It's mostly-new content time. ;D


PLAGUE
by Obsidian Blade

Family

Shaaca's sharp, silver talons dug into the soft layer of black splattered over the solid rock at the lip of the pit, her wings stirring the broad leaves at her back. Silently she peered down into the bubbling ooze below, her violet gaze barely focusing on the thick mass of tar as fumes tickled her throat.

This was it. She had found it easily, though the knowledge gave her no satisfaction. So she could navigate. So she had been here before. It didn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things, did it? Not one of her so-called skills had made a difference.

The pit wasn't large but could swallow her easily, she knew. And it was so black. Black like her. Vaguely she wondered if she would blend in as she sank: vividly her imagination conjured up the way the tar might wrap around her, folding over itself and shifting with her movements, with the slow death waltz her mind prescribed to her limbs. Sluggish, burning, it would dip into the crevices of her armour and blot out the shining silver, seep down her throat and cut out her breath-

Horrified, she lurched back, violet eyes sharpening as they darted around. She couldn't think like that; she had a mission to carry out, things to do, omastar to slaughter.

A mission? Kognook is dead!

The piercing metallic shriek of her wings tore through the forest as she raced back the way she had come, scythes slicing through vines and branches that barred her way with deft, thoughtless grace. She had to force it down. Force it down and lock it away. Just as she had done with Haakmin. The mission had to come first.

o o o

Tziir stepped into Jakinzaa's hovel, his helmed head scraping past an overhanging branch and showering him with splintered wood.

'A little lower next time perhaps, my kabtaar,' Jakinzaa suggested warmly, looking up at him from the animal hide Siira had occupied not long before.

She sat cross-legged, a position made possible by the rounding off of her leg barbs with age, her carved scythes resting in her lap. Still and peaceful, as she had always been. Shaking off the shards of wood that clung to his armour, Tziir masked a sigh and crouched beside her, their huge, shielded heads nearly touching.

As the last surviving kabutops of her generation, she had lost too much to this plague. That she had always distanced herself from the rest by choosing to live up here, well up the beach with her trees and her insects, hadn't eased the sting of a single death; he had seen her lower her head in grief more times than he cared to count. Not for the first time, he wished he could come to her with something good to report. Just once.

'Would it be too much to say I never was one for stooping?' he enquired, glancing sideways at her.

'Most definitely,' she replied briskly, reaching up to flick a missed splinter from his shoulder with the flat of her scythe. 'Why, I remember distinctly that case with the lileep when-'

'Tmiirin Jakinzaa,' he interrupted pointedly.

'Yes, yes, I know, my kabtaar. You needn't worry. I haven't been recycling that particular incident as folklore,' she assured him, though there was an undeniably impish tone to her voice that Tziir wasn't entirely sure he appreciated. 'Not to say the temptation was never there, but in the end it wasn't really Bladesworn material...'

'Far too free of ghosts, monsters and overblown notions of heroism, undoubtedly,' he agreed.

'If by that you mean amusement beyond the crude humour of an old kabutops, yes. I do have to mystify them with something and the tales I told your lot had become rather stale.'

'You could, perhaps, cease to mystify them altogether.'

'And what do you think would sustain them through the noons between battles, hm?'

'The goal should be enough in itself.'

The tmiirin laughed. 'Is that what you've been teaching this new batch? No wonder some of them are fast becoming grouchy as you.'

He gave a disapproving but good natured snort, eliciting a smile from the elder. They sat in companionable silence for a while, the breeze occasionally singing tunes through the cuts in her scythes.

'I am ready now,' she said at length, turning to face Tziir fully. 'I know you didn't come here to listen to the wind, Kabtaar.'

Her steely gaze met his, resigned. He almost resented her for prompting him. Even with all the things he needed to do clawing at the back of his mind, sitting with her in the quiet for the entire day would have been vastly preferable to passing on the news. He took a deep breath. Bemoaning fate would never help him escape it.

'Kognook is dead.'

The elderly kabutops folded in on herself as though punctured. She slumped forward, head and shoulders drooping, and her third lid slid halfway shut over her eyes.

'He had lasted so much longer than the others – I had started to hope...'

Tziir pushed his plated head against hers. 'You weren't the only one. He had... his mother's tenacity, lasting as long as he did.'

'She must be devastated,' said Jakinzaa, raising her eyes to peer beseechingly at Tziir, the weariness evident in her posture echoed in her tone. 'You know how she is, Kabtaar. You must support her, like you used to. No more of this coldness between you. Please.'

He met her gaze, carefully keeping his expression neutral. The tmiirin knew Shaaca's ways just as well as he did. She knew the aashnin's reckless streak, how single-minded she could become and how badly it had hurt her in the past. To let on that he had allowed her to run off alone in such a state would only worry the elderly kabutops, worry that he could easily help her to avoid through a simple lie of omission.

He sat up straighter, nodding. 'Of course.'

It was firmly planted in the forefront of his mind again, though: that aching fear. He tried to focus on Jakinzaa as she sighed but all he could see was Shaaca driven wild with grief, hurtling through the wilderness and bursting out into the open above the omastar's bay to the deadly whistle of a barrage of spines.

'Thank you,' the elder kabutops said, turning her head away and missing the inadvertent flex of Tziir's scythes as one-sided battle played out across his mind. 'Poor Kognook.'

His muscles singing with the urge to race after his aashnin, the kabtaar barely kept still. Distantly he echoed Jakinzaa's words.

'Poor... Kognook.'

o o o

'Be careful. You don't want him falling in.'

From atop a suitably tar-free rock, Raahn observed as the aashnin lowered Zetaahn onto the ground near the lowest lip of the pit. The obsidian kabutops had yet to acknowledge him directly since her return, save to offer him a seat on her shoulder as she carried their wounded raakin through the jungle, but the kabuto had decided to take this as a challenge rather than an insult. Indeed, he had resolved to throw out useful comments as they occurred to him. Eventually, he knew, the brilliance of his insight would remind her of his worth and she would hang onto his every word.

'He almost looks like a big dead fish from up here, you know. A spiny one. With legs.'

'I do not,' Zetaahn grumbled back, flinching as Shaaca pushed at his cracked shell with the blunt edge of her scythe.

The youngest of the group had finally regained consciousness halfway through the trek, alerting his companions to his awakening by throwing up down the aashnin's back and prompting a full halt while the irritable female hunted for a water source. When none could be found in the immediate area it had been down to Raahn to clean his superior's fins with a few leaves. As a result, he had no qualms with insulting the raakin even more than usual. It seemed a fair bet that Shaaca was unlikely to intervene on Zetaahn's behalf.

'No, on second thoughts you do lack the brilliance of a fish, both in iridescence and mental capacity.'

'Who told you fish were brilliant? They're not. They're stupid.'

'They're brilliant comparatively when set beside you,' Raahn clarified, cackling.

His laughter trailed off as a metallic hum drew his attention from Zetaahn to the aashnin, whose violet eyes were narrowed in irritation. Ducking his gaze, he hunkered down on his rock.

'Sorry,Aashnin,' came the muffled apology from beneath his dark shell. 'I shall dedicate my efforts to... extensive study of this rock face.'

Zetaahn did his best not to grin as Shaaca turned back to him, a task made considerably simpler when her expression remained just as cold and disapproving. Squirming uncomfortably as she reached down into the tar pit and brought up a scytheful of viscous black ooze, he couldn't help but feel exceptionally vulnerable spread out on his back like this. A cold sweat began to form in the gaps between his armour plates as she forced his head against his chest with her elbow, eyeing the cracks in his helm as she figured out how to apply the tar. Peering up at her as best he could with pressure on his forehead, he saw her stop and glance right at him.

Holding his gaze she said gruffly, 'Calm yourself.'

He swallowed. 'I am calm, Aashnin.'

'Oh?'

Her clean scythe materialised beneath the curve of his chin before he even saw her move. A hair's width from his shell, the blade emitted an odd clicking sound he couldn't quite place until he heard their cowering strategist snort derisively from his rock.

'Shaking,' Shaaca said, withdrawing the scythe. 'You need to be still.'

'I'm trying,' he replied, tensing.

With a hiss of blade on blade, Shaaca sliced the tar from her scythe and deposited it on the ground near his flank. She stood swiftly, looming over him, and looked down intently.

'Not hard enough. Get up.'

Zetaahn blinked. 'But I thought you wanted me to rest as much as possible.'

'I've changed my mind. Get up and fight.'

The click of Raahn's legs on rock as the kabuto raised himself up to watch was lost on Zetaahn, who found his nervousness building into utter panic. He was light-headed, slightly dizzy; his joints ached from a night spent tossing and turning; and the nausea that had persisted throughout the day was worse than ever. The idea of fighting amplified every complaint. The idea of fighting Shaaca made him want to pass out. That way he would probably lie still enough to appease her too, now that he thought about it, so maybe it was a course of action she would endorse.

'Raakin. Now.'

Wondering vaguely if the aashnin intended on 'accidentally' tripping him into the tar pit for his little faux pas earlier, Zetaahn clambered unsteadily to his feet, the aching in his head increasing to a distracting throb.

He had never been good at duels. The balance between trying to fight as well as he could and making sure he didn't move so fast his opponent couldn't keep up was just plain difficult and, if he was totally honest, the potential mishaps scared him. Hesitantly, thinking of the occasional ugly wound he had seen as a result of raakin training duels gone grisly, he adopted a defensive posture.

'Hm, your choice,' said Shaaca.

She shifted into an aggressive stance.

His heart fluttering against his chest, Zetaahn realised she had let him choose who went on the attack first. He had just chosen wrongly. Panicking at the thought of the aashnin's blades slicing at him, he tried to shift stance in the vague hope she would allow it, but she was already striking out, her left scythe arching towards his flank. Yelping, he stumbled backward, the very tip of the blade grazing his armour with a shriek.

'Aashnin, I-'

The right blade cut him off, tilting at the last second to turn the slash into a slap against his hip. Staggering to the side, the world spinning sickly around him, he felt sour bile push against the back of his throat and gagged, spluttering phlegm.

'Raakin!'

'I can't,' he gurgled, humiliating tears pricking at his eyes.

'Your kabtaar wouldn't have picked you for this mission if you couldn't,' she snapped. 'Now raise your blades, stop giving ground and show me what convinced him!'

Luck and lies, he thought wretchedly, glancing up just in time to see her next attack sweep towards his shoulder.

His left blade jerked into an awkward parry only for the right to be immediately busied fending off Shaaca's following strike. He saw her elbow loosen just before impact; her scythe bounced neatly from his as he blocked, the shock of impact jarring all the way up to his shoulder, and sliced straight back in beneath his guard. There was no kindly turning of her sickle this time: it was only a hasty, terrified leap backwards that saved Zetaahn from being split across the belly.

Landing solidly on a flat expanse of rock, he lashed out instinctively as Shaaca leapt after him, only for her to neatly sidestep the attack and continue her assault. Each strike calculated and precise, a marked difference showed between her form and that of his peers. There was no hesitation, no flash of indecision in her eyes as she second-guessed her movements. No sign that she doubted his ability to defend himself even at this speed, either. The aashnin trusted him.

The knowledge provided a surge of excitement and adrenaline, the pain in his head lessening as he threw himself into the task of repelling her expert blows. There was no discernible pattern to her strikes; she seemed equally comfortable leading with her left as with her right and more than happy to miss a beat and dodge one of his enthusiastic but apparently predictable blows before retaliating hard and fast.

Defending himself became artful guesswork, his reflexes improving with every last-second dodge or hasty parry until he was barely thinking at all, something deeper driving his limbs. His sickles moved so fast his arms ached beneath their armour. He began to match her, the aashnin of his tribe, the supposed strongest amongst them, and him nothing more than an untried raakin, injured no less but actually in with a chance-

His brain barely registered what could only be a gleam of amusement in Shaaca's eyes before she hit both his scythes with such raw power he was instantly rendered numb up to the shoulder. Her own blades arching back around, she swiped at him with both at once, a manoeuvre he wouldn't have known how to repel even if he wasn't already effectively disarmed. Eyes wide, he launched himself out of the way, crashing painfully into one of the trees surrounding the pit and nearly losing his footing altogether. Staggering, he leapt blindly from the edge of the forest to one of the broad, flat stones encircling the tar, looking around wildly for his opponent. She had disappeared entirely from view.

The raakin swallowed, checked his footing on this new ground and cast his gaze about, his pulse thudding through his joints. The forest stood firm before him, overhanging branches, swathes of moss, assorted shrubs and prevalent shadow hiding Shaaca but failing to disguise the sounds of her movement. His head tilted to the side as he listened. Zetaahn raised his blades, arms still tingling, and grinned as a rustle of leaves to his left gave her away in an instant.

'I'm ready, Aashnin!' he bellowed to the thick foliage in which she undoubtedly hid, his shoulders hunched and attention fully focused on that very spot.

In hindsight, he should have realised she would never be so easy to track.

Bursting from the undergrowth to his far right, Shaaca charged him directly: a gleaming streak of polished black and silver that ploughed into his flank shoulder-first. Staggering back to the very lip of the pit, their scythes tangled and muscles straining, the two kabutops wrestled chest to chest, growling with the effort. Even his new-found strength failed to make it an even match. Part of an older, larger, heavier generation with more barbs and five times the experience, the aashnin only needed to strengthen her stance with a tiny step to the side and she would overpower him with ease.

He didn't expect the hook. Giving a sudden shove with pure brute force, she slipped one leg behind his while he struggled to regain his balance and in one sweeping pull sent him tumbling backwards over the edge. Scalding fumes seared his back.

I'm dead, he began to think, too bewildered to really process fear at the concept.

His brain barely even made the first syllable. Her expression unchanging, Shaaca reached out in that split second before he passed the point of no return, hooked her arm through his and hurled him back onto land.

She turned slowly for any duelling combatant, let alone the aashnin, and he anticipated her words before she even started to say them. That will be enough. They were bad words. He considered himself to be doing her a favour by cutting them off. He surged forward just as she drew breath, a flicker of surprise showing in her eyes as she turned her head and found the sharp side of a blade already mere centimetres from her face. Her scythes lowered to signify the end of a duel, it was going to take every bit of that speed she had shown before to raise them in time. But of course he trusted her to make it, she was the best warrior in the tribe, she could deal with just about anything-

The blade struck home.

The resulting crack scared Raahn off his perch, but Shaaca was past noticing. The look of disbelief on Zetaahn's face as a duck of her head caused his scythe to skitter across the sweep of her helm, too, was of no particular interest. No, she had come impossibly close to a particularly ugly defeat, obsidian armour or otherwise, and her blood was already rising to the challenge, her wings' hum developing that particular piercing edge to it.

'Aashnin, are you- I mean, I never thought-'

'Zetaahn! Alert!' barked Raahn from the ground, not a second too soon.

No holding back. From at ease to striking without pause, she slashed down at Zetaahn's shoulder, horizontally at his abdomen, straight up towards his chin. Every demand she made of her body was met with the sharp, swift precision of a century's worth of practice. Driving him back towards the trees, towards fallen leaves and precarious footing, was easy even with the same battle lust mirrored in his eyes, even with the odd competent parry amongst the weak bluster he had fallen back on.

He was off balance: hell, he had been off balance since he'd hit her, but this was something else. He knew it too. She saw the beginnings of a well-guarded correction in the angle of his scythes and the hasty shifting of his weight, but had no interest in letting it reach its fruition. The dull side of her left blade rammed into the one soft spot on his flank, forcing the air from his lungs before folding, slipping past him and lending its momentum to her body. Spinning, she half crouched before kicking the raakin square in the back with enough force to send him hurtling into a tree. Colliding chest-first with the trunk, he slid to its base and lay there sprawled in the dirt, coughing. Practically finished. All that was left was to actualise it.

Just as she took her first step forward to carry the deed out, he raised his head. Sheer admiration shone in his eyes, not terror. For a second her warrior's mind struggled to comprehend it: the contrast between that expression and those she was used to receiving from prey was so sharp it pierced straight through the veil of red. She blinked, the burst of extra energy fading from her limbs. Young, impressionable and unaware of the danger he had been in, Zetaahn blinked back. He grinned and lurched to his feet.

She raised her chin, eyeing him up and down. 'Are you all right?'

'Yup,' he replied, shaking an impaled leaf from the tip of one scythe before shooting her a worried look. 'We're not stopping, are we?'

Her smile would later be blamed on the rush of battle, but for the time being it was simply a smile: relieved and just a little charmed.

'It would be for the best.'

'Of course it would be for the best,' Raahn snapped from the sidelines, his irritation seemingly aimed at both kabutops equally. 'In case you've forgotten, our present aim is the treatment of Zetaahn's injury, not the continuation of your petty sport until one of you brains the other.'

Glancing sideways at the huffing kabuto, Shaaca gave a half nod before gesturing for Zetaahn to sit. His eyes, still wide and eager from the fight, followed her as she circled him, crossing and uncrossing her blades absently as she considered the task set before her.

'Close your eyes,' she said at length, pausing in her pacing, 'And reflect on the fight for me. You did well but you could do better. Tell me everything you noticed.'

Looking over Zetaahn's bloody head to Raahn, she gave him a pointed look before raising her scythe in the direction of the tar she had already extracted from the pit. The telniin hesitated for a second, processing the command, before indicating he understood with a few clicks of his claws.

'I enjoyed myself, Aashnin,' Zetaahn told her between heavy breaths, unaware of the critical look she was casting over his cracked shell, 'Which doesn't usually happen... Duels with other raakinoi were always clumsy. When it's clear someone's as inexperienced as me, I spend the whole time worrying about how I could accidentally spear them, you know?'

'And this was different,' she said, narrowing her eyes at the fracture, where the gathering of blood was thick and brown with dust.

'I was more worried about you hurting me than me hurting you, Aashnin,' he replied, grinning. 'I wasn't holding back 'cause there wasn't any reason to. I just went for it and... I don't know. I felt separate from myself at one point, like I wasn't purposefully working out how to parry and strike back. I just did it.'

'Battle trance. It means you've trained well.'

'I'm ready to become a delfiir?'

'I wouldn't stretch it that far.'

She glanced over at Raahn, who was busily transferring tar to his shell with stubby claws, muttering out curses under his breath when the viscous substance refused to cooperate.

'What else?' she asked the raakin, realising he had fallen silent.

'You're fast,' he said immediately, 'Much faster than I am.'

She frowned. 'So you did notice. Explain, then, why you kept trying to match my speed.'

'You're better than me at everything else too,' he replied a little sheepishly, 'I couldn't see anything more to do.'

'Aim to strike as I strike,' she said, cocking her head to the side and observing the rigid line of his back as he sat at attention. 'I'm not trying to kill you, so continuing my strike and finishing you off to halt your blow wouldn't be an option. I would have to abort my swing and parry yours, perhaps even tie up my other scythe dealing with it too. Even if it didn't get you an immediate opening, you would break my rhythm, push me onto the defensive for an instant. Enough to perhaps gain a modicum of control.'

Zetaahn poked at the earth with his blades, perplexed, before peering up at her. 'But Aashnin.'

She sliced the air right in front of his face and his eyes snapped shut again.

'Aashnin, that doesn't have any proper application outside of a duel. Why learn to do it? You'd hit me first in a real fight.'

She hissed at him, eliciting an embarrassed duck of his head. Did all the raakinoi sport such gaping holes in their general knowledge? Maybe gaps in their education were to be expected when the experienced warriors meant to teach them were floating corpses tethered to the seabed below the kiteraan shelf, but that didn't stop the surge of indignation at the thought of the new fighting force of her tribe being so poorly informed.

'A duel isn't to practice moves you can copy perfectly across into battle,' she chided somewhat more passionately than intended. 'If you haven't noticed, you fight other kabutops in duels. How frequently do you think that's the case in real battles?'

Trundling over, Raahn settled at her feet with the tar piled carefully on his back.

'Aashnin Shaaca simply wants you to consider the motives and aims of your attacker and factor those into your tactics,' he explained. 'Being creative is what separates excellent warriors from those who are merely serviceable.'

Reaching down to scoop tar from Raahn's shell, Shaaca clicked her agreement. Memories of the very same principle being repeated to her in various different forms when she was newly evolved swam clearly into focus despite the decades that had passed since: memories in which she sat, wide eyed with fascination, as her only friend paced in front of her, swishing his scythes through the air as he lectured her on form and strategy as though she were like any other kabutops. Fresh-faced Delfiir Tziir, his speeches tumbling into eloquent rants as he began to pick apart his own logic mid-flow or peel off at some seemingly random tangent in pursuit of further truths. Turning suddenly to her - 'Do you think that's right? Do you know of anything similar?' - and really believing that her juvenile opinion carried some weight.

The recollection stung. She forced it deeper into her mind, focusing instead on Zetaahn himself. Popular amongst his peers. Self-confident, if whiny. Nothing like her, but still entirely worth her effort because he was part of the future of the tribe and yet still so very young, just like-

She focused on Zetaahn.

'Is that why you kicked me, Aashnin?' he was enquiring dubiously, presumably set back by Raahn's display of knowledge.

She snorted, disbelieving. The dark thoughts were locked back for now, buried deep under the moment. 'You've never been kicked?'

He crossed his scythes emphatically. 'Never! I was told you never wanted your legs ahead of your scythes. Djirnaar Jaahzi said if you were legless you might as well be headless, insofar as expected lifespan was concerned, and legs first was a sure way to make it happen.'

'I think there's an insult in there somewhere, Aashnin,' said Raahn.

'Quite,' she agreed, smirking despite the abyss her heart teetered above. 'Did you mean to say your tribe's helniin executed a reckless, poorly considered move, Raakin?'

Giving him no chance to reply and herself no pause for thought, she hooked the joint of her scythe under his chin and tipped back his head brusquely, aiming at a point just over the ugly injury.

'I think you did,' she tutted, and muted his objections with a gentle stream of water.

Colliding with the curve of his helm and swirling over the crack, it washed filth from the wound, splattering on the rocks at their feet. Zetaahn jumped at the sudden cold, eyes flying open and darting around in confusion. Apparently they fell on the dome of tar at his feet, because Shaaca heard him murmur in confusion, 'Raahn?'

The strategist let out an irritable growl. 'No, it's the many-legged black goo pile here to watch the show,' he snapped, 'And that, by the way, is the magic waterfall of bladed demise.'

She snorted, working tar between her scythes as she said, 'Had I such a title.'

Zetaahn's eyes rolled as far back as they could to try and look at her. 'But Aashnin suits you,' he said plaintively.

'Of course it does,' Raahn interjected with his usual superior tone. '"Midnight general" as opposed to "Kabtaar's general". No other helniin could alter their title quite like that.'

'I know that,' the raakin snapped back. 'Everyone does.'

'Yes, well, it seems best not to assume knowledge with you – any knowledge at all.'

Their bickering was soothing somehow; she wasn't really processing the particular words as she began to smooth hot tar over Zetaahn's broken helm, but the babble of voices expanded across her consciousness with just enough weight to hold down all the things she really didn't want to think about. As the exchange broke down to name-calling, it occurred to her that she hadn't heard any sort of discourse beyond the clipped comments between shiraari for weeks. Because of Kognook.

'Aashnin, why is it no one else has wings like yours, anyway?'

The comforting chatter halted as Zetaahn waited for a reply, but it mattered little. The thought was already loose and stalking through her head unchecked, overwhelming every other notion it encountered. It took every ounce of willpower she had to finish her work on his injury before staggering back from him, off balance, ropes of tar hanging thickly from her scythes and drooping toward the ground. Speech seemed impossible.

'Aashnin?' he repeated, turning rigidly so as not to tilt his head.

She sucked in air, vaguely aware of Raahn's rueful look of comprehension from down by Zetaahn's feet. Even with the tar scraped away, his shell was still as black as hers. Like Kognook's could have been, had he hatched with her looks.

'We should get moving again,' the telniin proposed gently, skittering a short way toward her.

Clearly perplexed by his elders, Zetaahn eyed Raahn sideways. 'What about your shell?'

'It doesn't matter.'

Ignoring the raakin's further questions, the kabuto moved closer still until he could reach out and tap Shaaca's leg lightly.

'Aashnin,' he said, 'It'll be best to keep moving.'

She forced herself to steady her breath, her transparent lid closing over her eyes, before giving a weak nod. Of course it was best to keep moving, just like it was best to keep busy. That had just been proven. One minute of calm and her warrior's composure had failed her, her mind wandering until she was once again reminded of that most chilling of possibilities: that her resentment toward her only son would never fade.