Definitley Worth Keeping Up With This One !!!

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SCREAMING CRYING AND ABSOLUTLEY THROWING UP AND GOING FERAL FOR @skidotto 's QI THIS MAN HAS ME ON MY KNEES AND BEGGING

But fr @skidotto thank you so much for the amazing art you're extremely talented ♡ everyone needs to buy your art 😭

Chapter 10 aaaa!!! Things really start picking up now as the siege has put its pressure on Ilucia to the point of nearly breaking it, a strange visitor all but seemingly an omen for turning tides.

Still editing the earlier chapters, so stay tuned for those edits!!! And all feedback welcome, of course please and thank you 😌

tw: blood, death, bodily harm, horror, war, food shortages

Tag list: @skidotto @idonthaveapenname

Ch. 10

“You know,” Maureen was covered from fingertips to forearm in slick blood, the pungent smell of iron and the very beginning of decay permeating throughout the dank room beneath the cabin. “There are those who would have us hanged for what we do.”

Starla etched away at the blade of the old knife, intricate runes taking a long while to carve on such a sharp and old piece of silver. The dust piling on the table was picked up by a gust of wind gently sailing through the open window. “Since when have you cared about those who’d hang us?”

Elisa grunted with disdain as she held the struggling sack of birds underwater, the churning quickly fading away as they met their deaths. “It’s one thing to be heretical,” she mumbled, her breath heavy as a bead of sweat dripped from her brow into the now still sink, “It’s another to do what we find ourselves doing.”

The three of them continued to work mostly in silence. It had become routine, yet none of them found comfort in it. When they closed their eyes at night, they no longer dreamt of each other’s warm embrace and being at one with Vitality. Instead, they bled carcass after carcass dry, praying to whatever gods they thought might listen to make each dying breath the last they would hear unless it be their own.

It was a true waste of what they could do, but they did it nonetheless. Each animal sacrificed; each child butchered… Was there any such thing as the greater good while you pulled the meat from the bones of a babe? Any grief felt when the hundredth dying heart was held in their hands, pink matter turning gray as the bucket at their feet filled?

The three of them sat amongst the riverbed as the child ate. Their feet were drifting in the clear water, the cold not enough to numb them the way they needed. The blood under their fingernails was dark and browning, no amount of river water able to wash it away.

“We’ll die before it happens,” Starla said, looking nowhere in particular as the sun began to set across the horizon. “If we’re bringing this upon the world, I don’t want to see it when it happens.”

Elisa nodded.

Maureen’s gaze didn’t change—it rarely did anymore.

“Let’s decide now.”

The three of them continued to sit in silence for a while. Starla knowing when she’d like it to end, Elisa never wanting it to, and Maureen wishing it would have long ago.

Maureen closed her eyes, breathing in the fresh earth around her as dug her blood-stained fingers into the dirt beneath her. “Everything we stood for was toppled in an instant. All the love we’ve ever felt greedily taken from us. There will come a time where our deaths will have that same impact on him. Then. That’s when we do it. I want him to hurt.”

~

It was dark. Late. Most men who had been well enough to be tended to in the manor’s once-banquet hall had found themselves hobbling on two feet again, well enough to stir a pot or muck the stables if not picking up the sword. The longer the barricade held, the more secure they became in their positions. Less of them were hit by the searching arrows as they learned where the best nooks and crannies were to seek cover, got quicker with the barrels of hot oil, rarely allowing the enemy to cross the threshold.

And yet the standstill was putting them all on edge. This wasn’t a matter of holding their ground; they could do that in their sleep. They needed an offensive play and, from behind a siege wall, it was far easier said than done.

“If you held the meeting and announced your loyalty, it would end. Isn’t that what we want? Isn’t that the goal?” Demetrius followed May at as close a range he could as she hurried through the halls.

She strode with purpose, her boots hitting the floor as thunder roared in the sky above the manor. “My loyalty has been sworn for as long as my bloodline has commanded Ilucia,” a slow pounding rhythm started sounding near the base of her skull as the rage in her blood boiled hotter, thicker, “and I am committed to the oaths I took.”

He sighed, grinding his jaw. “We’d never win against him. You know this.”

She shook her head, her hand gracing the sword in its hilt at her side, “This is not a matter of control to the crown—”

“Then what else!” His whispered shouts were hoarse, his eyes all but emerging from his skull as his face turned red.

May stopped in her tracks, facing him for a moment. Before her lips opened, he knew the answer.

“You don’t feel it? You don’t know?” the pounding in her head grew in strength, as did her conviction.

For just a second, they stood there in silence, the rain hitting the roof so far overhead.

“It ends tonight, Demetrius. When it does, you’ll see that I’m right.”

They made their way through the corridor and down the once-grand set of stairs, the few candle nubs and spent torches barely lighting the rough stone walls. The muffled sounds of the raging storm were both a blessing and a curse: only a fool would procure an attack under such circumstances, while the makeshift village of tents and shacks scattering the courtyard would all but be washed away in the aftermath. She’d have opened the doors to the manor weeks ago for more stable shelter had Demetrius not reminded her that she didn’t know who she could trust.

Oryn and Alec were already standing near the main entrance, shrouded by the shadows playing off the dripping walls and shuffling where they stood.

A shiver ran through Demetrius’s spine as he leaned towards May. “The boy can’t be a part of this.”

No one was summoned to the hall.

In fact, May hadn’t thought she’d be running into Demetrius as she assuredly slunk into her armor, peeking through darkened windows to see if she could spot any wayward fires amongst the storming winds. Of course, there were none.

When she opened the heavy oak door, his silhouette was lurking just beyond its precipice. Something’s about to happen, he’d said.

May took an uneven breath as she looked over Oryn’s figure covered by the heavy robes they wore to sleep. The bit of their body that she could see was taught, straining itself against something unseen.

They feel it, too.

“Alec, go back to your chambers.” May’s voice was firm.

His hair was ruffled at its ends, bits and pieces sticking up from what must have been restless sleep, if any at all. He wasn’t wearing any armor, just his boy’s pajamas. His cheeks flushed a deep, hot red as the pounding in his head slowly started to fade and he found himself for what he was.

He nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat as he turned on his heel. “You’re… you’re all about to go and do something,” he muttered under his breath, not wanting to show how embarrassed he felt as the little boy who could barely hold a sword. “And I won’t be much help. But there has to be something. A reason to… Why’d I come down here?”

The rain continued its relentless beating against the manor. Time seemed to slow.

There was a slow, solid knock on the door behind them.

"Self insert characters are cringe"

Bro I'm trying to survive capitalism with maladaptive daydreaming. Leave me alone.

he is so babygirl

farmer uses he/they

Roland Topor for Fellini’s Casanova, 1975

Chapter 11!!! I'm getting close to having posted everything I've worked on up to this point. I NEED to get back to writing lol whoops.

This chapter explains a bit more of how Oryn came to be in the forest with the Witches in the first place.

tags: @skidotto @idonthaveapenname

tw: mentions of death, war, abuse

Ch. 11

The man was rugged; not the image of holy ambition and sanctity by any means. May didn’t know what to expect—gilded robes, braided hair, hard posture—but he was none of it.

Flanked by both Demetrius and Oryn, he sat beside the hearth as if his very bones craved the warmth it gave. His bony fingers shook as he held his hands before the flames, his cloudy eyes glowing in the soft light. They were heavy, thinking and turning and never quite still.

He swallowed another sip from the flagon Demetrius provided, coughing as he choked it down. His legs sat at odd angles in front of him, his bloodied and bruised feet emanating a smell that could only be a festering rot. He’d trudged through the mud on foot for far too long to make it there.

The tension was thick, flitted gazes passing between Demetrius and May as a deep and boiling heat was stoked in Oryn’s core. They all but vibrated with the anticipation of knowing what was to come; the iron smell creeping its way through their nose and to their brain feeling like a coil being wound tighter and tighter with each breath they took.

May’s jaw tightened as she shifted where she stood, the weight of her armor clinking as she settled. She turned the pin over in her hand: heavy, weighted with a dark blue stone at its bottom, the rest of it a soft gold.

“I’m sorry for the lack of hospitality, Councilor, but with the ongoing siege I’d hope you’ll understand my hesitancy.” She studied his face.

His bones all but creaked as he pulled his legs underneath himself, settling into a slouch within his tattered robes as he scooted himself closer to the fire.

He wasn’t deaf; she saw the way the weight in his eyes rattled as she spoke. No beggar would calculate himself so.

May took a deep breath, looking towards Demetrius’s hard gaze before continuing, “I had sent word to our good King in hopes of… Well, support of a different manner.”

That elicited what could only have been a laugh from the High Councilor, his ragged wheezing behind a smile quickly descending into a coughing fit. It took a moment for him to catch his breath, but his smile never left his lips.

Oryn watched closely as he pulled a muddy and deep brown-stained sleeve away from his mouth, a small trickle of blood and pungent saliva running down his chin.

He wouldn’t look towards May when he spoke. “The good King Terrance did not send me,” he sputtered, struggling to put the flagon back to his lips.

Demetrius rolled his eyes, his hands laying on the hilt of his sword.

“Then you’ve traveled all this way on foot with no supplies but the robes on your back for…?” May shook her head softly.

The man sighed. “I heard of the death of some people very dear to me,” he said, sitting up a bit as he reached into his robes and procured a tattered piece of parchment. “They thought I’d perished, too, but were right in their suspicions of my… continued existence on this mortal plain, with the God’s mercy,” a small, sad excuse of a chuckle left his cracked lips.

Demetrius sighed, tired of the Grandfather’s games right as they had started. “You still have not said why you’ve come, sir,” he clipped, ignoring any honorific if not those of who he directly served.

With a blink his body had snapped towards May, his long and dwindling arm extended towards her, his skeletal hand holding the all but unreadable letter that he’d carried all this way. As Demetrius jumped where he stood, the old man shook the wet parchment.

“They left something to me,” he huffed towards May, his breath the smell of death and decay. “And I had to come and claim it.”

Demetrius let his sword slide heavily out of its sheath, the grating noise of steel on steel a warning to the man to step back.

May took a moment to study the man behind the tattered page before gently taking it from his hands and standing a bit closer to the hearth to get some better light.

Jonas,

We know not where this piece of parchment will find you, but know deep within our souls that it will.

It’s time to make pace, High Councilor. The boy has taken the last we have to give; we’re joining our sister and suggest you come to proceed to the next steps in this wretched plan of yours.

Do not mourn us. We wouldn’t have mourned you.

Maureen, Starla, Elisa

~

She clutched the babe close to her chest with all the might she had left in her small frame. Her legs shook exposed to the chill air, her feet numb on the frozen earth, her arms burning and tingling as she struggled to maintain to her grip on the bundle she carried.

The cabin was close—she could feel the forest closing in around her as she pushed forward, her blood boiling with the fear it instilled in all those who entered. She knew she could make it, if she could just keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking one more breath after that exhale…

You have to promise me, he’d said to her, you have to promise me with every part of your soul. Swear it on the Waters and Winds, swear it on the church, swear it on the love we share. Please, Grenia.

His pleading rang through her head like the bells upon the church towers, bouncing from one side of her head to the other over and over again, reminding her what her purpose here would be.

This is the beginning of it all, he whispered to her, pulling her hands into his own and leaning down to look into her eyes, into her soul.

I love you, Genia, he’d said, his voice but a murmur against the soft skin of her ear. He’d never said it to her before this, never once. Not when she’d saved his life at the Sanctum, not when as she cried in his arms, not when he’d finally told her about where he came from and his purpose was here at the palace’s chapel. Not even when he finally bed her, their first moment alone in the months since they had met, in a dark and cramped alleyway between a scribe’s office and the sanctum’s entrance.

She thought of it all now. Thought of it while she ran, while her feet bruised with each step she took and the blood trickled from the scratches and cuts across her arms and legs.

At first, the babe was silent. They lay in her arms all swaddled in blankets that must have been made with love by one wet nurse or another. Their breath was soft and steady, heat steaming from their tiny lips as they drifted into a deep sleep.

Now, though, they screamed. She couldn’t understand how something so small and fragile would wail with such strength for so long. The blood-curdling screams pierced her ears as she ran, mixing with the dark and malicious feel bubbling up inside of her as her thoughts bounced around in her skull.

Then, for a while, everything went black.

When the warmth started returning to her it was the soft linens and skins laid beneath her that told her she’d made it where she needed to go.

She shifted in the warm bed, her entire body beginning to throb and ache as it started to fully feel alive again.

“Easy! Easy,” Maureen shot up from the chair beside her, gently laying her hands against her shoulders to push her back onto the mattress. “Don’t move too much, it’ll hurt. And you get nothing for the pain until I know where you’ve been, what happened.”

The conversation didn’t start for another hour after she woke, needing to reorient herself before breaking into tears at the face of the sister she thought she’d never see again. But their reunion was short lived.

“The child, Grenia. Is… is he yours?”

She shook her head. Jonas’s voice rang in her ears. They must not know.

But how could she keep this from them all when she was asking so much?

She looked throughout the cabin from where she lay, the walls keeping all of the warmth and life of the forest inside of the dwelling for the four of them to feed their practice. It was a small space full of trinkets and bobbles of all sizes and shapes that could do any number of different things. Books and charts and maps were scattered across every surface, littered with sketches of the local flora and fauna, but also symbols and glyphs she knew weren’t holy.

That’s how the three of them found themselves out here, after all.

She swallowed the lump in her throat before looking down at her hands.

Swollen. Bony. The joints all red and enflamed, her fingers bend in odd shapes and the skin of her palms scratchy and rough. Those fingers, that just a few weeks ago were spinning threat and crafting needlepoint and practicing piano. Now so changed, so stained…

“You will not be happy with me, sister,” she said, her voice hoarse and full of sorrow.

Maureen nodded, standing to move the chair closer to Grenia, laying a hand on top of her own. “That’s alright,” she nodded, her eyes serious but soft, “What matters is you made it back home to us. To me. As long as we’re together, we can handle the messes you’ve made.”

Grenia’s eyes filled with hot tears as she looked up her older sister. She was both gentle and firm, loving and strict. She hated herself for knowing what she had brought here.

“The babe,” Grenia muttered, her breath hitched. “Is not what you think.”

And so, she told her.

How they met

(Mr. Qi used to be a farmer theory is used)

Sorry about not posting I'm going through an oc Renaissance of some sort and I suck

The eclipse today

Pc: my coworker lol