Maneater (Sapphira)

[Bran Viola]

He’d made the choice to infiltrate at night, which in reality was more the choice to enter in the darker period of the estates pattern over the past day or so, he hadn’t the time for an in depth stake out, nor, in his opinion, was one necessary. Time was a strange thing in the land of faerie. Bran remembered old arthurian tales in which time passed by some arbitrary ratio, a day to a year and the like, and he’d long suspected that this was why. While no such altered time existed proper, unless brought about by powerful sorcery, it was indeed true that a day night cycle was difficult for someone uninitiated in the creed of the biome of this secondary world. The faewild was a place of magic, in which the moods of its denizens were often mirrored by the mood of the physical environment, whether this was due to some unconscious bond born of the sycophantic noblesse oblige running in a bloodline, or intentional alteration by way of glamour and area enchantment. The sky could be of such sunny haze that the whole sky was a bright warm orange, or of a fog that carried whispers and dry leaves through dim waltzes depending on whether you were at one of the south courts bright garden villa, or the winding corridors and liminal passages of the west. In the south for that matter, it often felt like daytime. In a way, bran thought, it wasn’t entirely different to the streetlights of the mortal world, just that the aesthetic sense of faerie was less bound in practicality. This woman, it seemed, was quite impractical. It had been different when the late tenant had lived there alone, and even when he and his betrothed had lived there together, but now it had changed again. There was something awfully theatrical about it, even for a nobles estate, and most certainly in the more brutalistic north court, though brutalism didn’t really exist in faerie, Bran more just used the term when their weren’t flowers and a crowd of concubines in every other direction. Theatrics aside it had been night, or perhaps glowing twighlight for most of the time he’d been there, which seemed appropriate for a mourning widow, though the deep lights that served to make even lit areas a colorful and rich dark, like red wines and glinting metals, was a darkness that was born of excess rather than loss. How gothic

.

A lattices enchantment gave way along with the stained glass it cradled as Bran cast a shower of salt through the window, which dispersed into the air like treacle smoke. Bran dropped softly onto the carpeting beyond the window as he turned to look momentarily at the trap he’d disarmed. The glass was thin. It was designed to break. The lattice itself was also remarkably thin, the glint of a sharp edge along its thread before it evaporated. That window wasn’t meant to keep him out, it was designed to defenestrate him as he passed through. Creepy. It felt as though he were in a vampires palace, which didn’t seem entirely odd given the friction between what he’d heard about this woman and what he knew. Sapphira Solokov. She’d married into the place bran now stood, and had lost her husband to hunters, who bran knew had never come. She was held to be a powerful magic wielder as well, which had already been made clear to Bran by the relatively advanced enchantment work on a third story window. Even the defense on such an unlikely mode of entry was first class, and expensive. The target was evidently, very personally wealthy when it came to magical ability.



Bran set down the hallway, a gothic statuary of interior accents, a slow, plodding, dance of minuscule shapes and images. The detailing on everything in the house was so intricate it admittedly made his head hurt. He couldn’t call her a target yet. Bran could have whatever reservations he liked, but it remained that he wasn’t aware of the whole picture. Her husband was killed by hunters. There were hunters outside the Viola of course, but it should have come up somewhere on their radar if amateurs were entering the faewild. Though if they’d managed to kill a high ranking official they weren’t exactly amateurs, were they? A husband killed by mortal men and his beloved, left in the wake of a good faeries death. It was odd, somewhere between a sob story and fear mongering. It didn’t feel right that she was still alive either. Maybe this really was the work of amateurs. Bran moved towards the room he expected he’d find her in and circled it to reach all of its outward doors, whose frames he traced, leaving a wet path of plant matter behind. Painting lines in empty space, If the room was as large as he estimated, shed still have some significant space to move around a bit without being halted by the rule of seven steps, which wasn’t ideal, but it did mean she might not realize he’d locked her in immediately. Whatever was going on here it was valuable to learn about, in his superiors opinion, and if that failed he’d just clean up what had been left in this first alleged assassination. Bran passed through the door, another light hail of salt before his feet, this time from a hand that held a blade.

tags- Sapphira Sokolov

[Sapphira Sokolov]

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Bran Viola

380 Words

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[break][break]

The rumors are terrible and cruel [break]



But honey most of them are true

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When Sapphira was asked why she kept most of her husband's decor, she would merely smile and say dryly, "Masochism." [break][break]






In reality, it was cost effective, and she did love gold. [break][break]




Gold drapes, gold tapestries. Gold candelabra and gold livery. Her staff was always well dressed, often sought after professionals. She kept few glamoured mortals. They were only good for basic jobs and not at all trustworthy. She had too many secrets. She was not going to deal with loose lips.[break][break]





And last time, a glamoured mortal girl had put her in this position. Or that was the cover story. [break][break]




The second cover story. She had many. The fae couldn't lie, but nothing she said was untrue. The body that was supposedly her husband had been killed by hunters. The girl had been desired by him. Sapphira had wanted him dead. What order those things went in didn't matter much to her at all. [break][break]




It was a brilliant scheme. The new mortal queen couldn't ignore the threat of mortals hunting fae without looking weak. Ambrose had every reason to take revenge on the fae. She had no reason to want the hunters dead-- but she had no reason to want them alive either. It was a plausible story-- and she couldn't lie. Why wouldn't they believe her. Switching bodies was easy. Thorough investigation was hard. And if she was convicted, would the Northern nobles really enforce the law? She doubted it, but she wouldn't trust the Volkovas again. She would be her own savior.[break][break]







Something was wrong here. Something was off. There was a draft where there shouldn't be. She stepped into her sunroom and turned in a full circle carefully, slowly. She knew her house well and her defenses better. And yet-- she couldn't place this feeling. Then she tried to step back, and something was repelling her. She pulled her knife-- pure gold, enchanted with every ward she could think of. It couldn't only be repelled by iron. It was a fae weapon, after all. [break][break]




She was not skilled with a weapon, but not just anyone trapped her in her own house. She didn't believe in justice, but she did believe in retribution. Her eyes narrowed. If they wanted her dead, she would be. This was something different.
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[Bran Viola]

"Hey."

There was a figure in the door to the sunroom, dressed in something akin to black war fatigues, a strange iron gas mask covering his lower face, salt scattered in front of his feet. The man drew an odd looking sword from a sheath that clicked softly as the blade was pulled clear of a metal latch. He held out the blade, handle facing her as though to indicate he was not yet prepared to attack.

"Sapphira Noyer, right? I was under the impression a faerie would be better at this."

Bran took notice of what he could in the room. There were likely traps all over this place. He was relatively safe until he started to move. Firmly in the center of the dead zone by the door, no full blooded fae could get closer than seven steps in either direction. The servants he'd seen moving about the grounds of the estate seemed to be of fae ancestry, and even if this woman did have mortal thralls, cutting a puppets strings was never a very difficult task unless they were bound by pact and could still fight with their own full mind. His main concern for the moment, would be whether or not Sapphira would try and throw that knife at him.

"Scheming, I mean. You can't toss the blame on hunters and expect them to leave you be. Were you prepared for this? Either way, you need to tell me who actually killed your husband."

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[Sapphira Sokolov]

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Bran Viola

362 Words

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[break][break]

The rumors are terrible and cruel [break]



But honey most of them are true

[break][break]





When she first realized she was trapped, perhaps Sapphira should have been subdued. Mostly, she just had to fight not to laugh.[break][break]

The figure standing before her was a child. Not just a child, he was mortal. He was carrying an iron sword that no faerie could handle, in her house, threatening her. The situation was laughable. The idea that she would be afraid was insulting. [break][break]

She was a Volkova. She was a Noyer. She was one of the greatest sorceresses the fae had every seen. She was raised by the black dogs of the high court. She had watched her parents die when she was a child. And this rat of a human though she would be afraid of him. [break][break]

"I don't need to tell you anything," she sneered, ignoring the metal at her throat. "Try and kill me. See if you can do it without finding this knife in your skull. I am immortal. I am eternal. You were born to die."
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Honestly. She didn't need to escape this trap. She didn't need to kill him. She didn't need to do a thing, because nothing had to kill him. Time would do it for her. He would wither and grow old and she would be as beautiful and powerful as ever. And he thought she worried about a single moment or hour lost. She had as many as she ever wanted. He was the begger when time was concerned.[break][break]

"You want to see how good I am at scheming?" she asked. "I don't have you kill you. I just have to wait." Her brother would come or no one would come and time would eat at his bones. "Death is hungry, son of dirt. It is waiting. I don't even have to push you in to its jaws. You will fall all on your own." She was stalling, she was avoiding the question, but mostly she was scanning the room. So he had traps. So he had plans. She had more than him, and she had been planning longer, and he had already proven herself a fool. She didn't have to do anything but let him die on his own. [break][break]

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[Bran Viola]

Bran scoffed. This was completely non-negotiable it seemed. Maybe that was a good thing though. Bran hadn’t stretched his wings in a bit, and he definitely wouldn’t feel any remorse about this. If she’d killed her husband he’d be able to tell once he put her in a situation where she was forced to kill someone. Maybe that wasn’t even really necessary, the way she spoke to him sounded like the mewling of a jaguar whose kill had been disturbed. Even if she hadn’t killed him she certainly wasn’t innocent. None of them really were.



“Everyone’s born to die you idiot. I’m sure you’ll stay perfectly eternal until the earth collapses and your oxygen is gone, but if that’s when you prefer to die you have to survive first. But I guess you’re right, If your grand design is to wait in a room and hope your enemies die before you, then there’s no way you could kill a man. You probably couldn’t figure out who killed him at all, if you bothered to try.”



She seemed susceptible to insults. It was time to clean up. Either she’d vomit up answers as a testament to her pride, or she’d die holding it in. Bran switched his grip to bring the point of his blade to face her, and slid long iron nails, one after another, into his off hand from their bindings at his hip. As he spoke, each nail appeared in the gaps between his fingers.



“A dog with a longer leash isn’t free. Want me to show you?”



As the line of the eroteme came into view, Bran punched in the point that completed it with a flash of iron that would dot the interrogation point with a clean hole in Sapphira’s left rotator cuff, and broke the line between them to circle the room to her right, leading with his blade to disrupt any traps placed int the room’s ornamentation. Bran had created a large amount of space in which Sapphira would be unable to move and he intended to use it. Bran walked around the room, casting antique statuettes and mirrors to the floor in jagged shards with the edge of his sword. If a trap triggered, or sapphira cast something in his direction, he’d move into the room’s deadspace where his prisoner was, and jam a nail into another joint before he crossed out again. Bran pulled down his mask with his nail hand, and opened his fist to pour a full tablespoon of raw salt onto his tongue.

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[Sapphira Sokolov]

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Bran Viola

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The rumors are terrible and cruel [break]



But honey most of them are true

[break][break]





Perhaps a lesser fae would have been afraid, would have been concerned, would have been cowed. Sapphira was no lesser fae. She was Sapphira Volkova, Sapphira Noyer, Ruslana, the lioness. She was raised with bloodlust in her veins and he was as insignificant as dirt. For her to be afraid he would have to prove himself a threat.[break][break]

She wondered dimly where he had gotten the nerve. Who had raised this child to think he could waltz in wherever he liked, break whatever he liked, throw nails at his host, and she would do nothing? She snorted, totally disregarding his voice. His words meant less to her than his attack. She had ducked as soon as she saw his hand move.
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The nail grazed her left shoulder anyway. She let out an affronted gasp. The dress had at least one more wear in it. He would pay for that too. She knew he was carrying iron. She could feel the wound burn and blister. She did not reach for it. She stood, ignoring her pain, turning her hand in the already specified positions. One by one, the panels on her hallway flipped.
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Mirrors were said to be a vanity, but she cared very little for mortal morals or mortals at all. It had been a mortal serving girl who had given her cause to kill her husband, and that was all she had to thank them for. She would have found a reason. 
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Reasons were illusions like everything else, and illusions were her trade. So he had taken advantage of a mortal glamoured girl and Sapphira had stabbed him six times. So some foolish mortals had wandered to far and killed one of her lovers and she had used his body as a decoy. So she hadn't cried over either one. So there was blood on her marble floors that took too long to get out. They were all reasons enough to be angry. Reasons were illusions, and illusions were her trade.
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She held her hand up, and she could feel the power in her veins. It made her smile, and when she smiled, that was the time to be concerned, because she smiled when she stabbed her husband. The air glimmered and the mirrors glowed. And then the cage started to glow.
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A cage of glowing bronze, crackling with electricity, electricity that was real enough. Electricity that he would feel if he touched it. Electricity that any fae might feel also, unless they were truly powerful or truly concentrating. Electricity that stemmed from the anger in her heart.
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She was a product of her environment made of a singular material. Some worried that they might just be a product of their environment. She had heard as much in the whispered confidences that she could inspire. She had only smiled then, to keep eliciting secrets, because she knew the truth. Sapphira would have always been this way. She was a singular woman, a singular creature, born into power and black-hearted vengeance, yes, but finding her own way to it regardless.
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Erstwhile, she had been foolish and clumsy in her way to that goal, that ultimate vengeance that had captured her so surely, but now she was much more refined in that aspect. Now she knew how to get what she wanted. Now she closed her eyes, and focused, and thought about what she wanted him to see.
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A glittering bronze cage, reflected on every mirror, showing his own fearful face and her serene one. She couldn't see his expression and didn't need to. If he saw himself afraid, oftentimes weaker minds would simply go along with what they saw, and she had found mortal minds to be very weak indeed. Sapphira's face truly was serene. She was in control here. She always had been, even with blood dripping down her arm. Already, the wound had cured itself. She had warned him and he had ignored her. What other proof was there? Her blood glowed golden. She was immortal. [break][break]

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[Bran Viola]


The insides of Bran’s mouth were already beginning to slough off into the salt he’d put there. Illusions. He didn’t need magic to deal with illusions. Suddenly the space around him warped and closed in, surrounding him with a great circling cage of bronze, the only recourse beyond its confines the repeating kaleidoscopic reflection of the same cage, binding a wingless raven, lines of golden electricity grasping at its feathers to pull it into the bed of barbed wire that the dead lovers of this woman slept in. He could see a gilded shadow just beyond the confines of the mirror, moving around outside the inescapable barrier it had constructed in his mind. Did she want him to see her face when he died? Narcissistic prick.



Focus.



This design was so surreal and excessively grandiose. In her desire to exhibit power over him she’d shown him an image so grand and self serving it could only be something she’d made herself. He hardly even needed his charms to tell him what he was seeing was false. Was she arrogant enough to think she could cause his mind to snap with brute force? The essential principle of a glamour was imprinting concepts into someone’s mind, so naturally, if an image was sustained or repeated it could become more powerful. Bran held his mouth shut. Salt could break planted illusions but he’d seen her signal the approach of a death row of mirrors before his consciousness had lapsed. The rowan berries and whispered gifts from Lucio superimposed the dull impression of a world outside his mind, it too, lined with mirrors. It didn’t matter if he broke the illusion now, if it was being reinforced by the mirrors he would just fall back into it the moment he saw his reflection. He could fight her from inside this place, but it would be an uphill battle, she was strong-willed enough to impose some of her imaginary world even over his countermeasures, and Bran did not intend to give this creature that satisfaction.



Two nails in hand. It will take about a full second to retrieve more.



Bran aimed at the impression of the first mirror to is left, a muddled image colored over by his mind, and drove the second nail into its surface from several yards away, an empty blur of iron, shot from the gaps in the birdcage. The mirror shattered, and its cracks stretched outward into the immaterial bondage in Bran’s mind.



Now.



Bran closed his eyes and opened his mouth, spitting a mix of saliva, salt, and blood into the air in a short burst of rain. As he did so, cracks rippled out across the cage he saw behind his eyelids, and the illusion shattered, falling to the earth in a cascade of glass fragments that left Bran alone in the darkness that was supposed to be behind closed eyes. He moved quickly to his left, measuring his proximity from the wall via its impact with his shoulder. Bran opened his eyes to face the broken panel in the wall, now devoid of the door that would have plunged him back into her cage. Without looking, he drove his sword under the mirror next to him and quickly pried it from the wall. If she didn’t have these mirrors would the rowan berries even permit him to see her cage? He’d done this under the impression that she would be thrown from the visualization once her reflection was used to cave her skull in but her eyes were closed. Perfectly acceptable.



Bran spat blood onto the tile and ran forward with the mirror as though it was a large scutum, and jumped into a bodyslam that would smash the entire mirror over her body.



This is what I hate when I step into this godforsaken place. You are the monsters I hunt. A vile ceramic doll pretending it’s goddess. I’m going to shatter your porcelain outsides. You’re going to remember you can die once your golden ichor is spilled across your wretched body.

Bran drove his blade through the back of the mirror.

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[Sapphira Sokolov]

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Bran Viola

466 Words

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The rumors are terrible and cruel [break]



But honey most of them are true

[break][break]





Was it not masochism that fueled her then, but dramatic irony? Perhaps. Sapphira was no longer sure that she would know the difference, anymore. There was certainly something ironic about this. This was the moment in the myth that the woman was punished for her hubris. This was the moment that everything fell apart. For her, though, the glass barely broke skin.[break][break]









He did better than expected, but what was expected of him was nothing. That was not difficult to surpass– it was harder to survive. He had broken the illusion and broken her mirror. She heard him coming. Clumsy mortal footsteps. They knew nothing of subtly, nothing of patience. He could not fathom the amount of time she had to wait. And now he never would. It would have been a shame that he would die here if she could have believed his life would amount to anything.[break][break]







She stepped slightly to the side. Too slowly or too subtly. There was always a balance that must be struck. She was hit by the mirror. The glass shredded her shawl. She sighed and dropped it. A new shawl, then, and a new dress. She hoped she didn’t get blood on the one she was wearing now. He had already wrecked her patio.


[break][break]




She stepped back, pulling a knife. It was not so much a drawing as it was a conjuring– thinking of the knives that sat on her nightstand, and then they were in her hand. Ornate and deadly sharp, overlaid with peacock designs. She drove one into his arm. She held her sleeve out of the way while she did it. Sapphira may have loved good dramatic irony, but she had her priorities straight. Tailors were so hard to find these days.


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The mirrors were not gone so much as disabled. He had only shattered one. That would make it harder for him to operate. He thought he knew her palace, but he only knew what he saw at the surface. She knew everything else.[break][break]







She sheathed the knife at her waist with one hand and tightened the other into a fist. She knew the symbol. She knew the words. She knew the phrase. If she spoke it, so would he. But her strength of will was strong. She hoped to summon it yet. [break][break]






It wasn’t until she heard glass breaking for the second time she knew she had succeeded.


[break][break]




One nymph, then two, dragged their way through the window. They were not armed. Nymphs were classically peaceful– which made these statues behaving as weapons all the more humorous– but they were still strong. These nymphs did not need weapons. They were hewn from stone. And they were hers.[break][break]







This mortal boy wanted to play. Sapphira smirked. She had always enjoyed some good dramatic irony.[break][break]

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[Bran Viola]

The mirror shattered as Bran was thrown off kilter from the impact, his body rolling over in midair. The mirror had hit her off kilter, his blade had missed. He wrenched his sword from the wreckage of the mirror. The mirror frame clattered to the ground as bran fell to earth further beyond it, his body skidding against the tile as he pulled himself upright again. It was only then that he registered any sort of pain.



She stabbed me? Midair? Fast!



No sooner than he had regained his visual on Sapphira, Bran was met with an arcane gesture and the sound of yet more shattering glass. Pale faces frozen in expressions of passionless rapture approached him on all sides through a cloudburst of glass. Nymphs in the service of their mistress. Their bloodlust would be uncharacteristic if they truly possessed any, but as far as bran could tell these were merely puppets. It didn’t matter if they weren’t.



Bran took his sword between his teeth, and in one single mercilessly overtrained motion, removed the chain wrapped three times about his waist, drawing the weapon with a ferocity that translated into the far end of the chain whipping out across the three statues nearest him, a dull arc painted across their bodies, scraping across the first, the weighted tip shattering the nose of the second and finally hitting its actual target just past its marble hewn throat, where it wrapped into a vice grip around its neck, the tip, carried by the sudden tautness in the chain, whipping around into its targets forehead. Bran flicked his wrist as his end of the chain wrapped around it.


The first statue, a dainty nymph wrapped in stone garments that rippled as though she was dancing. Her pose was artful, an awful ballet in which her cold body was outstretched towards him. If there was any time in which a statue would be spread so wide as to give him leverage, it was now. In a sprint that quickly divorced itself from the ground, Bran lept through the air, turning almost entirely sideways as he thrusted his leg into the first servant, driving it against a pillar where its body continued without the wreckage of its left arm, head, and elegant little garland strewn harp, to collapse into a cabinet, shredding the almost organic craftsmanship that had clearly been dedicated to its completion. 

Before landing several steps past the middle figure Bran pulled the rope taut again with the momentum his leaping kick had carried, rolling over midair to face his new prey, as the far end of his chain pulled one nymph bodily to the ground, and the link between them clotheslined the other, grating from its lower torso up to catch its chin and send it reeling back, off balance but not quite fallen. The wrapped chain separated from the statue that had fallen with a shower of yet more sparks, and Bran touched down behind the reeling mannequin to face it on the tips of his toes, before he pivoted into a three-hundred and sixty degree turn, the whip sailing through the air in a spiral drawn by the spinning of his body, pulling it around in a full circle to a horizontal strike that soundly decapitated the final nymph.



If Bran hadn’t acquired so much inertial force he would’ve barely chipped it. Three down, but if Bran knew anything it was that every single one of them could get back up anyway. If he wanted to dispatch one of these he would need to remove every opposable part it had. Adrenaline had set him on a path that was measured in less than seconds, and he hadn’t had time for a headcount. How many things were in Sapphira’s gallery? If he wasted time here she’d either escape, or more likely, kill him once he was overwhelmed.



In yet another clearly practiced gesture, Bran continued the whip’s spiral as he abruptly halted in his own facing Sapphira, the chain adhering back to his waist, wrapping itself in its own continuing motion. Bran grabbed the end of the chain he’d yet to reattach to prevent it from breaking his hip, and clipped it to his uniform as he drew his blade from between his teeth. His hand stung, even through the glove that had absorbed the chain’s impact. The remainder of the gallery began to close in as the nymphs he’d broken began to pull themselves up from the floor.



The room is sealed in saint johns wort. You only have one direction to run. And I already know how to get there blind.



Bran ran directly at Sapphira as marble limbs closed in around him. He pulled the pin on something before jamming an iron cage over his mouth and nose.



An immense eruption of heavy smoke shot against the ceiling before it formed into a great billowing cloud that consumed Bran and the nymphs. Sapphira wasn’t quite in the blast, but even outside of the cloud, its presence still remained. Dull grey flashes, as though the cloud was raining ash. Iron shavings. Bran had no idea if the coating would deactivate the nymphs, and furthermore he doubted they needed to see, but it might give them pause at the very least, and that was all bran needed. He shut his eyes. Iron in this quantity and form was dangerous to him as well. There was a reason he’d been warned against using them like this.

Bran charged forward through utter blackness as the manufactured ticking of a stopwatch repeated in his mind. 8, 7, 6. There should be a pocket. 5, 4. she can’t exit the sealed room, so she’ll be forced into the pocket. 3, 2, 1.



Die!



A wingless raven collapsed the boundary of the dark cloud, and flew forth with an iron talon that followed the meticulous clicking of an obfuscated internal clock, come to kill yet another of those who lived forever.

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Bran Viola

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The rumors are terrible and cruel [break]



But honey most of them are true

[break][break]



The wise thing to do would have been to flee. Sapphira considered this briefly before immediately dismissing the thought. He would not have free reign of her home. She did not trust him. He would not have any of the things he wanted, if only to spite him.
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She watched him fight the nymphs and stood her ground. She would exhaust him. She would tire him out, and then she would drag him to her basement and make him watch her experiments until his little mortal mind snapped. She had not been there when the High King's bitch went crazy, but she would have loved to see it.
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"You came into my home uninvited," she snarled. [break][break]
She knew he would ignore it. He had proven his arrogance. She was born from the North, yes, but her husband from the West, and she liked to think she had learned some skills of prophecy from him. Perhaps it was just intuition. He would have done well to listen.
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Sapphira knew intimately what happened to those who crossed her. She had learned from the best. She had studied machinations like he had trained to kill. He could win this fight, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't because nothing he achieved here would be considered a victory. He would regret it.
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She could tell him he was making a mistake, but he had to know it already. The only way this didn't end in his utter destruction was if he killed her. He wouldn't. She was a creature of singularity. The only thing that could kill her was herself. 
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He released a cloud. She thought it was smoke, first, before realizing what it truly was. She hissed and stepped back. Most fae couldn't get near iron at all, but Sapphira had always been especially sensitive. That would also disable the nymphs. At least they weren't in her experimentation room. Her hair had not been signed. This was salvagable.
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There were several ways out. The nymphs had smashed the windows. She would have to go around the cloud carefully or suffer burns, but he couldn't see either. An apropos metaphor. He wanted her in that narrow hall behind her. She didn't know why. She did know that she would not do it, even if there was no trap, out of spite. She would not do it for the same reason that she didn't run.
[break][break]
You fool, son of dirt, she thought, irritated she was running out of options and irritated that he wasn't dead yet. He fought too well. Those nymphs should have crushed his fragile little bones so she could grind them into tinctures. She was going to feed him his own tongue.
[break][break]
I will watch you die, she decided, setting aside all the ideas she had that involved getting her servants to shoot him down and pretending to lose. It would not do. She would kill him. She would watch him die.
[break][break]
The cloud, the cloud burning her lungs and blinding his eyes, rendering her statues as pieces of marble on the ground. He forgot himself again. You are of the dirt, and to the dirt you will return. I am folk of the air. The window was opened. She could feel the wart that kept her from exiting that way. That was fine. She wouldn't run.
[break][break]
She took one step back, just one. She didn't even have to make a gesture, this time. The wind came rushing in through the broken window. It was not a normal storm. It was a blizzard, running through the cloud, throwing the iron against the walls, driving it back into his face.
[break][break]
It was true, that she was far too stationary to be a proper fighter. It was also true that iron disabled any magic it touched. Forcing wind forward couldn't be disabled. It was mortals' so called "natural world," their laws of physics. It was already in motion.
[break][break]
Until he understood that she was made of things more natural than he was, he would be doomed to lose. [break][break]

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[Bran Viola]

Bran’s internal clock passed where he’d left a notch in it, and as it did so, the smoke that had clung to his back like the grasping tendrils of some creature of foul iron, birthed by the family, was ripped from his silhouette by a sudden white gale. The form of the wingless raven was suspended in midair, iron of the same pitch as its feathers cascading across the floor to be dashed against the finery of the manse’s walls, and a sudden pressure, invisible save the frenetic dance it forced upon the flakes of white that fell upon the forms in the room like an endless barrage of gentle flechettes. Bran's hair and clothing, alongside even the iron chain at his waist eddied wildly as he flew towards his prey like a cannonball dropped from the sky.



you should have moved.



Nothing of the surface could touch a creature that had been buried alive. The raven possessed no wings with which to dance on the air as the fae did. It could not be carried on the wind back on to the flow of the endless dance. Since its birth, the dance had been fated to end, and its body returned to the dirt. There was no dance to return to, no ascent to the heavenly spheres, nor an abyss to fall into.



There is nowhere for you to fly.



As was his fate, Bran's body was returned to the ground, dragged from the sky by the heavy curse of his own blood. The weight of mortality, ever falling back to the final embrace of the earth. It was with the same accursed weight that Iron blazed downwards, terra firma desperately trying to wrest her extricated child back from the mortal’s hands. The blade, however, remained in excommunication, trapped in the body that interposed between it and its primeval mother. 

Bran had curled his limbs, and as he landed on his knees, not upon the floor, but upon Sapphirah’s stomach, he drove his talon into her upper left chest, just below her collarbone, exposed by the finery that now fluttered in the maelstrom as a gauzy veil that distended her pale figure into the course of the blizzard. Bran felt the sword burn through her pectoral tissue before halting against the inside of her shoulder blade. This would not kill her. He had fought to stay his blade in accordance with a wish that ate at the inside of his body.



As she collapsed beneath his weight, the both of them falling to the ground, he tore the sword from her side, ripping flesh from her as he inscribed a deep line across her shoulder, cleaving halfway through the head of her humerus. Even with the magic of the fae, the arm would be unusable for at least a month. A fine mist of blood rose from the pair, evaporated by the iron, yet a great streak of gore, drawn too quickly to be burned, painted the arc of his blade in a great red blossom that curved across the floor to the wall. The blade drew another rapidly blackening line against her throat before they had even hit the ground, a black glove wrapping around her only remaining wrist.



Just once, even just once, you should know what it’s like to be afraid to die.

Tags- Sapphira Sokolov,