#abyme.

r.elationship introduction: lireyle/ilya

❝ I’m sorry, ❞ he said at last.  ❝ You were right. ❞

m.ock covers : mise en abyme

ILYA was first and foremost a bastard, and second and perhaps more importantly an assassin. Though his mind was sharp as his knives, he’d always be those two things before anything else. There’s nothing he cares about more than the brush of a sharp edge against someone’s skin - even his own. He’s never been picky. He’s just a boy and that boy has made his home between the spaces of the grooves of an arrow.

LIREYLE translates a promise from an ancient being, written in a forgotten ancient language and thinks: ah. There’s that moment, when you’re staring at the most important thing you’ve ever studied and it all clicks into place. When everything becomes clear. Lirelye looks at the promise and everything becomes clear. He’d do anything to keep those he loves safe. Even sell his soul. What’s a soul, compared to Alis?

ALIS meanders through her brother’s mind now and then, when the world gets too loud and everything is screaming. His mind is quieter. It makes her feel like they’re the same. Without him, Alis would just break. Alis is seven minutes older. She tells Lirelye that over and over, out of a sort of aching desperation. When you are Alis, every minute is a century. Whole lifetimes separating her from Lirelye.

WREN is running. His whole life he’s been running. There’s a beat in his chest that yearns for a home away from home, away from the duty he was born into, away from prying eyes and expectations. After all, you can’t escape what you’ve been born into, and you can’t change fate. He’s going to try, anyway.

works in progress:

the weaver princess;

when sabina is chosen to participate in a contest to win the hand of the second-born son of the king, she decides to try and win despite her parents' wishes that marry for love one day. the contest is a showcase of magical abilities, and nobody is better at magic than sabina.

madeline

madeline has always been a fan of crime dramas so when a series of murders start to occur close to her home, of course she's going to be interested. she enlists the help of her friends and all too quickly it becomes clear that something inhuman is doing the killing. by that point, it's too late to back out.

kappa andromedae

cecilia, rafael, and dominika are training to be police officers, for a special unit whose mission is to take down hacked androids, rogue robots, and other machine-based crime. during their first assignment, they end up in over their head as their unit discovers a factory for eerily human-looking androids, each identical to one another. these should not exist, should not be possible, yet here they are.

rise and fall

somewhere in virginia, nestled between upper class neighborhoods and towns sits milton college, a school known for its elitism and classism. its halls and libraries are home to countless tomes about hidden secrets and historical intrigue, and in the right hands those secrets might reveal themselves. when presley, antoni, cameron, bianca, and isolde develop an unhealthy obsession with the austro-hungarian empire, things start to slowly fall apart. secrets are let out, addicitions get stronger, and lives are irrevocably changed.

mise en abyme

innapor city has always been known for intellect, scandal, and magic. lireyle and alis are just trying to figure out their place in this world and navigate the strict rules of innaporan culture, from courtship to duty. ilya struggles with his past as a young soldier and his future as a mercenary, a hired gun, and a thief. wren has to decide if freedom is more important than a country’s future. when danger comes, the four are united in their want to save their city. is there more powerful magic at play? and how far would they go to save themselves... and each other?

neon decay in sin city

a podcast run by our storyteller @maabonwrites. five vampires walk into an alley... wait, no, that’s not quite right, is it? how does the joke go? let me try again -- five vampires wake up. they’re confused. they’re hungry. 

ask to be added to specific tag lists! (neon decay is run by maabonwrites and she manages the tag list, though!)

↳ s e t t i n g ⟶ countries of ardanerel

The continent of Ardanerel is home to seven countries, some of them widespread empires with far-reaching impacts, some of them small and secure in what they already have. In the North, there’s Tovjland, where magic is revered and honored but seemingly scarce. Below that is the great mountain range of the Dubu’mugh, where different races of Tur live side by side in peaceful harmony – for now. Continuing southwest is the wild and untamed Erivanse, where the old gods are worshipped and old traditions are practiced with unrestrained fervor. The islands of Jornara lay just south of that, home to the Jorna-Elva who honor their ancestors through complex necromancy.

Usha is home to the largest matriarchy, and stands as a hub for trading and export with other continents. Above them are their neighbors in Innapor, whose strict culture and traditions may seem foreign and strange to anyone not from there. Finally, theres Aershale. The expanding and militaristic force that wants to hold everyone under their rule; united, they believe, they can be great.

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↳ c h a r a c t e r . i n t r o ⟶ Ilya Vasilev 

There were two things you needed when you identified a mark, two things that needed to cross every thief in Innapor City’s mind when they saddled up near a tourist on an out-of-country vacation to the decadent westernmost country of Ardanerel. The first was to understand if the person was protecting something, and if that something was worth the trouble of stealing. If a man clung too much to his change purse or a lady to her beautiful diamond necklace, it might not be worth the attention garnered if one was to successfully relieve them of their possessions. After that was through, it was finding out if there were other hidden treasures on a person. The thing about thieves was they often got hung up on the idea of stealing a large some of coin, but completely ignoring everything else they had to offer.  

Everything, including thievery, was a balance.

That was something that Ilya was very good at; picking off the smaller prizes and letting someone else take the thing that looked the shiniest. Yet again, a lot of thieves in Innapor dealt in coin. Ilya dealt in secrets.

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↳ c h a r a c t e r . i n t r o ⟶ lireyle,  earl of belbonne

Alis had been frantic when she saw him — said, it hurts, said but I’m alive. So. Alis is alive.

Good. Lirelye has a lot of blood on his hands. Right this second, most of it is his. There’s a joke in there, maybe, about accountability and duty and what to do when the lights all go out, but he doesn’t have it in him to make it right now. If it was Alis’ blood, Lirelye isn’t quite sure he could stay conscious, breath after painful breath, spitting blood from between his lips, the smell of his sister when she hugged him floating around him like a vision from the gods.

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