Don't Forget, Karma

[Strawberry]

Bargain

I’m losing myself. Little by little by little, piece by piece by jagged little piece. I seem to be spending longer and longer in my head these days and it isn’t even always of my own volition. It started off with the Convocation, a deal I made willingly. Power for a vessel. Or more than power, they offered me freedom. By virtue of nothing more than the blood in my veins, I was born a marked girl, a child meant for more. Cliche as it sounds. Really, it was less a chosen one cliche and more a… child promised to a debt. My mother had the tendency to play fast and loose with her own soul and when her debts proved too great and I was a fantastic insurance policy against it all. I was her ticket out, all it would cost was my future. But the paragons offered me a buy out of sorts, my debt, my soul, my freedom. All I had to do was help them save their people.

It sounds altruistic as fuck, doesn’t it? Theirs was a brilliant people doomed by their own creations. When you give a being limitless potential, as you approach the so called limit of this potential, you find it does not exist and you simply find absolution rather than unconditional enlightenment. I thought I could help. Maybe I got in too deep.

And now I’m losing myself to their influence. It was small at first, bits and pieces of time lost to her presence. I thought I was aware of it when it happened but I’m finding myself with less and less of a grasp of what I’ve done and when.

The dreams come more often. I spend most nights watching some other version of myself live her life in this dream world. I avoid it if I can, the distractions are endless and seem to be the only way to truly hold off the inevitable. Alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, anything to keep my mind just off its normal frequency to keep her from resonating properly within me. Which sounds far more lewd than it is. But once she gets her claws into my brain, I have trouble shaking it, and the longer she spends at the helm, the more insistent she is on doing it more and more and more and more.

As of yet, it’s been mundane time that I’ve lost. Unimportant moments, minutes, or hours. Nothing important yet… but what if that changes.

“It will.” A voice answered a question I didn’t ask out loud and I realized I was once more in the dark of my head, alone but not. Rather than my counterpart, I instead saw my normal self, tangled up in the sheets of an increasingly familiar bed. The man that had been sleeping at my side was against slipping free of the warm quiet for work he didn’t talk a lot about. It was an understanding we had and I liked that he didn’t push. He made it easy to just… be.

I appreciated that about him… even if she was threatening to fuck it all up.

“He’s just going to get hurt in the end. Don’t you see the way he looks at you?” I wish she wouldn’t make me watch it. I didn’t want to see the glance back or the look on his face when he finally left. I looked away but try as I might to avoid it, the image in my mind’s eye was unavoidable.

“You really should cut him loose. Or… maybe I should.” She said and I felt my blood run cold.

“Don’t.” I warned. She may not have had a corporeal body but I could feel the way she was smirking within me.

“Why shouldn’t I?” She countered. I could tell she was fishing, but for what. Better to just ask.

“Cut the shit. What’s your game, Nem?” I was afraid of how she might answer but after a long, long silence in which I was left to watch myself sleep, she responded.

“More time. More control.” She said.

I fucking knew it. The threat she dangled over my head like a guillotine was sharp enough that it made my throat hurt just thinking about it.

“Fine. But not with him.” I said at last, conceding more and more of my autonomy to this… parasite.

“Mmm, deal. He’s not my type anyways.” She said, smug.

“Swear it. Never with him.” I demanded. Laughter filled my ears and for a moment it nearly overwhelmed my psyche with the way it echoed around my head. I watched my sleeping form shift uncomfortably, fitful in her sleep. I shut her up with three words. “Swear on Truth.”

Would she balk or would she accept? If I was going to hand myself over to serve as her conduit at her whimsy, then I deserved some modicum of respect for… whatever it was that was between the assassin and I.

“I swear on Truth.” She said at last, her voice quiet, solemn, lacking in any sort of the mirth that had reverberated through my soul moments ago.

“Then it’s done. Just… hold to your word and I’ll hold to mine.”

She didn’t answer. I was alone once more.

Just what the hell had I agreed to?

[Strawberry]

Mirror, Mirror

We sat together, she and I, beneath a burning red, red sky. As the world fell to ashes like snow upon our crowns, we held hands and communed with quiet words and soft laughter. She was me and I was she and between us we were perfectly we. The Watcher shut me away in the dark again, leaving me to the drift of the black expanse in my head. This was happening more and more and more and more and the less than subtle burn of black rum dripping through me like acid rain only served to punctuate my imprisonment.

But at least I wasn’t alone.

Well, at least as ‘not alone’ as one can be with… some form of themselves. She gave me a glimpse into her life and I gave her insight into mine. More often than not it was me listening to her but today… today she seemed introspective and curious. A red moon ringed in a black corona lingered in the sky overhead, foreboding but not immediately threatening. She had told me the story of it before, of this place and of this time. We came here often, trapped in a frozen moment just heartbeats before calamity reached its crescendo. Ever been at the eye of a category five hurricane just before it makes landfall?

Me either, but I like to imagine it would be a bit like this place. This moment. The quiet anxiety, the silent acceptance of what was to come. Like holding your breath for a few seconds too long until your lungs feel like they might make a jailbreak from the bone cage of your chest.

“So why did you say yes to them?” She asked me softly, her hands in mind. Mine were softer, more delicate. Hers were strong, callused in the way that swordfighters and brawlers tend to get. She carried an axe reminiscent of the one I had been given by my mother but the aetherial energy of hers exuded a purity of intent unlike the more corrupt forces of the hellfire forged blade I had come to bear. Unlike me though, her hands did not bear the etched runes that I wore from the heels of my hands to just beneath my fingers.

“The Paragons?” I asked, looking up to meet her gaze. We were a mirror if a mirror whispered what if. Older, more scarred and worldworn, she was pretty in the way that broken things were, patched together with spite and unrelenting fortitude. I could respect that, you know? They were my favorite sort of pretty things, the imperfect and unconventional, the worn and the tattered. She nodded, watching me with a look I could only describe as sad.

“They needed help… I needed freedom. It was supposed to be a mutually beneficial thing. There was an irony in all of it that I couldn’t help but jump at. Prior to my involvement with the Paragons, I stood as a balance between realms, the high and the low, the dark and the light, heaven and hell. Of the latter, both tugged at me, pulling at celestial and infernal threads alike until I was certain they would unravel me before my very own eyes. The Emissary came to me when I was on the cusp of breaking. He could offer my overlords an offer they couldn’t decline and in turn he could offer me my freedom.”

“But what was the cost?” She asked, her fingers curling into mine until I could feel the scrape of rounded nails against the insides of my palms, tracing lines that were mere remnants of my station before.

“I don’t think I know fully yet.” I answered. Her mouth tightened by degrees and it was then that I knew I had confirmed her fears. I was in over my head, drowning in the ink and unable to cough it out.

“I’m afraid you’re right…” She said, turning my hands over in hers to run her index finger around the outer circle of the sigil on my right hand. Normally a pale white, the marks were etched not into my flesh but rather my soul. In this light they glowed a faint orange like dying embers. Once, some time ago now, she had asked what they meant but there were no words in the common tongue to explain. They seemed a point of fascination for her now, a symbol of the divergence in our paths.

“I’ll get it under control…” I told her. It was a promise to myself as much as it was to her but the way we looked at each other said neither of us believed it. I was fast losing myself and these little stints where I was locked away in my own head were getting longer and more frequent. The only control I had was when I was too fucked up for her to get a foothold in my psyche or when I was around a certain assassin and that was only by virtue of some precarious agreement I had struck with the Watcher.

“This… this is what happens when they win.” She said, releasing my hand to turn instead toward the impending destruction.

“I… I know it’s a possibility.” I began only for her to shake her head and interrupt me.

“This is more than a possibility, it’s an inevitability. You are their last piece and while they may restore what they lost, it will come at a cost… of all of this.” She bit at her bottom lip, swallowing a lump of emotion that had been welling in her unsteady tone.

“Only if we do it wrong.” I countered.

“No, this is if it’s done right. By their standard, wrong is a world in which humanity, mundane as it may be, is allowed to grow and flourish no matter their flaws. It is something I have spent most of my life fighting for, holding off the tide of darkness.” She stood while I sat, my empty hands left to clasp at one another now that she was out of reach. I looked down at them, the soft skin, the sigil seals cut into my skin, the delicate flesh that spoke not of a life of hardship but rather of an upbringing of decadent indulgence and privilege.

“I won’t let it go like that.” I said softly, so quietly in fact that I wasn’t sure that she would be able to hear me.

“I won’t either.” She said, her feet coming into view. I looked up to find her standing over me, her aetherial imbued axe in hand. Her expression was equal parts hard and sad, apologetic as she brought the axe down upon me.

“What are you…”

“I’m sorry, Karma…”

I awoke with a gasp, alone and tangled in sheets dampened with sweat. My head throbbed with a splitting headache so bad I physically touched my skull to ensure it was all in one piece. My hair was matted, sweaty, but unbloodied. My hands ached and in the dark, their sigils were dull red, not quite aglow but bright enough to be seen in the slice of moonlight that cleaved through the narrow gap in the curtains. White moonlight, not red, thank the gods. I untangled from my bed and stumbled into the bathroom to douse myself with cold water. Hesitant though I was, I peeked into the mirror to find only myself looking back at me. No older me, no Watcher, just a twenty-year old, soft handed half cynic, half romantic torn between what she thought was the right path and all the others presented before her. Could this tired eyed girl looking back at me pick the right one?

I couldn’t help but wonder if all paths were strewn with landmines. I was liable to lose a piece of myself no matter where I stepped.

So maybe it was time to toss caution aside and sprint into my chosen course, consequences be damned.

Less thinking that way. Future Karma could deal with the aftermath.

[Strawberry]

Remember Us

A desert oasis, a far cry from the keening of the city. Sand and sun and the lap of the sea against the shore, all of it made for a sweet sanctum of an escape from everything that had been weighing upon me. His was a welcome presence in my respite, a calm in the storm, or perhaps a lighthouse that called me back to safe port until I could get my head on straight. Either way, the paragons didn’t fuck with me when he was around. We had an agreement after all.

It meant that maybe, just maybe, I could relax. And relax I did.

So when he asked something along the lines of “Why ShadoWeaver?”, I didn’t even flinch. I was quiet, lips set to the rim of a glass with some sort of fruity rum drink with a pretty purple umbrella rolling around the lip. A tip of the glass filled my chest with a harsh but soothing burn. When I swallowed, I had his answer.

“It seems both obvious and not all at the same time, doesn’t it?” I mused aloud, fixing the handsome assassin with a pretty smile. He always seemed to enjoy that so I tried to give him as many as I could spare in hopes of perhaps paying him back for the kindness and caring he had shown me. Here was a man with no obligation to me whatsoever who had fallen in at my side as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t poke or pry or ask questions he knew I couldn’t answer. I could afford him this one.

“I was very specifically told to stay as hands off as possible as I could when I came here.” I began, not quite starting at the beginning but giving as much context as was needed. Seldom did I open up so blatantly about the past and how I came to be here, but it was what it was. “You’re not supposed to fuck with time after all… but then things started happening here that never happened where I came from and so… I dunno, that rule sort went out the window. Can’t mess up what’s already messed up, you know?”

A server dropped by then with a fresh round of drinks. More rum, more tropical fruit, another purple umbrella.

“Then the opals shattered… people went missing. Children… and nobody knew how to get to them. But I did… so I left to do what I could. I spent… mmm… five months in the realm of planar Shadow. Five months there at least. It was something like two or three here while I was there. Where elemental shadow is, well, not born… but certainly originates. For me, it manifested in the form of a post apocalyptic city chock full of all kinds of unpleasant beasties.” I picked out the umbrella from the drink, rubbing it between my fingers to spin it. Anything really to keep my hands busy.

“I could only do so much without my interference causing more harm than good but after months of searching, I found them. Scared, but safe. I did my best to clear the way before I convinced their parents to trust me long enough to venture into the Shadow realm too for the sake of retrieving their kids. They were successful, though they definitely saw some shit…” No matter my best efforts, there was little I could do to stymie the flow of fresh horrors. But I had tried.

“All of it turned out well in the end but it still calls to me in the quiet moments, the shadows, the entire realm, maybe even the rock itself a little bit.” I gave him a sheepish little smile soon to be drowned in a long drink. It sounded silly when I spoke it aloud. A small shrug pinched the line of my shoulders. “I’m hoping if I can get my hands on it, that maybe it will stop being so loud…”

So why ShadoWeaver indeed. Time would tell if I ever got my shot at silence.

[Strawberry]

When Pigs Fly

A storm of challengers, a tower siege, if you will. Though I had waffled and waned on whether to challenge for a tower on the Isle, I had really only considered one. And then it went under challenge just after Water. Followed shortly thereafter by Earth, leaving just Air by its lonesome. So I said why not?

Air has never been my element, no, I have always had more of an affinity for fire or shadow or light, anything but air really. But what is fire without air? Smoldering ruin, a spark unable to catch, a canvas without a catalyst, an artist without a muse. I had been struggling to find that spark, that hint of a foothold in otherwise cutthroat sports, so maybe if I shifted tactics this would be it. I had no grudge or issue with Ellie, the holder at the time, it was simply a moment of opportunity.

I spent the days leading up to the challenge with a growing pit in my stomach, wondering if I had made the right choice. Maybe the timing was off, maybe the Isle didn’t want me. Maybe I wasn’t good enough.

It went better than I thought. I was good enough. Of course, it did not start particularly well. My magic is a volatile thing, a bubbling essence in my blood composed of warring bits and pieces all fighting for some sort of dominance. A hand-made mutt, I somehow have ended up with a balance of the abyss and the celestial heavens, peppered with hints of the fae touch that made me and the hardlight wielding superhuman that gave me half my genetics and my last name. I am stardust with a pretty face and a dangerous vessel. It is a weird sort of combination but I suppose that is pretty par for the course any time you start diluting Rhydinian bloodlines with one another. I don’t feel human. Probably because I am not. It makes for a good excuse when I start to forget my own humanity.

Someone once promised me that they wouldn’t let me forget. And here I am. Right on the edge.

I walked on clouds that night, flying high above those watching. The war for the tower pushed me to the brink of collapse and I am grateful most for the kindness of my opponent for not letting me fall at the end. It would have been so easily to just… let go. Of control, of balance, of all of it. So easy. But drained of all reserves and fighting back against the presence that seeks constant control within me, my feet touched down on solid ground.

When all was said and done, Air was mine.

Or at least it will be tomorrow. I thought long and hard about what the Tower of Fire would be like but never the others. I heard stories when I was young though. I’m told that the view can’t be beat. And who knows, maybe I will be able to finally breathe again even with this weight on my chest.

Maybe.

Here’s to you, Uncle John.

[Strawberry]

Hesitate

I heard once that faeries learn to dance before they learn to walk. That they learn to sing before they learn to talk. I have also heard that they will twist and manipulate the simplest truth to befit their narrative. They will steal hearts and souls and freedom and children and sanity without so much as a second thought. Behind veneers of perfect jawlines and ethereal beauty are sharp claws and sharper teeth.

Mama always said “Don’t trust the Fair Folk.”

Sometimes she was wise. Hypocritical, but wise. In a land like this, the fae come in any number of shapes and sizes and alignments. Some good, some bad, some perfectly neutral. Most are harmless, but you still shouldn’t trust them. There is a touch of fae in me and I definitely don’t trust myself. Part of me wants to tell Caleb to do the same but I have a feeling he would not listen. It might not run in my blood but it rests in my very being, a hint of a vengeful creator and with it all the trickery that comes with that sort of origin.

I was going somewhere with this, I swear. But it keeps slipping away. Maybe by design, maybe by time.

But I learned my lesson the hard way when I was just a girl. Fifteen maybe sixteen, I say this like it was not just a few scant years ago. Granted, at twenty it feels like I have lived a thousand lives and been ten thousand versions of myself. So for all intents and purposes, it may as well have been a century ago. She was beautiful in the way that car crashes are impossible to look away from. We were in the same year and half our classes overlapped so I was forced to study and to study her day in and day out while I tried to focus on class.

Her profile is burned into my memory, delicate and perfectly sculpted by a master artisan. The cupid’s bow of her lips forever drawn with the arrow that would shatter my heart into splinters and sharp slivers. My first taste of heart break and never would I trade it for another. She was beautiful and cruel and I loved every moment of her cruelty. If nothing it was good for my pain tolerance today.

Do I chase the pain to see if I can recapture the way her fingernails felt on my skin or the sting of her palm on my cheek the first time she slapped me? I do not even remember why she slapped me but I clearly remember the echo of the blow in the empty hallway, her scathing words and the burning warmth that filled my cheek. I remember her rage and her mouth on mine, her hand grasping my chin and cheeks so hard it hurt.

Mama always said don’t trust the Fair Folk but I gave her my heart just the same. Even on paper I don’t dare utter her Name, one of the few real things she ever gave me.

Years later I do not quite recall what kind of fae she was other than “beautiful” and “perfect” and “mean”. But I suppose that could be said for any teenaged girl who knows all eyes are on her when she walks in a room, and not just because she was sporting emerald green hair. No, she could command a stadium with merely a look, and gods were those looks lethal. Heaven and Hell all under her jade gaze, tides turned only by the shifting of her moods for she was the moon and the sun all in one at least in my skies.

She tossed me aside like refuse when she was through with me with barely an explanation and even less kindness. I cried for weeks and then when I could not cry anymore, I drank myself into such a stupor that the Headmistress had to call my parents when I spent my first class of the day throwing up into the trash can. They did not even ground me, not when I told them why I reeked of high proof vodka. One sighed, the other hugged me. We got ice cream and tacos in lieu of a lecture.

They really should do a better job of locking the bar down near the dueling venue.

When I went back to school after my temporary suspension, she was with someone new as I knew she would be. A pretty boy, a lovely, beautiful boy with lashes like raven’s wings and a stare like arctic ice. He was tall and strong, a sunspun Adonis given human form. She looked at him like he was her sun and moon and he looked at other girls like they were brighter than she. Still she clung to him like I had to her and so the cycle was perpetuated once more.

Maybe he would eventually cast her aside like trash. Maybe she would eventually feel the sting of young love broken too. I doubted it though, threw myself into my studies, kept to myself save for the company of my sister and my pseudo-cousin, who was ironically fae of a sort himself. Like I said, you can’t walk ten feet in Rhy’Din without crossing threads with the good people in their various forms.

We caused our own brand of trouble, raised our own sort of Hell, you know. I did it all with the ache in my chest that seemed to get better and better every day. Of course it still pained me to even look at her but I learned what laser focus was and how to selectively ignore an entire human being’s existence, so there was that. So when my mother said to never trust the fae, I think she was just a little wrong. You can trust them to teach you a lesson that you never forget. Maybe you can trust them to hurt you too, but that is wholly dependent on you allowing them to do so.

So I learned my lesson. My first love, my first heart ache, my first lesson in why you should hesitate before you give your heart away. They are fragile things, hearts. And some here seem to hand them out like candy and then look shocked when they’re chewed up and spat out like Juicy Fruit gum six seconds after popping it into your mouth. But not me, no.

Might it be detrimental down the line? Sure. Maybe it already is. I spent two years with the same man and never once said “I love you” despite loving him with every ounce of my being. I forsook my tendencies and trends and threw myself into loving him first and foremost. More than I ever loved myself despite my vanity. But I never said it and when he finally walked away (for which I still do not blame him), I felt that old familiar heart ache once more. Drank myself into a stupor once more like I was sixteen and heartbroken all over again. Only this time there was no Headmistress to suspend me or call my parents. The perils of adulthood I suppose, right?

I would like to think that the lessons I have learned would serve me with better coping mechanisms than this but sometimes you just have to put away a 750 of cheap bourbon and puke your broken heart out in a prayer to the porcelain gods. Or maybe it is just my heart’s way of reminding me that even my pain tolerance has a limit. All the physical pain in the world can’t quite stack up to that pang of longing and self-loathing and grief that comes in the wake of losing someone you could have held on to.

But everything I have ever let go of has claw marks whether it be friendships or romances and everything in between.

So to tie it all back together, it was the fae who taught me how to love and it was the fae who taught me how to carry on when that love falters. A lovely, cruel, perfect, ugly, mean girl showed me what it means to pick up the pieces and taught me that at the end of the day, you only have yourself. Never fill your lungs with the air of another’s presence in your life because when (not if) it disappears, you are left gasping and floundering, a fish out of water with nothing but unkind hands to hold you in your panic.

You should always be able to breathe on your own.

You should always protect yourself first and foremost.

Maybe that is why I am so afraid now. I find myself giving away bits and pieces of myself to a man who has no obligation to me and yet has sworn on whatever resembles a rogue’s honor that he will be my shield. Fast he is becoming the first I tell when I have something exciting on my mind and the last I think of before I fall asleep. He has been my saving grace in these moments where Nem is at the helm and I am left to the dark. She has upheld her bargain so far and I think the threat of what may happen if she does not is enough to keep it that way.

The dark gives me too much time to think and today I think of the fae and the future and how the two are inexplicably intertwined in perpetuity. I wonder if the little hint of fae in me means that some day I will break that shield from the inside. Or maybe it isn’t the fae influence so much as it is merely an echo of the pain that came before.

Hurt people hurt people after all, right?

I don’t want to hurt him though. But I cannot help but fear that the day will come and I will shatter him as I have been broken. I am a case study in inherited trauma and while I have the opportunity to break this cycle, I find the threads of Fate pulling at the fabric of myself until I am forced to comply or unravel. Perhaps falling apart would be better to bear. I can only hope that when the moment comes that I can choose to be selfless.

But like Mama always said… never trust the Fair Folk.

[Strawberry]

Hesitate Pt. 2

I’ve known for awhile. I knew when he withheld questions that were burning him from the inside. I knew when I felt my heart tumble and flip at the thought of him. I knew when his was the face I awoke to after cleansing the Tower of Air. I knew when he handed me the keys to a home with no expectation that it would be his too. I knew then and I know now. Somewhere in the stacks of the west library in this grand home (not house), I’m buried in books and my own thoughts about the night prior.

Even Nem knew.

That was a thought. An interesting one at that.

I'd still probably love you regardless.

The beginning of the end or maybe the beginning of a beginning. Something, something chapters closing and opening. Who knew.

I flipped through another tome, letting the pages flutter over the plane of my thumb as I contemplated whether or not to add it to the growing stack at my bedside… and on the coffee table… and in the bathroom… and in the kitchen… and in the teahouse. Maybe I had a problem. But what would anyone expect when giving a book collector two whole massive libraries.

Maybe that’s when I knew.

My favorite books are sitting in a display case in the other library, under plexiglass for the first editions and in a plush setting for the other less rare volumes. It’s always been an odd pleasure for me. I tend to find them in the strangest places, some of them have been ordered in from off world and some of them would be worth a massive amount of dosh if sold to a proper collector. But people tend to cut me good deals on things. Sometimes they just give me things.

Like this house. I never asked for it. In fact, I was perfectly content with the suite in New Haven. Regular housekeeping, a soft bed, nice doormen. But Caleb knew I was still trying to contend with the loss of the Tower of Air and that I, like him, didn’t really have a proper home. He saw it and he did something about it.

Is that what having a partner was like?

Usually, yes. Odd, isn’t it?

“I wasn’t asking you, Nem.” I grumbled, closing the book and setting it to the side.

But you knew I would answer anyways. So you finally did it, eh?

“Did what.” Intentionally obtuse, I grabbed another dusty book from a higher shelf to inspect its spine.

Told him.

“It’s not a big deal.” It wasn’t the one I was looking for, so I gently replaced it and stole another one instead.

Did you tell him also that you’re going to ruin him in the end?

I paused, unable to focus on the book in my grasp. My knuckles were going white from how hard I held it.

“That’s a risk we take any time we love someone.” I said finally, steadying my tone and my breathing. I wouldn’t allow her to shake me.

I suppose it is. So you’re alright with it then.

A statement, not a question. I rolled my eyes and haphazardly tossed the book back on the shelf before gathering the three I had pulled earlier to tuck them into the crook of my arm. With that, I climbed out of the stacks, padding barefoot down the circular staircase to the lower level.

“I shouldn’t even dignify that with a response, but I’m going to go ahead and point out that you should be happy for me because if I’m happy, I’m more likely to complacently do what your people ask of me without being a petulant child about it. Have you ever cared about someone other than yourself? If not, you should try it.”

I shut the library door behind me and with it, Nem’s voice disappeared from my head. Her presence was still there, deep in the recesses of my consciousness, but at the least she was quiet.

And… sad.

I tried to shake it off but the symbiosis between her psyche and mine was, well, painfully entangled.

“Look, I’m sorry.”

Nothing.

“I didn’t mean it.”

Still nothing.

With a sigh I turned the corner and down the hallway toward the kitchen. Ten minutes and half a cocktail later, a whisper finally tickled the edge of my periphery.

I miss him.

I was going to need a significantly stiffer drink.

[Strawberry]

Lost

Normalcy is never meant to last. Never am I allowed even a moment’s peace before it’s on to the next crisis. And this… I… I can still feel Bandit’s fur under my hands but it’s becoming more and more distant. Like my hands are getting further away… or maybe like they aren’t mine anymore. I’m no stranger to dissociation but this… I know what’s coming.

I feel it before it happens, like the rise of your stomach in your gut when you go too fast over a high hill and begin to drop over the other side.

And then it gets dark. Not like the flipping of a switch but more like the fading of a day, the slow twist of a dimmer knob just before a movie’s previews pop on.

For some reason… I can’t fight it.

Soon it is only me and the dark. She won’t even let me see what is going on externally.

“Be nice to Bandit please. He’s a good boy.”

A simple request, met with silence.

And then… an overwhelming sense of dread. Foreboding. Something was wrong.

“Nem?”

Nothing.

When I called out again, I couldn’t even hear my own voice.

Nem?!

No. No, no, no.

Please… let me out.

Nemesis, this isn’t funny.

Please.

Nem, don’t do this.

“I just did.”

[Strawberry]

Vault

“So no bourbon tonight.”

Caleb. No.

"Quick on the draw."

Nem… Nem, you promised. Not with him, never with him.

“What do you want?”

He knew. Of course he knew. He knew her better than she knew herself, it was inevitable that he would pick up on the shift in her. It wasn’t just the hair and the eyes, it was in the way she carried herself, almost awkwardly like she was wearing a skin that wasn’t her own.

Because she was. Or at least Nem was.

"Nothing. I'm fulfilling an obligation and then getting some work done."

Please, help me, Caleb.

“Keep her safe.”

No, no, don’t go.

“Always.”

For as much as I thought I could win out in a battle of wills, I was utterly powerless to stop her when she turned away from him. It was cruelty that she would let me witness the exchange. Perhaps it was a test in the wake of the way she had marked by body, etching the entirety of my back, arms, and legs with gaol-sigils.

I was a prisoner within my own body, unable to do anything except watch through the windows of my own eyes to see what havoc she wrought upon my life. I could feel the coiled tension in my own muscles as she tried to restrain herself from inflicting grievous damage upon my opponents during the tournament. It was a practiced dance that I knew well, I could do the back and forth for sport without severing tendon or artery or invoking long term damage after the wards finished their job.

Nem was not made for subtlety. Though she was one of the more peaceful of the paragons, at the end of the day, those clawed gloves were still fit for her hands, not mine, and in turn, they were a second skin for her, meant for lethality. She looked offended when the Egyptian stabbed her square in the gut.

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood.

The offense continued with a loss to a staff wielder and I could practically feel the way she seethed at the thought. The audacity, you know? That along with a steady stream of thoughts that this was inane and pointless and stupid. When it was over, she was all too keen on leaving but I put everything I had into dragging her feet. My feet. Holding her back there at the bar as if I could get her to stay long enough to get some sort of a sign to Caleb.

Nem. What about our deal?

No response. I hadn’t received a single one since she had entrapped me within myself however long ago.

May as well pull the trump card then. Between her split focus on leaving and healing the wounds of our fights, I assailed her mentally with every recollection of Truth and the Emissary that I could until her footsteps faltered. She lingered at the bar, her gaze unfocused but vaguely upon the ring in which Caleb fought. I took the opportunity and funneled the entirety of my will and effort into a single hand and three words scrawled on a bar napkin tucked beneath a refilled glass of vodka.

Three words, I wanted to say so much more.

After all it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Three words, simultaneously too much and not enough.

Three words on a napkin left to catch condensation from a glass sweating like a hooker in church.

It was time to go, a jacket snagged from a stool was slung over a shoulder and quick steps made tracks for the stairs. She was gone when the final call of Caleb’s lost match rang out over the loudspeakers.

Three words, all I had left.

I’m so sorry.



(Opening dialogue from live play in the Arena on 3/26/21. Thank you Caleb!)

[Strawberry]

Splinter

Again I found myself sitting beneath a blood red sky and a dying sun. The last time I found myself here, my doppelganger put her axe through my head like a watermelon at a Gallagher show.

“What do you want?” I asked the woman standing at the edge of a high cliff overlooking a burning, crumbling city.

“I should stop you.” She said, her back to me. The axe on her back was stained red. A closer examination told me that this was not my mother’s axe, despite my earlier thoughts on the matter. I was unarmed, as I always was whenever I saw this woman, this scarred, worn, older version of myself. Her life and mine were so drastically different though that I found some small comfort in that I would not become her. Not in this life.

“Should you?” I asked.

“I should.” There was a but there, I could feel it. Rather than prompting for it, I waited, silent. She gave it up a few moments later, her shoulders sinking beneath the weight of heavy plate mail. “But it isn’t your fault. As much as removing you from the equation would stop all of this… it isn’t your fault. You shouldn’t suffer for my choices.”

Now I was confused.

“Your choices? What do you mean?”

“Bargains made, deals struck, your life, your future for the future of another. I… I had no idea that it would come to this. That they would not only go to you but that they would also get this far. I thought you would be…” She trailed off, a hand rising to rub at her face.

“Would be…?” This time I prompted, hoping she would continue.

“Weaker.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be angry. Maybe a little bit of both.

“Looks like I surprised us both.” I said with a humorless laugh. A distant explosion on the horizon pulled our attention but only for a moment. It wasn’t an imminent threat, we were… well, as fine as we could be for now.

“Made things like us… our paths are infinitely more variable than those brought into the world more conventionally.” She said, finally turning to face me. She had gained another gruesome scar since the last time I saw her, the angry pink line marring an otherwise pretty face from forehead, down over her right eye and stopping at the corner of her mouth. It made her not just pretty but otherworldly and vaguely threatening. “Most people… their possibilities split based on their birth, variations of the same life. We… us… things like us… we are but shards of a greater self and in turn, our stardust is scattered to the ends of the universe to manifest in whatever way it might be cultivated. You… you were molded into an artist, a poet, a lover. Me… I was made in the image of the Fury, I am a life of endless war, pain, loss. I seek a better tomorrow for the people of my world no matter the cost. But what we share… is a need to be loved.”

I wrapped my right hand around my left upper arm.

“You find love across a number of avenues. You love your friends, your family, both blood and chosen, your lovers. Or should I say just lover now?” Her smile was half wry, half wistful. I nodded a little, she continued. “Me, I lost any family I had when I was a kid. You’ve seen glimpses of that. I spent most of my life alone. Took me years to find him… and when I did, I didn’t realize what I had until it slipped through my fingers.”

“Him?”

“Mhm. The first man to see me for me. He accepted my past and pushed for my future to be better than I ever thought it could be. He loved me when I still tasted of blood and war. He gave me a beautiful daughter and the peace that I never thought would be mine.”

But she was referring to him in the past tense. I frowned.

“And then?” I asked softly.

“And then… like everything else in my life, he died. We tried our best to stop this calamity,” she gestured with a hand to the landscape behind her. The broken land, the dying skies, a veritable hellscape. “It wasn’t the first we’ve lived through, you see. But it will be the last. These are my last days and soon enough I will join my family in whatever comes next. Or at least I hope so.”

“And until then?”

“Until then I am here to ensure that you fight. That we fight. For life, for love, for tomorrow… whatever it is that we need to fight for. It is half my fault that you are in this shit pit, I should at least help you climb out of it.”

“Do you think we can?”

“Probably not. But does that mean we’re going to try any less? You still have shit to fight for. Now fight.”

This time around, Nem was left with the splitting headache.

[Strawberry]

Mother of Mine

Dying and then undying is like learning to walk again. Normally I’m given the time to learn by way of a short stay in Purgatory while my body reacclimates to having a soul in it. Or in cases where my body is too broken, while my soul reacclimates to having a new body. This time around, I didn’t get that. Caleb’s blade struck true, as I knew it would. It was enough to deal the last blow needed to free me from Nem’s grasp. I sundered flesh and soul both and after all I had been through with the Paragons, it simply proved too much. I don’t really remember hitting the bridge, though I felt it the next day. I vaguely remember the distorted lullaby that called me from the dark, pulling me like a fishing line from the cold of the abyss as it sought to reclaim me, to call me home.

Never have I had such a horrendous hangover. Whatever I have that resembles a soul came back to my broken body before my body had a chance to heal. I was still effectively dying. Healing spells and salves and crystals helped stem the bleeding and knit the damage. Normally my body did all of that on its own, the wards in the dueling rings never did a thing for me after all, but this time around… nothing. Had it not been for the nasty, lumpy shit that Ettyn dumped down my throat, I’m not sure I would have wanted to open my eyes. That’s not even a euphemism. I still should have slapped her harder.

What with the whole broken wrist and all. You know, I’ve had a lot of broken bones. Never until now have I had to have a doctor reset one. That was an experience.

But it healed. Decently in fact. Let it be known that splints suck and I never want to wear one ever again if I can help it.

The chirurgeon said it was rather miraculous that it healed as it did considering my body was effectively still actively dying as it did. Weird, that. Ever walked around in a body that was trying to give up the ghost? That’s a surreal feeling. But little by little, that too slowed, turning around until my natural proclivities returned. I’m not quite one hundred percent, even almost two months removed from it all as I am. But it’s better than it was.

So much is better.

There’s an odd sense of freefall that comes with this sort of freedom. I am alive and I owe my soul to no one. For the first time in my life, I have this… scary clarity where all of my life is ahead of me and I live not in the shadow of some sort of damoclean doom, just a thread’s snip away from losing my head.

It’s nice.

Even if other forces want to ruin it. It’s always something with me, right? This time around, it’s my own mother. Not the one here, she’s still perplexed as to why it’s happening. But my mother from the time I belong to… she’s… what’s a good word for it?

Batshit crazy?

That’s a nice way of putting it, I suppose. First and foremost, she is a woman who never wanted to be a mother. Claim as she might that she is the mother of demons and of succubi and other nasty things, she hasn’t a motherly bone in her body. The rare exception comes in the form of my younger sister, the only child she ever asked for. But me? No, she never wanted me.

And that’s okay.

I think.

But over the twenty-one years of my life, she has experienced over two centuries. What is a statistically significant event for me is a blink for her. Add in that most of the shit she does experience happens in the Nine Hells, well, it skews her view. She is paranoid and power hungry and immensely volatile. To her, I was a pawn, a piece she could use to get ahead. Me… what I am, who I am, I would make a valuable asset for any number of interested parties. And she knows this and has used it to her advantage a number of times.

The latest is some fucked up scheme to marry me off to the son of an ally under the guise of strengthening their ties and her power stake. A joining of the First and Second Circles of Hell, so to speak. Which, tactically speaking, isn’t a terrible move. So often, the higher Circles are seen as weak, and with good reason. They’re usually full of the more indulgent, lazy minded sorts. It isn’t constant conquest and war up there like it is in the lower circles. My mother came from the Seventh originally, she understands the importance of strength and of keeping up appearances. But she has impressed over and over and over again that I am not one of them, I am not meant for their games… and yet here we are.

Tillianius is not the worst of choices, don’t get me wrong. He is handsome and smart, from what little I know of him. But he’s a century older than me and we have met all of once in my lifetime and just in passing. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not much for commitment. I scare easily and it takes very little to send me running for the hills. When I dated Dillon, we spent nearly three years on and off and never ever put a definitive label on what we were. That’s how bad I am at committing. I couldn’t even call him “boyfriend” because it freaked me out too much.

Lessons learned. We all grow up eventually.

Part of that growing up is figuring out what I can and cannot commit to. What I can’t commit to? A man I don’t know for reasons I don’t believe in, in a place I refuse to live. Three strikes, he’s out. You know what I can commit to? To a crooked smile and quiet strength, to a man who doesn’t realize how handsome he is, who looks out for me when I don’t look out for myself, who loves me when I don’t feel deserving of anyone’s love, and who has gone to the ends of the earth and then some to make sure that I am safe.

That’s what I can commit to.

It’s what I have committed to, in a way. Likely what people will think anyways when they see this ring I wear or the one I’ve given him.

People talk. It's shutting them up that's the problem.

A problem indeed. I thought it might be a good thing if rumors spread and got back to the lower realms in distant times that I was committed to another. I thought maybe, just maybe, it would dissuade my mother from her course and show her that I am intent on forging my own path in life and that I will not be her political pawn any longer.

So perhaps that’s why this note scares me so.

Simple parchment.

Neat, familiar handwriting.

Sanguine blood.

A countdown enchanted to tick down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the final stroke of the year.

Four words, the ink still wet somehow.

I am unamused, kitten.

She can’t touch me here… she can’t hurt me. She can’t force me to do anything I don’t willingly choose to do. Free Will has to prevail… it has to. She can’t hurt me.

Right?

For the first time in a long time... I'm afraid. And I think... I think I should be.

[Strawberry]

Solace/Silence

Four in the morning but there is no sunrise in space. There are no sounds of pre-dawn, no birds or squirrels or other such nonsense. As with the last time I wrote these words, it is much too early to open my eyes and far too soon to be awake. But just like the last time, I can still hear him breathing beside me, slow and steady. Even if it wasn’t, his warmth at my side is a familiar reminder that I am not alone. I used to think it rather queer, the whole staying the night thing with a lover. Stranger still was sleeping with someone. Really truly sleeping with them. The sex was easy, too easy. It was always easy with him too. But then came the legitimate sleeping, resting, relaxing with him at my side without fear that he would disappear come morning. I have no need to sneak away before he wakes. It was odd once, to think it a possibility. Now… now it’s normal.

As there so often is, I’ve got a pleasant ache keeping me anchored to bed, a night well spent and all the more reason to not be awake yet. A string of days like this, all with him. Somehow it’s been almost a year of this. Sweet nothings and sultry nights, sweat stung welts on skin, bruises in unusual places, wholly different from the bruises garnered by nights in the rings and the pits. I still love the ache of fighting, it’s an ever present reminder of what is on the line. This soreness though, it’s a reminder that life is more than that. More than steel and fire and blood. Sometimes it’s okay if it’s callused fingers on my hips or tangled in my hair or the taste of vodka-by-proxy from a crush of lips on mine or better yet the softer touch of them to my forehead.

Anyone can tell you that I have never been the sort to stay with one person for any extended period of time. I come and I go, but mostly I go. Not built for it, you know? That’s what I claimed. A product of the hand dealt, a broken girl who became a jagged woman bearing the sword and shield of sarcasm and snark like the most adept warrior. I’ve never liked nor been inclined to stay in one place longer than I have to. There is that whole saying that home is where your heart is and I have always, always, always been dead set on making sure it was never anywhere but within the cage of my chest.

Then long ago, I doubled down on this, adding lock upon lock to this cage until the weight in my chest was an unbearable thing. Homeless, I claimed. Giving out my heart was a mistake, the worst thing I could possibly do even if it quieted the maelstrom within me. So I locked it all down, swore it off, never again. Hotels only, never homes.

And then… against every proclamation to the contrary, I found my home. For all that I swore he would never be entrusted with my heart, there was a bluebird in my heart that wanted to get out. Unlike Bukowski, for all that I told it to stay in there and that I wouldn’t let anyone see, for all that I poured whiskey and took cigarettes, for all that I thought myself clever enough to only let it out at night, it eventually escaped without me even realizing it.

Now this man, this simply complicated creature, has given me all the home I could ever hope for and more. There’s a weight but it’s not in my chest. Rather it’s in platinum and diamond and fire opal and it sits upon my left ring finger. It’s in the promise we’ve made to one another. When his breathing lightens and he rolls toward me to slip an arm around my waist, pressing his frame to mine, he gives me the anchor I never knew I needed and I am not inclined to move anytime soon. He sleeps once more and I am tempted to join him.

A storm I may be, a torrent of destruction with so much potential to bring so many to their knees and yet he never kneels beneath the weight of my force. Proficient as I am in the breaking of bones and hearts with tongue or blade, not once has he withered in the face of all the warnings. True to his word, he has never let me lose myself and the one time that I stood at the brink, he went to hell and back to call me back to him. Not literal Hell, of course, but I have this sneaking suspicion that may come in due time.

Little by little his presence in my life has unraveled the carefully constructed armor I’ve wrapped myself in. It’s been melting, little by little, day by day, and while to this day, I still don’t think you should ever let a lover change you, I do think it’s okay to change yourself to be a better You for those you love. Self-worth is an odd thing and it’s one I struggle with in mercurial ways. Some days, I deserve nothing less than the universe. Other days, I don’t understand why those I love are here for me after all I have done, all I have put them through.

Sometimes I don’t deserve the happiness they offer me.

To be worthy of such a thing, how terrifying a thought. Much of my life, I’ve been told the contrary. That monsters like me do not get happily ever afters. But what’s wild is... who isn’t a monster in this fucked up world? To this day I have a hard time believing that we can’t all be so undeserving of happiness. But who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re not. Some monsters just have to find solace in one another. Some of us find solace in those who claim to be monstrous things if only because that is what they have been made to believe, either by society or people that don’t understand or even by their own misguided brains. What is a monster anyways, after all. Are monsters giving and kind and protective and thoughtful and funny? Because those I love are just that. I can’t call them monsters with all of that to the contrary.

Maybe someday it will bite me in the ass but when the teeth upon my throat are so, so pleasant, I don’t know that I would care much either way. Much as I want to laugh, he’s so very close to me and while waking him might be fun, our nights have been long with drink and revelry as of late. So much to celebrate. He asked me to marry him, you know? Unexpected but… appropriate, I think. He should rest, if only so that we can do it all over again when the day finally stirs. It’s the least I can give him for the peace he has given me.

My head has always been a noisy place, even in the best of times when it isn’t full of otherworldly influences both benevolent and nefarious. In another time and another life, it would have ruined me. My mother being what she is, can I say I would blame them? Most would say abominations like me shouldn’t be suffered to live but here I am. So very alive, with friends and family and things I want to do to change the world. Contrary to so much that I have been told, I am here. Call it spite, maybe. Or perhaps it’s thanks to moments like these where his breathing matches mine and I can feel the steady thump of his heart in his chest.

Dawn is coming, at least for Rhydin so far below us. Somewhere the brightest star in our galaxy is irradiating the outside of the ship we’ve made our home for the next week. A four mile long vessel of hedonistic debauchery, full of gambling and music and alcohol and other vices. Everything that I would have let myself fall into so willingly once upon a time. Anything for an escape, you know? Now I have my escape, lame and cheesy as that sounds. Sure I might indulge from time to time in the siren’s song of drinking and fucking and fighting the good fight if only because I am alive. Magnificently so.

He’ll wake soon. He always does before me. May as well go back to sleep until then.

For the first time in a very, very long time, this contentment is here to stay.

[Strawberry]

Fingers Crossed

Warlords and Generals, denizens of Hell and deities of far flung death realms. The women from which I descend are a mighty line of conquerors. They have been soldiers and saints, champions and knights. Godkillers. Demonslayers. They are fierce and unyielding and unafraid to look Death in the eye to say “Go fuck yourself. Not today.” The blood on their hands is fathoms deep, enough to drown whole civilizations.

I was supposed to break the chain, to be a paragon of peace and pacifism. I would not be used by higher beings for their petty ministrations. I would not be party to cats paws and infernal politics. I would never be beholden to a realm that kept me from my family.

But as they say, the best laid plans oft go astray and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. While we may not be taking the paved way, we are on our way to Hell. Not by choice but by necessity. No longer will I allow my mother to hang her threats over my head like a Damoclean doom, a thread away at any given time from coming down to cleave my life in two.

New Year’s Eve, the ending of one chapter and the beginning of the next. So often a symbol of hope and change for the better, the day loomed over me like an execution date. At every turn I was certain I would face my mother, who would assuredly dig her claws into my flesh and drag me back to my Hell kicking and screaming. But that moment never came. Despite her threats, the end of the year came and went without issue.

I should have thrown that party at Battlefield Park’s armory.

You know what they say about hindsight.

Needless to say, I was sick of waiting for the guillotine to fall. Tired of waiting to be stolen away like some helpless child, powerless to stop her. I am no child and I am not her subject. Waiting has filled. No more will she torment me, my sister, my fiance, my life here. I am done. She is no queen, she is no god, and even if she were… our blood has a habit of bringing gods to their knees, doesn’t it?

Perhaps she could use a lesson in humility.

I am going to her to settle this. Once and for all.

For Caleb. For Angela. For myself. For our future.

My affairs are in order. While I plan on coming back and I know that I will, I find it better to be over prepared rather than to get caught with your pants down. My assistant, Meraud, has instructions for how to handle things should I be delayed in coming back. My lawyer has everything else.

My only hope is that in the face of logic that my mother doesn’t shut down for the sake of stubbornness. But knowing her the way I know her…

Well… I’ll keep my fingers crossed but I won’t hold my breath.