Tasmin watched the events around her. She glanced anxiously at the king, wondering if he could see through her act. She glanced at the guests, wondering if any of them could sense the magic running through the castle, the magic running through her veins, and burning her skin time and again. Would they be so joyous if they knew? Would they allow her to still hover in their presence, or would she not survive long enough to warrant any interest? Fears flickered through her mind as her gaze shifted to an individual that always left a slightly bitter taste in her mouth: Vasylia.
She didn’t often feel the weight of envy pressing down on her, but it rose up every time she looked at the apprentice. Her parents’ desires rang through her mind. Marry someone of higher status. Help guarantee Sabina and Nesryn a better life. It was the goal she set out to accomplish, but her target wouldn’t glance her way. Instead, he followed after Vasylia. He held an interest in her, and Tasmin felt frustrated. She didn’t understand what she was doing wrong. She knew her nerves would spike around the royal family, that she’d occasionally say the wrong thing or spill something, but she didn’t think that would discard her completely. She hoped it wouldn’t discard her completely.
That familiar voice rang out, and Tasmin felt herself straightening up. She hadn’t realized her staring was so apparent, but the apprentice must’ve noticed her from her position. Words got caught in her mouth before she slipped into the seat next to the necromancer. Nimble hands plucked a roll from the spread of food before she managed to form a sentence together. “I must’ve been lost in thought. My apologies.” That last sentence left that familiar bitterness dancing on her tongue, but she pushed it away for now.
Still as a millpond, Vasylia waits while her company decides whether or not to accept her offer. She waits, uncomfortably taut, almost unnervingly still, but with the strangely tender portrait of a smile. Hers is not a smile that often presents itself, but when her lips flinch upwards there’s something oddly pacifying about it, something odd in general; it’s an episodical sort of thing, but one could not doubt its sincerity. Vasylia certainly recognises there to be a matter of dispute between the two of them, but she struggles to place it. She’s resolved to wilfully misinterpret Tasmin’s issue with her, perhaps, and in extending her company to a girl who seems quite glad to be without it, the grievance between them only swells. She settles her dark plum eyes on the girl and she watches her with a sort of fascination; a bewilderment. Tasmin is perhaps the only noble at court to hold herself with a hesitation that matches Vasylia’s own: just as Tasmin repeatedly slides velvet gloves up her arms as if in perpetual fear they might slip from her, so must Vasylia acknowledge foibles of her own. But Tasmin is only a girl, and as quick as she is to become discomposed in a crowd, Vasylia has more than ten years on her. Perhaps there’s a kinship in that — to feel alien in one’s own skin.
Then again, perhaps not.
The air lengthens out between them all tense and Vasylia knows it, feels it. As Tasmin weighs the bread roll in her fingers Vasylia brings a chalice to her lips; she drinks from it slowly, if only to distract from the clumsiness hanging between them. “Will you tell me what you were thinking of?” she asks, perhaps invasively, pulling the chalice from her lips. While the question is one she poses merely to soak up this draught between them, there is at least a degree of sincerity to it. Vasylia is curious. For as long as she can remember—which, depending on the day, can be anything from her thirty-five years and a few months—she has always liked to know what other people are thinking. It says a lot about a person; sometimes they will part from their thoughts, sometimes not. But she is not, say, Wraith. She feels no overwhelming desire to expend every ounce of her body’s mortality to expose the dark, webbed secrets buried in the dirt. Vasylia is a listener, always has been, and she is fond only of imagining things, burrowing herself into the life of another.
OUTSIDE THE SANCTUM ; SIXTH OF THE TENTH MONTH.
closed for @vasylia
His steps faltered at the threshold of the Sanctum, as they often did, feet rooted to marble by the intangible questions that never failed to coil around his ankles and bring him to a disillusioned halt. It was always a clashing set of reasons that sent him drifting back towards the veiled, shadow-lit path of the Undying God. Sometimes, it was out of heartache and longing for his mother who lived on to touch and heal any life but his own. Other times, it was out of a need for the grounding stability of his halfhearted worship which, despite how it always wavered and morphed and flickered in and out, was the only constant that he had ever found. It was always one reason or the other or all of them intertwined.
He wasn’t sure which one it was tonight; wasn’t even sure if he had truly ventured out to seek Undeath or if he was simply wandering on an aimless search for clarity in the wake of all the doubts that now clung to him alongside the ashes of the burning man.
Viktor gazed up at the towering beam of the Sanctum as it pierced the skies and the heavens, looked down at the stretch of pews, the gleam of gold, and the reach of Undeath’s gaze where Her idol hung at the center of the room – and then he turned away. He walked across the courtyard encircling the Sanctum, fingers curling into loose fists at his sides, eyes shadowed and shoulders locked. He came to a stop at one of the railings overlooking the sloping cliff and roiling waves upon which Castle Tyrholm was perched, taking in the sights for a long moment before his wandering gaze landed on the familiar form of the court’s bright-eyed necromancer, Vasylia. She carved herself a visage as solemn as his own.
Without moving from his spot near the balustrade, Viktor addressed her, the quiet impression of his voice enriched by the dominating silence. “Have you also come to seek what cannot be found inside?” He tipped his chin in an indication of the Sanctum. “Or have I caught you at the end of your search?”
Vasylia kneels at the cold stone of the Sanctum and she feels her limbs grow numb like the slate. Her neck stooped in reverence, the girl isn’t entirely sure what she’s praying for; and if she isn’t sure what she is praying for, she resolves that she must not be praying for anything at all. Hands still clasped in supplication, Vasylia winks her eyes up towards hanging idols and effigies. To pray here is a gaudy sort of worship, and she determines that this is what makes it such a trying task to devote herself — hanging tapestries from the ceiling all lined in gold only serve to distract. The power of the Undying lingers at her fingertips and, in theory, she should melt as easily into these effigies as molten iron, but something always stops her. Vasylia decides it is easier to cast herself bewildered than entirely severed from the hand that makes her.
Perhaps she brings herself here out of habit. Perhaps she feels like she must. Perhaps she hopes that the Undying will choose to answer her tonight. Nevertheless, She speaks with the resounding silence of divinity.
So Vasylia pushes herself from the ground; she rises. She wanders over to the great, gaping windows and watches the pale waves as they swallow up the black sea-rock, as she often does. She continues to do so, eyeing the salt-water as it washes up the crag, moving between splinters and fissures, until she is stirred from her position. Stirred, by a voice as windless as the silence to which she often retreats, but one which cuts through the quiet with a knife all the same. A voice that possesses a strangely pacifying quality, but now almost causes her to jump. Almost. Vasylia spins on her heel and fastens her eyes on the source of the sound, as if she had not already identified its author. Viktor.
Vasylia bows her head in informal courtesy. “Oh,” she hums, “The end. I was just turning to leave, actually.” She closes the space between them; it feels a little idolatrous to speak in anything other than whispers here. “The Undying grows weary of my voice tonight. She is looking for some silence, I think,” she says, casting her eyes over her shoulder as if the divine being was a friend who stood behind her now. “She stays silent, so I will leave Her be.” If one was to closely exhume her tone, they might note the half-sigh inflected between her words, made in mocking yet made weary by the distance of the deity. “And you, Viktor? You come in search of answers?” she asks. “Perhaps you are only looking for some silence, too.” A beat passes between them. She will let the events of the day settle, like dust on a surface; they will talk around it, ignore it, even, just for tonight. Vasylia’s expression softens. “Come,” she entreats, gesturing towards a pew. “I will sit with you a while as you conduct your hunt.”
i. what the water gave me, florence + the machine. ii. arsonist’s lullabye, hozier. iii. smother, daughter. iv. 400 lux, lorde. v. simple death, chelsea wolfe. vi. sisters of the moon, fleetwood mac. vii. the wolf, phildel. viii. lavender moon, haroula rose. ix. black lullabies, black lullabies. x. moonrise, wildwood. xi. werewolf heart, dead man’s bones. xii. feral love, chelsea wolfe. xiii. the forest, mirah. xiv. stolen roses, karen elson. xv. ghost in the machine, the fire and the sea.
closed: @maidenhoods.
location: the gallows, maiden’s tent.
date: six of ten.
The smell of death clings to the air and, in a rare exception to the rule, its perfume does not arrange itself around her, burying itself underneath her fingernails and gathering on her eyelashes as dust. Today, it stretches for as long as she can see, as it must. The King has chosen to stage his display on the earth of criminals, the proturberant feeling of a noose long removed still lingering in the air like carbon. What it is to hold an event in celebration of your own eminence over a pile of blood and bones, covering over the dust of failed mutinies with the tawdry film of blue and gold. Vasylia cannot decide whether the decision is ingenious or the work of a man gone half-mad — in rumination, or simply to navel-gaze, she eyes the way that the nobles hesitantly eye the torn earth and the way that the others delight in a display of ghastly authority. Perhaps the court finds itself equally split down that divide, too.
Vasylia watches the King thrust his arm into the air, flex the muscles in his hand, order the jovial music of today’s event to pause. While he thinks, while he spits a command, while he decides what the afternoon shall yield to next. In the quiet, Vasylia listens. She unearths nothing particularly extraordinary and nothing entirely unexpected: whispers of the three bodies suspended from the scaffold only yesterday, expected; idle courtly gossip, completely ordinary; bets being hedged over the King’s favourite or his own son, as is routine. All things one might expect. Vasylia determines to redirect her attention elsewhere, and promptly lands upon the small congregation forming around Maiden’s tent, which she has already been watching hawk-eyed. She has been noting the way that each visitor, entirely unsuspecting, wanders in for a soothing elixir only to leave half-aware that they’ve been picked off like a hungry wolf at mice by the Prince of Snakes. One cannot miss the action here. One can only watch the day’s events unfold under the canvas and feel their secrets slip from them.
She would like to avoid that, if she can. Vasylia adjusts her cloak bowing over her shoulders and tunnels past Zoya’s teeth, slipping into the tent like a knife in a gut. As she does so, the day’s melody resumes.
For all the tent has the look of a small, unimpressive thing from the outside, made of worn wood and beige canvas, Vasylia decides that inside it holds magic. She watches the illusion creep up the walls in spilling waves, and there’s a veneer of comfort as she feels its influence settle into her bones. At the centre of the tent, a wooden table, and at the centre of the table, a line of golden liquid waiting in vials. By the vials, Maiden. Maiden, spun from silver bark and forest branches, made from pollen and hoarfrost and daybreak. Vasylia nods to the woman as she steps towards her incrementally, and while she doesn’t quite smile, she feels the muscles in her face warm a little and thaw. “Maiden,” she hums, pulling her gloves from her fingers, “Many visitants today?” The winter is harsh and bitterly cold, and the way that the mud squelches at noble feet is hardly a comfort. Casting an eye towards the mouth of the tent, the corner of her lips tug upwards. “I see you are beset by wolves. Or is the wolf one of your own?”
19 — what do they think of before falling asleep at night?
Vasylia’s mind is always preoccupied with something, be it an inane thought or something a little more profound, but her inability to properly process her emotions unfortunately extends to her thoughts. If you were to ask her, and if she felt inclined to answer you, she might tell you that she thinks of nothing at all when she sleeps at night — but that’s not strictly true. She thinks about how some nights the goose-feathers in her pillow feel soft as she puts her head down to sleep, and how on other nights she can’t feel that comfort at all. She thinks about the people she’s raised, but more importantly she thinks about the people she hasn’t. Her mind drifts towards picturesque scenes of calm waters and moonlit forests that she knows she’s never seen, but they’re scenes she’d like to. Nevertheless, if you asked her, she’d say she thinks of nothing at all; if she was determined to be honest, she’d say that her mind is never occupied with anything except what’s in front of her. But, of course, that’s not true either.
31 — most prized possession?
Marking five years beneath her tutelage, Levana gifted Vasylia with a glass pendant, shaped to look like a coffin. Inside the glass coffin, there’s a rose which moves between life, wilting and death, completely of its own accord. Vasylia actually owns very few possessions — she’s not particularly materialistic, and while she is afforded the same status as a noble, owning things has never particularly been in her interest. This pendant, though, is special. It’s an echo of her power, the ability to (hypothetically) make and unmake life as easily as breathing. The rose at the centre of it is an ensign of the Undying, a blend of snakes (thorns) and wolves (beauty). She wears it around her neck at all times, as devoutly as a married woman wears a ring, and it’s become something of a reminder of what she could be capable of. / @undyingpriestess.
46 — do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?
Neither, really, so I’m just going to create a third option. Vasylia expresses her thoughts through body language. She wasn’t always so difficult to talk to; while no-one would ever be quick to call her chatty, in her earlier years under Levana’s tutelage she was less difficult to reach, and she would yield more about herself. She does express her thoughts to people she’s close to, such as Levana and possibly Maiden, but you learn much more about her if you study her body language. Wooden shoulders when she’s paying attention, a cant of her brows when she’s interested, the twist of a half-smile when she’s amused. The way that she wrings her wrists at the side of her thighs when they tremble. Her love language is almost certainly acts of service, but there are very few people that actually see this side of her. She avoids talking about herself as much as she can get away with it.
The morning had dawned red and it had remained so – crimson hands, maroon dirt, a rosy sky. They had lingered far behind the front lines, granted a bird’s eye view of the slaughter and carnage that raged on below, one horse pale, the other as golden as the sun. Like vultures, they were drawn to death, to corpses, to the sounds of the dying.
It had been some time since Levana was able to bear witness to such destruction, and she could feel her power building up within her fingers, buzzing in her veins and filling her with that ever-familiar sense of power. How was it possible to be satiated and ravenous within the same breath? Satisfied and restless? Her gaze flickered from one point of concentrated violence to the next, watching those who were able-bodied drag the fallen away from the battle to the tent. Only the ones that were not so terribly mutilated – simply skewered and unlucky enough to have the misfortune of slowly bleeding out from their wounds.
Grabbing her leg, she balanced herself on the stirrup, then carefully slid off Norn’s back, landing with a thud upon the muddied ground, dark eyes shifting to assess the moaning soldiers and the corpses that resided beside them. Idly, she made a note of the few that had been dragged away that were not likely to cling to life for longer than the next three days. Their energy would be better used bringing back those who had a fighting chance. Perhaps it was wrong fo her to be so familiar with this scene, but it was far more comfortable to her than the castle walls that she was forced to reside in. The crisp air, the field below, and the cry of the suffering hordes. This was what the Undying God had created her for.
And the far less enthused mage next to her.
The Undying God had created her, also.
Her voice was not likely to carry over the clamor, so she brushes her fingers over Vasylia’s hand, motioning for her to step away from Hel so that they might begin.
Iron and silver rings in the cold air like a battle hymn, because that is precisely what swordplay is. Metal strikes metal and in the prang it makes a song; it beats one’s breast for the dead, rising up from the alloy, away from the stiff bodies that wrap their cold fingers around their weapon — even now. And then it dissipates into the air. Vasylia watches the battle closely and with an assured distance: the way Koldam’s warriors stumble backwards, clumsily defend themselves, allow their chainmail to be pierced through with steel as they raise their swords above their head in a sweeping motion. They are callow. They never had a chance.
Vasylia has learned that rebellions rise, one after the other, in swift and incendiary succession, but their dreams of deposition sink as quickly as they gain tract. Tyrholm ensures it. She has seen her fair share of beaten mutinies and revolts, but there is something different about this one. Something desperate, something melancholic; something, quite frankly, miserable. The battle blurs with sheer speed, with bloody carnage, and she resolves it is akin to watching silver veterans make battle with boys with wooden swords. Nevertheless, she should delight in it, should she not? She supposes she does, though the thought curdles on her tongue like sour milk while she concedes it. A squashed rebellion keeps Tyrholm recognisable. It kept it immutable. She watches as souls leave bodies and bodies become nothing more than vessels, a piece of mutilated flesh laying limply on the grass. She watches as the dirt drinks up the blood, as if forging for the fallen a timeless grave beneath the soil.
The earth is the only thing that will remember these men.
But the magi do not come to ogle the dead, to pass between themselves impressions on the morality of war-making — they come to resurrect them. To augment the forces to Tyrholm, to bolster them to success. As if by second nature, Vasylia mirrors her teacher’s movements to a fault, slipping from the side of Hel and ruffling her pale mane emptily with her fingers. She’s a convincing shadow, is she not? Levana’s fingers brush over her hand and she feels herself stirred by the touch—cold, colder than her own, even, but warm, somehow—and, like the faint outline of an entirely different person, she follows. Together, they stand amongst the fallen, and they have the look of strange soothsayers; like sibyls of Death. It is a strange thing, Vasylia had thought once, to be so hardened to the bloody loss of life, like a piece of armour made impassible: but here she is, curved over bodies like they are nothing. Without them, of course, they are nothing; they are only flesh and bone, their last gasp wrangling free of their lungs, leaving their skin to the dirt. Vasylia turns her head to Levana, watching for her next command.
status: closed to naenias.
location: the noble quarters, castle tyrholm.
date: sixth day of the tenth month, evening.
So there was to be an inquisition. No, not an inquisition; they would let loose bloodhounds, set them upon people of interest, and allow their bloody jaws to give chase. The King would have them ferret out the villain and scratch them out from the earth, with only the scorched ground beneath them to attest to the fact that they’d ever been there. Vasylia could not authentically answer to how that made her feel: uneasy or gladdened? Tyrholm had come close to total collapse, a globe spinning on its axis too precariously, always within splitting distance of keeling over the edge. If it had not been for the decisive swing of Viktor’s iron sword—well, she did not like to linger on that thought for long. She would facilitate the King’s investigation, take an active role in it, even—because that is what Levana will do. And what Levana does, she does too.
First: whispers. She has already taken charge of one set tonight. Vasylia has learned enough to know that, left to fester, whispers always become more than whispers. In fact, whispers become secrets, a great black mark rotting from a single point of origin—and rotting secrets become resistance, hostility, action. She isn’t certain where her desire to ballast the throne and her devotion to her teacher ends, but they trace along the same line. It hardly matters when their desires are so difficult to separate, does it?
It’s late. The castle has been cloaked by nightfall for some hours, but Vasylia has been attending to things. Whispers. Prayer. Rumination. Things that fit into conspiracy and treason like a glove; things that hang over her now, dark as the witching hour. She is climbing the steps to the Noble Quarters, thinking of resting her head on goose-feathers and falling into an emptied dream, when she eyes a figure lurking amongst the festoons of blues and gold. Naenia, a face that attaches itself as securely to the absence of light as she does. Vasylia does not smile. As she passes a pillar, she brushes her fingers over it. “Naenia. The King’s words trouble you?”
It is odd, to see her sitting alone, and not as Levana’s side, like seeing the shadow of an invisible man, like an eclipse without a sun. So perhaps the are staring, though if they are it is not a conscious thing. So many of them, the magi in this court, are dogs who have been taught to heel; it is strange to see one so far off leash.
And there are other thoughts, that the sight of her brings to them—thoughts about her usually sun, the figure that usually casts her shadow: Levana, whose absence is a constant, nagging presence in their own mind. It’s not that Vasylia is a means to an end, for them, not that Wraith only associates with her because they both share Levana’s mentorship in some form or another. It’s just that after all these years they’re still not entirely sure who she is, all on her own.
Perhaps, then, this is a sign, an opportunity. They feel the tug of the void, in their chest, but instead, the close the rest of the distance between themself and her.
“Was I?” they reply, wryly, accepting the offered seat and grinning a little behind their mask. “How could you tell?”
Wraith arranges themself in the seat beside her and Vasylia feels the ghost of a smile on her lips. As faces go, theirs is not an entirely unwelcome one. “How could I tell?” her mouth twists, “Well, I have eyes.” Are they so used to nobles washing over them like water slipping over glass? “I suppose you’re in search of secrets,” she adds, resting her elbow on the table, balancing her chin on curled-up knuckles. “I’m afraid you’ll find none here.”
Vasylia turns her head, nods to the escalating display of lechery she’d noted before Wraith’s approach. “Lord Resny, on the other hand,” she hums, “I’m not so sure. I fear he’s been at risk of spilling his secrets since the evening began.” Vasylia pushes her plate from her, turning to face Wraith. “Not that our King would be much interested in the secrets of Lord Resny.” Septimus has never much cared for the affairs of the heart—he is interested in a disloyalty of another kind.
Vasylia reaches for her goblet, rubbing her thumb over the iron, the letters ‘C’ and ‘S’ embossed into its side. Raising it in the air, she taps at the rim with her forefinger, and a server materialises, seemingly out of nowhere. They pour the dark red liquid into the cup before pausing, cocking his head towards Wraith, waiting in silence. Vasylia jerks her head towards the server before turning back to the King’s keeper of secrets, gesturing towards the jug. “Will you take wine?”
She was damned and didn’t know it. She clung to a thread of consciousness and mentally repeated over and over again: I am, I am, I am. Precisely who she was, she was unable to say.
Clarice Lispector, from The Hour Of The Star
(via violentwavesofemotion)
closed: bardglory.
location: receiving hall, castle tyrholm.
date: sixth day of the tenth month.
Events of the day’s Tourney lie hulking on her tongue, heavy and ballasted. It prevents her from speech, even now, as she walks reticently by Levana’s side, words burying themselves solemnly in her mouth. Levana is better at this—of course she is, the priestess has hundreds of years on her—and while Vasylia is no stranger to silence, to tarrying in remission and watching with two dark, intrusive eyes, there had been something about the way that Levana had commanded the King that has stilled her. —No, not stilled her. Startled her. Septimus’ pliancy crept up with the sun and fell with the moon; he was not always so governable, this she knew. Perhaps it had been fear, like a wound rehabilitating itself only for it to be forcibly reopened raw, that had caused him to yield. Perhaps it was cowardice that caused him to deflate in his throne, sinking into it as an anchor ebbs towards the sea-rock. Vasylia is well-versed in her mentor’s hard-bitten tone, the way it cuts through the air with silver, the way one feels the heat bleed from it in spite of its icy shape. What Levana had promised was retribution, as divine as they are, and as hangmen following a royal decree, Vasylia would help her render it.
She is silent, but that is not unusual. That is often her way when whispers pick up in the wind. When such whispers happen to be accompanied by the metallic ring of a sword, the kindling crackle of embers, that in itself was cause enough for Vasylia’s body to contract restlessly. She felt a tension creep onto her shoulders as easily as furs, and it was as unforgiving as the sea. There would be an investigation, and Levana would direct it. By way of nature, Vasylia would assist. She could not have Septimus deposed, nor Tyrholm caving into chaos; she would take this small kernel of stability and make it immutable, make it last. They would find the felon, and stasis would resume.
They are walking down the steps that lead to the throne room when Vasylia pauses. A sound, a distinctly familiar sound, bleeding away at brass strings. A lute, if she is not mistaken. Silently, she breaks away from Levana’s shadow and turns towards the receiving room, from which the melody sends itself forth. Levana would not miss her; not now, not tonight. As she’d speculated, in all his lyrical nerve, there stood Armel the Bard, half-leaning against a table top and strumming at the instrument’s strings as if in distraction. A shadow of her own, sometimes, with half a million questions to put to her and only lifetime after lifetime for her to answer him. He’s been known to follow her like Echo, and she doesn’t understand it.
Vasylia approaches him soundlessly, as she does all things, and if she were less wooden she might posture herself formidably. Instead, she resolves to crossing her arms as if in mocking, arching her brow. “A new ditty?” she asks, half whimsical and half hollow. “You must have caught wind of something stirring.” Something must have inspired him, like a secret. “How long have you been lurking in the shadows?”
status: open.
location: dining hall, castle tyrholm.
date: third day of the tenth month.
She sits in an irrefutable position of honour—does she not? Some nights, Vasylia isn’t so certain. Some nights, as wine spills red and the room twists in roisterous noise, as she lingers at Levana’s right-hand, she must question it. Placed haughtily beside royalty, beside monied nobility, beside power and prestige and property, at times she can only sit half-embarrassed, watching the way that eyes fasten themselves on her, she and Levana both, taking them in. Hesitant, with a heart in one’s mouth, as if wont to catch a chill. There is power in that, to be watched—to be watched at the side of a king, no less. But she doesn’t ache after power. At other things, perhaps.
Tonight, though, she sits alone. As alone as one may be, at court. She manages it easier than most: those born beneath a splendid sun, fond of stargazing and gold satin and rose silk stockings, do not often rush into the company of Death. Vasylia is a great deal warmer than her instructor, but to be at her side still has the feeling of a hearth made in the winter’s cold. Things happen around her, as they always do. The bard sings. Lords parley and drink and, as the night swells around them, they begin to lose their footing, speak in hushed, low drones. King Septimus pulls another favourite onto his lap, laughing with a loud and gluttonous hunger. Still, for all she sits apart from it, picking at her food and sipping at her cup, the night is true to type. In a few moments, the Lord a few seats to her right will boldly saunter over to the woman he has spent the evening ogling, the wine in his bloodstream moving with him. The king will tire of his favourite and select a new one. People will begin to whisper about it, and she’ll pretend not to listen to them. It’s familiar. Stable.
And then, a figure: one that does not quite approach, but looks in wait. This is a less frequent occurrence. Curiously, she entreats them to join her. “Will you sit?” Vasylia taciturnly nods her head to the seat beside her. “You were staring.”
When Vasylia stands, she does so straight and imposing, but her posture lacks the peremptory impression of The High Priestess. Nevertheless, when she walks through a sea of people they tend to part for her—hesitant to brush hands with Death Herself, perhaps. Vasylia’s mannerisms have always been subtle, and that hasn’t changed. You must look closely at her body language to interpret her: wooden shoulders when she’s paying attention, a cant of her brows when she’s interested, the twist of a half-smile when she’s amused. The way that she wrings her wrists at the side of her thighs when they tremble. Many consider her perplexing, at times even inscrutable, as if buried beneath dirt. The High Priestess is perhaps the only person cognisant enough to truly read her, to truly translate her, thus for many she emits an air of strangeness. For the most part she follows her mentor as if a shadow, but she is not averse to social interaction, if a little difficult to have a conversation with.
Her language is at its most colloquial when she speaks with her mentor, but it never loses its inflected formality; having lived a life first of religion and second of statesmanship, she has always been like this. When she points things out she rarely indicates with a finger, but rather nods her head towards her subject. Eye contact with Vasylia has the tendency to feel intense, as if her bright eyes are burning into you, but this isn’t a corollary of her magic; this has always been her way. When she speaks, she has the tendency to tap her feet in uncertainty, and when quiet falls between them her breath grows almost silent. More imprudent nobles may have cause to wonder if she’s still breathing. At her most nervous, Vasylia bites at the dead skin of her lip, but this is never done in the public eye. She wears lipstick at all times: red in battle, pinks for stately events, and neutrals in-between. When she passes you by, you think you detect the scent of bergamot following her; only slightly, never distinctly, as if day-by-day the fruit shrinks in size.
zodiac sign: virgo / virgos are always paying attention to the smallest details and their deep sense of humanity makes them one of the most careful signs of the zodiac. their methodical approach to life ensures that nothing is left to chance, and although they are often tender, their heart might be closed for the outer world.
element: water / water people are emotional, intuitive, deeply creative, empathetic, spiritual and psychic. water allows people to emotionally connect with others. and yet, water people are so sensitive that they often have a hard time unplugging from life’s chaos. consequently, many water people suffer from addiction as they grapple for distraction from life’s pain. thus, water people tend to be secretive and private.
temperament: melancholic / the melancholy naturally wants to do things right, and is quality-oriented. melancholies are not trying to be right, they are driven to figure out what is right. they have a cautious, tentative response designed to reduce tension in an unfavourable environment. the melancholy’s second response is often to become aggressive to restore peace in an unfavourable situation. they influence their environment by adhering to the existing rules, and by doing things right according to predetermined (and accepted) standards.
moral alignment: true neutral / a neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. she doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. such a character thinks of good as better than evil-after all, she would rather have good neighbours and rulers than evil ones. still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.
enneagram: the investigator / fives are alert, insightful, and curious. they are able to concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills. independent, innovative, and inventive, they can also become preoccupied with their thoughts and imaginary constructs. they become detached, yet high-strung and intense. they typically have problems with eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation.
mbti: intj, ‘the architect’ / an architect (intj) is a person with the introverted, intuitive, thinking, and judging personality traits. these thoughtful tacticians love perfecting the details of life, applying creativity and rationality to everything they do. their inner world is often a private, complex one.
soul type: the scholar / being so focused on information and its logical implications means that scholars are naturally introspective and contemplative. they like to have time alone to fully process their experiences and observations internally, before trying to articulate their thoughts.
tree type: willow / willow signs are bursting with potential, but have a tendency to hold themselves back out of fear. your powers of perception will ultimately allow your true nature to shine, and will lead you to success in life. willows pair well with birch and ivy.
bones and lungs • a genesis
i. the fool, upright
innocence, new beginnings, free spirit
The first thing a child sees in its life is its mother, and you are no different. The first thing you know is her, penniless enough that your infanthood would have been nothing short of unremarkable but provided for enough that she could have kept you if she’d wanted to. She has had children before, and she’s felt the billowing warmth that childrearing lends her, but you are stealing something from her. Your mother cannot quite place the feeling, cannot understand what it is you’re doing to her, but when she holds you in her arms she feels her limbs growing heavier, her muscles deaden. You must be, she determines, a punishment - so she resolves to rid herself of you. More important than that, she resolves to make an offering of you. The woman makes the long, arduous journey from Tyrholm, averts road bandits and street beggars and pardoners swearing by religious forgeries; she pushes herself halfway across Markholm with only her conviction to drive her. She commits you to the Temple of the Undying, and this is something she wants known. She wants the great, bipartite deity to know that this largesse of hers is an immolation, a symbol of her devotion. In return, she would have the punishment lifted. And you never see your mother again.
The temple names you Vasylia, assuming the role of a strange, distant mother who plucks the word from between the stars. You have no surname and therefore no genesis, nothing to remind you where you come from and who you are. Of course, as you well know now, none of that matters. As soon as you pass the threshold of that sacred place, it forges an identity for you.
(Your heritage is a secret that tucks itself away from you, like a shadow that shies from the light. You are the result of a union between a travelling merchant and a beautiful, beautiful woman, and this is all your mother has to protect her in life. Those who covet beauty, who wish to steal it away and display it among their wares, are always equipped with a lie or two. The lie is this: he loves her, he does; devotedly, honestly, purely, and he wants her to join him. To travel with him over pale waves and into the cove of pirates. Perhaps he’d believed in that at first, but it ends as all things end; in fiction. He leaves her as all men leave her, with an enormous pouch of gold. Your mother settles in a village at the border of Volkan Forest. You do not live there long. You never learn your mother’s name. Her name is Estrid.)
Life at the Temple is, for the most part, simple. Dull, pedestrian, but simple. Abandoned, you are raised as one amongst many, a single child amidst a whole throng of neglected children. It quickly becomes clear to you that some wield magical abilities, shielded from a world which harshly forejudges them, and some arrive with nothing to them at all. Like you: not even a name. Some of them are sickly, a few of them are malnourished, and far too many of them are the reluctant offspring of poverty, charily offered to the Temple by parents who lament of their penury. But you are not sickly or malnourished or magical, even. You wail out in the dark of night for a mother who doesn’t want you, but which child here does not? At least at first, there is nothing particularly special about you. You are still a child waiting to grow into yourself, and, well, there is nothing unusual about that fact.
Your childhood is, in a word, unremarkable. The Temple does its best to inspire loyalty in the offspring yielded to them - you are, after all, an opportunity for life-long indoctrination. Your earliest days are structured by a conformity which they shake into your bones: the Temple teaches you of the wolves and the snakes and the annihilating body they make as one. On magic, their position is less clear. Messages are mixed. Necromancers are a chosen, sacred few. But the other magi are being punished, cursed for a cycle of blasphemy and adultery and theft and anything else they can conjure up. As with all children, you assume the first thing you hear as gospel, but as the years gallop past you, you find yourself cordoned off by a low drone. The Temple is not so united as it seems, and there are people who whisper in disagreement. You think you are beginning to notice the resentment growing around you, but you are still a child - you know nothing. You determine that it is safer to be ordinary.
You cannot quite be called pious, but you rise with the morning light. You work hard. You devote time to your prayers and you comply with the codes of silence which linger between them. You restock ink and parchment for the Clerics working sedulously at translation. You trim the rose bushes at the edge of the forest. You are untroublesome and, for the most part, amenable; shapeable. You offer a hand to help wherever it may be required, because that is what you’ve always been taught to do. You are nothing much like some of the other children, boisterous and ambitious, hungry for stories of politics and warfare. Hankering to feel the weight of a bronze rapier in their hands, to run their fingers through enemies’ blood and call it an act of cleansing. The Temple is not cruel, but it is cyclical, and the pattern is not enough - for them or for you. But you do as you’re told, your life moves in a progressive rhythm, because what else is there?
You have always needed a hand to guide you.
When life drifts in a sequence it all blurs into one, so you find solace in the small things. You revel in the sanctuary of the forest. Its trees keel into spirals, bent by the weight of their branches. You like the stillness of the air, the way that the birds settle on the branches so completely at peace - unaware of the eyes watching them. You learn that silence is not solitude, that the reticences observed by the Temple do not always bring you peace. In fact, they rarely ever bring you peace, and at times they have the tendency to strangle you. You marvel at the way the water refracts in the moonlight, bending with the shape of its brilliance. It moves furtively and secretly, as if beneath the surface there is buried a whole other world that it hopes to keep concealed. You are never the sort of girl with fantasies mirrored from the vellum of a fairytale book, and you never touch things so delicately that you look to be afraid of them. You would never call yourself a dreamer, but there’s an intensity to you which makes it hard for you to stop staring at things. There are only a couple of children in the Temple you ever feel particularly close to, and when you think back, they are the only things you feel are worth remembering here. Curled up on a stony ledge, watching a religious darkness fall over the ancient rock. Organising altars and scrubbing floorboards and observing silences with a dash of humour. You have never truly felt like you belong anywhere, except when you lay down in the grass or you sit on the cold stone and run your fingertips through the water, imagining that you are somewhere else. It makes this place feel a little less dull.
ii. the hierophant, upright
education, knowledge, beliefs
It is perhaps no coincidence that it’s during your sixteenth Summertide that you first raise an animal from the dead, completely by accident. A butterfly, crushed beneath the weight of a snow which is only now beginning to thaw. You cannot describe what brought you to pick it up. Beauty? You have always looked beneath the surface. Macabre as the very idea of it may be, you cannot not help but take it into your hand. You feel its limp body balance in your palm like parchment: you want it to be beautiful again. And as if by magic, it shifts in your palm, it wakes. Half-amazed and half-afraid, you watch how its wings unfurl themselves and its body cracks and distorts itself back into shape. But you are overcome by something strange: the insect sits in the centre of your palm, learning about the world again, but if you were blind you wouldn’t know it. You can’t feel it there. By instinct you clasp your hands around it and bring it into the Temple and, perhaps foolishly, you show them what you have done.
The Temple determines that it is no coincidence that your gift for rebirth, the very echo of Summertide, should reveal itself now. It’s an ancient celebration of renaissance. Fate twists, and the Temple has two Necromancers already, devoted to the craft and resolved to educate you. Educate perhaps puts it generously: they test you, push you, assign you tasks to complete without any tangible goal in sight. They never teach you what it takes, what you must sacrifice, what it truly means to excavate that void between life and death. This is the truth of it: you have been chosen by the Undying Herself and this gift is yours to own, but as with all things we take, it demands sacrifice. A piece of you, snapped off from bone; it lingers there at your side. They teach you that you are different, you are special. The other magi can manipulate solid matter and regenerate limbs, but you are sacred. They will not see twenty-five years, but you? You can live for hundreds of years.
Your schooling begins small. Insects, mice, small woodland creatures. But it’s a demanding, exhausting process - still, you continue to work hard. When you’d brought back that butterfly on the third day of Summertide, it had seemed so easy. A case of simply wishing and being. But things are not so easy now. You find it difficult to pour that same longing into the creatures put down in front of you; you are more sophisticated, less candid. But you do as you’re told, make as many successes as you do failures, and for whatever end goal the Necromancers have in mind for you, you progress.
Then, as if you have not already experienced enough change, the world spins carelessly on its side. You are eighteen and you have been under the tutelage of the Necromancers for just under two years. You feel you are drifting away from the green beauty of that first instance, the first time you bartered with the universe and it chose to answer you. But you are still just a child and your teachers have lived for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, you learn that Necromancers are dangerous, they’re volatile, they’re lethal, and that includes you. It takes little more than the impetuosity of a boy sat next to you at dinnertime, for him to waggishly swipe the bread roll from your plate - as children are mischievously wont to do - for you to wreak tragedy. The action irritates you, infuriates you, even, because you have less patience for things now. You snatch the roll from his hands. Without warning, he collapses, body limp on the floor. You are puzzled at first, you’d scarcely touched him, but as the Brethren roll his body over on the stone, you realise what you have done. The boy is dead. The boy is dead, and you’re learning your emotions have consequences. But this you’ve forgotten. You’ve scrubbed it from your skin raw, as if that will absolve you.
Things are accelerating. You perform your lessons largely in isolation. You are kept away from the other children, particularly those who hope to take vows, because you are dangerous, you cannot be contained. Your tutors take the opportunity to teach you more diligently, more industriously. Your accomplishments are growing: frogs, small birds, rabbits. But the hours are slipping away and you don’t understand what it’s all for, bringing back forest animals contentedly buried beneath the moss. Nevertheless, you move forward. You think you are getting better at this. When you have lived for twenty years, they bring you live animals; they show you how to drain them, how to cleave to your youth. The work you are performing is an honour.
You have always needed a hand to guide you.
Something has changed in you. The forest recedes from you. You wake and you learn and you perform and you dream empty, hollow dreams in an unbroken cycle. More often than not you lie awake for hours, allowing your eyes to rest on a rotting mark in the corner of the ceiling. You smile still and you try to laugh, but as each chuckle worms its way up your throat you feel it strangle you in the process. Sometimes you cough up blood, thick and hard, and you stare at the red spot in confusion. One day, you catch your hand on a piece of shattered glass and feel nothing. You don’t even flinch. At the wound you simply stare and, out of curiosity perhaps, or a pointed desire to hurt at something, you pick up a shard of glass and feel the weight of it in your fingers. And with all the force you have, you burrow it into your flesh. That, you feel. You drop the glass, wincing, and a hot tear rolls down your cheek.
You lie in your bed and wish on a comet for somebody to steal you away from this place. You whisper it into existence. But in the morning you wake and everything is the same. A blur settles into your bones. Things are a cycle, so much more so than when your life had begun. But you know nothing else. You stay.
iii. the wheel of fortune, upright
change, cycles, inevitable fate
In your life you have learned much. How to raise animals from the dead. How to canalise energy away from the living and into your bones. You have learned that things change, of course they do, but they also stay the same. For people like you, life motionlessly moves from one event to the next. You remember the day that your life had spun so carelessly on its axis once again with such precision that, at times, you are sure that you are back there. You think that you are back at the Temple, raising rabbits and drawing the lifeforce from dandelions. You think that the clouds are weeping into the earth with salted rain, and the chill of your salvation buries itself into you.
By now, you know she is not your deliverance. There is nothing holy in her but power, and how she revels in it. The woman alights on the Temple without a horse, without a thing to carry her here, and if you had ever been a foolish sort of girl you might have assumed she’d undertaken the journey on foot. But you have never been a fool. You are twenty-five years old. A solemn cold which seems to swell in her at once brings you a much-desired quiet and chills you to the bone. To your surprise, all bow to her. Cower from her. Even your teachers are beneath her. With purpose she pulls you aside, ungloves your hands and takes them in her own, and she promises you that the two of you are the same. She does not fear you, and you have no cause to fear her. You are cut from the same dust and made from the same bones - there’s divinity in that. Like you, she can raise the dead, and what’s more: she’s good at it. Perhaps for the first time in your life you are asked what it is that you want. You feel like the decision is yours. She offers you an ultimatum: remain here, raise rabbits and mice and crows, be nothing; or join her, learn the craft, study beneath her, become something. While you are torn between your desire to flee this place and a thick, breathless lump which lingers at the back of your throat unexplained, it is never really a question. It is an answer. You pack up everything you own: garments, mementos, fear and desire, all. You accept willingly, unthinkingly, blindly. You pass through the egress and step into a shimmering new world.
Even now, that is the only way you can think to describe this place. This new world you have chosen for yourself coruscates beneath the light as if in dance. It’s a world that winks like glitter - Castle Tyrholm is so unlike anything you’ve ever known. By now you are so accustomed to rough hems and the bland taste of food on your tongue that you have forgotten there was anything else. You only know things bland and bloodless, humble devotions. But here? Here, they dress lavishly. Here, they eat lavishly. Here, they live lavishly. You stand at the fortress’ great, impressive windows and you contentedly watch the way the pale waves lick at the black stone, the way the castle bends over the waves and balances on top of the rockline. It’s more than regal: it’s thunderous, luxurious, rich. Of course, you know a little better now. You know that glitter catches in the corner of your eye. It has the tendency to blind you, to force you to look at things between the sequins of a kaleidoscope, all twisted and torn out of shape.
You have been under The High Priestess’ tutelage for two years now, and you feel your life bisecting into two distinct worlds. You must reconcile yourself to that. Statesmanship has very little in common with religion, and unfortunately, that’s all you know. Religion is devotion, fidelity, constancy. Whatever fidelity you see before you has been rigorously shaped, re-wrought in the shadows for years, and that is the only constant here. Still, it does not shake you. Your first lesson is this: you must cut the history of yourself out into stone. You do. You become a silhouette which cleaves to your mentor’s side, a thing that can’t be shaken. Like a shadow you observe the way your mentor manoeuvres; the way she holds her tongue and the way she weaponises it; the way she plumes and crows and deceives as if she’s been doing it for a thousand years. You watch the way that King Septimus’ hands move with hers, shifting in mirrored gestures - like she has attached strings. You become an accepted prerequisite at her side, a creeping outline which follows her devotedly. Part of your status, you brush shoulders with some of the king’s most trusted advisors - you attend assemblies, convocations gathered in the throne-room. You are so far from home now; wherever your home is, wherever it was. You are beginning to learn the meaning of diplomacy: one keeps a knife permanently unsheathed beneath their cloak.
Your instructor resolves to fill in the gaps that the Temple left barren: you learn what you must give up for this gift, you learn of all the grief it has caused you. This is a magic you watch her lean into so deeply at times you think she’ll splinter apart - but, of course, she never has. Never will. This is a truth that lies uneasily in your stomach. It lies heavily on your lungs and it chokes you. You can feel your heart climbing up and down your windpipe - you aim to seize it in your hands, to still it, but you can only retch at it. You’ve lost count of all the creatures you’ve poured yourself into, and you wonder where all those pieces of you are now. The fading feeling of your bones makes sense now, at least; the universe is a glutton and it has been stealing from you. You never even knew the rules of the game.
The king’s physician brings you animals to practice upon. The High Priestess teaches you the most painless portions of yourself to sacrifice: you learn the things you need and the things you can go without. Your abilities are growing, and with that you feel the weight in your chest shift a little - things are becoming easier to swallow. You learn the importance of giving back: to creatures, to people, but also communities, dynasties. Yours are regular faces in the Farmlands which edge on Tyrholm. Here, you resurrect animals, livelihood; they are indebted to you both. One day, a farmer’s son slips from a ladder, cracks his skull open on the coarse ground. The High Priestess takes the opportunity to teach, to have you bring him back. But too much of you clings to the Temple, the way its cold was settling into your bones. The High Priestess’ dissatisfaction is evident. You’ve been studying beneath her for three years now, and still you have not raised a body. She wants you to look at this world without Necromancy directly in the eye: destruction, death, misery. You cast your eye down to the boy and swallow the lump growing in your throat. Grief. As painless as breathing, your teacher brings their son back. The world is better with Necromancers, she has resolved. Dutiful, devoted, you have resolved that as well.
You have always needed a hand to guide you.
As part of your schooling, you ride out with your mentor and Tyrholm’s great military army. To squash rebellion, to quell revolt. The two of you are never far from each other - you are a shadow clinging to a shadow. There’s something about the way that you both sit, regal and harrowing above your white horses, lingering like death at the rear of Septimus’ forces. You are a lethal sight, but your power is not enough. Not yet. You arch over the body of a fallen soldier, but something is stopping you. You try, you really try, but you fail. Half-alive, he blinks back at you. A lungful vibrates at the back of his throat. His chest rises and falls with air, but is nothing in his eye to suggest he recognises the figure bending over him. It is half a failure - but half a failure is still a failure. You have given him nothing human. As if flowing over water, your mentor dismounts her horse and puts an end to her experiment. She doesn’t look at you. You don’t look at you. Sometimes, you can’t bear to.
But your failures do not last forever. When you are thirty-two, you animate a body. At last. It has taken you seven years, seven long years of unlearning the Temple’s way, but at last, success. Of all the places you manage it, it is on the battlefield, and you are in your element. Surrounded by blood and warfare and death - ah, always death. You are getting better at this. At night, you rest your head down on your pillow and you dream. You dream of your hands, reaching out. The Undying God reaches back. You feel you are becoming one with Her.
iv. the high priestess, reversed
repressed intuition, confusion, dissonance
You are a vault of fears, but you have spent these last ten years bent on throwing away the key. For the last decade you have been following your mentor indiscriminately, almost blindly, and while you are finally beginning to make progress, you are also beginning to feel that haze gather around your fingertips, weighing down your wrists. You feel yourself swallowing the sensation at times. You don’t like to close your eyes. If you do, you think you are back at the Temple, raising creatures injudiciously, feeling your soul taunt you in the air between you. A cold is settling into your bones again. Your dreams turn themselves inside out and empty themselves when you finally fall asleep, and when you wake in the morning you are confronted with a sense that your emotions have slipped out of you in the night. That you have slipped out of you in the night.
Your fingers pressed to rotting flesh, you decide that the bodies you have brought up in halves are warnings. As their eyes roll demonically back into their skull and the listlessness of their breath catches at the back of their throat, you cannot help but think that your half-failures are warning you. That this is what awaits you should you consider to amble down this narrow path. Not death, but instead life: long, death-defying, rotten life. A life of nullity stretches out in front of you, like a void that opens its black mouth and eats you raw. Impassibility is creeping into you, settling into the spaces between your bones and lungs. The taste of blood in your mouth has recently returned to you, though you only notice it when you can taste at all; you cannot determine whether being able to feel it flip thickly over your tongue brings you a sense of peace or horror. When you slip your rings over your fingers, heavy with all the ore you could never have afforded when you were young, you can’t feel them there. You feel ancient impressions dig their way into you.
Perhaps you have been foolish. You have been believing that carefully handpicking the parts of yourself to sacrifice can go on forever; that you will never feel the weight of your earliest years again. And while that’s true, you have been slicing off the most unforgiving parts of yourself and offering them up to the Undying God, you feel yourself recede from Her. They are determining that these pieces of you are not enough, and They would have you offer more. When you travel out with Septimus’ forces to quell revolts you feel eyes on you: The High Priestess’ eyes, impatient. In the battlefield you are anxious to stop your hands from trembling. Perhaps you can’t bear the pressure. Perhaps you can’t bear yourself. Your teacher is always left to clear up your mess, always left to do the brunt of the work, but she is never cruel about it. Sometimes you wish she was. Then, you might be better.
And yet, you are not all failure. In the last two months you have successfully resurrected five bodies, breathing and seeing and living, and that in itself is commendable. The High Priestess brings you to orphanages, and it is there that you set about your reanimations. While, like always, your mentor bears the brunt of the work, you manage to resurrect four bodies. Three girls, three children, and a boy who has been bound to these walls for too long. At Koldam, much to your own mystification, you bring back another. A Lieutenant, a real piece of chainmail in the king’s military armour. When his undead eyes finally settle upon your face, noticing the way that you lip quivers at your achievement, he breathes a sigh of relief. He looks at you as if you’re an angel, sent from the Undying God to rescue him. You are sent by Her, this you concede, but you are no angel.
Whispers of a coup have been present for as many years you have been beneath The High Priestess’ care, but they are thickening now - they are becoming more difficult to ignore. Still, you ignore them, as you must. You are not ready for Septimus to be toppled, you are not ready for the throne to keel over into the pale waves beneath the black rock. You don’t want to watch it drown, you don’t want to watch it to be torn apart like some; more than anything, you want it to stay put. Every time you squash a rebellion, every time a coup fails, you allow your heart to settle in your chest again. But it only lasts a moment, because treason is always being whispered, mutiny is always being accounted for. What you think of Septimus is irrelevant: you aren’t strong enough to fight for a place in whatever new world results from it. There’s still so much you can’t do, so much you don’t know if you want to do, and even now all you want is balance. It is a line you have toed your whole life and it has always got the better of you: religion and politics; life and death; permanence and impermanence; the girl you were and the girl you are becoming. You want the world to stop spinning. You want stability. You can’t know what you want if everything you know keeps changing.
You are only loosely beginning to learn the sort of vacancy you have inside you. Perhaps if you knew better, if you were better at knowing what you want, you would say: the world is creeping away from me, I am creeping away from me.
Do you still need a hand to guide you?
heart and soul • a making
METAMORPHOSIS: What she wants is stability. If she will live for centuries, she must have something to endure with her. Vasylia’s loyalty is very intricate. She doesn’t quite block out the throne’s transgressions in the same way that Temperance does, but there’s still a degree of selfishness to her fealty. She calls herself a Loyalist not because she believes Septimus is genuinely deserving of her love, but because her body cannot bear the instability. I’d like to see that shift very gradually, though. She can’t cling to this dream of stability forever, not when the path she’s chosen is so weathered by impermanence - and the dream will only become more impossible to uphold if Septimus grows in cruelty. I’d like her to realise that slowly. It begins small: she focuses her attention on those who bear the brunt of his mistreatment. I can see The Star, The Hermit or even The Hierophant factoring into this. And then it grows - whispers intensify. The king’s mistakes become impossible to ignore. Maybe he orders heads to be put on spikes on the castle barracks. Turncoats are beaten and hung as if crucified in the main hall. Equally, it could have nothing to do with violence at all. She may simply determine, like her mentor, that the throne doesn’t suit him. Either way, I’d like Vasylia to move with the developments of the game. She wouldn’t fight for Septimus, but she does tend to ignore whispers of coup. Right now, she is trying to balance the parts of herself she feels at war with; she can’t handle another one. Nevertheless, I want her to be forced to grapple with the fact that this is bigger than her and that she may have to act. I don’t know whether she’s likely to have confided in Vasylia of her intentions (depending on the player), but should the divergence become evident, questions of loyalty would certainly be pulled into the fore. Would she follow her mentor into revolt? There’s an opportunity here for conflict - but also for growth. Growing into the person The High Priestess wants them to be: willing to fight, to take, to reconcile yourself to your powers, hardened to the consequences. I want to see her really become a part of this war rather than hesitating at the edge of it.
NO MORE FALSE HEAVENS: The High Priestess never hesitates, she leans into this gift as deeply as her body is able without prying itself apart, and Vasylia believes that this has always been her way. The same can hardly be said for her, though. She is hesitant, at times she has misgivings, and the sight of a corpse almost always makes her tremble. The High Priestess has been guiding her for ten years now and in that time she’s discovered a lifetime’s worth of arcane knowledge, twice as much power as the Temple ever bequeathed her, but there is still so much she can’t do. What causes her to fail is hesitation, placing one foot in the art and one foot out of it. I suppose this is an alternative to plot #1, depending on which way things develop, but I’d like to see Vasylia turn away from The High Priestess. When she looks at her, at The Sun, she recognises what she might become. It is a fate she wishes to escape, and if she is truly committed to that, she may be forced to act. It’s no easy feat to kill a Necromancer, even one as wavering as herself, but severing ties with The High Priestess could breed disaster. She has always needed a hand to guide her in life, but it’d be fascinating to see her break away from that. The world opens its jaw and waits to swallow her whole, and The High Priestess is certain that without her guidance she’ll falter, but she needs to make herself more than what other people have made her. I’d like to develop her self-sufficiency, her willpower, but most importantly, I’d like to explore her desperation, to develop the recklessness which would no doubt begin to grow. Leaving The High Priestess’ tutelage is a make or break moment: and unless something considerable changes within her, it is likely to be the latter. Over time, she needs to determine whether she wants to be a Necromancer or a human-being. How far is she willing to go to excavate that small part of her, and is the act her genesis or her epilogue?
THE DARK MARK OF ME: As a Necromancer, she’s used to instilling at least a bit of apprehension in others. The Lovers’ eyes scan Vasylia’s skin for evidence of a pulse, a suggestion that, even now, she is alive. More importantly, though, The Emperor goes out of his way to make himself available to listen to her. Listen maybe isn’t the right word, to have his curiosity sated is probably more apt, and in moments of weakness, her secrets spill out of her like a river. He’s used to getting what he wants, and she will not stand in his way. But the very act of this is dangerous; it could breed conflict, consequences, even bring about Vasylia’s death (!?) should information fall into the wrong hands. I don’t think Vasylia has shared her hesitancy to continue down the path that The High Priestess has forged for her with her mentor - there’s no need to, it’s as easily distinguishable as ink spilled on skin - but there could be disastrous consequences should her concerns spill out. Not from The High Priestess, I don’t think, because I don’t see her as having an aim in mind to destroy Vasylia. Her resolve at least appears to be motivated by cutting away the thorns and making space for her prodigy to grow. Yet, Vasylia’s vulnerability is a weakness, and weaknesses can be exploited. While the dynamic between The Emperor and The Wheel of Fortune is… by far one of my favourite character dynamics you’ve written, perhaps The Emperor’s player would like to use this to his advantage in some way. The Emperor certainly isn’t The High Priestess’ first choice for the throne. So, I’d like to see these words come back to bite Vasylia, to further complicate her oscillation between this path or that. She’s no fool, but she by no means has the experience of her mentor. She studies underneath The High Priestess and lauds her propensity for manipulation and schemes, and while in her experience she’s picked up more than enough tricks, her hesitancy is weakness. She sacrifices her feelings and anxieties freely - because he coaxes it out of her, but also because she needs to purge. Over time, I’d like to see Vasylia’s actions breed consequences, over and over and over, to the point that she can’t run from them. She can only follow them blindly down a path she was always meant to.
SKIN AND TEETH: Maybe this is less of a personal plot point and more of a worldbuilding idea, but given that Necromancers have the ability to kill, I’d like Vasylia to dabble in that in the future. It’s something The High Priestess can do as second nature, as if she was born with the gift, and while Vasylia is better at drawing life into her than pouring herself into things, it’s not something she’s easily reconciled to. Still, I’d like to develop her skill here, figure out if it could be of use to The High Priestess or Septimus (because she serves the former first, the latter second). There’s an opportunity here to flesh out a dynamic between Vasylia and The Sun, who of course kills for a living, but I certainly think it’d be an irreversible path for her to walk down - one that, should she give herself over to it, solidifies her fate.
TRICK BOXES: If The High Priestess is the type to gather secrets in her plotting against Septimus, it could be interesting to have Vasylia drop by places such as The Rosewood Maiden in disguise. To gather secrets in a place where secrets are spilled like blood. She wouldn’t even need to disclose her plans to Vasylia if the player didn’t want her to, but I’d love an opportunity to branch out beyond the castle. Much of her life has been limited, either by the Temple or Castle Tyrholm, and it’d be interesting to feel her form an opinion on the ‘outside’ world; to get an idea of the sorts of people she’d be fleeing to should she leave The High Priestess’ care. Alternatively, it could be a good way to turn Vasylia away from her neutrality/loyalty and into the company of revolters.
A PLACE OUT OF MIND: Depending on how things shape up, I’d love to see Vasylia finally become an advisor. Perhaps not to the same degree as her mentor, but in some shape or form, I’d like to have her officially offer advice to the Crown. While The High Priestess’ intentions in extracting her from the Temple are, of course, ambiguous, it’s what she’s been training towards. What would make this even more interesting is: who will she be advisor to? To Septimus? Well, that spot is already taken by her mentor. The Emperor? Well, that depends whether his father can hold onto the throne until he dies. The Chariot? The World? Two vastly different options, but I suppose it depends which of them The High Priestess hopes to install on the throne. Vasylia is already quite content with the notion of serving The Emperor, and that could breed conflict, but it could also change.
WRITTEN IN THE FLESH OF US: While Vasylia is getting better at nominating the more sacrificable parts of herself every time she uses it, the sickness is spreading. She’s heard rumours, though. Rumours of a mage with the inexplicable ability to draw from two bodies of magic. I think The Moon could be a source of real fascination for Vasylia. If she fears anything, it’s that she’ll turn herself so irreversibly over to Necromancy that she loses the essence of who she is. Given that The Moon’s abilities lie in healing, I’d like Vasylia to investigate. If there is a possibility of regeneration, she wants it. It could be an opportunity to rehabilitate her self-image, to reconcile herself to this fate of hers, or even to break away from it - depending on what she discovers.
NAME: Vasylia
AGE: 35
ALLEGIANCE AND OCCUPATION: Loyalist, apprentice to The High Priestess
ABILITIES: Necromancy
PRONOUNS: She/her
FACECLAIM: Anya Chalotra
HISTORY.
Out of nine necromancers born in the last century, you – well, you are the ninth. Your life before The High Priestess isn’t worth remarking, in your opinion. You are abandoned at the Temple of the Undying as a child. You have few friends. You work hard. You never do much more than bring small animals back, once they discover your abilities. Rabbits, or maybe frogs if you are lucky. You lay your head down at night and dream of nothing, only to wake the next morning with a blurry sort of sensation all around you, like your own body refuses to right itself. (Then, you’d thought nothing of it. Now, you wish you’d known better. Necromancers give pieces of themselves away to push and pull life out of others, but no one told you that at the Temple. All they did was stand aside and give you meaningless tasks to perform, while your own hopes and aspirations were drawn out of you like water from the well.) At times, you consider running – or pray that someone will come and rescue you from the numbness which is beginning to settle in like cold. Someone does come, but she isn’t your rescuer. You know that well enough by now. You remember the day she calls for you with such visceral clarity it is like you can smell the rain that on the air all over again. She announces herself without words, and all in the Temple cows to her without so much as a thought.
She asks you if you have any aspirations beyond staying there and bringing little creatures of the woods back to life. You say no, and just like that, a deal is on the table: go with her, study under her, become something more. Even torn between your worry and your wants, the answer is clear. You accept, pack your bags, and you are off – stepping through the portal of a hooded figure who holds onto both yours and The High Priestess’ arms as you fall through the abyss. When you land, you are at Castle Tyrholm, and the real work begins. The position is more inherently political than you realize. Day in and day out you study underneath her, watch her every move and listen to every word she says. She is a decent instructor, you’’ll give her that — although she pushes. In the last two months you’ve brought up five bodies, and no matter how much effort you make, it’s never quite good enough. No matter how much you wish to avoid it, that fuzzy feeling is starting to settle in again. You think you are laughing, smiling, talking less. You feel that you are wandering through your own life like a ghost covered with a funeral shroud. But this is the fate you’ve accepted for yourself – you almost feel an obligation to see it through. Perhaps the only thing hanging in the balance is the throne, which dangles over a cliff perpetually. No one can tell what one day or the other will bring. All you find yourself wanting in the midst of your efforts is stability; no one can give you that if the king is dead.
CONNECTIONS.
THE HIGH PRIESTESS: You’ve never had a better teacher. What you thought you could do at the Temple is a fraction of the power she’s put into your hands. You only wish you were a better study; how many bodies have you tried to raise or put down that have ended up half-dead or half-alive? Too many. Your hands shake so often that if she were crueler, she might call it unacceptable. You can see the disappointment in your eyes when you express hesitation, because she never hesitates. But she’s been walking this earth for so many years it is a shock she hasn’t turned to dust. You are still new, still stumbling, fragile like a fawn stepping away from its mother for the first time. Her methods are unconventional, and you do understand the way she does things, but you worry that you will never truly be able to be like what she wants you to embody. She’d seen something in you at the start. Is it still there, now?
THE LOVERS: You’re not sure what she is to you – what she thinks she could become. You might see a little of yourself in her; she certainly does follow her charge around as loyally as you trail after The High Priestess. The few spare moments of conversation you get are interested, if not inane and mindless, but you can always see her searching your face for something. A cue, maybe? An indication you’re still alive? You used to try and give that to her, in the beginning, but as the days pass by and things start to dull instead of sharpen, it’s become harder to manage. In the minutes that move between meetings and assemblies the two of you stand side to side and stare out at nothing, and she tries to initiate conversation. You are hesitant to call this thing a friendship, but it’s the closest thing you have to what you were given at the Temple; you think, for now, in spite of her curiosity, you’ll take what you can get.
THE EMPEROR: He is, in a way, your achilles heel. He is young, and so foolish, and yet you cannot help but open your mouth to say something to him when he is nearby. He certainly doesn’t act like it, but he’s a good listener – has a way of goading on conversation with you that you’ve never really been able to comprehend or experience before. It’s a stupid thing to do, yes, but you’ve admitted to him in moments of weakness your terror of becoming truly numb. Of having all emotion carved out of you like the meat of something in a shell. Stranger, still: he never says anything of it, never really remarks upon it. In fact, he’s usually flippant, but you look at someone as young as him and question what power he could truly hold if he just stopped limiting himself to the constraints he’s set on his own. In a way, you wonder if you could be to him what The High Priestess is to his father someday.
