Oh no! Here we go! Here come the saints of violence and innuendo!
We formally graduate to an M rating, my friends. For gore and general effed-uppery about to ensue.
Bleak meter: All the stuff we graduated to an M rating for. Gore, death, nihilism, effed-up social practices, and oblique (okay, not very oblique) sexual references. It's like Arcane and Evangelion simultaneously and in a desert.
Timeline: After Season 10/MotO
Context: Many OCs today. Many-many. The only ones who are going to maintain relevance are Redskull, Tsippa, and that one guy whose name etymology I will never confess because it would ruin the effect.
Some days, Chew Toy's morning cowbell didn't even finish ringing before Faith was running three things at once. Today was one of those days.
"Sunrise over Dead's End, and alllllll's well!" crowed Chew Toy from the granary roof. "Hey, we have a rainstorm due this afternoon!"
"What?" Faith rounded on her heels, barely even breaking pace on her way to the smithy. "You're sure? Dammit."
"What's up?" Jet Jack popped out of a side alley to trot by her.
"Rainstorm. The grain needs to come in early before it gets wet and molds," said Faith, still walking half-backwards. Then she looked again. "Why are you bleeding?!"
She stopped, trying to hide her dismay. This early in the morning and Jet Jack had already gotten herself into a brawl? Meanwhile Jet Jack wicked the heel of her thumb under her lower lip and regarded the smear of blood dispassionately.
"Eh, it's fine. Rondo just bites when he really gets into it." She smirked. "You know, considering how boring he is out in public, he really—"
"That'll be enough!" interrupted Faith. When Jet Jack grinned she added sharply, "you can spare me the details; closed doors exist for a reason."
"Oh, if it was up to me I wouldn't care about closing the door—"
"Enough!"
"Sheeeeeeeesh." Jet Jack rolled her eyes behind the visor. "All right, I see how it is. We can find someone to cure your sour grapes later—"
"No thank you—"
"—In the meantime, what can I do about the dumb grain?" finished Jet Jack, with a maddeningly innocent smile. Faith seethed at her a moment more, then sighed and let it go.
"All right. Make yourself useful. We're going to have to pull workers from the village, most likely, but for now see who's free for the day. Start with them."
Jet Jack tipped a lazy salute and whisked off.
"Tell them to start on the west fields!" Faith shouted after her. She swung back around to resume walking forwards, just in time to nearly slam into Arkade.
"Sorry Chief!" he took a step back. "Mornin'. Just heard about the grain. We don't have room in the granary, not since the roof failed over the back half."
"Ugh." Faith tugged at her ponytail. "Do we have an alternative building lined up?"
"No ma'am."
"Then you're in charge of securing one." Faith shook her head, even as Arkade seemed to be about to speak. "Wait, no, never mind. You need to tally the grain as it comes in. All right, I'll find someone else to look for a building. Remind me if we don't have one by noon."
Arkade nodded and headed towards the west fields to begin tallying.
"Chief, morning," said Tsippa, accosting her next. Faith grimaced, knowing from her tone that it was bad news.
"More spontaneous concussions?" she said.
"No new reports yet," said Tsippa. "But Malachi died overnight. Could you—?"
"Lead the way," said Faith, even though her heart was sinking. So early in the morning, already.
Tsippa led her towards one of the larger huts near the edge of the village. Faith flinched again—that would mean he was married. Had been married. The building's windows seemed unnaturally dark, as if the death within was sucking light from the outdoors.
Faith paused on the doorstep and moistened her thumb in her mouth. She drew a line of saliva along the top of the doorframe as she passed indoors; the traditional way of wishing better luck to a household.
Inside it was stifling and silent. Malachi's wife Vera huddled over his corpse, its hands still bright with blood from trying to burrow through the stone floor in his death throes. Worse, he had been one of the few who raised his own children, apparently. Two small whelps huddled in a corner, their wide red eyes empty as they turned to Faith.
"Morning, Chief," said Vera hoarsely. "Thank you for coming."
Faith dipped her head and crouched to regard the dead man's face. She closed his eyelids, then stood and again moistened her thumb in her mouth, this time drawing the blessing mark across Vera's forehead.
"Better health to you," she said. "If you need anything, let me or one of my bravors know." Vera nodded wordlessly.
Faith turned towards the doorway, unsure as always how to tactfully step away, only to find Soul Snatcher already silhouetted in the doorframe. As the village deathmonger, he seemed to sense new corpses even before they were indicted.
He had a jointed prosthetic leg, which had been worn down with endless sand invading the hinge. His knee rasped noisily with each lurching step.
"I'll take it from here," he said in his soft, spidery voice. As he passed he drew a perfunctory blessing mark across Faith's forehead as well, and as usual didn't wait for her to give one in return. He himself felt no need for it.
Faith slipped away before she had to witness Soul Snatcher dragging the body away along the village streets, and before Vera could start crying in earnest. She was terrible at handling that kind of thing. She stumbled aimlessly past a few intersections, then slowed and shook herself, trying to buck the chill of death. What had she been doing? Grain, the fields, the granary . . . Oh, the smithy. She turned that way.
"I've found fieldworkers!" said Jet Jack, suddenly dropping from the sky. "There are . . . three. And one of them is me."
"Start pulling from the occupied roles then," said Faith. "You know the drill. Ask every trade who they can spare today. We can't let that grain go to waste."
Jet Jack flipped backwards and was gone again. Faith chewed her lip, wondering what vital tasks around the village wouldn't get done today because of the emergency harvest. She hoped Jet Jack had at least some sense of which jobs really couldn't be spared, but she wasn't optimistic.
Before she even got to the smithy she heard a commotion coming from the village marketplace. A hoarse roar mixed in with the clattering and shouting, and Faith, her heart seizing, hurried in that direction.
Sure enough, it was Fire. The dragon garnered enough of the Hunters' frustration that he'd never earned a more affectionate name, as many of the other dragons did. Today he had overturned several of the trade booths in the marketplace and was straining to reach another, his nostrils flaring. That one must be offering meat of some kind. The traders were swarming around in a noisy panic, trying to save their booths and wares as Fire's claws trampled erratically over the wreckage and his neck stretched out long.
One particularly daring trader began to beat the dragon's muzzle with a broom. He lurched his head back, giving an offended hiss. His wings sprang up and his tail began to lash, shattering still more booths. His back arched. He was growing angry. The trader, heedless of death, swung the broom at his head again, and Fire reared back, howling angrily and with embers flashing between his jaws.
"Hey! That's enough!" Faith barged in and gave Fire a solid whack in the side.
Abruptly he whirled, a shrill snarl bursting up his throat. His teeth, spurting angry boiling-hot foam, flashed inches away from Faith's face. She stumbled back a few steps, inadvertently.
It grew silent. Fire still stood with his neck arced around, saliva dripping from his jaws as he quivered with rage. Faith stood where she'd stopped, steady but breathing much too fast. She felt her hands shaking; she prayed it wasn't visible.
Finally she convinced herself to move.
"I said no!" She cuffed Fire across the snout. "Get out of here! Break it up."
Fire hissed, but drew back from her assault. His eyes flared as he rose up to his full height, leering down at Faith contemptuously. She stood with her head up and her shoulders back, her eyes doggedly fixed on his, the scars on her face burning. This dragon had been one of her first catches as Heavy Metal. She often wondered if he resented that she had moved too fast for him to take out her eye.
The seconds ticked on. Fire narrowed his hard red glare, hunger sparking in his expression. Then he snorted, turned in a flourish of wings and tail, and swept away, flapping for the village limits.
"Well then." Faith dusted off her hands as if she hadn't done anything out of the ordinary. "At least some of us know how to handle a dragon."
Still, she didn't miss the disgusted looks some of the traders tossed her way. She had a sinking feeling they had seen her fear when Fire turned on her. There it went. More fuel for the rumors that she only let the dragons come into their village because she was afraid. The usual accusations that the dragons ruled her; that she was letting them run amok because she was too weak or too stupid or too generally disloyal to stand up for her own people.
"I'll see who I can spare to fix the trading booths," she said, forcing herself to sound calm and unconcerned. Inside she was desperately trying to tally how she was going to find extra help for the fields and for the repair work here. The obvious solution was to tell the traders with wrecked booths to spend today working in the fields instead of trading, but she hesitated to ask that of them when they were already shaken and upset. Finally she bit the bullet.
"We need field workers," she said. "Help gather grain today and we'll be able to dedicate more workers to help fix your booths tomorrow. Everyone who lost their stand here, you're in the fields for the day."
There was a smattering of "yes ma'am"s, some resigned, some sullen. Faith set her jaw and continued to the smithy.
The day ground on. Production report from the metalworkers—they were running short on ore. There would have to be a scouting mission to find more soon, or an inventory of what they could afford to scrap, melt down, and rework. Tsippa reporting three new spontaneous concussion cases. Cobber had found a good-sized building to store extra grain, but it was in use, and Faith had to set up a bargaining session with the owner to get use of it. She had a bad feeling there were some trap clauses worked into the final agreement.
Production report from the weavers. Jet Jack reporting a fistfight between some of the displaced traders on their way to the fields. It had been sorted out she said, and Faith restrained herself from asking why her other lip was bleeding now. The nursery didn't have enough food for dinner tonight, their rations needed to be adjusted. Tsippa reporting another two spontaneous concussion cases. One of the three from earlier had already died. Another doorframe marked with saliva, another encounter with a grieving spouse, another airless brush with Soul Snatcher, his knee creaking out the same steady beat.
She stopped by the field early in the afternoon. Redskull, probably one of the un-busy ones Jet Jack had first found, was trotting back and forth with a bucket of water.
"Helping out?" said Faith.
"Ah! Faith." He turned his shrouded face towards her with a smile. "Good that you're here. They keep telling me it's urgent and we have to gather the grain quickly, and then they went and took away my scythe! Do they want to pull this off or don't they?"
Faith eyed the sky silently, knowing better than to try convincing Redskull that he maybe was better off without a giant cutting implement in his hands. Subconsciously she checked if any of the nearby field workers were bleeding.
Redskull maybe did understand, on some level, because he gave a rueful laugh and held up the bucket.
"Ech, I suppose I'm good for something, anyway. Do you want a drink, Faith?"
Faith was about to say no, but then realized that she hadn't had anything to eat or drink since knocking back a cup of sandwater at dawn. She accepted the ladle Redskull held out and drank thirstily.
Only after finishing, she realized some of the nearby fieldworkers were giving her covert dirty looks. They had been working hard in muggy pre-rain heat all morning. Of course, so had she, but they probably felt that their lot was much worse, and resented her coming her and schlepping down their water when they were the ones breaking their backs. Feeling a little queasy, she tossed the ladle back into the pail and turned back to the village.
Another fistfight on the north side of town. Report from the construction team, who was already planning out a new building to replace the one they were borrowing for the extra grain. Report from the leatherworkers. No report from the millers, because just before Faith arrived one of their giant millstones had broken loose and fallen onto one of the young apprentices, crushing his legs. He was screaming with agony even as Faith arrived, at the same time as Tsippa.
"Easy, easy!" Tsippa was already helping to hold him down. "Sweetie, shhh. Look at me. Plant or blade?"
The young miller's wild eyes flickered over her, uncomprehending.
"Plant or blade?" repeated Tsippa urgently.
"Plant," he finally guttered. Tsippa, not even bothering to hide a sigh of relief, reached into her pocket and produced a small canister of green pulp, already half-rancid in the day's heat. The injured apprentice choked down the prepared Healing Plant, which would prevent his injuries from killing him, at least for the next few days. Faith could tell at a glance that he'd never walk again, though.
"Dammit," said Tsippa as she left, her voice wavering. Faith wondered how she hadn't grown inured yet, seeing this every day. Another forehead marked with saliva. Onwards to the rest of the day's rounds.
The rain came early in the afternoon. Faith met some of the fieldworkers scurrying into the village, dragging the last few carts of grain covered with tarps. Arkade was darting back and forth counting, scratching tally marks into a piece of wood.
"Did you get all of it?" called Faith, above the thrumming of rain on Arkade's armor.
"Most," replied Arkade. "Almost."
His tone was heavy. Faith paused, giving him a questioning look.
"It was a little early to be harvesting," he said. "Not all of it was ripe, I suppose."
"Less than you expected?" Faith set her teeth. "Will we still have enough for the winter?"
Arkade's eyes flickered away silently. For a second Faith didn't respond; both of them frozen in a vague dread they couldn't express.
"We'll think of something," said Faith at last. "There are later varieties of grain plant, maybe those will bear more. We'll be all right."
Arkade dipped his head and stepped back, deferentially asking to be excused.
"Thank you for your hard work today," said Faith, and he nodded and left.
Faith stayed behind, still scrabbling for some ray of hope. She'd think of something. They'd always pulled through before. Sort of.
She held out her palm, feeling the cold drops splatter against her skin. Normally she loved the rain, but right now she couldn't bring herself to enjoy it. Shaking her head, she flicked water from her fingers and returned to her rounds.
The village seemed to lull as Hunters fled the downpour. Work continued indoors or ground to a halt. Most of the people Faith met along the way were scurrying with cowls pulled up or hats pulled down, hastening to someplace drier. Faith had left her own broad conical hat at home; even as she felt the rain soaking through her hair and undoing her ponytail, she couldn't work up the wherewithal to bother getting it. She was already wet, whatever.
Report from the weavers. Another spontaneous concussion died. There were always more in the rainy season, weren't there? Report from the repairmen. They were behind schedule because they couldn't work in the rain. They weren't going to have enough vehicles to bring ore for the metalworkers, not for a while.
Faith's bangs were starting to slither down her forehead, into her eyes. She lost focus for two seconds to push them back and proceeded to run into someone, hard enough to knock him backwards.
"Dammit." Faith started into the real world and held out a hand, unable to repress a weary sigh. "Forgive me, I didn't see you."
"Forgive you," spat the man, picking himself up. Faith started at the venom in his voice. Her heartrate spiked. She knew where this was going.
"Ren," she said evenly. She recognized him as one of the traders whose booth was destroyed this morning. "Is there a problem?"
"Don't patronize me!" snapped Ren. "Don't pretend you don't know!"
"I'm sorry about your trading booth," said Faith. "It's going to be repaired, I promise. Give it time."
"I don't want repairs, I want solutions," said Ren hotly. "How long are you going to keep sneaking around patching up everything the dragons destroy, bribing people to keep quiet about it, trying to cram it down everyone's throat that it's good to let those stinking animals in here?"
Faith faltered, unsure how to even begin replying.
"I don't—"
"Are you trying to get us all killed?!" Ren barrelled on. "One of these days we'll all wake up murdered in our beds because some giant brainless lizard decided ruining our property wasn't enough. Are you stupid? Do you think they care about us? You think you can gamble with all of our lives just so you can feel noble and heroic? They see us as dead meat they aren't allowed to eat! And you welcome them!"
"We're at peace with the dragons." Faith forced herself to keep her tone level. She was struggling to feel some sympathy for this man; she tried to remind herself that he had lost his livelihood today. He was afraid, he needed someone to be angry at. But those were only thoughts whisking along the surface of her brain. At her core she was on fire, terrified, howling with rage of her own. At the most visceral level she could only register the threats in Ren's posture, his tone. Danger. Only danger. He spared no energy on seeking charity for her.
"Peace!" he spat. "Peace, great! Fine! But who asked you to let them in here, just because we're at peace?!"
"I am not going to ban the dragons from the village," said Faith, quiet but firm.
"Then answer for our blood!"
Annnnnnnd there was a blade. A rusty sword sprang from the folds of Ren's cloak and slashed a ragged diagonal cross in front of him, coming to a shaking halt between the two of them.
Faith felt all the heat inside her morph into a deep, airless cold. She regarded Ren in silence. His words had been well enough qualified for treason. Drawing a blade was inarguable.
She was aware of scurrying and rustling at the edges of her vision. The noise had attracted many other Hunters. A crowd was gathering, peering from doorways, shuffling through the rain, keeping at a safe distance. Whatever she did would send a message to the village as a whole.
"I'm going to give you a chance," she said, measuring her words carefully. "Put away that blade and make your peace, and we can pretend this didn't happen. It's more than you deserve."
Ren gave a jagged laugh, his blade shaking in his hands. He stepped closer.
"Don't do it, Ren," said Faith quietly. "Put down the blade. Walk away."
"I'm through with being trampled!" barked Ren, his voice breaking. "Kill me if you want. I would rather die than watch you run this village into the ground."
"Put down the blade, Ren."
He swung it back, his feet biting through the mud as he prepared to charge.
Faith let him. Her own blade sprang out even as Ren was lunging; she took a few light steps to meet him along the way. His steel flashed for her throat, but her own blade was already there, intercepting, diverting his sword. In the same fluid motion, even as she continued past him, she drove her own blade into his stomach. Maybe she didn't have to drag it as far as she did, but it was done and she couldn't take it back.
She stepped away from the encounter, her sword dripping, while behind her Ren crumpled to all fours, blood and bile spurting from the gaping hole in his belly. Faith glanced over her shoulder and quietly stepped aside.
The onlookers were silent as Ren retched endlessly, curled over himself. Soul Snatcher broke from the crowd. He limped over to the shuddering man on the ground and crouched at his side.
"Plant or blade?" he said. There was the barest flicker of life in his eyes, for once; a strange hunger.
Ren coughed. Bubbling pink and red acid splashed onto his chin, dissolving in the rain. His eyes roved, then fixed on Faith, who met his gaze steadily. She watched the pain in his eyes blazing into hatred. A similar hatred flared in her own gut, swallowing any traces of regret. Her head tilted back slightly in contempt even as Ren's face twisted in a matching, vindictive revulsion.
"Blade," he gritted.
Soul Snatcher reached for his belt without further comment. A smooth slice, a seething, fizzing noise as the spurts of bright-red carotid blood spilled into Ren's windpipe; then silence. Soul Snatcher stood, moistening his bloody thumb in his mouth, and drew a perfunctory mark across Faith's forehead. Better luck and longer life to the victor. Then he bent to haul Ren's corpse away.
It was several hours more before Faith got home. She shook herself from the haze of murder and plowed onwards. She had to keep her promised meeting with the metalworkers, and break it to them that they wouldn't be getting their ore anytime soon. The measurements for the new building turned out to be wrong and had to be redone and re-approved. Another of the spontaneous concussion cases died. Faith began to feel like the creak of Soul Snatcher's metal knee never fully receded out of earshot.
She saw the meaningful glances when people thought she wasn't looking. News about Ren would be spreading. There would be yet another branching point, another split into factions; one who said she was a good strong leader who didn't tolerate insurrection and hate, another who said she was a barbaric witch who slaughtered her own people. No better than the Baron. Grain of truth to it, wasn't there? She had been a traitor herself.
As she trudged home she heard the splash of running feet. She whirled, bracing for someone to come at her back with a dagger, but it was only Jet Jack. Her second-in-command caught up to her, then stopped, seeming like she suddenly didn't know what to say.
"Hey," she finally said.
"What do you need?" Faith could no longer keep the exhaustion out of her voice.
"I don't need anything," said Jet Jack. Then she seemed to lose her thread again.
"Then what?" said Faith impatiently. Rain thrummed against the slates nearby, whispering the promise of shelter just out of reach.
"I don't know," said Jet Jack at last. "You're . . . going to be by yourself tonight, aren't you?"
"This again?" Faith's last tenuous link of patience snapped.
"Woah—" Jet Jack stepped back, startled at her tone. "I just thought you might want someone—"
"Not all of us spend our entire lives searching for the next man who's desperate enough to get inside us, all right?" gritted Faith. "Get out of here with that!"
Jet Jack took another step back.
"All right," she finally said, and turned away. She cast Faith an odd resentful look over her shoulder before firing up her jet pack and boosting off.
Faith continued towards her hut, seething. She was sick of hearing about Jet Jack's assorted conquests, and the last thing she needed was Jet Jack trying to force the same loose lifestyle on her. What the hell would she want sex for, she couldn't even get someone to—
—She stumbled, realizing suddenly that Jet Jack might have been on an entirely different trail. Her tone hadn't been the usual jibing singsong; Faith had assumed she was just chilled by the recent murder and even still couldn't resist harassing her. But only now it occurred to her, that might not have been a pimp call; that might have been Jet Jack offering to keep her company herself.
Shoot. That was unlikely, right? Faith shook her head, cringing. She honestly hoped she'd been right the first time, because if she'd just snapped at Jet Jack for trying to be nice to her, she was going to feel like the world's worst ass. Argh, but that would explain that look as she was leaving—
—Even as she was cursing herself out, a tiny defensive flame of frustration lit in her chest. It wasn't her fault she assumed the worst coming from Jet Jack, Jet Jack was never considerate. And what kind of stupid wording was that anyway? And besides, if it had been the other way around, Faith would have been more understanding that someone would be snappish after a long day, she would have looked past it and stayed anyway. It was a shoddy sort of kindness that took offense that easily, right?
Ah, but who was she kidding; the blame was mostly hers. And just because she would have given someone more grace, that didn't give her any right to expect the same from others, did it? It was entirely within Jet Jack's rights to take it personally.
Faith was already on her doorstep, weary and sick at heart, when she heard a cheery "hi, Chief! Glad I caught you!"
Arkade sounded much too chipper. He must have been holed up counting bags of grain all afternoon and not heard about Ren.
"I heard you were working on a new building for an extra granary, right?" he continued before Faith could say anything. "I wanted to talk to you about the measurements, I found a shape that will allow us to store the grain better! Can I show you really quick?"
Faith opened her mouth to say yes, but she couldn't get the word out. She looked at Arkade mutely for a second, then slumped.
"Can we talk about it tomorrow?" Her throat tightened around the words; she hated to admit defeat in anything, even in this. Arkade's eager eyes dimmed, then he stepped back, his head dipping.
"Of course, Chief," he said, his tone now much cooler, and left.
Faith leaned her forehead against her door for a minute, her hand still on the latch. Shame on her. Arkade had been excited about his idea. She should have more stamina than this; she shouldn't be brushing her people off just because she was tired and shaken and weak.
Breathing a curse, she unlatched the door and slipped inside.
The door clicked shut behind her, and she felt the usual rush of lightheadedness as the tension washed out of her all at once. The day was over. One more day down. Now to drink a cup of soup and a cup of sandwater and lie down on a cold sleeping mat in a silent room, and sleep. Get up and do it all again tomorrow.
She stood just in front of the door, motionless. Her brain said to walk to the woodstove but her body didn't obey. All her limbs suddenly felt so heavy.
Dizzily she leaned back against the door. As soon as she allowed even that much she gave up and sank to the floor. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Her hands shook. In a flash she saw blood splashing bright from Ren's mouth, his eyes hot with hate. Five dead today. One by her own hands. Another tomorrow? How many more tomorrow? How many dying of starvation over the winter? Why couldn't she stop them from dying? Why was she killing them herself? Why was she hurting them? How did she keep doing everything wrong?
Her breath was coming raggedly now. She bit hard into the back of her hand. She wasn't crying. Hell with this, no.
Shame on her.
The fit passed in a few seconds. She gave a final shudder, then sank back and let her head thump against the door, staring blankly across her small hut. It was empty.
Up, she told herself sternly. Up and do this all again tomorrow, you coward.
Tucking her feet underneath her, she wiped her face and stood.
Prompt was "Overwhelm."