#onyx symbolism is so ironic on envi.

[daystud]

OCs as houseki no kuni gems

[markoftheleviathan]

So when I haven’t been writing The Light That I Follow I’ve been picking away at So Below p.s here’s book one (because, man, am I actually putting effort into it, and it’s unnecessarily heavy-handed with the poetry and the symbolism, but it’s taking time), and I gotta say I’m a lot happier with it than perhaps I should be. Excerpt from Chapter Six under the cut.

“Are you saying what happened didn’t matter?”

“Of course it mattered.” She all but spat her words at Emily, composure fracturing, but she softened as Emily recoiled. “You loved him.”

She snorted. “So everyone keeps telling me.”

The noblewoman nodded, and her ice-cold façade returned, hiding her true emotions. “Then of course it mattered, but not in the way we… you need it to. Love matters, Emily, but it is not everything. You wear a crown, and as much as you may wish to ignore that fact, you must not. You have a job to do, now. Stop wallowing in your self-pity.”

“It’s not self-pity.”

“Everyone here has lost someone important to them,” Elizabeth said, gesturing to the people around them, ignoring her words. “Everyone here has lost someone they loved, but the world does not stop for a broken heart. So we do what we must, and we keep marching on, and on, and on, until the world ends, or we do.”

The truth she spoke hung in the air, even as Elizabeth excused herself, as though Emily was being haunted by the ghost of her guilt. She toyed with the whalebone charm hanging from her neck, and she could’ve sworn it pulsed with a phantom heartbeat as their ship left the shore. She pressed it to her lips, thinking to herself. If he was out there… If the Outsider was, somehow, still alive…

She was going to find him.

Her heart twinged as Daud pulled Elizabeth in, his mouth pressed to hers. His mouth came away stained by the plum tint she wore on her lips. The noblewoman seemed to lose all the sternness with which she’d spoken to Emily, delighted by the presence of partner. Was it unkind of her to be envious?

Yes.

They did not deserve her envy. After all, it was not by any fault of theirs that the man she loved had died. They had done their utmost to save him. They had failed, yes, but his death was on the hands of Galia Fleet, and not their own.

“Empress Emily Kaldwin.” He shimmers into existence like a mirage made of ash and charcoal dust. She had met him before, once in what felt like an age ago, when she’d carelessly fallen asleep with a whalebone rune under her pillow. Her dreams had been haunted by the pale god with eyes as black as polished onyx. It’s… strange to see him standing before her, close enough for her to touch. Those strange eyes watch her carefully, curious, and intrigued, as though he is waiting for… something. What? Her reaction? He does not scare her.

Perhaps he should.

“I’m a friend of your father’s from the bad old days.”

The Mark. It had stained the back of Corvo’s hand until Delilah had somehow torn it from him. She had seen it burn him, as though the Outsider’s magic was a red-hot iron that sizzled his skin as he called upon the magic of the Void.

He moves closer, until she can see the specks of sea green in his midnight gaze. The way with which he speaks his words is entirely foreign. He speaks her tongue, but his lips curl around the letters in an unfamiliar manner. It is not his native tongue, and though he does not stumble over his words, he cannot hide his unfamiliarity. It’s almost human, this trait he cannot disguise no matter how hard he may try.

“I never,” he continues, and he tilts his head to the side, as though perplexed, “expected us to meet.”

She cannot bite her tongue. “Neither did I. But we’ve met before.”

And to her surprise, he laughs. It lacks depth, lacks real emotion—he isn’t, after all, human, and he cannot sound like something he isn’t—but merriment flickers in his strange eyes, and a smile twitches at his thin lips. “I had nearly forgotten.”

“I haven’t.” She is strangely cocky, for a woman who out of place, out of time. Was she overcompensating? A voice at the back of her mind said, resoundingly: yes. “How could I? How could you?”

He shakes his head, supressing what is left of his laughter. “I do not think I will make the same mistake again.”

“You are correct. You will not.”

But unlike the commoners who cower in fear when her voice takes on the same commanding tone with which she spoke, and unlike her advisors who suddenly become eager to please her, he does not react. He blinks, as languid, and as bored as ever, and he turns his nose up at her.

Then he bares his teeth in a crude approximation of a smile, and something within her chest flutters like a bird in flight.

Emily held the whalebone charm flush against her chest, gripping it so tight the arcane symbols engraved into the ivory surface left idents on her fingertips. She was going to fix things. She had to fix things.

There was no choice now, not as Suiko-Hime’s boat left Dunwall’s docks behind, and headed off into the unknown. There was no turning back now, not as the shore disappeared more and more with every passing second, until it was obscured entirely by the fog. This was the path she had chosen to take, the path she now ran down, despite not knowing where she was going, all to find what was waiting for her at the other end.

And somewhere, overhead, a bird sung a mournful song as it flew back towards home.