Uhhhh posts this before I have a change of heart--anyways a little bit of a personal project I've been working on recently! I basically wrote these scenes to try and figure out some characters here as I see if I can build something around them... Anyways have... this?
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Dolls. False bodies. Wood, metal, plastic, and sinew.
To fight a demon requires something false, since you can’t fight truth with more truth. To break the truth, something akin to a lie must be used.
Wood, scraped and carved and shaped… Do you remember the form you used to take?
Metal, chipped and melted and purified… Do you remember that you came from the earth?
Plastic, burnt and melded—so fundamentally altered at its core… Do you remember what you were?
Sinew, cut and tied and braided… Do you remember that you once had flesh?
Simple lies, told through changes in shape, can fight the truth that exists at the core of demons. They can break their foundations and weaken them until only fear is left. Yet, they cannot kill them. They can only fight them.
A bigger lie is needed, something so deeply false that something so true cannot comprehend it. So at the core, the center of a doll must exist that lie… so that they may kill the Truth.
At their center, we placed…
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She lifted her hand. It was a desperate attempt—something so clearly the movements of someone who knew her fate… I couldn’t help but stare at her palm, Oak’s grain had always been beautiful.
I lowered my cannon, she didn’t deserve this.
My arm… the wood was splintered. Its metal sheathing was dented, a hole about the size of one of my thumbs punched through it—a thin trickle of black and blue ichor staining splinters and metal edges. It had passed cleanly through and through, though ‘clean’ felt wrong. Right now, calling anything about me ‘clean’ was wrong.
As I stood, I felt the mud slick off me, dirt and acrid water mixed with the black stains on my body. My wood and metal all hurt so much! No, no don’t feel it, ignore the pain.
“Come on—augh!—Come… on!” I forced my limbs into position.
My rapier lifted with my arm, the thin metal still somehow shining. I gripped my cannon in my other hand; the heft of its Truth trying to hold me to the earth as I rose. The new hole in my arm, my creaking joints, they all screamed at me. Every movement was a strain as I tried to take in my surroundings.
The trees surrounded us. I would have said it was night, but even here the sun’s light faintly scattered through the canopy. Only a few yards ahead of me it stood. Well… to say something like that, a quivering mass of darkness and color, stood without a discernible limb wouldn’t have been right.
My tools of Truth clutched in my hands, I faced the demon. I faced a lie.
Its writhing body, a rainbow of color and sound and feeling, fought every sense I had been given. I fought back with focus knowing I had been built for a single purpose; to pin it down, and kill it with my Truth.
“I can’t let you get away. I can’t afford it…”
“Weave their doom. The rapier puts you at a disadvantage with range,” my teacher had said. Her stern face betrayed no emotion as she pushed my arm up.
I held steady, and slowly inched closer. Holding its shape in my eyes I watched every surge, every shift in the mass of its body.
“You cannot feel pain. You are made of wood, metal. You are dead things.” She had said, tossing the disconnected arm atop my prone body. “Now, go get that reattached.”
Sound itself writhed as my black eyes stared the thing down. My enemy. The lie. I needed to lift my damaged arm. I could keep the rapier steady, but my cannon… its weight pulled me, its Truth. Its gravity was desperately pulling me to the earth as I approached my target.
It doesn’t hurt. At least that’s what I told myself, even as I felt the splinters, the fragments of the arm… my arm, shifting as I moved. Shivering, surging, sharp. I felt every twinge as I shifted forward with a gentle, but ceaseless motion. Ignoring the useless arm hanging at my left, the weight of my truth held so firmly in the earths grasp. I pushed forward nonetheless.
I could stand. I could move. No matter what, I wouldn’t stop.
I felt the glass of my eye shatter as the spear drove into it. I held my scream.
“Remember, this is the price of failure.” My teacher said, kicking my struggling body to the ground.
I was glad I couldn’t see the grin painted on her face as I hit the ground.
A single step, then another. The Demon sprung back, its shifting colors a blur as it darted back into the forest. I followed it, as it dodged and darted between trees. My boots pounded through the mud after the shifting rainbow of its body, as it blazed through the undergrowth. A dizzying array of color spilled from the browns of mud and bark, the greens of leaves and sprouts. My steps traced its motions—mirroring its every slip between bushes and trees. The chase was familiar. After all Demons always run.
I knew I would have to bring the cannon to bear soon enough. There would be no way to actually kill the Demon otherwise, the plain rapier would do little but slow it down. I had to wield my Truth to actually hurt the thing. Even if my arm still raged against the effort as I lifted it.
With the silvered length of its barrel leveled at the Demon and desperately clung to my focus. I just needed to avoid thinking about the ichor dripping from the hole in my arm, or the way my Truth’s weight pulled me in such an unfamiliar way. I just… needed… to…
The blue spark drew a line through the empty space it had occupied as the Demon flung itself to cover— it had reacted before the flame could even touch it! I launched myself after it, between trees, through the underbrush. More! Faster! Branches tore past me as I followed it deeper into the woods. Its rainbow sheen skirted just out of my view, as even the faint sunbeams were lost to the canopy.
Chase it. Corner it. Destroy it.
I was a hunter. It was what I was made to do, and I felt the purpose winding through my body as tree after tree whipped past me. A blur of darkness, green and black, consumed my form. I felt leaves, and branches against the dark trousers I wore. I felt no pain as they struck my wooden skin.
Again I dragged it up, leveling my cannon at the Demons fleeing form.
“Fire!” She yelled, slamming her spear into the ground.
I did. The blue flame whipped high this time striking nothing—nothing but bark.
Somehow I stopped myself from screaming.
The pursuit continued. I could catch it, I was fast enough, even damaged as I was. It wouldn’t escape me, I couldn’t let it. Too many stains on the record at this point. Just catch it. Just kill it. Straight ahead I saw that it was fleeing, in a straight line directly ahead—
Quickly I gathered myself, tension building in my legs. My sinew bunched, and I leapt! As my body flew forward I saw it, and all it’s dancing lights.
My rapier arced forward as I threw it!
The steel vibrated as it pierced both beast and bark.
The demon struggled against the rapier, and my body tumbled as I landed. Once again I found myself rising from mud, staring down my target. It’s black form, a panicked mass of color as I approached. “Only leave fear.” At least I was good at that—with my endless pursuits and chilling gaze. I didn’t even need my lantern here. Raising my cannon again I braced myself.
I Won’t—“Fire!” She pointed the spear at my chest, as I held the cannon steady. “If you can’t handle this then I’ll have you scrapped!”
The Demon squirmed in my trap. Its hues shifted desperately underneath the dark oily surface. The way it shifted, the light beneath it seemed to twist and turn with every step. Keeping my cannon raised I kept inching closer.
I heard—something, what was it doing?
My limbs locked in place as the Demon shifted and moved. Light, color, it all shone beneath the oil slick sheen that made up a majority of the beings body. Then the light slowed, as the sound around me… shifted?
I tightened my grip on my cannon, the weight of it increasing by the second as I tried to hold it still. Why was it—what was the Demon doing?
The vaguest sound at the edge of my hearing; words, or even the shapes of them bumped against my consciousness. Shapes, memories, feelings, it all rushed forward
“W—who?” I couldn’t resist the weight; I couldn’t lift the cannon anymore. “Wait, are—?!”
The demon lashed out. I was too close.
Black tendrils sprang from its body. Sharp and desperate, they stabbed into my shoulder, chest, and stomach. My body was flung backwards, only stopped by my back slamming into firm bark. If I had lungs, I wouldn’t have been standing after that. Even without them all I could do was watch as the demon tore free from my rapier, fleeing into the darkness.
My eyes followed the fleeting colors, then to the hole blasted in the tree below where its body had been. The faint blue fire flickering as it’s color shifted, the color of my truth. It was bleeding into a new shade. As the Demon, so familiar… fled into the forest.
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The forest’s form shrunk behind me. I saw her first, as I approached the overgrown chapel. Birch had always stood taller than the rest of us. The deacons constant comments on her performance, as they said that she was among the best of the Dolls. Her fair wood was a grain so fine you could barely even see it as she shone in the sunlight. As the sun’s glare faded the toothy smirk on her face shone through.
“Looking worse for wear, Rosewood.” Her lilting voice flung me back to training again, like an itch behind my eye. “Nothing to show, huh?”
Walking forward I bowed. Better to get this done with quickly. She approached as I stood, looming with the whole ten centimeters she had on my height.
“That bastard really messed you up, can you even move that arm?” She said, prodding the hole in my left arm with her spear. “Well you know what happens next. Follow me and get ready for inspection.”
I felt the hole in my chest, as we walked behind the decrepit building. I stared up at the wall, and it’s ivy sheathed form. Stone and mortar being claimed by green life moment by moment. Arm, shoulder, chest, and stomach. If I left them open, left these holes in my body, would something grow out of them? Would I feel that green wreath take me if I lasted long enough? Could I become something... alive?
Thoughts fled as we rounded the corner, passing from sunlight into the building's long shadow. A pit, cold and frozen, opened in my stomach as I felt the wind brushing past those wounds.
“Come on Rosewood, you let another one get away.” Birch tapped her spear against the ground, impatient and familiar. “You know we don’t like that.”
Just get it over with—I knew she hated prolonging this. The trouble was she knew I hated it too. I kneeled upon the soft grass surrounding the church with a sigh. Making sure to use my right arm I placed my rapier on the ground next to me. Then followed my cannon—from its holster to the grass on my left. It was within reach, but would my arm be able to grasp it? It was a gamble…
Circling me, Birch prodded, poked, all with the butt of her spear. She barely glanced at me as she settled her estimation of my damage all by touch.
She stopped directly in front of me, the butt of her spear against my chest.
“What’s that, Rosewood…?” She turned, a sickening grin spread across her fair wooden lips... She hadn’t painted them today. “Vest, Shirt. Both of them off, now.”
Shit… she’d seen it. Maybe I could distract her.
“I’ll be damned, and I heard you only slept with humans.” Ah… too much. It slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself.
A sharp crack echoed across the overgrown graveyard as the butt of her spear slammed into my chin. I picked myself up from the grass. Green joined the black stains already decorating the loose flowing shirt I wore.
The bladed end of the spear rested against my eye. It was familiar—that blade pressed against the slight discolored scar where they had filled in the wood she had damaged. Guess she wouldn’t leave me a choice now... I quickly removed the leather vest that protected my chest, revealing the three tell tale holes in it and my shirt which quickly followed.
It was plain what she was thinking as she glared at the metal plate that made up my left breast, and the black stained hole that decorated it.
“Oh Rosewood…” I didn’t have to see the leer on her face, all I needed was to hear how it dripped from her voice. “Don’t tell me you got your lantern damaged!”
Slowly I unclasped the plate, my chest, revealing the caged heart it covered. A small lantern rested within; its silvered exterior still had drops of black ichor decorating it, and I couldn’t help but stare at them as I rested it on the flattened grass in front of me. The lantern… a thin, hairline crack ran along the backside of the lantern's glass. I kept still, as impassive as I could as I latched my breast back into place.
Birch tutted loudly as she whipped the lantern up, suspending it in front of her as she eyed the small blue flame contained within.
“Hmm…” Birch murmured words I couldn’t hear as she focused on the lantern.
I managed to twitch my left arm, forcing my unwilling fingers around the cannon’s grip. Birch was still consumed by the lantern; her glass eyes searching the blue flame in its little silver cage. Meanwhile, my eyes still firmly locked onto the crack decorating the glass. I felt the sinew in my legs bunch as my eyes turned to Birch, and my other hand wrapped around my rapier’s hilt.
Then we both saw it. The way my flame, my Truth, flickered with a faint tinge of rainbow.
Birch cackled as her eyes went wide.
“Fuck.” There was no going back now.
Before she could react I felt the tension I was building in my legs whip my body forward. Birch barely had time to curse as my knees slammed the shaft of her spear against her chest. My rapier whipped past her, as we both crashed into the grass.
I managed to hold my place on top of her as we both hit the ground—Birch grunting with the impact. It only took an instant for me to hook my leg around her other arm squeezing her into lock as she thrashed against my weight.
“Rosewood! You piece of shit!” Birch spat, her knee slamming into my back. “You think you’ll walk away from this?! You can’t even swing that shitty toothpick right!”
“Yeah, screw you too Birch.” I didn’t give her time to react as I slammed my cannon’s barrel into her shoulder and pulled the trigger. The glass encasing my Truth exploded as I channeled it’s flame through my cannon.
I hadn’t expected the rainbow of flame that erupted from it with a guttural thunder—
Moisture–a fine mist of red and black ichor, spattered across my face as Birch’s arm, severed at the shoulder, spun past both of us. I heard it thunk off some anonymous grave as she screamed. The black and red sinew left of her joint writhed in the grass as I stood— stumbling back and off her, my lantern still skewered upon my shaking rapier.
“Birch–Fuck.” She’d done worse to me before. Focus, focus Aya! “Y-you can deal that.”
Quickly, I grabbed the lantern off the blade. The silver structure was still there, burnt and ragged but still whole. My eyes took in the glass scattered over Birch, the grass surrounding us, and me. What a pretty little cage it had been.
With a grunt, the silver casing bent—then broke in my fist.
When I opened my hand the tiny flame danced in my hand. Its blue flickered, shifting into completely new hues. With a quick action I sheathed my rapier. My eyes still locked to the light shivering in my hand. It was dazzling… my blue little flame… it shone with so many different colors. My truth was warping, finally free from its cage!
Birch tried to stand from the ground and shook as she leaned heavily onto her spear. I barely noticed as I opened my chest again. The compartment was meant to fit my cage, but perhaps it could fit a heart?
It fit perfectly, the smallest flame sitting in my breast as I latched it in place.
I stood for a moment, feeling the heat.
“What did you do, Aya?” The horror seemed fixed on Birch’s face, as one of her legs gave out–dropping her to her knees.
I looked at her, something… indescribable blooming within me. It was warm, so warm. I felt the wind flowing over me, the grass brushed against my legs, even her ichor drying on my face. I stood within the feeling while the warmth tinged my body.
“Ay—Rosewood.” Birch tried to stand again, quickly collapsing with a knee to the ground. “They’ll kill you for this.”
Her bite was gone, I knew she was right. Let her be right, and let them come. I’d broken it after all—the cage they’d held me in was gone, and I wouldn’t let them put me in a new one. Though there was no way the Church would let me live if they actually did catch me. No more cage, no more hunt, no more control. Just… me, just Aya.
“You know Birch, you really should think of a real name.” It was good enough, the only words I could think to leave with her.
I grasped my blouse and vest off the ground, and turned; leaving her and everything else behind.
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