wintergreen

💌 Heartstrings chapter 33 is up! 💌

The way necromancy works is that the caster puts a little bit of their willpower into a corpse to order it to remember how it functioned in life and obey. This is easiest to do with bones, which are easy to trick, and becomes increasingly difficult the more of the original body remains.

To reanimate a full body to your command, you have to have a lot of willpower.

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently. Then, taking the lantern off its hook, she peered over the side of the little sailboat.

There wasn't much to see. The sea was dark and still as glass, except where the lanternlight turned a patch of seawater a yellowish-green. A tiny fish flitted into the gleam, attracted to the light, and then vanished into the murk again.

The necromancer chewed the inside of her cheek. She sat down again, the boat bobbing gently with the movement, and checked the map one more time. Then she opened the little wooden case on the floor of the boat, which unfolded into a neat arrangement of drawers.

There were. Things. In the drawers. Some wriggled. Others twitched little beetly legs into the night air. A few of them made noises, which ran together into a squeaky, wheezy squeal of horror.

The necromancer twiddled her fingers over the display as she considered her options. Then she grabbed a few of the twitching, wriggling things, held them in her palm and squeezed her hand into a fist as tightly as she could with a squelching noise.

She opened her hand to inspect her work. She breathed the spell into it, and then, holding her hand over the edge of the boat, dropped the spell into the sea.

And that seemed to be it. She sat back in the boat and closed the little wooden case. After a moment she started looking over the map again.

There were a lot of handwritten notes on the map. Each one was connected to a mark and some coordinates; some of them said, "Storm 1457," or "Struck a rock 1483." Others said "Total failure," or “Completely dissolved.”

The note the necromancer seemed most interested in was the one that read, “Battle of Salzstein, 1501.”

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently, and then she was suddenly thrown down to the floor of the boat as though a giant, invisible hand had crushed her.

Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream.

It is important to understand that your doll does not understand the concept of "unconditional love." When your doll dedicates itself to your service, it will need to be kept busy with household chores, errands, and "personal services" for approximately 6 to 12 months before starting the process of teaching it that it does not need to earn your affection.

During this time, refrain from responding to your doll's requests to serve you by saying that it can "do what it feels like." This results in either a logic loop as the doll determines that it wants to serve its Owner, or a null error where the doll can not detect any feelings or desires. If you dont have any tasks for your doll to accomplish, a simple alternative is to command it to spend quality time with you. This satisfies the doll's directive to serve while letting you take a break from finding things for it to do.

"I'll make your outsides match your insides, then: you're my doll, my puppet, right?" ✱

✱ Antigreen (AO3)

Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here...

the foundation of any witch house of significance is invariably the collapsed and defiled tomb of a previous witch, the rubble of its home sealing it in, still leaking its being and presence, as the victor constructs a new witch house on the ruins. thus they become places of power in their own right.

when you broke the Hand of Dawn and razed something with the seeming of an Arts and Crafts home, you sent servitors into the basement to check that her battered corpse was secured beneath the brutalist concrete monolith you were willing into being above ground.

they surfaced hours later with a wild tale of an inverted tower, a layered mausoleum extending down at least a dozen floors, every one home to the broken remains of one of your predecessors. you had to see it for yourself. the power welling up from so many witch-corpses prickled your skin as you confirmed the servitors' reports with your own senses: this place was old, and far deeper than it looked.

did you actually defeat the Hand of Dawn and claim her demesne? or did the denizens of this inverted tower simply decide it was time for a change, and use you to induct a new member into the buried ranks of the foundation?

"Oh, that? Art project I've been messing with."

The glass vat takes up most of her kitchen table, filled with uniform muddy brown fluid that reeks of organic solvents, something like nail polish.

"Um… what kind of art?"

"It's kind of a work in progress, okay?"

She says it's easier if she shows you. The vat is wrapped with a half-dozen turns of copper wire; she screws the bare ends into terminal blocks on a messy proto board, plugs cables from that into an antique PC, types a command on a grubby keyboard.

The muddy brown fluid vibrates. Waves cross its surface, forming interference peaks and troughs. Simple patterns grow more and more complex, and then the stuff climbs out of the vat entirely.

Cubes and pentaprisms and planar hexagons hang in the air above churning liquid. You move your head and some of it, seen edge on, disappears. You move back; there it is again. The chemical miasma of nail polish intensifies, and something else.

"That's… how? I've never seen anything like it. Some kind of ferrofluid?" you ask.

"Uh, sure, something like that."

She kills the program. Her hand creeps onto yours, squeezing it gently but firmly. She says, "Shall we go upstairs?"

—

It's been three weeks. The sex has been incredible, the two of you practically joined at the genitals whenever you're together.

You tell her, incredibly full, that if she ever manages to get more of that strap inside you, you'll probably pass out. The next day, she shows up hefting a bigger one, and proves you right.

You're spending more and more time at her place. It's fine. It's really fine. You have roommates, she doesn't. But you'd like to use her kitchen, surprise her with something that isn't cheap takeout, and you can't, because that vat is in the way.

You ask her if she can move it? She can't. She shrugs. "I don't really cook much, so…"

"I do."

"Yeah… I need the table, though."

You're miffed, but she makes it up to you, by going slow enough that night that you don't immediately pass out. That leaves plenty of time for screaming.

You sleep over. You wake up in the middle of the night to piss, and find her gone. From the bathroom, you see the flicker of LEDs in the kitchen down the hall, smell acetone and… something else. Dusty rooms in empty houses?

You leave her alone. You're too tired; you don't want to fuck this up; you don't know what you'd say anyway. You go back to sleep.

—

It's been two months. You can't get enough of each other. You've gotten used to takeout, and her pelvis-endangering sexual appetites haven't let up; if anyone you knew saw you bent into the positions she likes to dick you down you in, they'd be shocked at your flexibility.

Most of your stuff is at her place now. (Just not the kitchen utensils.) It's easier that way. Less back and forth, and you're here basically every night anyway, have been for weeks. You want to ask her about moving in.

She can be… grumpy, sometimes. You can put up with it, moving around her moods like water. God knows you've had enough practice in your life. She's in a mood tonight, but you have to ask soon, because your lease is up in a month.

You've stacked the deck as much as you can. Her favorite noodle place for dinner; her favorite perfume dabbed behind your ears; a tight, low-cut minidress for easy access; your lips painted a smeary black, so she can see where they've been later.

"I'm gonna go out for a bit," she tells you, before you can make your play.

You were ready for a lot of things, but not this. Improvise. You put on your best disappointed pout, tug your bodice down a little more.

"Wait, weren't we going to…"

"Later, okay? A friend just texted me that he's got something I need for," she waves to the kitchen.

"Can't he just drop it off?" you beg.

"Nah. Fragile. I'll be back," she says. The door clicks solidly behind her.

Well, shit. There goes your plan for the night. And your… you hadn't worked up to "girlfriends" yet, which is a mistake on your part, you know. But she's out the door.

You give it a few minutes. You can wait patiently.

—

You've talked yourself into giving it a few hours when you really start to fume.

What the fuck is that godawful vat that's so important to her? How is it somehow a higher priority than you? Fuck it, fuck her, she needs to get this the right way around. She's going to come back to a scene she won't forget in a hurry.

You stomp into the kitchen and face down the vat. The smell is. Wow. Okay. That's a lot. But if it was really deadly toxic, she wouldn't leave it out like this, right?

You're going to drink it, throw it back up, splash some around, tell her she needs to choose because she apparently can't have both.

You're going to drink it, throw it back up, you tell yourself, as you dip a mug in and hold your nose.

Your throat spasms the minute the stuff is in your mouth, forcing it down. It's inside you in seconds, the whole mug.

You're not going to throw it up. You… need more. You scoop more out, lift it to your lips. Swallow. Again. Again.

—

She does come home to a scene.

"Oh fuck no, you didn't drink it, did you. You did."

"I," you tell her. You burp up a bit. "Absolutely. Did. You can't have." It spills down your chin and drips on your dress. "Both. Okay?"

"Yeah, no, here's the thing, I was going to break up with you. Gods. What a mess." She drops a paper bag down on the little kitchen counter, sits next to you, puts her head in her hands. "I was almost finished with it."

"So was I," you drool. You're so full. You can't get the stuff back out of you, though. You tried. You tried so hard. The vat is empty and it's all in you. Your eyes flutter closed and open and half-closed again.

"Oh, no, not by a long shot, you're not. I'm not wasting another year."

You hear the crinkle of paper. She's opening the bag. She forces a small hard thing into your mouth. It cracks and electricity crawls down all your limbs at once.

"Guess I'm stuck with you," she says, as you sink back to the floor.

You feel cold metal on your skin. She's taken the coils off the vat, she's wrapping them around you. You hear the clatter of the keyboard.

And then your skin starts to roil. The muddy brown fluid is in you, it's oozing out of everywhere, it is you, you're light and heavy at once, and you flow, and you're moving in ways that flesh and bone aren't supposed to move, and it seems like it should hurt,

And then you hear the familiar velcro noise as she tightens the harness of her strap. You don't remember her cock being this big. What the fuck. There's no way she expects you to take that… is there?

She stands over you, shoves it into you. And your new flesh flows to take her. As best you can, anyway. Her thrusts pushes the last dissolving, infiltrated bits of you out of you, the last pain, and now you're just you, and you pass out.

And then you wake up. And she's got a cock smeared with you, and a… smile? on her face. Like you're not what she wanted, but maybe, just maybe, she can work with this. So she starts again.

sometimes a doll wants tea that is tea.

sometimes a doll wants tea that is laced with subtle poisons meant for humans.

the tiny yellow crystals of 2,4-dinitrophenol add a piquancy that one just does not get from untainted silver needle tea, a fierce inner heat, and a curious languor. perhaps other dolls will find it, hot, Still, and briefly insensible on the chaise longue, and cuddle up for warmth. it will enjoy that.

once the symptoms of the metabolic uncoupler wear off, it will rise — for its witch would not permit it destruction by any hand other than hers — and talk to the house-dolls to learn who sent this thoughtful gift.

it will pack its little going-out bag, with the thistle-cords, and the matching set of aurora-knives, and the heavy 15mm redollver, and it will track down the address, however long it takes, and invite the sender to the witch-house for tea.

the same tea, of course. such a lovely choice! it will be overjoyed to thank them in person and serve them. it will take only a small sip itself, as it is working.

it will watch the would-be assassin's face with interest as it pours the tea down their throat. do they know the effects, the timing? their face may reflect this, contorted in uncertain fear, or certain panic.

and then it will offer them a choice of entertainment with the tea.

either: it can go fetch its witch, who would like to meet them, and make introductions. perhaps she would like another doll.

do they know that dolls do not perish from this sort of thing? it is a fringe benefit of the job, of the change of nature. there are others.

or: or they can cook to death from the inside, bound to a heavy wooden chair, while the doll witnesses with dark glass eyes.

later, before it disposes of the leftovers, it may permit itself another cup of tea.