Post by Seek on May 14, 2013 4:04:08 GMT 10
Title: Combined
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 525 words.
Pairing: Alanna/Jonathan
Round/Fight: 2A
Summary: AU, Alanna and Jon fight the blackness and the spells together. Set in the Barren Boughs and Dry Stones universe, same as The Dead Land.
Warnings: Very, very dark.
-
Alhaz steadies himself, spear in hand, despite knowing there’s nothing that can be done. There are stories, of course, far older than the tales of the Ysandir and the Black City. Stories of black stone and the Dark Days, the gone days. Stories told around the campfire only once, and names never spoken.
The Voice knows all the tales, the rules. But their Voice now—he thinks it, even though he mustn’t—is new, raw, fresh from the fire. Their Voice has not grown up amongst them, is a choice born from necessity, and he knows nothing of the once-tales, the tales told only once before the tribe shifts, told to the children, and names never spoken.
The injunction is older than the stories, perhaps as old as the Bazhir.
Some of them whisper: the Ysandir were their choice, child devourers, but nevertheless, the gatekeepers.
A tithe must always be paid.
He watches as the darkness swarms across the horizon, from the old city, and he grips his spear fiercely. Rust spreads along the tip of the steel spearhaft, no matter how well he has cared for it. Already, the wood of the shaft weakens in his grasp.
The old signs, the old stories.
Still, he faces the dark blot on the horizon proudly. Whatever it is, the Bazhir will go down fighting.
-
Black streaks twine themselves in the flagstones. Alanna hesitates, because she doesn’t know how to fight this sorcery, but her body is taught with tension, humming like a plucked string. She can improvise spells, but Jon has always been the better with magical theory, and they both know it. Power wells up around Jon, and she doesn’t take her hand off her ember stone, so she can see the bright Conte sapphire of his Gift blaze around him, shot through with a pale silver she somehow recognises instinctively as the magic of the Tortallan kings—he’s wearing the crown, after all—and pale power that is the exact shade of moonlight on desert dunes.
And there is something else. (She grips his hand, doesn’t let go.) Her Gift flares in response to her call, the inner ball of purple fire expanding to fill her, and she shifts it instinctively to match the patterns of power that Jon is calling up. Their Gifts twine and mesh as seamlessly as they did, that day in the Black City, so long ago.
They’ve always been attuned to each other, and to meet his Gift with hers is as simple an exercise as taking hold of his hand.
Instinctively, Alanna knows that like that day in the Black City, she can’t let go. There’s only one way they beat the Ysandir back, and that was together.
They had the help of the gods then, but…
In the seed within her that is the blood of the desert, the Bazhir, Jon asks, but?
Alanna thinks back to the Goddess’ warning, and deep within herself, in that same place where she hears Jon through their shared link as adopted Bazhir (and he the Voice) without him needing to speak, she replies, we are on our own, now.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 525 words.
Pairing: Alanna/Jonathan
Round/Fight: 2A
Summary: AU, Alanna and Jon fight the blackness and the spells together. Set in the Barren Boughs and Dry Stones universe, same as The Dead Land.
Warnings: Very, very dark.
-
Alhaz steadies himself, spear in hand, despite knowing there’s nothing that can be done. There are stories, of course, far older than the tales of the Ysandir and the Black City. Stories of black stone and the Dark Days, the gone days. Stories told around the campfire only once, and names never spoken.
The Voice knows all the tales, the rules. But their Voice now—he thinks it, even though he mustn’t—is new, raw, fresh from the fire. Their Voice has not grown up amongst them, is a choice born from necessity, and he knows nothing of the once-tales, the tales told only once before the tribe shifts, told to the children, and names never spoken.
The injunction is older than the stories, perhaps as old as the Bazhir.
Some of them whisper: the Ysandir were their choice, child devourers, but nevertheless, the gatekeepers.
A tithe must always be paid.
He watches as the darkness swarms across the horizon, from the old city, and he grips his spear fiercely. Rust spreads along the tip of the steel spearhaft, no matter how well he has cared for it. Already, the wood of the shaft weakens in his grasp.
The old signs, the old stories.
Still, he faces the dark blot on the horizon proudly. Whatever it is, the Bazhir will go down fighting.
-
Black streaks twine themselves in the flagstones. Alanna hesitates, because she doesn’t know how to fight this sorcery, but her body is taught with tension, humming like a plucked string. She can improvise spells, but Jon has always been the better with magical theory, and they both know it. Power wells up around Jon, and she doesn’t take her hand off her ember stone, so she can see the bright Conte sapphire of his Gift blaze around him, shot through with a pale silver she somehow recognises instinctively as the magic of the Tortallan kings—he’s wearing the crown, after all—and pale power that is the exact shade of moonlight on desert dunes.
And there is something else. (She grips his hand, doesn’t let go.) Her Gift flares in response to her call, the inner ball of purple fire expanding to fill her, and she shifts it instinctively to match the patterns of power that Jon is calling up. Their Gifts twine and mesh as seamlessly as they did, that day in the Black City, so long ago.
They’ve always been attuned to each other, and to meet his Gift with hers is as simple an exercise as taking hold of his hand.
Instinctively, Alanna knows that like that day in the Black City, she can’t let go. There’s only one way they beat the Ysandir back, and that was together.
They had the help of the gods then, but…
In the seed within her that is the blood of the desert, the Bazhir, Jon asks, but?
Alanna thinks back to the Goddess’ warning, and deep within herself, in that same place where she hears Jon through their shared link as adopted Bazhir (and he the Voice) without him needing to speak, she replies, we are on our own, now.