jotunkhiicha

[jotunkhiicha]

This is a bit of a soft background for Nífyre Eydís, my little Original Character who is a ward for Sanbreque & Leviathan’s Dominant—Sorry Waljas you are the cuter one though.

Word count of about 2.5k~Σ(￣。￣ﾉ)ﾉ

“𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚𝑠 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐷𝑟𝑖𝑓𝑡 𝑈𝑝𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑓𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐿𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡.”

It trails behind her like a staunch shadow, forever there and it stretches on to infinity when the brightest flames come to burn her fears away. It mattered not what she wished, nor how far she ran, it would always be there like a malignant hand tethered upon her own to drag her right back, kicking and screaming, to her prison.

They called it salvation.

They called it mercy.

They called it her recompense.

Yet she did not ask for such dues, nor did she wish to be bound in cast-iron chains to ensure this due was imposed and granted upon her like the branding of Fate. It was a self-gratifying action that sought to ensure her loyalty, to show Valisthea their mercy and their grace at taking in such a beast into their home; who else but the pious to take the sinful behind their walls and show them the way like the light of a halo behind their heads?

It made her heart decay in her chest as she realised all that she was, that all the exchanges were mired in either loathing or fear, nothing else and nothing between. In equal parts, she was feared for being more than them, but was treated as less. It was a conundrum, one a young Crown Prince didn’t understand, even as he toyed with his spears and danced with the danger afforded by his latent potential—just like hers.

They were stood, opposite from one another, as the wind whistle by and carried the dying leaves of autumn’s bounty with them. They were as young as the night as it found them, as the moon and Metia watched them carefully as the servants ushered themselves inside and the birds sang goodbye to the light. They were frail birds set to fly high if they hoisted or another up together, but would be really deign himself to lift her with him?

“Father says you are like me, a Dominant,” Dion tests the weight of his spear, much like he tests the weight of his words by measure of her reaction, “But why do they treat you so harshly? It does not make sense.” He readies his stance that he has practised for thousands of hours already.

She stands there, her own wooden spear in hand as she taps its edge upon the ground before her, drawing a sleek line in the dirt marked with a thousand wins. “They fear that which they cannot control. Simple.” She flatly replies, long since used to the tug and pull of their political whims.

This dispassionate response seems to irk him and he furrows his brows and scrunches up his nose. “Do not talk like that!” He snaps, “Like you mean naught!”

It’s uncharacteristic for him, and it shows as much with how she widens his eyes at his outburst.

“Your Highness—“

“No! Enough.” He drops his spear and marches over to her, a firm look in his eyes that reminded her of the day the skies turned black and the air was too hot to breathe, “I will not have you think yourself so low.”

It was that moment that birthed a friendship that made living in the gilded cage bearable, even when dragged along for Political matters between nations—Rosaria being the only place that made a lasting impression upon her.

She recalls the vibrant fields, the sweet scent of flowers that wafted in the air like faeries come to revel in their blessings and share that joy with mortal children. She adored the chirping of birds as they flew above and as they settled into their nests to nurse their young, it was a pleasant change from the shrill of wyverns that she had grown accustomed to inside of Sanbreque. She embraced the levity granted to her by the rows of people as they all waved, cheered and offered their bouquets and singlets to the visiting family, it reminded her of her home—beyond the sea where dreams gather and possibilities are endless.

Yet this recollection is a double-edged sword, as much as it was an act of rebellion against her captors, her ‘Wardens’, it also caused her much anguish in the same breadth; she recalls what she has lost, what she will never have again and she’s reminded that she is little more than a bird with clipped wings.

So she settles for her neutral expression once more when faced with Rosaria’s Archduke, Elwin she believes his name to be. She had heard tales of his valour and his magnanimity, it reminded her of her own father, and she envied the three young people at his side, each one more glorious than the last. She spends a set time gazing at each one from beyond her lashes, and each one shares the same questioning look her way, save for the youngest who smiles at her.

What?

“Oh? And who is this young lady?” The archduke inquired and she was taught to remain as still as she could muster, her gaze as unfocused and hazy as it always is when she meets his, thrusting her from her stupor.

She raises her head, her woven locks falling from their place behind her pointed ears. “I am Nífyre of House Eydís.” She bows.

“Raise your head, child,” so she does so, her sapphire orbs meeting Elwin’s, “House Eydís? Which house is that?”

The house the family before you tore to the ground—burnt to a crisp, leaving me the only ember of my home—can you look upon them the same now that you know they are but monsters?

Nífyre smiles disarmingly, dressing her subdued rage in silk to appease the larvae at her heels who wove the very fabric. “Ah, my house is no more, I fear, save for a few memories. I was saved by Sanbreque, granted sanctuary in the Emperor’s home.”

Truthfully, she viewed it as anything but.

She called it damnation.

She called it inhumane.

She called it punishment.

She called it these things in secret, when only Metia would listen to her cried as she clutched onto the pearls of memories she had left of her mother’s face. She whispered them on the balcony in the Archduke’s castle, as her tears fell and solitude became something so scarce, even this moment was ripped from her by the sound of footfalls behind her.

“The stars are exceptional here, aren’t they?” An unfamiliar voice muses

Nífyre closes her eyes and quickly moves to wipe her tears, a gasp calling from her lips like the dust from fading stars. “F-forgive me,” she turns to see a young girl behind her and a small wolf pup yapping at her side before striding, quite merrily, over to the young girl, “Lady Jill.”

Jill smiles and shakes her head as she takes large strides to her side before resting her hands on the railing. “Please, Jill. Are… are you okay?” She whispers softly, reaching a hand out to place upon hers.

Nífyre bites her lower lip to dissuade the tears and nods. “I’m simply weary after a long journey, Jill,” she sniffs and bows, “You needn’t worry.”

Jill furtows her brows at the terrible lie, she could see that the young Sanbreque girl hated the predicament she was in, she hated being dragged around the castle at the behest of a family who, presumably, were not hers to celebrate and embrace with. She could see it as plainly as one could count the stars and see the constellations that spell her woe, but why? Why was she lying to herself?

“I understand.”

Nífyre squints and sniffles away the remnants of her grief—her anguish. “Pardon?”

There’s a pregnant pause before she speaks again, a pause that gives birth to the tundra and the callous touch of being pulled from her home and placed in the warmth of a burning pyre.

“I understand how you feel.”

And then she retreated from the railing, her touch lingering upon her skin before she flew far from the haven this alcove afforded. She scoops up the young pup and saunters away, her shoulders high as she recalls her own tears she shed upon being brought to her new home for the first time.

It left quite the impression upon her, much like the next night where garlands were raised high and drinks were too raised high in merriment. The sound of a choir of performers intermingled with the strings of harmony and contentment make it seem so regal, so angelic, that it makes her think this to be all a dream. She can smell the sickly scent of honey and wax as it drips from the chandeliers above and onto the metal cages that hang the candles high; it makes her wonder how they managed to light them, a boon from the Phoenix perhaps? Among the burning wax scents and the general aroma of the most exotic perfumes gil could buy and the aroma of forgotten dishes, she can smell the sour scent of citrus and of a suffocating flame, and she turns to her right to see the young Princes discussing something as one plays with his food.

In hindsight, it was more like a negotiation than a discussion.

She stifles a giggle with her hand before reaching for the chalice, filled with some sweet liquid, to quench her thirst.

Dion smiles at the sound, it ringing upon his ears like the first bell toll of the day and the chime of the church as it hails for worship, and he realises he hasn’t heard her laugh before, and he thanks Greagor that she has done so.

Yet that merriment was not fated to last for the rest of the journey, it would seem.

As they bid their goodbyes to the Rosarian royalty, heads bowed low and a knowing wink from the eldest Prince aimed her way, Nífyre cannot help this unease that rides upon her laurels and she knew this dread all too well as Dion helped her into the carriage, offering his hand.

Danger was in bound.

It began with a jerk of the Chocobo carriage and it sent the Sanbreque nobility jolting forwards, worry-stricken faces all glancing between one another, sharing the same infection of panic. Then it came the sound of flesh being sliced and screams, surrending dusk to darkness and then it was the toll of destiny, the same bells that Dion heart with her smile, that rang far too loud for her to ignore when the wooden door to the carriage caves in and bandits, monsters, come to rend the heart from her chest—or perhaps strike out for their luck in treason and gold.

Rage envelopes her as she watches one of these brigands reach for Dion, their bloodied glove mere centimetres from his garb when she surges forwards. A beast roars in her veins, bouncing across her eardrums like a percussion, as a blue hue envelopes her and she screams vehemently.

Dion can only watch, astonished, while his view of the ward changes inexplicably. He viewed her as one might view a tranquil lake that belies the truth in its depths, reeds that ensnare those who try to get too close and drown them amongst her darkness, but she was far more than that. She is a raging sea with riptides that swirl into a whirlpool, dragging sailors to the abyss in a far more violent manner as bones break like wood splintering, as screams echo like the flap of a ships sails.

And he can only sit there, bewildered as she rips apart brigand after brigand, each bloodied mark becoming the dew that helps ascend to her Eikon and she primes. The residual aether siphons to her like moths to a flame and, with a pained scream, she throws her head back and a geyser of water erupts from where she once was, and all that she ever was is replaced by celestial rage. It electrifies her blood. It rebinds her neurones. It ignites her synapses. It sets her skin on fire—but she has never felt more alive in this agony that invites immolation to her body.

“By Greagor’s breath…” Dion murmurs under his breath at the sight of her primed form rising from the torrent and he recalls the words she had said to him, all those moons ago in the training grounds where she drew a line in the dirt.

They fear that which they cannot control.

But he does not fear her, not as she roars and her eyes are a vibrant amber. Not as her screams become a wail and she dashes forwards towards another mercenary, her water egis joining the fray, because she had saved him, she had sought to protect him like an older sister might try, so he owes it to her to return the gesture in kind.

He clampers out of the wrecked carriage, one of the wheels had been struck off and it lay slanted in the mud as a result, and he keeps a hand high to show he means no harm, not even as his father vehemently forbids him from going much further, not even as the aether vibrates against his flesh and invades his soul, speaking directly to Bahamut. Not even as disaster bites at his fate and wishes to adorn his head with a crown of thorns.

“Nífyre!” Dion beseeches the wild beast, the one that she is little more now, whilst she thrashes against the onslaught of aether, her hands to her head and tears streaming.

Inside her cocoon, inside the prison of her own flesh, she can see his form through the mist, like a beacon of light on a dark, foggy night and he is far from the demon she thought him to be when she first found herself in the Empire’s embrace. His form dances in her vision like shapes do when one looks at them from beneath the water, and it fills her with fear; will she strike him next?

“No—!” She whimpers as she scurries away, her amber orbs glistening with a primal fear of her rage—of Leviathan’s rage.

Yet the Prince continues all the same, his eyes filled not with fear, but with pity. Had she ever known acceptance in her life?

“Nífyre… I am well. I suffered no harm,” He lowers himself to one knee before her, gently reaching out to peel a hand from her head and she looks at him with wide eyes, wide to watch him, “See? I have not a single scratch upon me.” He beams with a smile, calming the dangerous seas that envelop them both.

Warden and Keeper, yet who protects who here?

The aether danced around them and, after a pause, Nífyre’s amber eyes are exchanged for rich aquamarine ones and then, soon after, she returns to her normal form, all traces of her eikon having faded from her body, save for the way she slumps forwards into his arms and he catches her.

A Keeper and a Warden, they needn’t be fettered to such roles and, even two decades on, they still swap the mantle as siblings ever should, even if they are not bound by blood. Where one goes, the other usually follows if they are able, even if that means through the gates of hell itself and the rubble they call home is where she must pull him from.

“…A foolish man, my brother is.”

[jotunkhiicha]

I would like some justice for my boy Sleipnir Harbard. 🥺🥺 My little twinky dink needs some MORE CONTENT, so here it is.

WARNINGS: blood, angst (lord knows we hate feelings in this household)—don’t say I didn’t warn you ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ.

“𝑍𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑡ℎ: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝑜𝑛.”

Change comes slowly in this lifetime; it takes it time as it meanders alongside the passage of time, gradually remaking the neurological pathways that make people who they are. It is gentle as a person changes, succumbs to the internal machinations that seek to remake them.

And the same can be said for Mímisbrunnr, her change was gradual, but its conclusion happened so suddenly as it revealed the fruits of its labour; a woman ready to cast her life in the lot of fate to buy a moment—to bargain in her liege’s favour.

Yet, in the same breath, some would dare to say she hasn’t changed at all.

Another swift swipe to her leg and she is stumbling over herself to avoid crashing into the floor, she can practically hear his saccharine chuckle as he watches her plight. The choir of war rings loud in their ears, but it is a symphony, it is where they perform their best as the first chairs of destruction and annihilation. They pull their respective strings and they watch as their thralls dance to their idiosyncratic melodies.

Just like before.

Inevitable change may have woven them apart, time may have pushed them far beyond each other’s reach, but the battlefield is where they shall always remain like a sword and shield—forever bound to be soaked in the blood of victory and drown in the spoils of their triumph.

Perhaps he realises this too with the way he sneers at her and dances with his blade, as they clash like the thunder above.

Mímisbrunnr has always said that Sleipnir does not fight, he dances. He gallops where firm feet usually tread. He trots along his own path, dutifully carving his name into the corpses of those who would dare challenge his liege and break apart the annals that drive him so. He needed not reason to swing his blade, only a command to sink his steel into the flesh of another, to feel the way their skin yields at the piercing gaze he used to impale the soul. He dances with death as his master, prancing to damnation with loyalty as his prize.

He tuts, shaking his head as he watches her assume a stance he had instilled into her many summers ago, summers like this desert heat where sweat clings to their skin like a second layer. “You say you’ve changed,” he swiftly blocks another one of her mad attacks, her face painted with the frustration that makes her so predictable, “But you haven’t changed a bit from that girl I knew…”

As if to prove his point, Sleipnir swiftly steps away from one of her lunges and kicks her forwards, causing her to lurch forwards at the force of his punt. “Still so predictable.” He smirks as she spins on her heel, knowing that he has pushed her buttons just as well as one might rip them from a shoddily made garb, and he is satisfied when she returns once more to this dance where their steel clashes.

Mímisbrunnr grits her teeth, her daggers an extension of herself that she wishes to bare into her prey—her predator—to grant some time for her Liege, as if to say ‘I have changed.’

While he was bound by darkness, bound to ever serve when the moon crowned its prince in blood, she was blessed to be able to weave a crown of roses, with the thorns plucked by her own hands, and place them atop the head of the princess the sun wept golden tears for. She knew of light where he knew only of darkness. She knew of hope, when he hadn’t the will to think of what that emotion might feel like. Sleipnir was a faithful steed, through and through, forever bound by the saddle and the chain, but Mímisbrunnr is no such thing, she is a pair of wings that will take her liege to new heights—to a better world—even if it means she must become the bridge to take her there.

A fierce flame burns in her eyes, one he had seldom seen before, and this surprises his cold, unyielding heart, and he realises that when someone does not change, they stagnate.

This lapse, this tiniest chink in his armour is all she needs for an opening. She kicks him in the stomach, forcing him away from her while she grasps one of her potions, tossing it at him and smoke envelopes him like the sweet embrace of His will. It sequestered everything else, drowning all in the sweet tar of nothingness until all that remained was the sound of her boots upon the ground, catching up to him. It reminded him of a winter night in the barracks, soft, fleeting sounds of human existence existed on the cusp of his comprehension, and she appeared then as she does now.

She closes the distance between them, blossoming through the veil like one would expect a courtesan to attempt when wooing a guest. She is graceful, so fluid with the way she slices her daggers at him as she had always been, all teeth and no love.

It was all she knew, after all.

And it happened as quick as their love had bloomed, swift and breathtaking.

Sleipnir was right, she hadn’t changed from the girl he once knew. She was still so insufferably reckless, but she threw her life down for someone else, not her own in some perverse way of preserving her dreams. He had read her attack as easily as the Astrologists might divine the stars, revealing unto him that he would be the one to cleave life from limb, air from lungs and her blood from her body by his blade.

Always him.

Mímisbrunnr gasps harshly at the agony of his blade piercing through her stomach, her blood staining the blade as it’s driven through her body. She drops her daggers, and her body falls limp against the blade; somewhere in her heart, she knew this was all she is to be, a moment in time that will dwindle away like the visage of the Enterprise along the horizon, along with the cries of her name.

She knew she was no match for him, she never was, but she never gave up until the final push, until the ground seemed too heavy to rise from and his hand hauled her back up to her feet.

Meekly, she raises her golden eyes to his enchanting sapphire ones; they’d always been the same, pardon today, where a shimmer glistens over them like a varnish to make their shine last longer, and she smiles. He might claim he is incapable of change, that he knew naught of evolution of self, but this here, the look in his eyes—the antithesis of the Constant Knight—is proof of his change, or perhaps this is simply how he had been all along. Either way, it was a side she had seen painted black to hide its shape beneath the lights of scrutiny, but it existed.

Mímisbrunnr staggers around, the pain like a thousand storms brewing upon her skin, she stumbles to her knees, one at a time as she unsheathes his blade from her stomach, tearing her blouse and a fat droplet of blood seeps out of the wound as she frees the blade before it becomes a steady stream of crimson staining her clothes as she crumples into a heap on the floor.

It is only after he slumps to his knees at her altar, reaching out to pull her into his lap, her body in his arms, that he is able to see how wrong he was in his initial assessment of her and he wishes—wishes?—he was wrong. He cradles her body as something screams beyond the horizon, as the seas surge and as water egi surround them like the stars come to witnessing the vanquishing of their sunlight, of their lifeline.

Had he made a mistake?

Mímisbrunnr’s eyes are unfocused, glassy like the ornaments she used to collect, as she looks at him, his emotionless face a mask that slowly crumbles upon her cheeks. It was strange to feel him be so gentle, his hand behind her head keeping her comfortable, keeping her head from lulling back, it was a touch she seldom felt save for the nights where the skyline was brighter, not so drowned by the Blight.

She had only ever seen him as this ruthless extended limb of Barnabas’, he was the cool steel that would cleave heart from mind, and her life from her body. It is by his hand that she should die, and by his arms she will be embraced in the coming death.

Weakly, Mímisbrunnr raises her left hand to his chest plate, the blood upon her gloves smears itself across the cold metal. “You… you’ve changed.” She huffs as the boat disappears in the horizon and the torches flicker around them.

She can hear rushing water, ethereal screams and the clang of metal as it hits the ground, but it seems so unimportant as she rests in his arms, his eyes darting across her face to see her agony as she dies, to understand her pain as she bleeds in his arms.

Before, he didn’t care, so why does he care now? Was she right all along?

“Mímisbrunnr—“ He begins, a thousand words upon the cusp of his lips, but he is cut off when she splutters and blood bubbles from the corners of her pursed lips.

She sucks in a breath and clamps her eyes shut, the pain becoming too much to keep hiding it from him, even if she bleeds out on his chainmail, she didn’t want to be seen as something so weak. With a strained grunt, her hand slowly falls from its place on his chest plate, but he snatches her wrist and places it back there, upon his chest, and she softens her expression in favour of a smile as he squeezes her hand when he latched it beneath his. His silence said more than his words ever could as the clones of himself make short work of the water egis, their disembodied screams fading into the aether that made them and it reminded her of a long-since dormant memory.

It is that memory she grasps onto as it becomes too laborious to gaze upon him, as her consciousness slips between her eyelashes and falls into the abyss. She smiles as she readies herself to meet death, so she does not feel the shift as Sleipnir rises, hauling her body with him as he clings to a hope of his own.

Perhaps she can find salvation too, just as the wards of Kanver did—he would see to it.

[jotunkhiicha]

I finished FF16 and spent a good hour just crying, so I had to have the ending changed a touch! Sad bitch hours indeed. I paid MONEY to be heartbroken.

Heavy spoilers for the ending of FF16! Don’t say I didn’t warn you rapscallions (＾ｰ^)

“𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝐺𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑏𝑦𝑒—𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑁𝑜 𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑒.”

It always ends this way and she has come to loathe the words that pen the same ending, over and over and over again. Suffering of others, the agony of separation and the screams for reunion ring loud and true in her ears like the percussion from her heart beating its tune against the cosmic dissonance that had penned the annals of misery.

When did sacrifice become the way things ended? When did the ending have to be something that one had to walk over another’s grave to reach? When did tomorrow have to be found when another’s today became their last—knowing that they would never reach for the light of ‘tomorrow’ again?

With trembling fists and shuddering breaths, she comes to her answer, clad in the slimy dew of her wet tears as they plop from her emerald eyes and down to the silky planes of her clothes.

“It’s not… fair.” Nífyre’s voice is like the rumbling of thunder, the crackle of the wind as it swoops by and the silence of a sea as the crows caw and it withdraws, readying itself to impart its lament upon the world.

Fury? No.

Anguish? Most certainly.

The futile realisation that, try though she might, it was all in vain. All of her attempts to be the shoulder to lean on, to be the bolts that seal the glorious chandelier in place, to be the sworn shield to the flesh that would push them ever onwards—it was all in vain. It was worthless. It meant nothing. It was futile.

It wasn’t fair.

Perhaps leviathan agrees. Perhaps they too think it to be a fate most remiss as it surges forth, surging through the waves whilst Nífyre digs her fingernails into her palms, drawing crescents when the moon is at its fullest in the sky, peering down upon her—upon the world from its lofty home in the stars where darkness knows naught of light.

They had made a promise.

Shaking her head, she takes a heavy step forwards into the night as the clouds part, as the seas roar and Metia watches on, with rapt attention, to make way for the agony as it rips itself from her soul, tearing at the joining sinews as it claws free from her heart, splicing the veins that fed her heart and wrenching itself free, bones and all. It crunches and it churns as it hauls itself forwards, upwards towards the light that spills off her tongue. It rips apart the thin strips of tissue that seal her larynx and it vociferates in their stead, summoning her visceral scream as she casts her eyes away from this wretched world and to the sky where they had soared, where he promised to reunite with her.

Her scream ricochets off of each and every single structure inside of the Hideaway, each wall pushes her agony back at her, each pulse of her pain like that of a thousand hands pushing down on her, pushing her out like a cancer. She feels the cold fingers of detachment curl around her form, embracing her like that of her lover; a stark contrast to the warmth afforded by an eternal flame.

Eternal? What becomes of an eternity when it ends?

It becomes a lie, and what is a truth build upon a lie?

Fictitious.

A farce.

A fallacy.

A forbidden dream.

She hasn’t realised it, or maybe she has and simple hasn’t acknowledged it, but Nífyre has walked to the edge of the platform, roaring seas at her fingertips and the world at her behest as sparkles of blue spin themselves into yarn so that she might weave a new tapestry to reawaken the smothered flame of the world. She welcomes the invitation, trusting where the beast that slumbers in her heart, the being that fills the void he left behind, will take her, knowing that it will show her the way.

And Nífyre turns, her eyes eerily void of all essences of emotion as she garners her fellows with her gaze.

She sees Jill reaching out first, running towards her with her hands outstretched like that of the wings that carried her dreams here. “Nífyre!” She beseeches, her voice like the tumbling of ice as it crashed into the ground, leaving naught but frost as it tried so hard to bathe the world in life.

She hears the fierce barks of Torgal as he rushes towards her form as she steps off the edge of the Hideaway, her arms outstretched and welcoming the embrace of the icy lake that is far warner than her own hearth.

Tarja and Gav’s voices swirl like the visage of the hideaway as she splashes into the water, muffled but true in that they exist, they do little to sway her resolve—to change her choice.

Leviathan surges towards her now, the gigantic serpent of the oceans as it encapsulates her, smothering her like she were a babe and it were cradling her very being to ensure she survived the night. Yet, as it entombs her being and they mingle together like to halves of a torn whole, she feels elation at the prospect of being able to pen the ending to this story in her own way.

Light erupts from where they joined and the seas explode, sensing a geyser of water up into the air and revealing a colossal creature in its wake—no, a vassal of new beginnings—where she had fallen, where she had summoned her Eikon and beseeched it to grant her the strength to right the wrongs that plague her conscience.

Jill stands, leaning against the railing, with her mouth agape and her tears of her own streaming down her porcelain cheeks. “Nífyre…” she mumbles as she watches in horror and, in equal measure, a desire to see her succeed and reach the conclusion she fought for, not the one that was handed to her by the calloused hands of Fate.

They can only watch as Levaithan surges towards the crumbling crystalline structure, as Nífyre sails towards a promise she made, and that she will not let go.

“My Phoenix,” She prays in the humble abode of this Eikon shell whilst the seas soar and she rises to meet the dust of progress and stagnation to find him, “Can you yet hear me?”

The platform hurtles to the sea, and the waters rise to meet its challenge and she does too, coming forth like the certainty of a sunrise, Leviathan’s colossal form blocking part of the moon as she reaches for the embrace of her lover, stained though it might be. Like that same sea, both Eikon and Dominant part and she steps onto the platform as it veers down to the earth it hailed from, seeking reunification and the deification of destruction.

And then she sees him, crowned in blood.

“Joshua!” She runs forwards, as fast as her weary legs will carry her feeble bones, and slides into her place at his side as if that is where she was born to be, where she rises to fall, “Joshua?” She gently utters like her touch, soft and firm.

She slides a hand beneath his head and the other upon the shoulder furthest from her, her sapphire orbs shimmering with tears that slide from her cheeks and upon his tunic, worn with war.

He looks so peaceful, he looks so content in her arms as the platform falls into the ocean, as water gushes around them, only halted by her dominion over it and Leviathan as it circles them both, smothering them in a light blue sphere that siphons the residual aether to fuel her unspoken desire, her most precious wish. He is perfection like that of a simmering flame between the timber offered to him. Tentatively, she reaches out and tucks some strawberry locks from his sealed eyes, and her fingertips brush across his scorching flesh—he has always been this way, for as long as she knew him.

When they were children, she recalls his sweaty palms as their palms kissed and it was almost too much for her own frail warmth, something that he easily eclipsed, but she persisted in chasing it, in cradling it between her palms and smothering it with her lips so that she would consume his flame to keep a piece of him forevermore.

His chest rises and falls into her embrace and she leans down to him, pressing a sweet kiss, full of the words she can not yet speak to him and all the agony she has reaped upon the world moment before, to his lips as her tears slip upon his cheeks, casting aspersions on the light of the joy of reunion. She grips him tighter and pulls back to let a sob burst from her lips as the moon watches on fervently, as Metia ushers a wish unto the moon to grant.

Nífyre trembles. “I’m so sorry…” she babbles, “I should’ve been here… I should have protected you.” Her fingers dig into his flesh, wishing that his would come and push her anxiety away, push this dread away that seals the snapped sinews.

And then she sees it, in her peripheral as Leviathan raises its head, and so too does she in turn, raising it to see Joshua’s cerulean eyes gazing, albeit blearily, into her own with a small smile. His thumb brushes across the pulse point on her wrist, and he lures her back to his lips.

Upon the wings of his fading power, and upon the scales that she rode, they seal their own tomorrow with one another’s lips.

“Let us go home, Joshua.” She whispers upon his soft lips, her eyes looking deep into his as his gaze hardens, as it solidifies and she is firm in her belief that he rises once more like his namesake.

No more goodbyes.

[jotunkhiicha]

I wanted to work on a backstory for Eramni, my blood witch and this is part of that—ty DMC for this one. T’was a fun little thing to do~!

“𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑙.”

Everything in life can be taken for granted, forgotten and, ultimately, left to rot in the carcass of yesterday as tomorrow strides ever-onwards, careful to always remain a touch ahead so that people cannot reach it. Did it not want the touch of mortal filth to stain its presence? Did it wish to remain detached so that, in the event that it doesn’t persist for some, it can slip away with such ease?

Was that even fair?

Eramni would argue that it’s not. It is not fair to grant a privilege to some, but deny others the grace simply because they are. Things in life regularly don’t make sense, it’s something she has learned to deal with; she doesn’t accept it—that would mean she has made her peace with it, she has not. She learned that life is regularly not fair, that people exist on a scale, and when their God has had enough of their prattling about, it will take others to redistribute the weight of progress and stagnation, inviting the shrill of the underworld to come and take those They deemed unworthy.

Some would call it blasphemy, yelling it as she walked by with a cup of coffee, Eramni would call it forward thinking.

“Hey, Ram.” An officer flatly hums as he takes note of her time and her name as she flashes her badge, showing him badge number before she even considers taking a step forward beyond the threshold where highlighter-yellow tape separates the pristine from the filthy.

She tilts her head at a flash of light inside; where the lights not on?

“There’s no power,” He says, reading her thoughts as they are written well upon her countenance, “Techs reckon the storm had a hand in that.” He readjusts his raincoat, pulling the hood over his hat a little more.

A stray beam of light catches her eye and the scuffle of booties on dirtied floors confirm this; looks like it’s back to the old fashioned ways.  

Eramni glances at him, leaving the darkness for a moment. “Do you have a torch I can pinch? I left mine at home.”

“Yeah, sure.” He drops the pen and it rolls off the board, hanging in the air by the rope he tied it to the clipboard with, whilst he plucks a torch from his belt and hands it to her, turning it on as he does so, “Can’t see myself going back in there in a hurry.”

She hums a muted note of gratitude in response. “That bad, huh?”

He nods back to the clipboard. “That bad.”

That’s always a good sign when the officers don’t wish to look upon the scene any longer.

And, here she is, wondering who else They took, as the rain splatters from above, singing idiosyncratic hymns that she cares naught for as the droplets crash into the trailer roof. The pitter-patter of rain acts like a sweet esoteric song that seeks to send the pour soul to another plane of existence, far from the maw beneath their feet that parents chide their children with. It calms her, just as it always has when it rains, and she gently pushes the glass door open, parting the black-beaded net curtain to see the fate that befall the owner.

Thunder crashes outside, and so too does the cacophony of insects as they scurry away at the press of her boot on the grime-infested tiles at her feet and she steps into the threshold into the world of the dead.

This is the part of the job she lamented the most.

Her emerald eyes trace the beam of light from the borrowed torch to find the eye of the storm, to see what created the stench of rotting flesh, to see what horrors awaited her.

“Careful!” Someone bellows, catching her off-guard as her foot hangs in the air, waiting to see what called out to her.

Out from the hallway appears a figure in white, less ghost and more crime scene investigator, with their face completely covered, save for their eyes that are wide as they hold their hands out to her, suggesting she’s about to tamper with something very precious to this tech.

“Evidence,” Is all he sheepishly squeaks and he takes slow steps towards her, sparing only a few glances down at the floor as he traces the evidence markers, “A bit more to the right and you’re clear.”

She does as she’s told, keeping her gaze on the ground and that’s when she sees it.

The blood.

Before she even realises it, she speaks. “Oh my God.” She murmurs in shock, dumbfounded as she rakes her gaze up the trailer walls and sees it caked in blood, from the walls all the way down to the floor, some brown but some a vibrant red, like that of rubies.

It scattered itself across the little home like a Pollock painting. Some splatters are black, some are brown and some are a congealed pink as it drips down the white blinds that shut out the world, so much so none cared for his absence. The lamp shade has gone from a yellowed smoke-infested colour to a stark crimson. There’s a dripping off in the noise of the blood rushing in her own body, not out of it, as her heart fights to show her veins what their purpose is. She didn’t realise that one person could bleed so much—just how bad is it?

“Yeah...” The tech stands beside her, clearing his throat, “It’s pretty bad. One of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Eramni looks at him incredulously. “One of the worst?”

He nods slowly, gesturing to the left with his head. “Wait ‘til you see the poor guy.”

There’s a shaky sigh and a pregnant pause between them where she decides there’s nothing she could say, nothing she could add to this horrific scene as it swims between the grooves on her boots, making a home within both the soles of her shoes and her soul, however damaged it may be. She takes a tentative step forwards, aiming the torch ahead of her, but also pointing it at the ground to avoid any evidence marked by the ever-vigilant technicians that dance around her like the flies the buzz ahead of her.

She tucks some of her auburn hair behind her ear as she shudders another breath when she rounds the corner and it’s the smell that hits her first. The stench of rotting flesh, the congealing of muscles as they turn to paste in the confines of the skin that sloughs off of the body, is like being hit by a truck without its lights on. It is sudden. It is unforgiving and it’s fucking horrible. She clenches her left hand, digging her blunt nails into the skin of her palms, drawing new lines for a fortune-teller to plunder and tell her how dark the past is, and that the future has to be brighter, for the brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.

Stood, face to face with the remnants of this man’s face, she can see that whatever his future may have been, his present isnow stained crimson, splashed with his congealed blood and, in the throes of that death, Eramni wonders, would his future have been bright to end up like this?

She swallows thickly, pushing down the lump of vomit and bile in her throat, the remnants of that carbonara that tastes a lot worse when it’s spent the last five hours in a vat of hydrochloric acid, she concludes. It tastes bitter and sweet at the same time and it sticks to her molars like gum that she spent too long chewing on.

“Here,” A hand, an olive branch, offers her a small packet of something, “Chew this.”

Eramni shakes her head with a clenched jaw. “Gum is the last thing I want right now, Xander.” She clicks the torch off as the techs have placed their lamps on, placing them strategically to see all there is to this poor soul, entrails and all.

With a single shrug, Xander steps back, the light of the lightning bathing his ginger locks in a dull glow, making himlook like a burning flame in the light. “Fair ‘nough,” He clears his throat, “Pretty gnarly, huh?”

Xander had this habit of trying to make conversation in the worst places, his rough voice like that of rocks being ground together, it was his way of coping, she supposes. His terrible quips, only ever made better by the sound of camera shutters and the dull tin of sirens, and his idea that he is, indeed, funny, will always remain the two stark contrasts to his personality, but it was nice. It was nice that some things could be made better, that they made each other better.

They complimented one another like night and day, Xander being the better part that others wish to know in its entirety, spending all their time in its glow whilst it suffers in silence, dying with each passing moment of light that spills from between the gaps of its shell. Whilst Eramni is the night, the moon that borrows some of that light to cast aspersions on the truths that the light revealed, she is the antithesis to the generosity of warmth but that doesn’t mean to say she doesn’t try. She is not perfect, she knows this, but maybe that’s why others cling to the night to be their true selves, to say the things they’d never have the confidence to with the sun watching them—seeing through them.

He intimidated people, and that worked for some things, but others required a far more delicate—calculated—touch to unwind.

A horseman is nothing without his steed, after all.

“You good?” He asks, leaning forwards to catch a look at her placid expression as she stares ahead at the corpse, or what remains of one.

She nods. “’m fine.” She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve, “What’ve you found so far?”

He pensively sighs as he shakes his head and flicks open his notebook, focused on his illegible writing whilst she stalks forwards to be closer to the horror. “Not much. His name is Terrance Lockford, a freelance caretaker,” He gestures around them with a circular motion of his pen, “Liked breaking things then fixing them, that sort of thing. No one heard anything.”

She crouches down beside his body, noting the lines of age upon his face like that of a map; where would it lead if she followed them?

“Family?”

“Just a daughter; the misses died a couple years ago, lymphoma apparently.”

Eramni raises her brows and turns to look at him. “And he’s been on his own ever since?”

He shrugs. “Neighbours said he had some visitors, but they couldn’t really describe ‘em. They never paid much attention.”

“Friends?”

“Some officers are just collecting more statements but, from those I’ve spoken to, they knew him, but they weren’t what they’d call ‘friends’. He was just someone who helped them when they needed it.”

It is a trailer park after all; everyone has a story to tell, but there’s a reason they last longer than any cul-de-sac, there was something greater that united them more than a postcode ever could.

She stands with a perplexed expression and turns to her partner. “So he has a daughter, his wife died from cancer. He works as a local handyman, fixing issues for people. He gets visitors, but no one can really remember them, just that he had them, and he ends up like this?” She points behind her, “You’re telling me a man like that gets mutilated and no one knows what happened?” She says incredulously, completely astounded by the absurdity of it all.

“Well, the lady next door seems to think it was a demon.”

Eramni snorts. “And next you’re going to tell me that she had tea with Jesus just the other day. Someone send a paramedic to her trailer to check her meds.”

But when she looks at him, she can see her joke didn’t land and Xander’s unimpressed expression, sagging the familiar lines of his face down even further. The trailer is eerily quiet now, save for the dripping of Terrance’s blood down the lampshade and the occasional shutters of a photo being taken. Her smile falls and she looks sullen when she takes it in, takes in the severity of the situation and the blood seeps into her bones as much as it has her shoes.

“You okay?”

He shakes his head. “Normal people don’t do this kind of shit.” He sounds frustrated, as if the years together, doing the same sort of thing, seeing the same feats of evil, have finally caught up to him, parading his brain around between their crooked smiles.

“And demons aren’t real. Don’t go talking yourself into a psychological evaluation, Xander,” She pats him on the shoulder reassuringly, “How about you go and liaise with the rookies? See what people are saying. I think you could use the fresh air.”

There wasn’t much resistance on his part, he was gone before she could even finish her sentence, ducking beneath the umbrella of someone outside and mumbling a curt thanks as the rain comes down heavier now, tapping against the trailer roof like a lone visitor in the middle of the night, wishing to enter a humble abode.

Turning back to Terrance, Eramni agrees; normal people don’t do things like this to other people.

[jotunkhiicha]

Clocking a sweet 450+ hours in Stardew Valley and I’ve FINALLY decided to write something based in it??? It’s a bit on the shorter side, but it was fun ~!

Fantastic comfort game, shout out to my baby boy Sam ✨🥰

“𝑈𝑛𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑙 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠”

Running her slender fingers across the smooth, cold and dusty, keys, memories fly high like angels soaring to heaven to return the dearly-departed souls to their rightful place.

How many years since she smelt the damp wood, the burning of sycamore timbre in that familiar fireplace, the scratch of an old record in that jukebox?

“Valerie? Is that…” a quiet, humble voice like that from the depths of the earth that birthed the saloon, whispers into the sunbeams, petrified that this is a mirage, “Is that you?”

And she wonders why she came back at all when she turns to look at Gus, eyes full of hope yet wracking terror; what if he wakes and realises none of this is real? Would she be the villain? She supposes she would be, she would be the one children are frightened of becoming, the name that would be far better discipline than a palm that ascends their words to Yoba. Though, she didn’t want this, she didn’t mean for this to happen—she wanted to come back without any strings attached, without being entangled by all the things that make life so complicated.

Most of all, she realised that Gus doesn’t deserve this.

Valerie rests her hand upon her suitcase handle as she turns to face him and a million words form to be spoken, some rehearsed, some improvised, but none feel quite right. How long has it been since she last set foot in Stardew Valley?

Gus still recalls that day in the rain with her mother at the station, bags on their back and her tiny umbrella clasped in her pale hands whilst she trembled for warmth. It was hard to tell where the rain stopped and her tears began, she didn’t want to leave—least that what he told himself—it was a matter of life, there are some things people simply had to do, so he learnt to live with the choice her mother made.

Even so, he wonders where that young girl went.

Did she ever leave the Valley?

Did she ever leave the home she made after?

But, most of all, why did she come back?

Gus steps forwards, tentatively as if the floor would open up and take him into the bowels of the earth if he stepped on the wrong plank. So, he settles for the only thing he knows how to do, the only thing he could do after they left.

“Must’ve been a long journey…” He strolls to the bar as casually as he can and dips below to pluck a glass, seamlessly, from beneath with as much flamboyance as he had back then, “Can I get you anything?”

It’s almost endearing.

Valerie lets a muted chuckle resound in he hollow atmosphere she’d crafted, her fingertips lingering on the piano as she treks closer to the bar to accept his offer, the heart can only heal after acceptance, right?

She slinks into place on the barstool like an octopus, her limbs sprawling across the seat and her arms snaking across the bar to pull herself closer to the precipice of this encounter.

With a huff, Valerie sits up straight, not quite the best posture, but it’ll do. “It was.”

Gus nods in agreement and begins wiping down a glass with a haggard cloth, one with her first attempt at embroidery on it, she can see the purple flower and the vain attempt at her initials—at closer inspection, it looks closer to illegible scripture—with the thread so desperately clinging to the worn washcloth.

“You still have that thing?” Valerie blurts out like the shattering of those pretty bottles that always sit behind him.

Gus raises a brow, almost as if she’d said the most outrageous thing anyone could possibly say. “Of course I did. Why would I get rid of it?”

She shrugs halfheartedly; she didn’t think he’d respond like that. “‘Dunno,” she sheepishly looks away and drums her fingers atop the bar, thinking of how to turn the conversation away from such a topic, “Hey, how about that drink?”

Her words give Gus a smile he hasn’t beamed in decades, one that hasn’t known the vitality of reunion and the endless blooms of spring.

“What’ll it be?”

[jotunkhiicha]

It’s been roughly 3 years since I started my book, and now that it’s almost finished and I’m looking at publishers, I realise I don’t really want to leave these characters behind.

I’ve loved writing them, and as I’ve grown, so too have they.

They are my babies (● ˃̶͈̀ロ˂̶͈́)੭ꠥ⁾⁾ I’m not ready to let them go yet!

[jotunkhiicha]

The best purchase I’ve made is a dinosaur plushie I have called Kenji.

I am an adult.

[jotunkhiicha]

I remember reading an amazing story on here and it inspired me to write this one!

Welcome back, Eliona.

“𝐻𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑙𝑙.”

Clinical.

It is all so clinical.

Eliona sits, her legs crossed, swirling a plastic cup of water in her right hand as the hands upon the clock tick, slowly moving over time, and it’s a painful memory for her. She can hear the shuffling of feet, the clack of heels that make the arches of her feet ache and the sound of a printer working tirelessly with no end it sight.

It’s been a struggle to make these appointments, time doesn’t quite exist on the same path as it does for everyone else. Where Laura wakes with the sun on days she has to get ready for school, eager to skip and hop into the car with her lunch and books in her bag, Eliona hasn’t quite mastered that. Where seconds turn to minutes, these seconds turn to hours. Years spent inside of Silent Hill, unaware of when one day eclipsed into the next, she often finds herself stood in one spot for hours and then she’ll come out of her trance and remember that time has a purpose here, in the real world. James suggested using a watch with an alarm on it, setting it hourly so that the chime would remind her that another hour has ticked on by and she must live out her life by these chimes.

And, that worked, for a while at least.

Yet familiar behaviours and patterns have arisen like a fungus sprouting from concrete, suggesting malice beneath the slabs where memories go to die, hoping never to resurface, but they always do.

Time slipped away from her again, a whole day had eclipsed and, when James came home, he’d seen her stood there, gazing out of the window where the fog rolled in—where he had left her. The lights had remained off, Laura didn’t come home that night, she was staying at a friend’s house. The routine was broken, she had nothing to keep her in check—to keep time in check—and she simply fell through the cracks where the clock stops between each second.

Only when he crept over to her, hesitantly flicking on each light, as he went along the pathway to her wakefullness. "Ellie?” He cooed softly and he placed a hand upon her shoulder, and she shrieked.

She remembers she apologised profusely, and he gave her a small smile and stood beside her, taking her hand as he spoke.

“I think you should go back. It’s happening again.”

And that’s why she’s here after taking Laura to school, sat in this dingy office where she’d toiled away many an hour, trying to explain her life to lab coats that never quite understood the depth of it all, looking upon her with levity. Her past, Silent Hill and all, is an abyss, a coiled labyrinth that has no exit, and it slithers beneath the surface of the ground she walks upon, waiting for it to collapse and swallow her whole.

“Miss Eliona Mourringham?” A sweet voice, akin to the taste of strawberry jam on toast, echoes through the tick of time, “Right this way, please.”

She sets her, still full, cup of water to one side and rises to meet the nurse. “Morning.” She chimes, singing with the birds from outside the window, as she trails behind the nurse.

“You look lovely today.” The nurse hummed, the clack of her kitten heels in time with the clock on her wrist.

She wasn’t late, at least.

Eliona nods and smiles, appreciating the compliment. “Thank you. I do try and make an effort sometimes.” She laughs, acutely aware that it was likely a way to make her feel comfortable in this clinical, detached and unloving, environment.

From the flickers of her youth, the memories drowned in the grime of neglect, she can’t recall ever really going to the hospital. Perhaps that’s why she is so uncomfortable within them now, a small reminder that hospitals are where death lurks, a stalwart reminder that man cannot play God, even though they try so hard.

She clenches her fists, her well-kept nails digging into her palms in a self-soothing gesture; it helped remind her that she was real, that this world existed around her and she was not slipping away. The sound of the nurse’s heels seem so distant now, save for a few punctuated clacks.

Suddenly, the nurse stops ahead of her and knocks on a door ahead of her.

She’d lost track. Again.

“Come right in.”

The nurse opens the door and ushers Eliona inside who, gracefully accepts her invitation and slides into place inside the doctor’s office.

“Ah, Eliona. How have you been? We haven’t seen you for…” he looks down at her file, her life and her experiences transcribed and reduced to words upon a page where the depth of their impact cannot be felt, and flicks through the pages, licking his pointer finger as he peels one page from the next, “Just about a year.” He seems as stunned as her.

Was it only a year? It had felt like decades.

She shrugs as she sits down, smoothing down her pencil skirt. “I’ve been… okay, if okay is functional.”

He frowns at her words. “Functional? Your own recollection doesn’t suggest you’ve been functional. You came back because you’d experiences lapses in time again, noting your last one being an entire day,” he looks at her, through her, as if judging her and his gaze softens when he notes her stiff posture and firm gaze, “Your partner came home to find you, fixed in the same spot he had left you in. What about Laura, the girl you care for? What about her?”

Eliona could taste his judgement and she could feel it in the way his eyes bore into her skin like hypodermic needles coming to take samples of her marrow to test if she wasn’t just a walking corpse, going through the motions.

His implication made her blood boil, he doesn’t know what it’s like.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath as she clutches the arms of the chair. “Laura was at a friend’s house for a sleepover. I just… lost track of time, I don’t get what the big deal is.” She laughs wryly, masking her gut-wrenching fear that he would take Laura away.

Anything but that.

He sighs and scoots forward in his chair that creaked beneath the weight of his knowledge, of his from. “But it’s not about how long the timeframe is, Eliona,” he looks his fingers together in front of him, deep in thought, “You’ve come too far to fall back into past behaviours. Did something change recently? Something small, even.” He looks at her now, looking at the culmination of trauma and regret given form, alongside the purposeful press of the iron against her blouse.

She sighs and shakes her head while gritting her teeth. She knew the answer, but could she stand to make it real by telling him? “…It was the fog. It… reminded me of that town.” She whispers, so small and so afraid like a child hiding away in sanctuaries of broken plasterboard and splintered wood.

“Silent Hill. You’d spoken about it in our previous sessions: ‘a fog so dense that you’d lose yourself if you dared to navigate it, I lost myself, purposefully, just to survive and come out the other side but… I’m not sure it was worth it, in the end.’” He tilts his head and a pity works its way into his eyes and his eyelids droop, thick and heavy with pity and empathy, “Did you think you’d returned? Lost yourself again?”

She nods.

“What about your other lapses?”

Eliona meets his eyes and sniffles, moving to wipe away the snot that slips from her nostrils as a tear falls. “They’re not as bad as that one. The-the watch that James got me it… it helps me keep track,” she looks down at her hands in her lap that fiddle with the sleeve of her ruffled blouse, “Laura keeps me accountable, they both do. They give me a purpose, a reason not to become Yariv again but, sometimes…” She trails off and clenches her fists while she grits her teeth, unable to stomach the reality of her fears.

She lightly shakes her head but the lights, the overhead bars that remind her of that dank prison, they seem so oppressive as they barrel their fake warmth down on her form.

She sharply inhales as his eyes feel like footsteps on her skin, like the steps of a spider as it crawls across her bare flesh. “I wonder if I’m still there, in that town, and this is just another facade, a farce, to keep me imprisoned, and… I don’t want that. I can’t—“ she cuts herself off as she digs her nails into her palm to remind she is real, she’s not there and she’s here, in this stuffy doctors office.

“You’re not there anymore, Eliona. You’re here, back where you belong. These lapses you experience… you’re dissociating. You’re not coping.” He calmly explains, his voice a smooth valley of golden flowers on a backdrop of grey, of hope.

She furrows her brows at the word. “Dissociating?”

They really do have a word for everything, don’t they? A way to explain her life and put it in a nice, pretty box with a black bow, black with the regret of all she had done and black with death. Her pain, her faithless cross to bear, it’s put into a nice little word, caged up and left to fester in the recesses of a psychiatrist’s shelf.

“Think of it like switching your brain off but your muscles, the body, goes through the motions and does what you need to throughout the day. Your brain wants a break from all it’s been through and, looking at your notes,” He flicks back through to the first page when she stumbled into the emergency room with James trudging her along, “It’s a lot. Most people wouldn’t have endured as long as you have, so take that with you—your strength will help you through this, Eliona.”

She sighs and wipes her eyes, the tears that have spilled down her cheeks countless times, to make herself seem more presentable.

“Here,” the doctor leans forwards, holding out a tissue box, “I think your returning is a fantastic step in of itself.”

“It is?” She scoffs as she takes a tissue and sucks in a breath filled with mucus.

He smiles softly like the sun at dawn, soft and gentle as it should be. “You recognised your behaviours and returned to push them back again. It takes courage to admit when you’re slipping and strength to change,” he picks up a scratchy silver pen and returns to a blank page in her file to scribble some notes, “I don’t think I’ll be prescribing you anything specific, just another session next week. I don’t want to disturb your routine too much.”

Eliona nods and clears her throat. “Thank you.”

[jotunkhiicha]

My ragtag group of mercenaries… my babies 🥰✨

This is a long one with 2,205 words!

“𝐴𝑐𝑡 𝐼, 𝑆𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑒 2: 𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑎/𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑢𝑚.”

Sunlight spills from between the cracks in the blinds in her office, daring to weave through her locks and drown her visage in light. In many ways, the sun is her antithesis; she sulks about in the shadows, dances along the edge of danger under the cover of darkness, but this mission—this recon chore—she is being sent on, she’d be thrust into the light like a sculpture placed under bright, blinding, lights to be marvelled at.

What are they thinking?

It seems off, this entire mission; like a farce, a grand and elaborate plan that she has been cast to act out. The notion makes her uneasy, more so than she would, ordinarily, be. She feels their strings, the fierce tug that pulls her around in many directions, forever bound to the wax and wane of men who dream of being the ones who snuffed out the darkness and bathed the world in light. She ponders the nature of her life, the reason she sat here, in this dingy office that is no more home than a cell of concrete, and how she came to be.

If this mission really has something to do with Evelynne, is there a chance that she lives, free from Wesker’s chains that seemed so much like a gentle hold?

There are three, gentle, knocks at her office door that rouse her from her stupor.

“Boss? It’s me.” A gruff voice, one that’s born from rocks grinding against one another in a larynx, slithers from behind the frosted glass.

She recognises that voice from anywhere—Antonio Bucker.

“Come in.” Rosalyn muses with a light tone, her Italian rasp not truly lost when she wistfully murmurs.

Gently, or at least as gently as he can possibly muster, Antonio eeks through the door with a sheepish smile, a small part of him is apologetic for having disturbed her deep thought and the ramblings of her mind.

In many ways, Antonio is the softest person in her squad, despite being the most intimidating by far in terms of appearance. His upper body is built for strength, pure and unbridled muscle that can break through almost anything and be a shield for the others behind him, and he uses his frame for just that. His hair is a dark brown with a few grey hairs, salt and pepper hair, she recalls it being described as. While he cares little for what others think of his apparel, he does take care of his beard, trimming it so dutifully that it looks near pristine—near perfect, dare she say; something he probably does for his wife, and no other.

He’s dedicated to few things; his wife, a bottle of expensive brandy is somewhere close to the top, and his team. A few of his scars that litter his body like the grooves on a map, or the Braille that communicate the words of the world to those who cannot read them, have been from being that barrier between enemies and his team; Rosalyn regrets this fact deeply, apologising to his wife whenever she can but she shakes her off, noting that her Antonio has always been like this.

“Sorry for bargin’ in like this, boss.” He apologises, his tone heavy with the tilt of guilt, “You alright?”

Rosalyn laughs dismissively at him, waving a hand in his direction that tells him to cut it out. “You worry too much,” She shakes her head with a humble smile, calming his jittery nerves as he stiffly stands in her doorway, “I’m okay, you?” She leans back and gives him her full attention, her emerald eyes like two glistening gems that shine in the morning light.

Like this, with her dark brown hair spilling across her shoulders like a fated waterfall, Antonio is struck by how beautiful she is; she could’ve easily become a model, someone his wife would fawn over at dusk with magazines on their coffee table but, here she is, in a veritable hell. How did she come to be here, sat across from him, leading a ragtag group of operatives who were too outlandish for most others to handle?

He supposes it takes one to know one, as they say.

“I’m good. How’s the Kennedy boy behaving?” Antonio drawls as he slips into place opposite her, folding his arms and his biceps flex at the motion, barely able to fit beneath that white leather jacket he wears.

Rosalyn shrugs. “Oh, you know, same as usual,” She hums and hooks a pen from her pot to resume her report on their previous mission, “How’s Penelope doing?”

He shrugs. “Oh, you know, same as usual,” He parrots back with a mischievous grin; he’d met her evasion with repetition, “It’s our anniversary smack bang in the middle of this mission so, I don’t think she’s all too happy about that.”

“Buy her some flowers. She’ll like that.”

“Think she’d prefer my head on a silver platter.”

“Oh hush, Antonio,” She chides playfully, “She won’t stay mad at you long, no one can. Just put in a bit of effort and I’m sure it’ll be fine. Take her somewhere nice after, on me.”

He huffs, his firm features looking so bleak at that notion. “After... right.”

Rosalyn tilts her head and sets down her pen, turning her focus back to his scattered gaze. “Something’s bothering you about this mission.”

It was a statement; it wasn’t a question. There was no doubt about it, Antonio has never been good at playing poker; he holds his cards out for others to read and pluck, he wears his heart on his sleeve and she could see the weariness that sagged his shoulders. That was the thing with Rosalyn, she could read her team as simply as one might read the headlines—especially Antonio—so what did he think he could possibly hide from her? Did he even want to, to begin with?

He shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “We know fuck all about this, Boss. It stinks. It stinks like a babe’s first shit. It reeks.”

Eloquent as well, she notes.

She sighs exasperatingly, unsure of whether she wants to dance around the landmines of his ire and, much less, her own conspiracies that are a horrific tint to all she has seen. The two of them have always been staunch allies; where she went, he followed, pistol and combat knife in tow. They are two peas in a pod, perhaps that’s why he’s come into her office, away from the ears of the others and is still keeping his voice measured, quiet enough that the others cannot hear, but loud enough that she can grasp the weight of his words.

“It certainly does, doesn’t it?” She glances out to the wider office outside of hers and spots Elouise turning some medical supplies over in her hands while Isabella reclines in her chair, with her feet on her desk, vaping, “What about it bothers you?” She asks, wondering if it’s the same things that irk her, the same things that niggle at her mind and leave an entrance for doubt to seep into her foundations.

“The fact they won’t tell us anything. All we know is that we’ve got to retrieve something, so why are they sending us, of all squads, to get it? They trust us about as far as they can throw us.”

 “It’s not like you trust them very much either, Antonio.”

“Not after that Baker incident, not after anything. They’re rats and I reckon they’re weeding out people like us to make their lives easier.” He hisses.

She widens her eyes at his brash insubordination. Any other operative under any other superiors haze would’ve been suspended right then and there for that, he would’ve faced the BSAA’s full wrath for such comments. Part of her knows, the piece on the leash, knows that she should scold him for such an outburst, but that would be uncharacteristic of her.

And how can she punish him when she thinks the exact same thing?

“I agree, but be mindful where you talk about it,” She warns, gesturing with her finger to the ceiling where there is a spherical camera, “They could be listening. You’re lucky Kiran disabled the audio for these cameras ages ago.”

Antonio follows her gaze. “My bad.”

“It’s fine. We’re safe here. Do you think the others feel the same?”

He shrugs. “Maybe Kiran. I don’t know about Bella or Elouise, though she doesn’t really trust people to begin with.”

She hums in approval and settles for looking at the space outside her office, trying to gauge her team’s faces and she spots Kiran, eyeballing them through the white blinds.

Walking over to the window, Rosalyn taps her nail on the glass and the team sit upright, their gazes snapping to her office window. Once all eyes are on her, she gestures for them to come into her office with her index finger, enticing them in like fish to her lure.

Antonio looks between the window and Rosalyn as the others approach, sheepishly and sparring glances to one another, murmuring to each other. “Boss?”

She turns to the door and folds her arms, watching as Elouise pushes the door open, her heterochromia eyes hesitantly searching her superior’s for an answer.

“Is... everything okay?” She mutters, her tone unsure as she steps into the room, making way for Isabella and Kiran, “You don’t usually call us all in here.”

It’s true. When Rosalyn has briefed the team before, it was usually in the armoury, at brunch or on the way to their mission in a cramped jeep, shoulders pressed impossibility close to one another that they blend together and the acrid smell of sweat burns in their nostrils.

Isabella laughs and puts a hand on her hip. “Maybe ‘cause there’s hardly room for us all with Antonio here.” She jokes as she shoves his shoulder to prove her point, a playful tilt in her tone to belie the unease in the room.

Isabella never liked the politics of guilt or fear, never enjoyed the idea of her life, as she knew it, coming apart. She prefers to dance around these heavier issues, never once setting foot in the barbed terrain of life and remaining distant from it whilst desperately trying to cling to it; this team was the closest thing she had to family, she didn’t want to lose it.

“Harr-harr.” Antonio flatly drawls.

“Seriously though,” Elouise interjects, stepping closer and pressing the issue further, “Why?”

The small office becomes impossibly smaller as they look at one another, wondering if she’ll break the silence. She mulls over her words, wondering if she should stroke the flame of their paranoia by confirming her own burning bridges.

Until the silence becomes all too much and she’s overcome by it, allowing it to speak for her.

“She probably wants to gauge if we trust the top brass, what with that lacklustre brief and all.” Kiran’s cool and aloof tone breaks the silence as he cuts to the heart of the matter.

Isabella widens her eyes and turns to him. “What? You also got a redacted version?” She glances to Rosalyn and sees her exasperated expression, “I thought that was just me.”

Shaking her head, Rosalyn walks around to the front of her desk, resting back against it as she folds her arms. “No. We all got the same brief, or lack thereof, and it sounds like we all find that a bit strange.”

Elouise shrugs. “You know what they’re like,” She sighs, “Never want to reveal too much to their ‘rogues’, after all.” She emphasises her point by making quotation gestures with her fingers.

“Think they’re trying to get rid of us?” Isabella asks, unsure.

“If we go out from a mission, that’s pretty convenient for them.” Elouise counters, “Makes it easier than firing us.”

Isabella sighs. “Certainly cheaper.”

“Alright,” Rosalyn nods, “Seems we’re all on the same page.”

“Yeah. We are. What’re we going to do about it?” Antonio asks, moving to stand.

The Italian taps her foot. “We go ahead as we normally would.”

Kiran furrows his brows. “What? But we all just agreed we think that they’re trying to get rid of us?”

“I know, but there’s something more to this—more than just the removal of our squad,” Turning to him, she meets his sapphire orbs with a firm stance, “Kiran, I want you to try find out more; find who drafted that brief and who assigned it to us. I want to know who is sending us on this mission.”

The red haired shakes her head. “The mission is in two days; that’s not enough time to find that all out.”

“That’s not something you need to worry about,” She bites back, “Other than that, we continue on as normal.”

Isabella widens her eyes as it hits her. “You want to use the plan to drop off the grid? What about your husband, he’s the president’s best friend. If you die, he’s going to ask questions.”

Rosalyn smiles and Kiran whistles as he catches on to the thought she lets go.

“She’s banking on it.”

The blonde applauds and can barely hide her grin. “Classy.”

[jotunkhiicha]

An exercise I did to get more comfortable writing in first POV! I used my character Elouise for this little exercise!

Friendly warning: mentions of death, murder and brief experimentation ✨ be your no.1 cheerleader.

“𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑆𝑒𝑡𝑠 𝑈𝑠 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒.”

I… don’t remember the day I changed.

People have told me the bits between, like Rosalyn. She told me what I’d done, who I had become—or, should I say, what I had become. She told me the gruesome details whilst Rebecca dressed it up in healthy gauze, each day it was tighter than the last, suffocating any hope I had of returning to my life—the world I had created with these hands of mine. Each modicum of memory had become a shattered remnant of what I used to know, a horrific funeral for a life I’d lost and yet, so stubbornly never let go.

I might not remember what I did that day, or the events after, but I remember who I was. I used to have a life, I had a purpose. I gave something to the world—I made it better—and he took all that away. He used me, treated me like some worthless experiment, he turned me into the very monsters we swore never to actualise.

I am a freak, a walking corpse with a few extra steps, all thanks to someone who, I thought, was my friend in this world. He betrayed me, made me betray myself, and for what? I’ll never know.

Apparently, I killed him in return, so I’ll never know why, I will never get to know what made him use me like a white mouse in a cage. I will never understand him. I will never get closure; I suppose it’s another form of torture, another twisted experiment into the human experience that he wished to watch unravel. I don’t remember him dying. I don’t remember anything.

I have died and yet, here I am, still breathing.

Is it a blessing?

Is it a curse?

I don’t know anymore. All I know is that I can’t wait to die again.

“Elouise,” Rebecca chirps like hummingbirds in the dawn chorus as her loafers clack on the white tiles in this bubble that they have me locked within, “How are you feeling today? I brought you some books.” She waggles the books in my face like a parent trying to soothe a baby with a piece of candy.

It was like everything else she’d presented me—it was a test. It was a test to see if I really am dead, if I’m some caricature of the Elouise Mikhail and if I survived this disease. I feel it, every second of every minute and every hour of every day, burning against the confines of my veins. I feel it pulsing like magma beneath the tectonic plates of my flesh and bone. I feel it writhe as people walk past me, each step an arduous dance with a foreign instinct that is not my own, yet it has replaced all I had known before.

So I don’t fall for it, or anyone’s lies.

“I’m fine.” I say through gritted teeth and avert my gaze, she doesn’t care what I feel anyway.

I’m just another sort of excitement for her. I can see it when she draws blood from these necrotic veins of mine, she seems excited at the prospect of my purgatory. Rosalyn has told me that isn’t true, that Professor Chambers is not like that, but how does she know? How do I know I can trust her about this?

They’re all the same.

“I thought you might like a visitor,” She hums, her footfalls distant like waterfalls crashing into the basins below, “I hope it cheers you up a bit…” she trails off and slinks away from the space she has occupied, running away from me.

Who would want to visit a half-dead person?

“Still got some bark, I see.” An Italian accent infects the space between my eardrums and the cavity my brain exists within.

It’s Rosalyn.

“What’re you doing here?” I pry out from between my clenched teeth; asking her what she wants with me in my hesitation to look her in the eyes.

She chuckles softly, serenity in the way it drifts. “I thought I’d deliver the good news in person; you’ll be leaving the facility today.”

I snap my eyes into hers, forgetting the consequences of the hope I dared to allow form. “What?” Is all I can ask, there were too many thoughts—too many questions—for me to pick any one of them, so ‘what’ did just fine.

She reclines, ever comfortable in the most tense situations, perhaps she likened this to fishing, tossing the line in my orbit and waggling the lure of freedom—there was a reason allure has lure spelt within it, after all.

“I can be very persuasive when I want to be. As of today, you’ll be free from this room and serve as a medic in my team.”

I scoff. “Free?” I shrug and look around the room to emphasise my point, a room filled with machines and my arms littered with tubes, “Taking me away from this place doesn’t mean I’m free. It’s a life sentence—a fucking stain I can’t scrub off me.”

She doesn’t relent, she looks at me with those brown eyes of hers, so still and so firm. “As far as anyone else knows, it’s officially Cotard’s Syndrome, no one has to know apart from me, Rebecca and you.” She leans forwards, clasping her hands together.

I look away. I don’t want her pity.

“And unofficially?”

She sighs; she should’ve expected this. “Unofficially, you were injected with a bioweapon that can be subdued by taking regular medications and regular checkups with Rebecca. You’ll be monitored, but it’ll be by myself. It was the best deal I could get for you to be able to live a life.”

“How many others are on this team?” I ask, I didn’t care about the checkups, I wanted to know who posed a risk, “Will I… really be free?”

[jotunkhiicha]

So I reinstalled Zenless Zone Zero and I have remembered how to put words together to create sentences.

Also Asaba Harumasa is the best.

“𝐷𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑑𝑒 𝑙𝑎 𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑓𝑓𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒”

“Should we… really be in here, R-Rina?” Corrin stutters as she scurries behind Rina.

Elegant and ever-posed, Rina carefully moves like a wisp upon the boundary of imagination, deftly selecting every step as she manoeuvres through the space Lycaon made his own.

His house is full of dark timber, mahogany specifically, and has white tiles, sealed with black grout and waxed to perfection. Each decorative piece has been selective for a specific purpose, to entrance and comfort, even in the way his glass chandelier dangles from the second floor, ricocheting the warm light across the spiral staircase, traced by a black metallic bannister. Next to the staircase is a grand window with a wondrous view of the city outside, and a small circular table with a white lace decoration that a white teapot sits atop, with a equally elegant white cup, with a golden rim and handle, and a saucer with much the same pattern in front of one chair. Another rests, not too far apart, from the other saucer with a lone petal drifting atop cerulean liquid.

It piques Rina’s interest.

“This is where we’ll find the most clues about him, Corrin. Fret not,” she turns and a soft smile comforts the young attendant like the comfort of a mother’s warmth, “He won’t deduct pay for our venture to confirm his safety.”

It isn’t the pay Corrin was worried about.

Regardless, Rina strolls closer to the table and noticed an open letter upon the table, next to the teacup.

There are only a few reasons why a person opens a letter and leaves it, as they had read it, upon where they dared to delve into the depths of another’s penmanship. Delicately, she lifts the letter to be able to read it while her bangboo float around her, swirling like bees to pollen.

‘Dear Lycaon,

A fateful child told me something interesting a few nights ago… she told me of a wolf thirian that had saved her from Etherals, and he moved like moonlight dancing across the water’s edge. Perhaps she could see it in my eyes, see it in the way my fingertips danced across a tattered astrolabe necklace that dangles from my neck like a noose, reminding me of the halcyon days.

I wondered, pitifully, could she have been talking about you? I hoped, like a moth pining for the light of a pyre, that it was you.

How many years have gone by since that day you left? Too many to count, I would reply.

I wondered, for all those years, what befell you, what became of your ivory fur and what happened to your vermillion eyes? It was a torturous dance between oblivion and absolution—and there was only one cure for this enchantment, only one elixir that could break the spell of this frightful worry that had swam into my heart.

I had to find you, Lycaon.

A Heart Entwined with yours,

Eisht Volmantrae.’

Rina gasps softly like rainfall against a lake surface. “Lycaon…”

[jotunkhiicha]

Feeling out the new cast of mercenaries for my short story with Rosalyn. I love a ragtag group of fighters who, lowkey, hate everything 🥹.

Give me dysfunction any day of the week mate.

“𝐾ℎ𝑟𝑦𝑠𝑜𝑠”

“Do you… remember the day that Boss recruited you?” Isabella asks through gritted teeth, her knuckles white at the desperate hold she has upon the tufts of her vest.

Elouise furrows her brows and adjusts her seating position as she holds the needle and thread, ready to stitch the hole the bullet tore through her ally. They’ve been in this position before, blood matted on her clothes as she trembles, white with shock, and the ginger medic can only do so much, like always. It had become a pattern with this team, Harlequin—Rosalyn—would be deep in the filth of the world while they all chipped away at the edges, hoping to thin out the swarm and, in many ways, she resented how there is always another implosion of war—of people turned into horrific nightmare fuel.

“Stop talking.” Curt and to the point, Elouise is focused, the blonde notes.

Isabella pouts. “Aren’t you supposed to have better bedside manner?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a better shot?” She claps back near instantly, her mind focused solely on patching up the brash operative.

“…touché.” She laughs, before it splinters into her coughing up some blood with a groan.

This is going to be uncomfortable.

She bites her lower lip and shuffles closer. “…to answer your question; like yesterday.” She murmurs as she begins the process of stitching flesh back together, like a twisted tailor using flesh as her artistic medium.

Closing her eyes, the blonde shaking exhales through her nose and grips onto the remnants of her jacket. “Yeah?” She huffs.

Elouise wipes away the oozing blood with some disinfectant, iodine, and it burns like a thousand needles eating away eat her skin. “Sorry.”

Isabella grits her teeth. “Don’t be,” she closes her eyes as the tears threaten to spill, “How?”

“My lab partner tried to kill me,” She pulls the suture taunt, “I killed him instead. She showed up and took me to an old friend of hers who patched me up. I couldn’t exactly go back so she offered me a job, with her, as a medic.”

With a wry laugh, Isabella shakes her head and glances down at the, what once was a gnarly wound, and sees the near silver threads that tie her together. “You killed him? Doesn’t that go against your oath as a doctor?”

Elouise lets out an amused huff as she pinches the flesh together for the final few stitches. “Am I really getting a morality lesson from an ex-assassin?”

She shrugs, her eyes filled with something heavy and dark; are they clouded by the fog of pain perhaps? “People can change, Doc.”

The red haired medic pauses.

Can people really change? This world has been grounded on the eternal greed of expansion and wealth, it has been this way for millennia—do people truly change? If she stripped away the genome, peeled back the layers in a cell that protect the DNA within, would it really be different from all those years ago? People are still bound by their dreams, by an endless light that dances above their heads.

“Do you really believe that—that people can change?”

Isabella shrugs. “I don’t know about everyone else, but I did. That’s got to stand for something, right?”

With a small smile, the medic agrees. Maybe they can.

[jotunkhiicha]

Even though I’ve got enough writing projects already, a book I’ve almost finished, I love nothing more than creating new ones.

I am my own worst enemy…

[jotunkhiicha]

Rosalyn is back and I’ve finally got RE1 & RE0. I’m hooked! I also want to raise a glass to photo mode in RE4 Remake.

“𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑁𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑄𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝐼𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑂𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎.”

When forever runs out, what happens next?

Does tomorrow become a useless function, a lie fed to the people to ensure servitude and to give the miserable their only medicine, hope? These moments bleed into nothingness, draining the wonder and brilliance of mortal ambition into the ether where their gods might finally have a taste of their struggle. Will it make anything worth it?

What of the ring, bound to their flesh like the rings within a tree? Do these decayed circlets of love and wonder become little more than epitaphs of a worthless vow?

Sometimes, when she feels the familiar drag of her dagger against her flesh, she allows these nihilistic thoughts the crawl between the gaps in her synapses, jumping between them to land closer to the housing of her soul to eat it—consume it—obliterate her spirit and grant her grace in the condemnation of self. She was beyond the salvation that man pines so fervently for, forever cast to be washed at the Devil’s feet for her sins—for her good intentions. She accepted this fact, embraced it even, but she still wishes, in some worn away part of her soul, that it didn’t have to be this way.

That she didn’t have to be this.

“Prevedibile (Predictable).” Rosalyn murmurs as the orchestra thrums to its apex, the violent torrent of squeals from the violins, the crashing of keys as they are struck upon the piano and the way the trumpets sing to the tune of destruction.

Her backless green gown scatters remnants of her past across the floor, each drag of the fabric across the marble floor, stained red in the blood of patrons—her would be villains.

It didn’t have to make sense, it wasn’t her job to make it make sense, her job is far simpler than that—to eradicate.

As her heels clack and she hears muted footfalls behind her, she spins in the same heels to face her opponent, eyes focused and brows furrowed with training moving her muscles.

It is the same as it always is.

Rosalyn swings to the left, avoiding a bullet, with grace befitting a swan as it flitters above the lake surface, and she unlatches her gun from its holster—her beloved Beretta 89—and fires three shots, in quick succession. One penetrates the flesh of his knee, crushing the bone and destroying the joint, if he survives this engagement, he won’t be the same man he was when he entered it. The second shot takes finesse, it catches his shoulder, sending him spluttering back and the third, the finality that even a God wishes they had, comes to rend the mind from the beast.

It splinters through skin and bone, the brow lines that showed frustration, the stress that servitude can bring, and pulls apart the pretty little neurological pathways that made him who he was. His eyes roll back into his head, trying to see what once was in the back of his eye sockets as nothing makes sense anymore; nothing ever did.

“Prendi la cagna! (Get the bitch!)” she hears above the sound of the opera singer.

Maybe Leon was right, there’s nothing quite like Italian opera.

[jotunkhiicha]

Mary and I both dream of silent hill like absolute units.

“𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑟𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑎”

Were dreams supposed to be an escape from the vitriol of existence—a balm for the agony of the torment of tomorrow and yesterday, leaving people hanging in the balance and seeking equilibrium?

If they were, perhaps that would give some sense as to why his dreams aren’t so much sweet escapes, little escapades for his consciousness to drift between his states of mind like a little flea, jumping from beast to beast; they are garbled messes of his trauma given form. They sulk towards him, twisting and twitching in unnatural ways that would make a God weep and it all reminds him of that wretched town.

Silent Hill.

In her restless dreams, she saw that town—is that why he sees it too? Is he a restless sailor, drifting along the sea of dreamlike ambition to die to join her?

A catastrophic wave sweeps his hopes aside, drowning them within the sea of nihilism like an all encompassing finality. It spans far and wide, beyond him yet no further than him—a conundrum. It exists within him and sprawls all around him like wishes slipping from their husks and splashing into the water. Its wishes are like pinpricks against his flesh, like goosebumps from a lover’s fingertips as they dance over his flesh in strange patterns.

“James?”

The angels sing, for demons have come to eat his heart and spit out the fatty deposits of gluttony at his feet.

Rejoice! They cry.

“James?” The sweetness of spring that soothed the dull ache brought forth from the longing of union, blossoms within his name.

Is he a bud in spring, or a hollowed tree where the insects burrow their larvae to give his death a purpose? Has he been reborn in this junction between an endless winter and the boundless spring?

To be reborn, he must die—rend the soul from the body and smother it beneath blankets and pillows to suffocate any hope of escape. Just as he did back then.

Familiar hands make familiar instruments of torture, rebirthing dead and buried memories of her.

She’s everywhere, filling in every single gap between atoms, drowning the world in her presence and everything reminds him of her. She’s a burden within his hippocampus, she is a proverbial leviathan in his dreams to swallow all of the waste that comes from the hopeful slumber he pines for. She is both the balm and the burn upon his flesh—a scalding flame and the sweet reprieve that mortal men hunt for.

What has become of him?

“…Mary.” He mumbles in his sleep, restless as always and even the rattling pills inside their sweet little containers don’t help.

She is still there, a humble flame come to burn down his foundations, he has just come to accept seeing her, every night, behind his eyelids and feeling her maleficent intent as she spills over him like toxic waste.

He will never escape.

[jotunkhiicha]

I love my irredeemable people.

Here is more Yariv Content that no one asked for.

“𝐷𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑑’𝑠 𝑇𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒.”

The rain falls heavier now, crashing against the rusted roof panels that keep this reflection together, stowing away sin and debauchery to ensure that trysts die when the sun rises. The pink lights, hiding the natural green tint of her eyes, sprinkle delight across her flesh as she swirls the glass filled with whiskey, a brand she would never purchase, and she sits at the bar, remembering nothing at all and enjoying the denouement of faith and the destruction of love.

Smiling to herself, Yariv raises the glass inside of this paradise carved inside of hell itself, this juxtaposition to the very nature of the world. It flowed outside the natural flux of destruction and the industrial might of the fog-laden city, it was special for some reason, so who was she to deny the enjoyment of docking her ship to let a poison swirl in her veins.

Off in the distance, she can hear gunshots and she brings the glass to her lips; if that is to be the ambiance this world wishes to grant her, who is she to deny it? She savours the crescendo of fate and of delusion, coming together to break apart the symphonies that had dared creep from between the cracks of this place.

Yariv sighs as she sets her glass down, gazing at the liquid as it sloshes, to and fro, within its container.

That is until the door is flung open with a grunt and footsteps fall into shuffling footsteps as they retrace steps previously taken to recreate memories, or to perhaps summon them to bring the joy and levity back.

The scent of death is heavy in the air, thick like a cloud of smoke, and it follows him like a shadow, constantly lurking. The stench of blood, of iron and of that putrid rotting smell of flesh as it slumps off of carcasses for the cockroaches, for the flies and for the maggots to come and feast upon their remains. There’s that tang of sweat interlaced in that too but, amongst all of that, there’s a humble scent of cologne and it tickles the deep recesses of her mind, awakening a beast she has long since changed down.

Lust.

“What? Yariv, is that… is that you?” James stumbles over his words as he carefully navigates the rubble around them to land upon the shoreline of her presence, “How did you get here?” He feverishly asks, keen to have her nestled someplace safer, somewhere far away.

Something isn’t quite right, James fears as he looks upon her placid expression when she turns to face him, holding onto her glass with two fingers. She looks at him from the corner of her eyes and he can sense a malice in there like a worm curling around her eyes to infect others with its despair.

“Any port in a storm,” She repeats the mantra Maria once murmured as they left Heaven’s Night, and then she kisses her teeth after another sip.

No. It must be a viper.

Was she drinking the same thing Maria had poured? Was she drinking out of the glass poured for him?

What was she doing?

An inexplicable jealously burns bright in his chest like nuclear fusion, bursting between his ribs and dripping between his lips as he pulls them together in a thin line, thinner than the line Yariv had crossed. The boundaries were not set between them, no, but he had told her who he was looking for, who he pined for and begged to return home, so how could she desecrate the closest thing he had to Mary? How could she sit there and blaspheme her memory—tarnish the gold she was and reduce her to cheap copper varnished as such?

“What are you doing here, Yariv?” His voice rumbles like thunder.

Yariv chuckles at him. She laughs at his meagre display of rage, pure unadulterated fury at the sight of her from drinking from that glass, and it fanned a flame inside of her, treating her depravity and filling that endless abyss she had carved with a blunt knife to survive.

“Taking a breather.” She hums nonchalantly, her voice like the sound of whistling before a hunt begins, calling back the hounds to savour this dance between them.

She selected her words so carefully to push the buttons inside of him, relishing in the way he folded beneath her palms, the way he would cave and become putty beneath her fingertips and the way he would melt from her words. She delighted in the finality she possessed over him with the knowledge of his thousands of deaths.

He would not remember his time in Apartment 213, but she does. She remembers the way his brain splattered on the inside of that white sheet, the way his grey matter slumped down between his fingers and how the bullet sat pretty between the neurological pathways that always brought him back. Perhaps he’ll never remember his time, stowed away inside of that motor home on Saul Street, but she would and she remembers how he howled and screamed as these strange reflections bit, tore, chewed and devoured his insides as he begged for it to stop. And maybe he’d never remember the little notes he’d written himself along the way, but she will.

He was a slave to his proclivities, an endless cycle of grief and guilt and of longing that drained into desperation. It was a delight to behold, to savour his descent into madness, into the coiled spring of depravity that only opened that maw further, deepening the chasm that Mary left behind.

It is art.

“Stop it,” he demands through his teeth, clenching his fists into tight balls that he could use to throttle her with, “Give me a straight answer.”

“I told you, I’m taking a—“

“Stop fucking lying to me!” He yells so loud it silences the rain and thunders back into her ears like a percussion.

It surprises her.

She freezes, her emerald eyes wide beneath the neon lights of debauchery.

This is the first time he has ever yelled at her, not even in all the other iterations of his delusions had he screamed, blasphemed or even bared his teeth but this James, this beast in the cage, he seeks blood—hers specifically.

“Just…” he closed his eyes and reigns in that berserk nature, the frustration of hundreds of days, blending to thousands of hours of the neglect of want, “Tell me what you’re doing here.”

She smiles once more, disarming and infuriating as she readies herself to dance around him. “I take it you’ve met Maria then, considering you know this place?” She chirps as she drums her nails against the wooden bar, similar to the sound of a metronome—of Mary.

The thought flashes like a meteorite in the night, burning up the darkness before it splinters and brings the void back, a void she seeks to fill.

“What?” James hisses.

The spindle rotates.

“Quite the woman, isn’t she? She’s a way with—“ She cuts herself off and, all that bravado that seemed to stretch on further than the cosmos itself, fades like insignificant stardust in the wake of a black hole’s hunger.

Yariv, once fluid like time, becomes rigid like a sculpture, set to be displayed as a monument of trickery and mischief, and her eyes, something about them changes; she becomes fearful. He can see it on the way her eyes dart around and she clenches her fist on the bar. He can taste it in the way her eyes swell with salty tears and a pure horror finds itself feasting on her soul.

“He’s here.” She whispers, full to the brim with a violent terror that wracks her very bones.

“Who?” James steps forwards, trying to watch for where her eyes land so he can trace the pattern of her skittishness to find the source of it all, “Who’s here, Yariv?”

“I’m not…” She trails off, her voice, fragile like silken dreams and childlike wonder, “James, look out!” She shrieks as a spear crashes through the wall and lands between them.

It was David’s Goliath—Pyramid Head.

[jotunkhiicha]

One ending away from getting 8/8 and 8 achievements away from 100% completion on steam! Needless to say, I’ve fallen in love with this game.

So more writing for it!

“𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒’𝑠 𝑊𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠.”

How had everything good in life fallen with her? How had the darkness weaved its way through every interaction, every single movement and every single light fixture? Why was it so painful to be seen to exist and be something more than the absence of her presence?

How had it come to this? Stuck in a prison beneath the heavens and left to collect weights, personifications of his guilt as it feels like a thousand hands are pushing him down, a thousand angels using their palms to pray for hell to swallow and take him away for what he has done.

Each weight claws at him, drags him closer to that damnation with each step, each thundering step across the metal floor. The sound comforts him, in a strange way, it reminds him he is still real inside this impossibility. It grants him something to focus on, aside from the monsters that skitter across the ceiling, their legs like little pinpricks of terror that inject their venom into his ears as he speeds up to a light jog, but not before stopping to check on her.

When he stops, he hears the scuttling come back and he draws his rifle, searching the darkness and, in a swift movement, he shoots down a creature that comes cascading down from the unfathomable heights of this place, only to crumble in on itself like when a spider is stepped upon—all legs, not much else.

“Sorry,” He mumbles out with a sigh, lowering the rifle as he turns to look at her, “You doing okay? Need anything?”

She shakes her head and smiles slightly at the warmth his questions give, that was a gift in of itself. “Just… want to get out of here. Are you okay though? You’ve been running backwards and forwards.” She tilts her head and steps closer, a warning wail from the darkness echoes as she does so.

He grimaces at her comment. “I’m fine, Yariv, just looking for a way out.”

She frowns. “You’ve called me that before. That’s not��� my name. It’s Eliona,” She furrows her brows in thought, “How do you know that name?” Her inquiry is as probing as the shining moonlight upon his sins as he lay in bed—alone—wondering what had become of him.

His gaze dithers, his attention unfocused as the last weight is heaviest in his hand, dragging him deeper, deeper until all he can possibility reconcile with is how he dies; after all, choosing how he dies is the last freedom afforded to a prisoner.

“James?” She calls hesitantly.

Her voice is akin to the light that moths pine for and he’s drawn to it as such, but she feels like a burning flame, too hot to touch and too risky to be near. She threatened the very structure of his thoughts and the smell is strong like gasoline, a roaring fuel to the fire in his veins. It frightens him, this burning finality that she is, the very thing that Prometheus was scorned for, but he could understand why, he could make sense of it in his mind. He could piece together the fragments of his psyche to put something concrete—something tangible beneath his fingertips like the fragile silken delight of expensive sheets.

He steps back from her, realising he’d come to close.

“James? Are you okay?” Eliona looks concerned for him as he rolls back into his steps, tentative but assured in his decision.

“I’ll… come back.” He trails off, his mind racing a mile a minute, much like his heart, and his eyes still do not meet her as he turns back.

He breaks off from temptation, off from the war between man and heart, from beast and jailer and from heaven and earth, and he moves towards those two metallic doors that clang each time he passes their threshold.

This time, however, is different.

There’s a light of the promise of sunrise on the cusp of the four walls in the yard, like a dusting of hope sprinkling over his bristling despair. Would the light of dawn, the promise of a new day, bring with it Mary? His beloved sent from the heavens and come to rouse the evil from within the depths of his depravity so that he might come with her to those gates that he prayed for.

Would she wait for him? Would she call to him?

As the doors clang, a curtain call as the gallows come into view, his name is sung from angels far and wide, but the angel rests in a cell he left it within.

Eliona.

“James!” Her voice breaks with fervent panic and he runs back, he regrets every choice he made that landed her in the position where he is in this yard with the nooses begging him to give their construction a purpose, and she is in there, with the antithesis of his very self pulling rusted metal bars apart with practised ease.

The glow of the red light, the broken lights atop those ornate doors, bathe its mask in the colour of blood and, as James stands here, unable to do a single thing about it, he fears that its form will drink her blood—bathe in her ichor to feel something real.

James throws all of his weight into doors that do not budge, begging them to move so he can do something, so he can die trying to save something that has meaning in this hapless circumstance that has befallen him.

“Eliona!” He calls as he shoves the doors, powerless and left to watch this horror, tuned just for his bewailing, through those impossibly small prison windows as a white hand, gloved and stained in black soot from the blood of all the creatures it slaughtered along the way, snatches her from where she has scurried to.

“No—get off of me!” She screams vehemently, her cry like a thousand needles come to rend the life from his worthless corpse, “James! Help me! James!” She reaches out to him as she is dragged back by the scruff of her collar, like pathetic trash, to bring his palm into hers, interlace their fingers so that she might be pulled free from death’s claw.

In her eyes, he sees terror as the tears slip from her eyes and her screams, though far, bounce back to his ears like a thunderous percussion. Her presence fades, its presence fades, but her gut-wrenching fear plays clear in his mind like a rewound tape with a notch, constantly replaying in his mind to remind him of his weakness and his inability to reconcile with himself.

She called out to him to save her, and what did he do? Nothing.

He did nothing.

Left with nothing but the rain above and the heavy consequence of his actions, his mouth falls agape at the absence of her presence, of her gaze from afar, and he’s infuriated by his own self for leaving her to rot there—to decay amongst the ruins of life as a white flower should.

Perhaps the gallows are precisely where he should be, for he had become nothing more than a criminal, set to die for his actions and allowing those near him to come to harm.

First, it was Maria, in that impossibly long hallway that stretched on for all eternity and, no matter how many times he plays it over in his mind and upon the back of his eyelids, the result is the same. He can still feel her blood upon his cheeks and the clumps of her flesh and bone stuck in his blond hair.

And, now it was Yariv—Eliona—the woman he had met in the fog and come to know as a restless soul in this prison beneath the sky. She hadn’t recalled their conversation in the thick of the fog as she danced amongst the creatures, deftly weaving between them to lead him to a prize amongst the rubble of civilisation. She had only remembered flickers of their interactions when she would bleed through the surface and those eyes, green like luscious foliage that he missed the supple feeling beneath his fingertips, and the time in Heaven’s Night where it turned up again.

What kind of man is he? is he a man at all?

Is he Charon, ferrying people down into hell in exchange for his own life rather than golden coins?

What has he become?

This town has changed him, changed Mary—it has changed everything. Nothing is the same anymore.

And, as his feet carry him to a noose, marked by the Roman numeral 6, he wonders if she stands at the lever, watching to see how he will struggle as he dies.

He pulls down, yanks it with a fervour so that he can meet rapture.

These hands that create,

The hands that take.