[Training] half a chance

MABEL

Recitations of death seemed abnormal, even to a girl who promised vengeance. Not a normal thing to glide past her tongue, over her teeth, wrapping around her fangs, the way her fingers splayed along the hilt. But then again, naught much was routine nowadays – not when one was reborn and the other half of her soul remained gone, gone, gone. Not when monsters promised to breathe down their necks. Not when they were soon going to strive and conquer a plague, a nuance, experiments before them.

He urged her onward, and she swallowed down the nothingness, renewing her decisions. She moved towards his spine next, sweeping the long, silver hair aside with the serrated edge of the dagger, pinpointing it as though the base was just the beginning, like it would embed and destroy. “Stab deeply. Pull towards the backbone, hit between the ones making up the neck.” To render immobility and demolition – she took a breath and stepped before them again, the tassels falling back into place.

Towards his ribs then. “Lungs, quick, before they scream.” Before they asked and pierced and yearned for help that couldn’t, wouldn’t come. “Heart. Liver.” She followed through on tapping the knife where his would reside, where they were still tragically mortal and human. “Between the ribs.” Thereafter, the armpit, hands grasping his arm, to lift it towards the sky, to not reach or meet his eyes with her own, concentrating. “Thrust up. More force from yourself.” Steps, steps, and more steps, attempting to commit them to memory as well as movement and motion.

If you dig under my feet
You will find things that you don't want to see

You are the night-time fear

He wants to shiver when the blade nudges his hair aside. Memories of touch and mortality overlap, knowing how sensitive, how dangerous a place the back of the neck is, and it's such a mismatch to what he feels now as the knife's tip rests against his skin again. He just kind of knows it's there—like a painting suddenly blurred and in grayscale, the nuances and details are missing.

Some things lost, some things gained. She whispers death and he merely receives, little taps of the knife marking his weak spots there in the dark. There's so many ways to kill someone. So many ways to die.

And he has so much more to teach her. All of this—useless, if she can't even get close to her prey. Where will he reside, where can he be found?

Will she accept help, when the time comes?

"Sharp edge towards you," he murmurs as they play out murder in nearly a dozen different ways. A ritual, a dance: a litany of death.

You are the morning when it's clear

AAMU

MABEL

Sharp edge towards you.

She’d like her serrated claws to be entrenched and her fangs to be elongated and for the world to topple beneath her feet - see my knife now.. Patience had to find its semblance somewhere though, and it might as well have been here, under the cover of darkness, with trust already established.

There was more to be done though, and she pointed the dagger towards his groin, muffling a juvenile laugh. “Up, and then cut down.” A slash. Where the arteries flowed until they couldn’t any longer. And the along towards his knee, along the back; a foretold mess. “Stab and hack,” and the whisper of a smirk landed there – she couldn’t explain why.

Thereafter she regained her prior position, coiling back to the surface, uncertain where or how else to proceed. Maybe the lesson was complete; a general overview of death, demise, and destruction.

If you dig under my feet
You will find things that you don't want to see

You are the night-time fear

"Good." Now you know how to kill someone. He bites the inside of his lower lip oh so slightly, feeling the pressure but not the pain. He wants to lecture her, on things like vengeance, wants to ask her—what do you actually want from your sister's killer?

Does she want them dead? Or does she want them to suffer, to look her in the eye as they're dying?

But not now. Not tonight. All in due time. First they must survive LongNight, and then, he'll do whatever he can to see her through this. Gently he reaches out to take the knife from her. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take this down to the forge. It needs some care after tonight."

And with that, he turns them towards home, beginning to wander through the abandoned ruins. "I thought we could look into clearing out the old barn a little. Make some space for a proper fighting floor, set up some practice targets," he muses as they walk. "Maybe make a couple of dummies too."

( fin <3 )

You are the morning when it's clear

AAMU