Atalanta

The Sunday Group

“Get down!”

Jaelle needn’t have bothered. Mrs. Peterson was already kneeling, one hand grasped her husband’s waistband, and her other held her up, shaking against the dirty linoleum floor. Liam grunted with each strike of the door, his face flushed. They both looked so pale.

It was times like these when Jaelle felt the most useless. She couldn’t pick up a key, couldn’t help Mal fight off the attackers. No action she took could directly affect the outside world unless it was through influencing someone that could affect the world. So, what options did that leave her?

She could change her appearance— make herself look like something impressive or frightening, but somehow she didn’t think that tactic would work on these men. They were too cold, too unflinching in their attack on Mal. She watched him use magic both defensively and in attack, but neither of the suits blinked. Jaelle’s heartbeat surged in intangible fury; it felt real enough to her.

Mal needed help, and she couldn’t do anything.

The door gave, and Liam Peterson tumbled through it in a spray of limbs. Jaelle turned with them, taking in the shelves and cleaning supplies, and most importantly, the emergency exit. “Through that door!” she hissed. “Get out and head for the tree line! We’ll be right behind you.”

Blue fire began to encircle Mal’s hands, and Jaelle blanched. This was about to get messy—the sort of messy that led to too many questions about strange powers and otherworldly destruction. She hoped he could keep it contained to this space, but just in case Mal couldn’t, Jaelle scrambled for an alternative to the destroyer of worlds.

She ducked into the hallway, waited for the emergency door’s clanging alarm, and then forced herself into a different shape—herself but male, her hair buzzed, her shoulders broader, and her legs longer. She flickered a moment, trying to solidify the deception, but it was difficult to force herself into this different of a shape. By the time she managed it, the spell was nearly ready.

“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Jaelle leveled an incorporeal gun with steady incorporeal hands at the nearest of the attackers. He promptly shot through her.

Well, so much for that idea.

Jaelle turned and ran back through the hall, letting the illusion fade with the same relief as someone carrying too much weight might put down their burden. It would be up to Mal unless—please God— they got some help. By the time she reached the Petersons, Jaelle looked herself again.

She waved them on, directing them into the woods behind the backcountry gas station. Hopefully, the fear and adrenaline would keep them from noticing that she didn’t disturb the shrubs they passed.

O R I F L A M M E

R I G E V A N D

Interacting with Nettle @A Lowly Wretch

---

On the morning of their departure, Osanna waved goodbye to the red sisters in camp, tied a black ribbon around Dame Sabine Dupont’s scabbard, and headed to the city gates. This would not be her first time in Eskand. Osanna’s work had taken her into the Quentic areas of Drudgunze for months at a time, and on occasion, the northernmost reaches of the enemy’s lands. She was grateful to those trips now, for the practice in Eskand’s language, though she was well aware she didn’t speak it like a native.

Because she’d only visited Eskand through Drudgunze, this would be Osanna’s first sea voyage. She looked forward to it from descriptions in stories and the mouths of sailors. They called the sea a tempting mistress— unpredictable in her moods, but beautiful. Osanna could just see the red of a sun sinking below a watery horizon, feel the playful lapping of wind through her hair. Even Sabine called it “bracing” and she under exaggerated everything.

Osanna didn’t experience any of that.

She spent the voyage hanging over the ship’s rail, spilling bile into rolling water. Salt caked her lips and hair, and if someone spied her from the murk, she did not see them.

When the Parrench landed in Eskand, Osanna was one of the last to rise. She scraped herself off the bottom off the ship’s deck with pale fingers, several pounds lighter now than when she’d left. Never had she experienced anything so miserable as the sea, and she found herself dreading the return—stuck in a strange land with that misery her only way home.

The fishing village of Rigevand was a gray place in twilight. The black mass of Eskand’s capital darkened the sky above rock facades. The village was little more than a collection of longhouses and a few scraggly docks. Even the land was dull, lacking the green they’d left behind. Yet Osanna blessed the dock’s soft, salt-eaten wood as her feet came to rest upon it even if the world still seemed to sway.

She’d ended up at the end of their little party next to a slim girl. She had a wealth of green hair tucked into a rich brown cloak, and her boots seemed several sizes too big. Osanna remembered her, vaguely, from between bouts of sickness. She’d stuck with the tethered girl in the bow during the journey, but now that Maud was at the front pretending to be ‘Captain’ Gerard’s daughter, she looked very young and very lost.

Osanna smiled at her even as she stumbled, trying to re-find her balance. “How’re you holding up? I think I hate the sea.”

The overture didn’t elicit any response but confusion. Osanna looked away, her brow furrowed. From what she’d understood of this mission, everyone selected had distinguished themselves in the battle for something or another, so the girl was powerful or clever or both. It was possible that she was choosing not to respond out of dislike or temperament, but that felt unlikely, so the simplest reason was that she did not speak the language.

“Hello,” Osanna tried again in Drudgunzean, hoping that the girl didn’t speak anything further afield. “You look like you fared better on the journey than I did.” She smiled, to show she was laughing at herself.

---

Nettle herself looked up at the woman trying to engage her. Though a number of the crew had on occasion tried briefly in vain to speak with her there was no understanding of what they were saying. When the woman re-stated her words again in a language she could, albeit poorly, speak she still looked confused but at least the light of understanding could be seen in her eyes.

”Hhhm- mayh be?”

The woman cocked her head to the side, as though listening. “I’m Osanna. What’s your name? Have you been to Eskand before?”

The man at the docks waved them towards the village proper. Dark was falling in earnest now, the silhouette of the city in the distance disappearing into the sky. There was little light to see by other than torches at the end of the docks.

Though the environment darkened Nettle was no stranger to the dark, the swamps barely letting light through the canopy even on clear days. She was well accustomed to moving around in little lighting, getting by on more than just her eyes.

”Hh… HNettle ihs name. N-hh, I hhhave noht.”

“What do you think? I’ve never been this far into Eskand, but I suppose one shouldn't judge a kingdom by its fishing villages.”

“Ehhh…” Nettle looked around at the twilight lit silhouettes of the humble village and what buildings lie further off.

”Hhhit iss hh, villhadge? K-khhinghome? Hhhh… Hhit hhass p-perhsohnss… Ahnd b- bhoatss.” She was quite unsure of what to make of this place. It wasn’t much different from the fake caverns of the drudgunzeans or the parrancians for that matter. Not as tall as their ‘Castles’ as they call them but quite similar to the smaller places she’s seen along her brief travels.

“I guess by that logic it's pretty much the same. Ah well, we’ll get to see a lot more of it, if everything goes to plan. Of course, we’ll be burning it down, but, hey, got to enjoy it while you can.” Osanna smiled at her like she was telling a joke, though she kept her voice lowered as they slipped through the village. A couple of their designated captains stopped to talk to villagers from the largest longhouse.

”Hhhburn?” Nettle questioned, canting her head to the side. She didn’t quite know fully what she meant by that given the tone and the context. Was she being literal, was it a figure of speech? Who would want to set more fires? Aren’t those dangerous? She was starting to get worried. Well, more worried than she already was around man-beasts.

Osanna blinked, and she glanced around before speaking in a whisper. “Do you not know why we’re here?”

Nettle simply shook her head to indicate that she did not.

“You know that the Eskandr attacked Parrence. We did not completely win, so now they’re in the Parrench countryside. Some of our people are working to make them leave, but we’re here to save our friends taken as prisoners and to attack Eskand back. If we do enough damage, maybe they’ll come running back home, eh?”

”Hhhwe… Hsavhe friehndss ahnd fforhce Essskahndrhh t- to rheturnh?”

She asked to confirm if what she understood was correct. It made some sense, they needed to save the friends the other man-beasts took and then force them to return home. She wasn’t really clear on why fire was needed in any step of this process but rescuing their friends made sense.

“Precisely! I don’t think the others realized you don’t speak Parrench. But I’ll translate when we finally gather to decide what to do.”

Nettle simply nodded. While uncertainty was abound she couldn’t argue with the idea of rescuing the man-beasts these other ones captured. What else they had planned she did not know but at this point a lack of knowing what was happening around her seemed to be a perpetual state of things. One can miss the simplicities of life in the swamp once they realize it’s gone.

---

O S A N N A

It was sometime later that they reached Birger’s grotto, a cave tucked into the mountains near Rigevand. Osanna’s eyes felt tight and itchy, the torches swimming through her vision like fireflies trailing streams of light. She wanted nothing more to find some quiet, dark place and sleep for hours to make up for the long night and the miserable journey that had led up to it.

Instead, she followed the line of Parrench into the cave and gathered around the fire with the others of the inner circle, peering down at the map of the area. It matched others that she had studied before, though was crude and lacking in detail. Osanna yawned. What strange turns her life had taken lately—from a near-solitary existence as one of Echeran’s assassins, to fighting in battles and working as a team. It was different, but not entirely unwelcome. Constantly traveling alone got dull.

This next part, though, felt familiar.

”We’ve got a lot to do,” she said, first in Parrench and then in Drudgunzean. “But I think the worst thing we can do is go in blind. I volunteer to scout the most important targets unseen so that we can better put together a plan. In the meantime, we need to lay an escape route—traps, misdirections, anything to stop the Eskandr from following when it's time to get out of here. For those of you from this are, it might be useful to meet with any contacts that remain loyal, though only if you trust them with the fate of Parrence, and even then, don’t tell them why you’re here.

The Sunday Group

Jaelle was still standing in the camera room when the car pulled up. Even in the grainy, thumbnail image in the screen’s corner she could tell it was sleek, but after four years of navigating this world, she still couldn’t tell the cars apart other than ‘big’ or ‘small’ or ‘truck.’ Two men stepped out in black suits and sunglasses—not much different from Mal’s “The Authorities” disguise. They just looked like more law enforcement to her, but Mal must have sensed something because his mental shout was enough to rattle her intangible teeth.

Jaelle raced back to the front, taking in the sight of the female gas station owner reaching down for something behind the desk and Mrs. Peterson stepping closer to her husband. They wouldn’t have long before the men entered, but they didn’t seem to be in a hurry. One pointed at the parked cars, and they exchanged a few words.

Mal’s fixation on Sherlock Holmes aside, Jaelle had seen enough Law and Order to know that, in a situation like this, you were supposed to protect the witnesses.

She made herself visible, wearing her own image, but altered slightly, her Roma garb replaced by a copy of one of Eleanor’s blouse-and-skirt combos. The sort that gave the impression that she was the person you ought to trust to know what was going on. So as not to overly startle anyone, Jaelle slipped from around one of the aisles of snacks instead of simply appearing, and wore a smile that she hoped would put the Petersons at ease. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson. For your safety, please come with me through the emergency exit while my colleague and the owner find out more about these visitors.”

The gas station owner glared at her. “Where the hell did you come from?” but Mrs. Peterson was well over her head. She seemed glad of any sort of direction.

“Come on, Liam. I think that’s an excellent idea.”

He dug his heels in. “We said we’d wait until—“

“Until the authorities came, yes. And it looks like they’re here.” Debbie Peterson hauled her protesting husband to the door where Jaelle stood and reached for the handle.

It didn’t turn.

The gas station owner cursed. “Here, I’ll get—“


The distorted electric bell chimed with the arrival of the two men. The one in the front took off his glasses, revealing warm, gold eyes set in a well-structured face. His skin was dark, and his hair buzzed nearly to his scalp. He looked at Mal, at the gas station owner, and finally toward Jaelle and the Petersons. He sighed and his partner, a shorter man with a wealth of curling blond hair, shrugged. “Told you we’d need a cleaner.”

Gold-eyes reached into his jacket and pulled out a silenced pistol.

The Sunday Group

“Too tangible, ha ha. I can’t touch anything, remember?”

Jaelle slipped from the red world and into the too-bright Louisiana sun. It was hot enough that the air above the asphalt road shimmered in the distance, though she couldn’t feel it, and those at the gas station were beaded with sweat from the few moments outside that it took to fill up their cars. Despite her sarcastic remark, Jaelle kept herself carefully invisible to mortal eyes—she was just too irritated with Mal to be nice about it.

“We’ve talked about this. Just because I’m tied to that damn staff doesn’t mean you can go haring off on whatever plan without telling me. I might have useful ideas! Insights! Opinions! I’m not a dog that you can pull around on an invisible leash.”

Mal was like a brother to Jaelle. He had saved her from the void of indeterminable years and helped her find a much more interesting existence with the Sunday Group. When he wasn’t trying to show off, he was funny and nice and fun to be around. But damn her fading remains if he wasn’t so self-absorbed that he forgot the people around him were intelligent beings as well.

The gas station was of the typical, back-roads sort. Two old pumps sat beneath a cover that looked to have been half-blown away by the last hurricane. A sizable corner was missing, the rough edge showing the frame and torn plastic. The car at the pump left with a fuller belly, leaving the lot empty except for two vehicles parked to the side. The windows advertised The Double Gulp for 89 cents around a big plastic cup spilling soda, and the over-stuffed cigarette disposal was surrounded by a halo of fallen smokes.

They stepped inside to the distorted jingle of an electronic bell, and three sets of eyes turned towards Mal. A middle-aged couple leaned against the far wall, exchanging anxious looks, and the decidedly unhappy store owner glared at Mal over her glasses, her curly hair pulled back in a tight, frizzy ponytail. “Welcome to 7-Eleven. Do you want gas or tobacco?”

Jaelle floated up a couple of inches to whisper in Mal’s ear. “I guess those are the Petersons— Primrose’s witnesses. I’ll go see if I can find where they keep the cameras.”

She sped off through a series of poorly-stocked shelves of cheap chips and candy. There was a shut door to one side of the garish Big Gulp machine, but she didn’t bother trying to see if it was locked. Jaelle just slid through, her body warming slightly with proximity to the mortal plane.

The hallway behind the door was disappointingly mundane. A bright yellow rolling mop bucket sat overturned in a square basin, its mop hanging above so that the discolored head dropped the occasional plop of murky water. Other cleaning supplies cluttered once-white shelves next to bulky wheels of toilet paper and paper towels. The door to an employees-only bathroom was open, showing stained tile, and crates of merchandise stacked against the walls in lopsided towers.

So much stuff. They’d never be able to take it with them if they left.

Just before the emergency exit on the far end, there was a second door. Jaelle went through into a closet stuffed with a desk stacked with old papers and an HP monitor showing the paused video of their victim’s car. She could see Mal and the witnesses in the live feed minimized in the bottom left corner, but none of the angles caught the edge of the crime scene down the street, and she could tell nothing about the victim’s car from the stilled image.

“Play!” she said, but nothing happened. “Google Assistant, play!”

Jaelle growled. The thing was too outdated for such useful features, and chances were they wouldn’t necessarily work with the program anyway if she’d been listening to Flint right. Hopefully, Mal would have more luck with the Petersons, or the others would find out something about the magic.

The Sunday Group

Sweet! I'm going to wait to see what Primrose does, and then I'll reply.

O R I F L A M M E

R E L O U S E

---

A F T E R M A T H

Osanna shoved through the city gate in a tide of bodies. Armored forms jostled her broken arm, elbowed her sides, and pushed her into other soldiers in their haste to answer the call. Many were wounded, and their screams tainted the night, the smell of blood and shit and vomit heavy in the air.

For a Black Rezaindian, death was usually a tidy thing. Osanna slipped open locked doors in the darkest hours, dealing in poison and quick-slit throats. She left bodies slumped over desks or in their cups or curled beneath a crimson blanket in their beds. The judgment of Echeran was swift but not cruel. By contrast, this war was filthy.

When she was finally through, Osanna stumbled through muddy streets until she found a wall to lean on, pressing her shoulders against cool stone, the squelch and slick of mud beneath her feet. Her hip throbbed with the trickle of blood she’d not been able to stem one-handed. Her collar and left arm ached unless they were jostled and then lit up with fiery pain. She needed care, needed to get to a mender.

The makeshift tents for the wounded smelled worse than the stampede of soldiers filtering through the gate. A miasma of pain and rot tainted the air like poison, and Osanna gagged as she was pushed into a cot. Time passed in strange leaps and jolts. The figure of a soft-faced boy in a giant’s armor swam beneath her eyelids, and the man in the cot nearest her died gasping, blood gurgling from his lips.

And then, the miasma began to lift. Two women moved through the tent, laying their hands on the ill. Osanna looked up into the eyes of a sharp-faced Yasoi lady, and her bones began to knit together.

---

M O R N I N G

“Osanna.”

Osanna opened her eyes to sun-lit canvas, the warmth of late morning heating Dame Sabine Dupont’s tent. The lady sat within arm’s reach, pulling a tunic down over pale skin and reaching up to tie back red hair. Osanna yawned and scrubbed at her face, trying to rub away the beginnings of a headache. Her mouth was parched.

“What are you doing that for?” Osanna couldn’t imagine that the Parrench army was leaving already. They needed time to recoup their losses and recover from their wounds, and there was the small matter of the Eskandr army outside the walls. She hooked a finger in the hem of Dame Sabine’s leggings, only to be swatted away.

“You need to dress too. The king has called for us both to meet him at the red table, though unfortunately not at the same time. It seems we’re needed for two different reprisals.”

“Whatever will I do without you around to sweep me off the battlefield?”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “I suggest you keep a better hold on your horse.”

Osanna groaned again and sank back into the bedroll. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance she made it back within the walls before they closed.”

“You might be surprised. Horses tend to return to the nearest source of food, and you lost her at the beginning of the battle. Now up, oh battler of Nashorns.”

“You still don’t believe me, then?”

“I’m starting to— begrudgingly. I overheard soldiers talking today about the little nun who took on the giant. Though you’re not that small. It’s still up in the air.”

“Hah hah.” Osanna pulled on her trousers and buttoned her sword belt over them. “I’ll show you little if you meet me on the sparring field.”

“I’d rather meet you back here if we don’t get shipped off today. Go, or you’ll be late."

---

T H E R E D T A B L E

Osanna met Arcel’s gaze as he looked briefly at her and glanced around the round table, her eyes lingering briefly on a pale girl with green hair and an older man in Rezaindian robes that she had not seen before. It wasn’t clear what his order was— Red, maybe? Unless he was here to care for the dead.

She listened to Arcel’s speech dutifully enough, but in the end, it did not matter much to her whether he sent her to steal into the Eskandr camps or to slip, wraith-like, through their halls. The archbishop had been clear—Osanna was to treat the king like a superior in the church, and it did not change much to have the order come from an abbot or a bishop or a monarch. It was the same job, and she’d always enjoyed doing it well.

Osanna sat back in her seat. “When do we start?”

The Sunday Group

Jaelle hung in a red world.

From within, the bloodstone felt almost incomprehensibly vast, a hollow sphere of red stone, the edges of which blurred to indistinguishable blood-fog with distance. It was lit from outside so that she could only see the color now because of daylight. All those insufferable years in the dark of a tomb, she had seen nothing but black. It was silent now, though when the edges of the living world lay close to that of the dead, moans and voices slipped through.

The bloodstone was a necessity of Jaelle’s continued existence in the world unless she wanted to fade away, to lose her mind to the vast nothingness beyond. But that couldn’t keep her from hating it. Prison and lifeline in equal parts.

Time did not seem to pass quite the same while she hid within, so it was not long before the light around Jaelle changed—morning sun to a bright, phosphorescent glare. She relaxed. The cop that spoke to Eleanor at the crime scene made her more than a little uncomfortable, even invisible as she could be to mortal eyes. If she and Mal were inside somewhere, they had likely gotten away fine.

With a little bit of effort, Jaelle moved toward the edges of the bloodstone, the space of a few millimeters stretching ahead like miles. When she finally made it, she pressed her face to the inside of the stone, squinting at the fuzzy shapes of the world outside—sharp edges, bright lights, the softer forms of desk chairs.

The office?

Jaelle took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and imagined a door on the inside of the gem. It bloomed into existence, the same red hue as everything around it, but with a big, old-fashioned handle. Light leaked from the keyhole, white and green and promising entrance to the real world. She reached out and turned the handle. Leaving the bloodstone didn’t feel like much of anything, really—like stepping through an inanimate object. Then she was out, the world immeasurably brighter and full of color. It was a good thing she didn’t have physical eyes any longer, or the difference might have been uncomfortable.

She was in, of all places, Mal’s office. It was fine as far as offices went, she supposed. More carefully decorated than Mal’s house with impressive-looking magical objects and thick, dusty tombs lining the shelves. Disappointing. She had wanted to see something more interesting than Mal chanting to yet another rock in his collection.

“Mal, why are we here? Aren’t there like people to question? Clues to track down? Strange, hidden parts of New Orleans to uncover? I thought Primrose said something about witnesses at a gas station.”

Honestly, why he insisted on spending so much time at the same few places every day was beyond her. People these days were far too well-rooted. Never mind security! There was a whole world out there, and they could still touch it. Why waste that time in one place?

“What are you doing, anyway? Did the others come back too?”

The Sunday Group

I'm having to take an unexpected flight home due to a family emergency. Jaelle can accompany Mal out of sight if need be. I'm sorry to do this to you guys, and I'm looking forward to writing with you more when I return.

O R I F L A M M E

B A T T L E: T H E N A S H O R N

Interacting with The Nashorn @Force and Fury

---

East of the beach, Osanna found a measure of peace tucked under the protective edge of an overturned wagon. She took a long draw from her waterskin, letting go of the magic hiding her now that she had a physical barrier, and started to draw. There was plenty to draw from—the thunder of the waves, the clash of steel, even the grunting effort of bodies. Arcane was little aid with the sky so dark, but that would only prove to her advantage when Osanna needed to hide again.

She closed her eyes. Here, protected, the battle felt far off, just a roar of noise and movement in the background. In this relative still, she began to pray, her lips moving in silent words to the Death God, words meant for no mortal ears. In her supplication, she found respite from anger and frustration and rest for her body after the exertion of the battle so far.

There was much to be thankful for. Osanna was alive, unharmed, and now, once more filled with what power she could command. It was time to stop playing soldier and start acting like the assassin she had spent her life training to be. The shadows were both her best defense and her weapon of choice. Now, she would use them.

Osanna slipped out of her makeshift shelter and into the night, drawing her cloak around her armor and the hood over her head to hide the glints of metal and skin. She would need to be conservative with what magic she had. The rain-slick forms of bodies still thrashed in bloody effort to the west, but much closer, Osanna watched a beam of light brighten Sir Rodric’s face before hitting his opponent in the chest. The mountain of a man kept his feet, and Rodric, by contrast, looked shaken. Osanna moved in to lend him aid.

Osanna slipped in behind the brute while his back was turned, but some minuscule noise must have given away her approach and without the covering of shadows, he easily repelled her first blow. Deftly, she dropped back, disappearing from sight as a knight charged in from the other side. She reevaluated the opponent, watching closely as he deflected the knight's arrows and sent them flying back towards him. This was not going to be a simple encounter.

“Esheran, empower me,” she whispered, moving around her opponent under the cover of night and magic. With him reeling from Rodric’s attack, she pressed the advantage, raising her sword to pierce through the eye open behind the slit in his helm. She felt no remorse for the death of this man. He would go to Echeran, be judged and kept.

The blade went in, but not as deeply as Osanna had intended, and the Nashorn shoved her away, roaring as she danced back out of harm’s way. Before she could catch her breath, before she could call for the magic to hide her or put some distance between herself and this beast, he attacked. Osanna threw up her sword to block the mighty blow, but it wouldn’t be enough—couldn’t be enough. She closed her eyes, knowing calm in her core, but the blow never came.

When Osanna looked again, the Nashorn’s charge had ended in a black-crystal replica of her that shattered even as she watched, the fragments turning to smoke and then dissolving into so much air. Praise Echeran. She did not stop to taunt the Nashorn but let the night swallow her and danced away while he raged at the spot where she had once been.

Osanna needed a new plan. Her allies were being drawn away by more adversaries, and her technique of slowly weakening a larger opponent through blood loss was not applicable given the Nashorn’s armor. Thank Echeran, she had more than one trick up her sleeve. Instead of going again for a full-on attack, she opened the sealed container of poison darts at her hip and readied herself for a series of glancing blows aimed only at the joints and straps of the juggernaut’s armor. The darts rose like wasps behind her, silent for their lack of wings, and when she directed them at the opening she’d created at his shoulder, he bowled through them as though they were nothing.

Heat crackled along Osanna’s skin, and she was forced to drop her cloak of shadows, drawing frantically for more power from the battle and the waves. There was no time. Osanna was not a strong magic user, but the amount of Thunder that the Nashorn drew left a void in the energy of the night like a hole in the universe. It was the only warning she had before she flung herself away from the resulting blast, landing hard on her belly and pressing close to the damp earth. Wet seeped into the chinks in her armor, and she shivered even as heat scorched the air where she had been standing only moments before, singeing her back and shoulders. She panted for a beat, not entirely sure how it was possible that she was still alive.

There, just barely visible in the light of distant torches, Osanna could see the black of dart fletching against the giant’s shoulder. It worked! Now, to see if she could do it again. With the power she’d drawn, Osanna repeated her last attack against the Nashorn’s opposite shoulder, her last darts rising from her pouch.

---

T H E N A S H O R N

She had escaped. The Nashorn was beyond words. He howled and charged at her, but there were more of those darts: those accursed darts! She was accurate again too, and the little things were so hard to pick out in the haze of battle and all of its various energies until they hit. His other pauldron fell, and one of the straps holding his helmet on, but he stopped the final dart: the one that would've struck his opposite shoulder. For a moment, without his massive shoulder guards, the behemoth felt... just a little bit smaller, a little bit weaker. He felt - a wave of vertigo assaulted him, and he knew that something was wrong. That dart was poisoned. It had to have been poisoned. As panic set in, he felt for its insidious Essences and tried to smash every single one of them.

The Nashorn pounded away at the poison. He could feel it in his veins, in his muscles, in his head, and he hated it. Slowly, though, he won against it, and let out a roar of fury. He blinked, still not feeling completely his normal self, and began to gather energy for an attack to finish matters. The woman disappeared again before he could unleash his attack, shadow blows snaking out of the night to cut at his head and shoulders. She nicked the strap of his helm, but he lashed out with one manacled arm and kept her at bay.

---

O S A N N A

Osanna did not quite believe it when the Nashorn's gauntlet closed over her wrist. She was too fast for this—too clever. She did not get caught. With a punctuated shout, she lashed out at him with her free hand, but he grabbed it too, surprisingly fast, and panic finally began to set in, cold and squirming in her chest. The magic hiding her bled away, and she spat in his face, white foam bubbling on the juggernaut helm sitting loosely on his head. "I will not fear you!"

And then, the earth dropped away, the night blurring around her as the Nashorn swung Osanna over his head like a child having a tantrum. Frantically, she summoned Force energy, throwing it gracelessly against the ground to absorb the impact. The second time he slammed her into the earth, she was not fast enough. She heard her bones crack open in her forearm and collarbone before she felt them, and then the pain came like a wave, threatening to drown her senses. Tears streamed from her eyes, adding their moisture to the already muddy earth.

It wasn't over. Osanna screamed as the Nashorn yanked her up from the ground again, jagged bone tearing into flesh and tendon. She was going to die. The ground was rushing up to her, her body empty of power. She found the only thing she regretted was not sending the Nashorn to Echeran before her.

The impact never came. Water rushed up around Osanna, some other fighter's weapon now a cushion to her fall even as it soaked her armor and washed the sweat and dirt from her face in a rough torrent. The Nashorn staggered back, losing his grip, and Osanna was left splayed in the aftermath of the wave.

She was not whole, but she still had one good arm, and her sword had fallen between her and her quarry. A deadly, killing calm settled over her, clearing her head. Osanna would not die today.

And neither would she lose.

Osanna sucked in a breath, drew power, and tensed to spring, dashing across the ground in a head-long sprint. She grabbed her sword from the earth and whipped it up to attack the Nashorn, dancing away when he reached an arm up to block it. She would not be stupid enough to stay within his reach again.

"I hate you! You intruder, you poisoner of peace! I hate everything you stand for and every overpowered fiend like you! I mark you as belonging to the God of Death, heathen, and I will take your life in his name!"

---

T H E N A S H O R N

The blade clanked off of his armor, but a new caution had wound its way into the giant. He had no armor to cover his shoulders, and most of the rest of it was filled with heavy water that still dripped and trickled from the gaps, exposing clearly where they lay. The woman screamed at him, then, in a language that he did not understand, the same way that many had screamed at him.

The Nashorn did not care. He had been a weapon since he could walk, and it had brought him all that he had, all that he was. He had been 'stupid' in the eyes of all since he had failed to speak as a child. Voices flung at him like weapons were nothing new, and he would break them with deeds instead of further words.

This stinging one was wet: covered in water and holding metal. He pulled from the charges in the air and unleashed them upon her to stop that flapping mouth and those stinging hands.

She was too quick, her small form twisting out of the way like a dancer or a hawk in flight. Laughter burbled from her lips, a sound that carried across the field despite the noise of battle. And she was coming for him again. She was quick, but not quick enough to entirely avoid his blow. The horn gracing the top of his helm scored a deep line across her injured shoulder, and her laughter turned to screams.

For a moment, The Nashorn gloried in his triumph, but then her sword thrust up like a bullet to slip beneath the edge of his helmet and skewer him in the neck. He rolled to the side, and it lanced through his armpit instead. Ligaments and tendons snapped, and he roared in pain. The arm hung limp, and he glowered at her. They were up towards where the cliffs began, now, and there was material enough for something different. Instead of doing the obvious, however, he drew from the sand itself, making blades of it: blades of his own.

He flashed at her, artless but unstoppable, each blow heavy enough to bring death if it landed. She dodged him, nimble as a snake, and lunged forward, taking off his helm with a well-aimed strike. Her eyes widened, and he knew why, knew what she saw. He could see the image of him change in her eyes, from steel giant to soft, boyish man, all blond hair and plump cheeks. He growled, and one of his blades found the flesh of her hip.

The woman gasped and stumbled back, clutching the wound. For once, she did not try to strike him again, only disappeared for a moment, her magic faltering as she stumbled back to the walls, and sharp horn blasts signaled the Parrench retreat. The Nashorn leaned back, glaring at the sky in anger and frustration before forcing himself onward despite more wounds than he had suffered in years. He had not defeated her, but he would still prove his worth that night.

Synopsis

-Osanna engages the Nashorn with allies who are eventually drawn away to fight other battles.
-They fight until they’re both barely standing, and the retreat is called.
-Osanna heads to the walls with a broken collar bone, broken arm, stab wound to the hip, and plenty of smaller cuts and bruises.
-The Nashorn is left without much of his armor, bleeding from a stab wound to the shoulder and several smaller wounds, and without one of his eyes.

The Sunday Group

Jaelle’s opinions on…

Malcador Ravenwood: "Somewhere between my best friend and an annoying brother I can't get rid of. Depends on the day, really."

Primrose Chastain: "Don't know her, but I don't like her either. It's not a fair judgment, but then again you can't get much further from the Roma lifestyle than an heiress born with a silver spoon in her mouth."

Fynn Laplace: "I love technology! Have you seen youtube? You can learn anything there! The day Flynn figures out how to let me interact with tech directly will be the second-best day of my unlife. That guy is great. Also, he's fun to mess with."

Eleanor Tregellan: "She's a friend that I have a lot of respect for. She's seen some crazy things, and she's still a good listener. I look up to her—despite the fact that I'm technically the oldest person here—, and find her attitude towards Mal absolutely hilarious. I know I can't like touch anything, but I want to prove that I'm useful."

Alyx Bellamy: "She's the new girl. It's always fun to see how The Sunday Group's neophytes react to the in-house spirit—you'd be surprised how many of these occult types are taken aback. I like all the music she makes just walking around the office, but find her germophobia absurd. Hand sanitizer didn't even exist when I died, and I was fine. Well, until I wasn't. LOL. But that, of course, had nothing to do with germs. It all started on a steaming day in Venice, Italy. It was too hot for one lover, never mind two, but who am I to say no? I snuck into..."