Ella’s motions were deliberate as she entered the salle and selected a practice sword .
She’d talked her way away from the
snake-creature, but she knew she’d been lucky at that. How bright would a creature have to be to notice the curse and turn her into a puppet? Her experience with her stepsister Hattie suggested it took little intelligence at all. And then, so captured ...
She could be made to spy, or to betray anyone or anything. Any secret she knew, she’d tell at a sentence.
With equally little effort, she could be made to kill, to wound, to fight on the wrong side. She knew she’d try to resist; she also knew how futile her resistance might be.
She could be made to do darker things yet, ones that lurked half-formed in the corners of her imagination.
Given all of that, she’d sat out the weekend’s fighting, terrified she would only hurt as she tried to help. But now it was Monday, and Hades was gone.
She still couldn’t stop someone from taking her with a word; that was at Lucinda’s mercy, and Lucinda was nowhere to be found. But she could make herself harder to take by force. It was a protection not just for herself, but for all around her.
And so she took up the sword.
[OOC: Open!]