The Rot - Part I, Chapter II
The Rot - Part I, Chapter II
The armour had many problems.
It looked perfect to the naked eye. Built of alloys that would be far too complicated to name, it hugged every contour of Castiel's body, as if it was shaped while she was wearing it. Though it looked marvellously ornate, with engravings and ornamentation that made one think of the beauty of Golmore, it was sturdy enough to withstand the mightiest of blows.
Castiel knew of all the secrets of her cursed birthright. How it was more than just metal shaped to fit a person. She also knew that it was too cumbersome to remove by herself.
Lyra undid the leather straps on the front, sides and the back of the cuirass. There was a particular process to be followed when donning or removing the Levinplate, and the blacksmith was well aware of it by now.
"Why bother wearing half of it? Hells, why bother wearing any of it?" She asked Castiel, leaning to the side as she carefully undid the last strap, near the tailbone. "I thought you were only checking out the body." Her voice was like that of a songbird that had worked far too long in smoke and smog, giving it a scratchy undertone Castiel enjoyed more than she'd admit. Lyra was much smaller than the Viera, but that didn't stop her from stomping up on a wooden stool until she stood as high as those lupine ears and sliding her fingers under the top half of the cuirass. Her soft appearance masked the strength of a blacksmith. Toiling away at hunks of metal built enough strength for her to lift the pieces.
The cuirass was split into two halves. The upper half covered Castiel's chest and upper back, while the lower half covered the rest, and rose high to offer additional protection.
"What if I got attacked?" Castiel asked with a smirk. In response, the girl snorted.
"Nobody around here's stupid enough to jump you, Cas. Not by their lonesome." Lyra responded, having removed the pauldrons and the gloves, leaving the Viera's upper half with only the chainmail and dark leather. "What did you learn?"
Castiel rolled her shoulders, freed from the weight for the moment. Her thoughts seemed clearer now, but strangely, a dark cloud remained. A cloud that hadn't left since she entered the village. It was why she had stopped here, after all.
For some strange reason, all the burdens of her soul felt heavier in the village of Hatterton.
"Magic," She responded simply at first, but Lyra looked up from where she was crouched next to Castiel with an annoyed expression. The Viera sighed and continued, "Something was done to the poor fellow. There was magic around him. Magic flowing through the spike. That's why he hadn't slid down--"
Her voice caught in her throat as she felt the girl's hands around the inside of her thigh, through the dark cloth. Castiel wasn't stranger to physical affection, but her life of travel meant that she often missed out on... opportunities.
"Hm?" Lyra hummed in a tone that seemed too innocent to truly be so, and rose to settle the greaves on a table with the rest of the plate.
Castiel cleared her throat and continued. "That's why he was suspended. Why there were no flies or maggots on him. Now, I just need to figure out the who and the why of it." She kept the details about the scar to herself. She didn't need anybody to wonder why the town's fresh cadaver and the passerby had almost the exact same scar.
"I suppose it's your job. You accepted it, you have to see it through." The sabatons came off, and for some reason, Castiel felt naked. There was still the leather and the cloth, but she could feel the blacksmith's eyes looking at her more than any modest woman in a modest village should.
It wasn't the first time, of course, but it had always been brief. Short bursts of physical contact, as if she were tasting of some forbidden fruit. She could feel Lyra's hands tremble, like she had done something terrible by touching her thigh.
Castiel turned and stripped herself of the leather underarmour and the cloth undershirt. As expected, Lyra blushed furiously and looked off to the side, clearing her throat. "Castiel, you are a guest, so you cannot just--"
"Just, what?" Castiel demanded, a devilish smirk painting her visage. She had only been here a few days, but it wasn't hard to notice how Lyra would steal glances at the Viera when she thought she wasn't looking.
"Just... strip. This is not a brothel," The blacksmith steeled herself. "And I'm spoken for." She looked up, glaring with as much authority as she could into Castiel's crimson eyes.
In response, the Viera nodded and leaned closer, causing the girl to mutter something incomprehensible. She didn't look away this time. Castiel extended her arm forward, her body coming dangerously close to Lyra's. All she did, however, was reach for a shirt on the table behind her.
She didn't move any further, however, staying in that awkward position, her body inches from pressing against someone whose breathing seemed to come out harsher than it was moments prior. There was a mirror behind them, and Castiel understood why the girl was practically frozen.
The Viera looked as if she had been sculpted from the finest of stones by the finest craftsmen. Every muscle looked to be rolled steel under bronze skin, which shone in the glow of the hearthfire. Her arms were made to bear great weights, and her abs were no less magnificent. Under the leather pants, her legs were as stalwart as the rest of her. Messy black hair, highlights dyed crimson, crowned her sharp, angular face.
She had the body of a warrior, marked with countless scars. Each one was a victory. She was perfect.
Except, of course, her left arm. It was sleek and black from the shoulder down. It was as muscular as her other arm, but it appeared sculpted in a more literal sense. She had built that mechanical arm herself, and more than two winters had passed before she perfected it. It moved almost exactly like her real arm.
Lyra wasn't focused on the prosthetic, though. She was looking straight ahead, at Castiel's breasts. She could feel the girl's breath, coming in quick and shallow, the warmth blossoming between her breasts. It wasn't unpleasant.
"Spoken for," Castiel repeated. "I don't see Jerome anywhere." She reeled back her hand, leaving the shirt on the table. In a few short moments, she had come to a decision and no longer needed her clothes. She leaned down, her fingers nudging Lyra's gaze upward by her chin. The blue of her eyes was speckled with violet.
"Do you?"
Lyra glanced at the door. It wasn't uncommon for that man to spend his days and nights at the tavern. Farkle and Triple Triad were more important to him. Lyra inhaled sharply and said, "Fuck it." Within moments, she had climbed upon Castiel, arms wrapped around her broad shoulders. She hung on as their lips met in a fiery connection of hot, desperate need, suppressing her shaky breath. Castiel's hand pressed into her brown curls, tangling and finding what purchase they could. Their bodies pressed against each other, melted into each other with the sweat and the rainwater, and Castiel could feel how hard the girl's heart was thumping. She could feel her own, too, beating against its cage.
With her prosthetic hand, Castiel made Lyra's legs curl around her hips and kept her there while moving forward. The motion only made the kiss deeper and hungrier, as if she thought it'd end if she breathed. Their tongues curled around and toyed with each other, but with a sharp motion, Castiel's tongue slid into Lyra's mouth. She tasted her saliva, and this invasion made her moan into the Viera's mouth.
They separated with breathless gasps when Castiel set her on the table, but before any regrets could be shared, she pressed her lips into the side of Lyra's neck. She could feel the heat of her breath spread, as she kissed and bit. Her prey groaned, "Oh, Gods... You make my heart stop."
She felt it again. The urge. The hunger in her depths, clawing at her soul, pushing her to take what was hers. This was not the armour. It was her very being whispering into her thoughts. The scar on her back pulsed. Lyra was a willing prey, and there was no reason to hold back. The war drums in her head grew louder. They were always there. They always made her tear flesh apart, but this would be enough. Tasting the girl would satisfy her enough.
It didn't matter that, while Castiel was beneath the curtain of the girl's hair with her eyes shut, teeth biting Lyra's neck whenever she wasn't kissing it, her mind wandered. For the briefest of moments, she was far away, in a cabin in the snow, with someone she lost forever ago. Lyra moaned into Castiel's ears, her need rising, her legs pulling her closer between them.
A woman's scream from the outside woke Castiel from her trance.
More Posts from Memoir-of-cas and Others
The Rot - Part I, Chapter I
As Castiel looked over the spiked body on the side of the small hill, she realised that the weight of the armour kept growing the more she chose to resist the influence.
The armour didn't appear to be anything malicious. If anything, any onlooker would find it to be ornate; something a royal knight would wear during a parade. Definitely not suited for a tall Viera woman who seemed uncomfortable, despite the metal being practically formed around her body with how well it fit her.
Of course, none but she could possibly understand how it made the war drums in her mind so much louder. Simply wearing the pieces made it easier for her old self to claw its way back. She could remember it all as clear as day now, the horrors she had committed with glee. Her skin crawled, the disgust with herself obvious on her face, and her gaze trailed downward, past the small patch of woods and toward the village.
She didn't know quite what to call it, really. 'Village' didn't seem quite accurate. That seemed to imply a community that was more tight-knit, perhaps. Here, people seemed disparate. Perhaps 'settlement' was a better term, she thought.
Castiel looked back up, and brought her attention to the job at hand. Before her was the body of a man, positioned awkwardly, with a large metal spike driven through his skull and into the grass. She couldn't tell exactly how young or old he had been at the time of his death. He had been flayed almost entirely, save for the bits between his fingers and his toes. She didn't wish to move him, because the spike appeared to be propping him up. How he hadn't slid down the spike was a mystery.
She walked closer, taking a deep breath as she did. The smell of a rotting body - a sickly sweetness, the smell of garbage in a bin left for too long - wasn't new to her. Castiel had dealt in death for far too many years for the pungency to bother her. She didn't ignore it, of course. It was simply another mental entry in her notebook, part of a list of what she noticed and learned as she conducted her autopsy.
Another entry in that notebook was about the state of the body. Besides being flayed, it was charred. As if the man - or boy - had been tossed onto a grill for a few seconds before being pulled off. He wasn't burned to a crisp, but the flesh had been exposed to heat.
Interestingly, it looked as if every part of him had been exposed to the same level of heat at the same time. No part of his body looked darker than the rest, and there were no burn marks separating the meat. All of him had been blasted with fire.
She took another step forward, and found herself standing over the face. Though the man was bent backward, with his now non-existant eyes looking skyward, even at his full height, Castiel would have dwarfed him. She was tall. Tall enough that, even without her lupine ears, she would easily stand out in a crowd. She leaned in closer to the face.
As had been evident, the face had been crushed inward, the skull cracking and giving way. The dried meat on the grass beneath him meant that some of it had seeped through with the spike, but it had created a gruesome plug of sorts, keeping the rest of the man's face within him. The spike had been driven through where the nose had been, and taken with it the upper jaw and both eyes. The lower jaw hung limply, and from the looks of things, most of the brain seemed intact. On the flesh of the chin, a jagged scar split the skin—a wound that had never fully closed, its edges gnarled like a crack in porcelain. A tiny, jagged line. Another note.
The gore didn't keep her attention for long, though. The light buzzing from around the head had distracted her.
Castiel crouched, an armoured knee pressing into the dirt beneath, and reached out tentatively at the air between the ground and the upper half of the burnt body, and extended her senses. What are you hiding?
It wasn't the most complicated magical technique. Aether was part of all. The people and the environment were connected in a web of energy, and her chosen discipline, that of the Dark Knight, gave her a deeper insight into the magical workings of the world. She would always know when magic was at play, and in that dead, sweet air, there was power. A small field of energy permeated the air between the body, the ground, and the spike.
Castiel could tell that it was magic that was keeping the body awkwardly suspended like that, but the reason for such a thing wasn't hidden in the Aether. Slowly, she reached for the metal spike, and let her metal fingers curl around it. Static bounced from the spike to the gauntlet, but she didn't feel anything. The spike ended with a sharp tip, allowing it to be buried in the ground effectively, but it grew broader as it progressed upward. All in all, the spike was roughly as tall as the man. Almost six feet.
She prepared to rise to her feet, looking upward to ensure she didn't collide with the body, but something far stranger than a little magical field caught her eye, and she gasped.
On the man's back was a large scar, running down his spine, that was white in colour. The scar ran down to the tailbone, and split off into different directions the entire length, looking like a white birch made of scar tissue.
Castiel recognised it.
She reached out again, and her gloved fingertips pressed against the scar. It was thick tissue, and it felt solid. Untouched by whatever flames had burnt the rest of the man. The power she felt in the air was more concentrated within that scarring.
She recognised it because there was a similar scar running down her own back. Larger and deeper, yes, but the similarities couldn't be ignored. It felt like her own had come alive in this moment, and she could feel it burning. She inhaled sharply, taking in more of that awful stench, and steeled herself. That feeling faded as quickly as it had come.
She pulled back. Damn it, she thought to herself, grimacing. This was meant to be a normal one, but there's something here. Another connection.
The clouds above roared in response to her discovery, it seemed, and within moments, her raven-and-crimson hair became drenched. The afternoon sun was cloaked by the dark clouds as rain started in earnest, and Castiel stood up.
She reached into the bag she had been carrying on her back alongside her enormous sword. The crystalline key was still there, but it hadn't worked for some time now. She sighed and turned toward the settlement.
Of course it had to rain. The world always wept when it was inconvenient.
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