"I get the feeling Ruon Jian likes Azula but also hopes she doesn't destroy him or make him regret his trust of her by like her eating him." He does indeed like her, but yes, there is that little fear that she's infected. "Is it survival instinct or paranoia?" Mix of both."I wonder what the spectral fingers/parasites are up to now..." Oh you'll see. ;)
"We need to clear them out." It had been her call…
For once she agrees with Bujing; they made her their leader, this is on her.
It is all her…
.oOo.
The noise seems to come from all around a macabre choir of moans, wails, and liquidy, guttural rambles. The hellish racket leaves Azula with an overwhelming desire to cup her hands over her ears and scream.
Scream just to drown out that Agni-awful chatter.
It reminds her too much of the clutter in her own mind. If it weren't for Xuia remarking that they should really consider going back to the palace Azula may have allowed herself to believe that it was all in her head.
"There's nothing left for us in the palace." Azula holds firm. "What we need to do is pick up the pace." But she herself is growing weary. She reminds herself of what happened the last time she had let paranoia get the better of her; she glances at Li. Lonely Li.
Azula very nearly gags at the vile putridness carried on the breeze; rancid meat and sour milk. A foul touch of rotten eggs and mold. All amplified by the heat of a Fire Nation afternoon. The odor is unmistakable. "We're almost there." She notes.
"It smells like a fucking compost."
It practically is one. Azula notes, but it isn't a productive one. The smell grows more pungent as they grow closer to the former celebration grounds. She can hear chokes and gags all around her, and nearly doubles over in one of her own. The foul perfume is infinitely stronger than when she'd last been here.
"Put me down." And Shinu helps her regain her footing and her independence.
She and her party weave between clouds of flies that gather in swarms around meat that has gone black with age. She can recognize none of the food lining the tables. All of it has been reduced to thick sludgy mush. The only thing that really distinguishes one goopy pile from the next are the smells. Each sports it's own unique rancidness. It is truly a feast for a corpse. She finds it incredibly easy to imagine the infected making their way over and helping themselves to some chunky slop.
When they reach the center of the grotesque banquet Shinu doubles over and in a series of more intense chokes and gags adds to both the smell and the slosh. Azula's face bunches in disgust. Burying her nose in her clothing she utters a, "let's get the hell away from here."
It must truly be unrepentantly foul, for Bujin is the first to say, "she's right, let's hurry the fuck up." Before he takes Shinu by the shoulders and practically drags the man along. He doesn't even have time to wipe the vomit from his mouth.
What a horrific distraction it had been and Azula curses herself for letting a simple odor throw her from her focus.
In her defense, everyone else had also been completely enveloped in the smell.
Still it doesn't take from the problem; the uncanny wails are significantly closer now. And none of them had noticed.
Azula wonders faintly if the scent had been a trap. Are they intelligent enough to use something like that to their advantage? They are possessed. Possessed and infected, not brain dead. She considers-not for the first time-with dread that they have intellenance and organization.
When it comes down to it, she realizes that she and Bujing agree on things that truly matter. "We really fucked this one up." The man remarks.
She fixes her stare on the source of the sound and chides herself for not thinking of each and every possibility. Had the time she spent chained to the grate diminished her careful thinking that much?
If they could topple the gates surrounding the palace, of course they could make their way into the ones the protected the coronation square. There aren't that many of them, she counts maybe two or three. But for all of the racket they make, there might as well be more.
The three are in various stages of decay. The first of them is sloughing skin like a popsicle in heat. The second is mostly free of decay, but her eyes a pools of blood and a black ooze weeps from her nose.
The third is a true monstrosity. Veins of black rise on his arms and flow into fingers that are completely inky and somewhat bloated. His eyes are bloodshot and leaking and his skin is cratered with rot. He reeks of infection. A scent that overtakes the uneaten victory feast.
Azula swallows back her revulsion just long enough to make note of the one thing that they all have in common; if she stares long enough she can see those same fingers of silvery-blue energy wriggling within the places where skin has rotted away. She could swear that she sees them snaking around beneath the skin that is still healthy...relatively speaking anyhow.
"We need to clear them out." She speaks. They look at her the same way her servants had when she banished one of their own. Absurdly enough, it strikes Azula then, that Xuia had been among the group that had witnessed it. Yes, the look she gives Azula now is much the same; perhaps there is an even higher degree of horror in her eyes.
"How the hell are we going to do that?" Bujing asks.
"I can lead them away."
"You can't lead them away." Ruon-Jian motions to her crutches.
She rolls her eyes, "honestly, do you really think that I am going to make bait of myself?" She finds what she decides is a good place to aim. "I am going to generate some lightning and throw it over there. If they take the bait, we will have to work quickly to patch up the holes in the gate. Clearly it isn't safe so we will move on at sunrise."
She waits for Bujing to protest, but the man keeps his mouth shut for once. With as much speed as she can manage, she sends a bolt sailing through the collapsed gate opposite of where they stand.
The three infected stare stupidly in its direction. They do not move.
Azula draws in a sharp breath. She can strike them down, but if they are anything like the one at the palace, they will only drop and bleed parasites.
She tries a second bolt.
One of them shambles towards it, but as soon as the sparks fade it's interest is lost.
Once again, Azula ponders if they are mindless or intelligent. Perhaps they are something in between; dull-headed until the parasites act on their control.
Every hair on her body raises, the wails subside and make way for those terrible whispers.
"We need to go back!" Xuia's eyes are starting to well.
"We'll never make it by nightfall." Azula counters. She doesn't know if they are more active at night, but if these things are some warped and twisted spirit parasites, then they are bound to be.
"I'm getting tired of this!" Bujing declares and ignites a flame in his hand.
"Wait!" Azula shouts.
Naturally, he chooses then to get back to protesting her every suggestion. He sends the fire hurtling at the nearest of the three-the one with the melting skin-and with force enough to knock it's head off. Granted, it was a delicate target.
For a moment, the whispers die off, leaving only a dull ringing in her ears. Something in Azula lolls with dread. For a few heartbeats, the body is still. And then they emerge, those worm-like whisps. But these ones are more akin to snakes in size and width.
Severing the host's head, Azula realizes, is like popping a cork off of a shaken champagne bottle. The spirits within emerge an a smokey current of hushed chatter. The group takes a uniformed step back.
Bujing, to Azula's dismay, strikes the other two down. She'd take him down herself if she didn't plan on using him as a shield. "Fools!" she shouts as the rest of them follow in his lead. The infected, don't seem phased by their bending.
"Are you going to just stand there!?" Bujing glares at her.
"Doing nothing at all is safer than what you're trying." She hisses.
The only people who seem to listen are Li and Xuia. Ruon, Shinu, and a cluster of other survivors whose names she hadn't bothered with all follow in Bujing's lead. She watches one of the newly freed whisps snake around one of the unnamed survivor's leg. The man goes tense as it make its way up. No one notices his struggle. They only hear the whispers growing in volume next to them. And so they distance themselves, leaving the man to his suffering. The tendril reaches is open mouth and crawls in.
Ruon drives a katana through his chest. Azula wishes that he wouldn't have. The specter is weeping out of the wound poised on the closest host to itself.
She sees it in his eyes that he knows.
If you can feel it, someone is going to die, you just have to hope that it's not you.
She can feel it too and she knows that it isn't her this time. She knows because she can see it now, as plainly as she sees Ruon but in the way that she sees her mother-like something that shouldn't be there. Something that is for her eyes only.
This time when she draws her lightning, she doesn't aim it at the host as Ruon Jian does. She aims for the specter.
It remains undeterred. So she tries her fire. This brings it delay, delay enough for Ruon Jian to break out of the host's hold and scramble back. She can't rush to his side and pull him to safety, he has to help himself from here.
Something in her mind screams and her head pounds furiously. Whispers give way to a shrill and merciless ringing as she burns away the writhing mass of worms that squirm at the open neck of the first host. The ringing intensifies until a splitting feeling agonizes her head. But the mass seems to shrivel away.
A second large snake emerges from one of the craters in the third host's skin, this time-with her useless leg and splitting headache to blame-Azula doesn't act quick enough. Her lightning collides with empty ground where the large wisp had once been.
It is now several feet from its host and another several from Xuia. She fires again.
"What the hell are you doing!?" Bujing shouts. "The infected is over there." He points.
Azula ignores him and prepares another attack. A familiar sensation pulls her attention. Host three is spasming on the floor shedding his skin in fleshy slabs that land with audible plops. In the mess is a sea of silvery-blue.
They spring up and propel themselves at her. Their whispers assault her mind. We should have stayed in the inside, oh shit, oh shit, oh…
She realizes that they are whispering the host's last thoughts. His final thought mixed with his darkest secrets.
Accompanying them is a sense of doom and failure. Though she thinks that the feeling of failure comes from within.
She muster up just enough energy to lift a will of fire between she and the tendrils. The ringing in her ears is practically bringing her to her knees now. But the ominous and oppressive feeling is retreating.
"I think that they're leaving!" Shinu calls. "It's getting quieter."
Ruon Jian nods in agreement. His smile fades when he looks at her.
But she isn't paying attention to herself. She observes the tail of host three's specter disappearing into Xuia's ear. Host three himself is nothing but a visceral pool of blood, entrails, and blackened flesh.
It is too much for her. She doesn't realize that she is sprawled out on the ground with sweat on her forehead and blood weeping from her ears until Ruon drops down next to her.
.oOo.
She spends the night curled up (as much as her knee would allow) in a ball, trembling lightly. It was her plan, her brilliant plan, to leave the palace and underprepared at that, she realizes. It was her plan to face them instead of retreating.
And know they have lost Xuia. Agni, they don't even know, but they have lost Xuia.
Xuia, beyond a soft, "I feel dizzy," doesn't know that she is claimed. They attribute her light-headedness to stress in the same way that they attribute Azula's own distress to it.
She ought to tell them. Yet she can't bring herself to even sit up.
Ruon Jian brushes some hair out of her face and hands her a waterskin. When she doesn't take it, he uncorks it and slips the lip of the waterskin between her lips. He withdraws it and sets the waterskin aside. "You're bleeding." He gently touches her nose.
With no energy left and having so freshly spent the rest of her dignity, she simply wipes it with the back of her hand. Just as he had said, it comes away smeared with red.
"I'm fine." She insists quietly. "Don't tell them." She now only whispers. "Please don't tell them."