67 for the spotify ask game!
@bloodlessheirbyjacques <3
Not Yours To Have
A very impactful song I was meaning to write something for for a while now (as for many songs lmfao). This one again is a vibe piece and a pretty emotional one at that. Besides Cronyl's darkest moment, this one became a kinda fav for now. Tho, I did not proof read so it might suck. Also, I haven't explained the magic in this world yet, so don't expect it to make too much sense I guess. Sorry, y'all.
Tiny Context: Metalsea's ending (not a canon or a possible one), where Avelyn tries to save Cronyl.
NON-CANON | EXPLORATION | TW: DEATH | TW: GORE | WC: 2,340
The battle marched on full force, seeking to bring Avelyn to her knees. Her concentration was strained to the point where she could barely distinguish the voices, noises, screams, and clashes from friends to enemies. She kept her will straight, however. The precise movements had eaten themselves into her muscles, but she needed to use her intent to slide her feet in the right direction, her arms into the perfect angle. She felt her exhaustion around, guiding the used golden energy back into their bodies.
Darmon danced the same warpath, in a perfect synchronicity with her. Avelyn trained her eyes to not flinch when the blackened figures clearly aimed to march towards them. Drehana flung her whip at two attackers, Syon slashing them down in a well-managed teamwork. On the other side, Bra’aka roared as he fought back a handful of Zheva’s army, side by side with his draar unit. They circled Avelyn and Darmon like a protecting ward, never stopping, never faltering.
Sweat drenched Avelyn’s forehead, the constantly coming, and going, taken and given energy cramping her limbs into a neverending motion, leaving behind aches and a drain that made her grit her teeth. She focused on the used-up golden energy, glowing brightly in the air, twirling from every single magic-touched individual. Feet forwards, slow spin, hands up, then slowly down, fingers stiff then softly drawn back. She stepped as she was taught, a cacophony of chaos devouring her.
Her eyes followed the trail as she poured as much energy into the sagging Bra’aka, the armoured lot trying to close around them. Avelyn blinked away a feverishly hot drop of sweat and aimed at the next person.
A raw yell cut through her concentration. It resonated in her chest, unlike the rumble of battlecries, the clashing of swords, or the slashing of flesh. Her blood ran ice cold, as her feet missed the next step, eyes searching frantically on the battleground.
No.
Through the ring of defence, Cronyl lay in the dirt, a spear bursting from his chest and the golden life energy escaping him in an alarmingly rapid manner. He did not move.
No.
Avelyn’s fingers began to shake.
No.
Her gaze roamed through her friends, exhausted but still going. Darmon stepped before her, guiding a big chunk of energy into the girls, then into Bra’aka.
“Go,” he said over his shoulder, eyes forward and red from the building fever from overuse of power.
Avelyn took off. Small stones like needles under her feet cut into flesh, but she ran. She ran, and ran through the armoured fighting, shoving an already stumbling enemy into the centre of the fight. With it, she slipped, falling on her knees and seeing a blade tower over her. Eldnar stopped and pushed back the enemy in the next moment, going for its neck with his spikes. Avelyn swallowed back her terror as she began to crawl to Cronyl not far from her anymore. The ground was an opened bleeding heart underneath. She ignored the thick pool under him as she crawled into the blood and pulled herself into a kneeling position. Around her, the slaughter did not stop for a moment.
No. Avelyn tugged Cronyl into her lap, coughing out a sob, and dirt. Her skin was red-hot compared to his. He had his jaw broken, eyes staring upward, chest punctured through, then dragged open by the weapon in it. No.
Avelyn guided every golden trail into his chest, pushing her hand to his wound as if the proximity would make a difference. She grabbed them all, the movements clumsy but enough. Yet, it did not last. However much she channelled into him, it evaporated back into the open air. His body did not hold the life essence.
No.
Avelyn’s chest tightened into a knot. Her breath quickened into a rhythm not even the driadlin masters’s movements would match. She gritted her teeth, hot, angry, desperate tears streaking through her burning cheeks, and she moved her hands up with the crystal-solid intention of draining everything she could. The golden energy wiggled, and twirled, thrashing like a wild animal as it ran — was snatched away from their enemies. She couldn’t take away something they did not use up, she could not take away a life; but she could grab the energy the moment it left their body.
Avelyn pushed her hand deeper into Cronyl’s open wound, blood bubbling between her stained fingers. She shuddered and trembled from the hollow film that settled on his once intense gaze. No. Her face contorted with the deep cracks that kept shattering her heart. She leaned down to touch her forehead to Cronyl’s, screaming as she pulled everything she could from around herself into his form.
The world warped and blurred. Her skin felt like it would burn off her bones any minute. She heard every noise as one, her sore voice coming from outside herself. Avelyn kept her flaming fingers on his chest, crumbling under the pressure of so much life energy. She kept channelling, and screaming until the air was too thick to inhale.
And then it stopped.
The terrible noises of the battlefield, the maddeningly spinning world, the feeling of others’s essence eating at her insides just to burst out into another bout. Something snapped, and Avelyn was deaf, breathing raggedly, while her tears kept drenching her face and Cronyl’s cold forehead. No more energy ran through her body — there was no more to find. As if all life had disappeared, she was alone.
It took a long time to lift her head.
She was in a room, a blinding white nothingness that had no depth, no sound, no direction. She found no weight within herself, or on her knees where Cronyl’s head still lay. The blood that was oozing, and drying on him vanished as well.
And his eyes were closed.
Avelyn put Cronyl on the ground softly, standing on two shaking feet. Even though weightless, the vastness — the endlessness of her surroundings tried to bury her under. She wasn’t going to let it, however. She straightened, taking a step forward.
With that, she felt the morphing within, and the depthlessness decreased. The sensation of having walls around, as if standing in a room rushed at her. She looked around, not seeing anything, but the feeling did not disappear.
She stepped forward again, and she could make out a barely perceptible slit on one of the walls. With caution, Avelyn walked to it. The closer she got, the sharper; the more real it got. Nearly up close, she found it wasn’t a slit — it was a crack on the wall, that had an uneven piece missing.
And through that missing piece, Avelyn saw Cronyl.
He was a little boy, playing with other draar kids in a flower field. The scene played out before her eyes like a moving painting. The way they smiled and laughed, and then as Cronyl later found himself surrounded by other driadlin kids, beating him up because of his draar friends. He didn’t cower, nor give up. He clawed and fought, but he was smaller than the others. When he pulled himself into a groaning, sobbing ball on the ground, the scene re-started.
Avelyn staggered back a little. She dragged over her gaze and found another crack, with a different scene. Then another, and another. As she turned around, the room materialised before her eyes, reaching into the white nothingness, revealing its cracks running through its surface. Avelyn turned, and turned around, slowly spinning until her head began to buzz. She breathed heavily, a stray tear still running over her cheek once or twice.
And every crack had a missing piece, displaying a moment of Cronyl’s life. As Avelyn looked through them, she recognised many of the cracks’ shapes. With a thick swallow, she walked closer to one and looked over the edges that curled exactly like one of Cronyl’s scars. Avelyn knew his wounds like she knew her own palm, and she saw every one of them around herself, the memories marked into it like an infinite dream.
She was standing in the gallery of his pain, and she found why she couldn’t heal him. The cracks let the energy seep out, some of them pulsing with it, some of them losing it. Avelyn’s stomach churned in agony. Most of it kept it and tried to absorb it.
Except one, that reached under where Avelyn stood and was lost into the empty white sky. It seemed like it split the whole place in two, and the missing piece’s shape brought out a shuddering breath from her.
It was the contour of Cronyl’s exile tattoo.
Avelyn walked up to it with heavy limbs but with a determination in her bones. The crack that belonged to it refused to keep any of the golden life energy inside, almost even pushing it out, rejecting it as if poisonous.
The scene it held was different from the rest. It did not start, or end. It was a simple, constant picture of a child — Cronyl, kneeling before two laying figures on the ground, frozen in blood, and fire blazing all around him.
“Save them,” a weak voice whispered from somewhere. A child’s voice.
Avelyn didn’t think twice before she placed her palm over the scene’s surface. There was no need to push, she could easily step into it, the heat of the burning house hot enough to melt, and the air suffocating from ash and death. Her eyes watered from the sting of burning skin. She put her sleeve before her nose and dived deeper.
The two figures were rigid on the ground, throats slashed open by a clean cut. Over them, the child knelt, wailing hoarsely. Blood dripped from his lips, a fresh, raw cut tearing through his top lip through his cheek and left eye, up until his brow.
“Save them,” he sputtered, eyes disappearing under the heels of palms that sunk into them. “You need to save them!”
Avelyn crumpled to her knees beside the child. She choked on the scratching air and the sorrow that snaked upward her throat. However she looked at them, she knew she couldn’t do anything.
“SAVE THEM,” the child screamed. Avelyn heard the crack widen.
All the sorrow, all the pain — she could heal wounds, but she didn’t know how could she fix this. The only thing she could always do was to take upon others’s hurt, yet she didn’t know how to have his. How to…
The child’s skin began to disintegrate into golden specks and absorb into her fingers when she tried to touch his shoulder. His wails softened only a little, and the cracking stopped. Avelyn couldn’t absorb the pain, but she could carry the memory.
Without a moment of hesitation, she pulled herself closer and embraced the child.
Her chest began to burn, hotter than anything she ever felt. She wanted to scream from the utter agony that touched her soul, and what kept coming and coming, drowning out everything. The shards of the memory, that cut so deep she felt herself bleeding without being wounded. The details, the parents, the…
A hand grabbed her wrist gently and pulled her off.
She gasped, sobbing uncontrollably, disoriented. Her head spun, and buzzed, her chest trying to rip apart. She felt like her heart grew into a stone, weighing her down to never move.
But her eyes cleared when she looked up.
“You can’t do this,” Cronyl told her. He was fully grown as she knew him, without blood smearing him all around, squatting beside her as he used to. Both his eyes watched her, but they didn’t seem to struggle. His voice was firm, and her tears rolled forward from the touch that felt real on her wrist.
“I must.” She smiled softly. “You can’t die on me just yet, so I must, and I will.”
“No.” Cronyl kept her gaze as the house around them creaked and stumbled, burning. “He’s not yours to carry.”
“But…”
“He’s not.” It was a whisper, a tender but unquestionable statement. Avelyn found herself almost giving up. Her lips trembled like the child before her, and she closed her eyes to take a heavy breath. He caressed her cheek and swiped away her tears. “Go, Avel. I’ll have him.”
She opened her pleading eyes.
“I will have him,” he repeated, firmer, “and I will come back to you.”
Without another word, he pushed her hard, and Avelyn stumbled back on her knees, falling out from the scene. Before her, the wailing child kept his bloody palms in his eyes, but this time, he wasn’t alone. Much like Avelyn before, Cronyl embraced the boy who then began to dissolve. The crack shook, torn between opening further or closing in, and the child’s echoing screaming slowly quieted. As if finding a home between Cronyl’s arms, he relaxed and wrapped his small, fading arms around his torso.
Avelyn scrambled to her feet, and she felt the whole place crumbling. The scars seemed to make it already fragile. But, her worry was in vain as the scene morphed and warped before her eyes —- the burning house collapsing down, the bodies disappearing and to their place, two gravestones growing on a meadow. The child faded into Cronyl, and he stayed kneeling in front of the graves, a solemn smile on his scarred lips.
The scene stiffened, and slowly, it began to golden. It spread until it froze into a moment, a memory, a picture, and the gold filled the cracks up to the brim. And not only that. Avelyn turned around in relieved awe as one by one, every scar froze in gold, the cracks filling and filling and filling. Tears streaming down her cheeks and sniffing with a smile, she walked back to Cronyl’s body. She kneeled down and placed his head in her lap before she touched her forehead to his and started guiding life back into him — finally feeling it accepted.