Backstitches

"[THREAD TITLE]" is a [SEASON NUMBER] thread written on [IRL DATE].
== Summary ==
[Write a summary of the thread's events here, including spoilers and important plot details. Check the Order of Threads to see if the thread you are placing already has a summary, to make less work for yourself.]
== Full Text ==
=== Part 1 ===
Milae stumbled into his back room, his chest heaving, and he tripped and fell to the floor, the blood on his cloak–not his, but someone’s–smearing across the floor and glistening in the firelight. His goat eyes were wide and glistening. His fur was soaked with sweat. He fought the violent urge to be sick as he shoved himself to his feet, stumbling and catching himself on the nearest loom, nearly tipping it over. He fumbled for his naginata on his back, pulling it down and wiping the blade on his cloak before taking a moment to steady himself. He reached shakily for the pencil on his desk, but moved away at the last minute, hurriedly moving to a loom that was covered in crimson, gold and auburn threads, and he made his usual loop marking and tore the end of the thread with his teeth, leaving a ragged end blowing in the breeze caused by another turn of the heel, another frantic pace away.
He lifted his hooves and hesitated, trembling, and then closed his fists, and he was gone.
The forest was darker this time, nearly pitch black. It was late at night on the third day before the deadline. Milae did not wait. He pursued.
“Rhenco!”
Rhenco looked back at him, and tilted his head. “Yes…?” 
Milae didn’t hesitate; he continued striding forward and swung his lantern at the man, the glass cage waving wildly and smashing into the side of a tree, spilling flames and oil across the bark. “I’m done with you,” he said in his eerily calm voice, but he couldn’t hold back a tremor of rage. The shadows danced across his steady, unblinking face. “I’m done waiting. I want to know why you can’t die.”
“Perhaps you should explain why you know me, but I do not know you…”
“I won’t. You tell me what I need to know.”
“You tell me, it was the demon, wasn’t it?”
Milae pointed the blade of his weapon directly at Rhenco’s chest. The fire burned brighter and brighter behind him. “Speak now, so that I may destroy you for even considering harming the children of the rebellion.”
Rhenco took one smooth step away from the flames and the blade, and then met his gaze evenly. “I’m an alchemist…” He explained. “I put all of my assets into regeneration. So technically, I do die. I just have it set so I always get revived…” he leaned forward. “Now you tell me strange fellow…why such a reckless abandon for life over snippets of information?”
Arms shaking, Milae trudged through the snow again and pressed the blade to Rhenco’s throat. “Tell me how to undo it,” he ordered quietly.
“Hm hm…” Rhenco chuckled softly, and then fell on the blade. 
Milae’s eyes widened as the man’s weight fell on the naginata, and he clenched his teeth as the body dragged his arms to the ground, bleeding onto the snow. The fire started to spread to the forest around him, and with a vicious yank, he pulled the weapon out of the body, sending blood spraying across the dead gray trees. The flames reflected fiercely in his eyes.
“Keep your secrets,” he whispered to the cold, smoke-filled air. “I have as many of you to ask as I need.”
He was gone.
=== Part 2 ===
The day of the deadline was tomorrow. Milae strode up to Rhenco and stuck his hoof out.
“Nice to meet you, Rhenco.”
Rhenco paused, and then carefully reached out and shook his hoof. His hands were cold, but strong. “So we’ve met…” His eyes flickered, and then he looked on the inside of his wrist before letting go. “Or maybe not…” 
“We haven’t. Tell me, why does Lady Grey hold your interest?” 
“Reading minds…?” Rhenco rubbed his chin, and then his eyes glinted. “I’ll tell you for a price.” 
“Name it.”
He held up a finger. “Let’s seal this information, and price, with a kiss…”
Milae laughed, the sharp sound echoing off the trees. He’d picked a bizarre one this time. “Rhenco, we hardly know each other. I should think you would rather have one of my eyes, wouldn’t you?” 
“If you offer an eye more readily…then a kiss is definitely the payment I’ll need little pet.”
His stomach turned, and he stepped backwards. “Maybe next time.”
The corner of Rhenco’s mouth twitched and he strode past him, and paused by his shoulder to murmur in his ear. “Then I will have far more than that next I see you…” 
Bile rose in Milae’s throat, he raised his arms to his chest, and after a few seconds, the contents of his stomach were splattered across the floor of the thread room. 
=== Part 3 ===
Six days until the deadline.
Milae was sat up with his back against a tree, holding something in his lap. A strip of cloth–an embroidery. His odd-looking hands held the needle remarkably well as he deftly wove the thin sliver in and out of the scuffed linen scrap. “Did you know Orskaf well, Rhenco?”
“No…” The man answered smoothly. “He got me into the kings chamber. Put me right where I wanted to be…and then I left.” 
“Hmm.” The stitch he was on was yanked tight and the silver tip dug back into the fabric. “That’s unfortunate, wouldn’t you say? You two could have gotten along very well.” 
“The only time I would have liked to spend time with him is if I helped him know what that little bodyguard went through…Or maybe peeling the skin off his grandchild the way he did to that ninja…And see what he thought about that.” 
Milae put the thread between his teeth, pulled until it snapped, and then finished off his project, still refusing to look up at Rhenco. “I see. Well, maybe I was wrong.” His voice held steady, but his hooves shook as he stood, looking down at his scrap of fabric. He let go of it, and it drifted to the ground. “I get the feeling he would have hated you.”
And with a flash of light, he disappeared.
=== Part 4 ===
[WARNING: GORE AND BLOOD AHEAD]
Four days until the end.
The weather was unbearably hot; the air was stifling. The sky was a muted gray brushed with orange light; the ground was hidden in a light covering of ash that tumbled and drifted over the stone as though it were what it pretended to be–a gray blanket of snow. But the heat spoke otherwise, making the contrast between eyes and skin quite unnerving.
Milae wore no cloak. His hooves were covered in soot, and ash dusted his fur in a light coating. He held his bladed weapon behind him, waiting. His scars were itching. Badly. His eyes were nearly watering from the intensity.
“I’ve come to kill you today, Rhenco.”
Rhenco starred down at the ash as if it were more concerning to him than the blade Milae held. “Oh…? Today? Have we met before ?” 
“Yesterday, today, tomorrow.” The naginata slowly spun by Milae’s side as the goat approached. His eyes were rife with razor-sharp focus. “It doesn’t matter here. I’m too far away to do much damage…except to you.”
“I’m not really a fighter…” 
“I would prefer if you were not, actually. Then I may take you apart and study you as I please, and wait for you to come back…and do it all over again.” The blade leveled at Rhenco. “I will figure out how to stop this.”
“No…you won’t.” Rhenco said so plainly it sent a shiver down the goats spine. Rhenco spoke with more than just confidence. He spoke with definitive, time tested experience. 
“No one has…no one will…” 
Milae raised his forearms, vanished with a flash, and appeared behind Rhenco, already swinging his weapon, landing it in his shoulderblade with a solid smack of torn flesh. “I will,” he panted.
Rhenco’s body fell to the ground and began to bleed. But then, right before his eyes, it burned to a crisp without fire, and then the ashes froze over. There was a pause,  and then Rhenco exploded up out of the dust, his knife stabbing into the inside of his arm, just below the elbow. He gripped his shoulder with the other hand. “I…know…you…” he said calmly as he began to drag the knife down the length of his arm. “But…we’ve…never..met.” 
Letting out a pained animal noise, Milae instinctively tried to curl his arms upwards, but that only drove the knife further. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to wrench his arm down and away, letting Rhenco’s own grip pull the knife from his skin, and he cried out as blood immediately soaked the ground between them. His hooves covered his scars protectively as he stumbled backwards, his weapon clattering to the ground. He moved his arms upwards, and Rhenco felt a rush of blood to the head, but when it cleared, Milae was barely standing a foot back from where he was before. “You don’t know me,” he gasped. “But we’ve met.”
“Time…” Rhenco said immediately, almost accusatorily. For a moment he looked annoyed. “Perhaps the closest thing to being able to stop me from living my life…but i planned to counter such things since the very beginning. Looks like we are both apprentices of an old, old craft." 
Milae was sweating profusely. His vision was pounding. "You speak nonsense.”
“Hm…" 
The knife sailed passed his head, but it was only a distraction. Rhenco plowed into Milae and pinned him under the length of his body. His sharp finger nails gouged into the under side of his other wrist with disturbing efficiency. 
"Life, connection, equivalent exchange. You got so much from me. And now, however many ‘Me’s’ are out there…I have a fuzzy recollection of you now…now that I know…" 
One of his other fingers curled around a tendon in his cut arm. "So…how many times has this happened? 
Black and red and white–Milae could barely see straight any more. He made a strangled noise and tried to kick Rhenco off of him with his hind legs, to no avail. Blood was pulsing in waves over his arm, down his wrist and over his hand, scarlet pooling in the deep crevices of his markings, mixing with the ash below them and turning it into a disgusting silt. The fear from Rhenco’s words only drove his adrenaline higher, and he struggled to pull his fists towards his shoulders, his eyes streaming with agony.
If I can just…reach…
The normal calm of Rhenco’s eyes suddenly flared in an excited malice. He grabbed Milae and threw him over onto his stomach, and grabbed either side of his head. He slammed his face into the ashen ground, once, then twice. He cinched his legs on either side of him to keep him pinned and dug his finger nails into the goats scalp. 
"I like this.” He said in his low voice. “Tell me, are their more you’s coming to get you out of this? Have things ever backfired like this before?” 
Blood poured from Milae’s nose and he could taste it, he could breathe it, it was filling his mouth and blurring his eyes, and as he was pinned, he struggled with one arm to tuck it in close, but his other arm was destroyed. The tendons inside were in ruins; he could feel it in the wildly numb pain that shot through his unmoving arm whenever he attempted to pull it closer. He was finished.
He shut his tear-and-blood-filled eyes, crying briefly and spitting up blood, and then he tilted his chin to the sky as much as Rhenco’s hold would allow him. 
He could see her. Her white eyes were fixed on the man holding him down, and they were dead and cold. Then they moved to Milae, and he shuddered, and ice flashed through his limbs as her gaze pierced through him.
Milae’s mouth moved weakly; he could barely croak out the words. His scars began to burn, and they glowed with a different color–deep amber.
“Fyrirgefðu mér, nornir, ég hef mistekist.”
Rhenco held up a finger. “Maybe, I’ll, close up those wrists. I’m thinking I want you around for more than the two minutes that blood loss will allow…Tell me goat….is anyone going to come looking for you?” 
Throat clogged. Tongue heavy and numb. She faded from his view, and he dropped his head to the ground, his vision filled with the light from his markings. “N-nobody needs to,” he rasped thickly. 
Rhenco’s fingers paused over his wrists. 
“Ah…” he sighed. “Then this will be better." 
He dimly felt Rhenco turn him over, and he had no more strength to fight back. His hand moved to snake around the back of his neck and pulled him in. Rhenco kissed Milae full on the mouth, and as he did so, he pulled his knife back over to his side. He pulled his lips away. 
 "I guess I, or any other me, will be seeing you then." 
Then the knife came around to press down into Milae’s neck, Rhenco’s hands making a rocking motion with it to sever the goats head from his shoulders. Milae’s body went slack.
...
The looms were shed with a sudden radiance, a strong light resembling fire, and it grew stronger and stronger from where it emanated in front of the largest loom. It began to slowly die away, and its fading light illuminated the outline of a cloaked figure, lying face-down on the ground, his cape spread around him like the broken wings of a dead bird. The darkness consumed the room once more, and it was silent for a few moments.
With a small shuffle, Milae suddenly gasped through his slack-jawed mouth, and his eyes opened to piles of thread and the feet of one of his looms. They flicked around frantically for a moment as he caught his breath, and then he began to push himself to his hands and knees, grimacing and breathing heavily. But the effort to stand much further eluded him, and he sat back roughly on his haunches, putting a hoof to his forehead and then running it back between his horns and through his messy fur. He squinted at his trembling arm in the darkness, untouched and unbloodied, and then turned it over to see his forearms. The scars were weeping dark crimson, a gentle trickle down to his elbow, and his blood began to drip onto the stone floor, one drop at a time. 
Milae got to his feet with a sigh and cradled his arms as he left the room, but just before he left the room, he turned his head to the left, seeing a loom with the barest amount of strings, all black and gray and orange, as though they had been a bright color singed into dullness. He gingerly pulled a small dagger from his side and reached out to one of the strings, catching the fibers with the edge of his blade and sawing gently. The string made an almost-melodious sound as it plucked free of its tension and fell to hang limply from the frame, drifting in a sudden breeze as Milae swept aside the curtain and busied himself boiling water for fresh bandages.
Category:Events
Category:BOTGD 2
Category:Yun Milae
Category:Rhenco
Category:Skuld
Category:Act I