Micali Alsara
Member
Quietus Quell
(3779)
(3779)
Author's Notes
Footsteps crunched on snow and gravel; an uneven gait for a woman whose mind had thrown itself into turmoil. Micali had used some of the healing magics Rosa taught her to seal the gunshot wound Olivor had left her with, but her novice was apparent by the limp she retained and the gritting of teeth every time she set her right foot forward. On the outskirts of the village was indeed the hovel she had been told to expect by the caravaneer that had let her hitch a ride to the village. To Fratrea.
She had watched the life leave Olivor’s body in an instant, and something in Micali felt all the more hollow for it; their images rotated in her mind. Pallorus, Valgora, Olivor. Old friends, old enemies, all dead. And so she continued her quietus march, a woman who had lost everything and more. Each step carried her closer to the end, and though she had long forsaken her right to choose, she hoped that she could see this through before her end finally came. Cidisti, Talrigori, Foss.
It was a wonder, then, that she had the decency to knock. If it was Corruma, she would live. If it was Cidisti, she would die.
The seconds were long agony until the door clicked and swung open, and Micali was met by another old friend. Long golden hair waved to her shoulder-blades, and her pale face read an emotion of shock and joy. In an instant, Corruma threw her arms around the woman - the old friend who had arrived at her door. “Vis…Micali. Come inside, you’re freezing.” It was true - a light tunic was all she had brought. She felt underprepared in every sense.
It was strange how easily she was regarded. How informed was the healer of all that had transpired four years prior? The petite spurii clambered about the huddled, cozy kitchen of the cottage. Towards the back of the kitchen were a few adjacent doors and one door with a window facing a forest. Another exit.
“You still take four sugars?” The words were soft, gentle. Familiar in the safest way.
Micali stared down at the table before her. “Yeah.”
It was a demented tableau; a woman fixing coffee for the old friend who had come to murder her brother. Oddly, no words were exchanged. In the years since leaving Lucrus, it seemed she had been broken by this world too. That cheerful optimist must have died too at some point. All that was left was another child soldier who had forgotten why they fought. Soon enough, Corruma sat opposite Micali, and she nodded to the brunette’s rifle. “That’s new.”
The laicar didn’t touch her coffee. Corruma was never the type to poison, to harm. But Micali had made the mistake of trusting people once before. Today could very well be the day she welcomed her end. But not yet. “Yeah.”
The two exchanged silences before Corruma managed to voice what neither dared acknowledge. “I heard Pallorus and Valgora died.”
Micali nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why are you here, Cal?” Corruma’s voice warbled and broke, a melancholy fear.
“He helped kill my daughter.” The words left her with venom and vigor, but something about it felt so…forced.
Corruma stared down into her coffee. “Yeah.”
So she had known. “He told you.”
“...Talrigori never told you?” Corruma looked to her, eyebrows tense with incredulity. “Micali…who do you think pulled you from the fire?”
Another detail, passed to her by those she could yet trust. “That’s how I survived? You and Talrigori pulled me out?”
Corruma’s silence was confirmation. “She was worried about you, said she needed my help to save your life. We healed you enough to stop the bleeding, and then we ran before Anima could show up with medical. Talrigori said that…” the spurii picked at the sparse webbing between her fingers, the only velen heritage once could easily see upon her. “Everyone else was going to kill you. By the time we got there, it was too late for…for Cora. I’m sorry.”
Micali screwed her mouth to the side as she fought back her emotions. “You know whose fault it is. You know why I’m here.”
“Yeah.” The younger woman mourned already, though for her brother or her old friend, even she probably did not know. “Y’know, we tried to move on. Pretty much all of us. Last I heard Pallorus was giving self defense lessons back home, Olivor was trying out some scheme to get big in Terminus. Talrigori’s always been off doing her own thing, but she always did look out for us, right?”
Micali tightened her hands around one another. “She…is the reason everyone else is dead. She sent me after Pallorus and Valgora. She- she took everything from me this time. I tried, too. To start over, to move on. From what they did to me. It almost worked. But I couldn’t- I couldn’t just let it go. Betrayal like that…you can’t let go of it. I can’t. I fought in the war, came back and found that she had taken everything from me that I tried to build back up. I learned a lot, Cor.” A grisly, spiteful smile possessed her countenance. “Did you know that Valgora and Foss were never even human?”
The younger’s eyes widened in abject terror at that. “What?”
The elder gave a grim chuckle. “And they were only part of the team to watch me, because my parents dug too deep into the council’s secrets. Foss can’t die. I tried, but he can’t. He’s waiting for me, back in Lucrus, and I have to kill him, too.”
Golden hair framed a face of overwhelmed confusion. “Foss- you…he’s waiting for you? Do you have some kind of deal with him?” When silence was her answer, she seemed to carry on, further emboldened by the irony. “Micali, he was behind everything! He manipulated everyone into helping him, and even then nobody knew that Cora was even there that night! Why- why would you ever align yourself with him?”
Micali slammed her hands on the table, spooking the spurii into silence. “Why did they kill my daughter? Maybe I’m no better, letting him manipulate me. But what other option is there? Go back to my empty home where I’ll only see their faces every time I close my eyes?! I was made to kill! It’s all that I know how to do now! I never had a choice! What else am I supposed to do?! Answer me!” She punctuated her rant by another slam of her hands on the table.
The dazed woman opposite her had begun to shed tears in earnest, and sputtered words on the defense. “I don’t know! But killing our friends won’t bring back the people you’ve lost! You’re…better than this, Micali. I know you are. Foss was responsible - I won’t ask you to forgive anyone, I can’t say you don’t have the right to hurt them. But think!” The youngest member of the Seven Devils pleaded with her friend. “Our whole lives we took orders, from Malum, from Anima, from everyone! It isn’t too late to end this cycle of violence. There was always a choice!”
Micali stood, needed to tower over the sobbing woman before her. “You’re wrong! Our whole lives were chosen for us, there is no choice in anything we do! My family, my love, my life- it all meant nothing! Here one moment, gone the next! I am following the only path that has ever existed for me since they broke me!”
Quiet, shy Corruma would never speak back. She would fall subservient to the commanding forces around her, backing down from every argument and conceding every debate. This woman, the one that stood and shouted despite the waterfalls from her eyes, was not that Corruma. “No! We are all broken, Micali! What happened to you was unforgivable, but it isn’t an excuse to commit wanton murder! You’re just trying to justify what you know is the exact same evil that was forced on us our whole lives!”
The silence was broken only by the pounding in Micali’s ears. She had no rebuttal, no argument, no denial. Corruma had reached into the worst part of her and pulled it to the surface, laid bare for the warm cottage to judge. The sniper - who had tried so hard to deny this to herself all this time - could do nothing but deflate. She sat back down in her chair, letting the tears fall down her face. “What…what do I do? He- he sent me here…he always knew how to use me. How to hurt me. I have nothing, Cor. I don’t know what else to do...”
The healer slumped back in her seat, too. “That man…he’s a monster. But you- you are better than that, Micali. Better than him. I know how you’ve suffered…but please. It’s not too late to just stop. To just go home. Because if you follow this path, it’ll take you too.” Corruma offered a hand across the table, an olive branch extended, an out.
Micali’s hand moved of its own accord - hovering over her friend’s offer. All she truly wanted was for her suffering to end. She thought all this time that killing the Seven Devils - that taking revenge for those she lost would make her feel whole again. But with every bloodsoaked step she took, she only sank deeper into darkness. Her hand shook with rage, with pain, as she began to lower it. Mere inches rested between her and this salvation.
It was only then that the front door handle shook and Micali threw herself around the table, pulling her pistol with one hand and grabbing Corruma with the other as the younger gasped in shock.
A man with cropped golden hair opened the door and closed it behind himself. “...Cor, we have to leave. Now. I think-” Cidisti stopped bare as he watched his sister held hostage by the woman he had likely come to warn her about. “Micali.” His words were hesitant, cautious. He spoke to her as if she was a madwoman, someone to be talked down from the precipice of insanity.
She should stop. It wasn’t too late to stop. “Cidisti.” She adjusted her grip on the pistol, her resolve wavering with every passing moment. “Stay…stay back.”
Corruma interjected quickly, her own breath coming quicker as Micali held a pistol to her head. “Cal, please. Please, don’t do this. You can just go. But choose. You can, and only you.”
She wanted to stop herself. She wanted so desperately to put the gun down and walk away. To go home. But she would only see them. Everyone she lost. She looked to Cidisti. The man she came for. Was there truly a choice?
“Micali, please. She was never part of this.” His expression was so…weak. It was a surrender - a willingness to do anything to protect that which he loved. He pleaded for the life of his sister, the only person he ever truly cared for in his life.
Like she had pleaded. Like she had begged. Like she had suffered.
It happened slowly, so slowly that the sick grin on her face didn’t even ask before it appeared. Temptation, the great hunger to see others suffer as they had made her suffer. Like a gluttony, a rotten beast that sought only to eat, never truly sated. The beast that whispered in her ear in soft tones. He would know, now. Exactly how it felt. “Neither was my daughter,” Micali muttered bitterly before she pulled the trigger and watched Corruma fall beneath a crimson mist.
“NO!” Cidisti lunged forward, knives pulled from behind him and held in each of his hands.
Why?
Micali had just enough time to stumble backwards and deflect his blows with her pistol before the knives catching along her knuckles forced her to abandon her gun, letting it fly to the side of the cottage, lost to either combatant. She instead tried to grab his arms. He had always been a more precise fighter in hand-to-hand, but she had strength on her side, a strength she owed to Pallorus and his training. Bracing to accept a hard cut along her arm, she gave a hard push and he stumbled backwards over the corpse of his sister, affording Micali enough time to sprint out of the back door and towards the long stretch of pine wood behind the cottage, cursing her injury as she tried to ignore the pain spreading through her insides. She limped, and just as she approached the treeline, she felt a searing pain through her left leg as a thrown knife pierced through her thigh.
The clusters of pine trees through the thicket were labyrinthian, and the only thought in Micali’s mind as she ran for her life was a simple one.
What have I done?
There was no time. Bracing behind a sturdy tree, Micali took stock of her wounds. It missed the artery, but she couldn’t fight, couldn’t escape with it in her. Shedding her tunic, Micali tied it tightly around her upper thigh, using a twig from a nearby tree to slow her circulation with a tourniquet before she cautiously, agonizingly, removed the blade.
It felt too familiar to ignore; the feeling of a knife being taken from her, slowly. She recalled her hours on the floor of the library, of her friends’ sympathetic looks but refusals to interfere. She remembered her pain, and that was all it took to pull the knife completely free and mumble a healing spell over the wound - it wasn’t perfect, but it would do for now. Even as she tried to control her breathing from behind the thick pine she hid behind, she heard echoes of Corruma’s words looping in her mind.
Why did I kill her?
That had certainly been Micali’s choice.
Before she could allow herself further thought, she heard rustling from where she had approached. Micali aimed her rifle to the way she’d come. But she realized it then - the blood trail she’d left behind.
Realizing her folly and feeling eyes on her, Micali ducked to the side before a blade sunk into the barrel of her rifle, effectively blocking it. As she moved to rip the blade free and aim her rifle, another knife dug into the strap holding it across her shoulder, slicing through the fabric and leaving the rifle supported only by one arm. She had no choice but to abandon her weapon in the snow and flee. She had been ambushed…but of course. Who else would know her tactics better than the strategist who first recommended them.
The babbling river that ran through the town was to her right, and as the land sloped towards the sky she rose up, up past the serene waterfall to the top of the hill that overlooked the alpine vista. She reached the edge of the river. It was too wide to cross - and even if she did make it across and away from Cidisti, she’d freeze to death. She had no choice; she would fight here, win or lose. Live or die. She ripped the dagger from her shoulder and ushered another mediocre healing spell. She was beginning to feel faint, either exhausted by the magic or the pain.
Why am I still fighting?
Cidisti eventually caught up with her, the image of rancor. “I’ll fucking kill you!” He shouted as he threw another dagger. She managed to parry it away with her own knife, and the two were left staring one another down. So he was out of knives, then. She remained stanced towards him, but he knew better. She was the one losing blood, as much as the tourniquet and magic can help.
She had to make the first move. With a sweeping motion she plucked a knife from the ground and feinted a throw at the man, charging behind it with her own utility knife. He knocked it away before being slammed into by the woman, who then proceeded to attack with ruthless abandon. At first, Micali left him little opportunity for evasion, even less for counterattack, her knife finding glancing blows along his arms and torso while he tried to maintain his foothold on the icy ground beneath them. But as her stamina was eaten away, he began to take the offensive, capitalizing on every sloppy opening she could barely muster any defense for.
Two old rivals, fighting to the death in the middle of nowhere. Exchanging glancing blows, cutting deep, cutting shallow, they danced upon frost-blessed blades of grass and fought to the bitter end. But as his fervor grew with each point of contact, hers began to wane. It wasn’t until he managed to dig his knife into her side - where she had not yet healed - that she realized the battle was lost. He shoved her to the ground and twisted the blade, hard. The clouds above swirled and buzzed, fraying at the edges. Her mouth was open and she was making a sound - a loud one. But all she could hear was the scraping of knife on bone, and the orchestra of pain, pain, pain in her body. The void danced along the edges of her vision. Then, he ripped the blade from her guts and grabbed her by the scalp, pulling her up to her knees.
She had a beautiful view of the river. The water flowed so peacefully, in no hurry to carry on its path and past the quaint village that held the body of her dead friend. Then, suddenly, it was hot around her throat. A comforting heat that reminded her of the fireplace back at Dom’s. Maybe if she closed her eyes she’d see Rosa there.
Then, it was jagged ripping across her jugular as the dagger slit her throat.
Micali clutched her neck, desperate, clawing for life.
She would die here. Foss and Talrigori would never get to use her again. The twins would still have each other. The city would forget her, and she would be with those she loved again.
Sanguine saliva sat upon her chin, and she struggled to breathe through the bubbling crimson that seeped down her trachea. Falling forward to the frozen dirt, she realized he had let her go. This was where it all ended - by a beauteous waterfall, where snow would cover her body and leave her to feed the land.
Across the river, the sun broke through the clouds overhead and shined off the frozen dew of a flower.
A single pink rose.
She saw them in the sun’s refraction; black eyes. The kind that grounded you, so deep you would lose yourself in them. A pristine face with scales that dared not interrupt the perfection they ornamented. A soft laugh that grew into one far too boisterous for such a petite frame. Chaste kisses that lingered for hours after. A hand in hers, a heart she could hold beside her own. Her memory. Rosa.
As Micali suffocated on her own blood, she attempted to gurgle the simple words that her love had taught her. Through the clogging, choking, dying, she spoke. “O wondrous light, I beseech you to heal these wounds.”
There was always a choice.
Micali felt her wounds begin to close - slowly. She still struggled around the blood in her mouth, down her throat, across her hands and down her front, but she managed to hang on for one heaving breath before she let her body go still, desperate for her gambit to succeed.
A few seconds passed before a hand turned her over. He was far too prideful, and she knew it. He wanted to see her die. Just as she had wanted to see him die.
She mustered just enough strength to fight. Not for Cora, and not for Rosa. For herself. She managed to grab him by the shirt and fling him over and into the river. She still felt blood leaking down her throat and over her body, flowing like violent watercolour. He breached the water in time to look at her with confused and terrified eyes - before she climbed atop him and pushed him back below the frigid drink. The river shocked her system by how it sapped what little heat she still felt, the dirt of it no doubt mixing with her collection of wounds. He flailed with his knife, dragging it along her knee and leg, her forearm and elbow. But he found no solid purchase, too panicked by the cold of the water and the knowledge that she had a strategy even he had not considered.
With one hand holding him under, she used the other to stop his waving of the knife. Eventually, she caught it by the blade - an injury barely noticed beyond the way she felt herself losing her ability to keep her eyes open. But this was her choice - to survive. To kill. To live. It had always been her choice. He thrashed about and she felt the blade in her hand cut deeply into her palm. But as her blood mixed with the waters of the icy river, his grip grew slippery and she was able to get his weapon away from him. Seconds became moments, and she kept him pinned under her weight beneath the water, his body long limp.
He had always been quick to learn, to adapt. But even she knew well enough that he and his sister were not the laicar they passed for, but spurii - with velen blood. She reached for a nearby rock, and raised it over her head, feeling more blood spurt from the fresh wound on her neck and hand. With a swift strike, she brought the rock down upon Cidisti’s head - and the man began to thrash anew.
Micali could only emit a banshee shriek with each strike, guttural and bubbling with her own sanguine regret as she caved his skull in and watched the calm river soak red with his blood. With each impact she remembered his face, his smug smile, his jealous chagrin, his embarrassed smile. The man she thought she hated, whose memories seemed only pure to her while she took his life. When bone shards dug into her knuckles and she lost all strength to use her limbs, she fell back. With her legs she kicked him out into the stream, and she watched the Fratrean waters carry him over the edge of the waterfall, where she heard a sickening splat from where he must have landed.
Bleeding, dying, alone, Micali screamed to the Vis, to this world, to herself.