IBECAME, an analysis of a self - made curse & blessing, the body and blood of a union that spelled death ( or a misdirection of hope, love that landed oddly; bones at curious angles and flesh marred by invisible scars ) — the dissection of a history left forgotten, abandoned at the foot of a cold mountain to rot and fester when the spring comes, a thousand centuries buried beneath an inch of snow / dependent muse affiliated with banerpg, mourned by sera.
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sweat nearly boiled off his skin, and his eyes raised in reverence, a silent prayer to casir to save him from any strange whim. the devil never listens. perhaps he should be casting his eyes below — still, it calmed his mind.
at least when he was sentenced, he knew the arbitrator. the familiar look of pity from master druenin almost made him feel like he was still just alya vanstrada's bastard and not a criminal soaked in blood.
patricide was a dangerous claim in his town. where your father, the one who's magic runs through you, is sacred. his siblings never even flinched against him out of respect. but luc ran a blade across his throat. he would not fear this.
the air in the room seemed to thicken as luc continued his banter, a thin veil between the precariousness of his situation and the grim amusement in his voice. his eyes flickered along with the candlelight, a spark of rebellion that refused to be extinguished.
his lips parted as she approached, nearly tasting the bittersweet until she pulled away. his shadows, useless with his hands bound, licked closer to the goblet in her hand. luc cleared his throat. " i call them the twins. they're not, i don't believe. but they share similarities, don't you think? both are rubbish at remembering to feed you, for one. "
luc used any slack he had to nudge the guard to his right, a wicked chuckle echoing against stone walls. dancing upon the precipice of a dagger. " they're also not used to me being able to speak, i think they're afraid i'll turn them to frogs. "
eyes, still shining, returned to the elvish woman in front of him. his smile faltered a little as he examined her. but he worked his jaw, and continued anyways. " nobodies don't get invited to save the world. " / ft. maerope
he is, perhaps, the most striking thing in the room. a man in chains, a devil bathed in his own sins. maerope, lover of beauty, bringer of destruction, can hardly bring herself to remove her gaze, run them over the twin figures on his side. they're less striking. less beautiful. less prone to destruction. can a man who chains another ever be considered a destroyer? a capturer, yes, and a victor, but more savior than ruiner. their eyes are cast forward, a pair of well trained guards who hide skittishness behind steel armor and the righteous word of the law. maerope's brow lifts, and she knows that their ignorance is a farce, but she chooses to become them — rife with ignorance, poised like a cat before a striking, half - cut claws glinting in the moonlight like a reminder.
her approach is languid, but she tilts the cup toward his lips, looking at the darkness around her hand. "petty magic, the turning of people to frogs," she answers, touching the goblet to his flesh. it's reminiscent of a gentler person, someone who has known how to be kind, to offer a starving man a pound of bread, feed a dying man some water. the glint in her eyes say otherwise. "keep talking and i'm sure they'll get used to the sound of your voice. if they're comfortable enough, they won't see their demise coming." her gaze flicks to the guard on her right, still not looking at her. she clicks her tongue and sees the twitch of an eyelid. "a joke, good sir."
and she turns back to him with a tilt of her head. "but, i am nobody," she repeats. "that's my entire appeal, the whole attraction." she retrieves the goblet to take a ginger sip — like it hurts her, pains her greatly. she says, "there's a certain allure in wielding a blade that your enemies don't see coming — a complete nothing, a nobody — but you are someone. everyone knows about you."
Somehow, Sion imagined that a mage would take great comfort in this place. high walls inspired security, an aristocracy that thought itself more important than the sort of dregs that live south in places like Blaegdyn or elsewhere. Sion was not one of them; he wasn't studied in the arcane and as accustomed to being gawked at as he was, that did not mean he particularly enjoyed it. Isolation brought with it a sort of addictive quality, Sion had been devouring it for a decade now, drinking it down, bathing himself in it. Now, he dressed in his solitude every morning, so often that it was ingrained upon his skin.
This creature was more feline than anything else, all grace and feline motifs. Sion supposed that someone who could appear so comfortably languid in this environment was a survivalist. Capable of blending in when needed, Sion did not know everything about those who traveled within the fellowship, but he was learning. Quiet as he could be, the mercenary could be observant when needed.
"And I am not most mortals." Sion looked towards the devil with midnight irises, porcelain features, and unconvincing innocence. While the barbarian was largely humorless, the corner of his lips turned slightly into a smirk before his gaze wandered back towards the grounds before them. There, Sion returned to silence as he contemplated what the night would bring and what would follow the morning after. He trained because he had to because atrophied muscles would get him killed faster, and while the barbarian had no real desire to fight, it was a necessity and a living. As it turned out, he and several people in this fellowship were incredibly adept at doing just that. "If y'ou are neither mortal nor mage, then what does that make y'ou?"
no, she agrees silently — keeping the thought spooled tightly behind her eyes, this man is not like most mortals.
even if people fail to realize it, they talk. they spread secrets like sickness, coughing into the elbow but breathing into the air — and they never seem to notice that their shadows don't always match their frames. maerope knows, truthfully, very little about her companions, but she knows enough. bring in the words of the mages that surround them and stir in the feelings found deep within her gut and the elven girl is smart enough to make a brew sweet enough to digest. she slices through another piece with a lift of her lips, just one corner — an edge. she says, "i'm nobody."
a recurring theme, her most common answer to the most common answer. she is maerope; she arrived with the prince and his guard, and the druid from the elven lands; she is made of lithe lines and bottled moonlight; she is absolutely nobody compared to the rest of them. prince, fighter, warlock, artificer — maerope. nothing. it's what she enjoys being most, a sliver of the imagination, an outline to be filled in by other people. "nobody of worth. an adventurer, i suppose — not one eager to venture into cursed land, but an adventurer nonetheless."
It's suffocating. This place, its great, its heaving black walls whetted like blades, the sea howling beyond. These people, knife-edged just the same, their faces shadowed, grave with duty and purpose that - when compared to his own - seems staggering. Hauntingly compelling. Hauntingly whole.
Like any reasonable heretic, Llyr corners himself. Starts no conversations, eyes a sombre stormchest, the gravity of the mission at hand - of the artefact they're to carry - not lost on him. There are miles and miles ahead of them. Agonies upon agonies to come. Still, all he can think of is that he isn't sure of what to do with himself. What to do with his hands.
He can't put name to the feeling. Black hole, maybe. Stranger to himself at his own graveside, maybe. Faith- cradled delicate like a mug meant to scald, or else the orbital fear of a broken-winged bird. He feels like .. a house. A house stripped of it's haunting. A house and the indelible possession of something unknowable given way to bitter empty space. A house and a breath in it's dark, no mouth to match. A house and phantom pain. Something like that. Something like that.
He doesn't know what to do with his hands.
( Should he know what to do with his hands? )
At a loss, he resorts, like always, to the practises of home. Strums quietly at nothing more than air, a rhythmic, practised circling of his fingers, a murmur under his breath.
Llyr could die for the mercy in that negligible flicker of light unfurling - however brief - from the palm of his hand, fingernail-delicate.
He could, and maybe he will, one day.
Bruise-tender, Llyr's breath stutters as the glint of it retreats beneath his skin, crucifying the last of the air in his lungs. His throat aches with too much trained veneration to make a sound, hollow but for the bleed of gratitude and it's urchin-barbs through his chest, it's reachings thick and dark and unnatural, like fever. It makes him feel sick, he thinks. The thread of nausea is hard to follow to a why.
Guilt follows on it's heels.
Silent prayer, after that, eyes upturned to the ceiling.
some wear duty well, as they would a shield or a cloak, an extension of one's self — like to say, this is what i am born to do, as if people are born to duties, death, and heroism. it evades maerope, duty and all its siblings, companions. no duty, no purpose, to the rest, no drive, no motivation ( nothing beyond a sense of loyalty, head bowed in an earned obeyance, perhaps an inherited one ). maerope is a wanderer trapped in the skeleton of fidelity — her father's doing — and she lingers, and she doesn't, is here and there, bathed in the shadows of vinnesse while letting her face shine in the night.
she recognizes herself in a fraction of each of her companions. this is face i have worn before, or that is what a wild dog looks like when it's starving, or here is a quiet hole that i have sank into. with a blade between her fingers, she swallows her words and ignores her thoughts, a watchful eye on the other quiet, silent soul amongst them. a mirror, fractured and strewn unto marble floors. a fragment of glass that may slice the palm if held wrong. a prayer, of sorts, that is yet to be memorized ( despite the ever present bruise of the knees — maerope thinks of a childhood with straw beds and wooden floors, blessed be the mother, blessed be the girl ).
her approach is careful, a calculated path of stepping on loose stones ( to warn of a coming intrusion ) yet avoiding weak - looking floorboards ( to assure that there is no threat ). the palm of her hand is filled with stolen grapes, not yet ripe and sour to the taste. maerope watches for a moment, this creature, this person — eyes upturned to the ceiling as if the answers will rain down from the heaven. she looks upward and tries it for herself. why me? why my parents? did i not deserve better? wasn't i just a child?
maerope drags her eyes back down. she asks, "does it help?" and rolls the grapes on her fingers like a cool marble. "prayer? what does it bring, answers or comfort?"
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who? open
where? sitting room within the citadel, vinnesse
when? a couple of days before departure
Silence can very rarely be found in the proximity of the artificer, whether it is her voice driving it away for her own peace of mind or the sound of her tinkering with alloys and all manner of metals, there is always a sound in the background of Graciela's surroundings. Always.
Except for when she finds particularly focused on a delicate task. Sewing takes the sort of patience she is grateful she can muster for specific tasks, embroidery doubly so, and yet the end results are worth it nonetheless. One week before departure is a rather tight timeline when it comes to enchanting, but it is one she makes do, desiring to provide some sort of aid for those who are to defend her on the journey ahead. There is an intrinsic awareness that comes from knowing she is likely to become a hidrance the more the journey progresses, and there is nothing she wants more than to prove that she can be of useful. Needle passing through cloth, she eyes the wrist band and hums in satisfaction. Nearly done, if only–
The sound of footsteps distracts her from her musings and her head snaps up towards the newcomer, a mix of relief and tension sweeping over her shoulder as they approach.
"Perfect," she says instead of a greeting, a warm smile on her lips even as she internally regrets having taken the mask off. It's only purpose is to hide her features and allow her to breath amidst the smoke of her work, but she has been in near solitude for years, it's rather unfair that when she is forced into a journey, it is with what clearly are the most attractive people in the realm. She is not used to that. "Please, join me for a moment? I have been preparing a cursory protection charm for the entire fellowship, and I would like to confirm that I gauged the size of your wrist correctly."
the chalice is empty, yet her fingers are steel around the stem and the blunt edges of her own fingernails are starting to dig into the warm flesh of her palm. it is for the first time in many, many years where maerope has been — for lack of any other word, useful. her tasks thus far have been leisurely ( as the important things have called for practicality instead of fast hands or the innate ability to listen in on a conversation where nobody notices the eavesdropper ), but she knows what lies ahead, even if she does nothing but sit around, flipping her knives and braiding her hair and asking for more spirits, more grapes, more music ( play, bard, so i don't fall asleep ).
her teammates are an amalgamation of ( mostly ) perfect strangers, all equipped with the practicality that's needed for a journey of this caliber. the artificier, in particular, is more of a stranger than the rest of them can be, arriving as a masked figure with such an immense knowledge that even maerope forgot to feign disinterest at their discussions. her knife had slipped right into the palm of her hand, forgotten mid - flip, the blade pointed in its natural direction toward the waiting hand. no matter. intelligence is necessary. an artificier makes sense.
leaning against the doorway, she allows the corner of her lips to pull upward — almost lopsidedly. a dangerous sort of smile, if graciela were anyone but a thing to protect, to respect for nothing but her task alone. maerope holds up a hand to the light, baring her skin as she observes her empty wrist. "is it common for your folk to gauge the size of wrists?" she asks. maerope drops the hand, brings it back to the empty chalice, holding it by the rim with both hands, lingering in front of her waist. "did you know, in miras, that could be considered a very intimate gesture?" her steps are long and languid, leisurely; approaching a partner at a soirée to ask about their necklace, their makeup. graciela really is quite beautiful without the mask. maerope stands before her and offers her wrist. "gauging the size of a wrist, that is."
a patch of sweat had begun to form, behind his shoulders, from where the twin guards were pressed against him. they'd been there all day, since he was dragged from his cell, and they haven't seem to have lost contact with him since. his eyes were closed, but he knew it wouldn't matter either way. the shadows whispered to push, push, push until they left him alone. gods, alone. a luxury he had not had in months past. and he fears that he would not have again for some time yet.
luc had spent weeks at a time like this in his cell. listening to the whispers and the tap - tap - tapping of his cellmate's fingertips on the bars. completely still, barred from all verbal and somatic components by bindings on his mouth and wrist. they called him many names there, shouted out by the guards that fed him. but it has been so long since he's actually spoke.
when footsteps echoed, dark brown eyes shot open to find their shadows dissipated. his posture straightened as he saw an opportunity. he would endeavor to try. " can you tell these lovely gentlemen that i can't do anything if i am to be bound the whole journey? " his words dripped with honey, head tilting as what he assumed was one of his new questlings. " pretty please. " he grated out, debased as it was.
she hasn't done much, this lone figure who ebbs and flows with the stretch and fold of her limbs, her body. maerope, as a woman, is of many thoughts, but few words, and while the others have poured themselves into discussions while poring over strategies and texts and maps, she has sat prettily with her hands in her hair, weaving and unweaving, counting their fellowship, attempting to commit them to memory — but this one, oh, this one. intruiging, said by half a girl, said by an elf who sees mortals as pets and inquiries.
maerope sips from her goblet, eyeing the guards who, warily — as all other folk seem to eye them ( the folk from elendim, they, fair folk ) — eye her back. they have a duty to do, seemingly immune to the recognizable honeyed voice between them, so sweet and saccharine, enough to rot the teeth.
"i'm nobody," she answers lightly, as if hopping from stone to stone as to not get the feet wet. in her approach now, her footsteps lose the sound they had just moments ago. "gentlemen like this don't listen to somebody who's nobody." maerope goes to offer him a sip from the goblet — this ostentatious golden chalice, filled nearly to the brim in over indulgence of local spirits, a liquid that only barely serves her tongue with luscious taste and a harmless buzz; they just don't make it the same — but turns at the last second to circle the prisoner, observing his restraints, the manacles they have placed upon him. perhaps a muzzle would have been better; any lesser woman...
"have you eaten?" she inquires, walking back to the spot she began. "are you thirsty?"
where: vinnesse... proving grounds..? somewhere they can do some light training.
when: the day before the troupe departs
So, they were resolved.
After some discourse, a path was set, though regardless of how specific their bearing might have been, attempting to discern the safest path through The Black Valley was like trying to figure out the surest way to swim across a lake without getting wet. That was where this fellowship of strangers, acquaintances, and individuals that, as far as Sion could tell, didn't particularly like one another came in. Graciela had a bold undertaking and a burden that Sion did not envy; the barbarian had felt the pull of the Gauntlet; he heard it whisper alongside the voices at the back of his synapses promising to give him every minute thing that Sion had ever craved. Certainty, purpose, and memory. Sion did not believe in destiny; even the measure between right and wrong was a hue of bleeding gray that the barbarian had resolved to dwell within. However, if there was a thing that needed to be destroyed, then it was an object that promised the world to its beholder.
One of Sion's axes split a training dummy clean in two, reinforced by magic, he heard the murmur of some of the unknown spectators about him. As if he were an animal and they'd each bought tickets to a show, cities, in general, raised his hackles and brought visible tension towards his limbs, but a city of these mages with their secrets and their spells was the last place Sion ever hoped to find himself. He knew what they wanted; they wanted the monster to lose control and rage in front of them, but instead, the barbarian wrenched one of his mismatched axes from the ground and put his back on the mages.
"I will be glad to put this place behind us," Sion remarked casually as he turned his attention from the onlookers who'd taken to peering in on the intrepid, destined, few and instead focused on the comrade he'd spend the next several weeks with. His tone was low, deep, and gravelly as obsidian eyes inflicted subconscious curses in the wayward direction of those who murmured among themselves. "Even if it means heading into the Black."
something akin to restiveness sits deep within the chest, an impatience that lines neatly with a sort of anxiety that always appears in moments like this — calm before the storm, a breath taken before the upward slash of a dagger. maerope, at many times during the week, has traversed their staying grounds, half invisible, more shadow than woman. practice, if one were to ever ask, or a familiar habit breaking the water's still surface for a breath of fine, fresh air; maerope falling back into the shoes of someone she used to be; maerope changing the genre of book in her hands; maerope tossing around a thousand different outcomes on the inside of her skull while her teammates ( companion seems too intimate a word, but they are not mere acquaintances ) prepare for the journey ahead. what has she done but walk amongst the people? sipped on local wine, watched the onlookers look on, twirl a knife between her fingers when she wants to be seen.
— and seen she does not want to be, not by her teammates, by the people she has been made to journey with. maerope thinks of them as one would think of a noisy neighbor; immovable, but there; annoying, yet still a neighbor. most of them mages or mortal, all of them just stranger enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up. she believes that they will eventually come to be known by their breaths and their footfalls, but for now, in vinnesse, with the tension of what's yet to come hanging over all of them, maerope thinks quite little of them.
a kitten that hides beneath a home and listens to its occupants. cat claws scratching against the underside of rotting floorboards.
her blade slices through an apple, as red as her lips, as the blood in her veins. she cuts a piece and brings the blade to her mouth, pulling the piece from the flat of it with her tongue. an eyebrow raises. she ignores the onlookers who have decided that they are both livestock and hero, things to watch, to be ignited by. she chews slowly on the apple, savoring its taste. "what an odd sentiment," she finally says, her words dipped with a cadence only found in miras. "i would assume that most mortals would prefer the, hm," she trails off for a moment. "the fierce protection of the mage kin, considerably when compared to the hostility of the valley." maerope raises a single alabaster shoulder in a shrug — like she doesn't even care. "what would i know, though? i am neither mage nor mortal."
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TRIGGER WARNING(s) ﹕ mentions of death, blood, murder, wine / alcohol, tensions between mortal men & elves
PART ONE [ dossier ]
FULL NAME . maerope ( pron. mer - oh - pea, like calli—ope ) nievethil NICKNAME(S) / ALIAS(ES) / TITLE(S) . tbd PREFERRED NAME . maerope AGE . twenty - nine ( 29 ) / three hundred and twenty - seven ( 327 ) GENDER + PRONOUNS . cis woman, she + her ORIENTATION . bisexual, kinsey 4 BIRTHPLACE . somewhere in the region now known as caerfaen, rinlun
EYES . large, dark as midnight, fitting to the face — innocent looking, almost doe like — always observing and rarely seen HAIR . takes after her human mother with long, thick hair of raven black. falls to about the waist, straight, only ever styled or decorated when in miras. outside of elendim, often tied or braided back HEIGHT . five feet, nine inches / 175cm
LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN . common & elder DOMINANT HAND . ambidextrous JUNG TYPE . intp — the thinker ( analytical, objective, and logical ) ENNEAGRAM . type 5w6 — the troubleshooter MORAL ALIGNMENT . lawful neutral ( lives strictly by her own personal code ) CHARACTER INFLUENCES . sévérine ( skyfall ), heloise ( portrait of a lady on fire ), satine ( moulin rouge ), rita ( mulholland drive ), marianne sheridan ( normal people ), berelain ( the wheel of time ) but also, mat cauthon ( the wheel of time ), polly ( peaky blinders ), clementine ( westworld )
PART TWO [ history ]
born three hundred years ago near the elendim border to a human mother and an elven father. her mother ( affectionately called maman ) was just a woman, a village woman, a kind woman, just a mother, just a wife — and her father ( lovingly called pére ) was the captain of the elven guard and served in a city that neither maman nor maerope was allowed. her youth was often without a father, but he was still loved greatly and deeply by both maerope and maman.
the small village in which maerope and maman lived was normal enough. it was just fine. people were fine with maman and they were fine with maerope — until maerope began growing from babe to girl and there was suddenly all this hatred that she had never seen before. her very first brush with this hatred is the shepherd dragging her by the ear to maman and kicking dirt into them, which has stayed with her nearly forever.
when maman and pére die, maerope is still a girl, halfway to womanhood. they die by ... and they are killed by ... and their deaths themselves don't matter because what matters is that they are dead — and there's nothing she can do about it but mourn. they are dead and all she has is a pair of graves that she won't return to when she's older.
so she grows. maerope doesn't speak about her past much, there isn't much to it. one day she is a girl and one day she is a woman.
these years are filled with learning — surviving. her most important skill is latched onto during this time, invisibility, elusivity, a complete and total stealth. she learns how to blend in among mortal men and how to kill them, how to become unnoticed in the midst of day and beneath the shadows of the darkness. when she is at an appropriate age, she goes to find the men that killed her parents ( there is a small village in which maerope and maman once lived, a perfectly normal village, it was just fine — and one day it was not ).
this part, i imagine, she made into a game. killed them one by one, at first a random pattern and then, a knowing. she was coming. she never forgot. if you were going to slaughter parents in front of their child, you should have killed her too — because now she has a right to hunt you down.
continued mostly as an assassin, then, likely for hire but had her own moral code. robin hood, if robin hood protected half - elven children and women, if he was a nameless champion of whoever was left behind in this realm, left beyond the borders of elendim.
[ to be plotted tbd but met dark heir, was taken to miras ]
settled in fine to miras, to elendim. it was the most home she had ever really had. maerope was quick to become someone else, a softer version of herself. she immersed herself greatly into the culture and lifestyle, finding indulgence in the spirits and the community.
has, in the past few centuries, carved out a specific image for herself amongst her peers. a social butterfly and still unknowable, a beloved neighbor yet near nameless, completely blank, empty — whatever it is her people want to see of her. joins the fellowship to protect them, of course, and follow in her father's footsteps !
PART THREE [ personality ]
languid, like a cat — something adopted from her time in miras. takes things easy, viewed as someone most likely to drape themselves over the nearest piece of furniture. speaks slowly, like a book of purple prose brought to life, attributes this to the discovery that she has all the time in the world — is sort of always floating around like a dandelion seed, is here but not really, not until —
well, there's obviously something hidden beneath the surface, the fluid laziness. alert, like a cat — a feral kitten left in the rain to die without the milk of her mother. stalks her prey with silent footsteps ( they never see her coming ) and strikes when least expected. always watching, always seeing — often forgotten and left behind, and —
a woman is never seen until she is heard, and she is never heard until she wants to be, revealed until the moment is just right, when the light hits the skin in such a way, when the moon is at its highest peak in the sky.
PART FOUR [ wanted connections ]
i am brain - dead but the vibes are: knife to throat moment, drunk on berry wine but not really, disappears into the darkness ( invisibility moment ), oh no you've seen me and it makes me feel weird inside, oh no i've seen you and it makes me feel weird inside, oh this actually really hurts i can't breathe ( that's me saying that not maerope ), hurt comfort, liberal use of our favorite tropes !
