Late 20s tgirl. Elf ear pervert. Some say hemipenis girl. Writing mostly original F/F. Stories will frequently be horny so if you're under 18 you're getting blocked.



caffeinatedOtter
@caffeinatedOtter

Heat and soap and soaking improve the elf's physical comfort, if not her mood. She presses cataloguing fingertips to the bruises from their tussle, tests the stiffness of her shoulder, lathers her hair, sinks low in the warmth and glowers over the bath's ripples.

Finally she climbs back out, briskly towels herself, clambers back into her clothes, and ascends the lodging-house's staircases. The paladin dies; she knows this. The paladin does not begrudge her many deaths, if they advance some usefulness; she knows this.

The internal violence with which the elf hates every one of the paladin's deaths is perhaps not rational. This, too, she knows; and she struggles to put words to it, for the paladin's benefit, or for her own. She tries; and founders. Her failures, tongue-tied and raging, catch alight instead in bruising fingers, teeth, pleasure waged furiously like war. Which is all very well, but she would like to know her own mind, and she would like to be known to the paladin. To make herself known to the paladin, all the more for the paltry extent to which there is any her to make known.

It's only being mired in this useless roil of thought that she can blame for her lack of awareness; she crests the steps from the basement baths to the ground floor entryway, and the dead wizard is there, only the width of the room away, a sudden surprise.

His revenance may be in imitation of Ryssa's undying, but he is unmistakeably dead. His flesh is waxen and sagging, eyes cloudy white, movements stiff and abrupt. The elf curses, arma insidiosa dropping into her hand; but dead eyes are on her already, and even as she steps forward, the wizard-corpse snaps one arm up before it, a movement that jolts it nearly to falling over.

The unsteadiness in no way prevents the explosion of actinic arcane fire that bursts her ribcage open.


It became rapidly obvious to the elf, after joining her in the Mother's service, that Ryssa's utter lack of fear of pain is not from any godly empowerment; solely from terrifying amounts of practice at enduring it.

As she opens her eyes, god-ridden, she is prevented from screaming only by the lack of air, chest whistling emptily through still-unsealed rents, even as her flesh bubbles and crawls over miraculously regenerated bone. She finds herself slumped against the wall to one side of the stairwell, a wrecked ragdoll, attempted breaths hitching in still-knitting lungs as the first arriving bystanders show up to mill and shriek and do nothing of use at all.

The dead wizard is on the ground. Unlike her, he lies neatly, presumably having laid himself out, arms at his sides.

Even as she blinks at him and manages to draw something like a normal breath of air, he jerks all over, and jackknifes, head snapping from side to side as if confused, seeking.

Because, of course, the revenant had fulfilled his mission. She was dead. And now she isn't, and couldn't have the luck for the accursed thing to simply stop, no. She pushes into a shaky crawl, reaching for her fallen knife; and then Ryssa flows down the steps from the floor above like a wall of blood-tinged water from a broken dam, sword swinging, and the wizard's head parts from its neck with a butcherly thud of impacted meat, rolling across the floor. The body drops, limp; the paladin seems scarcely to notice, hitting the shiny mosaic floor at speed, sliding on her knees.

The elf launches up to meet her, caught in a rough arm and pulled bruising tight to Ryssa's chest, half-articulated curses muttered into her hair.

For a second, it's the warmest place in the world, and the elf lets herself burrow into it, shaking.

It cannot last; she cannot let it.

Heaving air into her chest, she claws her way up to stare over the paladin's shoulder, fixes eyes on the body and the head, despite the hand twisted into the back of what remains of her clothes trying to pull her back in.

"Ryssa," she says, throat hoarse. "Ryssa. Watch."

Something that is not blood leaks slowly from the cut surfaces of neck, grainy, matte, blue-grey. It pools wrongly, edge sharp and scalloped into concave curves with sharp points instead of bellying outward like a liquid. The elf tugs impatiently out of the paladin's hold to scramble across the floor, craning close to see the way the points of the spiky-outlined puddle spread; each one tipped with a filament of the same blue-grey substance, which flails outward like a spider's leg.

The twin pools, from head and body, do not simply spread indiscriminately; she sees, gaze flicking from one to the other, that they are shaping across the floor, retreating from certain directions as much as they advance in others, seeking each other.

Behind her shoulder, Ryssa makes a noise of revulsion, takes a few swift steps, and kicks the head, hard, sending it flying into the stairway to the basement.

"We leave," she says, iron and fire. "So that this abominable thing follows us where it will hurt no innocents."

"Hibiscus," the elf says.

"I am here," the elven proprietor says from across the room, standing in a doorway with her arms crossed, fingers biting into her forearms. She stands straight, speaks crisp.

"Hibiscus-Blooms-Artfully-Arranged," Ryssa says. "My regrets; this...thing has followed us here to trouble you. We will not pause to pack; please try to recoup what you can from the money and few possessions we leave within our rooms."

"Would that I could tell you not to fret," Hibiscus says. "That is not going to simply cease its efforts to harm you, I presume?"

"I think not," Ryssa replies grimly, watching the prickly crawl of the body's fluid across the floor.

The elf pushes herself to her feet, and walks determinedly, if a little unsteadily, to where Hibiscus stands. "Lady proprietor," she says, conscious of the ruin of her clothes, the still-ugly mess of her chest beneath, the god's bloody miracle sliding downward from her elbows, coating her dangling arms. "I—" but there is nothing to say; she lifts her hands instead, takes blood-smearing handfuls of the other elf's robe, and lifts herself to tiptoe to press a hard, closed-mouthed, lingering kiss to her lips.

"Oh," Hibiscus whispers, when finally the elf pushes away. "Oh, child—" and she half-laughs, breathless, eyes shining wet. "Take care of your paladin, sweetness," and she turns to step away, pushing between uniformed porters and gawking guests and disappearing into the corridors of her disrupted domain.

Ryssa steps close and runs a careful hand over the elf's hair. "We'll come back," she murmurs, half a question, half a reassurance, and the elf turns into her, puts her face into the paladin's side.

"We leave," she says, on the out-breath of a huge sigh.


A rapid walk through the city, with only enough of a pause for Ryssa to empty her pockets of coin in the direction of a shopkeeper in exchange for unshredded clothes for the elf, and they find themselves exiting the gates.

"Have we any plan?" the elf says, rubbing the phantom ache of her exploded sternum.

"Walk," Ryssa says simply. "Wait for it to follow. See if anything kills it, and if not, lead it somewhere they'll do it for us."

"And where's that?"

"North," Ryssa says, and twists her mouth. "Not my first choice of destination, but — the Sergeant had it right. In Eisgriff, they'll hate a thing of the White Fastness even more than they'll hate us."

"The Iron Czars?" The elf stares at her. "We're looking for help from the mad icelocked bastards keeping alive the only warring one-against-all city-state-wizard-tyrant remnant of the Age of Mages? Really?"

"Help, no," Ryssa says, shrugs and smiles. "But we'll bait the revenant within their sights, if it comes to it, and let them treat it as a provocation and a weapon against them."

"Dangerous game, provoking a wizard fight." The elf casts a glance behind them, not that there's any hint yet of the pursuit they know will come.

"Elf." The paladin's smile straightens out, shines brighter; she reaches out a finger and brushes the back of it down her companion's hair, leaving the elf shivering. "Can't you tell yet? I like danger."


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @caffeinatedOtter's post: