What do you do when you're done with your task and waiting for exfill ? That's right, you have very deep and meaningful talks with your teammate 👏👏👏 I feel like this is such an easy way to spend time lmfao, Stryzh would probably not care if it was the other way around, but he never minds teaching good old classics
It's fairly self indulgent, I'm getting more comfortable NOT rendering everything all the time, I'm glad I seem to be finding a better balance :>
Gen, on the left, belongs to @sleepy-dino12 !! Thank you for letting me draw your pookie, it was a lot of fun <3
("go fuck yourself" is NOT a direct translation, but rather the closest I could find when it comes to vibes) (oh and the background is a screenshot from stalker 2)
Warnings for (pretty vague) mentions of murder and death.
This prompt was a pain. Can you tell I stared blankly at my laptop screen before going "heck with it, here's this" with the title? Hope you all like it!
*****
The worst place for a sorceress to be is in nobility's presence.
Kael's dress feels like a beacon, a red rich like fire. Bidding all to look beneath the tight-bodiced silk to recognize the spark in her heart. To recognize the sanctity of her blood and capture her so they may take it for themselves. She feels eyes settle on her, the bold color, the way her skirt floats out on the soft evening breeze, as if waving them all closer.
She's looking to be found, though. It's the reason she's come.
The mourning period of her father's untimely death is over, an accident too coincidental to be so, for his body had been leached of blood. An odd thing, if he was human, but a blaring signal of danger for a sorcerer. Their blood was like light and was worth more than silk or salt or gold. Drops gifted those ungifted with sacred blood all the power it had to offer. All the power a sorcerer could use it for.
The talent, after all, lied in the blood and not the person. Having it in a stranger's hands was dangerous. Terrifying.
She grips the delicate glass of dark plum wine in her hand lightly, smiling reassurance at the Duchess smitten with her father who had gotten her in the gates and who believed in the public truth of her father's death. She does not know that he was killed, does not know that he was a sorcerer, does not know that Kael possesses his same gifted blood. Does not know that she is here, hoping to be cornered by a killer.
She'd hardly pieced the truth together herself.
If she had not gotten the few moments with her father's corpse as she did, she would be unaware of the full truth. She would have believed him killed, but she would not have believed it done by an enchanter. They are so rare these days and they tend to keep to themselves.
She is lucky she had had those moments, had seen the rune burned like a brand, ash black and smooth, on his skin.
A sorcerer's blood in an enchanter's possession was a thing of great terror. The clash of their differences too often led to corrupt cursed objects. Enchanter's magic on it's own was humble work, hardly useful to anyone but themselves with the way they were bound to nature and the mere shimmers of power it offered. They could not hold enough to do anything large, on their own. But if they obtained a sorcerer's blood?
Well. Then they possessed a means to store power and a way to slowly obtain endless amounts.
In time, it was devastating.
Her only clue to the killer's identity was the rune, a mark left like a signature when an enchanter does their work.
It's burned into her mind. She'd made sure, once she spotted it and it took the breath from her lungs and left her cold, to memorize it.
To recognize it.
Of all the ways Kael thought her past might catch up to her, this had not been one.
She thought she might one day see Gen again, the little girl from the forest who adored her family and her magic, but she never thought it would be like this. She never thought Gen would turn her back on her people's beliefs.
"Oh, your dress it stunning," she compliments a Baron's daughter who sports a sleek, thin-strapped lavender piece. "It compliments your waist." She sips her wine. Her eyes roam the courtyard idly. No one has caught her attention, though she knows she's being watched.
She knows she's right.
"Thank you." Reflexively, her hand smooths over the waist, face lit by the compliment mindlessly given.
Kael smiles as her father taught her, straight and with no teeth. "Now if you'll excuse me, I should keep mingling."
"Of course!"
They tie off their pleasantries and part. Kael deposits her empty glass on a passing server's tray. She smooths her skirt. The magic in her blood hums. She chats briefly with a few more people, all of them as charmed as they were by her father when he frequented such events.
"Pardon me?" a girl demures softly, some time later, fingers ghosting at her elbow. The touch is cold in a way that betrays the owner's nature. It is a blessing that she was able to haggle those moments with her father's body. If she hadn't, she'd currently be clueless. She'd be in danger unprepared.
She quickly finishes her empty conversation with Viscountess Blune's niece, turning to Gen. "Yes?"
"May we speak?"
Her smile brightens as her blood warms uncomfortably. "Of course. Your dress is lovely," she compliments, though the article of clothing is out of season. It's a sleeveless knee-length teal that is better suited for summer's peak than it is for the ending hump of spring.
Gen tilts her chin up, face smooth and mildly pleased, though her hard eyes suggest that she caught the lack of genuineness in the compliment. She's unable to call it out, though. Polite society had rules. "Thank you." It could be rather stifling, filtering everything to be at-a-glance polite.
"It's wonderful to see you again," Kael says, "though I must admit I'm surprised to see you here." An enchantress this far from nature was all but powerless. It was all but a declaration that Kael's memory was correct. That she was right. The realization sinks something hot in her gut. "I thought you might be with your sister by this time of year."
Gen's face twists. She has been an only daughter for nearly a decade, her sister's funeral long come and gone. "Well, you know. She took a last minute trip to Kamri."
"Oh?" Kael grabs a new glass from a passing server that offers, tilting her brows up in curiosity as if she had not been among the small group that discovered Gina's corpse. It was tragic, truly, how she perished. Attempting the impossible. "That's a nice place, this time of year." It was near where her father was headed.
"It is. Simply gorgeous."
They hold eye contact. Kael sizes her up, believes Gen is doing the same. The years have not been as cruel as she thought they might be, with Gen being made an orphan with no family left to take her in the last time they saw one another. There's roundness to her cheeks and her eyes are not shadowed in a lack of sleep. It's impressive and insulting in the same stroke. "How have the years been?"
"Kind." A lift to her smile that seems bitter.
She returns it. "I can see." She takes a sip, leaving a perfect imprint of her red painted lips wrapped over the rim.
"Thank you. It's been kind for you, as well, I trust?" Sharp eyes. Oh, if only they'd been able to find one another in a place less crowded.
"Kind enough." She lifts a shoulder. "You've kept busy, it seems." Not a question.
"I have."
Kael switches her glass to her right hand to grab Gen's elbow, stepping closer to give the illusion that she's about to whisper something juicy and not quite polite. And she is. "I know. Murder is such hard work, isn't it?"
Gen lifts her chin, shaking off Kael's grasp. "You have no proof."
"I don't," she agrees. "But that doesn't always matter, does it? I'm not taking you before justice." There's other ways to deal with things. Ways more common among those who cannot stand completely honest before the world.
Fear cracks through her expression. Something else, steady and dark, is quick to mask over it. Grief, she wants to say. "You wouldn't."
"Wouldn't I? I would have said something similar about you, recently." She takes another sip, sour-sweet rushing over her tongue. "Yet here we are. What are you hoping to do, anyway?"
It can't be the obvious answer of bringing her family back. They were dead (in an enchanter's way, which wasn't quite as permanent as any other but was nearly so, for all that's needed to bring them back). It would take more time than Gen had, to gather enough power for one person, let alone more.
"Is it not obvious?" A glint in her eyes. Knowledge. Triumph. Some missing piece. What is Kael missing?
"Apparently not. Be a dear and enlighten me?"
Gen folds her arms over her stomach, stares pointedly at far side of the crowd. "You should know."
Kael observes the other's face. When Gina was newly dead, Gen used to hide her grief behind irritation. But surely not. "Gina?" she asks. "That was no one's fault."
None but her own, though she won't say that part. It was a pitfall of being an enchanter. She'd tried to use magic she didn't have, driving herself to ruin, trying to perform something that required more than she could ever hold, to wrangle together a cure for her uncle. A man who had raised them both for most of their lives.
"Don't say her name. And it was."
Kael's chest swishes. Her magic settles, quiets. She forgets all of the people around them, possible ears listening. "Sorcerer magic is poison for enchanters," she reminds her, voice low. "My father would have helped but it would have killed him faster."
A pointed look. Carefully raised brows and pursed lips. A struggle to look like they're not fighting. "He could have helped. You could have."
"You know what would have happened if we did."
But did she? She'd been young, when her uncle and sister passed. They'd been all she had. Who would have taught her more, after, if she was alone?
Sorcerer magic in enchanter's grasp was incapable of healing, not in a way that is true to the name, that is favorable. Their kinds of magic never mix to cast anything good. It would have hollowed Gina of her ability to cast, would have trapped her with magic that steadily, slowly grew, lazily turning her everything into agony. It would have taken her uncle's ill only to replace it with something far worse, the beginning of a curse planted steady in his chest, siphoning off every scrap of his own magic until he was hollow, until it took his life, leaving behind an object acting as vessel for all that darkness.
There was nothing good to come, mixing their magics together.
And to use sorcerer amplification to bring an enchanter back? She's never heard it done. She imagines the consequences of that would create something that might be capable of rending the world in half.
"And it would have differed from current circumstance how exactly?
A sigh. She really did not know? "Do you not remember your laws? We do not mesh our magics together for a reason. It ends in corrupt enchantments. Curses. Saving your uncle would have unleashed a horror upon a dozen innocents that are not suffering from it now."
"Curses are myths."
A righteous sort of anger lights within her.
"Don't tell that to me." Her eyes scan the crowd for a sun-yellow pleated dress. She points it out, forces a smile on her face as she remembers that they are not alone. "Tell that to Lady Ontil. Her grandfather had possession of such an object. Ask her about it. She's left living with the consequences."
Defiance. "She looks fine."
"And looks can be deceiving, no?" She holds Gen's eyes. "I suggest, for the fate of some little girl that will one day be forced to take the brunt of your mistakes, that you lose what you stole."
"I took nothing."
"Talk to Lady Ontil. Please. For Gina's memory, if nothing else." She steps back. "And for the future's sake, I hope you're right." She downs the rest of her wine. It tastes more sour than it did before. "Just remember that you won't be the one paying the price. Think of that, before you decide if you want to gamble."
Gina does not answer. Her face is mask of stern nothingness that Kael can't read. She turns, wordless, and walks away.
"You won't be paying," she emphasizes, one last time, hoping it sticks as she watches her go.
Kael hopes it was enough. She doesn't her father's memory tainted with what Gen might force it to become. She doesn't want to think of his kindness and remember that somewhere, there is a family suffering because of his blood taken and used and fouled into something punishing.
*****
Sorcerer doesn't look like a word. Neither does enchanter, really. Someone please tell me to stop making intricate worlds for things. This did not need to have as much worldbuilding as it does and I wanted to strangle it at least half a dozen times because of it.
I made this generator for myself when I need inspiration for designing new characters. This is totally open for anyone to use, but if you wanna share your art with me please tag me or use #AllDayOCGen , I'd love to see it!
How to use:
Pick a number (or use a random number generator) from each category. Go through every category and you'll have a list of numbers that correspond to specific traits. These are your new OC's traits!
This generator is a super long list of traits, but it is nowhere near covering everything that makes a character unique, which means this list can be added on to in all sorts of ways! Please feel free to add your own suggestions!
Hopefully you have as much fun with this as I have!
