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@nothinggiven
will you halt this eclipse in me?
ASK • SUBMIT • DOSSIER • LORE • MUSINGS • VERSES
A beloved original character roleplay blog for Hekate, adapted for multiple fandoms such as Destiny, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate and more. Penned with love by Jess (30+); mutuals only, 21+
Please review my guidelines below. ♥︎
i. SURVIVE.
Heavy eyelids fluttered open and woke to a queasiness in the pit of her stomach and a writhing sensation against the walls of her throat. A heavy thumping filled her head like war drums as her blurred vision began to clear. She was encapsulated in a chitinous shell, as if fleshy walls had grown and hardened around her weakened body, like moss consuming the flesh of a decaying corpse.
She struggled to move, struggled to breathe. Illyn remembered the Harbingers, the Queen’s sacrifice, and the blinding light that engulfed the Awoken fleet. She roused, but her chest could not expand fully, her legs were too heavy to move. She stretched her arms against the tight confines of her would-be tomb and etched her nails into it. As she exerted energy, she wretched painfully. Barbs caught within her throat as her body revolted, heaving in an attempt to expel what gagged and silenced her. Pain sliced through her from within as she shuddered, forcing her body to conserve what little stamina remained.
“You have strayed far from the Light, Coven Mother.” The words drowned out the hammering within her skull, but further still, she felt the voice within her bones rippling through her marrow like chattering teeth and vibrations over stone. “But it has never claimed you, has it? You remember, but you have always balanced the Light and Dark.”
A thickness in her esophagus caused her to swallow involuntarily, and the sickening realization that something living was lodged deep within her throat caused her to wretch once again. Pain surged through her as the metallic taste of blood and the sourness of bile flooded beneath her tongue. Despite the weakened, broken state of her body, her heartbeat thrummed quickly beneath her ribs as adrenaline surged through her.
“You are caught in between.” The voice mused. “In you, I see a fragment of what I once was, at a crossroads of false opportunities." There was an extended, pensive silence as the distant chittering behind the confines of her narrow prison grew nearer. “I offer you no promise of freedom. I offer no liberation. Instead, I offer you a choice.” She felt the larvae squirm, inching further down her throat, its barbs smoothing without the directional resistance as she gasped desperately for air.
“Adapt or die.”
The words were deafening as she lay motionless and her ears began to ring. It was a high pitched screech as her body shook, now hyperaware of the wiggling neo-worm and immediate attempt to expunge it. Every breath she took was closer to her last in this sickening abyss of apostasy.
Despite the acidity and bile that rose within her stomach, the Techuan swallowed the larvae in her throat. Her body shuddered in protest of the unholy communion as the living creature burrowed deep into her belly and coughed a spray of blood and ichor into the palms of her hands.
“I dub thee Knowledge-Eater.” The vibrato of the voice lapped at her skin and drew soothing fingers along her mind. Her chest, now dislodged of the foreign object, expanded freely as she audibly drew in a breath of stagnant air. She stared at the ceiling of her suffocating chamber, indistinguishable shadows passing overhead as the voice rumbled within her mind’s eye again.
“Heed me, ravenous one.” It hummed. “Seek the space that has stained your fingers of starlit pitch and feed the hunger.” The oppressive sounds of the surrounding darkness gave way to a calm lull, and the voice receded with a few final, parting words:
“And may it never sate you, as it never sated me.”
“Please,” he scoffed. “If you turned your nose up any higher you would be facing the sun. I can only assume you would wilt.”
His face retained its careful, carefree neutrality, but his patience with the circular exchange of words was fast waning. He did not leave Mythal to beg for an audience with those even Elgar’nan would not welcome. “All I require of Anaris is five minutes of his time in which to present my case,” he said sweetly, his tone just as confident as before. “He can decide that he wants me at his side afterward.”
Solas crouched down with a sigh, running his hands in the loose dust of this barren wasteland. His fingers tightened around it. “The land is not turning me away,” he shrugged, looking around him as if expecting the dead trees to rise up. “Anaris has not turned me away. The only obstacle, it seems, is you.” He rose, rubbing the dirt off the fingers of his left hand. His right remained in a fist which shook at her poor choice of words.
The final end of his patience. “‘Our people?’” Solas repeated, the coil of anger in his chest turning it into a snarl. “The people whose blood you freely spill in any man’s war? The people whose spirits you defile with your rituals and your death rites? The people for whom you have done nothing but butcher and desecrate into your playthings?”
Her outstretched hand seemed more gesture than invitation, but he took it regardless, and wrenched her close against him.
“I am through scratching at the door of your gate, Din’an,” he said in a low voice, his grip on her hand tightening enough to bruise. “Let me pass, or your corpse will join the bones of our people that you’ve littered across the countryside.”
Solas didn’t wait for a response. With a flash of magic in his eyes, his palm became a blazing heat that scorched the bruises he’d dug into her wrist. With an immediate burst of energy he pushed her back and, because she’d called him a tyrant, threw the dirt he’d clutched in his right hand into the blacks of her eyes. His dagger was in his hand in an instant and he fell back into the defensive position he'd taken in the hundreds of sparring sessions he'd had with Landalen. He may not have been able to best Mythal's Devotion, but what was a snake to a wolf?
As her hand was taken and her body was wrenched forward, Din'an collided with Solas' chest as he all but growled. A chill ran up her spine as her body went rigid, and her body responded with the encroaching danger. With the magic flashed within his eyes and the searing heat paired with the oppressive grasp, she had been blown back with the burst of energy that erupted from his very being and blinded with underhanded tactics.
Down on a knee, she blinked through a half lidded gaze, blurry and stinging from the debris as she lifted her charred and smoking hand between herself and Solas. Seared and raw, it shook in agony as she grit her teeth. A pulse of sickening green reverberated from within the core of her injured palm, the darkened, injured skin a contrasting backdrop against the ebb of magic that pulsed within. Another heartbeat of green magic flashed as the damaged flesh gave way to an emerald glow and skeletal digits replaced the pale, lithe fingers in a burst of veilfire.
"Coward," she breathed, her words confined but near eruption; that perfectly crafted composure coming apart at the seams.
"You come skulking unto these gates, beneath my watch under false proclamations and nefarious scheming, and have the audacity to bare your fangs to me?" She grimaced as rage flashed within her eyes, now wide and reflecting the same sickening emerald inset amidst the blackest obsidian.
"I see through your lies, wolf." Her voice was disjointed, overlaid with the presence of countless others as her fingers curled into a fist beneath her cloak. Runes began to appear etched into the earth, scattering between herself and the assailant, creating a minefield of defensive wards.
"But the question is: when will you?"
@sulahndinan || LIKED for a STARTER
Silence consumes, cloaks his figure where he sits outside of the main gates of the Necropolis - it's grand structure behind poking out of the sands, stone steps leading downward into its seemingly endless confines. Legs poise outstretched, crossed at the ankles, arms mimicking the same across his chest in an attempt to find some comfort, but all he finds is the sandy breeze that brushes across his face and the bizarre feeling of being watched wedged within his chest.
Eyes, colourless and hollow in his momentary lingering 'pon past failures, scan his immediate surrounds with practiced ease, taking note of naught in particular that stood to be out of the ordinary. 'T was, as he saw it, simply another dawning in Nevarra - - the sights of the oranges and yellow painting the skies above one he treasures for it was not often he rose from the depths to witness it.
"It's a beautiful morning--" He decides to utter, consciousness taking note of the lingering presence once more - knowing it is not Craig he senses nearby for he knows the wisp is somewhere in the foliage behind his shoulders. Whomever it was, wherever they were near to his person, he only hoped they could hear him well enough.
"I've some tea here, if you'd like some-" An easy offer to make given that the flask he has bought with him has two cups connected - and the bled within was but one of his own.
Her presence hung like a death shroud; heavily upon the chest, but with the warmth from the belief that the deceased passed on to a better place. The Necropolis’ halls are a comfort in their familiarity. Death was worshipped here—not for the spillage of one’s precious life force, but to protect the deceased’s passage into the next part of their life, and what of them that remained in the physical realm. From the mournful lament to incense lit in reverence, and the familiarity with various customary death rituals, Hekate was ever present within the Grand Necropolis whether she was invoked or merely oversaw the bodies of the deceased.
The current offering in and of itself was strange–intriguing, even. She was often welcomed with open arms by the Mourn Watch and the Mortalitasi, but to be summoned inward so warmly with an offering of something so basely mortal piqued her interest beyond the reverence of her namesake.
Hekate had all but manifested from the darkness, as if she had stepped from behind a curtain that was drawn aside; the veil slicing open for but a moment to allow her passage. Her strides were slow and deliberate, the trail of her ebony, silken skirts trailing behind her as a hound’s howl disturbed the Necropolis' stillness in the distance. Depending on how or why she was summoned, she presented differently for whomever invoked her name. Considering that her presence was more felt than called upon however, she presented herself in a form akin to a mourning widow. Mournful and familiar.
“A kind offer for a stranger,” she responded gently with a lilt in her voice, “though we are far more familiar than that, are we not?”
“The only power worth having anymore,” he said, but though his tone was flippant, his eyes were anything but. “The god-killing kind.”
He met her dagger sharp gaze with a widening smile. He resisted the urge to follow her gaze, confident he would at least hear someone coming behind him in time to move.
“Ah,” he said. “It is to be a bargain then. I prostrate myself to you, and then to Anaris. Is that it? I come with nothing but what you see.” He stepped closer to her, his hand never leaving his dagger, and the orb never losing its magic. “For Anaris, I bring intelligence. Information on the inner workings of each of the grand houses of Elvhenan, down to the name of the lowliest gardener. I was Mythal’s Left Hand. Everything I know is his, should he accept me. Which, let me be clear,” he held his hands out in mock humility, “he will.”
Solas looked between her shining eyes, as lifeless as the ground she sowed. “But for you,” he mused, tapping his chin. “I could offer you your life, but I think you do not value that so highly.” He walked slowly around her, though it was more consideration than overt threat. “But if you remember more than your bloody role in Falon’din’s coup, you might remember why he failed. Why the Titans now sleep in eternal torment. Why dreams have been severed from the Fade we once called home.” He came around her front, that slight smile having never left his face. He tapped the side of his head. “My wits were enough for our people in each struggle. My wits were enough for Mythal, and you cannot be so proud as to claim to be her better. So might such wits be enough for you?”
He glanced up at the barren cliff face from which she'd uncoiled. "Unless you need something heavy moved, which I can also offer."
“Once again, I know who you are and what you are capable of.” She volleyed flatly, unmoved by his preening and peacocking. She knew how deep the wrath of their people ran, and how deep they were willing to plunge the metaphorical knife to further their own agendas. “Your idle threats do not spur me into action, nor do your grandiose displays, sharp words and wolfish skulking prove what you require for passage.” He circled her still, like a predator waiting to pounce. She was not prey, however, and without proper tithes, she would not grant him ingress. Beneath Anaris, her role was to gatekeep the desolate lands beyond the reach of the Evanuris–a far cry from the power she held as Falon’din’s forceful right hand.
“It is not I that claims superiority, but you who suggests it to be so.” She replied as he came full circle. The tranquility of her demeanour clashed with her dead eyes, just as his impish grin had been the antithesis of his violet gaze. “And to what ends are you so positive that Anaris will accept you?” She inquired carefully. “Do you believe him to be so desperate to acquire your font of knowledge? Or do you hope that he is vengeful enough to jump at the mere mention of your presence?” It was not defiance in the face of his boasting, but scrutiny and analysis.
“You circle me like a beast of prey, threaten me upon lands in which you are not welcome, and proceed to stroke your ego with feats of godhood. And yet, you stand before me and claim benefaction behind the shield of our people.” She paused for but a moment, a limb unfurling from beneath her cloak.
“You claim to offer knowledge and wit, yet you are known for lies and trickery. How will you prove the legitimacy of your offer?” Din’an presented a hand, the pale and porcelain plane offered in expectation; to give but also to receive.
“You insist on reminding me of my place, of how worthless I am within your shadow. You flaunt your strength and power but claim benevolence so long as I bare my neck before you. These words are not proof of your intent, but instead tactics of a tyrant grasping for what he desires with the threat of brute force; learned actions from those in which you claim to be betraying. You must understand why I require more from you than your word alone.”
Death is inevitable. Dhavi nods, her serene smile steadfast; she has known death for as long as she can remember. On her hip, amidst various trinkets, she carries the lives of those she has lost; a locket that once belonged to a mother and father she never knew, a halla antler ring for the first love she lost in the Blight, and a scroll bearing the Oath of the Dales she received from Deshanna shortly before being named Keeper. And, of course, she has always been mortal. She has always known she would one day die. That never seemed special to her, until she learned the truth of Solas, and realized how valuable her limited days must seem, in comparison to someone who had seen so many sunrises.
Every one of her days must carry a thousand of his, of Hekate's, for her life to be half as full. Or so it seems. In truth, she looks at them and wonders how empty their days must feel. To have seen the same sun rising over the same world so many times, and to know it will still be there tomorrow, and in a hundred years. So stagnant, she wonders if the world ever runs out of beautiful things to see.
A deep, slow breath fills her. "You may need to begin again, yes," she offers almost hesitatingly, feeling every bit as if she is trying to free a wild animal from a trap—the softness of her voice, the careful way in which she pulls her words together, knowing that with a wrong move, Hekate will turn on her. "But my people have barely begun. Don't we deserve a chance in this world?" Her gaze shifts to something more somber, her smile falling to a sadder shape, but still there is that warmth, that... caring that flows through her hand into Hekate's.
"Life is flourishing, and I am sorry," says Dhavi'fen, squeezing Hekate's hand, with all the heartfelt sorrow that someone can offer, without feeling the loss themself, "that it is in the ashes of your world, but... death is inevitable. Begin again, with us. I cannot speak for others, but I would welcome you."
The gentle pressure around her hands grounded her as the flow of warmth from Dhavi into her rooted her in the words that danced across the other’s tongue like liquid honey. There was wisdom in her words that appealed to her innate being as a spirit of knowledge and it abruptly tore her from the role she had been thrust into. Did they not deserve a chance, just as every spirit who had been coerced into corporeal form deserve their own chance at life? To choose? To live?
Din’an’s world was dead, but she had been given the chance to be reborn in this one as Hekate. To aid the mortal world and their deceased rather than be an agent of death.
Her blighted gaze dropped from Dhavi’fen’s face and flitted frantically, unseeing and absent. She parsed through thoughts, beliefs and biases, blinking as she drew in an audibly pained breath. Her fingers cinched around the keeper’s as her hands quaked, and a knot of something unfamiliar that she had no name formed within the depth of her chest.
For centuries she had been a dark mark, an extension of Falon’din’s bloody crusade. Her name was whispered in curses and in fear, carrying over into this new world in the innate fear of death. Never welcomed, never wanted. But the people of this world adapted and called upon death with kinder purposes. The blood on her hands would never wash clean, but perhaps this was a start to rectify the damage she caused in a previous life.
As if coming to an unspoken conclusion, her silverite hues snapped up to meet with Dhavi’fen’s once again, the chill behind them softening to something akin to a morning frost.
“Perhaps you are correct.” She placated, softer now. A warm hue glistened over her exposed flesh as she relented, colour returning to her ashen skin. “Perhaps this world is a new beginning, built on the mistakes of our past.” To be given a seat at the table; to start again and be given a chance to repair what was broken rather than be used in one way or another. There were no words to describe the feeling that grew between her ribs.
“I simply hope that your belief within me is not misplaced.”
Brothers Dirthamen and Falon'din. Creepy as i love
@sulahndinan from [ x ]
The cold touch of the other's hand against Dhavi's warmth is enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and the way words weave not through her ears but through her very being proves unsettling. Her brow gently pulls together as the woman speaks, but it is a soft smile that winds its way onto her lips nonetheless.
"I don't need to be returned to it," she responds with the subtle confidence of a woman who once struggled with her place in the world, only to realize where she belonged had been there, all along. Her voice carries the same gentle tones it always does, as warm as her fingertips and as sweet as the honey-scent of her hair. "I've never left it."
As if to prove her point, she wraps her hand around the other's, joining them. Her thumb rubs warmth into the back of the other's hand, and tender eyes—the left flecked with green—meet those ringed in darkest night. If the cold bothers her, she doesn't show it.
Dhavi'fen is life, in the face of Hekate's promise of death.
"Being a fragment of the whole is an honor; it gives me purpose. Everything I do ripples out into the rest and reminds me that I am not alone." But she knows, as much as she puts out kindness, others do not, and those ripples are felt no less.
"If this world is broken, I don't believe destruction will fix it. I mean no offense, but I don't think death is the answer."
In the face of her frigidity and threat of the dark below was the warmth of a thousand suns. Hekate’s offer was a promise of sweet release; a kindness presented rather than the cruelty in butchery as she had committed so many times before. Instead of watching the world burn, her proposal was something softer: to return and become whole for when the veil came tumbling down, as only then may she still remain in part and return as a piece of what she was.
–But the warmth that is returned caused something akin to disorientation; confusion by the brush of the other’s thumbs and the encompassing of her hands. There was a willingness to remain, a silent offering to provide, but refusal to succumb. Dhavi chose instead to fight for something that was doomed to fail, an act of foolish ignorance, but the tenderness in her eyes had all but disarmed the isolated death witch in a moment of bemusement.
Had she, in her wakeful slumber, become so weak to be rendered defenseless so easily? Or had this mortal’s sheer desire to do better in the face of imminent devastation warmed the very human part of her that lay dormant? The dying glimmer of hope–of rebellion against the erroneous actions of another that she had so wished to embody countless lifetimes prior? To this she appealed, and to this, Hekate listened.
“Death is inevitable,” she rallied deftly, her fingers twitching within Dhavi’s grasp, “and life will flourish from the ash–free from the binding torment which this world has experienced. Free to begin anew.” The chill in her fingertips thawed against the other’s warmth, and the pulse within coursed through her like a beating drum. In the end, all living things were doomed to return to the earth, but through the death and decay, Dhavi fought like a budding flower amidst a bloodied battlefield. It was not yet her time.
“We have tried,” she relented, “there is no other solution than to begin again.”
mun & muse (picrew)
Be wary of the abyss. - from landalen / @weptduty
His words were, perhaps, the only thing that stilled her steps. While she was silent and focused in her trespass, she paused within those very moments and held her ground. Her fingers flittered over the length of her dagger tucked behind the sash at her midsection until her nails dragged over the hilt. Ever deeper she plunged, like her own athame finding purchase within the breast of her target. She served, and more was asked from her. Further and further she was thrust into the blackest abyss to which she could not see beyond. As Falon’din’s hunger stretched, so did the death she inflicted.
Din’an grasped the hilt of the ritual dagger, fingers curling, the bones of her knuckles straining taut against the thin flesh. And then she relinquished her grip.
“I have naught but the abyss.” She intoned in reply beneath the heavy hood, bright eyes downcast, head bowed. “For I am duty bound to inflict such release at his word, lest I succumb to him myself.” She craned her neck then, her gaze shifting from the shadows to the source of the voice in warning. She would not proceed, not yet, not beneath his watchful eye–but he ought to have known just as well as he that there was no other option in her servitude to Falon’din’s terror.
She closed her eyes in concentration, a determination within her mind weighing how to proceed like a set of scales evaluating the worth of a life lived. Din’an moved to pivot, her feet shifting against the tile beneath her heel as she turned to face him at last. She exposed her hands in an attempt to parlay despite the blood of thousands that would never be washed clean.
“And thus, I must surrender to it.”
Okay, now that I’ve been a little more active over the last couple of days, I want to give a little brief overview of what y’all are getting into. :))) I’ll eventually write out a nice big post with lots of fun, in depth background information, but here’s the quick and dirty version for all of you that are curious.
Meet Hekate. She is known as Din’an to our Dalish friends; Falon’din’s second. She’s known as Hekate to the rest of the Thedas where she embodies a goddess of necromancy and liminal spaces (and many other related topics as her namesake suggests). She is unsurprisingly more prominent in Nevarra, but there are numerous sects across Thedas with more dubious intentions. Like with most ancient elven culture, she is mostly forgotten/erased from Dalish records. She was more or less Falon’din’s attack dog until the beginning stages of Solas’ rebellion where she essentially defected (it’s complicated). In exchange for freedom from Falon’din, she effectively guards and restricts access to the Crossroads from unwarranted use.
In short: she’s old and tired as hell. She has been restricted to wandering the Crossroads up until the events of Veilguard. Thanks Rook. :)))
❝ I hope that at least that extra lining helps you keep warm at night. I wouldn't like you to catch cold. ❞ 👀
Pale lips parted as if to speak, but no sound emitted from her throat. Instead, confused pearlescent eyes darted from freckled shoulder to shoulder as a warm cloak was draped around her by kind hands. A gentle tinkling filled the deafening silence in her ears from the rows of silver hoops lining pointed cartilage and the grave dowry that hung from around her neck. The discomfort that settled into her shoulders was, for the first time, borne from unfamiliarity.
Uncertain how to proceed from such an act of unexpected kindness, Hekate looked up from where she knelt with her bare knees pressed into the earth as the other stepped back. She was near blinded by the smile that rivaled the sun as it stretched across Nanna’s face. Warmth radiated from her in comforting waves, and despite her own uncertainty, a very old and ancient part of her opposing frigid and distant nature wished to reach out and bottle the Warden’s essence.
Hekate remained stooped as a feeling rolled up her spine, like a hand wrenching and rooting her to remain. It was her own conscious thought to remain distant, lest she drain the very life from something so beautiful. Even after so many years free from his grasp and his death furthermore, Falon’din’s impression still remained.
Ringed fingers clasped unfamiliarly at the cloak that replaced what she had always known, and with a look of confusion, her gaze turned towards her own cold, darkened hands grasping at its edges. The unexpected show of concern or affection, or whatever the gesture was, had left her speechless in what had felt to be an eternity.
“I am not deserving of warmth and comfort, nor your generosity, Warden.” The words fell from her lips, calculated though strained. She was Nanna’s undoing, or what remained of it. “And yet you provide it still. Why?”
