burning - summer 2 [nq]

**Tatya** · Thu Jan 09, 2025 6:35 pm

Guild :

Guildless

Jewels :

2,417,500

Rank :

C-Rank

Race :

Daemon (Vice)

Experience :

62,500

Reputation :

2,500

Class :

Hunter

Magic :

Requip Magic

Strength :

13

Speed :

11

Constitution :

1

Endurance :

3

Intelligence :

80

Mana :

1,000

Weapon :

Off-Hand :

Head :

Body :

Ring :

Persistence was a vice that clung to Tatyana Romanov as a heavy perfume. It stung to breathe, eating at her lungs with every inhale and chipping at her heart with each exhale. Her legs ached. Her arms were on fire, seared within their tangle of veins and biting in protest when she'd attempt to move them in any complicated fashion. Even simple movements were a boon she was no longer afforded without some effort - and still, she blazed on. A mantra of sorts. And still. Even so. As it goes. And the world revolves. Her every day felt inescapable, as if she might not get through her next but had no means to shy away from that inevitability. -- But she did. And so it goes.

She shed no tears and fought her sleep for the last scraps of effort she could muster on any day. She tore into these afternoons and nights like the gristle of meat, stringy and bloody down her protesting jaw, and she supped into the last of it was gone beneath her teeth. She gnashed, and she clawed, and she fought on, pocketing every coin and allotting only enough for herself to get by on clearance foodstuff. The season's heat was the worst of it - if she could soldier through it under her heavy coat, smoldering near but not all the way to ash, she'd make it home with what they needed.

A fare was pricey from here to Iceberg, and there had to be enough to last her parents through their winter as long as it took for her to get back to work overseas. She could stay around her home, of course, but that wasn't a real option: it would be another mouth to feed with her father's resources, and the Romanovs couldn't bear the stench of the Marchesa on her long enough. It was... easier this way. More sentimental of her, but easier to be apart.

So she couldn't complain. There would be no rest for the wicked.

**Tatya** · Thu Jan 09, 2025 7:18 pm

Guild :

Guildless

Jewels :

2,417,500

Rank :

C-Rank

Race :

Daemon (Vice)

Experience :

62,500

Reputation :

2,500

Class :

Hunter

Magic :

Requip Magic

Strength :

13

Speed :

11

Constitution :

1

Endurance :

3

Intelligence :

80

Mana :

1,000

Weapon :

Off-Hand :

Head :

Body :

Ring :

It scorched. Another hybrid beast of some monster's insanity dropped from the nick of her blade, and her grip stalled in the river of its ichorous blood. She could feel the resistance of her pulling it out - and it came from her. Something tutted between her teeth. The hiss of air, coal from her lungs. Another. She held back her coughs, her hand not lodged with her dagger's hilt pushing over her face and kneading it down as she had done the last time the Succubus awakened. She would wrap that hand around a lapine ear and stroke it out, even tugs that lulled her as her father once did when she got lost in the garden - intentionally or otherwise - and he found her curled up behind a hedge row. Soothing. Just pull out the knife, Tatya.

Her clutch wavered on the dagger, but it never let go. There was some dying wheeze from the lion-hare and she met its eyes, rolling back in its head as it found its final sleep at her behest. Her gaze locked. It hung with the heaviness of her fingers but a weariness all its own, staring back at the pitiful creature in the empty cavern they had brought the fight to. Her legs were torn, but they could never hurt worse than they always did, nowadays. This had been perhaps her most desperate push yet -- and she was no closer to the Marchesa, so focused on her work and the coming days, split between loyalty and vengeance. Her sympathy for her family would always win out, and yet...

What had made her so antsy? The Daemon she met in Hosenka? That wasn't her first or last failure. If she saw her again, she'd strike the damned soul down before it could call to her again ... ideally, and yet. Virtue, she mused. How cruel the world could be. How terrible these demons, in and out of ourselves. Would she not call it innocent, how much innocence could she take from this world with her own two hands before not even freedom from her curse would be her absolution? How tired she was.

And yet.

So it goes.

[ 712 / 700 ]

burning - summer 2 [nq]

Thu Jan 09, 2025 6:35 pm

Thu Jan 09, 2025 7:18 pm

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