#soulmage

[meowcats734]

(prompt response) You're the villain that the Chosen One is meant to defeat. Once they arrive, you notice they're just a teenager who barely knows how to swing a sword. Angered by your opponents sending children to do all their dirty work, you decide to help the teen get revenge.

The Silent Parliament may have been ruthless, but they weren't stupid. They knew that Odin was turning their populace against them, and they remembered that Odin's opening move in the war was contacting possible sympathizers through the vehicle of dreams. So they'd taken countermeasures. While I was gone, they'd erected obelisks at the barriers of the city, and although I couldn't make heads or tails of how they worked, it was clear what the end result was. The few times that Odin did try to show up in people's dreams, the reports were that they were fuzzy and incomprehensible, their attempts to reach out to anyone in the Silent Peaks stymied.

But all that changed after our classmate went crazy and tried to blow us off the side of the mountain.

It frustrated me that I not only had absolutely no idea what the Silent Parliament was doing to keep Odin's dreams out, I hadn't the faintest clue what Odin had done to counteract that. Trying to catch any true information about the war through the waves of confusion and propaganda was like chasing my shadow around a dying fire.

But it was undeniable that after Odin played their hand and turned the Silent Academy's mind-wiped soldiers against them, the dream-wards on the outskirts of town were no longer effective.

So when I went to sleep next, something touched my soul, and I was no longer Cienne, witch of six magics, a student of the Silent Academy who was just trying to survive the war.

I was Odin, Demon of Empathy, and I had come to expose the Silent Peaks for their hypocrisy and lies.

###

"Prepare to meet your end, foul demon!" The slim, wobbly-kneed teenager tried to swing her blade at me. Unimpressed, I simply took a single, surefooted step back, navigating the corpse-strewn, muddy battlefield with ease. Nobody had taken the time to teach the poor girl the importance of a good pair of boots, and her pitiful slog through the mud would take ages to catch up with me.

"I have a name, you know," I said mildly.

"The only name you deserve is barbarian, you monster!" The girl shrieked as she charged at me. One of my soldiers appeared, brandishing a ball of fire, but I shook my head. This was the fourth would-be hero the Silent Parliament had thrown at me, and I'd given all of the first three a nice pat on the back, a reassuring pep talk, and in one case taken in a runaway who had no stomach for the churn of endless violence that made up an active battlefront.

I may have been a demon, but I was a Demon of Empathy. On occasion, I let others into my heart—which was more than I could say for my enemies.

"I recommend you stop following me," I said, taking another calm step back.

"Never!" The girl snapped. "They said you would try to sway me from my path with your wicked words of deceit!"

"Actually, I'm just trying to point out that you've been following me into enemy lines for the past two minutes." The girl froze as she looked around and realized that the black-and-white emblem of the Silent Parliament was nowhere to be found. "On the plus side," I mused, "it's not exactly as if you can get any more surrounded than you already are."

"Then I shall go down in a blaze of glory!" The girl leapt at me, blade crackling with heat, and I raised an eyebrow. This one knew some magic, evidently. Nevertheless, it was fruitless; she'd misjudged her leap and landed in a sprawl on the floor.

I sighed, walking towards her—ostensibly to give her a hand, but this was the fourth time I'd played out this pattern, and my enemies would be predicting me. I kept my eyes on the sky, watching for the telltale flash of—

There.

Quick as a flash, I slashed one hand through the air, tearing open a rift between here and the Plane of Elemental Darkness. A fraction of a heartbeat later, an eerily silent column of holy light struck the ground around us, crisping the mud into brick and setting the corpses aflame—but beneath the shelter of the rift of darkness, the girl and I were kept safe.

"That was an artillery strike," I gently explained, "ordered by your army's commanding officer on your position, in the hopes of taking me out while I gave a fallen child a hand. Scorn me all you like, but do yourself a favor."

The girl's eyes were wide and shellshocked as they met mine.

"As long as you continue working for the Silent Parliament? Don't think of yourself as the hero."

I stood, leaving the shocked girl staring at the destruction her own commander had wrought—the destruction that I had protected her from—and went to exit the battlefield.

But before I could return to my warcamp, the girl croaked, "Wait."

I stopped, then turned, raising an eyebrow. "What is it?"

"I..." The girl swallowed. "This can't be right. They wouldn't just... they wouldn't just throw me away..."

"But they have." My gaze was not unkind as I knelt by her side. "Would you like to see how?"

The girl got to her feet, sword abandoned in the mud, and mutely nodded.

Then I closed my eyes—trusting her not to strike me—and reached into my soulspace, delicately carving away a portion of my memories. The memories of the first three heroes who had come to stop me, who I had spared, and who had been quietly vanished by their superiors without a trace.

The first one, of course, didn't believe me. Neither did the second, even when I presented him with the memories of his predecessors. The third simply broke down when I showed him the names and faces of the previous "heroes" who had challenged me.

But the fourth?

The fourth grew angry.

"This... this isn't right." The girl clenched her fists. "The Silent Parliament—they can't get away with this."

"They have so far," I gently said. "And they will, if nobody stops them."

The girl trembled with fury. "You told me that I could not call myself a hero, so long as I worked for the Silent Parliament."

Slowly, I nodded.

"Then let me call myself a hero." She held on to the fragment of my soul that I had gifted her. "Let me show everyone what happened here, so that another child like me is never tricked onto this battlefield again."

A quiet, fierce grin spread across my face, and I squeezed the girl's arm.

"I will remember you," I said. "My name is Odin, and I am the greatest Demon of Empathy to walk this world."

"My name is Haionn," she said, "and I am a hero."

Then Haionn strode to her own side of the battlefield, wielding memory and truth where once she held a blade.

###

"I don't buy it," I said the next morning.

Lucet, Meloai, and Tanryn were the only ones in earshot, but Lucet still reflexively looked around with her soulsight. We were alone in the strange vault that Lord Tanryn had built to keep his daughter safe from the last war the Silent Peaks had waged. I found it ironic that we were using it to the same end.

"What don't you buy?" Meloai asked.

"The dream," I said. "The Silent Peaks are fucking awful, but for all their evils..." 

“I left a child in a warzone,” Witch Aimes snarled, getting to her feet. “A helpless, imbecilic child who it is my job to re-educate and protect from the Redlands. To protect from monsters like you, in body and idea.”

"They don't use child soldiers," I said. "And they protect their young."

"I mean, how would we know if they did?" Lucet asked. "What are we going to do, ask around if anyone had any missing children as of late? The watch would wipe our memories of the last week just to be safe if they thought we were questioning them."

"That might very well be Odin's aim," Meloai pointed out. "The watch's stockpiles of liberosis are already running low; they don't have enough resources to keep everyone safely mind-wiped. Having them waste resources on debunking an unfalsifiable accusation might be the sole goal of their broadcast."

"Well, hang on." Tanryn hopped into the conversation. "I don't know about this Odin fellow—"

The three of us chuckled. It was sometimes... endearing, how out of touch with current events Tanryn was.

"—but you said they sent you all a soul fragment, right? If it's a memory, it has to have some grain of truth to it, even if it's carefully chosen."

I shook my head. "Odin can do nonsense with soul fragments that I didn't even know was possible. Case in point: none of us have any idea how they sent the exact same soul fragment to the entire city, simultaneously. I wouldn't put it past them to be able to just... completely fake a memory. And some parts of it have to be fake. I've seen Odin fight personally, and if they had the power to casually open rifts of that size, I'm certain they would have used it against Witch Aimes. I don't know if it's, like, an intimidation tactic, or a tutorial on how to counter light magic, but it's definitely not real."

"So we're left with two competing sources of obviously false news," Lucet summed up. "Well, I suppose that's better than one."

"Not strictly true," Meloai pointed out. "I could add as many sources of obviously fake news as you want, and the situation wouldn't improve." At our blank looks, she elaborated. "As some examples of unhelpful false reports: bees are fish, snow is hot, and Iola is a good person."

I couldn't help but giggle at that. Meloai's sense of humor took some getting used to, but... I was glad we had her, during these times. I could use a smile every now and then. "Odin's lies are a little more subtle than 'bees are fish', but I take your point. We shouldn't take *anything—*either from the broadcasts or the dreams—at face value."

"So then... what do we trust?" Lucet asked. She folded her knees inwards, hugging her legs as if she was a giant egg. Tanryn gave her a scandalized look for putting her shoes on one of House Tanryn's precious chairs, but Lucet didn't even notice. "I mean, for all we know, we've already lost the war and Odin's about to kill us all. Or we won yesterday, and the only reason the Silent Academy is still showing those broadcasts is to fuel some completely unrelated conflict. And I hate that. I hate that so much."

I bit my lip, thinking. "Well," I slowly said. "The last time I didn't trust the Academy's narrative on things..." I almost laughed from how much simpler those times were, when all I had to worry about was what counted as Academic and what counted as Fell magic. "I asked someone who had been there personally."

Meloai and Tanryn gave me confused looks, but Lucet straightened up. "I thought you said Jiaola hadn't come back yet."

"He hasn't," I agreed, "but there's one person with oracular powers and a highly motivated interest in knowing what happened to him."

I stood, stretching my back, and prepared to open a rift back to realspace.

"I think it's time I paid Uncle Sansen a visit," I finished, and tore open a gate back into the Silent Peaks.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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#writing #writing prompt #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #writblr #serial fiction #fiction #series #web serial #oc #soulmage #dark academia #fantasy #high fantasy #magic #worldbuilding

[jinchuls-moved]

meows loudly at you. hi, hello. did u know i love u <3 i’m here to humbly ask you how you and fatgum celebrate the holidays ^_^ any fave activities ? traditions ? tell me all ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝🎤

meowing back at you my love (=`ω´=) ily2!!

holidays with fatgum are filled with cozy days. everything starts getting festive when we get the decorations down, blasting xmas music and sipping at hot chocolates while we get the tree ready and have our home sparkling !! we love our baked goodies, making gingerbread men and decorating houses (his always look so much better T-T) and, my favourite, tucking up in the evening with a terrible hallmark christmas film to laugh about with warm drinks and the fireplace burning. all cozy and calm and me n him just cuddled on the couch—the best thing ever !!!

#ty for asking aimsies #i am so thegriwbror about him rn #love letters ˚‧⁺ ･ ˖ · #ִ ࣪𖤐 true love: soulmage !!

[tafferling]

Aphelion

Free to read cyberpunk-lite/aetherpunk with a side of zombie apocalyse, soul magic, and slow burn. 

Episode 4 has begun! 

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Chapter 20: No way.

“All work, no— ugh. For fuck’s sake—play—okay, come on, will you loosen already you piece a’—”

With one last heave, Varrett bounced the stubborn shutters up.

His effort? Herculean. His ranting? Incessant. And his prize? A firm reminder why you were meant to lift with your legs and not with your already aching back.

“—makes V a sad boy,” he finally concluded, followed by a heartfelt “ow,” as he rubbed at a spot right above his ass bone.

The sun leered at him from over the storefront’s roof, slow-cooking him, while the once bustling artisan alley around him continued to rot quietly. At least the rotting had charm, the kind you got downhill from a park after three years of no one bothering to sweep. Dirt had been carried down by rain and wind alike, forming a cover of soil thick enough to attract the Elpisan fauna. With vengeance on its mind, it’d wrestled lampposts to the ground, ripped antennas from their sockets, and repurposed neon signs by hanging them off young trees like chokers.

And dear God, was it swampy.

Storms carried rains in their wake, and in the last few days, that’d been all Varrett had gotten out here: rain and heat and extra crowded streets since Maulers liked the wet a lot more than he did. But now the rain had let up. The clouds had broken. But the heat and the moisture had stuck around, turning even the widest of HC’s streets into saunas.

Varrett stared into the darkness beyond the shop’s shutters, his filter listless in its venture to pick up any potential threat, tired and overheated like the rest of him. No big surprise then that a sudden whisper of movement from above gave him a solid fright.

Varrett wheeled around, the prybar he’d used to jimmy the shutters open held at the ready—

—and growled at the vine that’d dropped from the roof’s edge to land on his shoulder. The vine slid lower, slung its slinky end around his biceps, and gave him a light squeeze. His thick shirt (which was totally the worst thing to wear in this heat) kept it from tasting skin.

“A for effort,” Varrett muttered, grabbed ahold of the plant above his head, and snapped it off with one hard yank.

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#Aphelion #Aetherpunk #Cyberpunk #Zombie Apocalyse #Chapter Updates #WebSerial #Soul Bonds #Soulmagic #writrblr

[starzpsychics]

In the dance of life, let not the seriousness of grown-up days overshadow the magic that resides in your soul.

Signup for our monthly newsletter to WIN a FREE tarot reading: 𝗵𝘁𝘁𝗽𝘀://𝗹𝗽.𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀.𝗰𝗼𝗺/𝘀𝘂/𝗵𝗨𝗹𝗘𝟬𝗫𝗖/𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴

Tap the Link in Bio to visit our website.

#LifeDance #InnerChildMagic #SoulMagic #ChildlikeJoy #MagicWithin #DontLoseYourSpark #YouthfulSpirit #DanceOfSoul #embraceyourmagic #psychicpowers #psychicadvice #starzpsychics #psychicreading

[transparentcandydreamland]

You Want True Soulmate Sketch 

Your hand drawn sketch and reading will be delivered to you via email within 24 hours.  In some rare cases when demand is high, it could take up to 48 hours.

YES I WANT  MY SOULMATE DRAWING 

#law of attraction #manifesation #spritualquotes #soulmate soulmagic

[kays-artstuff]

soul vultures, I think leave blue scars on people, badboyhalo however, is a grim reaper and a demon. his body is very soulmagic-based so i think instead of bleeding he'd literally start coming undone he can't tho so no worries! he's being preserved by the totems and the fact that he's kinda immortal

#qsmp #qsmp fanart #badboyhalo #qsmp eggs #qsmp badboyhalo #qsmp dapper #badboyhalo fanart #qsmp bbh #bbh fanart #bbh #qsmp pomme #pomme fanart #pomme #pomme the egg #dapper qsmp #dapper the egg

[otterize]

instead of soulmate I accidently typed soulmage and tbh its cooler

[rusmii]

I saw that something happened and i hope everything is okay, and gets better💗💗 I wanted to tell you my little idea I had based on something I saw but imagine a vampire chuuya x artist reader, the specific scene i imagined was chuuya frowning while looking into the mirror, being met with nothing, just his bedroom, not him, never him. He constantly would glance in mirrors or front facing cameras in attempt to see himself but always being disappointed and walking away to go sulk somewhere by himself. One day, reader notices him standing infront of his bedroom mirror, a common occurrence now, so they take it upon themselves to drag him away, placing him down on a chair in there art studio, that once was a spare bedroom that chuuya changed because "no one stays over anyways" and "you deserve your own space, doll", so after a few hours of him asking if it's almost done, trying to hide his eagerness with complaining the seats uncomfortable and the room is to cold, eventually the painting is done and they happily show him, at first chuuya doesn't react but then he smiles, slightly, very slightly that its almost unnoticed. "is that what I look like?". "I tried to make it as accurate as i could" to which he would question his own appearance, because what else could he do? "Is my hair really that color? My eyes surely arent two different colors, right? ..right?" each answer being met with a small laugh or gentle smile, nodding along and confirming his questions to be the truth, after his questions die down a bit and he would thank them, grabbing there hand and kissing there knuckles to which the reader would respind with "dont thank me, i would never give up an opportunity to draw another portrait of my muse". Chuuya, responding curiously, the smile a little more noticeable now. "another? is this not the first?" to which reader smiles and shakes there head, grabbing a notebook thats kept in perfect condition, showing him each page, the whole notebook dedicated just to him. "I know we can't exactly capture all those picture perfect moments in a picture, so i drew them instead..!"

AHHH OMG this was supposed to be a really short sentence like a quick "oo la la what if?" BUT MORE IDEAS KEPT COMING AND IM NOT A GOOD WRITER AT ALL SO I KNOW ITS NOT THE BEST AND I DIDNT REALLY CHECK FOR TYPOS BUT I JUST HAD TO! i have SO MANY ideas for stories or writings but i can NEVER actually put them into words or anything so i usually forget them but i needed to tell this one to someone and i thought you would like the idea!!🫶 i have another idea (not really with any character just a little idea) of a soulmage au but like my own sorta twist on it if you'd like to hear about it!! again, i hope you and everyone you care about are all okay💗💗 mwah💋

OMFGG AVA I LOST MY DRAFT TO THE SCENARIO IM ABT TO FUCCKINNNGG CRYYYY….

butbutbut let’s talk abt UR WRITING??? holy shit girl this is beautiful 😭😭 WDYM U DONT KNOW HOW TO PUT IT INTO WORDS?? UR DID IT SO WONDERFULLY RIGHT HERE 😳😳😳😳😳😳

BUT AAAAH vampire chuuya who has spent centuries without ever looking at his own reflection, realizing that he is indeed, the most gorgeous vampire a human has had the pleasure to lay their eyes on when he sees the hand-painted portrait by his one and only love 😩🥺💕 AND THE INNOCENT SHOCK OF YOU WILLING TO PAINT HIM OVER N OVER AGAIN UNTIL HE GETS TIRED OF LOOKING AT HIMSELF AAWWWAAAAAAA

#AND AWWW #yes i’m doing fine rn🩷🩷🩷 hbu?? #TY FOR TAKING THE TIME OUT OF UR DAY TO WRITE THIS HOLY SHIT😭😭 #I LOVE IT SM #AND HHUHUHUHUOOOO #PLS DO TELL ME ABT UR OTHER IDEAS <3<3<3 #𝙇𝙐𝙑𝙈𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎💌 #...𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗞 <3 #𝙇𝙐𝙑𝙍𝙎: ava🪽

[shenzaibird-art]

"So, what would you offer me in exchange for my work? What could you give me that would be worth my time?" While many of his potential clients would try to offer him hefty sums of gold and other riches, Verloren would never trade his soulmagic services for money. Sure, money could buy many supplies, materials, ingredients and even test subjects, but he could acquire it through ordinary necromagic crafts if he ever needed anything more than his job as a royal augur paid him. For soulmagic crafts, he sought something more interesting. Knowledge of obscure crafts, magics from different places across the world, or maybe even personal research if could be of use to him. Anyone could offer money, he thought, but could you offer something that is truly unique?

#stt.Houndsdagger #oc.Verloren #he's very picky about people also #you can offer him the coolest thing in the universe but if he dislikes you for any reason he won't work with you #and he has lots of reasons he dislikes people for #Shenzaiverse #furry #furryart #sfw furry #furry sfw

[garnetdawn]

Some more OCs!

These are Nox and Viscera, a healer of the body & a healer of the soul

magic powercouple <3

#original character #art #Nox #viscera #fantasy art #Garnet art

[toskarin]

since I got a few asks about it just now, yeah you can steal the pre-vesalblood setting thing about the soulmagic and concept reinforcement. I'm not using it and it was really derivative on my part anyway. if you feel extra polite, just include a special thanks for me or something

[meowcats734]

(prompt response) Demons gain power from the fear they inflict upon others. The more people are afraid of a certain demon, the stronger they will become. For this reason, Kingdoms employ, not Knights and Warriors, but Bards and Minstrels to combat the Demons.

The war was broadcast, because it had to be. The magic of the battlechoirs was fueled by emotion, after all, and every viewer at home was a potential power source. When the battlechoirs hurled grand fireballs at the enemy ramparts, it was our passion they drew on to feed the flames; when they called down great sunbeams to blind and burn soldiers, it was our joy they converted into sunshine.

And when the battlechoirs summoned walls of repulsive force to crush entire villages and shove the broken corpses aside, it was our nationalism they stole to fuel their war machine.

I felt vaguely sick at how my fellow classmates whooped and cheered on the battle being broadcast in the matrix of light spells in the center of the auditorium. As if the battle was a sports match, and the dark red mud was an aesthetic choice. Even poor Freio in the corner was confusedly smiling, simply from the sheer inertia of the crowd.

At first, the Order of Valhalla had fielded foot soldiers and witches against the forces of the Silent Peaks, but after the first battle resulted in a resounding victory for "us"—or, at least, the side that got to broadcast their version of the war to me and my classmates—the Order of Valhalla switched tactics. They had numbers and logistics, but the Silent Peaks had a vast edge in spellcraft, and the Order of Valhalla hadn't expected the seven-meter-wide fireballs fueled by the rage of an entire city.

So the Order of Valhalla began summoning demons. On screen, the Demon of Fear manifested as a vast, many-tendriled darkness, spearing soldiers with rays of absolute void that made whatever they touched just... fall apart. The view quickly panned away from the carnage, but it was too late. The image of a bard's insides being sprayed into the wind like a farmer sowing seeds had already been burned into my head.

Mr. Ganrey looked at the private, smaller broadcast he was receiving straight from the battlechoir's conductor, and said, "Alright, class, our brave battlechoirs on the front lines need us to supply them with joy. Remember that we will win this battle. That the Order of Valhalla will be crushed beneath our boot. Their children will be re-educated into a more civilized culture, and their war-leaders will be executed for their crimes against the Silent Peaks."

The majority of my classmates whooped in joy, but to my left, Lucet grimaced. "He wants us to be happy about that?" she whispered.

"There's no evidence to support the idea that the culture of the Silent Peaks is any more or less 'civilized' than that of the Redlands," Meloai added from my right. The three of us were a minority, though, and not a very vocal one at that. I grimaced as, through my soulsight, I saw the little dewdrops of joy on my classmates' souls condense and flow together, being siphoned into great magical channels all the way to the battlefront.

Mere minutes later, the battlechoir sang a triumphant chord, and a column of light so bright it left the grasses as nothing more than smoking ash struck the Demon of Fear. My classmates cheered as the feed zoomed in on the ruined, dissolving body of the Demon of Fear—

And revealed something much, much worse standing in its remnants.

The entity didn't have the same looming, formless menace as the Demon of Fear. They were large for a person, but still roughly human-sized, even with the faintly glowing runic armor they wore. They bore no weapon, and had no army to back them up, but a shiver went down my spine regardless.

For there stood a Demon of Empathy, and it was the first time since the war begun that they had taken to the field.

Odin wasted no time, looking straight at the projection as if they could see right into our souls. "Peoples of the Silent Peaks," they began. "Your government is lying to you. They are manipulating your emotions in order to continue the war crimes they commit on the active front. Exit your city's boundaries and sleep. I will inform you of more in your dreams. The Silent Peaks is—"

I heard someone on the other end snap, "Cut the feed."

Moments later, the image dissolved into smoke and light.

Silence reigned in the classroom.

Then Mr. Ganrey cleared his throat. "Now, class. Let's... forget that last part happened, shall we?"

And here came the part I hated the most.

My classmates' eyes glazed over as a spell struck them all at once, and I felt Mr. Ganrey's magic assaulting my mind. But I had come prepared, and with a calm, misty breath, I shrouded my soul in antimagic, dulling the weak forgetfulness spell. If Mr. Ganrey noticed, he didn't say anything. Around me, Lucet and Meloai came back to life, and my classmates began eagerly discussing how we'd totally annihilated the enemy and how we were guaranteed victory within months.

"Cienne?" Lucet asked from my side. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'm fine," I managed to choke out. "Just... give me a minute."

I sprinted out of the classroom. Down the hall, to the left, through the door, and fumble at the lock.

I barely made it to the outhouse before I threw up with fear.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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#writing #writing prompt #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #writblr #serial fiction #fiction #series #web serial #oc #soulmage #dark academia #fantasy #high fantasy #magic #worldbuilding

[jinchuls-moved]

congratulations to the newly weds ᰔ you and neuvi are too cute together ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝ love you both bunches !

i’m blushing hehe ty aimsies ily!!!

#my cat is not happy i’m on my phone rn n keeps booping ut #sending you smooches from me and him #love letters ˚‧⁺ ･ ˖ · #ִ ࣪𖤐 true love: soulmage !!

[tafferling]

Aphelion

Free to read cyberpunk-lite/aetherpunk with a side of zombie apocalyse, soul magic, and slow burn.

In which a shoe drops right on Varrett's head. A very heavy one.

This is a short one. But... SOPHYA LORE!

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Chapter 23: The Soul Eater

Post-scuffle clarity was a bitch.

The adrenaline wearing off was bad enough, but that moment when the dust settled and the questions started popping their heads out of the dirt? Yeah, Varrett didn’t like that one bit. Especially with What the fuck just happened? leading the charge.

No, he wasn’t confused about the general logistics. Those were pretty straightforward: Bad dudes did bad things and they’d tried to nab Fi.

But nothing past it made any sense. Not the dudes in CG gear. Not the Sare. And defo not how everyone still standing had hauled ass the moment SIN had thrown that dome in front of Varrett.

Yeah. The dome thing.

W. T. F.

Fi’s silence didn’t help. She hadn’t made as much as a peep since Varrett had pulled the weird-ass collar from her neck. Not a Thank you, not an I’m okay, just a lot of nothing and a thousand-yard stare.

It’d gotten worse once Seb had taken them back up to Sixty; like she somehow managed to shuck noise entirely, her breathing quiet, her steps soundless, and her eyes empty, perceiving nothing.

But hoo boy, was she being perceived in turn or what?

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[gracemwrites]

It was late when the meeting ended. Quinn had declined the general’s smarmy call for a drink of celebration. The theologians had stayed. They had all been very pleased by their discovery. All Quinn felt was numb. She slipped down the path, navigating it easily in the dark. Soon the packed dirt gave way to the sharp crunch of bones. They had made their home on a pile of their dead. Quinn ducked her way around tents and dying fires until she was at the front of the camp. The spun metal gleamed in the dark of the night. Flashes of soulmagic light up traveling up and down, jumping from bracelet to bracelet and colessing in the gates. She rested her head against the cool gate. Letting the cold metal and magic wash over her. 

Quinn clutched at the closed runed gates, fighting the urge to laugh. Well, the general had finally done it. He had found a suicide mission Quinn wouldn’t be able to walk away from. A sacrifice. As if they were living in one of those old fairy tales. Quinn wasn’t even sure the gods had demanded sacrifices back when they still gave enough of a shit to still show up. But still, something had to be done. They had run out of time. It figures that after all this time of trying to get her killed, the general was going to have Quinn walk to her own death willingly. Quinn banged her head against the metal and swallowed it all back. She’d have to tell Regina in the morning. Fuck. 

Quinn swallowed back her laugh with another breath and pushed herself off the gate. Well. She might as well get some work done. Moving with practice easy, Quinn made her way over to the curtained off section just to the left of the gate. A mockery of privacy for the dead they were dishonoring and violating. She drew the curtain back and carefully did not look at the faces as she waded through the pile of bodies. Quinn kept her breaths deliberately shallow as she made her way to the back of the pile. You had to add the oldest bodies to the wall first so that way they could make use of them. In the dark, there was more than one arm or face that she stepped on. There was no avoiding it. The sickly coiling scent of death never really left the camp, not with the wall and certainly not on the battlefield. But it was always so much worse here in the middle of the pile. The smell seemed to linger heavily in the air, seeping into everything. It was almost funny how the only resource they never seemed to run out of was bodies. Quinn reached the back of the pile and knelt next to the closest body. The girl’s  head was torn open top to bottom. The rotting Brains leaking out of the carved out face. Quinn was just grateful she couldn’t tell who it was. And her bracelet arm was still attached to her upper arm. Not too powerful but every bit helped. The wall always needed maintenance. Quinn scooped the body up and made her way back through the pile towards the back of the wall. The side facing the city always got updated last, but even if it faced away from the battlefield, they couldn’t afford to relax. To assume that the puppets wouldn’t surround them. 

“You must have been with the night crew,” Quinn told the body amicably. “I would recognize you otherwise” 

She shifted the body a little to look at the torn open skull. Nothing was left of the girl's face. 

“Well maybe not. The puppets got you good huh soldier? What did you not see the claws coming? You know all us shit heads set a bad example turning and talking to one another while fighting. We’re getting cocky in our old age.” 

Quinn glanced down again. 

“Guess you wouldn’t know.” 

Quinn laid the body down next to a bad spot on the wall. She carefully unlinked a body more bones than meat, saving the bracelet for last. Each body had to be unwoven and replaced one at a time, or the whole wall would collapse and the magic with it. Quinn breathed her will into existence. Black tethers, barely visible in the moonlight, held the protective magic closed as she slid the braceleted arm out of the wall. A portion of her will carefully broke the runes that had been carved into the man's arm. She let the body fall limp on the ground. The sun bleached bones cracking against many others. Quinn knelt once more and got out her knife. 

“Well little soldier” She told the body “I know you're waiting to be burned to join your family in the soul cloud, but you're not done serving yet.” 

Quinn traced the brown soul veins with a finger, her hands sticky with that white waxy substance bodies started to get when they had been dead too long. The soul veins still glowed. 

“This here means that you’ve still got power in you. And we need all the help we can get.” 

Quinn’s hands didn’t shake as she carved the protective runes into the girl’s arm, following the path of the soul veins. She pushed her will against the power there, urging it to connect to runes that surrounded them. That done, she picked the girl up and carefully wove her into the wall. The brown of the girl’s remaining soul instantly linking up, the color bouncing between the other bracelets it was connected to. A parody of the soul cloud drifting above, souls talking and connecting to one another. Quinn released her magic. The wall held. Quinn gave the girl a friendly pat. 

“Knew you still had some fight in you” Quinn told her. 

The lieutenant wiped her hands uselessly on her pants and headed back to the pile. She was mostly done with this section, having carried and carved six other bodies when she came across one she knew. As Quinn knelt next to the small body feeling for his bracelet, something seemed to be off. The bracelet was there, but Quinn could not feel any power coming off it. It was low too, past the body's elbow. It should have had enough power to support the protection runes for a good couple months. Instead there was nothing. She turned the boy over and let out a horrified gasp. 

Young Randall’s face stared up at her. His boyish grin was long washed away by hard battles and death. His chest was punched open. A fist size hole right where his soul organ should have been. The hole spanned nearly his whole chest. It looked so much larger on his small frame. It wasn’t the first death like this Quinn had seen. The puppets craved what they did not have. But she could still see his vibrant green magic dancing up and down his arm, matching the glint in his eyes. He had been too young for his magic to have settled when Quinn saw him last. The boy had marched right up to her and bragged that one day he was going to have hair down to his toes and that he’d beat Quinn out one day, just you wait and see. Quinn had laughed in his face and openly dared him to try his luck now. The boy had actually done it.   

The fight had been laughably ridiculous. It had been over in seconds. Randals arm had shook trying to hold up a sword as big as him. Quinn had recognized it as his brothers’. A boy of 16 in Quinn’s division who had died a month before Randal showed up. Quinn had mercifully not broken any of his bones. She had almost been gentle, knocking the cocky kid down. Now she wonders if she should have. If being confined to the med tent would have saved him the fate he suffered now. She had promised to train him up later. She had never gotten around it. 

A bigger part of Quinn knew it was a foolish thought. There was no saving any of them. Not with the training master sending twelve and thirteen years old in after only a month of finalized training. Not when they barely had the fuel to burn for meals. Not When cracked swords were pasted from sibling to sibling. Because they had run out of metal to make them. Not when they had resorted to using bodies for walls because they had run out of the specialized metal. In the end they would all be dead. Sooner rather than later. It’s a miracle they had lasted this long. 

“What the fuck were you even doing out of the battle field” Quinn asked the boy “I assigned you as a camp aide for fuck sakes. I bet you snuck out for the glory of it huh you little punk. If you thought a month of training and some long s.v  was enough to challenge me than I wouldn’t put it past you to try anything” 

Quinn closed her eyes for a moment and then scooped up the small soldier to move him to the discard pile. Feeling the rank sewed into his uniform, she knew this was a wishful thought too. He would have been promoted to squad lead when everyone else had died. 

“Now look at you, can't even serve with the others. And we don't have the fuel to burn you. Get used to being in limbo, kid. You’re gonna be stuck there for a long ass time. I bet you’d like that huh? Maybe you'll come back as a ghost.” 

Quinn laid Randal gently down in a smaller pile of bodies. There weren’t many they couldn’t use. She laid her hand gently over his hair. 

“I really thought you’d make it. I’ll make it right little one. Did you know that I'm the only person touched by two gods? Wrath carved his blessing into me and that bastard (god's name) ripped my arm right off. Makes me good god bait I guess. You’d get a kick out of that. If you had lived, I would have made you do push ups for days. Fatten you up a bit so your arms didn’t shake.” 

Quinn leaned back onto her heels and for the first time in a long time looked up at the soul cloud. She watched the purples, blues and greens drift for a while in silence. The vibrant colors flared and danced around each other. Before they had been pushed back here, they burned their dead. So that their souls might join the cloud, resting and watching, waiting to be reincarnated. 

“I'll end it, Randal. Your sister won’t suffer the same fate.” Quinn promised. 

The theologian's plan was laughably stupid. Basing the entire fate of the war and of the lives of the children in the city on a fairytale from a thousand years ago. The people sacrificed their chosen one to appease a raging god and then everybody lived happily ever after. All it would take was the right sacrifice. The theologians had discovered that love and wrath were bitter enemies. The story said they used to be soulmates. Only her and Regina, had been marked by both gods before. It was either her or Regina. Quinn didn’t want to condemn Regina to that fate. Selfishly, Quinn didn’t think she could live in a world without her soulmate.  

Determination settled like a physical weight over her shoulders. She knew what she had to do. A sacrifice would be needed. There would be no quafiling over it now. Regina’s fury be damned. Her soulmate would just have to understand. She looked back down at Randall and ran a caring hand through his hair. Perhaps she would. Afterall, Regina had siblings eagerly waiting for their turn to be slaughtered on the battlefield. 

After some time, Quinn stood up and made her way back to her tent. She shamelessly curled around Regina’s taller frame and stuck her cold hands under her shirt. Regina woke with a yelp and twisted onto her other side so that she could glare at Quinn in the dark. 

#the soulmates curse #a moment of peace #quinn fitzwilliam #chapter excerpt #writing #novel writing #fantasty wip #world building #magic horror #body horror just to be safe #ocs #my writing #angst

[clara-lux-lucet]

#soulmagic