Clare (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
demisemidemon) wrote2012-10-31 07:10 pm
demisemidemon) wrote2012-10-31 07:10 pm
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Clare wakes slowly, drifting upwards from dreams into confusion. She's stretched out flat, on something yielding and warm, and there's something heavy on top of her. Her senses feel peculiarly dulled.
Someone is yelling her name.
Oh, she thinks, as her sleep-crusted eyes blink open and she focuses on a high stone ceiling. It's a bed.
She's still in Rabona. In the cathedral. Healing from the fight with the yoma -- no wonder her chest hurts. And Raki is the one crying her name.
Raki, who's just flung himself down to sob wildly into the blankets next to her hip, weeping messily about how he thought she was dead, how scared for her he was.
Clare has no idea how to respond to this.
The door bangs open. It's Father Vincent. Clare relaxes a little -- him, she knows how to deal with. He respects her, she thinks, but he doesn't care. "Forgive me, father," she says, without trying to sit up. She's rationing her strength for later, and Raki's still sobbing all over the blankets. "I've caused you trouble."
"Not at all," he smiles. "I'm just glad you're all right."
Pleasantries over, she can demand information, and she does. It's been two days, Father Vincent tells her. She's been asleep all that time, resting and healing. Raki's been here, praying for her.
Poor Raki. And Clare's going to go into a fight she can't win. She knows that now; the yoma's too strong, and Clare's too weak, especially with the drug's remnants still muddling her system and suppressing her healing. All she can hope to do, unless a lot of luck goes her way, is to take the yoma down with her when she goes.
(She thinks briefly of Ambriel. How do you fight that?
By not expecting to win.
Her friend will understand.)
She lifts a hand to set it on Raki's head, in the only gesture of comfort and reassurance she can think to give a child like him. The world is cruel, and she's sorry for that.
"Forgive me, father," she says. "But I have a request."
The plan is simple. Father Vincent will gather everyone in this cathedral together: guards, priests, even the most senior bishops. He'll present Clare to them as she is, silver-eyed slayer, anathema to the holy city. It will get him in trouble, but there's no other way to finish this before more people die.
Galk and Sid, the two guards who kept getting in her way during the fight, will guard the door. They're the only ones who can't possibly be the yoma.
(Raki will wait in the baptismal hall with their packs. He doesn't need to watch this. He doesn't need to hear the plan, either; she asks him to find her some food before she finishes explaining to Father Vincent.)
Clare will examine each person closely. She has to, with her yoki power so low. Close proximity, maybe even physical contact, is the only range at which she'll be able to detect a hiding yoma right now. But Sid and Galk will keep everyone inside the room. She'll find the yoma.
And then she'll hold it in place, with the strength only a half-demon warrior possesses, so that Sid and Galk can stab them both with their lances.
It's not an ideal plan. But it's simple, and it will work. No other option has that virtue.
The plan works beautifully, right up until the point when it doesn't.
She examines each priest. Most of them are trembling with a combination of fear and outrage at being so close to a silver-eyed demon, but they cooperate. Each one reeks of proximity to a yoma, but none of them have a yoma's aura.
None of them.
No one here is the yoma. And there's no one else it could be.
Clare stands frozen, while priests yell in explosive fury around her. She has to have missed something, but what? Who? Who else in this cathedral could it possibly --
And then she knows.
She knows, and she's sprinting flat-out, skidding around the corner before the guards and priests can even react to her motion, running in terrible furious fear, because she might already be too late.
There are mummies here too. Dried corpses of saints, honorably interred in the baptismal hall.
In the baptismal hall where she left Raki.
Someone is yelling her name.
Oh, she thinks, as her sleep-crusted eyes blink open and she focuses on a high stone ceiling. It's a bed.
She's still in Rabona. In the cathedral. Healing from the fight with the yoma -- no wonder her chest hurts. And Raki is the one crying her name.
Raki, who's just flung himself down to sob wildly into the blankets next to her hip, weeping messily about how he thought she was dead, how scared for her he was.
Clare has no idea how to respond to this.
The door bangs open. It's Father Vincent. Clare relaxes a little -- him, she knows how to deal with. He respects her, she thinks, but he doesn't care. "Forgive me, father," she says, without trying to sit up. She's rationing her strength for later, and Raki's still sobbing all over the blankets. "I've caused you trouble."
"Not at all," he smiles. "I'm just glad you're all right."
Pleasantries over, she can demand information, and she does. It's been two days, Father Vincent tells her. She's been asleep all that time, resting and healing. Raki's been here, praying for her.
Poor Raki. And Clare's going to go into a fight she can't win. She knows that now; the yoma's too strong, and Clare's too weak, especially with the drug's remnants still muddling her system and suppressing her healing. All she can hope to do, unless a lot of luck goes her way, is to take the yoma down with her when she goes.
(She thinks briefly of Ambriel. How do you fight that?
By not expecting to win.
Her friend will understand.)
She lifts a hand to set it on Raki's head, in the only gesture of comfort and reassurance she can think to give a child like him. The world is cruel, and she's sorry for that.
"Forgive me, father," she says. "But I have a request."
The plan is simple. Father Vincent will gather everyone in this cathedral together: guards, priests, even the most senior bishops. He'll present Clare to them as she is, silver-eyed slayer, anathema to the holy city. It will get him in trouble, but there's no other way to finish this before more people die.
Galk and Sid, the two guards who kept getting in her way during the fight, will guard the door. They're the only ones who can't possibly be the yoma.
(Raki will wait in the baptismal hall with their packs. He doesn't need to watch this. He doesn't need to hear the plan, either; she asks him to find her some food before she finishes explaining to Father Vincent.)
Clare will examine each person closely. She has to, with her yoki power so low. Close proximity, maybe even physical contact, is the only range at which she'll be able to detect a hiding yoma right now. But Sid and Galk will keep everyone inside the room. She'll find the yoma.
And then she'll hold it in place, with the strength only a half-demon warrior possesses, so that Sid and Galk can stab them both with their lances.
It's not an ideal plan. But it's simple, and it will work. No other option has that virtue.
The plan works beautifully, right up until the point when it doesn't.
She examines each priest. Most of them are trembling with a combination of fear and outrage at being so close to a silver-eyed demon, but they cooperate. Each one reeks of proximity to a yoma, but none of them have a yoma's aura.
None of them.
No one here is the yoma. And there's no one else it could be.
Clare stands frozen, while priests yell in explosive fury around her. She has to have missed something, but what? Who? Who else in this cathedral could it possibly --
And then she knows.
She knows, and she's sprinting flat-out, skidding around the corner before the guards and priests can even react to her motion, running in terrible furious fear, because she might already be too late.
There are mummies here too. Dried corpses of saints, honorably interred in the baptismal hall.
In the baptismal hall where she left Raki.