“Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.”
–The Illiad
Salome Lukas, more often known simply as Sal Lukas, was marked by the Twisting Deceit at age four and died at age twenty-five.
In the twenty-one-year interim, she was brought aboard her uncle's cargo ship (age six) to be raised and educated by a rotating cast of nannies and tutors whose names little Salome was never allowed to learn.
Her childhood was a lonely one, as her uncle only spoke to her on Friday evenings when he would have her join him in his cabin on the Tundra for dinner to discuss how her lessons were progressing. He was friendly enough and spoke more than enough for both of them, but he never looked at her.
At eighteen, she began serving Forsaken, and at twenty-one, she started attending monthly financial meetings at the Magnus Institute in place of her uncle, where she met the young man who she would soon fall in love with.
He saved her, but it was never going to last. He died, and so did she, and after her death, she attacked the Magnus Institute in a fit of grief and
Rage.
Asks: open!
Magic anon (M!As) welcome
What are magic anons?
Mod info ( @kieran-the-turtle )
Rules
Canon/Reality information
Ask games
Important Tags
Art of Salome and Michael (not mine)
Mini Fics (Salome, Michael, Peter, etc.)
^They will be much closer in tone to the podcast itself than the silliness of the blogs because I've developed my OCs, their relationships, and their stories in ways that are far too late to change on here.
In the back of a shallow cave at the foot of the Spine of the World Mountains, not far from the dangerous Lurkwood, a small campfire burns and crackles, illuminating the cave and the faces of the three adventurers huddled around it.
The first, a tiefling with skin a dusty raspberry red and long, glossy maroon hair, sits with one of their legs stretched out before the fire. They alternate between humming quietly and whistling while filing each of their hard claw-like nails to a dangerous point. They occasionally cast a sidelong glance to the second of the group, a young half-eladrin with summery blonde waves and a small mole under the corner of her mouth; sitting close to the fire for light and to keep her ink from freezing in the cold, she pores over and scribbles in her thick, leatherbound notebook that seems on the verge of gaining another few pages; from her left ear hangs a crystal, teardrop-shaped and seemingly smoked black, with flashes of deep red and fiery orange, contrasted sharply with bright green against the dark backdrop.
The third and final member of the group, a little black kobold wearing small round glasses perched on his wide dragonoid nose and tinkering with a something in his lap, points suddenly to a spot nearer the mouth of the cave, where rages a howling snowstorm, and barks in a rough accent: "An'! Circle!"
The eyes of the tiefling, whose name is Nowhere Bryseis, lock onto Anwyn (the half-eladrin above mentioned) as she jumps to her feet almost as a compulsion upon the sight of the obviously magical ring of mushrooms nearer the mouth of the cave, as pointed out by the kobold Klank.
"Anwyn." Nowhere grips their walking stick and gets to their feet before Anwyn has the time to step foot into the circle of mushrooms. "You just got back."
It's an argument against heeding the summons of her patron, Anwyn realizes. "Aye, but if he needs me, then he needs me."
"What for?”
Klank swivels between looking up at Nowhere—tall and and at Anwyn, watching the growing argument with mild interest, fidgeting harder the longer the trio stays in the cave; Klank does not like caves.
Anwyn frowns, then turns away from Nowhere. "We'll talk more later." And she steps into the fey circle, and then the group is down to two.
With a shrug and with the show over for now, Klank returns to his tinkering.
Nowhere grunts unceremoniously and eases themself back to the floor of the cave, laying their walking stick across their lap. With an absentminded flourish, the tiefling pulls a roll of seemingly unremarkable parchment from their pack and unravel it, then hold it at various angles to the fire, eyes sharp and focused.
The parchment was recovered from the remains of a burnt-down home some villages to the south, and Nowhere is yet to uncover its secrets; surely it has at least some, as the roll was found to be entirely unharmed and unblemished despite its location in what appeared to have been the office of the home, where the fire seemed to have burned hottest.
Without another moment’s hesitation, the tiefling casts Detect Magic on the parchment.
All Alone
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Divider by @/sisterlucifergraphics
Summary: She would love him until she died
Word count: ~1265
Captain Lukas was as hard and stern as ever when Salome opened the door to her hotel room, and she was more than a little surprised to see him standing there in the hallway; normally he would send someone else along to pass whatever message he had for her.
“Michael Shelley is gone,” was all he said.
No combination of words could have stolen the air from Salome's lungs the way those four did. “What… do you mean…?” she asked breathlessly, silently begging, pleading to have misheard her estranged uncle.
The captain huffed, clearly uncomfortable to have to be the one delivering this news. “I don't know the details. The archivist and her assistant left the Tundra, and a few hours later, the archivist came back alone.”
“…Oh.” Salome's eyes fell to her feet from the doorframe that her gaze had been firmly fixed on, rather than her uncle's stony face. Then she shook her head and spoke softly to herself. “No… No, he promised to be safe. To come back. He promised he'd come back.”
Peter just shrugged. “Take it up with the archivist. I’m just passing along the information.”
Then Peter was gone, and Salome was alone.
The Distortion lay on its side, one of its arms folded beneath its head like a makeshift pillow as it stared at the emaciated young woman curled into a fragile ball on her bed. Its eyes narrowed as it studied the woman's sleeping face: pallid flesh, dark circles beneath her closed eyes, sunken cheeks, and a smattering of fading freckles across the bridge of her nose half-hidden behind overgrown and unwashed hair, which the creature saw was unnaturally beginning to turn white.
Though the creature did not yet know why, the Distortion was drawn to this woman. Suh-low-mee Lukas. Sal. Sallie. The monster tilted its head as it stared at her unbreathing and unmoving form. Was she dead? The monster rather hoped not; there wasn't much fear to be reaped from a corpse, after all.
The monster reached out and flicked a lock of Salome's hair out of her face, and it watched with unfamiliar eyes as the girl's lashes twitched. Alive after all.
“What are you…?” the Distortion mused, not doing much to keep its voice down. “The memories are… unclear…”
Salome Lukas's sunken eyes were the pale gray color of fog when they fluttered open. “You're alive…” Her voice was quiet and cracked, as if she hadn't had a glass of water in a long time.
The Distortion laughed quietly, and Salome's dregs of life died along with the rest of her; the creature knew what she was now.
“No, he is not,” it cooed. “He is gone, and I am all that's left. Poor little mourning dove,” it said darkly as the woman shook her head and moved away, passing through her bed like a ghost, and pressed her back into the corner of her tiny cabin only two or three feet from the edge of the mattress. The creature laughed its strange laugh again, feeling a rush at the muted pain, fear, and confusion oozing from the All-Alone. “Sad, pretty thing. Do you know what I am?”
She nodded.
“Say it.”
She swallowed, her throat clicking dryly. “…The Twisting Deceit.”
The Distortion's smile was a twisted thing, a perversion of the look that it knew Salome wished so badly to see again. “Part of it. Look at me.” It was in front of her now, one hand holding her chin in place. Though its fingers looked normal, the ends of them drew blood. “The part of me that was Michael Shelley ties me to you,” it jeered, glaring into Salome's wide and empty eyes. “What the Spider has planned for us, if anything at all and it is not simply pointless leftover emotion, I do not know. Had I my way, I would take you into myself and consume you until nothing remained but your fear of me.”
The woman said nothing. The creature studied her for a moment before it wrapped its arms around her in something approximating a hug, crowding her into the corner as she froze in its crushing, bony embrace that did not match its outward appearance.
But she did not try to escape.
“You're confused, aren't you, poor thing,” it mocked softly as it pressed its cheek to the top of the head of the human manifestation of Forsaken. “Poor strange, sad Salome. What will she do now…?”
Salome closed her eyes, allowed her head to rest against the creature's chest, and very quietly asked: “…Where is the archivist?”
“Oh?” The monster tilted its head in curiosity. Then, its expression twisted into one of sadistic delight as it pulled away from the cruel embrace. “I can bring you to her, although I cannot go very near to her myself; she has taken measures to protect herself from me.”
The Distortion watched something pass through Salome's hollow eyes. “Not me?”
The creature's gleeful smile sharpened. “No,” it agreed. “Gertrude Robinson underestimated your relationship with Michael Shelley. She will not think you are a direct threat to her.”
Icy fog spilled from Salome's mouth as she hissed: “…Take me to her. Now.”
The archivist looked up from her notes as icy sea fret curled and spilled around the edges of the door to her office, her archive. Without taking her eyes from the door Gertrude Robinson reached down, opened a drawer in her desk, and drew out the pistol that she kept hidden from Elias. She was quickly beginning to realize who was approaching.
The door burst open, apparently due to the sheer force of the All-Alone’s billowing fog. “Miss Lukas,” the old woman remarked by way of a greeting, and surely, there stood the remains of Salome Lukas—gaunt, her dark hair beginning to turn unnaturally white, deep circles beneath her fog-gray eyes, and a gun of her own in one hand. “Why are you here?”
When Salome responded, more of that bitter fog spilled from her chapped and purplish lips. “You took him from me,” she hissed, her broken voice a struggling whisper. “You… …t o o k… Michael… from me… …Going… to k i l l y o u…”
And she meant it, the archivist knew. “You wouldn't be the first to try,” the old woman replied coolly, “and you won’t be the last.”
“S h u t u p.” The young avatar lifted her gun, but the old woman was faster. Three shots to the torso, and Salome dropped her gun and doubled over; instead of blood, however, more of that icy fog oozed from her wounds. Gertrude Robinson realized then that she had underestimated the dependency that the dregs of Salome Lukas's humanity had had on Michael Shelley.
The All-Alone's head snapped back up to glare at Gertrude Robinson, pale eyes full of hatred and something close to what the archivist recognized as The Slaughter, when a terrible, familiar voice spoke from behind her: “No.”
A free-standing, dark, yellow-painted door closed around the All-Alone, taking her into its hallways. And then, just like that, the young woman was gone, and so was the door that was never there.
The archivist sat back down and addressed her whirring tape recorder, her brows knitted. “…So, that’s that. I misjudged the effect that Michael’s death would have on the Lukas girl. For her sake, I hope the Spiral consumes her quickly. However, given her history with the thing and how… strongly attached Michael was to her… I rather suspect the Distortion is going to toy with her...”
Tag list: @atinyladybug-daydreams @teethsies-chompies @zeelzebub
