Two Eyes Cenote [m] tierra de nadie

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making some assumptions/pp to keep the story moving but please lmk if you would like changes made <3

“@Soto!”

He thrust her body forward into the dirt. Stood with the weight of his paw on her face.

Niño wasn’t in the business of mangaling children.
But he couldn’t give a shit how old she was.
@Safiya was his little trinket.
Put up a real fight, too.
Put down with a claw to the eye.
A deep bite to the throat.
His little, maimed trinket, laid out to trade, just as @Juárez ordered.
The man, @Machiavelli, left in the pass to slither home or bleed out.

They’d better hope jefe was alive, or this would turn into a demonstration: what happens when you cross the cartel.
He dug his nails into the girl's cheek for good measure and bayed again.
Loud enough for the desert in its entirety to register the name:

“SOTO!”

She did not go quietly into the night. She raged and she screamed and she fought. She gave him what she could a bite for a bite. Now she lay in the dirt bleeding. And snarling. A deep constant sound. She struggled against his foot weakly. But she struggled. 

She would kill this man. Kill him and lay his bones for the birds to pick. He had left Machi to die. She had never screamed so loud in her life when they left her friend bleeding and broken.

Her eye was blood soaked and full. She was unsure if she'd gain all her vision back. The rip on her throat deep, and pulsing but he had not bled her out yet.

Fuck you asshole. She choked on her blood. Coughed and then laughed. I'mma kill you.

staying vague about current @Soto/khu thread but tag for ref/joining! <3

safiya.

by now he had come to the assumption at very least that his daughter had not reached akashingo. he had poured himself instead into the starving torment of soto, the brutality.

all for very naught.

safiya, safiya.

there was no wind to stir the crocodile. he stood sun-baking and implacable beneath the eye of Ra, feeling his belly sharpening that steel terror into a rage beyond any felt thus far.

the rope tightened; tightened; tightened; he wound it around his paw until he felt the bite of thorns in his own flesh.

brutality again in the yanking motion; eye for an eye, bits of soto traded for every cry his girl made.

it had been worth it, you know. the mingling cocktail scent of terror and adrenaline stymying his senses. the erotic feel of khusobek’s silken fur against his aching —

soto snaps from his stupor to the sensation of a heavy yank. tug harder, papi he thinks through gritted teeth, though any erotic pleasure he used to feel from pain had since faded. 

some time now he’s been at the captain’s cruel leash - long enough to know he’s being kept alive for a purpose beyond sadism. 

his name. soto. he’s dragged to the surface where the sky is so blue he’s blinded. scents he’s forgotten parade his senses in a state of utter disorientation. the world, has it always been this bright?

he makes out the unforgettable silhouette of niño, something hunching under his feet. 

and he is roughly yanked again, the thorns now embedded in his skin with prying teeth. 

a hostage exchange? is this why the father kept him alive all this time? a laugh — half drunk in delirium — bursts from the captive. 

but then he sees who the shape is, and his face drains of all remaining color.

“STOP! Don’t touch the girl!” Sobered, in an instant. She stands frozen upon the scorching sands, a scream trapped in her throat, foot shaking in mid-step. Each one of Safiya’s cries ripping like daggers through her chest. She could scarcely think clearly, but she had to, she had to, for ahead, the jodai was captivated in rage.

“Release him,” Eset cries, “Khusobek, release him.”

There was no other choice.

Pack wolves pour like ants from their mound.
Soto.
He’s there.
Held prisoner. Tormented. Eyes, bleary. Niño’s hackles rise.
There’s an apparent misunderstanding here.
The hound’s not been clear enough.
No matter, allow him to clarify, in the language both men speak.
Violence.


A second paw is placed upon the head of the girl. Her skull bearing half his weight.
It’s obvious, the crocodile man’s weakness. The more he wants to protect something, the more vulnerable he makes it.

Niño’s mouth twitches.
He puts a claw down into that jewel-toned iris.
Digs around until there’s a pop.
His hand is smothered in warmth.
He holds on his claw a turquoise eye like it’s a cocktail olive. Blood, seeping down his wrist.

“Soto.”

She had been through enough. But this bitch didn't give up. And he dug at her face. She knew, something bad was about to happen. But she was too weak, too small to do a damn thing about it. Blood loss had thickened her limbs. Her body ached in such a way.

She was furious and hurting. And she didn't understand half of what was going on. But when his claws came close to her eye. She tried to close it. But it didn't matter. His weight bore her down and though she didn't want to scream. Her stomach tightened and vomit rose in quick succession as the man put her through pain unimaginable. She Screamed and puked and when the world stopped spinning. 

She screamed again. I WILL KILL YOU. Blood pouring from her eye. The pain was too much and she slumped forward. No longer stirring. Blood painting the sand. 

Her one good eye whirred and she fixed it on Soto and then her father and it rolled back in her head. And she blacked out.

eset's cries blurred into blood beating boiling hot within ears that heard his daughter screaming, screaming. it was only the horrendous blows dealt early to emotion which raised his head only for the man who had maimed safiya in a cool stillness which mercifully measured his shock.

later the guilt would be immeasurable. today khusobek let go of the briarwhip lead. "crawl." a moment ago this tribulation had only been the purview of slaver to palace; now it had become the personal obelisk settled in ground sand within the dunes of his heart.

to be carved in so precious a crimson that no trade could equal its color. the end of soto's rope trailed upon the sand. he would advance next if there was no signal that safiya was to be released; better that someone else now ran to her than the father who had failed her twice and might a third.

so proud he was of her warrior's cry, tantamount to his own self-loathing but untouched by the calculation his mind made of space and time and equational speed.

the girl pays the ultimate price, as girls often do. her father would live with this and his other failings the remainder of his life.

soto has seen many terrible things, but even then something unspeakable moves in his gut to see safiya's bloodied eye held aloft, viscera and eye-string dribbling from nino's hooked claws.

a glance to her father and he knows khusobek is reeling. in that moment he could take advantage of the distraction and rip his throat from him -- fangs hungry for stiff trachea to turn to pulp.

it would be ultimate retribution, and deserving -- for this and other grievances laid upon soto's body.

but it would hurt safiya more to lose her father than the burn of a lost eye ever would.

against the will of his aching ribs soto bows and the green-rope slips from his thinned neck. coiled in the sand it looks like a dispatched serpent, the scars of its fangs leaving his throat bald and bloody.

safiya. he turns as she slips to the ground in relinquished consciousness. he's sorry she's been hurt, but that's the thing about girls and cartels. girls die every day. he supposes he's grateful it's only an eye.

he could seize her then and they could run. it's tempting, but he couldn't run long with broken ribs and god knows what else. he owes nino more than his life in that moment, and fixes his unsundered eye to the man with a sudden grin that defies the horrors he's endured in the crypt.

fuck, it was good to see him. vamos. he suggests with a raised brow and does not wait -- turning his back to eset and khusobek both.

they would come to regret this moment soon enough.

Predictable.
Men like that are.
There’s always a pretty face behind gritting fangs.
Well, this one’s not so pretty anymore.

One word uttered, the rest, silent acquiescence.
The girl screams. She’s sick.
The hound keeps on her, watching jefe slither through the sands.
Look what they’d done to him.

Niño opens his mouth to pant.
Slips the turquoise orb between his teeth.
Bites down hard for an audible crunch before spitting the mucous remnants into the dirt near the girl’s face.

She’s released.
Soto is hauled onto his back.

“Adios.”
He bolts.

She throws herself down into the sand at Safiya’s side, fighting off panicked sobs.

“You’re all right. Everything’s going to be all right now,” her hand trembles over the girl’s throat. Blood seeps from the mutilated eye, but it is the wound to her throat which concerns Eset most.

“Carry her inside, we need to get pressure on the wounds,” she speaks to Khusobek and in the same breath calls for a fellahin. “Go North to the Moontide gathering. Send for Tavina. Alert Pharaoh and Semer-wati, then go to Akashingo, inform the Erpa-ha," then breathlessly to a second: “bring sterile water from the cenote.” She must irrigate the wounds. Keep them damp. But she knew the clock on Safiya’s life was ticking.

Bursting into the medical bay, Eset rifles through the medicine stores.

“Something for the pain, something for the pain.” Feverfew. White willow. The hebsut began to crush strands of herb into a salve with her paw.

Safiya fought against the darkness. It clung to her, sucking her down, down into inky depths. Her soul felt like it was on fire.

Voices from long distances. Crashing of thunder and lightning across the world. And yet it was still dark dark. And pain, so much pain.

She woke up long enough to make a gurgling laugh, halfway to hysterics.

I'm gonna kill em.

Then darkness pulled her down again.

she's out for now. You can pp her.

"you will."

grease had glittered like splatters of old paint in the silver-brown mask of that one. khusobek memorized the length of his stride, the apex point where flank strained in running. he had even gazed at the underside of the hard paws as they carried soto across the sand.

now his own cradled safiya's cheek, her blood trickling warmly across his wrist. 

he had looked for the dirt's origin; he would go back to that sand with the jellied remains of her eye ground into its grit and lick the earth there in the footsteps of the man, tasting beneath a fallen sun the sum total of his days remaining. but now; now she was only on tavina's examination table and each breath felt like a thousand years.

"we will kill them together, habibti."

HIS FAULT she was here.

THEIR FAULT for breathing a single atom of safiya's air.

Her face burns, the ground wet with Safiya’s fallen blood. The salve is brought to the girl’s lips, wounds flushed with warmed water, then lathered in the pulp from aloe plants. Strands of chamomile are dressed across the flesh but they will not hold for long.

It is with a sob Eset realizes, “I can do no more.”

Amber eyes race as she considers the next move.

“She needs to go to Akashingo. She will be seen by a sesh there until Tavina’s arrival.”

Sepsis. Infection. There was too much that could happen beneath an unskilled eye. She needed a doctor.

She needed to get the hell away from Muat-riya.

was eset panicking? khusobek felt the rage again, frustration; her worries eddied in on him, and he tried not to think of what it meant if they could not get safiya there.

dread; dread; now a true horrible nausea, that he did not know how long she had been in their grasp and thus — he did not know —

his breath was a whisper. his ribcage was a contortion of control. "until pharaoh sends aid, we are on our own." his gaze held her own then; he was desperate in a way he could not be with anyone else; he tried not to move safiya more as he embraced her, as he bent his crown to her own and stared into the recesses of that eye ruined by his own demand for blood.

"deaden her pain. and please give me all i need to keep her asleep. our path will be twice as long when we go. kiyya and kheti are here to serve you beneath meseba's watch."

Twice as long.

Was it the right decision? His words stung, and she had no time to weigh the consequences.

Aloe, to fight off infection. Chamomile leaves to wrap over exposed flesh. The dressings to be changed twice a day.

She fitted a fur and her satchel containing the herbs over Khusobek’s shoulder, then helped him to position Safiya’s limp body across his back.

Eset kissed her hot cheek, then the identical one of her father.

“Gods speed,” she whispers to him, stepping aside.

"once she is delivered into the hands of a sesh, i will return."

he did not have the luxury of staying. a grown man willing to maim a child was not a man willing to be intimidated by kingdom's voice. only force would bring head to platter to crocodile. 

his own kiss was draconic breath which heated her brow.

"please guard yourself, hebsut. i speak not only as your jodai."

again their eyes, and then he was off, adjusting safiya's limp arms once before he strangled a sob and ran for the direction of the butte and its water-logged pathways which might drown their scents and buy them two days to the flatlands.

Only when they’d gone did she weep, trembling with the reality of all that had transpired. Safiya, slipping from their grasp.

What would she tell her brothers?

Helpless, Eset fled to the altar of Hathor and bent herself in prayer. Invocations sprang as fast as weeds, and there she sat all through the night.