A Wake in White [Flashback]

[Sondra]

Fall of 507 A.V.

Lorna was stretched across a sofa, balancing her chin on her hand. She would often sit like this, showing Gregoire her sumptuous profile as she pretended to be thinking.
There was no elegance to Lorna, only a sated richness. She would make the sofa her altar and sit as a fertility idol from crueler times. When men would bring blood and gold and put rubies between her breasts.

Gregoire had been drawn into her feverish touch and supped on her mouth. Soporific vapors emanated from her skin, and Gregoire had been made drowsy by them. He let a foreign woman with no past into the hallowed places and set her over those with rightful claims.

The white witch, Sondra, was never consulted. She held every hand but this one.

A house had been built around this second son, Gregoire. A dozen lives' fealties were in his hand like so many strings. Should he pull, they would follow. Their devotion was a sacred vow.

And yet, Lorna was allowed to straddle the sanctity and make it foul. She showed the men no honor, and laughed at the women's ancient ways.
But Sondra revered the house, accepting it as her own. She was no slave, but a counselor.

[Sondra]

Sondra had waited in her plain seat and cold corners. She faded into stone and scenery. The white witch let the dust gather around her hem, unmoving until one could pass her without notice. After much time, Sondra's hand struck, catching Lorna's as she passed. Sondra saw many things. Things she tried to pour in Gregoire's ears, until he forbade it.

Now, Sondra pulled aside the brocade curtain across the door, watching Lorna sink deeper into the furs on her chaise. Gregoire was leaning over her, making excuses for his leaving. Before Lorna, he never explained duty in such embarrassed and reluctant tones.

As Gregoire left, Sondra entered through the opposite door, quietly locking it behind her. She floated to the other door and turned the lock as well. Only the door into the garden remained open. Lorna was temporarily struck dumb.

"What are you doing, witch?"
Sondra said nothing. She leaned her back against the heavy door and watched the woman's indignation balloon.
"Answer me, you anemic thing."
"I am listening for the footsteps," Sondra's head tilted, "Ah, there. All gone to the ride." She softly smiled at the reclining Lorna.

"Do you know my purpose in this house, Lorna?"
The woman hesitated. After choosing an air of nonchalance, she sat up and selected an orange from the table beside her chaise. A costly piece of fruit, Sondra noted. Even Gregoire's mother ate wrinkled apples.
"You're a white witch, from that whorish race of women." Lorna glanced at Sondra briefly, "How many fathers between you and your sisters?"
"What else do I do?" Sondra asked, unflinching.
"Does it matter?" Lorna laughed.
"I am a sinspeaker. Guilt guides me through your memories."
"And for those who have no guilt?" Lorna asked with a wry twist to her mouth.
"Victims leave their own marks. Yours is a beacon to me, livid on your hands. And such a memory is in its light."
Lorna slowly ate a slice of orange, and suckled her fingertips for the juice. Her dark irises seem to spread to demonic fullness.
"Do tell."

Sondra's hand clenched. Lorna was a worst monster than she had dreamt.
"Your last lover dead at your hands. You even picked the gold thread from the corpse's clothes. And I saw you have wormed your way here for similar purposes."
A piece of Gregoire's heart in Lorna's mouth, the rest cut into purplish squares on a silver tray.

"Even so." Lorna had not stirred from the sofa, "Gregoire will not listen to you. I have filled his ears with too much. There is no space for your jealous omens."

Lorna ate the rest of her orange. The juice trailed down her hands, and she licked the drips off her wrist. It was the same way she cleaned the blood off her hands, relishing them equally.

"No, Lorna, he will hear me." The Konti stepped dangerously close to the sofa, "So you will march into that garden," she pointed at the open door, "And keep walking until you forget what this place even looked like."

"All that way in the snow?" Lorna pouted. "Oh I don't think so, my dear."
"Don't tempt me to more than banishment, Lorna. Gregoire's ears are not the only ones I speak to. Someone will hear and take interest. "

This made Lorna's eyes blink. Her lips drew back from her teeth and she lunged for the Konti's neck with her mouth. The white witch tumbled back, pressing against Lorna's shoulders as the woman tried to claw her back. They twisted and strained, dancing towards the open door.

[Sondra]

Sondra had seen a dozen such struggles and their ends. There was a trick to them, one the good would not think to take. But Sondra had absorbed too many wretched memories to be pristine.

Sondra pulled Lorna toward her and crudely head-butted her with staggering force. Lorna tottered and Sondra kicked her in the gut until she fell backwards into the garden's snow. Lorna scrambled to stand, her full features contorted with rage, but Sondra pinned her shoulders with her knees. A narrow piece of starlight flashed in the Konti's hand, a kitchen knife from her belt. Lorna's legs kicked and pivoted wildly. Without stopping, Sondra clenched the woman's hair and yanked her head forward.
The edge fit in the nook Lorna's neck made, and Sondra whipped the blade across it. Gurgling and pissing herself, Lorna died on a hill of snow with a Konti on her chest.

The trick was immediately raising the level of brutality. For the winners, there was no gradient between soft and savage. The Konti had learned that much.

Sondra felt the body grow cold under her. She crawled off it, disgusted by the skin her hands touched.
Corpses had been terrible in her visions, accusing, forsaken things, shaped by the dead's impotent fury or grief. But the thing at her feet was a lukewarm shell, fat and meat arranged in a familiar shape. Sondra could not even turn her anger on the body, there was no Lorna in this.

"Sondra," a voice trembled behind her, "What have you done?"

[Sondra]

The Konti spun, dropping her knife.
"What have I done? I have saved you, all of us from this poison."
Gregoire raised his hand to his mouth, made sick by the sight.
"She killed her last lover, and would have killed you!" Sondra protested, "I saw her eating your heart on a dish with your corpse behind her in the bed."
"No, Sondra, no," Gregoire was backing away.

"Gregoire, you have believed me before. This house has been purged because of me."
She took a step towards him, "She tried to kill me."

Gregoire stopped backing away, his brow black with simmering anger.
"You were always jealous of her. She warned me about you."

"You believe her?" Sondra's skin was stinging with cold and the blood was beginning to crackle on her hands.
"I have given you my life, Gregoire. Every moment in your service. I know little company. My family forgets me between pitying me. And I have no daughters. All to keep your house safe."
Swinging her arm toward Lorna's body, Sondra's voice began to growl.
"And what has she given you? A warm place to bury yourself and grasping hands."

Gregoire's dismay was twisting into something darker.
"I loved her." He clenched his jaw in pain as he looked at the body again.
"And you," he pointed towards Sondra's heart, "You are so full of other's bile that you want to poison the whole world."

The Konti grew dizzy, "No, no. I carried it so they would not have to."

"You never wanted me to be happy," Gregoire snarled.

Sondra tumbled forward kicking up snow. She pressed her hands on Gregoire's cheeks.
"Not true! Not true. Your happiness is all I ever wanted."

Gregoire spat in her face, but she did not release him. She bowed her head against his chest and began to cry.

Sondra saw it then, searing and clear since it was imminent: Gregoire pushing his dagger through her belly and her body fading into the snow. She was so pale, she was lost in the drift until blood welled from her stomach. A white hare torn in two.

[Sondra]

"You manipulative witch."

Gregoire's dagger was half exposed when Sondra grabbed the knife on his other hip. It found Gregoire's warm gut before his was unsheathed. His eyes widened; how she had loved their shifting hazel. She twisted the blade and watched him fall to his knees. It would take time for him to die, but die he would.

His own hands wrapped around the knife's handle and he sputtered formless prayers. Blood misted from his mouth.

Sondra crouched to his level, finding his wild, wild eyes.
"Some things I won't give."

She turned away, walking into the warm bedroom. At its threshold she cleansed her hands in the snow. She let them linger in it, taking the pain as penance, relishing the numbness, praying for it to reach her heart.

For a few minutes, she adjusted the room. She tangled the bed, aiming for a lover's quarrel. Gregoire's scent wafted up at her from the sheets twined with Lorna's cloying sweetness.
It made her weep.

When she returned, Gregoire was dead. Sondra knelt beside him and finished withdrawing his long dagger, meant for her. It was slid across Lorna's already lifeless throat, then tossed beside the body on the white ground.

Sondra picked up her kitchen knife made clean by the snow. The pristine ground around the bodies had turned incarnadine. The smells of blood and snow were similar, Sondra realized, unyielding and metallic.

The Konti looked down at her work one last time. People could destroy what they adored: friends, themselves, lovers. It was a story the others could believe. Sondra looked at Gregoire's stark eyes. She certainly did.

[Cheshire]

. Character: Sondra Experience: Interrogation +1, Storytelling +1, Intimidation +1, Brawling +2, Weapon (Knife) +1, Weapon (Dagger) +1 Lore: Taking a Life, Using One's Sins to Intimidate, Watching Someone Die, Trying to Protect Your Master, Killing Your Master Additional Note: Great thread Sondra! I was pretty sure Gregoire was Sondra's master but if she was not let me know and I'll change your lores! PM me with concerns.