her words perhaps as fragmented as her thoughts. And as fragmented as the magic apparently was. That was a problem, she supposed. One that had to be addressed before she could see the ocean, for shouldering the Kairos family magic was solely her responsibility to bear now. (Thanks to Cyrra. But it seemed that her actions had shifted some of that responsibility onto her shoulders as well, whether the assassin liked that or not. Which she did not, most likely. It seemed that she did not like most things. Including Faline.) At last, she brought herself back up onto her feet and patted her skirts with a businesslike air. "Then we shall find this well and drink from it, just as you've instructed." Essentially she just repeated what the snake said, but it was only two simply things. Those directions were direct and not confusing in the slightest.

Resolutely, Faline turned on her heel and walked with total confidence in a random direction. Then she paused a moment later and turned bashfully to glance back at the familiars, scratching her cheek. "Now... which way is the well again?"

Endymion looked at Atropos and sighed.

 

[Syntra]

Ugh. Was the girl familiar with the concept of shutting the fuck up? Because Cyrra didn't think so, and she also believed it would open up many, many new avenues for her. For instance, it could serve as her surest route to not getting fucking murdered! ...for the time-being. Faline was a witch, and all witches were stains upon the gods' creation-- dark, ugly blemishes, like open wounds on the earth's tortured body. Like limbs infected with gangrene, even more accurately. Now, what did you do with gangrenous limbs? Did you nurture them, waiting for the poison to spread further? Did you beg the gods for a miraculous cure? No, you cut them off! Cyrra happened to need this particular limb at the moment, though, and so she had to bide her time. ...she'd be a spider, not an eagle. In her little web, she'd wait, and when Faline got comfortable? Heh! Dead, like so many fools before her. Sacrificed at the altar of her own stupidity, broken and all the more beautiful for it. Weren't shards always more appealing than the whole picture, after all? (...wholeness was boring, Cyrra thought. Always the same. The ones who shattered tended to do it in myriads of different ways, though, and that was fun to watch.)

"Good thing that I'm secretly a cheesecake, then," she deadpanned. "Don't tell anyone, though, elsewise my reputation would fucking suffer. Most reputable assassins from around here tend to be brownies." (Cyrra may or may not have been embarrassed, thank you very much! Sarcasm hid these things fairly well, however, and so you would never find out. It may have been a bluff, she tried to console herself. Which, may have been? No, it definitely fucking was! Faline and her... her words and thoughts and weird charm would not get through her armor, no matter how hard she tried. Uh, had she said charm? By that, of course, Cyrra meant 'her annoyance factor!' An easy mistake to make, considering... um, the current constellation of the stars. Haha.)

Meanwhile, Atropos gave Faline a look that suggested that the only reason they weren't facepalming right now was that they, in fact, didn't have hands. "This way, Miss Kairos. I'm sure that I don't have to explain what drinking from Well of the First Spark entails? You shall be subjected to trials. Your mettle will be tested, as well as the purity of your hearts. I have no doubt that you shall prevail, but..." they shot a worried glance at Cyrra, "...I'd keep an eye on Cyrra, if I were you. Something tells me there will be problems."

"Can you fucking stop talking as if I'm not even here?!"

"Maybe when you actually start acting like you're there," Atropos countered. "A proper mistress would have assisted Miss Kairos in solving the mess instead of making a nuisance of herself. What do you have to say to that?" And, frankly, it wasn't a lot. Not that Cyrra fell for their nasty tricks for a second, of course-- there was just no point to dwelling in this strange space between different times, adrift on their sinking boat. Escape first, murder afterwards. Nothing like a tight fucking schedule!

"Fucking fine," she mumbled. "I don't want to stay here for a second longer. Come on, whelp." Atropos at least had the decency to point out the direction, and that earned him a small, meaningless amount of Cyrra's praise. ('Clap, clap, you aren't entirely fucking useless. Would you like some head pats for that?') Sadly, the barebones instructions still couldn't prepare them for what was to come.

"Miss Kairos! Please, please, Miss Kairos, can you listen to me for a while?"

"She sure as hell can't, you stupid... cat?" Because, indeed, a cat was what seemed to be talking to them-- a normal-sized ball of white fur that Cyrra would have been happy to overlook. (Fuck, maybe she should have.) "I know that you are in a hurry, but could you spare a meowment? My children are stuck on a tree, and I fear for their safety. If they fail to return home before dinner, you see, they will become someone else's dinner. Such are the rules of this land." The cat flicked their tail, clearly signaling their disapproval. "I tried to warn them, but you know how children are. Will you please help them get down?" ...which could honestly be a fucking problem, considering that the tree in question appeared to be growing in a giant alligator's maw. Again, what the actual fuck?! (Somehow, Cyrra had the feeling that this question was going to become a staple in her repertoire of things to say. Just a hunch.)

"Meow! Meow!" the kittens cried, black and white and everything in between. "Save us, Faline!"

 

[ellarose]

Faline interlocked her fingers behind her back and took long strides as she followed the snake along the path. She was listening-- or at least she composed a thoughtful enough expression that implied that she was listening. Tests, yes. That made perfect sense as magic was often a series of tests. Ever since she was small, she found herself navigating her way through them. One after another, she would often pass over certain thresholds without even realizing she was being tested to begin with. She always trusted in her own heart in these instances and hadn't died yet. Considering that method had worked out for her very well thus far, she walked along the path without overthinking it too much. What was meant to happen would happen whenever it happened... and she would deal with everything that came to her as it came. The flow of time and of magic was as true as the Kairos blood that ran in her veins. It was in the air she breathed, embodied the life she lived. It was all she ever knew. Therefore it was nothing to get all too worked up about. Or at least she didn't see it that way at first.

Indeed Atropos did have a point that Cyrra's presence would change things quite a bit as well. There was an element to this specific task that felt distinctly different from all of the rest. Unpredictable beyond the usual unpredictability of this realm. For Faline was not alone this go around. (In theory, that notion sounded very pleasant. In fact it was something she had craved for years and years. But perhaps in practice, it was not so nice after all. The cheesecake assassin made it clear with no uncertain terms that she did not like her and called her whelp at every given opportunity. A name which Faline did not very much care for. It was very much on par with granny calling her things like 'dunderhead' and 'nincompoop'. Couldn't she ever just be 'Faline' to anyone?) At this point, enduring the unenthusiastic energy she brought with her could already technically be considered a test all of its own. It weighed the fresh air she breathed in with a heaviness she was admittedly unfamiliar with. The call of her name distracted her before she could ponder the matter any further, though. Miss Kairos...? Yes. Well, she supposed she was the only one present who fit that title anymore. The only one in the world for all she knew now that auntie was gone.

"Of course I can, Missus Cat." Faline agreed at the same time that Cyrra refused. She shot the assassin a stern glance for insulting the sweet cat and answering in her stead (for she was not 'Miss Kairos', was she?) before kneeling in the grass to politely address the fluffy white creature face to face. The story gripped her heart immediately and she gasped, pressing her hands empathetically over her chest. Eager as ever to please-- for anyone she helped was a potential new friend-- she pushed off the ground again and gazed determinedly up at the tree. "Why, the poor dears! There is no way that I could ignore your catastrophe now that you have brought it to my attention." She resolutely nodded and walked right up to the peculiar tree, tilting her head as she gazed upon the alligator's maw. Hm. "Worry not, I have climbed plenty of trees and am pawsitive I can handle this."

"Well..." Endymion stared skeptically at wailing kittens in the tree and then at Faline. "This is weird." They said it flatly as if they had said that statement countless times before. Even then, they knew better than to stop their mistress once she set her mind to something.

Faline waved her hand as if to brush off their concern, beginning a long, full-body stretch in preparation to climb.

"Thank you, Miss Kairos!" The white cat sighed with relief. "Thank you so much. I have heard countless stories of your kindness and knew I could count on you. Unlike..." She squinted uncertainly at Cyrra. "Whoever this is."

"Oh, do not pay her any mind. She's just a bitter piece of cheesecake." Faline grinned cheekily. Then she glimpsed Cyrra with a shrug. "Hehe, I'm just kitten around." Making a decidedly strategic retreat, she ran at the tree and hugged onto the base of it, legs dangling just above the alligator's sharp teeth. Endymion watched with a sharp breath, clearly teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown as she climbed up inch by inch. Once she made it to the proper branch, she invited a few of the kittens to climb on top of her, poking through her dress with their claws as they gripped on for dear life. "Hold on, kitties. It seems I will have to make two... maybe three trips to help all of you."

Sucking in a deep breath, Faline swung herself from the branch onto the ground, allowing the first batch of kittens she's saved to run to their mother. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, wiping back her bangs and freshly beading sweat. When she heard the alligator cough she tilted her head once more. It... did not look very comfortable, did it? With a choking sound, more of the bark disappeared into the creature's throat and the remaining kittens cried out as they came a few inches closer to those sharp teeth. And the alligator did not look at all to be enjoying it.

This time when Faline approached the tree, she didn't climb it right away. Instead, she addressed the alligator. "Are you all right, sir? May I ask you why you have a tree in your mouth?" Perhaps she should have asked that question to begin with. "How rude of me... you cannot answer with your mouth full. Then how about you blink twice for yes and once for no?" She considered a good yes or no question to ask, then. "Do you want to eat these kittens?" Because if not, then the poor creature was simply choking on a tree and being blamed for a crime they did not want to commit!