☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
THEME
the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
THEME
She hears them first as screams on the wind, the howls of some reanimated ghost come for its reckoning – and she sends scouts, of course. Figure out what is happening and report back. Only one of them makes it back, bloody and bruised and half-dead, gasping, gasping, gasping.
Reagent Avdotya and her- the davke – they’re coming. And then nothing.
She would say that she is surprised, but she is not. Not in this court of thorns where she stands so utterly alone; she was mistaken in her trust. She was mistaken in trusting, and she should have known by the gleam in her reagent’s blood-chip eyes. She is not angry at Avdotya – there is no white-hot rage come like wildfire to consume her. She knows why the viper has come, and she knows what she desires – she knows why. But she does not care. In her mind, there is no bitterness, nor sympathy; there are no thoughts to the dead for which she has come to avenge, the wrongs done to her by Solterra’s boy-king. She cares nothing for her vengeance. She cares nothing for her rage. She cares nothing for her reagent – she cares nothing for the respect she once offered her. If she showed herself to the silver queen, she would gut her herself or die trying, and it would be no act of rage – simple necessity.
She was wrong. A miscalculation. A miscalculation she will pay for in blood.
A miscalculation she would not make twice.
There is no time to prepare – she sends the soldiers to the door to keep them at bay as long as they can. “The armory,” She tells others, “take what you can and destroy the rest. Do not give them anything more to use against us.” It is futile to send out evacuation orders while they approach – they will catch anyone she sends. There will be no chance for evacuation until they are upon the capitol, and even then, she doubts that most of their vulnerable will survive. All of her sings with urgency, with brutal pragmatism. She gives no speeches, only orders. There is no time for pretty words when death lurks ravenous on the edge of the horizon. There is no time, no time, no time – her mind clicks like clockwork. The sun throbs in the midday sky.
She burns the library herself – she will not give them the satisfaction. She sets aflame the scrolls and records, the fables, the precious accounts. She sends the past up in smoke, reduces a hundred years’ history to little more than ash and dust, and watches the embers catch in the sun.
Outside, she hears screaming.
It is not long before they bypass the soldiers, break down the door, flood into the capitol like a pack of ravenous dogs driven mad by their taste of blood – it is not long until the flames that she started are not the only ones that consume.
She slams out of the library and into the hall and finds herself facing the enemy, a spear clasped between his teeth.
The enemy - some faceless assailant, some shadowed entity. He has a name, a face – certainly some ambition. She cares nothing for it. As she looks him down, only one thought remains in her mind, perfectly clear: one of them will die.
It will not be her.
He rushes at her, then, a sadistic smirk curled across his fawn lips – he thinks himself a hero. His name will go down in history, the one to slaughter the silver queen of day--
but she dances out of the reach of his spear and snatches his throat in her teeth. He flails, jerks, twists, tries to free himself of her grasp, but he does not succeed. The spear falls from his screeching lips and clatters to the ground, and, as she finally frees him, she snatches it in her own teeth. As she looks back to him, she catches a glimpse of his eyes. The rage has faded way to ashes, the cold white of unholy terror.
She slams the spear into his chest. And again. And again. And again.
He twitches, faintly, lips foaming at the edges, then falls still. Her skin runs red. She is drowning in it.
When she draws back from his frame, she is a blood-stained specter, red and cold; her lips, her teeth, the pristine white of the braids that frame her skull like a crown – all red. A baptism, or a rebirth, or a return to who she was, for now her blood hums with a familiar urgency and her mind comes crashing to a still. She feels nothing. She feels nothing. No white-hot rage, no betrayal – nothing. Idle calculation. They are under attack. They are under attack, and their attackers will see each and every one of them slaughtered like dogs. No considerations for what could have been done, and no hesitation. Her lips curl. She drops the spear, then grasps it with her mind, allows it to hover at her side. So be it, then.
She cascades up the stairs like a wraith; a few of them have descended far enough into the palace to attempt what their fellow could not accomplish.
She will not give them that, either.
One pounces on her from above, comes crashing down the stairs with war in her eyes and blood in her hair – Seraphina thinks she might have been speaking, but she cannot hear her over the wardrum pounding of her own heart. Her mind hums. She is beyond thinking, beyond feeling, beyond caring for anything at all. The fool girl lets her hooves get the better of her, and the silver queen sidesteps her with ease; when she turns to snap at her, she finds herself impaled on the spear, drowning in the red.
She does not come alone.
Snapped necks, ripped throats, bodies shoved to break on sandstone streets as they find themselves shoved through what remains of stained-glass windows they shattered themselves, dripping red red red - she dances in blood. Seraphina remains a soldier, and no time spent among palace walls has dulled her sense for the war, the war that was broken into her, the war that became her when she was young, when she was vulnerable, when she was nothing. And so she slaughters those who stand in her way with the thoughtlessness with which one might smash a fly - a brutal, apathetic efficiency, a violence spurred by nothing nothing nothing. She takes no delight in it, no disgust. With each encounter, she finds herself stained until no part of her remains untainted, no part of her pure. Someday, she knows that all that blood might weigh her down. Someday, her crimes are bound to catch up with her – all those bodies left cold and dead for the sake of one fool king’s cruelty, and now again for her own naivete. Someday, they might catch her, trap the silver like the collar spun round her neck as a noose.
They would not today.
Smoke swirls on the roof. It constricts her lungs; her sides heave with perspiration, but she does not stop running. She does not stop running until she reaches the great horn on the fortress walls and blows it, screams her response to the charcoal sky – summons all of Solterra to gather up their arms and push them back. Behind her, she hears the clatter of hooves, and swirls in a cascade of red, prepared to attack-
but her eyes fall upon a trio of panicked scouts, staring at her blood-soaked frame in horror. She watches them in cold, empty silence, little more than an impatient swish of her tail betraying her thoughts. Get on with it, then. One of them manages to speak, his voice hoarse and stumbling with fear. “They want orders downstairs, my lady. What do we do?” Uncertainty. She stares at him – have two years truly been enough time for her people to forget how to fight a war? There is nothing that can be done for that now, she thinks. Her people grew up on tales of violent glory. They expect battle to be something beautiful and glamorous, something with meaning. They expect her to save them.
She cannot.
“Send a small unit to evacuate the ones who cannot fight,” She hisses through bloodstained lips, her narrowed eyes like chips of glass caught on the brilliant red of the flames consuming the sandstone in all directions. “The rest stay and fight to the death. What they were to us once – if anything at all - means nothing now. They will not surrender or negotiate, and we cannot escape. Push them back…regardless of the cost. This is a matter of survival.” As though it had ever been anything more. They fumble, hesitate, eyes wide with frenzy and panic – and she meets it with winter ice. “Did you hear me? Move!” They are gone, then, like shadows down the stairs, and she is quick to follow them, without even a backwards glance to the desert that is no longer her home; her mind is consumed with red. They would have their reckoning? Very well. If the Davke had once survived their destruction, so, too, would the Kingdom of Day.
For your gluttony, I swear by the sun our master to give you more blood than you can drink.
Reagent Avdotya and her- the davke – they’re coming. And then nothing.
She would say that she is surprised, but she is not. Not in this court of thorns where she stands so utterly alone; she was mistaken in her trust. She was mistaken in trusting, and she should have known by the gleam in her reagent’s blood-chip eyes. She is not angry at Avdotya – there is no white-hot rage come like wildfire to consume her. She knows why the viper has come, and she knows what she desires – she knows why. But she does not care. In her mind, there is no bitterness, nor sympathy; there are no thoughts to the dead for which she has come to avenge, the wrongs done to her by Solterra’s boy-king. She cares nothing for her vengeance. She cares nothing for her rage. She cares nothing for her reagent – she cares nothing for the respect she once offered her. If she showed herself to the silver queen, she would gut her herself or die trying, and it would be no act of rage – simple necessity.
She was wrong. A miscalculation. A miscalculation she will pay for in blood.
A miscalculation she would not make twice.
There is no time to prepare – she sends the soldiers to the door to keep them at bay as long as they can. “The armory,” She tells others, “take what you can and destroy the rest. Do not give them anything more to use against us.” It is futile to send out evacuation orders while they approach – they will catch anyone she sends. There will be no chance for evacuation until they are upon the capitol, and even then, she doubts that most of their vulnerable will survive. All of her sings with urgency, with brutal pragmatism. She gives no speeches, only orders. There is no time for pretty words when death lurks ravenous on the edge of the horizon. There is no time, no time, no time – her mind clicks like clockwork. The sun throbs in the midday sky.
She burns the library herself – she will not give them the satisfaction. She sets aflame the scrolls and records, the fables, the precious accounts. She sends the past up in smoke, reduces a hundred years’ history to little more than ash and dust, and watches the embers catch in the sun.
Outside, she hears screaming.
It is not long before they bypass the soldiers, break down the door, flood into the capitol like a pack of ravenous dogs driven mad by their taste of blood – it is not long until the flames that she started are not the only ones that consume.
She slams out of the library and into the hall and finds herself facing the enemy, a spear clasped between his teeth.
The enemy - some faceless assailant, some shadowed entity. He has a name, a face – certainly some ambition. She cares nothing for it. As she looks him down, only one thought remains in her mind, perfectly clear: one of them will die.
It will not be her.
He rushes at her, then, a sadistic smirk curled across his fawn lips – he thinks himself a hero. His name will go down in history, the one to slaughter the silver queen of day--
but she dances out of the reach of his spear and snatches his throat in her teeth. He flails, jerks, twists, tries to free himself of her grasp, but he does not succeed. The spear falls from his screeching lips and clatters to the ground, and, as she finally frees him, she snatches it in her own teeth. As she looks back to him, she catches a glimpse of his eyes. The rage has faded way to ashes, the cold white of unholy terror.
She slams the spear into his chest. And again. And again. And again.
He twitches, faintly, lips foaming at the edges, then falls still. Her skin runs red. She is drowning in it.
When she draws back from his frame, she is a blood-stained specter, red and cold; her lips, her teeth, the pristine white of the braids that frame her skull like a crown – all red. A baptism, or a rebirth, or a return to who she was, for now her blood hums with a familiar urgency and her mind comes crashing to a still. She feels nothing. She feels nothing. No white-hot rage, no betrayal – nothing. Idle calculation. They are under attack. They are under attack, and their attackers will see each and every one of them slaughtered like dogs. No considerations for what could have been done, and no hesitation. Her lips curl. She drops the spear, then grasps it with her mind, allows it to hover at her side. So be it, then.
She cascades up the stairs like a wraith; a few of them have descended far enough into the palace to attempt what their fellow could not accomplish.
She will not give them that, either.
One pounces on her from above, comes crashing down the stairs with war in her eyes and blood in her hair – Seraphina thinks she might have been speaking, but she cannot hear her over the wardrum pounding of her own heart. Her mind hums. She is beyond thinking, beyond feeling, beyond caring for anything at all. The fool girl lets her hooves get the better of her, and the silver queen sidesteps her with ease; when she turns to snap at her, she finds herself impaled on the spear, drowning in the red.
She does not come alone.
Snapped necks, ripped throats, bodies shoved to break on sandstone streets as they find themselves shoved through what remains of stained-glass windows they shattered themselves, dripping red red red - she dances in blood. Seraphina remains a soldier, and no time spent among palace walls has dulled her sense for the war, the war that was broken into her, the war that became her when she was young, when she was vulnerable, when she was nothing. And so she slaughters those who stand in her way with the thoughtlessness with which one might smash a fly - a brutal, apathetic efficiency, a violence spurred by nothing nothing nothing. She takes no delight in it, no disgust. With each encounter, she finds herself stained until no part of her remains untainted, no part of her pure. Someday, she knows that all that blood might weigh her down. Someday, her crimes are bound to catch up with her – all those bodies left cold and dead for the sake of one fool king’s cruelty, and now again for her own naivete. Someday, they might catch her, trap the silver like the collar spun round her neck as a noose.
They would not today.
Smoke swirls on the roof. It constricts her lungs; her sides heave with perspiration, but she does not stop running. She does not stop running until she reaches the great horn on the fortress walls and blows it, screams her response to the charcoal sky – summons all of Solterra to gather up their arms and push them back. Behind her, she hears the clatter of hooves, and swirls in a cascade of red, prepared to attack-
but her eyes fall upon a trio of panicked scouts, staring at her blood-soaked frame in horror. She watches them in cold, empty silence, little more than an impatient swish of her tail betraying her thoughts. Get on with it, then. One of them manages to speak, his voice hoarse and stumbling with fear. “They want orders downstairs, my lady. What do we do?” Uncertainty. She stares at him – have two years truly been enough time for her people to forget how to fight a war? There is nothing that can be done for that now, she thinks. Her people grew up on tales of violent glory. They expect battle to be something beautiful and glamorous, something with meaning. They expect her to save them.
She cannot.
“Send a small unit to evacuate the ones who cannot fight,” She hisses through bloodstained lips, her narrowed eyes like chips of glass caught on the brilliant red of the flames consuming the sandstone in all directions. “The rest stay and fight to the death. What they were to us once – if anything at all - means nothing now. They will not surrender or negotiate, and we cannot escape. Push them back…regardless of the cost. This is a matter of survival.” As though it had ever been anything more. They fumble, hesitate, eyes wide with frenzy and panic – and she meets it with winter ice. “Did you hear me? Move!” They are gone, then, like shadows down the stairs, and she is quick to follow them, without even a backwards glance to the desert that is no longer her home; her mind is consumed with red. They would have their reckoning? Very well. If the Davke had once survived their destruction, so, too, would the Kingdom of Day.
For your gluttony, I swear by the sun our master to give you more blood than you can drink.
@Avdotya - yer fired
also, last line is a play on a quote attributed to Queen Tomyris ( @)
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
