#ashenail

[edensbite]

@ashenail sent : " and why are you covered in blood this time ? "

for a moment eden almost allows her mask to slip, but in a single blink a smile slides over her lips, though perhaps one too uncanny when it doesn't stretch far enough to reach her eyes. she reaches up to brush a trail of blood running down her cheek with the pad of her thumb, staring pointedly at him as she pops it into her mouth to clean it off. it looks like a battlefield massacre, save for the single dim bulb hanging by a wire from the basement cellar's ceiling above an old wooden chair where someone had been sitting. eden's gaze shifts to the far back corner of the cellar where she'd started stockpiling everyone once she went through them; they were already dead, playing vessel and host to something beyond their control.

" i got hungry, obviously, " eden says in a deadpan, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. turning to fully face locke, she clasps her hands together, her lips pulling into a sickeningly saccharine smile. " you're late. i got started without you. "

inbox prompts / always accepting.

[elegaria]

it felt like the fall of the aspects, their swords clashing over blood-bright horizons beneath the glaring sun and well into the arms of the weeping moon. not so dramatic, perhaps, but it spelled the end of the world, the end of her world, fleeing the walls of the city she called home as magic, her magic, crackled at her fingertips. in one fell swoop, sona lost her family, her home, her friends, her legacy. the dishonored daughter of house buvelle, disgraced for being the very thing demacia feared most. she'd never taken a life before that night. sona never knew she was capable of it, but there's little else more frightening than someone trapped in a corner without escape.

for all the studying she did of demacia's geography and the world beyond, it's an entirely different beast to be thrust into the wild of dark woods and dim skies alone. without a map, without a plan, without a single piece of gold to her name. only her etwahl, ever faithful, soul-bound and heavy in her conscience. but despite the magic in her veins, sona is no mage: she is untrained and doesn't know the first thing about fighting. even if she did, she isn't sure if she would be able to make the choice to weaponize the melodies she'd never known could be lethal.

she doesn't know the first chord to strike, back pressed against the rough bark of a towering redbark tree. it feels ridiculous, slashing her fingers across the etwahl's strings, but it won't speak to her now, and the melodies are coming out all wrong; sona's panicking, frantic with each helpless strum as the creature advanced closer and closer. the etwahl steals her voice, and still it will not come to her rescue — maybe it can't.

starter for @ashenail.

[edensbite]

double-edged words, like always, with her lips as the knife, her teeth its sharpened edges. eden watches him quietly, carefully, studying him like she's cataloguing everything into memory storage for later. the ease with which he reclines into her gold-trimmed black velvet couch, the glint of silver maneuvering between his fingers. she almost grins, there; she has no doubt something like that could kill her. most things can, really. immortal, not indestructible, invulnerable.

" you seem to keep company with them quite well, " eden says at last, her expression impassive but with the faintest sheen of amusement, though it's mostly for locke's sake. for a moment she wonders — maybe even hopes in that morbidly macabre way of hers that dances too closely within death's reach just to feel anything that isn't numbing cold — what it might feel like, if locke turned his nails onto her. she smiles evenly, settling onto the open space beside him. her legs cross at her knees and rests her elbow onto the sofa's armrest, places her chin in her hand, and peers at locke. " i think i play the masquerade nicely, don't you think? say, do you have a favorite monster? "

@ashenail / continued from [ . . . ]