echo words you've heard [cowboys vs kobolds]
Jul 18, 2022 15:24:23 GMT -5
Post by pogue on Jul 18, 2022 15:24:23 GMT -5
T E X
"By tomorrow I'll have forgotten her face."
The truth slips heavy from his lips as he stares back towards Kip, unblinking, unmoving, covered in the blood of someone else and the sins he's created. His grip shakes, rattling in a white-knuckled grip that he can't stop at this point, fear and adrenaline laced into his veins and the tip of his spear stained crimson and dragging against the grass, spilling his crime onto the grass below. Him and Kip have met in a standstill, shattered reflections leaving only the cracks in their armor to look at, shedding parts of themselves branded as false, hating the parts that are revealed as true.
Piece by piece they fall apart, piece by piece the arena claims them.
He still clutches the near empty vial of truth potion in his opposite hand, what's left of the blue liquid still clinging to the edges, smell of lavender and lemongrass still drifting towards his nostrils in the soft breeze. The sponsorship had dripped from the sky after minute five of their standstill, Kip's weapon drawn and pointed at his throat, perhaps tracing the same path his spear had followed into and out of Alpha Quinn's throat, envisioning the scarlet smile he'd carved into her neck when he'd pulled it loose from her skin. Drinking the vials had been their last resort and first mistake, liquid burning their throats and the world suddenly pulsing to life with whatever drugs had been slipped into it. The truth hurts when it's pulled out of oneself, ripped up from the roots of eighteen years of life not lived, spilled into the dead space sitting between himself and Kip. In the end their weapons are dropped, both hearts still beating, one final truth murmured into the evening air: by tomorrow i'll have forgotten her face.
Just like the others, because he doesn't remember falling asleep as he stared out into the breathing meadow but he remembers what he saw when he finally did. His brother first, the memory of him carved deep into the back of his brain and he is staring into where the eyes of a boy he didn't know enough should be, met only with a fading reflection of his own image. Life made and life forgotten, his grief bubbles up and claws at his heart as he tosses and turns, presented next with the ghastly image of his own sister. Twelve took her like it took him, but even when looking at a girl he should have known too well his own mind protects him the only way it knows how.
Piece by piece they fade away, piece by shattered piece he remains.
It's why when he wakes the spear is still embedded in his grasp, flesh meeting hardened rock, the dried against both surfaces the one thing they share in common. He should be scared of the way the weapon feels a little more like home in his grasp each day, that he feels more comfortable holding it than he ever did his father's hands as a child, that the warmth he finds in it is a solace compared to the way his sister's hands went cold in the last days.
He should be scared-
he is,
he isn't,
Instinctually, he buries the feelings like he's done his own family members: so far down that he can't see them anymore, covered in enough soil and sin to never resurface. Temporary solutions to a permanent problem, written in black and cemented in red coating his skin. His words from the day prior run through his mind and ring true in the morning sun as he looks up to the sky, trying to remember the way the girl from Two stared down at him in final judgement, the clouds parting way and her eyes so full of life. He falls back on old habits and new truths, lets his mind obscure the final moments of her face until she is unrecognizable, until the memory dissolves and fades into nothingness, until she joins his brother and his sister as nothing but moments gone.
By tomorrow I'll have forgotten her face.
He was right.
There's a sense of deja vu that swallows them whole as they make their way back towards the forest, the welcoming sight of bright flora and ethereal lights only offset by the shadows that stretch and crawl in the dead spaces of the trees. He gulps as he looks towards it, feels what's left of his heartbeat hammer in his chest and catches his gaze slipping towards his ally, truths spoken and something akin to forced neutrality sewn between them, at least for now. "Something'll be waiting as soon as we step foot in there." He's a man of few emotions and few words, and as he slows his walk and buries his heels in the dirt to look towards Kip he can only imagine that he looks like something sinister, Alpha's blood still dried against his face in a crimson mask, bags under his eyes hardly enough to hold the weight of what he's done. "You don't trust me." Voice low, words heavy he speaks it as fact, and I don't trust you left unspoken. "But neither of us can die today, not to whatever waits in there." Brown eyes drift to the forest, clenched jaw and tightened fist and nothing but survival laced into his form.
His intuition rings correct, hardly ten steps into the trees when the brush suddenly comes to life with rushed footsteps and the sounds of growls slipping in between the branches. "Here they come-" He whispers to Kip, the tip of his spear following the sound of the movement, his own heartbeat cutting in and out as he listens.
What finally bursts through the trees is met with pure adrenaline in the form of his own weapon, sharpened by a lifetime of misery, guided by the blood of a girl he's forced himself to forget.
[attacks kobolds ; spear]
FALdSaaAgkspear
[0]
[accuracy]
spear
[9.5 + 1, strength]
spear·spear
![heather - d2 [mylee] Avatar](https://i.imgur.com/EYsuKfD.png)
