So my brain spiralled out while thinking of scenarios and I got disappointed bc I'm pretty sure that structurally, I should do The Ritual next (the one Robin interrupts). But then I remembered this is a notfic. So fuck it. Here's some more fucked up cult stuff.
[TW for more of the same for this 'verse. Cult stuff and Gore and sexual content.]
In a traditional narrative these things would probably come out later. Scenes of Bernard talking to various people. Mostly Teen Titans and Young Justice, with a smattering of Batfam depending on the focus of the rest of the fic. And Bernard just casually mentioning things in an offhand way (and then we get a brief flashback to what really happened). In @coconutjelly's fic, Kon mentions Bernard making jokes about spanking and whips and chains and this is like that.
I was studying yesterday and got to a section on Cryoablation and my brain, as it does, went "what if cold???" and then I recorded a fic about hypothermia today and that just cemented it. Bernard has experienced Cold. Both hypothermia style and cold so sharp it burned. The hypothermia was with a walk in freezer. I haven't fully figured out this scenario so feel free to chime in, but it definitely involves him slowly succumbing to hypothermia and maybe starvation while someone fucks him slowly and softly. Bernard is pretty sure that's the first time he actually died. They said they brought him back before his heart stopped but he knows what it feels like to have D bring him back and he's pretty sure that was it.
As for the sharp cold. Sometimes you're at a party and someone brings some liquid nitrogen to do the banana trick and you think "what if I shoved my hand in there?" - the Cult of Dionysus isn't known for controlling those intrusive thoughts. Which leads to people cheering and screaming and that guy that you think is so fucking hot finally looking at you and you end up on your knees sucking him off as he cracks the tips of your fingers off one by one. And you orgasm at the feeling of the entire thing shattering down to your wrist. Bernard's come from weirder sensations than the sharp burning there-and-gone pain of his entire hand shattering. Besides, now he has super fine scars over his entire hand. Perfectly preserving the moment. One ice and one fire. Eventually he'll be the avatar.
The second scenario is because I was, again, studying and this time it was needles and wires involved and I wondered - what if fish hooks? Which is why Bernard now has a story to tell to Aquaman about how he knows how much fishhooks hurt. There was a girl from the docks who was learning to be a piercer and Bernard's wanted dick piercings since he first saw someone with them in the Cult and one thing led to another and. well. he was wandering around the cult meeting with his dick out and displaying the fishhooks ladder. High fiving the person who said his dick was now a "fish ladder". Later, the piercer rode his dick with the hooks still in before ripping them out and leaving him to wander around with his bloody torn open dick and wondering how he was going to hide the bleeding in his crotch from his college roommate. [sidebar, did Bernard go to college? did he dorm??] He woke up in his bed the next morning with the ladder back - this time with more of those eerie fused barbells.
The third scenario happened because I was trying to think of who Bernard could make these remarks to and realized the gold that is Jason crashing a fake date with Tim. Jason is crashing it because this guy is super sketchy and he's trying to make up for almost killing Tim that one time. Gotta make sure little bro is being treated right. Only then Bernard turns to him and is like "...you're his older brother and Not Dick Greyson....." and then sees the edge of his autopsy scar and is all "oh hey! I've got one of those too! But you were probably dead for yours weren't you. Dunno how to feel about that. Like, on the one hand the pain of the scalpel is sharp and the sensation of the saw cutting through your sternum and ribs is like nothing else but the sensation of having someone literally hold your still beating heart in your hand? Makes me want to get heart surgery with no anasthetic. Makes me wish this guy *gesture at Tim* was a trained surgeon." And. well. what can Jason do in the face of that but retreat.
[and now I need to back away slowly from that scenario because otherwise I'm going to start shipping Bernard/Jason with the angle of "survived a death cult"]
And as for the last thing - and this finally leads us once again closer to The Ritual: @coconutjelly linked me to this post:
💬 3 🔁 1 ❤️ 13 · "You will have river-water enough when you drink the fatal water of Akheron (Acheron). Your belly swells already with the
And when I read it I think I got a little muddled with the bit about Lethe because I assumed the water of Akheron had some memory shit going on but I can work with this.
So I said that my Cult of Dionysus was a pretty Dry cult. there's some drinking but mostly not by people who do the sensation stuff because drinking tends to dull the physical senses. And hard drugs are generally also a no because of the same reason. They mess with your ability to really feel. [I say as someone who barely drinks much less has experience with hard drugs, I could be wrong here.] But everyone in the cult knows that sometimes the punch is spiked with the water of Akheron and that it increases pain a thousandfold and messes with your memory. And for years Bernard assumes that's what's happening to him. He didn't actually blow a hole in his hand with a blowtorch - he just felt like it. He didn't actually have his nipples ripped out or his dick torn apart or his hand shattered - that was the Water of Akheron talking.
Only then he gets inducted into the true Believer part of the cult - the parts that do the rituals and stuff. Because even with thinking his memory is fucked up, the physical evidence is there and deep down, unconsciously, he believes. And the set up for the induction ceremony is so tame. Just a bunch of cushions on the floor and a goblet in the middle.
the Water of Akheron Fucks. Bernard. Up.
He's never had to miss school or work or anything because of Cult activity but this takes him out for a week.
He's never felt pain like that before. And he never will again until the day it all comes crashing down.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Apostate is a Lovecraftian crime horror with themes some might find objectionable in later chapters. While nothing more than a description of a dead body is shown in chapter one, please be mindful of triggers listed in my pinned post.
TAG LIST: @lord-fallen @coffeexafterxmidnight @philosophika (please send an ask or dm to be added)
Chapter One
Bell Baylor hated the heat and its miserable twin, humidity. Sweat clung, caul-like, on his forehead as he stood in the field beneath a haint-blue sky. He hated the feeling of the sunscreen he’d smeared on his face as a half-measure, streaking deep into the lines of his face. The sun melted the crust of sunscreen and made it drip down his temples, a mixture of sweat and chemicals colored a bone-bleached white.
He hated the sound of the cicadas too, screaming their lusty songs from the trees, haunting him since he’d gotten here. He hated the empty creek bed in front of him, all dried up and dead. It had been full of life once.
So had the man laying in it. Now both man and creek lay empty, dry as a bone in the hot Georgia sun.
Red clay clung to bone as rust did to iron, and cave-hollow skull sockets stared up at him. Doctors Cargill and Lal had brushed carefully against the ribs as if they’d found a pharaoh’s tomb, but nothing could quite mute the vivid orange tone to the lower half of the body that had sunk into the creekbed. The prickled brush of a heat-dead tree-line a hundred yards away did little to shield them from vivid sky-fire beating down, but flame hadn’t faded traces of mud from bone quite yet.
‘Found him when the crick dried up,’ the property owner had proudly told the local police. ‘Was making some rounds when a cow got loose and found his hand reaching up out of it. Scared the shit outta me, I’ll tell you that.’
The creek had been deeper once, Bell knew, full of life and death in all its forms--deep enough to cover the body of a fully grown male and get him stuck deep down in the mud and rock and red clay in this part of Georgia.
But it didn’t make too much sense for the suspected homicide victim to end up in Slaughter County, regardless of what the name of the place may have implied. It was out in the middle of nowhere, at least until the chemical plant had moved in and made it somewhere at last. Bell could imagine the locals kicking and screaming about that the whole time too, from what he’d seen so far. Still, the plastic ID card near the body had read the name plain as day, even through mud streaks and sun-bleaching.
Brandon Severin, 24, male, white, recent fifth-year senior graduate of Georgia State University, disappeared from Atlanta nearly two years prior. Known for party-heavy behavior which delayed his graduation and lost him part of his left pinkie finger in a dazzling display of stupidity at a kegger.
So much could have stolen the finger on the corpse after death, Bell reminded the over-eager deputy who’d briefed him: fish, frogs, the rush of current. It didn’t have to be Severin’s body, even with the identification card. It might not be. They’d have to wait for dental records, he insisted, even as he eyed the file that listed Severin had veneers.
The smile of them was unnerving even to Bell. They were as bleached-white as the rest of him, with a wrongness none of them would speak aloud. Still, he was sure all of them felt it, even Luther, and Luther wasn’t type to be easily unnerved.
Supposedly, Severin had gotten a job interview in Savannah that didn’t actually exist. State police couldn’t find proof of it at least. Friends had claimed he’d been depressed, and police theorized he’d gone off to end it with a convenient lie to delay the search for a body or a suicide note. When his car had been found near Lake Lanier, that theory had solidified. While the case was still officially open, the police in Atlanta hadn't seen it as pressing–at least not if the files Bell read on the way over were any indicator. They hadn’t drained that cursed lake before for more urgent cases, more pressing closures. They weren’t ready to drain Lake Lanier for a party boy with a death wish, even if his rich parents were hollering to the news about it.
The creek before Bell didn’t connect to Lake Lanier. Instead, it connected to Lake Troxler, another large man-made lake dug out and filled when the plant moved nearby into Besant. While it lay in roughly equal distance between Atlanta and Savannah, the town was a convenient through point for neither.
Dr. Lal’s head appeared from behind the shoddy barrier around the creek.
“Agent Baylor? The ribs are the same as New Orleans.”
Bell shared a glance with Luther Tanner, his partner agent in this mess sent with him to the furnace of hell that was Georgia in high summer. He’d hadn’t known the man for too long. In many ways, he was still as much a mystery as Severin and his disappearance and Bonds down in New Orleans. They’d had the case file dropped on their desks four months ago up in Quantico. If it weren’t for the New Orleans case and the nightmares it brought them both, the box of loosely interconnected files probably wouldn’t even exist. Bell wouldn’t have even met the man beside him as more than a passerby in the halls. Just another box shape with steel gray hair, sharp eyes, and ill-fitted suit.
Not that he wasn’t getting there, he reminded himself, save the box-shape that at least implied he was at least fit at one point.
“We’ll see if we can connect Severin to Bonds.” Luther sighed, and Bell watched as the man’s fingers twitched for a cigarette as he spoke.
How many years had it been since he’d quit smoking, if he quit? Bell had seen the bottom of a nicotine patch on Luther’s arm earlier, the outline still whispering beneath the thinner fabric of a summer shirt. His own father had quit cigarettes when Bell was twenty-four but wore the nicotine patches till he’d died two years ago. Never stopped drinking. No way to know with some people. Addiction was funny like that. It pursued people in funny little ways, all their lives, invisible to the gaze of others.
Luther met his eyes looking at his twitching fingers and sighed, shaking his head, before stomping off through the field. It would have been a lot more dramatic, if the crunch of the grass wasn’t so quietly pathetic. With a quick glance back into the black, blank eyes-that-should-have-been of their victim, Bell followed through the tall, crackling stalks.
Luther had been on edge since they’d arrived in Besant, Georgia, with this new, familiar slaying; because of New Orleans, Bell had thought, surely. Luther would want to touch base with him about that, of that he was certain. What had happened in New Orleans kept the wheels of his mind turning constantly since it had happened those months ago, grinding his life to a stop and throwing off sparks like a train with a pulled emergency brake.
Only it wasn’t New Orelans. It was Besant itself.
What had once been a near-ghost town had only gained more people recently with the arrival of the petrochemical plant. Havich Industries had claimed yet more space in the American landscape with its flagship plant deep in the heart of the American South. Bell had heard the Havich family lived out here too. They followed the money.
And a lot of people followed them.
Bell sure had thoughts on that.
Bastards, the lot of them, like most with ungodly money. If it weren’t for the heat, he’d be breaking out in hives from the sheer obscenity of the building on the ridge pouring out smoke and tainting the beauty of the open sky.
But Luther wasn’t Bell, and obscenity wasn’t why Luther was on edge.
“You said something about your son living round here?” Bell kept his voice low. He wasn’t sure if Cargill and Lal, the pathologists the Bureau had sent with them, knew much about Agent Tanner, but he was sure that was entirely purposeful on the older man’s part. Hell, he only knew a little. Enough to be dangerous. Luther’s jaw clenched. He talked less about his son than he did his wife, and Bell figured it had to be on purpose. Bell was sure if they weren’t here, weren’t where Calvin was, that he might not even know the young man’s name.
Luther knew Bell’s sons' names, of course. He knew them before Bell had told him, and he knew Diane’s name too. Luther was that sort of agent.
“I take it that’s an issue.” Bell continued speaking through Luther’s brick-wall silence. He was used to it. If Luther thought he could gain advantage over his curiosity with the tricks of stubborn adolescence, he was wrong.
“It’s not an issue.”
“You sure?”
“It’s not an issue for this case, Baylor.”
Bell paused before nodding, glancing back at the taped off creekbed as he did so. Luther had only started using first names recently, despite all of their work together. He couldn’t find it in himself to be too surprised that he’d slide back to surnames at the first sign of irritation with Bell. He couldn’t even find it in himself to be irritated. His emotional capacity for the day had leaked out his sweat glands with what he was sure was the rest of his brain and insides. He didn’t have time for Luther’s personal problems.
“So.” Bell wiped an errant string of sweat-soaked black hair from his line of sight. “You think the director’s right about this being a serial? Hell of a coincidence if it isn’t, I think. With the way the bones look and all.”
Luther nodded, before cracking a small awkward smile. Bell had learned this was his equivalent of a slap on the arm, all masculine gesturing, all reassurances, all the little things he’d so rarely been included on in life, even at the FBI.
“You ever see the sun a day in your life, or did they bring you out of the basement for this one to fuck with you?”
A glass-breaking laugh cracked from Bell before he could stop it, but thankfully Luther had heard it enough in the last four months that he didn’t wince at the sound like many did.
“They–,” Bell stammered through laughter, “they thought I needed enrichment outside of my enclosure.”
Luther’s laugh was barkish, bulldog that he was, and his head tossed back with it. A pair of local deputies sent off glances between them and the scene of discovery, but said nothing. Bell wondered if they’d ever had a case involving the FBI. They hadn’t even touched base with the sheriff yet; they’d all got in at 0200 this morning and fallen asleep for a bittersweetly cursed five hours before leaving the air-conditioned oasis of the hotel in the morning for the scene.
It was more sleep than they got in New Orleans.
Breaking the moment with a nod, Luther stalked back over to the side of the ditch, craning his neck down about two feet from the edge. He’d fallen in once. Bell didn’t know it for sure in his mind, but he did in his gut, from the way the agent held himself.
He’d fallen once too, early in his days with the FBI. Stepped wrong off a muddy lick of solid ground into a mass grave near the aptly named Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia. His foot had caved a skull, rotted through with the seep of the bog and face bloated beyond recognition even before his clumsy idiocy. It sounded like the crunch of wet and rotten cabbage being split open. Nearly twenty years on, and he remembered the sound.
If Luther tripped, it would sound like the crunch of pottery underfoot, shattering so much history of the tomb Severin had fallen silent in. Bell had been lucky back then for dental records and lessons learned. They were lucky here for more than that. He stood by Luther and watched the doctors work with the rest of the forensics team weaving through the area around them like ants to their queens.
“Chances of finding anything around the area aren't good. Been too long.” Luther gestured at the body, before patting his shirt pocket reflexively. Nonexistent pack, Bell thought before replying.
“What do you think about the ID card?”
Luther bit his fingernail, seemingly uncaring of the black build-up beneath them.
“I think we’re either very lucky and our killer is very stupid or–” He gestured at Bell to complete his thought.
“Or the killer left it here on purpose.”
“Or Severin here really did fall into the lake.” There was a dark twinkle of humor to Luther’s eyes. “And went twenty rounds with a gator.”
“I doubt that.” Both men looked down at the bemused face of Dr. Cargill, who stood hands on hips staring up at them with wide brown eyes. “I can’t tell you yet without a full examination, but the wounds look purposeful.”
“Thank you, Rhoda.” Luther smiled a bit ruefully, shaking his head. Bell wondered if Luther’s nature was why he got the social misfits of the agency like himself and Dr. Cargill attached to his cases. He seemed to have a patience for the weird, or at least put up a good facade that he did.
Dr. Cargill hummed and went back to excavating the last bit of the body with Dr. Lal. Bell wondered if she handled the heat better with her shaved head. His own father had gone bald, and while Bell hadn’t seen any signs of that happening in his own life, he was afraid to test fate by taking the razor to it.
“Too much water damage too, before it all turned to clay and red dust.” Dr. Lal didn’t even look up from her work. “I don’t believe you’ll find any DNA or identifiable particulates on the body after the water and heat damage.”
Luther shrugged, turning towards a sound down field. The kick up of that same dried blood dust and the hum of an engine came from a distance. Bell heard Luther huff a small laugh before he realized that whoever was making their way towards them was being escorted by the property’s owner on the back of a UTV. The deputies stood straighter, as it approached.
The sheriff then.
Luther reached a hand into the ditch to help Cargill and Lal up the embankment, while Bell approached the UTV. Sheriff Harlowe was a tall man; his knees folded in an awkward slope towards the footboards of the machine. He looked less like a sheriff, Bell thought, and more like an Appalachian mountain man. He imagined that the sudden increase in population hadn’t done much for the man’s attitude or number of gray beard hairs, but despite that he’d been the sheriff for the past twenty-some-odd years.
He looked it. The thought was uncharitable of Bell, he knew, but the man had the kind of skin that had been tanned and hardened as tough as whitleather. Wrinkles sat like divots in the parts of his face that weren’t concealed by beard or brows or the longish mane of salt-pepper-rust hair that stuck out in wild strands from under his hat. He’d been the sheriff for twenty-some-odd years, yes, but Bell couldn’t tell if he had another twenty in him.
Harlowe’s father was the sheriff before him, he’d been told. Besant, Georgia had been that sort of town once. The wisp of white smoke coming over the hills from the direction of the plant was as much a marker of desolation as it was progress.
“It Severin?”
The sheriff’s voice was roughly chewed gravel sifted through an ashtray. It reminded Bell of his father’s at its root, all Marlboro and masculine posturing. The accent was different, oceans apart, but the core was familiar. Bell wasn’t sure how he felt about that, not yet at least.
“We’re not 100% yet, but the evidence is pointing towards that.” Bell glanced sideways at the property owner, who was eyeing him with an almost affectionate sense of doubt he was sure was reserved for the most well-meaning Northerners. Harlowe gave him a nod, a friendly dismissal abided by. The sheriff waited till the UTV had turned and cleared the area before he turned back to Bell.
“You Tanner or Baylor?”
“Sorry, yes, Agent Bellamy Baylor. Bell or Baylor, either work.”
“Agent Luther Tanner.”
Bell turned slightly, as Luther wiped sweaty hands on trousers and extended one in greeting towards the sheriff. He hadn’t offered his own hand, but then neither had the sheriff. The man seemed skeptical as it was of Luther, who was cut more from the same cloth of machismo.
“Boone Harlowe. Either name is fine. Ladies?”
“Yes,” Luther nodded towards the two lead analysts they’d brought along. “Dr. Rhoda Cargill and Dr. Bhavani Lal.”
“A pleasure.” Dr. Cargill moved forward for a handshake, which the Sheriff seemed mildly surprised by, but shook her hand nonetheless. Bell wondered if the issue was one of race or gender or even her shaved head and nose ring, settling quickly on the matter of gender, as Harlowe tipped the brim of his hat to Dr. Lal next.
“Nice to meet you, Sheriff.”
“You as well, ma’am. Ma’am. You the uh…”
“Forensic pathologists.” Lal nodded towards Cargill.
“Yes, sir. Dr. Lal and I are leading the investigation into the body itself. Our team is combing the area for any trace evidence. Unfortunately, given the time frame, it’s unlikely there’s anything notable that’s lasted this long.”
“How long y’all think it’s been?”
“We can’t be sure until we’ve gotten him into a lab, but I would estimate he died shortly after his disappearance.” The sheriff nodded, turning from Lal to Cargill.
“Small mercy, I suppose. I’m guessing it’s not a drowning, Doc?”
Dr. Cargill shook her head and released an uncharacteristic sigh. She had a high and breathy voice, and the noise sounded almost musical–a lilting dirge to the deceased.
Bell sighed too, despite himself, glancing back at the creek bed. The skeleton was covered by the rise of the embankment, but he could see it–could see New Orleans–in his mind’s eye. The split of ribs. The wild slices of blade or animal teeth down to bone. The lack of eyes and ears and tongue. There had been flesh left in New Orleans. There had not been enough flesh left in New Orleans.
There were no mercies for Brandon Severin, great or small.
“Taking that as a no, huh Baylor?”
Bell shook his head, snapping back to reality to see the others giving him a concerned glance. He tried for a weak smile, feeling the crust of sunscreen crack in the lines of his forehead. Lal seemed to have a small mercy on him.
“It’s highly unlikely his death was a result of drowning.” Dr. Lal’s tone was as matter-of-fact as if she were describing the shape of the earth. “At least not without multiple major contributing factors that would have resulted in death otherwise.”
Bell had known Bhavani far longer than Luther. He knew less about her than he did of the other agent. He did appreciate her demeanor though, just warm enough to keep her overly clinical speech from making her appear unempathetic. Not that they were in need of warmth here. Since arriving, they’d been suffocating in a sauna of Southern hospitality and politeness, more cloying and clinging than even the sheen of sweat.
“So he was dumped here?” The Sheriff nodded towards the ditch.
“Or the lake, yes, and flowed down here where he got stuck. That seems most likely. There is a massive injury to his chest cavity. Given…prior encounters with a similar case, I would hazard that this was his cause of death.”
Lal seemed hesitant to give this much information. Too many assumptions.
“Serial killer then?”
There it was.
“Too early to tell,” Luther rebutted quickly. “We’re not ruling anything out, though.”
“It is, then.” Harlowe seemed sure of himself, and Bell sighed.
“It’s complicated.”
“How–”
Luther’s firm voice cut the sheriff off.
“It’s complicated. But again, we aren’t ruling anything out.”
A cloud the shape of a file box shadowed Bell’s mind. No need to worry anyone local. Not yet at least, but the sheriff looked as skeptical as Bell felt. And why shouldn’t he? Before the plant had moved in Besant was unincorporated, known for nothing more than a horse breeding facility. Harlowe had the demeanor of a man who had a fine discernment for horse shit, a sommelier of lies that got caught up in good breeding.
The white smoke lingered above the hillside.
“Woulda hated to see him before he was just a pile of bones,” Harlowe commented from somewhere just behind Bell’s shoulder. His mind had meandered at some point during the muffled conversation. It was wont to do that more and more these days, especially since they’d been called to the Bonds case. He wondered if he should bother worrying about it. It seemed that he had so much to worry over, particularly corpses in creeks and swamps and ditches and run-off trenches.
He’d ruined enough by putting worry off in his life. What was a little more?
Bell lingered near the back of the group, only vaguely listening to their conversation, instead staring between them, below them, into Severin’s empty eye sockets. Nothing else could be done in the field at this point. They’d have to transport body and earth and particulates alike back to the cold closet of a medical examiner’s office in the local hospital’s basement, hoping all the way that no equipment broke in transportation. Or, he held back a sigh, anything they had to send away for analysis got lost in the mail. It had happened more than he cared to admit. More than the FBI would publicly admit either.
“You’ll have to push the gurney back up towards the gravel road. We ain’t getting the morgue truck down here, not anytime soon, especially with how well it’s holding up. Hey--”
The sheriff had turned a glare to the younger of his deputies.
“No smoking. Dry as kindling out here, you’re gonna light yourself and the whole damn field on fire. Jesus Christ.”
Addiction was funny like that, Bell thought for the second time that day.
He tamped down a wry smile, even as the young man tried to hide his sins and move to help with the removal of the body. Luther and Harlowe shared glances reserved for men with sons older than Bell’s own, as they helped the doctors back down the embankment. Pathologists lingered like fruit flies, as the choir of cicadas rose their pitch and volume till they were drowning out all else.
He wasn’t sure how he spotted it. The line of beech trees was nearly a hundred yards away, and the malformation was small. Could be a trick of light. Could be any number of things. Something called him still, some strange feeling wriggling in the back of his mind, like the melody of a familiar, forgotten song. He couldn’t place it. He was sure he’d never felt it before. It felt known to him despite that.
Bell looked beyond the others towards the tree line and began walking. Even a hundred yards away in the meandering windbreak of beech trees, the sound of cicadas was overwhelming. It thrummed in cacophony against the internal music of his soul, and were he asked later, he couldn’t tell anyone what compelled him to walk towards the line of bone-white beech trees sticking awkwardly along the boundaries of the field. Not truthfully. Not without sounding insane.
He could claim the carving was visible, just barely from the creek bed. That the sun had crept in and the lighting had been just right to pique Bell’s curiosity. None of that was true. They’d know that. Or would they ask? If it helped, would anyone care? The grass crunched beneath his feet. The corpses of dead cicadas crunched beneath his feet.
The trees grew closer.
The marking was carved into the tree and partially covered by the clinging corpse of a southern grass cicada. Bell resisted the urge to brush it to the ground, and instead slipped it into a small plastic bag he’d carried in his pocket. He felt dizzy from the heat. The screams of the insects swarmed into the songs of a calliope, and his mind spun in a tortuous carousel race. Why? He bent down and leaned in close, fingers and eyes searching the bark of the tree.
The marking was a rudimentary drawing of a man, arms and legs splayed out in an X-shape and head a simple circle. Above the head were scratched lines not unlike a crown, and the arms and legs ended in similarly scratched claws.
It made him lightheaded in ways he couldn’t understand. The cicadas pressed in, ever present sonic warfare bombarding whatever sense he had that hadn’t already been overtaken by the oppressive heat. The caul of sweat and the shrieking cries of new life overwhelmed him.
Bell’s vision swam. He vaguely registered the crown of the trees filtering out the haint-blue sky. He felt himself falling, falling, falling, and he tried to reach out, to claw towards the tree, but could find no purchase there.
hey guys just got back from a vacation heres a quick angst post
(if you would like to translate what he is saying for the lore, the cipher is called greenrune!! made by thealchemybook on tiktok!!!! its so cool i love it)
