#cw. gore

[kreidxpriz]

fine dining

cw. eating some raw chunk of flesh and eyeballs

[ajransome]

WHEN: Friday, 3 December, 1980; late afternoon  WHERE: DMLE Offices, London  WHO: A.J. Runcorn & Alice Shafiq ( @shafiqalice​ )

The clock neared five, and A.J. knew that the likelihood of leaving work at a respectable hour was slim—even though it was a Friday. Truthfully, they didn’t mind it. Being tucked away in a dimly lit, private facility within the DMLE had turned into a sanctuary for A.J., but they had always been something of a macabre soul. Not everyone could spend most hours of the week autopsying the dead, trying to uncover what magic ripped life from their bodies. A.J. Runcorn wasn’t most people, and they preferred it that way. 

This body in particular puzzled them for three days now. Magic of some kind tore within the deceased, turning their innards into lava and effectively incinerated the victim from within. A terrible way to perish. Worst of all, it wasn’t the first time A.J. examined a body who endured this horror. Since the Statute had fallen, the oddities began piling up. The first time A.J. declared this cause of death was only four weeks ago. The second time it occurred, they had a keen sense that the killer was only just beginning. And now, a third body.

The door clicked open, and they glanced upon one of the few aurors A.J. liked. They nodded toward the cabinet of gloves and protective garb, encouraging Alice to button up. “I found something.” They grabbed the victim’s file, riddled with photographs taken during the autopsy. “Possibly enough information to help you identify them.” 

[anomaly00-archive]

When Comes the Dawn // Camp Nano Round-Up

Total Words Written: 30,704/30k

Goal: Met

This was a great month guys! Even if April lasted like basically one week. I got pretty far in WCTD, the farthest I've ever been since the restart, and while I'm still figuring things out along the way I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on where this story is heading.

Also, can we appreciate how Fenice's characterization went from Ice Queen to positively feral (and slightly cannibalistic)? Girlboss, what happened.

Excerpt 1:

FENICE HUNGERS in the way all dead things do:

silently and without abandon

A rumbling chasm in her gut; a charybdis that opens its gaping maw and swallows the world only to spit it back out because what she eats does not sate her appetite. Only emphasizes the hollowness. The absence. The Hunger.

Excerpt 2: [cw: violence and mild gore]

Aretos only stared at her with that damnable silver eye of his. In vivid clarity she imagined herself lunging at him. Gouge out that eye he is so terribly proud of. Pluck it from his skull and squashing it in her fist; grinding it beneath her heel, so that he can witness with his lone eye the very symbol of his so called claim be reduced to nothing more than ground viscera on the dirt floor.

Anyway, we are near reaching the first major plot point of the story which is Fenice's Ascension. Though I have written a couple scenes that take place way farther down the timeline where things are a lot more...messy.

[viviantraversing]

TROIS.

UN | DEUX | TROIS

WHEN: Saturday, 8 August, 1979; after 6 o’clock pm  WHERE: 13 Woodville Court, Barnton  WHO: Vivian Travers & Torquil Travers

“Mon coeur!” 

Vivian heaved for breath, neck still burning; it hardly mattered though, not when her brother’s blood pooled atop marbled floors. She ran past her grandfather who stared dumbfounded, mouth agape, at the horror of his actions. A miscalculation, clearly, but Vivian cared little for his intentions. Instead, she rushed to the ground floor and pressed two fingers to Marceaux’s neck. Deeper, harder against his skin until—

“He’s alive.” 

It’s today, isn’t it? 

Marceaux’s words from that morning played over and over in her mind like a haunted melody. This marked the beginning of her new life, the one whose path veered far from the gilded cage she grew within. Today, Vivian Travers would be reborn. Her fervent belief in this idea pulled a lever within her conscious, tapping into a dark essence—once dormant, now fully alive. Her world spun on every axis. Vivian’s gaze shifted upstairs to her grandfather, still wide-eyed and disoriented, then to the house elf hiding behind furniture. 

“Go to the cellar. Bring her to me,” she ordered to the small, shaking creature. “With haste.” 

The elf spirited away, leaving Vivian to hold her brother within her arms. Why must this happen? Why age under the warm glow of Marceaux only for him to be plucked from the fabric of her life? Why his blood staining the floors when it ought to be Torquil? 

Her grandfather, who now descended the stairs and neared her. This time, however, he looked at Vivian from the barrel of her wand. She cast a body-binding charm on him, discarding him to the slide as she focused her attention onto the elf who presented a trembling, hysterical witch. 

“No need to be frightened, dove. I’ll make things better.” The coldness of her voice ought to have frightened Vivian, but for the first time in days, she finally felt in control. All her planning for this precise moment since solving for it with her Arithmancy formulas—finding a live-in healer and forcing her to reside at 13 Woodville Court in preparation for medical care needed. It all came together in a delicate yet precise melody, and now Vivian reached her crescendo. 

She now pointed her wand at the witch and cast an Imperius Curse, a woefully average one, but it would suffice. She commanded the healer to tend to Marceaux, and, of course, never to flee this estate nor tell another soul of the horrors she witnessed. With this arranged, Vivian gifted her full attention now to her grandfather who began wiggling, albeit barely, under her waning body-binding spell—precisely designed as such, naturally. She savoured the thought of giving this man an ounce of hope before caging him. 

“Oh, grandfather, the irony.” Vivian laughed, maniacally so. The sound did not frighten her; rather it furthered her deeper within that dark, oozing essence. “The delicious irony of spending decades mourning your son who, at the hands of my mother, suffered the same end that you, yourself, have inflicted on your grandson. It’s rather funny, is it not?” 

“Y-Yo—” Torquil’s mouth fumbled on words. This weakened, feeble man no longer frightened her. The power in that realization fueled Vivian further. 

“Speak clearly, grandfather,” she seethed through a sinister smile. “It’s unseemly for a gentleman to mumble.” 

“Y-You w-whore, l-like y-your m-mother.”

“Hm. Well, to be quite honest, I preferred you silent, Torquil.” And with that, Vivian summoned a knife from the kitchen and cut out her grandfather’s tongue. She tossed her prize and the blade onto the ground as he moaned violently. 

“You may tend to him only after my brother is stable,” she instructed the healer. She glanced at herself, amused at the blood smeared across her skin. 

“Oh, and it’s quite a quite a shame the infection took my grandfather’s legs, too. Such bad luck, that.” Vivian laughed at her power before heading to the stairs, pausing just before the first step to glance at the trembling house elf. 

“Draw me a bath. I’m quite filthy.” 

[ fin ]

[charlene-hong]

date & time : post-blizzard, 10:30pm location : sanctuary, the bar  status : open

There was a soft murmur of bustle throughout the bar. Of course the bar would be popular in Sanctuary — who when faced with the end of the world wouldn’t seek out cotton for the ears, a blindfold for the brain, anything to numb the pounding noise of everything loud and ferocious? There were drunk women clinging to the necks of drunker men, friends sharing lager, and Charlene, sitting in the dark. And what was she doing? Trying to forget?

Charlene could try, but no degree of penance could erase the images from the run. Bodies stacked like cordwood stained her retinae: men with emaciated limbs propped against little skeletons wearing dirty baseball hats. And the flies? Everywhere. Charlene sipped the farmers’ moonshine slowly, letting the clear liquid burn her throat and diffuse into her gut. It was stupid. She wiped her mouth with her wrist. Everything about it was so goddamn stupid. 

The alcohol had long taken effect, and such was evident in the slow realization of a presence behind her. She heard them clear their throat, could practically feel them shifting their weight from one foot to the other. Her gaze dropped to her drink — her second of the night and nearly drained. "You can sit,” she slurred darkly, “I was just leaving.” 

[kreidxpriz]

乱画

cw. missing lower jaw gore

[kreidxpriz]

(testing out tumblr community labels)

unhealed wound or reopened wound?

[viviantraversing]

MASQUERADE.

WHEN: Thursday, 20 August, 1979; late afternoon  WHERE: 13 Woodville Court, Barnton  WHO: Vivian Travers, Ruth Barnaby, & Torquil Travers

“Can he hear me?” 

Vivian reached for her brother, brushing his chestnut hair away from his face. A strand caught inside her palm, which she stored in her pocket for safe keeping. She tucked her brother into the sheets once more. The sight of Marceaux impossibly quiet and small, it all but shattered her heart into a million, tiny pieces. She wanted to weep, to beg for him to return, but Vivian’s numbers told an entirely different story. This would be her reality indefinitely; she must honour her brother and seize it. 

“Yes, there’s evidence to believe he could hear you.” Ruth Barnaby had now spent the past forty-three days residing at 13 Woodville Court, tending to Marceaux at every hour of the day—and then, at times, the elder Travers. Vivian’s Imperius Curse forced this frizzy-haired woman to reside here without worry, without desire to leave, and, most importantly, without a care as to the horrors she witnessed. 

“He looks peaceful, doesn’t he?” Vivian felt tears begin to form in her eyes, which she patted away. The healer remained silent, which set her teeth on edge. In an instant, her demeanour hardened. Vivian’s slender fingers reached for her wand and pointed it at Ruth. 

“Dress him in new clothes, immediately,” she commanded. “He’s worn these pyjamas for at least a day. As I’ve told you many times prior, please make sure you freshen his clothes at least once daily.” 

Ruth nodded a few times and then immediately busied herself with Marceaux’s armoire. Vivian rose from the bed, flattened her robe, and then exited the bedroom without a parting glance. She had business to deal with; tears would offer her no aid. 

Her black heels clinked against the marbled flooring at the Travers’s Barnton estate as Vivian made her way into the study, once Torquil’s and now embellished with her own items—her favourite being the jar that held her grandfather’s tongue. She savoured the thought of Torquil looking at it and remembering the cage Vivian forced him inside. Death would have been too kind; he deserved to live out the remainder of his days at her will alone. When she finally entered the study, her lips curled upward into a sinister smile when her gaze landed on her grandfather seated in his wheelchair, turned to face the window. 

“Good, you’re here.” Vivian used her wand to spin Torquil around. “I’d like an audience.” The man scowled at her, mouth moving in a vain attempt to curse her. She merely laughed in return. Her eyes shifted to the paper-bound parcel sitting atop the desk, reaching for it with more excitement than a child on Christmas morning. After kicking off her heels, she sat on the velvet sofa to delicately pull back the wrapping to reveal a muddy liquid inside a large decanter. 

“Yes, yes, this will do just fine until my batch is perfected, won’t it, grandfather?” Torquil furrowed his brows, eyes boring into her with rage. She giggled as she summoned a glass, pouring some of the sludgy liquid inside and raising the cup to her eyes for proper inspection. “Mm. Worth every galleon,” she mused. Then, Vivian reached for the strand of chestnut hair from her pocket and plopped it into the glass. The liquid turned an impossibly dark colour of blue—like midnight sky in the dead of winter. 

“Grandfather, I do hope you feel immense gratitude. You have exclusive access to my first act. How fortunate for you.” The man grunted, causing Vivian to giggle again before bringing the glass to her lips and sipping the contents full. It tasted of dark, bitter cherries. Instantly, her stomach curdled as she reached to the sofa for balance. Her body vibrated, each limb crying out in pain, but she merely shut her eyes and attempted to steady her breath. 

When the aching halted moments later, her eyes fluttered open to view Torquil Travers staring at her in abject horror. Vivian rose from the sofa, immediately sensing her towering presence. She drew closer to an ornately trimmed mirror and took in her presence. Marceaux stared back at her; the sight of his face stole air from her lungs. She touched at her brother’s face—her face, rather—then ran fingers through chestnut hair. 

Elation filled Vivian to the brim. She finally turned around to face her grandfather once more, still dumbfounded. “The prodigal grandson returns!” She announced, her now husky voice dripping with sarcasm. When Torquil did not laugh, Vivian neared him and grabbed the man by his neck. Marceaux’s strength allowed her to pick up the feeble man easily, who writhed within her grasp. 

“So this is what it feels like?” She spoke breathlessly, the words danced from her mouth. The entire world seemed brighter. “Astounding.” She released her grandfather who fell back into his wheelchair; his hands reached for his own neck, coughing aggressively. Vivian hardly noticed because she already traipsed back to the mirror to gaze upon her presence once more. Her heart thumped wildly at the sight of Marceaux smiling back at her. This, she thought, was only the beginning. 

“Let the games begin.”