#every blessed thing

[baladric]

For the ask game:

🙏 share the wealth! People deserve to see the beautiful trainwreck that is Tavi

heehee ty ty this is why we are friends

pulling from the last draft bc you requested tavi trainwreck and the present manuscript is still unspooling so the Trainwreck is quieter and still buried within other stuff, versus...

—

"You know nothing of me,” he said, barely moving his lips.

“Not you specifically, no,” Tavi said. “But I’ve met enough of Eadiir’s rejects to know a military exile when I see one, Major.”

The rank was only a guess, but it was a good one. Shock rattled through Melech in a reaction so stunningly kinetic that Tavi almost felt it himself.

“You dare,” he said—or questioned, maybe. His tone was a creature all its own, now that the constant companion of his fear was brought to the fore.

It was a pretty look on him—fear, and the gimlet-bright spark of panic—but Tavi felt no joy in the sight of it. Though he had made a home with the sort of people who played with their food, he had never found triumph in cornering someone. It was shameful in combat and it was shameful in conversation, and Tavi was ashamed. He looked at his hands in his lap, and found them shaking. Hoping to still them, he pressed them flat against his thighs—and if the motion had the benefit of creating a hot, grounding stab of pain from the tear in his leg, then that was between him and his saints.

“I do dare,” he said to the knobs of his knuckles and the blood-darkened length of his fingers against the black of his unsalvageable trousers. “But only to make a point.”

Tight as an over-tuned lute, Melech said, “Which is?”

Tavi rolled his tongue in his mouth and, when he felt he could bring up words, not bile, he lifted his face again to Melech's hard, hectic gaze.

“Take a lesson from the fairies people here are so scared of,” he said. “Names have power. Wield someone else’s against them only if you want the same done to you.”

He saw then, in the warm light of August’s lamp, that there was something cracked inside of Melech. Something raw and bloodied, something wretched, and Tavi wanted to say, Me, too. But before he could prove himself even stupider than he already had, a half-dressed and frantic figure burst through the open door.

ask me abt my WIPs >:3c

[baladric]

in the spirit of 2024 art wraps actually, here's the sparkling top notes of character sketches for my in-progress book 🥹

introduction blurbs under the cut if you're interested!! they are. all i care about.

in order from top left to bottom right, glossing over the couple duplicates

MELECH PEL-AHN VIÇ ÇIMELLA

lawful good made manifest, melech is a career soldier reeling his way along with a mélange of battles scars, while the world moves farther and farther away from the moral and balanced justice he believes in—and which has begun to challenge that belief, as he realizes that sin and goodness are much muddier waters than he thought.

TAVI QAN

freighted with secrets on secrets on secrets, tavi is a cautionary tale on legs, as well as the wikihow on how not to cope with the stress of compulsive people-pleasing (and every other blessed thing.) what more is there to say? haha jk there's at least 90,000 words of things to say, but that'd be spoilers 😌

KITELLA PEL-FAR EVITT

they say the scribes of anniall are the incorruptible breath of the cosmic body of the gods, and also that this belief has just been summarily shattered by a single man. but kitt, for his part, rejects the idea that he has been corrupted. saint anniall of the sotheren star would want nothing to do with this age of empire and oppression, kitt will tell you. saint anniall would spurn a leadership that has strayed so far from the tenets of harmony and compassionate community, kitt will say. saint anniall would—so kitt asserts (and rightly so)—prize and encourage the underground resistance trying to incite a labor revolution. anniall, too, would pen an aching, cutting manifesto and inspire a movement-wide rebrand in the name of the long-lost friend of his youth. he, too, would [squints at smudge handwriting] land himself a death sentence by military tribunal and lose everything he holds dear in the escape. or something like that.

MINA YLL-SHEVRASK

don't let the youthful portrait fool you—mina is well into her middle years now, and the decades have put the world is on its knees for her. imagine magic. now imagine breaking magic and making it all over again for your own pleasure. imagine keeping the secret of it to yourself while you build greater and wilder things. imagine giving those things to the rising storm of a bastard daughter-turned calamity, remaking the world in your own twined images. also, imagine being super duper gay married to her while you burn the world to its struts 💕

QAILLANI IIKHAL

princess? wife? mother? hah! she's tried it all and walked away, and what regrets she once had, she has swallowed down as bitter pith to be passed. watch out for the cormorants, by the way. they know more about our players than anyone can guess.

AMAAN YLL-SHEVRASK

khai'eş. khai'eş? listen, she didn't pick the name. she has an ego on her, sure, and hubris enough for any homeric antihero—but even she's not enough of a cock-swinger to name herself after the thing feared most by sailors across the khimell sea. or, well... what used to be the most feared thing. that title goes to her now, with her spellwrought ship and her bloody-handed crew and the mage of the isles for a wife. too bad she's grown sooo complacent in the keeping of that other two-headed secret, though.

THEODORA KOSTAS

you could say a lot of things about theo, but you probably shouldn't say them to her face. fractious, viciously smart and just as quick with her fists as her tongue, she ran out of patience for being undermined years ago and has no qualms about making it your problem. but mind your own business and she'll mind hers, and buy you a drink while you're at it.

KETILL BELOW

the thing about loving magic is it can break your heart worse than any person. or so ketill thinks, young as they are. they'll keep doing it, though. it's all they have. no—had. had.