The Unnamed

[Guppy]

Weakness seeped into her frame, dark spots dotted the edge of her vision as she dragged herself into the stables. Blood rattled in her lungs, but no amount of coughing could dislodge it.

The creature was lurking in the depths of her mind, furious and pacing like a wild animal. The wildling knew more than most, the demon in her head was much more sensitive than It let on. The friendship that It saw between Itself and the halfblood had fizzled before it began. Noura knew that there was something that pulsed low and heavy in the beast's gut, a yearning to belong in the world It found Itself.

Oh, the beast played a good game. And It did think Itself superior in all the wrong ways. Sometimes, It deserved its treatment. Most often, she shrugged off the loneliness with the benefit of Noura's consistent affection. The softer feelings might be the remnants of the creature's manipulation during the girl's rebirth, but they were nonetheless genuine.

And so, It paced against the cage of Noura's body and the wildling sighed.

Death would not find her here, but the pain granted no favor. She crawled into a ball against the warhorse, Peropis, who whickered softly and neglected to rise, showing himself more gentle than most thought him capable. His great velvet nose nuzzled at her cheek.

He would keep her warm.

[Rance]

A scent in the air that awakened unseeing eyes.

In another stall, there was a great grunt, a blast of air stirred out of tired lungs and blown out of wet, black-hole nostrils.

Hay rustled. Broken hooves scraped through the piss-reeking mud of the stable floor.

The single rusted lantern that lit the stables in the dead of night flickered a tired orange. A long, lumbering figure passed in front of it, casting a four-legged shadow that seemed to stretch and distort as it blocked the light from reaching the crumpled wildling as she lay bleeding in another stall against the flanks of the proud warbeast. On fores and hinds it seemed almost to drunkenly stagger, its long, bearded face and smoky, cataract-ridden stare seeking her out in the quiet stall.

(Had he not been tied up for the night? Perhaps the blood in her lungs made it hard to breathe; perhaps made it difficult to beg blood to find her brain, for there were words, weren't there, dancing like fireflies in the night inside her mind--)

Caliir, with all his matted fur and the foam-ridden blackness of his gums, stood at the entrance to Preopis's stall. Front legs bent to their trembling hinges, a soundless prostration to the steed that protected the girl.

A blind stare never moved away from the wildling.

--flesh.

[Guppy]

The great stallion lifted his heavy head and turned his eyes towards the plodding beast of burden. He made a soft noise of vague interest through his nose, tossing his head once with frustration.

The action awoke the wildling at his side, who whimpered piteously and buried her face into the beast's shoulder. She had drifted off into pained slumber and the movement had reawakened her to enjoy those wounds anew. One eye slid open, catching sight of Caliir standing bowing to the warhorse.

She struggled to sit upright and she suddenness of it almost upended the small amount of material that had collected again in her stomach. She managed to keep her guts from slipping from her mouth. Peropis wouldn't enjoy the christening, no doubt.

"Caliir?," she hazarded, her voice a rasp in her throat, coughing soon following. A dragon's eyes lingered behind her gaze, little interest for the creature beyond vague curiosity.

Was there was movement outside, a scrape of a foot against the ground, perhaps?

Maybe nothing.

[Rance]

The wildling's weak voice beckoned him with a name he understood.

secondbeast--

The flat, bestial face was long in snout and aged with wisps of white and gray where once there had been nothing but curls of brown. He was no horse, but bore a massive breadth of chest and shoulders that seemed disproportionate to his fragile ribs and flanks. The trembling lips curled back to reveal a probing, black tongue that slid back and forth over a single tooth. There were voids in the pack-creature's ragged gums where that incisor's brethren once lived.

The warm nose thrust itself nearer to Noura and lowered against her shoulder, hot wisps of breath rattling out of an ancient mouth.

...suffersuffersuffersuffersuffer?

Caliir's rough hide was etched with the evidence of the altercation in Threepoints Marsh. Whole hunks of hair that refused to regrow mottled the bison-like form with patches of visible flesh. A number of lacerations had healed, but left pink wheals in their wake, a permanent evidence of loyalty.

His head drew back. The dark member of his tongue, like a sympathetic worm, licked wet lines of comfort across the wildling's scalp.

[Guppy]

The stallion watched everything with a passive expression, his sleek cords of muscle upon his neck pressed against the little wildling. Her hands were tangled in the wired hair of his mane and there were fresh tears on her cheeks.

She gazed at Caliir with her doe-eyes, even as his tongue groomed her. Even as he attempted to soothe her hurts. She made a noise of weak protest, but it was mild and her hands did not seek to nudge him away from her.

She seemed wholly ignorant of his mental whispers.

The creature, though, It stared at him through her pupils with a barely-restrained sulk. A powerful sulk, one filled with a dragon's ire. When it replied, it was curt.

"She wants to hurt. Her edges are too sharp. Pain is like a balm. It distracts. Can you even understand that, primordial beast?

"Besides, airily offered, "if I must hurt, then why shouldn't she? The more I linger here, the more I despise this place and these people. What is the world coming to when beasts are more civilized than man? Scorn aplenty.

[Rance]

...secondbeast.

However decrepit Caliir was, however gnarled by knots in his bones and veiled by the cataracts that clouded his eyes, his ragged visage drew back only enough from the wildling to leer into the black pits that had awakened in the young woman's face.

secondbeastwillnotbecome--

They were not thoughts so much as they were flashes of pseudo-intellect somehow disgorged from that simple mind. A hoof dug listlessly into the hay. Caliir's massive shadow was a smear of darkness on the floor, his trembling, rheumatic form blocking the candlelight from entering the stall.

--willnotbecomegreatbyharmingfirstbeastfirstbeastgirlfirstbeastgirl.

[Guppy]

The young woman pressed against the warhorse watched Gloria's beast wander closer. He threw thick shadows across her frame, blocked her from the dim candlelight struggling against the enveloping darkness. Caliir's eyes, clouded over by white, focused on her own. They searched and she felt as if she were missing something important. Eventually, she let her eyes slip closed with exhaustion.

When her eyelids parted again, inky black color had suffused them. The expression upon her face was scornful. Annoyed by his patient bursts of kindness. For a creature so prone to fits of anger, she seemed to have gained some restraint. Or perhaps she had just been beaten with this particular setback.

For a time.

There would be no thrill in it. She will heal as others heal, because that will build her character. It will teach her that no one can be trusted. Go bother someone else, beast.

[Rance]

...thatnoonecanbecanbecanbe--

The beast didn't move. It stood in Preopis's court at the behest of an unseen queen, with the reptile-ink in her stare and the dance of smooth, human words--

notevenyouevenyou.

Dumb, primordial as he had been called, Caliir stood still, the nub of his tail snapping back, forth, beating away invisible flies. The pack-beast's body leaned forward, sluggish, that it might seek to press its ragged, dripping snout against the haggard wildling's battered face.

--hertoohertoosecondbeast.

[Guppy]

Those lips twisted in a frown and she considered the beast's words with more irritation than consideration.

Can she trust me, do you think? She does not trust many. The number falls quite rapidly with each passing day.

The creature considered, free from the girl's rapt attention. You may be stupid, but you might also be correct in your assumptions. Why punish the girl when I could just punish them?

Her lips curled into a chilly smile and she climbed to her feet, the matter decided. The wounds caused by the halfbreed's inappropriate rage began to heal. It was not an abrupt change, but a quickened natural process.

A thought occurred and the dagger was extracted from the wildling's boot. The magic a low pulse within its metallic frame. She considered the thin, lethal edge with a passive expression before lifting a fingertip to touch upon the tip of the blade. Blood welled in angry crimson, mingling with that still staining the metal. Murrukh's life-force became her own, bleeding into her as the creature called it there. The runes on her flesh began to gently glow in response to the foreign power, but quieted within moments.

Her violent grin gleamed in the shadows as the candlelight flickered abruptly and faded in the wind.

"Caliir, I think I need to meet this Lily."

[Rance]

...ifyoutakefromthemtheirteeththeirteeththeirteeth--

The beast's head cocked as steel sang in the air. The coppery odor of blood set his nostrils to flaring, pulsing large, small, large, small. A red droplet gleamed like a ruby bead on the refulgent blade.

--willneverwillnevernever--

Ears flattened against the breadth of his elongated skull. Stumbling hooves cast him backward. Engravings on her flesh winked and burned with unnatural light; the blurry rocks that were Caliir's eyes reflected the flash of light like cloudy glass.

A long line of white spittle dangled from the folds of his black lips. Once, he could have been a creature capable of intimidation or greater understanding, but his thoughts were rattled with age. He lumbered back out of the stall, a decrepit, cantankerous steed that had somehow avoided a retirement through death.

--andfirstbeastfirstbeastwillneverfindpeace.

[Guppy]

The creature rolled her eyes, ignoring the beast's advice.

Revenge was a soothing balm against pain.

I can not afford to let this go. Power is fleeting. They will soon forget that I have claws, if I did.

She called, over a shoulder. Then, she was gone.