She strikes again and again with the bolt, one arm covering her face in desperation. In her mind, as if summoned, appears the body of young Jenny Brooks whose aunt had been the to first write the Guild regarding the strange and unnatural happenings here in Post Market Green. There is something terrible about the wet, rotted smell of the creature as it tears at her that reminds her of that dead girl, her talon mutilated and exsanguinated body strangely unable to fill her pin neat Sunday dress as she had lain quietly in her family's sitting room surrounded by garlands of wild spring flowers and ashen faced relations.
Something stinking and horribly warm pours out of the beast. It smells like metal and Fitcher is certain it is blood, she just can't say to whom it belongs. Belonged.
And then the great black shape ratchets backward. With a grotesque scream, it accordions unnaturally back on itself, collapsing into stranger and stranger angles of black feathers and black bones until it is nothing more than a shapeless thing pin-cushioned by a series of crossbow bolts. With a final pop of air filling emptied space, it disappears entirely. The bolts, blackened with gore, fall from where they'd been suspended and scatter like loose twigs on the ground about her.
Fitcher lies very still. She's curled into a tight ball, the white fletched bolt clenched in her fist. In the dark, with her mottled coat and the terrible splatter of blood in every direction, it would be entirely impossible to say much of anything about her condition if it weren't for the fact that - given a moment of silence -, she comes uncurled to lay on her back in the beaten grass. She tosses away the blessed bolt. As Ellis swims into view:
Everything smells of blood and rot. Ellis feels an incredible sense of dread begin to permeate the momentary thrill of success. His hand tightens around the coin as he tumbles to his knees by her side. Ellis has the presence of mind to put it into his pocket; he can turn it over when they return to the Guild.
"Depends," Ellis tells her. "You'll have to tell me if you're bleeding out or not before I decide how well we are."
There are better clerics than Ellis. But Ellis is the person who's here, and he would prefer it if Fitcher didn't die on his watch. He'd do what he must to prevent that.
Maybe it's all the dark about them, how her eye has labored so hard in the last minutes to pick shadow from night, but he seems very pale above her. Lying there, Fitcher takes account of herself by slow degrees. For a long moment, she has no answer for him.
Then she decides: "Cuts and scrapes, I'll give you. But I don't believe the majority of this is mine, no." That said, she makes no effort to sit up. Instead, Fitcher tips her face so she might give him a thorough once over.
"Good Lord. We'll have to put a sheet down inside the carriage, else the league will press us for the cost of reupholstering."
Reassured, Ellis spills from his knees into a sitting position on the grass beside her as he exhales a hard breath. Dread subsides. He touches her shoulder in quiet, shared congratulations.
"It seemed like a good move at the time."
Which is as far as he'd ever planned in the midst of a fight. Get in close, hit as hard as possible, fight dirty if you have to. As it stand now, the latter had turned out very literal. He pats his palm lightly over the tacky mess of his shirt and shakes his head.
"Do you think we'll need to haul Bradshaw back?"
Unspoken: will Ellis need to heave his body onto the luggage rack of the carriage?
"And set a precedent for collecting the corpse of every third rate spell caster we stumble over? Don't be absurd. The value of this evening is in that bound spirit, not in Mr Bradshaw."
This said from lying still in the long, wet grass. At length, Fitcher begins to wipe her hands clean on the overgrown green about her. Speaking as if she is not splattered with every manner of viscera, nor splayed on the ground, nor battered by the buffeting of the freshly dismissed summons: "What was it? Our object of power."
Ellis sighs. No, no value in the corpse. Some muted urge demands that Ellis try to give Mr. Bradshaw some kind of dignity in death, but ignoring it, he digs the coin out of his pocket to hold it up for her to see.
"A coin."
Blood-smeared. Ellis hasn't tried to clean it. His palm is crusted over already, and he'll deal with the slash in the carriage.
"Not very imaginative, but at least it's easily portable."
And they can give it to Mr. Roscoe to examine. Ellis has a spell he could try, but he'd rather leave off. They've done enough.
"Do you want some whiskey?" Ellis asks her abruptly, as if just remembering that they might want to celebrate being alive or take the edge off nearly dying.
"Oh desperately," she says in the rapturous tones of, 'My dear Mr Ginsberg, you really do say the nicest things.'
Propping herself up on one elbow, Fitcher pauses to examine-- ah yes. She pokes her fingers through the lapel of her mottled coat from the inside, wiggling them through the slash. "Now there's something which will need some stitching." The coat, not her skin. The layers beneath have absorbed the mutilating slash very nicely indeed.
"I can stitch it, if you haven't the inclination," Ellis tells her, trading the offer as he extends a small, silver flask. Tarnished, round, toted in his pocket for who knows how many years. The ridges on it's stopper have been worn smooth. "I'm a fair hand at repairs."
It's what comes of doing your own. He supposes she's taught herself that skill as well. Whatever she'd been doing before the guild, it'd likely required a fair amount of tailoring if it was anything like the scrapes Ellis had found himself in.
"Your offer and resourcefulness are both appreciated," she says, accepting the flask and removing the stopper. She takes a fortifying swig from it, pauses, then downs another before passing it back.
"But I'm afraid I must decline. I've a seamstress in Stryevaek who would gut me more surely than our dearly departed demon if I went anywhere else with my repairs. I couldn't bear to lose her over professional discourtesy."
In response, Ellis makes a noise somewhere between impressed and amused. Subtext: How fancy.
But really, what must it be like to return to places regularly? What must it be like to have such connections? Though maybe the real question is what kind of seamstress tends to a monster hunter's dress?
"Maybe you'll have to introduce me," Ellis says, looking down at his front before taking a swig from his flask. "I'm going to need some tailoring done after I burn this lot."
One particular perk of joining this guild: having the space to expand his wardrobe, just slightly.
"I'll consider it. You will certainly need someone."
She is loathe to sit fully upright just yet - there is an ache in her side that seems like it will become deeply unpleasant when she does -, and so she neglects to do so for a few moments more. The night is cool, the view down into the meandering valley to the little winking lights of the village is pleasant enough and, with the exception of escaping the fetid smell, there is no reason at all to be in a hurry.
"It occurs to me that I neglected to ask when first we set out, Mr Ginsberg. What has brought you to our strange little coterie?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Something stinking and horribly warm pours out of the beast. It smells like metal and Fitcher is certain it is blood, she just can't say to whom it belongs. Belonged.
And then the great black shape ratchets backward. With a grotesque scream, it accordions unnaturally back on itself, collapsing into stranger and stranger angles of black feathers and black bones until it is nothing more than a shapeless thing pin-cushioned by a series of crossbow bolts. With a final pop of air filling emptied space, it disappears entirely. The bolts, blackened with gore, fall from where they'd been suspended and scatter like loose twigs on the ground about her.
Fitcher lies very still. She's curled into a tight ball, the white fletched bolt clenched in her fist. In the dark, with her mottled coat and the terrible splatter of blood in every direction, it would be entirely impossible to say much of anything about her condition if it weren't for the fact that - given a moment of silence -, she comes uncurled to lay on her back in the beaten grass. She tosses away the blessed bolt. As Ellis swims into view:
"All well, Mr Ginsberg?"
no subject
"Depends," Ellis tells her. "You'll have to tell me if you're bleeding out or not before I decide how well we are."
There are better clerics than Ellis. But Ellis is the person who's here, and he would prefer it if Fitcher didn't die on his watch. He'd do what he must to prevent that.
no subject
Then she decides: "Cuts and scrapes, I'll give you. But I don't believe the majority of this is mine, no." That said, she makes no effort to sit up. Instead, Fitcher tips her face so she might give him a thorough once over.
"Good Lord. We'll have to put a sheet down inside the carriage, else the league will press us for the cost of reupholstering."
slides a tag over to you on the break
"It seemed like a good move at the time."
Which is as far as he'd ever planned in the midst of a fight. Get in close, hit as hard as possible, fight dirty if you have to. As it stand now, the latter had turned out very literal. He pats his palm lightly over the tacky mess of his shirt and shakes his head.
"Do you think we'll need to haul Bradshaw back?"
Unspoken: will Ellis need to heave his body onto the luggage rack of the carriage?
no subject
This said from lying still in the long, wet grass. At length, Fitcher begins to wipe her hands clean on the overgrown green about her. Speaking as if she is not splattered with every manner of viscera, nor splayed on the ground, nor battered by the buffeting of the freshly dismissed summons: "What was it? Our object of power."
no subject
"A coin."
Blood-smeared. Ellis hasn't tried to clean it. His palm is crusted over already, and he'll deal with the slash in the carriage.
"Not very imaginative, but at least it's easily portable."
And they can give it to Mr. Roscoe to examine. Ellis has a spell he could try, but he'd rather leave off. They've done enough.
"Do you want some whiskey?" Ellis asks her abruptly, as if just remembering that they might want to celebrate being alive or take the edge off nearly dying.
no subject
Propping herself up on one elbow, Fitcher pauses to examine-- ah yes. She pokes her fingers through the lapel of her mottled coat from the inside, wiggling them through the slash. "Now there's something which will need some stitching." The coat, not her skin. The layers beneath have absorbed the mutilating slash very nicely indeed.
no subject
It's what comes of doing your own. He supposes she's taught herself that skill as well. Whatever she'd been doing before the guild, it'd likely required a fair amount of tailoring if it was anything like the scrapes Ellis had found himself in.
no subject
"But I'm afraid I must decline. I've a seamstress in Stryevaek who would gut me more surely than our dearly departed demon if I went anywhere else with my repairs. I couldn't bear to lose her over professional discourtesy."
no subject
But really, what must it be like to return to places regularly? What must it be like to have such connections? Though maybe the real question is what kind of seamstress tends to a monster hunter's dress?
"Maybe you'll have to introduce me," Ellis says, looking down at his front before taking a swig from his flask. "I'm going to need some tailoring done after I burn this lot."
One particular perk of joining this guild: having the space to expand his wardrobe, just slightly.
no subject
She is loathe to sit fully upright just yet - there is an ache in her side that seems like it will become deeply unpleasant when she does -, and so she neglects to do so for a few moments more. The night is cool, the view down into the meandering valley to the little winking lights of the village is pleasant enough and, with the exception of escaping the fetid smell, there is no reason at all to be in a hurry.
"It occurs to me that I neglected to ask when first we set out, Mr Ginsberg. What has brought you to our strange little coterie?"