let nothing of me remain when i die. let those future archaeologists kindly sweep over my last settlement and never find a single thing i’ve touched. let it be a barren place, a sacred, holy place.
and to you, kind excavator: should you see the shadow of a fence-post, or the dark patch where my foundation lay, turn your gaze. there’s nothing to see here. and should you find a busted plank from my Papa’s record cabinet? he built it with his own hands, but you’ll never know. i’ve filled my pockets with the memories, and i’ve counted my steps carefully.
should you find his paintings, faded and torn with age, or my Grandma’s rolled paper cross, or my Mimi’s old clock, walk away. you will never know the thick, familiar air of Papa’s studio. you will never know the gentle comfort of Grandma’s bread, fresh out of the oven and alighted with butter. you will never know how excited Mimi was to buy men’s cologne for me, that first Christmas after i came out.
should you find the statues from my altar, or the deer skull centerpiece, consecrated with blood, or the bracelet my mother gave me that proudly called me her son, let the years take them. let the earth swallow them whole. and should you find the picture of my sister, you will never know just how proud i am of her, how we inspire each other from miles away, a binary star in a slow dance across that cosmic ballroom.
all these things you will never know, because you will do me a great kindness and let this holy place be forgotten. do not resurrect me with your conclusions about how i lived. do not trap me behind glass in photographs and field reports. do not scour the earth for potsherds and bits of bone. let not one single person on earth know, and keep covenant with me, for only when i am long-forgotten will i be at peace, and the waves of my influence will become utterly anonymous. I Was Here, and you will never know.
If in these silent moments we must suffer, can we not also keep our silent joys?
The goddess of death took my heart into her loving hands, and she bade me to be silent. I watched her work over it with gentle love and care, skeletal fingers pausing to gently caress each bit of scar tissue, breathing life into that which feels half-dead even as I live, and in that moment I saw, black and white, mixed with steel blue and the cold of the grave, I saw her face and felt nothing but comfort and fear, awe and shame, disgust and delight, and I could not tear my eyes away even as I wished to scream. “Shh,” she whispered, and our covenant was sealed with a kiss. I will speak of it no further than this.
“Wait, wait,” Saffron managed through bemused laughter. “You’re telling me you just…force yourself to believe in this made-up god, and that’s why you can do fancy magic tricks?”
Lilly cracked a sly smile. “I wouldn’t put it quite so bluntly, but yes.”
“You summoned an illusory army through absolute bullshit. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“There was no shortage of shenanigans involved.” There was a fire in Lilly’s eyes now, a welcome change from their usual dull luster. “The trick is weaving a lie that’s comfortable enough to believe in yourself, even for just a moment. It’s not unheard of.”
Saffron scoffed and waved her hand dismissively. “Sure, there’s probably plenty of stuffy nerds out there stuck in towers who can do it, but doesn’t that take, like, decades of practice?” At this, Lilly’s smile grew with pride. “I mean, even the nutjobs in the Order of the…of the…”
“Order of the Dreamers,” her friend added helpfully.
“Yeah, that’s the one. They have to dedicate their whole damn lives to that god, and their best people don’t hold a candle to the shit you pulled down there in the valley.” Saffron took a huge gulp of water from her cup and shook her head. “How can you just pull it out of your ass like it’s nothing?”
“Well, I did have some help,” Lilly admitted, pulling her satchel onto her lap. She unbuckled the leather straps on the front and pulled out an elegant book bound in black snakeskin. Saffron leaned in to examine it. To her horror, the thing was ghastly: on its cover, molded as if it was trying to escape from the book itself, was a carved humanoid face with its mouth open in shock and its eyes sewn shut with thick thread. The “skin” was wrinkled and firm to her curious touch. She ripped her hand away almost immediately, disturbed by how lifelike it felt.
“What in the fresh nine hells is that?” Saffron recoiled. Her face contorted like she’d stepped barefoot into a puddle of gryphon piss. “Please don’t tell me that’s somebody’s face. Oh, gods” she moaned, “that’s totally somebody’s face, isn’t it?”
Lilly brushed off her companion’s concern and rolled her eyes. “I’m fairly certain it’s just resin, or wax. Could be both.” As she opened the book, Saffron prepared herself for the damn thing to begin bleeding from the pages, or screaming like one of the ban sidhe, but instead the scales of the binding shifted against the wooden table. It sounded as if the snake had yet to part from its skin, and a shiver ran up her spine.
“This is a grimoire, taken from one of the highest-ranking members…” Lilly paused for dramatic effect. “…of the Order of the Dreamers.”
Saffron’s eyes went wide. “No way.”
“Yes, way. It’s filled to the brim with the magical techniques used by the Order for centuries. It has detailed instructions for the creation of sigils and wards, grounding techniques, lucid dreaming,” she said with a grin as she flipped through the well-worn pages. “All conveniently organized by complexity and mastery level. The Dreamers are nothing if not meticulous.”
“Who did you have to kill to get your hands on that?” The dwarf was leaning forward again, hanging on her companion’s every word.
Lilly laughed and replied in kind. “Rather, it’s who I didn’t kill.” She looked wistful for a moment. “Her name was Serafina. She was working for our rivals at the time. The Empress wasn’t keen on another assassin’s guild challenging her own for power, but her hands were tied. After all, officially speaking, our guild didn’t exist.” She closed the book, much to Saffron’s relief, and placed it back in her satchel. “So, as far as her citizens were concerned, the Lithium Veil was mere legend, and our work continued without issue…until our rivals got ahold of something we had our eyes on.”
“The grimoire.”
“Exactly.”
Saffron raised an eyebrow. “What could an assassin’s guild want with a cult’s magic books, anyway? I thought assassins had already mastered the art of sneaking around like creeps.”
If Lilly took offense, her face didn’t show it. “It wasn’t for us. Not that we didn’t have use for it, mind you. But the Empress was concerned about what the Order was doing behind closed doors. She’d heard rumors of brainwashing, mind control, that sort of thing.”
“If it was that bad, couldn’t she just, you know, do something about it? Wave her magic Empress wand and outlaw the cult?”
She shook her head. “The Order was protected by laws and tradition that go back for centuries. They weaseled their way into tax-exempt status and they’ve been untouchable since.” The two shared a laugh and said in sync, “The freedom to believe is the freedom to live.” The words were practiced and often spoken in jest.
“So,” Lilly continued, “when rumors reached us about the disappearance of one of their grimoires—into the hands of our rivals, no less—I was tasked with retrieving it. I figured it’d be an easy job.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “Instead, I ran face-first into a trap set by that wily elf herself.”
Saffron looked doubtful. “How did she manage that?”
“Pretty easily, actually. I was tracking who I thought was the assassin, and I got…sidetracked.” Her cheeks flushed. “She took me by surprise, dressed like she was, and in a seedy bar, no less. I figured I’d just get back to business in a minute, but I had to know her name.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a professional?”
“Everyone has their weaknesses.”
“Oh, and yours is wily elves, apparently?”
Lilly shook her head again. “Women.”
They shared another laugh. “Fair enough. But I’ve got to know, what was she wearing?”
The assassin pretended to be deep in thought, but in truth the memory was close enough to be engraved on the insides of her eyelids. “Let me think…she was wearing a white linen shirt, loose in the sleeves, with plenty of, uh…” At this point, her whole face was almost as red as Saffron’s hair. She gestured to her chest. “You know.”
“Oh, yeah. Totally understandable.”
Lilly continued sheepishly. “And she had this, uh…this long, flowing skirt. One of the ones with the long slits down the sides, you know?” Saffron knew. “And sometimes she’d move a certain way, and you could see, from the side, that she was wearing a…a crimson-red…”
The dwarf began to blush as well, starting from her ears to the bridge of her nose. “Okay, so you’re telling me—” She stifled a giggle. “—that your whole mission got supremely fucked because you saw a hot elf chick in a thong? Am I hearing that right?”
“She was, and I truly mean this, the most beautiful person I had ever laid eyes on.” She paused for a moment and wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead. “And, yes, as you can imagine, it took me by surprise when she led me up to a small bedroom above the bar.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I swear on my life, she had me tied to the bed. The knots were impossible to escape. By the time I realized what was going on…” Lilly buried her face in her hands, wishing she could sink through the floorboards and bury herself alive from shame. Her voice came out muffled: “We made a deal, though. I told her my guild could pay her double what our rivals were giving her if she joined us and handed the book over to our leader. Thankfully, she was a fresh face in the other guild, not yet initiated. No loyalties yet to tie her down.”
Saffron began to smile, equally impressed and amused. “You’ve really got a silver tongue, huh?”
Lilly lifted her head. “Not nearly as good as hers was.”
The two erupted into laughter once again at the absurdity of it all, and the evening went on in kind, with Saffron prodding for more information about Serafina, and Lilly becoming increasingly more embarrassed. At some point, they replaced their drinks with sterner stuff, and the night was filled with mirth and reverie.
the world is big and bright, too bright, and it hurts like hell, and sometimes you can just see the blood on the cobblestones, and it’s all just too much, like a droning buzz in your mind that grows louder every minute. like a dull ache in your heart, a yearning for more.
make music in the silence. make art where there is none. it doesn’t need to be good, it simply needs to be.
we can’t keep the darkness away forever, and the torch will go out, so let’s spend the time we have telling stories in the dim light and painting ourselves on the walls. years later, they’ll see the forms we made and wonder how we lived, and we’ll reply with a whisper: just like you.
T’jora kept to the shadows, carefully avoiding the pools of light cast by torches lining the walls. She made her way through a pair of open doors and scanned her surroundings. The dining hall would be her biggest challenge yet; it was the only direct route to the master bedroom, yet the massive goat-horn chandelier hanging in the center threatened to betray her position to prying eyes. Across the room, just inside the entrance to the kitchen, she could hear the cook singing to herself as she began preparing a midnight supper. Darkness seeped in from the windows, offering the Khajiit a narrow path through the hall. Outside, the frigid wind whistled through the trees, muffling her steps quite nicely.
The cook hit a sour note, causing T’jora to stumble, just a bit. She righted herself, but the wood beneath her feet groaned as her weight shifted. A thousand curses in several languages came to mind, but she remained calm. From a small pouch at her side, she procured a pinch of shimmering powder just as the cook took notice of the sound. Waving her other hand over the powder, she conjured the image of a rat in her mind, covered in blisters and boils. The powder began to swirl around between her hands, forming the very creature she pictured. It was no bigger than her palm, cold to the touch, and glowed with an eerie, ghostly light.
Placing it on the ground, she whispered a few words under her breath, and the creature obeyed, scrambling toward the kitchen. Moments later, T’jora heard a high-pitched scream, followed by the sound of pots and pans clattering to the ground. She took the opportunity to dart across the room and into the hallway leading toward the master bedroom. She caught a whiff of something burning and foul emanating from the kitchen, but didn’t stop to investigate further. The Khajiit chuckled to herself as she dispelled the illusion, leaving the bewildered cook to her own devices.
Her destination was dead ahead, preceded by an embroidered rug that was the color of dried blood. Perhaps, she thought to herself, it was dyed with blood. Though she was no stranger to death and its trappings, the thought sent shivers up her spine as she crept toward the bedroom. As she approached two massive doors, both locked tight, she heard distant footsteps coming from behind her. They paused for a moment, and she heard the cook’s frantic voice as she spun a tale about a “ghost rat” wreaking havoc in the kitchen, and then disappearing in an instant. T’jora looked around for a place to hide as she heard peals of laughter from the newcomers. She quickly decided on a nearby chest, which was mercifully unlocked and nearly empty, save for a few odd scraps of cloth and a foot of coiled rope. As she shut the lid, the sounds became muffled and everything went dark, except for a small bead of torchlight flickering through the keyhole.
Almost immediately, she regretted her choice of hiding spot. The wood was slightly damp, and the smell of rot assaulted her sensitive nose. She could feel faint vibrations beneath her as two sets of footsteps made their way toward the doors. Peering through the keyhole, she could see two servants, a man and a woman, standing in front of the chest. The woman spoke first in a gruff voice.
“Our Lord will be eating well tonight, won’t he?”
“He certainly will,” the man replied. “After all, Bosmer is his favorite.”
T’jora felt the pit in her stomach grow larger. Something was wrong. She recalled the voice of the Night Mother in her head, guiding her toward her next victim. “Master Elmund Rolfsson is known for his brutality,” the withered old corpse had told her. “It seems someone wants to give him a taste of his own medicine.” She had been told nothing further, and those she had spoken to would only say that the old Nord’s greed was matched only by his appetite. Was this the right place? Had her intel been wrong?
As if in response, the woman piped up again. “I hear those elves only eat meat in Valenwood. Master Rolfsson says it gives them a more refined taste than other elves.”
At this, the man laughed. “They all taste the same to me. I prefer a bit of Argonian, actually. It’s not unlike eating fish: you have to keep the scales on one side for an extra crunch.”
T’jora’s stomach churned as the woman countered. “I still think Khajiit is my favorite. You won’t find leaner meat anywhere. They’re hard to catch, but the guards certainly won’t bat an eye if some caravan cat goes missing.”
“Do you sprinkle the meat with moon sugar, too?” The man was teasing now. “I’ve heard it’s all the rage in Elsweyr.”
Bile rose in her throat as T’jora closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. This was far more than she was expecting. Was this the Night Mother’s idea of a joke, giving her no warning about the target’s culinary preferences? She drew out her exhale, focusing on lifting the tension from her body. As she relaxed, her hand shifted, and she felt something wet oozing between her fingers. Water? No, she thought, it was far too thick. Her stomach threatened to rebel as she realized it was blood. Blood and bits of viscera.
It all made sense now. The Bosmer had been here. If what remained was anything to go by, he had put up a nasty fight. But where was he now? T’jora thought back to the foul smell coming from the kitchen and shivered.
She heard the sound of a metal key being turned, and one of the doors swung open. As the footsteps made their way into the bedroom, she waited for a brief moment, then took another pinch of shimmering powder from her satchel. This time, she sprinkled it over herself, conjuring images of the clever Alfiq of her homeland. After a brief moment, T’jora lifted the lid of the chest, knowing her magic had draped a blanket of silence around her. She climbed out of the chest and shut the lid, remaining close to the ground. Her magic, after all, did not protect her from sight.
The two servants stood just a few meters ahead, right in front of a massive wooden coffin standing upright. Carved into the dark red wood were images of celestial bodies: Masser and Secunda, as well as an aurora pattern stained with green and blue hues. Surrounding the images were the most notable constellations, as well as a few T’jora didn’t recognize. The handiwork was magnificent, yet she didn’t have time to admire it further. She grabbed a flexible wooden shortbow from two hooks anchored into the armor on her back and knocked an arrow from her quiver, aiming for the woman’s back. Holding her breath, she drew the bowstring back and let the arrow fly after a brief moment. In an instant, it found purchase in the woman’s back with a soft thunk. Her knees buckled as she gasped for air and fell forward, bouncing comically off of the coffin lid and landing motionless on the wooden floor. Dark blood began to pool underneath her as her comrade began shouting and pounding on the coffin.
“Master! An assassin! There’s a—“
Thunk.
His words cut off as he began coughing up blood. He reached up to grab the arrow piercing his throat, but it was too late. Another arrow buried itself into his back, and he collapsed on the floor. The Khajiit gave a silent word of thanks to the gods and moved to enter the room. It wasn’t ideal, taking more lives than necessary, but something told her the two wouldn’t be missed much. She stepped over their lifeless bodies and made her way to her target. The strong stench of death emanated from the coffin. Had she been more prepared, she would have stuffed her mask with sweet-smelling oils and herbs. Instead, T’jora began prying the coffin lid open. It was no small feat, as the wood refused to give way, but finally she was able to wedge her claws inside and use them for leverage. The lid creaked open, and what she saw inside made her blood turn to ice.
The old Nord was completely naked, save for an embroidered loincloth wrapped around his nether regions. His skin was steel-grey and loose on his flesh, wrinkling and pooling in places where gravity pulled it down. His stomach was distended far beyond his sunken chest, obscuring the bottom few ribs beneath his bloat. Although his fingers looked skeletal and hollow, tipped with long, sharp nails, his arms were bloated, as were his legs. Droplets of brown liquid had settled on his chest. The foul smell was overwhelming now, and T’jora retched as the man’s body groaned and purged more brown liquid from his nose and mouth.
Suddenly, the Nord’s eyes flew open, and T’jora watched in shock as the bloated, decomposing corpse of Master Elmund Rolfsson began to move, shaking off its slumber. The creature’s mouth opened further and its chest and belly expanded as it inhaled the warm air of the bedroom. With a sputtering cough, it spewed more of its strange ichor onto the Khajiit’s breastplate. A few stray droplets landed on her cheek and singed her fur like boiling oil. She reeled back in confusion and horror—the Night Mother, ancient as she was, had been preserved in a much later stage of decay. Her sunken eyes and dried-out skin seemed almost beautiful compared to the abomination before her.
T’jora’s instincts took over then, and she raced toward the entrance to the bedroom, grabbing another arrow from her quiver. She knocked it as she turned to face the undead creature—not quite human anymore, but certainly not Draugr—and aimed for the chest as it began to drag itself out of the coffin. Her shock caused her to stumble, and the arrow curved right, piercing the coffin lid. What was left of Master Rolfsson stepped forward and set its piercing gaze on the assassin. Another round of thick brown ichor bubbled up from its throat as it spoke in a terrifying, hollow voice.
“I see we have an honored guest in my halls,” it spat with a grimace. “Are you part of the main course? Or shall I save you for dessert?”
Knocking another arrow, T’jora held her breath and tried in vain to calm her nerves. This time, the arrow simply grazed the thing’s shoulder as it passed, and she cursed herself silently as she readied her bow again.
The Master glanced down at the servants, whose bodies were already showing the first signs of death. Its knees gave a sickening crack as it knelt down slowly and took the male servant’s leg in its clawlike hands. In one motion, it ripped the cloth of the man’s pants from his calf, then brought the limb up to its rotting lips.
“How thoughtful of you to bring me an appetizer.” More ichor dripped from its eager mouth. Each droplet that landed on the dead man’s leg began to sizzle and steam. T’jora willed her hand to let the arrow fly, but her body refused to move. She stood frozen in place as the creature opened its mouth wide—oh, Azurah!—and heard a disgusting, wet crunch as it bit down on the man’s flesh. When it finally raised its head, blood and ichor dripped from its chin as it began to chew. Its eyes had been locked with hers, until a brief moment when they shifted to look at something behind her.
T’jora turned her head. A few feet behind her stood a young Breton woman in a blood-stained apron. It was the cook, butcher knife in hand. Her face was pale, but her eyes were narrowed with conviction. She locked eyes with the assassin, then glanced over to the Master. It was still chewing, making its way through the tough tendons and ligaments of the man’s calf. Turning once more to the Khajiit, she uttered one word.
“Run.”
It was enough to break T’jora from her trance, and she let the knocked arrow fly wildly into the bedroom as she turned on her heel and ran. The arrow shattered a vase on a nearby table. She had just passed the cook when she heard her speak again.
“Give the Dark Brotherhood my thanks.”
The Breton dropped the knife and began moving her hands in a spiral around each other as an orb of flame began to grow between them, pulsing with blistering heat. T’jora felt the fur on her neck stiffen as the fireball grew. The Master’s eyes were transfixed by the swirling mass, its mouth agape. What remained of its meal fell out of its mouth and made a wet splat as the servant’s bloody flesh hit the floor. In one swift motion, the cook hurled the fireball toward the Master, her hands blackened with ash. The creature let out a blood-curdling scream as the hungry flames devoured its flesh. As the fire began to spread across the wooden floorboards, the cook grabbed T’jora’s hand and began to run for the entrance. Flames danced on the fingertips of her free hand as she set half of the dining room ablaze, then scorched the walls of the entryway. The goat-horn sconces shattered in the blast of heat, and each torch fell to the ground, adding to the inferno.
One final, ear-piercing scream echoed through the halls as the two nearly ripped the front door from its hinges in their escape. The night sky was littered with stars, and creatures of the night were going about their business when the house suddenly erupted in flames. The two tore through the surrounding woodland as fast as their legs could take them, until the Breton motioned for them to slow down. Gasping for breath, she fell to her knees and closed her eyes. T’jora cast a muffling spell on both of them as the cook slowed her breathing. A few moments later, she spoke again.
“My name is Amelie,” she told the assassin. “I’m the one who called on the Brotherhood.”
The Khajiit looked at her with a curious grin. “You performed the Black Sacrament?”
Amelie laughed darkly. “There’s plenty of corpses going into the manor. It was easy enough for one to go missing.”
T’jora wasn’t satisfied. “But how could you possibly know of such dark arts?”
The woman sighed, letting the question hang in the air. After a moment of quiet, she spoke again. “I was a historian for years, you know. I’ve studied cults and taboo forms of magic since I was very young.” She gestured in the direction of the manor. “That’s how I ended up here, in a house full of cannibals. I heard rumors about the manor, and curiosity got the best of me.” Amelie clenched her fists. Her knuckles were still charred with ash. “I did horrible, inhuman things...but I lived.”
Her Khajiiti companion nodded. “Survival is always the most important. Everything else comes second.” She paused for a moment. “Where will you go now?”
In the distance, the manor burned like a warm hearth. Wisps of smoke rolled down the hillside, carried by the cold wind. Amelie spoke again with a newfound conviction and a sly grin.
“Perhaps I’ll make use of my talents and join the Brotherhood.”
At that, T’jora smiled. “Our Family would be honored to have you.”
The two slept under the stars that night, shielded from much of the bitter cold with a conjured barrier. All around them, life went on as normal for the nocturnal creatures of the forest. The distant crackling of the fires soothed them both as they drifted into sweet dreams of future ambitions.
so i turned on a cyberpunk/synthwave playlist and came up with a novel idea (heh):
in the not-so-distant future, the World Wide Web’s newest nickname is Yggdrasil—the World Tree, of course, with every branch and root connecting the world together. the protagonist of the story is a hacker with the nickname Ratatoskr, named for the squirrel who runs up and down Yggdrasil delivering messages and spreading gossip from parties at its deepest roots and its highest branches. she works as a freelancer and mainly works to undermine propaganda put out by the government, twisting their words just slightly to leave subtle impacts in the minds of viewers, and occasionally splicing subliminal messages meant for various resistance factions. this must all go unnoticed, of course, by the Valkyries—an elite squad of tech-savvy soldiers, mostly women, who work sort of like a military police force, tasked with rooting out dissenters both online and offline, bringing them to justice and, on occasion, doing their namesake proud by “choosing the slain”—disposing of particularly dangerous adversaries. matters are further complicated by a mysterious and dangerous faction known as Níðhöggr, named after the serpent at the tree’s base, which aims to undermine Yggdrasil entirely for reasons unknown, carrying out terrorist attacks on internet hotspots like web cafés, or even directly assaulting cable hubs. their methods are entirely analog: pipe bombs, arson, etc. and they have virtually no online presence, so tracking them down is nearly impossible for a net-reliant society.
the story itself begins from Ratatoskr’s point of view, but later in the story, two more perspectives are examined: first, through the eyes of a particularly skilled Valkyrie, and later through a Níðhöggr agent. the three stories begin seperately, but gradually become intertwined as their fates collide, and they are forced to examine their own places in the madness as an even greater threat looms on the horizon—one that threatens to unravel society entirely, nicknamed “Ragnarok”.
here’s the playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4yixszIwt1Sa6s8OvZFRuD?si=8R438aPWSLykfvKpYAH-Qw
D&D session concept: you and your party arrive at a bustling metropolitan city with a complex political structure, and you begin hearing rumors about a mysterious newcomer whose been influencing the courts recently, and there’s concern that she’s trying to lead the city down a very dark path.
so you all put your court detective hats on and gather information, sneak/disguise your way into a few lavish parties, and eventually discover the culprit: an elven woman who has a body that Just Won’t Quit and a voice that can quite literally enthrall anyone who listens. you end up tracking her down to a top-notch courtier’s home, where you find servants bustling around, tending to the needs of the mysterious woman. eventually, you find her in the master bedroom, lounging around in comfortable attire as the courtier himself is fanning her and refilling her glass of wine every so often. she sees you and grins. “oh? we have visitors.”
the courtier tries to fight the party to protect his master, and once you either dispell the charm or knock him unconscious / kill him, you get to fight Her.
at some point, she breaks out into song, and her voice is so beautiful, so enrapturing that you all have to fight to break free from its control, lest you become charmed by her and begin attacking your own allies. you finally manage to bring her down, but presumably it’s a very tough fight, and her last words stick in your mind:
“You may have lovers wherever you roam,” she says weakly. “But sooner or later we all sleep alone.”
that’s when the music starts playing in real life, and it suddenly dawns on everyone that you and your party just killed Cher.
