The Downside of Anger Who: Aurin Demarc, Deidre "Dee" Aisli Where: Practice Hall, Vigil's Keep, Amaranthine When: Evening, 13 Molioris, 9:45, concurrent of The Joining and Waiting Rating: PG-13 just in case Status: COMPLETED Summary: For once, Deidre was not laughing.
---
The practice hall was empty.
It was a space in Vigil's Keep close to the courtyard, and while everyone else had gone their separate ways for the evening, she had found her own area of solitude here. An academic down to the very fiber of her being, Deidre wasn't one to resort to physical exertions whenever she was upset. Normally she would read, or sleep, or quietly brood in the times when she actually deigned to -- cerebral measures cultivated over the years to keep her calm and unflappable when things truly mattered. However, all that had taken up her earlier moments was sound and fury, whittling straw practice dummies back into nothing with her sword and dagger. Silver flashed along her blade, reflecting the flimsy, blue-white beams of the moon's blessings filtering in from the single line of windows that ran long one side of the room.
A single memory fueled her slashes, her stabs, the fluid lunges of her ripostes into the heart of yet another body's stand-in. Beads of sweat mottled the smooth skin of her forehead and trickled down her temples, crystalline drops curling around her jaw and pooling at the sensitive dip of her collarbones. All she saw inside her head were the candidates being called, and before a quip could even escape her, her blood froze as she watched Alderic stand up with the other chosen templars and were ushered out of the room. Whatever joke had been at the tip of her tongue died a black and sordid death.
She didn't know.
She hadn't known.
She should have suspected.
When in the thrice-damned abyss did she become so dense?
She dug her heel into the floor and spun. Her arm swept away from her as fingers let go of the hilt of her dagger. She watched the light from the outside, mingled with the ruby-gold of the fire blazing in the courtyard, wink off the tip before it buried deep into the dummy's jugular...or where it would have been if it were a real person. Her chest heaved as she breathed raggedly.
Deidre had never, ever, been so furious with him in her entire life.
With a curse, she flung her sword away from her, the blade bouncing hard from the pommel and skittering across the floor. Planting one hand on her hip, her hand lifted to draw her fingertips over her eyes, the whole of her face.