God it was hot.
The space around her turned into an awful damp shawl; there was never enough air, it seemed. The cloying mugginess wrapped around her sweat-beaded skin, her mussed hair, her mouth and nose until she was almost certain she’d simply drown by breathing in. The dry heat of her desert city had nothing on Hayven’s suffocating warmth.
Cecelia pressed her back to a tree, hugging her knees. She’d wandered far enough down the path to get away from the crowds and noise. There were thoughts to sort out and she simply couldn’t do it around the chatter and smoke and goddamned heat of the Double Tap. She took another deep, sighing breath and rubbed her temples, coaxing her mind back into meditation.
Acrid, stinging smoke. Unfamiliar scent. Cecelia coughed as it filled her lungs. They were hers, and they weren’t. Her body felt tiny, weak.
Beyond the smoke that wreathed her head, she could just barely make out a human figure, huge and dark. It spoke with many voices.
Idiot. There’s company. You only see the one.
They chanted, hissed, in words she could not make out. The more smoke filled the air, the louder they spoke. The din cracked at her head, threatened to split her skull wide open and she wanted to scream for it to stop. When she opened her mouth, she heard the plaintive squall of an infant.
No. Two cries.
She could hardly breathe anymore; the air was thick with smoke (it’s in your head, stop it) and her heart pounded with the mindless terror the entranced part of her felt.
Stay under stay under stay under. Something was coming, she was certain. It wouldn’t do to lose focus now.
A piercing wail broke the rhythm of the chant, and died away just as fast. The stench of blood filled the air.
“Shit.” Cecelia wiped away a trickle from her nostril absently. Her chest felt cold, and painfully tight. What was I seeing?
The girl staggered to her feet and paced restlessly down the path. That was not a normal trance. Her pulse still beat with an erratic cadence, her own private drum solo. She growled in frustration, wiping away the persistent stream at her nose.
If her meditations gave her nightmares, something had gone very wrong. It meant she were sick in the head, crazy- Cecelia glowered. Not crazy. I’m seeing the way things are. She could ask a priest. Mosh, maybe?
No, no, she chided herself. You’re a damn priest, figure this out. She debated asking Attica for the library key. Quiet, a good place to think, but it could be stifling at best-
“Ow!”
Cecelia clapped a hand to her head as a surge of pain hit her. WHen the sudden migraine passed, she realized her hand was slick and warm.
“Oh...oh fuck.”
There was enough time to register that blood black as grease is considered abnormal.
Her head rattled violently against the ground, over and over and over again, as her body jerked like a fish out of water. She lacked the control to even scream for help. The edges of her vision began to fray but it wasn’t until her limbs started to go cold and numb: I’m dying. I’M DYING.
New panic set in. She tried to move, to call out to anyone but her grip on reality was slipping. She gazed up at the trees without truly seeing them. Dark colors bloomed like inkblots. In them she saw people she knew, things she’d done.
Please. Cecelia struggled to control something in her short remaining lifespan. Her fingers spasmed, flexed. A chord. B chord. C chord.
Very distantly she heard the clatter of metal and leather, and swearing in a familiar drawl. When the Merican hauled her off the ground, Cecelia felt a new explosion of pain in her chest.
“It hurts, IT HURTS.”
“Cecelia, Cecelia calm down!” Savannah dragged her down the path as fast she could. The Merican yelled for help, and the accensorite threw what strength she had into calling ATTICA!
“What happened? Cecelia, what happened?” She was laying down, and there was a commotion around her. She recognized Vlad above her, rapidly falling into the routine of a doctor in an emergency. She gasped, drawing in shallow breaths as she tried to speak but fuck it hurt so much.
Then it stopped. Attica’s hand was on her shoulder. Her partner asked once more what happened. It sounded like she was trying to stay calm, but underneath maybe she was as scared as Cecelia was. She relayed in stiff, short sentences what happened in the woods. Mostly a conjecture, but it was all she had right now.
“I...we need to find Xen.” Wincing, she forced herself to sit up. “I think he’d know best.”
***
She let the deacon finish explaining the situation to Smiles. She was too angry to continue coherently.
Weeks had passed without one of her old painful fits; coughing, yes. Easily winded, yes. She’d never be a warrior like others in GDI and she could accept this. My strength is not my strength. But knowing things was a power all it’s own, in a town of shoot first, ask later, and one Cecelia had worked hard to cultivate.
Cecelia listened as Xen explained the depths of her frailty. “It doesn’t matter how it happens, if something takes her down and we’re not around, she is good as dead.” Quietly, she seethed.
She thought she had won. She thought she had beaten this ‘illness,’ one that supposedly she had since birth.
But that’s never what it was, was it?
A ritual half-remembered. He and his fellow Knights had pieced together what she told them into a something resembling a sensible theory.
Fact: it was a Final Knight ritual, something meant to rot the blood.
Fact: once the onset symptoms occur, it would only get worse from there.
Fact: there was only one known instance of a survivor, and the information is in a library back in the fucking City of Saints.
All they had after that was theories. Why this would be done; her suffering wasn’t meant to teach her anything, Winnie had pointed out. Perhaps her parents had enemies.
Smiles was looking at her quietly. Cecelia rubbed at her face. The blood that gushed from her eye earlier clung like a stubborn stain. “That’s all we know right now. I’ll tell you if we find out more, but for now...I’ll need adrenaline shots, or cold washes. Let me know if you find someone with either?”
The sawbones nodded, and they stood to leave the tea shop. “And just a reminder. Try to keep this as between us as possible,” Xen said.
She bit back a bitter laugh. How long could this possibly be kept secret?
***
Cecelia decided that what Scraps needed was support. She could give that. Even if everything else was a misery pile, she still maintained affection for the younger girl. Earlier this morning she’d held her quietly, stroking her hair until Scraps was ready to move. Cecelia offered to stay with her for a while, even tagging along to the TeeVees sermon.
Now it had come to this. They’d hurried to check out screaming by NWP; the commune seemed unharmed, but two members yelled that someone was being murdered on the beach. Scraps ran down the hill, Cecelia tripping along at her heels, in time to see two other Hayvenites trying to reason with a two strangers on the dock. One held the others head underwater and barked for them to stay back.
Just the two? Cecelia approached cautiously, keeping close to Scraps. “Listen, if you need help I can get it, I’m a doctor…”
The stranger sneered, and released the person he was supposedly drowning. She sprang up and positioned herself between the four Hayvenites and her would-be killer.
Then the water began to bubble.
“Scraps, go!”
She tried to run, but they were unnaturally fast to surge onto the beach. Slick fingers clawed at her, pulled her to the ground.
no no NO i’m going to die no no please
The man walked off the dock, knelt over her body. Cecelia’s vision grew blurry at the edges but it was enough to see gills on his neck. He grabbed her head, and she felt something….push into her mind. She cringed, trying reflexively to block it out. When he finished his companion tried to patch up her wounds, but black seeped through the bandages.
oh god it hurts please make it stop
“You, deal with her!”
Somewhere very far away, she could hear a young girl crying.
don’t hurt her
The man threw the Yorker to the ground by Cecelia. Inky blots spread across the bright blue sky, taking her vision away, and she could only feel for a short time the warmth of someone scrambling around her body. Her fingers twitched, grasping at sand and rocks.
i don’t want to…
Cecelia exhaled, black flecking her lips.
She did not inhale again.
The space around her turned into an awful damp shawl; there was never enough air, it seemed. The cloying mugginess wrapped around her sweat-beaded skin, her mussed hair, her mouth and nose until she was almost certain she’d simply drown by breathing in. The dry heat of her desert city had nothing on Hayven’s suffocating warmth.
Cecelia pressed her back to a tree, hugging her knees. She’d wandered far enough down the path to get away from the crowds and noise. There were thoughts to sort out and she simply couldn’t do it around the chatter and smoke and goddamned heat of the Double Tap. She took another deep, sighing breath and rubbed her temples, coaxing her mind back into meditation.
Acrid, stinging smoke. Unfamiliar scent. Cecelia coughed as it filled her lungs. They were hers, and they weren’t. Her body felt tiny, weak.
Beyond the smoke that wreathed her head, she could just barely make out a human figure, huge and dark. It spoke with many voices.
Idiot. There’s company. You only see the one.
They chanted, hissed, in words she could not make out. The more smoke filled the air, the louder they spoke. The din cracked at her head, threatened to split her skull wide open and she wanted to scream for it to stop. When she opened her mouth, she heard the plaintive squall of an infant.
No. Two cries.
She could hardly breathe anymore; the air was thick with smoke (it’s in your head, stop it) and her heart pounded with the mindless terror the entranced part of her felt.
Stay under stay under stay under. Something was coming, she was certain. It wouldn’t do to lose focus now.
A piercing wail broke the rhythm of the chant, and died away just as fast. The stench of blood filled the air.
“Shit.” Cecelia wiped away a trickle from her nostril absently. Her chest felt cold, and painfully tight. What was I seeing?
The girl staggered to her feet and paced restlessly down the path. That was not a normal trance. Her pulse still beat with an erratic cadence, her own private drum solo. She growled in frustration, wiping away the persistent stream at her nose.
If her meditations gave her nightmares, something had gone very wrong. It meant she were sick in the head, crazy- Cecelia glowered. Not crazy. I’m seeing the way things are. She could ask a priest. Mosh, maybe?
No, no, she chided herself. You’re a damn priest, figure this out. She debated asking Attica for the library key. Quiet, a good place to think, but it could be stifling at best-
“Ow!”
Cecelia clapped a hand to her head as a surge of pain hit her. WHen the sudden migraine passed, she realized her hand was slick and warm.
“Oh...oh fuck.”
There was enough time to register that blood black as grease is considered abnormal.
Her head rattled violently against the ground, over and over and over again, as her body jerked like a fish out of water. She lacked the control to even scream for help. The edges of her vision began to fray but it wasn’t until her limbs started to go cold and numb: I’m dying. I’M DYING.
New panic set in. She tried to move, to call out to anyone but her grip on reality was slipping. She gazed up at the trees without truly seeing them. Dark colors bloomed like inkblots. In them she saw people she knew, things she’d done.
Please. Cecelia struggled to control something in her short remaining lifespan. Her fingers spasmed, flexed. A chord. B chord. C chord.
Very distantly she heard the clatter of metal and leather, and swearing in a familiar drawl. When the Merican hauled her off the ground, Cecelia felt a new explosion of pain in her chest.
“It hurts, IT HURTS.”
“Cecelia, Cecelia calm down!” Savannah dragged her down the path as fast she could. The Merican yelled for help, and the accensorite threw what strength she had into calling ATTICA!
“What happened? Cecelia, what happened?” She was laying down, and there was a commotion around her. She recognized Vlad above her, rapidly falling into the routine of a doctor in an emergency. She gasped, drawing in shallow breaths as she tried to speak but fuck it hurt so much.
Then it stopped. Attica’s hand was on her shoulder. Her partner asked once more what happened. It sounded like she was trying to stay calm, but underneath maybe she was as scared as Cecelia was. She relayed in stiff, short sentences what happened in the woods. Mostly a conjecture, but it was all she had right now.
“I...we need to find Xen.” Wincing, she forced herself to sit up. “I think he’d know best.”
***
She let the deacon finish explaining the situation to Smiles. She was too angry to continue coherently.
Weeks had passed without one of her old painful fits; coughing, yes. Easily winded, yes. She’d never be a warrior like others in GDI and she could accept this. My strength is not my strength. But knowing things was a power all it’s own, in a town of shoot first, ask later, and one Cecelia had worked hard to cultivate.
Cecelia listened as Xen explained the depths of her frailty. “It doesn’t matter how it happens, if something takes her down and we’re not around, she is good as dead.” Quietly, she seethed.
She thought she had won. She thought she had beaten this ‘illness,’ one that supposedly she had since birth.
But that’s never what it was, was it?
A ritual half-remembered. He and his fellow Knights had pieced together what she told them into a something resembling a sensible theory.
Fact: it was a Final Knight ritual, something meant to rot the blood.
Fact: once the onset symptoms occur, it would only get worse from there.
Fact: there was only one known instance of a survivor, and the information is in a library back in the fucking City of Saints.
All they had after that was theories. Why this would be done; her suffering wasn’t meant to teach her anything, Winnie had pointed out. Perhaps her parents had enemies.
Smiles was looking at her quietly. Cecelia rubbed at her face. The blood that gushed from her eye earlier clung like a stubborn stain. “That’s all we know right now. I’ll tell you if we find out more, but for now...I’ll need adrenaline shots, or cold washes. Let me know if you find someone with either?”
The sawbones nodded, and they stood to leave the tea shop. “And just a reminder. Try to keep this as between us as possible,” Xen said.
She bit back a bitter laugh. How long could this possibly be kept secret?
***
Cecelia decided that what Scraps needed was support. She could give that. Even if everything else was a misery pile, she still maintained affection for the younger girl. Earlier this morning she’d held her quietly, stroking her hair until Scraps was ready to move. Cecelia offered to stay with her for a while, even tagging along to the TeeVees sermon.
Now it had come to this. They’d hurried to check out screaming by NWP; the commune seemed unharmed, but two members yelled that someone was being murdered on the beach. Scraps ran down the hill, Cecelia tripping along at her heels, in time to see two other Hayvenites trying to reason with a two strangers on the dock. One held the others head underwater and barked for them to stay back.
Just the two? Cecelia approached cautiously, keeping close to Scraps. “Listen, if you need help I can get it, I’m a doctor…”
The stranger sneered, and released the person he was supposedly drowning. She sprang up and positioned herself between the four Hayvenites and her would-be killer.
Then the water began to bubble.
“Scraps, go!”
She tried to run, but they were unnaturally fast to surge onto the beach. Slick fingers clawed at her, pulled her to the ground.
no no NO i’m going to die no no please
The man walked off the dock, knelt over her body. Cecelia’s vision grew blurry at the edges but it was enough to see gills on his neck. He grabbed her head, and she felt something….push into her mind. She cringed, trying reflexively to block it out. When he finished his companion tried to patch up her wounds, but black seeped through the bandages.
oh god it hurts please make it stop
“You, deal with her!”
Somewhere very far away, she could hear a young girl crying.
don’t hurt her
The man threw the Yorker to the ground by Cecelia. Inky blots spread across the bright blue sky, taking her vision away, and she could only feel for a short time the warmth of someone scrambling around her body. Her fingers twitched, grasping at sand and rocks.
i don’t want to…
Cecelia exhaled, black flecking her lips.
She did not inhale again.