Chapter Text
This would have been so much easier if the damn Pixie could have swallowed her pride and undone the binds on her hands.
Fighting was a skill that Lacrimosa considered to be one of her best. It came with being centuries old that the time it took for her to practice and master her craft was much more than anyone else would get. But even she could not fend off a swarm of assassins with her mouth gagged, hands bound and tied to a chair. One hand free would have been enough to cast a spell. One hand was quite literally all she needed to pull the filthy rag from her mouth, utter words that had lost their meaning and flourish her wrist to burn divine fury into the soul of every attacker in the building (provided all of these attackers crowded around her and stayed very still).
This, of course, was not an option.
Instead, Lacrimosa was forced to watch these men, more oaf than assassin all of them, flail their rapiers at the spot of air a four-inch Pixie had occupied six seconds earlier. It was beginning to really demoralise her. At this rate, she would have even happily let herself be tied back to the chair she had occupied for two weeks now after helping to fight, just for a chance to crack her neck and do something. Most people assumed boredom was a novel concept to an Elf, the common misconception that a year was like the blink of an eye. Maybe it was and there was something wrong with Lacrimosa, she had often wondered about it, but every moment of breathing was experienced and remembered with startling clarity. Which of course, meant she got bored very easily. Being held captive by Thimble and Thjazi Fang for two weeks was the most bored she had been in all her three hundred years.
So really, when half a dozen assassins decked in cowls of crow feathers burst into what she had been assured was a well-hidden hideout in a district of tanneries, there had been the briefest inkling that perhaps something interesting might happen. In a way, it was happening. Just not to her. Even watching the fray couldn't improve her mood, because for all Thimble was darting about and landing vicious blows now, the tiny thing was outnumbered. Likely the case, Lacrimosa was going to watch her die, there would be a discussion about what these assassins should do with her and then either she would die or continue to be a prisoner, just with different gaolers.
After all, an Elf cannot die except for injury and accident.
Considering how immortal she was supposed to be, Lacrimosa found that pondering the possibility of her death wasn't as dour a subject as she had expected. As she watched a sneering man with a shaved head have a small needle thrust into his eye with what would have been a neutral expression had the gag in her mouth not pulled her lips into a perpetually open state, she thought about it. Really thought about it. She arrived after a short time at the conclusion such an eventuality would be fine.
She had enjoyed a long life, longer than many others. Yes, meeting her end here would be anticlimactic and leave many journeys incomplete, but she could not in good conscience say her story would be unfinished. Maybe just missing an epilogue. Maybe this was also something wrong with her. For a creation of the Goddess of life, such indifference at its ending was odd. Lacrimosa was no stranger to the blank look in her sister's eyes as she tried to explain the intimate importance of what it meant to die. Maybe she was so unafraid because she already knew the feeling. It was so interwoven with her being that the call of death was like a lover skimming a hand down her back. She could feel it always, a little pulse at the base of her skull that flared with white hot pain whenever the moment arrived.
She could feel the pressure beginning to build as Thimble went for the other eye of the man she had half-blinded earlier. So it wasn't even a shock to Lacrimosa when a trickle of her soul completed a circuit around her veins ending in that horrible stabbing sensation right at the top of her spine. It was just death. That was all it was and all it ever would be.
Just death continued its little dance around the hideout and she felt that clarity of a life ended in her presence twice more before one of the assassins closed their fist around Thimble. Lacrimosa resisted the urge to lean forward to look closer at the scene, noting it would probably be in bad taste to show any special interest in the fate of her captor. Her quarrel was not with the Pixie, not really. She found it hard to harbour any animosity for Thimble beyond this new irritation that she had stubbornly refused to set Lacrimosa free to help with this fight. It was Thjazi Fang who had closed his hand around the Stone of Nightsong. It was Thjazi Fang who struck enough blows to render her unconscious. It was Thjazi Fang who had been tying her to this chair when she woke up.
If anything, Lacrimosa felt sorry for Thimble. Craning her neck to watch her last moments, such a tiny thing really in the palm of this man's hand… Well, it felt, to her, to be in bad taste. So instead, she averted her eyes. Turned her gaze to the ground. Followed the uniform line of the wooden floorboards with her pupils all the way to the wall where her shield and sword lay in the same position they had for two weeks, somehow undisturbed by the fighting. As pain began to muster itself, calling to coalesce at that particular point once more, she had to fight to give Thimble dignity in her demise. Distract herself further by tonguing the twin piercings that sat on either side of just below her lips so that there was at least one less set of unwanted eyes staring at a Fairy as it died.
When the drone of background agony did not reach its crescendo, however, Lacrimosa allowed herself to turn her head upward, watching Thimble make her final stand. She slipped from the grasp of the man holding her and darted towards the desk at the window, wings a blur. She wrapped her arms around the thing she had been working on for days now, a tiny glyph that Lacrimosa did not know the purpose of. To the Pixie, it must have been of the utmost importance, the way she gripped it like a lifeline. Her attackers tracked her with moderate difficulty, snatching and grabbing at the air, making her turn sharply before settling her sights on a small grate in the corner. Thimble did not fly into this grate but fell, letting gravity pull her down quicker than the flutter of dragonfly wings and stilled the moment she hit the ground, out of reach. For a second, the pain in Lacrimosa's neck began to rear its head again and for exactly twelve seconds she believed the Pixie's recklessness had been her end, only for the hurt to once again slink away into shadow like a dissatisfied predator finding no food.
“Well, that's that,” The voice of the assassin furthest from Lacrimosa was gravelly, ragged as he caught his breath. “Strip the place clean.”
This was to be expected. While Thimble and Thjazi had conducted the only (successful) robbery of that lonely room in the Mournvale she prevailed over, Lacrimosa still understood how a robbery worked the course of action that would be undertaken by these men. Thimble was out of reach and no longer a threat. They would proceed to pilfer anything and everything that could fetch a pretty price with no remorse or feeling towards any particular historical or personal or religious affiliations their prizes might have. They would forget that Lacrimosa was tied up in the corner until she was the very last thing to turn attentions to, unless she did something to make herself known like-
“NO!”
Of course, the sound came out muffled as a result of the rag still stuffed in her mouth. But it was enough to stop the outstretched hand reaching for the glass case on the mantlepiece and what it contained. The owner of the hand turned in Lacrimosa's direction, scarred mouth curled into a grin that spoke of a man who thought that cruelty was humorous and he was somehow akin to a God for having more power than a woman gagged and bound to a chair in a dingy attic.
“Oh? I think the Elf has something to say, lads.”
Lacrimosa would have curled her lip if not for the rag. It was honestly close to making her feel sick from second hand embarrassment, the performed clichés meant to impress this man's companions. He was ticking many boxes for being someone out of their depth sticking to stereotypes to masquerade inadequacy. The rhetorical question, referring to her as her species as a sign of degradation and addressing his group with an unduely familiar collective. It was pathetic really, but unfortunately, she was indeed a woman gagged and bound to a chair in a dingy attic, and loathe as she was to admit, this man was holding more cards than her.
He peeled the dirty cloth from her mouth with a dagger, letting the cold blade dance across her cheek in a perversion of a kiss. Another tactic to seem intimidating. Perhaps he expected her to whimper and beg for mercy. It was such a foreign concept that Lacrimosa almost felt the urge to laugh.
“Go on then, what's your problem with us taking that?” He jerked his head towards the glass case on the mantlepiece. “You gonna miss your special little rock?”
“Leave it alone or I will kill you all where you stand.” Despite this being the first use her voice had gotten since being accosted in the Mournvale, she kept her tone steady.
“Kill us all where we stand, she says!” Him and the three other assassins who still lived laughed. “If I'm not mistaken, you're tied to a chair. Not much you can do to us from over there. I reckon you're more in danger from us.” He jabbed a finger into her forehead, gnarled nail biting into amethyst skin.
“Have you ever fought an Elf?” Even from her chair she tilted her head, chin held high. “How do you intend to kill something that cannot die?” Lacrimosa left out the exceptions to her immortality, because she wasn't suicidal enough to announce that actually, they could kill her if they really wanted. Better to try and prey on their stupidity.
“We could still do more damage than you, sitting there.”
They were right, and that was what irked her. Her gag was gone, so the verbal components of any spells at her disposal were no longer quashed. But with her hands bound, somatic movements were out of the question. All she needed to do was loosen one hand from the ropes and have a fighting chance, but this was something she had been trying for weeks to no avail. Life didn't hand out miracles for the mundane like a lucky dice roll. So her hands stayed bound despite all her struggling and Lacrimosa chose instead to spit at his feet instead of answering.
“Listen here,” An unwashed hand clamped around her jaw, fingers pressing against her piercings uncomfortably. “You tell us what that thing does, and maybe we leave it alone.”
A really, really horrible lie that a child could see through. And Lacrimosa was not about to reveal the secrets of the Stone of Nightsong to common mercenaries for the sake of her own life. She was its steward, sworn to watch over it for as long as she lived. It had been stolen from its home, yes, but while it was still in the same room as her and she could see it, technically her duty was still being fulfilled. The minute it went beyond her reach, she had broken her vow. And moreover, she was not keen to discover what effect being parted from an object that had so carefully spiralled around her being with its magic would have. But, better to die than give four men the satisfaction of knowledge.
“Fuck you.”
“Maybe you can't die, but we can certainly fuck you up.”
At least they had bought that she really was immortal. After all, an Elf can't die, but at the very least they can certainly get close.