Interactive Quest again and again and rise

BUT THERE IS NO BARGAIN
for here, what is, is what must be.

TW for brief suicidal ideation

--

She has had nightmares like this before.

Nightmares where the sand is stained red. Where the moon is stained red. And then the red is inside of her, and she can’t breathe, and she is lying in a field under the apathetic sheen of an unyielding mother-of-pearl moon, and she is red, and so are the flowers. She smells them, in spite of the blood. Just barely.

It is the nightmare that wakes Seraphina – the nightmare that heralds the creature’s arrival. She doesn’t know it, yet. Not when she draws forth from the Elatus, not when she steps out onto the sands, not when she grimaces up at the pale curve of the moon, waned sickly on the horizon. No – she does not know it until she hears an unnatural sounding noise from behind her. It does not sound like one voice. It sounds like – a thousand, maybe. Some high and some deep, some sweet and some torturous, and some familiar and some utterly alien. That noise…and then a sound like wings.

Seraphina whirls, her mind wrapping itself around Alshamtueur’s hilt. There is a vulture in the sand behind her. Ostensibly, there should be nothing unnatural about the sight; her milk-white feathers, dipped with intricate black, and blood-red eyes are nothing that she has not seen in the desert before. There is something utterly wrong with the bird, though. Something unnatural. She isn’t sure what it reminds her of – not quite the gods.

“Seraphina.” When the bird speaks, she jolts, but her surprise feels strangely dull. (Everything does, lately; nothing feels real, not quite. Like she is underwater, hearing and seeing the world from below the surface. Nothing is moving right.) That isn’t a bird; she isn’t sure what it is, but it isn’t a bird. When it opens its beak and speaks, it has teeth like a shark.

Why have you come, she nearly asks. How do you know me?

Instead, what comes out of her mouth is, “What are you?”

The bird’s tongue squirms across her toothy maw, like a worm. “Insolent,” she hisses, in a voice like metal on stone. “You should be dead, girlie. Wormthing. How annoying.” She smiles her scorn like a knife, but Seraphina doesn’t think about how strange it is to see a smile on a bird’s beak, she only thinks about how the creature is right, about those flowers and the moon and the claws of a bear and how she should-

When the bird springs for her, a mass of feathers and muscle and unnaturally sharp talons, it is pure reflex that saves her. The bird’s talons sound like metal when they sweep past her, barely missing the soft curve of her throat, and she lets out an almost girlish giggle when she misses, her eyes gleaming with an amusement that strikes Seraphina as sadistic, remorseless, and utterly cruel. “Curious,” the bird purrs, her voice dipping low and sultry. “Do you still wish to live, little queen?” Her voice raises, soft and childlike and mocking, and Seraphina flinches like she has been burned. “I won’t let you.”

What catches in Seraphina’s throat is no.

No, no, no, no, she wishes she’d died, she wishes she’d bled out, she wishes that he had finished the job, like a proper assassin, like a proper crow - but there are consequences, and she has to live with them. “Who sent you?” Seraphina’s voice lies flat. Was it Raum? But she couldn’t believe that he’d found her yet.

The bird laughs – raucous and throaty, like she’d just breathed in smoke. “Stupid mortalthing. Always asking useless questions.” Seraphina grits her jaw, ignoring the insult. “I want your soul. To raze it. Weigh it. Do you understand?” Her voice is sweet. Sickly. Like a mother would speak to her child.

“You’re insane,” Seraphina says, and the bird just laughs and laughs and laughs like a jackal. Practically howls.

“Fool,” the bird says, and rushes at her again – faster this time. Unnaturally fast, trailing black plumes of something dark and twisting from her wings. There is no time to dodge her outright, so Seraphina takes the hit to her chest, wincing in pain as her talons slice into her with an ease that is unnatural; the wound is clean, as though it was delivered by a sharpened blade, and it immediately begins to ooze blood. But she barely feels it.

She jerks Alshamtueur from its hilt before the bird can strike her again, deflecting a hit from the talons with the cold steel; she whispers the name of the blade under her breath and lashes out as flames engulf the sword. The bird manages to dodge with unnatural grace, but a few of her feathers are singed in the process. She growls, like a rabid dog.

She is on her, swarming her vision with feathers and flailing talons and gnawing teeth; Seraphina flails backwards, blinded by the bird that is so close to her already-injured face, which still oozes pus and blood from beneath the gold-scars sometimes. She can’t see, not really, but she has some grasp of the space between them, and she knows that she has to get the bird off of her somehow, so she swings Alshamtueur half-blind at the bird from behind. When it catches in flesh, she feels a rush of relief, but only for a moment. The bird lets out an unholy shriek of pain, the blackness dripping from her wings flaring.

Their blood mingles on the sand beneath her hooves – an ugly concoction of violent red and ink-like black. She doesn’t bleed red. Seraphina doesn’t have time to think about it, though.

The bird is back on her almost immediately, but, when she attempts to bite her jaw, something stops her mid-motion. She jerks back in shock, dropping out of the air and stumbling backwards on the sand, and Seraphina takes the opportunity to put some space between them-

And then her mind is not her own.

Damned infernal beast. You’d trick me? You’d dare to trick me? I’ll rend you. I’ll rip your heart from your chest and give it to the worms. The flies. The roaches. I’ll have your head for this. How dare you? How dare you? I won’t kill you, I’ll torment you – torment you endlessly, until the end of time, rip out your eyes and devour them-

Her vision swirls. Her chest heaves – she’s panting with exertion. The bird is still rocking on her talons, giggling to herself, her expression erratic. How dare you leave me with this little snip? I don’t guard mortals. If I can’t kill her, I’ll see her killed. How dare you. I’m not some mortal’s pet, how dare you how dare you how dare you HOW DARE YOU-

“What is this?” Seraphina manages, between labored breaths. “Why can I hear you-“

Inside of your head, girlie-girlie? Don’t you know? You have your mortal stories – surely you’re smart enough to figure it out.

Seraphina pauses. Swallows. “We aren’t bonded,” she says, her voice wavering.

Is this what was meant, when I was told to take your soul? Insolent fool. Cryptic trickster. I have no time to entertain a little wormling because someone else did their job improperly.

A bonded is supposed to be a great blessing from the gods. Seraphina cannot fathom how this unhinged creature is supposed to be a blessing, but, then, she cannot fathom the will of the gods. She cannot fathom their depths; their kindness, or their cruelty.

If this is Solis’s gift to her, can she really claim to be surprised? The bird is violent, like her magic is violent, like Alshamtueur – still hanging in the air between her and the bird – is violent. If anything, this is likely another sign.

Solterra is not a land of peace, nor a land of kindness. She knows this intimately.

But…as she looks at the glaring bird, she cannot help but wonder if this particular violent thing is more of a danger to her than anything or anyone else.

“What are you?” she repeats, through gritted teeth. The bird inclines her head, looking slightly more composed, but the way that she is grinding her talons in the sand suggests otherwise. I am the great demon Ereshkigal, little girl. A judge of the dead. I pick the damned, and I give them their due.

She looks at her, and she smiles, all teeth.

One day, I will take your soul, too.

@Random Events || ~~catch me accidentally putting this up after the post she was supposed to leave off on, RIP~~ this was a real blast from the past to write - thanks to sam for the wonderful prompt!

"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"