The Killing Hymn: A Distant Whistle

by RoxyNychus

Tags: #angel #dom:female #f/f #hound/handler #mind_control #sub:female #collars #fantasy #hypnotic_singing #identity_manipulation

Danya leads her little sisters through no-man’s land, the eldest hound in Lady Vaschael’s pack. But after a seemingly mundane discovery in the wastes, visions of a past life begin to haunt her…

Hey so this literally me writing fan fiction of my own work (my series The Killing Hymn). I've given myself such brainworms with Vaschael and Canrie that I started thinking about Canrie getting pack-sisters, and then I had to get the brainrot out before it consumed me. Please note that this story is currently not canon, and given how the latest chapter of Angels of the Killing Hymn ended, it would be tricky (though not impossible!) to make canon. But for the time being, don't take this as part of the official story, it's just a fun little what-if.

Danya leads the pups along a ridge skirting the north edge of the battlefield. So far they’ve found little this morning. Only the bony black fingers of scorched trees pointing up to the empty sky, or the odd corpse half-buried in the grey mud. Still Danya keeps her head up, scanning the desolation, always alert.

Her little sisters mill around or just behind her, Canrie’s big green eyes scrutinizing every boot print or spent casing half visible in the mud, Merriet’s ginger curls swaying into her face as she peers around. Pups is the only way to think of them- soft-faced and wide-eyed, despite the filth on them and the weight they’ve lost, darting eagerly about the wasteland. Danya herself is tall and severe, dirt stains on her face highlighting her deepening wrinkles, blue eyes sharp as bullets. A proper hound. All that means, however, is that she is responsible for her little sisters. They’re one pack, clad in the same haggard green uniforms and bearing shimmering silver collars around their necks.

Merriet’s head pops up, looking down the ridge. Then she races off towards whatever she’s seen. Danya and Canrie follow. The eldest hound has to stop herself from calling out- this isn’t a place to make more noise than needed. She catches up to Merriet, seizing the pup by the arm and pulling them both to an awkward stop.

Merriet tries to wrest her hands off, protesting, “I see something down there.”

“Then point it out to us.” Danya can’t help but wonder how many more times they’ll need to have this exchange. “You mustn’t run off, it’s not—”

Merriet snaps at her hand, incisors grazing her fingers.

With a snarl, Danya bites back, closing her jaws on the back of Merriet’s neck, just above her collar. Merriet flinches forward. Danya isn’t biting hard enough to draw blood, only pressing her teeth lightly into her little sister’s skin, tasting sweat and tangled hair. She holds a moment to let the message sink in. Correcting a disobedient pup. Then she hears the damp flick of Merriet’s tongue, licking her upper lip. Surrender. Danya releases her.

They separate to find Canrie off to the side, watching. “There is something down there,” she says, gesturing to the base of the slope.

“Still,” says Danya. She nuzzles the tip of her nose lightly into Marriet’s hair- you’re forgiven. The younger hound straightens, the weight of the reprimand lifted, and the three move as a unit down the ridge. As they descend, Danya registers what her little sisters already have. Twisted bodies litter the mud, reeking of rot and old oil. Flayed red flesh decaying to grey-green, broken or missing bone replaced with rusting steel. Thralls, the foot soldiers of the enemy. Already dead, it seems, but the hounds draw their pistols to be safe.

After a quick investigation, three details strike Danya as unusual. First is that there are only thralls, no human soldiers fallen among them. She guesses around thirty lay here. Enough to cost an unprepared company a few casualties. Second are the dozens of spent casings littering the mud between them. She kneels and digs one out to examine. 9 millimetre. The same bullets her pistol uses, though there’s more casings here than the whole pack likely has on them. She recalls that submachine guns use 9mm, however. Not a common weapon. The casing isn’t so weathered, beyond the fine layer of dirt clinging to it. These were fired recently.

The third detail is that one thrall’s bladed arm has been torn off and rammed through its chest. That’s what gives Danya a good feeling- the hope they might finally have picked up a trail to follow. An average soldier isn’t prone to dismember their opponents.

Moving on, the pack comes across the ruins of a trench system, half-flooded with mud and bodies of both men and Host. The pups try to approach it and Danya warns them away with a growl. No-man’s land is a ravenous thing, eager to suck live prey down into its mud, chewing with teeth of buried wire and shrapnel.

As she leads the pack, Danya feels something sink into the dirt beneath her boot. Not uncommon. Something about the feel of this object gives her pause, however. Stepping back, she finds a tin whistle, depressed into the greying earth within her bootprint. After a moment, she realizes this kind of whistle is familiar to her. Its sound- a shrill, cutting whine- echoes from some deep recess of her memory. Other sounds join it. Hymns and songs, sung by ragged voices inside a dugout. Artillery, both its distant thunder, the shell’s whine as it arches overhead, the all-consuming crash as it hits. Voices, some shouting, some screaming, some weeping. A word, driving deep into her mind like a railroad spike, wailed over and over. “Captain, Captain.”

[Big Sis?]

The smells, blood and shit and gun smoke and the deceptive pineapple and pepper scent of chlorine gas.

[Sis? Are you alright?]

The feeling, freezing wet seeping into everything, the waves of nausea and exhaustion, the burning kiss of a bullet grazing skin. The guilt. The crushing, strangling guilt.

She blinks. For what?

[Danya? What’s wrong?]

Around her neck, Danya’s collar warms.

She snaps back to attention. Canrie is next to her, a simple concern in those big emerald eyes.

“Nothing,” Danya says quickly, as if her pulse isn’t racing and cold sweat isn’t prickling across her brow. “I thought I heard something.” Remembering herself, she looks around. “Where’s Merriet?”

“I didn’t go where anywhere.” Merriet bounds up beside them, brow knitted in indignation. “You don’t need to coddle me, Danya.”

Danya feels a cold hand unclench from her chest. Her little sisters have grounded her. They’re her responsibility, and she must be present for them. “Come on. There might still be a camp behind the lines.” She leads them on, trying to ignore that nameless guilt still sitting heavy on her shoulders.

The camp is stripped to its bones. A few rows of tents, half of which are torn into or blown over. Some field guns, heaps of spent shells left to rust with the artillery itself. A quick search does find a few tins of rations left behind in one tent, however. Danya keeps watch while the pups eat first, then helps herself to a tin of dry salt-heavy beef, cheese, and biscuit. Sated and fatigued, the three curl into a heap together on the bare cloth making the floor of the tent, Danya laid out while Canrie and Merriet press themselves into either side of her. Within moments the pups are asleep, their breath warm and gentle on their big sister’s neck.

Danya, however, can’t settle. There’s still that guilt coiling around her throat like a serpent, its scales shards of jagged ice. In a way, it’s good. She can remain alert in case something tries to ambush them as they sleep. Yet as the minutes drag on, even focusing on that becomes a struggle. She could wonder where this guilt comes from, but she knows. It’s coming from her. From that deep chasm inside her, where the whistle’s scream echoed from. She knows as if instinctively that sound means death. Mass wretched death, barrelling on under a pretense of purpose she can’t recall.

Danya reminds herself she’s only a hound. Her purpose is protecting her little sisters. She has no power but that which She has vested in her. These thoughts hang around her, debris floating atop deep water onto which she could pull herself so as not to drown. Yet feel immaterial to her. Somehow, she had played a part in all that death.

Danya had not been praying. Or perhaps, she doesn’t fully understand what prayer is, its mechanics. But when a soft silver light flows into the tent and a sudden gust rustles the fabric as heavy wings beat, she knows one has been answered.

Lady Vaschael stoops to enter, Her shining wings de-materializing. Pulling off Her eyeless helmet, She sweeps auburn hair from Her statuesque face. Seeing Her always feels like a weight lifted- a burden removed from Danya’s shoulders. That divine light has returned, and all is set right. Danya could shed a tear it’s such a relief. Even if it only lifts so much of her burden today.

The angel looks over Her hounds, piled together. Her lips curl into a smile, achingly fond. All the love left in the world could be contained in Her smile. Her eyes catch on Danya. Armor lightly tinkling, Lady Vaschael crouches over them. “How goes the hunt?”

“Better today, Ma’am, I think.” Composure is a skill Danya has worked to cultivate. Still, she is always eager to be of use to Lady Vaschael, and excitement wriggles in her stomach as she describes the odd scene at the ridge. Especially when her Lady’s face lightens with a cautious hope.

“They were here recently, then,” asks Lady Vaschael. “If it was them?”

“Yes, Ma’am, perhaps very recently.” Danya holds herself still, not wanting to disturb the pups nor make a fool of herself before the angel. “Does this sound plausible for them?”

Lady Vaschael settles back onto Her heels, considering. “None of my lost sisters are warriors, strictly speaking,” She replies. “But they can all fight if need be, and well at that. Beyond what a mortal soldier is capable of.”

Danya perks up. “So it would make sense to equip them accordingly.”

The angel graces her with an approving smile. “Yes, my clever hound.” She scratches Danya lightly behind her ear. “I think it would.”

Danya resists the urge to let out a happy whimper. It’s such elation. Serving Her, pleasing Her, contributing to Her holy cause. The only thing dampening her joy is the fact that she can’t confirm it was her Lady’s sisters who’d been at the ridge.

That, and the guilt.

Lady Vaschael sees it. Perhaps She feels it in the air. She runs her fingers over Danya’s dark hair, touch light and warm even through Her gauntlets. She asks in a voice as warm and inexorable as a summer wind, “What troubles you, my hound?”

Immediately Danya feels herself easing into the calm and blissful waters of obedience. At a glance her Lady sees her woes and offers solace. “Ma’am,” she whispers. “I found something else during our search this morning. A whistle, by the trenches. Something about it...” How to put it? Those could not be her memories. And yet, whose else could they be? “I remembered what it sounded it. And then, I suppose, I remembered what comes with it.” Her voice breaks into a tremble on the last word. She will answer whatever questions her Lady asks of her, but she hopes she won’t be asked to explain this.

Lady Vaschael’s eyes are all sympathy, however, all understanding. “We’re all haunted, Danya,” She says. “All marked by this war. I’ve been down here only a short time, and I doubt these wastes will ever leave me, even once my sisters and I have left them.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Danya swallows. “I think the same will be true of my sisters and I. But I must confess something.”

Lady Vaschael listens. Allows her time to compose.

“As I remembered,” Danya continues. “I felt this... terrible guilt. I still feel it.” Her hands twitch around the pups’ shoulders. “Like I bear some responsibility for all the dead men back there.”

Her Lady nods. So patient. So understanding. “And still,” She counters, “you guide your little sisters well. You keep them safe and focused, do you not?”

This frustrates Danya a little. Her Lady has blown past the enormity of this confession. But the angel is wise. She’s taking this somewhere, and the hound must follow. “I try,” she says. “Merriet is still reckless...”

“Yet I see her here, peacefully asleep.” Lady Vaschael brushes a finger over Merriet’s messy red curls. The pup whines softly into Danya’s shoulder before fading back into deep sleep. “Unharmed, thanks to her big sister.” Her eyes go to the other pup. “And Canrie is here, much the same. My first Little Hound, loyal as ever. Yet I can fear less for her now, knowing you’re with her.”

Danya sinks into herself. She cannot contradict Lady Vaschael. Yet these reassurances ring hollow next to that all-consuming remorse. There’s another knowing glint in her Lady’s hazel eyes. She must feel it somehow, must have some extra sense the hound can’t hide from. “Ma’am,” Danya is finally able to say. “I was someone else once, wasn’t I? Before I was your hound.”

“You were,” says Lady Vaschael. “You are not her anymore. Her sins are not yours. You were absolved when you first sang with me, Danya.”

Danya’s throat tightens. “Then why do I still feel her guilt?”

“She haunts you, I suppose.” The angel gives a sympathetic frown. “Fragments of her, still lingering.” Then She tilts Her head aside. “But perhaps we can free you of her, and her remorse.”

The hound blinks hard, trying to keep the tears scalding her eyes from falling. “Yes?”

Lady Vaschael leans down over her, breath all sweetness and ozone. “Danya,” She asks, “would you like to sing together again?”

“Yes.” It’s not really a question. Anything to bury this feeling pressing its granite fist into her chest. “Yes, Lady Vaschael, please.”

Lady Vaschael whispers to the pups, “Stay asleep, little ones.” Then she stands and beckons to Danya. The older hound extricates herself from the pile as gently as she can and follows her Lady outside. A light drizzle has started, little more than a cool flutter of moisture against Danya’s face and hair. They stand in the middle of the ruined camp, Lady Vaschael behind her, setting hands on Danya’s shoulders. Danya is the tallest of the pack, yet the angel towers over even her.

Danya has only sung with her Lady once before, when she first swore submission to Her in song. It isn’t a process one easily forgets. She closes her eyes. Braces for the burst of warm light and swirling wind, then her Lady’s six powerful wings enfolding her as gently as a blanket on an autumn evening. Lady Vaschael begins the hymn, Her singing soft and powerful. It seeps into Danya’s flesh, flows through her bones and into her soul. The hound doesn’t remember the words exactly. That’s alright. They come to her as she listens, and she joins in.

Then, the visions. Mercurial clouds circling upwards into the blue-gold eye of Heaven. Angels hovering above, sweet voices welcoming her. Static tickling her skin and the calming swirl of warm winds within her shelter of feathers. Danya sings but cannot smile. She has no place in that vibrant paradise, no place among these perfect beings. Before she was Lady Vaschael’s hound, she was something terrible. She feels it like insects biting at her skin and skittering under her clothes. No matter what voices tell her otherwise, she does not deserve paradise.

Vague images dart through her mind, showing her why. A comfortable childhood in a bustling city’s heart, learning piano, dinners of roast duck and caramelized yam, beautiful dresses. No hardship until a pale woman withering in a lavish bed, hair dark and straight like Danya’s, hooded eyes lit by nothing but a fading, desperate love. Then the trenches. Hundreds of desperate eyes, looking to her for guidance. A glass of white wine while others ate half-rotten scraps in the dirt. A tin whistle at her lips. Golden haze settles over these images, thickening, yet their message has been imparted. Whoever Danya had been, her life was held up by scarred and weary hands.

Lady Vaschael whispers, “She is gone.”

Danya’s throat tightens. The golden haze smothers the images. The guilt remains.

“Say it.” Her Lady’s voice is so gentle, a warm cup of heady tea. “She is gone.”

“She...” Swallowing hard, Danya forces the words shaking and thin from her mouth. “She is gone.”

The images disappear. The guilt lightens, starting to dissipate into mist.

“There is only you now.” A soft reminder. “And you are mine.”

“There is only me.” It comes more easily now. Her remorse becomes more and more ethereal, more of a faint sensation than a crushing fist. Euphoria begins to flow through her, returning to her rightful place beneath her Lady. It’s such a relief she almost doesn’t feel her eyes starting to sting. Almost doesn’t realize how her voice hitches as she says, “And I am yours.”

“My hound. Devoted to me, to your little sisters, and to the Silver Heaven.”

“Your hound.” There it is. Through submission, absolution. An effervescence sweeping through Danya’s body and mind, pulling the last barbs of guilt away, drowning those memories. Suddenly it’s gone and all she feels is the straightforward joy of subservience- of good hound, of her Lady’s loving hands gently squeezing her shoulders. She sinks back against Lady Vaschael’s chest, tears running free down her face and flowing away with the rain.

Lady Vaschael plants a soft kiss atop her hear. “Better?”

“Y...” A sob wrenches through Danya and she can only answer with a curt nod. She can’t even try to hold the tears in, so powerful is her relief. A relief her Lady, in Her infinite benevolence, has given her.

Lady Vaschael pulls Her wings tighter around Danya, sheltering her from the rain, cradling her as she weeps. Danya melts into this embrace, allows this feeling to course through and then out of her. Her gratitude to her Lady is so immense it’s almost a high. She does not see the sadness in Lady Vaschael’s own eyes. The frown creasing Her perfect face. Her lips twitching with more words She knows She should say, yet cannot bring Herself to.

You must be logged-in to give a snap.
register or log in

Age verification required