Matsu Xiangu
The Haruspex
Annaj - Midday
Matsu sat in a chair in one of the training rooms, looking down at what remained of her arm and flexing the mechanical half. She'd had ample practice to get good with the arm but sometimes she just liked to listen to the whir when she opened and closed her hand...open...close...open...close...
She snapped out of her daydream, a habit that was common enough for the girl.
She was there with a purpose. It was her mind that she wanted to strengthen - a sick pool of dreams and half-sane predilections that needed shielding so what had happened to her and caused her to lose her arm would never happen again. She'd heard of [member="Ahani Najwa"]...and only hoped she would answer her request.
Matsu sat in a chair in one of the training rooms, looking down at what remained of her arm and flexing the mechanical half. She'd had ample practice to get good with the arm but sometimes she just liked to listen to the whir when she opened and closed her hand...open...close...open...close...
[SIZE=12pt]Like breathing.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]When she opened her eyes, lids lifting in lazy acquiescence to a command they perhaps didn’t see the point of, she smiled.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]She could hear a voice. It spoke to her from beneath a swamp's cold, black water. It was twice as clear as heaven, and twice as loud as reason. It was rich like the riverbed silt. She could feel the marsh below her opening up to swallow her whole, swallow and sweep her away. The voice was so different from the melody she knew before; now it was spider legs picking quick and unnatural across the carpet of the swamp’s willow forest.
It was the spiders side-tracked by the body lying prone and stupid in that forest, arachnid legs arching like bow-strings across a body too weak to defend itself from their tickling advances. But I’m alive, alive I am still alive! Beaten and broken, spine made of strings too weak even in unison to lift her arms and swat away the spiders crawling down her throat and bursting in her stomach acid. Eyes open wide, the dirt and spit of the world level with her sight as she died…[/SIZE]
It was the spiders side-tracked by the body lying prone and stupid in that forest, arachnid legs arching like bow-strings across a body too weak to defend itself from their tickling advances. But I’m alive, alive I am still alive! Beaten and broken, spine made of strings too weak even in unison to lift her arms and swat away the spiders crawling down her throat and bursting in her stomach acid. Eyes open wide, the dirt and spit of the world level with her sight as she died…[/SIZE]
She snapped out of her daydream, a habit that was common enough for the girl.
She was there with a purpose. It was her mind that she wanted to strengthen - a sick pool of dreams and half-sane predilections that needed shielding so what had happened to her and caused her to lose her arm would never happen again. She'd heard of [member="Ahani Najwa"]...and only hoped she would answer her request.