rookwritesrarely

[rookwritesrarely]

obviously magical friendly fire is more canon-compliant and suited to how magic is portrayed by the worldbuilding but a) i am not going to turn that setting on because i love myself and b) i think stuff like having your mage summon a roaring wall of fire and trusting in their skill and their control so deeply that you charge through it knowing the flames won’t hurt you even as they lick over your exposed skin is just too sexy to miss out on

[rookwritesrarely]

i want to talk about my ocs but im literally this image. i got nothing

[rookwritesrarely]

so embarrassing to get obsessed with your own oc but it doesn't fuel you creatively or motivate you at all you just sort of sit there. like yeah I've been thinking a lot about blorbo from my mind. no images of them exist in the world and they have maybe 3 personality traits so far. I would rather die than attempt to write about them. I've spent the last 48 hours rotating them in my brain though

[rookwritesrarely]

i kiss you on the mouth and end my turn

[rookwritesrarely]

i kiss you on the mouth and end my turn

[rookwritesrarely]

"came back wrong" what about Came Back Afraid. You used to be brave. Too brave maybe, defying the odds at every turn, a fighter, cocky, playing with fire, first to throw yourself at the enemy. Until one day it all caught up to you. You came back, somehow, but now you know all too intimately how it feels to lose, to die, to be destroyed. Now you flinch and freeze and cower at the slightest provocation. Who even are you now if you can't be brave? The grave may have let you go, but the mortal fear still grips you tighter than ever.

[rookwritesrarely]

"I have depression." - character who has been through extensive therapy.

"I feel dead inside all the time and nothing helps!" - character who does like, regular introspective thinking and is aware of the concept of mental health.

"Leave me the fuck alone I'll be fine once I get over my stupid shit." - repressed character.

"It's fine I'm just having an Empty Time. What? Yeah, empty times, you know, when everything is like bzzzzzz in your brain and you don't shower for two weeks. Why, what do you call it?" - ooooughhh now we're talkin

[rookwritesrarely]

Blood and Dust

Blood and dust. Again and again, blood and goddamned dust. Don't think about the blood, focus on the dust. Don't think about how there was a time when you didn't even know what blood was, focus on the smell of gunpowder smoke. Forget why they call you Old Red-hands. Forget that you were proud of it once. Forget that before that you couldn't even understand what it was you were really doing. Focus on the movement. Focus on each moving part of yourself, every shard of glass and mote of ash. Focus on the mission. Forget about why you are here. Forget, forget, forget. Movement. Arcs of silver and shining stygian, followed by a mirror of crimson. Remember only what you are, remember glass and ash and smoke and soft silver light and silence. 

Silence. The silence is deafening. Forget the silence. But you are silence. Forget the blood. But there is too much blood to forget. Then forget everything but the blood and silence. No… There are too many things that you need to remember. How beautiful his song and his voice is. The bright joy of her laughter at your unfunny joke. Her piercing eyes and her understanding. His bravery and his kindness. 

How he taught you to create. How he showed you how the rest fit so perfectly against your chin and your collarbone. How the bow moved so naturally against the strings. How he smiled and laughed and clapped and brought more to listen to your music. How he showed you what it meant to be happy. How the arc of his blood shone in the sun as the bullet flew through his temple. How heavy he felt in your arms as the medics tried and failed to take him from you. How he taught you what a life lost truly meant. 

You stand in the middle of a concrete hallway, surrounded by lost lives, remembering everything. You remember what you are here to do, who is following on your heels, what they will do to you if they find you lacking. And so you start moving again, because you remember that even though you were not always so, you too are a life to be lost. You push forward because you remember those left behind, because many, far too many, never met remembrance, and so the duty to remember falls to you. You will face the blood and the dust because against your will you were given a life to be lost and you have clawed, with bloody and torn fingers, from the silence you once were, the chance to save some lives that otherwise would have been lost. And because no one should be forgotten. Blood and goddamned dust, again and again. Blood and dust.

[rookwritesrarely]

“The stone corrupts all those who wield it, it is fueled by their ambitions and dreams. So we need someone with no ambitions, no dreams, someone who doesn’t care about what the future holds for themselves. That’s why we found you.”

[rookwritesrarely]

Saturn: King of Ages

[rookwritesrarely]

Forthright had seen all kinds of common mages, cryomancers, pyromancers, storm singers, you name it. You could always tell what they used at a glance. Little quirks brought about through the magic they wield. A slight fog when they breathed, a fire in their eyes, a tongue as fast and sharp as lightning. But he had no idea what the wizards that sat before him used. The woman who spoke with a million tiny whispers, the man who made no sound even when the door creaked like hell for everyone else, the man with eyes like molten gold and who clicked whenever he moved. There were two possibilities when you could not tell just by looking. One; it was something minor and obscure and they were not worth worrying about. Or two; they had found (or had been found by) something different, and they had mastered it to the point where their name was synonymous with the concept, and were the only ones worth worrying about.

[rookwritesrarely]

The Watchman stood atop the highest tower of a castle overlooking a valley, and watched a battle unfold. "How fares the fray?" Asks a voice behind him. He does not turn to look at the intruder as the Lady comes to stand beside him, leaning on her cane. "It will be a decisive victory, but it will require finesse and bravery on our part." Says the giant man, still not turning away from the valley. 

"I'm not sure if you ever explained, but I've never understood why you never speak in absolutes", asks the lady, staring at a valley green and empty of combat, 

"Can't you see the future?" 

"The future is never certain, I can see possibilities, but each and every one of us has the capability of changing their fate." 

"That is both reassuring and frightening" 

"Ha! I suppose so, but even then, we must play the hand we've been given. As they say, today is a gift. That is why it's called the present."

"That sounds like something parents came up with to teach their children some lesson or some such nonsense."

"Maybe, but it is a useful lie."

"Useful how?"

"It ensures that we will be there tomorrow, making use of the gift we were given yesterday."

[rookwritesrarely]

The lady walked silently through the Baron’s room, looking for anything she might find. He was acting unusually, and she had to be certain he was not doing something she would regret. The first thing she noticed was a door that had not been there before. Inside, there were eleven threadbare dolls, one for each of the chosen, excluding himself. Each one had markings indicating major arteries and organs embroidered onto them, and the occasional “stab here” message for the more inhuman among them. They sat in a large dollhouse, arranged at a miniature dining table, with small felt food covering the table. At the head of the table was a freshly made doll of the Baron. The Lady smiled to herself, and quietly closed the door, careful not to disturb them.

[rookwritesrarely]

Blood and Dust

Blood and dust. Again and again, blood and goddamned dust. Don't think about the blood, focus on the dust. Don't think about how there was a time when you didn't even know what blood was, focus on the smell of gunpowder smoke. Forget why they call you Old Red-hands. Forget that you were proud of it once. Forget that before that you couldn't even understand what it was you were really doing. Focus on the movement. Focus on each moving part of yourself, every shard of glass and mote of ash. Focus on the mission. Forget about why you are here. Forget, forget, forget. Movement. Arcs of silver and shining stygian, followed by a mirror of crimson. Remember only what you are, remember glass and ash and smoke and soft silver light and silence. 

Silence. The silence is deafening. Forget the silence. But you are silence. Forget the blood. But there is too much blood to forget. Then forget everything but the blood and silence. No… There are too many things that you need to remember. How beautiful his song and his voice is. The bright joy of her laughter at your unfunny joke. Her piercing eyes and her understanding. His bravery and his kindness. 

How he taught you to create. How he showed you how the rest fit so perfectly against your chin and your collarbone. How the bow moved so naturally against the strings. How he smiled and laughed and clapped and brought more to listen to your music. How he showed you what it meant to be happy. How the arc of his blood shone in the sun as the bullet flew through his temple. How heavy he felt in your arms as the medics tried and failed to take him from you. How he taught you what a life lost truly meant. 

You stand in the middle of a concrete hallway, surrounded by lost lives, remembering everything. You remember what you are here to do, who is following on your heels, what they will do to you if they find you lacking. And so you start moving again, because you remember that even though you were not always so, you too are a life to be lost. You push forward because you remember those left behind, because many, far too many, never met remembrance, and so the duty to remember falls to you. You will face the blood and the dust because against your will you were given a life to be lost and you have clawed, with bloody and torn fingers, from the silence you once were, the chance to save some lives that otherwise would have been lost. And because no one should be forgotten. Blood and goddamned dust, again and again. Blood and dust.

[rookwritesrarely]

The eyes Canticus should no longer have slammed open and he choked back a scream he should not be able to produce. The all consuming panic of a celestial soul adjusting to a mortal body was just something you had to ride out, and even if you grew accustomed to experiencing it as he did, you never actually got used to it. Eventually his heartbeat slowed and he got his breath under control, and he began to take account of his surroundings. He was in an operating theater, one of the old fashioned ones, a circular pit, with a viewing area above the rim. He had seen other rooms like this, but something was different about this one. The surfaces were too smooth, the lights were too bright, and it looked like there were guns mounted on the rim, pointing down into the theater. He tried to get up, and in doing so finally realized that he was tied to an operating table. As he turned his hands to shards of astral glass and began to saw through his restraints he looked closer at the room. There were four other tables, but they were obscured by curtains, and there was another depression in the center of the pit. There was no one else in the room, and a suspicious lack of medical equipment. Around the circumference of the pit there was a magical circle, but he couldn't recognize it. 

Canticus let his instincts take over his body as his mind continued to race. There were memories he couldn’t account for; the machine god drowning in its own blood, armies turned to dust and cinders, the screams and sighs of hundreds of bindings finally breaking. But he could not have seen any of it, because he was fighting for his life until his bindings snapped like all the rest. In stalking the perimeter, he passed a sink, slightly removed from the wall so that it was inside the circle, with a mirror mounted on the wall behind it. The face that canticus saw was tragically familiar. It was fairly young, with shoulder length blonde hair. Its features were sharp, and its amber eyes were filled with bright violet shards as its new inhabitant’s influence began to seep in. How do they keep finding bodies that looked like this? So he was in the clutches of another organization that viewed human life as expendable, nothing new about that, but disheartening nonetheless. He could feel the mask sliding back into place, he knew what to do alone in enemy territory. He finished surveying the perimeter and ventured to the center of the theater, crouched down to look down into the smaller hole and froze. Inside were five objects arrayed in their own smaller ritual circle. A glass urn with a pile of bone dust in it, iron spikes placed neatly in a row beside it, empty of the smoke that should be swirling within. A book bound in black leather, open to a seemingly random page, white paint drowning the names painstakingly written in blue-black ink. A tapestry of the night sky, the polished stones scattered across it torn out, leaving ragged holes where they once were. An intricate clock, its gears made of bone, removed and shoved back haphazardly, its hands bent and crooked. A greatsword, its pale wrappings torn and tattered, its engraved blade snapped in two. Panic consumed him once more as Canticus fell backwards. How were they here? How had anyone found their original reliquaries? He ran to the nearest table and threw aside the curtains and there was a tall, stocky man, with jet black hair and a long, deep scar over his right eye. Vergil. Struggling to breathe slowly, Canticus looked at the other tables. Clarissa, Selene. But the fifth table… Canticus knew who it would be, but could not believe that it was possible. Slower this time, he walked to the final table and cautiously nudged aside the curtains. On the last table was a small, thin young man with tanned skin, his face covered in stress lines, eye bags as deep and dark as the night sky. Cassius had never been as close to Canticus as the other three, but he still wept to see him here, the one who deserved freedom most of all, still in chains. The start of a scream came from Vergil’s table, shortly followed by two more from Selene and Clarissa. Canticus looked to Cassius, waiting. After a few seconds, Cassius opened his eyes and stared into space, silent. Canticus clasped Cassius’ hand in his own and waited for any reaction, and slowly realized there wasn’t going to be one. He didn't think that there was anything left of his heart to break, but the resignation on Cassius’ face found a way. Canticus cut Cassius’ bonds and went to help his companions.

[rookwritesrarely]

“Claire!” The Lady was torn from her trance of tedium brought on by paperwork. The Nightwolf had barged into her office, a look of panic on his face.

The Lady rose from her chair, reaching out to steady the Wolf, “What happened?” If the Wolf was using her true name, it meant that he was very worried.

“The Baron has been kidnapped!”

The Lady stood silently and blinked for a few moments. “What? How?”

“When we went to check on him like you asked, his cottage was empty, and we found a ransom note from that guild he pissed off in Tetralia.”

The lady stumbled away from the wolf and fell back into her seat. She did not speak for a minute. “What are they asking for?” 

“The note just says that they want to ‘have a talk’ with us, they want to teach us a lesson.” 

“What do we know about them?”

“They’re the biggest organized alliance of mages in the area and do their very best to stomp out any competition before it becomes a problem. With great enthusiasm.”

The lady stared at the mounds of letters and other correspondences on her desk for several minutes as the Wolf waited patiently.

“We can’t go.”

“What?!”

“There are too many plans in motion, too much dependent on us remaining beneath anyone’s notice.”

“But he is one of us! We can’t just leave him there, who knows what they could do to him!”

The Lady slumped further into her chair “We won’t be able to talk our way out of it, and if we use force the eyes of the world will turn to us. We would attract too much attention from too many powerful people.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

The Lady turned to look the Wolf in the Eyes, suspicious. “What do you mean?”

“We already have five of us here, and you said yourself that we could stand against the world with all twelve of us together. We will need to change our strategy, but being in the public eye could help us more than harm. But not without the Baron, not without his silver tongue and full pockets.” 

The lady squinted her eyes, a mix of confusion and surprise visible on her face, “Where did that come from?”

The Wolf hesitates “I- The Baron and I have been talking…” he says, trailing off.

The lady sighs loudly, and the Wolf stands up straighter. “It wasn’t like that. He won’t say it, but he’s trying to change.”

“Alright, but we need to ask Clover and Gerhart. We’ll need their help if we want it to go smoothly.”

[rookwritesrarely]

The End of the Road

I sit on an empty crate, staring unblinkingly at the massive doors. I should be nervous, but I’m not. I am just as empty as I always have been, even facing down the prospect of my imminent death. At this point, I'm not even surprised that it has come to this. For what looked like the last time, my life was finally looking up only to be stamped into the dirt. They had simply shown up, I should have known it was too good to be true. They knew me, and I knew them. I'm still not sure if I dreamed them into existence or simply wished them into being here, but I guess that won’t really matter soon. And since they were here, so must it. When a normal person is suddenly thrust into a magical otherworld, they always find something on the other side to help them through their story, that's just how stories work, but I guess I’m the outlier again, just like in everything else. I had tried everything I could think of to talk to the crows, except one. To become one with death is to die, and you need to be certain about that sort of thing before you try it. I know that the cycle is out there, the crows follow me practically everywhere, but it won’t talk to me, I even stopped having dreams about it. It should be enough, being a person again, but it’s not. Not when I know what I could be. It feels like yesterday when I met them in person for the first time, and now here I am, waiting for the end. Do I really think this will work? Or is this just an attempt to force the responsibility onto someone else? Do I really know what this is? Is it what I told them, a last stand to give them the time to save everyone? Or is it what I hope it isn’t, deep down, a chance at an ending, an ending that I didn't have to make myself. Dust and Decay, that is what my life had become. I should have known that it would take more than a miracle to fix that. And so, here I am. In the dark, waiting to die, praying that I would be able to delay the inevitable long enough that mine would be the only one. I hear muffled footsteps beyond the grim portal, and move behind the makeshift defenses we had constructed. I look to the rafters. There were no ravens watching me, it looks like this is really the end of the line. The frantic blur of adrenaline begins as the first mine goes off, sending the attackers into a panic. Taking advantage of the panic is essential, one person against dozens of soldiers is never good odds. Time passes. I can’t feel my arm. I'm having trouble breathing. I hear the click of a hammer being pulled back just out of sight, I spin, draw, fire. Nothing happens. A moment passes. I can see something bordering on sympathy in the soldier’s eyes, and he pulls the trigger. True silence, and then the muffled sounds of the soldiers regrouping as the deafening roar recedes. I can't see out of my right eye, and everything is going dark, sounds are fading. I knew this day would come, better sooner than later I suppose… or perhaps not. I stare at the ceiling, absentmindedly listening to the increasingly frantic whispers of the soldiers as I wait for the end. And I wait, and wait, and wait. Hmm. I should not be this lucid after being shot in the eye. I blink, and gingerly touch the area around my right eye. As my hand makes contact, I freeze. There is blood, of course, but my hand… My hand is cold. And metallic. And is wrapped in vines. And has an extra finger. I blink again, and my vision begins to return. With my other hand I probe further. My eye-socket is again intact, home to a metallic orb, still cold, not yet brought back to body temperature. As my vision comes back into focus, I look again to the rafters. I see nothing but the writhing darkness of millions of black feathers. It begins deep in my chest, and flows inexorably upwards. I begin to laugh. Low and quiet at first, but it quickly becomes louder, manic. The soldiers back away as I roll over and pull myself to my knees. I begin to cough as blood flows down from my sinuses, and I briefly choke. I bring my new hand down on the floor and hear stone shattering. 

Revelation. Absolution. Vindication. The universe had finally gotten what it wanted, but so had I. 

Of course this had been the only way. Life could never be easy. Neither could death, apparently. I climb to my feet, bracing on a small tree that had not been there before. I should not enjoy what comes next, but it would be difficult not to find some happiness in finally feeling alive, after all these years. I look at the remaining soldiers, and they stare back, eyes filled with shock, confusion. Fear. I reach out behind me, without looking, grasping for what I know will be there. My metallic fingers grip the leather wrapped hilt of the blade that is death, as naturally as if I had held it since birth, as familiar as my own mind. I smile involuntarily. The soldiers back away further. As I ready my sword, I feel the memories and instincts of warriors long past flowing through my veins. I see myself, seen from above, through hundreds of beady black eyes. I feel skin part and flesh shift as my wings unfurl, sticky with ink and ichor. The Carrion King has been reborn, long may he reign.