#;cornelia

Hell on Remnant would be apt to describe the ranch at the moment. Her once idyllic home had been turned into a warzone, a battlefield, strewn with the bodies of the fallen. None of whom were her family, thank the gods, but that didn’t erase the horrors playing out before her eyes.

“They’re more capable than you think...” Cornelia muttered, unable to tear her gaze away from the still twitching body that laid at Viri’s feet. “I’m not the only one my moms have trained.”

She was just the most deadly.

She could take care of some bandits. She could kill them. Just like Viri had slaughtered this particular bandi-

All of a sudden, a rush of nausea hit the young teenager. Cornelia bent over and retched, bile rising up from her stomach and spilling all over the barn floor. Fucking- fuck. This was- gods.

So embarrassing...

It was rude to eavesdrop, or so she had been told.

She’d also been taught that such niceties were the first thing to be thrown out the window when there was a threat around. And this lady that Mama Blake was meeting with certainly qualified. It’s not that Cornelia didn’t trust her mother to take care of herself. Indeed, the more she watched and listened in, the more it became obvious that this pretty stranger was here on Mama Blake’s behest...

But Cornelia didn’t know her. And just because she was friendly with Mama Blake didn’t mean that she wasn’t dangerous or trustworthy.

Only family was trustworthy. Which was why she had to be able to protect them.

But, of course, Mama Blake spotted her soon enough. Tsk. And she’d thought that she’d hidden well this time. It took longer to be spotted, at any rate. That spoke of progress... but it wasn’t enough.

And soon enough, Cornelia was being paraded around the strange, mousey lady. She stared down at the offered sweet, only to glance back up at the strange redhead with suspicious eyes.

“You eat it.” She said bluntly and crossed her arms.

Cornelia had literally just watched this pretty huntress hand Mama Blake some sort of concoction (poison, knowing mama). There was a more than 0% chance that the candy was also poisoned.

Her violet eyes glanced over to the stranger’s (Viri, she said) shoulder, where a mouse sat comfortably. Huh...

☠️ “A... mistake.” Cornelia commented dryly. No offense to Giada, but... Cornelia was used to dealing with Giada’s mistakes. Not that the chieftain of Menagerie made a lot of mistakes... Giada was smart. Wicked smart. And so many other adjectives that Cornelia would explode before thinking of them all. Point being? Giada was as perfect as it got. Not in the classical sense, no. The gods only knew that her sister’s hubris would get the better of her one day. But... perfect for her...

It was concerning her how desperately Giada was clinging onto her. Like she was afraid she’d disappear. Like she had been- “Oh gods, Aevum was involved, wasn’t he?”

Cornelia and Auriel really love their big sis, Giada.

OoOOOF

“Where is Giada?”

“Oh gods, please don’t rape me!”

“I... wasn’t... planning on it...”

“Don’t leave me by the side of the road bloody, bruised, and defiled... barely able to walk, yet shamefully aroused. My conceptions of intimacy and physical affection unalterably broken. I’ll grow up to be a filthy, self-loathing whore; insatiable but never able to love. It would be a... tragedy...”

“...What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Not enough.”

---

“Cornelia, why would you run off like that? What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing!”

“It’s okay, Nel, all you need to do is tell me about your tragic backstory then we can have a good cry, I can teach you about friendship, and you can join the main cast of my story! You might even get your own story, that happens sometimes.”

“Fine. Ever since I was a little girl, there was one thing I’ve been really self-conscious about...”

“Good. Keep going.”

“I... Don’t have a tragic backstory.”

“...”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like being an anti-hero with zero backstory? Nobody takes you seriously! Everyone’s always like, ‘Eh, you’re just a normal kid who grew up in the idyllic paradise of your peaceful small town, you’ve got no reason to be angry.’ And you wanna know what really pissed me off...? They were right. So I decided that if the world wouldn’t give me a tragic backstory, I’d make my own!”

“...”

“I started encouraging Auriel to go to Levante to get to know our dad; he thought he was pursuing his dreams, but he was a fucking idiot! Then I concocted this plan to get close to Giada and let her use me as her substitute for Auriel!”

“Because...?”

“Because, then, when everyone found out what happened, it would look like the sweetest, most supportive, most badass kid in the family was taken advantage of by her own big sister, who groomed her into a codependent relationship and broke her to the point where she couldn’t legitimately live without her big sister within arm’s reach! It’s the most tragic backstory ever!”

Cornelia Ennius