Tag Archive | character: urania

Walk the Fields, talk some more

Dec7

First: The Reveal
Second: Find an Exit, Talk it Over

“Who still farms, anyway? I mean, gas, right? The pipelines stopped. Tractors gotta run somehow, don’t they?”

They were walking – ambling, really – down an almost-invisible path between two fields of something Urania was pretty sure was wheat. The demon pretending to be a gym teacher hadn’t said anything since they started walking, so Urania grabbed at the first topic she could find.

“Magic,” he answered mildly. “And horses. Mostly horses.”

“Horses? What is this, the eighteen-hundreds?”

“Last time I checked, a couple years after the pipelines stopped running.” He looked, she thought, amused. He also looked human; with the wings gone, he didn’t look anything at all like a demon.

“…Touche, creepy demon man.” He still was a demon. It was important to remember that.

“You ran into some pretty bad fae out there, didn’t you?” He sounded sympathetic. She wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with that.

“I ran into ‘fae’,” she answered shortly, “if you want to call them that. They were bad. That’s because they were demons.”

“Mmm.”

“What?” She glanced at his face, wondering if she was seriously worrying about insulting a demon.

“Just thinking I’d heard that before.”

“Well, you’re a demon.” It was just logical that someone would have pointed out that demons were evil, right?

“Not because of the ‘demon’ thing.” He didn’t make air quotes, but he somehow twisted the word anyway. “No.” He stopped and looked at Urania straight on. “Something like ‘the Dakota attacked my people. You’re a Seneca, therefore I can’t trust you.”

“But… Seneca and Dakota are totally different tribes! That’s like saying all Italians are the same as all Irish!”

“Exactly.” He raised his eyebrows at her.

Urania wasn’t having any of that. “You saw what the demons did to the world! You have to have seen it!”

“I did.” His voice was quiet now, and his expression serious. “And I’m sure Alastair did as well. It was horrible. The aftermath is devastating. I’m not denying that.”

Urania snuck a look at Alastair. He was still following along, but seemed content to stay quiet, listening. That seemed to be his thing, so she didn’t push it.

“So you’re saying, what, some other tribe of demons did it?”

“Not all of it, no. Some of it was done by well-meaning idiots who never learned to watch out for their surroundings, even when they were taught better.” His voice took on a bit of heat. “Some of it was done by humans desperate for an answer, any answer.”

“And this other tribe? Who are they? Why aren’t you them?”

“Well,” he coughed, and a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “There’s a whole school down there, and that’s on the curriculum.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1020014.html. You can comment here or there.

Find an Exit, Talk it Over

Dec4

directly after The Reveal, from yesterday.

Urania ran straight into the demon’s wing membrane, dragging the skinny kid along with her. If she shoved through fast and hard enough, the door ought to push open. It might hurt a bit, but that was nothing compared to what would happen if a room full of demons got their hands on her.

She’d been hiding in the bleachers when they attacked her school. Urania had a very clear idea of what demons were capable of.

The demon made a surprised grunt, but they were going too fast for him to stop them. One sharp shove through with the heel of her hand, an awful bending and tearing noise, and they were through.

Forward and to the left, that was where they’d come in. Urania didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, just ran, catching the skinny kid as he stumbled, pulling him upright when he fell.

She’d be quicker without him.

She wasn’t going to leave anyone to the demons.

The warehouse-like room was right where they’d left it – Urania hadn’t ever seen a room move, but she’d heard about the possibility – and the stairs were still there, too. She darted up the stairs, stopping to help the skinny kid one more time, and shoved the door open.

There was a demon standing there, his tattered wing flapping about in the breeze. Urania stared at him. “How did you…?” It was enough to throw her off her stride.

“I guessed,” he admitted. He folded his wings against his back, and once again looked more or less like the gym teacher. “Take a walk with me? You have my word that I won’t attack you today.”

“Today.” She raised her eyebrows. “They say demon promises are binding.”

“It’s true.” He tilted his head at the wheatfield. “You’ll be able to see anyone else coming, if we walk out there.”

If he had beat her here, if he’d known where she was going, he could just stop her, couldn’t he? Maybe once they were in the field she could dart again, once he thought she’d relaxed. Then he couldn’t “attack” – probably.

“I could walk a little. But then we’re leaving.”

“Shouldn’t you let Alastair decide for himself?”

She glanced at the skinny kid. The name was nearly bigger than he was.

The kid, in turn, shrugged defensively. “Leaving sounds… I dunno. They may be demons, but there’s food.”

She pursed her lips, unwilling to admit he had a point. “I won’t make you. But I don’t want to leave you behind to be…” She trailed off, biting her lip. If he hadn’t seen what the demons could do, she didn’t want to be the one to tell him.

He raised his chin. “Talk to the man. He’s waiting patiently.”

“I don’t think he counts as a man.”

“Well, he killed three warcats who were trying to kill me. So. Call him what you will.” The kid who was too small for Alastair shrugged.

Urania turned slowly back to the demon, to find he was looking like a gym teacher again, wings nowhere in sight.

“I guess we talk?” she offered cautiously. “Since you promised. Just talk. And then I leave.” And she might just carry Alastair of with her, too.

“Just talk.” The demon nodded. “Let’s walk this way, the three of us.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1017255.html. You can comment here or there.

The Reveal

Dec3

Set in Year 19 of the Addergoole School.

“As I told you all on your first day here, Addergoole is an experimental school.”

Urania had found herself a nice corner of the dining hall where she could see everyone. Today, she was sharing the table with a Sixteenth Cohort, Hroderich, an Seventeenth Cohort, Bracken, and two other nineteenth Cohorts, one of whom refused to give a name but was skinnier and hungrier than Urania and one of whom looked far too clean, far too smug, and far too well-fed and called himself Kameron. She hadn’t meant to share her table with any of them except the underfed feral one, but they just seemed to gravitate to her table.

She was trying to eat, without looking like she was stuffing her face – one of the advantages of having the feral one there was that he made her look tidy and well-fed by comparison – but the Director had decided it was a good day to start lecturing.

“…there will be a number of things that will seem very strange to you. Now that you’ve had a chance to settle in, things will be getting progressively stranger over the next week or two.”

Urania set down her drink and raised her eyebrows, not that she thought the director would actually notice.

“She means it,” Hroderich assured her.

“This is an underground facility in the middle of nowhere that just happens to have food and electricity.” Urania kept her voice low. Hroderich was sitting right next to her, way within her personal space, the way he seemed to like to. She barely needed to raise her voice at all. “It’s pretty freaking strange already.”

“It’s going to get stranger.”

“…don’t let anything you see or hear alarm you.”

“Hrod, I saw a demon from hell rip apart my jr. high. Do I really look like the sort of person who is going to be alarmed by…” She trailed off, shoving her chair back as far as it would go. “No. Oh, fuck, no.”

“Ninteenth Cohort, if you have any questions, please feel free to…”

Urania wasn’t listening anymore. She grabbed skinny kid’s shirt and pulled him backwards with him. She wasn’t sure if she was using him as a shield or getting him out of there, but both had merit.

Every single upperclassman, every teacher, even the freaking cafeteria lady. They were all monsters. Horns, tails, wings. She hadn’t seen this many of the creatures in one place since they burned down her school. Hell, even there there had only been twenty or thirty.

Someone’s hand landed on her shoulder. Urania pushed away. The door was right there, and it might be closed but closed doors hadn’t stopped her before. If it didn’t open, it could be made to open. She got a better grip on the skinny kid, who either didn’t feel inclined to argue or was just as intent on getting away as she was. “Ready?” she muttered. “On three. One, two…”

On three, there was a demon in the doorway, those wide, awful wings blocking the way. Urania ran straight for his left wing. Membranes, she had learned back in jr. high, tore quite easily.

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