Starglow Basin trastornado

piece of shit fucking men. she'd managed for years to elude their heavy swinging fists, and somehow found herself clocked twice in less than an hour.

she worked on a woman, that in her own estimation was a waste of her talents and time. 'sangre', as this man called her, was hardly more than visceral pulp propped up by what must have been a spinal column before a meat-cleaver got its teeth into it. qiao did what she could but frankly, given their situation and her limited resources, it wasn't much.

and that stupid halfwit wouldn't let her do any sort of spell-work. the moment she set aside a tool or changed the rhythm of her work he was upon her with bristling insistence, redirecting her to some other endless task.

superstitious son of a bitch.

qiao had no grand hopes of rescue. as far as she knew, nokht was a fellahin child. what high esteem did royalty place on the lives of pauper children? they hadn't thought highly enough of her either, given the lengthy interest accumulated by the crown's debt.  an extraction mission seemed unlikely.

like all other times her life had been inconvenienced by the unpredictable short-sightedness of men, qiao would have to rely on her own cleverness and instinct. she might include the child, but if it proved too dangerous, qiao's ultimate goal was her own skin's preservation first.

before, her ire had been aimed at the palace. now it sat and simmered threatening to bubble over; growing fat on an endless stream of spite and murmured curse-words, its unattractive eyes resting on the man that had turned her hind leg into piecemeal. an irrational portion of her still held anger for them: this was -- as the thought explained in a voice all-together too composed to be unreasonable --  indirectly their fault. if they had paid their debts, she would have been on her way. akashingo would have been an unpleasant memory -- a blessedly short footnote in the long and ponderous tome that was qiao's storied life.

qiao had lost a lot of blood.

she winced at every turn, but refused to allow him the satisfaction of seeing her agony. there was nothing here to blot the nerves or disguise the ailing body's natural defenses -- she would have to ride this immeasurable pain out the old fashioned way.

at least she wasn't sangre. that girl was unlikely to ever rise from the poorly bed soto made her.