Song of the Fall

[Rance]

She screamed when she'd seen the dreamcatcher break before her eyes.

There, that very moment, where all three of their hands had been grasping for the artifact, confusion was at its prime. Pyra had thrust the dreamcatcher towards Sings-in-the-Fall -- Khalika, in her fit of rage, had reached for it to keep Pyra from completing the exchange. Sings-in-the-Fall had been gripping at it, too. She was but moments from retrieving the artifact, moments from making it hers and returning it to her homeland, where it rightfully belonged. Every droplet of sweat upon her brow was another moment of suspense, and even as sweat dribbled into the wrinkled, moist flesh where her face had once been burned, she did not care. She had eyes only for the dreamcatcher.

She wanted to go home. This land, it made her sick. If she returned without the dreamcatcher, Fury-of-the-Winds would likely muder her. And here, she was only a hand's grasp away from it, and she was reaching. She stared in Khalika's eyes, and then in Pyra's as well. The dreamcatcher was hers.

And then, it had broken.

To hear its delicate twigs snapping was to feel her every bone shatter within her, it seemed -- her heart clenched itself into a tight, stone fist, and the sound echoed in her ears like the words of some diseased spell.

"No!" She had managed to cry. Every prediction of the outcome of that meeting might have been shattered in those few desperate moments. Pyra had meant to pass the dreamcatcher to its seeker. Khalika, she had not -- and Pyra had raised a dagger and had cut it towards the gypsy's throat, seemingly to keep her from ruining the peace of the situation. But it had not helped. The dreamcatcher's sinews were torn between them.

Sings-in-the-Fall did not remember tearing the bone-handled knife out of the sheath at her side. Nor did she remember clutching it within her desperate, white knuckles. But she did remember the satisfying, disgusting vibration that surged through its hilt and in her bones as she rammed it down to the hilt between Pyra's collarbone and shoulder. She did not remember beginning the Song, either, but it had come -- a wild, horrendous shriek from the pits of her stomach that sounded as if Hell itself had given birth to it. It was the same high-pitched banshee-wail that had torn the hearing right from the ears of Khalika's lover.

The blood reeked of treachery, and though it felt like laval, like magma had been spewed from the wound she'd torn in Pyra's breast, she did not care. In graceless, wretched emotion, she ripped the blade free and stumbled backwards, holding it high as if it were a prized trophy. It was, as if all of a sudden, the delicate woman's legs had grown weak -- and she leered up the bloodied length of the blade towards the moonless sky above. A fragile, hopeless warrior, she clutched with both hands at the blade with which she'd pierced Pyra's chest. Her eyes stared at the skies above, and in a voice as thin as a whisper and as dark as midnight, she mused while the echo of the scream faded off into the distance, and was swallowed up by the trees of Myrken Wood.

Simply chuckling, and dropping to one knee, the woman threw back streaks of burned, black hair. "... then my mission is failed," she gasped, the corner of her lips drawing upwards into a slight smile. ".. and I should not return." Scalplocks brushed about her shoulders. A bloodied tear streaked down her black face, where the shadow of the raised blade dribbled Pyra's burning blood along her nose and cheeks. Through this gory canopy, she smiled and rolled her eye from the point of the dagger, over across Khalika where she lay, and finally, she settled them on Pyra. Those words were meant for her.

".. blessed be the final days of your life, nanchaun. May your deathbed be peaceful -- for your Hell, I promise, will not be. I will be waiting for you, Ember-Blood, and may the final fallen leaf of autumn .. be your final breath." And she turned her cheeks up towards the sky, and closed her eyes.

"May you die as autumn finds its rest."

She brought the blade down, then, in a glimmer of deathly silver, smile resplendent, even as her own breast was torn asunder and black blood spewed from the midst of her fingertips. With the final words of that curse still warm upon her lips, Sings-in-the-Fall crumpled towards over her suicide-blade, and was sprawled amidst wet grasses on the ground below.

A breeze shuffled through the trees. Autumn's first fallen leaf fell to tickle against Pyra's wrist, and landed softly in her palm; the first grain of sand to fall in the hourglass of life.