#love the trajectory of eliada / soulless content only to round out with worst girls lol

[nerice]

"find the word" snippets round 2!! wahoo!!!

reasonable (eligray banter ft. whatever this implies abt worst man's idea of a fun pastime)

eliada stirs more sugar into a tea he no longer has any desire to drink. his story is much too reasonable to dismiss outright, but that does not mean he has to like it. an existence manifested in the cradle of creation, an existence come face to face with the elusive observer... that would make gray a true ruler. but he cannot be, he isn't, eliada would know. eliada is the only person in this thrice forsaken universe able to say so with certainty. the gold stitched into his spine shudders whenever reina and him have the misfortune of sharing the same physical space, but gray, as aggravating as he is, leaves that part of him cold. he has the sudden suspicion that he is being scammed. "you are certain of your immortality?" he asks. gray dismisses the idea with a wave of his scarred arm. "plenty."

extinct + threaten (this will not end badly, don't worry abt it :)!)

hunting shadows is meant to be more of a patrol situation; keep them out of the palace, keep them from wandering into the surrounding settlements, but cait hunts them with a ferocity. she hunts them for sport. venturing out erratically, drawing circles far and farther still until she finds a nest, or until one is dumb enough to mistake her for prey. her kills are always vicious, her chase relentless, as if she could actually drive them to extinction. all to draw out their leader, the scorpion that took her sister from her—unaware that maheloas is not a shadow at all, but a god—so it's no wonder sky tries to dissuade her from the path of revenge. maheloas may be less threatening than garvith or noah, as far as true ruler power levels go, but even with all her natural talent for swordsmanship, if cait were to ever track him down, she'd only get herself killed.

value (more early eligray content! just rail him on the couch its ok)

surely, if gray clothed himself in better suits than rags, he'd make a fine man. even a man someone such as eliada could fancy. but all of that is tangential, a temptation for when they share too deep a drink. now eliada only has eyes for his true interest: the conspicuous bracelet slipped from under gray's sleeve. it rises and falls with his sleeping breath, the shifting opalescence within the marbles following a stranger rhythm. he'd only seen it twice before; both times gray had quickly pushed it back under his sleeve. both times eliada's attention had been drawn, and both times this interest had set gray in a bad mood. it could be ornamental. it could but that's as unlikely as ever seeing this man in anything that could even loosely be termed an "outfit." no, gray does not value fashion and it follows that he does not wear this bracelet for vanity, either. which means there is a story. and any fragment of an existence as impossible as his is bound to be worth a little risk.

cunning (that one canon jumie/gray dance long before 🐇. :)))

"you two are close?" gray asks to divert her attention. "i pledged my life to her," jumeira says, using his moment of genuine surprise to overtake the dance, clasping his hand and locking him into her own interpretation of the rhythm. all faux seduction gone, she is clean, businesslike composure now as she measures him up, step by step by step. he recognizes a cunning in her that, for the first time this night, worries him. forget the soul-bound pup figuring him out, this woman is worse; a single exchange enough for her to glean the murderous impulses he has kept concealed all night, though she wouldn't know him as soulless even if she cracked him open with her bare hands.

priority (queen of (fucking up) everything 💔)

"i abandoned them. i was at the peak of my power, veiled, i did not feel pain—but i fled. because i could not bear the dead, thousands torn apart in a blink..." nerice was different. reina can barely stand to think its name. it was a different world, a different war. how tired she is of war. she was the beginning of this universe and she has yet to know peace, but now, as the last remnant of her world, she is azra's priority. now she can become a shield; do for these worlds what she couldn't do for her own: face azra, and fight.

relate (like f*ther like d**ghter moments <3. + throwback 2 their talk in lhnh)

gray's daughter has changed since the last time they met, in more ways than one. the bandaged sleeves replaced by long gloves over hard muscle, her once-pale hair now kept in tight braids pulled back and dyed a rusty black that absorbs the dim light of his study. "you associate with soulless, we both know that well enough," sky says, trailing the long edge of his drafting table with two fingers. eliada folds his hands in lieu of a smile. her threat has a familiar flavor of indifferent dominance. "they seem drawn to me," he muses. "a position you can surely relate to, rabbit." the mahogany beneath her fingers cracks. last time her birthname had sent her scrambling for the door, but that, too, has changed. she leans onto the table, the splintering around her fingers deliberate, controlled. annoyance flickers through eliada at the thought of having to patch those cracks after she leaves. "that dark hair can't mask the resemblance." "good," she snarls. "i'm not trying to." (((((a lie))))

adventure (the girls are not ok but once upon a time they were)

lucie remembers the attic with crystal clarity: derelict as the rest of the house, a simple mattress in the corner waiting for her whenever she escaped from the orphanage. avery in her hammock. avery with a foot flexed against the ground to keep herself steady while she aimed rubber bands at the rats infesting the woodwork. avery, head tilted back at the sound of her hasty ascent on the rusty ladder; brimming with excitement for the tales from lucie's latest dream, the next adventure they could replay.

&&& bonus 白花 adventure snippet under the cut due to #tw linn

linnea restrains her with a tight fist in her hair, pouring the liquid down faye's throat until she sputters and chokes, spits some of it back up at her. "vulgar," linnea remarks and shoves her back into the blankets. faye begins to stir beneath her, coming awake, aware as their skin contact draws on. as soon as linnea withdraws her touch, she curls back in on herself, panting and gasping. "not long now. soon you will forget everything, forget the pain," linnea hums as she lays out an assortment of pills in a neat line. pressed herbs, polychrome powders, dried fragments of mushroom. last, right by faye's twitching fingers, a small vial of fluorescent liquid, a syringe, and a tourniquet. "we are going to have an adventure."

CHEERS >:3c

#elia writes #long post / #love the trajectory of eliada / soulless content only to round out with worst girls lol #once again these have been insanely fun at this rate i will have cleaned up a good chunk of my content by the end of this year ww