[color=lightgray][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/YGxzxVR.png[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/AVwIuBJ.png[/img][/center]
[color=D0B4EC]Time:[/color] Evening 
[color=D0B4EC]Location:[/color] Tough Tavern
[color=D0B4EC]Attire:[/color] [url=https://i.imgur.com/cNnyMvV.png]Outfit[/url], [url=i.imgur.com/2SBcciZ.png]Amulet[/url]
[color=D0B4EC]Interaction:[/color] [@CitrusArms] Stratya  [@Potter] Olivia [@Lava Alckon] Drake [@Tpartywithzombi] Ariella [@Samreaper] Kazumin
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[color=lightgray] The light in her eyes had been snuffed out like a flame on a candle. 

It was as if someone had pinched the flame between their fingers. Those wide, empty pupils had been fixed on the body from the instant it hit the wood floor with that awful [i]thud[/i]. She hadn’t been able to drag her gaze away... Not even once. Beneath the table, her fingers were dug into her own knees, clutching through the fabric of her skirt so tightly she expected to feel her kneecaps crack under her grip, even as her entire body trembled.

The last few minutes hadn’t felt like time so much as a plunge into one long nightmare. 

It hadn’t taken long for her and Drake to find their seats once again by the group when it had all started. One moment, they’d been walking back in from the night; the next, it was as if the world had turned upside down.

Charlotte had been uneasy from the beginning, of course. It didn’t take a genius to notice the way ruffians seemed to seep in from every corner, or how all the laughter had ceased. She knew this would be bad from the moment that large man had shut the door. 

That was when the anxiety started. The certainty that in that moment she had been trapped. It rolled through her with a terrible familiarity, like déjà vu, as if some part of her recognized the feeling of being shut in with no promise of when—if—she would be allowed to leave.

But that had not truly shaken her. Nor had the gunshot. Nor the windows going black as if the whole city had been erased.

The nausea had started when that poor, innocent man began screaming. 

The sound of every splatter of blood hitting the wood tore through her as if the blade was being dragged along her own nerves. 

Her breathing had stalled in her chest. Then, rage had surged up so hard it made her legs twitch under the table, as if some part of her was ready to burst out of her seat and throw herself between them without a single thought for what came next.

[i]How could someone do that to him?[/i]

[b][i]Why was no one stopping him?[/i][/b]

The answer came as a man lurched to his feet and attempted to make a run for it. It felt as if she could somehow feel his fear thicken the air. The poor man hadn't even made three strides before his back wrenched into an impossible arch. His toes barely scraped the floor; his arms flew wide like a grotesque puppet. 

Her breath stopped in her chest as he hung there, suspended, eyes rolling white.

Then the unseen force flung him sideways. He hit the stone by the hearth with a crack that would haunt her for the rest of her days. She let out an audible gasp before she could stop it; her lungs suddenly felt too small as she struggled to pull in air. Her hand flew up to clamp over her mouth as if that might hold the sound of his panicked breathing in.

Charlotte couldn’t tear her eyes away from where he had slid down the wall and crumpled, his leg folded under him at a wrong angle, his head lolling. Hot tears spilled from her dilated eyes, running in streams down her cheeks and over the back of her hand. She hadn’t even known she’d been about to cry, and though no sound left her mouth, tears just kept falling.

The first thought that had made its way into her brain had been: [color=D0B4EC][i]That's maybe someone's husband... Someone's father... Someone's baby.[/i][/color] Her stomach lurched so violently she thought she might be sick right there, her mind circling again and again around the simple fact that he was no longer moving. She wanted, even if it was absurd, to drag herself over to his body, to shut his eyes, to hold him, if only because there was no one else there to do it, and that knowledge tore at her, body and soul.

[color=D0B4EC][i] I'm so sorry... I wish I could have protected you.[/i][/color]

Then for an instant, the body on the wall wasn’t his at all; it blurred and became another broken shape, blood spreading out in the same slow way from a head.  The two images slid over each other until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Black hair sprawled over grass that seemed to bloom up over a stone, and suddenly she was no longer in the tavern at all—she was back on the night outside her home in Veirmont, staring at the first dead body she had ever seen—[i]her mother[/i]. 

She stayed like that for a long time, simply staring at the corpse as the world around her blurred away, her teeth chattering against one another in tiny clicks.

The room went on without her.

She didn’t hear Ox’s threat. The shapes of the sounds brushed past her and dissolved. Her mind was still trying to understand how a person could be there and gone at the same time.

The first thing that truly pierced the fog wasn’t a sound at all.

It started as the feeling of resistance when she tried to breathe. She frowned without quite noticing, her chest hitching and her brows furrowing. Her body tried again on instinct, another inhale. This time, the air only went hard halfway down, as if it had run into a wall.

It became much clearer that an unseen force was tightening around her throat. Her fingers flew up from her lap to claw at her throat. No matter how wide she opened her mouth, she couldn't quite get in a breath of air.

Her eyes tore away from the corpse at last and jerked back into the present. She saw the glow of the fire, the bowed heads, the way people at neighboring tables were touching their throats, faces blanching as they felt the same phantom hands... [i]The sound of the man with the mauled hand weeping. [/i]

[color=paleturquoise]“Drink,”[/color] Charlotte's gaze slowly moved to the woman who spoke. [color=paleturquoise]“Or I close my hand and see which of you sings sweetest when the air runs out.”[/color] 

A tankard scraped against the table and bumped her wrist. She hadn’t seen who set it there. Her vision tunneled around it as she reached for it. Her fingers closed around the cup clumsily, lifted it with both hands, and forced the liquid past her tongue. It was only then did the grip on her throat slackened slowly and she took in a full, ragged breath.

[color=8FBC8B][i]"Do as they say. Please tell Drake to do as they say. I will protect you all..”[/i][/color] 

Olivia’s voice filled her mind. It took a moment of extra processing before she shook her head subtly.

[color=D0B4EC][i]No, Olivia… not here. Do not call on magic. Do not give them the slightest cause to turn their eyes to you.[/i][/color]

Her throat still felt tender, but she leaned toward Drake and gently brushed her fingers against him. [color=D0B4EC]“Olivia is right,”[/color] she murmured. [color=D0B4EC]“Please… no sudden movements. Just do as they ask for now.”[/color]

A voice by the bar then tugged her gaze. Kalliope was calmly trying to negotiate, as if it were a simple market deal, to pour the drinks instead. For a moment, Charlotte simply stared at her with worry knotting in her chest.  Her eyes lingered on her, hoping to the Gods that she knew what she was doing, before she forced her gaze back down to the wood beneath her hands.

That woman filled her mind, the one who had snapped a man’s life away without even moving toward him. She had given Charlotte a brutal clarity as to why the kingdom had become so suddenly intent on hunting down those who participated in witchcraft. It was powerful and [i]dangerous[/i] beyond anything she had ever dared imagine. And if her own aura had truly been what she once saw… then she, and Olivia too, were cut from the same cloth as that woman.

But there was no time for Charlotte to deliberate who she was or what she was. 

What mattered was that no one else ended up like that man by the hearth. And something in her felt fiercely so that she would die trying before she let that happen, even as the tears continued to spill down her cheeks.


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