Charlie flips a coin into the air.
The coin spins, arcing up, up, then back down again for Charlie to catch.
Heads!
Not too long after the Knight drifts off to sleep, Charlie is sneaking away to go finish those pesky dishes. Or something.
When he wakes, the dishes are done, the place is tidied, but something is off.
The tank of flesh eating beetles has been tipped, scattering a few bones, and most of the beetles are awol. Still, that faint, creepy sound of a few thousand mandibles chewing can be picked out in the near silence of the place.
Etching grooves into the suit of armor was easily done, just adding creases to the inner panel like pre-folding paper so it'll give along a certain line. Beetles scattered into bins of hides and furs to work their consumptive magic. Off near the racks, Charlie's working on fleshing out a new hide, the fur still wet with blood that hasn't been wholly rinsed out, entrails in a bucket and a pile of bones in a garbage can lined with a black bag.
Raymond wakes up with sleep in his eyes. He rubs at his face, and reaches for his phone. Looks like he slept through that alarm, but someone else got up. He stands to his feet, stretching his arms high. He eventually starts moving, and looks around the place. It takes the smell of guts to really wake him up, and he follows that scent until he's found Charlie. "What in the world are you doing at..." He checks his phone. Whoops. "Well crap."
Glancing up from the task of running the knife over the fresh skin to remove the bits of membrane and fat. "Working, of course." she says with a soft chuckle. "You were sleeping so good, I didn't want to wake you up. Feel better after the nap?" Her hand has a thick layering of extra gauze and tape on it to pad her hand, but even so, there's blood in the dressing from the hide she's working on.
"You really shouldn't be working right now," he says while reaching over to the wrist of the formerly injured hand. "You're still hurt, and-" He pulls away to slap his forhead. "You healed it off, of course. You just needed some rest, huh." He reaches for the injured hand again, this time trying to get a hold of it unless she yanks it away.
Well. No. She didn't heal it off, she just padded it up and put Righty on light duty while Lefty does the heavy lifting. Letting him have the hand, she smiles slightly, turning away from the short haired, blond hued hide to let him examine her hand. "It's still pretty sore. I just got blood on it."
Raymond looks over the hand, frowning. "If it's still pretty sore you don't need to be working just yet. Even if you're too stubborn to heal it yourself you still need to give it time to heal. It's not like you need to be working just this instant, right?" He lets go of the hand to study her for a second. "What exactly are you even working on?"
"I'm not too stubborn." She says, making a bit of a face, then laughing. "This old thing?" she asks, switching the fleshing knife to her left hand and using the right to flip the hide over. It's cut like a cow hide - only the upper legs, no head, but man that fur looks familiar.
Waiting for that sweet moment when recognition hits, she tenses, subtly coiling up to take advantage of shock - intent on adding Raymond's hide to the fleshing rack.
Raymond scoffs. Her not stubborn. He chuckles at the thought until she flips over the hide. He nears it, eyes narrowing as his curiosity gets the better of him. He lays a hand, and immediately goes still. "No. Seriously. What the hell are you working on?"
"I'm thinking it'll be a nice vest, don't you?" She asks, smiling at him. "Sort of a cowboy throwback, with a dash of Hank the Cowdog meets Ol' Yeller. Without the rabies. Pretty sure rabies got both of those dogs." As IF she saved King from some terrible fate by peeling his skin off after slitting the trusting animal's throat.
Regular Charlie might not have seen it sans pledge, but fetches can always see faerie for what it is. His mantle briefly flares, and that atypical heat radiates out all around him. "I'm gonna imagine this is another one of those jokes that just goes way over my head, and I don't get it. Seriously, what the fuck did you do?"
Charlie picks a bit of fleshy goo off the fur, some of the scraped up membrane. Flicking it into the trash can with the bones in it, she smiles again. "Sure. I'm just pulling your leg." she says, leaning in as if to bump him with her hip and trying to slip that fleshing knife between his ribs in a quite unfriendly manner.
Game: Raymond takes 4 Lethal damage.
GAME: Raymond spends 1 Glamour
-> >> Raymond to Here << <-===========================================
Rolled 0 Success
< 1 2 2 5 5 >
============================-> >> Strength + Wits - 1 No Flags << <-
GAME: Raymond regain 11 Glamour
"Bullshit, Charlie. If you were pulling my leg I-" Raymond says it again as if it might somehow help. The knife finds his insides before he has a chance to breathe, and he's left stunned. Appalled. Angry. His mantle flares in a burst of heat, but nothing happens as he turns to face his assailant.
Waste time being shocked. Hand still on the blade, she gives it a savage wrench, still smiling, as she jerks it out of his side, dripping vital fluids. "Think I'll make the cut?" She taunts, drawing back to, no doubt, try to finish what she's started while he's off-guard with another thrust towards his soft abdomen.
Raymond grits his teeth as the pain hits, and he reaches for her now. With one hand he goes for the one he injured, and with the other he reaches for the one plunging a knife into his ribcage. "I don't know what the fuck's gotten into you, but it stops. Now!" As he speaks light wells up in his eyes, masking much of his evergrowing rage.
It's almost laughably easy to grab her, though she tries to evade the touch. "... gotten into me? You don't even know who I am!" She lunges forward, trying to break his hold on her left hand with a jerk and twist on her arm, leaving the right hand almost relaxed in his hold.
"Yes, you!" he all but roars at the top of his longs. As the words escape his mouth the light of his eyes well up until searing heat lashes down at her once good arm. "I trusted you! I believed in you!" The grip of her wrist tightens as he sears away flesh. "Do you really fucking think you're the first person to stab me in the fucking back!?"
She burns. She's not supposed to burn, but there it is. The skin sears, blistering and crisping, splitting while she howls with the pain of the flames.No healing, no resistance to fire... The knife is dropped and she tries to pull away - it's an instinctive motion, the urge to pull that ruined nub in and hide it against her chest overriding the desire to add his skin to the tanning racks and his horns to a macabre trophy mount.
-> >> Raymond to Here << <-===========================================
Rolled 3 Successes
< 5 5 6 9 9 9 >
============================-> >> Resolve + Composure No Flags << <-
"You wanted to skin me. Take me away from children, and turn them into orphans." He lets her go, his voice calming. Despite that the anger is always present. That blazing heat coming off him is only stifled by the searing pain of her new wound. "You wanna kill me? Pick up the knife again." He makes sure to always look her in the eye, moving as she does. "Pick up anything. It'll be the last mistake you ever make in your life."
"Not from your children." They hadn't even crossed her mind, really. There is no reaching for the knife, but she does retreat, backing towards where the high concentration peroxide she uses for bleaching bones is. Stuff that burns skin on contact.
In a flash the horned man is covered in metal as he stares her down. "No, of course not. You didn't even think of them, did you? They're all I think about. I thought I'd made that clear before, but no. You think it'll be cute to skin me like some damn piece of meat. The only thing stopping me from killing you is a promise I made. So you're gonna tell me here and no: do you surrender?"
Charlie knows not to try and touch him, now, when his skin changes to that metal skin. Continuing to back away, she makes a face. "You didn't promise me anything?" confused, she can't find it in that false memory of life before. Fumbling, she pops the stopper out of the barrel and uses her hip to knock it over, seeking to make a barrier between them before turning to bolt for the back doors of the warehouse.
The smell is rank and foreign, but there's little reason for Raymond to stop pressing forward. As far as he knows. "What are you talking about? I did, or did you bump your head real hard today? Because if you don't give up now and surrender so I can throw you in front of the King I'll take you there alive or dead. Do you understand me. This is your last chance." He spreads his hands out, palms for her to see. "Surrender."
Surrender? So she can be taken to the King? No.
One hand a crispy, crackling, bleeding ruin, the other so carefully reassembled by his own hands, she keeps pushing for that back door - but the warehouse is huge, and she isn't very fast. "I didn't hit my head; I had my eyes opened." she snaps, trying to keep thigns - boxes, crates, shelves - between him and her.
-> >> Raymond to Here << <-===========================================
Rolled 4 Successes
< 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 5 7 7 8 9 9 10 >
=-> >> Dexterity + Athletics + 1 + 1 + Mantle + 3 - 3 No Flags << <-
-> >> Raymond to Here << <-===========================================
Rolled 7 Successes for an exceptional success.
< 2 2 2 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 8 8 10 10 10 10 10 >
=====-> >> Dexterity + Athletics + 1 + 1 + Mantle + 3 No Flags << <-
GAME: Raymond spends 2 Willpower
GAME: Raymond spends 8 Glamour
"I didn't force a thing open, and never once lied. I made a promise to you, but I guess it's going to be as forgotten as you are." He doesn't stop for a moment. Simply batting away the things that might hit his face, and allowing the metallic armor to stab away whatever else comes his way. Then the last of it comes when a torrent of fire bursts from his eyes and mouth at her.
Fire is a thing of hunger, anger, passion... it consumes whatever it can feed on.
Hair, clothing, skin. The screams of the mortal echo in the hollow space of the warehouse as she hits the ground, trying to roll, but really just writhing, twisting as the Summer's flame eats into flesh.
And what is beneath? What remains? The stink of burnt hair, a female shaped pile of ash and metal shavings and scrap, and a scattering of burnt and singed animal hair.
As she screams and burns to ash, Raymond still keeps his calm. At least verbally. "You didn't have to run. You didn't have to attack me. But, here we... are..." Raymond watches what comes and he stands there in shock. No charred bones. No cooked meat. Just the leavings of a fetch, and him to stew in his anger by his lonesome. "Oh son of a fucking bitch."
The space of the warehouse has never felt so empty. No forge, no crucible, no projects in the works. The King is dead, the Queen complicit in his death - now dead and scattered as remnants. A thing. A cheap replica, left behind to crack when the realities came rushing in.
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