DemiMoon
Just a demi kind of moon...
The Wizard and the Witch
With Owl Knight & DemiMoon
Valpurga’s cage scarcely jostled her on the freshly laid road that carved a smooth, straight gash of rock, ash and sand in layers of construction she could not conceive. There was only the sense of the wound the Empire Arcanum wrought in the earth below her, salted with sand from lands she did not know. It was an unfathomable road, as incomprehensible as its architects and their obsession with the mingling of things from every corner of the world. Wonder and abomination at once.
She spoke against it. They did not hear. Did not feel the damage they did in the carving up of lands with their civilization. It was not a matter of felling trees or killing animals. Death was part of life. It was the way they reshaped the world. They carved into the very veins and arteries of magic that sustained the pulse of magic or delved into her organs to make their artifacts. They left wounds that they did not know how to tend. They festered and rotted. And such wounds come to rot. The feeling of it was sure and strong in her but absent to them. It was like trying to describe color to the sightless. None of them felt it. Not their soldiers, not their Wizards, and not their Inquisitor dogs. Instead, they bound and blinded her, in cages with their sigils and symbols of fused metal. She was left only to feel absence.
It was not the only wound that hurt her. Not the only loss that filled her heart with terrible emptiness. When words did not work, war must serve. Her Coven, her sisters united with the Ostmani Tribes the Empire pushed from their homes and lands in their relentless expansion. They won battles. Tore down edifices of stone and metal, Empire and civilization. Tore open scars to allow them to heal.
But the Empire Arcanum was vast. The Ostmani and her Coven came to know the true strength of their machinery of war, formations of seemingly endless soldiers - clever magic and devices that didn't have their raw power but weathered them in endless conflict. They were few, and their Coven only three. Now they were one. Her fists clenched, shifting the iron manacles that bound her wrists to the cage floor. Grief and anger rose in her, a demand to marshal power in terrible vengeance upon her captors. But nothing came. In their cage on their road she could call on no shade to freeze their soul, no primal beast to gore them with fierce anger, no balefire to give form to her rage and burn them to ash. A sob shook her frame and she slumped, bent and broken. She could do nothing. Nothing but wait to be burned as a spectacle in the heart of this cancerous Empire.
Her wagon rolled to the stop at the foot of a stone bridge over a slow stream. The Inquisitor and their soldier lackeys stopped for their midday meal, to water and refresh their horses. She watched them. The Inquisitor did not meet her gaze, swaddled in their ebon robes. Their imperious expressions broke almost no humanity, it was almost drilled out of them in their terrible purpose of finding 'unsanctioned' magic users and ending them. The soldiers looked back, sneered at her. They at least showed their feelings, even if that which played across their expressions was anger, hatred, bitterness and disdain. That at least was comprehensible. She had killed many of their kind.
"Water," she croaked. Her throat was dry as gravel. They had no interest in her comfort, only that she survived to be killed. They barely fed her, gave her too little to drink. She longed to plunge into the sweet stream and cleanse the drought that suffused her whole body. But a soldier sneered at her, beat his fist against her bars. "Quiet wretch!"
The Inquisitor pulled the soldier's hand back sharply, glaring at him. "Do not touch the bars."
"Why not? What's she going to do like that?" the guard scoffed, forgetting his discipline.
The Inquisitor regarded him with steel eyes and spoke slowly, as if to a child. "She would tear and bite your arm and use your very blood to boil you from the inside, fool."
The soldier looked at the Inquisitor sourly, then his expression fell and he looked back at Valpurga. She gave him a slow, grim smile and very slightly moistened her dark lips with the tip of her tongue. She saw a moment's fear on the soldier's face, felt it in the way he shrank back.
"You want water? Here!" Another soldier hurled a bucket of water through the bars, soaking her. The cold shock of it stole her breath and she gave a hoarse cry, the chill seeping into her fur and leathers to prickle her pale skin. Even still, she pushed her lips to her skin and suckled the moisture from it. Pressed it from the dark violet strands of hair that now clung to her cheeks. Sucked moisture from her gloves or sodden fur mantle. None of these tastes were clean, mingled with sweat and dust from her torment and travels. But thirst had its way with her. The soldiers took comfort in her pathetic state, laughed at her as they feasted on their waybreads, cured meats and cheeses. The sight was a reminder of hunger pain that gnawed at her gut. Would they throw her so much as a heel of bread or a rind of cheese? How much longer, how much worse, would this dread journey become on the way to her death?
Valpurga could not know, and they would not tell her.
With Owl Knight & DemiMoon
Valpurga’s cage scarcely jostled her on the freshly laid road that carved a smooth, straight gash of rock, ash and sand in layers of construction she could not conceive. There was only the sense of the wound the Empire Arcanum wrought in the earth below her, salted with sand from lands she did not know. It was an unfathomable road, as incomprehensible as its architects and their obsession with the mingling of things from every corner of the world. Wonder and abomination at once.
She spoke against it. They did not hear. Did not feel the damage they did in the carving up of lands with their civilization. It was not a matter of felling trees or killing animals. Death was part of life. It was the way they reshaped the world. They carved into the very veins and arteries of magic that sustained the pulse of magic or delved into her organs to make their artifacts. They left wounds that they did not know how to tend. They festered and rotted. And such wounds come to rot. The feeling of it was sure and strong in her but absent to them. It was like trying to describe color to the sightless. None of them felt it. Not their soldiers, not their Wizards, and not their Inquisitor dogs. Instead, they bound and blinded her, in cages with their sigils and symbols of fused metal. She was left only to feel absence.
It was not the only wound that hurt her. Not the only loss that filled her heart with terrible emptiness. When words did not work, war must serve. Her Coven, her sisters united with the Ostmani Tribes the Empire pushed from their homes and lands in their relentless expansion. They won battles. Tore down edifices of stone and metal, Empire and civilization. Tore open scars to allow them to heal.
But the Empire Arcanum was vast. The Ostmani and her Coven came to know the true strength of their machinery of war, formations of seemingly endless soldiers - clever magic and devices that didn't have their raw power but weathered them in endless conflict. They were few, and their Coven only three. Now they were one. Her fists clenched, shifting the iron manacles that bound her wrists to the cage floor. Grief and anger rose in her, a demand to marshal power in terrible vengeance upon her captors. But nothing came. In their cage on their road she could call on no shade to freeze their soul, no primal beast to gore them with fierce anger, no balefire to give form to her rage and burn them to ash. A sob shook her frame and she slumped, bent and broken. She could do nothing. Nothing but wait to be burned as a spectacle in the heart of this cancerous Empire.
Her wagon rolled to the stop at the foot of a stone bridge over a slow stream. The Inquisitor and their soldier lackeys stopped for their midday meal, to water and refresh their horses. She watched them. The Inquisitor did not meet her gaze, swaddled in their ebon robes. Their imperious expressions broke almost no humanity, it was almost drilled out of them in their terrible purpose of finding 'unsanctioned' magic users and ending them. The soldiers looked back, sneered at her. They at least showed their feelings, even if that which played across their expressions was anger, hatred, bitterness and disdain. That at least was comprehensible. She had killed many of their kind.
"Water," she croaked. Her throat was dry as gravel. They had no interest in her comfort, only that she survived to be killed. They barely fed her, gave her too little to drink. She longed to plunge into the sweet stream and cleanse the drought that suffused her whole body. But a soldier sneered at her, beat his fist against her bars. "Quiet wretch!"
The Inquisitor pulled the soldier's hand back sharply, glaring at him. "Do not touch the bars."
"Why not? What's she going to do like that?" the guard scoffed, forgetting his discipline.
The Inquisitor regarded him with steel eyes and spoke slowly, as if to a child. "She would tear and bite your arm and use your very blood to boil you from the inside, fool."
The soldier looked at the Inquisitor sourly, then his expression fell and he looked back at Valpurga. She gave him a slow, grim smile and very slightly moistened her dark lips with the tip of her tongue. She saw a moment's fear on the soldier's face, felt it in the way he shrank back.
"You want water? Here!" Another soldier hurled a bucket of water through the bars, soaking her. The cold shock of it stole her breath and she gave a hoarse cry, the chill seeping into her fur and leathers to prickle her pale skin. Even still, she pushed her lips to her skin and suckled the moisture from it. Pressed it from the dark violet strands of hair that now clung to her cheeks. Sucked moisture from her gloves or sodden fur mantle. None of these tastes were clean, mingled with sweat and dust from her torment and travels. But thirst had its way with her. The soldiers took comfort in her pathetic state, laughed at her as they feasted on their waybreads, cured meats and cheeses. The sight was a reminder of hunger pain that gnawed at her gut. Would they throw her so much as a heel of bread or a rind of cheese? How much longer, how much worse, would this dread journey become on the way to her death?
Valpurga could not know, and they would not tell her.
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