Clare (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
demisemidemon) wrote2012-10-30 09:12 pm
demisemidemon) wrote2012-10-30 09:12 pm
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Rabona is clean and tidy, and full of more people than Clare's ever seen in one place. So this is what a city looks like.
She'd be more interested without the yoki-suppressing drug in her system. It makes her stomach swim, and she keeps trying to reach out with the senses she doesn't have. It's disorienting; she keeps feeling as if she ought to check where the ground is, where the walls are.
She wants to get this job over with.
Raki wants to sightsee, but Clare drags him to the cathedral instead. He can look around at the guards and buttresses and mummified saints if he wants, but Clare has an appointment to keep. She shows the pilgrims' token Rubel gave her and is allowed into the baptismal hall, where she kneels modestly in front of Father Vincent. He prays over her in God's name, and she tells him who she is and where she's from.
He nearly gives them away to everyone in his shocked stammering. Father Vincent may have been brave enough to send a secret request to the organization, but he's not very practiced at deception. Still, he tells her to meet him in the tower that night, and he blesses her as a pilgrim and devout child of the Lord, and she leaves.
Raki's confused, but that's nothing new.
There's a curfew in Rabona at night, but that's nothing. Rooftops are an easy road. And the drug is wearing off; not enough to give her any aura-sensing abilities yet, but her eyes are silver and she doesn't feel quite so cut off from drawing on her own strength.
She meets with a couple of guards, and they make nuisances of themselves with sword and knives. Clare's only armed with a couple of daggers, but that's plenty to fend off two humans. She beats them off and goes about her business.
The meeting is predictable. He's horrified by the notion of a monster preying on his fellow priests, of the people losing faith in his God's holy power -- as if yoma care about distinctions between humans. Clare tells him the truth: that it's probably someone in the cathedral. That she can't sense yoma, and will probably die in this fight. That she'll do her best. What to do with the money he owes for this.
She asks him to look after Raki if she dies. He's just a boy with nothing in the world, nobody but a silver-eyed slayer to look after him, but she can at least promise that he's not a yoma. She can see him fed and cared for.
Father Vincent is touched. He talks about humility and virtue, but all Clare cares about is that he agrees.
The good news: by morning, Clare's powers have returned enough for her to vaguely sense a yoma moving around the cathedral. It's nothing like the precision she's used to, but at least it's something.
(Of course, she has to take a pill immediately after, lest she be detected. Last night's guards are persistent enough to be searching.)
The bad news: two more guards are dead.
It's a Voracious Eater. An old, hungry, powerful yoma. It has to be, to be devouring humans at this rate.
The worse news: Rabona really is sheltered. Clare finds the yoma mid-kill, and the two guards who keep persistently following her try to attack it. They're just humans, and they're in her way, and they keep trying to help -- and she can barely sense the yoma even when it's nearly on top of her, it's like seeing through a blindfold and listening through earplugs, and all the skill Clare has trained into herself is useless --
and the humans won't leave, so Clare has to split her attention between attacking the yoma and keeping it from hurting them too badly, and she doesn't have that attention to spare --
It doesn't hit her in any vital areas.
She doesn't think she hits it in any vital areas, either, though. She can't be sure.
Because with the drugs tainting her system, she can't call on enough power to heal. The first slash to her shoulder was bad enough, but when all five of its fingers stab out to impale her straight through the heart and lungs, all she can do is choke on her own blood. Her vision greys out with pain.
She waits for the pain to recede, but it doesn't; weakness swamps her instead, and she drowns in it.
(She doesn't see the yoma disappear back into the shadows of the cathedral. She's unconscious on the gory flagstones.)
She'd be more interested without the yoki-suppressing drug in her system. It makes her stomach swim, and she keeps trying to reach out with the senses she doesn't have. It's disorienting; she keeps feeling as if she ought to check where the ground is, where the walls are.
She wants to get this job over with.
Raki wants to sightsee, but Clare drags him to the cathedral instead. He can look around at the guards and buttresses and mummified saints if he wants, but Clare has an appointment to keep. She shows the pilgrims' token Rubel gave her and is allowed into the baptismal hall, where she kneels modestly in front of Father Vincent. He prays over her in God's name, and she tells him who she is and where she's from.
He nearly gives them away to everyone in his shocked stammering. Father Vincent may have been brave enough to send a secret request to the organization, but he's not very practiced at deception. Still, he tells her to meet him in the tower that night, and he blesses her as a pilgrim and devout child of the Lord, and she leaves.
Raki's confused, but that's nothing new.
There's a curfew in Rabona at night, but that's nothing. Rooftops are an easy road. And the drug is wearing off; not enough to give her any aura-sensing abilities yet, but her eyes are silver and she doesn't feel quite so cut off from drawing on her own strength.
She meets with a couple of guards, and they make nuisances of themselves with sword and knives. Clare's only armed with a couple of daggers, but that's plenty to fend off two humans. She beats them off and goes about her business.
The meeting is predictable. He's horrified by the notion of a monster preying on his fellow priests, of the people losing faith in his God's holy power -- as if yoma care about distinctions between humans. Clare tells him the truth: that it's probably someone in the cathedral. That she can't sense yoma, and will probably die in this fight. That she'll do her best. What to do with the money he owes for this.
She asks him to look after Raki if she dies. He's just a boy with nothing in the world, nobody but a silver-eyed slayer to look after him, but she can at least promise that he's not a yoma. She can see him fed and cared for.
Father Vincent is touched. He talks about humility and virtue, but all Clare cares about is that he agrees.
The good news: by morning, Clare's powers have returned enough for her to vaguely sense a yoma moving around the cathedral. It's nothing like the precision she's used to, but at least it's something.
(Of course, she has to take a pill immediately after, lest she be detected. Last night's guards are persistent enough to be searching.)
The bad news: two more guards are dead.
It's a Voracious Eater. An old, hungry, powerful yoma. It has to be, to be devouring humans at this rate.
The worse news: Rabona really is sheltered. Clare finds the yoma mid-kill, and the two guards who keep persistently following her try to attack it. They're just humans, and they're in her way, and they keep trying to help -- and she can barely sense the yoma even when it's nearly on top of her, it's like seeing through a blindfold and listening through earplugs, and all the skill Clare has trained into herself is useless --
and the humans won't leave, so Clare has to split her attention between attacking the yoma and keeping it from hurting them too badly, and she doesn't have that attention to spare --
It doesn't hit her in any vital areas.
She doesn't think she hits it in any vital areas, either, though. She can't be sure.
Because with the drugs tainting her system, she can't call on enough power to heal. The first slash to her shoulder was bad enough, but when all five of its fingers stab out to impale her straight through the heart and lungs, all she can do is choke on her own blood. Her vision greys out with pain.
She waits for the pain to recede, but it doesn't; weakness swamps her instead, and she drowns in it.
(She doesn't see the yoma disappear back into the shadows of the cathedral. She's unconscious on the gory flagstones.)