Arcana Imagines 「When They Break」 Pt. 2
I promise I didn’t forget about this series.. here’s Julian’s chapter! Did the devs ever say how he got his murder’s mark? Hope they were nicer than me. 🤧
Alssooo I’m posting this series on ao3, where the chapters are together. If it suits your fancy, find ‘em @firent_fae. If you want the headcanons on there too lmk ✌️ I’m debating it rn. I know people have platform preferences…
Ruminations and reveries shatter like glass against the wood.
Julian runs his tongue over his teeth, like beads on an abacus, swallowing the ichor. A warped, boney embrace twines around the nape of his neck, and again he kisses the table.
“Pick a hand. I’d like to go home, boy. And the Countess don’t like jobs that ain’t done.”
Julian inhales but chokes violently on the exhale, painting the table with more colors than it already possessed.
The fingers crawl up like spiders, webbing into Julian’s curls and yanking up ー
There is an older man, balding, with thick-rimmed glasses and an apron stained like a bruise. A variety of metals peek out the tops of his pockets, neither familiar and none friendly.
He huffs an air of irritation at him. Julian reels at the acrid exchange.
The word hardly breathes life before splinters fly like confetti once more.
“Stop that!” Julian rages.
“That one was for your benefit.” This time the person behind him speaks. The words rattle up like rocks in a cave. “It’s worse if you see.”
“You were a fool to pick the left, boy,” the other man laments, taking Julian’s hand in his.
Heat steals Julian violently and suddenly. An image dances before his eyes of the creepy crawlies the Nevivon children tortured with their glass and little tricks of the sun.
The sensation travels over the bones and tendons like a broken wheel, grabbing at the skin when it stumbles into a rut.
Julian didn’t know how much not seeing was worth it, when he could very much smell it - sweet rot, like the smell that holiday trees exhaust when they’ve sat in their decorations too long.
The sound that echoes in the room was the type of sound that scared him as a child, like the sound of wind in the trees, or the ocean’s tantrum beneath the moon. The types of sounds that made you fear the places they came from.
The pain stopped sooner than it started but lasted longer than it should. Sensation and movement returned in ferocious shivers.
“It’s cold,” Julian husks out.
“Cause you’re wet,” one of them says blandly.
“Sweat, piss, not my job to know. I’m not a doctor.”
“You picked a shitty hand, boy. Awful place to put a wedding ring now, it is.”
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