Post by YueFei on Oct 27, 2022 19:04:55 GMT
It was really...fucking...cold. Not a natural cold, like when it snowed outside or you went too far north, but soul deep cold, the kind of cold you felt in your bones and that made your soul itch. If Souls could itch. Ku Sai rubbed at her arms and ignored the fact she couldn't actually feel the fire at the other side of the room. She also ignored that its flames had gone black. Fire wasn't supposed to be black. The servant girl knelt and pressed her forehead to the blackening wooden floor as blue energy swirled together at the room's center to form an image she dare not observe.
Remember your brother. Remember your brother. Remember your brother. Fear replaced cold, her heart quickened and her breath, visible in front of her, came only quickly.
"Did you find it?" It was impossible to tell the gender of the voice that filled the room, or even if its owner were human.
"No," no sense dragging out her admission of failure.
Nothing struck her down, but the silence that followed was so long that she dared a glance up. The shape was still there, she stared back at the floor as quickly as possible. The less you know, the less they can hurt you for. When a reply finally came it was not at all what she expected, no raging against the failure of servants or her stupidity or anything of the sort, just one word. "Wraith."
I've been saying that since all this started. Wraith this, Wraith that, Wraith myself for being stupid enough to get into this situation.
"Your servant wishes to make it up to you if..."
It kept getting colder. The wood floor, now black, twisted and cracked in a spider's web pattern out from the center of the room. What had once been uncomfortable was quickly becoming painful. Her fingers and toes burned.
"Hire someone, several someones, capable of finding it."
"The Emperor's Scale is just a myth." Wraith! How stupid are you?" She'd never been good at biting her tongue.
Initially she thought the silence a result of whoever she was talking to thinking of an appropriate punishment, but as the room grew colder and colder and the cracking floor started to pull away from itself, she realized this WAS the punishment. Her exposed skin hurt, everywhere and she shivered uncontrollably. Ice patterned across the floor. She drew her knife with shaking hands, pressing the tip to her wrist. Aross, not down. Across, not down.
Blessedly, the connection severed and the magic vanished. She sat up, turned to the man bound to the floor to her left, and slit his throat. The blood ran out, soaking into the floor and running in rivulets through the cracks. The fire turned back into proper fire colors, the floor slowly returned to normal, and the room returned to a temperature the human body could survive. Honestly it was probably overkill, but she couldn't leave the witness alive. She used to bring chickens, but that was back when their communications were shorter. A chicken didn't have enough blood. She could have cut herself, had been about to, but that would have been a stop gap to keep the cold from growing lethal. This man's life would erase the effects entire.
She smeared his blood across the floor in the symbol of the Broken Goddess and muttered a prayer. "please accept this small token and forgive us our use of your power, however brief." The Elarian gods were not her gods, but it was best to be careful with this sort of thing. Besides, she doubted the Dragon God Emperor was listening anyway.
If he was, she wouldn't be here. So, hire some idiots to find it. Maybe they'll have better luck than me. I'd better start sending out messages. This was probably all a Bite Hare chase anyway, but she had to try. She shuddered to think of what that--thing--on the other end of the spell was capable of. Sure, she'd cast a tiny spell here or there in secret, but this thing was communicating across Emperor only knew how long a distance and for minutes at a time. As bad as things had got here on the receiving end, the material effects of magic must have been ten times worse on the other side. And it didn't care. Only a He`Draxi could survive cold like that and a He`Draxi casting spells was as likely as a rock sprouting wings and flying south for the winter.
Well, time to get rid of the body.
Remember your brother. Remember your brother. Remember your brother. Fear replaced cold, her heart quickened and her breath, visible in front of her, came only quickly.
"Did you find it?" It was impossible to tell the gender of the voice that filled the room, or even if its owner were human.
"No," no sense dragging out her admission of failure.
Nothing struck her down, but the silence that followed was so long that she dared a glance up. The shape was still there, she stared back at the floor as quickly as possible. The less you know, the less they can hurt you for. When a reply finally came it was not at all what she expected, no raging against the failure of servants or her stupidity or anything of the sort, just one word. "Wraith."
I've been saying that since all this started. Wraith this, Wraith that, Wraith myself for being stupid enough to get into this situation.
"Your servant wishes to make it up to you if..."
It kept getting colder. The wood floor, now black, twisted and cracked in a spider's web pattern out from the center of the room. What had once been uncomfortable was quickly becoming painful. Her fingers and toes burned.
"Hire someone, several someones, capable of finding it."
"The Emperor's Scale is just a myth." Wraith! How stupid are you?" She'd never been good at biting her tongue.
Initially she thought the silence a result of whoever she was talking to thinking of an appropriate punishment, but as the room grew colder and colder and the cracking floor started to pull away from itself, she realized this WAS the punishment. Her exposed skin hurt, everywhere and she shivered uncontrollably. Ice patterned across the floor. She drew her knife with shaking hands, pressing the tip to her wrist. Aross, not down. Across, not down.
Blessedly, the connection severed and the magic vanished. She sat up, turned to the man bound to the floor to her left, and slit his throat. The blood ran out, soaking into the floor and running in rivulets through the cracks. The fire turned back into proper fire colors, the floor slowly returned to normal, and the room returned to a temperature the human body could survive. Honestly it was probably overkill, but she couldn't leave the witness alive. She used to bring chickens, but that was back when their communications were shorter. A chicken didn't have enough blood. She could have cut herself, had been about to, but that would have been a stop gap to keep the cold from growing lethal. This man's life would erase the effects entire.
She smeared his blood across the floor in the symbol of the Broken Goddess and muttered a prayer. "please accept this small token and forgive us our use of your power, however brief." The Elarian gods were not her gods, but it was best to be careful with this sort of thing. Besides, she doubted the Dragon God Emperor was listening anyway.
If he was, she wouldn't be here. So, hire some idiots to find it. Maybe they'll have better luck than me. I'd better start sending out messages. This was probably all a Bite Hare chase anyway, but she had to try. She shuddered to think of what that--thing--on the other end of the spell was capable of. Sure, she'd cast a tiny spell here or there in secret, but this thing was communicating across Emperor only knew how long a distance and for minutes at a time. As bad as things had got here on the receiving end, the material effects of magic must have been ten times worse on the other side. And it didn't care. Only a He`Draxi could survive cold like that and a He`Draxi casting spells was as likely as a rock sprouting wings and flying south for the winter.
Well, time to get rid of the body.