It is muddled, indistinct. It is a jumble of fleeting, gore-streaked shadows, impossibilities and strangers in familiar bodies, and he should be left stunned and fumbling in its catastrophic end as the grim Corpse Prince flies straight and true through it all as a bullet might, murder encoded as inevitable physics.
But Ortus has been home often, these past cold days, and home has been in him, as serrated as the crystals shattering inside Kiriona's joints as she moves. He knows the undying, abnegating logics of this world like he knows the weight of bone.
Kiriona lunges for her old tormentor, who is no less vile in aspect for his feebleness at the cusp of death, her eyes dead as they must have been at her first sacrifice, and some shackle Ortus did not know himself clasped in gives way.
He cannot hope to match her strength or speed. He does not try. When he steps between her and the fallen Marshal, he takes her by the wrist, and he adds his force to her own as he alters the trajectory of her blade so it clatters hideously against the stone, and he spins with her as though she were fibre he would work into a thread, until she is jarred into his yielding bulk so he might drape his arm around her shoulders and gather her to him in all her coldness.
Clarity comes after instinct. He knows, now, why he has come home. He knows what purpose he has been made fit to serve.
Ortus unclasps Kiriona's wrist. He cups the back of her head and presses his painted face against her temple, his other arm supporting her against his chest and steady heart.]
Gideon. [He tells her, as soft as fresh turned soil.] I am here. I have you.
no subject
It is muddled, indistinct. It is a jumble of fleeting, gore-streaked shadows, impossibilities and strangers in familiar bodies, and he should be left stunned and fumbling in its catastrophic end as the grim Corpse Prince flies straight and true through it all as a bullet might, murder encoded as inevitable physics.
But Ortus has been home often, these past cold days, and home has been in him, as serrated as the crystals shattering inside Kiriona's joints as she moves. He knows the undying, abnegating logics of this world like he knows the weight of bone.
Kiriona lunges for her old tormentor, who is no less vile in aspect for his feebleness at the cusp of death, her eyes dead as they must have been at her first sacrifice, and some shackle Ortus did not know himself clasped in gives way.
He cannot hope to match her strength or speed. He does not try. When he steps between her and the fallen Marshal, he takes her by the wrist, and he adds his force to her own as he alters the trajectory of her blade so it clatters hideously against the stone, and he spins with her as though she were fibre he would work into a thread, until she is jarred into his yielding bulk so he might drape his arm around her shoulders and gather her to him in all her coldness.
Clarity comes after instinct. He knows, now, why he has come home. He knows what purpose he has been made fit to serve.
Ortus unclasps Kiriona's wrist. He cups the back of her head and presses his painted face against her temple, his other arm supporting her against his chest and steady heart.]
Gideon. [He tells her, as soft as fresh turned soil.] I am here. I have you.