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👤+ Quelaag

@criniteris

"I hate to speak of them." She says. It is a clinical way she has, when she says this. Her words are a thousand years old and they have gathered sufficient dust, they have been adorned with cobwebs. The maiden in white, with her sober veil, her unvain robes, lowers her gaze as if shy. Her eyelids are heavy and in the light, in the half-shadow, you'd think them touched by kohl, some paint that should give color to her pallor. So turned away, so gazing down, one cannot see the splinter in her gaze, the infection she dares not touch.

"Any of them. I hate to think their names and their faces and all their deeds. I hate to share them. In truth, I know that they are gone from me and dead. I've kept them in my silence as in a tomb. I've kept them with me. I never thought I was jealous, because, of course, I had everything I wanted. You can think yourself so virtuous, when you lack nothing." Miriam of Carim lifts her head by the fire and the shadows fall differently.

"Quelaag would laugh at that. She had a way with her laughter, a cutting way. She'd make you so aware of your failings. Perhaps because she had so few. She was Lord Mother's favorite, mind you. None could argue with Her in Her own halls. She'd suffer no dissent. But She would suffer Quelaag. In pride, they were equals. I believe my sister was born with a hunger for all our Lord Mother possessed. She was never content, being another treasure, another tool. There were times when I thought... One day there shall be bloodshed. And it shall be Quelaag whose head shall be dashed against the onyx tiles and Lord Mother will stand tall and awful over her corpse. I've dreamed of it in nightmares. Even in my worst fancies, I could not imagine a world in which Lord Mother would not rise victorious. ...Quelaag always thought me too subservient. She thought ill of many things about me, I believe." A concession in the tilt of her head, "She thought ill of my betrothal. 'Married to a dog', she said. 'A shame', she called it. Whose shame was it, in the end? I wonder if she'd resent it, that it was my love for him that saved me from the corruption. If she'd rather I'd have suffered side by side with them all until my last futile breath. She was never uncaring, my sister. She was my sister."

Miriam exhales and the bonfire shudders like a fawn.

"I'd give anything to see her..."

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anne carson, ‘lines’

[ID: “How long will it feel like burning,” end ID]

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Quelaag

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Will it ever stop festering, the Chaos Flame in my belly? Will it ever stop its gurgling, its mad trembling with the hunger for change? Will its need ever abate?

It matters little now, I suppose. It’s part of me now, the Flame, wrong and twisted as it is. It belongs here in my gut, I, Daughter of the great Witch. Even as it rips through my insides, melts and reforms me, I feel its power surge like lightning through my veins. Oh, what sweet anodyne, the power. You may think I am drunk with it, gone mad. But who would I be, if I did not welcome it, relish in it? I would not be myself. I would not be Quelaag.

What a gift You have given me, fallen Mother, dearest of kin! For Your mistakes I am made greater. Where I once walked I now skitter, tenfold legs tipping and tapping. They feel everything, the slightest of movements, the disturbance of air.  I see the world through so many eyes now, in hues I could not have dreamed of. I grow with every corpse I create, great spider that I have become, in the home I have woven with my own spinnerets. You always told me I was the most promising of them all. Do You see me now, Mother? Do You see me?

Watch as my blade tears through undead flesh. Watch as Izalith’s red rivers pour from my thousand-toothed maw. Watch as I devour. And poor Quelaan, her gentle soul, it rots where mine burns. I do it for her, Mother, that darling sister You never liked. She is weak, You were right. Tenderness ravages her like miasma. Perhaps she, and not our brother, was your first misstep. Did You see them, these monstrous bodies, grown like worms from our wombs, when you brought the Flame to us in our tiny nest? We were pups, then, unformed things, crawling blind in the dirt. But I am not what I once was. None of us are.

It is a cruel gift You have given me, Mother. To become so powerful, so beautiful, when there are none left to see me. When the mortals come, I let them gaze upon me, before I claw out their souls. I watch the horror on their faces and I smile, knowing their doom is at my hand. I will delight in their pathetic, night-black cores. Then my sword sings and it is over, that quickly, that suddenly. I want to make it last, but the thrill is too strong. No longer daughter, no longer woman. Do not blame the Flame, I beg You. I was always a predator.

But Mother, oh Lord Mother, will it ever stop burning?

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priv. sel. CHAOS WITCH QUELAAG of Dark Souls. sideblog to @henosiis. low activity. written by kat affiliated with @tismitros