* shatterdark : a dependent multimuse for prythianfm, as lovingly curated by vesper.
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@shatterdark
* shatterdark : a dependent multimuse for prythianfm, as lovingly curated by vesper.
when he attempts to avoid the tragic fate that has been prophesied to him and in doing so only serves to fulfill it 😩😳🥵
women: exist alina: 😳😵😍
𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬 : closed ! @shatterdark ( kairos & hayal )
𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭 : towards the end, hayal joins kairos to push through and clear another path while keeping an eye on him
Fatigue rattled bones, seizing muscles injecting the paralytic that was the build up constant repetition and movement sapping strength further even with the power involved to operate hindered by faebane. There was a seductive lure to the darkness, to find a cold wall and slid down against it to breath, to sit, to die. The hollow ache and the need for a pause sang a deathly melody from ancient devils towards ones doom. She winced, all but snarling at every slam of a fist now that shot a reminder through her frame that one of her shoulders was injured awakening the source of pain at each movement mistakenly made with that side. That in itself pulled Hayal from the brink, tearing her away from the edge of nothingness and the long dive into the great void. Hair was no longer any shade of white, stained pink and dirt sullied tailored clothes that withstood this function they were not made for but that was because they were winter court made. They were made by Catrin and by whatever was holy if gods existed and the mother breathed life into the world while the cauldron sought its own agenda that woman was getting the largest kiss before Hayal could find a place to sit and not move for an exorbitantly long time. Hayal drugged on, pounding and punching. Scratching and clawing in the swipes of lethal hands waiting to watch the tide turn. Turn the tide, crush the line, clear a path forward. trust in your high lords. A second wind hit her, not renewing depleted strength from shoving back the hoard of dark fae and defending the light, body only tapped into the last reserved left powering limbs to clear a path forward.
Mustering a hearty laugh, her attention divided from the beasts before to smile at the figure next to her. Dear Kairos, the detective that she would chose to fight crime with, drinking what she had promised who be mint tea when she returned from wherever she wandered. Oh friend she thought, I will protect you too well into the long night and we will have that tea. Those were not the words that came out of her throat falling off lips in a raised shout so he could hear her. “We shove forward friend. Push until we can’t anymore and you protect my side, I yours”
𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 wasteland : every inch of the arena is a stitch on a blood-wrought tapestry, none of it unsullied by slaughter, all of it unclean. the oil-slick sheen of grime and gore on his skin has bled through every fortification he has drawn over himself, and hoarfrost is encroaching upon the drawbridge he so foolishly let down. it settles first as a fine mist, but where snow has fallen, a whiteout is never far behind in step ; sometimes winter steals but only the youngest from the cradle of the earth, and sometimes it kills.
kairos threads himself through the eye of the needle as best he can, whittling himself down to just the pith, to the pit of the peach that survives the sweet rotting of flesh. if it is seeded, it will grow —— even in the cold, even when it does not tolerate. he weaves through the multitude as a trout hastens upstream in order to spawn, slipping deftly out of the taloned clutches of unnameable beasts and shepherding the lost and witless. when a dark faerie lurches from a blind spot and snags the elbow of his tunic, the last dredges of warmth in his heart shiver even when he does not. with a jolt, the dagger dives into the faerie’s bared throat as methodically as it is retrieved after the blade has found its mark ; with a rasp, he crumples to the floor.
‘ thank you for the knife, hayal. i shouldn’t like to think of braving this crowd with just my wits and a pocket of spare change, ’ kairos remarks, mirthlessly. it is to her side he returns, still bracing an arm against the unrelenting press of bodies on his right. you protect my side, i yours. the emissary is tenacity made corporeal, the rimed wind that gusts within every forest and rattles every bolted door —— yet, she salves, placates, and sentries the passage he now wades through, subsisting on her faith and fortitude. a cluster of lesser fae wrests his attention then, their shrieks carrying over from a shaded alcove. ‘ there —— hurry. ’
𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱,for @xstarforged. under the mountain. on the fringes of the vast chamber, seren and kairos purge the perimeter of any straggling vermin.
𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝘀 bloodless and bereft ; it traipses the tightrope of his shoulders as a widow, newly devoid, and catches its teeth on marrow that already knows grief like the cask of its own bone. his guilt is as strange a bedfellow to keep as any : in the comedown, she reaches for him with a lover’s dove-soft touch, but winds her hangman’s braid around his neck instead —— here is the poison you feed yourself, delicately doled. here is the knife you have thrust within your own gut, the knife you twist on your own accord. this shame is of your own design, your own make.
vallahan skulks the periphery of his mind as an infection bides its time before taking hold ; it pummels against every door in the labyrinth of his consciousness, demanding to be granted entry. gnashing his teeth with an urgency that rattles his skull, kairos relinquishes himself to the writhing, seething mass of bodies and pulp —— the carnage is a living, kicking thing, with a blackened heart and venom-capped fangs of its own. his lungs seize as if rebuking the fetor of iron and rot, but before bile can leap to his throat, he has been heaved out of the throne room and onto the fringes of the chamber. eyes of raw silver, soot-flecked and funereal, sweep the vicinity and clap on a brood of nagas, still salivating and throbbing with unshed rancour. unsurprisingly, he does not surge for them alone —— for she is at his side. night-forged and ardent in her pelt of stars eternal, she cauterises the corruption of fear from him and distills it to its rawest form : resolve. ‘ seren. i take it that the attor has been rent ? ’
Anne Sexton, You, Doctor Martin.
closed stsrter for @shatterdark ! | during act i.
a voice echoed in her head as the world around them descended into chaos, the same warm one that whispered jests to her and told her to rise once more during training. find me, iona. the order had been from both her general and her protector when it was first spoken a few years ago, when war was at their door and koray could no longer shield her from the fight. brown eyes frantically search around the room, finding wings that she would recognize in complete darkness. there is a whisper within her mind when iona gazes upon him, as if something near otherworldly is attempting to grab her attention. she needs you. something ethereal whispers. in a voice she cannot place. a tongue she cannot name. her body changes course, as if it is not her own to lead. and in the midst of the attack, iona sees the aerial soldier bearing down towards izara, eyes tracking the path of his swing as she was taught. without a second thought, iona is vaulting herself towards the man, unsheathing her blade as she leaps. a swift downward swing forces the soldier to take steps back, the woman landing on two feet in front of her friend. ignores the way her stomach settled at the sight of her. “ are you alright?” the words come out rushed, sparing izara a glance before she prepares to block another attack. body a barrier between the fae and those who wished to attack her. “ we should move, before they overwhelm us.” baring her teeth at the soldier as he began to charge for them once more.
𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 pitches into dissolution, the scream that thrashes for release at her lips is leashed as soon as it materialises. something far more primal is baying to be heard : she is a girl again, kneeling grooves into the porcelain adriatan strand and tucking her hands into sea foam —— laughter, light as chiffon and silvery as the sighing of harp strings, peals into the air. she is rising to her feet and wading into high tide, thrusting herself forward until she is waist-deep in the fold of a churning wave. as she makes to dig her heels into the sand, a shark-white billow lunges and shoves her onto her back ; ankle twisting grotesquely, she is pulled under, and for many uncountable heartbeats there is nothing but the roar of silence.
the same undertow breaks its back on her shore now, binding her feet and wrangling her prone form into the heart of the mayhem. sibusisiwe’s touch stains her cheeks in the stead of tears that have not been permitted to fall —— izara will not allow herself to succumb to that sightless death again ; will never be engulfed by the wellspring of her own power. she is spurred through the throng on fawn’s legs, quivering like a too-taut bowstring and buffeted by nothing other than abject terror. yet, yet, yet, there is a faint trilling in her ears that hushes even the shrieking of steel rending flesh, and the gentlest of tugs on her navel that quells even the frenzied heaving of her chest. it is to the other end of that tether which she goes, enchanted, lulled so wholly by its comfort that she forgets herself, forgets the treachery of her position —— until the whistling blade of a dagger clips the shell of her ear and she is reeling back into catastrophe.
blood is singing on the skin where dull iron met its mark. izara staggers into a crouch, then, as a white-winged fiend rounds unto her. his eyes are the hue of curdled milk, glazed and translucent in a way that obscures the irises ; the slack line of his crimson-wet maw warps into a leer as he stalks forth, convulsing with ire. curling into herself, she feels bird-bone thin again, marooned in the undercurrent with neither anchor nor lighthouse in sight from where she cowers on the prow of a floundering vessel. when his sword is hefted, its gleam is as savagely dark as the hull of a warship, and she shudders with a whimper that will never grow into a cry.
but the axe does not fall : her keeper arrives fleet-footed and celestial, sundering space to parry the mortal blow. iona. like the parting of storm-addled clouds to reveal the first scintilla of light after a thousand-year downpour, iona wreaths herself into view and suddenly, suddenly the world is aflush with colour again. the breath that took flight from izara’s lungs returns in a strangled gasp ; her limbs, once deadened with fear, thrum with renewed vigour and loosen as if thawed. pushing to her feet in a swift motion, izara sweeps up the dagger with unshaking fingers, slots herself into iona’s side —— rib to rib, as if they were always made to be phrased as halves —— and nods, firmly. ‘ we’ll make for the centre —— there are too many recesses here that, if backed into, will swallow us. ’ she does not quail as their assailant careens forth again, but drops nimbly to a knee and slits his thigh, opening a bone-deep gash that severs a tendon and incapacitates the leg. as we practiced.
closed: tyrian aurelius ( @shatterdark ) setting: his private quarters !
she doesn't normally drink much. in fact, she hadn't planned to drink at all while she was under the mountain. drinking dulled the senses, and even though the war ended when the high lords of winter, autumn and night lost their heads, there were still plenty of unresolved conflicts. she doesn't trust the other courts not to retaliate against adrius for the crimes committed by his father, and so sobriety made sense. she hadn't banked on feeling weighed down once the fighting stopped, worried about the family she'd found and can't bear to lose, and irritated by the direction fate is pushing her way. it's no wonder that she's slipped into the familiarity and comfort of old habits, and there's a bottle of faerie wine clutched in her grip. she knocks, leaning against the door frame when it opens. "tyrian. are you busy, or can i come in?"
𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 divinity is ever-sloping and ever-treacherous ; any overturned stone can billow into an avalanche. the slip into sacrilege and vice is a mere pivot away, and yet, tyrian prefers that trapeze to sure-footed equilibrium.
naturally, he is found in similar repose, slanted against the arm of a high-backed chair and skimming the details of a missive. at veila’s approach, his gaze flicks up and sharpens almost imperceptibly on her form. inclining his head, he ruminates over her profile as a poet pores over an oeuvre, transposing her features at present unto that of an iteration of her from before the war and sieving for change, for transformation, for growth. his desire is mnemonic, after all : it ensnares, most tenderly, in venomed bite, and hoards every fragment and fibre in a trove lined with devotion. his scent, white amber and cypress, prowls forth to greet hers and there it is, plain as day —— change. the delighted twist of his mouth is vulpine-like and unashamed of its own brazenness ; this is a marvel he can never have scried. ‘ veila, ’ he purrs, winding languidly around the armchair to welcome her. ‘ of course. the two have never been mutually exclusive —— though i dare say it has been forever and a day since we spoke. how fare you and the mate ? ’
Halle Bailey | The 61st Annual Grammy Awards
anaïs nin, the diary of anaïs nin, vol. I: 1931-1934
𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱,for @thorndheart. under the mountain. night-time.
𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 blood-warm turns of his cloak and leathers, kairos makes for town as the violet and maroon of eventide dim and become weighted with stars. the trek is a perverse pilgrimage : the terrors which harass him so pointedly in daylight are not laid to rest in the flurrying snow, but waxed and buffed to shine as lucidly as the canopy of jewels above. silhouetted against the snowscape, he appears formless, and almost capitulates to the shadows that clamber forth to encase him as he drifts into an alley. the street is aglow with reserved revelry : the war dithered to its end a fortnight ago, but the common folk cling to their small miracles as assuredly as an infant reaches out to grasp. a cat winds her bottlebrush tail around his ankle as she slinks by, purring to herself.
his office is as much chapel as it is abattoir. there, his woes and delights are liable in equal parts to exaltation and slaughter, indulgence and disdain. open wound, suture site, and scar. he begins his ascent of the stairway almost petulantly, leaning into his gait and striking the steps with more vigour than is strictly necessary. it is not until the backlit door has emerged from the gloom that an uncanny bout of vertigo takes him by the ear and renders him momentarily stunned. winded and reeling, he grasps the brass handle and gives a most violent twist —— only to go cold. there, a woman, tucked into the alcove between his desk and the sputtering fireplace. shawled in twilight and soaked in the flush of the hearth, she is a vision to behold. yet, the nausea does not abate. when he speaks, it is with a gravel that even he is unaccustomed to. ‘ it is quite late. how may i be of assistance to you ? ’
“He’s mourning me now. He’s imagining me eating away at someone else’s light. And that’s perfect.”
— Olena Kalytiak Davis, from “Angels and Moths,” And Her Soul Out Of Nothing (via lifeinpoetry)
𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱,for @azraehl. the threshold between the courts of night and day. war camp. dusk, a month before under the mountain.
𝘁𝘆𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 go easily into his grief. at first, everything and nothing was sticky with its hue —— all those leagues of silent, anguished grey. his mind’s eye is a fractured triptych : his mother, folded at the waist, ashen hair hanging lank at the sides of her sallow face ; the pegasus, lurching beneath him, and the spray of her ichor on his face ; and, most damnably, the inky seraph, cleaving the sky to halves in his trajectory to break tyrian’s fall. azrael. the gasp that fled his throat took that name for shape, then, as they veered to earth like meteors.
the hiss that parts tyrian’s lips now is reedy and snared ; it rattles against his teeth as he tries in vain to trap it. only then does he dip his chin to the notch between his clavicles and consider the gash, the furrow that meanders from shoulder to flank in perfect mimicry of the tear that put his mare to death. the skin, though puckered and rash-red, no longer weeps —— the healers salved and placated it as best they could, coaxing it with words of old and daubing onto it their best balms and poultices. flayed like a stag brought down onto an embalming table, he laid on the cot for a day and a night, clinging to his body as a newborn to its mother. no longer within, yet fearful that to return is to push something monstrous out. there’s nothing for it, he said, at last, when the wound-scar remained stunted and would not yield. it shall be a reminder always.
the press of him against his wards is as staggering as it is natural : outside, the sun is veering to earth also. before long, the moon will assume her consort's mantle —— he wonders if they will touch, if even in passing. a zephyr, small and childlike, curls against his ear and whispers, he is here. wretchedly, a memory lashes at tyrian’s back like the whip of a wyvern’s cutlass tail : he is half-crazed again, mouthing against the column of his throat to feel the motion of each swallow, each shuddering gasp, each strike of his pulse. he is wreathing his hand into that black-opal hair again, furling and unfurling his fingers to feel the tresses fan out on his palm like tendrils of smoke. it shall be a reminder always. as surely as the stars know distance, as one constellation grieves the uncrossable chasm that flanks the next. such is the interim between day and night, their deathless rupture, their lifeless rapture, a haunting that can never be soothed. and it was just a little like holding death to his chest, too, but if death is close then so is life, and they are nothing if not an unbreakable conflation of both.
unfurling now, tyrian laughs, low and pleased. the sound pours from his maw like nectar from an overturned chalice, slow to come into its own. ‘ azrael. ’
𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱,for @dcybrck peritia of the day court. the palace, audience hall. midday. a fortnight before under the mountain.
𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀, tyrian has held vigil on the light-varnished dais, throned in the infernal chair that once heaved under his father’s vapidity. the late patriarch’s tenure of lordship dulled the pale, empyrean gold of their family’s distinction and cast a centuries-long shadow that the sun can no sooner move out of.
the audience hall is limned in the white-gold of high noon, and the draperies skirting the length of each limestone wall stir faintly as a breeze sifts through the open mouths of stained-glass windows. the baroness with whom he has been conferring has ceased her snivelling ; her cause, it seems, is lost. her proposition of recompense for the assets she was divested of in a dreadful break from her husband —— loyalist in sentiment, and entirely unembarrassed of his crimes —— is no singular appeal. for seven days, tyrian has been preached at, bargained with, and perhaps most absurdly —— lied to. ‘ do you mean to refute your hand in the enslavement of two mortal families on the outskirts of the capital ? or your attempt to slip them away through the underpasses when your mate was captured ? ’ he is sorry to see her features blanch like yarrow in scalding water, their severity slackening into fright ; so, she thought herself untouchable by rite of widowhood. the baroness beats a hasty retreat, lowering herself into a curtsy and vanishing through the archway with one of his sentinels in tow.
‘ leave us, please. ’ the command crawls out, rough as grit, and clatters through the chamber. briefly startled, his attendants halt in their motions to peer at him. at the answering curve of his lips, they loosen like seeds from a dandelion’s head, trickling through the archway and leaving the fatigue of the morning’s labour with their high lord. rising to his feet, tyrian moves to stand by a window. as the sun wheels overhead, a shaft of her light arrests his face, slanting across ivory eyes that do not cringe away but flare impossibly brighter, as if leeching radiance.
her footfalls come so softly, only he can have heard. he will recognise them anywhere, at any end, even after the stars have been extinguished and the heavens bite the earth. ‘ she will be lowered into the ground on the morrow. ’ the air ripples and splinters at the flex of his fingers, recoiling from his mute agitation. tyrian looks squarely at her, then, the first in seven days, and he feels his heart lurch ; remembers it is there at all. there, unbidden : i would gorge on the world for you. i would spit out only the parts that you pick out, that strengthen and nourish you. ‘ after, i will retreat to the libraries —— there is something i must make certain of. would you like to hold audience on your own ? ’
The Promise (2016) dir. Terry George
open : for everyone ! settting : the dining hall !
it was no easy thing to move on from the past. it had been no time at all since the war had come to a close, her father and the other high lords killed for what they put the country through. she knows plenty may even blame her, as though she would be insane enough to move against her tyrant of a father whilst he still held onto power. there was very little she could do about all of that, and her focus has shifted to the things she could control. keeping up moral in her new court for one, reminding them that it won't be long until they finally get to go home. distractions worked well to keep them entertained for now, and her table was filled with laughter and smiles as they sat there sharing either bald truths or secrets. her own smile is wide as she looks up at the figure growing closer to her table. "and what about you? any secrets to share that are worth my time?"
𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 feasting in the wake of war is scarcely lost on her —— it is a rare and terrible thing to consider the bronze platters and their torrential bounty when their brazen excess is so acutely hounded by the contours of lack that darkened the world over. izara slips easily into the glove of well-manicured pretense as she draws near, ever the vision of complicity. her fingers, curled loosely at her sides, are lined with a strain that obscures itself behind the sheen of signet rings and unblemished skin. the silk of her gown —— of monteserian make, she was told —— hitches with a sigh as she slides into a seat. izara soaks her signet-ringed fingers shamelessly in a chalice of nectar, then, as she beholds videlia. in her molten, newly-cast glory, the high lady of autumn appears nothing short of hallucinogenic. ‘ is that all it would take to please you ? ’ she beams, then —— a show of teeth. ‘ no, i’ve nothing so crude as a secret. what about a truth ? ’