I'm Not Calling You A Liar

bkgrl's sideblog for incyal fanworks. feel free to submit a question, a request for future teasers, and any spelling/ grammar errors you see. co-admin'd by Jen (who has less patience than Anne and will delete rude, asinine things)

[bkgrlrandomthoughts]

1014 AD

Skarlaza, Norway

The air was perfumed with boiled flesh and wet cedar. The acrid scent of drink permeated Tatia’s senses. Never again would she smell bitter ale and not think of warm lips pressed against her ear, giving confessions of hope and the promise of something lascivious but seemingly more.

           The feast of Blott, after the last harvest, was the end of courtships. Husbands taking wives before they’d go and possibly never come back. They would drink, eat and give thanks to the Gods for another summer and pray that the winter wouldn’t bring sickness and death.

Seven pigs were cut from navel to throat, seven horses beheaded and hung, their blood drained into bowls that were spread across the ground dusted with a light snow, the first of the winter. Single file, the men approached the sacrament, dipping their hands inside, the liquid sliding between their fingers, dribbling down their arms as they marked their faces and necks.

           The women were always last, the blood no longer warm but cold as the snow beneath it and fetid. It had turned from coral to maroon and finally black with the dirt of each man’s hands.

Spread from temple to chin, it covered both sides of Tatia’s face in long dingy streaks. The women were blessed with the dirt of men and the blood of innocence.

           How fitting it truly was.

           Everywhere men lay drunk, knowing that soon they would be leaving, traveling west for trade and scouring any undiscovered countryside for wealth and slaves to sell. The women scattered around, stayed close to the man of their choice. A watchful eye as they waiting their turn to be blessed.

           Elijah found her alone, hand pressing against her back, the bitter smell of ale blowing past her face as he whispered, “Soon, Tatia Ólafsdóttir….”

           Stumbling from the völva’s tent, he promised her that she was his prophecy. Not gold, a great death or the birth of sons, only her.

           Elijah’s fingers slid down the inside of Tatia’s forearm, “The völva has told me, I will have you soon. We will be together as I had thought I would with Hnossa.”

           He kissed her, smearing the markings of anointment on her face. The filth of men and blood of sacrifice mingled with their lips, settling on Tatia’s tongue as he walked away. In earshot Niklaus had watched the exchange, his stomach tightening with a sharp twinge. And what of him? Was the land, their name and Mikael’s kindness not enough for his brother? Perhaps the volva was right. His future was nothing but a pair of green eyes searching in the woods, always looking for the thing that hunted him.

           Tatia watched Elijah as he left and for a moment forgot who she was and where she’d come from. Had so much time passed that reality- her reality, her real life from 2016 completely disappeared? How was she ever supposed to make it back if she continued to allow herself to be part of this life? She’d waited too long to get to this point. She was so close now that she couldn’t afford to allow herself even the smallest of distractions. She had to make it to the mountain. She had to speak with the protectors.

           “Tatia,” Niklaus’s voice was soft and unsure behind her. Turning she saw him looking somewhat sheepishly back at her.

           “Will you take me to the mountain?” She asked, trying not to seem as desperate as she felt. Niklaus’s lips perced together as he nodded slightly, “I’m not sure how far you will get.”

“You promised,” she started, her stomach lurching into her throat with the mere thought of him reneging on their agreement.

Hanging his head for a moment, his hand rubbing the back of his neck, Niklaus turned his head looking deep into the forest, past the last of the celebrators before quietly responding, “I know….”

Tatia would never be Elijah’s and she’d never love Niklaus. She couldn’t be Skuld’s mother or anyone’s wife, friend or confidant. She couldn’t be anything to anybody. Only something to herself. She wasn’t meant for this life. This wasn’t her time. And she refused to believe that she’d never be able to make it back. No matter what the sacrifice, she had to go back to the present. Even if she had to leave a life, a very real life, behind.

[incyal]

have you already completed things fall apart? or like how much have you written through the years??

No, I haven’t completed it. I’ve completed probably close to 300 pages. Things Fall Apart, is really the whole story of the family in Norway. The whole scope of the story though, I mean I’ve completed probably 40 pages of Christine’s story. I’ve completed sections of Kol’s and Rebecca’s. Its really become kind of my own personal story over the last years. Where its starting to look nothing like fanfiction. Which is why I haven’t posted. If its not fanfiction, there really isn’t any place to post it. 

[incyal]

Things Fall Apart

Prologue: 1939, Berlin

    In a harlequin mint green satin dress that dipped well below her collarbone and clung to her frame, he recognized those hands, that neck and her mouth before Lyanna continued, “And it’s been the ruin of many a poor girl, and me, oh God, I’m one.”

   White curls sat heavy on bare shoulders, red lips hovering centimeters above the metallic microphone she cradled in her hands, “My father was a gamblin’ man, his fortune, taken away. If I had only listened to what my momma said, I’d be at home today….”

   Blue eyes of an all too familiar adversary peered past the stage lights into the crowd. It was the face that had too many names to curse at once: Hannah, Christine, Nataline, Interloper, Devil, Misery, etc. and the first, the one he’d never forget no matter how desperately he would try. It was her that lead him straight to the gates of hell where only loss and despair awaited him.

Things Fall Apart: Full Prologue Here 

[incyal]

Hello! I just want to ask if you are planning to update incyal? :'( I really love your story. :) It's epic.

Yes I am 

[incyal]

Hiya, I was just wondering if you was ever going to finish your fanfic "incyal" because I have an unhealthy obsession with it atm. If not, can you please post a chapter about what was supposed to happen with each hunter. Like what was going to happen with Christine, Mary, Emily, ect. Cause it's driving me crazy not knowing and I desperately need to know how each hunter effected Klaus and the Mikaelson family in different aspects. So can there be some sort of closure?

Yes, I am going to finish it. Or rather I started writing on it but in multiple different stages. I’m actually working on the beginning of the story and changing the mythology. So I hope that helps. Christine’s chapters are in multiple pieces. To be honest, its nice to know that someone is still interested in reading. Its been so long and this fandom has really kind of died off. 

[incyal]

I don’t know if you are still looking on this page, but did you ever continue the story beyond Christines chapters? If so where could I find them?

Yes, I did. I haven’t posted any of it on any websites yet. I guess I figured there probably wasn’t the same interest level since its been so long since I started that story. 

[incyal]

Since I assume you discontinued INCYL, do you think you could tell us what was going to happen? Like what you had planned?

The funny thing is that I haven’t. I got busy yatta yatta but I have still written on it. In fact, I started from the beginning. I began to rework the mythology and begin the story of the Originals. And I’ve completed maybe 10k words worth of Christine’s chapter. 

[incyal]

hey just wanted to know that since it's been four years, i shouldn't keep my hopes up and still hope for that "epic update" on Running To The Edge of The World?

The truth is that I will likely never finish that story. However, I have started a short story about the same triangle, slightly different circumstances but very similar story in many ways. I will post the first snippet as my next post. 

[bkgrlrandomthoughts]

Warm hands, the smell of incense and him- those would be the first memories of her childhood. In those early years Christine knew nothing of the streets, the city outside, sunlight or other people. The world to her was four walls, damp floors and halls that were occasionally filled with the sounds of music, filtering down from above. Christine spent most of her childhood, living in the underbelly of the St. Hubert Basilica, where she had been brought as a child and where she would stay until she was eight and ten.

Her only window to the outside world was one man. Over the years she would call him many things, Father, Cyril and him, with a distinct hatred. But in the beginning he was Father, an earthly demi- God that was sent there to tutor her in her mission for the God, of marble, prayer and the Bible.

During her days, Christine would follow the young priest with his brown robes and soft hands down the long dimly lit halls that lead into strange rooms filled with objects, books and other things that he used for up there- that place from which the music came. Whatever existed above those cobbled ceilings of her isolated stoned village was a mystery. For many years as a child, Christine thought whatever flourished above those chambers was heaven, where God sat and watched her every move.

She marked her days until she was six by father Cyril’s comings and goings. To her there was no morning and no night. Time only began and seemed to end, marked by his presence and absence.

Yes, in those early years Christine lead a simple life with only few possessions to her name: a blanket, a few candles, the Bible and a picture.

Wax slide down the candle stick like water, pooling on the wooden surface, edging ever so much closer as it threatened to burn her at any moment. The six year old stared at the charcoal face of a man she’d never met before but whose mere existence had formulated her own.

Her fingers hovered over the sketch, tracing each line. It was just a picture. Nothing real, breathing or tangible about it but still it was enough to inspire endless dreams for Christine. Ones that made her wake in sweat, trembling, calling out to no one in a dark room. That face was as familiar to her as her own. It haunted her both in sleep and in waking.

“Klaus,” she whispered, letting the last syllable linger on her tongue. Her eyes peered around the room, as if just saying it would conjure him to appear.

Focusing on the sketch once more, she studied every wrinkle in his forehead, every crevice under his eyes. The man that had brought her here as baby to fulfill her life’s purpose, had drawn this sketch for this exact purpose- so that she would know. He was her soul purpose in life. Someday she would meet this man that she studied. Someday Christine would confront the man that had taken so much from her.

Her

The only name Christine had for the woman that should have been her mother: the person that Father spoke of few times but when he did he told Christine stories of a woman who was Godly and obedient. The Father, told her of a mother that was unlike any other, one that was directed by God to rid the world of a certain pestilence. Those few words became stories in Christine’s mind. Ones to rival those read to her from the Bible. Until in Christine’s mind this woman was more unearthly than human.

She was an angel, warrior of God that had been taken by this man in her sketch.  

“Klaus,” she said his name again, bolder this time.

He had crippled Christine before birth; making her an orphan in this world and slave to the church’s crusade against him. And although Klaus may not have known who she was Christine would know him, memorize him and every detail she was given of his existence.

He was inhuman, unclean and evil and she only a girl but they were more connected than father and child, brother and sister, husband and wife. His existence had bled into hers and now there was no way out. Even as a child Christine knew this intrinsically. There were four things that kept her child’s mind busy during those long periods of solitude: her mother, the Father, God’s request to her, and Klaus.

Dipping her fingers into the burning wax, Christine scribbled Her on her forearm temporarily branding herself with the memory of a mother she’d only ever meet in her imagination, for it was there only, in Christine’s mind mother had a name face, hands and a voice. All of which that longed to hold her long forgotten child.

“You are still awake?” he hovered in the doorway watching her as she played with the wax.

“Do you wait for me?” The Father smiled as she nodded her head. With him he’d brought her food and something else, another book. The volume was heavy and shook the desk as he dropped it.

While she ate, he read to her part of Ephesians speaking of God’s directives to children on their parents and finished with the relationship between a husband and wife.

As Christine crawled into bed and he finished his lesson, Father Cyril hesitated when shutting the book and then started, “When you wake Christine, we will begin as we should.”

Shivering under her thin blanket, she welcomed his warm hands on her legs and thought nothing on his words. In a child’s mind words often collected and scattered holding no meaning or weight.

“Yes, Father,” she murmured.

“God expects things of you, my child. You understand that?”

The heat from his hands and the feeling of food in her stomach, the comfort of another voice was lulling her to sleep, “Yes Father.”

“Our God is wrathful God. When he asks something of us, we must comply,” he continued.

“Yes Father.”

“Do you know what happens to those that disappoint?” his hands stopped rubbing warmth into her legs, prompting Christine to open her eyes.

Slowly she shook her head, unsure of what to say. She was afraid that if she said the wrong thing he would disappear, leaving her alone again too soon.

“He punishes them. Worse than we can imagine and he punishes those we love….” He lingered knowing perhaps that she knew no one other than himself and therefore could love no one other than perhaps one, “your mother.”

Christine’s eyes grew wide.

“Hell is a horrible place, Christine. Would you wish to send your mother and I, there?”

The little girl licked her lips, thoughts of her angel falling from heaven, her demigod leaving her forever in these empty halls.

“No.”

He nodded shortly approving of her answer. “Go to sleep child, for tomorrow you finish what your mother could not.”

As he rose to leave, the little girl fought her urge to call out to him and beg him to stay. Turning at the door Father Cyril bid her good night, “Say your prayers child, as I showed you. Pray for your obedience, pray for success and pray for your Father.”

As the candle continued to melt itself down, Christine did as she was told. She prayed for her mother, that God would spare her soul and not fling her from heaven because of his displeasure with Christine. She prayed for her paper enemy’s demise, for Klaus’s death and she prayed for Father Cyril.

The last words that slipped from her mouth, in the last hours of her childhood innocence were those that were written on the back of the drawing. The words that Christine always assumed were her mother’s.

  The way, the truth and the light.

[bkgrlrandomthoughts]

To build a home...

His knees practically shook as he stepped onto the dock. Men were scrambling around him, unloading boxes of goods from the mainland. Their boots scuffled against the wooden docks, their thick Gaelic greetings punctuating the air. The noise of birds, human chatter and men grunting under the weight of the cargo all melded together into a mindless hum that beat in rhythm with Kol’s dead heart. Over five centuries old and his palms still sweat as though he were a nervous child. Looking out into the leaden cold village he knew that he was staring into his future, which was possibly just as bleak and tenebrous as that morning. Somewhere amongst the thatched tattered huts, she was waiting. Perhaps she was she was down at the shore, knee deep in ice cold water, searching for shellfish to sell at the market or cook that evening. Maybe she was still in her dilapidated home, bent over a stove heating food before she started her day or perhaps she was still warm in bed. With some other man’s arms wrapped around her, Lilly could be engulfed in happiness, blissfully ignorant to the fact that he was out there- that Kol was still wandering around this earth thinking of her, wondering after her, chasing her still with his every breath. The thought of it was enough to fill him with both hope and dread. Maybe she thought of him still. Perhaps in the back of her mind, in even the remotest of her random thoughts she still saw him.

He could only hope.

Even now, after he’d traded it all- his future, freedom, life, name and identity it was all still worth it. Kol would gladly be Degare Bersierwan and trade his soul if it meant that he could have one more moment with her; only one more second in a world where she existed, even if that moment could only be filled with complete and total contempt.

Where she would go, he would follow. Where Lilly lodged he would stay. Her people would be his and her God he would follow. Kol was a man of few promises and even less resolve. Only for Lilly, he would bend- so far that his life and existence would not only snap under the pressure but practically cease to exist.

As he walked into the village that cold windy morning, Kol walked back into his future as a man he only hoped Lilly could someday accept as a friend. He would never be her husband or lover in this life. For his brother’s sanity and his own stupidity he’d sacrificed that right. All he could hope for now was to watch from a close distance as someone that was almost her part of her life. And pray to the God that Lilly believed that his brother would not come.

Soon he would know what Kol had done to acquire his new face and identity. Someday Klaus would know how little loyalty Kol had.

[incyal]

You’ve Haunted Me All My Life- by  thebluefeather

https://8tracks.com/thebluefeather/you-ve-haunted-me-all-my-life

Beautiful playlists made by thebluefeather for INCYAL!!! 

Thank you so much!!!

[incyal]

Hey I'm the tumblr-less anon that asked about publishing an 8tracks playlist. Check it out: 8tracks. com/thebluefeather /you-ve-haunted-me-all-my-life (remove the spaces

This playlist is ridiculously beautiful. Thank you so much. There really aren’t words! You have fantastic taste in music

[incyal]

Hi, I have been following this fic for a long time but first time having a tumblr account. Just wondering if you are alive and planning on continueing this series? Also this is the best Klaroline fic I have read yet. Please continue it you wonderful amazing fanfictioner.

Alive and well! I am writing on it on occasion. And im so glad to hear that you’ve enjoyed reading. 

[incyal]

Hey I don't have a tumblr so I sent a message on ffn, but I wanted to ask if it's okay if I post a fanmix for INCYAL on my 8tracks account? If that's cool, could you reply on ffn or something?

Hell yes it is! Who are you new best friend? Can you please link me? I would love to listen

[bkgrlrandomthoughts]

When he looked at her, Christine felt as though she had been kissed with the cold whisper of death. Her skin prickled, every tiny hair on her body standing on end. Every dream, near every thought, every haunting of her life had led to this moment. Her pulse slowed, breaths now shallow and soft, while the edges of her conscious mind screamed out with hatred, disgust but most importantly desire….

“Niklaus….” it danced on tip of her tongue, falling out her mouth just as his eyes met hers. And in that single point of contact between them Christine’s existence all at once made sense.

Every emotion she had ever felt had narrowed onto this one set of greyish blue eyes. It was pure lust and nothing else. In her mind Christine could feel his hand beneath her skirt. His teeth were tearing through soft the skin beneath her jaw as all resolve rapidly dissolved. However somewhere among that near failure arose Christine’s euphoric triumph with the soft give of her blade cutting through his skin.

Now, those lifeless eyes peered up at her intently searching for weakness.

“Do you have a name?” he spoke to her deaf ears.

Lost in the lust of death and possible defeat, Christine looked back blankly. She was response- less for moments, unsure what he had even said until words came to her, “Who are you to ask?”

[bkgrlrandomthoughts]

She could hear the screams echoing through the long, dark musty tunnels. It seemed as though the sounds were coming from every direction whispering their invitation for death. As Christine crawled along thegutters that trickled with black filth, she kept herself pressed to the wallwith her bow partially drawn.

The tunnels were crawling with them. Their movements were the bursts of quick gusts of wind in a breeze-less space; the flattening of each echo as the sound waves met mass. Christine could hear them passing from one tunnel in the maze to another, gathering like a nest of rats preparing to feed.

It had been hours or perhaps days since she had entered the maze, at this point she could no longer tell. She’d often lose track of time and day all together while there. The vast seemingly endless space lit with unnatural light leaving her suspending breathlessly in the hunt.

Hearing their movements slow she stopped, her knees and shins covered in the fowl smelling inky water. Christine knew that the three she’d already killed were perhaps only half. The new breed that filled the maze much improved compared to her first.

These new creatures were not the freshly born, with clouded eyes and little sense. No this novel breed had a refined thirst for death. Their attacks were never rash and senseless but more the slow agonizing thrill of the chase. These vampires weren’t sloppy and half starved. There was an art to how these creatures hunted. With craft and calculation, it both nauseated and thrilled Christine.

They had bested her more than a few times in the maze and always for some foolish mistake. Countless times before, a moment of pure thoughtlessness had overtaken her as she’d act too quickly misjudging a play only to wake hours later bleeding from both her neck and between her thighs.

It was all part of her training, the game that seemed to never end. Only no longer was there an ominous threat of death. No, Father Cyril wouldn’t let them kill her now after all the time he’d invested. Now that she’d narrowly fought her way to survive to this point, he would choose a punishment for failure so much worse than an endless sleep.

Death would have been a blessing she would have welcomed with open arms instead of waking on cold, putrid floors, half drained, half dead, raped repeatedly and left to languish.

“Why am I here?!” A voice screamed out into the darkness.

This game was nothing new. The stakes always just as high. If Christine lost she’d be preyed upon just to the point of death. The other human fairing no better. 

“Please help me!” The voice called out desperately.

Turning the corner Christine entered another tunnel in the vast maze, only this one was part of multiple branching chambers. Standing in front of three separate entrances, all black and equally foreboding, the girl rang her hands and wiped tears from her cheeks. The young female was perhaps only three and ten. She was just a child that screamed at the cobbled walls as though they would answer her back.

She was a trap.

[bkgrlrandomthoughts]

Hello! We're sorry we couldn't inform you earlier but you have been nominated for "Best Overall Author as well as "Best Dark Author" and "Best Klaus Author". Congratulations!-KA

Awesome. I thought the awards were in October. Too late to nominate now I guess.

Thank you to that one person who nominated me- you’re my new fav