Our Bones Are Oracles
Zelist Varjal || Present Night || Derevnya
You look up from the papers on your desk, bleary-eyed, feeling like the sand in the corners of your oculars is never really wiped away. It’s there every time you brush through them, a reminder of not only your fatigue, but the group’s fatigue. Pencils and pens lie scattered across its surface haphazardly, a strange sight to you, but you only have yourself to blame for the lapse.
Samane has to be dead. Weeks have gone by and while dim, he’s not the flaky type; you could set a clock by that boy’s dedication to routine.
You wish you could feel more upset about it, but mostly you wish he was here to help you deal with this before your thinkpan explodes.
“Darling, honeyblood, sweetbiscuit. You have got to give me something to go on before my followers upend themselves into a fervor.”
The cult follows a violet who deserves it far more than some cheeky olive, but they spend most of their time with their nose in the lore books, obsessed with what they think are secret messages hidden in the pages. Marisa cultivates that interest, gets trolls to bring them as many files as they need, and keeps them neatly tucked away in their library away from the rest of the cult.
Which is why she’s standing in front of you, posture prim as a blueblood’s. It looks a bit ridiculous on a girl who meddles a bit too intimately with corpses and ties down screaming trolls for eldritch rituals.
“They’re out of Derevnya. We don’t know where; we don’t have the resources to track them anymore.”
As you know damn well, you bite back. Marisa’s here to posture; it’s what she does best, though you wonder why she didn’t bring Glaceo as support. Maybe the cerulean’s actually off doing her real job for once.
A tad hypocritical of you, perhaps, but unlike her you have the best of reasons for being here.
“I’m sure we’ll find the horrorspawn, dearest, but no - it’s the harvesting I’m here about. Your little proclamation has ground our progress to a shuddering halt, and we need all the weapons we can get if she’s waking up again. Which reminds me; how is that problem coming along?”
She flutters her lashes at you, and if you had more energy you might feel the urge to punch her in her smug face. You’re going to have to settle with refuting her.
“We’ve put her back to sleep for now.” You reply. “There were traces of other horrorterror activity, but whatever it was, we can’t tell if it did anything to the Siren.”
“Mmm, it’d be so much more expedient if we had the gun, didn’t we? You’re so generous, and it’s terribly admirable, but we really could use it for this little issue...”
“Perfected that metal yet?” You reply, a touch more acerbic than you mean to be, but can anyone blame you? You’re not in the mood for this.
Now is an even worse time than she usually chooses.
She only smiles more in her infuriating way and runs a finger across the top of your desk, picking up more dust than you’d like.
You eye the oliveblood, the both of you well aware it wasn’t generosity that prompted you to give the gun to Sochet sweeps back. Even then the pair of you had argued over how to deal with the Siren trying to use the Gunsmith’s descendant to free herself; Marisa had wanted to cull the girl.
Instead Sochet left carrying her ancestor’s weapon, with no knowledge of its legacy or her own. A compromise that left the pair of you staring each other down, a fistfight narrowly prevented by the leader’s stern words.
“No, lemondrop, but the harvest...”
“Have to say I’d be impressed if you did.” You bowl over her, picking your way through words delicately as a surgeonhiliator stitching a wound. “No one’s solved it in all the sweeps we’ve had the Gunsmith’s records...I don’t want to expect too much of you, I overstepped.”
Her eyes narrow slightly before she resumes smiling widely, enough of a victory to warm your tired pumper a bit.
“Are you going to keep us out even if she is asleep? I have to say, I never took you for an obstructionist, my dear Zelist.”
Oh, she’s definitely annoyed, and you sit up straighter, leaning forward.
“If we harvest from her now, we could wake her up again after she’s had disturbances from two horrorterrors, and she could try to manipulate us through the flesh we eat. She can also thrall anything of her own power against us; we should go put down the Lumier girl before she comes tearing people open, she’d be thrilled to have a stab at it anyway.”
You end the last sentence on a note pointed enough to cut through steel, and Marisa has the grace to look faintly embarrassed. She knows full well she can’t talk her way out of that one; you were present for every part of that little lupine disaster.
Unfortunately, she recovers as quickly as ever.
“What do you suggest we do then, darling? We barely have any other horrorterror weapons in our stores or cages, and the other cults aren’t about to share even if they had anything of the grade we needed. It’s the most I can do to keep them from attacking us, never mind giving us aid. If I can’t find the right formula for that bullet metal, we’ll have no way of killing her either, and it’s a teensy bit difficult when you only allocate me a handful of staff after we lost the rest of them in the glub.”
Her voice veers close to a snarl for just one word, but it’s enough. Marisa only ever lets even the smallest edge of aggression show if she’s exhausted all her other options; she’s desperate enough that it can’t matter anymore.
Good.
You can’t smile, not with what you’re about to do, what you’ve had to do, so you merely raise your eyebrows, fingers laced together as they prop up your chin.
“Luckily for all of us, I have a weapon for you.”
“Don’t tell me you got the gun back; I simply won’t believe it.”
“Better than that.”
“Do stop winding me up, goldbug.”
Marisa might whine, but she thrives on drama, and you’re going to give it to her in a way she can’t refuse.
Slowly, casually, you get up out of your seat and beckon for her to follow you down the stairs to where the cages are for the weapons the cult makes with the knowledge-flesh of the Siren.
For the first time, one of the cages holds a creature that none of you made; a horrorterror in the shape of a boy, one your trolls finally tracked to where it got stuck in a tree just outside of Derevnya. That suggests an odd weakness in it - maybe whatever contributes to the dead flesh - but it doesn’t matter.
Marisa’s eyes widen and her ears flick as her shock quickly turns to an eager and greedy grin as she claps her hands in delight.
“Honeyblood! You are my favorite troll tonight, you know that? I thought we’d never find a subduable host. Why, I could kiss you.”
Perish the fucking thought, though it’s shame Marisa’s Marisa, because it’s not like she’s not cute otherwise. Any pupahood pitch feelings for her died off sweeps ago - it would’ve been inappropriate anyway - so you wrinkle your nose and her attention swiftly turns back to the creature.
“What a marvelous specimen. You have to show me the full report, and I want to interview the team that found it. What does its transformed state look like?”
“Funny thing; it barely transformed at all when we found it, it just seemed relieved to get down, and bizarrely enough, terrified of us. Our working theory is that it acts like a troll for fun, or when it’s low on energy.”
“We understand them so little, even after all these sweeps...” She murmurs, more to herself than you.
You roll your eyes. The last thing you need is Marisa waxing lyrical about eldritch monsters when you have more than enough to do, and nobody to split the work with.
“Understand its weapon level and get me a report.”
You go back up the stairs without waiting for a response. You’ve got a call to make.
Sochet owes you a favor.