Harlot's Kiss (Annie)

This is a story I'm writing to fill in the gaps in the culmination of an RP plot that Ledgic and I put together. I've done my best to explain the surrounding circumstances in the text, but the quick version is that Vanith Caan, an ill-intentioned relative of Ledgic's, has put Ledgic into an arcane coma of sorts, and Annie's decided to go have it out with Vanith.

==

'Harlot's Kiss'

Annie knelt on the floorboards beneath the stairs, pushing open the lid of a small chest nestled in the musty corner, the only mildly cool place in Ledgic's house in Booty Bay. She kept only the smallest stock of already-mixed potions, poultices, and poisons during the Vale's dry season: most of them would congeal or discolour if left to the ravages of the sweltering jungle weather. And she needed them all to be perfect.

Cautiously, she drew the stopper from a greenglass vial, releasing a sudden, pungent scent of vines and patchouli. It was a deceptive poison – the name scribbled at the top of her recipe was 'Harlot's Kiss' – and it was both one of her best, in terms of the speed with which it produced an effect, and one of her most difficult to craft. Had Annie been of a poetic nature, she might have mused on the name and its subtle ironies, but Annie Fox was the stuff of plain words and plain ideas.

Annie dipped a corner of cloth into the vial's slender neck, lifting one of several slim throwing knives that she usually kept tucked inside her leather gauntlets and beginning to paint the poison onto the blade with painstaking accuracy. This, as surely as the act of throwing the blade and piercing skin, was the art of life and death – and yet even though her brown and callused hands moved with care, her mind was elsewhere.

It was with Ledgic, lying motionless in Eothan Dawn's house, entangled in Vanith Caan's arcane spell of stasis like a fly in a spider's web, waiting for its captor to come and suck dry its life...

Annie's jaw tightened as she laid the miniature blade down on a cloth and took up a second. When Eothan had scryed into Ledgic's mind last night to allow her to see some of the struggle that was taking place– it was one thing for Ledgic to tell her some of his past regrets and actions, but seeing some of it through his eyes, even if only in snatches of emotions and images– it was like looking through somebody's windows while they were in the bath.

For a moment, holding the blade half-coated before her, Annie closed her eyes, remembering. There had been a dark room like an inn; she was cradling the lifeless form of a girl child, her white face soaked with blood, and then nothing but a wave of rage... It faded. Darkness. Then Iriden's face, twisted into a sneer, his features so like Ledgic's and yet so unlike. The scene faded again. A starspattered sky. The high scream of a night elf: she felt the grip of the knife in her hand as the scream raggedly ended, bringing with it the hot stench of blood.

Slowly Annie dipped the cloth into the poison again. These were Ledgic's memories, some of which she thought she could match to stories he had told her, some of which were too formless or ragged to be able to guess. These, then, were what plagued and preyed upon him now while he was... comatose? Was that what Eothan had called it?

She bit down on the cracked skin of her lower lip, laying the three poisoned knives side by side on the scrap of cloth. When they were dry, she would wrap them each separately for the journey to Elwynn, make her last preparations, and go. She had realised that she couldn't ask Rennie, Lari, or Delmy for help, not this time; she couldn't have their deaths on her hands. But dammit, it didn't matter. Vanith might have both the arcane and the roaring madness of the Caan blood to aid him, but she had made Ledgic a promise to sort this out: and this time, fuck the odds, she was going to do just that.

(to be continued...)

It could just be all the coffee I had this morning, but I'm ridiculously happy about having finished this. Did I ever mention that fight scenes can be hell to write? >>

The unnamed Caan in the story is Maldrin, another character of mine.

==

Annie spotted the dim glow of a campfire some time before midnight. She paused, skirting around the still distant pinpoint of light, as soft-footed as the occasional lynx that hunted among the heavy oaks and maples of Elwynn in the graveyard hours. She risked a brief glance upward, pausing in the shadows of a leafy elm. The moon was nearly full, only a day or two waned, which was damnably inconvenient when one didn't want to be seen; still, after searching for several hours, a few extra minutes in spent in caution could hardly hurt.

Annie felt rather than heard the movement behind her, but even the reflexes that had saved her time and again since her childhood weren't enough to avoid the hand that gripped her arm and flung her bodily into the elm-bark. She drew in a sharp gasp of breath, struggling to regain her wind. Her dirk flashed in her hand as she turned to face her assailant, steadying herself against the tree.

In the darkling shadows, she could see only that it was a large man, that he wore a loose shirt rather than armour, and that he wore a blade on each hip. Daggers, thank the bloody Light, not swords.

'Wha' d' ye want?' she said as soon as she regained her breath, her voice cool but rough-edged, like the chill night-breezes.

The man barked out a short laugh, stepping toward her into a watery patch of moonlight. And then Annie saw his face, and saw what she had already expected: the pale skin and harsh features of a Caan. The jagged mouth twisted into a sneer.

'If it ain' Led's lil' whore.'

Annie stepped cautiously away from the tree, raising the point of her dirk. 'Well that ain't 'ow I'm in the 'abit of introducin' m'self, but I'm na' 'ere t' trade insults. I need t' see Vanith.'

'Vanith said ye'd show up. But y'see, lass...' The Caan took another step toward her, reaching to slide the twin daggers from his belt. They glinted in the half-light, long and keen-edged, like a pair of butcher's knives. 'I've got sorta tired o' Vanith's games. S'much as I'd like t'see ye on yer knees beggin' fer Ledgic's life, I'm fresh outta patience.'

Annie melted back another step into the forest's heavy shadows, trying to gauge his tone and movements, the lines of his face, searching for the best words. She couldn't fight him; she needed to get to Vanith.

'Fuck's sake,' she said, puncturing the air with her dirk for emphasis. 'Can't y' jus' kill me after I talk t' Vanith an' 'ave yer fun both ways?'

The man threw himself toward her with more agility than Annie ever would have expected from a man of his size; she twisted with a quick intake of breath, darting behind the elm just as the Caan's blade marred the bark where her head had been.

''Ave t' take tha' as a no, then,' she muttered, stepping backward into the enveloping shadows and flicking one of the blades from her gauntlet. She was going to need distance in this fight. Thank the Light he used daggers...

With a harsh growl, he was around the tree, barreling toward her again like a bear stirred too early from its winter cave. Poised, she let the slender knife fly–

Precisely at that moment, he lowered his head and leapt. The poisonkissed blade, the work of Annie's finest craftsmanship, skidded across the skin of his shoulder, barely puncturing the cloth of his shirt. With a ragged curse, Annie twisted sideways and sent off a measured kick at his arm.

She heard the crack as her boot collided, saw the white gleam of metal as he dropped the knife, heard his shout– and then it was all lost to the cloud of pain as his weight crashed against her, sending her staggering. His blade hadn't found its mark, but he was quick, too quick. Annie gasped again for breath, lashing out with her dirk and feeling it rip into the flesh of his chest.

The Caan's blade darted toward her and, with the reflexes of self-preservation, Annie leaped in toward him to avoid the swing, the waves of pain mixed with the wild, clearheaded rush of battle – another throwing knife was in her palm, but she had no space to throw. With a screech that would have put one of the Stranglethorn panthers to shame, Annie shoved the slender blade up under his ribcage, driving in its full length.

And then they were both covered with the heavy stench of blood and the Caan began to shout, clutching her arm in one great hand.

Annie slashed at his side with her dirk, struggling to free herself, but a sledgehammer fist crashed into her head above the temple and it was like a gale-tossed surf was washing over her head, drowning her as she fought to breathe, think, survive–

Distantly she realised that he must have dropped his other blade, because it was only the fist that she could feel now. She thrust again wildly with her dirk, but her hands were sticky and didn't seem to move the way she wanted them to. The dirk fell from her fingers as she heard rather than felt a wild crack. Her arm. She gasped– someone screamed, had she screamed?

As she stumbled backward, dimly knowing she had lost, the grip on her lifeless arm suddenly loosened. Annie fell to her knees among the sparse forest undergrowth, looking up with the last vestiges of her consciousness; the man was clutching at his side, his motions stiff, his face twisted not in a sneer but in violent, recognisable pain.

He collapsed a few feet away and Annie closed her eyes to avoid watching the end. The harlot's kiss, at last, had done its work.

Annie crawled to her feet, trying to walk, but she swayed like a drunk on her last legs and fell leaning against the trunk of a tree. She had to move or she would die here. Light she might die anyway, but first she needed water, then she needed to find Vanith and the crystal that would bring Led back to consciousness. She needed to–

She fell to her knees again, clutching upward at the rough bark of the tree beside her. 'It ain' o'er yet,' she croaked, as the nightwashed forest began to spin around her. 'Na' yet... I promise...'

Wonderful! I really enjoyed reading this, especially the first part! :) Oh and I think I remember stumbling upon you and Ledgic in Booty Bay on my gnome. I still remember how you two shouted at her! :( Poor Pippy.

Oh my gosh, you play Pippy? Arrogant gnome! I remember that too -- I laughed so hard when she wrote out that note about how horrible they were and stuck it on their door.

Thanks so much for reading, and I'm delighted that you enjoyed the story.