▲ ezra collier & luce feyre
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Feb 18, 2021 22:07:44 GMT -5
Post by fleur on Feb 18, 2021 22:07:44 GMT -5
A boy with the capacity to summon ancient beings was surely of interest to her, but for the moment, she dismissed her messenger and nestled that tidbit of knowledge in the back of her head, where it would take root and grow to fruition later. There were other things of more immediate importance than that-- like the other thief running loose on her streets, who'd crossed the threshold of maturity into her teenage years and was causing more problems for the Umbras than Luce would like to admit. Really, she was tiring of these petty thieves coming out of the woodworks all of a sudden.
Normally, she would send someone else to handle the dirty work for her, but right as she was prepared to give the order, one of her sources let slip an even juicier detail that had her doubling back on her intentions and taunted that curious hunger in her that was never quite sated.
She arrived into the heart of Elden right as dusk settled in, violet hues fracturing the saturated sky. By this time most people who had homes to retreat to had already retreated to them, and the remainder of those ambling throughout the sandstone streets were beggars, thieves, and the other low-life scum only willing to scuttle out of the town's darkest recesses under the cover of obscurity. If only they were like me, thought the woman ruefully, her amusement never waning at how insignificant those around her seemed to be in the face of her abilities, subtle as they were. Her usual garb-- the dark robes that masked her identity-- was shed for an even better guise, thick curls bouncing against bronzed shoulders. Her form scintillated vaguely, perhaps a trick of the light?
She drifted along the streets and corridors until she spied what she was searching for, a ringed tail luring her down an alley.
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Feb 18, 2021 22:39:02 GMT -5
Post by flor on Feb 18, 2021 22:39:02 GMT -5
For all that Luce wished that thieves would stop coming out of the woodwork, Zanna was glad to watch them leave the safety of the shadows for the notice of the Umbras. It left all the more shiny things for her light fingers to snatch up without stepping on anyone else's toes. Getting in trouble with the officials might have lost her a hand once, but tangling with the wrong thief would cost her more. It only benefitted her to watch her competition get swallowed up or shut down by the shadowy organization that ruled over Esso'tera, leaving their hunting grounds up for grabs.
If the young thief had known she was about to step straight into the arms of the Umbras herself, perhaps she would have called it a night already, convinced herself to be satisfied with the trinkets lifted from more respectable characters in the daylight - but the best items, the most valuable on the bustling black market, tended to be found on the person of those who were unscrupulous to begin with. The low-lives of the Elden nightlife could be a goldmine as long as you didn't stick your hand in the wrong pocket, or at least didn't get caught doing so.
Tattered black robes drawn around her as she leaned back in the darkness of the alleyway, she awaited her prey. She knew all of her escape routes. Her dagger hung securely on her hip. Her fingers itched to wrap themselves around gold. Her companion crossed paths with the leader of the Umbras, and her fate was sealed.
Striped tail waving in enticement, the furry bandit led Luce into the darkness. Dusk was drawing into night, just light enough that fairies were bold enough to venture into alleyways but just dark enough that they weren't likely to catch a good look at Zanna. She waited for the curly-haired woman to pass and slipped silently out of the shadows, her fingers light as a feather as they slipped into a pocket.
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▲ ezra collier & luce feyre
Administrator
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Feb 19, 2021 10:52:21 GMT -5
Post by fleur on Feb 19, 2021 10:52:21 GMT -5
Zanna belonged to Luce now. She just didn't know it.
The pocket of her coat rustled, indication of an unwelcome presence, and in the same instant a viper sprang from it, coiling around the foreign arm and sinking its fangs into Zanna's skin. It looked back at its prey with human eyes-- deep, swirling emeralds-- and when Luce's body pivoted to the side to regard her, her own gaze was shrouded, twin pits embedded in her face.
"It's not good manners to steal from an assassin. Save that for the nobles," she chirped. One of her hands, hidden by the veils of her illusions, whipped forward and snatched the knife right off its perch and, seizing the opportunity her victim's immobilization offered, balanced the tip against the side of Zanna's neck. She tilted it closer ever so slightly, the skin bowing beneath it but not enough to give way, to let blood meet steel. "You're smart, Zanna, I'll give you that. But you're getting a little big for your britches, don'tcha think?"
The cheeriness, as usual, was frozen by the hint of a threat never far from her tone, like tar clung to each word and adhered peril to every meaning. The snake hissed in the very same way, enthralling but deadly, and tightened itself around its prey.
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Feb 19, 2021 22:28:22 GMT -5
Post by flor on Feb 19, 2021 22:28:22 GMT -5
Shit.
If you were going to be so difficult about being robbed, why would you walk into an alleyway in Elden at night? Zanna moved to yank her hand out of what had turned out to be a pocket empty of anything but a serpent, muscle memory kicking in before she looked down and saw a viper coiling around her forearm, staring up at her with impossibly green eyes. How had she not known? How had she not heard it? The thrill of fear that trickled through her veins as the snake stared into her soul had nothing on the way her blood ran cold when her target said her name, and she looked up into the face that had brought death to a thousand souls.
Zanna's mind raced as her own dagger pressed against her skin, cool steel drawing a ribbon of cold across skin warmed by the arid air. The snake's hiss wound through her ears, but no matter how she pushed she couldn't feel a thing from its mind - how? Unless... she had only had a split second to decide her course of action, and either way her one good hand was on the line. "Don't you think," she said, "That your snake is a little big for not being real?"
The only real animal in the equation came flying out of the darkness as Zanna jerked backwards, its very real teeth digging into the hand that held the dagger to its master's throat. The raccoon dangled by its bite for only a moment before Zanna's other arm reached out to scoop it to safety, the thief and her pet spinning to make their escape.
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▲ ezra collier & luce feyre
Administrator
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Feb 21, 2021 21:18:26 GMT -5
Post by fleur on Feb 21, 2021 21:18:26 GMT -5
Teeth gritted, she hissed as her apparition faltered long enough for Zanna to tear away before it could resume its grip, and then her temper was stoked by the pain flaring through her arm from the pest's attack. How did she...? The thought was fleeting, realization setting in moments after it first reared its head, her sights befalling the animal Zanna was cradling close to her during her escape. Of course. It made sense now-- how it was trained to do her bidding, how they seemed synced to one another, all owing to the fact that this fledgling fairy was a mind fairy with a clear proficiency in attuning to animals' thoughts rather than other peoples'.
Luce did not give chase. There was no need for her to break a sweat on a fruitless endeavor now that Zanna was aware of her tricks. There were others around to handle situations like this, though, a satisfying thud resounding through the night that closely resembled what it might sound like for two bodies to ram into one another.
When she approached Zanna a second time, her stroll was languid and her tongue clicked as she came to a stop, noting with amusement how the captured girl still wriggled despite how her captor was twice her size. "Take it easy with this one. She's very interesting," she hummed, crouching down to scrutinize the raccoon, which snapped its jaws at her. She snapped back. "You two can stop fighting now. My illusion may not have been enough to keep you in place, but these guys here are elites. You won't get away from them as easily. Either I can have them squash you like bugs or you can settle down and hear me out. Which would you like?"
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Feb 21, 2021 21:46:01 GMT -5
Post by flor on Feb 21, 2021 21:46:01 GMT -5
The thrill that came with wrestling freedom back from the jaws of capture whistled through Zanna's veins as she ran, but the fact that she was clearly the prey in a situation where she had thought she was the hunter haunted her like a shadow. What had she done to attract this kind of attention? Had she stepped on another thief's toes? Had they sent someone after her? A knot of fear constricted in her belly as she confronted the possibility that she had attracted the notice of the Umbras, her mind racing as quickly as her feet were.
She raced through the alleyways. Usually she would have only fled a few blocks before finding a hiding spot to hunker down and wait for the danger to pass, but she wanted to be as far away from that woman as possible. It wouldn't be far enough.
Zanna spotted the first bruiser waiting for her, but she didn't see the second one cutting off her escape route until she ran into him. Her grip on her companion loosened, her arms twisted up behind her back and the raccoon constrained by another bruiser before it could run.
She opened her mouth to scream for help, having once evaded a similar situation with a pissed-off merchant by convincing a gullible passerby that he was trying to kidnap and sell her into slavery, but the words died in her throat as Luce appeared while she was struggling against her captor's grip.
"What do you want?" she panted, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
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▲ ezra collier & luce feyre
Administrator
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Feb 22, 2021 8:06:42 GMT -5
Post by fleur on Feb 22, 2021 8:06:42 GMT -5
"You," she said decidedly.
There was no other option for the girl now. She knew far too much for Luce to feel confident in scaring her into submission. That kind of knowledge was too dangerous to let run wild, enough to make a stupid man grow brave with idealistic ambitions of dethroning the leader of the most notorious organization in Esso'tera. Not to mention what it might do for her members themselves if they sank their teeth into the morsel Zanna could dangle in front of them, starving lions enticed by a clever little lamb. She could propel herself into fortune, status, and invincibility if she played her cards right.
No, Luce couldn't have that.
"Tell me, you've heard of the Umbras, no?" The question was rhetorical, though she paused as if in anticipation of an answer, then carried on when the thief stayed quiet, her silence enough validation for Luce to be sure the gravity was settling in quite nicely. "I'm normally not interested in fairies your age. Young'ins like you are a liability. You're still so emotional and arrogant, like the world is yours to take. But you're not the typical mind fairy, are you? You can't divine my thoughts through my eyes like most of your kind can. That's how you knew my viper wasn't real and why that vermin of yours is bonded to you."
She rose from her crouching position and waved her hand for the bruiser to loosen his hold on Zanna, his companion releasing her pet, though neither of them moved far and it was abundantly clear that they would waste no time in tackling her a second time should she choose to flee. "I'm giving you one opportunity to become an Umbra. You don't even have to undergo the initiation. Isn't that charitable of me?" She laughed but the sound was without mirth, curious eyes squinting humorlessly at the girl.
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Feb 25, 2021 21:27:44 GMT -5
Post by flor on Feb 25, 2021 21:27:44 GMT -5
The fear settled into a cold weight in her stomach. Luce might not be confident in her ability to scare Zanna into submission, and maybe she was right to be, but right now the girl would have given anything to be allowed to walk away from this situation without ever breathing a word of it to anyone.
She did not want to be an umbra. Power was not what she wanted. She wanted to be left alone in the shadows. Not for the first time in her life, she cursed her parents for abandoning her on the streets of a place like this, but for the first time in her life she regretted the choices she had made in the aftermath. Zanna had always told herself that she was doing what she had to do to stay alive, that there was no hope for her in trying to toe the line of the law, but she began to wish that she had endured the stares at her missing hand, the judgment from her peers who knew what that signified, and borne it all to live in the light rather than the dark - because the dark had lead her here, and she knew that there was no way she was ever walking away from this.
She held out her arm for her companion to leap into her arms as they were released, soothing him with a stroke on his head as he snarled at the fairies surrounding them. "We both know I don't have a choice," she said, not bothering to entertain it as an opportunity she could refuse. It was the umbras or death. "What do you want from me?" she asked. Zanna knew she had an unusual gift, and clearly so did Luce, but she failed to see how communicating with the rats would benefit a group that already had a chokehold on Esso'tera.
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