Violet Woman
A Legend of Dragoon Fanfic
Summary: Waist-length hair the color of a raven, soft pale skin that glowed as moonlight, clad in violet and black with traces of gold, cast in the dim light of a single torch, seated in the stillness of a room black as the night, she made for a beautiful and deadly sight.
(Start)
"Wake up! Red-Eyed Dragoon!" When the small stone began to pulsate with red-orange light, she knew that this was the moment of truth. The man was engulfed with a magical light. He shouted – be if from pain or surprise she was not sure – and flames shot ten feet high. A moment later, a Dragoon was born and for the first time in at least 10,000 years, and Rose was surprised.
Thinking of the circumstance now, as she perched on a low wooden bench in the darkness of a side-room, she should not have been so surprised. The man she had saved from the dragon several weeks ago, whose name she learned was Dart from the crying brunette, was far from ordinary. Her own Dragoon Spirit's reaction to him was proof enough. First a dragon resurfaces, and then a new Dragoon is born. What in the name of Soa was the world coming to?
At any rate, she would be here for a while. Having your Dragoon Spirit forced into awakening was far from a pleasant experience, albeit necessary for the occasion. But Dart would be unconscious for some hours yet, which meant Rose had some waiting to do.
She'd have waited in the same room where they had Dart resting, but the young brunette whom Rose assumed was his sister was hardly want for company. When Rose had come in to check on Dart, she received nothing but tears and glares from the girl, along with an endless stream of questions she had no intention of answering – at least, not to her. So she found the low bench in the room next to his. There were only two torches lit, leaving the room covered mostly in darkness. One torch was on the same wall as Rose's bench a few feet to her left, casting a low glow on her left side and leaving the right in shadow. The other was across the room, illuminating a nearly empty rack of weapons. Else wise the room lay black, a station that Rose was most comfortable in. Rose crossed one leg over the other, her arms against her chest, and closed her eyes to get a few hours rest.
She never did actually sleep. It was more of a stasis that she'd perfected over the years, allowing her body to rest and recover but still maintaining her alert senses. Presently she could hear the beat of horse hooves on the cobblestone paths leading around the small fort of Hoax, and their occasional whine as soldiers urged them on. She felt the chill in the air that pressed in on the room, along with the darkness. She could smell the remnants of fires that had been set by the Sandoran invasion. Charred brick and stone and wood would be the decoration of this town for many weeks to come. She heard the boots of soldiers as they went past, their conversations about the recent attack and how it was turned back. One pair of voices grew particularly close.
"I was sure we were gonna die. I was sure of it!" one man said, his voice thick and slurred. It was the accent of men from further south, and an accent Rose was never particularly fond of.
"Yeah, but we showed those Sandorans a thing or two!" his companion replied.
"What do you mean we?" the first asked as the two of them actually entered the same room as Rose. The sound their boots made went from the muffled stomp of dirt to the steady click of boot heels on wood floor. And they were speaking quite loudly now as their voices bounced off the walls. "All we managed to do was not die. It was that Dart fella who did all the real fighting!"
"Yeah, he sure was something! I wish I could have been there to see it myself." Rose didn't open her eyes or move a muscle. They were hardly of any interest to her, so she wouldn't let them interrupt her rest.
"Me too! But with someone as strong as him on our side, we can't lose! Basil is gonna win this war!" the first man said with gusto. She heard the familiar clink of swords lightly knocking against one another and other metals, and concluded they were putting their weapons up on the rack. They would be gone soon enough.
"Hey, hey," the second man said in a much more hushed tone. "Check this out." She heard a soft shuffling of boots and rough-spun fabric as the two men shifted about.
"Well well," the accented man said in an equally hushed tone.
"Where do you think she came from?"
"No clue. But she's sure a sight for these sore ole eyes." Rose's felt her right eyebrow twitch ever so slightly at the realization that the two soldiers were talking about her, but otherwise maintained her composure and continued to sit silently.
"Been so long since I've been home, I could really go for a woman's touch right about now," the second man said, his voice full of greed and want.
"She looks like she's sleepin' to me," the accented man said, as the sound of their boots grew slowly closer to the bench.
"Well then she won't mind if we have ourselves a bit of fun, will she?" the second man asked as Rose felt a hand land on her shoulder. As both men snickered, Rose concluded that this had gone on long enough. The soldiers saw nothing at first. They just felt a sudden push of air blow against their faces, and suddenly the second of the two soldiers was on the ground, screaming. Stunned, the accented soldier blinked and looked down at his fallen friend, wondering what he was screaming about. He quickly saw the reason as his companion flailed about on the ground, his left arm ending in a bloody stump. He would have shouted in surprise and fear himself if he didn't suddenly feel the flat of a blade smack against his chest. He looked down and there was a fearsome and bloody dagger pressed against him, and the woman he had previously thought to solicit had her eyes locked on him. Where once there was violet, her eyes were now black and heavy with quiet rage.
"You should know," Rose said in a calm voice, "that I do not like being touch." As she spoke, she wiped the blood off the dagger on the stunned soldier's shirt.
"You bitch!" screamed the soldier on the ground. "My hand, you bloody bitch!"
"Your friend should see a healer before he bleeds to death," Rose said as she silently returned her dagger to its sheath on her hip. The realization of what had just happened finally hit the accented man, and his face contorted into proper fear of the woman who sat before him. "And quickly," Rose added as she peeled the still hand from her shoulder and tossed it on the ground. "Before his voice further upsets me and I relieve him of that as well."
The soldier needed no further bidding. He half stepped half leaped back from the woman as if she would attack him at any moment. Then he quickly, although clumsily collected his fellow soldier off the floor and ushered him out of the side room, though his friend continued in his pained and angered rant.
"Dear Soa, my hand! My fucking hand! I'll remember this! I won't forget! You'll pay for this! Aaaahhhh!"
Rose watched them go. She counted 30 seconds before shutting her eyes again. There was a sizable amount of blood on the ground where the soldier had been flailing, and it was beginning to stink. But Rose could handle it. The scent of blood was like a field of flowers compared to the smell of charred flesh, and Rose had experienced much worse. The Dark Dragoon crossed her arms and shut her eyes again to get some rest because she had a new Dragoon to attend to in the morning. She was not disturbed for the rest of the night.
(End)