OOM: All Skate Skellig Dream Magic Weirdness? -Part Two

[brave_kreyu]

Kreyu intended to dance in the sky with Skellig the very next day, but events have conspired to prevent that from occurring. A raid on the village by former soldiers meant many wounded to heal and much damage to fix. Akatan's sister, Neferet, has a definite crush, an infatuation, with Skellig. She hasn't done anything but look and exchange some friendly words, but it still makes her brother FURIOUS.

For all that Euripedes was from a different time and place, a line he had Medea speak in the play of the same name still rings true: "I would rather stand three times in the line of battle than once bear a child." Even with Kreyu's magic, with Taweret's skill, childbirth is incredibly dangerous. There are reasons why Taweret's goddess image of She Who Is Great has elements of the hippo, the lion, and the crocodile, a fearsome appearance to drive off the many threats facing a woman giving birth. The second birth in a week began this morning and was still going on when the sun began to set. Not a good sign.

Skellig, trying to burn off nervous energy while Kreyu was working, happened across a few of the village men drinking. They said things about Kreyu they should not have said. That he was FEEDING on Kreyu, drinking her blood. There...may have been a fight. At least they don't think he's a demon anymore, you can't give a demon a black eye in a brawl with your fists!

It is truly night now, and Skellig can hear Kreyu's tired footsteps on the road...

(OOC: Warning for explicit adult content starting around tag 194.)

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[brave_kreyu]

Kreyu answers the door, and when she sees him her eyes go violet, the wood of the door latch creaks at the strain her hand is placing on it.

She steps back, too quick, to let him enter. It's best that the village not See, right now. Heqet is safely asleep, Taweret dosing where she's leaning against the wall.

"Where?" She can smell the blood, wants to stop it, HAS to stop it.

[27_53]

Skellig has sensed both Taweret and Heqet (as well as the babe) asleep, so he keeps his voice low, not much above a whisper.

"Eye." He points first at the rapidly darkening and swelling bruise and edema around his left eye, then flashes his teeth at her, pointing his finger at his mouth - there is blood puddled there which he swallows back again, oozing from a split lip that is bleeding eagerly as his heart still hammers in his chest.

[brave_kreyu]

Kreyu only has one way to heal him quickly. She TAKES the wounds, the pain, onto her own flesh. She feels EVERYTHING for a moment, then forces the karma from her necklace to knit her flesh back together. It still has one charge left, she shouldn't need more than that any time soon.

There won't be anything left but the faintest surface bruising.

"Did I get everything?" she asks softly.

[27_53]

He nods, without speaking for a moment - placing his hand on her shoulder, letting some of his Light flow between them. It is less than he could usually manage, but there is still anger and Dark clouding his mind.

There is gratitude, in his touch.
Love.
And apology.

"I would not have knocked, if I had known Heqet and the babe were here," he whispers. "But I did not know what else to do, except find you."

Not only to seek aid to heal his injuries, but simply to find her. Protect her.

[brave_kreyu]

"I need a name, this time," she says, voice quiet but firm. "Four hours, we've been apart, and already harm has been done to you again."

[27_53]

Skellig shifts his jaw, a phantom ache radiating through his face and neck. He does not wish for her to fight his battles for him, and this battle was for her.

He also would not anger her, in this space. He tightens his grip on her shoulder, willing her to stay calm.

"Akatan."

[brave_kreyu]

"I should have known," her voice is bitter, tired. "It seems he took my refusal of his attentions more poorly than I had imagined."

"We'll deal with it, with him, in the morning. Once everyone's had the chance to cool off a little." She leans in to kiss him on the forehead.

"I'll let Taweret nap another hour or so, finish things up here. If you could handle things at home, that would be a big help."

It looks like his willing her to stay calm worked!

[27_53]

Skellig shakes his head, swiftly.

"No. I may have left him in the dirt, but I did not kill him. I would not have you walk home alone, tonight."

A glance to the bed, to Taweret asleep in the chair. This space is sacred, and he feels bad merely sitting in it. He looks to the door.

"I would sit on the step, until you are ready. I will handle things once we get there, so you could rest." Nevermind he just got in a fistfight less than an hour ago.

[brave_kreyu]

"Thank you, love," she kisses him softly.

She doesn't keep him waiting long, he hears Taweret's voice saying goodnight about an hour later, just before Kreyu steps out of the door.

She's less than three paces off of the steps when Skellig hears a sound he hasn't heard before. The shots he's heard before were from a small bow, poorly maintained and meant for ducks. This one, this one is well maintained and meant to kill men, and larger things, wielded by the only trained hunter in the village.

The arrow takes Kreyu in the back, pierces through her lung for the arrowhead to emerge from a breast like a grotesque growth. She makes an almost soundless gasp, collapses like a puppet with its strings cut.

Her heart is still beating, frantic, like a bird trapped in a cage!

[27_53]

She hits the dirt next to him before he even has the chance to react, but within a fraction of a second - the space between heartbeats - Skellig turns and his senses zero in on the shooter's location.

And identity.

He's putting another arrow to the nock and pulling the bowstring back, the motion calculated and automatic and trained, lethal, a hunter, letting it fly free before she can even struggle to gasp for another breath from her collapsed lung.

"No!"

Skellig dives for her and the speed which he grabs her off the ground is most definitely unnatural. The arrow whizzes! past his body and hits the dirt beyond them, but he's already moving back to Taweret's doorstep. He doesn't bother knocking - he knows his shout was likely enough to startle everyone nearby awake anyhow - simply pushes the door open, Kreyu held in his arms.

"I need a knife--" he's already moving for the table, ignoring (only because he has to, he can't focus on her panic, her frantic heart pounding in her chest, if he focuses on that he can't save her) any protests as he moves to lay her down. "Bar the door."

No knife.

At least not fast enough.

He's not bothering to hide anything from anyone, right now.
There's blood on her lips and fear in his eyes and he could give a damn less who Sees.

He flexes the fingers of one hand and allows a visible shift. One talon swiftly slices through the end of the arrow that is sticking out of her back - the wood parting effortlessly, as if it were made of wax and struck by hot iron pulled from the flame.

His other hand is firm on her shoulder, but he doesn't have enough Light to let her take from him, not now. Not with what he's going to need to do next.

[brave_kreyu]

He did wake everyone, but the baby's cry, Heqet's confused question as to what's going on, Taweret's desperate prayer to She Who Is Great as she throws the bar across the door, are all background noise in the face of Kreyu's distress.

There is one small mercy, he won't have to CUT the arrow out, this time. The head of the wicked, barbed, thing came all the way through - he can use the head to pull the rest of it from her body.

For a moment, her eyes focus on him, color shifting between violet and brown, her hands scrabbling at the beads around her throat. "Take it," she manages to gasp out, the sound too weak for lesser ears to hear. He knows there's power in the necklace, karma he can use if he needs it.

[27_53]

"Kreyu, listen to me."

His voice is low, firm and steady. A rock to grasp hold of, amidst the thundering waves of an angry (he is so very angry beneath the surface) violent ocean storm. He moves his fingertips to curl around the necklace, merely needing to touch it to allow the Karma stored there to surge into his system.

The Light in him briefly FLARES as the strange, unfamiliar (but yet familiar all at once) Karma clashes, two different currents of energy sparking and misfiring until they realize they are both on the same side.

"Do not let go of me. Even if you go under, do not let go of me."

His voice sounds old, powerful. Powerful in ways that even he will struggle to understand later, when he revisits this moment in his mind (which he will do countless times in the coming moments, hours, days) and heart.

Pressing his forehead closer to hers, curling his hand around the shaft of the arrow lodged in her chest (he ignores the barbs that prick his hand) he keeps his gaze steady - the fear gone from his eyes, replaced with something stronger (power, Karma, Light) that has pushed the emotion completely from his body.

"I will not let you drown."

[brave_kreyu]

She feels like she's drowning, water in her lungs. (Blood is thicker than water, a red sea inside of her.)

With the last of her strength, she grabs hold of one of his arms, reaches out with her soul toward his light.

She knows what dying feels like, she's done it before, although not in this frail shape, so very small. Something cold and dark wants to swallow her up and she's so TIRED, but she hangs on to him.

The necklace shatters under his hand as it gives up the last of its strength.

[27_53]

Light surges throughout his system rapidly as the clay beads shatter and crumble beneath his touch, and he knows that he has to hurry because she is drowning on dry land and he has to get this arrow out--

Without hesitation, he swiftly pulls the arrow free from her body, the bloody shaft clattering to the tabletop as he drops it, frothy blood welling quickly to the surface of her wound, spreading from both sides of her body front and back. He reaches over his shoulder, grasping at what appears to be thin air - searing a ward? Signaling? No - a fistful of feathers yanked quickly into his grasp, which he plasters over the wound on the frontside of her. Another fistful gets placed behind her as he lifts her slightly into his grasp off the table.

(His feet are only just barely touching the ground, but there is likely no one in the room that will notice.)

Visions and echoes are ricocheting throughout his focus as he reaches, eyes closed tight, seeking to repair the damage within her body. With the extra Karma, he is able to knit faster (it still isn't fast enough, she's slipping further from him) and repair internal wounds with greater efficiency (not fast enough, you are losing her she is going to drown) and then something sparks in his brain.

"Give."

It is a command (one he did not know he could give, one he will likely never be able to give again) which shall not be disobeyed. His own lungs quickly grow heavy, filling with blood (her blood) as the tears in her body mend and seal beneath his reach, his touch.

He doesn't let go of her as he turns and coughs, choking, before he spits and retches blood (so much blood, more than should be possible) into a bucket on the floor beside the table. His vision is blurred, and he's still coughing, his own lungs gasping for oxygen, but he needs to feel her breathe beneath his hands, his mind willing her chest to expand and rise with every ounce of Light he can possibly spare pouring into her soul.

Another fistful of feathers is torn free from his wing and he threads them quickly into her hair, eyes glancing desperately at her face. Her throat, her chest, her heartbeat (he can still hear her heartbeat, it is fainter than it has ever been but it is still here) pulsing through the vein in her neck. He reaches further--

breathe, my dragon, my mate. breathe, kreyu.
i will not let you drown here on this day.
this is not the way this ends for you. breathe, please. breathe!

Skellig has walked with Death many times.
But Kreyu will not join Them. Not today.
Not so long as he has breath in his lungs.

(Bloodied as they are.)

[brave_kreyu]

Even dying, on the very edge of death, her blood is full of power. The blood of a goddess in his lungs, a goddess who wants to heal him. It heals what it touches, spreads out in little waves to his internal organs as the power is picked up by his OWN blood circulating through his lungs. Even as he retches it up into a bucket, it is healing what it touches as it passes out of his body.

An echo of her words not to waste it, if she's going to bleed anyway she'd rather it do him some good.

She breathes, a wretched, gasping sound, her chest rising under his hands. She's not conscious, but her heartbeat is strengthening. The next breath is a less dreadful sound, the third better still.

Death's grip slackens, then releases. There is other prey to be hunted tonight.

The arrow he pulled from her flesh sits on the table, mocking him. A whisper in his mind. 'He struck at her to get to YOU, Skellig. To make you hurt, to make you suffer.'

[27_53]

The whisper is acknowledged, but he doesn't act on it just yet. His main focus is still her, with her chest rising and falling under his hands - he's still working on steadying her muscles, knitting together torn fragments, repairing the more detailed damage he 'missed' on the first pass.

The taste of her blood is in his mouth as he works, and he can feel it working throughout his body - a most unfamiliar feeling, but not one that is unpleasant.

As her gasping breaths steady into something that is a greater semblance of 'normal' - she's still not perfect, and she won't be for some time - Skellig glances up at Taweret.

His voice is raspy and raw when he speaks to her - as if he has been screaming. "I would put her in the bed, if you would allow it?" She is still covered in blood, patches of his feathers stuck to her skin where wounds have been erased.

[brave_kreyu]

"Of course, child," she says, voice quiet. "You are both welcome to whatever lies within these walls for as long as you need."

She looks at the feathers. "The owl means death, mourning, in these lands, but you have beaten death back instead." There is a touch of awe and wonder in her voice.

[27_53]

Carefully - oh so very carefully, this is so much different from every other time he has carried her, but it is effortless as he lifts her into his arms - he moves her into his grasp, transferring her from the table to Taweret's bed. There will need to be washing done, but at least Kreyu is no longer actively bleeding.

"There is no beating Death," Skellig says quietly, bowing his head as he strokes a hand over Kreyu's face. "But today was not to be her walk with Them."

(He nearly says our walk, because if Kreyu had perished...he would have likely gone after her, losing himself in the process.)

He shakes his head to clear his vision and looks back up at Taweret again, then to the bucket near the table. "Do not...do not toss that aside. She may need it, when I return. I would ask of you...please. Watch over her."

[brave_kreyu]

Taweret's gaze is firm, solemn. "I will watch over your heart as if it were my own."

Her eyes flicker to the goddess image. "I know what you would do. Would you be HER hands tonight, in my stead? There are older laws than the laws of kings when She must protect those under her care from Men."

[27_53]

Despite his wings not being visible in this space, Taweret will feel a faint rush of air as he shakes them out against his back, perhaps even hear the rustle of feathers as an echo in her mind.

"I would consider it my sworn duty," he says, solemnly.

[brave_kreyu]

"Never before have I had to give a life my hands brought forth to HER jaws. I would not falter in my duty, but you are better able to see the matter ended quickly tonight than these old bones."

And it will hurt Skellig less, though she won't SAY that.

[27_53]

She doesn't have to say it. Skellig reaches once more and plucks a single (clean) feather from 'the air' behind him and offers it to Taweret.

"I give you this. If you fear she is slipping beyond once again," he shoots a sideways glance at Kreyu, who should not (and will not) be going anywhere. "Just think of me. I will return to help at once."

[brave_kreyu]

Taweret nods, takes the feather with all the care afforded to something holy and precious. "I will."

'It's all your fault, he attacked her because of you,' the arrow whispers.

'He nearly stole heaven from you tonight, condemned you to a hell without her,' Kreyu's blood speaks on his hands.

'He needs to SUFFER for what he's done," the fire crackles.

[27_53]

With that, and a final (for now) press of his lips to Kreyu's bloodied cheek, he rises from a knee and moves to the door.

He stops only to glare at the arrow that whispers at him from the puddle of blood (her blood, her precious blood) it rests in on the table.

"He will pay," he speaks, voice low.

Who exactly he is talking to - to Kreyu? to Taweret? to the voices? - is unclear, but it doesn't matter. He has business to attend to. He leaves the arrow on the table and takes his leave.

[brave_kreyu]

Akatan has been waiting for him, with a hunter's patience. He KNOWS he killed the witch, nothing survives a shot like that for long! But he wants the demon too. Skellig is barely out of the door when another arrow comes for him.

But Skellig knows the sound of them, now, and Akatan has lost the element of surprise. And Skellig is so very, very, angry. Akatan is perched on top of the wall that rings the town, a position that gives him an easy sight line to Taweret's dwelling.

'Blasphemer' the earth rumbles.

'He wanted your mate, coveted her. Wanted her to bed him, to bear his children, to be his prized wife' the well gossips, 'but she wouldn't have him after the night she kissed him.'

'Wise goddess, sensed the poison in him, even if she didn't know its name' the wind whispers in his ear.