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doledition · 3 months ago

Text

OUROBOROS

A necklace, a girl, and the feeling of vengeance beneath your rotted flesh- this is all you are, now.

( a IWx PC fic i did way back when for @dolmimi for the dolgl halloween event! be warned this version of Ivory Wraith is not meant to be canon compliant-I take artistic liberties in regards to the canon of the game, so do no expect this fic to be extremely in line with canon. TW for descriptions of decaying flesh, depictions of assault, unreality, etc)

kɨnthaβ̃

There was a woman smoking by the beach. She’d been there for fifteen minutes so far, pacing up and down the strip of corpse gray sand, heeled boots squishing with each step. Every few minutes, she’d stop, face the water, and take a long, slow drag of her cigarette. Deep breath in, and she’d hold the smoke for a bit, as though tasting it. Deep breath out a moment later, and the gray vapor would swirl in the cold fog, twirl and twist into the mush colored sky before fading into condensation.

She’d gone through five cigarettes so far like this, simply by pacing the length of the beach. It was a cold day, deep in the heart of winter. The sun’s rays had disappeared, replaced by clouds that rumbled and roiled far above. Heading into December, it usually snowed, a downpour of white covering the town proper. It usually turned into a wet slurry by the end of the day, trampled over by hundreds of boots covered in slick and grime, sludge and piss. No fret though; by the next day, a new fleet of fresh snow had replaced the old, pristine and untouched, glimmering in the dawn.

The beach was one of the only parts of town spared the constant barrage of snow. This was around the time when the fog would roll in from the ocean, thick and heavy, bringing with it the scent of brine and salt. It covered the beach like a thick coat-it felt sluggish to move through in human skin, sticking to flesh with greedy fingers. The air prick, prick, pricked at one’s skin with clumsy, cruel fingers, eager to undo the weak bindings of flesh. You couldn’t see past your own two feet in the fog, so thick was it. It was a perfect cover for all things unseemly, ghastly, with bodies hard and cruel.

No one in town thought of the beach during the winter as a pleasant experience. Of course, there were still parties held there, deep into the freezing night. The occasional dog walker would pass through, dogpeople lapping at their nervous heels, one second away from breaking free of their leashes. The beach wasn’t deserted during the winter (no area in the town was ever truly deserted) but it certainly wasn’t frequented.

The woman, though, had been coming to this one spot on the beach for a week at this point. It was fairly easy to trace her path: first, she’d emerge from the thicket behind the orphanage, the ruined one with dead trees and burned grass from bonfires. Sometimes, her pockets would be laced with arrowheads, foraged berries, roots- she’d look positively medieval, an ardent of a nomadic lifestyle long since lost to Britons. Other times, her fingers would be laced red with blood, and her maw would be wild, white splattered about and a bit of something dried and ugly laced around her neck, glimmering in the sun.

From there, it was one of two options: on the weekdays, she’d walk down a particular formation of alleyways and crosswalks until she came across Connudatus Street. The day market would be forming starting from eight that morning, and she’d always choose the stall at the very back of the formation, facing the intersection between High Street and the Temple. It would always be stocked with fresh produce by the time she got there, farmed from her own hands. Daisies, roses, cabbages and onions, all separated into neat little rows and set out underneath the peppermint striped canopy. Sometimes, she’d bring bottles of baby milk with her, and the bottles would clatter together in the roiling winter wind.

On the weekends, she’d instead walk to the bus station down the road from the orphanage. It had a rust colored awning and glass that held imprints from watery angels, cold to the couch. She’d lean on them, face pressed and turned into the pane, hand shoved tight into her pocket. The bus would rumble in five minutes later and she’d be the first to hop on.

Twenty minutes later, it would stop at Oxford Street, and the woman would get off. Her body would be tiny, curled in as she walked past the ornate iron fence walling off the school and into the adjacent museum. As she walked, her left foot would meet the pavement first, then the right, and then the left, until she’d climbed inside and had slammed the doors behind her shut.

The innards of the museum were scarce, and had been scarce for years now. You didn’t go to the museum to see the three arrowheads locked behind glass cases, or the cabinets that sat undisturbed and filled with dust. You went there for the exhibitions: for the waterboarding, the Spanish Horse, to see a woman writhe and scream, to see a sinner punished for her misdeeds, to see a thief get her due diligence.

Each day at 1pm, she’d take a lunch break. The town was a small town: it didn’t take more than 30 minutes to get from one end to the other. The walk from Connudatus to the beach was 10 minutes, and the walk from Oxford was similarly short. She’d go along a side alleyway, stopping at Sam’s Cafe first to get some sort of lunch before continuing her walk to the beach. It was almost always a fruit salad, except for when she had cash to spare. Then, she’d get a stack of pancakes, laden with pats of butter and syrup. She had a particular spot she liked to sit in: the dark corner near the employee loo, covered in shadows and as far from the shop window as possible. Her eating was quick, sparse. She ate not to enjoy it, but to feed her animal body as fast as she could, before she could poison her lungs with smoke.

Then, it was to the beach. She always smoked the same brand of cigarettes: Lucky Strike Red, and once she’d finished a pack, she’d fiddle with the packaging before launching it into the ocean. The white box would hit the water with a wet smack and would float upon the waves before sinking, and the woman would watch. Her eyes would be dazed and uncaring, fingers fiddling with the dying cigarette clutched in her hand, before sighing and walking away. That box would turn into mush and melt into the water, to be later swallowed by some poor creature and then regurgitated up.

Be it to thieves to not care about such small, superfluous details.

From there, she’d make her way back to work. She didn’t take the bus back in either scenario- instead, she simply walked back, eyes trained on the ground. She’d stay at the market, or the museum, until six. Then, it was to the orphanage, room 4B on the ground floor near the back door which rattled in the wind despite being bolted shut, and with windows that lay cracked in their frames.

The woman would rob others on the way back. It was an indisputable fact of her miserable existence- her fingers would pass over opened pockets, filching at bare wallets and stealing pennies from paupers. When night struck, she’d slip out of the poorhouse and into the houses of Domus, fingers scrabbling against loose change and the last of some struggling mother’s paychecks, all to save her own skin.

Thief, filcher, burglar, grave-robber, cut from a cruel cloth sewn by greed. She had lungs that sucked the air from the sky and left birds to plummet to the ground; eyes that fixated on glimmering, shimmering things, with a burning desire to rip it away; and hands made for deception, for ripping off a strand of silver once placed there lovingly, never to be seen again.

Her wrists were fragile. Thin and weak, like a baby bird's neck. They danced upon the air, twisted against restraints and brusquely knocked back against rushing arms. Her wrists were small enough to fit into the smallest of alcoves, such as the ones buried beneath the Lake surface. The home of the Wraith, defiled and destroyed by wrists and hands such as those, her jewelry box raided and memories snatched away with each stroke up to the surface.

She would pay. Her wrists would shatter, and her body would rip, and she would pay.

Soon.

Ėl

The Ivory Wraith’s body had laid upon the Lake’s ground for millenia.

At first, it had simply laid there in a perfect fullness that spoke neither of rot or decay. To the untrained observer- if they were able to get down to where her body lay- she looked almost as though in a deep sleep, eyelids fluttering and hair floating against the water's currents. The sea creatures were not at all taken by her beauty, however: the fish dared not swim near her, and the seaweed would grow around her body. The water would churn her body around, as though contemplating her taste. In the darkness of the lake ground, she illuminated like a torch, with the wany paleness of the moon.

Now though, the skin had sloughed off into the ground, leaving behind a canvass of frail, brittle bones. The creatures played amongst its burrows, hiding behind the bones made rock. Algae clung among the spires, the green bright against the dirty calcium. The skeleton had been half eaten by the rocks in subsequent years, until only a skull jutted out. Deep inside the tunnels of the lake, the Ivory Wraith’s skeleton had become simply just another rock of the ecosystem, another footnote to grab onto for swimmers to haul themselves up.

The Ivory Wraith couldn’t quite remember what she looked like in life- she remembered long, moon pale hair, that twirled and twisted along the breeze. The Initiate would run her fingers along the strands, twirl them around her fingers into pretty braids, plaits, whatever her heart desired. The Wraith remembered pale skin and freckles emblazoned upon her cheeks, ones the Initiate would count when the two lay in the fields outside the town proper. They’d sit there for so long the Wraith’s skin would burn crimson, and the Initiate would dip her long fingers into pots of salve to smear across her skin. It had stung cold and harsh against the rashes, and after that was done and the Wraith had her fill of complaining, the Initiate would laugh and press her lips against each portion of sun–burnt skin. Her lips would be cracked and each kiss left behind a faint tinge of vermillion on her flesh, stark even against the irritated skin.

The Wraith didn’t remember the smaller details though. She didn’t remember her nose, the shape of the bridge or the way her nostrils would flare out. The Initiate would say that when she was mad her nostrils turned red and fanned like a rooster, and that it was perhaps the cutest part of her. The Wraith had a birthmark on her knee back when she lived- it was gone now in her ghostly form. Any imperfection was gone, burned by Virgo’s feathers off of her skin. It had been shaped like a star, and the Initiate would wish upon it.

The Initiate. She’d had a name. It started with an H- or maybe an A? D? W? Aine, or Fiona? Bronagh? Maeve? None of them invaded her mind, bought her face to face with the Initiate. After all these years, she still remembered her: the way her nose scrunched up in disgust whenever almond milk would be had during the midday meal- she’d hated it, said it tasted like dirt water- or the way her eyes would shine in the dawn, as though absorbing the light around her.

The hill the two used to herd goats on was gone now. With the schism, it had sunk down deep into the lake. The Ivory Wraith couldn’t remember what formation it was now, whether it had become one of the alcove’s many caves or fused with the lake floor. Any identifiable landmark that could be used to discern where it had gone had faded into the coldness of the pond, into the winter sky with each flap of Virgo’s wings.

The Ivory Wraith used to head into town. In the days after their death, when the town was more of a village, they’d stand on what would become the Temple proper for hours. In those days, the Temple was a formation of trees- Sycamore Trees, the ones the acolytes would tend to. It was only later, during the arrival of St. Augustine, were the trees cleared to make way for the Temple. The Ivory Wraith had watched the landscapers tear at the trees and replace them with Apple trees. Soon, they became heavy with pink fruit, and the Ivory Wraith spent days cursing each tree so when the monks would awake the next day to collect the fallen fruit, they found only charred bark and maggot ridden cores.

The Jeweler had been long dead by the time the Wraith had managed to find him. The old man had sought refuge in one of the nearby villages after the Schism, and was moaning weakly in his bed when the Ivory Wraith arrived at his hovel. He had corroded over the years, weak and trembling in his yellow cot. Maggots and flies had overtaken the village, leaking out of each and every house along the way. Above Head, the cloud of volcanic ash that had plagued the world for years, which the Ivory Wraith would later learn hailed from Indonesia, covered the sun like a brutal fist. The crops had all been dead by then, and it was only a matter of time before the people would die too.

The Wraith had used to keep post over the Mausoleum. It had been evacuated sometime in the 19th century, and the creatures inside laid to waste. The Wraith had not found out until the 1930’s, when the streets were filled with wastes and men turned into nomads, booze in one hand and a clenched suitcase in the other.

In their youthful optimism, the Ivory Wraith had appeared at the Mausoleum everyday, praying- to whom she knew not- for another spirit. Another soul, another vagabond such as she. She didn’t know where any of her friends had gone: whether they had survived the Schism, or if they had turned into food for Auriga. Half of the village had fled for greener lands, but the Wraith had stayed.

All they could do was stay, and sit outside the Mausoleum.

One hot Tuesday, a woman had crawled out of the Mausoleum. Flies were eating the crops, and the Wraith’s children were disappearing, one by one, stolen by wandering hands and pushed into the rumbling black beetles that clogged the roads. Her fingers had turned into bloodied messes, and her clothes were half gone, webs entrapping her thighs. Black streaks- mascara, perhaps- cascaded down her cheeks, and her nose was scrunched up, in the same dizzying way the Wraith had remembered of the Initiate. The sun hit her eyes and the rays were consumed by her irises, and the Wraith felt whatever remained of her heart drop into her stomach.

The same woman who had stolen her necklace was crawling out of the Mausoleum, pockets weighed down with riches stolen from the dead corpses of all the Wraith had known and loved long ago, with the face of the Initiate.

The Wraith had dug her bioluminescent nails into the ghoulish wind of her palm and screamed. The wind crashed into the trees and the pond had foamed over, crashing over the shore bed and bursting out of alcoves that had once held mementos of days long gone.

The Wraith didn’t know how long she’d stood there for, just that when they fully came to, the woman was gone and rain was beating the land. The thief, the murderer, the defiler- she was gone.

She had the Initiate's face. And she was gone.

The Blood Moon was at the end of the month. It would bathe the town in its crimson embrace and the Wraith would feel air fill sunken lungs, and her eyes would gain an almost supernatural clarity back to them. And that day, the Ivory Wraith would have her revenge.

It was only a matter of time.

Trɨdɨð

The woman hadn’t slept in two days.

It was the Blood Moon tonight. A wave of crimson had descended upon the town, the stain of blood upon the air. The town at night looked almost like the vip section of Briar’s brothel, with the red filtering through black smoke clouds in rivets. The town looked as suspect from the outside as it was on the inside, finally.

Some out of towners had arrived. For once, they weren’t interested in the town’s ‘trade’, but in the natural phenomena surrounding it. Telescopes, binoculars, sonar technology, the whole nine yards had been installed in the park for them. The revelers that met in the park hadn’t been there the whole past week, and the streets had been swept of their filth just for the occasion.

The woman didn’t give a shit. She’d only seen the outsiders twice- once when their van had pulled into town, clanking up the rubble road, and once in the town proper buying supplies for their stay, towed by a retinue of Remy’s farmherds. Their equipment was worth a pretty penny, more than enough for Bailey’s rent that week. She’d entertained the notion of stealing it- all she’d needed to do was slip off her shirt, show them a bit of skin- but she’d looked into the eyes of one of the women, and her face had been turned into something grotesque, pale with blood red eyes and hydra tentacles and an empty chest where once lay a gem-

Suffice to say, the woman dared not steal from them. In fact, the woman had dared not leave her room. It was locked shut, and a chair had been propped up against the knob. Robin had asked her to open the door, but it had stayed shut, and at some point, Robin had sighed and stopped asking.

There was a tree right outside the woman’s window. The wind had been strong lately, and whistled through the trees' barren branches. Each gust of wind caused a branch to scratch against her window, like nails on chalkboard. They came in three second intervals, long enough for her to pull in a breath and hold it. The air tasted like iron, as though the sky had begun to bleed, and the air was the sticky remains within.

The world always seemed to shift during the Blood Moon. It wasn’t anything perceptible to the naked eye; more of a gut feeling than anything else. The shadows seemed to drag along the walls, turning into slathering beasts with claws that scraped the ground. Food was meatier, juicier, the fats and juices trailing down your chin and to the earth below. The harvest was always better during the blood moon- turnips were ripped out of the ground with gusto, about as heavy as a pumpkin and with shuddering flesh. Berries were succulent, fat, ripe- they popped in your mouth, with a freshness that spoke of spring.

It only lasted a day though, sometimes three. The Blood Moon rushed into town and just as quickly rushed out, gone with a flick of The Head Priests robes. The world would return to normal, and almost shrink, shrivel up like a prune. The woman would sit by her bedside and watch with melancholy as the pale moonlight returned, and pop a berry between her teeth.

Sometimes, she’d go on a walk in the forest during the Blood Moon. Usually, the woman would be inside her room during the late hours of the night, windows locked and buried in between her sheets. The forest during Blood Moon, though, was silent. The creatures of the forest lay in their abodes, hidden from the red reys. The writhing trees and vines lay asleep, their figs ripe and heavy. The babbling brook, the laughing lake, the shivering shore, all lay in a quiet domesticity, a peacefulness that spoke of peaceful mornings and brewed coffee.

The woman liked to sit on the shore and dip her legs into the water below. It was cold, ice cold, and raised goosebumps against her flesh. There was a certain stillness that prevailed in the area, a calm that made the woman flutter her eyes close and untense her shoulders. A faint buzzing could be heard in the air, and when the woman would open her eyes, lightning bugs would be dancing on the blades of grass, and she’d wonder if this was what peace felt like.

She hadn’t left her room in two days. Not for anything: not to use the bathroom, not to get food, nothing. Her nose had gone numb a while ago, but she was sure the stink was overwhelming, overpowering. The water bottles and snacks she’d stashed in her room had all gone to waste, wrappers and cans rolling around the room floor. She hadn’t moved from her bed in hours, and her body felt almost grafted to the sheets.

There was something stalking her. Kylar always stalked her, would always gaze upon her flesh with the look of a hungered dog. The townspeople would follow her sometimes, heckle her and grab at her skin with mirth. Everything in this town seemed to follow her, as though stuck to her like miasma. At some point, she’d become numb to it.

This following was different. It stalked in dark corners, rotated with each phase of the moon. It whispered in the wind, and had arms that sprung from walls. It had faces, thousands of them, and voices to match. Whatever was following her now was far from mortal…far, far from mortal.

She didn’t know when she’d started looking in the mirror. Was she looking in the mirror the whole time? Her reflection had turned dark in the reflective glass, backlit by the stream of red coming from the window. The mirror was dirty, always had been, always will be- she saw no use in wiping it everyday. Maybe twice a week she’d wipe it down, but that was the extent of it. The mirror was clear now, shining and cool, almost wet looking.

There was a woman staring back at her from inside the glass. Her eyes glowed red, and her skin glimmered pale. A long braid of white flickered behind her- no seven braids. Seven braids of white danced behind her head, flicking against the confines of the mirror and slithering against the frame. The scent of salt and brine followed each twitch of the braids, and the woman could swear she saw a barnacle underneath one.

There was a knock at the door. The woman startled, and the reflection in the mirror was gone. Of course it would be gone; it wasn’t real. Just a trick of the light. A sleep addled hallucination, caused by stress and paranoia. She needed sleep. She needed to rest.

But first, the door. It was Robin, or Bailey there to collect money. Maybe another one of the orphans yelling at her about missing her chores. Something normal, expected. Despite how odd the town was, nothing unexpected ever actually happened.

She opened the door. No one. She looked down the hallway, left and right. No one. The hallway lay dim and empty, dismal, the only sound the scratching of the trees upon the window. Some red light seeped into the hallway from beyond her door, casting long, writhing shadows, tentacles sprouting from her back and licking at the door frame. The scent of sulfur filled her room, and distantly, the woman could hear the faint scream of Thief flying upon the wind.

When the woman woke up, she was floating inside a cage. Something pale had grabbed her, slimy and thick upon the water like an oil slick. The reflection from her mirror stared at her like she was a betrayal, a destroyed secret. Her braids were tentacles, whipping against the woman’s skin. Seaweed clung to her arms, and the currents beat down against her chest. Sea Otters, mollusks, fish, krill, barnacles, surrounded her, as though the whole lake ecosystem had come to see her drown. They glowed with a red glow, the glow of the blood moon. Amongst their chattering voices, a whisper of Burglar bit against the salty gloom.

The woman screamed.

Her face felt wet. It might have been tears, or it might have been the water suffocating her- there was no way to tell. The pale figure’s hands burned against her skin, and her tentacles swirled against the woman’s fear stricken flesh. Hard, gripping, as though trying to break into the sinew beneath, to stain the water red with shark feed. The woman felt her chest constrict and she choked back a sob. Her arms beat against the figures frame, but to no avail. She would drown tonight.

The pale figure hissed. Her prodding grew more brusque, sharp, invasive. The figure’s thick arms pried open the woman’s mouth, and saliva streamed past her lips. The pale figure’s fingers were like ice, pale as the moon and slightly freckled. They looked like they’d been crafted years before, from stardust and moonlight.

She was on a hill. It was lush and green, and there was a bushel of Sycamore Trees growing in the distance. A small group of people congregated on the base of the hill, donned in dark brown robes and golden clover necklaces. The sun was bright, and the air smelled of roast duck. Someone was cooking, far below.

Goats pranced below. Gray goats, one, two, three, hightailing over knolls and rocks. Each jump in the air was a sudden spike, and their hoofs made a clack sound against the gray rock. A woman ran down below, chasing after them with the speed of a wild cart. Her robes were the same drab brown as the group below, tied at the waist with a brown cord of felt. Her hair was blinding in the sun; her body was the color of stardust, freckles staining her body like brown paint; her feet, when emerging from behind the hem of her frock, became a blur as she ran across the green expanse. A necklace of solid blue and silver bashed against her chest, and the woman felt a phantom shiver go through her arm.

The pale figure down below glanced up at her. There was a grin on her face, teeth glimmering white in the spring day, and her forehead was slick with pale sweat. Her eyes met the figure’s, and an awareness gleamed inside, a sharp pinprick of knowledge that appeared in a flash and made her red eyes shine all the brighter. The woman’s hand flew up to touch her face as the red ate up the world around them, as smoke hissed into the air and orange flames licked at the braying goats. The ashes floated upon the air, thick and cloying, and the clouds ate her up.

She woke up.

Her bed was wet. The woman lay there, entrapped in her blankets, smelling of slime and rot and wet. The detail she was most cognizant of, besides her numb face and aching torso, was the wetness of her bed. Something inside her felt empty, drained, as though it had been torn open from her chest and consumed. A growing abyss, shaped like an alcove worn into rock, ached inside her. A name resonated from within, a voice from eons before. A spire grew from her spine, and saltwater rioted in her lungs.

The woman didn’t remember if she had a name or not. It felt as though it had washed upon the ocean, buried with one of her cigarette cases into the thrashing waves. The name inside her swelled up, as though eager to answer the query, before sinking back down.

Up- the hallway door began to shake, cave in, transform. Barnacles bloomed upon the coral wall, pink and purple, as a redness began to seep into the room. The wallpaper began to stink, and bruise-like stains appeared on the white cracks. Dirty water began to leak up from the floor, and the woman's face in the dark water had turned into sludge.

Down- the moon outside began to wane. As the water rose, inch by inch, the moon’s reys began to flicker. The red turned into a light pink instead, the color of salmon and pink eye. There was a churning outside, as though the earth was changing course. A humming floated on the breeze, the sound of machinery and weaponry, as pink bled onto trees and roofs.

Up- The water below her rioted. It sprang up high, high as a building, blasting against the roof and splattering on the walls. The dark brown liquid sprayed the woman in the face, and seeped into her mouth. It tasted foul, like sewage, and as she doubled over trying to choke it out, she could swear she heard a laugh, sharp and cruel, ring out into the night.

The walls shook. They began to shrink in on themselves, collapse. She was a doll in a dollhouse, too large for this space. The photo of Robin on her bed stand cracked as the wall rammed into the bed, and her closet fell down onto its side, clothes spilling out onto the filth water below.

The sun peeked outside. Golden reys spiked the town. It rolled over the snow banks outside, awoke the animals from their slumber, and singed the lake shore with its brightness. All the things that thrived in the night had been banished, and the water hissed and dried as the sun touched it. Her eyes glowed, dizzyingly, and she blinked furiously. When her vision cleared up, the water was gone, the laughter had ended, and red eyes flickered in the mirror before receding into the glass, as though it was never there at all.

The next week, the necklace would disappear from the Museum. Winter mourned it, of course- the woman would see Winter’s glaze turn longing, sometimes, and she’d run a finger across the dust ridden case slowly. The woman didn’t know why Quinn had wanted it, and truthfully, she didn’t care. Whenever she looked at the case, a measure of guilt would bury itself in her chest and she’d hurry away, trying not to think of a pale girl with long, white hair.

The red eyes were everywhere now. Sometimes, the woman would squeeze her eyes shut, and the red eyes would be there. Watching, always just watching. They’d appear behind the reception desk of the Museum, staring down at her from the high ceiling and melting into her soul. Other times, it would be in the eyes of all she crossed on the street, large, encroaching, unnatural. She’d walk away in a hurry, now, and head into her room, making sure the door was triple locked.

She wondered about the name. Maybe once or twice she’d think about the group clothed in brown at the bottom of the hill. Her mind would often drift to the white tentacles foaming in the waves, and a gnawing chasm would bite at her. But mostly, she thought about the name. She thought about its echo, its imprint in her mind, and would rub at her chest as though her heart were on fire.

She heard it on the wind, on occasion. When she’d smoke by the sea, she’d hear it whispered to her on a salty breeze as she wound her arm back to discard her cigarette case. She would focus on it, ears straining to hear. It was too faint though, always, always too faint, always just out of reach. And so, she’d throw the case out into the water (aiming further than the day prior, for extra measure) and walk back to town, red eyes staring at her all the way.

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