Solo Never Helpless

[Kit Rowan]

Day 86, Season of Summer, 513 AV

The evening was drawing a bit close but in spite of all her running as a courier and in spite of her exercise still Kit's legs were restless. The demanded motion and movement, and Kit indulged them in a small way. She took a long, meandering walk around Ravok's waterways, ignoring Ravosalas in favor of ways she could simply walk. She shrugged her way through the dying crowds, made her way here and there. Kit turned down a corner, passed next to a man with brown hair and did not look back.

She felt a hand close on her forearm, tug her closer. "You!" A voice said, and Kit turned to see that it belonged to the brown-haired man. There was nothing worth speaking of his face beside his smile, long and twisted and full of pleasure. "Where are your papers, eh?"

"You ain't Styfe," Kit hissed, trying to pull away. Failing. She kicked him in the shins, once, twice . . . He drove his fist into her chest, blew all the air out of her, left her falling to her knees and gasping. Kit heard the stomping of heavy boots, turned and saw a member of the Ebonstryfe marching toward them, eyes hard and face harder.

He stopped in front of them, but before the Stryfe could open his mouth Smily had pulled an official-looking paper. "Citizen here. She," he nodded toward Kit. "Is not."

The stryfe raised an eyebrow. "That so?" He turned toward Kit and let the question sit, giving her the chance to deny it. But if she did, Kit knew he would fast find out that she was lying.

"No," she said, and the Ebonstryfe had already started turning away. "But I work for the Nitrozians!"

"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow. "Got proof?" She had none. The Stryfe shrugged. "Don't make too much noise," he said, and Kit felt as though she had swallowed a heavy rock.

She tried to pull away, but he was bigger and strong and knew what he was doing. While she was still winded he got behind her, put his arm around her neck, backed away from the main canal while she squirmed in his arms. "Let me go shykestain, LET ME—"

There was an impact against the side of her head, sudden and hard, and she lay dazed. "Oh yes, there's a fire in this one!" She felt a pressure against the back of her head, a sound . . . a kiss? "But we're a little in the open, aren't we, little whore?" He whispered, like a lover might. He grabbed her face, tried to turn it up to face him. "I'll show you—" Kit bit down on the side of his hand, hard. It was hairy, and tasted of worksweat and filth. He only chuckled. "That's right, just like that. Just remember to save some for the petch."

The Ravokians looked in her direction, one and all. Most of their faces were neutral, some were smiling, and some were so deliberately looking anywhere and everywhere else that they might have been staring. One even whistled. Smiley laughed and waved cheerfully as he dragged her back, back out of the canal into an alleyway, turned a corner. Out of sight.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit kicked and struggled and bit, but this wasn't like when she'd tangled with the Cripple before she escaped. He had been a feeble, broken shell of a man with one arm. This man was big, and strong. He held her close and did not shake when she kicked him or scratched or gnawed; and he was bigger, stronger. She could remember only one time when she had hated her smallness, her weakness so much, and it had been when they caught her on the Kabrin, clamped irons around her legs and dragged her across Sylira with only tears and desperation for company. I am alone and no one will save me. They'd made her say, to try to break her spirit.

It was true! There was no one would save her. No knights, no Wren, no friends she could trust with truth. There were tears she had not asked for on her face. "You twice-damned, colorless asshole! Let me go!"

"You know," he said, his voice a smooth, sensual baritone. "Some men? They like older women. They'll go to the House of Immortal Pleasures and pay, say they have more experience. You know what I think?"

"Don't care what you think," Kit pissed, pulling again, failing again. "LET ME—" Suddenly an impact that sent her thoughts reeling and whirling. Her throat betrayed her with a whimper.

"I think it's best young. Oh you can tell them to fight you, tell them to pretend, but it's never quite the same. Never quite real." Oh gods help her Kit could feel his breath on her neck! "The best are the little ones, the fragile ones, the nubile creatures who actually believe they can get away." And then he bit her eat, hard, and pulled and Kit screeched in pain and surprise both.

He shoved her forward into a dead-end alley, with him the only thing standing between Kit and freedom. She staggered back against the wall, held a hand to the side of her face and felt blood rolling down from where he'd bitten. "The petch do you want from me?!" Kit hissed, flattening herself against the wall as old instincts screamed run!

"A little bit of foreplay." He smiled, Kit's blood trickling down the side of his cheek, spreading his hands as though he were the most reasonable man in the world. "And then a finish."

Kit's hands . . . trembling? Oh yes, THIS was what fear tasted like, raw and pure, divorced from thrill. It was not a good feeling. "You . . . you sick vagik!" She spat, clenching her hands into fists, as Smiley smiled another slow, carnal smile. Licked his lips.

[Kit Rowan]

Magic? A little, hopeful voice in the back of her head whispered. No! Escape. Kit turned away from Smiley and took off at a run toward the wall. She had scarcely three feet of space to get enough speed. It was more than enough. Kit pressed her foot on the wall, kept the momentum going up another step and grabbed the edge of the roof. She breathed in once, pulling herself further and further up . . .

But not fast enough. A hand clasped around her ankle. "What a lithe creature you are," Smiley purred, and she could hear the smile in his voice. He yanked once, and Kit found herself pulled back to the edge of the roof scratching up her arms and leaving her barely hanging on by her fingers. He pulled again and Kit's fingers lost their grip; her stomach tried to rise into her throat as she fell.

She was caught by big, hairy hands, held her so close she could smell the stink of his flesh, her feet swinging panicked and uselessly inches above the ground. "Half the joy," he murmured, fingers grabbed hold of her collar, "is in the unwrapping." Rip went her shirt, from collar to right sleeve, leaving it dangling over her body by the one she had left. Kit reached back, aimed toward what she hoped was his face and clawed.

A soft, frustrated sound and Kit was dropped to the tripping over and landing on her side. Smiley loomed over, stepped, reached as though he meant to to trap her there, but Kit had already rolled backward, sprung to her feet. "This is the fourth," Kit hissed. "This is the fourth good shirt you Ravokians have ruined since I got here!"

"I am surprised," he murmured, closing the distance step by step by step, looming still smiling that infuriating, horrifying smile. "That you can still joke. You still don't understand." Kit gritted her teeth, stood her ground. Step, step, step . . . Kit dodged to the left, putting foot to pavement as fast as she could muster. He reached for her, she passed him. She was through! She was through! She was . . .

Something snared her wrist and yanked, pulling her back. Smiley grabbed hold of her with his other hand as she screamed out in frustration; why couldn't she get away? Why?! "Don't be like that," he said, his voice deceptively gentle. "We've only gotten started." He shoved her against the wall, hard, held her there with one arm while the other skirted down the side of her body. "I haven't seen it, yet." He whispered, leaning close, right next to her ear. "The look in your eyes when you realize there's nothing left for you to do."

Magic? Kit bit down on her lip. Her fingers began to wave and res began to push itself out of the roof of her mouth. Yes.

"Oh, what's that?" Smiley said, hand drifting to her trousers. "Do you understand? Have you accepted it?" Her grabbed hold of her pants and started to pull down.

Kit opened her mouth, raised her hands and moved them in a spiraling motion. Res spilled out of her mouth in a spiral before Smiley had a chance to react. Kit pushed gently at the open air, and the res transmuted, slamming into Smiley and throwing him back to the other end of the alley. Kit breathed hard, the pleasure of casting roiling through her body. More! It begged. MORE!

She gave it more.

Kit took a step forward, holding out one arm to the side as res spilled out of the palm of her hand. "I am not your whore," she said, the diminutive, frail, redheaded girl suddenly menacing. "I am not your petching toy. And I will not be part of your thrice damned rape fantasy."

Kit made a grand waving motion with her left hand; an aeromancer's trick to snare the air around her res and use it to empower her spell so much more power. Her hands shook, a metalic tang was in her throat, her res quivered and resisted manipulation. Kit snared and pushed onward. I am a sorceress! She thought, her smile wide and manic. NO ONE hurts me!

"Oh, Rhysol protect me," Smiley said, eyes wide. For a long moment he stood stock still, then he turned began to run.

Kit flailed her hands in the direction of her assailant, and wild air smashed into him, threw him against the side of the alley with a sickening thud. His head smashed against the wall and left a bloody mark there. Smiley collapsed, rolled over on his back and moaned.

Kit marched over to him. She took a deep, ragged breath and planted her foot on his throat.

He looked up at her with disbelieving eyes. "You can't hurt me," he said. "I'm a citi—"

"Corpse!" Kit snarled.

Crack.

[Kit Rowan]

The throat was a delicate thing, vulnerable, protected. Even a little pressure . . . like a small girl's stomp . . . could break some essential pieces.

Kit had expected . . . No, but she'd hoped that Smiley would die a quick death. A moment of stillness and a moment of lifelessness. But her step had broken his throat and kept him from breathing, and his death was a slow, frantic thing.

Kit stepped backward, away from him as he made small, tortured gurgling sounds and scratched frantically at his throat, hard. Smiley's nails dug deep, tried to tear open the blockage and left red marks on his neck where he tore—blood. Kit fell back on her ass as what was happening finally caught up with her, scrambled away until her back was against the wall.

Smiley wasn't smiling anymore; his mouth was open wide in a desperate, silent scream. She watched as awareness bled from his eyes, then life. His hands fell away from his throat, one landing palm up, toward Kit. She held a hand over her throat, turned to the side and vomited. When there was nothing left in her stomach to vomit, she dry-heaved. One her body finally ceased its futile seizing Kit curled her legs close and hugged her arms around them, closed her eyes and waited for the panic to pass.

I, Kit thought, staring her hands. KIlled him. I killed a Ravokian citizen. Oh, I'm five ways petched . . . Kit had turned the tables on someone before, but never . . . She hissed to the accusing sky. "I was . . . I was protecting myself!" Even when you won in Ravok, you won only by making yourself more apart of its own vile texture. "Oh Trickster, oh . . ." Kit buried her head into her hands and breathed deep, ragged breaths. "Give me the keenness to see a way, grant me the cunning to walk it." She was doomed. Utterly doomed!

"No Kit!" She pounded a hand onto her head, again, again, again. "Think! There's gotta be a way, there's gotta!" But no matter what she thought, Kit could not imagine an ending to her killing a citizen in an alley that did not end in tragedy. What had gotten into her? Where had the bloodlust come from?

"But what . . ." She swallowed, looking up at the corpse and biting down on the edge of her lip. "What if it wasn't a citizen?" The reality was right in front of her. But what did they teach in Ionu's temple, in the streets of Alvadas? The truth only has power if people believe it. If their senses tell them something different, and they believe another thing, it becomes the truth. That was what illusion was.

Kit cut the illusion that kept her looking like the quarter-Benshiran courier off, left her looking entirely like herself. She stood up, grabbed the broken straps of her shirt and tried to tie them together. It was a quick fix, but until she got a needle and thread it would have to be enough.

She marched over and, hands shaking, began to frisk the body. Coins in this pocket, this here, that there . . . She pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and held it up, but it had gotten too dark to read. "Okay," she breathed, shoving it behind her belt. "Okay . . ."

Kit remembered what a Symenestra looked like. Her acrobatic tutor had been one. The way she could see his blood through his skin, the paleness of him . . . she remembered it all. She held out her hand and pressed those features onto this man, his face and body utterly nonhuman. With a thought she changed the texture of his face, so no one would know him by looking at him. The curious proportions of a Symenestra she could not mimic without building them onto empty air, but what she had already done would be enough . . .

. . . At least, that was her prayer.

[Kit Rowan]

The next issue was moving the body.

Smiley . . . Kit supposed his real name didn't really matter anymore . . . was a big guy. Kit tested her body, prodding and feeling for damage or tears and found nothing. Whatever her abuse had done to her, at least it wasn't physical damage. Kit wriggled her fingers, began an experimental push to excrete res out of her palm, and a bolt of pain rang up from arm to her shoulder. Kit grimaced and held her arm in a cradle for a chime until the pain subsided. No magic, then.

Kit tried to grab his arm and drag him, but she realized quickly enough that she'd get nowhere fast with that. She got down lower, where she could see the dent in his skull and the blood leaking out the top. Swallowing hard, Kit got her arms under him, under his shoulders. She tried and tried to lift, and he was halfway off the ground, head lolling back against her chest, staring up with dead eyes over his red throat. If Kit had anything left in her stomach, she would have lost it there.

Her success depended on threethings; that no one remember the redheaded slave who escaped her master nearly a season ago, that no one care that a non-human was dead and that Kit could drag the body to the canal and throw it in the lake so she could cut the illusion short and go back to being Shy as soon as possible.

Kit took step after slow step backwards out of the alley, Smiley's feet dragging noisily against the floor. One step, two step, five step, ten . . . Kit fell to her knees, arms still coiled around Smiley's shoulders, staring to the sky, her arms protesting every action, her back rebelling at the extra weight she put on it. Come on Kit, she thought, and imagined Ebonstryfe breaking down her door in the morning. She imagined being stood naked on the stage of the slave market, naked and shivering. Kit forced herself to her feet, dragged the corpse back just a measure more . . .

Progress was mind-numbingly slow. It would have taken half a chime for Kit to get from the alley to the canal's edge at jog, but with Smiley in tow time had no mercy. Kit couldn't pull him all the way in one go; it was just beyond her. So she took a few slow steps back, rested, took another few slow steps, rested. Syna had dipped over the edge, and Kit saw Leth cut a silver crescent in the starry sky. Sweat dripped down her back, her little arms whining and complain. "Aw," Kit breathed to them. "Just. Shut. Up!"

Then Kit was at the canal again. The crowds had long since filed out, leaving only a trickle of people. But a trickle was still less than Kit was comfortable with. Come on, she thought, biting down on her lip. Make your bluff. Kit pulled, dragging the body out onto the main canal. She must have looked pathetic, a tiny girl with a ripped up shirt dragging a big body along behind her. People turned to look . . . And kept on walking.

Except one. "Hey," he said, and when Kit looked over shoulder she saw him looking her over. "What happened?"

"H-he . . ." Kit swallowed. What should she say? What could she say? "He caught in an alley."

The stranger took a few steps closer, looked over the body and made a soft, sharp sound in the back of his throat. "Damn bestial races," he said, and when Kit heard the venom in his voice she knew that she was safe. "They belong in cages, or dead." She looked down at him, saw half of the image of the black sun branded on his hand. He was like she had been, then. Only, where she'd escaped, he'd accepted his servitude. "You ought to thank Rhysol for your good fortune." He suggested.

Kit breathed in. "If you've no urgent orders, help me throw this into the canal," she said. "So no one has to clean it up later." A slave was to obey all citizens. She was not a citizen, but if Kit acted enough like one . . .

"Will do, mistress." The slave said. "You take the feet." Kit breathed, laid the body down, and her muscled cheered like children at a festival. Don't thank me yet . . . She walked around, took hold of the feet.

When the slave got his arms under Smiley's arms, Kit breathed out and counted down. "One," she said, "two . . . Three!" And they lifted. Her muscles screamed in betrayal, filled her arms with a thousand little needles of pain.

"Mistress?"

"Go!" Kit hissed through her teeth, and took quick little steps toward the edge of the canal together. Kit was the first to let the body drop, and the slave did as well, more out of startled reflex than exhaustion. Smiley leaned over the edge, toppled into the dark water and sank, vanishing from sight into the depths of lake Ravok. She fell back on her rear and stared up at the sky. It's done. Done.

"Now mistress," he said, eyes downcast, "if you're finished, would you like me to take my leave?"

"No . . . Not yet." Kit pulled a gold miza from her pocket and gave him a long, slash of a grin and slapped the coin down on the ground next to her. "Consider this a tip."

"That is . . ." The slave swallowed, suddenly nervous. "Very generous. Would you like me to help you up?"

"No!" Kit said, so sudden and sharp she made herself jump. She couldn't let him touch her! "Just . . . Wanna sit here a bit. Take your gold and go."

He did. And for a while, Kit sat, alone and safe, and watched the stars.

[Alric Wilmot]

Grades Kit Rowan Unarmed Combat +3 Reimancy +2 Impersonation +1 Lores: Citizen brutality, Killing Smiley Notes Secret : This was very good, and fun to read despite its darker content. I enjoyed seeing such an accurate portrayal of Ravok. Though I'd like to point out that you can't alter appearance and texture at the same time with mark one illusionism. Though perhaps you meant visual texture? Anyway, go ahead and edit your post to reflect that this was graded. If i missed anything important, PM me.