❀ ― continued from [ ❀ ] | @mcnthofdarkness
MORTALITY IS A PRECIOUS, POWERFUL THING, one someone guards with a primal ferocity until every reserve of strength has been whittled away. there is no force more powerful than the will to preserve one's own life. people will cast aside loved ones if it means surivival. they'll hold someone under water if it means they can keep their head above the surface. kill or be killed. and death is always looming. there is never a moment where anyone is truly safe. though, throughout the mundane days of ordinary life, it can be forgotten.
but castle dimistrescu is anything but mundane. it is a den of predators. each guest, every staff, is one misstep from becoming a victim of the food chain. indra had already been at the mercy of her mortality. she faced it when she was a child, when her lungs nearly failed her, over and over. she had become well acquainted with death. they had brushed past each other many times, but she had always escaped its grip. it didn't frighten her anymore--- not death itself.
it's precisely this familiarity with danger that allows indra withstand the uncertainty of life in the castle. other servants, often younger, more sheltered women, were not so comfortable. they watch their colleagues disappear one by one, watching the numbers dwindle, wondering if they are going to be next. the panic consumes them gradually, a steady torment that descends into madness. every word becomes a threat toward them, every movement becomes an attack. and what does prey do when it is cornered? it lashes out.
indra had watched many a maid before this one succumb to their paranoid delusions. she saw the signs in this one over the last couple weeks, the way her eyes darted around, the way she was always tense, the way her hands trembled when she folded the linens. she was afraid. afraid of the lady of the house, afraid of her daughters, afraid of their loyal dog, indra, whom she had never seen kill a fellow maid, but couldn't prove she hadn't. she was right to be afraid, but indra hadn't planned to harm her, despite what that maid's spiraling panic made her believe. she would have disposed of her only if the lady commanded it, or she posed a threat.
but the maid's paranoia was too overpowering. convinced indra was going to kill her, she had decided to make the first move. in the store room, she rushed her with a large knife, stolen from the kitchen. indra dodged the swipe, but the maid was in a frenzy. she kept swiping, screaming, eyes wide and wild. when she drew back to slash again, the end of the knife's handle hit the window with enough force to shatter it.
just as bela manifested in a consolidation of swarms, becoming solid between indra and the knife. her sickle buried deep into the neck of the knife-wielding maid. her wild eyes changed then, grew wide with something clearer than panic--- a concrete fear. she was mortally wounded. death was no longer teasing her. she was being beckoned by it. when bela wrenched the blade back out, blood spurted from her severed artery. the blade fell from her hand. she made gurgling, choking sounds as she fell to the floor, twitching, grasping her throat.
the wind was icy, and so was the dread that immediately coiled in indra's stomach. the cold is dangerous to the dimitrescu daughters. they could not withstand low temperatures, lest they become dormant and eventually perish. in protecting indra from a maid lost to madness, bela had put herself directly in the path of her own destruction. if she was exposed to the cold for too long, she would die. indra acted immediately.
" miss bela ! " she gasped, throwing herself over the woman made of flies, shielding her from the onslaught of winter air rushing into the room. she could feel how rigid bela's body was already. " come ! away ! " she instructs, ushering bela out of the storeroom with her body, pushing her toward warmer areas, toward safety. the maid that had attacked, lay bleeding on the ground behind them. " are you alright ? "
