gemsofformenos: Thanks, I like trying to show that kind of struggled from a few perspectives. Not just her own but from the outside as well. Show the fight from inside and out. But yes there's a lot of just very atmospheric fear. It's something that none of them can physically fight. And even when it's over, she isn't sure that it really is. Things didn't go as they usually do in terms of becoming infected/possessed so that leaves the characters and Azula herself unsure of what to do. "You definitely give her a hard ride, letting her thrown back into her latest nightmare again, bound and left alone." Yeah, she has a bit of trauma there and it isn't goign away any time soon. I feel like she's afraid of abandonment. 'Her mind was shsttered before and it seems to her that the irnoy in this fact may be that this has helped her to fight against this attack." It very well could have. ;) Thanks again and you have a good week!
CeCeHigganbotham: It might be. :P
With a loud clang, the gates come down again. All it takes these days is a furious storm. If the wind gusts powerfully enough, the barricades are useless. And if the barricades can't hold their own against the wind, Azula can't see them withstanding an army of the claimed. She watches Bujing and Shinu work to erect the gates once more, a futile effort if she must say so.
Mostly she watches from the doorway or from her bedroom window. She tries to avoid excursions to the outside world, which is easy enough with her leg still in a state of healing. When she does find herself outdoors, that feeling of wrongness takes on a deeper intensity.
Today is different though.
Today she wants to be outside.
She feels remotely useless.
On top of useless, she feels faint and in turn her feeling of uselessness doubles. She catches sight of some of the claimed shambling up the palace staircase. Their faces and torsos weep gore where skin has rotted away. She hadn't noticed before, but there is something else; the faintest outline of something. If she looks close enough she can see silvery-blue wisps writhing like worms or candle smoke around the rims of empty eye sockets and along the craters in decaying skin. On some of the possessed, the spectral fingers are longer, more apparent. On a very select few, the silver blue seems to halo their entire bodies like an aura.
"Those weren't there before." She says as Ruon takes a seat next to her.
"Huh?" He asks.
"Mother fuck!" She hears from below; Bujing has finally made note of the intruders. It crosses her mind that she should be out there helping. "Why aren't you working on the barricade? You have four well-functioning limbs. What about Xuia, why isn't she…"
"Because the gates won't last no matter what we do. Those two just like to feel like they're making a difference." Ruon shrugs.
Azula turns her attention back to those strange spectral glows. "What are those?"
"Those would be the infected." He laughs.
She gives him a little swat. "No, not them. Those wisps in their eyes." She points at the figure wrapped in it, "It's all around that one."
Ruon cocks his head. "What are you talking about?"
Azula's heart sinks. She really should be medicated. "Nevermind."
A few incoherent shouts from below draws her attention and she watches the pair scramble up the steps and into the palace.
"We need to secure the palace." Ruon notes. "And we need to do it quickly."
Azula shakes her head. "We need to leave the palace." She allows no room for protest. "It's too big to secure. There are too many entryways and not enough personal to keep them from being breached."
"There are only two of them." Ruon notes.
"For now." She replies. "What do you think we'll be able to do if a heard of them find us?" She watches Bujing trip over a large crack in the stairwell, the angle at which his ankle twists is not lost on her. She must be truly and irreparably mad of mind because a smirk tugs at the corner of her lips. The possessed shamble closer. Bujing cries out and Shinu turns around, at last realizing that his partner has fallen.
Azula takes a breath, she supposes that now is as good a time as any to do a little experimenting. She makes her way to the window and opens against the nearest wall with as little weight on her bad leg as she can manage, she arcs her arms with the grace she hasn't had in a long while, sparks dance at her fingertips. When lightning is generation to her satisfaction, she releases the energy.
The trajectory is fatal, she lands her mark. The force of it takes the thing's head off. Bujing looks up with a mixture of relief and horror. The corpse of the possessed drops and Bujing's face pales completely. He scrambles back and away from some unseen horror. Unseen to him anyhow.
Even from here, she can hear the whispers. At first she almost doesn't notice it, a bubbling in the blood that pools around the corpse's neck. A bubbling that she soon realizes is more like a pulsing. Swimming within the crimson is a worm-like tangle of those spectral wisps.
One of them springs from the mass and misses Bujing by only a few inches.
Shinu grabs the man and drags him up the stairs and into the palace. With a slam of the heavy double doors, the world is hauntingly quiet again save for the gurgles of the still twitching corpse and the occasional slosh.
She wonders how long these creatures can survive outside of their host.
.oOo.
Azula isn't sure why she had expected gratitude from the man. Still it comes as a slap in the face when the man jabs a finger at her and shouts, "that girl is a demon!"
She crosses her arms and listens to him prattle on.
"She's one of them, I'm telling you."
"One of them?" Shinu asks. "She saved you!"
"Takes one to kill one." He insists.
"I didn't kill it. I killed the host body." Azula clarifies. Though she isn't entirely sure that the body has died at all. It was still spasming when she'd last looked at it some several hours later. She is almost sure that it is still an incubator for those phantom creatures-some type of nest or temporary home until they can find a new and functioning host.
"You can't prove…" Ruon starts.
"I say we send her out there and see how they react to…"
"That is out of the question, Bujing." Azula knows that tone. It is the very same finalizing one that Li used to placate her when she was just beginning to learn to firebend. "If you cannot see her as a friend then I suggest that you at least recognize her as a valuable asset."
"Or the undoing of us all." He argues.
"We are well past the incubation period. She can speak and she move like she used to Her temperament is as it always has been." Li counters. "I have closely watched over her since she was a baby, I would be able to tell you if we were speaking with something else."
Azula sits back and takes the argument be told she does feel strange and out of sorts. But they don't need to know it, especially if it can be chalked up to simply recovering from such a close call.
She hears Bujing continue on with his ranting and raving but she isn't really listening anymore. She waits for him to finish before flatly stating, "keep me or don't, I don't really care. I can make it to the Tribes on my own." Her leg will continue to be a hinder but it is much easier to hide and stay out of trouble without the weight of a group to hold her back. "Just make up your minds so I can begin planning my next move."
"You're staying with us." Shinu replies as Bujing refutes.
"The majority wants you to stay." Xuia smiles.
Azula nods. "Then you best find a way to keep him quiet." She folds her hands in her lap. "I like to think myself patient, but I won't put up with his outbursts much longer."
.oOo.
All in all it has been a productive day. Probably the most pleasant she has had since descending deep into madness. In some sense she is beginning to feel more or less like herself again. Her head has been much clearer, the hallucinations quieter.
She is getting used to getting around on with the crutches. It isn't ideal and her strides are significantly slower, but she is beginning to feel confident in her ability to retreat from unsavory situations with haste.
Perhaps they can begin to move out soon. She would like to vacate the palace before the two lurking infected grow into a vicious pack of them. The opening of her door interrupts her solitude.
"In this palace, we knock before we enter a room." She chides. "The world might have gone savage but we can at least retain some scraps of civility."
Ruon Jian rolls his eyes. "Sorry, princess." She doesn't like his tone but elects not to comment on it. "I was just thinking that we should change your bandages again. This time I snuck some real ones from the infirmary. We haven't had to use many yet so it couldn't hurt."
Azula pats the mattress, he doesn't take her invitation right away. Instead he begins tending to her leg. "It doesn't look as bruised or swollen." He notes.
A good sign.
"We were hoping that you'll join us downstairs again." He says as he begins binding her leg up once more. "They want to know the plan."
"The plan?"
"Yeah. You said that you'd start making plans. They want to hear it. The group is getting kind of restless."
Luckily for them, they aren't the only ones. Azula has been jittery enough to make good on her word. "I was actually hoping to leave tomorrow or the day after…"
"But your…"
She holds up a hand. "I can get around just fine." She pauses. "We need to comb through the palace and pick out supplies. Forget clothing and blankets, we can scavenge clothes when we need them and make bedding out of what's available. Comfort is second to survival." She cringes as she admits as much. "My leg won't be a problem right away. I know a decent passage system that runs beneath the palace."
Ruon laughs. "How about you save all of that for when we're with the rest of the group."
Azula coughs awkwardly. "Right, yes."
"Done." He declares.
Azula nods. "Meet me down there, I will be there in a moment."
He gives her a thumbs up and she watches him exit the room. She takes a deep breath, it has been so long since she has had any sort of authority. She coughs again, this time it is wholly involuntary. A nervous dizziness washes over her. She swallows before looking at her sleeve.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Just to be sure, she picks up her crutches and wanders into the adjoining bathroom. She spits into the sink. It is free of blood and black sludge. She tilts her head back in relief and exhales. It would seem that she isn't rotting away.
She still feels faintly dizzy, but she more confidently writes it off as the product of nerves.