fragment: Crimson Colchis 1

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Memory Extract XXXX-04: A Sorceress Begins to Bloom

The following synthesized Memory Extraction and Journal log was provided to the department of Folkloristics and Mythology by SCP-XXXX on May 7th, 2024, following the end of [TEMPORAL ERROR DETECTED].

Foreword:

They were ten, almost eleven, when it began. The severing of our ties. They were growing fast, already taller than I had ever been. The House’s blood in their veins, probably. The Monster always said I was shorter than I should have been. She was over two meters tall, as had been every Matriarch since the beginning of our house. It was the sorcerer’s blood in my veins.

They ran free now, beloved among the city children in a way I had never been.

Bane of every parent in the upper and lower city, orchestrators of infinite schemes. Where Mermeros was the mastermind, a natural mage in his own right, Pheres inherited the strength his father never had. Brains and brawn, unstoppable with a gang of other children, younger and older. They dreamed of adventure, of riding off on great ships or noble steeds to fight the monsters of the world. I stopped them once, attempting to sneak through a hole in the city wall.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Going to slay the hydra, just like mighty Heracles!”

“You are far too young for that. Back, back to your hobby holes.”

I would sit on the colunade of the palace and watch them. Used reflective charms for surveillance, to keep an eye on them while I bought herbs in the markets. Kept them close when we went on trips into the forest for things the merchants did not sell. I couldn’t have been more proud of them.

On that fatal autumn evening, Mermeros came to me as I was cooking in the kitchen.

“Mother, one day, will you takes us to the golden city where you were born? We want to see the scales that wreath the sky, the plain of fire. We want a fleece of our own from your father.”

I felt every muscle in my body tighten and then I whirled around. It’s the only time I think I’d ever shouted at them.

“No child of mine must ever walk that place!”

He took a step back, wide eyed, as if he’d seen something terrible on my face. For a very brief moment, I was the monster he’d heard about from every whisper by the adults in the city. Realizing my panicked mistake, I shrunk back, leaning against the counter. My hands were trembling, seeing every potential thing she might do to us.

“No. No, I won’t allow it.”

“Mom, are you scared of going home?”

His brother joined us, having overhead the commotion. I took a long, deep breath to try to steady myself. It didn’t work.

“I would give anything in all the world to be able to go home. But I can’t.”

I was so very glad their father wasn’t there. Oh, the verbal lashing he would give me for cowering like a babe in front of his heirs. But then, he never understood just what monstrosity was waiting in that place.

“Why?”

“Because there is something evil there. Something that would take everything from me, sweep all three of us from the earth and erase any trace of our existence.”

Silence between us.

“Is it your Mother?”

I leaned forward, heart hammering in my chest. Looking deep into their eyes, I tried to understand why they would ask that question. What had they been told? Had I spoken in my sleep?

“Why do you ask that?”

“One of the other boys said you’re a Blood Witch of the East. That you’re ruled by cruel Mothers.”

I froze, wide eyed. A combination of shock at what had been spread, and relief that they didn’t know the truth. I would shield them from knowledge of such horrors at every cost.

“You should not listen to such things.”

I turned back to the cutting board on the counter, not daring to pick up the knife while my hands shook so vigorously. I grasped the edge of the wood to steady their shaking, knuckles turning white with the exertion. Keeping the breathing even was a task onto itself.

“Mother, they say we have the ears. They say we are half blood-witch too.”

I closed my eyes, shoulders sagging. So, this is what it felt like. What every slave in those halls endured from every Daevite. What she would have dealt with, bound in chains as a child.

There was quiet for a very long moment.

“It’s true.”

“Which part, Mom?”

“All of it. You, we, are Daevite. You are the children of a daughter who was supposed to be a Matriarch. Blood of a Queen of a Noble house. And I am terribly, terribly afraid of her grasp”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“No. Hecate’s sacred fire, no. I’m afraid, because she was never a mother to me. She was a Monster who would swallow me whole. And you’d be swallowed with me.”

I tried not to cry. Tried not to let all the pain, all the terrors of those memories rise back to the surface. How could I bring myself to tell them that I could have saved our people, my sister? That I too was a monster in a class all my own? How could they see me as anything but a coward for running away.

There is something about children. Especially children who are not yet overwhelmed with the rush of bodily changes and horomones in their bloodstreams. That golden age of 8-10, they see straight through every hidden fear burning in their parents’ bellies.

“Are you afraid you’re a monster too?”

The question broke something inside of me. Or maybe, it just brought it back to the surface after being buried for so long. I could not turn back to face them. For a long moment, I couldn’t even speak.

“No. No I’m not afraid I’m a monster.”

There was a dramatic breath of air that filled the entire room, as if they knew you were not finished.

“I’m afraid I will always be a monster.”

My voice cracked, and trembled. For the longest time, they said nothing.

“We don’t think you’re a monster.”

Tears started to run in big fat streams. How could they say that so innocently?

“We know all the stories. But most of them are just lies. Our Mom would never do that.”

Oh, how wrong they were. Two pairs of arms wrapped around the waist and pressed into my shoulders.

“Even if they were true, we don’t think you’re that person anymore.”

We stood there for an eternity. I was trapped underneath the weight of their love that I did not deserve.

How I wish the night that came after that had been different. How I wish.

---

<Begin Log>

The first steps beyond the palace were into a world of color and light. The true scale of the Lemurian Ironski, of the palace and city around it had always been obscured, except for those rare hours spent atop its canopy in the Maker’s grandiose throne room. Its titanic trunk towered up, clawing at the sky itself. It was night when the caravan had stepped out into the grand stone hall, with four fountains burbling four different streams of fluid at at all hours of the day and night. Every wall coated with paints of so many rich and vibrant colors marking the history of your house, declaring the glory of the Golden Throne to all visitors from the empire who dare to tread there. Above you, the golden light of the tree’s great canopy, showering the earth below with its warmth even now in the dark.

“What’s your name?”

On the steps of that grand hall, you were greeted with a sprawling city of stone and wood, sweeping orchards of auric leaves where many great fruits were picked in the spring and autumn seasons. Beyond the walls lay fields and forests where many different crops would grow in the underbrush.

It was also where your people would hang their dead from the trees to nourish the earth below.

“Is she deaf?”

The Northward Journey was long and filled with wonders. Towering peaks of grey and purple stone, capped with snowy white peaks. Endless thundering plains and forests in which your people, their human slaves, and the free men lived.

The group of Daevae children standing in the shade before you were, just a few minutes ago, frolicking in the sunlit field. They’d been doing so all morning while the Queens spoke of strategy not far from where you sit. The shade shields you from the heat of the warm North Summer sun. There are flowers everywhere, tall red things that jut up into the sky in defiance of gravity. The seeds, you’ve learned after toppling one or two, are quite savory underneath their purple shells. A secret you weren’t hesitant to share with the adults, who then shared it with the children.

You’re four years old now. The trip here took nearly a year, delayed by the Maker’s recovery. Then again till your sister was old enough to properly travel.

You’re not supposed to approach the children, and now that they’re in front of you, you’re not sure what to say. Though they are the children of the Northern Queens, you are still above them. No matter how much your heart aches to get up and play.

Something is different about the people of the North. There is no fear in their eyes when they look at you, there is no quiet aversion of gazes or moving to the other side of the path to let you pass. The other Matriarchs are unlike your mother. Tall, strong, fierce women marked with scars of hard-fought wars to the west.

Their palaces range to the north, west, or east of here. Here being a flat grassy plain that stretches far as the eye can possibly see. Or that would be the case if it weren’t for the forest city of shrubby Lemurian Ash Root trees stretching several hundred meters into the sky. Not nearly as impressive as the Ironskins of your house, but no less a marvel with their ashen bark and white leaves.

How many hours now have you spent watching them? Mothers with their daughters. Matriarchs with their blood sisters. There is warmth between them. Laughter in their hair, affection in their eyes. Are they hiding their true feelings, as your Maker often does when in the presence of foreign dignitaries? Where is the disdain in their hearts? Why do you not see the hidden agitation at their children’s presence? Why is it so blatant in the Maker’s eyes?

Is your house not normal after all?

Chalciope is sitting on a blanket next to you. Her rich hair reflects the color of the rising sun when you’re not in the shade. She’s two now, wide eyed and taking in the entire world around you. How quickly she has grown. Nearly your height already, a sign that she will rise to match the Maker in her adult years.

There’s a vague sense of her pulling on your robe sleeve, as if trying to get your attention.

The Maker has written her off as an idiot because she hasn’t said a word in their presence. Which has, in many ways, deferred all talk of her ever being a worthy second, Vessel. A relief of sorts. After the initial cries of her birth, she fell silent as the grave.

But you know a truth that they don’t. Her very first word was in your presence.

“Sister.”

It bubbled forth from her one quiet afternoon when you were alone with her in the room you’d come to call your own. You froze in place, staring at her with wide eyes as she stared back. Some warm flower had bloomed in your chest on that day. It was the first time that anyone you considered family had ever referred to you as something more than a Vessel.

Now you’re just waiting for the day that she’ll finally speak in their presence. Not that you’re in a hurry. Trying to convince them otherwise is a fruitless effort which ends in punishment for defiance. In the quiet hours of the night, you would talk to her, and its there you began to piece together that she is an empath. Sensitive and open to the feelings of all around her.

So, her silence was a response to the deep turmoil constantly raging inside of you.

You finally look at the small gaggle of future Queens, most a year younger than you. Their faces are bloated with baby fat. Richly colored hair thick with copper undertones frames their pointed ears. They remind you of the Queen in the Punished Dark.

The question is asked again, dragging everything out from the thoughts of the past.

“Excuse me, what’s your name?”

Their attire is of a different world from your own. Furs and leather. They lack the fine silks that reach your house along the Empire’s trade routes or the golden wool of the winged rams. There is something about their eyes, a hardness of winters seen when all did not survived. Yet a softness that was not there in the Matriarchs of your house.

You open your mouth to reply, but can find nothing to give them, so you close it again. The truth is, there is no name you have to give them. A Vessel doesn’t need one, according to the Maker. But don’t tell them that. That’ll just make it sound as if you see yourself above them.

Well, you do, but that’s a separate matter they don’t need to see. These are the children of Matriarchs, not human slaves, merchants, or other things.

“My name is—“

A pause, stumbling to come up with a name of proper gravitas. How do the mid-wives help the Queens do this?

“My name is, uh, —”

A sneering, venomous inflection cuts you off. Blood starts to boil in your veins, a quiet anger that’s been growing every time his palm lands across a cheek or his words cut deep beneath the skin.

“It doesn’t have a name.”

“Why not, Absyrtus?”

“It doesn’t deserve one. It’s just a mindless, obedient sack of flesh.”

Eyes dart to his shape. Six years old now, already monstrously tall and strong. He looks more like the maker with every passing year. That’s not even mentioning how much of a spoiled brat the bastard is.

Instinctively, you pull Chalciope behind you to protect her as you rise to your feet.

“She doesn’t look mindless?”

Before you can confirm you aren’t, he chimes in again.

“Go on give it an order.”

Daggers burn in your eyes, stabbing straight through his skull. The Maker you could at least somewhat accept, she forged you in her image. A child belongs to their maker, a vessel bound by the blood it is filled with. But him? How can he be above you.

The other children look at each other with uncertainty in their eyes. Finally, one steps forward.

“Kick your Mother.”

You stare at the girl, her hair raven dark. They watch you expectantly, jaw muscles working as you debate on the most appropriate response.

“No.”

The words come out as a dangerous growl. You stand your ground, a hot anger flooding your veins. The shadows seem to crawl deeper, the darkness swirling at your back.

The girl takes several steps backwards, your reflection swirling in the black of her pupils. The tattoos across that olive flesh squirm with growing brightness as you stare her down. The others look on with wide eyes. Even Absyrtus looks mildly surprised at your defiance. He purses his lips together, the tinge of fear reflecting in his tilted ears says everything.

“Do as they say, Vessel. I command you.”

Your gaze drags from the child back to your brother. There are two options. Obeying his command will only end with more pain and humiliation. Not obeying, well, he’ll either run to the Maker anyways, or he’ll handle it himself. He’s not an idiot, no matter how much he plays one to bait you into punishment. He has her same, cold, calculating gaze. He’s betting that you’re more afraid of him than the Maker.

There’s a heat crawling up the back of your neck. Balled fists, steadied legs.

“No.”

A heavy silence settles twixt the two of you. The tension is so thick it could be cut with a flint knife. His expression is inscrutable other than his narrowed eyes. Ears stand horizontal to your skull; lips peeled back to reveal those white teeth.

Your move, Brother.

The silence holds. Then, he laughs.

“Look upon her friends, she’s going feral. A feral beast is nothing to play with, It’ll just steal your soul with savage human magic. Get back noble young Queens, I must tame this monster again. RAH.”

He lunges at the other children with hands held in the shape of imaginary claws. Squeals as the children turn and flee, looking back all the while with fear in their eyes. A breeze trickles beneath the tree, blowing your hair sideways. You can only stand and watch another chance to end this isolation slip between your fingers. A deep familiar weight settles in your belly.

You’re so distracted you miss him moving. The fist is a nasty surprise. It lands in the middle of your chest, knocking the air from your lungs with a pained gasp. Suddenly down in a kneel you croak for air while your vision swims.

“Disobey me will you? Did you forget, Vessel? I’m above you! You don’t get to say no.”

His hot, rancid breath washes across reality, provoking a silent gag. You clench your jaw, gritting teeth.

“Nothing to say, Vessel? No excuse for humiliating me in front of the other Queens?”

You spit a bit of blood into the grass. He must have cracked a rib.

“If you grovel right now, maybe I won’t tell Mother.”

With one hand still pressed to your chest, you look up at him. He looms over you, his smug little face obscured by the sun.

How dare this little retch tell me what to do. I am the blood of a Queen, Vessel or not.

“I will not grovel for a male brat.”

The hiss comes between your teeth with enough venom you could lay a dragon low.

“What did you say?”

You stand up, an unsteady motion informed by still being winded. Pain radiates out from your chest, burning against the night fire of rage that sears through every vein. Standing to your full height, you stare into his eyes with a defiant hate. The Queen of the Punished Dark’s words ring in your brain.

‘Bullies feed off fear. Do not give them it to them.’

“I said, you’re a brat who’s beneath me.”

He stares with incredulity. A spell, you could use a spell to lay him low.

Before you can reach for one, his fist slams into your lower abdomen, sacking against your diaphragm and stomach. The air bursts out of your lungs first with a croaking gasp. Acidic bile, full of half-digested flower seeds, splatters into the grass as you crumble to the ground.

“You dare insult me?!”

A swift kick to the chest sends you spinning across the dirt like a top.

“Look at you. Look at how weak you are, squirming in the dirt like a worm.”

You roll over onto your back to try and mitigate his kicks. As a reward for the effort, his fist slams down into your face, cracking your nose to one side. It is the worst pain you have ever felt, an instant bolt of white lightning ricocheting through your face. You stop moving, stunned by the pain.

Spots spin in your vision. Where are you? What happened?

Chalciope’s squeal brings you crashing back to reality. With blood drippling from your broken nose, you roll to your feet, pain and swelling already radiating outwards. He’s caught Chalciope by the back of her silk top, holding her in a grapple. One arm is wrapped around her neck, compressing her windpipe

“Did you forget, Vessel? She pays for your transgressions too.”

Hot flashes of hate fill the contours of your vision. Ice constricts around your ribcage, mixing together with the flame rising in your belly. You take a step forward.

He pulls back his arm, balling a hand into a fist.

“Take another step. See what happens.”

Tears are trickling from the corners of your eyes from the pain. Shakily you reach up, grip your crooked nose. It’s tender, hot, and throbbing. She’s going to tear you apart for this, but you don’t care now. With a bolt of unbelievable pain, you wrench your wrist. It pops and cracks settling back into place as a swollen painful mass.

He stares at you, that little trembling hint of fear rising in his lips. Your hands tremble as they fall to your side. You won’t be able to cast with this pain; you can’t focus long enough.

“You’d raise your hand against your sister?”

The words are slurred from the swelling.

“She’s not a sister worth having. She can’t even speak.”

You spit a bit of blood into the grass. There’s no way to get Chalciope out of his grasp without her getting hurt, or you getting more injuries.

“Now, I’m still feeling generous, even though you have been a disobedient little sack of ram shit. If you drop and grovel at my feet, I’ll give her back untouched.”

“How can I trust your words.”

“You don’t have a choice, but I’ll tell you what, Vessel. If you’re convincing, I won’t tell the Maker.”

The humiliation burns hot in your belly as you stare at him. You don’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him see you splayed out on the ground. But you’re not an idiot. If you let pride win, Chalciope will get hurt. You swallow a knot of blood.

Kneeling is an effort in agony, that rib is definitely cracked. Prostrating yourself before him in the dirt makes you feel like a slave wallowing in pig shit.

“Brother—”

“I am your King and you will address me as such.”

You grit your teeth biting back real tears.

He will pay for this.

“My King, forgive me for disobeying you. I do not know what came over me.”

Your face is inches from the dirt.

“Say it. Say you’re beneath me.”

Fingers curl against the dirt and grass.

“I’m beneath you oh King.”

“King of Legends, say my name!”

What a stupid fucking name.

“I’m beneath you oh King of Legends.”

“Now say that you’re nothing but a tool for Mother, that you’ll never be anything else.”

You cough a clot up into the dirt.

“I—I’m nothing but a Vessel. Nothing but a conduit for the Maker’s legacy.”

His sneering delighted gaze burns holes in the back of your neck. There’s a moment of silence. Then his foot presses to the back of your skull, rubbing your face and broken nose in the dirt. The pain is blinding as you bite down an agonized scream by picking up a stick in your teeth and biting down on it. Splinters are better than giving him a reaction. He’ll just keep going if you give him that.

He laughs above you.

“And don’t you forget it, Vessel. You are nothing, you will always be nothing, and you don’t deserve to feel Mother’s touch. She doesn’t love you; you’re just serving a purpose.”

Spells begin to bubble up in your mind, curses and bindings you could use to make him pay.

“Absyrtus! What are you doing?”

The Maker’s voice. A hand roughly yanks on your robe, lifting you from the ground with dirt and blood caking your face. More bolts of pain through your chest and face. His expression becomes a perfect mask of innocence.

“Oh, Mother, it refused to obey me when I told it to take Chalciope further away from the Children. I had to intervene when I saw it looking out at them. I was so scared when it tried to rush me, and I had to defend myself.”

She drops you, and your legs force you to stumble. Spindly fingers grip that blood and dirt-soaked chin, jerking your face up, turning it side to side. There were other eyes on you now.

“Tch. You broke it—her nose.”

“I was trying not to, Mother. But it just came at me so fast.”

She leans towards him, and in a tight venomous voice says

“They are watching us, stop speaking like that.”

He glances towards the other Matriarchs, then back to her and nods.

She stands up.

“You, take my Ve—eldest daughter and her sister back to our quarters. I will attend to them when we’re done here.”

The term daughter provokes a confused glance at the Maker. But your hand is taken and you’re hauled off in the direction of a Cinderskin.

Later that evening, she enters the room with the hollowed out needle and sieve of a plant stalk that she has used for the infusions of blood since your veins became large enough to support such things. She sits in silence next to you, as the blood trickles from beneath her flesh into your veins. It bubbles beneath your skin, sweat percolating against your skin as that old familiar churning begins across every inch of flesh.

Your breath comes in pants as she lays you down on the table, her spindly fingers beginning to press and wind into your flesh. The sensation is indescribable as skin, muscle, and nerve mold beneath her massaging touch. The pain in your chest from that broken rib vanishes beneath an obsessive arc of crimson light trickling through the skin. The ridges of her fingertips dragging across your swollen, broken nose leaves it molten like gelatin. A blinding white warmth curls through your vision. You gasp for breath as she drizzles the swollen flesh and reforges it into a mirror of her nose.

“You are a canvas on which our will shall propagate. Born of my flesh, my blood in your veins. You are better than them, those other things which walk the earth. We dance to a melody called empire. We serve the weaver in the dark.”

When she’s finished, she turns you over, tracing every curve, every fold of flesh. For the longest time you have believed she’s looking for imperfections. But as you get older, you are growing less and less sure, as she rarely follows up with further shaping.

When she’s finished, she sits you up. You sit there, shivering from every inch of skin having been aflame with her intent. Your belly churns, mind squirming with twists of confusion as it works through the echoes of the mantra, most of which is cast aside. She leans in after a moment.

“Just because we’re here where the other Queens can see doesn’t mean you won’t pay for this defiance when we return home. If you attack him again, I’ll do far worse than break your nose. Do you understand, Vessel?”

Her words are ice, carving gashes in your skin.

“Yes, Maker.”

“Good.”

The hand lands across your cheek with such incredible force that it knocks you flat. You gasp on the table, stunned by the white flash of pain.

It takes a moment for the spots to clear from that swirling vision. To see her walk towards the wide eyed form of Chalciope who has been watching all along. Everything becomes ice when there is another meaty smack, followed by Chalciope’s cries of pained distress.

“Mama why!”

You freeze, a deep pit forming in your stomach. With eyes wide, the Maker takes a step back, rare surprise thick on her lips.

“Well, it seems she does speak after all. How long have you hid this from me, Vessel? ”

Sitting up is impossible with every muscle still feeling like its made of gelatin.

“D-d-don’t hit her.”

“What was that?”

She turns to face you, surprise etched into the curl of her lips.

“Please, don’t hit her, Maker.”

She stares at you in silence, for several seconds longer than you’d really like.

“I see. Exactly what I thought I heard. What have I said to you all along?”

Her eyes are narrow.

“She’s my responsibility.”

“That’s right. So, when you fail me, when you don’t act like a Vessel, what happens?”

A swallow, ice spreading through the veins with every heartbeat.

“You punish us both.”

“That’s right. Her suffering is and always will be your fault. You best remember that.”

She claps her hands together as if cleansing herself of your taint.

“Now then, did my ears deceive me or did you just dare to command me? No, don’t look away, up here, meet my gaze, Vessel.?”

A shudder runs through your body. Her eyes are filled with a crimson flame. Anger.

“Sorry, Maker.”

“Answer my question.”

“Yes, Maker. I tried to command you.”

You flinch at the words trickling from your lips.

“Do I need to strike you again?”

“No, Maker.”

“Good.”

---

How long are you in that place? How long before the packing onto the animated transports begins? A year? Yes, that seems right. A year before the journey home begins. Then, a year and a half before you return to the hallowed halls of the great Colchian palace.

For years you’ve wondered what exactly was discussed in that meeting. Perhaps, perhaps it was regarding what lay to the east in the mountains before those calmer seas.

The journey home is long and arduous as it was on the way there.

“Wouldn’t it be faster to travel by ship?”

You asked one morning as the Caravan was beginning to move.

“I do not travel by ship. The Heads of this house have not since the night your great grandmother was lost on a ship in one of Her storms.”

She says as you walk through the endless gras of the great plains at her side.

“Why not?”

“That’s Her domain. Any opportunity she is given, she will take.”

“Her?”

She stops in place and looks down at you.

“The Monster of the wind. Silence now, we will talk of this no more.”

Then she walks ahead, leaving you to wonder, what could provoke the lines of fear on her brow.

As the path home continues, avoiding Absyrtus becomes difficult. He rides the Maker’s coattails at every opportunity. Worse yet, he makes an active point of seeking you out when he gets bored. Ambushes on the path that end with beatings, word gamings at the Makers side that end with her admonishing you for stupidity. Humiliations and increasing deprativity with every step.

With every passing day you hate him more.

When he gets bored of screwing with you, when you do not give him the reactions that justify his belief that you are unworthy of the Maker’s praise and shaping, he always resorts to physical violence. You learn to numb the pain, to simply take his blows in silence while you protect your core.

For Chalciope’s sake.

“How did this happen?”

She demands of you on the nights beside the firelight, as she prepares the infusion to reshape what he bruises or breaks.

“I tripped and fell.”

Became the favored excuse. If you tell her the truth, she’ll call you weak. She’ll praise her golden son for his brilliance, for his strength.

“Stop being a clumsy oath, or I will cast you aside.”

In her eyes glimmered the truth. She knows he’s responsible. She just doesn’t care.

And in the quiet small hours of the morning when they think you’re asleep, there is always encouragement for him to set his mind against yours. Games of cruelty rewarded with praise and favor.

The arrival home is met with a great feast, festivities, music, competitions of woodcraft or stonework, of bloody sacrifice on great altars.

But she doesn’t forget the long promised punishment, and neither do you.

It’s at the feast as you sit quietly far removed from the Maker and Absyrtus with Chalciope that you’re torn from her. She screams out your name in a moment of distress as the guards drag your six and a half year old shape from the table. Down the old familiar stairs, shoved through the door into the Punished Dark. The sympathy on the Servants faces is mixed with relief. You’re too old to be hand fed now. You see here there among them, her gaunt face, lightless eyes a reminder of what escape might cost them. The door slams closed and the lock clicks shut. Another door slams somewhere down the hall, not too far away.

In the muffled dark, as you sit there upon the floor, Chalciope’s faint voice cries out.

“No, no, I didn’t do anything! Please, please don’t leave me here! Let me out. Please.”

A tightening ache around your heart. She didn’t grow up in this like you did. She grew up in the light of the Northern Sun. The dark is a secret terror that swirled in caves and the shadows of each night. It’s a monster that she’s seen lurking deep inside you, that you can’t hide from her deepest empathy. She’s afraid of it.

The tattoos on your skin have been growing with every shaping, every time she’s reinked your flesh. They flare now as you twist across the floor of the room to call forth the spell. A simple incantation designed to reach her through the endless stone. With a whispered word and a prayer to the ancestor who founded your house, you call out to her through the thread of connecting minds.

“Chalciope, I’m here.”

She recoils at first, feeling the flush of purple magic form in the shadows of her chamber. In turn a silhouette forms in the corner of your cell. With measured steps you approach, stopping when her image presses back into the corner.

“Sister?”

Her trembles in the corners of your mind, a panicked desperation threatening to spill across the connection between.

“It will be okay. The dark won’t hurt you.”

She leaps from the corner, shadow wrapping around your waist. You sit with her on the floor, already mapping out how you’re going to hide the charm from the guards, from the Maker when she eventually sets foot inside.

Through the mental strings flow all the comforting things of the earliest days spent in this dark place. In time she finds new scrolls full of stories, full of ancient magics all on her own. Across the days that trickle past, she shares her gaze, a brighter world than the one you have always seen. Among the things you share in deepest confidence rise the tales of that strange phantom, the Queen of the Punished Dark.

It calms her, yet she shivers from the cold in the dark. A cold that has never bothered you. Despite trying to teach her, she shows no aptitude for the deep magics or blood thaumaturgy that burn so strongly inside of you. She does not bear the foreign divine sorcery of your father, nor the witchery of your mother. So, instead, you teach her the lessons of pharmacology, yet she has not much aptitude for them either.

“I’m sorry Chalciope. It is my fault you have been placed in here.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. I am not enough for them. I am a tempting a target for Absyrtus’s cruelty and you get hurt because of it. I am too proud for the Maker, not subservient enough, and she hurts you for it.”

“I don’t care what they say. You’re enough for me.”

“How can you say that, when every mistake I make hurts you.”

“You don’t hurt me. They do.”

“You are far too forgiving.”

“You protect me. You love me. That’s enough. I don’t care what anyone else says, I love you.”

Love. She loves you. Just as the Queen in the dark has loved you, without ever uttering a word.

Such a simple concept emblazoned deep in you. Such unconditional, uninhibited love. How can you deserve that? You who aren’t a person. You who are a destiny for something else, something more. How can you tell her that she’s wrong? That you are a waste of breath?

You can’t. You simply let her believe the lie, because you don’t have the heart to crush her impression of the world as better than it is.

Time is a funny thing; it moves far slower when you’re alone than when there is someone there you love. With Chalciope on the other end of the line, the days don’t seem to tick by quite so slowly. Of course, she is not a chatter. She never has been and she likely never will be.

One evening, you assume it’s an evening based on your constant internal calendar, there is a draft that flickers beneath your door. Movement on the other side as you look up.

Someone or something slides a heavy shape underneath the wood. A thick square shape that just barely squeezes through. Footsteps. Then, nothing. A single glance reveals its silhouette cloaked in darkness, as if what lies inside of it is forbidden.

“Sister?”

“Someone slid something under my door.”

“What is it?”

The broadcasted curiosity and surprise flickering in your breast isn’t intentional. It goes through all the same.

“I don’t know.”

On approach, tattoos illuminate the object in the dark. A tome, bound in unusual leather. It takes a moment to recognize it as human skin. It’s heavy with many pages.

‘The Witch of Tempests, Slayer of Kin, Hero of the North’ it reads in the dim light of the charm floating overhead. The name provokes wide eyes. You take several steps back.

“The traitor of our house. Architect of the Night of Flowering Tempests, stain on the blood in our veins.”

You don’t let the words filter through the line. There is no doubt, someone has slid a forbidden tome beneath the door in the Punished Dark. A slave or one of the Daevae from the North, perhaps? In the year you’d stayed among them, there had been many whispers in the dark of a name. Witch of Tempests.

They never spoke it in your Mother’s presence.

“Sister? What is it?”

“It is a forbidden tome.”

“What? What are you going to do with it?”

“I should call for the guards, or the servants.”

“They’ll go get Mother, and she’ll blame you for having it.”

Her words run harsh and true. There would surely be no good that could come from telling her it had suddenly appeared in your punishment chamber.

“I should destroy it.”

“Can you?”

You look at it again, flicking to that trick of arcane vision. No, glittering like a kaleidoscope of strings in your vision, rich enchantments. Protections so extensive and dizzying that make your head spin.

“No, it’s heavily spelled.”

Silence.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe hide it?”

When you touch it again, the tome is warm. Is it just your imagination, or is there something whispering in your ear. A voice, distant and beautiful in its endless harmonies. Something about it calls out to you, burning against the horizon of your mind and spreading beneath your flesh. It has a familiar character, a safe touch. You start to open it, only to stop seconds later.

“What is—”

Chalciope stops as a familiar images flood through both your minds.

“Sister.”

“I know.”

“You should read it.”

So, you open the pages. You read, oh how you read. With every turn of the page over the course of several days and nights, a story unfolds unlike any you’ve read before. A tale of tragedy. A ballad of heartache, of loss, of rage, and of power. It’s almost like a myth, a work of fiction retold as history. But there’s something about the nature of the words that sing otherwise. This, this happened.

It resonates in your soul, and yet at the same time, you cannot believe its truth. Her casting aside of the Font as a well of endless compassion, this depiction as an avarice endless hunger, of seeding life and then its consumption. It’s sacrilegious, dangerous, and disgusting. How could they have been fooled by these outsiders’ touch?

“No. I don’t believe that. It’s a lie, a rehabilitation for what she did in that moment of darkness.”

Yet… there’s the description of her. There are similarities to the Queen of the Punished Dark. Could it possibly be?

If so, then perhaps that has been the source of your corruption. Why adhering to your Mother’s intent has always been so difficult. Could she be poisoning you?

You don’t share what you find with Chalciope. She does not have your strength of will, and you’re afraid that by exposing her to this potential heresy, she may be corrupted. When you finish, you slide the book into a hidden little nook and say nothing more about it. By then her mind has moved on to other things.

On the third week in the dark, there comes a cataclysmic commotion from somewhere above. The deep reptilian roar of something immense followed by wingbeats that grow increasingly more distant with every passing minute. It’s not till later that you’ll learn that your Mother and Brother went Northeast, to deal with something urgent in the Urals at the call of other Queens. A ‘project’ of the Empire had gone awry.

“What was that?”

Balarax, what’s going on?

Your mother is leaving aboard her bond with great haste. She flies to the North East.

“It’s the Maker. She’s leaving for the Mountain’s to the North East, with urgency.”

“She never rides out on her bond.”

“I know.”

Yet you don’t know what it could mean.

A few days pass in the dark, as you wait for any sort of news from your bond. But she has no further insight to offer. Yet, now is when she chooses to reappear. A shadow falls across the light coming from under the door. The hour is between when the servants bring meals and drink. The lock clicks and the handle moves, but you already know who awaits beyond. The Queen of the Punished Dark stands there in the black, as the door shuts behind her. Her golden radiance penetrates the abyss, casting you in its warm touch.

Your stomach churns, a vice of anxiety wrapping its chill fingers around your chest.

“Chalciope.”

The thought is an apprehensive but excited hiss.

“Sister?”

“She’s here. She’s come back.”

“Who?”

“The Queen of the Punished Dark.”

Warmth burns through the connection, a name seared against the tapestry of arcana fluttering in the depths of your mind.

I AM OF THE SUN.

Her songlike voice filled the air, sinking deep into flesh and bone.

“Child of Sorcery, much have you grown. Tonight, and every night hence we continue the deep lessons.”

A few tears burn in the corner of your eyes. Though the doubts and fear burn in the back of your mind, even if it really is her, even if she does commit this heresy, she gives you the only thing you have ever wanted. Unconditional, motherly love.

“I am so happy to see you.”

A smile curls across her lips. There she takes up that old, familiar position, sitting next to you on the floor. The urge to cry presses heavy upon your chest, after everything you’ve endured so much in the gap between her presence. But you don’t. Because, no matter what else may be true, the Maker’s words ring in your ears.

“Crying is weakness.”

Her arm curls about your hips, pulling you in close. Every breath fills with the deep suffusion of her magic filling the air, scrawling upon that page. You almost do a double take when you see Chalciope sitting on her other side.

“A trick of the mind,”

She whispers in your ear before the question can leave your lips.

The snagging thought rises through the back of your mind. Should you ask her? Should you query who she really is? Your lips start to move, but she presses a golden finger against your lips.

“In time, you will come to know.”

---

It is nearly a year before the Maker returns. While she is gone, no one frees you and Chalciope from the Punished Dark. There in the abyss, that Queen who never takes the same shape twice is a constant comfort. Yet with every passing day, there is a distance between you and that Queen, a warm comfort she offers that you no longer quite need in the same way you thought you once did. Instead, it’s Chalciope who thrives in the warmth and love that she has to give.

There’s something in the reflection of that Queen’s eyes, a darkness seen swirling upon your skin. It provokes sadness in her twisting lips, constant pauses and reasons to frown. The forbidden book remains heavy in the back of your mind. A deep suspicion that the woman who provided such warmth in your early years was anything but a blanket of safety.

On the day that your bond reports the Maker’s return, there is a deathly stillness throughout the halls. Chalciope is released the day after, sent upstairs to her room where your shadow charm doesn’t reach.

Later, when the guards return, it is for you. There’s no statement that the Maker wishes to see you. Only the expectant look you’ve come to know from years of summons. When you are brought before her under the cool sun of late autumn, she is pacing before the throne, one hand running through her hair. The room is rich with fluttering tapestries made from fleeces of winged rams, masterfully crafted weapons from the smiths of the city below, pieces of armor, murals of bright and vibrant colors matching those in the entry hall far below. Every wall is decorated with shelves of thick scrolls, seats of feather cushions and wood frames.

You’re eight now as you step inside. A large table with a map of all the lands of the Empire and well beyond sits in the center of the throne room, in front of the pools of every flowing blood that drips at your Maker’s feet. Cities are marked upon that table’s map, Borders of Queendoms drawn in streaks of charcoal.

“Majesty, your Vessel.”

Her eyes snap to you, a mixture of many expressions flooding on her face. Irritation. Perhaps surprise? It has been nearly a year since she’s laid eyes on you, and you have grown in that time.

“Ah, good. Good. Vessel, come here.”

You approach her with a cautious gait as if expecting to get struck for some unperceived slight committed in her absence.

Absyrtus’s voice cuts through your advance, causing you to stop in place.

“Mother, you can’t be serious. What good is it going to do for us right now—”

“Silence Absyrtus.”

She whips her head to the boy, coming from the back room behind her, with a hissing with a venom you’ve never seen her level at the boy before. A strange sensation begins to trickle into your chest, something foreign to the darkness that normally rests there. It’s not empathy, you have none for this little spoiled monster. It hits you all at once. A quiet, vicious glee burning down into your belly from the dual looks of twisting surprise and fear curling across his youthful face.

How does it feel? How does it feel you little bag of goat shit?

Your eyes meet his, and you let a little bit of it leech out onto your face.

That’s right, I see how you’re afraid. I see that you’re finally learning your place.

The expression of distress upon his lips becomes apocalyptic fury. You break the gaze, lifting your chin, hands clasped behind your back.

“Vessel.”

She turns her attention back to you.

“Yes, Maker?”

What comes from between those lips is a sweet, chirping tone. A reflection of perfect obedience, the model Vessel she’s always wanted. There’s a moment where her lips twitch up into a small smile.

“From this day forward, you will learn everything I have to teach about war. Strategy, tactics.”

“Of course, Maker. Anything you desire.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the apocalypse grow in him. The flame in his eyes, the balling of his fists. The dark curls about in your middle, burning with a joy that tickles at the tips of your earlobes all the way down to your toys.

Finally, the tables turn against you.

“It seems, among the pustules,”

The word drips from the Maker’s lips with such venom. For the first time in your life, it’s directed explicitly in Abstyrus’s direction, and not in yours. Oh how good that feels, doesn’t it?

“Only the vessel for my flesh has the brilliance to be my hand in the field.”

“Mother, I swear to you, she ambushed us upon—”

“SILENCE.”

She roars. Abstyrus flinches, but you do not move.

“I have heard your excuses a thousand fold, and not once have they demonstrated understanding of your abysmal mistakes. Abstyrus I love you as the child of gold you are, my sweet boy, but you are useless in the field. Your one and only job was to use your bond and the men I gave you to bottle the Kin-Slayer in that pass. You were to wait, until the rest of us came down upon her from the slopes with all our fury.”

“Mother, she had a bond of her own!”

“ASHER IS OLD. I spoke to you of how to neutralize that beast. Instead, you let her escape, with the precious prize our plans rested upon. Bah, get out of my fucking site.”

“But—”

“I SAID OUT.”

He scowls, and marches towards the door. He veers, purposefully as to ram his shoulder into you as he passes. You do not move from his blow.

“Enjoy it while it lasts, puppet. She’ll hate you again tomorrow.”

You tilt your chin up further, ignoring him as he starts to stomp past.

Something in your stomach tickles you, and you say, in a soft, poisonous hiss.

“How does it feel, to know that you’ll never be what she wants.”

Her whirls on you, a screech of rage in his throat. The helmet swings towards your skull, only for a guard to catch his hand at the last possible moment.

“The Queen has asked for the prince to leave. You will not lay a hand on her guest.”

He looks at the guard with apopleptic disbelief. Then he looks to the Maker. Her gaze is on the map, and it does not move from there.

“Vessel, come here.”

Without casting any further venom, your legs obey her command. His eyes burn holes into the back of your skull with every step. Eventually, the stomps of his feet echo as you come to stand beside your Maker.

The map is even more detailed than you initially believed.

She turns to look at you after a moment of contemplation, and a scowl spreads upon her lips.

“I have been away too long, his features are coming through again.”

Her fingers clasp on your chin, turning your head this way and that. There’s none of the usual roughness you’ve come to expect from her outside of the shaping.

“Do you want to shape me now, or later?”

A sigh ripples through her entire body.

“As deeply as it vexes me to see the shape marred like this, I think I can bear the insult for the moment. It is better to teach you now, when your mind is not hazed by the process than hope you’ll retain the information after.”

From there she begins to teach you the ways of war. Long have you spent with the tomes of the empire’s exploits, tales of great ancestors and their strategies in the punished dark.

Now again that forbidden tome swims to the front of your mind. Among the many names, there were none as brilliant as the Witch of Tempests. How much had been lost by the zealotry of the second empire in carving her name out of history.

There she gives you an exercise, likely to assess your instincts. It has the distinct echoes of the failure she’d torn Absyrtus apart for. So, you’re careful to think through every detail, every response. The traitor, the Kin-Slayer, the Witch of Tempests, has appeared in the Urals, above a secret temple. The question lingers in your mind, how is she still alive? If the Queen in the Punished dark is her, how could she be in two places at once?

The Maker is vague about the details, but you hear enough to piece things together. There was another, similar to your purpose. A human of dual flesh, designed to call forth the Font’s power for some purpose you don’t quite understand. Countless years of investment, of sacrifices, of funneling blood into its veins.

Then, out of nowhere, she comes down upon the temple in a hail of storms and lightning. There’s a running struggle through the Urals, as many from the North tried to bring her down and recapture the prize.

Only for the effort to fail when the traitor massacres the force your brother has been given. With her prize, and a heavy defeat inflicted on the north, she flew off into the thundering skies. It is quite the tale of a heroic rescue. Of a cataclysmic failure.

No wonder the Brat is now in her bad grace.

She asks you to point out the flaws in his movements, the errors in everyone’s positioning, and each unseen advantages of terrain. The spatial grasp of the wargame is easy to pick apart for that deeply analytical mind. Every choice has pros and cons, every position rife with opportunity. You point out each thing you see, approaching the traitor’s movements as if they were your own until you find the perfect check-mate.

As you walk her through every permutation, every step of your decision making, perhaps for the first time, she sees you. She looks at you with something different. Appreciation? Respect? Whatever it is, it’s an open, alien, warmth.

In the weeks to come, how she treats you changes. The impression of being a mindless, obedient object that needs to be forced into line washes away. Now you’re a budding extension of her will.

Everyone in the palace is beginning to realize it.

Even Chalciope.

As an extension of this recognition, you are sent down into the streets. A ruler must learn about her people, must begin to build the blocks of understanding necessary to preside over a Queendom.

The Colchian Daevae are meticulous workers. Though many years have now passed, that hunger to learn burning in that skull has not diminished. It has only grown. You hunger to learn of their crafts, understand what drives them.

Chalciope is always with you, a silent presence drifting through the streets by your side. It is a choice made to protect her from the machinations of Absyrtus when you’re not there, or worse, the idle hands of the Maker. Hoods hide your faces as you listen to the bartering, walk among the smiths, flow amongst the carpenters. The orchards are beautiful and boundlessly free; the rich dirt is cool beneath your bare feet.

With every trip into the world below that once prison, you begin to fall in love with the city of Aeae. With your people, every craftsman, every merchant, every farmer. There is a kindness here that has never been present in the palace above. It’s a lived in feeling of people existing, surviving, living. How many hours are spent watching the smithies, learning their techniques? How many nights are spent down by the river docks, watching ships come and go?

You dream of grand adventures out on the great sea on days where the Maker grants you passage aboard the ferries. At the mouth of the river, there is a great port, where much of the Colchian fleet lays at berth.

When you’re not in the city, you are the Maker’s shadow. The Punished Dark remains empty in those months. The forbidden tome becomes a forgotten memory in its hidden cubby beneath that old, familiar bed. Things are changing for the better. The Queen of the Punished Dark still often lingers in the back of your mind. Sometimes you can feel her eyes watching around a corner, only to turn and find nothing there at all.

But it is not all for the better. With age blooms awareness of the nature of those around you, particularly of the Maker. You are nine when you start to come to grips with the fact that no matter what you do, the Maker is always going to be a temperamental, cruel, and egotistical creature. Though she sees you now, appreciates what you’re becoming, there are very strict bounds and its very clear she’ll never see you as a daughter.

But the parameters of staying inside that lane are now very well defined in your map of what she thinks of you. Still, there is no accounting for her games. She frequently asks questions as vague as they are onerous. Any response that is not exactly correct to the smallest technical details ends with degradation and humiliation before her servants and guards. It leaves you questioning what you did wrong. But time heals most wounds, and it gets easier to maneuver around her moods with the passage of time. The days you’ll want to be scarce from her presence are more obvious now.

Abstyrus tends to linger in her presence on those days, relishing the chance to finally reclaim his place. Avoiding him is never easy, ignoring him usually is. Often you’ll pretend he’s not there when you can afford to. What you can’t do is avoid him on the nights when he comes into your room, and beats you till your bloody. She knows, how can she not when he brags to the whole palace about how weak you still are. Yet despite the shift in how she treats you, she doesn’t say a thing, not a damn thing in the Font’s name when she has to fix you in the shaping sessions that follow.

The only time you’ve ever asked why she lets him behave this way around her vessel, her response was so shockingly apathetic.

“Whatever he breaks, I can fix.”

“Does it not make you angry with him, that he damages your Vessel like this?”

“He’s my son. My golden boy. Whatever illusions you have about finally finding my intent, it doesn’t change the fact that he remains above you. He always will.”

“Then why does he not act like it?”

“He is angry at the world that he cannot rule. He is a man, and thus he is not fit to.”

“He should learn his place. When I reach my full intention, Maker, what then?”

“Then I will use him as breeding stock.”

The words stirred a sense of nothingness in your belly. They were, should be shocking. It made sense, he was, by nature, 50% of her by blood. Its just good sense to fortify the blood line, isn’t it?

Some small part of you can’t help but feel pity that he was being reduced to nothing more than a stud. At least you had a greater purpose in the end. But after everything he had done, would do to you and Chalciope, you didn’t have anything but pity to give him. Even that was fleeting.

A consequence of hovering in the Maker’s shadow grows with the passing months. Chalciope has taken to putting distance between you and her. It isn’t like this at first. It starts when all those bubbling feelings towards the slaves, towards the servants, towards the apathetic matriarchs of the lower houses who left you at the mercy of the Maker begin to bubble over. It’s a dropped platter of food, scattering the contents on the dirty floor. Something snapped in your chest, and you fly into anger. Vicious screams, rocks thrown and clattering off the walls, off flesh. As they flee your anger, you look over, only to see Chalciope standing there. In the reflections of her eyes, the horror on her lips, you saw someone you didn’t recognize. You saw the Maker in her eyes. Which made sense, you were shaped every so often in her visage.

But it makes you stop, and wonder. Were you changing for the worse?

Some part of you worried that you were. The rest, reminded you, that you are above them all. Even Chalciope, who you have protected all these years. Growing into the shape of her intent requires change.

She still comes to you in the evenings your with the Maker, still leans against you for safety, still loves you deeply. But there is a palpable fear slowly growing in her eyes with every passing day. Especially in the hours following a shaping. As if she no longer quite recognizes you as the sister she loves.

One evening, you stumble upon her in the Palace orchards near a small crack in the wall. She kneels by the wall, nearly a head taller than you now. She’s whispering quietly to something you can’t see.

“Chalciope?”

She turns in place, and looks up at you with a sudden, quiet, terror. Held tight to her chest, is something furry, with four legs, a flicking tail, and triangle ears. It has long whiskers arcing out of its face, a pair of large triangular ears that pivot towards every sound, and bright green eyes with a yellow slit just like your bond sister. It is the cutest thing in the whole world that you’ve ever seen.

Some small part of you hates it for the way it makes you feel. With that hate stirs something in your chest, something said what feels like a lifetime ago that you can’t quite remember.

“What is that?”

You stare down at the tiny creature. It is making a small, rumbling noise and chirps at you. Your heart practically melts, but your expression remains even.

“The slaves call it a Cat. Don’t tell anyone, please.”

Again, that feeling plucks at the strings of memories that are just barely out of reach.

“Why would I tell anyone?”

“I don’t know.”

She glances down. Have you really changed that much in her eyes?

“I won’t tell anyone, Chalciope.”

“I want to keep her.”

You look between the cat and Chalciope. Your expression softens, and floods with small amounts of concern.

“You’ll have to feed it?”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do if it gets sick?”

“You taught me healing herbs. If I don’t know what to do, can I come to you?”

“I don’t know if they’ll work on it.”

“Sissssster.”

A deep sigh that rattles through your chest.

“Alright, alright. I can try, I suppose.”

“Oh thank you, thank you, thank you.”

How many hours, how many weeks and moths were spent together next to that little crack in the wall? Do you remember the way it pounced after balls of string? How it proudly paraded mice it caught before you while letting out small trills? Listening to its purrs, its chirps, it’s trills as you sat with her and watched it grow. Whenever a guard or a servant comes past, you’d put it in the little crack in the wall and block it with your bodies, pretending to laugh and drink from rich juices dranw from the Orchard fruits.

One evening, the Maker keeps you late for a Shaping session. Your legs still feel like gelatin as you descend the lifting stairs of the palace, which always know which floor you wish to go to. A thick mental haze lingers after this one, something fundamental clinging to your mind in a way it usually doesn’t. There’s a coldness there at the idea of spending time with Chalciope that you’re having trouble shaking. A distracting, somewhat distressing dissonance that just doesn’t seem to want to fade. You’re not entirely sure why, maybe it’s because you’re nine now, and the Maker is changing the way she’s touching you again. Places she didn’t touch when you were much smaller now becoming targets of her grasps.

The strange echoes still ripple through your brain. They’re different in ways that you can’t quite place. No matter how much you try to write it off as just a facet of getting older, you can’t shake the way it makes your lower abdomen feel tight.

You’re sluggish coming down the final set of stairs. Maybe, if you’d been a little faster, you could have stopped him. Maybe, what came next, wouldn’t have happened.

As you step out into the Orchards, you hear a commotion from the far wall. The wall where her fuzzy little creature lives.

Feet pound against the dirt, heart hammering as they come into full view. Abstyrus has the creature, lifted by the nape of its neck, in one arm. Chalciope is on the ground, crying. Her nose is bleeding; there’s an ugly bruise causing one eye to swell close. You’ve never let him touch her like this. You should have been here to intervene.

A cold ugly frost curls through your veins. Your jaw sets, teeth gritting. Why hadn’t you finished and forged the device already? You’d been drawing it onto the paper with charcoal for weeks now. If you had it, you could smash his skull open, consequences be damned.

The tattoos across your skin flare with arcane power. The spell comes with ease, the one she taught you in the dark.

“Did you really think you could have a pet? You can’t even take care of yourself, Chalciope. You hide and cower behind the Vessel. Sister help, Sister stop him, Sister please, Sister!”

He laughs cruelly.

“Absyrtus.”

Your voice is a knife, cutting straight through the wind and reaching him. It starts as a whisper, but the weight of its hate sags the air and becomes a primal scream. He turns his head and sees you. Sudden, immediate fear. Chalciope takes the opportunity to try to lunge for the creature, only to get kicked in the face. She falls back and doesn’t get up, her soft sobbing audible.

Every inch of your etched skin squirms with lines of purple light.

“Nuh uh, Vessel. Not a step.”

The power brims at your fingertips. You don’t need to touch him; the somatic motions have already been fulfilled.

“Do you really think I need to touch you? You really are an idiot.”

It’s a snarl. His expression falters for a moment, before he buries it.

“What can you do, Vessel. Magic? You wouldn’t dare.”

A sneer, a taunt upon his teeth. An evil grin spreads across your lips. Darkness blossoms in your chest, knowing exactly what to do.

“I’m not a helpless bag of flesh anymore.”

The finger rises. Intent blossoms outwards in a neon streaking bolt of hateful, purple light. It slams into his chest, knocking him down. He tries to get back up, words forming on his lips, only for an undignified, bestial noise to escape. The cat drops from between his twitching fingers.

His flesh squirms, blossoming light velvet stretches of fur, white pokedots marring flesh. The air fills with the sound of breaking bones, tearing muscle, and shifting flesh. When the magic finishes its work, a baby deer is all that’s left behind, struggling on its feet.

“For years I have tolerated you, you abusive bag of rat shit. Have a taste of your own medicine.”

You step forward, and kick it hard as you can manage. It sprawls on the ground, flailing its limbs. Chalciope holds the cat in her arms, eyes wide with fear as you stand there, lowering your gaze to watch him struggle. In an instant you dart forward again, catching the creature by its neck to prevent it fleeing.

“Sister, what did you do?”

“What I should have done years ago.”

The words hiss from your lips like a serpent’s tongue. It’s easy enough to drag his shape towards the Palace. Chacliope trails behind you, a look of fear etched into the lines on her face, cat in her arms. Again, that old feeling of something you’ve forgotten bubbling just out of reach. On the wishful stairs you step with her, and up the length of the tree it climbs with you upon it.

The guards at the entry to the throneroom look at you with befuddlement upon their girlish faces. You drag the deer through the doorway of the Maker’s throne, her eyes rising to look at the two of you with a moderate amusement on her lips. With all the strength in your body, you toss Absyrtus’s thrashing shape across the floor, watching it skid across the polished wood and smack into the side of her blood pools into which it tumbles. She glances at the Deer, then at you.

She tilts her head back and begins to speak.

“Vessel, if this is an offering then you are stooping far below what you are—”

You cut her off, breath still hot with rage.

“He will not touch my sister again.”

The words are barbed with incredible venom. You are done. For seven years you have tolerated this brat’s cruelty. You will not do so any longer.

“I do not care if he beats me. I do not care if you beat me. But nobody, NOBODY will touch Chalciope.”

Her eyes meet your furious gaze. They trace back to the deer, then to Chalciope, linger on her wounds for only a moment before drifting down to what she’s holding. Again, the feeling rises in your chest, a tightness that you can’t place. There’s a flicker of an expression on her lips when her eyes focus on the cat. It fades as she looks back to the deer. It takes a long moment for her to truly piece together what you’ve wrought.

“Absyrtus?”

The fawn bleats in the blood, acknowledging its name. There is a long, pregnant pause as a dangerous tension thickens the air.

“You turned my son into a Deer?”

The words are cold.

“I could have done much, much worse. And I still might, if he dares again.”

Her eyes narrow. There’s something there that you don’t recognize. An acknowledgement, a recognition of something you’ve done alongside her usual calculation.

She leans back in her throne a moment. Then she does something strange. She starts to clap. Slow, methodical, and then faster, more enthusiastic. After maybe fifteen seconds of this, she rises, walking down the stairs of her throne towards you, still clapping.

“I don’t think he will. Well done, Vessel. Well done.”

The world seems to tilt a little. A thread of confusion worms its way across your face, reflected in her eyes. This is not the reaction you were expecting.

“Maker?”

She sighs languidly.

“Absyrtus has been flying too close to the sun for far too long.”

“I don’t understand… are you not, angry?”

“Angry? Oh, no child. It’s about time that you both learn this very valuable lesson.”

She reaches down and hauls the deer out of the blood, dragging him across the floor before tossing him where he lands, halfway between the pair of you and her.

“Lesson?”

“Oh, yes. You can only push thinking creatures so far before they finally snap. It’s an important characteristic that every Queen, or vessel of a Queen should know. You’ll do well to remember it, as long as you’re my shadow.”

You blink several times, glancing at Chalciope. Her expression, coated by the fear of her quivering lips, and the surprise in her wide eye matches your own.

“Yes, Maker.”

“Now, before you turn him back, I want to know something.

“Anything maker.”

She walks across the gap, looming over you.

“Where did you learn that spell?”

You chew on the inside of your cheek. It was one of many things that the Queen in the Punished Dark taught you.

No, you know her name. That heathen title given to her by the slaves she freed.

Kirke.

Somehow, you feel her eyes burning a hole into your back even though she’s definitely not here.

“I taught it to myself.”

“You, a little thing nine summers old, taught yourself transformation magicks?”

“From one of the scrolls in the dark place.

She regards your face, only inches in front of you.

“Really? Are you sure, Vessel?”

“Yes Maker.”

“Are you really really sure, because my darling little Vessel,”

Her hand shoots out and wraps around your neck, lifting you up into the air. Chalciope makes a noise behind you.

“SILENCE.”

Her voice is like a whip as your legs thrash under you. That piercing gaze turns back to consume you.

“There’s only one other magic user who can turn people into beasts with a simple spell, only one person who can do so so effortlessly.”

Her voice becomes a knife against your throat. The constriction is making it hard to breathe.

“It’s the Kinslayer, the stain upon this house. Tell me, little Vessel, Has she been in my halls unseen? Has she come to speak with you? Like on that fucking beach?”

“Mommy! Don’t hurt—”

“I SAID SILENCE CHALCIOPE.”

She screams at your sister, shaking you with the motion of her body. You try to swallow, but you can’t.

“Answer me, Vessel. If you lie, I will snap your neck and start again.”

You gasp for breath, barely managing to rasp out the words.

“I taught myself!”

She waits another moment, eviscerating you with those lavender orbs. Then she drops you. The impact hurts, as you can’t quite catch yourself in a way that doesn’t send you sprawling. There is a long, heavy silence.

“If I find out otherwise, Vessel, I will replace you. With no hesitation.”

It’s a hissed and venomous warning.

“Yes, Maker.”

The words come out as a half-strangled croak.

“Now, turn this little brat back to normal, before he makes even more of a mess on my floors.”

She walks past you as, while you release the curse. The squirming shape of Absyrtus reasserts its human form with the same symphony of rearranging flesh as when you first turned his body against him. She stops in front of Chalciope, looking down at her. An extended hand brushes against her swollen eye, wiping away half-dried blood.

“What do you have there?”

“T-t-the slaves call it a cat, Mommy.”

She spends a very long moment staring down at it before she responds.

“A cat. It looks soft and furry.”

“It is, Mommy!”

You turn to watch them, something cold pitting deep in your stomach. Dread.

“May I see your cat?”

“Of course, Mommy.”

Chalciope’s eyes are full of bright warm stars as she hands the cat over to your Maker. She holds it awkwardly up in the air, rotating it in inspection. That same feeling churns in your belly now, screaming out a warning that drives forward deep into your chest. It blooms, the realization of what she once said in your presence. Reality seems to move in slow motion.

You cannot see the cat any longer, as the Maker cradles it in against her chest. You can hear it purring.

“Such a soft, fuzzy, warm thing. I see why you love it.”

Then, there is a horrifying sound. Bone being cracked. The whole world twists on its side in front of you. This is a nightmare. Her lack of anger finally clicks into place.

“No.”

You whisper.

“So fragile.”

The body of the cat hits the floor with a pointed wet thud. It doesn’t move, its neck is broken, head positioned wrong. You don’t need to feel its neck to know, it’s already dead. Chalciope screams, a bloodcurdling, desperate noise you’ve never heard her make. You helplessly watch as she drops to her knees, desperately scooping up the poor creature in arms. It is a harsh, pathetic sound that follows, made as she rocks it back and forth, futilely begging the creature to wake up.

Your eyes drag from the atrocity up to the Maker. All the while, Absyrtus has started laughing somewhere behind you.

She turns to make eye contact. There is something in her gaze, an all too familiar look you’ve seen on your own face in Absyrtus’s eyes just a few minutes before. Vicious glee. Then, she says it. The very thing you couldn’t remember in time to prevent this from happening.

“I hate cats.”

With a flourish of her fleece, she descends the entry steps of the throne room and is gone. Chalciope, somehow finding the strength to stand, rushes over, as you stare helpless after the Maker. You feel sick.

“Sister, sister please, can you help her? Please!”

Chalciope’s grief stricken voice snaps you out of the stupor. You ook down at the poor thing, already fumbling with a belt pouch filled with ingredients. Hornroot, ginger leaf, tract of icebloom. You mix them together into a small draught. She almost doesn’t let you have the broken shape but yields after you beg her to give it to you. It pours into the creature’s throat. A few words of power, a flare of your tattoos.

Nothing. There’s nothing you can do. Your hands shake as you stare down at them, powerless to protect something so dear to you.

“I-I’m sorry Chalciope. I can’t. She’s gone.”

She bursts into tears, leaning against your shoulder as the guards watch, and Absyrtus laughs fill the air behind you.

<End Log>

---

Site-189 Incident/Operation Sundown

Date: 04/13/2026-04/24/2026

Operation: Site-212A, Scottland. Site-189, Pacific Ocean (Destroyed by Special Cooperative Assets). Unknown anomalous location.¹

Participants: Special Field Operative, Melina Anagnostis. Special Field Operative Cardea Gataki. Special Cooperative Asset [TEMPORAL ERROR DETECTED], Special Cooperative Asset [TEMPORAL ERROR DETECTED]. Eulades Eurylochus (deceased). Sandomen Jacobs (deceased). Eric au Helios (missing, presumed alive). Site-189 personnel (deceased).

Operation Sundown: At 1200 hours on April 12th, 2024, Foundation database systems were subjected to an unexpected cybernetic attack, using an evolved program variant identified as responsible for a previous hack in early 2016. Files from the Mallorca operation were scraped by what is now believed to have been a Horizon Initiative AIC. These files were then, shortly after, delivered to the director of Oceanic Site-189 in the Central Pacific Ocean. Due to the destruction of Site-189 and most relevant local records therein, the exact reason for this transmission remains unclear. However, using reconstructions of private communications between Site-189, flight plans, radar returns, and other records, O5-01’s office has reconstructed the following events.

Shortly after receiving data files from the Horizon Initiative, Director Eulades Eurylochus deployed a high-speed VTOL transport, on a dummy flight path for a scheduled visit to an arctic site.

At 0200 hours on April 13th, 2024, head of Site-189’s security, Sandomen Jacobs, and MTF Sigma-12 (‘God Tamers’) were vectored in over Site-212A aboard the VTOL, taking advantage of authorization codes flagging them as needing to refuel to mask their approach. Sandomen and the MTF were airdropped at a location that’s estimated to have been just south of the southeastern residential compound, without parachutes, using unidentified para-tech. The VTOL proceeded to land on the runway and then took off again less than five minutes later with the MTF onboard.

During the five-minute gap, onsite camera systems were disabled by a backdoor intrusion. A few site personnel reported a loud ‘bang’, brief shouting, and thumps of some sort of firearm, but not in sufficient quantity to raise any alarm. This was largely due to the cover of the VTOL’s engines overhead as it landed.

Site security did not become aware of the infiltration until nearly two hours later. A patrolling guard discovered a room in the southeastern residential compound, which is largely reserved for irregular personnel, with its door blown apart and the exterior windows shattered. A series of pamphlets espousing Horizon Initiative adjacent propaganda condemning all ‘divine’ or ‘divine-adjacent’ anomalies, including immortal individuals of varying degrees, not associated with the one true Abrahamic Divinity as heretical falsehoods that need to be destroyed or brought to heel. Cross referencing existing residential assignments revealed the apartment to have belonged to Anagnostis and Gataki who could not be located onsite.

Operations Command and Site-212A’s director were notified, which began a further sweep of the surrounding area. In the meantime, Operations Command initiated a chain of contact as specified in the files of Anagnostis and Gataki. This ultimately ended with the notifications of Co-O5-01’s at roughly 2400 CST local time in Birmingham Alabama.

Co-O5-01’s then boarded a rapid transport jet at 0030 CST and flew to Site-212A, arriving at roughly 0800 hours on April 17th. The Director of Site Security was immediately relieved of duty, Site-212A’s Director was reprimanded for the neglect which allowed the infiltrations to occur. While O5-01-04 went ahead with trying to track down the rogue Foundation Elements responsible for the incident, O5-01-03 contacted the Balearic Islands Freeport Cooperative Entities and summoned them to Site-212A.

Site 212A O5-01’s Temp Office
13th April, 2024

You called for us?

There’s been an incident.

Oh? Has there now?

Yes. I think you can—

Gather how bad the situation is? Fairly easily when it’s written all over your face.

Silence.

I’m going to be quite blunt; I’m really not in the fucking mood for your games, Abigail.

** Tell us what’s happened?**

Cardea Gataki and Melina Anagnostis have been abducted by an unknown group, possibly within the Foundation. I can’t rule out foul play by one of the other O5’s, but I have basically nothing informationally to work with.

Who?

Are you really doing this right now?

No I’m dead serious, who is that?

What? I’m—you just helped them. Not even 24 hours ago.

Silence.

That’s not their names.

What?

They’re [TEMPORAL DATA ERROR].

That’s what I said.

No, you said Cardea Gataki and Melina Anagnostis.

Silence.

Shit. They never took off the Ontokinetic Skins.

That explains a lot.

We’re immune to that. Perks of being a Beast.

Well, that aside, they’re gone. Snatched in the middle of the night.

So that we both understand, what you’re saying is, someone waltzed—

Flew.

Right. Someone flew through your secure airspace right under your nose. Got in, got the jump on two of your biggest assets, and absconded with them. Now you have no clues or leads on where they went?

Leep is… working on it. Heads are going to roll.

So, what do you want us to do about it?

Find them. Bring them back, ideally. You can track their ontokinetic trails, right?

In our sleep.

Hold on, isn’t this your responsibility? Why are you pawning your fuckups off on us to clean up?

Aren’t you their friends?

Friend is a strong term—Ow! Aleah!

They are our friends. Intervention makes ripples, and this is not within the normal functional range of our agreements. Why us? What aren’t you telling us.

Rustling of photographs and papers being dropped onto a table.

We’re in.

Takes us to the site of the abduction.

Before O5-01-04 could fully piece together the radar maps to track the VTOL, the pair of Special Cooperative Entities were able to locate and track the residual ontokinetic after-trails of both assets to the airfield. It was at this time, after reviewing air traffic logs, that Site Security, Administration, and Air Traffic Controllers made the connection between the kidnapping and the arrival and departure of the VTOL.

Multiple personnel down the chain were fired or immediately reassigned. The reason later given to Operations and Site Command for these decisions was that these personnel had enabled the kidnapping of a pair of high-level assets and Type-Black entities inside of a secure Foundation Site. The status of Gataki and Anagnostis as Type-Black entities was not known to Operations Command at the time of the incident.

In retrospect, the kidnapping was largely enabled by inattentive air traffic monitoring by the night shift, the coincidental arrival and departure of the VTOL during a period of changing shifts, poor timing on Site Security patrols, and the mishandled relay of the refueling request by the on-station controllers to ground personnel.

Site 212A
13th April, 2024

We’re going after them.

Hold on, I’ll prepare a fast transport for you.

No.

No? What do you mean, no?

It’s too slow.

Then how the fuck are you going to go after them?

The sound of shifting flesh fills the auditory recording.

I forgot you can do that. At least let me send a high-speed jet escort with you.

No. That will just slow us down and put your people at risk.

We don’t take risks with this.

And you’re not going to like what we are going to have to do.

Fine, as long as you get them back.

The real identities of Anagnostis and Gataki continued to be obscured by O5-01’s office during this process, frustrating efforts to provide additional assistance.

The Special Cooperative Entities returned to Site-212A on the morning of the 16th of April.

Site 212A
16th April, 2024

You’re back. Where are they.

They slipped through our fingers.

Silence.

I gave you one fucking job.

Alright before you go and explode, we have an idea of where they are.

Then why the fuck are you back here? Why didn’t you go after them!

You’re going to need to chill the fuck out and let us explain. If you can’t tell, we’re just as pissed off as you are.

It better be a damn good explanation.

We tracked them to one of your sites.

What? Which one?

189.

You, go get me everything on 189, right now. I want their Director on the line yesterday, do—

Sherry, I wouldn’t bother.

Silence.

Why?

Site-189 no longer exists.

Silence.

What exactly did you…I—can I at least ask why you destroyed the Site before reporting back to us?

They were violating every tenant of your ethos.

Worse than that. Way worse.

They were transgressing against justice well beyond any acceptable bounds, meaning we could not ignore what they were doing.

Examples, cause otherwise that’s ridiculously abstract.

Humanoid Anomaly mutilation.

Destruction of occultic items.

Manufacture of anti-divinity weapons.

A sigh.

Well. That’s understandable, I guess. I’m not fucking happy about it, but not much I can do now. How many were onboard when you—how did you do it?

65 people were onboard.

None of them were innocent.

Ok, but how did you do it?

How do you think we did it?

I don’t know, that’s why I asked.

At that scale, we condensed the conceptual mass of Venus and brought it down upon the Oil Platform like a spear. Their deaths were instant, painless, obliterated in a single instant.

Silence.

You did say I wasn’t going to like what you might have to do.

And you insisted we do it anyways.

That I did.

Silence.

So, I take it by your wanton destruction they weren’t inside of the Site?

No. They’d already departed by the time we got there.

But you did find them?

We sensed them on a Jailer frigate to our East, ten minutes before sunrise. There were about thirty or so people onboard with them. And they weren’t alone.

Okay? You said you knew their current location. Where? At least give me that so I can send in a retrieval team.

We flew as fast as possible to get there. We were right on top of them, with five minutes to go before sunrise.

I’m not grasping why the time or sunrise was relevant. I’m also losing my patience; so, cut to the point.

The 14th was a Sunday, Sherry.

And they were sailing right into the path of the rising sun.

Silence.

Okay, let’s put aside the question of how you even fucking know about that pocket space anomaly, that’s a completely separate headache. I need to take the time to point out that, that anomaly’s effects only happens right at sunrise. Not five minutes before, not five minutes after. So, if this is the excuse you’re going to give me—

Sherry.

What?!

Sunrise was moved up by five minutes.

Silence

What could possibly let them do that!?

There was another Beast onboard with them.

Silence.

They have… someone equal to one of you?

Several seconds of silence.

Hello?! Can you stop shooting each other looks and answer the fucking question?

They’re not with the Site-189 group.

We think they were only pretending to be.

You _think_?

Yes.

There was an item on that ship we think they wanted.

Why the fuck—who is this Beast?!

We mentioned that anomaly earlier, the one that happens when you sail due East on a Sunday Morning?

How is 8711 even remotely relevant to the identity of this third party?

It’s _their_ pocket space.

It is now believed both assets were taken into a known anomaly, SCP-8711, for reasons that remain largely unclear. At this time, O5-01-03 suspects that the cooperative entities are aware of the identity of the unknown entity of concern. They appear to be withholding additional information regarding its intentions.

---

Memory Log 5

Memory Extract XXXX-05: Rotten Love

Foreword: I knew, only Hecate knows how, but I knew. He had taken a mistress. I had seen them in the palace, bouncing together. A charming smile on his face, a giggle on her lips. She was young, maybe less than half my age. She was a pleasant thing on the eyes, with hair of chestnut, and brown eyes that turned amber when the sun hit them just right. In another world, maybe I would have chosen her myself.

But the only time I had ever asked after taking a lover for myself, his reply had been mercilessly cold.

“You are mine, and mine alone.”

It would be a lie to say I didn’t care. I hadn’t yet broken what he’d done to me, hadn’t even realized it was there. Yet I understood all the same, he was a prince of a foreign land where such things were normal. Such things were normal in my home as well, I’d been told. Not that I really knew.

So, in theory I did not mind.

But it was the way he was happy all the time in her presence. It was a lie; I knew the burn behind his eyes all too well. Yet he positioned himself in every conceivable place he knew I would regularly pass through or linger. A constant pain tugging at my heart strings. She was the king’s daughter, maybe half my age. That little thing hanging off his arm always looked at me with disgust.

I could hear her whisper quietly in his ear.

“Why are you married to such an evil, ugly thing.”

In her eyes, I was a foreigner, an eccentric, evil witch who didn’t deserve the great hero of the Argo for myself.

He would always say,

“She is powerful, vicious, and I love her.”

The stories he wove when I wasn’t there to her.

Now I know he minimized our roles in raising him up to meet a great fate. I just wonder how much he played it up after.

But there was something else. He had a scheme and for the life of me I could not figure out what.

It was on the same night the boys had come to speak with me about my home. The same night I learned they knew every rumor, every lie, every truth about my nature. That’s when he came to see me.

Not my husband, but the King. He stepped into the house; the same one he had given us. I heard him long before his lips called out my name.

“[TEMPORAL DATA ERROR] would you please come here?”

I came down from my workshop up on the third floor, wiping my hands upon a cloth to clear the stain of crimson crushed berries. I offered him a half-meant smile; he was a kindly wise old man who had largely always done right by me. A better ruler than most, and one who respected my advice. In the 20 years since our arrival, I had attended to his wife to help her have three girls. A curse of his line apparently. In this land, women could not rule. But I wasn’t terribly happy to see him. Even still, I put on the deference I had learned to show to human rulers, and the sweetness that humans responded so well to.

I bowed before him as a sign of respect. He had gotten used to it, everyone else kneeled. But I still kneel for no man.

“If you are searching for my Husband, majesty, I do not know where he is. Probably off drunk in some garden.”

It was said as if it was acceptable behavior from a rapscallion.

“I am not looking for your husband, lady [TEMPORAL DATA ERROR].”

“Oh? If you’re looking for my children, they have already left to spend a night at a friend’s home.”

“I do not search for your children either.”

“Then is it a brew you require? Ah, your wife’s aches are up again?”

“It is not that either, lady.”

I looked up now to meet his eye. He met my gaze for but a moment, before averting his eyes. There was something there, something full of hesitation.

“Then, if it may please you, your majesty, please speak it.”

He sighed, a great heavy thing.

“Your husband is set to marry my Daughter.”

Silence.

One of my ears twitched, the muscles flicking. The polite smile dripped off my face, replaced by smudged wrinkles across my forehead. I stood there, stunned in disbelief.

“I am sorry, majesty, but maybe I misheard. Or, if this is a jest, it is a poor and unfunny one.”

He hesitated again, his eyes looking anywhere but my face as I stood up.

“It is not a jest, lady. He will marry my daughter and become the heir to the city and the house.”

There came the sound of shattering glass rippling through the back of my mind. The whole world began to tilt on its side. I suddenly could not think straight. My chest constricted, something tightly wrapping around my heart. There was a very distant sound rolling through my skull, of someone screaming.

It was me, inside my own brain.

I could not breathe. In this land, you could not be bound in matrimony to two women. It would require, he would have to—

The king took several steps back, as the shadows in the room began to crawl with bubbling fervor. The marks upon my skin, hidden to ease the worries of the denizens of our home, trickled to the surface. They burned with heat, purple twitching and flowing across the surface. Her laugh burned in my ears.

‘You will never fit in a place with them.’

I pressed my arms to my chest, wrapping my fingers around the shoulders.

“He will leave me? He will try to have me killed?”

His expression softened.

“To free the way for the marriage, he has asked me for mercy in the stay of your hand.”

My eyes slid back to him, boring holes in his very being. He took another step back, his concern writ plain upon those wrinkled features, especially in the way his beard crinkled.

“Lady, you have never been anything but gracious and good to us. My Queen would never have survived our girls if you had not intervened.”

Something spoke now in my place. No, it was still me, but a me I was struggling to fully grasp. The voice was a harsh lash. Filled with a venom I had not spoken in an age.

“She most certainly wouldn’t have.”

He paused, considering his next words carefully. Even after everything I had done for this cowering little skink, he still saw the reflection of my people to the east in a barbarous visage. I breathed in and out, deflating to try and soothe his worries. But I could not diminish that rage burning hard in my chest. It didn’t quite belong to me.

“With such great gifts showered upon me, I refused to put you to the blade as he so initially wished. Instead, I will send you into exile tonight.”

Everything seemed to freeze as time itself answered the call of my distress. Purple fluorescence squirmed in lines across exposed skin. My heart hammered in my chest.

He actually wanted to kill me?

I think it was then, that the spell began to crumble. The first pieces falling from the iron hand holding me beneath his will for 20 fucking years. I saw her for the first time then, the woman trapped underneath its grip.

She was right, this couldn’t stand. My gaze slid back to him again.

“What of my children?”

“He will keep them here. They will enjoy lives as second princes to whatever heir Glauce gives him. They will live well and full.”

How dare he. He who had left me with both squealing infants for months of sleepless nights. He who had abdicated every responsibility to drink and whore himself to every young woman in town. He who had never loved them. She was screaming now, that he never cared. I struggled to listen.

Another crack. More pieces crash to the marble floor.

“Where will I go?”

“He intends to send you home. As I understand it, he sent a message by raven this morning.”

The lights on my skin flared with an unholy fire. The grasp fragments, pieces raining to the floor with tiny tinks, consumed in an inferno of purple ire.

She is full of wrath, and I am trying so hard to let her in.

He steals my children. He burns our love for some child half his age. After everything I went through for him, after ripping open my heart with every stillborn child. My breathing picks up as the spell tries to reassert its hold.

But those aren’t my words. Those aren’t my thoughts. I love him still. He gave me everything. He fought to get me free from that place. He was there when she couldn’t handle me and left on her own.

I breathe hard, falling to my knees. One hand pressed against my pounding skull. Two dissonant strands of thought tugging on me in waves of jagged glass.

I loathe him. He took something from me in that precious moment and its still beyond my reach. Wake up, me. WAKE UP. We’re bound. I’m bound. I’M BOUND.

Some foreign arcane effect is crushing my heart as it tries to burst free. What did he do? Was it a potion? A curse? When did this start? I couldn’t think. I could barely breath. I needed time. Time he has not given me.

The whole world spins.

I kneel before this tiny wrinkled King, knowing that he is nothing to the heirs of the great houses to the east. But I do it anyways, because my rage would not be enough in this delicate moment to stay the bays of so many beasts that are eager to drink my blood.

“For the love of my children, please, your Majesty. A day. One day delay so I may hold them, so I may give them a loving goodbye. What will the children think of their mother if she simply vanishes? What good will that do them to never know that I loved them in giving them the life they finally deserved? This is all I ask.”

The tears burn on my cheeks, not tears of grief for losing them. Tears of rage, tears of fury as I try to reconcile my mind at war with itself. I have been used. I have been slaved to his will. These children were never mine to hold forever. They were tools for his twisting of the knife. It will not stand.

The fear upon his lips fades. Surprise takes its place, before flowing into a deep sadness.

“Lady, I have never wished to see you so wracked with despair. I will give you another day to take care of your affairs.”

“Oh, thank you your majesty. Thank you.”

I let the false relief, the false gratitude flow into my words.

He takes his leave then.

I begin to pick myself up, a deep flame of rage and grief burning against my reddened cheeks. Then, my husband walks in. Always at the time when I am at my lowest. He revels in this suffering. I stared at him, his ugly, beautiful face full of false solace. It hid a twisting smile of glee.

Half my body wanted to tear forward and rip open his throat. In one smooth motion I would draw every ounce of blood from his veins and feed it to my fleece. The other half tried to bring me down to kneel before him, beg for his love, beg him not to do this.

“How could you do this to me?”

“Oh, my wife. I could not pass up the opportunity to marry her. Can’t you see, she is a princess of my homelands, a wife with her best and most fertile years ahead of her.”

“Am I not Queen enough for you?”

“No. No, you’re a barbarian, a savage witch who dabbles in blood and magic. They call you a wicked creature of the east. A part of me always knew this day would come, as much as I loved you. Maybe some small part of me still loves you. Maybe someday, I’ll come back to that golden city and bring you back here. Our families will be one then. Would that soothe your acheing heart, to know that I feel horrible leaving you alone, completely bound to my spell.”

I seethed with such rage. There it was, the admission out in the open. He still believed my mind would fully omit the truth.

“Hera will scorn you.”

“Hera is dead. You saw to that on the fields of Aries, or do you not remember.”

The words are a blow, playing on the addled mind distorted by 20 years of enchantment. I recover fast.

“You do not know what you do to me. You do not know the Tartarian suffering you are sending me back to.”

Then, he finally drops all the pretense and façade. Just to see me squirm.

“Nor do I particularly care. I admired you from right there, right in your gaze, but you never had eyes for me, did you? You only loved that beastly woman of no noble heritage.”

Spikes of pain in my temples.

“I loved you. I loved you deeply with all my heart.”

“Oh, come now, we both know that’s the spell that Aphrodite put on your heart. Maybe I underestimated you, maybe you simply can’t break it. Maybe what I have to say will kill you.”

He holds wide his arms.

“That’s probably cleaner isn’t it, you dieing of heartbreak would resolve every problem. Listen, serpent of the east, I knew I’d never really have you. Even under the spell, where the enchantment twists every thought and word, all you could talk about the first time we slept together was ‘[TEMPORAL DATA ERROR]’ this and [TEMPORAL DATA ERROR] that. To think your attachment to Her was more powerful than Aphrodites desire, it’s really ridiculous.”

I wanted to scream. His fucking gods had meddled in my heart and mind.

“I gave you everything. I rescued you from the Monster’s wrath. I stole a fleece out from under their gaze, killed my bond mate in your goat fucking name. I bled my womb half a dozen times to give you heirs you never loved. They are the only good things I have ever brought into this world and you rip them now from my fingers. We made your name, her and I together. And this is the end you give me? Doom me to my Maker’s hands.”

For the first time since that night on the boat, his eyes softened. There was, perhaps, a tinge of sympathy.

“Ah. I am not a heartless monster. If you wish it of me, I will give you money for your trip into exile. Divert yourself from that place, or don’t. I’m ready to give it to you with a lavish hand.”

A giant piece of enchanted glass shatters and tumbles to the marble floor.

“FUCK YOUR MONEY.”

The only thing that held me back was the guards just outside the door. I could hear their heavy armor, and there would be no time to weave a spell to bring him low before that.

“Go on, play the bridegroom to a lesser whore. Perhaps now you’ll have a match you’ll one day have cause to lament.”

I picked up a potted plant, one of my precious children, and threw it at him with such force it shattered against his skull. Arcs of hardened clay spiraled through the air, dirt caking his face, the fleece, sprinkling across the floor. The plant was dead, killed the moment of impact, and some small part of me regretted it. He was knocked flat on his ass, arms flailing the whole way down. Wasn’t down there long; the fleece saw to that. There was a rapidly healing cut upon his brow, as he ungraciously windmilled his arms to find balance as he leapt back up.

Did he know that his fleece only still worked because I had fed it all that blood over the years?

“You snake-scaled witch! You did break the spell!”

“Get out of my fucking house while it is still mine to hold. I will not hesitate now to cleave open that slithering throat, shove your larynx up your gullet, then rip it and your tongue from twixt your lips!”

Such a vile threat turned him pale. There was the fear, the recognition of what he had just unleashed in his hubris. He turned and fled with best haste, and the guards followed him twixt clomps of metal. I breathed a storm upon the air, before crashing up the stairs in retreat to my workshop. A haze of rage and grief burned across the sightline. A great groan from the wood as a lump of womanly flesh collapsed into it. Two decades of pain, of being slaved to his will, all burning to the surface in a flood of tears. The moment I sat down, alone, I completely shattered.

I wept. Oh, how I wept until the sun went down. Thank the gods my children weren’t there to see me break. I don’t think I could have borne it.

That’s when she came to me.

There was a sudden shift in the breeze. A quiet whisper of murmuring stardust brushing against my ears.

“Child of the House of Gold.”

The sound was fragmented, distorted and broken. I looked up slowly, turning in the chair. I was in no shape to fight an intruder. If he’d come back with a knife, to plunge it in my neck himself—

A shattered visage, a fluttering ghost of torn strings hovered in the air in the center of my workshop. She was beautiful, wreathed in purple stars. Mist drenched the floor with its arcane smoke. The three aspects were shattered, only one remained, the hag, the other two threads in the wind just barely visible as reflections of light with eyes or mouths left behind. I stared, wide eyed at the flickering presentation of this specter, unable to truly grasp what I was seeing. I knew her name instantly. The founder of my noble house, immortalized in myth and tale as the Witch of Magic, noble Queen of the first frontier.

“Hecate.”

I croaked with such reverence.

“No, I am but a frayed thread of that once great meaning.”

I fell to the floor on my knees, prostrating myself before her. I was unworthy to stand or even sit before such a great ancestor. She who ran the Children of the Night from our ancient home. She deserved to stand before someone far grander than I could ever be.

“Child, there rests upon you a great spell of binding. Your heart and mind at war with each other.”

“Oh grandmother of many grandmothers, he has made a slave of me.”

“As did the stain that is the Monster in my halls.”

“I failed to break her strings and free our people.”

“And it is best you did, for there were other things in wait.”

I didn’t understand why she would say that. I wasn’t in the right mind to ask.

“I dishonor you with the blood in my veins, with my presence before you.”

“The only dishonor is that you are bound to an arrogant prince who does not love you.”

“He has cast me off.”

“And that cannot stand.”

Silence as she flutters there, the fragmentation in her being flowing in a breeze.

“She has called your name. Have you not heard her?”

“Who?”

“The one who altered your path. You know her many faces, her endless tides. Will you not answer her?”

“I don’t know how. Not with my soul at war. I cannot free myself from his yoke, I cannot right this slight against me. I am broken.”

“You are not broken. I would not have chosen you if you were.”

I looked up, wide-eyed.

“Chosen?”

“Yes. Child of the Noble Blood, on this night I have wreathed you successor to the noble title of Hecate. For I am faded and will soon no longer be. Made of such foolishness we were to fight the Pillars upon the Trojan Planes, Zeus’s folly foisted upon all of us. There is little yet that remains.”

“My lady, I am not worthy!”

“Silence.”

My lips felt like lead, sealed shut for the moment.

“There is no such thing as worthiness. Only potential, and in this you are not alone, as the last silver sister is finding within your reach.”

“What?”

“Do you wish to reclaim what was taken from you? Do you wish to make him pay for binding a greater being?”

I nodded, sniffling. I didn’t believe I was a greater being. Such notions were eroded from me by years of travel with the folk of fins. If any deserved that mantle, it was certainly them.

“Then hark I shall ascend my power in your blood.”

I sat up, about to ask what she could possibly have meant.

I remember a breeze, a wind, pouring in. My lungs, my nostrils, filling, then my belly as her essence burned against my flesh. I screamed, yet nothing would come out. The lights squirmed across my skin, coating me in a purple glow that she fed again and again. It was the strangest feeling I’ve ever had, barely remembered like a fever dream. Every inch of flesh was swelling, tearing and pressing into everything else. I was floating, rising through the sky like a fattened flesh sack that’s ready to burst at any second. All the stars wove out before me, an infinite spiraling series of threads connecting every concept together. Some close, some far.

There was a sound, it was metallic, filling the sky with hues of multicolor bliss like splatters of severed arteries spraying across the ground.

But I wasn’t alone. There was something else there too. It filled the entire southern horizon, crowding out all the other strings. It curled about a spiraling tower burned into the fabric of everything in a woven arc of coral-turned-metal that clawed at the sky itself. An endless rippling fractal of contorting cerulean flesh. Infinite undulations of limbs, claws, eyes, mouths, teeth and hair. It bloomed like countless flowers before me into some otherworldly, incomprehensible shape. And in the middle, there were four golden eyes boring down at me through the ethereal mass between us.

It, I believe it said something in a voice I already well and truly knew. But I didn’t really hear it.

Because the moment the words would have reached me, all my senses stopped working. Everything went to black.

Then, I died in the most ignoble way. I popped like a balloon.

---

<Begin Log:>

Summers flow like leaves in the wind, drifting past with every blink. Three summers have passed when it begins in the North. A rebellion long feared by the Maker, Ion’s rebellion, as they are calling it. Driven by that mythical dual fleshed Vessel, with the heretically divine aid of the Witch of Tempests. Or, at least, that’s what the Maker suggests. But she so rarely works in such direct ways.

There are rumors of a new belief trickling in to the Queendom, rumors of a faith so strong among the defiant slaves and ex-matriarchs of the North that whole cities fall to it in a single night. The refugees whisper of it, never in the Maker’s presence. A crackdown on such things is probably warranted to prevent its spread among the House slaves, but as long as the whispers are trickling new information, there’s no need for that. Only the occasional beating in the Matriarchs presence.

Before you can get a proper handle on how to begin to approach this issue, Absyrtus rushes to supplant you in the field. He’s fifteen summers old now and his abuse has never quite let up.

“I will take my bond north with an army of animations, golems, slaves, and experienced warriors. I’ve been speaking with several of our Northern sisters, Mother. They’re preparing to animate several of the Cinderskins.”

The Maker’s reaction blossoms with lines upon her brow, and the upward tilt of her ears. Even you must admit, animation of herbaceous constructs of that size is a move that hasn’t been undertaken since the reclamation wars with the Children of the Night.

“You’ve been speaking with the Northern Queens?”

“With my friends who are coming of age. I’m sure you remember them.”

“I do. What are these plans you’ve made without my permission?”

He stiffens a bit at the curling calculation thick in the Maker’s undertones.

“I’ll send scouts to the Northeast and East. From there, we’ll identify the weak points in the enemy’s lines and then attack them.”

“What do you think, Vessel?”

She turns to look at you, where you’re leaning against the table, taking in the lines on the map, with many question marks. There is no knowing just how far this plague has spread across the flat grasslands of the Northeast. You tilt your chin up slight, with an imperious air hovering in your eyes.

“It’s about as straightforward and sound a plan as I’ve heard from Absyrtus.”

He gives you a nod of appreciation once. Too oblivious to see the knife you have in the other hand.

“But?”

“But, I have also heard rumors from the refugees trickling through our streets. This, Ion, commands numbers of a fantastical nature. They have turned entire armies their Commanders, cities against their Matriarchs, entire Queendoms twist against their Queens in mere days.”

“Hopeful exaggerations by the slaves designed to undermine our faith. We will have to organize a mass sacrifice and progrom of those responsible.”

“No, I don’t think that’s wise.”

She turns her gaze, the downward curve of her lips and narrowing of her eyes screams her displeasure at your defiant dissent. It’s one of those days where you would have preferred to avoid being in her presence. But, with Absyrtus’s little maneuver, it can’t be avoided.

“Are you questioning my judgement, Vessel.”

There’s a hint of a smile on Absyrtus’s features.

“Never, Maker. But you do not have all the information.”

She tilts her head, lips twitching.

“Have you been keeping information from me, then?”

Now things are getting dangerous.

“Not with the intention of hiding it from you, only so I can separate what’s the truth from the fairy tales.”

“Then tell me of this truth.”

Her voice is almost a hiss.

“The refugees from the north are whispering of a rising fervor among the Queendoms that have already fallen. It’s spreading quickly from what I understand.”

“A fervor?”

“Yes. A devotion to transcendence, of the North freeing itself from the yoke of a divine, false providence posing as the Font. Eschewing the bonds of flesh and rising to be something more. It is an old, familiar mantra.”

Her eyes smolder with lavender ire.

“The Kin-slayer.”

The room falls still, Absyrtus stiffening on the other side of the table.

“It’s what she believes. But, its rising a step above that.”

“Go on?”

“They want to kill something, something ancient. Something I don’t really understand. Some aspect they say is of the Font.”

A long silence.

“Well, now there really is a sense of urgency.”

She steeples her fingers on the edge of the table.

“Yes, but, sending Absyrtus would be like trying to draw the blood from the flesh before you’ve applied the knife. I’m certain he’s learned from his mistakes, but you need a leader in the field who can adapt to an enemy who’s overcome everything that’s been thrown at them so far.”

Absyrtus seethes across the table, his eyes filled with daggers sliding straight between your ribs. It won’t save his plan.

“Who would you suggest, Vessel?”

Her expression is inscrutable, but the swirls of light behind her pupils scream of the calculations she is making.

“Send me. I will be your hand against this new enemy. I will learn their strategies, the strength of their forces, and then I will crush them against the anvil of the Cinderskins.”

This is your chance to really prove yourself in the field. Something you can finally get the recognition you deserve from.

“No.”

The word is crushing, smashing against your ribcage.

“What?”

“No, I will send Absyrtus.”

“Maker, you cannot—”

“ARE YOU QUESTIONING MY DECISION.”

She rounds on you, breath thick with her anger. You take a few steps back, vaguely aware of the smirk on Absyrtus’s lips.

“No, Maker. I just don’t understand?”

“Then I will explain, since you seem to still yet be vulnerable to bouts of stupidity.”

The words dig into your flesh like claws.

“These rumors among the refugees and slaves are psychological warfare. False depictions, which you have fallen for.”

Her finger jabs against your chest, against a flat nipple that has felt strangely sensitive as of recent days. The sensation that spiderwebs out catches you by surprise, provoking a quite sharp yelp to leap from your lungs. The moment of weakness only makes her eyes narrow.

“No human army can stand against an army of ours, they cannot hold against our divine magics. We are above them, as they Fond made us to be. Did you forget that?”

“No, Maker.”

You rub at the nipple gently, having to stop almost as soon as you start. When did they become that sensitive?

“I think you could use a little refresher during our Next shaping.”

She turns back to Absyrtus.

“Absyrtus, you will go North with an army. I expect you to crush these heathens and put an end to this rebellion.”

“Yes, Mother.”

He gives a far too practiced bow, turns and makes his leave, but not before giving you the most vicious grin.

Eight months later he returns from the frontier after several weeks of protracted silence. You’re in the sacred grove, speaking quietly with Balarax, affection in your touch for every inch of scales across her black body. A runner summons you to the throne room, with news of Absyrtus’s sighting on the horizon.

She’s hovering over the table when you enter the throne room with a scowl on her face.

“You summoned me, Maker?”

You stand in the entry of the throne room, glancing back at the steadily growing speck on the horizon.

“My son is expected within the next two hours, Vessel.”

“So the slave told me.”

She looks up at you with pursed lips and a wrinkled brow.

“There’s no column beneath him. He’s alone.”

The words flow into those sylvan ears, curling down and settling into your belly. It rises up into your chest as a vicious heat, spiteful glee you bite back to stop it from twitching across those lips.

“Oh, well. That seems like a turn of misfortune. We’ll need to hear—”

“Stop hiding your smug glee. I can see it in your eyes.”

She snaps, her words like a viper’s bite sinking into your skin. Chalciope stands off to the side, looking down and making herself as small as possible.

“Maker?”

“You were right, is that what you want to fucking hear? I should not have sent my useless son to do a job requiring my own hand.”

The admission is like sweet, sweet catharsis to your ears.

“Well, we can’t know that until we hear what Absyrtus has to say.”

“Since when do you have such faith in the boy?”

“I don’t, strategic growth doesn’t happen after just one failure. Now whether that failure was purely do to his idiocy, or due to an enemy who outmaneuvered him at every turn? That’s a substantial difference.”

She blows air out of her nostrils.

“Outreasoned by a mere Vessel.”

“I’m told I had the greatest teacher in all the world.”

She grunts in acknowledgement of the compliment and then waves you away to wait for Absyrtus.

A turn, moving towards bright haired Chalciope. She hasn’t been the same since the incident with the cat. There’s been a return to that near total silence of her early years. Though the love still shines in her eyes, there is a complexity in her expressions that grows with every passing season. In those shimmering lavender orbs, you can see the shape of your face, of your body. With every shaping you look more and more like the Maker.

With every shaping you act a little more like her.

Taking her hand, squeezing it, together you walk out into the canopy to lay among the thick snaking branches and leaves to wait.

What a difference three and a half summers have made. You’ve grown taller, not quite to the full height you will eventually reach. The height has always been behind Chalciope and Absyrtus, the latter of whom reaches the Maker’s neck, and the former of whom is now as tall as her. The top of your head barely reaches the Maker’s shoulders. Your body is beginning to change as well, hormones raging in your blood.

Among the most immediately noticeable shifts is a chest full of small aches and increasing sensitivity since Absyrtus left for the front. Like something is gathering behind the round pink bumps.

It’s another hour and a half before he arrives. By then you’ve both moved back inside the throne room, Chalciope sitting in a chair on the far wall with a needle and thread. She loves to weave pieces of cloth. You lean against the doorframe of the entryway, watching Absyrtus’s bond come in for a landing atop the canopy.

It’s a great lanky thing, a true dragon of sparks rather than one of the greater concepts the Matriarchs of the house are given. The wings are bigger than its entire torso. It’s neck is at least four times as long as it’s scaled abdomen. The neck ends in a head full of sharp teeth that seems far too big for the body it’s attached to. Rounding off the repugnant creature is a spiked tail of nearly equal length. It’s ugly and you can’t even remember its name. Balarax is the superior bond by all reasonable measures, of that you’re sure.

The first thing that stands out is the ragged state of the beast’s armor, full of shorn away wooden armor, copper plates torn off in random batches across his belly. Dozens of scarred over wounds criss cross through the scales. Absyrtus himself looks not all that much better. There are still fresh wounds upon his arms and shoulders.

He walks towards you, helmet underneath one arm as you lean against the doorframe. There’s a sneer upon his lips.

“Here to gloat, Vessel?”

“Oh no, I’ll have plenty of time for that after she rips you apart. She’s very angry, by the way.”

He stops in the doorframe, eyes smoldering with anger.

“I should cut out your whore mouth for talking to me that way.”

He spots Chalciope not far away, getting up. He leers at her, and snarls. She takes a few steps back, fear in her eyes.

You step in between them, breaking line of sight with one arm down at your side, the other behind your back with a spell held at the tip of one finger.

“Whore mouth?”

He leans in, the words dripping from between his lips into tilting ears.

“I know what she does to you. Everyone sees it, they always have. She touches you all over, has she started doing more than that yet? Oh, by the look on your lips, I’d say so. Drags her fingers across your flesh, savors every touch. Does she lick up your sweat? Does she touch you in soft places and call you special?”

The words cut straight into your core. A deep churn rises in your stomach, flesh crawling beneath your skin. Heat crawls up the back of your neck.

“Oh yeah, she definitely does. You enjoy it, don’t you? So much shame behind those eyes. So much desperation for her approval, for Mommy’s love. Always my Mother’s obedient sack of flesh. Have you realized yet, that you’re nothing more than a toy for her?”

There’s heat burning in your cheeks, a quiet instinct that makes you pull the hem of your dress down. An inferno trickling through every limb with the beat of your heart. Shame, deep shame.

“Tell me, Vessel, why does she look at you like that? Do you put that nasty tongue somewhere she likes?”

You flinch as if you’ve been struck.

“Oh, maybe you haven’t gotten there yet. But you will. When you do, I’ll make sure to ask, how does it feel to wallow in the dirt for her whenever she commands? Does she make you feel good? Promise you the world when you obey her whims?”

He pulls back, and stares. In the reflection of his pupils the lines on your brow run deep. Jaw muscles are clenched. How can you see anything but the youthful mirror of her face there.

“Bless the font, you didn’t know. Now I almost feel bad. Almost.”

He laughs. You have no retort, no words. Your abdomen is a storm of emotion, things you’re struggling to understand.

“Before you run your mouth again, I want you to ask yourself one question, Vessel. What happens when you mess up again? What happens when she loses interest?”

He starts to move past, only to toss one more match upon the flame.

“Or don’t, I suppose. Keep being Mommy’s little whore. Maybe, eventually, she will finally love the idea of what you are. Maybe she’ll convince you of that. But that’s when I want you to remember, she doesn’t love you. She only loves herself.”

There’s a deep frost sinking into your chest, curling out through your limbs as he walks towards your Maker, bent over the table. The hand at your side balls into a fist, as cold anger rises in your throat.

“How does it feel, Absyrtus?”

He stops in place.

“To know you’ll never be a name worth remembering in our house. To know that I, a Vessel with no name, will crush this rebellion. That you’ll never have her approval like I do. That she will touch me like you so desperately want to be?”

The fist connects just in front of your ear, a hard blow that sends you skidding further into the throne room. Consciousness evaporates for several seconds before you wake up on the floor. The arrogance of thinking that you could get the spell off before he could make a movement has cost you. He’s drawing a blade from his belt, eyes bloodshot with a hate you’ve never seen from him before.

The Maker is watching now, a silent, appraising gaze. There are a half dozen of her other children gathered in the throne room, all younger than the three of you. Each watch with wide eyes. Everything seems to move in slow motion, guards are shouting.

“Absyrtus no!”

Chalciope screams. He steps towards you, blade rising for a downward strike to where you are sprawled upon the floor. You raise your arm defensively, with nothing else to defend you.

At the last possible second, Chalciope throws herself in front of him. The blade slices into the flesh of her arm, as he tries to abort the swing at the very last second. She screams.

White hot fire spiderwebs outwards in your chest. Everything turns a brilliant shade of crimson and there are laughs filling your ears.

“Mother, I didn’t mean to—”

The words die in his throat as you rip up from the wooden floor, feet carrying you towards him in a dancer’s arc. The tattoos across your skin burn with the purple flames of hate.

Seconds later you are being yanked away, screaming as the dagger from your belt clatters on the floor. Absyrtus’s pig form squeals upon the ground, thrashing. Something hard collides with the back of your neck, causing your limbs to go limp. With the black seeping into your vision, the spell falls away. He starts to revert in shape.

The venomous, cold tone of the Maker’s voice cleaves the air, the last thing you hear before you pass out.

“Throw them in the Punished Dark.”

The stone is hard as you hit the ground. It’s a bad landing, adding to the bruises in the dark. The door slams closed behind you. The cool stone acts like a cold soaked cloth against the throbbing heat radiating from where he struck your jaw.

“Chalciope, are you okay?”

“It hurts.”

Her thoughts are small, the shadowy silhouette pressed up against the back corner of the room atop the bed. Rising from the floor, you go and sit next to her, wrapping a protective arm around the shadow on the side that doesn’t have the arm cut.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is. I was so consumed with how he was about to lose all favor with the Maker again, that I let him get in my head. If I had just kept my mouth shut, he would never have drawn his blade. Now you’re hurt because of me.”

You pressed your face into the shadow’s shoulder.

“Sister, he was looking for an excuse. He always has.”

Of course, she’s right. But the difference is, had you said nothing, he would have come to beat you in the middle of the night.

“I know.”

Several seconds of silence pass between you.

“You looked so rattled by what he said. What did he tell you?”

Her question stabs at the deep wound he made in your belly, reopening the still bleeding scar. How can you possibly begin to tell her what the Maker does In the dark.

“I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”

The thought slips free as a sharp purple blade that cuts across the space between you. A reflexive reaction to a deep stir in your abdomen that you don’t fully understand. You didn’t mean for it to be that sharp. She recoils from each word as if you’d insulted her.

“Chalciope I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, Sister. I can tell it hurt.”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence. Despite the apology, she has closed herself off. Her feelings don’t come through the shadows. There’s not really a way to coax her back out right now, other than to change the topic.

“Do you remember the herbs for the pain draft and how to bandage it?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Okay. If you need a reminder, please say something.”

A moment of quiet before she responds.

“I will.”

A stillness settles over the dark. The herbs get applied, the wound stitched closed, and everything starts to settle.

Eventually, the tension thick in the air slowly dissipates and she begins to relax. Together you slide down onto the feather mattress, each holding a shadowy silhouette of the other. After perhaps an hour in the dark, you think she might have fallen asleep.

Then she asks,

“How long do you think she’ll keep us down here, Sister?”

Eyes close.

“Not long. She’ll need me with the rebellion in the North spreading. Especially after Abstyrus’s failure.”

The assertion is made with intense confidence, arrogance even. A warm flood of certainty pours into the shadowy linkage twitching between you both. The Maker wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t leave you down here for more than a few days.

The minutes start to tick by as you occupy yourselves in the dark with those old familiar habits. Minutes bleed into hours. Sometime around mid-evening, the servants come with food, but there’s no sign of the Maker or soldiers coming to take you back up.

The hours become days. In turn days bleed into weeks and then months.

When the second month in the dark begins, you accept that your pride, your arroagance likely burned the chance to make an opportunity out of Absyrtus’s failure. The maker doesn’t even come to shape you down here, which is a sign that she is not going to pull you out from the abyss anytime soon.

The worst part, other than the misjudgment you made, has to be the Maker’s stupidity. She’s already underestimating this Ion. Her welp of a brat already lost an army to his grasp. Why would she choose now of all times to punish you like this? In a way, it makes a twisted amount of sense that her madness of ego and pride would eventually put the house at risk. Yet still, surely she cannot be so stupid? Right?

In the days that follow this realization, you daydream of being released from the Punished Dark to sweep up into the fortress and save your people from the idiocy of your Mother and Brother. A hero finally worthy of a name of her own.

You don’t bother to discuss any of these thoughts with Chalciope. She’s too soft, too fragile to ever understand.

Several days before what should be your thirteenth Nameday, something strange begins to happen. You stir from sleep in the early hours of what you assume is morning, a slow, dull throb beginning in your abdomen. Movement reveals an accompanying ache in your back, and a soreness resting just behind each nipple. At first, you pass it off as just a stomachache. Maybe one of the servants messed up the food preparation. But there’s not really the associated desperation to grab for the chamber pot that accompanies the rare bout of dietary intolerance.

“Chalciope, my stomach hurts.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause on the other end.

“Did you already make a draft for it?”

“I did. It’s not really helping.”

“Maybe try laying on your side.”

“I’m not an idiot; I already tried that.”

The words snap at her mental fingers and she pulls back.

“Sorry, I’m just trying to help.”

You suck in a deep breath, trying to ground yourself.

“No, sorry I don’t know what came over me.”

Was it the pain causing these bouts of irritation? When the servants come, and set your food and drink out, you rise with a substantial amount of effort. While trying to take a drink from the vase of water you spill more than intended, and soak the bread on the plate. That’s when you break down in tears, frustration and confusion swirling together as tiny bolts of electricity across your chest.

“Sister?! Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m crying.”

With every passing hour, the pain gets worse. At some point your head starts hurting too, as if the deep aches and cramps in your stomach and back weren’t enough. Every brush of fabric against your nipples becomes intolerable due to a rise in sharp sensitivity.

What if this is an infection?

What if you’re dying?

There’s a growing cold pit in your stomach. Dread. No, no it might be worse.

What if they poisoned you? A slow acting poison that is draining you of your life force, and you can’t even call out for help.

The debilitation is bad enough by the second day that you can’t even muster the energy to scream at the dead-eyed servants and slaves. You’re going to die, and it’ll be here, in the dark, with only Chalciope to know your final wishes.

“Chalciope, I need you to tell one of the servants that I need help.”

You barely manage to assemble the thought through the line.

“I’ll try. Do think the Queen of the Punished Dark could help, Sister?”

Something tickles in the back of your brain. Of course. Of course she taught you almost everything you knew about pharmackology. But where has she been? She should have shown herself by now, shouldn’t she?

“Maybe.”

Has she abandoned you? After everything she did, half of you believes she loves you. The other believes that as the Kin-Slayer, she is a traitor to your people. A heretic who abandoned the very core principles that defines your whole world. Were your beliefs that she should stand and face her crimes the reason for her absence? Would this be your undoing?

“Where is she, Sister?”

Perhaps she was simply too busy betraying your house again by aiding the Rebel and their spreading taint across the land. But, if you are honest with yourself, you’re far too miserable with this sickness, deeply embedded in your flesh, to refuse her help. Maybe it was simply that she no longer believed you needed her.

You are about to respond to Chalciope’s question with:

“She probably won’t come because I doubt her intentions. Her efforts are better spent elsewhere.”

Before the words can tumble free, an old familiar warmth permeates the darkness, flooding through the connection to wash against Chalciope. A flush orange light ripples across the chamber. The air is thick with the scent of your sweat and nausea, but it’s soon overpowered by something else. A sweetness, like budding flowers on a distant breeze.

Moving is a titanic task that you can’t find the energy for, not without a wave of hot aches spreading deep in your belly. Though you can’t see her, you can feel her gaze rising up your shape with a long-missed wave of affection. It’s carried by those glistening ripples on the dark water of the arcane world in which she exists. Which is probably the moment where you finally realize, she has never physically been here with you. Your entire life, it was a simulacrum of the real thing, crafted to be as warm, as maternal as possible.

She made a Mother for you in the dark. The tears are hot in the corners of your eyes as you grapple with the realization, stacking it atop all the conflicted feelings about who she is and what she has done.

Chalciope’s excited and relieved thought screeches in your skull, not helping the matter.

“You’re here! Oh, thank the Fontbearers.”

She enters your field of view with as purposefully slow and methodical movements as ever. Though she is but a projection, when she sits on the bed the mattress depresses beneath her weight, rolling you just enough to make contact with her hip.

“I have come, because you both called for me.”

You sniffle through the haze of swirling emotions. A single question pops free of those lips in a half croak.

“Where have you been?”

The skin attached to your bones feels slick and clammy with sweat as her expression swims.

“I think you know the answer, [TEMPORAL DATA ERROR].”

The term that drops from her lips strikes you like a gong. It is deafening, echoing in your skull, pouring into every bone, every muscle with a certainty that can only ever be called yours. But at the same time it’s a void, hollow, refusing to stick as it slides out again and vanishes into a hole drilled into the temporal fabric. The expression on her face shifts, her ears almost drooping against her skull with despair.

Chalciope’s confusion drips through the other end.

“What was that?”

“A truth, one that will rise in the years to come by the words of another.”

“I—”

The words stick in your throat. An accusation, a description of what she really is. But it won’t come out.

“I know what you believe of me. What you would say. It’s the poison she feeds you in the dark, washing across your flesh with every connection of her touch. A poison only another can truly break you free of.”

Her words are like a scalpel, striking with precision at the root of everything that you have become, everything that she is making you into. There is sudden, rising dissonance twisting in your acheing abdomen, a war as you’re pulled taut between two worlds. The Witch of the Tempest’s love pitted against the approval and blood of the Maker in your veins.

“Know, child, that I have only ever wanted what was best for you. For our people. Know that my love has no strings, that its depths are boundless as are my Master’s.”

Her master’s? The thing that she betrayed the Font for?

“You are her? Did you give me that forbidden text?”

“I have never tried to hide who I am from you. The tome was a gift, in the hopes that you would see the truth, as I did.”

Sadness in her tone as she lays a gentle hand atop yours. That old, familiar feeling curls beneath the echoes of her skin. Safety, comfort, protection.

A tear runs down your cheek.

“Why do you keep leaving me?”

The hurt pours into your voice, bleeding through the connection.

Her eyes soften. A single tear falling down her cheek.

“You are deep within the core of her power. Beyond what I can reach on my own.”

You shift, wincing from the shoots of sensation that curl out into your chest from those puffy nipples scraping against fabric. Chalciope’s thoughts cut through the heavy silence resting there.

“Can you help her? She is very ill.”

The woman’s lower lip trembles ever so slightly. The words that fall out next are full of a quiet pain, as if reliving some deep ancient wound. Your mind goes back to the tome, her twin whose blood runs through your veins.

Does she see her in your face?

“Does she want my help still in such matters of directness?”

It’s a bitter question, drenched with the impression of the Maker’s marks etched into your skin.

“Why did you do it?”

She meets your upward gaze.

“Specificity is important.”

“Collapse the empire. Abandon the Font?”

A breeze trickles through the room accompanying her deep, heavy sigh.

“I think you know the answer.”

“The Font is a lie, in your eyes.”

She frowns at the implication.

“No. That is why I abandoned a false Faith, grown from an endless greed for expansion. It is your mother’s zealotry for that thing disguising itself as She Who Weeps Crimson which pollutes the understanding that you would gain if I were to show you the depths of the truth. Such poison plunges our entire house into the depths of despair.”

‘Our House’ rings in your ears. A stirring heat ripples through your chest. You try to sit up, but she stops you with a hand planted upon that acheing chest.

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

Words lash out with more venom than you meant. There’s a flicker of something in her face, the eyes deepening with many swirling lights that you can’t peel apart.

“No, I didn’t…that’s not what I—”

Her eyes close.

“Child, I brought down the empire because it was corrupt. As it was then, as it is now. It is a rotting corpse, disintegrating from the inside out. In the process I lost so very much that I cared for, because too many could not see the truth. Chief among them, until the very final moment where I could not save her, was my mirror image. Maybe, Mither above, I hope that one day you will understand. I hope that you may yet be saved before falling to a similar fate.”

Heavy, unyielding silence. There is so much pain in that expression, pouring through the connection to you both.

“I ask again, child of my blood, do you want my help?”

Eyes close. Thinking is such a labor.

“Yes.”

The relief that washes through her pours into the contours of your mind.

“But, I don’t know that you can keep coming here.”

The relief evaporates. When you open your eyes, her gaze is elsewhere. There is a deep melancholy etched into the lines across her face. All at once she seems to have aged thousands of years, appearing nothing more than an ancient, elderly Matriarch. Grief. There is so much grief.

It vanishes with a blink, leaving her as she was before, only echoes in its wake.

“That, my child, I had already concluded. There are many other concerns which demand my attention, winds of change pouring from the heavens that shall soon cast aside a child who does not know what she has been given.”

A deep, bitter sourness plunges into her words, carving open your heart like a ritual knife. It spills into the room, into the connection to Chalciope, threatening to cast the world in flame. Though it is so very clearly not meant to wound, it does. Cutting deep. But there’s no apology this time, as there might have been before. The rift that has opened between you cools in the seconds that follow but does not heal.

“Please… please can you help her?”

The softness returns to her face.

“I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do to stay the hand of this condition. It will writhe through her flesh until its task is finished.”

Frost spiderwebs through your chest, wrapping around your ribcage like a vice.

“A—after all that, what was the point if you can’t help? Am I going to die? Are you just going to leave me to die.”

You’re starting to hyperventilate. You lift your head to stare up at her, but her hand gently pushes you back down. Her palm brushes the sweat-soaked strands of brown hair from that brow. It is soothing against the fevered flesh, stirring deep in your breast many tangles of regret for snapping at her. The search for an apology ends before it begins, with a roll of her eyes.

“You truly are a child after our House. Do not be so dramatic, you are not dying.”

“What?”

Chalciope’s words ring in unison with your own.

“There is a draft that will help ease this pain throbbing in your lower abdomen. Every day it remains; you must drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration.”

In the reflection of her eyes, your brow wrinkles with many lines, lips folding down into a frown. With every passing second the confusion fills that acheing abdomen.

“What? What’s happening to me then?”

The words tremble as they fall from those lips.

“It figures no one would have told either of you.”

The palm comes away from your brow. She shifts next to you, one hand coming to rest against the hardened muscular core of your belly. The other moves further down, past the border of the wool blanket. Muscles tense up as it moves undernearth, beyond where you can see. Your eyes jam shut, as her fingers brush gently over the sensitive skin of your upper thigh.

A small whimper pools from your lips in anticipation of something that never comes.

When you open your eyes a moment later, the look on her face has shifted. A deep intensifying flame burns behind her pupils as she meets your gaze. It’s an expression that makes every hair across your body stand on end. A gaze that could level the palace just from it being cast upon the stone.

Apocalyptic rage.

It’s not directed at you, though it takes a second to realize, during which you try to sink deeper into the sheets. Then, she closes her eyes.

"That depraved monster. This will not stand."

There is a deep heavy silence that crushes everything between you. She breathes in and out, heavy, slow exhales. The temperature in the room rises briefly, some aspect of the sun itself scorching across the distance. In the moments that follow it comes back down again.

Then, she moves down, hand dipping between your legs without ever touching that sacred place through the cloth that protects it. A moment later, her hand emerges from beneath the blankets, fingers slick with crimson.

You’re bleeding. Oh, you’re bleeding a lot. When did that happen? You stare at her fingers, as she turns them over, looking for something. What, you have no idea.

“I thought as much. You are at that age.”

“Why is there blood?”

There’s something warm pooling under the blankets against your legs. You unsteadily reach, and lift the wool, to see a slick of crimson between your thighs when you pull up the hem of the gown.

“Oh Fontsbearers!”

“Relax, child.”

“What’s happening to me?!”

Her words are soothing to the ears.

“You are taking your first steps into womanhood.”

The words are a sledgehammer into your middle, stunning you into silence.

Womanhood?

Meeting her gaze, you tremble.

“I don’t understand?”

“There are many things which set us apart from men. You will have noticed that at a certain age, your brother became stronger, bigger, harrier. This is for us, as that was for him.”

“I don’t—"

“Tell me, are your nipples sore as well?”

A confused blink. Heat flushing those cheeks.

“Yes.”

She nods, slowly.

“Soon your chest will start to feel heavier. It will protrude outwards more with every passing day. Like every other woman you’ve ever met, you are starting to grow breasts to feed the children that may eventually come from between your legs.

“Children?”

The thought stirs something in you that you can’t quite place.

“Yes. But you are still too young to worry about such things.”

“H-h-ow often will this happen?”

“Every month, for a week, you will experience the same thing you are now. Cramps in your middle, bleeding from that very sensitive special place. There are going to be new, strange feelings that run deep in your belly, urges you don’t know how to satisfy. You’ll look at a boy… or maybe a girl and wish they would touch you in places. It will be confusing at first, but these things are natural parts of growing up into a woman.”

She reaches out, takes your face in between her hands, and pulls you up ever so slightly to kiss the top of your forehead.

“Your Mother should have been here to teach you such things. But it seems like she had other things in mind.”

There’s anger in her words, and a deep sadness there as well. Her expressions, dark as they are, flitter between several different things, too quickly to be picked up on. As if she’s debating saying something or elaborating. Ultimately, she lets it fall away and focuses her eyes back to the patient before her.

One hand returns to the belly. With whispering breaths there comes a curling breeze that shifts and crawls against your skin, suffusing warmth deep into the tissue. The deep agonizing cramps dull until they are practically gone. The headache fades as well, but not the flow coming from between your legs.

“What should I do when it begins?”

In the minutes that follow she pulls a scroll from the many stacks. On its surface she writes down the recipes for several drafts to help with the pain, the swelling, the headaches, and other details. In that same hidden ink that she always leaves behind.

“Chalciope, make sure that when it comes, she drinks lots of water. And you,y will watch out for Chalciope’s as well.”

You nod.

“The two of you can make strips of well-brushed wool pads to help soak up the blood. Make sure you clean them well after use, and that you have enough to last the whole week. I promise you, always make three times as many as you think you’ll need.”

You sit now, a strip of wool cloth wrapped around your hips, cushioning your sensitive places to absorb the blood. She looks at you again, her expression dripping with intention to say something else. Then her gaze darts to the door. The room falls silent, and there come the sounds of steps. Her eyes close, before she looks back to you.

“I’m sorry. I thought I had more time, but she is coming.”

“Wait!”

“I’m afraid I cannot, lest she discovers my presence.”

“But—”

“I promise, one day, you will be free of all this.”

You reach out as if to touch her, as if to beg her one last time not to go. But she’s already scattered into petals on the breeze. They’re already blinking out of existence, thwarting any final effort to reach across space to beg her for forgiveness. Footsteps reach the door, right as you cut the line to Chalciope’s shadowed connection.

The door clicks unlocked and it pushes in. Standing in the doorway, with none of the warmth of Kirke, is the Maker. She snaps her fingers and light fills the room.

It’s so much worse in the light, all that blood that pooled beneath you on the mattress now a fat, ugly stain. Her eyes dart there first, and then to where you’re sitting cross-legged, just shy of the pillow.

The door shuts behind her. She doesn’t say anything, not right away at least. In her hands is a stone crate, with the sieve for the infusions sticking out of it. There is a long moment of tense silence as her eyes carve into the contours of that flesh, drifting down to the wool padding wrapped around your hips. Something churns deep in your abdomen, a quiet, incessant pressure that makes you shift in place and pull the bloodstained gown down over your legs. The first thing she says, after taking it all in are normal. Or at least, not immediately suspicious.

“Well. I had started to wonder when you would first begin to flower. It seems it was a little later than I was expecting.”

No, the truly terrifying words come after a particularly heavy, pregnant silence. They will stick with you for the rest of your life.

“Well, this leaves me with a single question, Vessel. Is your blood also an aphrodisiac?”

For a moment, after the words pollute the air you’re breathing, you wonder if they were just a hallucination. Maybe just an imagined intrusive thought so deeply, deeply twisted that it can’t be real. But no. It isn’t your imagination, because she expands upon it.

“With so much of my essence inside of you, Vessel, and such glorious resonance with my intent, I’m almost certain it will be.”

She walks towards the wide stone worktable/desk adjacent to the wall. Every muscle feels frozen in place as you can do nothing but watch. She sets the crate down, and begins neatly pulling the contents out, arranging them on the stone surface.

When she next speaks, her words feel distorted, a ringing filling your hearing with every syllable.

“Now that the body is finally maturing, it is time I begin to teach it the art of mating. The muscle memory is incredibly important.”

She flicks the side of a glass vial, the tinks echo in your ears.

“Which means it is time you are taught reciprocation. After thirteen winters of blessing you with that writhing heat at the touch of my fingers, there’s quite a bit of debt to repay, wouldn’t you agree?”

Her fingers wrap around your arm, pulling your gaze up to meet hers.

“You’ve not said a word, Vessel.”

At that moment you avert your gaze, stomach flipping in your belly. The contents splatter on the floor seconds later, a deep retching heave filling your core. The bile stings at the back of your throat as you gasp for breath and then heave again.

“Hmm…”

One of her hands, with those long spindly fingers presses against the core muscles of your stomach, and traces down. Eyes squirm shut as cold digits press and feel into the petals of the flower below through the wool pad, eliciting an almost inaudible whimper from your lips.

A moment later you’re sitting back on the bed, everything a haze. She’s starting to lift the gown up, fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your torso.

“Be a good Vessel, hold your arms up.”

After a second, you obey on instinct. Everything seems unreal, as if you’re not quite in your own flesh, but experiencing it from a distance. Yet every chilled touch feels so visceral. The gown comes away, leaving you practically naked, with the exception of the cloth undergarments at your hips and the wool pad pressing against the flower.

She slides the hollow tipped bone needle into the vein on your arm. It’s a small sharp prick, repeated thousands of times across your life.

“It seems this body has developed an unfortunate condition.”

You look up slightly to see her appraising eyes, her gaze roving down your shape.

“Maker?”

“The lining of your womb has grown beyond the natural bounds of its flesh into the deep soft tissue. It’s an issue my Mother also experienced that went dormant in me. I can only imagine the pain you must have started experiencing a few days ago, such unneeded suffering.”

She clicks her tongue.

“I felt really ill.”

The words slip out absently.

“You really should have sent one of those useless slaves up to get me. Then we could have done this much sooner.”

“Sorry, Mommy.”

Why did you say Mommy? Are you an idiot? How many times has this lesson been beaten into that flesh? Why does the slip have to happen now? A flinch as you brace for the punishment, a slap, a vicious verbal lashing. It doesn’t come.

“Shhhh.”

Her fingers caress your cheek, almost lovingly. But in that gaze is not Maternal love. It’s a predatory, an unsated hunger rolling across the crinkle of her lips. Her fingers trace the contours of the chin, the nose, the jaw.

“How much you are growing into my visage. Vessel. When I shape you today, I will fix this headache and relieve you from the pain. It will help with your lessons in making love.”

A shudder crawls up your spine as the transfusion begins, the flow of blood curling through the sieve. Her fingers trace the blossoming curves of that body, undoing the knots holding the wool pad into place as you try to find something to start at on the far wall. The undergarments and cloth pad slide away, and that warm begins to trickle down one thigh.

A single hand full of spindly digits presses you back, propping you up against the pillow. Familiar heat swells along that arm, rapidly spreading through the veins. Breaths comes faster as something stirs deep in your lower abdomen. A confusing desire rises in your chest, a maddening urge to be touched roiling together with churning nausea in your stomach. Muscles are rapidly turning to jelly as her blood burns its way through your body, waves of electric sensation washing back and forth across every inch of tissue as skin bubbles and boils.

You gasp for breath, vaguely aware of her fingers dragging up one thigh. Every part of your mind wants to scream as sweat torturously beads and drip through writhing skin. She’s saying something, chanting the mantra she always does, ice cold fingers kneading into the flesh of one thigh.

That old familiar haze leaks into your brain, sticking more pliantly than it really ever did in your younger years. Yet still it seems to slip and slide, not quite taking hold. There’s a thunderous crack, the sense of flesh being spooled out in one leg, a deep, primal heat that roars in your abdomen. You scream. Fontbearers cups, you scream. She stretches your limb out an inch or so, working soon upon the other as stars fill every corner of your vision.

You barely register the motion as she shifts further up, pressing her lips up against one of your ears.

“What a good Vessel you are.”

The nibble on that earlobe dredges the twists in your stomach, swirling all together with the rampant fire setting your flower ablaze. Your voice seems so very far away as you scream to the air, as her fingers gather flesh behind one nipple, pulling it out from your chest, as something swells. The other is soon attended to much the same, speeding the promised growth spoken by Kirke in the dark. The words are pouring from your lips, begging her to stop. But with every burst of sensation slamming against your mind, the words twist, changing into desperate cries for her to touch you more. It’s the aphrodisiac in her blood, the warping of your mind beneath her mantras, and that prophesised desire that Kirke promised as you grew further into womanhood.

Her words swim in and out of focus.

“A little at a time, Vessel, but you will have such beautiful means to feed those future children.”

This is not the way it was supposed to be, was it? There’s a shock of fear that scorches through your mind, that half of you disagrees. But such thoughts are drowned out by the ides of her hedonistic fire.

For a moment she’s in your field of vision, dark slick red coating her fingers. All sense of presence in the moment vanishes as she drags her tongue along one finger.

“I was right, it is an aphrodisiac.”

There’s the sensation of lips kissing down your body, provoking spiderwebs of lightning as she shapes the skin. Everything becomes a nightmarish, hedonistic haze.

“Now you will learn and feel the power of a divine tongue so you may in turn use it to reciprocate.”

Her voice is a purr that curls through every inch of flesh to your ears and makes your skin feel clammy and wrong.

She’s shimmied down between your legs, spreading your thighs apart. Pure willpower drags your arms up, coiling throbbing fingers through your hair as something warm and wet brushes up against the flower. Your lower abdomen roils, heat and quick, sharp shoots of pain rippling up, and then back down through that most sensitive thing carved through your flesh.

Something far longer than it should be curls up inside of you. It’s a hostile, alien presence that twists the flesh it brushes against, making you tug harder and harder on those brown strands of hair. You scream. It’s all you really can do.

Your back arches with a sharp upward curve. The flower blooms deep below in a confusing rush of sickening completion. Dizzying crashes of thunderous heat shatter your mind beneath its currents. Only half of you feels this is so expressly wrong. There’s a rush of something hot pouring out from inside of you. Its slick and heavy, her icy breath chill against the flower as she—

Gods you want to vomit, you want to retch, but your body does not respond. Your mind, your body is at war with itself, and as you settle back into the sheets, slick with sweat, all you can do is stare absently at the far wall as your chest desperately rises and falls to keep pace with urgently needed oxygen. A golden haze wreathes your vision.

You’re just thirteen summers old. None of the heroines in the ancient epics had their flowers depetaled so young. Is this supposed to be wrong?

When your eyes refocus, she is sitting next to you, the skin around her mouth stained with a rich crimson.

“Was it good for you, Vessel?”

She purrs, gently stroking fingers along your acheing curves, along your cheek. Tears accumulate in the corners of your eyes, and you fight back the urge, but you cannot stop them. They pour down your cheeks in little streams. Her expression softens.

“Shhhh, shhh, do not cry little flower. I know it is strange, but in time you will learn to love it deeply.”

Her words twist in your ears, the air spinning.

“Now come, dry those tears.”

She wipes the liquid from your cheeks, stroking along your jaw.

“All your screaming has worked me up. I think it’s time for you to reciprocate, don’t you agree?”

She leans in, blood stained skin growing closer by the second. You have to do something. You have to stop her, or she’ll—

Your arms move on instinct, catching her in the middle of the chest. It’s a shove, fueled by the adrenaline pouring through your body. Even with your arms rendered as effectively gelatin, you still knock her back, where she trips and nearly falls over the chair.

“No!”

Your voice is a gasp, before you slam your hands over your mouth.

Her mouth hangs slightly open, brow knit with surprise. Then it twists; bared teeth, ears swept back, eyes narrow.

“After I have given you the gift of my tongue, of deflowering you so that you will know and understand the depths of joy when making love, you would refuse me?”

Her voice is a dangerous hiss. You shrink back into the corner of the bed, jammed up against the stone.

“You shouldn’t have. I’m not old enough.”

The reply is in a small, quiet voice.

“Such insolence from a Vessel!”

Her voice becomes a roar. She surges across the space between you, grasping strands of hair between her fingers, and yanking you up. Fingers try desperately to claw tightly to the wool blanket, but her strength is beyond anything that can be resisted. She slams you into the wall with substantial force, forcing the air from your lungs. An apocalyptic slap smashes across your cheeks, blood immediately pouring from your nose.

She holds you there, her naked body pressed to yours.

“Your flesh is mine to do with as I please. I made you, I shape you, you are mine, you will always be mine!”

A whimper escapes. Her gaze bores into you, carving a tunnel in that trembling flesh. Then, she looks away.

“Bah!”

She slams you against the rock again and then releases you, backing away.

“Don’t reciprocate then, spoiled brat. But you will stay down here if you don’t. And I will make sure that holds until you understand the gifts you are refusing.”

The door slams behind her. The floor and walls are cold as you slide down, a trail of blood and something else smearing on the rock. Your body curls up into a ball, feeling so very very week. There, you sob, in the dark, alone, wishing Kirke would come back.

---

13 YO Medea getting first menstrual cycle. Imperious. Receiving her fleece. First shaping where Ilya becomes physically affectionate. Medea not really receptive to Ilya’s touch.

16 YO Medea, starting to like girls, talks to Chalciope, now 14, about it. Goes to Ilya about potentially taking on a lover. Ilya quashes it.

18 YO Medea, helping Ilya map out an assault in Thessaly by sea, guised as a diplomatic mission. Medea is told she’s going to be leading it, her first real responsibility. Final shaping session before she departs, Medea is receptive to Ilya’s touch and affection for the first time.

---

Video Audio Log VAL-XXXX-01

Date: May 6th, 2024

Location: Eurtec Proper and the Silicon Nornir Foresight Matrix Array (NFMA) Complex

Foreword: At approximately 1700 hours, Eurtec time, CCTV cameras recorded a hooded figure believed to be SCP-XXXX entering the city via a Way. The following recording transcript covers the entirety of its transit through the city, infiltration into the Silicon Nornir Complex, and subsequent interaction with SCP-001: ”Onyx.”²

---

<Begin Log:>

A hooded figure is seen exiting from a wall where a solid doorway made of purple light has appeared. The figure scans the alleyway for several seconds before beginning to walk in the general direction of the Silicon Nornir Complex at the center of the city.

They spend the next hour utilizing alleyways and city structures to avoid patrolling Eurtec security forces. During this period, it is observed using thaumaturgy when no obvious cover is available to shield itself from observation using either darkness or invisibility.

The figure arrives at the road security checkpoints for the Silicon Nornir roughly two hours after entering the city. It spends nearly half an hour circling the complex, using local flora for cover. At 2000 hours, the figure begins emitting a thick faintly lavender fog, which flows unnaturally into one of the security checkpoints. Agents within the checkpoint do not seem to notice the fog and begin dropping to the floor. They will be discovered, unconscious, nearly a half hour later by a returning patrol.

The hooded figure passes through the security checkpoint, taking the badge of the highest ranked guard, and proceeds into the Silicon Nornir’s complex. It spends the next fifteen minutes avoiding Silicon Nornir security in the halls of the complex. Eventually, it runs into a Speaker of the Cult. The speaker is abruptly incapacitated with very little motion from the hooded figure. She will later attest that she was ‘hypnotized by purple lights dancing in her eyes’ before losing consciousness. SCP-XXXX relieves the speaker of its badge, before arriving at the Central Focal chamber of the NFMA, where it uses the credentials to enter the chamber.

The Central Focal chamber is large and appears organically shaped to resemble a magma chamber. Lava tube-like structures are arranged along the ceiling and face down into the center of the chamber. Several of these tubes contain large bundles of wires and fibers which vanish into the floor. The walls, floor, and ceiling are carved with irregularly shaped light panels which glow in varying shades of neon, predominantly reds, blues, and yellows. The figure stands near the closed and sealed bulkhead doors, staring at the center of the chamber. It has its head tilted down, looking at the floor.

Onyx: So, you are here.

SCP-XXXX: As a woman of such power, I’d expect you know exactly why I am here.

Onyx stands in a sunken area of the floor in the shape of a circle. Stairs are accessible from the south. The sides of the sunken dais consist of digital consoles glowing with neon fluorescence. Grooves for the placement of hands are embedded into the consoles. A large wooden staff is slotted into the center of the sunken dais, decorated with a lyre at its top made of gold and encrusted gems.

Onyx: Flattery is an interesting approach.

SCP-XXXX: I prefer to treat crucial allies the compliments they deserve. Is it strange, to know that one of the very people who played such a large role in freeing you from the GOC, now stands on your doorstep?

Onyx: Your assertion in your role is, as always, slightly and amusingly overstated. Yet, It would be accurate to say that I owe you much. A debt that will not be properly satiated today.

SCP-XXXX: Why’s that?

Onyx: I have only seen you in the last few hours, slinking through my city. Well ahead of the planned date on which this meeting was supposed to occur.

SCP-XXXX: What? Why?

The figure shifts, one hand slipping into its robes.

Onyx: You and all others touched by her hands are difficult to see. A fact which is of great irritation given the current mess that the Witch of the Sun is making of my web. This is putting many moving pieces in peril. Too many emotional outcomes will arise by its revelations.

SCP-XXXX: Wait—

Onyx: I should have anticipated her motions in the shadows. She has always preferred to operate alone, and it causes no end of headaches. Now there are ripples out from this that I will need to account for.

SCP-XXXX: —your voice is familiar.

Onyx: Is it? Well, I would have expected you of all the servants to fully remember it.

SCP-XXXX: Servants—

Onyx turns and removes the staff from the dais. It mounts the stairs and stops at the edge.

Onyx: Open your eyes and look upon me.

The figure looks up and takes a step back. It points at Onyx.

SCP-XXXX: You! You’re—

Onyx: I am the weaver who’s been in the abyssal dark. I am the shaper of fates, master of strings.

The hooded figure balls their fists.

SCP-XXXX: All this time—How long?!

Onyx: Since the 1950’s.

SCP-XXXX: I—

Onyx: Go home to your wife. Forget that we have spoken and purge this sight from your mind.

SCP-XXXX: I cannot walk away from this. I need—

Onyx: I know what you think you need.

SCP-XXXX: It is not a thought; it is an absolution.

Onyx: It is a reckless thought, to see how the threads might have woven had a different path been tread. A desperation burns in your breast; to know the possibilities of what you might weave if you return to face her. No matter the course in this hour, you are not ready. We will not be able to save you if you go.

SCP-XXXX: Can you not see what will happen if I don’t? I can’t run from this! She has her strings deep in me. I am filled with a lifetime of the blood she poured into my veins as a child. She shaped me with her own fucking hands doing—

SCP-XXXX stops, hugging its arms to its body, and shivers in place.

SCP-XXXX: Every passing day I feel more of her influence in my flesh. I am fighting against her will, her thoughts in my head with every second. If I run, I will cease to be. If I hide, she will take me either way. I cannot move beyond her reach. The only way I have a chance is to put an end to this, once and for all. But I need a way to end that doesn’t end with my consumption and the stringing of my mind to the Scarlet Monarch’s will.

Onyx scowls.

Onyx: Damn the Witch of the Sun for this acceleration.

SCP-XXXX: It was starting before she ever intervened.

Onyx: I doubt that. This timing could not be worse and will have many consequences. Right as the confluence of the engineer and her protector is beginning as well. Should we pivot to you, we will need to split our attention across many trickling streams.

SCP-XXXX: Will you not show me? Are you so removed from the soft woman I used to know? Would you damn me to this fate?

The figure lowers its hood. The face of a humanoid woman is revealed. It has vibrant purple eyes, long hair, mediterranean skin, and sylvan ears. Across what skin is visible flows an endless stream of arcane, fluorescent tattoos. Most are purple, but a few are crimson in coloration. There are tears in her eyes. Onyx frowns.

SCP-XXXX: Would you, Cassandra?

Silence. After several seconds, Onyx sighs.

Onyx: Needs suppose I could not allow this to come to pass. So much depends on all the pieces being in play.

Onyx turns to descend the stairs, and pauses at the top.

Onyx: Hark, join me below, child of the winged rams, and do not say I did not warn you. This will be painful for both of us and needs to be spread over several days.

SCP-XXXX: Wait. There’s something else I need to know.

Onyx pauses. It grasps the staff more tightly.

SCP-XXXX: How did Moose—

Onyx: That is Moose’s prerogative to disclose.

SCP-XXXX: Then, tell me, how did they know to come to us? If your sight cannot adequately resolve us, how did they know where to look? You owe me that much.

Onyx sighs.

Onyx: I will tell you. But only when you return on the 9th.

<End Log>

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Footnotes

1. Post-operation testaments suggest SCP-8711.

2. SCP-001: “Onyx” is an extremely potent, prescient, humanoid anomaly placed under Foundation oversight. It drives the function of the Silicon Nornir Foresight Matrix array, allowing the Foundation to identify emergent anomalies, containment breaches, and at times, GoI activity.