Blood and Water Mini - The Frost Kiss
#4 of Blood And Water
Another mini-story for you all! Rather than focus on people you don't know, this one deals with someone you do, and considerably earlier in his life than anything you've heard before. I hope you enjoy! Oh! And keep an eye out; there's two more of these mini-stories that I plan to write in the near future. More Blood and Water content is coming!
Blood and Water Mini
The Frost Kiss
Time slowed. Oswell's eyes were wide as he watched the otter soar through the air. He could see terror in her eyes, the torn fabric of her dress trailing behind her. His gaze met hers. Her fear collided with his desperation. An eternity passed in the single second she hung in the air.
When the second passed, she'd travelled over fifty feet and impacted the stone wall with bone-shattering force.
Breath rolled from his muzzle as she fell from the cracked wall. Blood trickled out of the corner of her muzzle as she struggled to stand, and Oswell gasped as he ran toward her. "Lise!"
An invisible force took a hold of his body and yanked him firmly back, like fingers hooked around his limbs. He yelped as he fell back on his tail, and the fox rolled to the side in order to clear it. After barely a moment of pain, he scrabbled back upright again. Around him, dust floated up briefly from the ground.
It was blown away as he found himself forced firmly back down against the floor. Oswell grunted as he strained against that invisible grip, but it was no use. The force against him was too great; too precise. It limited his movement in just the right little ways to keep him trapped, with minimal effort from the magi who had him pinned. "Damn you, Haldane!" he snarled as his ears flattened atop his head. "I'll kill you for this! You hear me? You are dead!"
"Until such a time as you end me then, I shall live on and continue my path," came the reply of the wolf that strode casually past Oswell. Draped in the same black magi robes that the fox was covered in, the lupine drew the hood of his robe up and over his head as he spared the fallen fox a glance. "You blame the executioner for meting out justice?" His accent, thick, foreign and melodic, slipped off his tongue like a sweet wine. Charismatic. Smooth. Remorseless.
"This isn't justice!" Oswell snapped back as he narrowed his eyes. Lightning flickered in between his fingers as he curled them into fists. "This is murder!"
The wolf snorted and spared the fallen otter girl a glance. She'd struggled up to all-fours, but clutched at her chest with the meagre strength she could muster. She coughed blood as he watched. "As she murdered your studies? Please. Sorcery such as mine demands concentration, Oswell. Focus. Devotion." He turned to the fox with a thin smile. "You sought this power. Why should I allow one moonlit dalliance to color your future?"
Oswell grit his teeth as he glared up at Haldane again. The wolf had started toward Lise again. "I found something better than power," he replied as he strained against Haldane's hold again. Still, the wolf's powers refused to budge. He was just too strong. "If you're such a monster as to not understand love... I swear to every god and every demon lord that I will rend you from this world for harming her."
That stopped Haldane in his tracks, and he turned back to Oswell with a perked eyebrow. "Harm her?" he echoed with a cock of his head. "Oswell, I intend to kill her. I intend to take her life and make you watch. I intend for you to understand the frailty of existence, the inevitability of death, and the price you pay for defiance." He thrust a finger at the fox and held it still. "Learn this lesson, Oswell. Learn it well, and carry it with you for the rest of your days."
The fox's breath caught in his throat as he watched Haldane turn away. The wolf's paw lifted toward Lise, and the otter gasped as she found herself lifted up off the ground by the lupine magi's telekinesis. "You bastard," Oswell snarled as he felt his _aerun_powers welling up inside him. His eyes burned with more than just tears as jagged bolts of energy flickered across his gaze. "Don't do this, Haldane... I beg you; please!"
"Are you watching, Oswell?" asked the wolf as he brought up his other paw. The otter girl screamed as she found her limbs pulled in every direction, stretched out as far as her body would allow it in completely opposite directions. "Can you hear_her, Oswell? This is the price you have paid. This is the punishment your split loyalties have won you." Haldane's muzzle curled into a smile. "This, my foolish little fox, is what _love has wrought."
Lise's screams intensified as, little by little, Haldane's powers tried to pull her apart. Oswell watched on with disgust, fear and rage, and each instant of her suffering gave him new, desperate strength. He reached down deep for every ounce of that strength as he panted for breath. His paws trembled as lightning arced along his arms. They twitched. Shook. Rose.
By the time Haldane realized his distraction with Lise's torture had weakened his grasp on Oswell, the fox was already free. He roared, a terrifying, distressed scream of rage as he launched himself clear of the ground in a gust of wind and brought a paw forward. All the lightning and all the rage channeled into his grasp as a brilliant, blue bolt of lightning left his grasp and crackled through the air.
Lise fell back to the ground as Haldane turned to the assault. He lifted a paw and swept it across the path of that bolt, and it bent just enough to strike the wall behind him. It ruptured in a shower of stone shards even as Oswell thrust his other paw forward and loosed an equally powerful bolt of lightning at his master.
This one struck Haldane's outstretched paw, but the energy collected there and was crushed to nothing in his fist. That fist pushed forward, and the ground beneath Oswell's footpaws quaked. It ruptured upward all around him in a shower of displaced rock and stone, and launched the fox into the air. The stone chased him up in fingers that grabbed him by the waist and wrapped him in a crushing grip. "You _dare_attack me?" the wolf roared as he squeezed his fist tighter.
The fingers of stone squeezed Oswell in turn, but the fox uttered another wordless roar as his power erupted all around him. Lightning flashed from his body in bolts that scorched the walls, ceiling and floor all around him, and the air rippled with force as he blasted the stone that entrapped him off of his body. One shard of rock spun off across the room and struck Haldane in the head, knocking off his hood and gashing open his forehead.
As Haldane recoiled and staggered back against the wall, Oswell fell to the ground in a crouch. His fingers flashed to life as he stalked toward his master, and he grunted as he hurled another quick bolt at the wolf. It slammed into Haldane's shoulder, and the lupine magi spun back against the wall with a groan of pain. Oswell lifted his other paw with a shout and loosed another, and Haldane buckled under the impact as it seared his arm.
For a brief moment, he saw regret in Haldane's eyes as he approached his master. It mingled with fear; terror at what lay in his immediate future. Oswell saw his own reflection in the wolf's wide eyes. In that reflection, he saw himself as he was in those moments. He was destiny. He was fate. He was rage and revenge incarnate. His breaths came in short, quick pants as he watched his former master cower before his power.
And then, with a roar, he unleashed every ounce of that power from both paws in a sustained stream of lightning.
Thunder drowned out his cries as he emptied everything he was and everything he felt into that final strike. He watched as the wolf's robes were burned away, ignited and vaporized by the force of his magic. Oswell's robes were whipped up by a swirling storm of wind, and the light from his assault flashed across every inch of the surrounding room. Haldane was pinned against the wall under Oswell's attack, as his student took his vengeance. Oswell watched every last moment of the wolf's suffering, until he snarled from behind tightly-clenched teeth, wrenched his paws apart and ripped the wolf's burned body completely in half.
The bloody, severed halves of Haldane's body struck the walls on either side of the room as Oswell slumped forward. He panted for breath as he sagged toward the ground, and strength gave out and forced him down to his knees. One smoking paw reached out to catch the ground before he struck it as the world spun around him. It took the work of a few moments to close his eyes and center himself. It was done. He'd done it. Haldane was dead.
His eyes snapped open again as he remembered why he'd struck down his master. The dizziness returned in full force as he scrabbled across the broken floor toward Lise, and there was no containing his whimper as he saw her.
The otter's dress was torn, yes. It was ripped where it could be seen, and it exposed the torn and cut flesh that lay beneath it. She was still. Her chest refused to rise as Oswell crawled closer to her. Her eyes were wide with terror. Her bottom half couldn't be seen beneath the rubble of the wall Oswell had obliterated, but the volume of blood that trickled out from beneath a particular large slab told him the story. His attack against Haldane had killed her by proxy.
In her eyes, he saw his reflection again. The thought that her terror had been induced by his former master's attack on her turned into terror at the power and hatred her lover had brought to bear. The soft warmth of her gaze - that which had so enraptured and ensnared his heart in the first place - was vanquished under an icy, dead stare. The warmth would never be there again. His fault.
The howl that tore from his throat was accompanied by a blast of force that rattled the walls and threatened to bring the whole structure down around Oswell. He slumped down until his forehead touched the ground, tail curled up tight between his legs as tears poured from his clenched-shut eyes. He shook with pain for his loss and rage unabated.
For how long he stayed at her side, weeping over her body, he didn't know. What he knew was that the dark of the night beyond the wall he'd shattered began to give way to the oncoming dawn, as the sun began its long journey up toward the horizon and beyond. Oswell reached out with one shaking paw to brush down Lise's cheek as he shuffled closer.
It was almost too much to lean down and touch his lips to hers. Already they had begun to cool. She may as well have been ice to Oswell, for all the life left in her broken body. Guilt and rage vied for control as he brushed a pair of fingers up and through her hair, his muzzle pressed against hers as if the kiss might bring her back.
But no. He knew better. The frost kiss was the last farewell a loved one was afforded; tradition for his people for as long as they had lived. Lise was gone. His world was gone. His everything had been shattered. Guilt faded. Rage took a greater hold. Oswell set his jaw as he forced his breathing to steady. It slowed. Calmed. He became the eye of the storm.
His lips pursed as he forced them to cease their trembling, and one last time he locked his eyes on the otter he'd loved. The frost kiss demanded a pledge to the fallen. As Oswell injected steel into his spine and pulled every muscle taut, the perfect one came to his mind. "I swear, in your name," he growled, low and deep, "that this will not stop me. I swear, in your name, that your end will not be the end. I swear, in your name, that I will never again bow before death."
With each proclamation, the fox rose from his crouch and thudded his chest to his heart. Never once did his eyes leave her fear-frozen face. "And I swear, in your name, that death will never again come to someone I love. Instead, it shall bow before me.
"I swear, Lise, that I will master_death... in _your name."