Oleander

Something was coming. All the signs pointed to it, there was no denying it. So when Korvax asked her to investigate the tunnels under the mansion, Mephyst readily agreed.

Mephyst had an uncomfortable relationship with the tunnels. They were where she met the vampire Lilith, who turned her, but it was also dark and peaceful, and the silence was a refuge after the business of the mansion.

The upper levels of the tunnels were occupied by members of the clan who had fled the plague of bees that was tormenting the mansion, and Mephyst was glad to leave them behind. She didn't dislike the clan dragons, she just preferred her own company.

Mephyst wandered deep, far past Lilith's temple and into the natural caves that contained the Rip in the veil that Korvax so loved to study. She paused to gaze at it, a pale wisp of smoke that shimmered and danced. Such a strange portal, it took you to the misty place between Life and Death, where unhappy souls rested. Even at a distance she could hear their mournful cries.

Turning away, she followed the slight tug Korvax had mentioned, the sense of a powerful mind deep below the earth. It was a strange mind, darting away at her touch. Her curiousity prevailed, and she followed the tunnels so deep it began to grow warm and humid. Strange mushrooms grew in clusters on the wall, blue bioluminescence allowing her to better see the shape of the tunnels. She could see perfectly well in the dark, but the mushrooms strange beauty was entrancing, and she was happy for the light.

The mind darted away again and Mephyst followed. It became a chase the closer she got, the mind, rippling with barely contained power, but also riddled with fear.

It was many hours later when she finally cornered him. The mind belonged to an imperial, a huge, hulky shape in the shadows a full third larger than her. But he cowered away, the power within him banked. Quiet words brought his head up, and their eyes met.

The gentle green of his eyes bored into hers, and Mephyst forgot herself. All that existed was the imperial before her, the green shimmer of his scales a distraction.

Sebastos was his name. His was an ancient lineage, one soaked in tragedy and hardship. There was an accident, and a fire, and he had fled, ashamed that he was unable to control his power. Mephyst smiled, and stroked his head, assuring him that he had arrived in a clan full of teachers who were more than powerful enough to not be in danger from him.

Their love was slow and hesitant. Sebastos had many wounds to heal, but Mephyst was patient, and soon a nest of three eggs was hatched.

Oleander, the youngest child, was also the most powerful. She was calm and centered, the opposite of her mother, and undertook strict study to learn to control her powers.

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ft. Capriccio

Hooray for the Traumatized Cousins Club!

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Oleander was born to be a weapon.

That was fine. There had been great need for weapons when the threat of what lay beyond the Veil became imminently apparent, and she, alongside her siblings, were honed to perfection. Their bodies trained for battle, their minds trained in strategy, their innate powers trained for pin-point, precision control, until they could spare no more time for preparation.

Ollie was the youngest of the three, but also the most powerful, and so it was only natural that she lead the way unto the breach. Each of them understood their duty, their purpose. Together they were a super-weapon, specifically designed to defeat the great conglomeration of woeful malice; Thousands of lost souls with unfinished business had twisted and distorted into one being, until all that was left was a hatred for anything that still possessed a breath of life and thus still retained the right to reside on this side of the Veil. They each understood what was at stake should they fail, and bore that burden in solemn determination.

It had not been an easy battle. None of them expected it to be, not when their own venerable uncle, elder brother to their mother, mantled with all his power and wisdom of the Veil, had been unable to subdue the Enemy. The fight was long and hard, and the three warrior-siblings suffered greatly in the struggle, but in the end, they prevailed.

Now, there is no longer a need for weapons. The danger has been vanquished, the Veil restored to its rightful state, and all is well. This was the inevitable conclusion. The quest is over. The happily ever after has been earned. Everything is fine.

It’s fine.

Ollie tells herself she is fine even when she flinches away from loud noises or startles when approached from behind. She has to be fine. She wakes screaming in the night, terror lodged in her throat, unable to separate reality from memory for several insensate minutes. Why wouldn’t she be fine? She pins her own mother to the wall by the throat after being unexpectedly shaken awake. Her shame keeps her from looking anyone in the eye. How could she?

She is a weapon. There is no place for weapons during peacetime, especially not weapons of her caliber. She was born to fight that which threatened reality itself; now that the fight is over, she is at a loss for what to do with herself. What was supposed to come next, after the ever after?

You’re always on edge, well-meaning clanmates tell her. You don’t have to be on guard all the time. It’s fine now.

It’s fine. She’s fine.

It’s-

It’s not fine. How can it be fine? She was born to be a weapon. Normal children have normal childhoods, full of laughter and play and love. Her childhood ended the moment she shook herself free of the egg, for even newborn weapons needed honing. Every waking moment was spent studying, or practising, or training, mastering her powers, mastering her control, mastering herself so that she could go on and master the Enemy. She was the master of everything except her own life, until there was no longer need of weapons. Then, the weapons were finally given mastery of themselves, with no thought given to the fact that no one had ever really prepared them for such a thing.

The weight of it all lays heavily across her shoulders, and she staggers from the burden. She can’t speak of it to to her siblings: She was the leader, the fixed point; to reveal her difficulties now would risk setting them both adrift with her. She’s been avoiding her parents ever since she- since her mother tried to wake her that night. Her relationship with her parents has cooled considerably besides, after she had wondered to herself, ‘What sort of mother or father would ever allow this to happen to their child?’ and come to a very uncomfortable answer. Perhaps she could have found some wisdom in consulting others within her storied lineage, but the only other who could possibly have an inkling as to what she’d experienced within the Veil was her uncle. Ollie knows both herself and her uncle are in agreement that a lobotomy would be far more preferable to discussing feelings with each other, so that was out as well.

Salvation comes in the form of a cousin. Granted, given their family’s tendency towards preponderance, you couldn’t go twenty feet without tripping over a cousin of some sort, but Ollie knows this one was different: She flinches at loud noises, and she startles when approached from behind.

Her name, Ollie learns, is Capriccio. She had undergone a similar trial, passed down onto her and her siblings by parents, who had needed a shield to protect the world. Capri hadn’t exactly seen any sort of battle nor had she been the leader of her sibling choir, but she, like Ollie, had been born not for love’s sake, but to be used as a tool.

The Sword and the Shield. A useless warrior and a broken songbird. What a pair they made.

‘I don’t know if they love me. Not really,’ Capri scribbles into her notebook, late one night as they tried to dodge the nightmares that plagued them both. Ever since the Song of Hope had come to an end, Capri had been unable to make a single sound; her voice had been utterly broken by the task. ’They say they do, but if they did, why would they make us do that?’

“I know mine love me,” Oleander whispers back, and it felt both a great betrayal of her family and a great relief upon her soul to finally put it all to words. “I know they do. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that the only reason they wanted me was to use me. How do you get past that?”

Neither of them knows the answer. Maybe there wasn’t one. It did help, though, to know they weren’t alone. The two of them understood each other in ways no one else in the world could. It makes things a little more easier to bear, in a way.

As the weeks went on, and the spend more time together, neither of them notice they began to flinch a little less often, and didn’t startle quite so badly when approached from behind. Or, rather - they did not notice their own behavior shift, but they very much noticed the shift in the each other. The loud noises were easier to handle when one knew the other was nearby, and being approached from behind wasn’t nearly a big a concern when they knew someone was watching their back. Even the nightmares ease a little. Sometimes they even manage to sleep through the night.

’None of this is normal,’ Capri writes one day, as they sit together watching the sunset. ’Normal families don’t do what they did to us.’

“We aren’t normal,” Ollie points out, with a soft, rueful little laugh, “I mean, we’re descendants of-“

’I’m not talking about that,’ the last word underlined twice to make the point. ’Normal families… talk. They do things together. They support each other. Not- this.’

They know they that they cannot stay. The petty politics, the squabbling aunts and uncles, the endless games being played as unwitting and unwilling chess pieces are moved around the board, all exacerbated by their bloodline’s terrible magics… they cannot stay.

So they don’t.

When the sun rises upon the two of them next, it is the dawn of the next chapter in their stories. It was time to learn how to live for themselves.


Lore by Penguinball and Counterklock