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Camp At Summit
Topic Started: Jul 4 2017, 02:02 AM (273 Views)
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July 5th, 1674…
July 23rd, 1674

????

Cyrus stared at his surprise witness. The man had surrendered himself out of a guilty conscience, he’d said. They likely would not have found him otherwise. Cyrus respected the action even if he was suspicious of it. People always had the motive. What was this young man’s motive?

”So you’ve come,” Cyrus began, his eyebrows rising, ”revealed yourself knowing the consequences...to tell another side of the story?”

”Aye,” the witness answered with a single nod, ”it’s important. And the law is supposed to look at facts, don’t it?”

Cyrus inclined his head. He would do his job, and he would do it correctly and efficiently. That included hearing the man out. After a brief explanation of what the interview would entail, Cyrus extended his fingers. To his credit, the witness did not flinch.

We were gathered in the forest at the early morning of July 5th. It was still dark. There was a large group of us, we were all arguing. A line had been crossed. It already had been, long before we realized.

“We’re leaving!”

“He’s gone mad! She was our ally and he-”

“We’ve gone too far.”

Our leader joined us. Breathing heavily, splattered with blood, it was a walking nightmare. We all quieted and it was silent for a long time. Then we voiced our concerns again, the same voices parroting their previous valid fears. Our leader was unmoved.

“She put us all in danger. What I did, I did to protect us, all of us.”

“They will never stop looking for answers now! They've already begun to realize-”

“So we kill them all.”

The uproar drowned out all other sounds of the island jungle at night. Some were for it, others were against it. I was silent as I watched. I wondered where our friend and leader had gone, what was standing in front of us now. A shadow, driven by fear and hatred.

“Has there not been enough blood shed?”

“It has to be done. No survivors, no witnesses, and the island will be safe again.

They have no idea what they’ve awakened.”


Cyrus pulled back. He understood better now. This witness had looked on without judgment, without hate- just sadness and remorse. But how someone felt did not matter much when it came to the law. Maybe it did for justice but Cyrus had always known those were two completely different concepts.

Before he had a chance to ask the witness anything else, he grabbed his fingers again. The scene changed.

It was a small circular room with a single threshold that led outside and showed the sights of an island. We were high up- our camp of retreat. I looked at the two women- one unloving and laying on a metal slab- naked but for a cloth to keep her modesty. The other had a wand, a spellbook, and a variety of potion ingredients. One of them was a heart.

I asked the prepared woman if this would work. She said it would have to. The rest of the room was relatively empty- most of us at the jungle had already left. We could not stay, we could not join our leader.

I had never seen this type of magic performed before. It was chaotic...malicious almost. Much like we must appear to be. Blood was spilled, fire called...she worked at it, never ceasing to cast until later in the day. She finished the ritual with a gasp. A gasp she shared with the woman on the table- rising with a violent heave.

“Welcome back,” Audrey told the woman.

I stepped forward.

“Ken?”

“Leah, we need your help.”
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Leah Brackner
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Ghost of Christmas Past
Leah sat up slowly, plainly not understanding where she was. Though when she saw Ken, she...started realizing things she didn't want to realize, making connections she did not want to make, and winced in pain that had nothing to do with the realization she must have been dead. It was in her chest, it was sharp, it was debilitating -- and it was not a physical pain at all.

Pressing a hand over her heart and breast, she teared up as she flinched away from them all. She was taken aback again seeing the mangled corpse and a few tears leaked out. She stumbled off the slab, hair ragged and limp, limbs naked without shame. She didn't want any of them near her right now, not right now. Taking steadying breaths she finally managed a single curse.

"Ken, what the fuck have you all done? What the FUCK has he done?"

Say his name, Leah. Say it, you'll owe him that.

"Mitchell." She muttered. Her hand rubbed over her bare chest, as if she could dig her heart out with her nails. "What the fuck have you done?"
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Kenneth exhaled. He could hear Karyn and Arthur's argument outside suddenly fall silent as Leah's curse rang out, quieting everything on the mountain. He held a boar skull in his hands- the mask they wore accompanied with the black robes.

"We never meant any harm," Ken began, quiet. Beside him, Audrey collapsed into a chair. The resurrection ritual had taken a lot out of her.

"This island is a refuge for Yeitiri sinbornes. Some of us live here, mostly in shifts and never permanent...we find sinbornes a way out, relocate them. Egaligny, Vosmaya, Solimar. We couldn't risk the nobility finding out about it."

Ken pursed his lips. He could see Sonja's hurt gaze still, her outrage. They'd gone too far.

"We were only going to scare you off but when you died, Mitchell..."
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Leah Brackner
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Leah winced, glaring at him - affronted and snapping, "Of course you and Mitch smuggle sinbornes, how dense do you really think I am?! I just never wanted to make you--"

Confirm it, she almost said. Tell me where they go, she could have added. But then she realized she was affronted that he was acting like Mitchell wouldn't trust her with the truth, and well, there were a lot of truths that he clearly had not trusted her with here. None of them were Kenneth's fault. She took a deep breath, running both hands through her sweaty, wet hair. Her heart was going too fast, her breath was unsteady, her limbs were stiff and not working particularly well.

When her hand flapped around her throat, she realized the thin cord still there. Then her eyes narrowed. She didn't need her sword for this, she realized. Exhaling a little steadier now, she added, "When you lot killed me, you mean. All of you. You took me to teach him a lesson and couldn't keep your skeletons leashed. Right? And then you learned from Mitchell, you can't keep monsters leashed in the first place."

It only was after she snapped that she realized what she was calling Mitchell. But it was in grief, she argued, in defense of her, in the loss of her life. The guilt and fury were two warring monsters in her chest and she didn't have any idea what Mitchell may have actually done. She only knew what he would have been like, thinking what he would be like if he inadvertently caused her death.

That scared her.
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"No," Kenneth shook his head, "Mitchell wanted to prove to us, some of us, that nobles wouldn't go out of their way to sacrifice in order to save non-noble and sinborne lives. After the prince's death Nadia wanted to teach him a lesson instead. You were never supposed to be there."

"We were there to make sure that did not happen," Audrey added with a dry scoff and chuckle, "can't account for falling boulders, it seems."

Kenneth frowned and shook his head at Audrey, "it doesn't matter," he turned back to Leah, "you're right. We killed you. But Mitchell took his revenge on the people Nadia loved."

Kenneth looked at Julio's body. They'd used his death, his heart, to bring Leah back. Perhaps Julio's death hadn't entirely been in vain. The thought would have normally frightened him. They were all past that.

"He's lost it, Leah, he wants to kill everyone on the islands, leave no witnesses. He's taken a few of us to do it. No one else can stop him."

Kenneth took out his wand, wand made from the trees of this island that would allow anyone to cast, and floated Leah's clothes to her. He did not want to move towards her.
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Leah Brackner
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Snatching her clothes out of the air, Leah started to wonder if she was ever going to stop feeling affronted. Now it was the fact another person was supposed to be taken in her place. 'What if it had been Jane, or Charles, or Rick?' Leah worried, unnecessarily, knowing in her heart that it would have been someone Mitchell would not have cared to protect. Any of the nobility -- her cousin getting married, her husband-to-be --

"Prince's death?" Leah asked, halfway through relacing the front of her dress. It hung over her shift forgotten, in the wrong order, fingers too stiff to get it right.

"Vladimir?" Her eyes were wide in horror, and pain, for her cousin. "You lot..."

But it wasn't you lot, she knew. Nadia had taken her for revenge against Mitchell, Ken said, so, Nadia hadn't known.

That meant Mitchell had.

Maybe she should re-evaluate how obligated he would feel to protect her family.

After all: he wanted to kill them all, Ken said. Jane. Charles. Rick. Helena --

"No. I won't let him." Leah winced, tying off the excess laces and not bothering to fix the missing holes. She shoves shoes on without socks and rubbed furious tears from her eyes, looking at the body, at the ex-baron.

"I want to thank you for resurrecting me, I do. It's a debt I owe. But however you brought me back was wrong." Leah said as she worked on the shoes she was given, insistent, "Even still, I understand the reason I was, well enough. You - not to mention all the refugees from the ship, my own family - need me to stop the man I love."

Her foot slams back down. Leah was shaking so hard she wasn't sure how to stand yet. So she stayed seated, looking furiously between them.

"Where's my sword?"
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Neither Kenneth nor Audrey said anything about her resurrection. They'd argued at lengths about it when they first found Leah's body- its unnaturalness, its danger, its need for a sacrifice. It was why they kept Leah's body away from Mitchell. Vlad's death had been too long ago to have worked. Mitchell would have killed anyone if it meant getting Leah back. Then he killed for less.

There was a scuffle outside as Leah asked for her sword. It didn't reach the room so likely Arthur or Silva were holding back the people still defending Mitchell. Kenneth swallowed on a dry throat.

"Last I know, your sister had it. We have others and a wand."

He procured another and offered it.

"It allows non-sinbornes to cast magic on these islands...I am truly sorry, Leah."
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Leah Brackner
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She took them. Slowly. Her head was pounding; her heart was racing. Leah wanted to close her eyes. Leah wanted to go back to sleep and forget where her bruises were from, forget what they were telling her about who had died. She wanted to cry, to scream. Whoever was fighting outside the door - she imagined there were plenty of sinborne she knew who may be there - she wanted to join them.

But she knew she would have to face Mitchell.

Her eyes opened again, with regret and determination. She whispered to him, to the woman who had brought her back.

"Helena and Olivier's wedding was meant to be followed by proclamations of ending sinborne illegality." Leah cast her eyes between them, chewing on her lip. "Did he tell you? I told him." Likely he had not. Likely it was even reason that Mitchell had felt so...threatened, after keeping it secret for thirty-one years on penalty of his life, why would he believe that a piece of paper could fix it?

Sadly, she continued whispering, "No, he probably didn't, he told me it didn't matter he didn't believe me, Ken, he even said it could mean a war but they were going to -- fuck, Ken, you know what D'Grey is, why in the world would he have a problem with sinborne?"
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"He didn't," Kenneth answered.

"I doubt it would have changed anything," Audrey added. He wondered if the woman said it out of some form of kindness. She and Mitchell got along well and allied together for a reason. Kenneth thought those reasons were good when they all first began. Perhaps it spoke more to the darkness within. Audrey did not wince when carving out a human heart.

"We're being killed, Leah. And we were done hiding. Mitchell isn't wrong...once people find out about what happened here, sinbornes killing the prince, raising the dead? We've made our death sentence official where it wasn't before. Our best chance -is- in ensuring no one can leave this place, but I never learned to value one person's life above another. And I had forgotten that.

I love Mitchell, too. Maybe he's beyond saving...but he doesn't deserve to become a monster."
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Leah Brackner
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Leah's eyes narrow as she listened - tried to listen. He was right about the one thing, she realized, her thumb rubbing the pommel of the sword he gave her with a wince.

"If it is this hard for me to hear you out," Leah admitted, quietly, before fiercely interjecting, "although you did murder me--" And then there was a long, horrid, wretched sigh.

All the resignation and terror and hurt in the world might have been felt in that single expulsion.

"You aren't wrong." She admitted. Maybe it was naive of her to have hoped otherwise before. But-- "And 'the prince' was my cousin Ken. I helped teach him to hold a sword, I watched him ride his first horse and heard him teasing his sister and--" She drew a long breath again, angry. "I hoped to teach him to be better than my uncle, who was already better than his father on the matter. I--"

This was helping nothing. She clipped the sword around her and let it hang, rubbing her face with both hands and muttering to herself angrily, furiously, emptily. His words were painful, like arrows from Mitchell's bow already going straight into her heart.

"No he doesn't." She whispered to herself. Her eyes met his again, accusing, debating. And then she added firmly, louder, like she had made a decision to herself.

(Don't make her say what it was yet, Leah begged.) Her hand went around the cord on her neck.

"And I won't let you have signed your death warrant, Ken. Mitchell isn't the only one of you I love."

Edited by Leah Brackner, Jul 6 2017, 02:56 PM.
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