Probably, and something tells me you actually know more about proper transcoding than me, as I don't know any Transpersons in real life.
I would actually love an explanation in fact, expand my horizons and knowledge.
(Un)Happy Family [Worm/Elden Ring]
- Thread starter WhoAmEye
- Start date
- Mature
Probably, and something tells me you actually know more about proper transcoding than me, as I don't know any Transpersons in real life.
I would actually love an explanation in fact, expand my horizons and knowledge.
WhoAmEye
Bunker-Dwelling Cryptid
- Location
- Vault Birb
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That can be done. Maybe ask for the explanation first next time instead of declaring there is no transcoding?
That can be done. Maybe ask for the explanation first next time instead of declaring there is no transcoding?
Maybe in PM? the thread had enough of a derail I think.
Though it may be more clear if you tell it here too.... not sure.
If I had to guess part of it, I'd say it is the very literal changing bodies because the last one creates bad feelings (golden order not helping, but could see it as worse if the golden order is just an addition that reminds her of this fact. No idea what you mean about dolls, would like more on that.
Edit:
A slight part of the problem, I think, is that I associate changing bodies more with outright transhumanism than just transitioning, I don't have part of the Eclipse phase motto in my sig for nothing.
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Avangelion
Princess Astra
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Slight tangent but transness and transhumanism aren't so different/incomparable/unrelated? More just using this point to ramble about some interesting stuff, but it's really not so strange when you think about it.
They're predicated on similar bases of "changing what was to suit yourself", even shades of "and others might not understand and fear/hate you", and you don't have to be 'just' human in either case- funnily a good few trans stories also include becoming "something more" or "something else" - with dysphoria for the lack of that "more"/"else" that they gained coming up too; I think it's honestly not all too dissimilar, and 'human' is just a label that not all would be comfy with for whatever reason. Obvs both are distinct/specific concepts, but the line can be a bit blurry/they can be rather intertwined in reality.
Heck, being able to handle swapping bodies easily/without much issue in that form of transhumanism implies that someone's "self" is already malleable/flexible to some extent in the first place, for example enby and genderfluid people come to mind for the cases of "sex swaps" between each body. And- there was a reason that GNC/gender-diverse people were worshiped/venerated/holy (it's a complicated mix of veneration and discrimination a lot of the time IIRC; people aren't perfect, but it wasn't all that worse at worst compared to what came after) to varying degrees in a buncha societies before they got fucked up by colonialism and imperialism; in degrees transness is seen as something in the realm of the 'divine', "beyond men and women" or "the best of both", etc., or something about how that relatively unique outlook/experience makes them especially qualified for spiritual matters. It's not literal transhumanism/stuff like bodyswapping in most cases, but the whole "being beyond mere humanity/mortals" isn't a new association with transness.
Architect Iront.
Verified Cosplayer, Verified Living Doll
- Pronouns
- She/Her
'Looks at Ranni is trans coded revelation'
'Looks at character design'
'Looks at current cosplay roster'
'Adds Ranni to the to-do list'
Dammit, now I have to play Elden Ring. I hope you're happy with adding another blue skinned, four armed giant woman to the world.
'Looks at character design'
'Looks at current cosplay roster'
'Adds Ranni to the to-do list'
Dammit, now I have to play Elden Ring. I hope you're happy with adding another blue skinned, four armed giant woman to the world.
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
1. Some people don't need to transition as far as others in order to make their inner Self physically manifest.
2. With Scion in play and Taylor mainlining his dead girlfriend, I think that the line you omitted from said motto has the potential to become relevant.
Elden ring is worth playing.
But I'd point out that Ranni is actually pretty short, the only reason she seems tall is because in her first encounter she is sitting on a wall, and subsequent encounters are with her sitting on a stack of books. It's absolutely hilarious the first time your in her tower when she isn't there and you see this big stack of books on her chair.
Lagoon12002
How far have I fell down into this deep deep sea
You would think that she would invest in a suitably taller body, but maybe there were incompatability issues idk.
Dopplerdee
Accident Prone(Yes the caps are necessary)
- Location
- Happy Place
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Her original body was really tall like all the fully grown demigods.
Blame the signature word limit for that one.
But yes, *extinction is coming, fight it* might be slightly relevant when it comes to Zion.
I blame Seluvis, he was the one that made the puppet, after all.
WhoAmEye
Bunker-Dwelling Cryptid
- Location
- Vault Birb
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The what?
Edit: is a joke about how my signature is *much* bigger than yours
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My signature is too long, too many lines, I tried putting the whole motto in there, but it says *1 line too long*, and I do not want to cut the previous quote, since, you know, it wouldn't makes much sense if I did.
2.3
WhoAmEye
Bunker-Dwelling Cryptid
- Location
- Vault Birb
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What's the worst that could happen?
Special thanks to prime beta Lucky38, Canon Overlord @Ganurath, @hellgodsrus for being my loveliest wife and co-author, and @SolarFlare for being our wonderful supportive girlfriend! And Silvia from the Gaylor Discord for her fantastic livereads!
Enjoy and gib feedbacc!
I woke up with a start. When had I fallen asleep? I vaguely remembered Dad ushering me off her lap to go take a shower so I stopped alarming her with the lingering rot scent that had bothered me. And then there was… I wasn't sure.
It was probably a good thing I'd taken a nap. The mental equivalent of turning myself off and back on again. It made things a bit clearer. Calmer.
I wasn't going back to Winslow again. I refused, and Dad and Ranni would help me keep that promise to myself, against anyone who would try and have me break it. I wouldn't see the traitor, or any of her cronies again. Unless I chose to kill them. My future, for the first time in years, was - open. Almost impossibly so.
Apart from the looming threat of Lost Paradise, I supposed, but other than that.
I wanted to sleep in. But if I did I'd never be able to get to sleep tonight at a decent hour. Then again - I didn't have anything in particular I had to get up in the morning for. I could - huh. I could stay up as long as I wanted. The thought shouldn't have made me as giddy as it did, but - I could borrow something from Mom's library, and read all the way through till morning. Sleep while Dad worked. Become nocturnal!
And all that time we had to set aside for school - I could just keep practising magic and learning how to fight! Get Ranni to finally work on teaching me sorceries, or just more about the Lands Between -
I stared at the ceiling, paralysed with indecision. I had so many options.
Too many options, almost. It was kind of - overwhelming. I'd never really thought what my life would be like after school. Now I had to also consider all the gods and magic and such on top of that as well. Did I - want to be a cape? Pretend to be one? Was that a decently paying job?
I remembered playing capes as kids with Emma. Before things turned to shit - I'd wanted to be Alexandria. So strong and powerful that criminals threw down their weapons and surrendered when they knew who was coming for them. Using just the right amount of strength. Vicious and smart, and good. Saving grateful civilians -
Saving people. Saving them like I'd wished to be saved for so fucking long though nobody came.
I was only one person. Not trying to build a religion around myself. Maybe Ranni would approve? Helping people was a noble goal, right? And - even though I was only one person, I was a demigod, an Empyrean. I could be… a symbol, maybe? Of something.
An image in my head, of a woman in silver, silvered skin, speaking to heroes and helping them prepare against an attack that would destroy their city -
A ruler. A god-annointed saviour. I wasn't sure that was such a good thing, after Dad's experiences and Ranni's horrific stories of what Dad had done with that power, that worship. But maybe it wasn't that, maybe it was just… something more mundane than leadership. A gentler approach than last time it had communicated through me. I still wasn't sure I trusted it. But it had helped me yesterday. Helped me see Emma coming, what she wanted to do.
You think I'd make a good hero, huh?
Maybe it was just eager for me to go out and get into dangerous situations so I'd start casting more Incantations for it to study. It definitely was pushing the idea of practising more with the discus… discuses? Discii? The frisbee blades of light that Dad had demonstrated a few days ago. Now that I didn't have to deal with school - I might even consider indulging it a bit. Having a backup option that didn't rely on my turbulent hormone-ridden emotions was a good idea, right?
Dad had said it was about imposing will upon the world - a will that wasn't your own. Was it the Patron casting my will upon the world? Or me casting its will?
Maybe… maybe it could figure out a way to wake up Mom. Impose my will for her to wake up onto the world. There were incantations of the Erdtree, separate from the Golden Order, and the Flame of Ruin, separate from them… I wondered.
What incantations could you offer me, Paradise Lost? I was - still aware of the danger. How could I not be? But I also wanted to know what my options were, now they were so vast as to be my entire horizons.
My vision flickered silver-lined, like when I'd first tried to call fire. I saw myself in silver from the outside - and it was so weird looking at myself like this - flying on a half-dozen wings, in a fight with a man throwing lightning bolts and catching them out of the air only to throw them right back, growing scales and flame like I had in the kitchen, something crystal shifting to my whim out of sight but I could feel it, feel them kneeling in obeisance.
Even the wings, feeling like the odd one out, all carried the same feeling. Authority. That it wouldn't be offering me incantations so much as tools.
It seemed almost apologetic, the visions of potential ending with pain, of some kind or another. It was an outer god, not knowing how to human was kind of expected, in the case of the mutations, but the Authority - the pain came from elsewhere, it felt like. Reaching for the tools of a dead god would hurt. But I could work with that. Would have to ask Dad about it, but I was asking Dad about a lot anyway.
… and whether that potential would come with a greater cost, given how my Patron had clawed its way into me before. Is this you trying to apologise for that? No, that wasn't how dead gods worked, according to Dad and Ranni. Not enough mind to think of apologising.
Maybe… are you truly dead? It was possible I was wrong, slightly. It wasn't dead, just in a state that was - physically indistinguishable, maybe? I'd noticed that cunning before - or maybe that was just how Paradise Lost was even in death. Smart. Cunning.
Tangled webs of fingers crawled up the rope towards me, slowly, but. For now, I could live with that, if my Patron kept being useful to me. I'd just have to be careful.
I thought I could manage that.
-.-.-
This 'PHO', ParaHumans Online, was an interesting place, Ranni decided. 'Borrowing' Taylor's phone to browse had been the most illuminating choice she'd made since her awakening. And since her sister was considering going out and being one of this world's powered cuckoos, researching them - or at least the local ones Taylor was likely to encounter - seemed like a good use of her time.
And she discovered that all of these parahumans were eager to use their powers for combat. Oh, some of that was societal pressure from governmental forces, but even so, the whole setup reeked of an Outer God's meddling fingers - the ritual and pageantry of it, the discarding of identity, the legal protections round a sacred rite of combat, the throwing aside of other things as fuel to the fire of this new life - but widespread across the entire globe, actively and subtly manipulating millions, billions, subtle moves of dominos so all fell in line.
Was this what her greater self had noticed and gone to combat and, mayhap, die against? She had forfeited a natural death long ago, but one could never be certain when it came to Outer Gods. By the design of their own many hands they oft created their own rules and rhythms and could, at the very least, have shattered her body and held her soul imprisoned. And that was to say nothing of what they could have done to her sweet Consort.
She investigated further, lying back in the air against one of the bookshelves - even if her channelling capacity was lowered by being a fragment and being in a far smaller body, she was still the Ruler of the Age of Stars, and now her soul was recovered from the trauma of its splitting the cool mathematics of sorcery flowed freely through her - and soon discovered that there were parahumans that were not 'human' in their guise at all. Instead several seemed cursed into misshapen bodies, like the Misbegotten that Father had shed from the Crucible, save these ones lay bereft of memory. A mystery with no true leads, and barely any false leads, either, due to their lack of knowledge and the distaste for the different that many humans in this realm held.
Her heart went out to them, truly. They were trapped in discomfiting bodies that matched not their wants - but their situation did provide her with a unique opportunity to blend in. And, in posing as one of them, any perceived oddities in her speech, her gaps of knowledge, her misunderstanding of culture, all would be dismissed with a simple label, turning what would be disdain for a bluntstone into sympathy for a lost soul.
The other curious thing about PHO was the sheer number of people that were very clearly wrong, and even continued to be wrong when presented with evidence otherwise, and her basic account - she had not used her family's true address obviously, she was not foolish - lacked the appropriate authority to correct them. Curses upon the being behind the name of Void Cowboy! Once she had her verified account showing her to be a cape of non-human form - hmm, actually, before that she could just weave a curse upon whoever it was -
"Oh, that's where it went."
"Ah! Sister, thou hath risen." She looked up, rotating her body in flight around her neck, and found Taylor had draped herself over the back of the couch. She looked better for her rest, much of the tension and rage gone from her voice and posture. "Would it be in thy knowledge of who this user who uses the sobriquet Void Cowboy is?"
Taylor frowned. "I don't go on PHO much, but I think I remember that username. He's a Brocktonite I think? And the attitude towards him seems to be that he's a bit of a troll?"
Ranni blinked. There were cultural implications that she was not aware of to that word, since she doubted Taylor meant that Void Cowboy was a slave kept in misery and pain, refused knowledge and succour by will of the Golden Order.
"... right, uh - internet slang. Think um… a jester, but more to cause trouble than amusement? I would suggest urban dictionary but having that as an introduction to internet culture would be - bad." Taylor shuddered. "Anyways, are you on PHO?"
"It seems to be a forum for the common person of this realm, where, to an extent, recent matters may be discussed without interference from those with power."
"Yeah, if I remember world affairs right, there used to be other forums as well - hell, there still are - but since so much of world news is cape related in some way, PHO sort of exploded back in the day and has only grown since." Taylor huffed a lock of hair out of her face. "And no matter how hard the PRT or any government tries to make a replacement, people just go back to PHO."
"As I understand it, it is an owned place. Not a truly free gathering for discussion." She had to do further investigations into that, into the whole - strange system of ownership this realm, or at least this portion of this realm, seemed to have. Another sign of Outer God interference, perhaps, that such an unnatural hierarchy could have arisen.
"I mean - America's laws mean you can't be arrested for having an opinion. Even if sometimes you should be. But I guess PHO mods can ban you instead of landing you in legal trouble, or dealing with weird harassment about stuff." Taylor shrugged. "I dunno. Some people probably find it easier to have debates in a format you can put down and walk away from easily. Can't do that in person because it's 'rude' and 'I'm not done speaking to you'. Plus the whole anonymity thing. Actually, it's probably the anonymity thing. You don't have to worry about friends and family judging you for what you post if you don't tell them that poster is you, after all."
"I… do not understand."
"Imagine you could tell Dad all the way her opinions were wrong, with the only possible consequence being that you wouldn't be able to do that anymore."
"Why would I want that? I can tell her my opinions regardless." Ranni floated lower, then cut the spell and settled beside Taylor on the couch back with a light thump. "And those who rule will always find ways of finding consequences for those who offend them."
"Okay, um - imagine neither of you have any power. Just totally normal people with differing opinions." Taylor paused, opened her mouth. Closed it. Spent a very long moment thinking. "Have you ever… pretended to be someone else, for any reason? Like, lied about who you are so someone won't, um, be weird about you being royalty, or the Shattering stuff, or anything like that."
Ah, well. She had told her Consort, before she was her consort, that her name was Renna - that had more been because she was not good at pretending, and had no desire to pretend, and as she had made her true body at least in part in her former teacher's image - "Mayhap."
"It's like that, I guess. Online they only know as much as you share. If you don't like being who you are in reality, online you can be someone else, act differently, and not have to deal with your family asking stuff like 'why aren't you that energetic at the family outings?' or get mad at you for making a juvenile joke." She rolled her eyes, presumably grumbling for a moment about Father's sense of humour. Or lack thereof. "Or judge you for your taste in porn, since there's the not safe for work boards."
Ranni blinked. Father having knowledge of the intimacies she enjoyed was - an unpleasant thought. Especially as she well knew what Father and Mother enjoyed because they were not subtle, and the thought of them awkwardly trying to offer advice or suggestions - well, it turned the knots that were in place of her stomach. But the idea of a place she could have searched the truth of who she wished to be without Father's knowledge - "That does sound - is it truly anonymous, though?"
"I mean. Probably not, to determined hackers or the government, but to the average person? Yeah."
"I meant more - Rykard wrote many pamphlets, but also wrote a number under other names. However, those were attributed to him too, due to his unique cadence of written words. Twas most vexing for him. Additionally, PHO required me to provide an email address which, if used for other accounts, can likely be linked back to oneself."
Taylor smiled, gave a little chuckle. "The internet's a big place, and there are millions of people on there at any one time. So you'd have to be incredibly distinct in order for the average person to put it together, but honestly, most probably wouldn't make the effort." She shrugged. "I can't really give you a comprehensive lecture on online safety, just… if you're going to share information, keep it minimal and try to avoid anything that could be used to identify you. Or your location, I guess, if you plan on posting selfies like some users do, but they're braver than I am."
"... mm." Ranni frowned. "What if my plans to acquire further information on this world require me to reveal some of myself?"
Taylor frowned heavily. "You're gonna have to explain that a bit."
"I had a plan to hide in plain sight by claiming to be what the boards refer to as a 'cape monstrous'. Or, as others correct them, a 'Case 53'. Perhaps this will allow me to discover, for instance, what the other fifty two cases might be."
"Ohhh. Okay," Taylor slowly nodded. "I think the cases are PRT things? Like parahuman oddities? Anyways, uh. Okay. I guess if you're careful about what's in the background of any pictures you take, like street signs or licence plates on cars, identifiable landmarks, you should be safe. I heard that all Case 53's have a tattoo on them somewhere, what's your plan for that?"
"Claim it is somewhere private."
"That should work. I can find a sharpie for you if it doesn't."
"My magic shall suffice. I obviously intend to fabricate the truth of my living conditions, since I would not have a family with which to dwell."
"And if the PRT tries to get in contact or organise a meeting? I'm not asking to be rude, I just - I'm worried a bit, I guess. I know you can handle yourself, but the internet is like a minefield even to those of us who grew up with it."
"Then I will politely decline. Or perhaps less politely. I do not intend to portray myself as a slave to the laws of this land."
"Right…" Taylor grimaced. "Just as long as you understand that breaking the rules of the forum could get you banned. Otherwise, uh. Have fun, I guess?"
Ranni patted her foolish, well meaning sister on the knee. "I will take good care of myself, I assure thee." Then a devilish thought occurred to her. "Though, perhaps, if thy plan is to engage in such activities thyself - as a cape, at least - I could act to assist thee."
"I…" Taylor paused for a long moment. "I guess I do want to be a cape? I have powers, there are Nazis in town, it seems like the solution is just… right there. Go out and punch them. All I need is a costume and suddenly it's socially acceptable to do."
"Mayhap." Ranni - truthfully - wasn't keen on the idea of Taylor participating in such things. But… but if her Patron was linked to them, if it was some clue of what had happened to her greater self and Consort - and it wasn't as though Taylor was wrong, as though this city and this realm were perfect and couldn't do with some assistance in helping their people decide on their best selves - "Though I suppose it is well I am here to offer aid, since thy sole plan seems to be to commit violence and hope that this solely improves matters."
"I mean - it's not like leaving them un-punched has been improving things." Taylor gestured aimlessly. "I'm not sure what else I could even do, really. Not without going too far down the same road Dad did." She sighed, slumping against the armrest. "And I very much do not want to do that."
Ranni folded her legs under her and reached over to gently pat Taylor's hand. "That is fair enough. But - have you even considered your likely foes, their capabilities, how even the smallest of thy actions will be perceived and taken? These are all, according to my research, somewhat important for a caped one."
"I…" Taylor frowned. "I haven't - I'm not sure I care much about public perception. And I'm strong. I'm not sure how much knowing my enemy matters." The smell of silver was thick in the air.
"Then Father and I have been failing to adequately teach thee combat or caution." She tried to keep the snap from her voice. Her own struggles had been different, but she knew all too well the elusive call of a Patron, and it would do no good to speak directly to it, not in this moment. She and Father had already attempted thus, and to direct attention to it seemed to feed it, to cause it to hurt Taylor as punishment. So, for now, she would pretend she was speaking to her sister still, and not something that had slid behind her eyes to dip its tendrils into her brain and stir and use her face as a mask. "Every combatant thinks that their strength or skill will suffice until they meet a cannier opponent, a fighter who is more of a bastard, or til luck simply swings its hands to another. I already told thee of Malenia and Radahn's fall to such belief, and how both their stubbornnesses lead to each being near-enough death as to be gone, and destroyed half the continent. I would not have thee make the same error."
"So - I need to get -"
"Smarter."
"Smarter." Taylor nodded slowly.
"Either through knowledge of thy enemy, or knowledge of thyself." Ranni couldn't quite stop herself from adding, "And thy Patron."
Her sister's face lit up with life, the scent beginning to fade. "Okay, so - knowing my own limits would be a good start, I guess? My Patron feels like - authority. Not in the way you and Dad described the Golden Order's authority, that was more like a forceful dictatorship, right? This feels more… um. Vizier-y? Advisor-ish? Like - like it's already a ruler, it doesn't need to threaten to make others serve. Confident? But also not - like it's teaching someone else on how to rule?"
… that was closer to the Greater Will than Taylor knew, but there were differences. Then again, every would-be God that Ranni and her love had slain save for the Greater Will had brimmed with unearned confidence and misplaced authority - it would hardly be the first time such a being had presented with a face. "And has it given any clues to thee as to the domain it claims?"
There was a moment of silence. "Wings?" What?! "Maybe… lightning. Electricity? No, it's… it's shown me potential situations involving those but there's a concept there I'm missing, I'm sure of it."
"Did it show thee truly growing such wings from thine own flesh?" Because Gods of such kind, of meat and bone were always truly unpleasant things to carve down, and generally held an unpleasant attitude as well -
"Not really, more… temporary additions that I could un-grow when I was done." That sounded more kin to the Crucible, which was scant relief since even that power could turn ill, and generally deities with access to such boundless wells of life were not exactly sapient - so one dead and capable of thought - they truly were missing something. "Not a painless process in either direction."
"Mmph." Ranni scowled and gently drummed her fingers against each other, enjoying the hard clickclack of her shell. "I do hate to repeat myself sister, but be cautious with what thy Patron offers. Tis akin to some users who have messaged me over the internet, promising me that they are princes of foreign lands in need of monetary aid who will in return shower me with wealth."
"You've been on PHO for a matter of hours and already gotten scam emails?" Taylor shook her head in disgust. "I don't know what's worse. The people still do that or that some people fall for it."
"So do not fall for your Patron's temptations, even if you they claim they have power to offer," Ranni poked her foolish sister's hand perhaps a bit harder than necessary. "You are mortal, they are not. There is an inherent imbalance in any deals offered, even if it does grant thee some power."
"Aren't we immune to Destined Death?"
"We are immune to age and fated deaths, not to unpredictable violence outside the sight of the stars. Removing the vital organs is still a reliable method for ending those whose life is linked to their physical form, such as you and Father." She gently poked her foolish, overconfident sister's head. "I would merely need to find a new host doll before my soul faded, which, while incredibly difficult, would not be impossible. Does thou understand the difference?"
"I guess so." She huffed. "... what about your Consort?"
"The Grace of the Stars and her soul being entwined in mine greater self's protect her from any permanent death." Ranni smirked. "She does die. Excessively, in truth."
"Sounds like there's a story behind that." Taylor's smile was eager and brittle - if a change of subject was what she wished…
"We will finish this discussion later then." She promised. Because she very much did not want Taylor to go out and act recklessly. "As for my dear heart's foolishness… many of her deaths have been entirely unnecessary, inflicting self-imposed challenges upon herself when the stakes are low enough, or merely experimenting with new tactics that even I could tell her would not be useful. And many of her deaths are simply due to falling off things."
"Falling off things?"
"Yes. The one foe she has failed to conquer is a steep drop. She refuses to learn my spells for flight, it is vexing." She'd have to have that argument with her again when - whenever her Consort and her greater self returned. And that would be - if they were not dead, then her greater self would obviously have primacy in the relationship, having continued it for their years apart, and Ranni was stuck in this far smaller form -
She breathed evenly and deeply of the aetheric vapours emanated by the stars, and focused in on Taylor's words.
"Did she… lose an eye or something?"
"Nay, she is hale and hearty in that regard. Her judgement is rather less hale and hearty however." Ranni forced a smile. Stars, she missed her. She wanted to be held again. It had not ached so much over the past few weeks - they often took different paths in their hunts, but at least then they could still speak. At least then she knew her love was safe. And with the stones her Consort had made they could still know each other's safety, speak to each other, share in experiences - "And since thou lacks this protection from death, should you begin the performative combat of the caped, thou needst greater training and advice. And, mayhap, to keep such intention from Father."
Taylor grimaced and actually recoiled from the idea. "I remember her laughing when I asked if she was a cape. When I first woke up like…" She gestured to herself. To her skin. "So. Yeah. Maybe let's not tell Dad yet." A small pause. "Not sure what I'll use as a costume though. Or how to afford the stuff I'll need to make one."
Ranni shrugged. "We have time to consider that prospect. Truthfully, I believe we should plan thoroughly before thy debut in such fields. Know thy enemies, thy actions, thy persona… I planned mine own escape from the Fingers and the Will for decades before I put it into action and it still went awry in many ways. Even in the matter of garments, truthfully."
That got her a raised eyebrow. "What happened?"
"Remember thy garb is not as durable as thy form." Ranni couldn't truly blush like this, but she still felt the sensations. "Else you might… expose thyself unintentionally." Like her Consort, kneeling before her naked form, and still slipping the ring on her finger so gently after all the carnage they had both wrought to get there. "But I meant more - Father and I never intended for war to follow my actions. Or, well, I never intended thus. Father's… Father's intentions I have never truly known. Regardless. If thou art set on becoming a 'cape', then we must plan this most thoroughly."
"Agreed." Taylor nodded, before looking down with a small frown. "Actually - I'm surprised you can even use my phone."
That was - something of a non-sequitur. 'Hm?"
"It's a touchscreen, and you're kinda…" Taylor waggled her fingers.
"I have magic, dear sister. That is no great boundary to cross."
"Well it's also like - half as big as you are. Wouldn't that make it a pain to hold and use at the same time?"
Ranni wordlessly lifted the three arms not being used to hold the phone.
"... why do I keep forgetting that?" Taylor muttered. "I bet it's the sleeves."
"They are most pleasant are they not?" She swished them, smiled at their swish. The swish of her skirt, especially when she spun, was most pleasing as well. "Mine consort is also often forgetful of my extra arms - when she is not struggling to pick which hand to hold." Ah, the times she had surprised her magpie with a quick pinch while holding hands… "Though, she does most enjoy how I employ them. Did Father explain such relations to thee, or will I have the honour of embarrassing thee with - "
"Noooope nope nope nope, no need for the Talk here, I'm good kay thanks bye -"
Oh, how Ranni cackled.
-.-.-
Special thanks to prime beta Lucky38, Canon Overlord @Ganurath, @hellgodsrus for being my loveliest wife and co-author, and @SolarFlare for being our wonderful supportive girlfriend! And Silvia from the Gaylor Discord for her fantastic livereads!
Enjoy and gib feedbacc!
2.3
Be Thou Mine Greatest Sorrow
-.-.-
Be Thou Mine Greatest Sorrow
-.-.-
I woke up with a start. When had I fallen asleep? I vaguely remembered Dad ushering me off her lap to go take a shower so I stopped alarming her with the lingering rot scent that had bothered me. And then there was… I wasn't sure.
It was probably a good thing I'd taken a nap. The mental equivalent of turning myself off and back on again. It made things a bit clearer. Calmer.
I wasn't going back to Winslow again. I refused, and Dad and Ranni would help me keep that promise to myself, against anyone who would try and have me break it. I wouldn't see the traitor, or any of her cronies again. Unless I chose to kill them. My future, for the first time in years, was - open. Almost impossibly so.
Apart from the looming threat of Lost Paradise, I supposed, but other than that.
I wanted to sleep in. But if I did I'd never be able to get to sleep tonight at a decent hour. Then again - I didn't have anything in particular I had to get up in the morning for. I could - huh. I could stay up as long as I wanted. The thought shouldn't have made me as giddy as it did, but - I could borrow something from Mom's library, and read all the way through till morning. Sleep while Dad worked. Become nocturnal!
And all that time we had to set aside for school - I could just keep practising magic and learning how to fight! Get Ranni to finally work on teaching me sorceries, or just more about the Lands Between -
I stared at the ceiling, paralysed with indecision. I had so many options.
Too many options, almost. It was kind of - overwhelming. I'd never really thought what my life would be like after school. Now I had to also consider all the gods and magic and such on top of that as well. Did I - want to be a cape? Pretend to be one? Was that a decently paying job?
I remembered playing capes as kids with Emma. Before things turned to shit - I'd wanted to be Alexandria. So strong and powerful that criminals threw down their weapons and surrendered when they knew who was coming for them. Using just the right amount of strength. Vicious and smart, and good. Saving grateful civilians -
Saving people. Saving them like I'd wished to be saved for so fucking long though nobody came.
I was only one person. Not trying to build a religion around myself. Maybe Ranni would approve? Helping people was a noble goal, right? And - even though I was only one person, I was a demigod, an Empyrean. I could be… a symbol, maybe? Of something.
An image in my head, of a woman in silver, silvered skin, speaking to heroes and helping them prepare against an attack that would destroy their city -
A ruler. A god-annointed saviour. I wasn't sure that was such a good thing, after Dad's experiences and Ranni's horrific stories of what Dad had done with that power, that worship. But maybe it wasn't that, maybe it was just… something more mundane than leadership. A gentler approach than last time it had communicated through me. I still wasn't sure I trusted it. But it had helped me yesterday. Helped me see Emma coming, what she wanted to do.
You think I'd make a good hero, huh?
Maybe it was just eager for me to go out and get into dangerous situations so I'd start casting more Incantations for it to study. It definitely was pushing the idea of practising more with the discus… discuses? Discii? The frisbee blades of light that Dad had demonstrated a few days ago. Now that I didn't have to deal with school - I might even consider indulging it a bit. Having a backup option that didn't rely on my turbulent hormone-ridden emotions was a good idea, right?
Dad had said it was about imposing will upon the world - a will that wasn't your own. Was it the Patron casting my will upon the world? Or me casting its will?
Maybe… maybe it could figure out a way to wake up Mom. Impose my will for her to wake up onto the world. There were incantations of the Erdtree, separate from the Golden Order, and the Flame of Ruin, separate from them… I wondered.
What incantations could you offer me, Paradise Lost? I was - still aware of the danger. How could I not be? But I also wanted to know what my options were, now they were so vast as to be my entire horizons.
My vision flickered silver-lined, like when I'd first tried to call fire. I saw myself in silver from the outside - and it was so weird looking at myself like this - flying on a half-dozen wings, in a fight with a man throwing lightning bolts and catching them out of the air only to throw them right back, growing scales and flame like I had in the kitchen, something crystal shifting to my whim out of sight but I could feel it, feel them kneeling in obeisance.
Even the wings, feeling like the odd one out, all carried the same feeling. Authority. That it wouldn't be offering me incantations so much as tools.
It seemed almost apologetic, the visions of potential ending with pain, of some kind or another. It was an outer god, not knowing how to human was kind of expected, in the case of the mutations, but the Authority - the pain came from elsewhere, it felt like. Reaching for the tools of a dead god would hurt. But I could work with that. Would have to ask Dad about it, but I was asking Dad about a lot anyway.
… and whether that potential would come with a greater cost, given how my Patron had clawed its way into me before. Is this you trying to apologise for that? No, that wasn't how dead gods worked, according to Dad and Ranni. Not enough mind to think of apologising.
Maybe… are you truly dead? It was possible I was wrong, slightly. It wasn't dead, just in a state that was - physically indistinguishable, maybe? I'd noticed that cunning before - or maybe that was just how Paradise Lost was even in death. Smart. Cunning.
Tangled webs of fingers crawled up the rope towards me, slowly, but. For now, I could live with that, if my Patron kept being useful to me. I'd just have to be careful.
I thought I could manage that.
-.-.-
This 'PHO', ParaHumans Online, was an interesting place, Ranni decided. 'Borrowing' Taylor's phone to browse had been the most illuminating choice she'd made since her awakening. And since her sister was considering going out and being one of this world's powered cuckoos, researching them - or at least the local ones Taylor was likely to encounter - seemed like a good use of her time.
And she discovered that all of these parahumans were eager to use their powers for combat. Oh, some of that was societal pressure from governmental forces, but even so, the whole setup reeked of an Outer God's meddling fingers - the ritual and pageantry of it, the discarding of identity, the legal protections round a sacred rite of combat, the throwing aside of other things as fuel to the fire of this new life - but widespread across the entire globe, actively and subtly manipulating millions, billions, subtle moves of dominos so all fell in line.
Was this what her greater self had noticed and gone to combat and, mayhap, die against? She had forfeited a natural death long ago, but one could never be certain when it came to Outer Gods. By the design of their own many hands they oft created their own rules and rhythms and could, at the very least, have shattered her body and held her soul imprisoned. And that was to say nothing of what they could have done to her sweet Consort.
She investigated further, lying back in the air against one of the bookshelves - even if her channelling capacity was lowered by being a fragment and being in a far smaller body, she was still the Ruler of the Age of Stars, and now her soul was recovered from the trauma of its splitting the cool mathematics of sorcery flowed freely through her - and soon discovered that there were parahumans that were not 'human' in their guise at all. Instead several seemed cursed into misshapen bodies, like the Misbegotten that Father had shed from the Crucible, save these ones lay bereft of memory. A mystery with no true leads, and barely any false leads, either, due to their lack of knowledge and the distaste for the different that many humans in this realm held.
Her heart went out to them, truly. They were trapped in discomfiting bodies that matched not their wants - but their situation did provide her with a unique opportunity to blend in. And, in posing as one of them, any perceived oddities in her speech, her gaps of knowledge, her misunderstanding of culture, all would be dismissed with a simple label, turning what would be disdain for a bluntstone into sympathy for a lost soul.
The other curious thing about PHO was the sheer number of people that were very clearly wrong, and even continued to be wrong when presented with evidence otherwise, and her basic account - she had not used her family's true address obviously, she was not foolish - lacked the appropriate authority to correct them. Curses upon the being behind the name of Void Cowboy! Once she had her verified account showing her to be a cape of non-human form - hmm, actually, before that she could just weave a curse upon whoever it was -
"Oh, that's where it went."
"Ah! Sister, thou hath risen." She looked up, rotating her body in flight around her neck, and found Taylor had draped herself over the back of the couch. She looked better for her rest, much of the tension and rage gone from her voice and posture. "Would it be in thy knowledge of who this user who uses the sobriquet Void Cowboy is?"
Taylor frowned. "I don't go on PHO much, but I think I remember that username. He's a Brocktonite I think? And the attitude towards him seems to be that he's a bit of a troll?"
Ranni blinked. There were cultural implications that she was not aware of to that word, since she doubted Taylor meant that Void Cowboy was a slave kept in misery and pain, refused knowledge and succour by will of the Golden Order.
"... right, uh - internet slang. Think um… a jester, but more to cause trouble than amusement? I would suggest urban dictionary but having that as an introduction to internet culture would be - bad." Taylor shuddered. "Anyways, are you on PHO?"
"It seems to be a forum for the common person of this realm, where, to an extent, recent matters may be discussed without interference from those with power."
"Yeah, if I remember world affairs right, there used to be other forums as well - hell, there still are - but since so much of world news is cape related in some way, PHO sort of exploded back in the day and has only grown since." Taylor huffed a lock of hair out of her face. "And no matter how hard the PRT or any government tries to make a replacement, people just go back to PHO."
"As I understand it, it is an owned place. Not a truly free gathering for discussion." She had to do further investigations into that, into the whole - strange system of ownership this realm, or at least this portion of this realm, seemed to have. Another sign of Outer God interference, perhaps, that such an unnatural hierarchy could have arisen.
"I mean - America's laws mean you can't be arrested for having an opinion. Even if sometimes you should be. But I guess PHO mods can ban you instead of landing you in legal trouble, or dealing with weird harassment about stuff." Taylor shrugged. "I dunno. Some people probably find it easier to have debates in a format you can put down and walk away from easily. Can't do that in person because it's 'rude' and 'I'm not done speaking to you'. Plus the whole anonymity thing. Actually, it's probably the anonymity thing. You don't have to worry about friends and family judging you for what you post if you don't tell them that poster is you, after all."
"I… do not understand."
"Imagine you could tell Dad all the way her opinions were wrong, with the only possible consequence being that you wouldn't be able to do that anymore."
"Why would I want that? I can tell her my opinions regardless." Ranni floated lower, then cut the spell and settled beside Taylor on the couch back with a light thump. "And those who rule will always find ways of finding consequences for those who offend them."
"Okay, um - imagine neither of you have any power. Just totally normal people with differing opinions." Taylor paused, opened her mouth. Closed it. Spent a very long moment thinking. "Have you ever… pretended to be someone else, for any reason? Like, lied about who you are so someone won't, um, be weird about you being royalty, or the Shattering stuff, or anything like that."
Ah, well. She had told her Consort, before she was her consort, that her name was Renna - that had more been because she was not good at pretending, and had no desire to pretend, and as she had made her true body at least in part in her former teacher's image - "Mayhap."
"It's like that, I guess. Online they only know as much as you share. If you don't like being who you are in reality, online you can be someone else, act differently, and not have to deal with your family asking stuff like 'why aren't you that energetic at the family outings?' or get mad at you for making a juvenile joke." She rolled her eyes, presumably grumbling for a moment about Father's sense of humour. Or lack thereof. "Or judge you for your taste in porn, since there's the not safe for work boards."
Ranni blinked. Father having knowledge of the intimacies she enjoyed was - an unpleasant thought. Especially as she well knew what Father and Mother enjoyed because they were not subtle, and the thought of them awkwardly trying to offer advice or suggestions - well, it turned the knots that were in place of her stomach. But the idea of a place she could have searched the truth of who she wished to be without Father's knowledge - "That does sound - is it truly anonymous, though?"
"I mean. Probably not, to determined hackers or the government, but to the average person? Yeah."
"I meant more - Rykard wrote many pamphlets, but also wrote a number under other names. However, those were attributed to him too, due to his unique cadence of written words. Twas most vexing for him. Additionally, PHO required me to provide an email address which, if used for other accounts, can likely be linked back to oneself."
Taylor smiled, gave a little chuckle. "The internet's a big place, and there are millions of people on there at any one time. So you'd have to be incredibly distinct in order for the average person to put it together, but honestly, most probably wouldn't make the effort." She shrugged. "I can't really give you a comprehensive lecture on online safety, just… if you're going to share information, keep it minimal and try to avoid anything that could be used to identify you. Or your location, I guess, if you plan on posting selfies like some users do, but they're braver than I am."
"... mm." Ranni frowned. "What if my plans to acquire further information on this world require me to reveal some of myself?"
Taylor frowned heavily. "You're gonna have to explain that a bit."
"I had a plan to hide in plain sight by claiming to be what the boards refer to as a 'cape monstrous'. Or, as others correct them, a 'Case 53'. Perhaps this will allow me to discover, for instance, what the other fifty two cases might be."
"Ohhh. Okay," Taylor slowly nodded. "I think the cases are PRT things? Like parahuman oddities? Anyways, uh. Okay. I guess if you're careful about what's in the background of any pictures you take, like street signs or licence plates on cars, identifiable landmarks, you should be safe. I heard that all Case 53's have a tattoo on them somewhere, what's your plan for that?"
"Claim it is somewhere private."
"That should work. I can find a sharpie for you if it doesn't."
"My magic shall suffice. I obviously intend to fabricate the truth of my living conditions, since I would not have a family with which to dwell."
"And if the PRT tries to get in contact or organise a meeting? I'm not asking to be rude, I just - I'm worried a bit, I guess. I know you can handle yourself, but the internet is like a minefield even to those of us who grew up with it."
"Then I will politely decline. Or perhaps less politely. I do not intend to portray myself as a slave to the laws of this land."
"Right…" Taylor grimaced. "Just as long as you understand that breaking the rules of the forum could get you banned. Otherwise, uh. Have fun, I guess?"
Ranni patted her foolish, well meaning sister on the knee. "I will take good care of myself, I assure thee." Then a devilish thought occurred to her. "Though, perhaps, if thy plan is to engage in such activities thyself - as a cape, at least - I could act to assist thee."
"I…" Taylor paused for a long moment. "I guess I do want to be a cape? I have powers, there are Nazis in town, it seems like the solution is just… right there. Go out and punch them. All I need is a costume and suddenly it's socially acceptable to do."
"Mayhap." Ranni - truthfully - wasn't keen on the idea of Taylor participating in such things. But… but if her Patron was linked to them, if it was some clue of what had happened to her greater self and Consort - and it wasn't as though Taylor was wrong, as though this city and this realm were perfect and couldn't do with some assistance in helping their people decide on their best selves - "Though I suppose it is well I am here to offer aid, since thy sole plan seems to be to commit violence and hope that this solely improves matters."
"I mean - it's not like leaving them un-punched has been improving things." Taylor gestured aimlessly. "I'm not sure what else I could even do, really. Not without going too far down the same road Dad did." She sighed, slumping against the armrest. "And I very much do not want to do that."
Ranni folded her legs under her and reached over to gently pat Taylor's hand. "That is fair enough. But - have you even considered your likely foes, their capabilities, how even the smallest of thy actions will be perceived and taken? These are all, according to my research, somewhat important for a caped one."
"I…" Taylor frowned. "I haven't - I'm not sure I care much about public perception. And I'm strong. I'm not sure how much knowing my enemy matters." The smell of silver was thick in the air.
"Then Father and I have been failing to adequately teach thee combat or caution." She tried to keep the snap from her voice. Her own struggles had been different, but she knew all too well the elusive call of a Patron, and it would do no good to speak directly to it, not in this moment. She and Father had already attempted thus, and to direct attention to it seemed to feed it, to cause it to hurt Taylor as punishment. So, for now, she would pretend she was speaking to her sister still, and not something that had slid behind her eyes to dip its tendrils into her brain and stir and use her face as a mask. "Every combatant thinks that their strength or skill will suffice until they meet a cannier opponent, a fighter who is more of a bastard, or til luck simply swings its hands to another. I already told thee of Malenia and Radahn's fall to such belief, and how both their stubbornnesses lead to each being near-enough death as to be gone, and destroyed half the continent. I would not have thee make the same error."
"So - I need to get -"
"Smarter."
"Smarter." Taylor nodded slowly.
"Either through knowledge of thy enemy, or knowledge of thyself." Ranni couldn't quite stop herself from adding, "And thy Patron."
Her sister's face lit up with life, the scent beginning to fade. "Okay, so - knowing my own limits would be a good start, I guess? My Patron feels like - authority. Not in the way you and Dad described the Golden Order's authority, that was more like a forceful dictatorship, right? This feels more… um. Vizier-y? Advisor-ish? Like - like it's already a ruler, it doesn't need to threaten to make others serve. Confident? But also not - like it's teaching someone else on how to rule?"
… that was closer to the Greater Will than Taylor knew, but there were differences. Then again, every would-be God that Ranni and her love had slain save for the Greater Will had brimmed with unearned confidence and misplaced authority - it would hardly be the first time such a being had presented with a face. "And has it given any clues to thee as to the domain it claims?"
There was a moment of silence. "Wings?" What?! "Maybe… lightning. Electricity? No, it's… it's shown me potential situations involving those but there's a concept there I'm missing, I'm sure of it."
"Did it show thee truly growing such wings from thine own flesh?" Because Gods of such kind, of meat and bone were always truly unpleasant things to carve down, and generally held an unpleasant attitude as well -
"Not really, more… temporary additions that I could un-grow when I was done." That sounded more kin to the Crucible, which was scant relief since even that power could turn ill, and generally deities with access to such boundless wells of life were not exactly sapient - so one dead and capable of thought - they truly were missing something. "Not a painless process in either direction."
"Mmph." Ranni scowled and gently drummed her fingers against each other, enjoying the hard clickclack of her shell. "I do hate to repeat myself sister, but be cautious with what thy Patron offers. Tis akin to some users who have messaged me over the internet, promising me that they are princes of foreign lands in need of monetary aid who will in return shower me with wealth."
"You've been on PHO for a matter of hours and already gotten scam emails?" Taylor shook her head in disgust. "I don't know what's worse. The people still do that or that some people fall for it."
"So do not fall for your Patron's temptations, even if you they claim they have power to offer," Ranni poked her foolish sister's hand perhaps a bit harder than necessary. "You are mortal, they are not. There is an inherent imbalance in any deals offered, even if it does grant thee some power."
"Aren't we immune to Destined Death?"
"We are immune to age and fated deaths, not to unpredictable violence outside the sight of the stars. Removing the vital organs is still a reliable method for ending those whose life is linked to their physical form, such as you and Father." She gently poked her foolish, overconfident sister's head. "I would merely need to find a new host doll before my soul faded, which, while incredibly difficult, would not be impossible. Does thou understand the difference?"
"I guess so." She huffed. "... what about your Consort?"
"The Grace of the Stars and her soul being entwined in mine greater self's protect her from any permanent death." Ranni smirked. "She does die. Excessively, in truth."
"Sounds like there's a story behind that." Taylor's smile was eager and brittle - if a change of subject was what she wished…
"We will finish this discussion later then." She promised. Because she very much did not want Taylor to go out and act recklessly. "As for my dear heart's foolishness… many of her deaths have been entirely unnecessary, inflicting self-imposed challenges upon herself when the stakes are low enough, or merely experimenting with new tactics that even I could tell her would not be useful. And many of her deaths are simply due to falling off things."
"Falling off things?"
"Yes. The one foe she has failed to conquer is a steep drop. She refuses to learn my spells for flight, it is vexing." She'd have to have that argument with her again when - whenever her Consort and her greater self returned. And that would be - if they were not dead, then her greater self would obviously have primacy in the relationship, having continued it for their years apart, and Ranni was stuck in this far smaller form -
She breathed evenly and deeply of the aetheric vapours emanated by the stars, and focused in on Taylor's words.
"Did she… lose an eye or something?"
"Nay, she is hale and hearty in that regard. Her judgement is rather less hale and hearty however." Ranni forced a smile. Stars, she missed her. She wanted to be held again. It had not ached so much over the past few weeks - they often took different paths in their hunts, but at least then they could still speak. At least then she knew her love was safe. And with the stones her Consort had made they could still know each other's safety, speak to each other, share in experiences - "And since thou lacks this protection from death, should you begin the performative combat of the caped, thou needst greater training and advice. And, mayhap, to keep such intention from Father."
Taylor grimaced and actually recoiled from the idea. "I remember her laughing when I asked if she was a cape. When I first woke up like…" She gestured to herself. To her skin. "So. Yeah. Maybe let's not tell Dad yet." A small pause. "Not sure what I'll use as a costume though. Or how to afford the stuff I'll need to make one."
Ranni shrugged. "We have time to consider that prospect. Truthfully, I believe we should plan thoroughly before thy debut in such fields. Know thy enemies, thy actions, thy persona… I planned mine own escape from the Fingers and the Will for decades before I put it into action and it still went awry in many ways. Even in the matter of garments, truthfully."
That got her a raised eyebrow. "What happened?"
"Remember thy garb is not as durable as thy form." Ranni couldn't truly blush like this, but she still felt the sensations. "Else you might… expose thyself unintentionally." Like her Consort, kneeling before her naked form, and still slipping the ring on her finger so gently after all the carnage they had both wrought to get there. "But I meant more - Father and I never intended for war to follow my actions. Or, well, I never intended thus. Father's… Father's intentions I have never truly known. Regardless. If thou art set on becoming a 'cape', then we must plan this most thoroughly."
"Agreed." Taylor nodded, before looking down with a small frown. "Actually - I'm surprised you can even use my phone."
That was - something of a non-sequitur. 'Hm?"
"It's a touchscreen, and you're kinda…" Taylor waggled her fingers.
"I have magic, dear sister. That is no great boundary to cross."
"Well it's also like - half as big as you are. Wouldn't that make it a pain to hold and use at the same time?"
Ranni wordlessly lifted the three arms not being used to hold the phone.
"... why do I keep forgetting that?" Taylor muttered. "I bet it's the sleeves."
"They are most pleasant are they not?" She swished them, smiled at their swish. The swish of her skirt, especially when she spun, was most pleasing as well. "Mine consort is also often forgetful of my extra arms - when she is not struggling to pick which hand to hold." Ah, the times she had surprised her magpie with a quick pinch while holding hands… "Though, she does most enjoy how I employ them. Did Father explain such relations to thee, or will I have the honour of embarrassing thee with - "
"Noooope nope nope nope, no need for the Talk here, I'm good kay thanks bye -"
Oh, how Ranni cackled.
-.-.-
Dopplerdee
Accident Prone(Yes the caps are necessary)
- Location
- Happy Place
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ah yes the problem if super durability that ends with your skin. Honestly more superheros should end up naked pulling the shit they do.
WhoAmEye
Bunker-Dwelling Cryptid
- Location
- Vault Birb
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There are so many fics Madison writes based on that premise alone.
Oh, Taylor, strength matters little if you get caught off-guard by an opponent whose capabilities are unknown to you. Intel is king even for demigods. It is good imo Ranni was able to redirect Taylor away from that line of thinking to some degree.
"Alas, mine Consort is such a noob."
"...I don't even want to know how you learned of that term, let alone use it properly so quickly."
Troll!Ranni is best Ranni.
Thank you for this update.
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According to the Shard definition? Totally.
As the complete being behind all the shards, the central command? Probably.
The individual pieces? If you are looking at if they can act rather than if they can communicate? Eden's shard are very much not dead there.
You know the funniest part? Most of what you told is not the shards trying to push for it, it's the hosts adapting to the impulses and the change in then status quo that comes from it, plus the meddling of... yeah, actually, nevermind, Contessa absolutely counts ass *An Outer God's meddling Finger*, what with how much of her decision are made by her shard.
Worse, they did know the body that matched, even if subconsciously, for Ranni, it would be as if the current one was put back in her old body with just enough of the knowledge to hurt.
Interesting thought, she can actually pass for a case 53, the only ones who would know wouldn't do anything about it, she does know part of what they live with (minus the memory loss), and she is powerful, even diminished, she could spearhead a social movement about their rights, and this time, contrary to canon, it probably wouldn't end with them deciding that the best thing to do during the apocalypse was made their main source of coordination unable to act.
Oh god, I just had a vision of Radagon trying to give the Talk... to the twins.
If you don't get why it's hilarious/horrible, think about who the twins parents are.
You reminded me of my time in university, while the exams were technically anonymous, I never actually had one as such in practice, because my writing is extremely easy to recognize (As in, even someone who only saw it once would probably be able to pick it out amongst a class).
Go high in the sky, point the camera up, no risks.
To be fair:
-I am not sure if parts of the *Nigerian prince* scams aren't made to make people lower their guards to more elaborate ones nowadays.
-A well made scam just wants to hit you on a bad day for you, right as you're vulnerable, people in general are not the target demographic most of the time, they want people when they can't think, and they can exploit that.
I once had the beginning of reacting to a scam in a way that would have led to it working, and it was just because its phrasing made me panic just long enough to begin thinking it was telling the truth, if I had decided to act on it right when it happened instead of searching just a little more, I would have fallen for it, yet I do know things about them.
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Thief of Words
Trans lesbian librarian
- Location
- Best book girl
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"She claimed she had to to 'Git Gud'."
"Just imagine, Tarnished, what those four armpits must smell like."
2.4
WhoAmEye
Bunker-Dwelling Cryptid
- Location
- Vault Birb
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Taylor: What if the solution is arson
Ranni: Arson is not the solution
Taylor: Erdtree.
Ranni: Fuck
Apologies for the lateness, again. Life is fucky, don't miss your meds, kids.
Special thanks to prime beta Lucky38, Canon Overlord @Ganurath, @hellgodsrus for being my loveliest wife and co-author, and @SolarFlare for being our wonderful supportive girlfriend! And Silvia from our Discord for her fantastic livereads!
Enjoy and gib feedbacc!
After three days of freedom, I was starting to get… anxious. Freedom was nice, great, even, but it was also undirected. Empty. My days felt too full and too lacking all at once, and the idea of every day being like that was kind of terrifying. So I tried to just focus on the moment. I could deal with the long term issues when they cropped up.
School was one of those government mandated things - even though I was over sixteen and didn't still need to attend, just completely disappearing like I had probably wasn't legal. Every day I woke up and the ecstasy of no longer being chained to that horrible place was ever so slowly worn down by the thoughts of 'today is the day everything goes to shit when truancy officers or people from the local school board knock on the door and Dad or Ranni kill them for trying to take me back'. And then, just, everything that follows killing government officials on your doorstep.
I didn't even know if they'd contacted Dad to ask if I was absent for a reason yet. I didn't even know if they were aware I had been absent.
Presumably, given the situation that caused me to leave, someone had taken notice, but… I honestly wasn't ready to put money on that. Because, above all, that would mean someone working at Winslow was capable of caring about their students. Capable of thinking about their wellbeing.
I wasn't even sure why I was that worried. Winslow was criminally underfunded - even if they had wanted to do something, would they actually have shown up to bother me? My hatred and paranoia said yes, because Winslow would always do its best to turn a blind eye to or actively prolong my torment, but I knew that wasn't exactly - rational. You saw stupid stories about it on PHO - that you needed to be in a gang just to be safe there, that it was full of druggies, and that wasn't true. There were gangs and drug-users - even relatively hard drugs, one of my attempts to hide in the bathroom to avoid the lunch hall had been interrupted by a girl a year above me casually coming in to tie a rubber hose around her arm and start prepping a needle - but it was just an underfunded school.
That wasn't what my brain felt about it though. It - I - knew that they'd come for me. Eventually. They had to. Emma would make them do it to hurt me more. She'd wanted to trap me in there with the rotting filth. Eden had shown me.
Then again, it might just have been that I hadn't left the house all week, not even to go in the backyard. I might have been starting to go a little stir-crazy.
I just - wanted to go out. Even combat practice had been indoors the past few days, and all discussion of incantations had been boring theory and emotion stuff, when Dad hadn't been busy at work. I'd gotten so bored I'd started asking Ranni about some of the things Paradise Lost had shown me, not saying where they were from - things like the wings and such, and she'd started talking about the side effects of mutagenic incantations and how I couldn't even attempt to think about them unsupervised, sister, unless it is thy wish to have keratinous outgrowths sprout from thy bones.
She'd probably have had the doll-equivalent of a heart attack if I'd mentioned their source. And there was her increasingly odd relationship with the internet, which wasn't something I'd ever had to worry about before. Mom had been tech savvy, but hadn't really talked about it much beyond typing up things on the computer in the basement, and Dad always avoided computers where he could've, occasionally plaintively asking for assistance with emails.
But Dad'd been - distracted lately. I didn't want to know if it was her trying to do something to the trio, or something else, but she'd slipped back into being more distant, just a bit. Spending more time curled by Mom's side, sparks of gold occasionally lifting from her hands.
It hurt, but… it was better than trying to manage the vengeful rage she was prone to. I wonder if she still talked to Uncle Alan and Aunt Zoe? I was almost certain if Anne knew what was going on, she'd absolutely kick Emma's ass for it. I hoped. I didn't want to imagine that they'd - abandon me. Even if I kinda - they were lesser, right? But that felt wrong, and twisty because they'd been almost family and -
Ranni's words about sparing friends from punishment I'd inflict on others so harshly for the same actions came back to me. Intellectually I knew nepotism was bad. But emotionally it was so much harder to accept. I - I remembered that Mom and Dad had been friends with Alan and Zoe before Emma and I had been born - I was pretty sure Anne was named after Mom's disguise - did they view them as… pets? Smart pets, like a parrot you could teach to talk.
Something to ask later, maybe.
And people - I didn't care about them, I thought. When had they cared about me? At Winslow, they'd just walked past. Dad had been right to call them sheep.
But what makes us different? We're just… more than they are. More important. More powerful. Just… more. And I'd been raised thinking I was one of them - why was I so eager to throw that away?
I flopped down on the couch, legs hanging over the other armrest. Ranni was sitting on the coffee table - you almost wouldn't know Dad had smashed me through it spine-first on Christmas day, she'd repaired it so well - with her own mini-lounge set up on it. Which honestly just consisted of a cushion, a blanket-nest thing, and a couple of books she was using as a coffee table on a coffee table. "Hey, Ranni?"
"Yes, dear sister?"
"How do you keep yourself from viewing people as… lesser, like Dad does?" I rolled over onto my back.
"... hm." She snapped the book she was reading shut, and looked over to me, her blue-ghost-shadow echoing behind a half second later. "I have never - struggled, in the way Father has. But I find it helps lessen some of my distaste to interact with them. To ask oneself whether one would do better in the circumstances they have found themselves within. Place oneself within their footwear. Empathy is a simple trick but an effective one for preventing contempt." She hummed, and licked her lips, and I was reminded once again how weird it was that she had a tongue. "And, I suppose, it helps to know my own failings. How can I call myself better or different when I know mine own petty biases, my failings, my fears and doubts and dreams? Nothing makes them grander or more real than those of any other. And so on and so forth - thus if all dreams are equal, all dreams must be protected where possible, unless those dreams involve the destruction of the dreams of others."
Hmm. That… was a good idea, but the empathy part - how could I put myself in their shoes? When all they had done was turn me into a pariah, or stood by and let others do it. To imagine myself in their situation was impossible, because they wouldn't let me understand if I tried. And I had. So many sleepless nights crying till morning wondering why, why do they just watch? Their dreams? They seemed to idolise nothing but indifference, the status quo, avoiding being the target like me. Their doubts? Their fears?
Urgh. I was starting to feel self-centred, basing all of this off their reactions to me, but it wasn't like I'd been given a chance to get to know anyone the past few years. Was that a bias? Or a result of their own actions?
"I can see thou art struggling. Perhaps more than thou were a moment ago."
I groaned and rubbed at my forehead. "Being a social pariah stunts your empathy a lot."
"Then befriend others outside of the vile academy now it is no longer part of thy waking life. Interact through this vast communication array that exists. Or, since thou art determined to act as one of the caped ones this realm holds in such esteem, befriend some of them whenever thou art ready to embark on such endeavours."
Whatever social skills I'd once had - assuming there were any - would be rustier than old gardening tools by now. And socialising as a cape, when I'd barely started to consider how I'd be one beyond vague desire - I had no idea how to even begin on that. Not an immediate problem, though. So, instead I asked, "Does that mean you're willing to put your scheming on hold and let me use my phone again?" I raised an eyebrow at her and tried to grin cheekily.
Ranni tilted her head and raised her own eyebrow. "... thy computer still dwells within the cellars of the house, does it not?"
"I suppose…"
"And thy size is much more befitting for its use than my own."
"Yeah, I'm going to have to give up on getting my phone back, aren't I?" I sighed in false annoyance. "And here I thought being the youngest sister I'd be the one getting the handmedowns."
"Thou art too large to fit even the clothes of my greater self, sister." Ranni poked her tongue out at me. "I suppose I could trade thee some tutoring in the base elements of sorcery, if that will quell thy unrest. I have been meaning to regardless, but now is as good a time to start as any."
"Sure. Magic's awesome." I grinned and sat up. It wasn't that I hated learning, it was that I hated Winslow, a place where I didn't learn anything academic. If I could just learn how to fly like Ranni did - that alone would be amazing. But add to that the fact she'd somehow stopped my Patron's panic response - Stilling - when the incantation Dad had used had hit. It had been buried under the panic at the time, but looking back, that wave of flat, hating, nihilistic longing for the end must have been - anyway, if Ranni could do that, there was a good chance she could block anything my Patron could try to pull. And while Paradise Lost had helped me, I didn't want to accidentally hurt my allies - my family - again just cause it had panicked due to being dead.
"Though - a thought I had not considered ere now - if thou does partake in 'caping', a phone will be necessary for thee, will it not?"
"Yeah, but if I take that one into a fight, it might get broken, and then I'd lose all the important stuff I've got on it." Like my high scores. I'd worked hard on those, damnit! "So, I'll probably have to get a burner or two - something cheap and expendable, probably on prepay. They're not that hard to get, and people don't ask questions." Though they'd be somewhat expensive, and it wasn't like we were rolling in money. And the whole thing was potentially kind of traceable… I'd worry about it later.
Ranni nodded and grinned, wide and beaming. "Then, I will offer thee knowledge of glintstone and the stars in return for thy telephone. Do we have a deal?"
"Sure. Just let me copy over my important data once I have a replacement." Magic tiiime! "So, glintstone. Sounds shiny." I couldn't wipe my own grin off my face if I tried. And I didn't. Magic! This was why missing school was fine, because I'd get to learn actually important things now!
Ranni's own grin widened as she nodded. "Tis crystal from the heavens to channel their power. This realm already acknowledges that time and space are one unified fabric held under gravity's sway and that one touches the other - to gaze skyward is to gaze forward, and to see the true stars is to become erudite." Her face fell a little. "Though many men became arrogant with that knowledge and - well. They lie dead now, and what they did to Mother has been avenged."
"I'll try my best not to join their ranks." If they hurt Mom - if I hurt Mom - I hoped Ranni would deal with me before I hurt her badly.
"It was not their knowledge that made them so, and no such ranks remain. Thankfully enough. And I think thou wouldst agree that to wear a giant face of stone upon one's head is a crime against aesthetics most foul and heinous in any regard."
"... yeah, that…" Giant stone heads? "I can't imagine it'd be easy on the neck muscles, either."
"Mine Consort complained most vigorously about the times she'd been headbutted by one wearing such a mask. Regardless. Due to this focus on celestial bodies - even if by this we refer to their true forms, not the ones we perceive with fallible eyesight - sorcerous casting and creation focuses upon mathematics and physical studies of the world. One cannot break such rules without knowing them, after all."
Oh. If there was an entire academy dedicated to this, a university-ish one Mom had run, it probably wasn't as simple as just feel really angry, like incantations had been. Of course there wouldn't be an easy way, no simple trick to become a sorcerer in an instant, nine out of ten astrologers hate her. "I was kinda hoping…"
"I know." Ranni smiled sadly.
"So incantations rely on faith and emotion, sorcery on knowledge?" I liked learning, but math wasn't one of those things that were enjoyable to learn. It was just… numbers and values, no… excitement. No otherworldly mystery to it, even with crystals and stars and such at the end - Sigh.
"More the comprehension of such knowledge. The ability to see said patterns and understand them. One could 'cheat', by memorising the movements and mathematics behind spells, but the result would be rigid, uncompromising. You would need to follow the exact motions with every cast, or it would fail entirely - and even then, such casting would only function in certain situations, for the stars and world move, and thus the motions of casting must move with them. So, rather than teach you eight thousands, seven hundreds and sixty different magics to form a glintstone, one for each individual hour in the year and their place in the cosmos, it is simpler to teach in principles, and numbers, and forms, so that one may move between such castings fluidly. In the Lands Between, there were runes capable of searing the base knowledge as a permanent artifact into one's memory, but again, they were limited. Good for those who sought a small edge to aid them in combat, poor for those who wished to master magic."
"Did your Consort use them like that?"
Ranni shifted, a little uncomfortably, maybe. "Yes, but she is - was - Tarnished. Those who followed Godfrey into exile often were… gifted in the art of warfare with any means at their disposal, and it was not as though they could attend any true academy whilst wandering so far, or whilst the stars were frozen. She did not master the magic, at first, but what magic she had, she did master. She did the same with incantations, in truth, as did many others - it is oft easier to seek such a seared memory than attempt to search for strong enough emotions to incant in the heat and madness of battle. It was almost an art form of its own, the creation of Memory Stones."
"They sound useful." A stone that I could keep in my pocket and use whenever I wanted to use fire without blowing up half the city would be pretty useful…
"Alas, we have neither access to them, nor ashes to replicate their effects on other objects." Ranni's mouth twisted. "Though I suppose we could use the unscrupulous methods of certain practitioners and compress individuals into smaller and smaller farms of glintstone, harvesting only the purest cuts from the crystals closest to their hearts as they begged for death. But that would be…"
"That uh. No." I shuddered. "But - back up a second - ashes? I'm assuming they're - special in some way, and not just the leftovers from any old fire."
Ranni nodded again, and leaned forward - sometimes when she spoke like this, I caught the cadence of Mom's voice in her tone, and it - it hurt, in a good way. Seeing part of Mom again. "The Erdtree, curse all it was, came to represent life and hold some power over its cycle - in no small part due to Father's actions. Ashes are what comes after life has been ground away, burned by flame or time. Ashes are - were - remnants, and thus were imbued with the power of memory. Some skilled individuals could infuse ashes from great battles, skilled warriors, or momentous events with memories of such things, and graft said ashes to a weapon or other object, allowing any who hold it to replicate the feats within the ashes." Ranni frowned, tapping her chin with a little click-clack that was at odds with how soft she looked. "Twas another form of magic, I suppose. Different from Incantation or Sorcery, available to any who had the tools to call upon said ash. The cremated bow of a famous archer could produce ashes that enchanted arrows to never miss from the new bow it was imprinted on, for example. They could even be copied onto specially made ashes that were blank, lost and silent. With the right whetstones - enchanted, of course - one could even imbue one's weapon with permanent shadows of the magic that dwelt within."
"Like a sword that was perpetually on fire without any fuel?"
"Sister, I must note a curious trace of pyromania within thee."
"Arson for profit is still profit, right?" I grinned weakly.
"Arson is rarely profitable, Taylor." Ranni fixed me with a look. "But, in aspect, you are not wrong. Such weapons were a favourite of General Radahn's Redmanes, after his battle with Malenia. Used to combat the Rot-infected beasts of the Caelid Wilds." Her face shifted to a gentler smile. "Some who had mastered sorcery in life found their ashes imbued with glintstone sorceries, allowing any who wielded a weapon whetted in their cremains to cast, for instance, an array of glintstone blades."
That sounded awesome. A way to cast without having to force my emotions into loops or study math? "Does it have to be weapons? Could I, for instance, imbue a ring with ashes?"
Ranni had to think about that for a moment. "I do not believe it's been done, but… perhaps if you used the ring as a caestus?"
"So I'd have to punch someone to activate the magic blades?" I frowned. Violent, but… nothing I'd heard about the Lands Between so hard hadn't been violent. Even the foliage there seemed to have a bone to pick.
"No, but - they are known as ashes of war, sister. The promise of combat, of blood spilled - it restores enough vitality to the dead as tribute for them to grant their gifts to others. Or so was the belief, I never truly investigated it - perhaps if the ring was enough associated with combat for it to be seen as such it would work, but." She shrugged, lower arms spread wide. "Truthfully, I am uncertain if their function would remain the same in this realm, without an Erdtree to act as a focal point of beliefs and power."
"If they do work though, I - well, let me know, yeah?" I wasn't sure if that impulse to know more, to experiment, was mine or my Patron's - I'd need to fight people with my magic as a cape, but blood sacrifice through combat was likely a step too far, unless I could find a good workaround.
Then again… I was already going to struggle with most of my magic not coming with a 'not-shredding-people' setting. I guess - maybe if I leant more heavily on the combat stuff I was learning? But that was all knives and medieval weapons that were just as lethal -
I was getting distracted. Sorcery. "Um, returning to the original topic." I shifted and hummed. "So, stars - comprehending them is important. How do I get started on that? Besides waiting for a clear sky to stargaze, which I know you've been talking about."
"Indeed. Since that has not occurred yet, though, we can start with the mathematics involved in the simplest divisions of sorcery. That used to be the division between those derived from glintstone - the offshoot of accrued stellar energies - and those of a gravitic nature - the offshoot of accrued stellar existence." Ranni folded her arms. "However, there are a number of other sub-divisions - such as those sorceries born of the deathroot and ghostflame, when they formed, or from the cursed blood star - as well as smaller schools of study such as the teachings of Haima, or the castings of the alien Crystalians. But - that level of specificity is more advanced than we are ready for, I'd think."
I nodded slowly. Very slowly. In the back of my mind, I felt Paradise Lost churn - it was digesting this better than I was, I thought. "I'm gonna need notepaper for this, aren't I?"
"Thou art attempting to rush through what would have been decades of institutional learning in exchange for a phone." Ranni smirked.
"I'll go get a notebook then."
-.-.-
There was something odd about being a semilucid dreamer. When she was awake, she couldn't remember. When she was asleep, she felt conscious, awake, capable of making decisions - even if her logic was as fuzzy as the edges of her vision - sometimes she even realised it was a dream!
Sometimes. And she never realised for long.
It felt more like she was a passenger in her own body, looking out through her eyes as the script kept moving without her input. But there was her input, it just… wasn't pronounced. Like it was simply being asked of her - what will you do here? And then it happened. Cause and effect separated.
Dreams were… dreamy.
Of course, nightmares were a different kettle of fish - who puts their fish in kettles? - and all of this internal monologuing, all this thinking -
Madison's hair had turned to flax, derailing whatever train of thought Emma had in favour of giggling. Why she was on a swingset, she didn't know. She'd never been to a park with Madison. A mall, yes, the Boardwalk, yes, but a playpark with a swingset? No. Sophia was crouched beside it, tracing something in the wood chips.
Yet for all of that, the image was… sensible. If they went to a park, then yes, Madison would be on the swingset, Sophia would be drawing in bark, and Emma would be stand-sitting there, feeling floaty and free. Jules in the background reading aloud silently, near the Gaggle of followers, their soft goose-like honks merging together. Swinging back and forth like her legs.
None of this made sense, especially given the sky was purple in the middle of the day. But it all made perfect sense!
"Am I dreaming?" she asked herself. Then shrugged. "Probably." It wasn't like she could do anything about it.
It was better than -
Something. Better than something else that could be happening. She was just going to sit here and enjoy her time in the rain-that-wasn't. Because it was raining, but nothing was getting wet. Perfectly normal things. No kettles of fish here today.
And the shadow of Taylor behind her. Just a void in her reality. There had been Taylor in her life, before she cut it out. Now there was a Taylor-shaped hole there that she didn't know how to fill. Sophia didn't fit. Madison didn't. Julia had… maybe one or two things similar, but that wasn't enough, really. She didn't fit.
So there was just a hole, babbling away happily about anything and everything that caught the void's attention. Emma had been good at wrapping the parents around her finger for extra treats or time to play. But Taylor was the one that had made it all worth it, meaningful. Before -
|Ah. Now that's interesting.|
Emma straightened. She hadn't - the voice, gentle, hadn't spoken. It just was, sudden and firm as jewellery fastened around her throat.
What was interesting? Why was interesting? Sophia was scowling at nothing - not the nothing in the Taylor-shaped-hole, but the nothing that talked, which was completely different.
|Do you miss her, then? I thought that she was weak, that she broke where you held the line. That's what the rest of your mind says.|
The light was shifting, bruising red-brown from purple.
But that wasn't how it happened? Was it? Or - it was. She missed Taylor. She wanted her sister back, the other sister, the one in all but blood, but she needed to be - she hadn't been strong enough to join her. To join her in… in… something.
The Sophia-shaped-glare wavered a bit.
That was what she'd been doing. Wasn't it? Or - she'd decided that Taylor would never make it. Would never stand up. Couldn't be strong. Hadn't she? Or…
|It's hard to stand with you pushing her so far down into the dirt. But perhaps that's the point.| The voice's existence was a dry whisper. |It's funny… you hate the bigots in your city, don't you.|
She did. It made things at school difficult, sometimes, negotiating between the inherent racism and sexism and homophobia of this fucking city, but she would never give a single inch to the Empire.
|Ironic, then, that you preach such a philosophy that seems so similar to their own. Might makes right… the strong survive… the weak are lesser…|
Echoes of other voices. Gang teens, colleagues Dad said she should stay away from, geese, saying -
"It's not like that." Her voice burned in the cold, red-brown air. The bark Sophia had been drawing in faded away like ice, melting into stuff. Very poorly defined stuff, because that wasn't in focus right now. Madison had stopped swinging, as Julia and the Gaggle settled down in a ring around her. Trapping her.
|Is that a fact?|
Taylor was-wasn't strong. She had to be - to not be. Because if she wasn't - if she was - then Emma was doing all of this for… nothing. But did she - she didn't believe that when she was awake. Not any more. And she didn't think that you - there was simply a hierarchy of things, a natural order -
|A golden order.| A flash of something in its sarcasm, of the something worse that could be happening instead of this, and Emma cringed.
|I am interested in your philosophy though. Especially given how many you gather to yourself. If any of them became weak, would they become lesser? Become outcasts from your caste, shunned as you now shun her? Would you expect them to do the same to you?|
But the Gaggle were weaker, lesser than her and Sophia. Clinging to her coattails for crumbs, herded like sheep for their own safety. Trusting the wolves that guided them so they didn't become dinner themselves. That was how it worked, right? She was strong, she could order them around. Guide them to do things that benefited her more than them.
She clung to the ropes of her swing, pressing up against her sides. They didn't offer comfort.
|I wonder… how loyally they'd cling to your strength if it cost them everything.| The voice twisted, like flesh parting from flesh, the consonants popping like tendons and snapping like strands of fat.
Emma coughed, suddenly, violently. Just the once. A mangled, phlegm-coated petal in pink and white drifted from her lips. Madison had spoken about that, some sort of - made up disease. Hanahaki. Roses grew in your lungs until you confessed your secret love, and if you didn't, then you'd choke on petals.
The voice huffed, a strange mix of emotions in it as Emma glanced to Sophia, to the Taylor-shaped-hole, to the petal in her lap.
But none of that explained the vivid taste of rust. Not iron, not metallic, just… rust. Rust didn't even have a flavour!
Her body felt light. The light you felt before vomiting. Like your whole body was hollow with a weight in it and to wobble to disturb it -
The coughing hit her again, suddenly, violently. She choked, something forcing its way up her throat, mouth dripping with saliva - she fell forward, hacking and wheezing, snot forcing its way from her nose, pressure in her sinuses - her ears popped, suddenly and violently, and she spat out more petals, more phlegm, specks of red - her vision trembled -
Her stomach roiled and more poured out. Dripping from her nose as she retched. Her chest heaved, compressed - a crack of pain as she coughed harder, couldn't breathe - not just petals now but roots and branches and the petals weren't romantic, how could anyone think these bedraggled masses soaked in blood and thick phlegm and oh god were those pieces of meat, oh -
The petals twitched. Not petals - she could see the legs now, the twitching - and the stems and phlegm were -
She retched up another wave of the filth she'd left in the locker for Taylor. Behind her, she could hear the gaggle screaming.
She managed to raise her watery eyes and saw -
Branches, punching through Julia's face like knives, the flesh crumbling like cake around them.
Madison, babbling, but every motion of her jaw loosened the flesh on her face til it melted and slid off her skull, jaw still flapping even as fibrous fungus pushed her teeth aside.
And Sophia - running, backing away from her, but too late, red spurting from her ears, her eyes -
|You think strength is simply pushing those around you down deeper and standing atop their corpses. There is a kind of strength in that, I suppose. I used to believe in something similar. In being victorious, where you stood a survivor. But there is no victory in strength.|
Something was pushing on the back of Emma's eye. She tried to scream, but it just became more wheezing coughs, a wobbling twitching fragment of lung riddled with keratinous growths landing with a splatter in front of her. She shouldn't be able to see it but she could, could see the filaments, the mycelia carving through the white of her eye, her iris - her eyeball shifted forward more and more til it popped from the hollow of her skull, landing in the pile of refuse in front of her. Something burst from the top of her nose. She coughed again, thick fibrous flesh pouring from her mouth, and realised she was somehow coughing up her own ears.
She looked to the Taylor-shaped-hole pleadingly. Begging for - she wasn't sure what. Comfort at the end? She could taste her own brains in the back of her throat, her spine caught between her teeth. What came out of her was thick and orange and awful.
|I defined defeat so narrowly but every day of my life had been defeat. Losing ground, little by little. I had no strength, truly. But those who stood by me… who chose to stand by me despite knowing what they would lose. Despite what I did to them simply by the curse of my existence…| The voice hissed, gaseous and bloated like a corpse. |Now that's strength, Emma.|
Her right shoulder - her knees - the flesh and bone detached, melting away with a soft pop and she collapsed further forward. The others - they were all dead but before they'd died - they'd been fleeing from her. They hadn't stayed. Even Sophia -
She was crawling away. She was -
Emma's body moved. Slowly.
|One in particular stood by me til the end. Even when there was nothing of me left. And I took everything from her. Do you know what that's like? I barely do. I wasn't even fully aware of what I'd done until - far far later, because my dreams had become dull gold and murder.|
Only one arm, and the stumps of her legs, and she still caught up to Sophia. Her broken ribs creaked and heaved. Roots carved scars into their skins.
|I pity you, because I know you, because to an extent I was you. Whoever you are, wherever you are. I only found you because the doors to your mind have been left torn asunder by the force of a familiar wrath, and such a breach is - well. We'll speak more on such matters soon, Emma Barnes.|
Her back tore, from her shoulderblade to the tops of her thighs, thick flesh lifting as wings with wet splatters as she began to eat Sophia alive.
She woke up choking. A hard hand thumping on her back and a wastebin under her face. Her whole body felt achy and weak. Nothing came out her throat but bile and sobs.
It wasn't - it wasn't true. Being a survivor wasn't like being a Nazi. It wasn't true.
The comforting murmur of Sophia's voice came from behind her, as she finally drew in several heaving breaths without immediately retching again. "You okay there?"
"No." Emma croaked. It felt like she'd hacked up a lung or three. Like she'd swallowed a noodling twist of spaghetti without chewing enough and it was caught but it was made of barbed wire. "I - puked all over us, didn't I?"
"Yeah. You kinda did." A soft sigh. A firm hand on her back. "Don't sweat it. I woke up, like, half an hour before anyway, so at least it wasn't, uh. A surprise alarm."
She'd woken up half an hour ago and was still laying in bed next to her when she - ? Her heart fluttered just a little bit - my hero, still keeping me safe - enough to make her worry that the butterflies in her stomach were literal again. Again?
"Sorry."
"Don't need to apologise."
She made a questioning noise. "But I…"
"Can't control our sleep. Ever seen a wolf run into a tree in its sleep? Sometimes our own bodies are our own worst enemies."
The laugh escaped her before she could even think to stop it. But it was good to see the tiny smile on Sophia's lips. "Don't wolves lie down to sleep? But I guess - I guess you're right. Ugh. We're… filthy. I'm - gonna clean up what I can and shower after that, I guess. Hope the hot water pump doesn't wake Mum and Dad. You shower first while I - get new bedclothes and stuff I guess."
"I was staying the night, I don't exactly have much to change into, but uh. Sure." Sophia rubbed at her neck hesitantly. "I was gonna say you look like you need the shower more than I do."
"So what, we both go at the same time?"
A pause. "N - your shower isn't even big enough to f-fit both of us, Emma."
"We could both fit. It'd be - kinda cozy, but that's okay, not like my bed's even a double. I'm… not even sure if I'm up to taking off my pjs. Might just - wear them straight in."
She didn't really have the brainpower to decipher that noise coming from Sophia's throat. But it'd be good to - have someone to lean on. Maybe help clean up the mess she made of her hero. It was so hard to keep her eyes open.
Her hero who she ate as the rot poured from her -
Emma flinched, just a little. Tried not to think about the stickiness of her sweat and vomit clinging to her skin. I'm a survivor, I'm surviving, I'm not weak, Sophia wouldn't leave me if I was weak.
"Ghlkh. Okay. Fine."
She could still taste her friend on her tongue.
-.-.-
Okay. Sharing a shower with Emma. How the fuck did she talk me into this?! Her shirt - that definitely needed a wash, she could rinse it off in the sink, hang it to dry over the back of a chair or something, but she wasn't going to be wearing it or her bra into the shower, which -
She couldn't really wear her other clothes into the shower either. She hadn't - expected to stay the night, just come over to share the goss and vent about her patrol and somehow ended up with Emma leaning on her, gentle and soft like a nervous cat. And Emma was looking worse and worse every day, even her makeup wasn't hiding the bags under her eyes. Teachers called on her and it took her a solid five seconds to realise she heard her name, let alone figure out the question being asked of her.
So. Yeah. If Emma only managed to get decent sleep by sleeping on Sophia, she was willing to play mattress for a night. Even if it hadn't really worked tonight.
Maybe it was a bit selfish, wanting to be closer to her. But -
Well, she still thought it was Hebert, given the whole thing at school, and Hebert fucking off into the great blue yonder. A… something Brute. Draining? Vampiric? Like whatsisface, King from the bad old eighties. One who did something to other people to get their durability and strength, took something from them, or something like that. Nightmares, apparently, maybe. And while it was just a theory, if she could throw the fucking book at that bitch for what she was doing to Emma, she'd find the evidence to do it.
If she started getting nightmares herself, or Madison and Julia started struggling with sleep… then she'd have to pay Hebert a visit. As a concerned Ward and citizen. She'd have to stop if she realised Sophia knew where she lived, right?
And then Emma was in the bathroom and peeling her shirt off, sleepily pawing at the shower's dials. Sophia tried to avert her gaze, but… she was only human. And Emma was the girl she was crushing on so fucking hard.
Idiot, she doesn't like you, doesn't even really know she likes girls yet, stop creeping on her you perv, she just had another fucking nightmare -
But Emma just stood there, under the spray, swaying gently, and all Sophia's mind could conjure up was that scene in every stupid romance movie where the main girl was looking away, heartbroken in the rain. Unfortunately, she tilted her head back and completely ruined that gorgeous image by gargling a mouthful of hot water and complaining, "Ugh. So slimy. You gonna - get in too?"
"Yeah, yeah, uh. Gimme a sec." Sophia fidgeted with her hands for a second before deciding, then pulled off her shirt and sleep shorts, letting them land in the sink with a nasty splat she didn't want to think about. Stepped into the shower behind and beside Emma, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on the tile. Took the thing of body soap and poured a dollop into her hand, lathered up around her neck, where most of the filth had gotten. "So. Uh. If you're up for it. This one seemed… worse."
"Maybe." Emma's voice was hoarse and quiet. "Different, anyway."
She didn't want to talk about this while naked in the shower, side by side with Emma, but the noise of the water would keep any eavesdroppers - she did not trust Anne, who still hadn't gone back to college - from listening in. "I - I didn't want to say until I was, like, sure. But given everything, I'm around… eighty three percent sure Hebert's the one doing this."
"Huh?"
"It's - okay, so this is not my thing, I'm not super nerdy about powers. But it's a thing, Brute powers where they increase based on doing something to people. Like, torment someone with nightmares, you grow half a foot in a month and put on serious gains. Like Taylor did."
"Mrhh." Emma's head hit the wall with a muffled thumpy splat. "Can't be her, though. She couldn't - she doesn't - she doesn't know the things that happened. That are in - that the dream talked about - "
"Look, we don't know how her power works. I'm spitballing here, but dreams are like - stuff your brain makes up anyway. Maybe her power just turns on that bit of the brain. Doesn't have to personally hand-craft the whole dream."
"... this felt - " Emma stopped. Sophia tried not to think too hard about the sounds of scrubbing. "Why did you tell me?"
"Because she's hurting you, and fuck her. Like, this is some underhanded bullshit, if it is her, and as soon as I get proof, I'm dropping the hammer on her. So you won't have to - live with this any more." She examined the tiling on the wall as hard as she could, twisted her hands together.
A long silence, and then - "My hero." Emma murmured, clinging to Sophia's side, arms wrapped around her midsection. Abort? Abort? Don't abort? "Wish I had abs like this." Hand running over her stomach -
"Y-yeah, you gotta work for those -" Gripping her wrist, keeping her from going further - why would she go further that's just wishful thinking, stop it -
"Taylor didn't." Emma whined.
"Taylor cheated with powers." How to properly say it - "She's basically stealing them from you, with this nightmare thing."
"If you're right." Emma was still against her. "... do you remember why you didn't like her? That day?"
Okay, sudden non-sequitur, or whatever the word was. "What?"
"When we ditched her. When I told her I didn't want a weakling for a friend, or - I can't remember what I said, exactly." Leaning her head on Sophia's shoulder, trapping her arm against her chest that was thankfully no longer slimy. "When she showed up at the house, and… " Her voice trailed away, and Sophia tried to focus with the weight of Emma right against her, the warmth of her skin under the water. It was so, so difficult. "You saved me because I was strong, right?"
"Yeah, of course. You kicked and screamed at those fuckers. They'll never get to touch you again, and if they tried, we'd put them in the damn ground."
Emma made a noise in the back of her throat. "Sophia… I think Taylor's trying to put me in the ground." Not if I have anything to say - "And we've - arguably - done a lot of shit to her. Would she be… wrong to try?"
"I mean - yeah. It's - and the way she's doing it is - different. It's not - " Sophia bit her lip, tried to hunt for the right words.
"And what is - because I don't feel strong right now, Soph. I don't feel like a survivor. Does that mean that I'm… not meant to be saved?"
Sophia stiffened. Because she knew the truth and if you were anyone else, but you aren't. You're you, and I - "You don't have to feel like a survivor to be one, Ems. Of course I'll save you." She saw a pretty girl in a bad moment, fell for her, and imagined she could be happy with her, if she got rid of the competition. First thing the animals in the wild did, getting in a new pack. Or whatever. She knew it was Emma's preferred metaphor for this kind of thing, so - yeah. Establish strength and dominance and claim their preferred mates for themselves. And - of course other packs objected cause - morality was always biased and subjective, or something - "And you are a survivor. You're stronger than some - freaky, weird, bullshit power. Yeah?"
Emma's head lifted, ever so slightly. "There is no victory in strength," she murmured, so quietly Sophia almost missed it. "I - Soph - "
Thudthudthud. "Emma?" Anne's voice, fuck! Sophia tried to get her heart rate under control. "Are you having a shower in the middle of the night again?"
"Puked all over myself in my sleep, unless you wanna come in here and wash me yourself -"
"Noo, no, no thank you." Ah, right, nobody knew Sophia was here for the night. "Just don't use all the hot water, 'kay? And - stop waking people up with the damn hot water pump. I know Mum and Dad talked to you about it. I'll… leave some clean bedsheets by your door."
"Kaaay. Thanks." Emma groaned out, before shifting to a mumble.. "Why does Anne have to be such a light sleeper…"
"Why isn't she back at college yet?" Sophia whispered, as quietly as she could.
"It starts up again next week." Emma whispered back, and then started shimmying out of her pants and that tile was far too shiny, Sophia could see silhouettes in the reflection. "Help me with my back?"
She didn't know what she'd done to deserve this gay torture.
But she'd suffer it.
For Emma.
-.-.-
Ranni: Arson is not the solution
Taylor: Erdtree.
Ranni: Fuck
Apologies for the lateness, again. Life is fucky, don't miss your meds, kids.
Special thanks to prime beta Lucky38, Canon Overlord @Ganurath, @hellgodsrus for being my loveliest wife and co-author, and @SolarFlare for being our wonderful supportive girlfriend! And Silvia from our Discord for her fantastic livereads!
Enjoy and gib feedbacc!
2.4
Be Thou Mine Greatest Sorrow
-.-.-
Be Thou Mine Greatest Sorrow
-.-.-
After three days of freedom, I was starting to get… anxious. Freedom was nice, great, even, but it was also undirected. Empty. My days felt too full and too lacking all at once, and the idea of every day being like that was kind of terrifying. So I tried to just focus on the moment. I could deal with the long term issues when they cropped up.
School was one of those government mandated things - even though I was over sixteen and didn't still need to attend, just completely disappearing like I had probably wasn't legal. Every day I woke up and the ecstasy of no longer being chained to that horrible place was ever so slowly worn down by the thoughts of 'today is the day everything goes to shit when truancy officers or people from the local school board knock on the door and Dad or Ranni kill them for trying to take me back'. And then, just, everything that follows killing government officials on your doorstep.
I didn't even know if they'd contacted Dad to ask if I was absent for a reason yet. I didn't even know if they were aware I had been absent.
Presumably, given the situation that caused me to leave, someone had taken notice, but… I honestly wasn't ready to put money on that. Because, above all, that would mean someone working at Winslow was capable of caring about their students. Capable of thinking about their wellbeing.
I wasn't even sure why I was that worried. Winslow was criminally underfunded - even if they had wanted to do something, would they actually have shown up to bother me? My hatred and paranoia said yes, because Winslow would always do its best to turn a blind eye to or actively prolong my torment, but I knew that wasn't exactly - rational. You saw stupid stories about it on PHO - that you needed to be in a gang just to be safe there, that it was full of druggies, and that wasn't true. There were gangs and drug-users - even relatively hard drugs, one of my attempts to hide in the bathroom to avoid the lunch hall had been interrupted by a girl a year above me casually coming in to tie a rubber hose around her arm and start prepping a needle - but it was just an underfunded school.
That wasn't what my brain felt about it though. It - I - knew that they'd come for me. Eventually. They had to. Emma would make them do it to hurt me more. She'd wanted to trap me in there with the rotting filth. Eden had shown me.
Then again, it might just have been that I hadn't left the house all week, not even to go in the backyard. I might have been starting to go a little stir-crazy.
I just - wanted to go out. Even combat practice had been indoors the past few days, and all discussion of incantations had been boring theory and emotion stuff, when Dad hadn't been busy at work. I'd gotten so bored I'd started asking Ranni about some of the things Paradise Lost had shown me, not saying where they were from - things like the wings and such, and she'd started talking about the side effects of mutagenic incantations and how I couldn't even attempt to think about them unsupervised, sister, unless it is thy wish to have keratinous outgrowths sprout from thy bones.
She'd probably have had the doll-equivalent of a heart attack if I'd mentioned their source. And there was her increasingly odd relationship with the internet, which wasn't something I'd ever had to worry about before. Mom had been tech savvy, but hadn't really talked about it much beyond typing up things on the computer in the basement, and Dad always avoided computers where he could've, occasionally plaintively asking for assistance with emails.
But Dad'd been - distracted lately. I didn't want to know if it was her trying to do something to the trio, or something else, but she'd slipped back into being more distant, just a bit. Spending more time curled by Mom's side, sparks of gold occasionally lifting from her hands.
It hurt, but… it was better than trying to manage the vengeful rage she was prone to. I wonder if she still talked to Uncle Alan and Aunt Zoe? I was almost certain if Anne knew what was going on, she'd absolutely kick Emma's ass for it. I hoped. I didn't want to imagine that they'd - abandon me. Even if I kinda - they were lesser, right? But that felt wrong, and twisty because they'd been almost family and -
Ranni's words about sparing friends from punishment I'd inflict on others so harshly for the same actions came back to me. Intellectually I knew nepotism was bad. But emotionally it was so much harder to accept. I - I remembered that Mom and Dad had been friends with Alan and Zoe before Emma and I had been born - I was pretty sure Anne was named after Mom's disguise - did they view them as… pets? Smart pets, like a parrot you could teach to talk.
Something to ask later, maybe.
And people - I didn't care about them, I thought. When had they cared about me? At Winslow, they'd just walked past. Dad had been right to call them sheep.
But what makes us different? We're just… more than they are. More important. More powerful. Just… more. And I'd been raised thinking I was one of them - why was I so eager to throw that away?
I flopped down on the couch, legs hanging over the other armrest. Ranni was sitting on the coffee table - you almost wouldn't know Dad had smashed me through it spine-first on Christmas day, she'd repaired it so well - with her own mini-lounge set up on it. Which honestly just consisted of a cushion, a blanket-nest thing, and a couple of books she was using as a coffee table on a coffee table. "Hey, Ranni?"
"Yes, dear sister?"
"How do you keep yourself from viewing people as… lesser, like Dad does?" I rolled over onto my back.
"... hm." She snapped the book she was reading shut, and looked over to me, her blue-ghost-shadow echoing behind a half second later. "I have never - struggled, in the way Father has. But I find it helps lessen some of my distaste to interact with them. To ask oneself whether one would do better in the circumstances they have found themselves within. Place oneself within their footwear. Empathy is a simple trick but an effective one for preventing contempt." She hummed, and licked her lips, and I was reminded once again how weird it was that she had a tongue. "And, I suppose, it helps to know my own failings. How can I call myself better or different when I know mine own petty biases, my failings, my fears and doubts and dreams? Nothing makes them grander or more real than those of any other. And so on and so forth - thus if all dreams are equal, all dreams must be protected where possible, unless those dreams involve the destruction of the dreams of others."
Hmm. That… was a good idea, but the empathy part - how could I put myself in their shoes? When all they had done was turn me into a pariah, or stood by and let others do it. To imagine myself in their situation was impossible, because they wouldn't let me understand if I tried. And I had. So many sleepless nights crying till morning wondering why, why do they just watch? Their dreams? They seemed to idolise nothing but indifference, the status quo, avoiding being the target like me. Their doubts? Their fears?
Urgh. I was starting to feel self-centred, basing all of this off their reactions to me, but it wasn't like I'd been given a chance to get to know anyone the past few years. Was that a bias? Or a result of their own actions?
"I can see thou art struggling. Perhaps more than thou were a moment ago."
I groaned and rubbed at my forehead. "Being a social pariah stunts your empathy a lot."
"Then befriend others outside of the vile academy now it is no longer part of thy waking life. Interact through this vast communication array that exists. Or, since thou art determined to act as one of the caped ones this realm holds in such esteem, befriend some of them whenever thou art ready to embark on such endeavours."
Whatever social skills I'd once had - assuming there were any - would be rustier than old gardening tools by now. And socialising as a cape, when I'd barely started to consider how I'd be one beyond vague desire - I had no idea how to even begin on that. Not an immediate problem, though. So, instead I asked, "Does that mean you're willing to put your scheming on hold and let me use my phone again?" I raised an eyebrow at her and tried to grin cheekily.
Ranni tilted her head and raised her own eyebrow. "... thy computer still dwells within the cellars of the house, does it not?"
"I suppose…"
"And thy size is much more befitting for its use than my own."
"Yeah, I'm going to have to give up on getting my phone back, aren't I?" I sighed in false annoyance. "And here I thought being the youngest sister I'd be the one getting the handmedowns."
"Thou art too large to fit even the clothes of my greater self, sister." Ranni poked her tongue out at me. "I suppose I could trade thee some tutoring in the base elements of sorcery, if that will quell thy unrest. I have been meaning to regardless, but now is as good a time to start as any."
"Sure. Magic's awesome." I grinned and sat up. It wasn't that I hated learning, it was that I hated Winslow, a place where I didn't learn anything academic. If I could just learn how to fly like Ranni did - that alone would be amazing. But add to that the fact she'd somehow stopped my Patron's panic response - Stilling - when the incantation Dad had used had hit. It had been buried under the panic at the time, but looking back, that wave of flat, hating, nihilistic longing for the end must have been - anyway, if Ranni could do that, there was a good chance she could block anything my Patron could try to pull. And while Paradise Lost had helped me, I didn't want to accidentally hurt my allies - my family - again just cause it had panicked due to being dead.
"Though - a thought I had not considered ere now - if thou does partake in 'caping', a phone will be necessary for thee, will it not?"
"Yeah, but if I take that one into a fight, it might get broken, and then I'd lose all the important stuff I've got on it." Like my high scores. I'd worked hard on those, damnit! "So, I'll probably have to get a burner or two - something cheap and expendable, probably on prepay. They're not that hard to get, and people don't ask questions." Though they'd be somewhat expensive, and it wasn't like we were rolling in money. And the whole thing was potentially kind of traceable… I'd worry about it later.
Ranni nodded and grinned, wide and beaming. "Then, I will offer thee knowledge of glintstone and the stars in return for thy telephone. Do we have a deal?"
"Sure. Just let me copy over my important data once I have a replacement." Magic tiiime! "So, glintstone. Sounds shiny." I couldn't wipe my own grin off my face if I tried. And I didn't. Magic! This was why missing school was fine, because I'd get to learn actually important things now!
Ranni's own grin widened as she nodded. "Tis crystal from the heavens to channel their power. This realm already acknowledges that time and space are one unified fabric held under gravity's sway and that one touches the other - to gaze skyward is to gaze forward, and to see the true stars is to become erudite." Her face fell a little. "Though many men became arrogant with that knowledge and - well. They lie dead now, and what they did to Mother has been avenged."
"I'll try my best not to join their ranks." If they hurt Mom - if I hurt Mom - I hoped Ranni would deal with me before I hurt her badly.
"It was not their knowledge that made them so, and no such ranks remain. Thankfully enough. And I think thou wouldst agree that to wear a giant face of stone upon one's head is a crime against aesthetics most foul and heinous in any regard."
"... yeah, that…" Giant stone heads? "I can't imagine it'd be easy on the neck muscles, either."
"Mine Consort complained most vigorously about the times she'd been headbutted by one wearing such a mask. Regardless. Due to this focus on celestial bodies - even if by this we refer to their true forms, not the ones we perceive with fallible eyesight - sorcerous casting and creation focuses upon mathematics and physical studies of the world. One cannot break such rules without knowing them, after all."
Oh. If there was an entire academy dedicated to this, a university-ish one Mom had run, it probably wasn't as simple as just feel really angry, like incantations had been. Of course there wouldn't be an easy way, no simple trick to become a sorcerer in an instant, nine out of ten astrologers hate her. "I was kinda hoping…"
"I know." Ranni smiled sadly.
"So incantations rely on faith and emotion, sorcery on knowledge?" I liked learning, but math wasn't one of those things that were enjoyable to learn. It was just… numbers and values, no… excitement. No otherworldly mystery to it, even with crystals and stars and such at the end - Sigh.
"More the comprehension of such knowledge. The ability to see said patterns and understand them. One could 'cheat', by memorising the movements and mathematics behind spells, but the result would be rigid, uncompromising. You would need to follow the exact motions with every cast, or it would fail entirely - and even then, such casting would only function in certain situations, for the stars and world move, and thus the motions of casting must move with them. So, rather than teach you eight thousands, seven hundreds and sixty different magics to form a glintstone, one for each individual hour in the year and their place in the cosmos, it is simpler to teach in principles, and numbers, and forms, so that one may move between such castings fluidly. In the Lands Between, there were runes capable of searing the base knowledge as a permanent artifact into one's memory, but again, they were limited. Good for those who sought a small edge to aid them in combat, poor for those who wished to master magic."
"Did your Consort use them like that?"
Ranni shifted, a little uncomfortably, maybe. "Yes, but she is - was - Tarnished. Those who followed Godfrey into exile often were… gifted in the art of warfare with any means at their disposal, and it was not as though they could attend any true academy whilst wandering so far, or whilst the stars were frozen. She did not master the magic, at first, but what magic she had, she did master. She did the same with incantations, in truth, as did many others - it is oft easier to seek such a seared memory than attempt to search for strong enough emotions to incant in the heat and madness of battle. It was almost an art form of its own, the creation of Memory Stones."
"They sound useful." A stone that I could keep in my pocket and use whenever I wanted to use fire without blowing up half the city would be pretty useful…
"Alas, we have neither access to them, nor ashes to replicate their effects on other objects." Ranni's mouth twisted. "Though I suppose we could use the unscrupulous methods of certain practitioners and compress individuals into smaller and smaller farms of glintstone, harvesting only the purest cuts from the crystals closest to their hearts as they begged for death. But that would be…"
"That uh. No." I shuddered. "But - back up a second - ashes? I'm assuming they're - special in some way, and not just the leftovers from any old fire."
Ranni nodded again, and leaned forward - sometimes when she spoke like this, I caught the cadence of Mom's voice in her tone, and it - it hurt, in a good way. Seeing part of Mom again. "The Erdtree, curse all it was, came to represent life and hold some power over its cycle - in no small part due to Father's actions. Ashes are what comes after life has been ground away, burned by flame or time. Ashes are - were - remnants, and thus were imbued with the power of memory. Some skilled individuals could infuse ashes from great battles, skilled warriors, or momentous events with memories of such things, and graft said ashes to a weapon or other object, allowing any who hold it to replicate the feats within the ashes." Ranni frowned, tapping her chin with a little click-clack that was at odds with how soft she looked. "Twas another form of magic, I suppose. Different from Incantation or Sorcery, available to any who had the tools to call upon said ash. The cremated bow of a famous archer could produce ashes that enchanted arrows to never miss from the new bow it was imprinted on, for example. They could even be copied onto specially made ashes that were blank, lost and silent. With the right whetstones - enchanted, of course - one could even imbue one's weapon with permanent shadows of the magic that dwelt within."
"Like a sword that was perpetually on fire without any fuel?"
"Sister, I must note a curious trace of pyromania within thee."
"Arson for profit is still profit, right?" I grinned weakly.
"Arson is rarely profitable, Taylor." Ranni fixed me with a look. "But, in aspect, you are not wrong. Such weapons were a favourite of General Radahn's Redmanes, after his battle with Malenia. Used to combat the Rot-infected beasts of the Caelid Wilds." Her face shifted to a gentler smile. "Some who had mastered sorcery in life found their ashes imbued with glintstone sorceries, allowing any who wielded a weapon whetted in their cremains to cast, for instance, an array of glintstone blades."
That sounded awesome. A way to cast without having to force my emotions into loops or study math? "Does it have to be weapons? Could I, for instance, imbue a ring with ashes?"
Ranni had to think about that for a moment. "I do not believe it's been done, but… perhaps if you used the ring as a caestus?"
"So I'd have to punch someone to activate the magic blades?" I frowned. Violent, but… nothing I'd heard about the Lands Between so hard hadn't been violent. Even the foliage there seemed to have a bone to pick.
"No, but - they are known as ashes of war, sister. The promise of combat, of blood spilled - it restores enough vitality to the dead as tribute for them to grant their gifts to others. Or so was the belief, I never truly investigated it - perhaps if the ring was enough associated with combat for it to be seen as such it would work, but." She shrugged, lower arms spread wide. "Truthfully, I am uncertain if their function would remain the same in this realm, without an Erdtree to act as a focal point of beliefs and power."
"If they do work though, I - well, let me know, yeah?" I wasn't sure if that impulse to know more, to experiment, was mine or my Patron's - I'd need to fight people with my magic as a cape, but blood sacrifice through combat was likely a step too far, unless I could find a good workaround.
Then again… I was already going to struggle with most of my magic not coming with a 'not-shredding-people' setting. I guess - maybe if I leant more heavily on the combat stuff I was learning? But that was all knives and medieval weapons that were just as lethal -
I was getting distracted. Sorcery. "Um, returning to the original topic." I shifted and hummed. "So, stars - comprehending them is important. How do I get started on that? Besides waiting for a clear sky to stargaze, which I know you've been talking about."
"Indeed. Since that has not occurred yet, though, we can start with the mathematics involved in the simplest divisions of sorcery. That used to be the division between those derived from glintstone - the offshoot of accrued stellar energies - and those of a gravitic nature - the offshoot of accrued stellar existence." Ranni folded her arms. "However, there are a number of other sub-divisions - such as those sorceries born of the deathroot and ghostflame, when they formed, or from the cursed blood star - as well as smaller schools of study such as the teachings of Haima, or the castings of the alien Crystalians. But - that level of specificity is more advanced than we are ready for, I'd think."
I nodded slowly. Very slowly. In the back of my mind, I felt Paradise Lost churn - it was digesting this better than I was, I thought. "I'm gonna need notepaper for this, aren't I?"
"Thou art attempting to rush through what would have been decades of institutional learning in exchange for a phone." Ranni smirked.
"I'll go get a notebook then."
-.-.-
There was something odd about being a semilucid dreamer. When she was awake, she couldn't remember. When she was asleep, she felt conscious, awake, capable of making decisions - even if her logic was as fuzzy as the edges of her vision - sometimes she even realised it was a dream!
Sometimes. And she never realised for long.
It felt more like she was a passenger in her own body, looking out through her eyes as the script kept moving without her input. But there was her input, it just… wasn't pronounced. Like it was simply being asked of her - what will you do here? And then it happened. Cause and effect separated.
Dreams were… dreamy.
Of course, nightmares were a different kettle of fish - who puts their fish in kettles? - and all of this internal monologuing, all this thinking -
Madison's hair had turned to flax, derailing whatever train of thought Emma had in favour of giggling. Why she was on a swingset, she didn't know. She'd never been to a park with Madison. A mall, yes, the Boardwalk, yes, but a playpark with a swingset? No. Sophia was crouched beside it, tracing something in the wood chips.
Yet for all of that, the image was… sensible. If they went to a park, then yes, Madison would be on the swingset, Sophia would be drawing in bark, and Emma would be stand-sitting there, feeling floaty and free. Jules in the background reading aloud silently, near the Gaggle of followers, their soft goose-like honks merging together. Swinging back and forth like her legs.
None of this made sense, especially given the sky was purple in the middle of the day. But it all made perfect sense!
"Am I dreaming?" she asked herself. Then shrugged. "Probably." It wasn't like she could do anything about it.
It was better than -
Something. Better than something else that could be happening. She was just going to sit here and enjoy her time in the rain-that-wasn't. Because it was raining, but nothing was getting wet. Perfectly normal things. No kettles of fish here today.
And the shadow of Taylor behind her. Just a void in her reality. There had been Taylor in her life, before she cut it out. Now there was a Taylor-shaped hole there that she didn't know how to fill. Sophia didn't fit. Madison didn't. Julia had… maybe one or two things similar, but that wasn't enough, really. She didn't fit.
So there was just a hole, babbling away happily about anything and everything that caught the void's attention. Emma had been good at wrapping the parents around her finger for extra treats or time to play. But Taylor was the one that had made it all worth it, meaningful. Before -
|Ah. Now that's interesting.|
Emma straightened. She hadn't - the voice, gentle, hadn't spoken. It just was, sudden and firm as jewellery fastened around her throat.
What was interesting? Why was interesting? Sophia was scowling at nothing - not the nothing in the Taylor-shaped-hole, but the nothing that talked, which was completely different.
|Do you miss her, then? I thought that she was weak, that she broke where you held the line. That's what the rest of your mind says.|
The light was shifting, bruising red-brown from purple.
But that wasn't how it happened? Was it? Or - it was. She missed Taylor. She wanted her sister back, the other sister, the one in all but blood, but she needed to be - she hadn't been strong enough to join her. To join her in… in… something.
The Sophia-shaped-glare wavered a bit.
That was what she'd been doing. Wasn't it? Or - she'd decided that Taylor would never make it. Would never stand up. Couldn't be strong. Hadn't she? Or…
|It's hard to stand with you pushing her so far down into the dirt. But perhaps that's the point.| The voice's existence was a dry whisper. |It's funny… you hate the bigots in your city, don't you.|
She did. It made things at school difficult, sometimes, negotiating between the inherent racism and sexism and homophobia of this fucking city, but she would never give a single inch to the Empire.
|Ironic, then, that you preach such a philosophy that seems so similar to their own. Might makes right… the strong survive… the weak are lesser…|
Echoes of other voices. Gang teens, colleagues Dad said she should stay away from, geese, saying -
"It's not like that." Her voice burned in the cold, red-brown air. The bark Sophia had been drawing in faded away like ice, melting into stuff. Very poorly defined stuff, because that wasn't in focus right now. Madison had stopped swinging, as Julia and the Gaggle settled down in a ring around her. Trapping her.
|Is that a fact?|
Taylor was-wasn't strong. She had to be - to not be. Because if she wasn't - if she was - then Emma was doing all of this for… nothing. But did she - she didn't believe that when she was awake. Not any more. And she didn't think that you - there was simply a hierarchy of things, a natural order -
|A golden order.| A flash of something in its sarcasm, of the something worse that could be happening instead of this, and Emma cringed.
|I am interested in your philosophy though. Especially given how many you gather to yourself. If any of them became weak, would they become lesser? Become outcasts from your caste, shunned as you now shun her? Would you expect them to do the same to you?|
But the Gaggle were weaker, lesser than her and Sophia. Clinging to her coattails for crumbs, herded like sheep for their own safety. Trusting the wolves that guided them so they didn't become dinner themselves. That was how it worked, right? She was strong, she could order them around. Guide them to do things that benefited her more than them.
She clung to the ropes of her swing, pressing up against her sides. They didn't offer comfort.
|I wonder… how loyally they'd cling to your strength if it cost them everything.| The voice twisted, like flesh parting from flesh, the consonants popping like tendons and snapping like strands of fat.
Emma coughed, suddenly, violently. Just the once. A mangled, phlegm-coated petal in pink and white drifted from her lips. Madison had spoken about that, some sort of - made up disease. Hanahaki. Roses grew in your lungs until you confessed your secret love, and if you didn't, then you'd choke on petals.
The voice huffed, a strange mix of emotions in it as Emma glanced to Sophia, to the Taylor-shaped-hole, to the petal in her lap.
But none of that explained the vivid taste of rust. Not iron, not metallic, just… rust. Rust didn't even have a flavour!
Her body felt light. The light you felt before vomiting. Like your whole body was hollow with a weight in it and to wobble to disturb it -
The coughing hit her again, suddenly, violently. She choked, something forcing its way up her throat, mouth dripping with saliva - she fell forward, hacking and wheezing, snot forcing its way from her nose, pressure in her sinuses - her ears popped, suddenly and violently, and she spat out more petals, more phlegm, specks of red - her vision trembled -
Her stomach roiled and more poured out. Dripping from her nose as she retched. Her chest heaved, compressed - a crack of pain as she coughed harder, couldn't breathe - not just petals now but roots and branches and the petals weren't romantic, how could anyone think these bedraggled masses soaked in blood and thick phlegm and oh god were those pieces of meat, oh -
The petals twitched. Not petals - she could see the legs now, the twitching - and the stems and phlegm were -
She retched up another wave of the filth she'd left in the locker for Taylor. Behind her, she could hear the gaggle screaming.
She managed to raise her watery eyes and saw -
Branches, punching through Julia's face like knives, the flesh crumbling like cake around them.
Madison, babbling, but every motion of her jaw loosened the flesh on her face til it melted and slid off her skull, jaw still flapping even as fibrous fungus pushed her teeth aside.
And Sophia - running, backing away from her, but too late, red spurting from her ears, her eyes -
|You think strength is simply pushing those around you down deeper and standing atop their corpses. There is a kind of strength in that, I suppose. I used to believe in something similar. In being victorious, where you stood a survivor. But there is no victory in strength.|
Something was pushing on the back of Emma's eye. She tried to scream, but it just became more wheezing coughs, a wobbling twitching fragment of lung riddled with keratinous growths landing with a splatter in front of her. She shouldn't be able to see it but she could, could see the filaments, the mycelia carving through the white of her eye, her iris - her eyeball shifted forward more and more til it popped from the hollow of her skull, landing in the pile of refuse in front of her. Something burst from the top of her nose. She coughed again, thick fibrous flesh pouring from her mouth, and realised she was somehow coughing up her own ears.
She looked to the Taylor-shaped-hole pleadingly. Begging for - she wasn't sure what. Comfort at the end? She could taste her own brains in the back of her throat, her spine caught between her teeth. What came out of her was thick and orange and awful.
|I defined defeat so narrowly but every day of my life had been defeat. Losing ground, little by little. I had no strength, truly. But those who stood by me… who chose to stand by me despite knowing what they would lose. Despite what I did to them simply by the curse of my existence…| The voice hissed, gaseous and bloated like a corpse. |Now that's strength, Emma.|
Her right shoulder - her knees - the flesh and bone detached, melting away with a soft pop and she collapsed further forward. The others - they were all dead but before they'd died - they'd been fleeing from her. They hadn't stayed. Even Sophia -
She was crawling away. She was -
Emma's body moved. Slowly.
|One in particular stood by me til the end. Even when there was nothing of me left. And I took everything from her. Do you know what that's like? I barely do. I wasn't even fully aware of what I'd done until - far far later, because my dreams had become dull gold and murder.|
Only one arm, and the stumps of her legs, and she still caught up to Sophia. Her broken ribs creaked and heaved. Roots carved scars into their skins.
|I pity you, because I know you, because to an extent I was you. Whoever you are, wherever you are. I only found you because the doors to your mind have been left torn asunder by the force of a familiar wrath, and such a breach is - well. We'll speak more on such matters soon, Emma Barnes.|
Her back tore, from her shoulderblade to the tops of her thighs, thick flesh lifting as wings with wet splatters as she began to eat Sophia alive.
She woke up choking. A hard hand thumping on her back and a wastebin under her face. Her whole body felt achy and weak. Nothing came out her throat but bile and sobs.
It wasn't - it wasn't true. Being a survivor wasn't like being a Nazi. It wasn't true.
The comforting murmur of Sophia's voice came from behind her, as she finally drew in several heaving breaths without immediately retching again. "You okay there?"
"No." Emma croaked. It felt like she'd hacked up a lung or three. Like she'd swallowed a noodling twist of spaghetti without chewing enough and it was caught but it was made of barbed wire. "I - puked all over us, didn't I?"
"Yeah. You kinda did." A soft sigh. A firm hand on her back. "Don't sweat it. I woke up, like, half an hour before anyway, so at least it wasn't, uh. A surprise alarm."
She'd woken up half an hour ago and was still laying in bed next to her when she - ? Her heart fluttered just a little bit - my hero, still keeping me safe - enough to make her worry that the butterflies in her stomach were literal again. Again?
"Sorry."
"Don't need to apologise."
She made a questioning noise. "But I…"
"Can't control our sleep. Ever seen a wolf run into a tree in its sleep? Sometimes our own bodies are our own worst enemies."
The laugh escaped her before she could even think to stop it. But it was good to see the tiny smile on Sophia's lips. "Don't wolves lie down to sleep? But I guess - I guess you're right. Ugh. We're… filthy. I'm - gonna clean up what I can and shower after that, I guess. Hope the hot water pump doesn't wake Mum and Dad. You shower first while I - get new bedclothes and stuff I guess."
"I was staying the night, I don't exactly have much to change into, but uh. Sure." Sophia rubbed at her neck hesitantly. "I was gonna say you look like you need the shower more than I do."
"So what, we both go at the same time?"
A pause. "N - your shower isn't even big enough to f-fit both of us, Emma."
"We could both fit. It'd be - kinda cozy, but that's okay, not like my bed's even a double. I'm… not even sure if I'm up to taking off my pjs. Might just - wear them straight in."
She didn't really have the brainpower to decipher that noise coming from Sophia's throat. But it'd be good to - have someone to lean on. Maybe help clean up the mess she made of her hero. It was so hard to keep her eyes open.
Her hero who she ate as the rot poured from her -
Emma flinched, just a little. Tried not to think about the stickiness of her sweat and vomit clinging to her skin. I'm a survivor, I'm surviving, I'm not weak, Sophia wouldn't leave me if I was weak.
"Ghlkh. Okay. Fine."
She could still taste her friend on her tongue.
-.-.-
Okay. Sharing a shower with Emma. How the fuck did she talk me into this?! Her shirt - that definitely needed a wash, she could rinse it off in the sink, hang it to dry over the back of a chair or something, but she wasn't going to be wearing it or her bra into the shower, which -
She couldn't really wear her other clothes into the shower either. She hadn't - expected to stay the night, just come over to share the goss and vent about her patrol and somehow ended up with Emma leaning on her, gentle and soft like a nervous cat. And Emma was looking worse and worse every day, even her makeup wasn't hiding the bags under her eyes. Teachers called on her and it took her a solid five seconds to realise she heard her name, let alone figure out the question being asked of her.
So. Yeah. If Emma only managed to get decent sleep by sleeping on Sophia, she was willing to play mattress for a night. Even if it hadn't really worked tonight.
Maybe it was a bit selfish, wanting to be closer to her. But -
Well, she still thought it was Hebert, given the whole thing at school, and Hebert fucking off into the great blue yonder. A… something Brute. Draining? Vampiric? Like whatsisface, King from the bad old eighties. One who did something to other people to get their durability and strength, took something from them, or something like that. Nightmares, apparently, maybe. And while it was just a theory, if she could throw the fucking book at that bitch for what she was doing to Emma, she'd find the evidence to do it.
If she started getting nightmares herself, or Madison and Julia started struggling with sleep… then she'd have to pay Hebert a visit. As a concerned Ward and citizen. She'd have to stop if she realised Sophia knew where she lived, right?
And then Emma was in the bathroom and peeling her shirt off, sleepily pawing at the shower's dials. Sophia tried to avert her gaze, but… she was only human. And Emma was the girl she was crushing on so fucking hard.
Idiot, she doesn't like you, doesn't even really know she likes girls yet, stop creeping on her you perv, she just had another fucking nightmare -
But Emma just stood there, under the spray, swaying gently, and all Sophia's mind could conjure up was that scene in every stupid romance movie where the main girl was looking away, heartbroken in the rain. Unfortunately, she tilted her head back and completely ruined that gorgeous image by gargling a mouthful of hot water and complaining, "Ugh. So slimy. You gonna - get in too?"
"Yeah, yeah, uh. Gimme a sec." Sophia fidgeted with her hands for a second before deciding, then pulled off her shirt and sleep shorts, letting them land in the sink with a nasty splat she didn't want to think about. Stepped into the shower behind and beside Emma, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on the tile. Took the thing of body soap and poured a dollop into her hand, lathered up around her neck, where most of the filth had gotten. "So. Uh. If you're up for it. This one seemed… worse."
"Maybe." Emma's voice was hoarse and quiet. "Different, anyway."
She didn't want to talk about this while naked in the shower, side by side with Emma, but the noise of the water would keep any eavesdroppers - she did not trust Anne, who still hadn't gone back to college - from listening in. "I - I didn't want to say until I was, like, sure. But given everything, I'm around… eighty three percent sure Hebert's the one doing this."
"Huh?"
"It's - okay, so this is not my thing, I'm not super nerdy about powers. But it's a thing, Brute powers where they increase based on doing something to people. Like, torment someone with nightmares, you grow half a foot in a month and put on serious gains. Like Taylor did."
"Mrhh." Emma's head hit the wall with a muffled thumpy splat. "Can't be her, though. She couldn't - she doesn't - she doesn't know the things that happened. That are in - that the dream talked about - "
"Look, we don't know how her power works. I'm spitballing here, but dreams are like - stuff your brain makes up anyway. Maybe her power just turns on that bit of the brain. Doesn't have to personally hand-craft the whole dream."
"... this felt - " Emma stopped. Sophia tried not to think too hard about the sounds of scrubbing. "Why did you tell me?"
"Because she's hurting you, and fuck her. Like, this is some underhanded bullshit, if it is her, and as soon as I get proof, I'm dropping the hammer on her. So you won't have to - live with this any more." She examined the tiling on the wall as hard as she could, twisted her hands together.
A long silence, and then - "My hero." Emma murmured, clinging to Sophia's side, arms wrapped around her midsection. Abort? Abort? Don't abort? "Wish I had abs like this." Hand running over her stomach -
"Y-yeah, you gotta work for those -" Gripping her wrist, keeping her from going further - why would she go further that's just wishful thinking, stop it -
"Taylor didn't." Emma whined.
"Taylor cheated with powers." How to properly say it - "She's basically stealing them from you, with this nightmare thing."
"If you're right." Emma was still against her. "... do you remember why you didn't like her? That day?"
Okay, sudden non-sequitur, or whatever the word was. "What?"
"When we ditched her. When I told her I didn't want a weakling for a friend, or - I can't remember what I said, exactly." Leaning her head on Sophia's shoulder, trapping her arm against her chest that was thankfully no longer slimy. "When she showed up at the house, and… " Her voice trailed away, and Sophia tried to focus with the weight of Emma right against her, the warmth of her skin under the water. It was so, so difficult. "You saved me because I was strong, right?"
"Yeah, of course. You kicked and screamed at those fuckers. They'll never get to touch you again, and if they tried, we'd put them in the damn ground."
Emma made a noise in the back of her throat. "Sophia… I think Taylor's trying to put me in the ground." Not if I have anything to say - "And we've - arguably - done a lot of shit to her. Would she be… wrong to try?"
"I mean - yeah. It's - and the way she's doing it is - different. It's not - " Sophia bit her lip, tried to hunt for the right words.
"And what is - because I don't feel strong right now, Soph. I don't feel like a survivor. Does that mean that I'm… not meant to be saved?"
Sophia stiffened. Because she knew the truth and if you were anyone else, but you aren't. You're you, and I - "You don't have to feel like a survivor to be one, Ems. Of course I'll save you." She saw a pretty girl in a bad moment, fell for her, and imagined she could be happy with her, if she got rid of the competition. First thing the animals in the wild did, getting in a new pack. Or whatever. She knew it was Emma's preferred metaphor for this kind of thing, so - yeah. Establish strength and dominance and claim their preferred mates for themselves. And - of course other packs objected cause - morality was always biased and subjective, or something - "And you are a survivor. You're stronger than some - freaky, weird, bullshit power. Yeah?"
Emma's head lifted, ever so slightly. "There is no victory in strength," she murmured, so quietly Sophia almost missed it. "I - Soph - "
Thudthudthud. "Emma?" Anne's voice, fuck! Sophia tried to get her heart rate under control. "Are you having a shower in the middle of the night again?"
"Puked all over myself in my sleep, unless you wanna come in here and wash me yourself -"
"Noo, no, no thank you." Ah, right, nobody knew Sophia was here for the night. "Just don't use all the hot water, 'kay? And - stop waking people up with the damn hot water pump. I know Mum and Dad talked to you about it. I'll… leave some clean bedsheets by your door."
"Kaaay. Thanks." Emma groaned out, before shifting to a mumble.. "Why does Anne have to be such a light sleeper…"
"Why isn't she back at college yet?" Sophia whispered, as quietly as she could.
"It starts up again next week." Emma whispered back, and then started shimmying out of her pants and that tile was far too shiny, Sophia could see silhouettes in the reflection. "Help me with my back?"
She didn't know what she'd done to deserve this gay torture.
But she'd suffer it.
For Emma.
-.-.-