#until i realised it needed the emmrich volkarin snoring soundtrack

[volkoss]

WIP Whenever

Tagged by @serbarris, thank you! Tagging: @carnalapples, @queenaeducan, @gallows-into-oblivion and anybody else who might like to do this one! Scene from the still tentatively titled follow-up to Brilliant Things.

If Johanna were the type of woman to believe in the Maker, perhaps her current circumstances could be excused as divine retribution. In the absence of faith, however, a more mundane explanation must suffice.

Fortunately, she knows exactly where to pin the blame: any wrong she has ever faced can always be traced back to Emmrich Volkarin.

Volkarin has not been subtle about his involvement when it comes to all matters involving Johanna’s imprisonment. It is obvious in everything from the basic details of her physical location in his office to the structure of the wards he’d placed upon her skull: of course he would use a personal variation to the special formulation they had developed together in simpler and happier times. He had always enjoyed such petty flourishes, and Johanna had always indulged him.

And then there is the fact of her continued existence.

In her degraded state, the lich lords of the Grand Necropolis could have easily destroyed her soul in its entirety. And yet, through whatever contrivances Volkarin must have mustered in conversations with his fellow Watchers, Johanna had been granted this so-called mercy instead of the oblivion she had expected.

Given his intimate knowledge of her feelings toward contrition, it had been Volkarin’s most masterful ploy yet. Honestly, she would have been impressed—perhaps even proud—had she not been the target of his malevolent intentions.

Nonetheless, the events of the last few days as well as a newfound purpose in light of Rook’s disappearance had started Johanna along the path of considering accepting the excoriating indignity of her reduced circumstances.

Or they had, until Volkarin had started snoring.