#cerenomy

"I'm here by choice: by my own hand."

Not in the way a lamb was sent to slaughter, though. No. The intentions here were not to seek a willing and pliant sacrifice. Far from it, actually. It was more trying to find that one white deer that could be chained in cold and kept in a similarly gilded cage with minimal force. Everything that was wanted could only work if it was given, not taken. And the King knew that.

Blood and bones: crimson and ivory. A weft heavy with the burden of his own perception and heavier still with the weight of all he wrought. Listless red eyes stared out from the dark where he stood. Watching. Patient yet not.

Of course, there were no stipulations on how willing it had to be. There was no fine print saying that it must lack any form of eternal coercion. Nothing said each king, god, or god-king couldn't hunt down and promise to destroy, maim, or kill whatever it was their desired rare beast held near and dear. No word written or recalled to stop them from binding and bleeding seers and judges alike.

This little ceremony required no clarification. A simple word of mouth was all the artificer needed, as he carefully took the seer's hands into his own, turning their arms over a few times to seek out a non vital yet viable and visible blood vessel. His hands were warm. With that weird sterile prickle of energy that so often came with being touched by those who carved glyphs into their skin, as he carefully scrawled ink over a region to his satisfaction.

Too many eyes.

But wasn't it to be expected? Wasn't it antrual for them all to want to know everything about the new little beast running about underfoot? Even if Shiloh could only physically see three or four, excluding the one right in front of them, there had to be no.

No. They knew there were more. Ones they couldn't figure out the position too, blended flawlessly amongst shadow and wood and stone. This was the domain of paranoia, after all.

"It's going to sting a little," the hoarse voice of the holy man whispered.

"You are going to feel faint. You are free to grab any part of the basin you wish to keep balance, so long as you do not remove your arms from it."

There was no warmth or well-mening intetenion behind his tone. It was simple. Matter-of-fact and blatantly rehearsed, almost as if he was equal parts bored and annoyed by how often those he did this to flinched. Still, his hands were reverent and careful as he dragged a cloth reeking of alcohol and something sweeter down their skin. Cleaning and disinfecting the area as well as he could.

A quiet murmur between the gathered group. Tones indistinguishable in the room built to muffle as much sound and scent as possible. Yet undeniably there, given how both seer and artifacer tripped their heads in the direction of the sound. The man before them merely huffed. If he knew what was being said in those barley audible glyphs, he didn't seem intent on sharing. He picked up the thin, straight blade from a flat of wine-red cloth that had been spread on the flat counter, gingerly holding one of their arms down.

"How will I know when it's done?" Shiloh asked.

"When you feel as if your soul begins to reject your own body," was the cryptic yet colorful answer.

To give the stranger with the knotted weft credit, he did allow them to adjust their weight. Bracing on wings against the stone, and waited a second more for a wary nod before putting the point against their skin. Slowly angling it back.

The blade sliced through their flesh with ease. Perfectly sharp, and cold as blood immediately welled and began to run freely down the growing gasp. The sight itself wasn't knew. Their gaze followed, half lidded and barely interested at first, as the warm liquid dripped seamlessly down their own hand and into the engraved basin below. Sigils quietly curled to life within the seams of the stone. Slowly. Carefully winding up from one slight end to the other.

In a gentle, well trained movement, the blade was pulled from their first arm. Shiloh willingly shifted their bleeding limb out of the way, instead angling the untouched one to better fit the light. The artificer hummed something that vaguely felt like quiet appreciation. Barely tapping the inside of their thumb to correct the position of their arm before once again finding a proper angle for the knife, and pushing it in.

It was in that movement that the nausea began to trickle in, and they felt their shoulders tense.

Nothing about the physical sensation had changed. Nothing in the room had changed either. No one had entered or existed: their skin was the same awkward middle ground between the sheer heat of their blood and the sheer cold of the steel knife as it traced slowly and deliberately down a predetermined path. Yet somewhere within the back end of their ribs, something was broiling to the point of charring. A quiet yet sudden foreboding ache that consumed the edges of their senses until the discomfort forced them to stop looking at the weave at all. Crawling, demanding more of their mind. it came with over awareness of the heat leaving their body in free flowing streams from their wrists. It came with the proper unfiltered weight of the eyes of the gods bearing down on them from each possible direction.

You left them to die. You turned your back on all three of them.

There was no peace or comfort to be had in knowing their own roles in walking into the gilded cage. There was no guarantee that any of the others who had been dragged elsewhere, who did not walk into the room with them were safe, or even alive. It was only by word. And word was functionally useless when it came to something like him.

The only language the God of Carnage knew was violence. For it was what had secured his domain, and his throne. It would be the primary language the Scarlet King used when speaking to his new seer, bound by blood and soul to never truly hide from him.

The weakest third; the brittle third. Truly a shame it was you who walked out of that hole and not Aika.

Just as the sensation of the blood leaving their own skin stopped holding any warmth, a cloth was wrapped around both of their arms, lifting it from the basin and setting it instead on the flat of stone alongside it. The artificer worked quickly. Using the same rag drenched in alcohol and whatever else to clean the areas yet again. Movements seeming quick and rough compared to the more cautious, gentle touches that he had used prior.

Something new was written in ink against their skin. But before they could blink the lights into focusing, the gauze was wrapped around their arms and wrists, then followed by a more solid canvas bandage. Their hands felt cold as they gingerly touched the material.

All of skin on their back danced. Shivers indecisive in directions to go as their own senses seemed to be peeled away layer by layer, leaving their soul and mind completely exposed. Each sound not of them was a threat. Something that came with the quiet hiss of teeth and claws ready and willing to tear into them to claim whatever pitiful third remained - and they really were always the weakest of their siblings, weren't they? The small one; the brittle one.

You never actually left that void. A key piece of you is still suffocating down there - you'll never find it.

The Artificer gestured to someone beyond them. Whether the exchange had words or not was unclear. What was clear, however, was that before whoever it was he'd gestured to could reach them-

"My love?"

A trick, hissed something not of them within the edges of their mind, A lie. Treason. He's not here - someone has stolen his face and his voice only to deceive you. Senseless little Weaver.

And yet, within that warm, bright weft that was agony to peer at, Shiloh could make out a piece of their vibrant sapphire. Buried low within the warm hues. Undeniable and tangible as the star placed a hand in the middle of their spine, warmth rushing through them with such a speed it forced them to suck in air.

They blinked, then again, as the blurry mass of light and heat gradually gained features, and Pangloss gently asked, "Can you feel your limbs? Can you stand?"

… stand. Yes. Right. The ceremony was over: the artificer had all he needed. What they needed to do was get up and figure out where the hell it was Scarlet had decided to place them. Then they could go find the others.

Each of them are dead, taunted that trecherous yet ever present part of their kind, killed while you were too lazy to bother searching the local weave.

Or, a voice like crackling flame hissed back, They're all isolated until his men can figure out how to contain them.