jotunkhiicha

[jotunkhiicha]

Rosalyn is back and I’ve finally got RE1 & RE0. I’m hooked! I also want to raise a glass to photo mode in RE4 Remake.

“𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑁𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑄𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝐼𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑂𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎.”

When forever runs out, what happens next?

Does tomorrow become a useless function, a lie fed to the people to ensure servitude and to give the miserable their only medicine, hope? These moments bleed into nothingness, draining the wonder and brilliance of mortal ambition into the ether where their gods might finally have a taste of their struggle. Will it make anything worth it?

What of the ring, bound to their flesh like the rings within a tree? Do these decayed circlets of love and wonder become little more than epitaphs of a worthless vow?

Sometimes, when she feels the familiar drag of her dagger against her flesh, she allows these nihilistic thoughts the crawl between the gaps in her synapses, jumping between them to land closer to the housing of her soul to eat it—consume it—obliterate her spirit and grant her grace in the condemnation of self. She was beyond the salvation that man pines so fervently for, forever cast to be washed at the Devil’s feet for her sins—for her good intentions. She accepted this fact, embraced it even, but she still wishes, in some worn away part of her soul, that it didn’t have to be this way.

That she didn’t have to be this.

“Prevedibile (Predictable).” Rosalyn murmurs as the orchestra thrums to its apex, the violent torrent of squeals from the violins, the crashing of keys as they are struck upon the piano and the way the trumpets sing to the tune of destruction.

Her backless green gown scatters remnants of her past across the floor, each drag of the fabric across the marble floor, stained red in the blood of patrons—her would be villains.

It didn’t have to make sense, it wasn’t her job to make it make sense, her job is far simpler than that—to eradicate.

As her heels clack and she hears muted footfalls behind her, she spins in the same heels to face her opponent, eyes focused and brows furrowed with training moving her muscles.

It is the same as it always is.

Rosalyn swings to the left, avoiding a bullet, with grace befitting a swan as it flitters above the lake surface, and she unlatches her gun from its holster—her beloved Beretta 89—and fires three shots, in quick succession. One penetrates the flesh of his knee, crushing the bone and destroying the joint, if he survives this engagement, he won’t be the same man he was when he entered it. The second shot takes finesse, it catches his shoulder, sending him spluttering back and the third, the finality that even a God wishes they had, comes to rend the mind from the beast.

It splinters through skin and bone, the brow lines that showed frustration, the stress that servitude can bring, and pulls apart the pretty little neurological pathways that made him who he was. His eyes roll back into his head, trying to see what once was in the back of his eye sockets as nothing makes sense anymore; nothing ever did.

“Prendi la cagna! (Get the bitch!)” she hears above the sound of the opera singer.

Maybe Leon was right, there’s nothing quite like Italian opera.

[jotunkhiicha]

Mary and I both dream of silent hill like absolute units.

“𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑟𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑎”

Were dreams supposed to be an escape from the vitriol of existence—a balm for the agony of the torment of tomorrow and yesterday, leaving people hanging in the balance and seeking equilibrium?

If they were, perhaps that would give some sense as to why his dreams aren’t so much sweet escapes, little escapades for his consciousness to drift between his states of mind like a little flea, jumping from beast to beast; they are garbled messes of his trauma given form. They sulk towards him, twisting and twitching in unnatural ways that would make a God weep and it all reminds him of that wretched town.

Silent Hill.

In her restless dreams, she saw that town—is that why he sees it too? Is he a restless sailor, drifting along the sea of dreamlike ambition to die to join her?

A catastrophic wave sweeps his hopes aside, drowning them within the sea of nihilism like an all encompassing finality. It spans far and wide, beyond him yet no further than him—a conundrum. It exists within him and sprawls all around him like wishes slipping from their husks and splashing into the water. Its wishes are like pinpricks against his flesh, like goosebumps from a lover’s fingertips as they dance over his flesh in strange patterns.

“James?”

The angels sing, for demons have come to eat his heart and spit out the fatty deposits of gluttony at his feet.

Rejoice! They cry.

“James?” The sweetness of spring that soothed the dull ache brought forth from the longing of union, blossoms within his name.

Is he a bud in spring, or a hollowed tree where the insects burrow their larvae to give his death a purpose? Has he been reborn in this junction between an endless winter and the boundless spring?

To be reborn, he must die—rend the soul from the body and smother it beneath blankets and pillows to suffocate any hope of escape. Just as he did back then.

Familiar hands make familiar instruments of torture, rebirthing dead and buried memories of her.

She’s everywhere, filling in every single gap between atoms, drowning the world in her presence and everything reminds him of her. She’s a burden within his hippocampus, she is a proverbial leviathan in his dreams to swallow all of the waste that comes from the hopeful slumber he pines for. She is both the balm and the burn upon his flesh—a scalding flame and the sweet reprieve that mortal men hunt for.

What has become of him?

“…Mary.” He mumbles in his sleep, restless as always and even the rattling pills inside their sweet little containers don’t help.

She is still there, a humble flame come to burn down his foundations, he has just come to accept seeing her, every night, behind his eyelids and feeling her maleficent intent as she spills over him like toxic waste.

He will never escape.

[jotunkhiicha]

I love my irredeemable people.

Here is more Yariv Content that no one asked for.

“𝐷𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑑’𝑠 𝑇𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒.”

The rain falls heavier now, crashing against the rusted roof panels that keep this reflection together, stowing away sin and debauchery to ensure that trysts die when the sun rises. The pink lights, hiding the natural green tint of her eyes, sprinkle delight across her flesh as she swirls the glass filled with whiskey, a brand she would never purchase, and she sits at the bar, remembering nothing at all and enjoying the denouement of faith and the destruction of love.

Smiling to herself, Yariv raises the glass inside of this paradise carved inside of hell itself, this juxtaposition to the very nature of the world. It flowed outside the natural flux of destruction and the industrial might of the fog-laden city, it was special for some reason, so who was she to deny the enjoyment of docking her ship to let a poison swirl in her veins.

Off in the distance, she can hear gunshots and she brings the glass to her lips; if that is to be the ambiance this world wishes to grant her, who is she to deny it? She savours the crescendo of fate and of delusion, coming together to break apart the symphonies that had dared creep from between the cracks of this place.

Yariv sighs as she sets her glass down, gazing at the liquid as it sloshes, to and fro, within its container.

That is until the door is flung open with a grunt and footsteps fall into shuffling footsteps as they retrace steps previously taken to recreate memories, or to perhaps summon them to bring the joy and levity back.

The scent of death is heavy in the air, thick like a cloud of smoke, and it follows him like a shadow, constantly lurking. The stench of blood, of iron and of that putrid rotting smell of flesh as it slumps off of carcasses for the cockroaches, for the flies and for the maggots to come and feast upon their remains. There’s that tang of sweat interlaced in that too but, amongst all of that, there’s a humble scent of cologne and it tickles the deep recesses of her mind, awakening a beast she has long since changed down.

Lust.

“What? Yariv, is that… is that you?” James stumbles over his words as he carefully navigates the rubble around them to land upon the shoreline of her presence, “How did you get here?” He feverishly asks, keen to have her nestled someplace safer, somewhere far away.

Something isn’t quite right, James fears as he looks upon her placid expression when she turns to face him, holding onto her glass with two fingers. She looks at him from the corner of her eyes and he can sense a malice in there like a worm curling around her eyes to infect others with its despair.

“Any port in a storm,” She repeats the mantra Maria once murmured as they left Heaven’s Night, and then she kisses her teeth after another sip.

No. It must be a viper.

Was she drinking the same thing Maria had poured? Was she drinking out of the glass poured for him?

What was she doing?

An inexplicable jealously burns bright in his chest like nuclear fusion, bursting between his ribs and dripping between his lips as he pulls them together in a thin line, thinner than the line Yariv had crossed. The boundaries were not set between them, no, but he had told her who he was looking for, who he pined for and begged to return home, so how could she desecrate the closest thing he had to Mary? How could she sit there and blaspheme her memory—tarnish the gold she was and reduce her to cheap copper varnished as such?

“What are you doing here, Yariv?” His voice rumbles like thunder.

Yariv chuckles at him. She laughs at his meagre display of rage, pure unadulterated fury at the sight of her from drinking from that glass, and it fanned a flame inside of her, treating her depravity and filling that endless abyss she had carved with a blunt knife to survive.

“Taking a breather.” She hums nonchalantly, her voice like the sound of whistling before a hunt begins, calling back the hounds to savour this dance between them.

She selected her words so carefully to push the buttons inside of him, relishing in the way he folded beneath her palms, the way he would cave and become putty beneath her fingertips and the way he would melt from her words. She delighted in the finality she possessed over him with the knowledge of his thousands of deaths.

He would not remember his time in Apartment 213, but she does. She remembers the way his brain splattered on the inside of that white sheet, the way his grey matter slumped down between his fingers and how the bullet sat pretty between the neurological pathways that always brought him back. Perhaps he’ll never remember his time, stowed away inside of that motor home on Saul Street, but she would and she remembers how he howled and screamed as these strange reflections bit, tore, chewed and devoured his insides as he begged for it to stop. And maybe he’d never remember the little notes he’d written himself along the way, but she will.

He was a slave to his proclivities, an endless cycle of grief and guilt and of longing that drained into desperation. It was a delight to behold, to savour his descent into madness, into the coiled spring of depravity that only opened that maw further, deepening the chasm that Mary left behind.

It is art.

“Stop it,” he demands through his teeth, clenching his fists into tight balls that he could use to throttle her with, “Give me a straight answer.”

“I told you, I’m taking a—“

“Stop fucking lying to me!” He yells so loud it silences the rain and thunders back into her ears like a percussion.

It surprises her.

She freezes, her emerald eyes wide beneath the neon lights of debauchery.

This is the first time he has ever yelled at her, not even in all the other iterations of his delusions had he screamed, blasphemed or even bared his teeth but this James, this beast in the cage, he seeks blood—hers specifically.

“Just…” he closed his eyes and reigns in that berserk nature, the frustration of hundreds of days, blending to thousands of hours of the neglect of want, “Tell me what you’re doing here.”

She smiles once more, disarming and infuriating as she readies herself to dance around him. “I take it you’ve met Maria then, considering you know this place?” She chirps as she drums her nails against the wooden bar, similar to the sound of a metronome—of Mary.

The thought flashes like a meteorite in the night, burning up the darkness before it splinters and brings the void back, a void she seeks to fill.

“What?” James hisses.

The spindle rotates.

“Quite the woman, isn’t she? She’s a way with—“ She cuts herself off and, all that bravado that seemed to stretch on further than the cosmos itself, fades like insignificant stardust in the wake of a black hole’s hunger.

Yariv, once fluid like time, becomes rigid like a sculpture, set to be displayed as a monument of trickery and mischief, and her eyes, something about them changes; she becomes fearful. He can see it on the way her eyes dart around and she clenches her fist on the bar. He can taste it in the way her eyes swell with salty tears and a pure horror finds itself feasting on her soul.

“He’s here.” She whispers, full to the brim with a violent terror that wracks her very bones.

“Who?” James steps forwards, trying to watch for where her eyes land so he can trace the pattern of her skittishness to find the source of it all, “Who’s here, Yariv?”

“I’m not…” She trails off, her voice, fragile like silken dreams and childlike wonder, “James, look out!” She shrieks as a spear crashes through the wall and lands between them.

It was David’s Goliath—Pyramid Head.

[jotunkhiicha]

One ending away from getting 8/8 and 8 achievements away from 100% completion on steam! Needless to say, I’ve fallen in love with this game.

So more writing for it!

“𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒’𝑠 𝑊𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠.”

How had everything good in life fallen with her? How had the darkness weaved its way through every interaction, every single movement and every single light fixture? Why was it so painful to be seen to exist and be something more than the absence of her presence?

How had it come to this? Stuck in a prison beneath the heavens and left to collect weights, personifications of his guilt as it feels like a thousand hands are pushing him down, a thousand angels using their palms to pray for hell to swallow and take him away for what he has done.

Each weight claws at him, drags him closer to that damnation with each step, each thundering step across the metal floor. The sound comforts him, in a strange way, it reminds him he is still real inside this impossibility. It grants him something to focus on, aside from the monsters that skitter across the ceiling, their legs like little pinpricks of terror that inject their venom into his ears as he speeds up to a light jog, but not before stopping to check on her.

When he stops, he hears the scuttling come back and he draws his rifle, searching the darkness and, in a swift movement, he shoots down a creature that comes cascading down from the unfathomable heights of this place, only to crumble in on itself like when a spider is stepped upon—all legs, not much else.

“Sorry,” He mumbles out with a sigh, lowering the rifle as he turns to look at her, “You doing okay? Need anything?”

She shakes her head and smiles slightly at the warmth his questions give, that was a gift in of itself. “Just… want to get out of here. Are you okay though? You’ve been running backwards and forwards.” She tilts her head and steps closer, a warning wail from the darkness echoes as she does so.

He grimaces at her comment. “I’m fine, Yariv, just looking for a way out.”

She frowns. “You’ve called me that before. That’s not… my name. It’s Eliona,” She furrows her brows in thought, “How do you know that name?” Her inquiry is as probing as the shining moonlight upon his sins as he lay in bed—alone—wondering what had become of him.

His gaze dithers, his attention unfocused as the last weight is heaviest in his hand, dragging him deeper, deeper until all he can possibility reconcile with is how he dies; after all, choosing how he dies is the last freedom afforded to a prisoner.

“James?” She calls hesitantly.

Her voice is akin to the light that moths pine for and he’s drawn to it as such, but she feels like a burning flame, too hot to touch and too risky to be near. She threatened the very structure of his thoughts and the smell is strong like gasoline, a roaring fuel to the fire in his veins. It frightens him, this burning finality that she is, the very thing that Prometheus was scorned for, but he could understand why, he could make sense of it in his mind. He could piece together the fragments of his psyche to put something concrete—something tangible beneath his fingertips like the fragile silken delight of expensive sheets.

He steps back from her, realising he’d come to close.

“James? Are you okay?” Eliona looks concerned for him as he rolls back into his steps, tentative but assured in his decision.

“I’ll… come back.” He trails off, his mind racing a mile a minute, much like his heart, and his eyes still do not meet her as he turns back.

He breaks off from temptation, off from the war between man and heart, from beast and jailer and from heaven and earth, and he moves towards those two metallic doors that clang each time he passes their threshold.

This time, however, is different.

There’s a light of the promise of sunrise on the cusp of the four walls in the yard, like a dusting of hope sprinkling over his bristling despair. Would the light of dawn, the promise of a new day, bring with it Mary? His beloved sent from the heavens and come to rouse the evil from within the depths of his depravity so that he might come with her to those gates that he prayed for.

Would she wait for him? Would she call to him?

As the doors clang, a curtain call as the gallows come into view, his name is sung from angels far and wide, but the angel rests in a cell he left it within.

Eliona.

“James!” Her voice breaks with fervent panic and he runs back, he regrets every choice he made that landed her in the position where he is in this yard with the nooses begging him to give their construction a purpose, and she is in there, with the antithesis of his very self pulling rusted metal bars apart with practised ease.

The glow of the red light, the broken lights atop those ornate doors, bathe its mask in the colour of blood and, as James stands here, unable to do a single thing about it, he fears that its form will drink her blood—bathe in her ichor to feel something real.

James throws all of his weight into doors that do not budge, begging them to move so he can do something, so he can die trying to save something that has meaning in this hapless circumstance that has befallen him.

“Eliona!” He calls as he shoves the doors, powerless and left to watch this horror, tuned just for his bewailing, through those impossibly small prison windows as a white hand, gloved and stained in black soot from the blood of all the creatures it slaughtered along the way, snatches her from where she has scurried to.

“No—get off of me!” She screams vehemently, her cry like a thousand needles come to rend the life from his worthless corpse, “James! Help me! James!” She reaches out to him as she is dragged back by the scruff of her collar, like pathetic trash, to bring his palm into hers, interlace their fingers so that she might be pulled free from death’s claw.

In her eyes, he sees terror as the tears slip from her eyes and her screams, though far, bounce back to his ears like a thunderous percussion. Her presence fades, its presence fades, but her gut-wrenching fear plays clear in his mind like a rewound tape with a notch, constantly replaying in his mind to remind him of his weakness and his inability to reconcile with himself.

She called out to him to save her, and what did he do? Nothing.

He did nothing.

Left with nothing but the rain above and the heavy consequence of his actions, his mouth falls agape at the absence of her presence, of her gaze from afar, and he’s infuriated by his own self for leaving her to rot there—to decay amongst the ruins of life as a white flower should.

Perhaps the gallows are precisely where he should be, for he had become nothing more than a criminal, set to die for his actions and allowing those near him to come to harm.

First, it was Maria, in that impossibly long hallway that stretched on for all eternity and, no matter how many times he plays it over in his mind and upon the back of his eyelids, the result is the same. He can still feel her blood upon his cheeks and the clumps of her flesh and bone stuck in his blond hair.

And, now it was Yariv—Eliona—the woman he had met in the fog and come to know as a restless soul in this prison beneath the sky. She hadn’t recalled their conversation in the thick of the fog as she danced amongst the creatures, deftly weaving between them to lead him to a prize amongst the rubble of civilisation. She had only remembered flickers of their interactions when she would bleed through the surface and those eyes, green like luscious foliage that he missed the supple feeling beneath his fingertips, and the time in Heaven’s Night where it turned up again.

What kind of man is he? is he a man at all?

Is he Charon, ferrying people down into hell in exchange for his own life rather than golden coins?

What has he become?

This town has changed him, changed Mary—it has changed everything. Nothing is the same anymore.

And, as his feet carry him to a noose, marked by the Roman numeral 6, he wonders if she stands at the lever, watching to see how he will struggle as he dies.

He pulls down, yanks it with a fervour so that he can meet rapture.

These hands that create,

The hands that take.

[jotunkhiicha]

5 years on, what does a letter in the post mean?

“𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑙.”

“…A letter, you say?” Eliona murmurs as she runs the ragged dishcloth over the glass, drying it once more, or perhaps she’d done it a thousand times over—it is hard to tell at this point.

Laura sighs and shakes her head while leaning against the counter-top. “I know what you’re thinking, that it can’t possibly be real, right? But what if there’s a way that—“

“No.” She is firm, staunch even, like a familiar flicker of their shared past.

Laura widens her eyes in shock, turning to face her completely with her arms out, asking what on earth she could possibly mean by refuting her point. A betrayal exists within those chestnut eyes of hers and, eventually that gives way to anguish and it comes to drown out the other emotions in her eyes, falling from her lashes and down her cheeks.

“But...” She babbles with no clear directionality as the woe steals her path from her.

Eliona sighs and pauses her ministrations, not that she was really drying the glassware in the first place. “Laura,” She pauses, sets down the glass with a clink and sets the cloth to one side to face the young girl, “I know you miss James but, that letter, it can’t be from him.” She sucks in a shuddering breath as she takes her hands into her own, looking deep into those eyes to give her a warning.

She didn’t have to say it for Laura to comprehend what she was warning her about; that town, that fucking town where memories come together and clump like a cancerous mass, slotted against reality and it infects the area around it to impart a toxic despair. They’d seen it, faced it, and come out the other end with pieces of themselves lodged in the debris of the buildings they walked through. It left its mark upon their minds, rising in their sleep to keep them fearful of the fog as it rolled in.

And, yet, it dared to strike out again to tempt them back into its garden, even though it still had parts of them, tucked away, inside of its walls.

A letter from James Sunderland, dropped into their letterbox, had appeared five years after they’d managed to escape that wretched town, Silent Hill, but James had vanished one day, inexplicably. It was as if he had never even existed at all, as if he had never walked out of the fog with both Eliona and Laura—like he had been dragged back, kicking and screaming, into the very depths of hell, because that’s what Silent Hill is, to fill what some other being deemed must be whole. And, much like a dandelion bulb drifting in the wind, he dispersed and the fragments of his life led to no real clues as to where he had possibly gone and what he had done.

Laura was inconsolable when she had found out and, as for herself, Eliona was despondent and could only think of hunting down whatever took him to bring him back. She recalls the way she stood in the doorway, clutching onto the red door of their house, lamely as she uttered;

“What do you mean?”

It reminded her of when she paraded around as Yariv, the devil amongst the fog. She’d started to carve away at her emotions again, like peeling the skin off of an apple with a knife and steady hands, and it was only when Laura screamed at her one night, begging for her to return when she had been sat, opposite her, at the dinner table all night and she suddenly remembered who she was again, what she’d done and who she must become.

“But we don’t know what happened to him! He might’ve gone back to look for Mary—you don’t know!” She yells, desperate now as she claws at anything—any possible thought—to bridge reality and dream together to bring him back.

Eliona shakes her head softly and bites her lower lip as a tear falls, a single tear filled with so much anguish and misery that it could drag the whole world with it as it splashes to the floor. “No, Laura.” She whimpers as the rain trickles against the window in the kitchen, like little taps from imps to steal them away, take them back to Silent Hill, “He’s gone, this is proof of that.” She squeezes the young girl’s hands to ground herself as the grief crawls back into her heart again.

That void, that horrific abyss where hope goes to die, where life ends and time ceases to be and where she sees her own face, yet so strikingly different, gaze back at her with empty eyes—Yariv.

Interlaced with that grief, braided together, is guilt. The twin demon curl around her neck, that whisper for her to step onto their gallows and be punished for her sins, to face judgement for her crimes and to be persecuted for the wrongs she committed.

And Laura shakes her head vehemently as her words become thoughts, and those thoughts become concrete slabs that fall down into the ground so that she can lay James to rest. A loud sob wracks through her lips, crashing through the barriers she had hauled back up after he died, and she closes her eyes as she reaches out to Eliona, seeking her embrace.

Without hesitation, she wraps her arms around the young girl and they stand there, weeping over a man who, seemingly, everyone else forgot. The world moved on, the traffic lights turned green and the sun still rose on a world without him in it.

“It’s not fair…!” Laura cries through gritted teeth while she clutches at the fabric of Eliona’s shirt, squeezing tighter to remind her of what is real and of what is a farce.

Smoothing her hair down as she shushes her, she nods. “I know…”

[jotunkhiicha]

I haven’t written so much in such a short time, at least not for a while, even for my book. Thanks Silent Hill, dinner’s on me.

For clarity, Eliona is Yariv.

“𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑙”

Eliona strolls forwards with her hands in the pockets of her brown leather jacket, daring to find warmth amidst this lifeless town. She scans the horizon, only to find her gaze obscured by the familiar fog that she had once led wayward souls through.

Even after spending years, suspended in this purgatory, she still doesn’t know what purpose it truly serves, or why she even took up that false name—that name her grandparents gave her, ‘Yariv’, the Adversary. She didn’t quite understand it, as she came to in that cell with the flickers of memory that dared to set what she once knew ablaze. In that dank, dark cell with her only comfort coming from the rotten mattress beneath her buttocks, she peeled away layer after layer of those defences she had put up to keep her alive—to stave off that stench of death that clings to her like a second skin.

Then again, was she truly living, drowned in the fog and laid to rest amongst the other wayward souls in this place? Had death already won the bout and she was simply reeling from the aftermath, stuck dancing in their music box to play them a merry tune?

Gritting her teeth, she shakes the thoughts away and as she comes to a halt, an imposing building peers down upon her, a dirtied cross gleaming from above.

It was the Chapel.

Her eyes dither up, daring to look upon the olive branches that gave birth to warped ideals, broken glasses and desecrated the innocent for something as cruel as the approval of a being that dare not even listen to her prayers. It looks the same, even in this foreign town where nothing else is the same, and it even smells the same; that sickly scent of frankincense and the sticky stench of melting wax that would cling to her skin and coat her tongue. It makes her skin crawl and a dread, the type that screams a warning in her soul to turn back and run away, blossoms like an oak tree and it takes root into the very fibres of her being.

Leaves of terror sprout from its branches.

The sap spills from her eyes while she stands there, possessed by the pain of a thousand memories.

Yet, something within her calls for her to step forward, to face this colossus that blocks out the light and drowns her past in darkness, and quell the beast—to fend off her would-be guardians, one last time.

So, with unsure movements, she takes her hands out of her pockets and ascends the few steps leading to the entrance of the chapel. As she rises on the nightmare like the rising sun, she notices a yellowed note, stuck to the window with a key attached to it.

‘I knew you’d come back.’

She purses her lips and snatches the note off of the window, causing the key to clatter to the ground, and she doesn’t care for where it lands, its origins as worthless as its conclusion, but she does look for where that old iron key lands. She drops to the floor, her palms pressed to the damp concrete to find the key.

After a few seconds, Eliona finds it with greater ease than she anticipated; most of this town is filled with complex riddles, the pathways between one point and the next a garbled mess that does not make sense. It is senseless, unintelligible like a dream—a nightmare dressed in white and bathed in obscurity.

The door unlocks with a loud clack, echoing her progression of self to the monsters that snarl outside, gargling on their own liquified insides, and she pushes back the doors to her past and her world is enveloped by the sweet sound of a piano playing.

She walks into the chapel and the doors swing shut behind her with a clang, and she turns around at the noise to see if it truly had shut on her, leaving her nestled in this faux paradise that fools dare to pine for. She recognises that dirtied red and yellow diamond patterned carpet, dirtied from years and years of filthy pariahs coming to offer their sins to a gluttonous god, and the yellow light from above that was worn with grease and age; it would only be a matter of time before it shattered completely.

In the distance, the piano is almost melodious and the sweet hum of a lady sat there, offering her soul to the instrument to bestow art upon the world, fills her heart with comfort, as if this tune was familiar—had she heard it before? Was it sung to her at her bedside by a mother she no longer remembers?

It certainly wouldn’t have been her grandmother, so who could it be?

Her footsteps are muted by the carpet and she’s careful not to make too much noise, lest she end the performance prematurely. Her eyes scan the entrance and she sees these old, grime-infested, picture frames that seem, somewhat, familiar to her. Each one is a flicker of a past that crumbles when she cradles the memory.

While one piano continues its labour, she inches closer to the paintings and sees a pristine, rather out of place, golden frame with a silver plaque in the centre that reads;

‘Piano Concerto No. 2, 2nd Movement: Sergei Rachmaninoff…’

The rest if it is unintelligible, a garbled mess of rot and decay over time, she can’t make out the rest of the letters but, looking up at the picture, it seems to be of a person sat at a piano with the sun beams raining down upon them. They seemed enthralled, possessed even, by the music and the dulcet tones of the keys as they are softly struck, each one a desperate cry to be heard.

Eliona steps back and takes a peek around the corner to the opening of the main bowel of the chapel and sees the sun cascading through stained glass glass, bursting through the morphed glass to impose upon the world shards of red, blue and green. She sees the same rows of benches, carved with inscriptions and childish graffiti, some phallic in nature and some just hearts and letters; a promise to stay together forever when tomorrow is barely a given, but the crux of the matter, the lever that keeps the world on an even axis—she can see it in between the cracks in the walls.

The carpet cuts off after the gallery finishes and her footsteps are far more pronounced on the varnished timber at her feet while she walks, coming at the beginning of the aisle and, in the back right corner of the Chapel, she can see that piano that the keys struck true upon. Each one is a calculated choice, familiar and yet so far from recollection; it is a hazy memory, drowned in the opaque fog that haunts this town.

And, as she comes to a stop, looking at the intricate patterns on that altar ahead of her, she’s overcome with that dread once more and a thought sings in her ears.

This should not be here.

This whole Chapel it shouldn’t even exist.

It’s an impossibility yet, how come it’s here, brick for brick, timber by timber and from dust to dust?

“What the…” She mumbles under her breath as she steps down, onto the aisle, and she reaches out to the aged benches, with bits of wood missing from use and general decay, to feel its unyielding touch beneath her calloused fingertips.

Beyond the sunbeams, hidden in that yellow line between depravity and divinity, she spots the confessional booth.

It was her home inside of this atrocious place. It was where she spent her time here, dragged into that tiny box where sweat permeated her nostrils and that disgusting stench of pleasure flooded her senses.

The memory of the vile, venomous viper that dared to slither around her joints, squeeze ever so slightly and coil around her sense of self to constrict it—to suffocate it.

Her fists tremble at her sides as the light drifts ever so slightly above, dancing upon the floor as the crescendos land and the score ends with no one playing.

She was their Yariv, the fabled Adversary that comes to tempt holy men away and grant shame upon those that she shares a household with. She is the reason the world has fallen to wrack and ruin, why their beloved God left them here, to fend for themselves amidst a lightless place.

“You’re just like your whore of a mother.” A voice keens in her ears, a voice she has not heard in decades and it sets her thoughts ablaze.

Eliona screams, she vociferates so loudly that it would be no wonder if He can hear her, and she picks up whatever is closes to her and, it happens to be a worn bible with the cross scratches away from the cover, and she throws it, as hard as she can, at the altar. It doesn’t break on impact, it simply bounces off and clatters to the floor but she, the fated impurity in the world of the pure, is a jagged edge of a blade.

She trembles with rage, with the suppression of memory and the resurgence of a blind fury that roars in her veins.

Years upon years she endured their psychotic babbling, endured their endless religious persecution and endured at the hands of the person that was supposed to be a herald of light, be a servant of God Himself.

“Shut up.” She spits like her likeness, “You know nothing.” She bites her lip to swallow her rage, to keep the words she wished she could scream at them at bay.

But, if they truly knew nothing, then how did they know she would return?

“We know you better than you know yourself—we know what you are, Yariv!” Her grandmother yells back at her rebuke, a grand guillotine that sacrificed many a head at the table to rule the roost.

Eliona wryly laughs at the spectral maw, she laughs in the face of the voices that tormented her, knowing that their silence would be sweeter than a thousand hearts, gifted to the villains below the earth, that their silence would taste as decadent as the wine distilled from his blood.

She shakes her head and her nails bite into the flesh of her palms as she turns away, seeking the higher path of salvation, and begins to walk back where she came and, as she comes back to the gallery, the picture frames fall to the floor, shattering the plaques and their words of praise clatter to the ground.

“You must pay for your sins!” Her grandmother shrills and she can hear the pitter-patter of her bare feel across the waxed timber as she lunges for her.

She barely makes the turn before it’s too late and she just, by the skin of her teeth, manages to avoid the knife that is thrust down upon her and, here, beneath the red light of the stained glass window above the door, she can see her grandmother in her manic state, her depravity so clear. She can see that twisted rage in her eyes, the way it swims between her pupils and lingers on the cusp of her breath as she sucks each breath in.

Eliona stumbles away, turning back on the door as she seeks to out some distance between herself and her rampaging grandmother. She picks up a candelabra from one of the aisle seats and throws that at her, flames and all, and the flame catches upon her clothing.

Her grandmother screams and howls as the flames consume her, just as they did back then, just as they consumed the Chapel back then.

Even in the dance of the flames, her grandmother persists but is oddly calm about it, had she accepted her fate?

“You will always be Yariv—the devil our daughter gave birth too.”

Is all she says as the flames consume her wholly and she falls, face first onto the floor as the knife, the scorching blade that was supposed to purge the devil from their world, clatters at Eliona’s feet.

Staring down at the blade now seems so familiar.

It was different to what Angela envisioned it to be and it was different to what James saw it to be.

It represented all the delusions that her grandmother and grandfather were fed by the priest, by their fated God, and by the world at large and, as she pulls down the sleeves of her turtleneck to snatch it up and take the trophy back, she hears the crackle of flame eating the wood from the floor.

A flame is a hungry beast, and she would not be its meal.

Briskly, Eliona makes her way back to the door and the door, as she yanks and pulls, does not budge. The heat, this inescapable heat of retribution, must’ve made the wood swell.

“No! God damn it!” She curses desperately as she looks around for another escape but the fire creeps up to her, and, between those flickers of destruction, she can hear her grandmother laughing at her misfortune.

‘The sinful always fall before their punishment.’

It was a trite thing that a young girl had said to her once, on her way back through the pastures all those years ago and, even then as the rain dripped down from the corn, she believed that she did not deserve to be punished, she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Ellie!” A familiar voice calls, frail but firm, from just beyond the barrier of the Chapel and, beyond the warped glass, she can spot Laura struggling with the door from outside, “H-Hold on! I’ll get James! James!” She shouts at him, her head turning to help her voice reach him.

Silent Hill, this small town that was once filled with vitality and exuded a hopeful exuberance when the sun rose upon the people, had changed Eliona. As she traced the foreign streets to find purpose, it rejected her presence and fed upon her repression. She adapted to survive, becoming the Devil that her grandparents labelled her as such.

James had Pyramid Head, an executioner to come rend the life from his body as recompense for taking the one he swore forever to.

Eliona had Yariv, a devil come to lead the hopeful away into the bowels of hell and to feed upon their screams.

[jotunkhiicha]

I completed one run of Silent Hill and it now lives rent free in my head.

I adore it, so here is “Devil’s Lingerie,” a story about finding humanity in the thicket of misery.

“𝐷𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑙’𝑠 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒”

The rain slices against Yariv’s flesh as she walks, her gaze blurry and her mind unfocused, unsure of where she truly wishes to go. Her feet carry her onwards, stumbling forward like an inebriated fool, too lost in the poison that sludges through her veins like a mud, making every movement arduous and her limbs sag. Each step is as laborious, if not more so, than the last but, beneath the popping streetlights, she still trudges on.

She doesn’t know why she’s compelled forwards, what keeps her moving onward through the barren streets of Silent Hill that change so much over time?

What changed?

Amongst the rain, her own tears fall and she, in her haze, struggles to notice a Lying Shadow that stumbles over to her, unable to walk properly due to its elongated limbs. It leans, it wretches and its bile, the chemical twinge of radioactive waste, burns through her flesh and seers its presence on her skin like a brand or marks from a lover. She screams as she shirks away, unable to conceal the pure, unadulterated fear that has wrestled free from the confines of her atrophied heart—yet the creature still follows. It’s faster than she is, having gotten used to its unnatural gate, and it lunges at her, throws itself at her body and they both go tumbling down onto the concrete.

She scratches at its flesh, if it could even be called that, and pushes away in equal measure. “Get off me!” She pleads with a terrified scream and the buildings, these rotten epitaphs of a time long passed, echo the pathetic sound back to her as if mocking her.

This helplessness seeps into her muscles as the creature rears its head back, a familiar sight, and she can hear that congealing of its insides turning to mush as it prepares itself to regurgitate the splotches of ink that the devil drew it with.

She is going to die here, just as he did—a thousand times over.

Was it painful for him? Did he wish, deep down, for someone to come and rescue him as he lay there in a pool of his blood and his entrails? Or did he find peace in that moment of stillness, awakening a twisted euthymia, born from the remnants of his twisted body?

“Please…!” She begs of something larger than this town, something bigger than all the things she had dared to mock.

Yet, who listens in a town where even the monsters are mirages and their own worst enemy is themselves?

No one.

The crackle of dream shattering far off in the recesses of her mind as she finds that tranquility she had seen, so many times before as the ink pours forth and, then, something yanks her away. Its limbs scuttle against the floor, screeching as she is hauled away by the snag of her clothing and dragged beneath the concrete, down into the bowels of hell itself.

Worse still? Yariv does not scream, she only silently cries as the darkness consumes her wholly and the feeling of weightlessness possesses her totally.

Is she falling? It’s hard to tell, and she only surmises that when she lands against something soft, yet also rock hard at the same time. She wants to move, but can’t find it within herself to do such a thing.

Her limbs, filled with sand, do not move and her consciousness is whisked away like a lone dove, set to fly above the flooded orchard to grant a crown of thorns. Beyond the boundaries of her thoughts, she can hear the creaking of metal, the wax and wane of industrial might, come to rot like abandoned flesh, and she knows who it will be, who the damned man at the altar would be.

Yariv can smell it, the stench of sweat and that sickly scent of iron as it suggested that brutality had been used as a means of passage, a tool to forge a path. The subtle scent of sweat as it permeated through clothing, sticking the worn fabric to dirtied flesh, and suggested a fight, a battle of wills and of desperation.

If there was no such thing as fate, then what brought them here, together, beneath the dull light of a pocket-flashlight that illuminated her features? What else could have pushed the pair of them forwards and left her here, rather than let her die in the centre of that street?

“Yariv?”

There’s the sound of shuffle footsteps and, here, Yariv grunts, shifts and opens her emerald eyes, revealing her bloodshot orbs and her face, that had once shown peace, twists into horror as she recalls what has befallen her.

She scuttles back on the bed, bringing her legs up to her chest and she holds herself together like a bow upon a present at Christmas. Her heart pounds in her chest, a reminder that she exists but also that she must suffer, and her breathing comes out in short, ragged breaths as terror swims in her eyes, dancing on her lashes.

“Hey, Yariv?” James calls to her, softly calling her name to encourage her to look upon his weary face, “It’s just me, James.”

She shakes her head, biting her lower lip as memories flutter to the surface like moths trying to taste the light and this guilt, this burden that sags on her shoulders, is palpable—it swallows the pleasantries of mundanity.

“…I have watched you die a thousand times,” she takes a shuddering breath and, beneath that beam of light he carried with him like a slice of heaven, she turns her head to look at him, “I thought I’d be desensitised to it James but… but I’m not. I was so…” she shakes her head vehemently to fight the tears, but a sob crawls from between her lips.

James grips the bars of the cell door as he watches her. “Scared.”

He recognised it.

“I remember…” she whispers into the cell where her breath crystallises in front of her, “I remember what it means to feel and I… I want nothing more than to leave this town.” She clenches the worn mattress cover, uncaring of the rusted springs that threaten to pierce her flesh.

He furrows his brows. “H-How long have you been in this town for?” He shifts his weight while he glances around the room for a way to free her, the cryptic person who has been a mirage in the fog this entire time.

Yariv raises her head. “I don’t know,” She pauses and stammers, “Long enough to forget where I came from.” She rises, pushing herself off of the bed as she takes unsure steps towards him.

A metal pipe is struck from afar, the sound of something scuttling across the walls, reverberates into their ears and they snap their gaze over to where it originates from and that fear, that haunting look of terror, burns beneath the light of his torch.

She brings her hands over his on the bars and looks deep into his hollowed eyes, his eyes worn with exhaustion, to find comfort.

“I don’t want to die, James.”

He widens his eyes. That’s the most human thing she has said to him since he stumbled into the fog and saw her there, standing in the centre of the cross-section with her hand dancing in the fog. She had always seemed to out of reach—out of touch with her own humanity—and deep beneath the burning flesh of their touch, he wonders, what changed that?

He steps back, his hands sliding out from beneath hers and he presses his lips together in a fine line as he flickers his gaze between her and the direction of the noise. “J-Just stay there. I’ll find a way to get you out of there, alright?” He gestures for her to stay put, but the way she frantically shakes her head and shuffles closer to the bars as he steps further away, it tells him she’s terrified, “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

As the light fades, she wonders if he truly will.

[jotunkhiicha]

If Nora was on earth, I imagine her working on Wall Street. Power suit and all.

[jotunkhiicha]

To change and to grow. To strive and to seek.

To endure and to perish.

Wilting Willow.

Deep in the recesses of her mind, beneath the chemicals she infuses into her body with a glass of water in the morning, Fran knew she would be the last one of the Green family to remain.

The heavens open up, spilling down their tears from the lofty heights that man can only ever dream to reach, and she is drenched by the oncoming swell of sorrow, but she doesn’t move from her spot as if she has been fixed to that spot; gazing upon her sister’s sleek black coffin with a bouquet lilies and nightshades. In a way, only her body is there as her mind recalls the winding tale of their traumatic youth and laments the distance between them as they grew old, never once appreciating the privilege of tomorrow.

There’s the crunch of footsteps across gravel, the grinding of stone against stone as they fail to fight back under the weight of an approaching being to the empty brazier.

“Fran?” A gruff voice murmurs.

There’s the pitter-patter of rain against an umbrella that, despite everyone else’s advice, is raised above her head and she looks up at it.

Sleek black; just like her coffin.

Only then does she turn her head to see Hank standing there, beside her, with a knowing look upon his face.

They don’t talk, not like this, there’s no need for a conversation when their words have been stolen and written down as stage directions. Even if the words vibrate on her larynx, as they fight to crawl across her tongue and spill out from between her lips and where the world does not offer the latitude of forgiveness, they do not escape and she sighs.

He knows what she wishes to say, but he also knows there is no point in her saying anything; what will that achieve?

“C’mon,” he gestures with his head and turns his back, “Let’s get you inside. You already look like a wet dog.” He chuckles as she steps into his embrace, allowing him to escort her away from the reminder that her sister will not come back—not this time.

A smile blossoms on her face at his comment and, soon, it gives way for the pollination of laughter and she howls.

[jotunkhiicha]

I often wonder if, in some strange way, in our last moments we find what we were destined to become and if we succeeded in our purpose.

Wasted Urns and Yearnings.

Laying in a pool of her own blood, Laryllis does not weep, nor does she feel much of anything—save the throbbing in her side and all over her back as her blood pumps out of her. It oozes out slowly with every pump of her heart, and each beat is slower than the last and she wonders if this is finally the end.

Her sapphire orbs dither up to the glass ceiling and she sees the dust bunnies cascade around her as they dance in the beams of light—hopping to and fro to embrace a warmth they cannot, and will not, ever truly appreciate. The light makes her eyes sting and she winces, but she only averts her gaze a little bit, deciding to focus on the wisps of darkness that waltz above her.

Slowly, and steadily, she feels her fingertips becoming colder and colder, as if a tundra is sweeping through this building. The frigid kiss of death lingers upon her blue lips and she hopes that it is true, she hopes she fades into dawn as she truly desires.

Even as she lays atop the finest marble tiles and clad in the finest blue gown, her blood still worms it’s way through and into the white tiles and through the fabric. If she had any other thoughts aside from the suicidal fantasies of a woman bound to live forever, she might’ve placed her hands over her wound. She might have tried to save herself with magic. She might have wept like a babe at first breath. She might have done her own last rites so that she might reach the heavenly plains of euthymia; the forbidden state of utter tranquility.

As she feigns delight in death, regret slithers up her insides and into her tear ducts, making a single tear slide down from the corner of her eye and down her temple. The warm tear sunders the chill of her flesh and worms towards her ear before splashing down into the pool of her blood.

Laryllis forces herself to look up once more and finds her eyes no longer sting in the wake of the sunlight, rather, she weeps at the idea that she will leave them behind.

Perhaps in response to her heartfelt wish, the doors to the library slowly creep open and she hears the clatter of metal against metal.

There’s a pause. There’s a fragment of space that fails to catch up with the rest and the world falls silent for that single lapse… then it explodes with sound.

“Lara!” Barthandalus cries vehemently before he runs over to her and his hands hover over her.

Her eyesight jitters and she grimaces at the sound of her heart as she looks up at him. “…You.” She whispers as her head is lifted up by him and he places a hand over her wound.

“What happened to you?”

[jotunkhiicha]

Chengzhi is, actually, originally supposed to be an Al’Kamaka who takes the form of a foxian envoy for Nora but hey, who says she can’t go into the Luofu for some fun?

The Broken Pendulum.

While the stars bleed black into the night sky, drowning the lecherous hours in an all-encompassing finality, Chengzhi stalks the rooftops like a hunter, or perhaps a crane fluttering about in the clouds to see what the people beneath its abode dare partake in.

Perhaps, if she truly were a crane, she’d fly back to whence she came if she saw the way the blood spills between the cracks in the cobblestone, the way it seeps through the cracks and into the foundations of the Luofu to enrich the place where secrets go to die. Her white feathers would be dyed red and she would become a Trojan for despair, for the horrid demon would attach itself like a parasite and suck the very joy from her marrow.

Yet, she is no crane.

She is a curious sparrow that flitters about on the cusp of the, ever cordial, hurricane.

While most foxains fear the crimson tides, the awakening of that vermillion moon that shines bright like a lover’s promise, Chengzhi welcomes the ancient story to appear once more so she might delight in its denouement—so that she lives long slough to watch it unravel like a loose thread upon a tapestry.

Her four tails, each one stained gold in the avarice of the gods she hates, and that hate her in tandem, are like falling petals from a wilting flower; they trace her every movement and act as a stalwart reminder that she is a beast beneath all that demure and her dulcet tones. If one could strip away the bark of her facade, peel away the tar from the jagged rocks and see the true self beneath, all that would be there is a feral creature that is desperate for acknowledgement and revenge.

If the stars were to die tonight, she will find joy in their departure from this world; for she will have what she has pined for centuries.

“Mummy, look!” A young girl calls, her little hands reaching up to the golden leaves of Chengzhi’s presence.

She is gold leaf pressed against food to devour, the drizzle of honey in a cup of tea or the crushed leaves, set to unfurl at a moments notice, that lay at the bottom of a cup.

“It’s the Heaven Punisher. Have THEY abandoned us?”

She smiles giddily at the question. “THEY abandoned you long ago, child.” She murmurs as she meets the horizon in a twisted dance, stepping out off the roof and onto blind faith.

[jotunkhiicha]

Evelynne Anqore’s short story ✨

The Way Sorrow Burns.

‘Just run, Eve! Don’t look back!’

It had been a quiet voice that bristled through her ears and smacked against her eardrums in a frightening motion. She didn’t know horror before that night, she didn’t know the pain of watching her life come apart when a pin was pulled and the heat—the flash—of igniting propane curled against her flesh like shadows, the shadow of a decrepit monster.

It had brought sunrise to a life that did not need to meet dawn in a rapturous embrace. All she ever wanted was for it to endure under the balm of the tempestuous light of the moon, yet even that light is a borrowed thing and comes from the receptacle of her hatred—the Sun.

Yet, amongst the ash and soot of a memory bonded to flesh like a tumour, there exists a strange sense of peace about it. She recognises she can never go back to that childhood of crayons scraping against papaya walls, the sound of laughter as it got carried along the pipework of the house like little marionettes, dancing to a merry tune. Those days are long since dead, buried beneath the mortar of trauma and despair; each tear is a trickle of cement that stops joy from ever rising from that pit ever again.

So what better way to live with a past that has died? To make peace with it. To accept its loss and to never forget it.

The dead endure, even as they writhe against the chained fence and snarl at her, she can see how they endure. Their flesh, as once perfect recreations of a God that did not care for her prayers, is reanimated as broken canvases with blood, with their entrails like beloved ribbon to mark the entrance to the unpaved.

With practiced ease, Evelynne loads her beloved gun once more, that comforting sound of the magazine slotting into its home, the sheath, and she takes aim.

Where her sister, Rosalyn, liked to dance with her prey, keep them close and pepper them with faux attention until their insides spill from elation, Evelynne preferred simplicity. She did not want to dance with the devil. She did not wish to barter with life.

Evelynne liked the distance a bullet afforded her and the totality of it all, even if the recoil shattered and asked the little girl within the same question he did from decades ago.

‘Little girl, do you really think you can fight me?’

What fight is there to be had with nine millimetres of lead, of the catch of flesh as it rips apart and settles a delightful little hole that consumes blood, life and every burning aspect of vitality left in a body?

There isn’t. Evelynne knows that.

So why do they get back up?

Perhaps her Sergeant was right.

‘Fear will kill you, and weapons make for better friends because they will keep you alive.’

[jotunkhiicha]

Started playing Resident Evil and I’ve fallen in love with it, so say hi to Rosalyn Anqore as she begins her journey into Raccoon City for more than just state secrets.

And Through the Dust, She Rides.

Clack. Clack.

Like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Rosalyn Anqore rides into hell with her trusted steed—fury—at her side.

Rosalyn strolls through Raccoon City, stalking corridors, slinking in and out of shadows in the streets and buildings, with her trusted beretta in hand and a torch, attached to her left breast pocket, illuminating the darkness in a way that one would expect a nightingale to do—yet she is no balm for the pain, a remedy for the ailing, she is the consequence.

She is divine retribution in form and in the sound of the zip of her bullets.

“It’s messy in there, Rosa.” Her trusted guide, the optic nerve to her retinas, relays to her, “It’ll be a shit-show. Are you sure he’s worth it?”

Rosalyn scoffs at the words of the oracle along the audio channel. Her words were venom disguised as a delightful treat; a warning, perhaps? Did she see something that she could not sense? Was there something in the aether that foretold her death in this wretched city where the dead become the living and the living haunt the dead?

As the city lights flicker, as the dead bewail and the crackling of open flames draws to a fever-pitch, she places her hand to her earpiece. “I made a promise.” She staunchly says as she scans the area around her, noting the pile of bodies and entrails that seem more like forbidden ribbon being snipped to welcome the opening of the city.

A sigh is born from lips that are not her own. “Always a stickler for a promise, eh, Rosa?” The jovial tone seems to taper out and wither like the rest of the city, having been born from ill-gotten gains and left to ferment in a polluted echo chamber, it rots in her brain like smoke does to lungs.

The tar of forgotten words, the sludge of withering memories, drips down into her gut like an infection and births a sickly feeling for Rosalyn. Even so, she moves onwards and pushes open a creaky, battle-worn, fire escape door and she clampers up metal stairs with her boots clacking on them.

“Trying to find a vantage point? You know that’s my job, right?”

The rain comes down heavier, each droplet a tear from the heavens as they weep over the fate of the creatures they had nursed from the dawn of humanity, watching as they fall to forbidden depths and rise amongst the filth of preservation and perseverance.

Rosalyn comes to a chain-fence gate. A meagre obstacle, she thinks with a frown as she throws her weight against it.

It sings an aria of isolation, a warning into her ears and the world around that Rosalyn seeks passage—and she will not be denied. She steps back and kicks the gate in, having it slam open and rattle against the fence of the roof she, now, has access to.

“Wouldn’t want you to have all the fun here, Evelynne.” She quips, a change from her somber attitude from earlier.

“Aren’t you so considerate, dear sister?” Evelynne laughs heartedly at the tonal shift, silently thankful that something so bright can come from something so dark, “Your six o’clock!” Her voice cracks like thunder down the line and her sister steps back into a turn, her gun drawn, and she shoots at the enemy coming towards her.

It twists, it turns, it stumbles and it lurches. Each step seems cumbersome, as if each step is not its own as the blood-matted blue plaid shirt flaps in the wind. It stutters back from the force of her bullets, each shot a calculated focus-point on its body; the heart and two shots to the head.

Yet it still tumbles down her path like a billowing gale, in name alone.

“That wasn’t in the brief!”

Rosalyn furrows her brows and aims for the kneecaps, opting to immobilise the creature rather than eradicate it all together and, if there are more of these beings, her gunfire will only draw more in like moths to the infernal flame.

Two more shots, each one a gift to the knees to guide this creature into prayer, and it goes down, leaving her in on this rooftop with the angels of woe upon her skin.

“If that was a struggle for you, what is it going to be like for him?” Evelynne whispers, the crackle of distance a reminder that Rosalyn is alone in Raccoon city, “Does he even stand a chance?”

In her heart, she wants to say that yes, he does stand every chance and can survive this accursed city if he just keeps going forward, but her mind, her rationale, it pens a very different story. Each lick of worry fans the flames of fury in her heart for having this city turn into this wasteland, into the apocalypse, and her beloved be thrust into the mix of it with no warning.

“I don’t know, but I’m not leaving until I find him.” Rosalyn clenches her fists, her promise burning like the propane from below.

Evelynne clicks her tongue. “Then off into the night we ride.”

[jotunkhiicha]

Perfectly imperfect!

Beelzebub’s Wraith and Baal’s Maiden.

“Do you think that, when they made us, they wanted us to be perfect—just as they are?”

Centuries on, Skáfos still doesn’t know if she can answer that question posed to her by a, long since dead, comrade. If they were, indeed, perfect, why did their bodies break so easily? Why do they bleed when they hurt? Why do they cry when they are sad?

Why are they… vulnerable?

“No…”

She would reply if she could return to that cliff edge where the rivers flowed golden.

Now, all that remains of that world is ash and dust at her own hand as she tried to find these perfectly imperfect Gods and their distasteful cultists.

She recalls, with great clarity, the moment she came to an agreement with the God Sin amalgamation in her heart, Yozui. They were upon that ledge, gazing up at their sun with cheeks red, saturated in her salty tears as she had weeped at the injustice of the Gods above and how they callously handed out punishment.

She wanted revenge, oh how her limbs burned for the taste of sanguine delight, how they ached to feel the yielding of flesh’s and the crack of bones beneath her fingertips.

And Yozui gave that to her.

“Aren’t we perfect now?”

[jotunkhiicha]

I adore Fire Emblem Fates and I forever regret not buying Revelations before the store closed down… anyways!

A Heavy Crown—and Heavier Vows.

“This burden…” Yuko murmurs as she drags the bloodied Raijinto along the forest floor, the singed corpses of her enemies as the only proof she ever existed, “Was never mine to bear.”

And, oh, how she loathes it.

She wishes she could discard it, dismantle the system that created the situation she finds herself in.

She wants to slaughter Corrin with her own bare hands, to feel the yielding of their flesh as she plunges Raijinto into them—just as Ryoma was forced to. She dreams of the day she can see the light fade from Corrin’s eyes just as she watched Ryoma; she wants their loved ones to feel the moment their corpse runs cold with death.

She wants them to feel her misery—experience it and live it.

She wants to extinguish in a blaze of blood and beauty—to burn as quickly as their love lasted.

After he died, she was never the same, not even as she held his armour in her hands and wept upon them.

She wasn’t the same as she ascended those steps to that throne and was crowned.

She wasn’t the same when Aikaya threw herself into the Bottomless Canyon, joining Takumi in the afterlife.

She was not the same when he died, but she cannot escape it, nor can she escape him.

In her dreams, he comes to her, not as a spectre haunting her, but as that loving, foolish man she knew him to be and loved him to be. Her dreams are a record of all the memories they created together, all the promises they made and the vows they swore when they were married.

She recalls his warmth and the way his hair cascaded, even the days he asked her to help him tend to it—she treasures them and, even in this dead forest, she weeps as she recalls them.

“…why?” Yuko seethes through gritted teeth as she suddenly turns and thrusts her sword in the direction of the footfalls, “Why did you take him from me!?” She screams and all the sparrows fly from their nests.

She envies them in this way, even as she’s the rabid rabbit come to face the wolf who has eaten the rest of her family.

Corrin raises her hands and shakes her head, almost acting as if she were attempting to tame a wild beast. “Yuko, we don’t have to do—“

“Draw your blade!”

“Yuko—“

“You killed everyone I loved—you destroyed my entire life! I have no words apart from draw your fucking blade!” She screams and she affirms this by slashing forwards with Raijinto, causing lightning to flash before Corrin, threatening to kill her.

Corrin jumps back, unsheathing Yato as she keeps her eyes glued upon the mad Hoshido Queen. “Yuko! I don’t want to fight you!” She yells back as she dodges another blast.

Laughing, Yuko dashes forwards and raises Raijinto. “Well, I want to kill you—seems we’re at an impasse!” She oozes malevolent intent as she goes to decapitate the princess, but she ducks once more.

She is slippery like a viper, isn’t she?

“Face it! You are the reason Ryoma, Takumi, Aikaya and everyone else is dead!” She manically exclaims as she frantically slashes at Corrin, who simply defends against her attacks.

Corrin widens her eyes and defends against another mad slash, eyes wide with shock and horror.

“Aikaya… dead? She’s dead?” She dubiously mumbles as she then yells to dodge another attack.

“Yes! She threw herself into the Bottomless Canyon after Takumi died at your hand! Tell me,” She hoarsely hisses as she dashes behind Corrin, “How does it feel to rip apart lives? You must let me know.”

[jotunkhiicha]

Separation makes the heart grow fonder.

And Strawberry Doesn’t Seem the Same.

As the sunlight bleeds its benediction across the unfurling petals of the lily encased in glass, there’s a shadow that encroaches up the stem of this white delight. Pure as fresh snowfall, as innocent as a babe’s eyes at first gaze, the lily’s petals seem a touch close to divine and a doctrine that others try so earnestly to abide by.

And, just as the darkness of sun creeps up the stem, the petals move to bathe in the light of the burning star—to be coated in the remedy of memory and sheathed in the soulless melody of sanctity. The white petals are blinding but invite more darkness into the lily and the underbelly of these petals, like the underbelly of a grotesque beast, hold notions that are beyond comprehension and are far too abhorrent to behold.

The white fights back the black tar of transgression and, this lily encased in a thick sheet of glass is akin to Larisa Delugia Bronviska.

The haunting visage of life no longer attainable.

The reflection of one’s self as they drown in the deluge.

Larisa is the lily swept away by the deluge and, thankfully or perhaps unfortunately, she was picked up by a curious man.

Her body floats atop the roaring oceans just upon the boarder of the Adrestian Empire. Her black, thin dress dithers upon the algae as she drifts in and out, bobbing along the waves as she is pushed towards the shore, then dragged back. Her black hair has a curious white streak through it, as if someone had opened a package but couldn’t bare to see the rest of it, tossing it out amongst all the other garbage off the cliff. Perhaps that is exactly what happened to her; she was cast off a property for being less than the garbage one might be fine with coexisting with for a few days.

Eventually, her body finds itself upon the shoreline and a tall man, with hair like that of uncooked vanilla cake mix with hints of strawberry, and eyes that seemed like fine jewels to seal in metallic casings and gloat about possessing.

From afar, he thought he could see a form floating along the ocean but, for some reason he felt a compulsion to go and investigate this corpse that rides the waves. In many ways, it could be likened to a Siren and the way they use their wiles and voices to lure in prey; a compulsion and an impulse to step heedlessly into the waiting arms of Death and into the trap it, so laboriously, crafted.

Yet, as he reaches out to the curious corpse, fingertips upon her forearms, she shifts and flutters her eyes.

“Protect...” Larisa murmurs as she jumps in and out of lucidity; hopping through hoops that are her consciousness.

The man raises his brows as he rolls her into his lap and holds her there, gazing at her like one would peruse a museum—yet he broke through the blockades and held the priceless exhibit—and he feels an intense desire to keep the promise, just as his intense as his bloodlust.

“…I shall.” He whispers and he stands up, bringing her with him and, it is here, as the sunset bleeds across the coast and meets the backs of these two lilies flittering about inside the tar of sin, that they find their fates intertwined forever.

[jotunkhiicha]

I run Blade with Bronya, Lynx and Ruan Mei; it’s a fun combination!

Chains & Whips.

Over the years, Skáfos had learnt not to fear chains, nor to fear whips, or any sort of torturous implement, really. Even as she kneels, chains keeping her arms above her head, she cared very little for the current predicament, of which, she scarcely remembers the events of.

Sighing bemusedly, she hangs her head low and wriggles her fingertips, resting against the unique metal around her wrists as she flexes forwards. The wall creaks, it groans and beseeches her to remain motionless in this coffin while the maleficent moonlight bathes her cheeks. It glistens across her flesh, igniting the pristine contours of her face and she sighs at the notion; it reminds her of angels and how her Gods lied about their thralls.

“Ironic…” Skáfos chuckles to herself as the chains rattle against one another, pulling at their place in the walls.

She could rip them out, but that would be distasteful, considering all the effort her captors took to steal her away—however, every damsel has some sort of knight come to save them from their ivory tower, right? While tradition has been little more than muted guidance from the dead, she cannot deny the delight of leaving all the jailbreaking to someone else; it’s not her business anymore.

It excites her, so much so, she smiles in the face of despair that might be born from certain destruction. With blood coating her pearly white teeth, she grins at the faces of Death with their white masks and sickles. With nails keeping her chains to the wall, she laughs heartedly at the idea of someone drilling the golden ore from her veins and drinking this rotted soul up, pouring the very essence of sin into a chalice to slurp—to delight. She finds it so humorous in fact, her mirth reverberates against the walls of this cell and into the depths of this esoteric paradise.

She howls at herself when she looks upon the familiar golden rivers.

There’s a thud as she contemplates who will come and oust her from her gilded cage of hay, blood and debauchery. In her heart, in her ancient bastion of blood and death, she needn’t think of who will take her from the heavens to rend her in hell—it was Blade and it will always be Blade.

How dare she doubt the demon’s tenacity?

She can hear that familiar wet plop of organs being sundered from their blessed place beneath flesh. A gasp escapes her lips as she widens her eyes at the prospect of hope—such a sight blinds her and she lurches forwards.

“Blade!” She calls out to him.

And he answers her siren call in the thud of bodies against the floor, like a sailor caught adrift a crimson sea.

“Skáfos.”