#the magisterim series

[secretly-a-catamount]

  Water is eternal. It cannot be created. It cannot be destroyed.

  Water is ancient. It fell from the heavens at the beginning of the world encased in rock, and, once it was freed, drowned the flames and ash. It falls to the earth still, a cycle that cannot be broken, an ouroboros eating its own tail.

  Water is all-encompassing, everywhere. It is present in ever living thing. It seeps into that which is believed to be dead but is not.

  Water births.

  Water sustains.

  Water kills.

  The man walked up the misted dock with an assurance that could only be granted by absolute power; someone who was used to taking what he wanted, the very mountains crumbling beneath his will. His skin was paler than sun-bleached bone, and his hair was the color of burnished gold and fell in tousled waves to his coat collar. He wore black clothing, blacker boots, and a dark gray jacket that accentuated his musculature well, silver buttons neatly fastened through ever hole atop his wrists and up the deceptively delicate, almost swan-like curve of his throat. His blood ran slowly through his veins, each beat of his heart punctured by a wound that would never heal.

  He stopped halfway down the dock, hellfire-green eyes scanning the partially obscured surface of the lake, and spoke.

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  The trees did not answer, gnarled roots and trunks bent, arms burdened with leaves bending down to be swallowed by the water, but the man had not expected them to. The mist did not answer either, but he had not expected it to, anymore than the trees. The wind, faint and weak, running the incorporeal tendrils of its fingers down his neck, didn’t answer, but he had not expected it to anymore than he had the trees and the mist.

  “I said: I need you to do something for me.”

  We heard you the first time, the response came from everywhere and nowhere, a thousand voices speaking as one but slightly overlapping, the angry buzz of bees, the deafening patter of raindrops against a metal roof, the howl of a hurricane, waves crashing against the shore, who are you, to think you can command the Element of Water?

  “I’m the Enemy of Death.”

  A moment of silence, then a loud crack as the end of the dock splintered off, then a thump as a mangled corpse pulled itself from the churning depths and heaved itself onto the splintered end of the dock.

  The mage gasped and staggered back, watching as the animated corpse dragged itself towards him with the nasty scraps of bone against wood, and the wet slaps of wood against rotted flesh. The water, splintered boards, rusted nails, vegetation, and silt, came with it, reconstructed its body as it went.

  By the time the Devoured was erected and whole, the Enemy of Death had composed himself again to the point of neutrality.

  The Devoured smiled like a predator, the vines wrapped around her bones and ruptured flesh acting as muscles and ligaments, her remaining bits of skin splitting at the movement, peeling away from her ruined body. Blood and oil leaked from her empty eye sockets, and her black hair twisted around her form like a shroud. She was vaguely humanoid, vaguely feminine, and vaguely young. She wore the tattered remains of a Golden Year uniform and a Magisterium wristband.

  “Hello, Tamara.”

  Hello, Aaron.

#WIP #work in progress #fanfiction #fanfic #fan fiction #ao3 author #ao3 writer #cross posted on ao3 #magisterium #the magisterim series #callum hunt #aaron stewart #tamara rajavi #the enemy of death #devoured #au #alternate universe #canon divergent au #tw: blood #tw: body horror #tw: dead body #the iron trial #the copper gauntlet #the bronze key #the silver mask #the golden tower

[secretly-a-catamount]

Magisterium Pinterest Boards | WIP

#pinterest #moodboard #the magisterium #the magisterim series #the iron trial #the copper gauntlet #the bronze key #the silver mask #the golden tower #callum hunt #call hunt #aaron stewart #call/aaron #calron #wip #I’ll update this as I make boards for the other characters