If I were the Elf on duty watching you -

Yeah. I could do it then. I'd have to use your blood if you can't bring me any.

Would you?

Yeah.

The next day his guard is a solemn grey-eyed girl in a uniform slightly too big for her. Couldn't figure out how to bring blood.

That's okay. I shouldn't use mine, I did that too recently, but yours'll work. Do you want to nick yourself or shall I?

She has a knife. She nicks herself.

He sponges up the blood and starts painting.

Halfway through someone else walks in. "- you're not supposed to let him do that -"

" - it's chicken blood, for practice -"

" - doesn't look it -" He frowns and reaches for her arm -

- Cor throws the sponge at him.

- he knows enough about how this magic system works to know being splattered in blood is bad. He freezes. 

"I'm sorry," she says hurriedly, "I need to be deoathed it's important I'm not going to betray us I just found a way I could get contradicted -"

Cor picks up the sponge and keeps going, keeping an eye on the splattered guard.

He starts wiping off the blood.

Cor's nearly done. "Better make sure you don't miss a spot."

"Do you even know which pattern means what," he says to her. 

      "It's deoathing -"

"You don't know that, you lunatic -" he checks for blood, he scuffs the pattern on the floor with his shoe -

"I'll do the chant aloud." He finishes the section he's on, throws the sponge at the male guard again, dives to smear the blood to fill in the pattern. "Interrupting me could kill me and then who's going to kill your god? There is no oath. There are no oaths -"

The guard does not interrupt him.

"I destroy. It is not; they are not. I annihilate. It is not; they are not. I erase. It is not; they are not. I void. It is not; they are not. I nullify. It is not; they are not. I extinguish. It is not; they are not. I shrink the world into one without this oath, without these oaths! I destroy, I destroy, I destroy!"

There are six guards by this point. 

She shivers. I - I'm so sorry -

It's okay. Be free.

"They're both under arrest," says one of the guards. "We're to take her downstairs and him to the King."

She goes with them quietly.

He doesn't bother trying to run away. Or throw the sponge at anyone else. Although he does hold onto it.

"Why don't you put that down."