Singing down History, a continuation of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@inventrix)

After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ) and
Bringing Home History (LJ)

Part 4 of ~7.5
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

The rope seemed rather superfluous, but Karida didn’t want to risk their new… sister… wandering off, so she finished the ritual, giving the girl a little more water and then binding her wrists in front of her, leaving the end of the rope as a leash.

Fiery didn’t even fight the rope, looking at it with an expression Karida thought might be resignation. “Show us what you know of this place?” she asked, to take their minds off of that.

The girl nodded, and looked around for a moment, orienting herself, maybe. Or buying time. Amalie hummed softly, getting the thread of the song back. “This changes the tune. It adds…” she hummed for a moment more, and then sang a quick scale of nonsense sounds. “Ah. A minor note.”

“Sounds like there ought to be a thudding drumbeat,” Dor commented. “Maybe just the walking? Ba-bum, ba-bum.”

“Ba-bum,” Fiery smiled, thudding a beat on her thighs, da-da-da-DUM.

Let them sing the trip. Someone had to actually MAKE the trip for the song to finish. Smiling in exasperation, Karida started walking again.

The buildings nearby were in bad shape, fallen in, collapsed. She went past three without entering, because her sense told her they were death traps, empty of anything useful and full of rotting boards.

Behind her, her little party followed, humming and singing as if they were on parade, Amalia holding Fiery’s lead. They turned down what had to be a road, between the wrecks of two homes, and then down another road, while the music evolved and trailed behind them.

The song, as far as Karida could tell, had taken a detour into their captive’s life, or at least what little she was capable of telling them so far.

“‘Monster,’ they said, who had eyes but no sight,
“‘Monster!’ They threw their kin to the night.
“‘Monster,’ no beast, just a girl with a gift,
“‘Monster,’ their child, set loose and adrift.”

“Monster,” Karida snapped, as her sense told her something was coming, something that had gotten nearly up on her without her knowing. Too big to be a human, too silent to be a normal creature.

“Kar…” Amalie complained, but Karida didn’t have time for that.

“‘Ware danger,” she repeated, reaching out her sense. The damn thing was invisible, wasn’t it, and there it was, almost on top of them and she could smell its breath, like carrion rotting. “There’s a monster.” She swung with her stick and connected, landing on something tender, from the sounds of things. “Dor!”

“On it.” Dor muttered and then yelled, pressing his hands and his power towards the monster, guided by Karida’s swings and the solid thunking noises they made. Something caught her arm, raking a long cut through her sleeve and into her skin, burning and going numb all at once.

She shifted her grip to her other hand, cursing softly, and kept swinging. Any moment now…

“And thud,” Amalie sang with joy, and the ground under the monster opened up in a pit.

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