boudika
rebellion sits well on you; like a red coat
rebellion sits well on you; like a red coat
The beating of the drums was now her own heart.
In all her years of war with water-beasts, she had never known such fire. Her experience was limited to bonfires and funeral pyres; to candlelight and lanterns, fire that was safe, contained, subservient to the will of its creator. This, this was an entity unto itself, a power as free and reckless as a young god. It carried its own beat of life, its own severity of weight, and it cackled, it laughed. Her lungs were filling with smoke, her eyes stinging with it, everything burning, burning, and all of these things kept at bay by the rushing of adrenaline in her veins. She was naive to Toulouse aside from that first, creeping sense there had been two figures in the smoke—a thought that was quickly forgotten when with a quick glance from her peripherals she found it to be untrue. Abel became her focus after the initial hit connected, taking some of the breath from her lungs, too.
The tempo was changing, changing—quick, urgent, demanding some sort of violent climax, some violent resolution.
Involuntarily, she began to cough—but pushed through the pain of the heated air in her lungs. Please—Please, they’re getting away. She registered somehow, somewhere, that they needed to leave now. But she followed Abel’s fall—having been taught, having learned, to follow every blow to avoid retaliation—her hooves coming down in sharp, clipped blows near his head, hoping to keep him on the ground. In the same disjointed fashion, it also came to her attention she was no longer alone—Boudika was pleased to see she recognized the mare who had arrived and, if memory served correctly, the other woman was the definition of a spitfire. Boudika had the opportunity to believe him, this barred stranger; but it did not sit right with her, to have seen him standing so clearly in the billowing flame and smoke, not in the act of raising the alarm, not in the act of subduing the flames. There was a wrongness to his presence and Boudika had long-since learned the importance of trusting her instincts. It would be better to take him into custody and ask questions later than simply allow him, if he were a perpetrator, to escape. Morrighan had responded quickly, which Boudika appreciated—the other mare hovered over the potential criminal’s body, her hoof dangerously placed.
Beat, beatbeatbeat, beat—
Boudika knew the nature of conflict. She knew inaction was the worst decision they could make. The heat was growing… growing… and her eyes welled with water. ”Shut up,” Boudika barked at Abel, side-eyeing Morrighan. It did not appear as though she recognised him, either, and that was cause enough for Boudika to charge a second time—not to hit him, but heckling, her teeth snapping at his haunch as though to drive him up and froward. ”Let’s take him outside before this entire building collapses, and ask a couple questions,” she declared, yelling over the crackle of flames. The heat was too much— oppressive, heavy, stinging. The flames had grown everywhere around them, and even the entrance seemed to have disappeared into the fire and smoke. Simultaneously, something cracked, and a part of the building’s internal structure gave way, cascading in a rain of fiery embers. Had he stood, Boudika would force her shoulder into his ribs, lowering her head so that a horn pressed ominously into the side of his neck, the tip wicked, curled, and sharp—and pressing forward, forward, running.
”Move,” she commanded, hoping Morrighan would take the initiative to secure the prisoner’s other side. She envisioned exactly how she wanted the next few seconds to go:
They would burst out of the flames, onto the street, covered in soot and coughing from the smoke. Boudika would not stop there, however, pushing, shoving, snapping toward an alleyway. They would push through the bustling activity of frantic Denoctians as they attempted to quell the flames, shouts rising into the air.
There was an alleyway across the store shed, narrow enough to prevent the criminal from escaping. It was only wide enough to turn around in. Had they made it that far, Boudika gestured Morrighan through, to seal the other side, and would follow closely behind Abel.
But Boudika did not yet know if they would make it that far, as she thundered toward the distant night through the smoke and flame, the beating of the drums enveloped by the sound of the inferno.
@Abel @Morrighan @
