Herbalists' Cache i knew it wasn't actually you a few feet from my reach.

backdated - a few days before phas arrives at AS. @Zephyr

kevlyn's soul lead the fuming husk of caiaphas through herbalist cache, stopping only once at the thinning edge of a pine grove. she had been here thousands of times before and yet did not remember it; did not remember anything, save for the tantalizing glow of salvation, kevlyn's soul tied imperfectly with her own. just out of reach.

she did not even remember that hours before, she had cut down spyridon like a scythe through reeds.

caught in a bush of stinging nettle, caiaphas was only vaguely aware of the thorns that plucked and dug into her fur. snarling, frothing, she thrashed and thrashed -- freeing nothing but foaming, blood-splattered spittle the worse she struggled.

He wanders away from @Phillip with promises to return soon, intent on finding some alone time under the pretext of an attempt at hunting. Yet despite his original intentions, guilt leaves him sniffing at the ground as he walks through the forest, ears tall as he listens carefully. The last thing he wants is to miss any sign of a stranger, or prey, or his friend calling out to him. He needs to be alert.
So naturally he notices the sounds of snarling and thrashing from somewhere in the woods. A shiver rolls down his spine, and immediately he's overwhelmed with the feeling that something is wrong. In true "white person in a horror movie" fashion, he investigates anyway. And immediately regrets it.
What the fuck — He doesn't even hear the words as they slip from him, too wrapped up in his shock at the scene before him. Somehow, it's too ridiculously grotesque to be frightening, at least in the first moment after he registers the sight. He's still several feet away, but close enough to make out the details: a gaunt blood-covered demon of a woman with eyes almost like his own, foaming at the mouth, writhing blindly in a bush's thorny embrace like some lesser beast driven mad. He takes several steps back immediately, staring with wide eyes. It's not real, he tells himself; an old habit, resurfacing at the most inconvenient of times. But a monster like this can't be real... can it?

it matters not, the little cuts — the rivulets of dewdrop blood that rouge her hide. she was insensate to these small nuisances, caught only in the maddening circus of her gradually declining disease.

after crashing against a thorny rebuke of the bush’s edge, caiaphas was freed; in time to see a shellshocked silvery youth, regarding her with wide eyed horror. caiaphas lurched, frothy lips parting — yet no sound save a choked and haggard gasp made it past her frothing lips.

The demon wrenches free and — no, not a demon, he realizes as she turns her gaze to him, she's real. Real, and very sick; it's the only explanation he can think of for her condition. It occurs to him that he could offer help — that he should. It would be the right thing to do, he knows, and it'd be what his dad would do. He sucks in a breath, trying for a moment to steel his suddenly-frayed nerves.
But then he remembers that no one had helped him when he was sick. Not until dad found him. He takes another step back, ears flattening warily as he starts to give in to his fear. She can ask if she wants help, he tells himself, trying to summon up some sort of irritation. All he feels is afraid and guilty and slightly nauseous, though.

no amount of help — freely given or not — would help Caiaphas now. a fey disease had sunk its wicked talons into her; an awful end, for an awful creature.

she staggered towards zephyr with no real ambition in mind. unlike spyridon, no fragmented ghost of her mind whispered he was a threat — all she saw was kevlyn’a absence.

the same panic that drove her to madness pushed her forward now; she stumbled past the boy, cheeks working in incomprehensible chatter. with gobs of drool swinging portentously from her muzzle, caiaphas made towards zephyr at an obscene crawl.

aaaa sorry, this took longer than i'd hoped! last from me <3 thank u for the thread

His eyes fix first on the warped movement of her cheeks, then on the shining tendrils of saliva hanging from her lips, and for several moments he does not register her approach, too wrapped up in his guilt and horror at the situation to focus properly on anything but the tiniest of details. Something breaks the spell, inevitably; a shift in the wind, a rustle from within the forest, or perhaps one of the sickly woman's stilted movements. His eyes widen as he realizes she's moving toward him, and the last of his guilt flees in favor of a crushing terror. All thoughts of offering help vanish, and he turns with a sharp, slightly choked breath, bolting in the opposite direction with a silent vow to never speak the truth of what happened here. Not to Phillip, or Helios if he should ever find him, or dad, or anyone. No one can ever know he'd left her to die, or they will see him for what he truly is: a twisted soul, broken perhaps — or maybe just defective.

in a similar situation, caiaphas would have left her own for dead also. zephyr owed nothing to a stranger, least of all one terminally ill. unfortunately caiaphas was too far to register much of anything at all past the all-consuming inferno that lit her head and eyes afire.


that was the one unflinching truth about the world — cowards, cravens, and bastards were all just another name for survivors. the brave died by the thousands, the honorable were legion — but the cowards lived on, once the fires from the razing receded.

caiaphas’ fire had only just begun. it would be a week before she drew her last shuddering breath, and she would never know of her end at all — but zephyr — survivor — would live on, while the wraith in the woods met her bitter end a hundred miles north of here, in climes far colder.