boudika
rebellion sits well on you; like a red coat
rebellion sits well on you; like a red coat
A part of Boudika had always belonged to the malicious whimsy of fairies or dragons; a siren had sang to her once, perhaps, and drowned out her better parts. A kelpie, too, had whispered promises; and her heart lusted for them with all the wanton need of a lover starved. This left her a beast in both the best and worse senses. It left her numb to pain and real, genuine fear—not philosophical fear, but the fear that turned one’s blood to leaden weight and bound them fast to where they stood. Boudika did not know that fear because when she felt it, like the stirrings of something too-light and too-airy in her veins—a feeling that would soon become heavier, heavier, heavier—it was, instead, transformed into action. The adrenaline awakened her senses to their most heightened form. It was the fear that made her feel alive, fear of failure first, fear of death once or twice, fear of the unknown and unknowable—and all of them, breathed into her, made her alive, alive, alive.
Alive like a fistfight. Alive like a battlecry. Alive like a final, gasping, breath.
Hers had never been the concerns of generals, spies, or governors. Hers had always been the simpler life of the cadet, the soldier, the second lieutenant. Hers had always been the immediacy of the people, the immediacy of her individual action, the immediacy of the battle.
And so, when Able’s capture did not come easily, her heart leaped with joy. The primordial, ecstatic, orgasmic pleasure of the hunt—the chase—the fight—became her everything. Yes, run! her mind cried and her body already, with no prompting, reacted.
She had been a fool to trust someone she did not know to secure his other side—and that was a mistake she would not make twice. The alleyway was too narrow for her to pursue alongside Morrighan and so Boudika pivoted in a full circle, rearing out of the alley in a gargantuan leap. From there, Boudika took a chance and galloped toward the street-front. The alley, she knew, must access the rears of multiple store entrances—and she knew Denocte just well enough to know which side of the alley was backed by warehouses with no back doors, and which one met the bustling marketplace. Boudika had no idea which building he may have leapt into, if any, but as she ran she kept her eyes fixed sideways, catching abstract glimpses of open doors and windows, or closed ones—and then, two dark, rapidly moving silhouettes.
Boudika almost ran past them—but she dropped her haunches and nearly slid, instead, pulling herself into a hasty and inelegant halt. Unknowing if Morrighan’s offensive had worked, Boudika plowed through the open doorway through the crowd gathering to defend the fires. Multiple horses cursed and leapt sideways, but she remained undeterred—entering the room snorting, head tossed, still made devilish by the light. She would immediately move into whatever position was unoccupied by Morrighan, whether that be the front of rear door… and, not one to bother with interrogation, kicked out at table leg. It snapped audibly, and she raised it with her natural telekinesis. “You shouldn’t have ran,” Boudika said, blandly. “This would have been easier for you if you hadn’t run.” She simply side-eyed Morrighan, hoping for back up but not expecting it. Simultaneously, Boudika stepped nearer to Abel, had it remained enclosed in the small space of the bar. As she did so, she lashed out with both her tail and the broken table-leg—aiming the leg at his head, and her whiplike tail at his haunches.
This was them. The drums at their summit. Her heart, elated from the chase and exuberant from the run. The cries of the fire outside, the roar of a dragon, all of it irrelevant to the piercing clarity of this moment. It was what a sheepdog lived for—the thrill of hunting wolves.
@Abel @Morrighan @
