#bastard should have been run through with a sword 1000 years ago

[lananiscorner]

Contribution for Day 7 (Wildcard) of Darksiders Week 2023--the OG bastard, Abaddon. In both his forms. That concludes the King cards.

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Before you read: This is a short-ish snippet from Veratrum K’Ron’s POV, and happens about 1000 years before the events of Firebreathers. It’s probably going to be an interlude chapter between parts of the book, though this isn’t the whole thing. I just wanted to share it, since I’m proud of this piece, and hopefully you guys like it, too!!

Content warning for death. Let me know if any other warnings apply, too!

--

Tieling stands at the Godwood altar, back as straight as his hair, gazing over the city below as only a born leader could, his expression as stoic and blank as stone. Arthur stands beside me, to Tieling’s right, hand resting gently on the rim of his shield, tapping the plated surface incessantly, stage fright radiating off of him in waves. They’re both young - too young to be crowned, as Tieling is about to be. A few years ago, I would have even said they were too young to be on such public display, in front of a crowd of tens of thousands.

Then again, a few years ago, I thought the magic flowing through my veins would have been gone by now.

Tieling’s aides pour his commissioned potion into three wooden goblets on the altar, then hand each of us one. With a nod from their new king, they step away. He takes a deep breath, and for the first time today, I sense an anxiety about the boy. A tense, fearful silence.

He downs the potion quickly - there is not much to drink - and gestures surreptitiously for Arthur and I to drink as well. I take it like a shot, swirling the coppery - bloody - taste in my mouth for an instant before swallowing the disgusting mixture.

Arthur is slow to reach for it. As his lips graze the edge of the goblet, he lets out a pained gasp. I think little of it, for a moment, but the gasp quickly becomes a scream, and more join him, and soon, there is too much noise for me to think.

I fall to my knees, cursing, gripping my ears, trying to halt the cacophony. My skull - no, my brain feels like it’s splitting, like an axe has been buried to the handle in my head. The screams of agony start wailing up from the crowd, children’s screeches piercing through the muffling of my palms. The tree beneath me begins to shake, the Life wailing in hellish notes through my bones, and swathes of broken, brittle wood come pouring down on us, splinters shattering against my head, and all I can think is I’m going to die here.

Tieling Evergreen, you snake-tongued bastard, I’ll take you with me.

As the screams closest to us fade, I’m able to open my eyes slightly, and everything I see is bathed in the furious heat of rage. The unholy prince is the first thing I see, panicked, pouring the last potion down Arthur’s throat, desperation clear as day on his usually calm face.

Through gritted teeth and the worst pain of my life, I rise as well as I can - one knee still firm on the ground, one foot bracing, ready to launch me across the room at this devilish child - and relinquish my grip on my right ear, reaching for a spear one of the guards dropped.

“What... Have you... done?” I can barely hear my own voice, though my throat sears in a pain that tells me I’m screaming harder than I did when birthing my child.

Tieling looks up, eyes wide and full of terror, his rosy skin now as pale as paper and marble and bone and somewhere deep, behind the rage, beneath the fear, at the very core of my being, I know he did not mean to do this.

The excruciating screams down below start dying off as the realization hits, but the tree around us is creaking, dust still raining down on our backs, and further in, a large portion of the ceiling falls. In the seconds it takes me to gain my balance, Tieling has found his feet again, and has started to drag Arthur’s barely-conscious form towards the opening beyond the altar.

He is weak, and as much as I wish to leave him here, beneath the collapsing Godwood, Arthur does not deserve that fate. And he would be devastated if Tieling were left behind.

I leap across the room, grabbing Tieling around the waist in a tackle, and shove him towards the opening. The shock on his face as he stumbles back over the sheer drop is satisfying, for the moment I see it before I turn back to Arthur.

He’s heavier, of course, and wearing thick plated armor. It’s all I can do to heave him over the edge, too, in the hopes that Tieling’s senses have come back to him in time to catch the boy.

I cast one last glance back into the chamber, into the tree, taking note of the corpses that have gone from living, breathing people to decaying skeletons in the last - how long? Minute? It had to be more, it had to be.

It wasn’t.

I take a running leap out into the open air below, and as I fall, I reach for the Life that should be all around - and I find nothing. None of the vines that would have swarmed to my aid, no grasping branches of the trees that would have responded to my call - there is a void around me unlike anything I have ever experienced. There is nothing left to catch me as I fall.

Am I truly to die among the Godtrees, away from my home, away from my people?

I was promised eternity, and this is what I get instead? Betrayal, pain, death - the corpses of my kin strewn everywhere. Every living thing in sight, my Magic, gone.

He said he would stop it.

Tieling Evergreen, I will be wringing your ichor from my hair when I’m done with you.

The silent oath is punctuated by the sudden howling of wind around me, as the boy calls on his Magic - he traded mine to keep his, didn’t he? - too late to catch me.

I land flat-footed on the roof of what was once a guild hall, momentum sending me into a somersault as the bones in my ankle snap and my shoulder hits the shingles with a crunch and I lose consciousness when my back hits the ground below, a final curse on Tieling dying on my lips.

I don’t see the guiding hand of Libin waiting in the darkness. Luma does not shine a gentle light upon my soul. Not even Erra, to whom I have dedicated my very existence, seems to want to help me, for her children do not rise from the soil to bring me home.

Instead, when I open my eyes next, I’m greeted with the sight of the Godtree branch nearest to me crumbling.

I don’t stop to think, to care, about the fact I just landed on my spine, that I dislocated a shoulder, that my ankles can’t carry my weight - I roll to my feet and run. It’s not until minutes later, when Tieling finds me, Arthur hanging from his arm like a child, that I realise I’ve somehow healed from my fall.

When Tieling extends his other hand, I stare at it, and the baby fat that keeps it fleshy still, and the flecks of gold that remain from the potion he forced into Arthur. And I understand.

His face is covered in sawdust and sweat and soot and the paths of tears that still stream from his eyes as he begs me to come with him, to get away. His face, that’s still round with youth and pale with fear.

And a new rage blossoms, one which I cannot ignore, and which will be sated with blood, when the time comes.

“Which one?” My voice rasps with the stick of a dry mouth, and the boy’s confusion grows.

“What? I - please, Queen K’Ron, we need to get to safety.” His voice cracks.

I take his hand. Let him summon the Wind, and whisk us to the cover of the Godtrees that still live. To the outskirts of the city that now burns and collapses and rots in front of our eyes.

We three stand silent, staring, for what feels like hours as Fahrial falls.

Arthur vomits, when the realization hits him. Tieling turns away, tries to leave. Falls to his knees and starts sobbing after a few steps.

I cannot rip my eyes from the destruction. Buildings burn, smoke billowing out from beneath the gargantuan husks of what once were Godwood branches. On the edges of the once-great city, charred bones still reach out from the wave of debris that was unleashed when the tree collapsed. Reach towards us, grasping, frozen in their finite desperation.

At the center of it all, the hollow, rotten bark of the Godtree stands tall and jagged and dead. A single, smoldering shell standing among it’s eternal kin.

Arthur is still heaving, though nothing remains to expel. Tieling has fallen silent, but for his choking breaths. I continue to watch the smoke, even as it begins to die.

The last embers slip away as the evening sun begins to turn golden. As Arthur curls into a ball, holding himself by the knees. As Tieling starts calming himself down.

As I find my voice, finally.

“Which one chose you, Tieling?”

His voice is fragile and hesitant. “Those of Nimia have no names.”

“Do you know her face?” I turn away, at last.

“Yes.” He watches me, eyes hollow, as I step up to Arthur. Knits his brows, when I take the knight’s shield and sword from where they lay beside him. “Why?”

“We will find the nearest town, and bring news of this tragedy. Send a portion of their guard to search for survivors. Recover as much of our wits as possible.” I tighten the shield to my arm with a tug.

”And then you will take me to Nimia, and show me the abomination who chose a child to be the Savior.”