Open Turgor

[Krava'quiloor]

​

tw: blood, gore, aliens
music: Miquella's Promise by Solas Composer

The grassy hill, the size of a carriage and then some, hummed low and arduous. A mournful sound, a painful sound, the wounded giant groaned, and shifted, shuddering and sending clumps of wettened fertile soil tumbling beneath the three pairs of its sturdy, stumpy legs.
Beneath the shroud of plants in an intricate pattern, and some sparse shrubbery that was mostly pretty on top, was a layered turtle shell. It billowed more, into a dome so large it could be a room in an of itself. Small pale stones lined the base of it between the segments - shielded eyes that could discern the light. Soft tendrils stirred under the soil, unable to shield the body from steel.
It was a huge, alien thing of uncommon parts, but it was a gentle thing that came to being once upon a time - whole.
It creaked and whined, called out for help in pleas that went unheard by those that saw it for what it was.

*

Everything on that small hidden meadow near the creek was coated in fine red ribbons and splatters. The grassy hill, the cliffs behind it, the earth, the water, the low leaf-covered branches of the trees and ferns in brilliant greens. Red flooded the senses, the mind. Rage. Someone else's primal, visceral, indignant fury and grief that unraveled into blind destruction.

It's been so long since she'd lost it like this. Hammers were pulsing in her skull, air burned the lungs, her chest felt like it was braced with tightening irons. She's gone so far. She's been through so much. Something snapped, cracked, popped out of junction in the worldly patience. She was not struggling to get it back.

Even as the fourth body hit the ground, she yelled at its quietened brain, at its distorted face, not paying any mind to anything but the outburst anymore. An odd array of coins slipped out from the to-be-hunter's purse - the leather bag got cleaved apart along with the gambeson and shirt from hipbone all the waist to the back side of the clavicle.

"You vile, repugnant ingrates! Spawn of the dying and diseased!" She was suffocating, voice grainy and thin. It didn't matter that the light has gone out of the eyes of her creed's assailant, the violent spike of injustice did not leave her heart, eating into the marrow of her spine with grief. "What self-important hubris gave you the right to attack my home?!"

Was she wounded? She did not know. Everything hurt. Everything was red. The hill giant was wounded heavily, and while another small creature skittered about in an attempt to help, it was not clear if she had enough in her, not material, but strength. She was not a warrior.
She screeched and stomped the unmoving face into the creek.
"We are not parts to trade for your dead metal wafers! What do we need to do for you to stop?!"

Months of work. Small cozy comfort of a new half-mind, half-home.
"You hypocrites! Never enough for you! Not enough to fix you, not enough to do no harm! Not enough to coddle your fragile selves! Not enough to adapt your social mores! Not enough, nothing enough!" Winded. She swayed, but stood her ground, long arms shortening to their usual lengths, keratin turning back into chromatophores, skin, bones, fingers. Her voice broke, but someone had to listen. The dead heard her no more than the living anyway. "You parasitic mold of a species! We will never be enough like you until we're you, and what an indignant bastardry to aspire to! Why did he regard you?! The most of you are worse than ringworms! You ruin everything you can't lord over, sell, or fuck!"

Her long white hair, thin and soft like spider silk, unraveled, hung in clumped up reddened icicles in her face.
Oh, everything hurt.

*

It was then that something moved in the corner of her mind's eye stretched unstable and thin over the surroundings. Someone else. Close enough.
Krava whimpered, giggled in utter exasperation, and lowered to one knee sinking into the creek. Her long, knotty fingers wrapped around the neck of the fresh body. The spine would make for a fine poking implement if she needed it. She was not going to fall here. Not before her wounded home. Not before her familiar. Because if she was not pretty enough, not noble enough, not palatable enough - the rest of her kith were of her true, unmasked creation. They would be doomed if she fell here.

"Come out and face my wrath! I know you're there! Show your face or show your steel!"

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

You know what happens to the weak that move alone. – An unhappy thought from the midsection.

Ribs may have been gone, but disagreements always came from the midline. Perhaps this new one would be known as Kidney with time. It throbbed in the right spot for it. And stones were a familiar ailment. Always seemed strange when you had to make a new name for an old problem. But Kidney if they were lucky, and Stone if they were not...well, that was old and reliable. Known.

But we are never alone – Shot back someone with a sense of humor.

Yet the mind was disentangled like their once braided beard. No one was focused enough to claim ownership. Everyone just grumbled. They did a lot of that lately.

They could not be sure why they were still alive after being taken. Seemed a strange thing. If you took for food or worse, you'd have finished and discarded the useless bits by now. If you took for coin, you'd have sold by now. It didn't make too much sense. And that thought kept them sane when everything felt unsafe. Woodsmoke sometimes thought of capture. And they could glimpse some uncomfortable truths.

It was him that told them those were sounds of battle. There were more who could recognize it, but his experience, even as a heretic, was the most applicable here.

Some of them new the voice that made those threats. Knew how to talk back in an accent the woods hadn't heard in a century or two. But do you even talk and reveal your exact position? To the thing worse than the ones that took? Fear didn't get a name, but it did get a vote, as the many voices aligned there.

And yet the commotion had stopped. Only quiet moments of anticipation left.

We are being stalked. – Everyone accepted thought as correct. Terrified people didn't need much convincing.

They could probably get free of their bonds and run away. Not faster. Too tired. Bound too long for that.

But freer.

Could never outrun that which killed the takers.

So they spoke, because what else was there?

„We don't have steel.“ They had...twine? Their arms were bound behind and the torso turned to barely flail the arms.
„We are...troubled.“ Was that the right word?

 

[Krava'quiloor]

"Lady..." hiss like the tremor of leaves in the breeze, carrying the scents. Carnage. Earth. Late-blooming apple trees. The cool stillness that was never truly still.
A silhouette detached itself from beside the hill-giant, straightening from bent legs and nervous glances barely up to her shoulder height. Red cloak loosely hugged its shoulders, fell in large folds that dragged across the grass.

The field of her thought cast like a storm cloud, rippled, rippled, rippled again, water in a pond. But nothing fell nor emerged. There was no clarity, no focus - until she caught the sound of that voice and held onto it like lifeline. Like prism light focusing, the ripples ceased, turned into steady undercurrents in the shared space. A shiver passed through the air. Tenderness. Life still had some semblance of a purpose beyond simply carrying along.

A not-elf managed to catch her breath, and the tides receded, then spread anew, no longer electrified and chaotic. They focused to the unusual source that spoke with one body. 'We'.
Kin?
Bait?
It spoke like a human.

She willed the corpse she was touching to shift, the fresh blood - to recede from her hair, her skin, her clothes. Mend. Nourish. Retreat. Straightened up, leaving the wet ground and the water of the creek as carnage dripped down and away from narrow tips of the boots. Head turned to the exact direction. Fingers hugged the trophy spinal column, and its bone melted, shedding muscle, changing form into a weapon.

In a few moments, she emerged, float-stepping rather than jumping down into the dry moat below and to the shade of a tree uprooted by the storm, where larger roots served to accommodate tethers.

A pristine wraith. Disheveled hair white as the clouds on a clear day. Eyes without pupils, green like the waves shone through by the unyielding sun. All of her was sharpened, lanky, angular, even the face framed by ears that felt like mockery of 'elven'. The yellow garments swayed around her form instead of wrapping around it with the movements. From the moments she emerged, she was looking at the figure.

The short glaive turned to be held at ease with both hands.
Thoughts focused, flowed around the subject of the study, touched like idle seaweed, passed through.
Fractions of emotions reached through the studious onslaught, all the same. Grief suppressed. Reticence. Bitter waves trying to find warmth by flowing to kin and back again, calmer in knowing them there. Familiarity. It was lighter, once, bright with curiosity and wonder and belonging. Before the slumber. Who knows how long ago there was hope to achieve what they have dreamt of.

What was this multitude in such a fragile sack?
"You are many," she concluded, out loud, voice distant, devoid of prior viciousness, "but not a choir. How come?"

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

They held many images in preparation. Something to match the sound and carnage. Pristinely clean wasn't a thing they'd readied for. And that was worse somehow. That this creature took the effort to clean itself up, or...but who was even capable of such a thing?

The elf...No. Not an elf. They'd been an elf. Balim still remembered it, even if it was hazy for the others. Woodsmoke forced thier nose to sniff. Plenty of copper upon the air, just not the newcomer. Their shoulders tensed, but it was futile. It was unwise to make fearsome enemies. More so when bound.

For all the voices that wanted to clamor when they wanted quiet, no one was coming forward to speak now. Perhaps that made them cowards. And perhaps that was acceptable.

„Choirs require harmony.“ Woodsmoke took charge as he normally did when others backed away. He was a heretic after all.

Thoughtthief? – Herra warned.

Unlikely – Adem rejected.

„Do you mind?“ He scooted their arms into full view. They'd been bound so long it was hard to feel powerful below the elbow.

That just wouldn't do. They were already shorter than useful. Crippled was a bridge too far.

We should run – no one claimed it, but many agreed.

And maybe they should. But, right now, they wouldn't get far.

So the feet knew not to move.

 

[Krava'quiloor]

"So they do," the entity agreed, feet finding ground firmly. The grip on the weapon would not relent, not for now.

A lilt of songbird like a laugh, not out loud, pure radiant sheen of humour in the air like a scent or a melody, glittering against perceptions like a babbling brook.

"I have no use for stealing the thoughts you scream so loudly." her head twitched slightly to the side, as if to demonstrate the chaotic orchestra of mostly unintelligible tones.
But the displeasure buzzed sharply and alarmingly, a wasp's wing-rattle, brackish-grey tint, drunkard dong's folly.

Eyes tracked over the rope-worn wrists.
Nose scrunched slightly at the scent of old sweat and more.
Are you strong of arm? I could use help, in exchange for your freedom.
The cool voice came as concepts, blooming at the edges of the mind instead of words.
Creed. Ally. Harmony.
An offering of peace. Budding potential, airs cool but meanings clear.

This was no more a dwarf than she was an elf. Some part of them, perhaps - or simply a semblance after the becoming.
She walked, the wispy frame tilting for an upward swipe. A frustrated downward saw. A few awkward motions, trying to avoid damage to the vessel of the other.
You remind me of a spirit-seer more than an artisan of my kind. What kind of hive are you?