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moonlight's requiem
notes – tinkered with, but otherwise the same. Really, this chapter is the BEST one. Why screw with what works? XX should take her own advice
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Miranda
Thrashing in her bed, almost in mortal pain, the Sacred Sister whimpered and tightened her hands into fists, as if trying to ward away the voice in the dark. Moonlight spilled from the open window, bright beams pinning the blond woman to the dark coverlets, chaining her to the swirling figures the same nightmare that plagued her for days.
Teeth bared in a soundless snarl, the blankets providing no protection from the voice that was so damned gentle it actually hurt to hear it. Trembling against the sudden onslaught of gusting wind that breezed through the flimsy curtains and whipped around her tiny room, a coat of frost edging everything it touched.
Miranda
"No," whispered in a pleading voice she had never used in her entire life.
Miranda…wake up
Now the wind was swirling fiercely, knocking over odds and ends gathered on shelves, the quiver in the corner, the bow hanging on its rack, getting warmer, almost unbearable hot…
"N-no…"
Darkness exploded, a myriad of sounds and lights rushing to fill the void, a thousand voices sounding as one, a thousand heartbeats beating in unison, faster and faster, the voice in the dark still breathing softly almost next to her. Miranda hissed out a breath, involuntarily readying a scream to wake her. Heart hammering, a cry working up from her throat, all-building tempo until—
--she woke up, breathless in the dark of her room, looking up into a fanged mouth that appeared to be grinning down at her. Confusion assaulted her on top of the fear she had felt. Darkness did most certainly not smile, did not have teeth, in fact, it didn't even have a mouth in order to do so.
But it was grinning at her and she was not hallucinating.
Move Miranda. MOVE NOW!
Not a voice, but an explosion of blinding colors voiced this command and Miranda dove out of the confines of her blankets and smashed into the cold stone floor with an audible teeth clicking jolt.
Adrenaline powered her legs into a leaping sprint upwards, sweet blood ringing in her ears and singing in her veins.
Blonde hair bound in a short ponytail, a nightshirt, and her bare hands. Shit.
The mouth above her bed disappeared. The mattress where she had just lain dented inward sharply, a great weight pressing it nearly to the floor. And a good ten feet above her, a hellish set of crimson eyes flared open.
Darkness didn't possess eyes either. This certainly wasn't part of her damned nightmare, her damn chin hurt too much for that.
A throaty growl and the springs screamed in protest at being forced farther down, Miranda tensed—
--And dove to the side as the indistinguishable blur of shadows slammed down where she had just stood. She rolled upward and threw herself backward again as the rush of night air swished towards her in an intent that was unmistakable.
Need the spirit! Get to the Dragoon Stone! Now!
Which would be easier said than done. It sat on her nightstand, by the bed, which was on the other side of this invisible assassin.
Phantoms roiled to her right, boiling over in a excited rush at her once more. She spun and threw herself to the left, her head snapping to the side painfully as midnight talons caught in a loose tangle of golden hair.
"Hiss….arrrrr…" A breath inhaled noisily into brittle lungs, the inhalation of death itself it seemed.
She scrambled desperately away, diving to the floor just ahead of another sweeping attack. Hands stinging form impact, a warm trickle of wetness coming from the side of her head, she rolled forward.
Stillness. Absolutely nothing as she came back up, hands in a warding position.
Excellent way to wake up. Nightmares and now invisible god damned…THINGS…
Her hand brushed the side of her head and came away with sticky wetness. Still, no sound. Like a forest when a predator was about, so still that the air itself dared not to move. She instinctively moved towards the open window, closer to the moonlight that filtered in. Azure eyes were nearly engulfed in the black of her pupil as they expanded. This wasn't her element damn it!
A snuffling sound- then a high snarl. The sharp click of talons on the cold floor as they circled the room, all mingling with the muted darkness. A flickered flash of crimson eyes, so close.
It would wait her out, she thought darkly. Whatever it was, it could sit there until the sun rose, till she thought she was safe, till it was too late to scream.
Curtains fluttered against her back, lightly a feather touch. A crooked smirk graced her tense features. In a whirl, she latched onto the fabric and yanked, brining down the works and flooding the room with sweet-silvered light.
A coaly paw took her upside the head as her back was turned, tossing her like a rag doll into the far wall.
Silhouetted already in sinister shadows, it dropped back to all fours, a tiger of complete darkness, crouched in the moonlight, a tail lashing as if to berate her foolishness. Miranda's world spun crazily, an indention on the plaster wall as a reminder of her impromptu flight. Shadows blurred into a all consuming oblivion.
No! Not like this!
A snarl, and she pulled herself up onto a supporting hand, wiping her mouth with the other and grimacing at the red smear that came with it. So it wasn't afraid of light, huh?
"So," It was weaker than she wanted it to sound. "You wanna play rough do you?"
"Hisarkkkkk!"
The dragoon spirit glimmered urgently on the bedstand. Dizzily and with growing numbness, she was on her feet again. A low growl emanating from the shadow-beast, it clicked forward.
Its mistake.
Miranda lunged, a full stretching grab for the pulsing stone, her hands closing around it even as the creature leapt at her extended form—
For a single moment, time was still. A knight at the doorway to the Crystal Palace glanced upward to the window of the First Sacred Sister, noting the odd noise that leaked from so high up, looked away as another knight passed by to greet him, and missed the spectacle of the entire section that had once been Miranda's windowed wall blow outward in a tremendous explosion of burning white light.
Thrown outward by the initial outburst of the transforming dragoon, the shadow-spawn twisted in mid-air, wings of a bat unfurling from its dark back. Its scream was a foul cloud of nothing by darkness that would sap the strength and will to fight.
Miranda never gave it a chance. The gaping hole that had been her window still raining chunks of crystal and stone down to the streets below, she leveled her open palms directly at the howling beast.
"I don't care what you're doing here," she shouted over its caterwauling and the frightened cries from below. "But it was your last FUCKING mistake!"
Shrieking, it came at her in a flurry of shadows.
She thrust her hands outward; point fingers and thumbs forming an upside down heart shape. "Moonlight's Requiem!"
A cone of pure silver lanced forward, enveloping the shadow-spawn in all its untainted beauty.
She was screaming along with it, willing the light to burn this abomination to nothing, not to be, the creature wrenched free of the pulsing wave and climbed from her reach, baleful burning eyes fixed on her hovering form until they blinked out of sight.
Miranda lowered her hands, grace lending her no hand as she tumbled back into her ruin of a room and felt rather than saw the armor fade from her limp form. By the time she was forced a healing potion by one of her Sisters, she was slipping into gray, clinging long enough to wakefulness to order a ship to Serdio, to Albert, who she felt had something to do with this, because something was very, very wrong.
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