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blankdblank · 4 years

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Gust - Preview

Ok, got this idea at work, been mulling it over please let me know what you think. mainly Thrandy based but i have some thoughts on a possible triangle with Glorfindel as well. Lots of drama and angst. :D

...

“Get those books on the fire!”

“Not a one left behind!”

Between puffs of cinders and massive plumes of smoke subtle whispers floated on he breeze blowing back into the book shop from whence the books had been taken. By the hundred characters billowing up invisibly to reach for their haven, anywhere but here had the fiery men flinching at every book collapsing to the ground on its own. Shouts of angered spirits soon flooded the streets sending those too frightened to risk gaining a curse for allowing the destruction. Flight however had them missing the mournful young girl left behind circling the cinders watching the last trace of her former life fade away. The first word of her book being her name, and at the flame devouring it the chains seemed to break free and fleeing the darkening world to the brilliantly glowing bookstore timidly her eyes scanned over all that was left. Which, quite frankly, was not very much.

One by one the standing books were inspected without a single brush of so much as a curled hair on her badly bruised and bloody head. That was her beginning, and the beginning of her new tale. The old one cut long before she had risen to power finding her courage within to save her people from an unseen enemy lurking from within their very own neighborhood cobbler profession. Shoes was your world’s downfall and after a glance back towards the door hearing thick unforgiving soles crossing the wooden floor that creaked and moaned with each step from the building of a man coming to inspect the problem. Up you reached to a book that seemed to be quite lovely by the artwork on the cover of a colorful choir singing bound in aged but unbent leather with three odd stones down the spine of it listing a name the book gave you little chance to read upon your touch.

Right to the heart of the Kingdom of Doriath from mid air a beaten and bloody body of a child fell heavily into the arms of two diving guards abandoning their posts in the presence of their King and Queen now hurrying over to inspect. Tenderly wounds were treated with soft words while echoes of an old life remained. Orphan, street child, unworthy, unloved, burden. Again and again they swirled and latched on sinking the poison a bit deeper into the blood. Eyes however did open with the curious King and Queen already assigning tasks to the child now to live in a cot with the kitchen staff. No one to mind you meant no one to pay and even Elves had their limits on children past a certain age to be cherished by the whole Kingdom as their own selflessly, even those immortal beings wished to not give unjust hope that a family would take you.

Not when you wouldn’t speak and seemed so mournful right away. Not when it seemed all you wished to do was scribble unknown texts and images into an empty journal given to you for distraction allowing time to mend. The wounds even far from gone all anything could see when looking at you was your little mangled self, well, not everyone. One boy that by the frantic race of your heart signaled the search for your other half to be through. Only it wasn’t, that wish could never come true. Not when mothers to suitors warned any but you.

One try, one single try for a friend and to silence you clung. Planned and determined, silent always with eyes lowered to hide the tears of truth. Days grew harder to hold it all in, always below and unwelcomed. Present but not participating in anything with little focus on the faces of strangers around you leaving you to nothing but memorizing outfits, color schemes and shoes to know to whom the orders came from. No one was waiting and no one ever would be, the guard is where you would go. There was silence there and freedom from curious stares at the polite, silent volcano of a creature with eyes able to stun like lightning of unshared beauty years had cultivated for just you. There you could think and earn and possibly die into that yearned for freedom this place denied.

So many moved on, so many had young and spouses with houses to care for, a single room apartment was all you required with all you had fitting into two simple bags. No one cared enough to come see that often you did not eat purely out of aggravation for having to sit at your single seating table alone. No friends, no family, just you and the little animals sneaking in to steal some of the corn you were trying to force yourself to at least nibble on a few kernels beating a small goal of an earlier promised amount of exactly two. Halfway to the archery grounds ignoring the shifting of the earth under your feet through another woozy spell from your self allowed hunger distant marching turned you off to the bridge leading up to this bubble protected Kingdom.

Feanoreans, loud and brimming with pride sneered and taunted the lone maiden across the bridge while the armies of Doriath were being called to arms. Flinching however to the eerily echoed snap of the fans said orphaned maiden had arrived with and fought to never lose. Across the backs of your hands swirling patterns and dots formed glowing silver arrows matching the one on your forehead above your now glowing eyes. A single swipe and a third of their armies tumbled backwards miles from the bridge, five heavy gusts was all it took and their retreat sounded to the click of those fans closing again. Wordlessly to the archery grounds you turned once they were gone and the armies were waiting for any possible fall back to try again that never came. To their eyes another Maiar had been dwelling within their walls, but you were so much more.

From a world of Avatars and Spirits colliding and dwelling in peace another stood watch over the balance, reborn to each reincarnation of the Avatar you remained. Peacefully dwelling in every family chosen by the Spirits who seemed to take enjoyment in placing you. Though this time a formerly angered Spirit to old justice you had served watched flinching to each blow and poisonous word bestowed upon you. The Avatar could endure pain, but the Pear, pain that deep rooted would poison all. The Pear was there when the Avatar and Spirits required, all together in unison even then they were helpless to this destruction wilting the hope in your heart to find peace again in a world all your own. Wars would come and go with dreams tucked away for steady work to be chosen and simple life of bed, forced meal, training and patrol then bath and bed again through months of silence in seas of Elves was what you would choose.

That same gentle boy now with a son of his own dwelled to your guess in lands not far from here, surely happy beyond words. While you sat sifting your fork through the lettuce in your salad in the annual guard luncheon with the Lord and Lady, the former who once again watched you not eating trapped in a silence he felt too far from your circle of comfort to inquire upon. Always watched and mentally commented on but never so much as being able to share your name, Pear was what you had told them because the other died in flames. It hurt too much to think it let alone say, chosen with such hope and goodness far beyond you now. A plan however was formed and in a stunning upward glance the glowing silver flecked purple eyes few had seen and was able to describe Lord Celeborn inhaled saying, “Miss Pear, my son in law Lord Elrond in Imladris requires some aid in guarding of the heirs to their keep through a visit from the King of Gondor. I have suggested your name for this task. You are one of our eldest warriors.”

Where an opposition or something was expected the petite moonlit creature stood and bowed her head, “I shall gather my bags and leave at once.”

To which he hastily replied, “Any of our finest steeds are welcome to your choosing.”

“Respectfully, My Lord, I can travel faster on my own. No use robbing another of their steed when there is no means to return from this visit soon. I shall leave my quarters pristine in the event you would not wish for my return, My Lord.”

Again your head bowed and leaving the food untouched out you hurried to grab your bags from the already spotless apartment to use a lift down from the massive tree top barracks before darting off in the direction of Rivendell fully in view of the lone guard who so long ago refused what he took of curious interest in learning a possible friend to a hopeful courtship of one so low to a Lord of his rank. After all, ages you had served Celeborn’s people since leaving Doriath, passing claim of the saved first set of twins over to more worthy guardians than you for the Princes now ruling over Numenor and the islands surrounding it.

Still no more than a grunt guard having never been promoted at lacking the knowledge it was your place to ask to be tested to move up, the most infuriating part for the confused Lord just trying to understand. Why you weren’t eating, speaking to no one on your own whims, refusing to leave your grunt position refusing them chance to move you up to grander housing. Why you always wore the same four outfits never attending celebrations or banquets for visiting guests of standing unless on guard, and probably the most painful of all, why your eyes remained lowered and distant from gaining sight of the one sure to be awed by your staggering beauty.

But he would never know if he would never ask. And where this trip was set to have been one of silence for you that pattern was to be shattered when that same gentle boy now King was to be attending this gathering and held none of the restrictive notions Lord Celeborn held as to delving for why his people might be suffering. And that was all he wanted, after all this time, even just for a moment for you to be his while since your first try to talk over purchasing bread from his family shop for the King’s table ended sharply in a shooing for the entrance of more worthy customers, he saw that glint of pain in your eyes and at the stab in his heart he knew he would always be yours. The King would again see that pain and demand answers and improvements.

Yet sometimes old wounds could still bleed and deep wide cracks left through the silence may leave a difficult path to chase when kindness has always been used as leverage and words are often lies. To mend your broken heart would certainly take time, and what a blessing said King and yourself happen to be immortal.

Lost to the ages is an unwritten law, when all written trace of a book is lost those inside might find shelter in another to begin again.

@himoverflowers, @theincaprincess, @aspiringtranslator, @sweeticedtea, @thegreyberet, @patanghill17, @jesgisborne, @curvestrology, @alishlieb, @jogregor, @armitageadoration, @fizzyxcustard, @here2have-fun, @lilith15000, @marvels-ghost, @catthefearless, @imjusthereforthereads, @c-s-stars, @otakumultimuse-hiddlewhore, @mariannetora, @shes-a-killer-kween, @ggbbhehe4455

X Thranduil - @evyiione, @sweetlytenacious25, @tigereyesf, @pastelhexmaniac

#preview #thoughts please #possible new crossover #Thranduil x oc

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essays-for-breakfast · 4 years

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One False Hope

Melizabeth Week Day 5: Death/Rebirth/Meetings

Warning: This piece includes blood, violence, and character death.

The city was burning. Smoke and ash hung in the air and made it impossible to breathe, much less see in the cauldron of hellfire. Screams rung through the canyons between the high rising marble facades, screams of cornered foot soldiers, of children crying for their parents. The attackers had long overtaken the king’s residence in the city center; all that held them here was the thrill of destruction and murder.

Meliodas fought for each step forward with gritted teeth, and the feeble piece of metal in his left hand trembled along with his heartbeat. He could barely hold onto Elizbeth’s hand as he dragged her along. It had never been this bad.

A stray arrow whistled past his head, and he dove for cover in the dust of a house corner. Elizabeth stumbled and fell, but Meliodas pushed her deeper into the shadows, on the lookout for the marksmen. He spotted the masked soldier of Malachia on the top of a building not too far but paid for the information with another almost-hit. For a human, the marksmen controlled his bow with remarkable precision.

Meliodas slipped into his dead angle and studied the arrow buried to the shaft in the wall across the alleyway. The silver crane feathers of its fletching brimmed with the remains of magical energy. Thank heavens. Had the marksmen solely relied on the force of his arrows, Meliodas would have had far worse odds to struggle against.

Elizabeth quivered next to him, her eyes hazy with the images of her past lives raining down on her; she hadn’t even had the time to process the extent of her curse. A few strands had escaped her carefully woven braid, and the beige of her leather doublet had lost its pure color to the ashes of Ys. Even now she looked beautiful. Meliodas had to make sure she would make it out alive, make up for the past times he had failed her.

With the taste of acerbic smoke on his tongue, Meliodas jumped out into the open, and his shoes crashed on the paving stone loud enough to be heard above the roaring flames nearby. But the noise proved unnecessary as the enemy had only waited for his prey to rear its head in panic. In less than a heartbeat, another projectile shot through the black smoke aimed at Meliodas’ chest. Meliodas squinted against the cinders burning in his eyes and raised his sword. Even the advanced eyesight of his Demon blood couldn’t track down the arrow in the dark, but he could hear it, a high-pitched buzzing that raced closer.

Then the arrow reappeared, and Meliodas flicked his wrist at the last second. The red lines of magical energy enwrapping the projectile were flung backwards, reflected by Meliodas’ «Full Counter». On its own, the magic the marksmen had used didn’t offer enough force to kill a man, but doubled in strength, the red bolt did the trick; the marksmen tumbled from the rooftop into the obscurity of the street below.

Meliodas coughed, and blood splashed into a growing puddle at his feet. Swaying from dizziness, he looked down and broke into a humorless grin. How stupid of him to forget the arrow itself. The iron head had buried itself into his chest, and blood poured out of the wound to add to the red stains in his tunic. Another heart gone. Meliodas had stopped counting how many of them had ceased beating, but he had taken at least two fatal strokes when he had fought back the invaders threatening to burn Elizabeth’s house, and a few more might have given in under the constant flood of lethal smoke he pulled into his lungs.

“Meliodas!” Elizabeth had escaped her shell shock and rushed to his side just as the pathetic sword he had taken from a dead soldier escaped his numb fingers.

“No worries, I can still stand,” Meliodas coughed up despite the tremor in his left arm.

“Stop lying, you’re not well. This is all my fault. Ys is being destroyed because of me.” Elizabeth’s broken words of self-blame faded as she held her hands over the arrow wound, deep in concentration and desperate for a spark of Goddess magic to heal him. But there was nothing she could reach out to; her powers had yet to awaken, and her memories of when she had wielded this magic couldn’t spring the flow to life at will.

“Don’t bother, it’ll only slow us down,” Meliodas said between haggard breaths and took a shaky step. His legs could still carry him. At least that.

Hand in hand, Meliodas and Elizabeth stumbled through what had once been the great alley of the city of Ys, the golden kingdom in the far south of Britannia. Like a fever dream, the images of the street’s prosperous days hurried before Meliodas’ inner eye. Here he had laid eyes on this incarnation of Elizabeth for the first time, clad in the white attire of a priestess, a sight of shock and awe between the market stalls teeming with customers from all corners of the land. Here he had bought her the slim golden bangle she had worn ever since. And yesterday, the basket filled with apples and oranges had slipped out of Elizabeth’s hands when Meliodas had declared his love in front of the tailor shop right over there.

Yesterday, all had been well. Today, hell had come to burn Meliodas’ hopes with one swift attack.

Dazed by blood loss and only on his feet because Elizabeth’s hand kept him sane, Meliodas told himself that Ys would have fallen anyway, would have burned to the foundation stones even if he hadn’t uttered the words ‘I will love you forever’ to the woman by his side and triggered her memories. The kingdom of Malachia had long planned this strike, had long eyed the wealth of Ys with envy. He told himself Ys would have joined the ranks of fallen cities regardless of his actions. Another Belialuin.

But Elizabeth remembered now, the curse had awoken, and if Meliodas didn’t give his all, her hours would tick down with brutal certainty.

The massive archway of Ys emerged from the smoke screens in front of them, its gold ornamentations dull in the absence of sunlight. Beyond the marble structure, the plains of winter wheat awaited them where they would be safe from the massacre. Elizabeth would leave behind all the people who mattered to her in this life, but she would live. Only a handful of steps separated them from safety.

Two invaders emerged from the shadows of a doorway, loaded with silver trinkets and sacks of coins from the household they had robbed; the owners had either refused to put up a fight or had long been silenced. And by the time Meliodas became aware of the hooded figures in his periphery, they had dropped their loot, their bloodlust stronger than their greed.

“Run!” Meliodas yelled and shoved Elizabeth forward before he spun to face his adversaries. Blood dripped from the ridges of their daggers, and one of them made the mistake to go after Elizabeth instead of the bigger threat.

Even without a weapon at hand and with a hazy vision, Meliodas could rip any human apart, and one punch square to the chest sent the soldier of Malachia into the wall across the street. The other one rushed at him, but his loud feet betrayed his move, and Meliodas caught his wrist before the dagger could do more than graze him. The man screamed as Meliodas crushed his bones and dropped limp to the ground. He wouldn’t raise a weapon against anyone any time soon.

In the incarnation of stupid defiance, Elizabeth waited for him in the middle of the road with no cover in sight; she had always refused to listen when he told her to run. But she was still standing, fate hadn’t ceased the opportunity to strike her down while he had been distracted, and nothing else mattered.

He staggered towards her, and his view swayed like a ship in a raging sea intent to pull him underwater. Smoke ate its way into his lungs as he gasped for air. But Meliodas pushed forward, despite the blood running down his side. He could still breathe, he still had a heartbeat left, so he could still protect Elizabeth.

They dragged themselves into the shadows under the grand archway that had marked the borders of the city for countless generations. Today it marked to gateway to safety, to a life beyond this hell. Meliodas clung to the stone wall, barely aware of the detailed reliefs under his hand, and pushed himself forward and into the open. The wide road of well-trodden dirt stretched into the far distance, skirted by the high corn that would cover their escape. On the horizon, a thin blue line hugged the ridges of a mountain range, a sliver of sky against the black clouds of death hanging over Ys. All would be well. Meliodas would make sure Elizabeth would live.

She reached the edge of the field faster than he did, and her fingers had almost brushed the surface of the outer leaves when she turned on her heels to shoot him a concerned look. The blue ribbon with which she kept her hair in check had loosened and her silver locks waved around her slim shoulders in the breeze. For a second, the triskelion of the Goddess Clan flashed in her blue eyes as she made sure he was right behind her, as well as could be given the situation.

Then the buzz of a bowstring cut through the silence, and this time Meliodas spotted the arrow emerging from the dark and racing towards them. To Elizabeth. He had no weapon to deflect the projectile, no strength to catch it midair, all he had was his own life to give. He didn’t hesitate.

Meliodas’ gaze clouded with blackness when he stared at the hole in his chest. That was a first. For once he would leave this world before he saw her death, felt her fingers grow cold, watched the light disappear from her eyes. He gurgled when he tried to pull in a lungful of air, his throat filled with blood.

The same sound recurred behind him. Meliodas turned. Elizabeth had fallen to her knees and clutched her abdomen where the arrow Meliodas had meant to shield her from was buried in her flesh. Horror washed over him, and his muscles froze to ice.

No, no, no, not her, not again, not this time. They had been so close, the walls lay behind them, and yet Elizabeth bleed to death all the same, regardless of his efforts. He couldn’t hold himself upright and dropped to the dust beside her, his fingers stretched halfway towards her.

He could barely see the lovely features of her face as she placed a cold hand on his cheek to wipe away the tears that kept streaming. I failed you, he wanted to say but only managed a blood-filled gargle. If only he hadn’t admitted his love, if only he had taken her for a trip outside the city today, if only he had been stronger, better…

“I’ll see you in the next life… Meliodas,” Elizabeth whispered. Her hand still on his cheek, she sounded her last breath, and her soul fled her body to enter the cycle of reincarnation anew, to be reborn in some other place in this world for him to fall in love with her all over again.

The city of Ys burned down behind him.

Meliodas’ last heart sounded its final weak beats before it succumbed to the smoke poisoning his body.

When he opened his eyes, Meliodas was greeted by blinding rays of sunlight and the smell of summer grass. All he could do was stare into the endless blue of the sky as the memories dripped into his mind, memories of fire and failure. Elizabeth, love of his life, priestess of Ys, admirer of fruit buffets and harp-playing was dead.

The giggles of a child tore him from his trance, and the young girl he was faced with when he sat himself up clapped her tiny hands in excitement. “You’re awake!” she said with a grin and stroked his hair as if he were a pet her parents had presented her with for her birthday. “Happy day!”

Meliodas’ mind slowly assembled itself back together, and the more he remembered the more bitter he became. Elizabeth was dead because he had failed to protect her; not even his own life as sacrifice had broken her curse, and his own curse of Eternal Life had brought him back to the land of the living all the same. The field of wheat where he had died had become nothing but a faint dream, and wild grass and clover covered the plain in its stead. Only a few yards to the west, ruins dotted the scenery, covered in ivy and scorch marks from the fire that had eaten the city whole. Marble pillars, the remains of an archway, reached for the heavens like people in desperate prayer; the last citizens of Ys.

“Come home. Mommy makes stew,” the girl said and took Meliodas’ hands to drag him to her village across the hillside. With a heavy heart and one last look at the ruins glistering in the sun, he followed the girl barely old enough to walk.

Her eyes were blue, her short locks silver.

#melizabethweek #nnt fanfiction #nanatsu no taizai #seven deadly sins #meliodas #elizabeth #melizabeth #my writing #I had way too much fun with this #character death #I regret nothing

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chalabrun · 6 years

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vengess victorious, ch. 1

Word Count: 2,341 Pairing: Ardyn/Luna, Noctis/Luna Rating: M Warnings: Some mentions of abuse Summary: Based on Catherynne M. Valente's Deathless, Lunafreya was once the Tsarevna of Light, set to ascend to her mother's place as Oracle, diviner between the Tsars and Tsaristas of creation itself. However, her mother's death brought destitution with it, and Lunafreya must battle between keeping the world being thrown into chaos and a heart tugged in too many directions, between being a girl and a queen.

Luna is just awakening to the reality of what she is, of what the world needs her to be.

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They didn’t like it when she dreamed. They knew what flitted across her face when she did, of those gold dresses and ivory sandals and humming summer breezes of home. She was peaceful, and light, this former princess. Even clad in ragged dog’s cloth, a girl who sat by the hearth and waited for scraps, she remembered what she was—who she was. A princess pushed from her nest, daughter of the Tsarina of Light. But, she was no Tsarevna to them.

She was lost, she was human, as insignificant as coal dust scattered near a stove. As it coated her, sooty and ashen on her features once lunar as silk, hair spun from pouring, pale gold.

On a bed of straw, Lunafreya curled into herself like a hound, still dreaming in vales of sylleblossoms and a dead mother’s love. The stove behind her crackled and cinders collapsed, a breath of flame exhaling through the metal flume that fed into the chimney. Warmth caressed her back and made her glow, yet despite how tightly she curled her toes and fingers, it was not enough to keep warm.

Thunderous staccato resonated from the train below in the valley cloven by tracks, motes of smog and coal smoke pillaging through a gray dawn and polluting the air with acerbity and bitterness. Luna coughed as azure eyes cracked open like eggs, sudden and stiff. It was early morning, unfurling her limbs that creaked from the cold, sooty soles accented by blue toes. Always cold, no matter what.

“Luna! Come here this instant!” Luna jolted when she was suddenly summoned by her mistress, a cold flush suffusing as she hurried in a panic, almost fumbling through the straw with a coltish beginning. She tapped down her hair and tightened her ponytail, slapping her mottled dress of powdery dust and sliding into her slippers as she ran through the kitchen like a fox in a hen house before composing herself again.

“At once, Lady Ulldor!” she called through the rafters, hoping her voice would carry as she hurriedly put water to boil in a tea kettle, fumbling with matches and their antiquated stove. The old kitchenette whirred to life as fire flamed its veins, Luna’s brows furrowing as she ensured all was ready for preparation.

“Lunafreya!”

Luna bolted like a crop had been taken to her heels, whipping her strides and forcing her into a near run that shamed her heritage. She paused before the threshold of Lady Ulldor’s room, ringed by statues and paintings so congested by their own layers they seemed to sweat color from the loud garishness of this place, of this red-cocooned corridor. She opened the heavy carved door, mindful to curtsy and to keep her eyes trained low.

Lady Ulldor was a woman bathed in wealth, sunk into a satin cushion like a dowager queen shrewdly overlooking her empire. Her gaunt, handsome face was framed by heavy graying ringlets and she was painted more heavily than the subjects of the portraits that hung from the walls. White as the bones that nearly split from her joints, she wore her power in rings and ornamental gold, flippant and rich compared to the ragged girl who slept in straw.

“My tea?” she demanded loftily, arching an inked brow as she blew smoke rings impatiently into the foggy air. Marina Ulldor always was this way, after all. Her cutting eyes of pale gray lingered on her face like smoke, Luna’s eyes lowering away.

“My apologies, Lady Ulldor. I’ll be but a moment more with it,” Luna apologized in a stiff bow, only for Marina to lower herself from her dais and bring her spindly gait towards Lunafreya. Spidery fingers curled around her jaw and the cigarette holder was held loosely in her other hand, twining about the instrument like thread.

“I’ll never under the emperor’s or my husband’s fascination with you, Tsarevna of Light,” Marina hissed through sharpened teeth mockingly. Up close, her painted face was craggy with age, Luna flitting among its hills and wrinkled valleys before those severe, stormy eyes demanded hers again. Her nails bit crescents and welts into Luna’s skin, the young woman shifting uncomfortably. “You’re just a dirty girl without a title or gil to her name. You’re nothing but an insect I could crush beneath my heel.”

“Lady Ulldor?” A waxy, tired voice broke through their confrontation. Luna nearly collapsed to her knees when Marina threw her away, puffing irately on her cigarette while Maria stood pensively in the doorway, a silent gesture to retreat. “Your tea is ready. Shall I bring it in?” She was old, gray hair bound in an oiled bun. As Ulldor’s servants were required.

Marina champed on the cigarette holder impatiently while Luna gathered herself quietly and exited the room, a sharp sting of tears pooled within her eyes that she refused to allow the woman to see. For though her pride was a shattered bird in a cage, forgotten how to sing, it still fluttered. Sometimes. Luna wiped those tears before they could truly be shed, the dusky dark of the corridor encompassing both women comfortably.

“Are you well, Lady Lunafreya? Come, to the kitchen. I think I know just the thing to remedy this.”

Guilt flowered cold and dreadfully in her breast, feeling as though she were robbing Maria of duties that often saw them severely punished for not being completed on time. Still, she followed with all the beguilement of a duckling back into the stone-cold kitchen, where the stove-fires crackled when fed the scraps that kept them blazing bright. “Maria, please—don’t call me that. Please tend to Lady Ulldor first and foremost,” the young woman protested of Maria’s fussiness, the older one busily lifting the puffing and singing kettle from the stove top to pour into two waiting mugs with tea leaves settled inside.

Nonplussed, Maria poured a cup for Luna first and foremost, stirring the contents to brew before doing the same with Marina’s with many more flavorful embellishments for the Commander’s wife’s sake. For all the richness that dominated the domicile, any place inhabited by the servants was woeful and dreadfully cold. “Nonsense, Luna. I’ll be just a moment, dear.”

Luna took the old, earthenware mug in hand, quietly relieved that Maria had enough sense not to relegate use of the gleaming porcelain mugs so thinly crafted they might be crystallized lace, for a mere servant as it often spelled trouble. She was grateful for the warmth, though knew it would end soon enough when she and Maria had to set about preparing the Ulldors’ breakfast, no easy feat when their teenaged daughters were thrown into the mix.

Luna sipped her tea quickly, deciding incisively that she would begin preparations for breakfast for the five of them. And it was no easy task, surely. The sole manservant, Jared, was tending to Caligo himself while the youngest of them, Talcott, was likely polishing their shoes for the day. That left she and Maria to tend to Marina and her daughters. For Caligo, it was simple; as austere as Niflheim’s armies prided itself upon being, kolbasa, ham, sandwiches were often served and paired with symiki, a sort of pancake. Solheimian-style coffee was popular, served dark or with lemon. For Marina and her daughters, they always basked in decadence. Semolina served hot and drizzled with syrups and blueberries, raspberries and blueberries with puffy cream paired on their symiki, and coffee so creamy it was too sweet for those reared on an ordinary palette.

When Maria had returned, Lunafreya had already begun whipping the cream in a metal bowl, though dull thumping upon the tin roof drew their attention with furrowed brows. The griddle upon which the pancakes flattened spat and hissed greasily, but it wasn’t enough to draw their eye. In utter disbelief did Luna abandon her work and dash to the window, recoiling by what she saw.

Feathery shapes fell from the sky, a small panic bursting through her chest when Luna realized these were birds that thumped upon the roof, in the immense cluster of buildings terraced into the cliff-side did they fall, morbid and grim and ominous.

Reactive, Luna grabbed the tattered curtains and drew them shut, the intercom system blaring just as she did. “Maria! Luna! Close the curtains in my and my daughters’ rooms this instant!” Marina hollered, causing both women to wince. Neither exchanged more than worried glances before rushing from the kitchen like hens fleeing a coop, splitting in the corridors as frightened shrieks of the daughters sounded above the cacophony.

Within Marina’s room, Luna rushed to close the curtains while the woman herself hurled abuses upon her, doing so with grit teeth and wishing the swish and furl of falling blinds and layered satin could drown it out. “You useless cunt!” she shrieked, chucking a slipper that bounced off Luna’s back, the younger woman flinching. “You useless whore! Harlot, wench!”

It was only when she finished that the ruddy hole of her mouth seemed to close that Marina threw herself on her silk sheets, robe pooling at the nude, bloated contours of her grotesque body beneath. Strange, when compared to the arachnid thinness the rest of her bore. Lunafreya swiped errant bangs from her eyes like leaves left wild by a storm. “You’re trying to sabotage me, aren’t you?! Tormenting me, even though my husband gave you a home!” Marina caterwauled, eyeliner running down her face like rain, like black blood. “You only wish to ruin me!”

Luna speechlessly attempted to comfort the distraught woman, unknowing of what to say. “I— Please, my apologies. I didn’t mean to be so slow, my lady—“ Marina only hissed when she drew near, lashing out with nails like talons.

“Leave me be! Prepare breakfast, but leave me!” she raged, coif tangling into a nest of bedraggled gray hair, Luna withdrawing a step before fleeing the room. Like an eaglet shrieking for its mother, barely a wind touching the nest. Luna feared her, but a part of her deep inside wished to stand tall and say, I am the daughter of the Tsarina of Light and you are a little, cowardly woman compared to me. Stand defiant and iron. She did not quake, but skin flinched when whipped no matter how strong its wearer was.

Within the hall, it was Jared she nearly ran into, the blonde balking short of upsetting the man’s cane from his hand. “Ah, please excuse me, Luna.” His smile was pleasant, but a sense of urgency riddled it. “Master Caligo wished to see you. I’ll tend to breakfast in your stead.”

“I—thank you, Jared.” She breathed a strange relief, watching as the man nodded pleasantly and doddered away.

She knew where Jared meant. Caligo only ever spoke in confidence within his study, a place all of the staff knew of. High-walled with lacquered roan panels and wallpaper red as blood, square and sturdy, deep and mired in thought and books thickly as cigar smoke. The vaulted ceilings bowed like scholars bent over their work, mosaics their minds of imagination wandering away from them. The deliciously musky scent of old books drowned that of acrid cigar smoke, fumigating from the tip Caligo puffed from behind a desk larger than him, in an overstuffed leather chair that loomed over his head.

“You wished to see me, sir?” Luna greeted, curtsying before clasping her hands together. Even in ragged, dowdy dresses rough as tarp and spotted by soot and roughly combed hair that stuck like maize, her straight posture betrayed her noble upbringing. Perhaps it was all that was needed, as when Caligo looked upon her, it was drawn and poignant.

“No need to sit, I won’t keep you,” Caligo said dismissively, a flap of his wrist before a cutting gray gaze met through with her own. He stood, slowly, seeming to belay what roiled through his mind. “The Tsar of Salt has demanded an audience with you. Personally.”

Luna’s eyes widened and she felt her heart climb into her throat. “What on earth does His Radiance wish from me?”

Caligo snorted, an irregular puff of smoke curling away with the stutter. “You’re the Tsarevna of Light. The war with the Tsar of Death has become bad as of late, if the downpour of dead birds wasn’t enough to go by. With each death, His army grows stronger. They become conscripted, but you knew this, didn’t you?” His gaze sliced towards her own.

Hers dropped, sidelong and wondering. Emperor Iedolas’ frantic efforts to avoid death had come to a pass with the advent of the Magitek, an army wrought of the city and daemon vessels that used the Tsar of Death’s own darkness and demons against him. For the Tsar of Death was also known as the Deathless. Yet, it seemed a hopeless war, even as the Tsar of Salt ruled from his cities and possessively hoarded them like dragon’s gold. “And...if the Tsar of Death isn’t defeated, our country will become his?” Luna surmised before their gazes matched, searching his for confirmation.

“Precisely!” Caligo shouted, smiting his fist on his desk on a dash. “If be damned before I see my countrymen die with streaks of black on their chests, drinking dust from goblets and becoming hollow wraiths!” The man stalked around her, fuming hotly before he stopped short of leaving the study. “Get ready. Have Maria dress you in something of our daughter’s, but if you speak one word of how you were treated as anything less than a daughter of my own, you’ll regret it, Lady Lunafreya.” The last was spoken in an odious snarl, the shorter man curling his lip in a grimace before whisking in hulking strides from the study.

Bemused but excited by this purpose, she decided she’d ponder what Iedolas wanted of her and the escape she might finally have from this wretched place, all while changing into the woman the empire thought Caligo had raised as his own.

#lunafreya nox fleuret #ardyn izunia #noctis lucis caelum #lunardyn #noctluna #ffxv #my writing

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