Aftermath

[Kelski]

Timestamp: 90th of Spring, 518 AV

Continued from: Hunting And Being Hunted

When she woke, Kelski had no idea of how much time had passed. Her face throbbed in time to her heartbeat and she felt something hard spanning across her aching nose. Both eyes were swollen, and she could tell they were blackened. Darvin had broken her nose. The Kelvic moaned slightly and tried to sit up. She managed it, only barely, swinging her legs over a cot that appeared to be in Darvin’s laboratory. The big man was bent over a workbench, cooking up something on a burner. His forearm was bandaged, but there was a dark stain beneath the surface. He didn’t look like he was bothered much by the wound.

He also didn’t so much as glance her way when she sat up. Kelski wasn’t sure what he was going to do or what was going to happen now. The Kelvic expected punishment, but she wasn’t sure what form that retribution would take. Darvin, for his part, acted as if nothing had happened and nothing was wrong. Kelski carefully lifted her hand and gently probed her nose. All she could think about was what effect the break would have on her beak as an Eagle. She found a rough little cast the size of her forefinger and pointer finger put together bridging the gap across her nose.

“I didn’t mean to do that.” Darvin said abruptly, turning to scowl at her ruined face. “Jaren is going to be pissed and I’m going to have to explain to him why I punched his little jeweler in the face. He likes things pretty, not bruised and broken. You aren’t going to be able to show your face around him until the bruising goes down. I had one of the other Dragoons set the break, otherwise it was a trip to the doctor for you, and I don’t think you’d have enjoyed that nearly as much. Don’t stab me again, little bird. My next reactionary punch might snap that pretty little neck of yours.” He said gruffly, as if he was mad, but madder at himself than at her.

Kelski rubbed the back of her head, found a large lump there, and groaned.

Darvin grinned. “You sure make a lot of interesting noises when you don’t feel too well. Maybe I should knock you around more. You do seem a bit more feisty than usual.” He said, picking up something off the counter and walking over towards her. “I have a new dose for you to try. This one I’m going to advertise as a party in a vial if it turns out right. It should make you see things.” He said with a grin, walking towards her. He caught her chin up, tipped her head back and uncorked the vial. While pinching her broken nose – which of course caused her to gasp – he poured the burning contents down her throat. She choked, tried to vomit them back up, but got distracted as he shoved her to her feet and pushed her towards the door.

[Kelski]

Kelski staggered but managed to stay on her feet as Darvin shoved her out into the hall, across the distance to another room and opened the door. “This should be fun….” He said as he pushed her inside then draped a bracer of daggers over her shoulder to settle across her torso.

“In about five chimes or less you are going to start seeing things… hallucinating tremendously. And once you do… I’ll see how the drug reacts. I’ve tested it before and it seems to give people an open edge on strength. They get hard to handle. But you’re a bit beat up so I think it’s a great test to what it would actually do to a habitual drug user. Now…. If you look around…. I have some other toys in here… some of which I’ve been testing drugs on too, Kelski.

The Kelvic really looked around at the new room… it was an open area but was not unoccupied. Half a dozen youths that looked worse for wear were huddled in the corner on what looked like a cot very similar to the one she just got out of. They looked street tough, scrawny, and thoroughly pissed. Kelski knew the kind; cruel, hard, and adult way before their time. The Kelvic judged them as young adult humans, maybe on the cusp of their early twenties. They wore Daggerhand colors and looked like they’d been treated roughly in Darvin’s hands. Each had their wrists bound together, either in front of them or behind their backs, and several had similar black eyes to Kelski’s.

“Boys… she looks a little rough around the edges, but I promise she’s a fine piece of ass. You can have her and her blades if you can take her. I don’t care what you do with her. But remember how I promised you’d never get out of here alive? Remember how I told you there was a Sun Birth Daggerhand War brewing? I meant it. You aren’t leaving here alive. So, if you want to have some fun before you die… maybe even procure some weapons… I’d suggest you take her down. Have a little fun with her. Carve her up. Petch the crap out of her. I don’t care. You are dead by sundown tonight anyhow. Live a little before you go.” He said with a laugh, and then firmly shut the door behind him.

The Kelvic's heart nearly stopped. What? They were lambs to the slaughter being served up a last minute treat before their last breaths.

Kelski didn’t wait for them to attack. As badly confused as she was and as hard as her face hurt, she wasn’t going to let some Daggerhand punks lay a hand on her. She drew a dagger in each hand from the brace across her chest and tried to narrow her eyes. Her eagle vision was still good, only slightly obscured by the swelling. It was her head that was pounding and getting in her way.

She stepped out with her opposite foot, swung her hips forward, took a deep breath and released it the moment and threw her first dagger. It nailed the closest advancing boy in the chest, dropping him. Three of the others charged her, while a forth stopped to yank the dagger out of the now-dead boys breast and cut loose his bindings on his wrists.

[Kelski]

Kelski drew a second dagger to replace the one she’d thrown and blinked her swollen eyes as her vision blurred. The young men charging at her began to bleed, the colors in the shadows melding as if it were darkly wet watercolors bleeding off a parchment. Their features contorted swirled and blended into monstrous forms. They looked like corpses that had been left out into the sun to bloat, fester, with parts of their forms sluffed off. Kelski cried out in horror, seeing the men as more bone and festering flesh than living human beings. The Kelvic didn’t know what to think. Was it real? Where these dangerous youths truly the living dead or where they just normal kids as scared as she was and fighting for their lives?

She gripped the daggers tighter, and took a step back, all but tripping over her own feet as the drug Darvin had given her hit her bloodstream and altered her reality. There were four of them… four… bile rose in her throat as the first one reached her. He pulled up short, swinging his torso down and lashing out with a foot that caught her squarely in the side. The Kelvic belatedly realized the youth had no weapon but his fists and feet while she was fully armed.

Kelski had tried to react, but her limbs felt sluggish, causing her to dodge only slowly, allowing the assault to happen. Her ribs crunched under the nasty kick, but she brought her well armed fists around and sliced at the connecting limb as the boy launched her, hamstringing him even through his pants. He screamed while she had no breath to do so as his attack flung her out of the way of the other assaults.

Kelski twisted as she went down, trying to defend herself. She managed to swing wildly at a second youth who was on her, slamming her blade into his forearm as a third dove on her, pinning her down but also pinning the brace of daggers between them as his heavy form lodged itself on top of her. The heavy youth knocked the wind out of her lungs and her head to knock back against the floor hard on the already bruised skill. She literally saw stars, as her body jerked violently in reflex, trying to knock the youth off.

The first boy was still screaming, grabbing at his leg which Kelski had cut to the bone. If Darvin’s threat rang true, the boy would never walk again on that leg. The boy with the cut arm was trying to deal with his own wound, which involved screaming profanities while trying to close the wound in his arm which was leaking blood like a river down his arm. Darvin had taught Kelski to fight… and had taught her to strike hard the first time.

Kelski didn’t see them as wounds. The drug had ahold of her so deeply that she saw a walking corpse grabbing at its leg and another one grabbing at its arm, trying to hold moldering flesh onto the bones. On top of her, rotting flesh and glaring gaping eye sockets belonging to another undead thing stared at her as she writhed under him, gagging at the smell of his form. While he had her body pinned, his hands on her shoulders and the wind knocked out of her, her arms were still somewhat free and she reversed her grip on the daggers in each fist and started raking them up and down his back, opening up large gouges.

Kelski hadn’t realized she was screaming at the same time.

[Kelski]

To Kelski, puss and visceral fluid that had long gone foul was pouring over her, filing her senses with a stink she’d never be free of. In reality it was blood, fresh and thick, pouring out of the boys wounds as he sprawled across her trying to hold her down long enough to get one of the daggers either out of her hand or out of the brace of them hanging across her torso. The problem was, he was unwilling to lay there holding her down and getting raked by her bladed hands to do so. Kelski was screaming so loudly it was hard for him to think past the shrill noise right in his ears and the torrent of pain on his back. His ultimate goal was getting a dagger, choking the bitch, and getting free of the prison the Dragoon had thrown him and his little gang in.

The Kelvic just wasn’t cooperating. And the wounded Daggerhand didn’t know why. Huge dilated silver pupils stared at him as if he were something horrifying instead of just a captured gang member that got caught snooping where no Daggerhand should be. Blood was pouring out of the back of her head too, as if he’d opened an injury there. Ignoring his back wounds, the youth grinned, reared up releasing her shoulders, and slapped her hard across the face where she obviously had a broken nose.

Kelski hoped it was worth it because before his palm made contact, his motion of rearing up had freed her shoulders and arms and allowed her to bring the daggers around and stab him in the heart through the sidewall of his chest just below his armpit. She lost the dagger though, lodging it deep in the youth’s ribs. He died fast, almost instantly, but not before the slap connected. Her stars returned immediately, even as a lifeless corpse plunged down as deadweight on her. The Kelvic couldn’t even groan.

The one with the sliced leg screamed at the remaining two to kill the Kelvic. It was all happening so fast the Kelvic didn’t how how to cope. The human part of her screamed in denial. The Sea Eagle just wanted blood and kept the body moving. Whatever these things were in the room with her, they were unnatural, unwelcome and needed to die. She flailed beneath the dead weight of the body on her even as the remaining youth that was unscathed grabbed the fallen and yanked hard, freeing the Kelvic. She thought she’d be clear to roll free, but the one with the forearm wound was there with heavy boots and made to kick her solidly in the ribs. But Kelski was on the move already and so her tucked roll took her already damaged ribs out of the youth’s way.

He did connect, but it was with her hip, which was stronger and didn’t give under the boot kick. Just as soon as he connected, she reversed the direction of her roll on him and rolled towards him rather than away, hissing violently at what she thought was a monster. She brought the remaining dagger up as a distraction. Meanwhile she lashed out with her foot and connected to his knee, slamming it backwards. The monstrous youth went down hard still screaming, grabbing at his ruined knee.

[Kelski]

Kelski watched him fall and that was her fatal mistake. The remaining youth that had dragged the body off her got behind her. He wrapped an arm around her neck and yanked her back to him, choking. Kelski blinked, choked, and the room literally melted under her vision, the drugs hitting her even harder with all the adrenaline coursing through her body. She tried to scream as her mind conjured up horrible smells and her senses painted rotted flesh choking off her breath rather than solid flesh and blood. She bucked wildly against him, her damaged ribs and battered face screaming in protest beneath her skin.

The drug made her strong, almost unmanageable and the boy was scared, believing what Darvin had told him earlier. They would be dead by nightfall regardless of what happened here. He was the youngest of the group, almost a tag-along third wheel and it had been his fault the others had gotten caught. Bold but stupid, the boy felt his grip slipping and knew he was in trouble. He couldn’t hold the feral girl and he couldn’t release his hold on her long enough to grab one of her daggers. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And meanwhile the blood splattering all over his face was leaking from the wound at the back of the Kelvic’s head.

Once more good buck and he released her, jumping back, putting space between them. The boy with the ruined leg screamed “Daniel… what the petch! You did not just let her go!” But it was too late. Kelski was halfway across the room on the far end, perched up on top of the bed, hissing at both of them. She was breathing hard and unable to stop shaking. She had three daggers left, all still tucked in the bracer of them that Darvin had draped around her. There was literally no place on her that didn’t hurt. Her head, her face, her ribs, her hip… there were deep bruises on her shoulders where the boy that had jumped on her had held her down. And she was terrified. Kelski couldn’t remember being more scared than she was in that moment. Thoughts tumbled through her brain and were lost under the influence of the substance Darvin had cooked up. The walls were still bleeding, and even her own wounds looked like they were weeping pus now. That caused her terror to ramp up even higher. When she went to reach for another dagger, she stopped, horrified. Her hand was no longer wrapped in flesh, but was skeletal, and her long black claw-like nails were wicked talons just like her eagle form sported.

The Kelvic screamed louder, closed her eyes, and made a blind grab for the weapons across her chest. Fumbling, she managed to get one then another into her hands. Then she opened her eyes to see the two remaining wounded monsters on the other side of the room. They weren’t moving towards her and she wasn’t willing to advance on them. Shaking, sweating now, and in some place beyond fear, Kelski quietly lost what was left of her mind as any sort of intelligence fled, causing her to collapse. Instinct drove her to arm her other skeletal hand and she just curled, daggers raised, defending what was left of her rotting body.

It was a long time before she moved. And when she did, it was to take a swing at a big shadow looming over her. He knocked her attack aside, laughing lightly, and disarmed her. Then the big shadow picked her up and checked her eyes, finding the pupils huge. She was covered in blood, but that didn’t stop the man from swinging her up into his arms. The Kelvic felt her head bounce against his shoulder and blinked in confusion and pain as he jostled her out of the room, passing five neatly stacked bodies of what looked like Daggerhand youth. Kelski wondered where the monsters had gone for a moment before she quietly came to the realization that the monster had gone nowhere. He was quietly carrying her from the room.

[Kelski]

Kelski didn’t have long to wonder how Darvin was going to explain her wounds to Jaren. She was very soon laid out on Jaren’s couch with a blanket thrown over it to protect its velvet surface from the blood on her while Darvin spun the most fantastical story.

It seemed the Kelvic had gotten separated from him when they’d went to Dagwood’s to get her more gold for a project Jaren had her working on. There’d been a brief gang skirmish or something, maybe a riot, Kelski wasn’t sure because she kept fading in and out of awareness as Darvin spoke. He was busy with her though, so it wasn’t like she couldn’t hear him. He was tenderly wrapping her ribs, resetting her nose, and dabbing at the blood on the back of her head. While he was ‘treating’ her, Jaren was pacing, demanding answers, and listening as Darvin spun a tale of a Kelvic running astray of five Daggerhands who were busy trying to have some fun with her. Darvin, of course, had found her before it was too late and had rushed in to kill the troublemakers. He’d even brought the bodies back for Jaren to inspect in case there was any doubt. Kelski knew it was a lie, and because she knew she began weeping in sadness.

The whole thing was so sad, so hopeless… so unbelievable. Kelski kept looking at her hands even as Darvin pushed them down and out of her view. She’d lift them back up awkwardly, seeing if the flesh was actually there or the talons had vanished. Filled to overflowing with hopelessness and sadness, Kelski wanted to physically cut open her flesh to try and release the pain… and actually snatched one of the two daggers still strapped across her chest. She sobbed as she did so, muttering apologies as she reversed the dagger in her hand, gripped it, and tried to slit her own wrist wide open.

Darvin stared at her incredulously then disarmed her and took the remaining dagger before she could open up her flesh and let the sadness out. Tucking it into his wasteband, he shook his head at her, eyes burning with anger.

He grumbled then once when Jaren wasn’t directly watching them, he hushed her. “Just shut up, Kelski. You’re crashing off the drug. Its normal. Everything’s fine… stop your whining before I dose you again to just get you leveled off…” He hissed, giving her a shake that caused her to whimper due to her ribs and wounded skull.

Jaren turned back to them and shook his head. “Unbelievable. I don’t even think she can work like this. And I certainly can’t sell her and turn any sort of profit. Get her out of my sight until she’s at least functional, then move her back into her workshop. I want those orders finished by the end of the season, but I don’t want to see her around. Confine her there and bring meals into her. No one should have to see that sort of ugly.” He said hedonistically, not willing to have his reputation or his pleasure damaged by a slave looking the way Kelski looked.

“Take those corpses out to the courtyard too. I’ll look them over then I expect you to get them to the slag heap discretely tonight to get rid of them. Sounds like we are going to have to plan some retribution on The Daggerhands. I want them to regret ever even looking at my property, let alone touching it.” Darvin nodded at Jaren’s words, agreeing to the course of action and agreeing to move Kelski out of the way for a while.

“I’ll see it done.” He added, picking up the Kelvic – blanket and all – to go find an empty room to deposit her in so she could heal enough to get back to work. Jaren thanked him profusely for his diligence as the Dragoon slipped from the room. It had Darvin half laughing as he headed down the hallway with Kelski draped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Keep your mouth shut and I’ll leave you alone and let you eat. Breathe a word that contradicts what I just told him Kelski, and I’ll kill you. This time I won’t leave it to drugs or captured boys to do. I’ll do it myself with a quick break of your neck. I keep you because Jaren wants you. You’re only safe until he doesn’t want you anymore… then things will change. Don’t forget that.” He said, kicking the door open to a run down single room with only a partial roof and two boards on the outside wall missing. “This will do. Stay here until you feel better. I’ll have someone bring you food tonight.” He ordered, tossing her on a moldy smelling cot that had no sheets and no pillow. He left her the blanket, but that was all.

Kelski curled in a ball, exhausted, heart sick, and feeling next to worthless… letting sleep claim her.

[Kelski]

Grading

Kelski

Experience: Dual Wield +3, Dagger +5, Evasion +3, Acrobatics +2

Lores: Jaren: Likes Things Pretty, Not Broken, Darvin: Doesn’t React Well To Stabbing, Drugs: Party In A Vial, Drugs: Hallucinations, Dagger: Fighting While Drugged/Hallucinating, Drugs: Party In A Vial Gives Strength, Dagger: Fighting Two Handed, Dagger: Slaughtering Daggerhand Youths, Drugs: Fighting Rotting Walking Corpses, Drugs: The Horrible Crash

Note: Broken nose, two broken ribs, two black eyes, deep bruises on her shoulders and hips.