Gems: "but our beloved Princess fights and it seems with success." Azula certainly isn't one to go down without a fight. T"or if the ones it has touched first will come back." This is a good question. Perhaps the answer will come in time. :P "Azula doesn't seem to be like other victims, she seems to be able to resist." She is unique, but how so is to be seen. "The description of the struggle in her mind was great as ever, so vivid and haunting, I love it. Great job, keep on having fun with your stories" It isn't quite over yet. :P And thanks again!
Ruon Jian flinches. The noise tearing from the princess' throat is absolutely unholy. It is layered and unnatural. A cacophony of suffering and all that is wrong in the world. Overlapping her normal, rather soft and soothing voice is something much lower. There is another something that is more like a wail and beneath that, something perhaps mechanical.
Her nose and ears bleed profusely, and Ruon slinks further away. The infection...it could be in her blood. Can it transfer that way? Azula twitches and seizes.
"I told you all, didn't I!" Bujing bellows. "We shoulda killed her. She's gonna be one helluva vessle with that blue fucking fire."
"Her leg…" Xuia points out.
"Those things can't feel pain, it'll walk." Bujing snarls.
With a few more gurgling noises and gasping breaths, the princess goes rigid, her body seeming to lock with her back arched awkwardly and her fingers stuck halfway between a fist and being outstretched. Ruon Jian can't gauge for exactly how long she held that impossible contortion. She seemed to have been suspended for ages and then her body drops with a considerable thud.
As soon as her head hits the floor, she begins to weep. Ruon Jian shudders, her cries are more disturbing than those screams. He thinks it is due largely in part to how human and pained her natural voice sounds beneath the excess vocal layers. The others step back even further, but he draws nearer.
"They've got him too…" Shinu trails off.
Do they? He wonders. Is that what it is? Is his mind his own or are they compelling him to come closer? To join them. An image flickers in his mind. A morbid grotesque thing; his body merging and fusing into Azula's. He casts it aside as abruptly as he can manage.
He reaches a hand out to her, feeling the tension in her body slacken under his touch. Her body meets the floor. It looks so incredibly fragile and broken. She, though free from that disturbing living-flesh rigor mortis, goes completely still.
"Azula?" He tries.
He shouldn't.
He should back away with the rest of them. If he had any sense at all, he would.
She turns her head and her lips part ever so slightly. For a moment, he thinks that she is dead. But then she slowly sits up, her hair obscuring her face. At last, self preservation kicks in and he backs away.
"My head hurts." She mumbles. She brings her fingers to her nose and her expression seems to twist into something of pain and confusion. She looks directly at him. "You fool, don't just stand there…" Her words are normal for her but her voice is uncanny and still holds traces of the layers. She is panting lightly. He wonders if she is even aware of the distortion in her voice.
.oOo.
"I need…" What does she need? Help? A doctor? She won't find either of those. Reassurance, the word comes to her head. She won't get that either, they are afraid of her. No, beyond that. They are horrified through and through.
For once it is not her own fault.
The ringing remains in her ears. "Get me something to drink." She feels sick. She hasn't time to fully comprehend this before she hunches over and expels what little food is in her belly. Mostly what comes up is a viscus mix of chunky, clotted blood, and some sort of thick black ooze.
It takes everything to keep herself awake and upright. She tastes rot and copper on her tongue and her stomach seems to be ripping at itself. She hugs her middle and gives a soft gasp of a cry. She squeezes her eyes shut and a single tear manages to escape.
"I've seen enough." She knows that the gruff voice belongs to Bujing. "Let's kill it before it can kill us."
She opens her mouth to protest, put can only manage another pained hiss, it probably doesn't help her case.
"Wait." She thinks that it is Li. "This isn't what the infection looks like, not entierly."
"Then it's evolving!" Bujing declares.
"You don't have to kill her, Bujing."
"And you don't have to cater to her needs anymore, Xuia."
Her vision blurs as the man draws nearer. "You didn't think that she was going to last did you?" He'd have probably given her a good kick if not for his fear of making contact with her disease riddled body.
She doesn't think that contact has anything to do with contraction.
No, whatever this is. It is a disease of the mind. She supposes that it is bad luck for, whatever they are, that her mind is already sick.
Such is her parting thought as she flops back to the floor.
.oOo.
Her first moments of awakening almost pleasant; there's a relief in knowing that she has woken at all. But the moment of jubilation passes as quickly as it had set in, replaced by a sense of wrongness, as though the universe is just off somehow. She looks around her room, everything is as it should be, where it had been last left. The colors are the same, it isn't inexplicably lighter nor darker.
But it is not the same.
Azula can't place it, but it just isn't.
She supposes it is more of a feeling than any real, tangible physical sensation. Something is wrong not just in her room, but in the world. She wishes that she could shake this feeling away and as soon as she does she longs to have it back, for that unnerved feeling is nothing in comparison to the sheer and utter panic that follows its departure.
She is alone again.
Alone and bound.
In a final moment of disbelief, she gives the leather strap a tug.
Azula jerks again with more force before letting an absolutely animalistic scream tear from her throat. Distantly, she notes that this isn't the kind of behavior she should exhibit; that this is the kind of demeanor that would convince a person to tether her in the first place.
But she wants out, she wants out now.
Before she can go hungry again.
Before she can go thirsty.
And tired.
And completely feral.
Just at the notion of reliving her worst week, she may have already reverted into a feral state. She wishes furiously that the creature-mayhaps, may creatures-would have ripped the entirety of that memory from her.
"Let me go!" She hollers her voice is raspy and with a harsh shrillness. "You worthless pesents, let me go!" But what if they have already vacated the palace in favor of a more secure place. A trickle of nervous sweat forms on her forehead. "You can't leave me here!" She shouts to the darkness of the hallway. "You can't!"
She throws her head back against the pillow. At least this prison is more comfortable than the merciless ground in the Capital square. At least her position is more bearable. But she isn't going to last as long here; there is no rain to provide her with drink and the palace is rodent free.
She watches the sun wayne and she knows that hours have gone by. Hours without a sound or a soul. She wishes that Bujing would have killed her as he had vowed to do. The night deepens and so does her resignation.
The initial shock and dismay gives way to a creeping numbness. In that numbness, that strange, off-beat feeling works its way back in. She fills the emptiness and quiet with trying to discern exactly what is not quite right about the world.
She doesn't make much progress at all beyond noting that she is simply, somehow seeing the world through different lenses. But she still feels like Azula. She still feels as though she is in full control.
Except for that one whisper.
The one she can hear but only if she really tries to.
She isn't worried.
That kind of thing had taken grip of her mind days prior to the comet.
Azula turns her head so that her cheek is against the pillow. She forces herself to believe that she is simply going to sleep after the stresses of a normal day.
.oOo.
"She looks normal to me." Ruon Jian notes.
"They all do." Bujing counters.
"That's not necessarily true." Says Shinu.
Ruon Jian looks to Li. The old woman seems to consider. "The incubation process I witnessed with my dear sister was much different." She confirms. "I do hate to say it, but Bujing could be correct about an evolution." She pauses. "A strain or possession that takes hold more rapidly."
Ruon Jian's stomach lurches. It was already bad enough when the progression was slow.
"So what do you propose?" Bujing asks.
"Keep her secure and see if she starts to deteriorate." Shinu suggests.
"No." Ruon speaks without fully forming the the reason for his aversion to this plan. The small gaggle of survivors await further elaboration. "This thing affects the mind before the body, right?"
Li nods.
"So we should let her go. We're not going to get an accurate picture if we chain her up and treat her like she's already gone…"
"Ridiculous!" Bujing exclaims.
"Fair." Li disagrees. "We will let her go free until we have a reason to speculate that she shouldn't be." The old woman observes the cross and skeptical expressions she has just drawn. "Pay attention to how she walks…" and then she backtracks. "If she tries walking at all without crutches, that is the first sign something is amiss. If her gait is stiff, then she has been taken. If her body locks and tremors…" She slows her pacing. "I think that you understand what I am talking about. "We've all seen it."
They mutter among themselves, some in agreement while others protest. "I'll undo her restraints." Ruon volunteers.
"Be careful." Xuia requests.
Her eyes are eerily vacant when he gazes into them. "Azula." He addresses and sets a try of stale food on her nightstand.
"Are you really here?" She whispers.
In way of an answer he loosens the leather straps around her wrists and lets her wiggle her hands free as he works on the ones binding her ankles and then the largest one that locks her torso to the bed.
"I thought that…" Her voice is hoarse. "You didn't leave me behind?"
He shakes his head. "We were out all day trying to fix our barriers as much as we can. We're not going to be able to stay here much longer. I don't know where we're going to go."
Azula rolls her eyes, giving him a burst of reassurance that she is still the princess he sort of knew. "To the tribes, idiot. Like I told you." She sits up and Ruon watches her movement closely. It is still slow, maybe some stiff. But it is the stiffness that comes with being confined to one position for too long, a theory confirmed when she stretches her arms and her good leg.
"I got you something to eat."
She lifts it to her mouth and makes a face when the stench reaches her nose. Ultimately she eats it anyhow. "This is dreadful, did you scrape it off of a pan?"
"I'm not too worried about you." He ignores the ungrateful commentary. "Bujing seems to think that you're possessed, but you seem fine to me."
"Fine…" she trails off. "I'm not fine." She takes another bite and her face bunches. "But I'm not infected."
"Do you want to come to the dining hall?"
"And grace my ears with Bujing's lovely banter? No thanks."
"I think that you should come down and show everyone that you're still you."
Azula sighs. "Yes, I suppose I should."
Ruon Jian lets her finish her meal before helping her out of bed. "Shinu is working on new crutches for you. Some of our fencing was broken beyond repair so he's using those parts to make you something that won't break as easily."
"At least someone is useful." She huffs as she fights for balance. He holds her securly. "Is Chan the only one who died."
Ruon Jian flinches. "Yeah…"
"What about my serving girl?"
"Xuia? She's fine. Sort of, she's not taking Chan's death too well; they were dating."
Azula sniffs, "only a complete dullard would try dating when the world is ending."
"I don't think so." Ruon disagrees. "People need to find something to live for."
"People need to face that there isn't anything left to live for."