#also his technical sister Avita was his previous iteration's daughter. so. his daughter too.

[vullcanica]

𝕲𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖘𝖎𝖘 // a study on ascension (part I)

It begins in early antiquity, with the lost town of Krilnei and Nikodemus' mother Septima ― a shrewd woman by all means. Even back then, the history of her secret little settlement of magically gifted folk is already long and varied. Hand-picked by her great grandfather, crafted into a society by her grandmother, brought to heel by her father and, finally, overseen by her, as the last by succession, it is a product of her family and the people within it - her subjects in all but name, for her lack of title in the hierarchy. She is no High or Great anything, but the power of her kin to peer into the very soul of man makes her far more irreplaceable than any honorific would suggest, and the mystery of her origin and abilities is enough to bring any naysayer to fearful obeisance.

Like all of her predecessors, her birth coincides with the former leader's untimely death - a circumstance her people have rumoured to be a curse on the bloodline. Her father, ailing and weak-minded with pain, had been taken to spend his last days in the deep wood, and sure enough, a week later Septima was ritualistically carried out of it by his wife, a woman long ago sworn to secrecy. She never breathes a word of finding the babe next to the torn, hollow-chested corpse of her husband, sat upright and feasting on his rancid flesh, nor of the way she had been carefully and intelligently considered that day by the eerily predatorial eyes of a two-day old. In honor of her husband's last wish she names the daughter she never birthed 'Septima'. As tradition instructs, Septima is tested on her soul sight in infancy and after, by virtue of geniture, is crowned with a wreath of young straksa leaves, to denote heirdom as leader when she comes of age. She waits 16 years to be crowned again with araksa, leaves of the Hollowed tree, and, like many before her, steps into her duties with practiced ease. She commands authority just as fearfully as her father. Suddenly it is as if he had never left. ―― He had not.

Septima is the last in line to inherit not only the title of her predecessors, but the soul they had all carried in turn, as well. It is an old thing. Powerful and hungry. A breed of creature gifted with the wretched ability to consume other souls and sustain its own magic through them ― an Eater, who had, like all predators, adapted to survive rather violently. Under threat of mortal expiration before its time, it had long ago taken to creating new vessels to inhabit. It would form fresh young flesh within itself like a tumor, then shed the old skin as a serpent does, in a gruesome process few would call something as savory as 'rebirth'. Or birth, for that matter. Though it would, indeed, re-enter the world as a babe again, with poor recollection of its previous life and a feeble, fragile mind, it would wisen unnaturally fast and even be born with certain instincts, muscle memories and uncanny intuitions intact. Within a few decades, it would remember as well.

But to twist one's form so artfully around sustaining such a beastly soul comes at the expense of certain biological compatibilities. The Soul and its vessels could no longer successfully mate with humans. Throughout all its various iterations, with countless wives and husbands, it had produced nothing but ill, misshapen or stillborn offspring. None had lived to childhood. Septima has prospects for neither marriage nor children by the time she is of age and takes no husband for years to come, well past old maidenhood, further incensed by the return of memories and old, painful losses past. When a new settler group, driven to seek shelter and safety away from mundane civilization, joins their little town, she marries out of pure necessity ― to lead by example and encourage the introduction of new blood and magic amongst her people. Her husband is a good, simple man of no known origin named Tibor and, though he is pitied for wedding a woman whose only ilk would draw air upon her death, he still grows fond of Septima and she of him. He gives her a daughter five years in. And despite being unanticipated and uncelebrated, born ill and premature and expected dead before long like dozens of her poor half-siblings, Avita ― desperately named for life ― lives.

She lives through infancy and well into childhood. Though prone to illness and slow to develop, Avita grows stronger and older yet with less and less complications, doted on by an entire town as its pride and joy ― a living symbol of prosperity. She is never crowned as Septima's successor, however. Septima forbids it. The burden of leadership ― the trecherous web of her own design ― can grace only her shoulders and those of her next iteration. Avita, her small, precious miracle, is to be spared it, predestined to nothing but happiness; set to inherit, of all that Septima has built, only that which she may wish to. But inheritance by blood is a different matter and Avita is her mother's daughter ― powerful and volatile, both in abundance. It doesn't take long for moods to sour in their settlement. Several townsfolk die of illness during that time, Tibor included much to Septima's utter devastation, and talks of an omen begin. The town is plunged into deep mourning. The air hangs heavy. Something ill-spirited lives among them. Septima feels it too - the swell of destructive power that grows within Avita by the day, the terrifying emptiness that denotes an Eater. She can do little to mask it and nothing to stop it from manifesting, not even with the help of trusted, powerful confidants who work tirelessly to reel in and stabilize the girl. Unlike Septima, who can only claim a soul and consume it once it is free of the mortal coil, Avita naturally draws force from every living thing like she is owed it. As recompense, all earthen things she touches bloom and flower under her hand if she wishes them to.

It isn't long before someone bears witness to her potential. And dies for it. A suitor of Septima's is the first casualty, driven to pursue her by the promise of power and puissant progeny now the bloodline curse is dispelled. Yet ultimately doomed by virtue of proximity to little Avita. She misses her dear father and thinks poorly of the would-be intruder, so it takes him but one little misstep alone before she makes quickwork of him. He is left half a man when she is done - half-alive and half-mad, left to the servants who drag whatever remains of him elsewhere. Septima hurries to orchestrate his death away from her home and to secure her and her daughter's innocence, but finds he's died by his own hand in holding. She's told he has left behind a warning as his last words. They are to be kept secret. Nevertheless, of all the ramblings his broken mind could barely string together, one still manages to exit the confidentiality of the few to witness him die: 'The eighth will be the end of all.' Pronounced a profecy and its speaker a seer, the utterance of a madman makes its covert way throughout the town. It isn't difficult to glean who it condemns. Avita is only six when, unbeknownst to her, the townsfolk deem her a curse on Krilnei in hushed whispers. But where many see doom, Septima - once she comes into the knowledge of the quiet rumour - sees opportunity. The eighth it will be...

To save her darling daughter from suspicion and to ensure her peaceful life among the townsfolk, Septima seeks to fulfil the profecy herself. Her grand scheme would leave Avita orphaned, and at such a tender age, but it would absolve her of the town's misgivings and buy her time to spend mastering her power under the tutelage of several trusted mentors whom Septima has gathered in preparation for her own departure. The little girl's care is delegated to them as well. With all her affairs in order, Septima settles down, puts her ear to the town's grapevine and begins the process of her own rebirth. She makes sure to show faux signs of pregnancy suspiciously soon. Regardless of timing, she is with child and without husband, so she soon falls into ill repute. Her people are restless and fearful, perturbed to watch their cattle die and their neighbours fall to illness, prepared to take up pitchforks at the slightest provocation, and she decisively abuses that uncertainty. She's made sure to keep the traitor who'd let the profecy slip close to herself and, to them, she shares the name of her future babe. As she'd hoped, it proves the last nail in the coffin.

The rumors begin. She's copulated with some beast, they say, some trickster or fae or devil. She's struck a dangerous pact to conceive Avita and this child is the wretched payment. The curse on her family has come to a head, with her chosen to end it in blood. Whatever the speculation, one thing is for certain - the child growing in her belly the true source of the scourge that has befallen their settlement, fated to bring ruin and damnation were it to be born. By then it would be too late, for the laws of Krilnei forbid the harm of a child. In the dead of night Septima's fearmongered enemies adjoin for secret council, agree to attempt salvation and send an armed man into her home. He never returns. She does die months later, bearing her new vessel into the world. By then sick and tired, near victim of four attempts on her life and separated from her darling Avita by force, she calmly orders the babe cut out of her and names it her successor. At last, she closes her eyes as Septima forever... and next opens them as the newborn baby boy in the wetnurse's shaking arms.

His name is Octavian. 'The Eighth'.

The scourge has been born. And he is tiny and fragile, yet eerily silent like his mother before him had been. Intuitive as well, personally picking who he wishes to hold him by fussing terribly in the wrong hands. Few dare touch him as it stands. For a thing so small, he inspires fear even among the ranks of Septima's trusted. He is left unharmed, as the law dictates, but the town condemns him quickly. He is not crowned with straksa leaves, nor allowed to live in the town leader's home, with Avita. A servant woman is entrusted with him, relegated to the edge of town. He is even stripped of his own cursed name, unworthy of that morsel of cultural belonging. He is not of their people and Krilnei refuses to claim him. They call a passing foreigner forward, a woman from another land, and bid her name the child kindly - for goodness and benignity, so that he may live up to it. She takes one look into quiet little Octavian's clever blue eyes and speaks a name, unaware of how many would one day whisper it in fear.

Nikodemos.