OPEN | prompt three | PAIN

[wrens]

prompt three | P A I N dressing-room style. start your own thread. tag others. wash, rinse, repeat. open to all.

 

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[scald]

[ There are rumors about Melisandre. The whispers follow her just as eagerly as the zealots who worship her blood-blazoned god do; they trail in her wake, leaving fingerprints wherever she goes — proof in bruises and broken glass that the Red Woman and her god of chaos have been here. There are fingerprints on Stannis as well — lines etched across the skin of his face and carved deep and unforgiving into the muscle of his body. Not all of his scars were earned in the ring but each and every one of them has been given her blessing.

Rumors say she drinks the blood of her enemies. Rumors say she drinks of Stannis' blood too.

(False and not so false. She's tasted Baratheon blood more than once.) ]

They'll find their knees or fall forever, Stannis. [ Finally, she releases him. ]

[pummel]

[ Lines etched across the skin of his face and carved deep into the bone, marks of wear and tear (the lives of other men thrust upon him as soon as he had become old enough to be called a man, himself; nightmares the color of the blood the Red Woman sows in the shadow of his brothers' deaths to the point that only she herself can soothe him to sleep) but never breaking, never yielding. Scars that had gone unseen until the coming of the flame.

When she lets go of him, he stands, turning his head this way and that (the scar will set). He has passed doubt, where she is concerned. She is his warrant or he will be nothing, a brilliant flame that dies too soon. Some would question that faith, he knows, but those who do follow him anyway (the light is too bright not to), and so he drinks from that font like a man dying of thirst. ]

They will bend the knee or I will raze them to the ground, [ he says, a near echo. (They are subject or foe. None stand in between.

They will bend the knee or he will destroy them with his own two hands. The ring has seen that carnage before.) ]

[scald]

[ Stannis rises and his retinue shivers, Melisandre's declaration made manifest (it would not be the first time something she says come to pass). First whispers, the nervous and reverent shuffling of feet, and then silence as they are all compelled to stillness in anticipation. Each of them know they are not to speak while Stannis exchanges words with his Red Woman and while none are so ignorant to think that this is a reveal of their inner workings, they consider proximity to the both of them to be nothing short of a blessing.

Stannis rises and Melisandre turns — pride burning brightly in her cheeks and her eyes. Had the she made him more than a man or had he lent credence to her madness? Regardless of which half of the equation is true there is no separating them, one from the other. Those that have tried in the past have burned. A white hand slices through the air, dismissing those that would crowd around them to touch the hem of her dress or the edge of his shadow. ] Leave us, [ she tells the others. (None dare protest.) ] He is in need of council.

[pummel]

[ To have such command over so many people is both a funny and a terrible thing. (His retinue is not the biggest on the block, but no so-called army is when one gets down to the nitty gritty, for the human will is weak and the wrong kind of fervency will sputter and die out all too soon. He knows, at least, that wherever he goes, she will follow — or is it the other way around? — and so will the smuggler. That's two, by his side. Two more, he imagines, than most can say.)

Just as the room has emptied, he becomes the shadow at her back, intangible (only for the time being) but practically sewn onto her heels, made of the terrors that loom in the darkness, woven together by her sheer fervency. Blood still draws a red line down his face. ] Council, you said?