Fantasy 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙾𝙻𝙳 𝙷𝙰𝚃𝚁𝙴𝙳𝚂. — A TRAGEDY BY SVETNICA + DEMONOLOGY.

[demonology]

​

a tragedy penned by mother of sorrows + demonology ​

 

[demonology]

location :

st. voisin's courtyard

summary :

commencement address, speeches, and the announcement of the tournament, along with the festifall !

tags :

my love cecil

chapter one »

. . . freesia festifall

The wrought gates of St. Voisins' swing themselves open, beckoning veterans and first-years alike. Above in cloud-spotted skies the leathery flapping of wings beats into the trembling hearts of the fresh meat dotting the lawn. One student sets down her bags and watch as the troll-like caretakers of the grounds haul them away with no promise of return. A quiet smile on her lips shows she feels right at home, nodding to the professor that hollers out, Welcome to St. Voisin's!.

The same professor directs students further along the trail of Fre Forest, which opens up to a voracious thunder. The knolling campus courtyard is full of wonder and merriment. A spinning wheel, larger than thought any moving structure possible, shoots up and kisses the clouds. On the other side of the yard, towards Lake Dior, there is a glowing carousel with enchanted beasts of all variety, including toadstools, frogs, unicorns, and even a strange one that looks close to the Grumsters that continue to cart away suitcases and other valuables. Lining the rest of the trail are rows and rows of tents, some with rudimentary labels indicating they’re for clubs or other campus activities. Some are for more of the carnival games that fit the theme of the day’s proceedings, including a dunk-tank with a mysterious chihuahua sitting atop it.

A great roar fills the arena as the faculty continue direct people forward, all dressed in robes and unphased by the loud sounds further ahead. Entering the field, it is reveal not to be a recording from one of the various rides.

“That’s Tohra,” Professor Walis murmurs to a student as he stops short next to her. “That roar wasn’t from her, though. It was her husband.”

A spindle-prick finger towards a luminescent cave carved in the side of the mountain. A three-headed beast. “Kéhri. Isn’t he beautiful?” The young man nods, not quite sure what to make of a tri-maned lion, before he starts to move on.

Cheers erupt from the crowd gathered before the ornate stage constructed in front of the steps to St. Aching Hall. A larger, burgundy slug murmurs at a microphone, frowning at Tohra, who makes another release of flame, striking stars into the students’ eyes like shooting stars.

Headmistress Xu shrinks into her human form, realizing her impression is a lost-cause with Tohra around to shoot fireworks in the sky. Grumbling, she catches everyone’s attention as the mic amplifies her prominence.

“Welcome, welcome. St. Voisin’s welcomes you. If you’re one of our brave First-Years, you might be confused as to what all this fanfare is. Perhaps you might even want to settle in and sit down.” She gives an empathizing smile. “As you’ll grow used to, witches have an innate disdain for the dismal or routine. Your warrior’s hearts will run amuck on this campus. Starting today, right now. Welcome to the Freesia Festifall.”

The Headmistress widens her stance and opens an arm in equal spirit. Then, she smiles with a small chuckle, “Unfortunately, before we can delve into the spoils, we must run through the dismal and routine traditions.”

Clearing her throat once more, she unfolds a sheet of prim-typed paper, lined with mucus membrane, and holds it a sharp distance from her face. Convulsed into an odd expression, she squints before going, “Ah yes!” Finally, after some more enthusiastic shuffling, she clears her throat once more and begins:

The University of St. Voisin has stood since the dawn of humanity’s triumph. It exists well beyond our memories, beyond any text of history, and yet, we know it has stood for centuries. A homestead for those imbued with gifts beyond our comprehension, St. Voisin’s has served as a refuge for the magical kind and a stimulant for scholastic knowledge. She is just as mysterious as the otherworldly miasma that flows through us, and yet, here we stand. And yet, we triumph onward.”

She pauses, glancing across a sea of faces.

“This year, you will triumph in your own ways. Perhaps, even bigger ones, too, if you find yourself lucky enough to have a professor take you on as a researcher. You will grow victorious over the domains that once restrained you, from the mastery of potionscraft to the elusive art of print-making or violin restringing. Mathematics might be your call, where you might find Professor Brunscoe more of a challenge than his calc-based physics course.”

Good-natured giggles flowed amongst the crowd, and the victim-professor readjusts his glasses and smiles with a wave. The Headmistress nods to him, beaming.

"Above all, you will prove yourself a battle-end to the challenges that arise. You will be a victor. You will be a Scholar.”

Innate with a flare for the melodrama, she pauses for effect.

”Welcome to the Fall Semester of 1949!”

A round of applause, and some hollers from the upperclassmen. Jubilee blossoms amongst the students, and the Headmistress waits for it to calm so she might conduct the chorus once more.

“Now, we will more on to speeches by your elected President, Violetta Williams.”

coded by reveriee.

 

[demonology]

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Violetta

the commencement stage

the crowd.

you know who you are...

The engine sputters in a familiar manner, causing the white-leather steering wheel to vibrate as Violet makes an ill-timed, high-speed turn that almost launches Cordelia the Cadillac into a ditch. She spent a summer in Berlin, visiting under the guise of a volunteer for rebuilding after the war effort and in actuality studying under a friend of Professor Yeltine's. As such, her driving skills had only worsened, making the familiar dirt roads of Sagesiers treacherous. Still, once she places her suitcase back on the passenger with a grimace at the empty seat, her mind manages to wander. The trees run past her with a flurry of Monet greens, blending sage with chartruse. She pushes back a sash of her blonde hair behind her shoulders, checking her watch, and murmurs,

"Shit."

Speeding down the narrow road, she spotted the sigil scraped into Cordelia's dash. The delicate curves of her own handiwork call to mind her father's careful cursive on notes he would leave for her on her bed, in her bag, in her books — everywhere. They weren't an often occurence, just as love letters from her weren't an ever-present occasion, but the rarity of them only made the memories of either — her letters and her father's notes — all the more potent. She looked at the passenger seat, and there was a ghost. It wore the face of her old friend. It bore the voice of her father. It had the same red hair as her other friend, the one she had not seen all summer. The who had yet to realize that letters and notes are just as treacherous as the road, especially when penned by the Williams hand.

The Cadillac, self-driving and sentient due to the sigil, slows down abruptly as she comes upon a line of cars waiting to drop off their students. Violet's whole body careens forward, and she grumbles.

"Cordy... we have to work on your braking!"

In response, the car turns herself off. Violet smacks the wheel, reaching for the keys to try to turn the engine over. Cordelia does not budge.

"Useless!"

She checks her watch. Five minutes.

She gets out of Cordelia, telling the Caddy that she expects the old girl to be in the parking lot in the small town of Sagesiers.

"Or else you'll be back in the scrap yard."

The car hums to life, beginning to honk voraciously. Violet, grabbing her suitcase and slamming the door, abandons the white car with the keys still in the ignition. Cordy gives one last honk, almost pleading with Violet, who looks back and bites her thumb at the piece of magical machinery that she stole from the rubble and cursed back together.

"By midnight, Cordy. Have fun!"

She breaks out into a frantic run, perhaps shocking a few of the returning students who wouldn't recognize this Violet Williams: running late, hair down and kissed by the breeze, and a smile so jubilant it is a bit crazed. They would be right to be a bit suspicious of this Violet — rumors spread like wildfire, and they tell that Violet has sold her soul to some evil spirit. After all, how could one be so happy when she is friendsless. Not even the dull, imaginary crown of the Presidency could explain her behavior.

Vi passes the student talking to Professor Walis about the residents on the Mountain, bumping into the first-year. Violet looks back, seeing the rotund cheeks and hopeful brown eyes of a blonde-haired girl. For a moment, she looks like a twelve year-old girl, the sort who spent hours studying her face in the mirror and trying to rub off her beauty mark. But Violet blinks and the student is clearly not a copy of herself. Her smile returns, and she doesn't stop long enough to see Professor Walis's bushy brow quirk up at the site of Violet Williams, free as a chickadee and smiling like she'd murdered someone.

"And now, we will move onto a speech by your elected Class President, Violet Williams."

Dropping her suitcase at the foot of the stairs on the stage of the stage, Violet fixes her hair and straightens her black, wool skirt. Her left mary jane is scuffed, and she licks her fingers and attempts to rub it off before looking up. Headmistress Xu looks at her expectantly — along with most of the student body.

Another smile, though less frenzied. It is the reserved, grim sort that Violet is known for wearing when someone slights her or she's simply disinterested and trying not to show it.

"Apologies, Headmistress,"

she announces as she trundles up the steps and moves to the microphone. Adjusting it, static fills the field. Vi clears her throat and shifts her cardigan.

"My car has a mind of her own."

Despite the fact that no one knows who Cordelia the Cadillac is, a smattering of laughter fills the crowd, along with Violet's own. Heat flames her cheeks though, as she realizes what she said. Stupid girl, she reminds herself. A whole-body correct ripples through her, and she mentally reprimands herself for having stuffed her notecards in the waistband of her skirt as she dregs the disorganized cards out. Stupid girl, she repeats, looking stern as she works the cards into a proper form and thanks Jesus she memorized her speech on the long drive.

This is St. Voisin's. The weight of this setting, perhaps as a result of the mountainous air or the presence of Tohra the dragon at her back, sobers her. There is no hint of the lively girl, who is quickly abandoned to the summer in Berlin. Anxiety waves over her, angry that she'd staved the feeling off for as long as she had.

"First, let me welcome you all to our beloved halls. In particular, if you find yourself a newcomer, I offer to be your tour guide, much akin to a hostess welcoming you to their home for the first time. As your Student Body President, it is my goal, along with the rest of Student Government, from my Vice President, the Treasurer, to our general members, that you find this a genial homestead. With that, I'll make it a point to keep this short, given the festivities that await us and welcome us all into the fold. Most of all, I wouldn't want to miss Professor De Agostini get his fur wet,"

she smiled and offered a dry laugh, overly formal in comparison to the off-the-cuff joke from a few moments earlier.

Out of the corner of her eye, she finds another ghost. An eldritch thing, crawling from the crypts, but she pays the familiar foe no mind once she realizes it is real and not a phatom. As she looks down at her cards, a shimmer-scape tendril fell forward.

Like a horse with blinders, she continues,

"It is my responsibility to speak on the nature of our body, as I act on the behalf of us all. What is most common to us all, from our current students to the alumni to the professors, and even, in a way, the Board, is that we all hold campfires in our bellies. The walls of St. Aching to even the House Halls are paved in the fetor of our ambition, of our persistence. Witches are oft thought mythical, unreal, and a threat to humans. Instead, we have show and we continue to prove that witches have always been a kind to triumph.

The Austrian philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche once said, 'All things great must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves in the hearts of humans.' In many ways, that is what we are. Many of us, either currently or during our first year, felt much the same — monstrous, fleeting, and a horror, either due to our magic, our academics, our families."

Her voice cracks miniscully at the final word. There is only a second of pause, easily taken for an acknowledgement of a period at the end of a sentence.

"Over the past three years, and hopefully during this final year, I have seen transformations beyond witching means. In our histories, we have born witness to innovations and figures we never thought possible. You may not realize it, but we are history, too, and we shall see who Fate chooses to leave their inscription, their embossed print, and in turn, who amongst us inscribes herself—"

A voice, robust in vibrato, interrupts her. Finally, the blinders demand to be removed, and she swivels her head to see Cecil Mangiarotti.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[mother of sorrows]

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Cecil M.

the commencement stage

the crowd.

my babygirl

In the subterrean climb, by the mildew walls, stone carved by inhuman hands, darkness so loud it hums, there is a corpse.

The echo of a dying god's last wail vibrate through the pseudo-air, from the two mile deep stomach and thrown back by the ceiling too high to see. Cecil's lamp flickers uncertainly from where he set it on the damp stone, reflecting the black flesh like a primodrial spill. Tendons and organs gleam, squishing under his knees and soft in his hands.

A god dies just like that. But its cries take eons to stop echoing - supernova in the form of noise.

Cecil's ears plug into themselves from the subtonal scream, his upper lip peeling back in a bloody sneer.

Almost like an animal. But worse. He crouches there, his hands tearing through decomposing flesh like ripping wet paper. Intercelluar fluid drips soundlessly from his dark hands, a gasoline spill between his fingers. His teeth move mechanically, churning muscle into a pulpy stew that burns down his throat. So disgustingly potent it leaves his gums tingling, a thousand biting ants salivating.

The meat speaks to him in the form of symbols he barely understands, and thoughts so complicated they give him a pulsing headache that throbs down his vertebrae. In the darkness, where no one is there to see him, not in any world he was born in, Cecil scavengers on the rotting body of a god.

Waltberg has told him to stop. But the arcane knowledge sits in his stomach, hot like ice -

and he learns, for a price.

---​

The courtyard is dry as a bone, even though it had been raining for weeks. Were Cecil's boots not muddy at the soles from trekking through the trails beforehand, one might believe this ground has never met water.

He is not excited about this semester. Inexplicably, the only ones with any sort of energy are the first-years and the students only a few exams away from growing wings and making a run out of here; students like him, in the unforeseen middle, trod around in resigned anticipation. Professors set up their own camp, conversing about God-knows-what. St. Voisin's is now to Cecil as miserable as milk left to clog, colorless and sour.

Cecil has done nothing this entire dusty, coughing summer except eat. Walk around his aunt's attic on all fours and grit his teeth. Life has become a single point that he's curled up around, like a child. The sandy wash, where him and Violet would exchange secret truths, has crumbled into gravel and rocks - and so he stopped going there, too.

The Headmistress' speech rolls along like a wheel of entrails. She succeeded in what she wanted, which is cutting the metaphorical welcoming ribbon; Cecil didn't come to listen to her, and he paces himself a little circle into the ought-to-be-mud. He only untwists from his slouched position when the stage is left open, him and a thousand other faces turning to the woman of the hour.

Violet Williams walks up. Everyone stares.

Eyes slick like animal fat watch Violet with untempered disdain. Black robes hand off his thin shoulders in afterthought, an uncomfortable contrast to the clean packaging that Violet wears like a presidental campaign. She's smiling so much. Formal, like the press of her black skirt and her power in anything worth having as a new, weak-legged student; the first-years remind him oddly of baby birds, watching her with rapt attention and slightly open mouths. A few academics whisper, their almost-gradutating paleness scorned by her presence. Cecil, unimportant and generally disliked - though whether more than her is up in the air - only crosses his arms over his worn sweater and closes his lips hard enough for the skin to whiten. She continues to talk, undeterred.

Cecil's legs move like an impatient horse's, and finally he begins to stomp down the side of the wooden beams and occupied chairs. A gaggle of students parts at the sight of him like living bushery, exchanging unsure looks. Professor Waltberg gives a nervous shoot of his spine when he sees Cecil passing by, standing up; but he's too late to catch the students arm and Cecil settles right by the podium, the first omen of trouble. A few gazes flicker from Violet to him.

Uncaring, he interrupts with a loud, unmistakable voice;

"And what about the deaths last year?"

His tone is firm, if raspy from lack of use. Enraged like a dog, Cecil glowers at the form of her, at her smiles and practiced jokes. Professor Waltberg has finally caught up and tugs him back, but Cecil remains stubborn with more words.

"Is there not going to be an announcement about those?"

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[demonology]

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Violetta

the commencement stage

the crowd.

you know who you are...

Her body betrays her by shifting towards Cecil, as though whatever viscera tied their souls together in the past is still there, albeit as a ghost. All it takes is a tug from him – she follows. Something cold as a fever shrinks into her bowels and takes refuge there, breaking her into a wet sweat.

There is not enough time for curses. There’s not time for any reaction at all. Suddenly, he is there, and she is standing in his shadow, which forms despite the cloudy sky and the shy sun. Christ. This summer, she had visited France and spent the night drinking with veterans who fawned over her. One laid his arm across her waist, and not even when she pushed him away and the mass of men turned on her, spitting at her heels as she made her escape, did she have as hard of a time doing damage control. What tied Cecil’s soul to hers was an ancient sort of hatred, and these rumors were fresh.

She takes a deep gulp and faces towards the crowd, ignoring the dark, incandescent blob to her left. A pseudo-frown takes shape on her face. ”We are all saddened by the terrible acts that have perpetrated the sanctity of St. Voisin’s campus. Personally, Iphigenia, last year’s Midsommar Queen, and her death weighs heavily on me as we begin this year, knowing she will not be graduating alongside me.”

Saying it aloud, it is the first time she has acknowledged Iphi’s passing since the funeral in May. Now, she has to reconcile with the image of their maturation in the spring: Violet, by herself, sitting atop the same stage, painfully alone.

Perhaps there is nothing false about her expression. It is equal parts grief — and guilt.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[mother of sorrows]

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Cecil M.

the commencement stage

the crowd.

my babygirl

Violet snaps in his direction like a wind-up doll. Perhaps he does not know her anymore, but he knew once a version of her, and the pale perspiration reflecting off her forehead speaks of unsettled nerves. Her speech is clean and smooth and easily digestible, and it drives a nail of rage into his stomach. No actual value to her words. A few of the baby-bird first years give chancy glances from him to her, still not decided if Cecil is a madman or if Violet has rumors biting at the back of her heels. Do they not smell the blood on her hands? How she reeks; it makes Cecil's brain go blank with a boiling white, a hate so forceful it blinds.

Waltberg has thrown his hands up, eyes damp and panicked. Cecil has precious few moments left before the Headmistress herself drags them apart and Violet slips out of trouble like an otter through black waves. Like drawing a line in the sand, the man firms his legs and bites a sneer.

"What about the fact that you were the last one to see her alive?"

Iphigenia. In a memory, she is still standing in the tall summer grasses and watching birds dive like tailored rocks. His tone points like an accusing finger, to the last panting heat of that day, where the blood started to rot too fast for anyone to wipe it away. Does Violet remember it? Does she pretend not to? Cecil scrutinizes the pinched terror of her features and the ruthless collar clinging to her throat.

A hush strangles the clearing. Curious, like he is.

♡coded by uxie♡