Information


Irritate has a minion!

Malkin the Graymalkin




Irritate
Legacy Name: Irritate


The Nightmare Serpenth
Owner: Pureflower

Age: 6 years, 4 months, 5 days

Born: November 23rd, 2017

Adopted: 6 years, 4 months, 5 days ago

Adopted: November 23rd, 2017

This pet has been nominated for the Pet Spotlight!

Statistics


  • Level: 77
     
  • Strength: 157
     
  • Defense: 10
     
  • Speed: 10
     
  • Health: 10
     
  • HP: 10/10
     
  • Intelligence: 153
     
  • Books Read: 141
  • Food Eaten: 0
  • Job: Topiary Tender


THE END

It started as a minor irritation in the back of his throat, working its way through the ranks of pain until it was a deep, searing burn that reduced his voice to a croak.

"Poison..."

His killer stared at him dispassionately. He had taken the cloth of her life and ripped it to tatters then burned the strands.

He was getting no less than what he deserved.

THE GLORY OF ROME

Three good citizens of Rome stumbled into her apothecary, the two leaders clearly drunk beyond rational thought. Their silk clothes bespoke wealth. The gold medallions around their necks warned of their noble status.

"Hey you. Peasant. Sell us a fertility charm and be quick about it."

The speaker was an arrogant youth with a bushy black beard that didn't match the puff of straw curls on his head. The girl clinging to his arm kept stroking that beard as one might pet a lap dog.

The other man looked thoroughly bored. His eyes casually scanned the bottles on the shelves. Iris watched him from the corner of her eye as she bundled up the requested charm.

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

The tipsy woman's mouth hung open. "Juno bless, lookit her feet, Lavius. Bare as a baby's bottom, they are. These peasant girls have no shame."

"They don't have your refinement, Leticia. That's why they're called peasants."

Her laughter was cut off by his lips. His hand traveled down her neck, slipping beneath the fabric of her dress. She slapped it away in a playful manner. Iris wondered bemusedly if they would remember to activate the charm in time.

The older man had slipped her mind for the moment. Fortunately, Malkin's attention never wavered. He growled low in his throat, alerting her to the would-be thief.

"Hey, you! That's 30 denari."

He offered a blank stare, replacing the jar exactly as he'd found it. "Come, Lavius. Apollo's chariot will cross the sky and you'll still be writing love poetry on that girl's neck."

The would-be thief glanced back only once as the young lovers exited the shop. Iris was good at reading people. She could smell the stink of blood and sweat beneath this one's civilian wear. Underneath that harsh exterior was a worse scent, a more brutal scent.

The man smelled of death.

*****

Iris found her man at his forge, honing the edge of a basic sword. Mawe was an honest man making honest tools. No jewels or fancy golden scrolls on those hilts. Men who tried to glorify the killing act were fools.

He plunged the blade into its cooling bath, then turned his attention to her.

When he had thoroughly kissed her, they entered the house together, hand in hand.

The children were seated in a circle, listening to one of Nanny Amaya's stories of the old gods. She wasn't a blood relation but there wasn't one child in that neighborhood that didn't know her as Nanny. She saluted Iris, touching a knuckle to her forehead as a sign of respect.

The girl would begin to take after her mother in a few years, training in the arts of charms and healing. The boys would learn trades or enter the army as they saw fit. Iris had seen the way Rome welcomed most children adopted through conquest. A hedge witch she may be, but she'd never been stupid. Her family was fortunate and she knew it.

The wheel of fortune can so easily turn.

*****

Malkin tried to warn her. Not even his yowl was enough to banish the cobwebs from her brain at such a beastly hour. Most of the household torches had burned down to nothing, making the glare of the intruders' torch all the brighter. Five shadowy figures stood over the bed.

Iris reached out a trembling hand to wake her husband. She snatched it back when her fingers met slippery warmth.

Mawe, the sun to her moon, was dead. His throat had been cut.

The dark-haired thief still held the bloody knife. Marcus Antonius. Some third-in-command legionnaire without enough glory won to remain in the army once he'd reached the age limit. There were rumors aplenty about how he bullied his wife and abused his servants behind closed doors. She had disrespected him though he built himself up to the status of an emperor in his mind. The spirits had paid her back dearly for ignoring their warning about this man.

Three more men entered, dragging her sleepy children. She fought with all the fury of a lion in chains to no avail. Meeko slumped to the floor. One of her captors gained three jagged scars to his face. Iris brought to mind the image of a zebra breaking a leopard's back with a kick.

The soldier in front of Iris was not wearing a breastplate. He flew off the bed, hitting the opposite wall with an alarmingly loud thud. Three more men hurried forward to hold her down. Bayo ceased his own small battle against the man that had captured him.

They had taken her baby boys but they would not, could not take her daughter. Niara was the promise of the future and a safe harbor for the spirits. She was a link in a cosmic chain that could never be broken, a thread in the very fabric of the world. She...

...was crumpling to the floor in a lifeless heap.

Marcus recalled his men when they would have sought further spoils. The woman was not to be touched. He made that clear. Any man that even thought about violating that order would find an inconvenient sword sheathed in their guts.

They carried Iris with them, leaving the house to burn. They placed her senseless body opposite the shop her grandfather had built. Its ruins would be the first thing she'd see upon waking. Marcus felt quite confident that sight would finish her.

None of them took any notice of the cat.

*****

Malkin sat on top of her head, tickling her nose with the tip of his tail. She hated this particular trick. She'd made that clear in no uncertain terms with the aid of a bucket of water. It had been years since he'd dared try it.

The events of the night came rushing back as Iris saw beyond Malkin's springy black body.

Malkin wouldn't allow time for despair. He stepped into her lap and fixed his eyes on hers. "Maow, mrrt, murrow."

She was in no mood for his antics. She was alone, she was penniless and she had not a single friend left in the world.

Malkin butted her leg with his head.

Well...no human friends at any rate. She reached for Malkin, wanting to pick him up and bury her face in his ruff. He evaded her grasp, darting into the ruins of the shop with a determined meow.

He stood atop a shelving unit that had, by some miracle, been overlooked. It held the very jar that had led to her misery...along with a few other useful potions.

She lifted her eyes to the sky.

"Thank you."

*****

Marcus Antonius was bored to death of parties. Andromena (his matrimonial whip and chain) not only forced him to sit in mind-numbing dullness for hours on end; she then wanted him to re-live every trivial detail he hadn't cared about the first time around.

She really had gotten ugly, these last few years. Every feature of her body was (there really was no other word for it) sagging. It was hard to believe she'd been such a beauty ten years ago, courted by the old emperor's own son.

The current emperor (long since robbed of the golden curls of boyhood) still had a wife fine as a gilded lily and Marcus had to share his bed with a toad. A gaseous, snoring toad with the morning breath of a fury.

Marcus tried in vain to tune into what the senator was saying, just barely managing to hold back a yawn.

If only the witch hadn't spotted him trying to pinch that valuable vial. It was no good telling Amdromena they didn't have two coins left to rub together. She might figure it out next week when the debt collectors started removing all the furniture from the villa.

Andromena came from a wealthy family, heiress to a small fortune. They had no children. A few drops of that draught in her quail eggs or her daily bowl of cream soup would've solved all of Marcus' problems. The emperor's own physician would write it off as a wasting sickness.

Marcus had been so close to freedom.

He meant to take a sip of wine but ended up draining the glass.

*****

Lavius was not a subtle man. He was a second cousin of the emperor's once removed or something like that. He took every opportunity to brag about that fact, particularly when there was a young lady nearby.

Iris sneered at the nobleman's lack of security. The guard on the gate was actually asleep at his post. She still threw a little sleep powder in his face as a precaution.

Three white peacocks crossed the path in front of her. She used the twisting hedges for cover whenever a servant - most of them women in scanty silk dresses - walked past.

She found Lavius lounging in the sun while three girls fed him grapes. Leticia was nowhere to be seen.

"That anti-fertility charm was only good for one use, you know."

He nearly choked on a grape. "You. Look, I had nothing to do with it, I swear!" He licked his lips, sweat running down his face. "Madness runs in Marcus' family. Everyone knows it. Cool as chilled wine on the surface but rotten to the core."

His girls had backed off quite a distance. They would feed their master by hand and rub his sweating feet but it would seem they were not prepared to die for him. Smart girls.

Iris held up a small vial, letting the sunlight glint along its edge. "One drop of this will cause your body to slowly eat itself. Tell me where I can find him."

Lavius' tongue darted out once again, a pale worm on a field of snow. "He has a villa in the Arbor. Please..."

Iris turned away in disgust, leaving the man-baby to whimper and gibber long after she had abandoned his gaudy garden.

*****

Marcus always delayed going to bed for as long as possible. All the banshees in the underworld couldn't rouse Andromena when she started her nightly concert of snorts, wheezes, and grunts. The emperor's tax code was less headache-inducing than that infernal noise!

He took a good, long soak in the bath, oblivious to the silent observer watching his every move.

*****

Iris was in no hurry. She'd used her powder on every member of the household from the boy who mucked the stables all the way up to the former soldier's wife.

She gave Marcus time to settle in, cutting through the darkness with help from Malkin's cat eyes. She waited until Marcus had worked his way up to a good, hearty snore, his lips slightly parted. (For all his complaints, his own nasal bellows were much louder than his wife's.)

Iris tilted the bottle with the greatest care, releasing a single drop of its contents.

Marcus coughed, smacked his lips once or twice, and was still.

Something stiff and furry tickled the tip of his nose, bringing Marcus out of a bleary, deep sleep.

It started as a minor irritation in the back of his throat.

In the light of a torch, he came to recognize the dark shape standing over him. His throat was closing. He couldn't draw enough breath to summon the guards. He managed to choke out one final word.

"Poison..."

His watering eyes swiveled to his wife. At least if he was dying, she would already be through the gates of Hades, chattering the ear off of that eternal skeleton that manned the boat.

We who are about to die salute you.

Hadn't he heard that somewhere once? It was so hard to think...

Andromena let out a great, shuddering snore, shattering the last of his earthly dreams.

THE BEGINNING

Malkin found Iris shifting through the ashes of her former life. Here was one of Mawe's hammers, blackened almost beyond recognition. There was Niara's straw doll, an unlikely survivor amid the flames. Iris hugged the doll to her chest.

In the depths of her body, she felt a gentle flutter. It was the motion of a new life being formed, Mawe's last gift.

The baby would be a girl, the spirits whispered. Her name would be Geneva and she would serve as the source of fire and destruction for any invader that thought to stamp out the powers of those cosmic beings older than time.

Profile template by Lea.
Story by Pureflower.
Background from pixabay

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