She had been here an awful long time - from a distance she looked indistinguishable from a corpse, the kind that wash up on the shores of the beach once they find their ways out of the canals, the bloody and battered refuse of a big city. A woolen cloak with fine silver threading spread out on the parched ground and jutting from under it an arm and leg twisted awkwardly away from the general lump of a body beneath.
At a glance one could make out few, if any, details of the person beneath and could hardly be faulted for missing the shallow rise and fall of breath. She had laid there for quite a while, long enough for the surface of her cloak to dry, the heavy wool sheltering a meager pool of liquid that had pooled beneath her. River water, brackish and full of silt but clear once it had settled, had tinged pink from slow-oozing wounds. Vivid violet bruises bloomed across pale flesh in the shape of hands, boots, and river rocks encountered in the tumult of rapids, swelling her right eye shut entirely.
That she was alive at all appeared a miracle, but then so was appearing from thin air - which she had. One minute she wasn't and the next she had arrived. There was no announcement, no fanfare, no crackle of eldritch energy - only the vague scent of ozone and, of course, the simple fact of her existence - a fact she became painfully aware of only now, her shallow breathing suddenly punctuated by a deep, gulping breath and a full-bodied flop not unlike that of a desperately land-bound fish onto her back. What grace and elegance she had been trained to exercise was now well forgotten after an ordeal that had left her entirely lost and unmoored from her understanding of time itself. How long had it been? Where was she?
She remembered death - or praying for it - and then nothing. Her head swam in agony as she attempted to recount anything that came before the great struggle that had led her here, or even how she had managed to arrive. She remembered nothing, and glanced toward her only clue, the mysterious dagger, ominously unfamiliar in her right hand. When she moved to bring it closer to her body she found the fingers of her right hand uncooperative and her shoulder painfully stiff, issuing a soft, muted howl of discomfort though clenched teeth as her muscles seized in an attempt to brace against the wave of painful complaint.
Sucking in several deep breaths she tried again, pinning the dagger to the black glass and dragging it toward her painfully with an animal growl. "Bastard-" Barely intelligible her voice rasped from a parched throat. She poured a lot of venom into the word, focusing her one open eye on the dagger as she repeated the process, taking several breaks to recover between hauling the knife to her side and passing it to a fumbling left hand with a right hand that seemed to only half remember how to function. Frustration rattled in each shallow gasping breath, whistling softly in her throat. She closed her eyes, desperately trying to calm her breathing as she clutched the dagger protectively to her belly, laying in mute exhaustion in the warm afternoon sun amid the sodden folds of her cloak with the warm wet threat of rain blowing from the coast.
Slowly the whistle eased out of her breathing, though the continuous ache of the gash in her belly made it difficult to draw a full breath. Already it had stained the white fabric of her shirt (slashed to ribbons and well beyond its functional lifespan) a bright shade of red and ruined what remained of a mauve leather vest. It was imperative to bind her wounds but the very thought of moving filled her with such dread that she continued to linger there, eyes shut as the storm continued to fill in overhead, threatening now with periodic rumbles of thunder and strobes of lightening, perhaps hoping to wake up in her bed (she thought she had a bed - she certainly deserved a bed) as if from a dream. Waking into undeath had been a common nightmare (why? She did not linger on the question as it made her head swim and ache) but this was something different. The dead did not bruise, the dead did not bleed - not bright red blood, anyway. No, she wasn't dead. Not yet.
And that was unfortunate - she imagined undeath to be quite a bit less painful when the body was little more than a vehicle anymore. The assumption and knowledge came to her as if by instinct, some rote memory. She was concerned, instead, that she would need to heal from these wounds - wounds that had left her somewhat relieved when she woke on the shore, assuming her slip from consciousness to be a merciful end to her suffering. No, stricken with global discomfort and and a tragically lucid consciousness there was no easy out afforded to her.
Typical. Her expression relaxed at the thought with a sort of detached acceptance. Just my luck.
At a glance one could make out few, if any, details of the person beneath and could hardly be faulted for missing the shallow rise and fall of breath. She had laid there for quite a while, long enough for the surface of her cloak to dry, the heavy wool sheltering a meager pool of liquid that had pooled beneath her. River water, brackish and full of silt but clear once it had settled, had tinged pink from slow-oozing wounds. Vivid violet bruises bloomed across pale flesh in the shape of hands, boots, and river rocks encountered in the tumult of rapids, swelling her right eye shut entirely.
That she was alive at all appeared a miracle, but then so was appearing from thin air - which she had. One minute she wasn't and the next she had arrived. There was no announcement, no fanfare, no crackle of eldritch energy - only the vague scent of ozone and, of course, the simple fact of her existence - a fact she became painfully aware of only now, her shallow breathing suddenly punctuated by a deep, gulping breath and a full-bodied flop not unlike that of a desperately land-bound fish onto her back. What grace and elegance she had been trained to exercise was now well forgotten after an ordeal that had left her entirely lost and unmoored from her understanding of time itself. How long had it been? Where was she?
She remembered death - or praying for it - and then nothing. Her head swam in agony as she attempted to recount anything that came before the great struggle that had led her here, or even how she had managed to arrive. She remembered nothing, and glanced toward her only clue, the mysterious dagger, ominously unfamiliar in her right hand. When she moved to bring it closer to her body she found the fingers of her right hand uncooperative and her shoulder painfully stiff, issuing a soft, muted howl of discomfort though clenched teeth as her muscles seized in an attempt to brace against the wave of painful complaint.
Sucking in several deep breaths she tried again, pinning the dagger to the black glass and dragging it toward her painfully with an animal growl. "Bastard-" Barely intelligible her voice rasped from a parched throat. She poured a lot of venom into the word, focusing her one open eye on the dagger as she repeated the process, taking several breaks to recover between hauling the knife to her side and passing it to a fumbling left hand with a right hand that seemed to only half remember how to function. Frustration rattled in each shallow gasping breath, whistling softly in her throat. She closed her eyes, desperately trying to calm her breathing as she clutched the dagger protectively to her belly, laying in mute exhaustion in the warm afternoon sun amid the sodden folds of her cloak with the warm wet threat of rain blowing from the coast.
Slowly the whistle eased out of her breathing, though the continuous ache of the gash in her belly made it difficult to draw a full breath. Already it had stained the white fabric of her shirt (slashed to ribbons and well beyond its functional lifespan) a bright shade of red and ruined what remained of a mauve leather vest. It was imperative to bind her wounds but the very thought of moving filled her with such dread that she continued to linger there, eyes shut as the storm continued to fill in overhead, threatening now with periodic rumbles of thunder and strobes of lightening, perhaps hoping to wake up in her bed (she thought she had a bed - she certainly deserved a bed) as if from a dream. Waking into undeath had been a common nightmare (why? She did not linger on the question as it made her head swim and ache) but this was something different. The dead did not bruise, the dead did not bleed - not bright red blood, anyway. No, she wasn't dead. Not yet.
And that was unfortunate - she imagined undeath to be quite a bit less painful when the body was little more than a vehicle anymore. The assumption and knowledge came to her as if by instinct, some rote memory. She was concerned, instead, that she would need to heal from these wounds - wounds that had left her somewhat relieved when she woke on the shore, assuming her slip from consciousness to be a merciful end to her suffering. No, stricken with global discomfort and and a tragically lucid consciousness there was no easy out afforded to her.
Typical. Her expression relaxed at the thought with a sort of detached acceptance. Just my luck.
