middaeg | August Catch-All

Fish scales are slippery, and it's always been hard to keep a good grip on them. Maria wishes she didn't have more experience with this, but she does, and as the merrow manages to slip from her grip (and who knows if she just nicked herself on the sword, but it doesn't matter), she backs up a couple steps, closer to the shore. Standing in deeper water is just inviting trouble... and...

Hm.

Given the chance to catch her breath for a scant moment, Maria reaches up to her throat, and unclasps the tie of her cape. The cape is treated leather, but with all the rest of the water seeping into her clothing, she's getting weighed down too much. She needs more mobility. She casts it back up onto the shore, not taking her eyes off the water.

Sure enough, as soon as the cape lands, the water surges forward with more force than it rightfully should this close to shore, and Maria instinctively slashes back, the Rakuyo neatly slicing a line through water and nothing more. How clever a cover.

Maria's not used to something so small splashing through the water after her. She's used to the giant shark-creatures - three times her size at least - as they slid along their bellies through the flooded streets of the fishing hamlet, mouths open, roaring that weird, deep-throated roar of theirs, trying to consume everything in their path. Alex is much smaller, but that also gives Maria one other advantage. She will not be taken and hauled over into the deeper water again - fool her twice, and all. And, what's more... Maria's a foot or more taller than Alex.

Fingers find her wrists, forearms, whatever, claws testing the resilience of her gloves, grip crushingly tight and making her wrist bones creak, and yet Maria allows the grip to come to pass... just so she can grab back, at least with her free hand. Then, she fights back and up and over as well. Alex can't get a good grip on anything with a fish tail, and while the bottom of the lake is muddy and slick, at least it's more solid than water. Alex pulls one way, and Maria pulls a different - up, straight up, trying to get her up and out of the water as much as possible so her tail gets as little traction in it as possible. It doesn't matter that this is going to start to rapidly eliminate any space between either of them, unless Alex can back out of it fast enough to not end up belly-to-belly against Maria.

Because once Maria's fought her up into the air enough, she'll just twist to the side, using her weight and strength to haul them both over sideways, and further up the shore. Not under Alex, though. She's not feeling in the mood for bottoming tonight.

There's that brief moment of feeling victorious when Alex manages to get a hold of Maria's arm, but that soon is dispelled when she finds herself being yanked up and out of the water. Her eyes are wide at the ease it seems to happen, meeting Maria's for just a second before she finds herself down on her back.

The wind is knocked out of her momentarily, but once she regains her bearings, she tries to surge upwards towards Maria.

A notable scholar, and one of the most talented and effective of the early Hunters, Maria's faced far worse than one slippery fish, and she'll face worse again in the future. (Or will she?)

She presses her advantage, and the momentary pause as Alex stares up at her, the now much shallower water splashing up around them as Maria goes right to... straddle Alex's tail. She wasn't kidding about not being in the mood for bottoming this day, though she did forget, briefly, just how strong fish could be - tails mostly muscle and sinew, and it takes her plunking most of her weight down to try to hold Alex steady between her knees.

Maria's trying to concentrate on doing two things at once, so the lunge catches her more off-guard than she would like, and she throws her free arm into the way. She won't be able to catch Alex's hands, but she does shove the leading edge of her forearm... right into Alex's face, apparently less concerned about her back getting clawed up than her throat bitten. Honestly, she'd been aiming for the throat to shove Alex back down, but has to make do with what she gets. Even if she gets bitten in the process.

In her other hand, she shifts the grip on her sword, turning the long sword edge to point downward. All she needs is an opportunity to line this up, and she can end this fight in a single stroke.

The arm hits her face first, hard enough to indeed push her dance. Her eyes squeeze shut from the pain, but she channels that right to her mouth as she clamps her jaw down in Maria's arm. It was only fair, after all. Maria made her nose bleed, so Alex will make her arm do the same.

She tries to surge up again, but catches the glint of the sword. The merrow doesn't let go, bites down harder in fact, but she does stop thrashing around.

Ah, there it is. She was wondering when Alex would stop pulling her punches - those claws could rend through Maria's clothing if Alex so desired to, but they haven't really. Not yet, though they've come close.

Feeling the sharp edges of teeth against her wrist and forearm gives Maria a shudder of anticipation - of the pain she knows she's going to feel, as the leather starts to fail and the teeth sink deeper and deeper into it. It'll probably be thick enough leather to save her tendons and bones, but it's not long before the edges of where Alex has clamped down start to stain red as the blood oozes up through the holes.

Byrgenwerth... Byrgenwerth... blasphemous murderers... blood-crazed fiends.

She doesn't have much time left, especially with the flailing as it is, and she has to shove her weight back down harder to keep the slippery fish right where she has her. It's only once Alex stops that Maria sees her opportunity, even though the sharp teeth sink ever deeper into her wrist, and the blood wells and drips down her glove - some of it probably ending up in Alex's mouth, and just as much of it seeping down Maria's forearm. It hurts, but Maria has dealt with far worse.

Her free hand grips the sword and she reels back, shoving down with her arm to keep Alex held down even as she starts to line up the sword's deathly sharp tip with Alex's face.

One strike. It's all she'll need. She can end this in one strike. Swiftly, and as painlessly as possible. She can at least do that much for someone whom she's spent so much time having an affable relationship with. Just like the students at Byrgenwerth who succumbed to the experiments. The ones she knew well. The ones who turned to Beasts.

Atonement for the wretches, by the wrath of Mother Kos...

Then why is she hesitating?

Edited 2019-10-05 11:40 (UTC)

With her head pulled down more, all Alex can do is look up at Maria, straight into her eyes. Strangely enough, fear hadn't taken over. There was almost a challenge being communicated in the way she stared up at her. A combination of stubbornness and pride, a taste for that thrill that wasn't there before.

Do it.

Looking down her own blade might have been the worst mistake Maria makes all evening. That sword, which caused her so much trouble and grief (She'd said nothing, nothing at all, just snarled in anger as she pitched it down the well and stalked off, ignoring Gehrman's voice and the clatter of the sword against stone), pointed down at the defiant piscine visage. It was familiar... so familiar... too familiar, though less of the villagers had looked defiant as had looked terrified, had begged and pleaded and prayed to their Mother Kos to save their lives...

... Or curse the enemies that had done this to them.

Maria's glove creaks, leather pulled taught across her knuckles stretching further still as her hand flexes on the sword handle, so tight her forearm aches. One strike. That's all she needs. Just one. The Hunt has called, its heat singing through her veins.

I gave up being a Hunter years ago.

She stretches back a little bit further, lining up a yet more brutal strike. Bone is harder to pierce than soft tissue, but she can't guarantee she'll find Alex's eye socket with this one thrust. So she needs to make sure she can end this immediately.

Because...

Her jaw clenches tight.

"Curse the Fiends..."
I don't...

"Their children, too..."
Want to kill...

"And their children, forever, true."
Anymore.

And with a loud shunk the tip of the Rakuyo pierces down into the sand a scant inch from the side of Alex's head, the blow so hard it sinks the blade nearly two-thirds of its length in. Maria leans against the weapon, winded, shaking, looking suddenly so very drained. The fight's sapped out of her in one fell swoop, and all she can manage is, at the end, a very weak tug on her arm, and a wince as the sharp fangs open the wounds further.

"Alex... let me go. Please. You're right..." Her voice pitches up a bit, tense and hoarse and so very... very... sad. She sighs, closing her eyes, leaning her head against her sword bearing hand as though it is the admission that is causing her pain, and not something else. "I can't hurt you."

Edited 2019-11-05 06:31 (UTC)

At least this time, Alex can say she didn't look away. That didn't sound like such a bad way to go, not like the coward she's always been. Only when the blade comes down do her eyes squeeze shut, expectant of the pain that would follow, right before she would feel nothing at all.

But it never came. No cold steel tearing skin, blood squelching from the wound. The only blood was what she could taste in her mouth, seeping through the cloth. She hears the sword sinking next to her, and her eyes slowly open, confused as she stares up at Maria. But Maria isn't even looking at her.

She doesn't look like the hunter at all. Shaking, hunched over, like a warrior defeated. A person in pain, even. Even her voice, for a moment, the tightness in her throat so evident and the sadness just echoing through. It all catches the merrow of guard, her jaw slackening as she slowly releases Maria's arm.

But her sense haven't returned to her yet, not fully. Rather, her curiosity is piqued, mixed in with the confusion that she felt. Her hand rises slowly, lest Maria take it as a threat, but it almost felt like she wouldn't pull away even if it was. She touches her cheek with the tips of her fingers, sliding them up till her palm pressed against her face.

"Why not?"

Maria winces again as the teeth slide out of the wounds, and rather than the persistent pain of the bite, her arm is allowed to sting and ache as it bleeds into her glove. She cradles the arm against her stomach, ignoring the droplets of blood as they stain the front of her trousers. The cool night air sinks in to her water-soaked clothes, but it's not entirely the chill she feels from it that makes her shiver when Alex's hand caresses her cheek.

In fact, it's the gentleness of that touch which nearly unravels her entirely. She grabs desperately to whatever shreds of dignity she has left and cracks one eye open, looking down, meeting Alex's eyes. It helps, to see the slightly hazy edge of hyperfixation in that gaze that tells her a predator is looking at her; that there's still plenty of the Beast called "merrow" driving the other woman. She's not sure what Alex is going to do, if the tenderness of that touch is going to turn into fingers curling around her vulnerable throat - all she has protecting it at the moment is her cravat.

She realizes she doesn't really care, either, if that's how it goes.

Maria realizes, belatedly, she's been asked a question. She is so exhausted, so worn that for a moment she doesn't really know how to answer it. Not with the swirling in her mind, the bits and flashes that keep cropping up from that night. She never remembers all of it, but she does remember different parts of it nearly every time, even as she forgets others; that whole evening the broken cascade of words and images and feelings of someone who had imbibed far too much alcohol, and woke up somewhere unfamiliar, unsure how they got there.

She can't say it, though. Even with her broken weariness, she can't admit to what she did, and she's not sure her voice will last that long anyway.

"I've done enough," she replies, voice trembling; the tears she never did shed over the whole situation are stuck in her throat, and don't seem to be able to move to her eyes.

For a moment, Maria is glad she isn't Bonded; that she's been so stubborn and reticent about it. The ice she carefully constructed over that swirling, churning sea of despair has cracked, the black water flooding up through the breaks. No one needs to feel that first hand.

She wants this night to be over. She doesn't want this hunt anymore. She wants to go home, and go to sleep, and maybe when she awakens the nightmare will be over.

But first, she wants Alex back. So she stays.

The metallic taste of blood still lingers in her mouth, the smell of it also in the air. Alex's eyes look down at the stained clothing, then back to the state Maria was in. She props herself up on her free arm, moving closer towards the other woman.

"Why would you go through all of this..and not kill me?"

Edited 2019-11-08 21:45 (UTC)

"I am a Hunter," Maria says, hollowly, and immediately hears her own voice in her mind answer, no I am not. She rises, a bit, from where she was leaning so heavily against her sword, leaving it buried in the sand. Her mind bleats a tired warning - those teeth are sharp, and they're getting closer to her more vulnerable areas - but she ignores it just as wearily. "I hunt Beasts."

She takes a breath in, notes the metallic tang of blood still on the air, but doesn't feel the blood within her quicken at the scent of it, like it used to. Her bloodlust is gone, just as surely as the corruption from the Vileblood had also been stripped. She remains hunched over, but she's not leaning anymore. This is about as much energy as she can muster to meet her fate. She's a Hunter who is not a Hunter anymore... who cannot even Hunt. Not the way she used to.

"It is all I know. But... you are not a Beast, are you?"

Edited 2019-11-08 22:14 (UTC)

Alex's hand doesn't go after Maria as she pull away, slowly lowering as she takes in Maria's words.

"Even after everything..I did to you?"

There's a quiver in her voice, something more familiar to her usual tone. That she had done something so very wrong was only beginning to settle in Alex's mind, her instincts and her consciousness debating over what had transpired. Maria was intervening, the merrow was only defending herself. But Maria was her friend. If Alex could do that to someone she considered important, how could that make her anything but a beast?

"Why would you..Why did you let me do that?" Maria could have stopped her so easily, could have defended herself without a problem.

"Everything you did to me...?" What a strange turn of phrase for what happened - though that Alex is shifting the blame onto herself tells Maria that Alex - actually Alex - is returning to her, and whatever madness the moon and the merrow were influencing her with is fading.

But now there's a more delicate subject appearing. Maria lifts her injured arm a little - not flinching nor hissing at all, though the motion stings. "This? My glove took the brunt of it; this is nothing. You would have to try much harder to scar me as the Beasts at home have."

She shifts a bit, reaching down to delicately grip Alex's elbow. Assuring her is making it easy to stay calm, to make the screaming and curses and voices in her head fade away, though Maria's hands are still shaking.

"You were the one who gripped my sword. Let me see your hand - the Rakuyo's blade is not kind."

"Doesn't change the fact that you're bleeding." And thus Alex keeps her own injured hand to herself and resisting Maria's hold, squeezing it into a fist as the pain anchors her consciousness more.

"I shouldn't have--it shouldn't have even gone this far!"

"Alex," she barks, hoarsely. She can barely hold herself together at the moment - she's not sure she can support Alex too, so the best she can try to do is head it off before the worst begins.

(And she's afraid - terrified - that if Alex loses it, she will, too. She can't afford that right now.)

"We're both bleeding. This could have ended worse for both of us. So... please," she hates how weak and tired she sounds, but she can't muster the energy for anything else. The fading adrenaline, the relief of Alex's old demeanor returning, the slow ooze of blood out of the wounds on her wrist, they're all sapping her yet further. "Let me see your hand."

August Catch-All

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