#lordkills

irelia knows the swells of grief more intimately than most, the scorching rage sweltering in her veins until it burned through her flesh in its wake. these days, in all that remains of the ashes of war and the blood-stained earth, rage is all she knows. her anger is all she has. and in spite of it all, of everything she lost, of every scar tearing ionia asunder with rifts searing the lands between the great heavens and endless conflagrations of hell, her people still have not found peace.

she was just a girl when they'd all been slaughtered — bright-eyed, soft-skinned when she'd left for the placidium. faced with the carnage awaiting her at home, it carved despair deep in the tides of anguish of her eyes, deep blue hues filled with the roiling rage of the seas; she'd soon grow calluses in the grooves her of hand, her smooth, delicate fingers that learned to wield steel in place of silk. one girl couldn't have felled the might of a noxian war host, but perhaps she could have tried. just enough to allow her family escape before the damage had been done, she tells herself, but it's a decade too late to change the course of history.

perhaps irelia had redeemed herself, honored the memories of her family and the other fallen when she stole jericho swain's arm and reaped the souls of his men and ripped free with bloody hands the desperately needed victory to put an end to the war against noxus. but even then, the violence hadn't stopped, and she's beginning to think it never will. she's staring into the unmoving porcelain mask of a man whose name lived on the tongues of dying whispers, and tales from navori, since a time long before she'd known the brutality and bloodshed that followed in the footsteps of death in war.

he is right, though, and irelia shifts uncomfortably on her feet but does nothing to lower her guard; the fire in her piercing gaze remains trained upon him. it's enough that he can read her so clearly when she can't in turn, but she wears her anger like a burning beacon of blinding light that it's all anyone can see. when it is your own history, your own never-ending nightmares filled with strangling spirals of regret winding tightly around your ribs, it becomes all too easy to forget who you have become in the eyes of the world. she was no longer xan irelia, daughter of lito, sister to zelos, kye, ohn, and ruu: she is the defiant blade of the first lands, defender of the placidium, savior of navori. it doesn't matter what she's done, though. they were all still dead.

" then tell me this, demon: what would you have done differently, if you were in my place? " irelia snaps, poising her blades toward him. they hover still in the air, but she can feel the radiating pulse of magic bleeding from each one, the sharp, deadly readiness to rend flesh from bone. " had you a chance for redemption, if there is even an ounce of good trapped somewhere deep in your soul, would you take it? would you make your choice in deference to the preservation of the first lands, or do you only act for yourself? "

three decades. three decades, she's waited to hear those words. not from swain, really, though it coming from him doesn't lessen the immense weight of its worth crushing into her chest, putting a strain upon her ribs so tight they squeeze against her lungs. katarina is stunned into silence, falling so still that she isn't sure if her own heart is beating.

it was not easy, growing up as marcus du couteau's firstborn. from the moment she took her first steps, he began to make her into his vision, to prime her as the heir to his legacy and that of their house with a knife thrust into her small, delicate hands. katarina had no friends, no life or childhood beyond the training grounds of their manor. where other noxian children played in the streets and ran happily beneath the sun, katarina trained from sunup to sundown until her limbs were sore and her bones ached. were she anyone else's daughter, perhaps the blooming bruises on her skin or the scars on her knuckles might have been cause for concern ( though let's be honest, this is noxus; an ailing child, a child in distress, is something everyone turned a blind eye to as they dressed the little ones in flimsy armor much too large for arms and legs that would never live to grow into. for the glory of noxus, the glory of the empire. ), but she was the du couteau heir. of course, it meant there was naught to be seen.

katarina spent so many long, grueling, exhausting years trying aimlessly, and failing spectacularly, to live up to her father's impossible expectations. no matter her perfection, no matter her obedience, no matter her undeniable results of success, it was never enough, and look what she — what noxus — had to show for it.

marcus du couteau, dead.

katarina stands silently over her father's grave, curling her gloved hands into tightly bound fists. he should have listened to her, but his pride never would have allowed him to admit his faults or his wrongs. too transfixed in an embittered era of noxian history and a legacy of shame that the cult-like few still thought of as true noxian strength, marcus never would have tolerated an empire underneath jericho swain, either.

" at least someone finally seems to think so, " she murmurs, kicking a pebble away from the headstone, sending it clattering down the path. katarina doesn't know how to thank the grand general, or if she should at all. for a woman who's never known acknowledgement toward her accomplishments, or praise, it feels unnaturally foreign and crawls against her skin, even when she knows it's right, that it's something she deserves. but katarina can't help herself, so she turns on her heels, looks up at the towering man behind her and says, " but would he be dead if i had? "

even now katarina couldn't say if she has any love for her father. growing up, she thought she did, but maybe she hadn't at all. she can't discern familial love from obligation because he is — was — her blood, like her love and loyalty was something he was owed just for being her father. she doesn't know if things, if she, would be better off if he'd lived. no one can say, now, though.

at face value and in complete objectivity, there is truth in those words: intention, oftentimes, will always fall remarkably short of its purpose if action doesn't accompany it. Regis can offer no reproach but a man such as @lordkills, truths such as these are never meant to be simple reflection. Conviction. Is it as fragile as the world Swain holds under such misanthropy? A deeply disillusioned perspective, if so, but one would never be able to tell by simply looking upon those grizzled features, aged by the fires of war and beset by the intensity of power. [ Regis averts his eyes momentarily, directing them skyward to a circling raven. It's not one of his. ]

❛ It's worth little if not acted upon, is that right. Hm. Understandable, ❜ comes Regis' quiet musing as he looks across from him again, meeting Swain's eyes. He wonders how many people actually do it without feeling like the Grand General is but a titanic shadow waiting to lengthen and crush them underneath his weight. Regis is hardly unsettled himself, for he has seen much and known many more, but his serenity is hardly a show of disrespect.

❛ Still, it can do much more for a man than one might think. Whether the leap of faith is taken or not, conviction is a bright star that many follow, oftentimes to success, ❜ he offers next, pleasantly; ever the academic, this old creature. He sees the message Swain weaves between his words, and pushes against it with the attitude and perspective befitting an outsider to the Noxian way. ❛ And needing additional time to act upon it is often mistaken with weakness, when sometimes it's really wisdom. Hesitation strikes for a reason, General, and not solely to our misfortune. How we look at it really makes a difference. ❜

let aqssa yap !!! ♡ @lordkills

20. Do you need music/noise to write or do you prefer silence?

Complete silence cuz anything else is way too overstimulating.

25. One thing you’d like new roleplayers to know?

to rmr that rp is pretty different from fanfic or personal writing. it's a highly social activity at the end of the day that functions a lot like group improv; it's an equal exchange of ideas and playing off one another.

the challenge and joy of it is that you should always give your partner / their character things to muse about, react to, respond to, and other action-based movements, however small or large, to keep the thread inspired and going somewhere. take the ball, run with it, but don't forget you have to always toss the ball back !! no one likes being the only one putting effort in, and it just doesn't work for rp, ever.

SCENARIO PROMPTS. 🪞｡˚ ↬   OF MERMAIDS, MASQUERADES & MAGIC. * 𓂃 ࣪ ˖ ➷ ❪  closed ❫ @lordkills

There are only three matters worthy for any discerning man to attend to: those of France, those of Britain, and those of great Rome.

And yet Adelaide, possessed neither with powers of discernment beyond that of a guppy goldfish, nor the masculinity of anything more substantial than dew trembling upon a Venus petal, has concerned herself with all three, anyway: having confessed her sins across every chapel of that great Rome, then rehearsing those sins all over again in perfumey, old France, and now finally — and idiotically — miring herself in the cold muds of Britain.

Thus has she wandered, proving that even these great, very manly matters of the world are not safe from the curiosity of a dying woman.

Her dress, once pale as evening lily, is coursed to the hip with dirt and the clinging, whispering spores of this wetland. She crumbles, sighing, at the enchantress' feet, spent of all willingness to forge further for potion ingredients that must dull this pain of knives in her ankles, and heart.

"My dreams came from the depths. That's where I was born, you know." She rolls to one side, catching a common frog in her hands by its tongue before he can escape. "Unless you meant it in a different, smarter way."

She watches its speckled throat pulse, then presses her thumb lightly to its heart, as if to compare the beat against her own. Not once does she blink towards Morgana; the enchantress' words are presence itself.

          shame is the great beast’s shadow that passes over the white flesh of my body– the waning sun’s light catches the scars, silver and shining like a gutted fish.   in its tracks are bottle-colored bruises and the river stone settled heavy at the bottom of my belly.