#god the thing that drives me fucking insane about this painting is the furred talons on the alkonost

[thestuffedalligator]

I’m fully spiralling in the death grip of an old hyperfixation right now so here’s The Birds of Joy and Sorrow by Viktor Vasnetsov.

[nagia-pronounced-neijia]

w(h)ip wednesday

It's a surprisingly quaint little farm, the kind of thing some traveller from the far-away west might paint into his little journal and tell all the Belgians and Austrians and French about.  Green hills rise up in a gentle roll, with occasional stones that must have tumbled down from God-knows-where, looking pushed up through the grass and the barley like crooked teeth.  Sheep meander among the gray rocks, bleating occasionally to each other and munching on the plants.

As they step past the low wooden fence, Trevor spots a goat chewing cud in a pen.  It stares disinterestedly at them, eyes gleaming with that peculiar mix of cunning and stupidity native to goats.  If it was ever a person, their mind seems long gone, he thinks, replaced by a goat's determination to be the biggest pain in the arse it possibly can.

They keep going and find a yard full of chickens.  Here chickens, there chickens, everywhere fucking chickens.  Mostly roosters, judging by the wattles, which he finds odd, and when Sypha steps too close to a hen, one of the stupid cockerels jumps at her.  His wings flutter, feathers flying further than he can, and he seems determined to murder her with talon, beak, or both.  He makes the most insane noises as he does it, like metal screaming.

It's instinct to try and put himself between her and something trying to hurt her.  Even something as small and stupid and surprisingly vicious as a pissed-off chicken.  He raises his arms to block the pecks and scratches, glad of the fur-and-leather vambraces, thick enough that he feels nothing.

"Calm the hell down," Trevor says, and puts a boot to the bird, which doesn't improve his disposition, exactly, but does manage to make him reconsider attacking.  "I'll do it again," Trevor warns him, and immediately feels like an idiot.

But the rooster subsides, sulky, glaring at them both with beady eyes.

And the cabin door swings open.  The woman who steps outside isn't quite pretty, but she's striking.  He thinks her nose might have been broken, once, and her hair falls loose around her shoulders in a riot of deep red that catches in the sun.

But it's her hands he's most interested in, and, just like every family book always said, they tell the real story to him immediately.

Her face may look youngish -- certainly only of middle years -- but her hands, too pale, have wrinkles and liver spots, a sure sign of a witch.  The deep, nearly black bruising that extends from the nail to the second knuckle of her littlest fingers, however, is the mark of a witch who has embraced questionable magic, if not outright reveled in the foulest and blackest of workings.

Beside him, Sypha moves to wave one arm.  "You must be Sârșe," she says, and he can hear that she's smiling.

The woman inclines her head.  "I am.  And who might you be?"

"I"m Sypha, and this is Trevor."  She jabs at him with an elbow.  He doesn't jab back, but mostly because he's trying to figure Sârșe out.

"Hello," he says, about a second after Sypha's pointy elbow makes contact a second time.

Sârșe watches them both.  Absolutely no emotion colors her face.  Even her eyes look flat and lifeless, no more interested in them as people than the goat had been.  "What have you come to find?"

He sighs.  "Oh, we found it already."

"Trevor," Sypha hisses.

But Trevor ignores her.  "Look, we know you're a witch.  Well, Sypha suspects.  But I know.  And I don't care about the whole," here, he makes a sort of quotation mark with the fingers of both hands, "'demons into chickens' thing.  Not sure anybody should be eating those, but it's not my business."

The very furthest corner of Sârșe's mouth curls up for about a second before smoothing back down.  Her gaze remains flat.  "And what is your business?"

"I'm not saying I expect you to turn them all back, mind, because I know that's not how it works.  But how many of your sheep used to be people?"

He's a little relieved when, rather than hotly deny it, Sârșe licks her lips.  "All of them," she says, calmly, like she doesn't care at all.

Well, that explains at least one of her fingers.  Hell, he's a little surprised it hasn't spread further.

Sypha's the one to step forward and ask, "Do you have any plans to stop?"

Sârșe stares between them for what feels like several minutes.  It's probably not even a whole minute of its own, but it sinks its teeth into him and drags.  Her eyes look like empty wells, endless and awful.

"No," she says, still very calm.

"Told you," he mutters to Sypha.  "When they're this far gone, they don't really listen to reason."

That draws Sârșe's attention.  She snaps her head to look at him.  Something even darker stirs in her dark eyes, moving and shifting, and they bite into him.  He doesn't look away, but he wants to, because eyes like those see, and the brain behind them judges, and men are always found wanting in a gaze like that.

Found wanting and then turned into farm animals.  And then potentially sold at fucking market day, to be slaughtered and eaten. Christ.

"Do you think yourself such a hero, Trevor Belmont?"`

He lets out a short bark of a laugh.  "I helped kill fucking Dracula, sure.  But what I was really doing was helping a man kill his own father.  What kind of hero is that?"

She repeats the question back at him, emphasizing it.  "What kind of hero is that, Trevor Belmont?"

"No kind at all," he replies.

And, for the first time, she smiles.  It's terrible and pitying.  "Will you kill fucking Sârșe?  And if you do, what will you really have done?"

Sypha fields this one.  "We'll have stopped animals that used to be people being sold and eaten by those who once knew them.  You have to admit that's grotesque."

"I admit no such thing.  They know who I am.  They know the consequence of crossing me.  They know what I bring to market day.  They choose to buy from me regardless.  Their business is no business of mine."

God, witch logic.  It's all perfectly factual, but frustratingly circular in a way he can't put words to.  A sort of pure, unfeeling truth that leaves no room for honesty or humanity.  Infuriating.

"Yeah, done with you, now," Trevor says, and draws the Vampire Killer.  Consecration is little good against witches except in their hands, but the Morningstar would be worse than useless.

Where's a rowan branch when you need one?  Not that there would be a single rowan tree on this property; they would have all died the first time she took a piss here.  Hell, if he were half the Belmont that Sypha thinks he is, he'd have a fucking pouch of salt on him, and he doesn't.  Their salt is in the wagon with their goddamned cooking supplies.

Sypha conjures a ring of fire, driving away all the chickens and other animals from the farm, and Sârșe's eyes widen for a moment.  She looks between them again, gaze darting from Sypha to Trevor, trying to determine if the Belmont or the fellow magician is the bigger threat.

She apparently decides on him, because she flings an arm out and tries to drag him toward her.

Trevor, more used to this sort of thing by now than he likes, drops forward.  He lets himself fall, and feels the grip of the spell break as his weight pulls him away from it.  His hands hit the ground first, and he pulls himself into a roll, coming up on one knee.

He lashes out with the whip, half-turning to improve its force as he lets his arm flow then jerks his wrist.  The line sings out, tip whistling, and the metal end bites into her hand.

Her finger flies away, landing with a sort of wet, useless noise in the dirt.

Sârșe doesn't even scream.  She just looks between her now maimed hand and the finger on the ground.

"That was very stupid," she says, somehow wholly unbothered by the fact that he just tore off part of her hand, a part she probably uses pretty often.  She raises the same hand, even as it bleeds, and makes a curling gesture with her remaining fingers.

Once again something grips him, trying to pull him closer.

When she raises her other hand, Sypha slides sideways, colliding with one of the wooden fences.  It cracks with the force she hits it at, splintering.

He's not thinking when he sends the whip out again.  It's anger that drives him to it, and this time, he gets her in one of those tainted, blackened littlest fingers, and Sârșe screams.  At first it's just a gurgling sound of pain, thin and high, like any woman might make when a man reached out and hurt her because he could.

But then it turns to something else.  Something thick and strange sounding, that scratches at his ears and the air around him.

"I name you worm, that crawls in the dust," Sârșe says.  "I name you dog, that licks his master's hand.  I name you cock, that lords himself over nothing.  I name you buck-goat, that ruts and farts, and I name you pig, that wallows in shit."

Absolutely no imagination on the woman.  He supposes whatever demon she serves, or made a deal with, or whatever, has probably long eaten it.  "People have really got to find worse things to call me."

Sârșe laughs.  "What a strange worry," she says casually.  "But needless.  You'll call yourself all those things, in the end, and worse."  And she raises both hands, and this time, she really does manage to pull him in, mostly because he lets her.

Once he's close, she smears her blood on his cheek and smiles that terrible, pitying, dark-eyed smile, and the empty wells of her eyes stare at him, judgmental, even as he sinks one of his knives into her throat.

He pays no attention to the witch's body after that.  Instead, he runs for Sypha.  She'd fallen among the splinters, and he doesn't even think about kneeling, about passing his hands over her to feel for blood, for anything sticking out or misplaced.

"Are you alright?  That was some hit."  And fuck him, his job is to be the one taking the hits.  He still hasn't forgiven himself for the scars on her upper arm from their fight with Dracula.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she grumbles.  "Help me up."

He does, splaying one hand under her back and supporting her under the elbow with his other hand.  He hefts her up, taking most of her weight, and she stumbles a little as she rises.  She leans heavily against him, and he lets her, wrapping one arm loosely around her shoulders.  "You're sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine," she snaps, predictably irritated, and waves a hand at him.  "Leave it be."

"Alright, alright, if you say so.  And, well, she's dead.  If we're lucky, some of these people might start turning back.  Do we want to be here for that?"  They probably should.  He thinks his uncle would have.  His father certainly would have.