GIVE ME THE BURDEN, GIVE ME THE BLAME
I'LL SHOULDER THE LOAD AND I'LL SWALLOW THE SHAME
GIVE ME THE BURDEN GIVE ME THE BLAME
HOW MANY HOW MANY HOW MANY
HAIL MARY'S IS IT GOING TO TAKE?

The woman is enervated, weary, mere tremblings of a step upon the earth, traversing beneath the twilight borne skies; mouthfuls of oxygen caressing burning lungs and feeble bones— the Rotunda and the lands of the kingdom were far birthed and troublesome to cross, and yet more so when the vagabond who flitted across them with a (shocking) lack of utmost grace and elegance coughed cruor from her throat, stained it in splatters across her alabaster lips, heralded decaying sinew across her croup and ribs, chunks of reaped flesh and flakes of once gleaming hide littering the grounds behind her.


The Nightingale looks like the scattered remnants of a wraith.
And perhaps she is; for all the conscious thought that prevailed her, a dull throb of pain — Lord, she had never known such physical cast agony in her life — and her skin shivers with the flinching tremors of muscle beneath the surface, her heart beating a fast paced rhythm in her bosom, each fluttering shadow a daemon to reap her soul from her frame and each caw in the coppice causing her nerves to dance with frightening pyre and her sluggish movements to jerk forwards. Harks flick rapidly to and fro even as her nostrils quiver with ambivalence, she feels as much use as a newborn babe, and when her hazy vision catches the faintest of flames upon the horizon, the warm hue of incense upon the wind; she feels her caged heart palpitate in her bosom. What if the childe of war had sent forth her armies, bludgeoned her kin with brutal force and burnt their ashes upon the cruor stained skies?

The white's of the Nightingale's irises gleam.
Cruor.

The Empress.
A swath of passion and ire causes her to drop into a fast-paced trot, a whimpering breath of pain and— they won't touch her, she's coming, it'll all be alright— shockwaves resonate throughout her battered framework and she despairs, trepidation fueling the wavering resources of adrenaline within her veins and she shall care less about the state she is in if only her Queen is not dead.
You'll lose her, murmurs her scrambled thoughts, you'll lose her as you lost him and the burden of it shall rest upon your withers (no, no she wants to scream to the skies, she shall not lose her as she has lost allgemeine, she shall not, she WILL NOT).

Voices ricochet. Legatus. Is that the Golden Caliph? Is it her mind, the short onyx and alabaster winged man? But even as she passes him, in a dreamlike sway, she sees whom he refers to, a woman with aureate flesh and bright, velvet cerulean spheres, she's not injured and she puffs out a strangled noise of relief even as the full weight of her exertion rests as the world on her withers, alive, alive alive alive alive alive.

Baleful violet, cracked lips, a dry song of damnation and stuttering hums to pass her maw, a chorus. What had they referred to the obsidian mare to, time and time again during her time in the swamps? She had lived in the swamps, had she not? "Oathbreaker," spots dance within her vision. "Swindler of babes, the woman with a skull for her dome."

Her neck tenses, droops, she's so sleepy.
"Regime.. in the Rotunda, she lives with them. She has purloined two babes with the scent of the north on their breath. I tried.." With a gust of the wind she falls to her knees in the blanket of tall stalks, the stretching skies swirling together in a breathtaking mixture of stars and the depths of outerspace.

And oh, the stars— she thinks, even as her eyelids cover her glazed pearls, a heaving breath and she is gone from the cruel touch of the world.
The stars are beautiful tonight.



:: I was vague on her injuries otherwise specifically on my part, as wanda and I agreed to spar directly following up the thread. tl;dr, she fainted.