Chansons of Sin (RocketFox & Lydyn)

[Lydyn]

"Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin; to say that you are weak, or others are weak."
-Swami Vivekananda

It was a pleasant, sunny day where only a few clouds hung from the sky above, rolling across it's blue expanse lazily with nary a care in the world. The folks, or rather to say the sweet couple were working the fields; Mary was tending to the chickens and feeding them while Victor was walking the fields and inspecting their crops to make sure they came in strong this session. It felt like a lazy day, the threat of summer rains in the distant horizon gave little motivation to work harder than needed today as it was slowly turning to the summer months. Mary spread the feed across the ground to watch the chicken flock to it's location and gobble the small grain up like the greedy animals they were before the older woman stood up straight. She was reaching the middle years where the black raven hair of her youth was starting to turn grey and her cute cheeks were beginning to adorn wrinkles. Wearing a plain yellow dress with an apron tied around her waist, she turned into the breeze as it whipped her hair into her face, forcing her to brush it back - her gaze catching Lilli walking towards her. Mary smiled a heart-warming smile to the young woman.

"Hello, dear ... you got the cows fed, I take it?" she asked, pausing her duties as the breeze caught onto the top of the grain and forced a few pieces onto the ground as the chickens scurried about as if it were their last meal. Lilli had little time to answer though as they both hear Victor yell from the fields, causing Mary to jerk her head his way. He was only but a few years older than Mary and aged about just as well, though his hair had been grey for years now and he wore a red plaid shirt and blue overalls. They could see the man running towards them and waving his hand. Behind him, they saw the creatures - grey masses of flesh that looked like humans, walking as if they were strolling along a park or lake but the soft moans carried into the wind.

"Mary! Lilli! Get back into the house!" the man yelled as he got closer, hopping the fence even in his old age - perhaps to fear. "It's the walking dead! We need to get inside!" Just as he had finished, the man came to a sudden stop, his face paling as if seeing a ghost. Quietly, the pair of women could hear a moan coming not far from their location. Mary turned to see the dead man walking, torn flesh rotting from his bones, muscles exposed in the daylight and the smell of dead flesh filling the air. She screamed.

Just as the undead man was about to close the distance between the three, it seemed to suddenly pause - a sound of something ripping into it's soggy skin. There - an arrow - through it's head. The mass of grey that was once human shuffled once.. twice.. and then toppled over as whatever magic or energies held it firm were dispelled. Mary then pointed suddenly towards the other group as Victory turned. "Wha- ... who is that?" In the distance, all of them could see a warrior of sorts, adorning in what looked like hardened leather armor, a battle skirt of sorts, boots, and two metal scimitars shining in the mid-morning sun. He moved as if he belonged to the breeze itself, weaving and dodging whatever meek and sluggish blows the dead threatened him with, cutting and slashing until all that was left was a heap of bodies. He paused, blades crossed and head lowered to the bodies almost as if expecting them to stir again. They did not.

Slowly, he sheathed his blades and turned his head towards the trio of people standing near the chicken coop, though it was hard to make out many features at this distance. Victory produced a short snort of happiness before waving to their savior, as if motioning him over to them, and the warrior answered the summons by making his way causally to the small family.

[rocketfox]

With the clouds capering across the sky in films of white and smog, soft against a backdrop of dazzling blues in the summer air tinged in the sent of flora, Lilli De'Cahors-Beau worked. And work she did. Sweat beaded on her slender brow, chased on down her neck and to the curve of her spine - here she paused, shivered once and tried not to think of what lay against her flesh in a macabre painting of twisted skin and scars long since paled and healed. The ever constant reminder to her sin, her loss, and her hopes all spent away in bitter nothings. She donned gloves, to shield away the similar mark warping the skin of her palm, callouses and tender flesh making into the emboss of a lily. Ironic, she thought truthfully.

For her name was given from the very flower which marked her.

Mary called it beautiful, a sign to her beauty, the sign of the lily which also came to form her calling. Their angel, she often told Lilli in the eves, before the fire and watching the flames dance. An angel who had lost her wings.

If only they knew.

Lilli sighed into the heated air and pushed her wheat-gold hair back from her eyes, like bronze they glimmered on the planes of her face, a complexion of sun-kissed cheeks under the heated sun. After her years of torment and self-directed shame, she still held the glamour of a beauty, appearing older than her years from the emotions and occurrences she had endured. A shame, and a lie it was, to be barely an adult in the eyes of her Gods and yet so aged from the blood that stained her pores, the hate she held for her eternal soul. Let it be damned, she thought, let it be feasted on by the hell hounds of the evil one.

Oh, if her family knew of the darkness in her heart, they'd label her an angel of death.

She eyed the cattle with envy, their cloven hooves narrowly missing her booted feet, their bleats and bellow ringing in her ears. Heavy frames, twitching tails, and simple minds that fueled the need to eat and eat. She envied the simplicity of their bovine existence, had naught to worry about in their days. She sighed once more, a little wistful note whispering through her teeth and lips, and latched her hands around the pail of feed.

The breeze was soft on her face and hair, brushing the strands down her shoulders and black, long over due for a cut. The long tresses were heavy in the heat and she figured asking Mary to hack off the troubling threads would be the next thing to do before the eve came. Of course, that was to mean the day was to progress naturally, and often she expected no less out here in this splotch of a farm home. Out in the outskirts and beyond the norm, what could possibly happen here?

Fortune was never on her side, it would seem.

Lilli approached Mary with a slight smile adorning her face, maneuvering around the clucking hens, she was about to respond to her inquiry with her lit of french tongue - voice of the Cahors, when the shout from the fields drew her attention. Lilli's body immediately tensed, old habits unable to wither away when her muscles coiled tight, her feet shifted and her fingers flexed for the grip of a sword. But there was none to be had, instead, Lilli paled at the sight of the dead shambling their way, moaning and grotesque in every way possible. She wanted to vomit.

The need almost over powered her, and she turned to the side and almost retched, her body shaking in her fit of fright as she moved; she was not prepared for this, even as a warrior taught through the talents of time, Lilli had not met with evil and decay in so long.

So, why now?

Lilli grasped the arm of her mother, preparing to flee, but she was caught in the same fix of morbid fascination as they. Her golden eyes honed in on the corpse of a man and to the arrow piercing through his cranium, the way nerves and muscles spasm-ed into old death throes. Lilli was transfixed on the death, as she had been all her life it would seem. But who had saved them? And why hadn't she responded accordingly, she was a knight, meant to react quickly and kill as she was bred to do.

Why not use the magic within?
No!

Lilli bit her lip and followed her father's gesture and the figure approaching, the man in leather, the man who walked as if of the breeze and grass. The woman blinked twice, taking in the trail of death at his ankles and then to his face. A man lost, just as she. The former knight breathed through her nose, watching his movements carefully, feeling meek and low in her peasant blouse and garb stained at the threads with mud and bovine stench. Seeing him adorned in armour, made her long for her own unpolished pieces, once silver and gleaming and now dull.

She sucked in a long breath and held it there, riddled with anticipation with her eyes narrowing into golden slits on her pretty little face.
"Who are you?" She demanded on a cold breath, her inquiry piercing and hollow, a lit of french marring her vocals in pleasing R's and vowels.

[Lydyn]

Mary instantly looked over to Lilli and scolded her silently with the glare of a mother before replying in a soft, warm voice. "Lilli ... manners," she nearly whispered, her eyes traveling back to the approaching man. It was but only a moment after that he had stopped before the three, arms and hands hanging confident to his side as those eyes scanned them in thought. Those blue eyes. They were distant and hopeless, as if whatever life the man still held meant nothing against the coming tides of time and yet there was a cold fire that burned with focused intensity. It was like seeing the moon shining in the night sky for the first time - such was the resolve in this warrior's eyes - these old, lonely eyes. His brown hair swayed gently in the breeze as if it was a child playing among the rolling plains of grass, but he stood with a stone cold discipline that spoke of years upon years of battle, even adorning faint whispers of various scars across his arms. "Andar.." he suddenly spoke, his eyes slowly traveling over to Lilli as they locked their gazes to one another and in that moment, there was a momentary paused found in the man where one would not expect. "My name is Andar."

"Well Andar! Why don't you come in! We'll, uh..." Victor started to respond before trailing off as his eyes went to the dead corpse. ".. bury the poor soul .." He paused once more, but only long enough to return his focus onto Andar, whom was still looking at Lilli. "Lilli here can show you inside and you can clean up, hm?" he offered, adorning a friendly, elderly grin.

"No," he spoke quickly, then turning her head to face east - to his right and their left. "There are more to hunt and time grows short... whatever 'Marked' magi has decided that raising the dead was in good sport and I attend to show him otherwise." He shifted in place and has Lilli been paying attention to his steps, especially with her familiarity of her new home, should could easily take in account by the lack of footprints the man seemed to make despite that he was very well grounded to the earth. Meanwhile, the elderly couple exchanged glances in both confusion and fear.

Mary then spoke up, adorning a soft expression that was laden with worry. "You.. mean.. there's more of those things?" The older woman was not so prideful as to not show her fear, staring at their apparent savior.

Andar turned his head back to them, looking into the pair's eyes for a few moments before his own would linger on Lilli once more, seeming thoughtful for unknown reasons. "You need not worry.." he replied then, his tone softened, most of his gaze spared for the eldery couple as he would glance to the french woman a couple of times. "It is my duty to see those protected and protected you shall be - no living nor unliving creature shall pass my guard as I travel east. I would spare the time to rid your farm of the bodies, but I cannot afford the it - I'm sorry."

[rocketfox]

She didn't trust him - it was evident in the twist of her lips and the way slender brows drooped over her stare. She didn't say anything, rather the former knight catered to a stern face and harsh glare, a lone man didn't go slaying the evil for the fortune of the good under a simple obligation such as self-appointed duty. She had been under the press of order and assignment, always to please her lords, to be deemed useful in the eyes of her Magisters. There had to be another reason why this man, fleet of foot, was carving a riotous path through the dead and the wicked. Something that goaded him along, gave meaning behind the void of his blue stare - something that she herself had naught of.

Lilli's gaze faltered, for just a moment, when those lapis pools honed in on her once more. She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes, the hopeless depth of his glance brought a twist of pain into her breast, where her own loss raged on in bitterness and the soul of someone who had long given up writhed in anguish. Lilli tightened her fingers around the pail, as if they held the hilt of a sword, and turned herself away from him - giving him only her profile. She stared out at the rolling fields of the farm, cattle grazing lazily, the stallions trotting along the fences with a mare cantering after them, heavy with foal.
"You say there is more, that one of the Marked did this." Her voice was clipped with meaning, heavy with her accent, and no more than a whisper. "It is my..." Golden eyes darkened with hate, glaring at the grasses swaying at her feet. "It was my job to hunt them down, see them destroyed. I do not want my home threatened."

Wheat-gold forelocks swept into her view, eyes cutting towards the man, Andar. "I would see this man destroyed myself, to protect my family. You do not need to bother with such long-forgotten heroism." Though meant to be a gentle warning, a soft chip of her tone came cold and hollow, just as before when she inquired to whom he was.

"Allow me to go with you to the East, at least that far." Lilli offered suddenly - the sudden spur of action causing the soft gasp of her parents. She had not been off for the farm for so long, her muscles had not waned, but then they had not been under strain of her armour and sword. But there was a determined gleam to her eyes, hardening the chromatic colour to bronze, a spark of something other than hopelessness and bitter rage. On the inside, she felt a smarting of irony, to be one of the Marked and still claiming to see them vanquished - if Andar knew of her sin, would he hesitate to cut her down like the man they were off to kill?

It was a question that made her shudder, for she did not know if she would stop him from ending her life, or welcome the embrace of death.