how the world works

Sharpe

The task Councilor Rexanthe had laid out before Enara seemed simple on the surface. Interview a survivor, one who seemed to have key details about the cult behind the attack on the clinic. Back when the explosion occurred, Enara had heard them speaking of the cult. So in all likelihood they had information and were willing to give it. Simple.

And yet her heart raced as fast as it had at the clinic, when the flames had licked at her clothing and a woman wielded a whip and wounded her and Kalem while trying to kill them and leave their bodies to the wreckage.

Maybe it was Felix’s presence. Maybe it was the weight of what would happen if she failed. Maybe she just knew how bad she was at speaking to others. It was probably all three and a hundred other reasons. No matter the source of her anxiety, she would push through.

The councilor had instructed her on where to go, and sent his seal before she arrived. Between that and Felix’s sergekeeper uniform, it had been quite easy to enter the hospital. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as a fellow doctor lead her towards the patient’s room. It was strange being here officially but not as a doctor.

Hopefully once this died down she could go back to just being a doctor for however many years she had left.

But until then, she was a civilian investigator. Just one with medical knowledge, which would hopefully prove useful at some point.

Their guide stopped outside a door, and Enara turned back to Felix. He’d trailed behind her all day, thought it was hard to read him he didn’t seem like he’d cause any trouble. Mostly she wanted him to help her seem more official and to keep an eye out. If this witness had the information they were seeking, the cult might want to silence them before any secrets were spilled.

“Listen, let me try to lead, okay? Jump in if I forget to ask something obvious, and other than that just keep an eye on the door.”

Felix rolled his eyes but nodded. For a second she felt a pang of loss, she and Virgil had been so close, but Felix felt like a stranger more often than not. Maybe if she’d tried harder, they could be closer. But then again, if they got close and she died in a few years, she’d just subject him to experience the same pain she felt now.

“Okay, let’s do this.” She said it more to herself than Felix. Enara took a deep breath, knocked, and called out as she opened the door. “Hello, I’m Enara, I’m here to have a chat if that’s alright?”

No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.

i could play the doctor

“Close your eyes, disaster's seed,
Hidden in the roots beneath;
Every root a knotted vein,
Every vein remembers pain.”

The lullaby falls almost heartbreakingly gently from my lips, as I approach the bed of the witness to the cult’s extracurriculars. She’s laying there asleep. So, so peaceful. I’m not surprised! Such trauma and injury takes quite the toll on the body.

“Shush your voice, my velvet blight,
The stars went blind to spare the night.
They scratched their faces from the sky,
So you would never learn to cry.”

I pull a sealed vial and a metal syringe out of my stolen physician’s robes. Don’t ask! I don’t kiss and tell. The liquid in the vial is a slate blue and feels physically warm against my palm, even in the glass. I unseal it with my mouth—yeah, yeah, yeah, horrible idea, I know, but my hands are full—and spit the top on the floor, swirling the vial to mix the liquid. Carefully, I put the needle into the liquid and begin filling the entire syringe.

“Sleep, my little poison bloom,
Swaddled in prophetic doom;
The river sings a lullaby
Of drowned hearts drifting slowly by.”

No, silly! I’m not drowning her! Goodness, you’re so dramatic! I mean…don’t get me wrong…I totally am gonna kill her, just not like that.

This handy dandy little poison is incurable. Magic, thoughts and prayers, sheer force of will… None of it works! Not even an antidote, considering how quickly this little concoction acts on the body. Sap from the heartbark tree, a dash of bastionite, and crushed soulberry. Let’s not ask about the banshee—I have a hunch I’ll have an issue on my hands when she finds out I don’t plan on following through with the wedding.

“Who are—”

“I’m filling in for your doctor,” I say with a soft smile to the woman waking. “You only need one more injection, alright?” She looks a bit confused, bless her heart, but she agrees. So, I carefully poke her and push the poison directly into her veins.

“Listen, let me try to lead, okay?” Comes a voice just outside the door. “Jump in if I forget to ask something obvious, and other that just keep an eye on the door.” Perfect timing.

“So hush, my starless, sweet delight;
The dark will tuck you in so tight.
It hums your name in gentle rhyme
And measures out your dying time.”

The knock comes, the door opens. “Hello, I’m Enara, I’m here to have a chat if that’s alright?”

I stand up and lock eyes with this Enara. Pretty girl, pretty name. Such a shame the chat will be cut short by her conversation partner physically turning to stone. Hope she won’t take it personally!

“That’s perfectly fine, Enara,” I answer, starting toward the open window, as I shrug off the stolen robes and drop them on the floor. In a fluid movement, I pull myself through the window and turn to face the room. “Have a lovely rest of your winter, and keep up the good work.” I lower out of view, then pop back up with a wide grin. “Would you mind tidying up for me?” My head nods to the empty vial and syringe on the bed. “Thanks, baby cakes!”

I lower as far as I can and drop from the second story window with a practiced roll into the grass, sprinting away from the hospital to get lost before anyone can even be alerted.

if you were a sinner

Sharpe

A lullaby of some sort drifted through the closed door, muffled and strange. Maybe a loved one had stopped for a visit? Then a voice responded to her own, inviting her in.

The moment she stepped through the door, something seemed… off. There were no loved ones, just a man in doctor’s robes that he quickly discarded as he opened the window. Son of a-

“Have a lovely rest of your winter, and keep up the good work.” The stranger lowered out of view, then popped back up with a sadistic grin. “Would you mind tidying up for me?” His head nodded to the empty vial and syringe on the bed. “Thanks, baby cakes!”

Enara surged forward, swearing and boiling with rage. At the patient’s bedside sat a lovely vase of flowers, which were quickly evicted from their ceramic home as she threw her upper body outside the window and scanned for her target. Felix grabbed her coat to prevent her from falling out as she chucked that vase with every ounce of strength and fury she could. Maybe it wouldn’t hit directly, but the shards from it breaking might.

For the first time in her life, half hung out the window, Enara wished she had wings and claws and teeth and could chase and tear and main and-

Felix pulled her back from the window.

Focus. The woman was still alive.

Enara shoved Felix to the door, barking out orders. Rage swirled but now it was focused on keeping this woman alive. “Go and grab some guards or keepers and bring that fucker back alive if you can, go now!” With that she shoved him from the room and grabbed another doctor’s robes as they scurried past.

“An assassin snuck in, used an unknown poison, get me some antidotes now.” She released the doctor, her voice thick with anger and fear. If she’d been only a few moments or minutes faster this could’ve been avoided.

She pushed the emotions aside and turned to her interviewee, and now patient. “Hey hey, it’s gonna be okay. I called for some other doctors, we’re going to help. You’re in a hospital, we can help. Until they’re here tell me everything you can about that man.” She tried to soothe the woman, kneeling at their side, though fear laced through her voice. She had no idea what poison had been used or how fast it would work.

---

TLDR:
Enara throws a vase at the fleeing assassin.
Enara wants her shifter magic back.
Enara sends Felix to rally a search party.
Enara tells another doctor of the attack and tells them to bring antidotes.
Enara goes to comfort the woman and find out information.

No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.

The lullaby is still in the room.

Not the sound of it, not anymore, but the shape it left behind, pressed into the air like a thumbprint in wax. The witness wakes into that lingering wrongness and immediately understands, with the cold clarity of terror, that something has been done to her.

Her fingers go first.

It starts as pins and needles, then becomes something sharper, teeth-bright, like ground glass being poured into her joints. She jerks her hands up in front of her face and sees the skin at her fingertips blanch, then shine. The color drains away as if it’s being siphoned out through invisible straws, replaced by a pale, glossy finish that catches the lamplight with a sickening polish.

She tries to bend a finger.

It does not bend.

Pain detonates through her hand so violently she makes a sound she doesn’t recognize as her own, a ragged, cracking sob that turns into a whimper when she realizes she can’t afford to waste breath on noise.

The stiffness is spreading. The stone isn’t a single clean wall, it’s a tide. It crawls in uneven lines along her knuckles, swallowing the soft parts first, chewing through sensation and leaving behind weight. Her fingertips feel heavy. Wrong. Like her hands are filling with something that doesn’t belong in a body.

Then her toes.

It creeps under the blanket in a way she can’t see, only feel, and that is worse. Her feet seize as if a fist has closed around each bone and decided to keep it. The arch locks. The joints freeze. Every attempt to move sends agony lightninging up her calves. She kicks once, reflexive and desperate, and immediately regrets it, the motion tearing pain through her like she’s being punished for remembering she’s alive.

She is crying before she realizes it. Tears spill down the sides of her face and gather hot at her ears. Her breath is too shallow, too quick, scraping at the inside of her ribs.

The door opens. A voice. Someone else in the room. A presence close enough that the witness flinches as if the sound alone might finish the job.

"Hey hey, it’s gonna be okay." Nothing is okay. "I called for some other doctors, we’re going to help. You’re in a hospital, we can help. Until they’re here tell me everything you can about that man.”

“I’ve never seen him,” she sobs, words tumbling out in panic. “I don’t know who he is. I swear I don’t. I’ve never seen him before.”

The syringe lies there like an accusation.

More footsteps rush in behind the first, fast and purposeful, the familiar bustle of a hospital responding to a crisis. Doctors, healers, hands reaching, sleeves brushing, voices stacking over each other. For a heartbeat, the witness clings to that noise, to the idea that trained people in a white-walled building means safety.

Then someone notices the syringe.

The room changes.

It’s subtle at first, the way voices catch, the way a healer’s hand hovers and doesn’t land, the way one man’s eyes go wide as he takes in the gloss creeping up her wrists, the unnatural line of petrification climbing her forearms like an evil vine.

A name is spoken, low and stunned, like nobody wants to be the one to make it real.

“Stonerot.”

The word hits harder than the pain does. It is a word with history in it. A word that tastes like funerals. A body that can't be burned.

Someone swears under their breath. Someone else takes a half-step back. Not from her, not from fear of contagion, but from that old, helpless recognition that this is the kind of poison that doesn’t bargain.

They all know it. The wide-eyed look spreads like a second illness through the room.

Incurable.

The witness feels it in their faces before she understands what the word means for her.

The stone is already in her arms now, climbing past her wrists, swallowing the tendons that let her flex her hands. Her forearms begin to ache with a deeper, grinding agony, as if her bones are being rewritten while she’s still inside them, as if the marrow itself is turning to grit. The change burns and freezes at the same time, a cruel contradiction that makes her body tremble.

She tries to pull her hands toward her chest, to clutch at herself, to hold some part of her still human.

Her elbows refuse.

Her forearms are too heavy. Too stiff. The motion stalls halfway and locks, leaving her arms raised like a broken puppet’s. The weight of them drags at her shoulders, and the pain that follows is blinding. She cries out again, raw and hoarse, and the sound is awful in her own ears because it is the sound of someone losing.

A figure moves near her, close enough that she can smell soap and wool and winter air. The witness turns her head with effort, terrified eyes searching for something to anchor to.

“You have to believe me,” she begs, voice shaking so badly the words fracture. “Please. Please, you have to believe me.”

More sobs. More tears.

“This isn’t over,” she says, panic making her sloppy, urgent. “It isn’t. The explosion wasn’t meant to happen.”

The sentence hurts to say. Everything hurts to say. Her throat feels tight, as if the stone has reached up into her neck to start measuring.

She shakes her head, frantic, and the movement makes her vision blur.

“I’m sorry,” she weeps. “I’m so sorry.”

Her arms are nearly overtaken now, the petrification crawling toward her elbows in a relentless line, swallowing her skin in that same glossy pallor. She can feel it eating sensation as it goes. The pain is sharpest at the edge where flesh is becoming something else, an advancing ring of fire and pressure.

“It was my fault,” she chokes out, shame and terror tangled together. “It was my fault.”

The room around her is a blur of faces and hands and horror. She tries to hold onto one pair of eyes, tries to speak fast, tries to get the truth out before her mouth becomes stone too.

“I was trying to stop them,” she sobs, words spilling. “I was trying to stop them from invoking it again, from making it another mass death like Determination Day. I tried to ruin it. I tried to break it before it could happen. I shouldn't have been doing this alone.”

Her lips tremble. The corners of her mouth begin to feel strange, stiffening in tiny increments between syllables, as if even her speech is being taxed.

“And it all went wrong,” she whispers, voice collapsing into grief. “It all went wrong.”

Sharpe

“I’ve never seen him. I don’t know who he is. I swear I don’t. I’ve never seen him before.”  The woman sobbed as Enara tried to comfort her. The attacker left the vial and syringe, maybe someone would know the poison and its cure.

All at once the hospital room erupted into chaos as doctors swarmed in, answering Enara’s pleas for aid. The flowers from the vase were quickly trampled, and the only good part of the day so far had been watching their vase smash open against the fleeing assassin. She didn’t want to enjoy the sight, but she had in that moment of feral rage.

Enara glanced back at the other doctors, waiting for someone to have the cure, the fix, some way to undo this mess. But then someone speaks up. “Stonerot.”

Shit.

Rage boiled up again, she wished that vase had slammed into his head and dropped him onto the ground. Maybe Felix would be able to catch up and stop him.

The woman’s pain, her tears, tore through Enara’s heart. This was the second time she couldn’t help her. Back at the clinic her magic had failed, and even if she tried to use it now, it would not help. Helplessness nearly brough tears to the corners of her own eyes. Nearly.

“You have to believe me,” she begs, voice shaking so badly the words fracture. “Please. Please, you have to believe me.”

“I do, I do.” Enara scrambled for her journal, pulling a pen out to write down the woman’s words. Even if her life was forfeit, there was still information worth killing for lingering in her skull.

“This isn’t over. It isn’t. The explosion wasn’t meant to happen.” What? The explosion wasn’t the goal? The woman sobbed out her apologizes, blaming herself.

“I was trying to stop them,” she sobs, words spilling. “I was trying to stop them from invoking it again, from making it another mass death like Determination Day. I tried to ruin it. I tried to break it before it could happen. I shouldn't have been doing this alone.”

Ah, that made a twisted sense. After Determination Day, the clinic had been a small scale attack. So few had died compared to before. Enara had assumed it was intentional, who hadn’t, but this was worse. They were planning another massive attack. She furiously jotted down the information in her notebook, the councilor needed to know.

“Who are they? Do you know their names? What do they look like?” If they could find even one other member, snap them up and keep them somewhere hidden from assassins, that could unravel the whole organization. “Anything you know could stop them. How did they cause the deaths at Determination Day? How are they going to do it again?”

She had theories already, if they were in the clinic invoking something, then perhaps they were tampering with the treatment at specific clinics and then using some horrid magic to active whatever they had added or changed. If their tampering was spread out enough, it could be disguised as truly random.

---

OOC Note: Vase hit Caen with Sage's permission!

No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.

Charlotte’s legs stop being legs.

The petrification has climbed past her knees and thighs with a speed that feels obscene, swallowing muscle and tendon into something heavy, glossy, unforgiving. It reaches her hips and locks there, a hard border of pain where flesh is still flesh and everything below is becoming stone. She tries to shift, tries to curl away from it, and the attempt only grinds agony through her like she’s being crushed from the inside.

Her arms are worse.

What started at her fingertips has marched up her forearms and elbows and keeps going, hungry and precise. The stone crawls over her biceps, into the soft hollow of her underarms, tightening the skin until it shines. It reaches her shoulders and her breath catches, because the weight changes, because her chest feels smaller, because her body is turning into a statue that still knows how to scream.

She does scream, once, a raw, tearing sound that cracks into sobs. Tears streak down her cheeks and disappear into the stiffening edges of her jaw. Her hands are half-raised and useless, locked in a pleading shape she can’t control. She can’t feel her feet at all now, only the brutal pressure of their absence, as if she’s been amputated and replaced with cold.

Voices crowd the room. Hands move. Someone says the poison’s name again with the flat horror of certainty, and the word hangs there like a death notice.

Stonerot.

The witness shakes her head as much as her neck will allow, eyes frantic, pupils blown wide. Her lips tremble, already fighting the slow, creeping tightness that threatens to steal speech next. Her breath shudders. The pain spikes at her hips, at her shoulders, at every place where living tissue is being rewritten into stone.

“They… they’re a group,” she forces out, swallowing hard. “A few dozen, perhaps. Normal men and women, I don't know, I don't know. Some had marks on their chest, like vile, green veins. There was a blonde woman, a silver-haired an... and one, who uses his veneration terribly.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, as if she can pull the image out of the dark behind her lids.

“He’s tall,” she whispers, and then it turns into a sob. “Too tall. Lean like a blade. Long hair. Always a long coat. Like he thinks the coat makes him untouchable.”

Her throat tightens. She coughs, a broken, painful sound.

“And they paint themselves,” she says, the sentence shaking. “Runes. They paint runes on their skin in blood.”

The room seems to go colder with those words.

“Not Loom markings,” she adds quickly, panic rising again. “Not the Loom. Not like that. The blood is from offerings.”

Her eyes search the faces around her, wild and begging, trying to make them understand the difference. Her shoulders stiffen more. The stone is not stopping. It is simply taking.

“They’re old,” she chokes out. “Ancient runes. They smear them on their arms, their chests, their throats. Like they’re making themselves into an altar.”

Another bolt of pain punches through her hips, and she goes rigid with it, teeth clenched. When she speaks again, the panic is still there, but something heavier crawls over it. Something grave. Something that turns her eyes hollow for a heartbeat.

“They’re invoking a god,” she says, and the word drags out of her like it costs her years.

She gulps air like it’s scarce.

“I'm a clinic worker, I paid attention, they were working out of them,” she rushes on, voice breaking, trying to outrun the stone, to give them whatever they can to stop this. “For a time. Moving in and out. Leaving things. Taking things. Changing little parts. Watching who comes and goes. I tried to stop it. I tried to ruin what they were doing that day and it all went wrong, it all went wrong and I…”

Her breath snags. She cries again, softer now, because it hurts too much to be loud.

“They’ll move,” she insists, eyes shining with terror. “They have to. After this, after today, they won’t go back. They’ll try somewhere new. Somewhere no one’s watching. You have to find them. You have to.”

Her voice drops, suddenly strained, suddenly careful, like she’s forcing truth through a narrowing crack.

“It’s not the Loom,” she says, each word measured against pain. “Not anything of Embrathis.”

Her lips tremble. The corners pull tight. Her jaw locks for a second and then loosens again with a whimper.

Sharpe

Enara watched as one of many in a sea of helpless horror as the woman’s condition grew worse. No cure. No one in the room could save her. The agony etched across her face turned Enara’s stomach. She turned to the other doctors.

“Are there any painkillers we can give her? Anything?” Even if her life was forfeited, shouldn’t they try and make it as painless as possible?

“They… they’re a group. A few dozen, perhaps. Normal men and women, I don't know, I don't know. Some had marks on their chest, like vile, green veins. There was a blonde woman, a silver-haired an... and one, who uses his veneration terribly.”

Enara scribbled down everything she could. If she couldn’t save this woman, she could at least make sure her death was not in vain. “He’s tall. Too tall. Lean like a blade. Long hair. Always a long coat. Like he thinks the coat makes him untouchable.”

It could’ve been true, she hadn’t heard of that exact magic item, but she knew of them. One resided within her pocket, a medical compress of some sort. Enara pulled it out and tried to press it against the woman in one last despite attempt to do anything at all. She didn’t know how it worked, she didn’t believe it would, but the least she could do was try.

“And they paint themselves. Runes. They paint runes on their skin in blood.” Enara scribbled again, knelt on the ground so her knee held up the journal as she wrote with one hand and helpless held the compress with the other. “Not Loom markings. Not the Loom. Not like that. The blood is from offerings.”

Offerings to what, if not the Loom?

“They’re old,” she chokes out. “Ancient runes. They smear them on their arms, their chests, their throats. Like they’re making themselves into an altar.”

Her stomach churned, but she continued to write every word. It was in her own shorthand, from years of tireless study and lecture notes. Later on she’d have time to write it up in plain language.

“They’re invoking a god.” A what? Her hand paused after the word. She underlined it three times before the woman spoke again and her notes resumed.

“I'm a clinic worker, I paid attention, they were working out of them. For a time. Moving in and out. Leaving things. Taking things. Changing little parts. Watching who comes and goes. I tried to stop it. I tried to ruin what they were doing that day and it all went wrong, it all went wrong and I…”

“You did what you could, you did well.” Enara tried to soothe the woman.

“They’ll move. They have to. After this, after today, they won’t go back. They’ll try somewhere new. Somewhere no one’s watching. You have to find them. You have to.”

That tracked. One location had been blown, literally, and a witness killed. The further they could distance themselves, the better.

“It’s not the Loom. Not anything of Embrathis.” A thousand questions popped up and were shoved down. Notes first. Information first. Everything else could follow.

“It’s a goddess. Not ours. Not from here.”

Fuck.

“Thank you, you’re doing so well.” Enara encouraged her, even as her mind shuttered from the information. Oh she needed to hurry to Wul- the councilor, and tell him this. How did some foreign goddess play into why the organics were being murdered?

“Do you know anything else about the goddess? Or the cult? Or about why they’re targeting organics?” What was even the best question to ask? With what little time remained in this woman’s life, was she waiting it on questions that couldn’t be answered? “I know it hurts, everything you say will help save lives.”

No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.

Charlotte cannot stop shaking.

Stonerot has climbed past her hips and shoulders now, locking half her body into a brutal, glossy stillness while the remaining flesh wages a losing war around the edges. The pain is everywhere at once and sharpest where the change is happening, a grinding, splitting agony that makes her breath hitch and snag in her throat. Doctors crowd the bedside in a blur of sleeves and hands and panic, trying to ease her suffering, but the look on their faces has gone from urgent to sickened.

"Nothing works on stone," one doctor says helplessly.

The witness sobs and forces herself to keep talking anyway, voice raw and wet with fear.

“I don’t know her name,” she chokes out. “I swear it. I never heard them say it plain. Only ‘Her,’. I don’t know her name.”

Her chest jerks with another cry as the stone creeps higher at her shoulders, tightening across collarbone. Her lips tremble around the next words.

“And I don’t know why,” she says, panic making her rush, “I don’t know why they’re targeting organics, or why it’s them and not others, I don’t know, I don’t know, I only heard pieces.”

She squeezes her eyes shut and gasps through the pain, tears slipping hot over her cheeks.

“They use blood sacrifice,” she whispers, then louder when she sees disbelief flicker across the room. “They do. They do. Offerings. Blood for the runes, blood for the workings, blood for her. I think…” Her voice breaks. “I think Determination Day was human sacrifice. I think that’s what it was.”

The room seems to tilt around that.

She starts crying harder, not from revelation now, but from terror. Her mouth twists as she feels the stone drag higher through her torso. Her breathing turns ragged and childlike.

“I don’t want to die,” she weeps at no one. “Please. Please, I don’t want to die.”

A small herbal compress is pressed to her skin in a last desperate attempt to do something, anything. It is the wrong tool for this nightmare. This is not what a compress like that is for. It does not stop the Stonerot. It does not slow it. The petrification keeps climbing with the same merciless certainty.

But the herbal coolness and scent does ease something.

Not the poison. Not the turning. Just the edge of the pain, briefly, enough that Charlotte’s face loosens by a fraction, enough that her jaw unclenches and her next breath comes less jagged. Relief flickers across her expression like a candle in a storm, thin and trembling, but real.

She grabs at that tiny mercy and spends it on words.

“Listen,” she rushes out, voice shaking with urgency. “Not all of them are there willingly. Not hostages. Charmed.” The word lands hard. “Charmed. Under magic control. But not like veneration, they have their wits about them, they act normal.”

Her eyes dart wildly across the faces around her, pleading for someone to understand.

“The green veins on their chests,” she says, breathless now, “the marks, the vile green lines, that’s part of it. It binds them. Makes them loyal to her. Makes them do what she wants. Her bidding. They’re charmed.”

The stone reaches higher through her ribs. Her body seizes. A muffled cry tears out of her as the petrification creeps toward her throat and the base of her neck.

When she speaks again, it is with the frantic focus of someone who can feel the door closing.

“Stop them,” she begs, turning what movement she has left toward Enara. “Please, stop them. You have to stop them.”

Tears pour faster now, her voice splintering under grief.

“I lost my whole family on Determination Day,” she sobs. “All of them. They can’t be allowed to keep going. They can’t. Please.” Her gasp is high and shallow, like her chest won't move to draw in the air. "Their Threads," she weeps. "Braided. Braid mine with them, my babies, under my pillow—"

The Stonerot takes her abdomen fully, then climbs through her chest in visible, shining bands. Her shoulders lock. Her neck stiffens. Her voice catches as the stone reaches the line of her jaw. Panic floods her face so completely it strips everything else away. She is only fear now, and pain, and the desperate need to be heard before she is gone.

Her mouth opens for one more breath, one more word that never quite makes it out.

A single tear gathers at the corner of her eye and spills free, rolling down her cheek just as the pale gloss overtakes it. The tear tracks across living skin, then over stone. Her lashes stiffen. Her gaze fixes. The petrification sweeps over her final eye in a hard, glassy shimmer.

Then there is no movement left at all.

Sharpe

The woman shook from the pain and the poison racing through her veins. From what the others said, there was nothing to be done. No relief to offer.

And yet the woman still spoke, even as death crawled up her skin, stealing her life away piece by piece.

“I don’t know her name,” she chokes out. “I swear it. I never heard them say it plain. Only ‘Her,’. I don’t know her name.”

Enara jotted it down, pen sliding across the page as she ignored the conflicting emotions brewing within her. How had this gone from a simple interview to a race against death to get information on an unnamed goddess and her cult?

“And I don’t know why. I don’t know why they’re targeting organics, or why it’s them and not others, I don’t know, I don’t know, I only heard pieces.”

Damn it.

“They use blood sacrifice. They do. They do. Offerings. Blood for the runes, blood for the workings, blood for her. I think…” Her voice breaks. “I think Determination Day was human sacrifice. I think that’s what it was.”

Nausea welled up in her throat. A mass sacrifice to an unknown god on the day meant to honor her own. And yet she wrote on. There would be time to process this later.

“I don’t want to die. Please. Please, I don’t want to die.” Enara held out the compress, watching for any sign of relief. It seemed to calm her a little, maybe it helped. It was all she could do. Helplessness had become a familiar feeling but the bitterness it wrought never eased.

“Listen, not all of them are there willingly. Not hostages. Charmed. Charmed. Under magic control. But not like veneration, they have their wits about them, they act normal.”

Each time she spoke some new depth of fear and concern opened up under Enara’s feet. New gods, new magics, human sacrifices, how deep did this rabbit hole go?

“The green veins on their chests, the marks, the vile green lines, that’s part of it. It binds them. Makes them loyal to her. Makes them do what she wants. Her bidding. They’re charmed.”

That was something, a small bit of hope in this. If there was a visible way to tell, that marked those who’d been bound against their will, then there was a chance to tell who was a thread. To round up the affected, keep them somewhere safe until someone could find a way to untangle them from the grasp of a goddess.

“Stop them,” she begs, turning what movement she has left toward Enara. “Please, stop them. You have to stop them.”

“I will. I swear I will.” Enara spoke without hesitation. Every step on this journey only strengthened her resolve, no matter how deeply it shook her. “This will help; you have helped. You’ve done enough.”

It may not have been enough, but it was all she could offer and it would not hurt anyone to let this woman die with some hope.

“I lost my whole family on Determination Day. All of them. They can’t be allowed to keep going. They can’t. Please. Their Threads," she weeps. "Braided. Braid mine with them, my babies, under my pillow—"

And with that her voice was stolen.

“I will, I promise I will.” Enara prayed her words reached the woman, though it was hard to tell if she could hear anything over the agony that plagued her. How cruel could her assassin be, to kill in such a horrid way? She reached under the pillow, and grabbed the threads, such a familiar thing to her now. “I’ve got them, I’ve got them.”

The seconds stretched on, feeling like hours as the stone climbed higher and higher, until no flesh remained.

Twice she’d failed this woman. Twice. At the clinic she hadn’t done enough to heal her, and now she couldn’t do anything but provide a scarce amount of relief and promises to a dying woman. If she had showed up even a minute or two earlier, this could’ve been stopped. But no, she’d moved too slowly, and now another person died.

Enara closed her journal, put it in her bag with shaking hands as tears clouded her vision. Once she closed the bag and had nothing more to do, she broke down. Tears flowed freely, sobs racked her body, as all she could do was sob into her hands, still clutching the stranger’s soulthreads.

[FIN]

No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.