↳ The reaper scans Lila's form critically, judging, eyes sparked at the invocation of her name, a daring risk. “True. But we collect very different things. What is gold compared to souls?”
Genre -> Fantasy
POV -> 3rd Person Limited, Multiple POVs
Themes -> Death, Effects of the Past, Loyalty, Perseverance, Trust and Doubt, Sacrifice, Trying to do the Right Thing.
Status -> Drafting
Setting -> My Magic/Everlasting world. A modern world that houses many different kinds of magical beings that unite under the term ‘Everlasting’ or ‘Evers’ for short.
Blurb -> Xia isn’t allowed to give up her Soul Blade, but she does. Lila isn’t supposed to be capable of wielding it and she does so with ease. An hour can change everything or change nothing.
Tags to follow -> wip to deal with a death, wip TDWAD
Synopsis:
Lila is a trader, a person who works to keep dangerous magical objects from the eyes of human Nons. Xia is a Soul Keeper, a reaper. They are not supposed to meet. Such is company policy.
Lila has never been good at following rules and Xia always keeps an eye out for a deal. Her cousin sets up a meeting between the two and Lila asks for the one thing Xia is never supposed to let off her person — her Soul Blade.
Under normal circumstance, the meeting would end there, except favors were called and the only way to trap a Soul Keeper is to bind them to their word. Xia has little choice, hands it over in trade for a sack of gold.
Lila only has an hour (a Non’s hour) to do what she needs but where she is going, it will be more than enough. There are places where time hardly ticks.
Time will not be her greatest challenge. What she is facing is centuries old, is more powerful, is so big it could swallow her. But she has a vow older than her skin to keep and a promise she makes to her mirror every morning. She will not be stopped, not by the rules of magic and not by an old friend.
She has no choice except to succeed in the impossible.
I spent literally 20-30 minutes of the hour just staring at this and wondering how it escalated, but I think its decent? Hope you like it.
Used the dialogue prompt and picture sorta.
*****
Lila strides out of the bar, blade pressed against her side, bell dinging over her head like a toll for death. She walks around the side, to the cold, bricked, dark alley. Spray paint tags the wall, a swirl of colors that is abstract to any human who doesn’t know better, but more to those who do. It’s a doorstop for the portal she’d opened to get there.
It leads to the woods. Long grass curling around her ankles, curled fingers from below, trying to pull her in with the old magic imbued within it. Spindly, tall trees reach for the sun, jagged branches thirsting for magic that no longer lives under its thin cover. Magic migrates, like flocking birds, to where it is easy to live, to where those who practice it reside. When the nest is left behind, empty, the twigs and dirt and sky thirst for what is now gone.These grounds were sacred, once. Lila was going to make sure that they were again, if just for a single moment.
The buildings were long gone, overtaken by nature as the centuries dragged on, but the magic they had been built with, tempered with, housed with, remains. It will take more than time and moss to remove that.
It thrums under her feet, desperate, pleading. Lila unsheathes the Soul Dagger she’d tricked Xia into relenting. It should corrupt her, leak poison into her blood that explodes her mind, taunting her with all of her thoughts of death.Lila isn’t a Soul Keeper. She doesn’t have a drop of it in her blood, in her past, in her ancestry. But the blade will cooperate, with what she’s going to use it for.
It takes souls. Cuts the bond between body and soul, an astral blade, forged by the Fates, eons and eons and eons ago.
There are few weapons older, more pure, than a Soul Blade. This one, Lila knows, happens to have belonged to the Cutter of String. The final Fate, the lesser Fate, the one who held the shears.
She walks through the trees, pulling against the magic in the ground, in the dirt, in the trees. It obeys, with that blade in her possession. So few know of Fate’s connection with Soul Keepers. Lila knows.
She knows of its history while also knowing of the corpse that lays in the ground here. An old body, an old soul, old magic that powers the plants to this day. Secret knowledge, deadly knowledge.
Kneeling, she digs her fingers into the soft earth, malleable with power. She stakes the blade into the ground, to the hilt. Light spills from the edges, and she drinks it greedily before beginning her chant.
The tongue she speaks in is old. Ancient. Powerful. Monarchs had crumbled under the taste of a single syllable, a fraction of a word, of a sentence, of a declaration. Now, it burrows, and grabs and tugs.
Bones rise from the dark dirt, shambling into a skeleton’s form. With words alone, she assembles one of the oldest skeletons, restoring it to its original form, to smooth white instead of craggled yellow-brown. When assembled, she stops. Slowly, reverently, she glides her finger along the clavicle, a sharp jutting point.
“Ward,” she breathes, running her gaze along the forgotten fragment of life. The skull tilts, in response, empty eye sockets turning towards her. “I’m sorry.”
Taking the dagger from the earth and plunging it into the skull, it shatters into a luminescent powder. Stinging, she blinks, gathering a small amount into her hand and blowing it into the air, where it sparkles and hangs, still like a puppet at the end of a string.
“What are you doing?” A voice sounds from behind her, a familiar one that is too late.
She doesn’t turn, instead manipulates the powder, infusing it into her breath, her being, her soul. In return, she trades three inches of her hair and a secret of the earth. Her skin changes, rippling into a darker shade, adapting to a thicker epidermis, the skin of a man who had changed MagicCraft for every being, who had almost become a god.
Finally, she turns to her visitor.
“You know what I’m doing,” she says, dual-voiced like a double edged blade, hers and something deeper.
Colin looks at her, pity hanging in his eyes like a corpse from a noose. “You can’t do this.”
Her hair recedes into her skull, shorter, thicker, lighter. “You’re too late to stop me.”
“Stop trying to be him,” Colin says, a plea instead of an order because she wouldn’t listen to that. “You’ll never be him.”
She stands, bones shifting under her skin, breaking, painful but welcome. “I’m not doing this for fun.” The feminine lilt is receding, a background echo to his deep tenor. “I’m adopting him so he won’t be lost. You can sense it. Traders are hungering for a piece of him, his bones, his flesh, his hair. It’s too dangerous, for him to lie dormant in this ground.”
Colin steps forward, hesitant, arms raised. “He will consume you. The old tongue will only keep him bound for so long.”
“It’s not for forever,” she says. “But the company cannot get their hands on him. They’ll destroy the Nons if they do.”
Tears light his eyes. “The Garden is sealed. You won’t make it.”
The old soul bubbles within her own, a temporary extension, a temporary half. “Together we can do it.”
Standing, she towers over him, body thin and boney. Once, he had fostered all life, had turned the tides of extinction into tides of change. Magic would be dead if he hadn’t sacrificed all he did. If he hadn’t created all he did. Unspoken, his name is just a series of letters to most. To Lila, to her ancestors, he is more. He belongs in the garden, in the cage of ethereal vines that holds souls too powerful to remain.
The forest would change. The Garden would change. Her and her magic would change. Stepping forwards, her footprints sink, below the mantle and to the core, to molten heat and chunks of forbidden, ancient magic.
His aura, even in death, is strong. Pungent. Trees bow underneath it, grass abating, life waning. Ebbing, she takes a step forward in the forest and finishes her next at the Gate of the Garden. The cemetery of power.
Immediately, the forest she left withers. Gone ebbs the fiendish pull of the call for blood, for death, for skin. Centuries among humans had turned his kind healing into vicious corruption.
Haunted woods haunted no more, Lila brandishes his power and skin like a fleet of trained men. Tearing at rust, at vegetation, at gates made of celestial, intangible steel, she demolishes the veil of protection and lies his soul to rest among all the dead, among world domineering strength, among vile healing and kind destruction.
She takes an old soul and heals the world.
*****
@caffeinewitchcraft Here it is!! I have no perspective on if this is actually good, but hope you like it.
Prompt: “Who are you? ……. Death?” -- “Sometimes, but not today love.”
Warnings for death and a car accident mention.
Added a title, read more, fixed one small grammar mistake and added a word. This is the same thing. It needed big edits.
*****
Xia walls down the sidewalk and is only mildly annoyed at the sight of a burning car wreck clogging up the traffic flow of an intersection. She continues on her path, swerving to the inner edge of the sidewalk to ignore the few people standing in horror, eyes fixed on the wreckage. Grateful that she had the head ups and knew that walking would be faster, today.
She pauses, however, when she hears a broken plea, contrasted against the scent of death in the air.
She turns, eyes scanning the nearby streets for a family member, but there isn’t one. No aunts, no third cousins, no step siblings. Tapping, she checks the spreadsheet on her phone. It’s Davis’ day to be Death, and he’s late.
Of course he’s late.
The scent of it reeks in the air. Sighing, she composes a vaguely threatening text to Davis, heels clicking as she boldly approaches the wreckage of two cars, the tap and scrape of her shoes casting an invisibility spell, making her sightless from all except the dying. She knew the custom soles would come in handy one day.
“Please,” the man begs, legs horribly crushed and bleeding, head bent to view the feet of people filming his demise, reluctant to actually help. “Help me, please.”
“Oh hush,” she says, backing up the text with a photo of the wrecked car and the name of the man dying inside in all caps. The man who’s supposed to be dead by now, if Davis was taking this seriously. “I’ll be with you in just a second, dear.” He was going to cheapen Death’s name for all of them if he wasn’t careful.
Sliding her phone into her purse, she crouches, careful to remain dignified.
Davis was damn lucky that she’s always prepared. She rummages for the small jar she always keeps handy — you never know when family will let you down and leave you to work on one of your days off. For her, it happens quite often.
“Now, Patrick,” she says, voice very calm, even. This isn’t the first time she’s done this and it won’t be the last. “Can you hold still for me, please?” Her Soul Dagger unsheathes from her side, glimmering into sight as she pulls back the illusion hex on it.
Patrick’s eyes get very wide. “Who are you?” He hacks a wet cough, making her cringe. He should definitely be dead right now. “…Death?”
Xia smiles. She always likes to be called that, which admittedly, is probably why she’s scheduled to be Death so often. It gives her a nice rush and she quite enjoys the work that comes with it. She’s one of the few of her kind to. Most of her family thinks it’s a drag.
“Sometimes,” she admits, quiet enough where the people and cameras won’t hear — she should be warded against it, but who knows when technology will evolve enough to sneak though— “but not today, love.”
“Wha..?” Confusion rises in his eyes as his life continues to fade from his body, recklessly spilling out into the open air, open earth. Thinking about it, Davis probably left this human because he knew that it was on her way to work and that she would clean it up. He was definitely going to hear about this at their next reunion, the lazy dog.
Xia slits Patrick’s throat in a metaphysical way and guides his soul into the jar, sealing it with the magical components in her lipstick, leaving an imprint on the rim.
She learned to mix business with, well, everything a long time ago. It made everything easier to be prepared and uncumbered by different vials and scrolls in her bag.
Modern technology was good, in that way.
“Not enough time to explain, I’m afraid,” she tells the jar, the wriggling light trapped in special glass. “Davis isn’t doing his job. Unfortunately for you, that means you’re mine now, Patrick.”
She hadn’t expected to earn any souls today. Her day to be Death again wasn’t for a few weeks and that side of her work had been slow lately. Mainly, she’s been stuck with filing and paperwork, which is boring, but she doesn’t mind. She was Death sometimes and Death was nothing if not patient.
Smoothly, she tucks the jar into her purse and continues her walk, shooting a quick text to her boss stating that she’d be a few minutes late.
Sorry, she writes, got held up in traffic. There was an accident on 3rd. Gonna be a little late.
*****
Still love this, honestly. And it is still 100% @caffeinewitchcraft ‘s fault that I fell in love with this world and Xia. How dare you.
Lila starts her ritual. A friend begs her to reconsider. Part two to this.
Used the dialogue prompt and picture sorta.
This is edited a fair bit. Some for flow’s sake, but I did tweak Lila’s spell/ritual and it changes a bit from there. No major shifts, but you may want to give this a glance over if you’re following in the transfer. This encapsulates the kind of changes that’ll happen to everything.
*****
Lila strides out of the bar, blade pressed against her side, bell dinging over her head like a toll for death. She walks around the side, to the cold, bricked, dark alley. Spray paint tags the wall, still wet, a swirl of colors that is abstract to any human that doesn’t know better, but more to those who do. It’s a doorstop for the portal she’d opened to get there.
It leads to the woods. Long grass curling around her ankles, hooked fingers from below trying to pull her in with old magic imbued and rotten. Spindly, tall trees reach for the sun, jagged branches thirsting for magic that no longer lives under it’s cover. Magic migrates, like flocking birds, to where it is easy to live, to where those who practice it reside. When the nest is left behind, empty, the twigs and dirt and sky thirst for what is now gone. These grounds were sacred, once. Lila was going to make sure that they were again, if just for a single moment.
The buildings were long gone, overtaken by nature as the centuries dragged on, but the magic they had been built with, tempered with, housed with, remains. It will take more then time and earth to remove that.
It thrums under her feet, desperate, pleading. Lila unsheathes the Soul Dagger she’d dealt Xia unfairly into relenting. It should corrupt her, leak poison into her blood that explodes her mind, taunting her with all her thoughts of death. Lila isn’t a Soul Keeper. She doesn’t have a drop of it in her past, in her ancestry. But the blade will cooperate nonetheless.
It knows what she is and what she’s going to do. It will listen. Cooperate. It’s going to do what it was made for, regardless that it’s not Xia wielding it anymore. Not a Soul Keeper. It knows this is important.
It takes souls. Cuts the bond between body and spirit. Is an astral blade forged by the Fates, eons and eons and eons ago.
There are few things older than a Soul Blade. This one, Lila knows, happens to have come from the Cutter of String. The final Fate, the lesser Fate, the one who held the shears.
She walks through the trees, pulling against the magic in the ground, in the dirt, in the trees. It obeys, with that blade in her possession. So few know of Fate’s connection with Soul Keepers. Lila knows.
She knows of it’s history while also knowing of the corpse that lays in the ground here. An old body, an old soul, old magic that powers the plants to this day, however dwindling it is. Secret knowledge. Deadly knowledge.
Kneeling, she digs her fingers into the soft earth, malleable with power. She hums a few notes of an old spell-song. She stakes the blade into the ground, to the hilt. Light spills from the edges and she drinks some in, allowing it to strengthen her throat. She begins the chant.
The tongue she uses is old. Ancient. Powerful. Forgotten. Monarchs had crumbled under the taste of a single syllable, a fraction of a word, of a sentence, of a declaration. Now, it burrows and grabs and tugs.
Bones rise from the dark dirt, shambling into a skeleton’s form. With words alone, she assembles one of the oldest skeletons, restoring it to it’s original form. To pristineness. To smooth white instead of craggled yellow-brown. When assembled, she stops. Slowly, reverently, she glides her finger along the clavicle, a sharp jutting point.
“Ward,” she breathes, running her gaze along the forgotten fragment of life. The skull tilts, in response, empty eye sockets turning towards her. “I’m sorry.”
For everything. What she’s done. What she’s doing.
Taking the dagger from the earth, she holds it in her hand. Resumes her chant, lets the power of her words shake the air. His bones vibrate. Her fist tightens and she severs the spine where it holds the skull. The bones sparkle into luminescent powder. She coaxes it into her palm. She blinks at the stinging in her eyes.
Closing her fist and pressing it to her heart, she says the part of the chant, the ritual, the spell, that’s actually draining. Important. The point of no return. Magic spears her. She opens her palm and blows the lackluster dust from her palm. The grinded remains of his bones, unneeded anymore.
It sparkles in the air, hangs still like a puppet on the end of a string. Blows away in conjured wind and becomes nothing that will ever be assembled again. Together.
Lila’s marrow burns.
“What are you doing?” A voice sounds behind her, a familiar one that is too late.
She doesn’t turn, instead aids the invading magic within her, infuses it into her breath, her being, her soul. As sacrifice, she trades three inches of her hair and a secret long passed. Her skin changes, rippling into a darker shade, adapting to a thicker epidermis, the skin of a boy who had changed magic. Who almost became a god. A true Ever. Unforgotten. Almost, almost.
Finally, she turns to her visitor, with the enchantment accepted and progressing. Changing her.
“You know what I’m doing,” she says, dual-voiced like a doubled edged sword, hers and something deeper.
Colin looks at her, pity in his eyes like a corpse from a noose. “You can’t do this.”
Her hair recedes into her skull, shorter, thicker, lighter. “You’re to late to stop me.”
“Stop trying to be him,” Colin says, a plea instead of an order because she’ll never listen to that. “You’ll never be him. He’ll take you.”
She stands, bones shifting under her skin, breaking and shattering, painful but welcome. “I’m not doing this for fun.” The feminine lilt is receding, a background echo to his deep tenor. “I’m adopting him so he won’t be lost. You can sense it. Traders are hungering for a piece of him. He was rotting. It’s too dangerous for him to lie dormant any longer. He’ll rot this forest.”
Colin steps forwards, hesitant, arms raised. “He will consume you. That tongue will only keep him bound for so long.”
His eyes, wide and green, are begging her. Please. Don’t. It’s hopeless. Already too late. He’s a part of her now and if she doesn’t get rid of him quick, things will stay that way. He will consume her. But she has to try. Too much is at stake for her not to.
“It’s not for forever. But no one can get their hands on him. Not even the company.” She fixes brown eyes that aren’t hers on her friend, steely and serious. “He’s too much. He could be used to destroy Nons. For eradication. War. It’s too much, Colin.”
Tears light his eyes. “The Garden is sealed. You won’t make it.”
The old soul bubbles within her own; a temporary extension, a temporary half. “Together we can do it. We have to try. It’s his best chance.”
His tears fall. His face collapses on itself in preemptive grief. “You won’t come back,” he whispers, voice breaking like she imagines his heart is. He steadies his breathing as her outward transformation completes. “Why is this your duty? Why does it have to be you?”
She doesn’t have any more time to spare him the answer. It’s not an easy one anyways. It has things she can’t tell him in it. Things she keeps only to herself. It’s a hard answer.
But the short of it is that no one else is capable. For reasons both in her control and not. She is Ward’s only chance at peace.
Taking a breath, first and new in this body, she stands over him. Taller, body thin and boney. Once, he had fostered all life, protected something doomed to death with his kindness, turned tides of extinction into tides of evolution. Much of magic would be dead and lost if he hadn’t sacrificed all he did. If he hadn’t created all he did.
Unspoken, his name is just a series of letters to most, a category of spellwork to others, nothing in it’s entirety but something in fragments. To Lila, to long dead corpses, to something he bore that still remains, he is more. He belongs in the Garden, in the cage of ethereal vines that holds souls too powerful for Keepers to have and too powerful to sit in the earth he once breathed in.
He is too much to let lie. Important in ways that don’t matter. Corrupted too much by time to be harmless and giving and true to what he was. He must be moved.
The forest would change. The Garden would change. Her and her magic would change. Stepping forwards, closer to Colin and not, her footprints sink below the mantle all the way to the core, to molten metal and chunks of forbidden, ancient magic.
His aura, even in death and new not-life, is strong. Pungent. Trees bow beneath it, grass abating, life waning. Magic leaving the forest to die. To look the same but be hollow under bark and grass and sky. Sighing, she takes a step forward in the forest and finishes her next at the gate of the Garden. The cemetery of power.
Immediately, all remaining bits of magic left behind withers. Gone ebbs the fiendish pull of the call for blood, for death, for skin. Centuries among humans had turned his kind healing into vicious corruption. His magic had rotted over time and started trying to self-live, to sustain itself on outward life.
It had tried not to fade into obscurity. It knew what it was. What it did. It knew it did not belong where it was.
Haunted woods haunted no more, Lila brandishes his power and skin like a fleet of trained men. Tearing at rust, at vegetation, at gates made of celestial, intangible steel, she demolishes the veil of protection and starts lying his soul to rest among all the dead, among world domineering strength, among vile healing and kind destruction.
She takes an old soul and heals the world.
*****
I’m still proud of this. Apparently originally I wasn’t sure about it, but I like this piece. I have no idea how the core of it came in an hour, but this is something I’m proud of. A little big, maybe, in the scope of it, but good.
Poor Colin. He’s just trying to be a good friend, but he doesn’t understand.
Summary: Davis leaves Xia to play Death on her way to work but this time, it makes her more then a little bit late.
Warnings for death mention, car wreck, mentioned child death. Edited for flow, grammar, minor changes.
*****
Davis, despite his laziness and irrelativeness and other shortcomings, is not on bad terms with Xia. Oh, they play rough and exchange sharp words, but it’s never landed a hard blow and they know it’s all in fun.
That’s not to say neither have ever stepped over the line, though.
Her family is conflicted about her status as a Trader. It takes some time away where she could be Death, but that’s all scheduled and her work is understanding of her other duties. It’s full of Evers, after all, and while they are not Evers like her, have magic that is free to do as they wish, some are still afraid that she’ll eat their soul if they cross her.
She could clear the misunderstanding -- only the sorely depraved of their kind are insane enough to consume souls and than it destroys them. It just isn’t done, in other words -- but she finds no harm in letting it remain. It makes things more efficient. Things are kept concise and blunt, though some are beginning to warm up to her and she will tell the truth if she’s asked. There are enough false rumors about her kind as it was; she didn’t need to add to it. She doesn’t hide what she is. She’s a solid worker and is praised for her focus and drive.
Not like Davis.
He has no human job, so he’s slotted in to be Death semi-regularly. Still less than her because she’s a special case and she enjoys the work, but he still works often enough.
If a death is due to occur within fifteen or so blocks on a day off or in her path on a day she’s working, he’ll leave it for her to deal with. It doesn’t happen too often, with both conditions needing to be met. To his benefit, she does and typically, she doesn’t mind it.
Until he takes it too far and makes her late for work, of course.
It’s an unlucky day and the circumstances aren’t in anyone’s favor. There’s a major wreck that takes place four and half blocks from her work and he’s left the entire thing to her.
Now, on a day off, she wouldn’t mind too much -- she’d give him hell, yes, but it would be the joking sort they always fling at each other. But this was not a day off, or her heading home, and he wasn’t answering his cell, so she does.
She calls him once more, gazing impassively at the mess of cars twisted together before her and speaks once it’s reached voicemail in her ‘death voice’. It’s oversweet and cold and each syllable is carefully pronounced. It has scared more than a few members of her family, which is a sizeable feat. Death wasn’t easily startled. “Davis,” her fingers tighten microscopically over the phone pressed against her cheek, “if I am late to work because of this, I will put in a request to suspend your Death status.”
And that’s... maybe taking it a touch too far, but she’ll apologize later. If she doesn’t carry it out. She’ll figure that out later too.
For now, she has a mess to clean up.
She digs in her bag for the spare death cloak she keeps tucked in the inner pocket. It’s dreadfully bland, short and a mockery of Death for them all, but it’s the only one small enough to hide in her bag without making it bulky.
If it was only one death or maybe two, she wouldn’t bother with this, but there’s near half a dozen, maybe more, so she’s obligated even though it isn’t her day.
“You’re so lucky I’m prepared,” she says into nothing, the invisibility spell etched in the soles of heels active and silencing her words from outside ears.
There are five cars with dead passengers, a couple more with people still breathing. The first car she approaches has a man and his daughter. Xia pulls out her soul-glass jar while she activates the rune on the bottom -- it will allow multiple jars to exist in the same place, so she can fit it all in her bag. It had taken years for her to assemble everything to be this quick and seamless, but it was worth the effort.
It takes nearly forty minutes for her to deal with the wreck and that makes her thirteen minutes late to work -- she arrives thirty minutes early, to chat and start coffee for everyone, and there’s a ten minute grace period where they won’t be counted late.
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes to her boss, bag weighted against her hip. “I had an errand to run and didn’t realize it would take so long.”
He eyes the black hem sticking out of her bag. “It’s fine,” he grunts. “You’re hardly ever late. Just get to work.”
“Thank you, sir.”
She stays fifteen minutes past the end of her shift to make up for her late start. When she exits the building, Davis is standing on the sidewalk waiting.
She scoffs and swerves to walk around him. She is still upset about earlier and is debating on following through with her threat.
“Xia, wait!” He grapples for her elbow, but she spins out of his reach before he touches her.
She raises a brow and waits. He shies away from the harshness in her expression. Another impressive feat, but Xia’s always been special among her family.
“I’m sorry,” he says, showing her his palms in a meaningless Non’s gesture meant to show his harmlessness. She knows better and she’s considering trading one of her souls to put him in time out for a while. Maybe even two. “I didn’t realize it was so many, I thought you could handle it.”
Xia places her finger to the bridge of her nose and slides it up to her forehead. “You made me late. This is a new policy of work for the Everlasting Trade Association that could open a new branch. If I do poorly,” she places her fingertips against the low hem of her shirt, over her heart, “than the project could get shut down and we’ll go back to doing the same work for nothing. Do you want that?”
He lowers his head. “No.”
She turns to continue walking down the sidewalk, but only makes it four steps before she stops. “And stop wearing colors to work,” she calls out. “It’s tacky.”
He opens his cloak to showcase his shirt. “You like it? Got it on sale!”
Xia shakes her head and rubs at her hairline, near her temple, as an exasperated gesture and a way to fix her hair. She starts walking again. That idiot.
Though, he was kind of her idiot. Her friend, one of the few family members she could tolerate, who didn’t treat her different just because of the blade she had on her hip, who she could see without entertaining the idea of dismembering them with her Soul Dagger. He was entertaining, if nothing else. He never cared about who she was. So she wouldn’t report him. This time. But--
“You owe me a favor!” she says, just loud enough for him to hear, looking back at him and noting that he’s wearing ripped blue jeans as well as a colored shirt. Grimness, how did he ever get allowed to be Death? Oh, yeah, because she vouched for him. What was she thinking?
She smiles and-- she knows. She’d wanted to have a friend be Death so they could laugh about it. So she could poke fun at the rules without getting a disappointed sigh in return. So they could have fun together.
And while, yes, he slacked a little and broke some rules (guidelines more like -- it was better to roll along with whatever visage the Nons believed of them, but it wasn’t strictly necessary), he was a decent Death. Though, she had to debate if decent was well enough. Maybe she should put in a request to put him back to behind-the-scenes Death work. He’d cause less trouble there and put them all in less danger, but it would wound him for her to do so.
As much as he annoys her, she doesn’t wish him anything truly ill-hearted. Despite his lack of foresight, he was a good friend.
The evidence of that is in the chiffon cake sitting on her table when she gets home. It’s her favorite and Davis only ever gets gifts like this for her, as an apology because he’s not good at saying the words. She chuckles as she shrugs off her coat, pulling her phone from her pocket to type a quick text before she enjoys her free dessert.
You aren’t supposed to use Death to buy cake. And you still owe me a favor.
*****
Davis is introduced! He is a lazy Death and he is very lucky that Xia likes him as much as she does.
For @violetvineyardnetwork 's pride week thing, again. Day 2 didn’t flow as well, but it’ll probably be up at some point. This is day three, aka yellow, aka sunshine. Note that this is an outline of sorts because I want to revisit this when I have more time to dedicate to fleshing it all out better.
490 words, no warnings, this is just slightly wholesome. Also Sulien is pronounced Sil-yen, not like Julian as you’d think. It’s a welsh-originated name meaning “sun born”.
*****
Everlastings draw power from everything. There are moon witches with sun sisters, earth nomads with arid brothers. The basics are easy to pull from, to take, but they give less. Some draw from obscure things, or have all their magic in themselves, but others have none they can keep and must form binds with the world to borrow some, engage in trades, turning the raw power into something tangible.
Sulien knows this, has seen his people bow to the sun and pull magic from its warmth. He did, too, once, before he started to question it all. Before he realized that the sun wasn’t giving him as much as it was giving all the others.
He tells an Elder, once, gets a nonsense reply about how some need to draw from elsewhere, but they are sun-borne and sun-blessed, where else could he dig his well?
He learns when they visit an old chapel and the stained glass kisses his skin with colored rays. On instinct, habit drilled into him, he invites the warmth into him. And, for the first true time, he feels full and warm.
Power crackles in him, the roots within him squirming with it. He looks up through the cracked glass, smooth and man-colored, and smiles.
To experiment, he outstretches a palm and conjures a light orb, a simple spell taught to children. The ability to pull surrounding warmth together to make light, spells he’s never excelled at, but it bursts forth easily now.
Sulien laughs, head thrown back as he lets the orb fizzle out.
He found it. Finally.
He found where his blessing lied. His whole life, he’d been told that he’d been chosen by the sun and it’s guardians, its gods. No one had ever been able to figure out why — he wasn’t talented in any of their arts, was clumsy in tradition, was painfully average for someone named after the sun they all worshipped.
(An honor bestowed only to the chosen, to help temper them to strength, to power, to unbearable heat. He had been chosen, and named, and failed to live up to it until now.)
He leaves running, shouting with the full expanse of his lungs, declaring that they begin to prepare a celebration. They smile, close-lipped, and watch him run.
Soon, he will be elevated to be what he was destined to — a sun’s son, the highest of them all. Casuality melts under him, now, friends distancing themselves in case the heat in his blood changes his mind or his heart too much for them to ignore.
He’s finally soaked in the sun, accepted its touch, and in doing so, has agreed to the trade of being blessed by it. It gives him a power of the divine, sun magic no one else can possess, but he must return the deal.
It changes him as much as he will change his people, as all before him have done.
*****
Tags: @citrusysumo @emikoshiriyuki
I want to do a full-fledged thing on him, now, his story. There’s potential for something here and I want to give it the attention it deserves. Would you all be interested in seeing Sulien and his people in more depth?
Also, I realized that these should probably say how they’re fitting for pride month, but I guess I’ll put it here. Sulien is somewhere under the asexual umbrella — we’ve not seen him enough to figure out where exactly, but he’s there. Jackson from day 1 is gay.
What Colin does after Lila leaves for the Garden with the soul she took (follows this and this in the storyline).
Also this is day four of @violetvineyardnetwork 's pride week. Green/Nature. Colin doesn’t have a label for himself quite yet, but he does fit in the LGBT+ group.
Hooray for me multitasking here^^ — doing an actual piece and the pride week thing (even though this wasn’t planned originally, but its important that it got added). Is that even allowed? Oh well, I did it. This should work okay enough on its own if not.
1055 words and no warnings. Happy reading!
*****
Colin stands in the balefully empty forest alone. He presses a tightly balled fist to his hand and screams.
She actually went through with it. Even after he came to stop her, to beg, try to make her see sense and ask her to stay, she still — she just left on her mission disregarding his pleas and his cautions.
He knew she would, has tried to caution her away from it before, but she never listened. She kept her determination closer than she kept him and that’s why he was going to lose her. Why he had. His best friend.
Lila was always been honest about this, about how this was something she’d do regardless of the consequence to her. He never understood, couldn’t, when he didn’t know why it mattered to her so much or how she even knew about it all. But it did and he hadn’t been enough to change her mind.
He lowers his fist, but keeps it bunched. He still wants to scream, to howl his failure into the charged air, but knowing it too delicate to handle a powered screech. Her magic — muddled with what was already there and what she brought up — lingers around him, most likely the last taste of it he will ever feel.
Any spark too powerful could wipe this forest from existence. The spell she’d used, whatever it was, was powerful in a devastating way he didn’t think a single being capable of.
But he’s been wrong about quite a bit lately. What’s one more to add to the list?
“Why...” he taps his hand to his leg, frustrated beyond words, trying to neglect how he’s not angry at all, just... crushed. “Why did you have to go?”
He feels something stir under his feet, deep in the earth. It feels like wakefulness, arousing from some deep slumber. It feels true, and he holds his breath and hopes it ignores him.
A second of movement and he knows what this is. The knowledge bounces in his brain, echoing.
Things like this were rare. Creatures born not from womb and blood, nor touch or love, but tragedy. Names lost and redone, Voreaks. Beings born from magic cast in times of extreme duress, a pure kind of heartbreak that soaks the land and mars it. From emotion so pure and primal it becomes it’s own magic, its own life. This place, it feels sacred, quiet, like all places of once-greatness, now-nothing do.
Now he knows why.
He hadn’t know that one dwelled here.
You wish to know? It asks, says, deep intonation rumbling in his ear, though it’s soundless. It is nothing, in all the ways anyone looks for. Most think them another mortal-dreamt monster twisted out of proportion.
“I... no.”
You asked. It stirs, palatable in the air, thick. I can tell you. For a price.
“Price?” He’s not supposed to talk to them, they eat things like him, and it can linger and swallow him any moment, but he can’t help the instinctive word. (Maybe its the pit in his chest making choices for him, deciding that his life isn’t all that much without the one who helped him save it).
Yes. It curls around him, blanketing him in shadows. A spell, perhaps? A filled hunger for a filled hunger. Truth for a meal.
He hesitates, feels the tug of suggestion weakly within him. “A truth?”
The Voreak shifts, lifting to nip at the sole of his foot. Yes. That girl reeks of illusions. Falsities. Aren’t you curious? It brushes its maw against the forest floor, still sunk beneath the surface, tethered to the town buried beneath the earth, the grave of the soul Lila took. Is she not an ally of yours? A friend?
He thinks back on her poring over books she never allowed him to peek at, instructions not to bother her for an hour, sternness he never understood. “She is. We’ve known each other for years.”
Years? It sounds almost surprised, but the grumbling roll of it’s words (it’s mind-consciousness speaking within him) seems sinister. And she still hides from you?
Colin shakes his head, pressing fingers to his temple. “No.”
Do you even know what tongue she spoke? What spells she used?
He lowers his hand, holds it at his hip. Repeats himself quieter, somber. “No.”
Lila had only ever called it an old tongue, shrugging off his curiosity with given disinterest. Oh, you wouldn’t want to know. It’s hard to learn. It wouldn’t be of any use to you.
He remembers pleading with her. Why won’t you tell me anything? I can help you. I want to.
When he had, though, she’d just looked at him with eyes too wise and too sad for him to push her harder. Eyes of one who was close to breaking, or who was still healing from being broken. When she’d looked at him like that — he hadn’t been able to bring himself to make selfish demands.
If she thought she could do it alone, than she could. He would wait for her invitation.
One she never offered.
But, with time, she had told him some details. And suddenly, he’d grown cold to her project. Maybe if he hadn’t, she would have let him help. Maybe they could have found a way that would let her live, to stay.
He’ll never know, though. But this Voreak— it was offering him what she didn’t. More knowledge, crucial details to fill in all the empty space.
“What kind of spell?”
Something filling. New. Draining.
“Draining,” he murmurs, tapping his thigh. “Alright. I can do that.”
He closes his eyes, breaths deep, and does a spell he hopes is well enough. He snakes his focus forwards, curling around a tree, ascending. When it’s length is wrapped tightly around, he blows out his breath sharply.
The tree trembles, shaking, and falls away to ash. Within the pile, lies a grouping of red berries.
Colin opens his eyes, feeling a little weary. “Life to death and repeat again,” he says, voice cracked.
The Voreak trembles in glee, soaking up the waves wafting off the changed tree. The tongue she spoke, it practically moans, was Atlantean.
Colin freezes where he stands, weariness wiped away with his pounding heart.
And that boy was it’s hero.
*****
Tags: @citrusysumo @emikoshiriyuki
Whoop. Cliffhanger-ish? Guess I’ll just have to expand on this little series more than I’d originally intended. Oh well. The next part (part 3 that follows in Lila’s POV like was planned) should be up soonish. After this week at some point.
Also I created the Voreak for this. Thinking of doing a creature info/about post for it, if you want because I don’t wanna info dump here. It’s pronounced vor-ache, though (prob not how I’m supposed to write that, but whatever). I hope you liked it and this part!!
