#aphone ire

[the-sisters-library]

Has it really been a year since I’ve posted?

I guess, between the end of the Siege series and a lot of real life changes, I never quite came back here.

But I’ve found something new that I adore and want to share. This is from the short story collection Era of Ruin, technically a Siege of Terra book. It’s a short story collection that gives snapshots of what happened after the Siege, or in some cases during the Siege in the less-glamorous parts of the fight.

The short story is called “Fragments (All We Have Left)” and it features Aphone. Remember Aphone? The Silent Sister who was Jenetia Krole’s second in command? And some theorize, more?

Aphone is Absolutely Magnificent. This story is worth a read but if you don’t intend to, here’s her shining moment below:

[inquisitor-gayfax]

By Any Other Name

Jenetia Krole knows not which came first: the fondness, or the name. Aphone's appellation was part chance, part marvel, and though the Soulless Queen remains scarcely less protective of her own secrets than those she forsook her tongue to safekeep, something bade her reveal one that day: 

I knew an Aphone, once.

Later, Jenetia will surname this second Aphone ‟Ire,” after a fury all her own.

Later still, as Jenetia clings tightly to this Aphone in parting embrace, she will both love her and remember the one who came before her: a woman forever enshrined in her heart.

My wife.

read it on ao3

2026 Femslash February Drabbles 1 (Jenetia Krole/Aphone Ire) | 2 (Saint Celestine/Katarinya Greyfax) | 3 (Lelith Hesperax/Morghana Nathrax)

[inquisitor-gayfax]

Trick or treat!

Thank you!! For Halloween, it seems appropriate to post a snippet from my WIP library horror longfic for my favorite soulless girls, Jenetia Krole and Aphone!

Reader beware, spooooooky stuff beneath the cut!

It is the tang of iron-rich water on your tongue, the fleeting scent of heavy woodsmoke, the shriek of tearing metal and rivets set free, the shiver of inevitability that courses through you despite your every effort, the prickle and stench of your own fear.

It is the light of glowing eyes, so bright, locked upon yours, as if to say “only you.” Only you can see the thing that spells your doom, can taste the moment it moves from potential to inevitable.

The details sharpen, become a moving mass of fur, and scales, and fangs so crystal clear you could almost touch them. It is every color, alternatingly mundane and flagging brightly like a peacock, whatever it needs to bewitch you, to make you see nothing else, until all you can think of is crying out to ensure you are real.

It provokes that basest of instincts, self-preservation, and turns it against you. Even knowing that silence is your only salvation, your throat seems to clog with words unsaid, revulsion unexpressed, cries of horror that never find their way out.

It chokes those unused to this burden, leaving them gasping in want of an outflow, stumbling through the halls, hand over mouth, seeking to fling themselves free of the great gate to scream at an always-overcast sky.

And sometimes, they even make it.

[inquisitor-gayfax]

Speaking of Jenetia Krole (a thing I'm always doing whenever the opportunity arises), I wanted to share some lore Aphone Ire drops in Fragments: (All We Have Left) (a short story in the Era of Ruin anthology) because it's new, not widely-known, and very important to our understanding of Jenetia Krole's life.

tldr: though Jenetia was the first of the Silent Sisterhood, she joined as an adult, not a child, and may have had a family of her own in her prior life.

My mentor, Jenetia, once said that she had known an Aphone once. That’s all. She seldom spoke – by which I mean used thoughtmark, as we all do, according to our Oath of Tranquillity – and shared her own stories even less often. But from the comment, I got the feeling that Aphone had been her sister, perhaps, or her daughter. Why would someone who said so little mention it at all if it didn’t matter?

...I liked that my mentor had mentioned it to me. It was something to cherish, something, if only imagined, that seemed personal. My mentor had lived a life of her own, a whole life, before she was inducted into the Sisterhood. Jenetia Krole… that was her actual name, not something chosen off a list. I envied her that. I envied the life she had led, however hard, before her induction.

- Fragments (All We Have Left), by Dan Abnett