Blood and Banshee

[Fynn (DELETED 8395)]

Gunfire in the distance echoed back into silence, not even the people's screams broke the sacred sounds of death. The tenement seemed grey in the dimming light as night began to blanket the horrors strewn over the streets. Bodies were strewn haphazardly over cobblestone and stair alike. In slow motion the booted feet of the killers walked through rivers of blood, splashing past his gaze as he lay there wounded, dying in the shared filth of his people.

His fingers closed around the small pistol he had under his cheek, burning the flesh with the heat from recent firing. Empty now, it too was silent. Life seemed to be spilling faster now from his open chest and it seemed to him it was fitting that it drained into the same land countless of his ancestors had also bled their lives out.

Darkness continued creeping in and his eyes shifted with effort to look up the narrow streets of his home. Few remained now, and those that were not dead or wounded unto it were bowed, kneeling, too numb to even weep. What good had tears ever done them? God was nothing more than a neon sign that was forced to shine by others design... follow me...

God had become a politician.

He tried to focus, the last of his strength looked up as a boot stopped before him and in that same movie time still frame he could see the intent before the event. The tenement walls were painted in rich deep ochre "For Bobby Sands!" futile words behind the loyalist soldier as his foot backed up and then viciously kicked him in the stomach. The chest wound opened further with a burst of hearts blood and he felt his body fly onto its back, slammed into the gutter where the loyalist believed he belonged. He who had been born in a line of kings and chieftains. He who carried the blood of warriors and those who would -never- kneel, never bow to the usurpers.

The hate that must have flashed in his eyes in that moment as he looked at his tormentor before blanking his expression was enough to still the boot for a moment of uncertainty. It was enough for now as the sounds of the slaughter once more picked up with the screams of a child.

She came toward them, her fists filthy and tugging at knots of bloodied black hair, tearing out great handfuls of her beauties crown. No more than six, her small feet shuffled through horrors no adult should be forced to wade through... her innocence ripped from her as she wandered lost. Another soldier appeared behind the wailing child, and like the bánánach ( banshee ) of battle legend she opened her mouth wide, her eyes rolling deep into her head till only the whites were visible in the gore that coated her face... and screamed.

It lasted forever and a second this call for revenge and death and justice. It lasted until his heart felt it would break long before the bullet lodged deep could stop the beating. She had never been more beautiful than this moment, and would never be again as the soldiers grabbed her and brought true the bánánach's death warning...

Forced to her knees before him it was quick work to gut her. As her organs spilled onto his hand spread onto the street the whites of her eyes ruled his vision until the soft blue reappeared in her dying breaths... and a tear spilled from the tender youth as she looked at him... and smiled.

Inside his head, he heard her

"From my blood shall their blood be bought."

The Irish rebel closed his fists around her flesh, her blood hot, so hot it steamed against his cooling fingers and his words crashed through the night... so quiet it became loud like thunder calling down the Morrigan. Loud as if the voices of all the dead laying around him lent him their voice as well...

He watched them then as his lips rounded to form the blood words. The blood magic. Slips of pale mist gathering above their bodies as more troops rounded the alley corners in the naked light of street lamps, stepping on the corpses, passing through the souls that all turned to watch the last rebel.

He knew he would be cursed if he failed. He knew that there was no going back from this. His people demanded nothing less than absolution. This dying girl who looked at him with so much love from dimming eyes...

Du Fynn Muiredoch seeped away into the earth of Ireland. Never would he call it North Ireland. Never would he forget this night or let the hatred leave him. He felt his mind split then. Buckle into what he would do and what he would do .

Hyde gripped the child's guts and screamed "Ris bás a sheolaim tú le mo chuid fola a thógáil do chuid fola! Dóigh!"

(Unto death I send you with my blood to take your blood! BURN!)

In a blur of motion, he wasn't sure until that moment he could even carry out as he too lay dying, he slammed her into his open chest, her blood was his and his was hers. United forever in all this war and wretchedness. United in vengeance.

"Feck yer God" he whispered as his blood began to boil with his mages magic. His veins began to throb, to thicken and rope under his skin, his body arched up and something ethereal and misted red raised him to his feet, floated him above the street by inches, his toes scraping the place he had just rested. His fingers loosed from the gun and it clattered unneeded onto the ground as his witch gaze went from horrified soldier to soldier.

And as his gaze lasted but moments on each, so each burst into spasms as their blood answered his own and boiled the demon straight into them. On and on it went until there was nothing left of him, nothing left of his humanity.

The blood mage had been born full grown into war.

He opened his eyes finally, he knew not how long he'd lain there on the sands of his coasts. He knew not even how he had happened to be there. His 8-year-old mind could fathom nothing more than the taste of vomit in his mouth and the scent of gunpowder and violence in his nose. He knew not how long he continued there motionless until he heard the faint voice of his father coming closer. The comfort of being found was little compared to the tears of loss as his brain worked furiously to disassociate the youth from the horror it had lived.

"Fynn!!"

he had been found...

part of him would forever regret that.