#zorille's sdatt

[zorilleerrant]

WIP game

Rules: You will be given a word. Share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that start with each letter of that word.

Thank you @striveattemptfail for the word WHALE

Well, he’d probably categorize it as come hither, but to each their own. “Copernicus Dale,” I say. “That’s me,” he says. Slowly. Langorously. I hate him already. “Okay, well, I’ve come to get you out, so if you have anything to take with you, pack it up or finish up your deals for it,” I say. He tilts his head, like he has all the time in the world. God. (I feel the demons turn to look at me when I think that.) “Who sent you?” “I didn’t get a name,” I say, “just yours.” “Really?” he says, and the smile finally lights up his eyes. He doesn’t seem like as much of a smug douchebag like that. I hold up my hand so he can see the scrawl, if he can read it. I assume he can read Adamantine if someone sent me to get him here, but I can’t vouch for my handwriting.

(Another excerpt from SDATT. original)

He sighs. “Dr. Green says I need to confront my fears.” “You’re afraid of quiche,” I clarify.

(From the main storyline of WHC. original)

“Are you a necromancer?” he asks. I pause. “I think we all are. Or, at least, all of us whose templates are necromancers, which is going to be most of us overall. I don’t know whether it’s part of the process or part of what we’re copying.” “Do you know what we’re doing here?” he asks. I look up at him. He has unassuming features. I wonder whether he’s trying hard not to make any expressions right now, or he just always looks like that. “You are supposed to be watching me, to make sure I don’t start committing atrocities or something. I am just trying to survive long enough to remember what I planned to do here.” He looks vaguely worried at that, but it’s all in the eyes. “It wasn’t committing any kind of atrocity, was it?”

(From the thing with the necromancers and the cloning, as yet untitled until I think of one. original)

Luxury like I’ve never seen before. Oh there were some that looked just like us – or like I will look, with my new clothes; I’ve bought pants that suit me very well if I do say so myself – but some of them! The men look dashing and the women ethereal and all of them in so many layers with hats and belts and ribbons and tassels and so much embroidery on everything! I think, when I come back home, I’m going to have all of my clothes embroidered and never go about plain again. It was like being in a play, and I was on stage with a whole troupe dancing their way around me while I made a lovely moving scene, dying in front of the prince so he could cry over never having loved me enough, or what have you. You should come yourself, if it wouldn’t upset your sensibilities too much.

(From the Hill House/Dracula crossover)

Extended silence is unusual for humans when spending long periods together, so I’m attempting to make small talk. Murderbot has given me a guide to this, which is very helpful, although I do sometimes wonder if I did anything wrong asking for help, because it gave me the strangest look when I brought the topic up. A look similar to the one Ratthi is giving me now, something I’ve come to interpret – with high 90s accuracy – means that I’ve done something out of the social norm.

(From the Murderbot story for FTH)

If you were tagged on the last one and want to be tagged again, let me know. If you weren't tagged either time and you want to be, let me know. Or just pretend I tagged you! @confusedshades @elodieunderglass @teashoesandhair @clockwayswrites

Your word is: MYTH

[zorilleerrant]

Witch's Dozen

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It’s fine. They’re all magical. Or they’re magical enough to invoke a prophecy, anyway, which should make them at least magical enough to bounce the spell off of. Ficus is leading, because of course it is, because Katie and Nick are the only ones with any remote magical training otherwise, and it’s a witch spell, so it needs a witch to run it. Of course. But they’re a coven, and coven bonded (sort of) witches (sort of) should be enough to run the spell. If they could all sing on key, which they’re mostly keeping to, at least.

Growing up, Ficus thought music classes were pointless, but now it’s very glad that most of its classmates loved them, because they turn out to be necessary after all.

They’ve been practicing as much as time allowed, on their own and together, and everything is just as streamlined as it can be. They measured the circle exactly, marking it carefully by single steps, they marked everyone’s place around the edges. They set the candles, tall and sturdy and matched, they pulled the shades and locked all the doors and windows, set music playing in the front room so no one would find them doing any of this. Anything that can be controlled for has been. The fact that they don’t have a witch’s dozen isn’t one of those things. They could risk looking for one more member to fill out the ranks, but chances are they’d get caught, and there probably isn’t time to get to know them and trust them.

If they even could be trusted. Ficus doesn’t know what it is and isn’t allowed to say, and probably won’t until one of them runs up against an extraplanar stricture on their communication. It wouldn’t have believed someone, with their positions reversed.

It stands at the head of the pentacle, just inside the circle, and tries its best to conduct. Ficus is a fine singer, most of them are, but keeping on time with each other – it should be easier. They should get swept away in the magic of it all. Ficus can’t conduct for shit and couldn’t let anyone else take it over, because whoever’s controlling the spell has to keep time, too, or else it’ll just never take.

Ficus can’t feel the chorus take hold. It can only feel growing despair.

Bangle has been watching from her corner, sitting like she was told, head cocked and ear flicking occasionally to the side as she listens. She so clearly wants to stand by them, and Ficus wishes it could let her, but she’s not a trained familiar yet. No telling how in tune she is, pardon the pun, to Tardigrade, who’s never had a single familiar before.

Ficus sees just the slightest flash of feathers, bright in daylight with no candles to flicker against its wings. Colorful. Vocal. It hears a short snippet of song, a spell just left of this one, but there’s no telling even what kind of bird it is.

Bangle howls, softly.

Tardigrade makes a hand sign, but she hasn’t worked out the details with her familiar yet, and Bangle takes it as a sign to trot over instead of quiet down, and, new familiar and all, she can’t help but pat the dog’s head. Ficus would complain except that, at this point, there’s nothing the clashing magic could do about it anyway.

Bangle begins to take up the song, and Ficus can feel it gathering. Just at the edges, just a little, but swelling in time with the rhythm, moving inwards to the center of the circle. Bangle is keeping time with Ficus, not her own witch, but she howls each note crystal clear, a ringing behind them, like the chime of the bells they couldn’t find and wouldn’t risk.

Ficus had a dream – more than once – of a dog singing. It only had the dream before they’d found Bangle, though, and so… it shouldn’t have been hard to connect the dots at all. It promised her a musically talented dog in the first place. That was practically what got her on board. It just forgot, when possibly this was the key to the spell all along. (The book specifies substitutions, but always assumed you were working with a full coven.)

They’ve been singing long enough that Bangle knows the tune, of course, but it’s the way she leads that surprises Ficus – the magic dips and glides when it wouldn’t know to ebb it. Even the notes in the grimoire are the merest suggestions towards experts who have done all this before so many times it shouldn’t matter anymore. They’re being conducted by a dog.

Ficus, for one, is happy to listen to the suggestions of a familiar leaning on her own magic, for a spell she might even have done before. It doesn’t think anyone else has even noticed they’re being herded (sort of) toward the end product. More time for it to weave together everything else they know they need, every note they jotted down on the paper they’ve carefully glued down in the grimoire so no one loses it.

The spell takes. The candles snuff out. Everyone, even Bangle, falls silent.

A feeling like being walked through by a ghost surrounds them, everything outside dampening as a soundless, sightless, tasteless void surrounds them, fading back in with the smell of smoke and the sound of the radio. They shiver, from either leftover cold, or the end to their exertion. With a pause to check it’s okay, Bangle starts singing along to the radio.

[zorilleerrant]

Hungry Like The Wolf

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Effie wishes she’d had this existential crisis just a titch sooner. It wasn’t until someone commented on the full moon that she realized, ha, no, it wasn’t quite full. But that means today – or maybe tomorrow, obviously none of her devices work – she’s going to have a problem she has no way of dealing with. Even if there are wolf packs here, they’d never let an outsider in, and anyway looking for them might get her locked up or whatever it is they do.

With a planned trip, it would’ve been fine. With a planned trip, she would’ve packed medication and slept through the change, but who knows if any of those have been invented yet? Effie’s not even sure sleeping pills have been invented, and also she’d probably make herself sick trying to calculate safe dosage without the pack pharmacist.

There are old ways of doing things, probably.

Effie sort of wishes now that she’d been into those kind of books, the historical horror that exaggerated her condition or even the stuff that romanticized it, but half of it made her throw the book across the room and the other half made her sick to her stomach, so she never read any. And now all the – probably apocryphal – tips and tricks in them aren’t even there to give her a starting point about what the fuck to do.

There’s nothing there even in the scenes in movies that make you roll your eyes so hard to instigate a migraine, because like. It’s one thing to fairly well trust someone – someone who’s openly a witch at least, if no one else – but it’s different telling someone you’re a werewolf versus, you know, you’re about to be a werewolf in a couple of hours and you’re liable to panic and bite someone because none of your pack is here.

It would’ve been nice to stay home longer, that’s all. It would’ve been nicer for Effie to, sort of, bond with the rest of these idiots and maybe start to consider them something. They’re bound together by magic, but if that were enough, no one would ever have problems integrating into a pack, and you can see how well that logic works out. It’s hard for Effie to convince herself they’re family, but maybe not impossible, right?

If Effie can convince herself they’re family sometime in the next two and a half hours, she won’t even need to come up with a plan. It’ll be fine.

Effie sits cross-legged, trying to meditate, or at least get into a calmer headspace, and see if she can’t readjust her worldview. The power of positive thinking and all that. Her therapist keeps telling her if she just repeats ideas to herself enough she can trick herself into believing them, so then the only question is whether two hours is enough hours.

She gives it a few minutes, but Effie’s pretty sure it’s not.

The second question is, of course, whether any of the bedrooms have locks. If she can lock herself inside with some, like, maybe soothing scented candles or something? They’ve probably got soothing scented candles because Effie’s pretty sure those were invented hundreds of thousands of years ago at the dawn of man or whatever. People have been collecting things that smell nice forever and of course they had fire, that’s sort of the point of it all. So maybe she should run to the store instead?

Except she’d be in a little bit of a rush and it occurs to Effie that she doesn’t actually know if that’s the kind of store people keep tabs on in case it’s full of witches. Or whether it’s actually full of witches, some of whom may be arrayed against her or others who might try to help and turn this into even more of a shitshow than it already is, and also the kids are fighting again and she doesn’t know why someone had to invite them.

To be fair, she doesn’t know why anyone had to invite her, either. She’d be doing a lot better in her own time, and especially in her own house, at her time of the month, and she doesn’t even have a single chewtoy, or anything raggedy enough to be one. They’re not going to sacrifice their already meager supplies just because she has a craving. Even if they were all lyco friendly it doesn’t seem like that would go down well.

Anyway, Effie really hopes that if they need the werewolf bit they’d hurry up and tell her what to be a werewolf at, because waiting is killing her.

Not literally.

Hopefully not literally?

It’s worth it, maybe, to see if anyone happens to have some meds on them. Or like, you know, knows the right dosages for whatever you can mix, or has some kind of natural remedy or something. That’s probably something that exists, or close enough they can fudge it.

Or else should she call on her patron? That’s probably not going to work because of the time differential and all, or it would be so expensive she’d never pay it back off. She’d be stuck in hell. Maybe Effie should go to hell? Like, just overnight, because probably they’ve got a lot of things to chew on there, and she doesn’t think she could bite a demon if they were on fire.

She looks up at the sky. She can feel the moon there, ready to pop out and judge her for her lack of preparation skills. She wishes it would stop looking. Good thing, though, because she has to go back inside anyway! She’d definitely get caught out here.

Sighing, Effie shoves herself to her feet, dusts herself off, and heads inside. It’s not like there’s any real alternative. She’s going to have to tell at least someone. So it’s better, right? To tell them when they at least have a little time to brainstorm.

[zorilleerrant]

On the Side of the Angels

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Ficus knows. It knows all the dire warnings and the legal loopholes and the subtle way people shift their eyes when they know someone’s engaged with extraplanar entities. It knows the way its so-called father makes people avert their gazes, and it knows that’s not even because they know what he did.

Ficus also knows that, if it were just a matter of traversing the planes of hell, it could probably do that under its own power. With training, obviously, but there are a dozen names it could rattle off already, and they probably wouldn’t even charge that much, not with its sister hanging in the balance and all that. There’s enough magic under its belt that the stupid tricks demons like to pull would probably be navigable. It can entertain if it has to.

Dad’s house, though. He knows what his children can do. Could do, if they didn’t think they should trust him. This is on Ficus for keeping its opinions from her, but it’s not like it thought he was going to do this. She’s six. The demons aren’t even going to want her, yet, they’re just going to sell her on, and who knows where –

He probably didn’t even realize that, if some medical testing facility gets their hand on her, it won’t be hard to trace out the rest of the family. Even after this, Ficus can’t imagine that’s what he wants out of all of it – does he think he’s off the hook? There’s got to be some law still on the books about having kids with a witch willingly. Maybe he made some deal to let him lie to the court.

What Ficus doesn’t know is enough about the politics in hell to track down the right demon. Who’s going to refuse, and all that wasted risk along with it; who’s going to be bought and sold already, leave it to tricks. Who’s going to try to use it as a pawn. So, much as it would rather, it goes the other way.

Ficus doesn’t bother to pretend to read the contract. The angel’s going to have their way regardless of what it says. The brand burns into its chest, and everything’s done.

Sneaking in is easy, when it’s invisible, almost laughably so. Ficus can’t feel anything but holding its breath until its lips go numb, but everything is gone. It makes no sound, gives off no heat, leaves no trace of magic, scent, radiation. It’s weightless. It can see itself but, the angel assures it, no one else can, and that word, at least, the angel is bound to. Cameras, guards, tripwires – everything is gentle steps around obstacles, and keeping its own magic penned up inside where its father can’t spring a lethal trap on sensing it. Then it’s just up the stairs and to his study, labyrinthian turns meaningless to someone who grew up here.

Mistake one: he covered for demons, because apparently he doesn’t trust them not to double-cross him, but he never checked for angelic interference. Not that he’d have such an easy defense, killing a bound human, anyway.

Mistake two: he forgot his kid watched him put in the code to the safe a dozen times at least, and won’t trip the usual safeguards.

Mistake three: he forgot that shorthand isn’t his. It’s from the Green Family Codex.

Actually, no, the first mistake was selling his daughter to demons for a taste of the magic he’s so jealous of, but all of these lead a path to whichever Demon Prince he’s in debt to, and he knows what happens if he reneges on the deal. He’s worth much less than a witch is.

Information in hand, Ficus doesn’t bother hiding the fact that it was here. Its father can keep the reminder singed into the floor forever. The marble recedes overhead and everything smells of cinders and ash, and it’s greeted by a cackle.

Ficus doesn’t bother to stay invisible in front of the demons. It wouldn’t be able to jump through any of the hoops, anyway, and the one advantage of being out of that place is that it can let its magic run wild, scaring away the opportunists and bringing it straight to the arena. Battle magic burns through its fingers and flies everywhere it needs to. Ficus has to almost enjoy the opportunity to test it, unfettered, reaching for every ounce of its power in here.

Magic to float. Magic to fly. Magic to breathe underwater and carve paths through earth and step through fire unscathed. Magic to decipher and magic to correct – magic to brute force its way through grates and gates meant to taunt it. Anger isn’t meant to make everything so strident, but emotions have a lot of force in hell.

The cage is covered with a soft drape, glittery tassels swaying in the breeze from the fan, at least until the Prince sends everyone out. They’re angry, but they’re hiding their anger well. They know the rules. They know the rules as well as anyone. They didn’t expect a witch line as ancient as Ficus’s to barrel its way through, but they fucking should have, because what do they think happens when they take one of its own? So they whip off the drape with one last cackle, daring Ficus to accidentally challenge them one on one.

She isn’t here.

[zorilleerrant]

For Sale

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There’s something familiar about the house, even though there shouldn’t be. None of us have even studied this era in depth, as far as I know – the angel and demon might have, but they don’t seem to have followed us here. They might not be allowed to. I’ve never been to this city. If anyone else has, they haven’t said. All the same, it’s on the tip of my tongue, and looking around isn’t resolving the déjà vu even slightly.

The vision comes to me the way they all have, so far, vertigo and irritation. The smell of decay – the gentler, earthy kind – and settled dust. Broken stairs and faded paint and no electricity. No running water, but a drip always just the next room over nonetheless. A tablecloth, picnicware to brighten up the place, and everyone – almost everyone – laughing. Sharing a meal together.

I blink and the house goes back to normal, or as normal as a house like this can be when it’s not a museum. It smells like latex paint and some sort of chemical cleaner. They’ve given up on it, from the state of the yard and the sign in it, but everything still looks bright and neat and new. No furniture. I guess that comes later, if at all.

The stairs are in good repair, and somehow look less stately for it. The lights flicker on. I walk upstairs to see if there’s anything else we should look out for, animals or problems or clues, but it’s just more of the same. Empty rooms in different colors and the stifling smell of historical paint trapped inside.

It’s not a good time to be selling homes, anyway. Especially not here. Least popular mayor in history, some say, but I still think that was mostly the asteroid.

I mean, I’m not looking forward to the witch trials. But they wouldn’t have happened if no one was.

When I get back downstairs, there’s soup on the stove. We’re going to have to find real furniture somewhere, but someone’s found folding chairs and a rickety table in one of the closets, and that’s close enough for dinner.

I glance at the stove, and the soup changes. Shit. I can’t tell which version is real. I guess I’ll know when I taste it.

The Major’s set up all our sleeping bags in the living room, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear it. The rooms upstairs all give me the creeps. It’s something about the shape of the windows, I think, or the sound of the ventilation, like the special lights they install that play sound effects in the reproductions. I don’t think anyone did anything special here. I think they’re just like that.

Probably I should be relieved she had sleeping bags for all of us, but I guess the military’s nothing if not prepared. Probably I should be relieved one of us is a nervous cook. Probably I should be relieved most of us are adults, and the kids are old enough to pass for one, with enough confidence.

Probably I should be relieved there are so many homes standing empty on this side of town, but that just makes me depressed again. I think my family came from here, way back when. I think if I went to talk to them they’d let me see the lost codices, they’d let me touch the amulets and stir the family recipes. The ones that stayed, anyway. I don’t know why they stayed when they could see what’s coming. I don’t want to.

None of us want to. Someone’s literally started taping photos to the walls.

I think the terms of the prophecy trap us here, but I’m not an expert, and I’m willing to look for one, if anybody knows safe channels for it. Maybe there’s just someone we have to meet, or something we have to get, or something we have to know, or witness, or learn. Maybe we can go back home before, well, before the asteroid, at least, if not earlier.

The windows are so thick, and not quite clear, and yet the cold radiates off of them, like they’re no protection from the wind outside. I can hear it pick up through the trees. Everyone else huddles closer to the inside of the house, away from the walls, towards the dubious warmth of the kitchen. How did people heat their houses? Naked fires, indoors?

A dog yips behind me, and I almost catch a glimpse as I turn, but it fades too fast for me to even catch whose dog it was. Will be. Probably the hacker’s again, like I promised. Too much to hope we got slung back in time just to meet a familiar.

I feel like we should have had a historian on the team. I feel like this was large enough we should have one. What are we doing if none of us know shit about history and all of us are trying to remember lessons from grade school about things most of us had no reason to care about and I, at least, already knew were wrong anyway? I don’t even know where to get food once we get through whatever’s stocked in the cupboards.

Are we going to have to hunt it ourselves?

[zorilleerrant]

The angel slides a piece of paper over towards us, and I try not to telegraph my relief, although they can probably tell anyway. Better to see it written; that means it’s probably the original and not a long string of mistranslations and sly winks. I do take a minute to worry that they’re lying to us intentionally, but the ink glows true. It’s written in a mix of Adamnatine and Argentine, which is unusual, because it’s usually just one or the other – I’m wrong. There are only a few Adamantine words sprinkled in.

The part that threw me was the first word – usually angels will use the more typical ‘host’ to describe the cohort, although I guess with demons involved they don’t want to, here. They’ve picked a group term that’s fairly nonspecific, all things considered, but then since when are prophecies anything but vague and unhelpful? At least it specifies that we’re a separate group from whoever our allies might be. So I don’t have to worry about recruiting anyone else. I mean, they did promise, but you know extraplanars.

It uses the prophetic auxiliary the whole way through, only it had to start in Adamantine and force me to translate back and forth and now trying to tense match is giving me a headache. But it says we’re going to fix – probably reinstate, possibly just bolster – magic, or a magic, or all magics – really couldn’t have used Adamantine for that word, guys? – at the end of/as a consequence of our, well, quest. Heroic arc. Enlightenment. Whatever. I really hate that specific word because there’s no real translation for it.

We, apparently, although it doesn’t specify if it’s all of us or just some of us, are claimed. That word had to be in Adamantine, had to specify the direction and force of the protection, had to give us the shivers. It makes my brand itch. That’s probably all in my head.

All of us have our particular magical skills, and that much I guess I figured, but I don’t know why they rendered the word that way. There are all kinds of perfectly viable Argentine synonyms for it. Especially since, in context, it has to mean Fated, not just new or unique or strong or special or singular. I don’t like it being called valuable. I mean I know the Value of my family’s gifts. I’m over it by now. But, like. Come on.

The next sentence throws me. It’s one of those all purpose words, whatever you do with the object of the sentence, which is, again magic. Some specific magic, or all of them, or one of ours, or what? For the sentence that directly states our success/safety hinges on doing this, you’d think it could make more sense. Fuck – we have to either discover a new magic, or discover our own special talents within ourselves and believe in each other or some shit, or we’ve got to teach each other what in most cases can’t be taught. Or, best case scenario, if we can hope for that, we’ve just got to learn all the banned shit. Great. Awesome. Loving this prophecy.

Someone – it specifies part of our group, but not how many, or who – will/must/has… I don’t know that word. Hang on. Usually that’s used in the context of higher education to talk about graduating, but I think that’s a recent innovation, and possibly more human-driven than anything native to the language. Extraplanar travel, that’s it, that’s the historical verb usage, there, that’s what angels and demons do.

Hang on, that’s a euphemism.

Hang on, that means die.

Then it concludes with the same word all prophecies conclude with, the one that means time is a circle or written in stone or self-consistent or what have you, but it doesn’t usually make my stomach hurt to read it. Maybe that’s because I’ve never read a prophecy about me before. (It feels wrong when I say it, but I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen another one. It must have been when I was really small.) It still rubs me the wrong way. All of this does.

The party will bring back magic as proof of their quest. They are Claimed and have each one a Fated talent. They must learn each other’s magics and/or new magics in order to succeed. Someone will die. Time flows as time has ever flown.

I don’t know. I don’t like it. I also don’t know why they insisted on bringing us all here first, given that Gabriel’s the only one besides me who seems to have actually read it, with maybe half of us still trying to struggle through. The rest don’t look like they’ve seen either of these languages before. Probably they haven’t; I don’t think they’re taught much outside of specific trade schools or doctorates anymore, but still, you’d think the magically chosen would have some familiarity. I don’t think they can even tell the difference.

I don’t want to translate for everyone. I’m bound to get something wrong.