Clare (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
demisemidemon) wrote2012-10-31 10:09 pm
demisemidemon) wrote2012-10-31 10:09 pm
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She's not too late.
She bursts into the baptismal hall just in time to see the yoma backhand Raki across the room. Her knife lodges in its forearm in the same instant; as the yoma blinks dumbfoundedly at its new wound, Clare lands between them in a fighting crouch.
Raki's breathing. She thinks he just had the wind knocked out of him. Good.
She'll probably still lose. But she has to fight.
It's hard.
The yoma's wounded; the eye Clare stabbed out two days ago hasn't grown back yet. And she can sense the flow of its yoki power again -- dimly, fuzzily, but enough to give her some warning of its movement in time to dodge.
But it's huge, and it's strong, and it can extend its fingers like lances to stab across the room in a split-second. Clare's dodged them so far, but each of its attempts shatters stone. And Clare's weak. Her wounds are only half-healed, in spite of the two days' rest, and her senses are weak, and drawing on her own yoki takes effort. It feels like drawing on a greased rope with a weight at the end: hard work, and harder to keep control of.
And she has Raki to protect. Raki, who doesn't have the sense to run when she tells him to.
But then Galk and Sid are there. The two guards who got in her way the other night, who agreed to stab her with the yoma -- and, amazingly, they're actually useful this time. They save Raki's life.
They tell her that this fight is theirs. It's their city to protect, they say. If they die while saving it, so be it.
They're idiots. They're human, and hopelessly outmatched. But Clare thinks of Ambriel, and of herself, and she thinks that maybe they're idiots she can understand. Maybe they're idiots she can fight alongside.
(And they're right: she's wounded, and it slows her down, and every blow she lands is weaker than the last. She could use even a human's help. They'll probably die, but they chose that, and they'll distract the yoma in the process.)
When Raki manages to get her her sword, though -- then it goes better.
(It amused Rubel, this 'antique' plaster statue: the saintly praying woman, the sword hidden inside. Clare's pretty sure she knows why. Even by Claymore standards, it's not subtle. But it did the job of hiding her weapon before, and now it does the job of shattering and freeing her blade at the yoma's first blow.)
None of those weak human knives now. The blades that broke or sheared through, that wouldn't stab straight through a monster's guard and into its vital areas. This is the claymore her kind are named after.
"Now," she says to the half-blind demon, "the monster hunt begins for real."
Brave words.
She tries to follow through on that bravado with a swift ferocious rush, with attack after attack to batter it down fast, and she almost, almost succeeds.
But the problem is that she's weak, and she's wounded, and her reserves are running dangerously low, and the whole point of this strategy (aside from the satisfaction of it) was to kill the yoma before she weakened any more. And almost succeeding isn't good enough. She's slowing down, and the yoma can tell.
And it takes advantage.
She's dangling from its impaling lances, stabbed through shoulder and arm with her old wounds reopening too, and she knows -- there won't be any black card for her. She can become a monster now, utter and final, and doom everyone in this room, or she can die here, and maybe some of them will get away. The organization will send another warrior, a stronger one.
She lets the yoma fling her to the floor, and stones shatter around her bleeding body. She'll die here, and so will Galk and Sid and Raki, and she hates it, but the other option is worse.
But then --
But then Galk is there, taking the blow meant for her. "We're no match for it," he rasps, keeping his sword up by sheer willpower. "Just like you said. Use our lives however you wish. Just make sure to kill that thing!"
For that strength, that respect, that stubbornness -- for that, Clare will do what he asks.
There won't be any going back.
She just has to hope she can keep her mind long enough to let the humans kill her.
She lets herself have a moment to search again for any other solution, any other reserves, a moment to think I wish and I'm sorry and Elena, you were smarter than me. And then she digs deep and draws on the slippery, surging, hungry power that hides inside her.
It's so easy.
Her eyes are golden, slit-pupiled, and she sees in a different light. Her wounds heal. Her veins pulse and bulge; her muscles are strong, coiled with power to spare, power that stretches and deforms her body to do anything she wants to do. She leaps, and she slashes, and the yoma dies in two halves on the floor.
And then she shoves the power back down inside her -- and she doesn't, because it won't go. It eludes her mental grasp. She's lost too much blood, too much reserves; her human body is too weak, and the monster inside her is too strong. Her muscles bulge and heave.
Her breath is coming fast. Her teeth are sharp points, pressing against the inside of her lip. She tries and tries but she can't do it, and she can smell the humans in the room with her. She can smell Raki. His guts would taste so sweet.
Clare drops her sword.
She can't -- she's losing herself. She's losing.
She kneels, wrapping her arms convulsively around herself so she can't lash out at anyone else. Raki, the idiot, the delicious-smelling prey, has run over and he's babbling questions, and she can't -- "Stay back!" she growls, while her hands sprout talons and her back bubbles into new humping configurations, and Raki jerks away in shock.
She grabs up her sword, and sets it at her neck. She has seconds left, maybe less. But she can't even manage to kill herself -- her arm bulges, and the sword swings at Raki, and she only just manages to miss. "Galk," she whispers, hearing her throat deform the human words. "Help me."
He lifts his sword, and then Raki does the unthinkable, the stupidest thing he could possibly do. He flings himself at her and drapes his body over hers.
Clare can't throw him off, because she's using every fiber of control she has to not move. She yells and pleads and reasons, and Raki won't move.
"You always said you weren't kind, but you were kinder to me than anyone," he sobs into her neck, while she shivers and pants and tries not to let her hands rip anyone to pieces. "That's why I don't want anybody else. I just want to be with you! So if you die, I'm going with you!"
She can't--
She's going to--
He's a child, a stupid helpless lost child, he's going to die and it's her fault, he just wants to be with her, he loves her, his guts smell delicious and she's losing--
(from the moment I first saw you, you've always looked so sad)
Her throat tears on something that might be a growl or a scream, as power explodes out of or into her and everything whites out into deafening nothingness, and
Clare opens her eyes.
Rock is shattered beneath her. And her power is quiescent again. It's stopped.
You can't come back after you've surpassed your limits. It's a fact. You can't.
But she just did. Didn't she?
Raki throws himself at her again, crying and laughing, like he does. Galk sags to the ground. "Enough," he rasps, and Clare thinks he might be -- amused? "I'm tired of standing around with my sword while my body's full of holes."
She doesn't understand humans. She doesn't understand anything.
"Don't give me that surprised look," Galk tells her. "You didn't turn into a yoma. That's all I'm saying. In the end, you were saved by that boy."
Yes she thinks, I was.
Hesitantly, she lifts a hand to pat Raki's shoulder. "Shhhhhh," she says, echoing a distant memory of someone saying that to her, sometime, long ago. "Shhhhhh."
When they leave Rabona, days later, Clare's eyes are drugged brown again. Most of the populace (and many of the priests) still think of half-yoma as anathema. What happened in the cathedral is a secret.
That's all right.
The guards and Father Vincent thank her anyway. They promise to take in Raki, to feed him and care for him as long as he wants. Clare's glad.
It means it's a real choice, when she says to him, "Are you coming with me, Raki?"
"Yes!" he blurts, beaming like the child he is, and she never doubted it.
Sid gives her a kiss -- she's too surprised to move, and too baffled to object. "It's against my principles to let a classy girl get away too easy," he grins, while she stares. He hated her, she knows he did. Galk gives her good wishes like a fellow warrior might, don't get yourself killed with a faint lopsided smile.
And they leave. Her and Raki.
She bursts into the baptismal hall just in time to see the yoma backhand Raki across the room. Her knife lodges in its forearm in the same instant; as the yoma blinks dumbfoundedly at its new wound, Clare lands between them in a fighting crouch.
Raki's breathing. She thinks he just had the wind knocked out of him. Good.
She'll probably still lose. But she has to fight.
It's hard.
The yoma's wounded; the eye Clare stabbed out two days ago hasn't grown back yet. And she can sense the flow of its yoki power again -- dimly, fuzzily, but enough to give her some warning of its movement in time to dodge.
But it's huge, and it's strong, and it can extend its fingers like lances to stab across the room in a split-second. Clare's dodged them so far, but each of its attempts shatters stone. And Clare's weak. Her wounds are only half-healed, in spite of the two days' rest, and her senses are weak, and drawing on her own yoki takes effort. It feels like drawing on a greased rope with a weight at the end: hard work, and harder to keep control of.
And she has Raki to protect. Raki, who doesn't have the sense to run when she tells him to.
But then Galk and Sid are there. The two guards who got in her way the other night, who agreed to stab her with the yoma -- and, amazingly, they're actually useful this time. They save Raki's life.
They tell her that this fight is theirs. It's their city to protect, they say. If they die while saving it, so be it.
They're idiots. They're human, and hopelessly outmatched. But Clare thinks of Ambriel, and of herself, and she thinks that maybe they're idiots she can understand. Maybe they're idiots she can fight alongside.
(And they're right: she's wounded, and it slows her down, and every blow she lands is weaker than the last. She could use even a human's help. They'll probably die, but they chose that, and they'll distract the yoma in the process.)
When Raki manages to get her her sword, though -- then it goes better.
(It amused Rubel, this 'antique' plaster statue: the saintly praying woman, the sword hidden inside. Clare's pretty sure she knows why. Even by Claymore standards, it's not subtle. But it did the job of hiding her weapon before, and now it does the job of shattering and freeing her blade at the yoma's first blow.)
None of those weak human knives now. The blades that broke or sheared through, that wouldn't stab straight through a monster's guard and into its vital areas. This is the claymore her kind are named after.
"Now," she says to the half-blind demon, "the monster hunt begins for real."
Brave words.
She tries to follow through on that bravado with a swift ferocious rush, with attack after attack to batter it down fast, and she almost, almost succeeds.
But the problem is that she's weak, and she's wounded, and her reserves are running dangerously low, and the whole point of this strategy (aside from the satisfaction of it) was to kill the yoma before she weakened any more. And almost succeeding isn't good enough. She's slowing down, and the yoma can tell.
And it takes advantage.
She's dangling from its impaling lances, stabbed through shoulder and arm with her old wounds reopening too, and she knows -- there won't be any black card for her. She can become a monster now, utter and final, and doom everyone in this room, or she can die here, and maybe some of them will get away. The organization will send another warrior, a stronger one.
She lets the yoma fling her to the floor, and stones shatter around her bleeding body. She'll die here, and so will Galk and Sid and Raki, and she hates it, but the other option is worse.
But then --
But then Galk is there, taking the blow meant for her. "We're no match for it," he rasps, keeping his sword up by sheer willpower. "Just like you said. Use our lives however you wish. Just make sure to kill that thing!"
For that strength, that respect, that stubbornness -- for that, Clare will do what he asks.
There won't be any going back.
She just has to hope she can keep her mind long enough to let the humans kill her.
She lets herself have a moment to search again for any other solution, any other reserves, a moment to think I wish and I'm sorry and Elena, you were smarter than me. And then she digs deep and draws on the slippery, surging, hungry power that hides inside her.
It's so easy.
Her eyes are golden, slit-pupiled, and she sees in a different light. Her wounds heal. Her veins pulse and bulge; her muscles are strong, coiled with power to spare, power that stretches and deforms her body to do anything she wants to do. She leaps, and she slashes, and the yoma dies in two halves on the floor.
And then she shoves the power back down inside her -- and she doesn't, because it won't go. It eludes her mental grasp. She's lost too much blood, too much reserves; her human body is too weak, and the monster inside her is too strong. Her muscles bulge and heave.
Her breath is coming fast. Her teeth are sharp points, pressing against the inside of her lip. She tries and tries but she can't do it, and she can smell the humans in the room with her. She can smell Raki. His guts would taste so sweet.
Clare drops her sword.
She can't -- she's losing herself. She's losing.
She kneels, wrapping her arms convulsively around herself so she can't lash out at anyone else. Raki, the idiot, the delicious-smelling prey, has run over and he's babbling questions, and she can't -- "Stay back!" she growls, while her hands sprout talons and her back bubbles into new humping configurations, and Raki jerks away in shock.
She grabs up her sword, and sets it at her neck. She has seconds left, maybe less. But she can't even manage to kill herself -- her arm bulges, and the sword swings at Raki, and she only just manages to miss. "Galk," she whispers, hearing her throat deform the human words. "Help me."
He lifts his sword, and then Raki does the unthinkable, the stupidest thing he could possibly do. He flings himself at her and drapes his body over hers.
Clare can't throw him off, because she's using every fiber of control she has to not move. She yells and pleads and reasons, and Raki won't move.
"You always said you weren't kind, but you were kinder to me than anyone," he sobs into her neck, while she shivers and pants and tries not to let her hands rip anyone to pieces. "That's why I don't want anybody else. I just want to be with you! So if you die, I'm going with you!"
She can't--
She's going to--
He's a child, a stupid helpless lost child, he's going to die and it's her fault, he just wants to be with her, he loves her, his guts smell delicious and she's losing--
(from the moment I first saw you, you've always looked so sad)
Her throat tears on something that might be a growl or a scream, as power explodes out of or into her and everything whites out into deafening nothingness, and
Clare opens her eyes.
Rock is shattered beneath her. And her power is quiescent again. It's stopped.
You can't come back after you've surpassed your limits. It's a fact. You can't.
But she just did. Didn't she?
Raki throws himself at her again, crying and laughing, like he does. Galk sags to the ground. "Enough," he rasps, and Clare thinks he might be -- amused? "I'm tired of standing around with my sword while my body's full of holes."
She doesn't understand humans. She doesn't understand anything.
"Don't give me that surprised look," Galk tells her. "You didn't turn into a yoma. That's all I'm saying. In the end, you were saved by that boy."
Yes she thinks, I was.
Hesitantly, she lifts a hand to pat Raki's shoulder. "Shhhhhh," she says, echoing a distant memory of someone saying that to her, sometime, long ago. "Shhhhhh."
When they leave Rabona, days later, Clare's eyes are drugged brown again. Most of the populace (and many of the priests) still think of half-yoma as anathema. What happened in the cathedral is a secret.
That's all right.
The guards and Father Vincent thank her anyway. They promise to take in Raki, to feed him and care for him as long as he wants. Clare's glad.
It means it's a real choice, when she says to him, "Are you coming with me, Raki?"
"Yes!" he blurts, beaming like the child he is, and she never doubted it.
Sid gives her a kiss -- she's too surprised to move, and too baffled to object. "It's against my principles to let a classy girl get away too easy," he grins, while she stares. He hated her, she knows he did. Galk gives her good wishes like a fellow warrior might, don't get yourself killed with a faint lopsided smile.
And they leave. Her and Raki.