#no graves

[acheyri]

They put me in the ground

But I’m back from the dead

[screamingvikings]

Shepard found Sephiroth floating in silence, watching the bands of the milky way.

They were meant to leave the star system an hour ago but he hadn’t come inside, or even acknowledged their request, so in the orbit of the gas giant they remained.

She stood by the window of the observation deck, looking at his back.

The last battle had gone much the same as all the rest. He did the bloody work and she co-ordinated their allies to stay out of his way while they fled. Until near the very end, he’d slowed down. He still fought, she didn’t think anything in the galaxy could stop him from fighting when he wanted to, but it was almost cursory. More Reapers got past him to shoot at allied vessels and for once she didn’t think he was making a point or playing some kind of game with them.

Could a sentient ball of parasitic energy be wistful?

She turned away from the window, a thoughtful frown on her face, and sat down at the empty bar.

They still had alcohol, for all that they had lost most of the garden worlds and live ships. It kept well and was commonly used in bartering since the citadel credit collapsed. The supply lines were a mess, and it had only gotten worse after the reapers stopped targeting population centres and moved onto agricultural areas.

The Normandy was high priority in the war, it always got food. Not everyone was so lucky.

She made herself a drink and pulled out something to read. The implants in her chest and oesophagus didn’t like the burn of it. She smacked her lips. The dead didn’t have the luxury of pain.

She kept Sephiroth in her periphery, as she swiped through pages. He was still floating out there in the darkness under a halo of hair. Either he would decide he was ready, or he wouldn’t.

She was halfway through some old human poetry when he spoke.

“The last dreadnought came from the human homeworld,” he said, his voice clear despite the vacuum and reinforced hull between them.

He eyes paused on the lines. ‘Between the woods and frozen lake…’

“Did it?” She’d always wondered how they organised themselves. Other than Harbinger, and Sovereign all those years ago, all the Reapers were identical.

“It feasted on the glut.” He turned to her, half his form illuminated in the harsh white light of the nearby star, the other half lost in shadow. “The dead held onto your name with hope. They awaited salvation… until the end.”

She starred at the holographic page. ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep.’ She looked down to her drink. The bottom of the glass looked back up at her.

“Have you nothing to say?” he demanded.

“Do you care?” she slammed her hand onto the bar top. The light from her Omni-tool died. “They ended up in the same place.” She let out an old and stale breath. Her throat ached, old implants doing their job but grudgingly. She was probably rusting. “I failed them. Years ago. I know that, and so did they.”  

“They did not know.” He scowled down at her. “They didn't believe the fight to be over, not when their bodies were stripped of life or their spirits stripped of consciousness.”

Her hands balled up into fists. “What is the stubbornness of dead humans to you?”

“Nothing.” He turned away, facing the star again. “They are nothing at all.”

She forced her shaking hand to unclenched. That he was bringing it up was.. odd. “You sound less pleased over that than normal.”

Shadow lurking at his back, billowing in the folds of his coat. One of the gas giants would hide the star soon and drown them both in darkness.

“The capital ship,” he said after a long silence. “It was made on my first planet. From the bones of the Cetra.”

She straightened at that. He looked oddly lost. She turned on the barstool to watch him.

“I thought you hadn't dealt with the Reapers before.”

“In the previous cycle. I am the last descendant of those few who survived.”

She shook her head, confused. “How could you tell? There… there was still a trace of them in there? They held onto themselves for fifty thousand years?”

“My kind endure in mind and spirit beyond the end of our bodies.” His gaze dropped from the star, but there was no looking down in space. Just as there was no looking up.

“They begged me to erase them,” he said. It whispered through the room, barely even a voice, barely words.

“Did you?”

“They are pure energy now. Unburdened by their past selves.” He gazed down at a black-clad hand, edged with light. His voice remained a whisper. “I will make them anew in the promised land.”

“No, you won't.” She slid off the barstool, her boots hitting the deck with a thud. How many billions? How many trillions? How many species? “They're gone. They will always be gone and nothing can change that.”

Shadow swallowed him as the star disappeared behind the planet.

“You don’t know what I am capable of.” It lacked his usual conviction.

She threw back the last dregs of the clear alcohol.

“You too will beg for oblivion when the time comes,” he said, and it sounded damn near resigned.

“Will you?” she asked. She couldn’t see him, not even the green tendrils of energy she could feel wrapped tight around the ship, around each member of her crew, around the fragile folds of her mind. She didn’t need to see him.

“Someone once told me submission is preferable to extinction.” She stared into the dark. “They were wrong.”

Silence was the reply. 

She turned and walked to the door.  

“We're jumping in twenty minutes,” she said, glancing back. “Are you in or out?”

Silence.

He stepped through the window, no backlighting or brilliant glow. A prowling shadow that met her eye with dreadful promise.

“Bring me more Reapers.”

[acheyri]

Lore has updated a lot since I made the text on these, so I rewrote the info on their refsheets :)

[acheyri]

Brief rundown of the No Graves premise since I never coherently talk about it anywhere:

It’s told post-timeskip. The older Svee design is 99% of the present plot.

Pre-timeskip Svee is a bodyguard and monster hunter for-hire who works for Lyra, a magic scientist and historian. Lyra has a lot of theories about the way magic works in their world, and thinks she could personally make it better. The use of magic has fallen out of style, due to improved tech and lack of public interest in magic use. Lyra hires Svee because Svee has a complete inability to channel magic at all. She finds her fascinating. She basically makes Svee the focus of her phD thesis. They also have a somewhat-covert definitely-inappropriate-as-boss-and-employee romantic relationship. Lyra wants to experiment on Svee. She does experiment on Svee. It does not go well.

Present story, Svee is on the run because she’s been framed as the one who caused Lyra’s disappearance almost two decades ago. She lives in a cabin in the far mountains with her daughter, Anja. She regularly loses control of herself and turns into a giant manticore, who the mountain locals call The Valkyrie. Anja knows nothing about what happened before she was born, because Svee refuses to speak about it. Svee’s health continues to deteriorate while Anja is left physically and emotionally neglected by her only parent, and has to run the house for both of them.

That’s all for now. Yippee

[acheyri]

my girl finally has her ref :)

[acheyri]

Nya Graves

(I turned my ocs into cats. Or. Even more cat than they were)

Separated under the break

[acheyri]

Pre-story lore dump from my comic but like 20 years before it starts. I posted this on bluesky last week but I’m gonna dump the full text under the cut. I want to talk about my ocs

Lyra is an environmental scientist studying how magic impacts their ecosystem in the age of technology, where manipulating magic has fallen out of use. She is focusing on how ordinary creatures seem to be turning into large magic-fueled beasts that destroy everything around them. She also studies the history of how people used magic, and the process of channeling magic to change one’s shape. She often goes out into the field and is faced with dangerous creatures, and, since she is not a fighter, she puts out an ad to hire a “research assistant”/bodyguard.

Svee is a lonely woman just entering her 30s, from the southern end of the continent, fresh out of combat school, with little to no idea on what she wants to do next. She never knew her parents, and went to school because she had nowhere else to go and didn’t know what to do. She is not unhappy, but feels like she has no purpose or drive to do anything specific. Not wanting to join the military, she decides to become a freelance sword-for-hire and takes gig jobs as a hunter.

She sees Lyra’s ad, and decides to move to the northern reaches of the continent to follow this potential job offer. She has no experience with magic or science, but she knows she is good with her swords, and that seems to be what Lyra is asking for.

Lyra immediately finds Svee fascinating – though people in the present time no longer actively use magic and don’t seem to even know how, Svee is actually physically incapable of perceiving or connecting with magic at all. Lyra can tell this immediately, and hires her. She is fascinated by Svee and wants to test the limits of her magic deficiency.

Svee is immediately in love. She is at Lyra’s side every waking moment of her life. She does everything Lyra asks, and tries her best to be exactly what Lyra needs. Lyra gives her a purpose, and is very kind to her. She accompanies Lyra on all of her field expeditions, and spends many days in her office or lab watching her and doing everything she says.

Lyra intentionally exposes Svee to areas and creatures with extremely high concentrations of magic, and smaller concentrations while under observation at Lyra’s side. Lyra is testing Svee, and Svee doesn’t know it. Svee is changing, and she doesn’t understand.

Lyra cares for Svee, but she cares about her research much much more. Lyra enables Svee’s behavior, though. She entertains a romantic relationship with Svee, but always puts Svee below her work. Svee fails to understand this.

Svee makes a lot of friends at the research institution. She is not a very “interesting” person (she has no hobbies and can only talk about Lyra and work) and is not very chatty in general, but she enjoys being in the company of others and learning what other people are doing. There is some negative opinion regarding Lyra, mostly that she does not want to work with others and won’t share what she’s learned or what she’s working on.

Lyra believes very strongly in the old religion, the spirits/gods that died from excessive use of technology, which left magic stagnating and fading away. She believes she is doing the right thing by helping purify and strengthen the magic left in the environment, and believes she might be able to create more of it, or control it in some way. She thinks she is on the verge of something huge, that could solve all of the problems she’s been studying for years.

Svee’s body eventually begins to rely on magic as a result of the exposure, but she can’t intake it herself. Her body starts to eat itself. Lyra has to infuse her with magic, and continuously increases the quantity.

Svee becomes increasingly protective of Lyra. She grows distant from all her new friends, and only talks to Lyra. Lyra is working on something very big, and does not elaborate to Svee on what it is. Lyra starts testing things on herself, and starts leaving Svee out of things and doing things on her own. She assures Svee that what she is doing is simply very important and needs to be done in a very particular way.