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ephemeralove · 2 years ago

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lifetaker

A scar remains long after the wound is gone. The mottled flesh on Katarina’s palm looks even fiercer beneath the firelight, and lingers with her like a dark memory, or the whisper of learned instincts in the back of her mind, quiet and yet much more alive than the one who carved them into her.

She supposes she must have always had an aptitude for magic, for it was certainly not her potential that had drawn Lady Eremiyah to her. What it was instead, she would never know; all that remained with her, in the end, was the memory of discerning eyes peering down at her from their throne of lashes, so delicate and yet so damnably sharp.

(“Repeat after me,” Lady Eremiyah had said. Her hand laid atop Reese’s, long and chilly digits pinning a child’s much softer palms to the worn pages of a book. Where once Reese’s heart had skipped many a beat over the gift of warmth and the grace of her charity, Katarina recalled the faint yet suffocating pressure atop her fingers. And she had repeated after her savior, so many times that she had lost herself in the fire. Lady Eremiyah never smiled at her.)

Wisps of flame glide smoothly over the back of her hand, slithering as a snake would along scarred skin – but, absent its bite, there is only the faint brush and comfort of its warmth. A viper bereft of its fangs could be pretty, but the turn of the heel of her palm laid bare the truth of things: she had chosen to keep her fangs; the finesse with which the serpentine cinder dances for her now belies the intent both cruel and clumsy that lays beneath the patterns carved in fire.

As ugly as the twist of Lady Eremiyah’s mouth, watching the way magic sang for her pretty little puppet, her own as pure as the innocence she would soon grind ‘neath her heel. Yes, just as pure… and just as frail.

Now she is dead and buried, and fire still laughs and sings for Katarina as it had for Reese – only now, night and thunder join their voices to the chorus, and her stomach lurches. It burbles with laughter and nausea in equal parts, for pride is a difficult thing on an empty stomach, and Katarina has not tasted it many times before. But this is it, isn’t it? Pride. Lady– …Eremiyah might have taught her how to take a life, yet now the wretched fool she cast aside outlives her, and in spells learned and writ in blood, she has found a way to see life for what it is: beautiful, and worthy of protection. (Hers, too.) She has found someone who will see her magic dance, and smile.

An infant flame drops from between pinched fingertips, bursting like a flower in bloom over the parcel laid atop her bed. Neither it nor the dark bishop’s garb inside are tainted with the touch of ash, for Katarina does not need to burn her past to move beyond it. It is her weapon; it is what delivered her unto the present, and still yet unto the future. Most importantly, it is not her– not Katarina, not the version of her she has made for herself– to destroy so wantonly.

(...That, and she does not wish to incur any fees.)

The fire flickers harmlessly out, and a smile tugs her lips. Perhaps it is a little bit childish, but she looks forward to showing them both her new tricks.

#class mastery drabble #wc: 590 #class; dark bishop #uhhh not sure if this needs a tag or anything but it's just generally mumbling about eremiyah and she sucks #eremiyah bishop vs katarina dark bishop has some good potential to think about but my brain is fried scrambled and thirdcookingmethod

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lady-o-ren · 6 years ago

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The Witch and The Red Man

Chapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Dawn had come and gone but two souls would never have known so, as it's gentle ray's had withered to dusk by the vast treetops where all beneath the boughs was still a shroud of secrets. As the wearied two trudged deeper into the wilderness a looming fog began to drift along the bramble. Plumes of purple and pink petals (deceptive in color and covered in thorns) dotted the ground like stars piercing the white to guide a tentative step away from small pools of water that were scattered about, reflecting only what ones imagination could invision in it's boggy depths.

A creature barely human, vacant eyes turned up to the neverending infinity of a starless sky with a blueberry mouth parted for one last gasp of air, one more plea for a kiss never to be bestowed, lost to the watery darkness. Perhaps there was nothing more but the floating specks of dragonfly wings and fallen leaves, to the sunken remains of songbirds from a dive taken far too deep. Or was it a long fingered snatch of a claw hiding in the ripples of elsewhere down, down, below.

Now and then a slender hand would brush up against a bush of berries to be shared, ripe and sweet, only to be ignored in stomach churning regret. One would insist despite the protest, the other would finally yield in red smeared hunger. But then an ankle would roll from a slip of verdant moss - a hand clasped for balance ripping at an already ruined sleeve, a hard press to a chest with a grunt of a language harsh and cackles more akin to hyenas, spewed from jaws eager for a fall of meat. A pause in their trek however would do.

Claire held her chin to her chest with a glare at the winding fog as if it would disperse. But more so to lessen the dizziness pulsing in a swirl behind her eyes and striking waves across her mind everytime Jamie would stir with emotion befitting of his savage title. But she had the fortitude to withstand the pain of what had killed her master, and the strength of spirit to quell the ravenous evil battling her over a man's soul.

Jamie for his part felt the unnerving sensation of fear, having never experienced it's crippling hold for so long without it triggering his deadly trance where he woke to a horror of his own doing. And he knew why that was. The woman leaning on his arm was growing more cumbersome, more laboured of breath that melded with the ghostly wisps around them. Jamie was torn between letting her plummet to a split of skin or to say to hell with it all and throw her over his shoulder. Better then pulling him into chilly ponds.

With frustration flaring and a sharp spike in adrenaline rising from the blurs of four legged movement ahead, Jamie felt her touch, warm under his skin, pushing further within. A grasp to steady. A balm to soothe.

Jamie's lungs expanded with a breath of cool morning dew that reddened his nose and chapped his lips as he wrapped an arm around Claire's waist, drawing her closer, upright. They shared a shiver from a passing gale, then a budding heat nestled between. She mumbled a thank you, gripping his belt under the cloak for support and he replied with a loosening of his, a warning that his opinion of her was still lower than that of a midge.

Claire sighed without argue, at least he hadn't rolled his shoulder to dislodge her cheek, allowing her (unknowingly so to him), to rest her sight however brief.

Jamie steered them from a soggy drop to an incline of ground that strained his legs, his mortal fatigue catching up with him spurred forward only by the watchful stalks of the pack that glinted through the frosty air.

"Seeing as that white mammoth was familiar wi' ye," Jamie cocked his chin to the far distance where the elder wolf had scampered off from the pack. "Do ye ken where we're being led?"

"That mammoth I'm almost sure is Fenrir the maneater, and it's not he that I'm familiar with but possibly the one inhabiting it's form." Claire could feel a quiver pass over Jamie and she glanced curiously his way.

"You've lived in these forests, surely you must've seen the like here and there. Even in Scotia, I thought it the land of faerie and water horses."

Jamie huffed, bowing his head from a low hanging branch. "All my time in these forest I've seen spirits who mind themselves as long as I return the gesture but never have I seen creatures as olden as they. As for my homeland, we have wonders to fear and praise but monstrosities like that." Jamie shook his head. "We've done away with." And for once he agreed with mans judgement of the different.

It was then Claire dug her fingers into the leather strap of his waist as she felt a shifting of elements in the air, saw slashes of charms cut into the bark of a rowan tree marked in old blood. Hopefully invisible to Jamie's senses. But she was not.

"What is it? I can feel yer pulse jittering in my chest."

He could? But that was a question for another time.

"I don't know where we're being led but it's by who I think it is you must control yourself when -" Claire's voice trailed off as Jamie froze in his step, catching sight of the markings that began to shimmer like the moon on black waters, and grabbing her by her shoulders to face him.

"What is it that awaits us if not another one of they?" Jamie growled, as his back of scarred symbols began to sting as if freshly carved.

No answer was given as a young wolf (yet still big as an elk) came snarling and snapping at them, saliva dripping from it's jaws gummed bright red. Jamie shoved Claire quickly behind him, readying for the crushing blow of flesh and bones, while she curled her fingers around the hilt of blade knowing it was a useless defense. Another one of the wolfs sisters leaped out from the mist to tackle the other, either to prevent a gruesome carnage or to be the first to relish in a feast upon their fatty marrow. The latter it seemed as more wolves joined the fray, disappearing into the fog with only the sounds of their rabid rampage cutting through the air like a thundering storm.

Claire and Jamie pulled at each other in escape, to be lost in the thicket of clouds not caring if their acrid scent of fear would make them easy to track, preferring to be hunted then find their fate in the mouth of the victor.

They ran with the last bolts of stamina they had, not bothering to mind the trails of flowers when the ground beneath them vanished with only a shout and high screech left in their wake. It was a steep bruising tumble to the red horned fungi protruding from the soil, meant to constrict the lungs that blackened the tissue with it's noxious spores and swell the heart to cease it's beating.

Unless you have the ability to purge death from your organs…albeit slowly.

Claire managed a good deal better, having fallen to the wet leaves, and maneuvered herself to Jamie, touching his chest and back lightly with her hands, drawing the poison from his vein's more quickly then he could, sending him into a coughing fit that he spewed to the dirt. She smoothed his damp copper locks away from his brow, wiped the blood the shade of ashes from his mouth and nose thanks to the shrooms that could only wrinkle her nose at their odor.

"You're lucky you have a skull harder then iron and blood thicker then oil, you know." A hint of a smile had barely shone through when his eyes freed of their daze changed to a stare of ice.

"You aren't going to bite me again are you?" Jamie's lips almost twitched in humor before jerking away from her caress with palms to his cheeks, rubbing the kindness that once was there away that then slid straight to his eyes groaning at what he saw off in the distance. Underneath the grove of trees, saplings of protective oak and blackthorn had bundled together to form a twisted dwelling where the wood began to ripple in a slither, scrapping against one another to weave into spiraled knots and blooming leaves.

What lied inside had awoken.

A wicked hag of black leathered skin was what Jamie's mind had conjured. Who would be adorned with a crown of his and Claire's gnawed bones dripping with the last drops of their blood that hadn't been licked clean by her viper tongue.

He gave Claire a vehement shake of head.

"No!"

"Yes." Though her answer was less then confident with her face mirroring his and their link a mutual trickle of dread. Even so.."This is where you trust me. No matter how you feel towards me, what calamity you wish to fall on my soul, calm yourself in her presence until I know if she means us harm. Trust me to protect you, Jamie. It's what I vowed to you."

Jamie could see the strain of keeping him whole line her features, swaying her frame. Fitting for what she had done to him yet still the nagging tug of a man he thought long gone urged him to relinquish himself to her care. He hung his head with a slump of shoulders.

"Mhac a 'chas!"

The door opened before they arrived on the threshold, a molten light flashing on their faces invitingly warm with the shade of a figure not at all like the triple eyed, leathered being Jamie was expecting. She was a woman with hair the blood of Scotia itself, flying loose past her breast white as the mist that had enveloped them, barely covered by her silky gown that parted low in such a way Jamie had only ever seen down the back alleys in Par-sii. But what caught his attention most that had him tight throat with an involuntary call of mind to Claire, were her eyes. Large to intimidate, to hypnotize. So like a luminous jewel that held the forest within them, cut sharply down the center. A cat-eyed creature she was.

"Hello, Geillis." Claire called cautiously as she carefully positioned herself in front of Jamie.

"Mo calman geal." She breathed with so lovely a smile, her face aglow, that continued still even after…"Ye look of shit."

Before Claire could answer Geillis made a move towards Jamie who was fighting mightily with himself as his back flared hot again in warning, flinching away from her outreach of hand in a glare she found wholly amusing.

"And this skittery thing." She crooned. "Ye want to tear yer teeth to my gullet don't ye lad?" Geillis' eyes dilated to obsidian as she saw beyond to the scar at his chest that sang of enchantment. "I can see why ye don't."

She grinned devilishly wide to Claire. "He's a blood drenched stag this one. Tell me, lass do ye sleep with a knife in yer hand with him? Or is it with his -"

No more was remembered as Jamie, the poor lad who had been hunted for eight days with little rest and nourishment, who had been blood shackled to a witch and then ran from the threat of beasts, finally succumbed to exhaustion.

____

Claire laid a blanket atop Jamie's sleeping form by the hearth, dragged there by the two woman, and feeling the burden of her own doing lighten, she almost felt compelled to join him on the floors. But an impatient squawk at her back had Claire back on her feet with a lean against the walls of saplings, where her fingers traced the sprouts snaking between the crevices, rustling and twirling for her touch and smelling of home.

"Yer making my hemlock blush, lass." Geillis purred as she gave a gentle stroke to the fine feathers of her raven Boromir, who sat with her at the blackwood table, scorched at the edges and grooved in frantic claw marks in others. Be they human or animal Claire did not question as she swiped away the hanging vines that tickled along her face, sitting across from Geillis with a cup of tea, thickly made with seeds stuck to the rim, pushed her way.

"Ye look as if I had poisoned yer brew." She said with an added mumble lost in a sip, coating her lip to a shiny plum, "Does nothing to ye anyhow."

"Considering how we ended things on a bad note..." That was putting it mildly. Theirs was a friendship formed under starlight that shattered when a question of alluring paths elsewhere arose, places away from the only home she knew. Claire remembered quite vividly the starlings that ravaged her garden and that had stalked her walks down streets with stabbing plucks of her curls for weeks long after their parting. "And if my memory serves me well you called me a great many horrid insults with the only word among them I understood being, Sassenach."

Geillis licked her lips, leaning her chin to her palm. "Sassenach ye are and still an t-amadan. If you had followed me like I had asked then ye wouldna be in this mess now would ye?"

Claire sighed at the impending argument building from her old friend, pressing her fingertips between her tired eyes with her wrist bare, the single slash still visible. Geillis eyes stared wide in startlement.

"Claire, what have ye done to yerself?" Geillis' voice was of hushed tenderness Claire had only heard her use with her most precious of animal kin and the once when she had asked her to leave Raymond.

"It's not that, only the blood bond," she explained, tugging at her cuff.

"After our quarrel, I never would have thought ye had it in ye to use the dark forces for yer bidding."

"My bidding?" Claire uttered barely above a whisper, offended at the word. "I went weeks with little rest terrified I'd find the butcher Randall in my dreams, his hands upon me until his touch seeped past my skin, squeezing my flesh bringing it to his lips and mine. That I would wake with him standing over me, his breath on my cheeks waiting for me to scream. I was alone and I - I just wanted to feel safe."

Claire looked over to Jamie, still furrowed brow even in sleep. "I did not slit my wrist to gain a servant and in the end if all I manage to do is damn my soul to saves his then it won't be such a waste."

Geillis swallowed the last of her prickling spite, reaching over the table, covering Claire's shaking hand, spread along the table, with hers.

"Randall," she began softly "has been terrorizing the folk of our circles searching for ye, tis how I heard of yer Raymond's fate. I sent my Boromir to scope the land for ye, had to make a deal with Fenrir and his daughters to bring ye here." Though considering the state of the two Geillis didn't think their deal still stood.

"Do you know Randall's whereabouts then?" Claire asked hopefully.

"He crawls around from every gutter to alley and by the time I hear of his presence he's gone like a puff of smoke." Claire finding no comfort in the press of Geillis' hand, pulled away from her to the cup of seeds and froth, contemplating the reveal of her fortune at the bottom.

"You could stay here ye ken." Geillis gently urged. "Randall is no friend to any beast that lives in these forests, he willna find ye here."

"You can't promise that he won't. If you found me how far away is he from doing just the same?"

Geillis tilted her head to the hearth where Jamie was curled by, her features growing hard. "So ye would rather trust yer life to a man who reeks of blood and yers soon enough if yer no' strong enough to master him?"

"Despite what lies within him Jamie will not harm me, he hasn't the soul to do so." Claire affirmed even as her hand, slightly swollen, still stung from his bite."Our time together will be brief, only to the coast and then no more will we ever see each other again. My power will hold until then."

Geillis' tea changed to a tepid rosey pink, much to her disgust, scooting the cup to the edge of the table with a clink at its rim that Boromir delightfully answered with a dip of his beak.

"On yer head then." Geillis muttered then under her breath, that left a small grin to Claire's lips, added, "Why do I let my heart grow weak for such a fool?" She stood to cross the room where her cloak was draped over a chair at the hearth.

"My room to the back is yers to wash and sleep. Or ye can eat whatever is stewing away in the my black as soot cauldron if ye dare to." She joked…or possibly not.

"Thank you, Geillie." Claire spoke rising as well with a question of where she was going.

"Another deal with the spirits, this time much more pleasant I reckon." She winked. "And you." With a kick at Jamie's leg that had him scrambling to a sitting position. "Wash the stink from yerself outside before I boil it out of ye. Boromir will provide ye clothes won't ye, my sweet lad?" A loud squawk was her ravens reply and Jamie didn't bother to ask how a bird could fetch him cloth.

Geillis left with a swish of her now cloaked form, to follow crystal streams to a secluded brook most wonderfully familiar, leaving Jamie and Claire alone in the house that creaked with the wind.

Claire bent to her knees in front of him, keeping a comfortable distance between. "How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough." Was Jamie's curt reply as he stretched his shoulders to a pop, stiff from the hard stone he was left to sprawl on. Without casting his sight her way Jamie's asked, "Do ye trust her enough to stay or do we go?" He hated that he had to ask and so did Claire.

"We're safe here for now, but I leave the decision to you.”

Jamie raised his gaze what he considered a feeble gesture she offered and found earnesty in the sheen of eyes of the woman dipped in the gentle burn of firelight. "Tired as I am it's no' like I can refuse. I'll take ye for yer word, Sassenach."

With a last quip that gave Claire a light chuckle despite the insult, Jamie felt his back meet the wall puffed with soft blades of green, his eyes drooping to a close, feeling the beat of her heart a calming rhythm to his own.

_____

*Fenrir is from norse mythology

*Boromirs name is from Lord of the Rings

#Outlander #outlander fanfiction #outlander fanfic #jamie x claire #now I can watch ep 2 of outlander #I fell like im going to get really annoyed watching it though

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alas-ward · 7 years ago

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A Familiar Gateway

[Warning: The following story contains depictions of drug use and the sensationalized effects, as well as the mention of past opiate abuse.]

Alice tapped the pouch against her palm as she paced. She knew the risks of what she was considering. She knew the gateway at which she stood. It was the familiar shadow of an old, false friend. She recognized it in the languid tendrils of smoke floating from the corners of the Captain’s confident, almost predatory, smile. The sweet, citrusy cloud was more lasso than halo as it reached deep to that yearning, caged part of her past. Every casual gesture of his pipe was an offer, even if he didn’t voice it, didn’t press it. He was skilled in his subtle trade, and she could appreciate it, but logically, she had his number.

Alas, she was a capricious creature, one rarely ruled by reason.

She patrolled a habitual path, her soft leather boots cutting a path into the dust covering the hut’s pallet flooring. She had already lost the fight, she just wasn’t ready to admit it. This place, the physical location, was one she kept a secret for just such activities. The smell of past chemical dalliances clung to the grass thatch walls and roof, manifestations of self-medicated memories. It was everything she needed to give herself permission to resign, the final stroke on the writ of surrender.

Alice pulled a pilfered pipe from her pocket and sat down to pack the herbs into the bowl. She tossed the empty pouch onto the floor and pulled a match from the nearby box, striking it to life and setting it to the herbs as she took practiced puffs to fuel the embers. The first tendrils of sweet smoke over her tongue unraveled the last of her patience. Like the hand of gods writing fate into the stars, the Captain penned the promise of release in the haze that had hugged them during their game.

She clung to the first lungful, retaining it in her chest the way the drowned hold their last breath. James had baptized Alice in smoke and now, emboldened, she waded past the breakwaters to float among the waves. With measured breaths, she reduced the herb to ash and drifted further from everything heavy and solid. She put the pipe aside and laid back on the cot, sending dust and insects into the air. Motes and moths played through a rebellious sunbeam entering the hut as Alice drifted away. Her eyes closed slowly and soon there was nothing but the comforting embrace of darkness.

Alice was alone with the ebb and flow of her breath. Her heart was the moon, an entity both lunar and celestial, and her lifeblood was the crimson tide at its command. Her muscles melted away and her bones took root. She was swallowed by the world, like a conscious corpse passed into the earth. Her survival instinct took its last gasping breath as she accepted the warmth of burial. It was not so final, this little death she experienced, but rather the welcomed embrace of a waiting loved one.

She wasn’t sure when it had occurred, but her eyes were open as dusk swallowed the hut. In her peripheral vision, she could see Pierce and Sambri slithering in the shifting shadows. The vipers were alive and thriving, up to those antics they had practiced as neophytes. Pierce approached and playfully tested Alice’s offered hand with a single fang. It had to be a dream because his kiss would have been fatal in life. She could handle them when they were docile and hungry, but it was never so intimate as this.

Sambri approached next, striking out to deliver the killing blow to its prey. Alice was both herself and the dying rat in that moment, simultaneously witness and witless. Her heavy-lidded stare took in the hallucinations for as long as they were fed. The intoxication was not permanent, however. Soon she watched her precious pets fade, her cruel subconscious turning the pale snakes to dark ash before a breeze carried it away.

The hut around her was a palace of pain now. For the second time, she did not say goodbye to her serpents and it tore a rift in her soul. Alice turned onto her side and pulled her long legs up towards her chest, trying desperately to levy the full rush of emotions surging free from her. Tears fell to the chorus of fond laughter. She growled in agony through the mad flash of a toothy grin.

These final throes resided rapidly, heralding the approaching attendance of reality. Slowly, Alice became aware of the physical world. The cot. The cold. Everything became corporeal around her and caught her as she fell quietly to the surface again. She remained quiet and contemplative for a moment, her mouth dry and her stomach growling.

Still, her first thought was of Quin.

More important than sustenance or comfort, she thought of her lover. She thought of him alone, watching over the demon bitch. A pang of guilt gripped at her heart, pulling her tensionless body to its feet. Hours had passed, if the sun was any indication, so she pocketed the pipe and pouch and made her way to the door without a second thought.

Even if she had wanted to tarry there, the Captain wisely gave her only a taste of his wares. If she wanted to revisit the euphoria, she would have to find him again.

[ Mentions: @jameshaywoode and @subjectragnar ]

#rp #tw: drug use #drugs #narcotics #story

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