#sapphic goddess of decay story

[artbyeloquent]

GUESS WHAT BITCHES (AFFECTIONATE) WE'RE COOKING WITH GAS!!

Transcript under the cut. Original post/idea.

All bad stories begin with a summoning circle.

That’s what Ramira do Monte had scolded when she caught Vivian in the Directed Study section. 

She puckered her lips like she’d just had a sour draught of potion while her eyes tooled Vivian head to toe. They lingered at the dismal shape of her hair, the dirt beneath her fingernails, and the muck flaking off her boots. 

Finally, her gaze came back to the spellbook clutched in Viv’s ashen hands. Bronzen leather embossed its seams, its title scrawled in Old Xelan. a complex lock which possessed no keyhole clamped its pages shut. 

“Let me see your DS slip,” she puffed, hand extending vexedly. “No professor in their right mind would sign off such a tome to a baccalaureate.”

Viv shoved her fist deep into her robes and produced a crumpled scrap of parchment. Ramira brought it excessively close to her fleshy nose and stared at it long and hard. 

“Professor Lambright?” she said suspiciously. 

“I’m apprenticing his research,” Vivian said, careful not to reply too quickly. 

“I won’t be doing anything unsupervised, Ramira. I mean, c’mon, without a Tombkeeper’s License? Do you really think so lowly of the dear Professor?”

Ramira’s lips pressed so tight they might well fall off. Her folly was and always would be an utter faith in the hierarchy. She thrust the tattered Directed Study slip back into Vivian’s calloused hands.

“You know what they say,” she harrumphed before repeating the immortal words.

It was easy to dismiss at the time. However, keeping the warning out as she traced sigils in goat’s blood was another task altogether. 

She hadn’t lied. Well, not technically. Lambright had asked for the book. He had wanted Vivian to get more hours into her apprenticeship docket. And sure, he’d be pretty pissed if she knew she had followed their lesson by drugging his tea and taking the book for herself.

But what else was she to do? It had been an insane gambit to even convince him a baccalaureate was ready for this kind of training at all, let alone make him think this particular book was his idea. She couldn’t chicken out after all she’d been through.

[tisiphonewolfe]

Writeblr Intro

Heyo!

I'm Tisiphone - or Tiss, or Tizzy, I don't mind (she/her). I mainly write SFF, but I intend to try my hand at horror and potentially espionage thrillers in the future. I also can't seem to write anything without women being very gay in the middle of it all, so I'm leaning into it.

I follow from @princessw0lf

About me:

I'm a disabled trans lesbian from the UK

What I like seeing in books? Mysteries woven through the plot that resolve satisfyingly. Characters that bounce off each other and grate against each other in interesting ways. Weird romances that don't dominate the plot, but are a key part of it. Great character development.

Favourite books? The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir, The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood, Malice by Heather Walter, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. And a lot of Terry Pratchett.

Fiction I probably won't enjoy? Something where the plot is purely interpersonal drama or romance with nothing interesting happening outside of it. Literary fiction. YA.

Outside of writing? By day I'm a software developer. The rest of my time is spent drawing, playing games both video and tabletop, and playing electric guitar (badly).

DMs/Asks/Tag games? Fire away!

@sam-glade is my pal and you should go check them out too!

With this blog I'm aiming to post writing updates, inspiration, and probably writing-related memes.

About my writing:

At the moment I'm primarily writing high fantasy/epic fantasy, with a view to trying out some more genres later on.

Admittedly a lot of the classic elements of western fantasy are in there, but I've been trying to get back to the mythological roots of creatures like elves, gnomes, and dwarves, and to present them as not being all white and vaguely British.

The world of The Tectomancy Saga is also, like that of my childhood writing hero Sir Terry, an odd shape. There's a reason for that, and we'll get to it eventually.

While my stories are currently third-person multi-pov stories, I intend to experiment on that at some point in the future.

My stories will probably all revolve around two things; a central mystery and a central relationship. I love a plot where you can pick at the smallest words and phrases, theorise about absolutely everything. I want to write stories where people have a thousand ideas about what the truth is, and each one of them knows there's a good chance they could be correct. I also, as a queer trans lady, want to write about sapphic relationships and include many people who are not cis.

My favourite themes to write are anti-authority, people breaking out of systems they've been trapped in for a long time, people being more important than power.

I'm definitely a plantser. I know kind of where I'm going, but let's see where the journey takes us along the way!

Finally, you can expect the tone of my writing to be trying to find that sweet spot between serious and dry humour that makes you groan, with a healthy sprinkling of subtle meme references.

Current projects below the cut

The Tectomancy Saga

On a bowl-shaped world suspended far above swirling blue mists, nine goddesses, witches, or geniuses, blessed their peoples with divine magics, then disappeared. Now, the world is decaying, tensions are rising, and people scramble to control the magics in order to shape the future.

Made with Crown and Claw

WIP Intro

High Fantasy: The classic Princess-in-a-tower-guarded-by-a-dragon story, but we see the machiantions that put her there, and what happens afterwards.

Releine Sholt is hand-picked by the heir to Tectomancy, Princess Almyra Tectus, to be her new bodyguard. The role has one ominous stipulation: nobody can ever speak to the Princess, on the threat of dire punishment.

'There was only one bed' turns out to have horrifying consequences.

Progress: Fourth draft done at 129.5k

Bound by Stone and Blood

High Fantasy: The saga continues from different perspectives, having different adventures, that will eventually conjoin.

Almyra vies for control of her kingdom. Ellimane tracks down two misfits who are being hunted by a rogue automaton. Releine visits hell. A new threat rises in the shadows of Versewelt, the decaying land.

Bitter exes who technically never dated are definitely not thinking about each other.

Progress: First draft underway at 69k

Snippets and Short Stories:

Flash Fiction Friday: On the Edge

Flash Fiction Friday: I Can't Tell

Her New Captain (Alternate Chapter)

Other

Naenia, through Murder

WIP Intro

Naenia, the reaper who is responsible for death through murder, is shellshocked when a murdered homicide detective returns to life before her eyes and promptly asks her out on a date.

Detective Carina Choudhry has an odd - very Goth - new girlfriend, who saved her from the serial killer she was on the trail of.

Progress: Complete at 46k

Fay and the Red Kite (Title pending)

Fay Orrel, a trainee mech pilot, finds that her beaten-up old training machine holds an AI that has replicated its deceased former pilot. She tries to keep the other woman secret from the PMC that owns the mech, who would be certain to wipe the AI's memories, destroying Mina forever.

Progress: Well, I wrote the prologue and some of the first chapter. Being dabbled with!

[weaver-of-fantasies-and-fables]

Vale Weaves - Writeblr (re)introduction

Hello! I’m Vale and I’m 24. Literature Gay with a degree, working to become a High School Teacher or die trying, very passionate about history and languages. My limited free time is divided evenly between writing and drawing.

My WIPS:

The Gift of Ashes: Fantasy, with a plus side of history and forbidden romance, action and revolution. Very queer!  A tale of Deities and mortals, of love, fate and revolution. It follows the Goddesses Sun and Moon in their forbidden romance as they try to escape the cage of immortality and gain the gift of free will. (#the gift of ashes)

It is said Sun and Moon have loved each other since the beginning of time - kept apart only by their duty to the world they are bound to watch over. But when Moon is betrayed by the very people who sought her help, everything changes… This is the story of what befalls them after they become mortals.

Scio remembers nothing of her past as Moon, and Sun is living in isolation, slowly falling apart for dereliction of duty. Chance has brought them back together, but what once started as a quest to revive Sun’s love for the world soon becomes a race against time: to tear down the cornerstones of a ruling class that uses the Deities’ name to feed fear and obedience into the people’s minds, the two fallen Goddesses will find themselves trapped in the workings of a building revolution.

Scio and Sunon will once again be faced with a choice - how much are they willing to sacrifice for the mortals they serve and whose hardships they now share? 

To curse an angel: The mourning rose: first of a three-part series. Set in a rapidly decaying land, it’s more traditionally Fantasy, full of varied mythology, magic and gothic elements.  Its main themes are friendship, love and betrayal, along with moral dilemmas, forgiveness and the power of siblings! LGBTQA+ (#tca: the mourning rose #to curse an angel)

This is the story of three Guardians who spent their immortal lives trying to keep their world from collapsing under the weight of an angel’s curse - or rather, the story of what happens after they fail.

There’s a young demon, whose mind is filled with long-forgotten knowledge and ancient magic he cannot use, running from his secretive caretaker and the terrible power that haunts them and all those they love.

There’s the Professor, grappling with the knowledge that it falls on him to figure out a way to rescue the world. An elf trapped within a puzzling curse that will soon kill him, but who refuses to surrender, and is building a revolution.

There’s the demon Lord’s bastard daughter - the best assassin in the kingdom, little more than a girl - who falls for the elf and his rebellious dream, but who swore she’d be the one to lead him to his destruction.

There’s the shadow of an era before history began, watching the world’s decay with excitement and satisfaction. And there’s Niallen, the caretaker, sometimes a demon, sometimes an elf, sometimes more, who is just about to give up on saving them all.

How to court a demon and start a revolution (a comprehensive guide): my very own webcomic! A slice of life prequel for the above WIP (but both work well on their own). TEMPORARY HIATUS

Bright young demon Anaichi deals with the horrors of service work as he flees from the magician who raised him. Biology elven professor Naeth investigates a curse as he may or may not be falling for his demonic partner in crime with whom he's leading a revolution. Disaster lesbian Telae attempts to wrangle unruly siblings while infiltrating the demonic government. Meanwhile, the world is ending.

And the Nymph sang: A sapphic short story, already published on AO3, you can read it for free! It’s bittersweet but has a happy ending! 

Some time long ago, an ancient nymph saved the life of a human child.

Thirteen years after, the child is a woman, and they meet under the shadow of a yew tree.

Their friendship is like a dance, warm and bright and dizzying, but it stretches from mortality to eternity, tearing wounds into the patterns of time. And then it melts into love...

Come say hi!! I’d love to make more writeblr friends, and I’m really not picky genre-wise when it comes to reading! Also let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist for one of my WIPs!

You can also find me:

On Instagram: @valeweavesfables 

On Ko-fi: Vale Weaves

I am also taking drawing commissions!