🩸 A prayer to Fortune (2)

She spit the blood out of her mouth, heavy breathing, knuckles raw. Astrid won her fight tonight - yet unease crawled under her skin.

She didn't cheat this time - it would have taken too much of a toll on her own fatigue and she needed every bit of energy to defeat her opponent, an impressively large woman with shoulders wider than Jean's. Astrid had won using her best abilities : nasty hits and sharp wits.

Jean himself had done well on his own : his enemy didn't last long enough for him to really tire. This was an expected result from someone coerced into violence since he was a kid, and risking his life at the mere thought of losing. It still was a win to be proud of.

Yet Astrid was afraid. The little tyran had lost. And he had lost against his personal nemesis at that - a man that wrecked his ego and riled up his temper with venom on his tongue. Astrid and Jean knew how it always ended when the little prick lost and the night came. He always took it out on them.

But the air was especially threatening that night. The last time Astrid's guts cramped in protest this hard, it had been hella bad. Astrid couldn't take it anymore. They needed a way out as soon as they could.

She had practiced her magic in secret on opponents and, with his permission, on Jean. But it wasn't enough - not to her anyway. A weak ass nosebleed was not the kind to turn over a fight, and the prick wouldn't even blink at it. She also sucked at healing. Jean tried to teach her. She spent hundreds of hours studying that beautiful, precious book the mad witch had given her. Ab Aqua Libertas - a guide to waterbending. She had scrolled through its pages so much she knew it by heart. She practiced its movements enough times that Jean just had to give her a number and she executed it by muscle memory. It was her most precious item and advice, a gift for independance and freedom - yet she still couldn't move the smallest puddle of water.

Nothing worked. 

She was growing desperate. 

She also was growing hungry - though she tried to shove it down and bury it. But she craved it - that feeling of power, of being untouchable as you forbid anyone to lay a single finger on you. She had drowned the feeling for months after the incident. Yet, as the prick evolved in his violence, the thirst slowly crawled back into Astrid bones.

The night her moon turned red, on her way to freedom, she had been unstoppable. She wanted it back. 

A little voice warned her of loneliness, death and corruption. She didn't want to become like them. She didn't want to turn into a monster, morally or physically, a cruel creature condemned to destroy people or being hunted down - with all hope for freedom gone.

But maybe that wasn't the only path ahead. Astrid had heard of the Weeping Colossus. A monster everyone had been terrified of, until it had taken down the Cursed Crone to protect the people. A pile of tar Astrid had already observed in the Sunless Jungle, quiet and peaceful as she walked past her. Maybe, if it ever came down to it, Astrid would be able to keep her conscience and freedom and fight for what she thought was right. Maybe her stubborness would be enough.

That night, when the prick let out his ire and Astrid was unable to fight back, she grew certain that Jean would not survive the winter. That she could not take it anymore either. So when the clan finally fell asleep, she went for the dearest and most precious item she had : a promise of protection, a path to good intentions, a guide to independance. A sacrifice in fire to Fortune, for Astrid always had to pay the price for her freedom. She would miss it deeply, for the symbolism and support it held.

Ab Aqua Libertas.

Water was never her element anyway - she'd been carved in blood.