[3,146] 8.10.2022
Hope you enjoy!
:)
/ DAFFODIL | prologue /
grown of sockets, in eyes colored moon,
and too from under leathery skin,
yellow, yellow,
as rebirth, as new beginnings.
Within the Lunar Isles, flowers bloomed brightest to the stench of rot.
The clouds rolled low, and the smog fumed high. Roads, laden by nature as it began to consume back its rightful land. Houses and farmsteads, left crippled underneath the weight of overgrowth, or strengthened by oven fires which swelled at night, to the chime of ironwork and cogs. Carcasses littered every island. Human and animal. Airships. Villages.
The mainland became legend. The islands became the world…
Canoes crept the waters, for barges and steamboats had long since been claimed by what lurked in the deep. High above, across the sky, a vacant frontier. There were no vessels. No blimps. No aircrafts. Few dared to fly brooms or jetpacks amongst the beasts who scoured the horizon, dawned by scale hides and scorched breaths.
One such beast splayed his shadow across the wetlands down below. His howl to the moon spat long traces of fire. The earth smoldered quietly. The mulch and brush sparked retaliation, and the water—of the river, and the grasses—seethed. Another plumage of fire found one of the canoes. Its wood ached until it snapped apart. The corpses inside, they plunged into the murky depths.
And all around.
Crooning violently at the dragon's crusade.
The dead. The blooms.
They which roamed beyond the grave and shadows, into sunlight, moonlight, rain. Through the wetlands, they waded. From the fires, they writhed. Petals, what sunlight nurtured, across molted skin began to wilt, burn, flake away. Moonlight bathed the stems which strangled their bodies—bent to the point of inhumanity, distortion. And the rain to come, it would bleed strength into the roots, and by proxy, every bouquet that crowned and caped the dead.
Down their maws hung vines, and so too the flowers that grew from the heart. Despite the vines, and the flowers, then the thorns of their throats, they wailed to smite down the hide which gleamed moonlight.
The grey dragon continued to circle his ring of fire. He scoured the landscape. Felt the fury rise in his chest. Then, his glare snagged a silhouette of monstrous omen. It has awoken… he realized, amidst the horror that dawned him whole. Oh, have mercy on my heart.
At once, the sky erupted. The monstrous omen screamed to slaughter the winged beast from the sky. Try the dragon did, though it was fruitless. The scream bludgeoned him to disorientation. His head twisted into his wings, and his tail thrashed—away from the omen, for his balance.
Mercy was but a dream.
The grey dragon plummeted to the wetlands.
And the flowers bloomed bright.
. / .
"The heart of a pure witch…"
Between them sat the hermit's cauldron. Within it broiled a monstrosity. The fire beneath smoldered as savage fervor, and it gave rise to broth which glowed a deafening blue. Her crimson eye followed slabs of meat and foliage—watched them blister.
And on the other side, bright, rust eyes that did the same. Lips thinned, the hermit's company swallowed hoarsely to croak, "And it's the only thing that will help me…?"
The hermit nodded to the rack behind her company, to which rust eyes met a marble, headless bust. There, a lone, blank eye—a moon—that had been painstakingly crystalized into a jade necklace. "That's what my second eye saw and knows. Written by playwright. Found in hands who roam a tower."
Lips thinned again. "Why do creeps like you always have to be so cryptic?" she muttered (almost choked) with narrowed eyes and a quiet grin.
Shrugged, the hermit said, "You get bored being so straightforward after a while."
"Well change it up sometimes! My head will split open all over this…weird rug of yours."
"You like the rug, and you know it."
"Doesn't mean a thi—!"
With her voice rose thorns. The hermit's company choked, and as she felt her throat tear itself apart, she nearly strangled herself to ease the agony. She toppled to the ground and hacked dry malevolence.
From the cauldron, the hermit's crimson eye widened, and she hissed, "Akko… Akko, you can't raise your voice like that!"
Akko wearily smiled between each cough. "I-Is— Is the—"
"Shut up, stupid," the hermit growled. Akko did as told, and she watched the hermit rip a bowl from its shelf and scoop it into the concoction. Then, with care, she crept to her knees at Akko's side. "No, the stew isn't done yet, but the broth is more than ready," she answered, barely voiced.
Akko nodded, and though she couldn't manage spoken gratitude, she knew that the hermit red her tears.
The hollow was dead quiet, aside from Akko's hydration, and too the raw stone all around as it settled. With a hand on Akko's knee, and nails dug into the grey, Ketill canvas of her trousers, the hermit peeled away her hood. Despite what wafted from her bowl, Akko caught the scent of potions that the poncho's boiled wool snagged without remorse.
It was a comfort, really.
As was the rest of their home. (The hermit's home in truth, but, well, things changed without a word exchanged.)
A comfort, yet of the odd sort. Akko never thought that she'd think of this hovel as cozy, nor that the hermit—who wore all black, in the poncho, and the mourning dress underneath—would ever be her source of compassion. Because she was a fickle witch, and she liked being the hermit who lived in a hole. Before and after Akko first (literally) fell onto her doorstep (face-first).
But that was Sucy's way. She loved like a viper, paid for entertainment through venom, and guarded herself as poison.
Akko drained the rest of the broth. Her breath steamed, and she waited. Hands tense around the bowl. Air sucked into her lungs.
Sucy snatched a steel bucket from the cauldron's side, and the moment Akko clasped her fists around it instead, she heaved violently. Mulch poured from her mouth and into the bucket. With every hurl, spindles of her blood, froths of spit. The sound of it, everything vile. The sight of it, red. Sucy kept her hand on Akko's shoulder throughout it all, soothing the knot just underneath her shabby, wool vest. Once, Akko thought of its color like roses, though now the vest's maroon bore too much of a resemblance to what drained from her mouth.
Maybe she could find a better fit in her next venture. Something like the deep violet of her ascot, tied securely around her neck, except…lighter. Like a heather shade. Like Sucy's lips…
Akko winced and leaned back against stone. "Heh…," she rattled, "your cooking always hits the spot…" Sucy didn't answer. She kept herself as apathetic as ever, though the crimson in her eye burned her anguish. "Will it be good cold?" Akko asked.
Sucy nodded slowly, and her answer was absent-minded: "Of course."
With that, she took the bucket from Akko's grasp and set it by a dozen more, each with the same, bloody mulch.
To be dumped later. In the flowerbeds where Akko had once fallen face-first into a new life. Because the ground revered the mulch, and the roots fed off of her blood.
…plants had a way of being far more carnivorous than some people, Akko found.
But, they bloomed best off of Death's back, and if that meant Sucy could brew her any dinner that came to mind, so be it.
From a vest-pocket, Akko pulled out a slip of parchment. Her eyes scanned the intricate map that had been stamped on after—what she assumed—days of reworking metal into the shape of this island: Nova Coast, the largest of the seventeen. Akko pawed the strings of her trousers where her wand was always tied, and through a sour, grumbled breath, she murmured to the map, "Show me to the tower…"
Specks tore across the page in a brilliant green. Akko deflated against the wall, and she eyed the quaint hollow in thought.
Every few hours she checked the map. Each time, Akko couldn't fathom how she would ever manage the energy. Each and every few hours, she wanted to laze underneath the hammock she could no longer climb to—hung within a different hollow of theirhome—, or to burrow in their shared bed, down the ladder just next to the cauldron.
But someday, Akko would be able to climb to that hammock. She had to.
Because she couldn't bear the thought of Sucy in her bedchambers alone, recalling the days when there was no Akko, and when the hermit hermit-ed in silence. None of the bombastic attempts at magic that should have collapsed the cavern system whole. Nevermore the quiet nights where she waited for Akko's return, nor similar times in which they found ways to forget the world, tangled within the sheets of those very bedchambers…
Akko stared into the map again. With a light heart and free lungs, the trip would've been a few days regardless. Jetpack fuel was scarce hard to come by, and though Sucy had managed to concoct a better solution than the old croaks in town used, it wasn't something she could just drain away without thought. By the hour, by the minute, Akko had to be wary of the fuel burning on her back.
And with a heavy heart, and chained lungs, those few days meant a week.
She missed the days where she could fly higher. Clouds were like velvet against her skin.
Wearily, Akko watched the magic across the map fade, then flipped the parchment over.
WITCH WANTED FOR CRIMES OF THE STATE
ALIVE
DIANA CAVENDISH
REWARD: 500,000
Cavendish… Akko vaguely recalled the name. One of the nobles. An aristocrat. And even though the story of this particular name melded with the rest, she couldn't help but grow curious. The aristocrats of the Lunar Isles either were the first to flower, or were the first to block off the rest of the world, without a damn extended to whoever pled for mercy at their doorstep.
Witch or not, they were all the same.
…still. Akko wormed against the wall, and she chewed the inside of her cheek.
"I don't… I don't want to kill anybody, Sucy…"
"It wouldn't be the first time."
"Well—" She slacked, then half-heartedly glared at the cauldron where Sucy tended to their dinner, her medicine. "I-I know. But I've only killed people who'd hurt us, or people who've flowered… Not—" Akko swallowed down mulch. "Not an innocent witch."
Sucy paused her stirring, and she exhaled quietly. "I know."
Akko scanned the wanted poster again, though it was less following the page and more branding the ink further into memory. Further into her skull until it was nothing more than a scorched imprint. "They don't even want her dead," she grunted.
"Yet," rang as a reminder. "You know if anybody works with witch-hunters, that's how it ends. They want something from her first. That's all."
A hardened scowl throve across her face. "But it's hardly worse than us…" Sucy didn't answer, not that Akko expected her to. She numbly folded the parchment and slipped it back in place—just over her breast. "We could just—" Akko sucked in the air needed to get to her feet. "Just take the money instead and find a cure that way…" she tried, maneuvering back to the cauldron through a clumsy stride.
Something that Akko did expect: a firm hand latched around her arm with nails that dug to carve. "You know that's not how this works, Akko…" Sucy murmured as she herded her to a quaint table and chair, sat within a sunken wall. "Life requires sacrifice. It's always been like that," she continued as Akko slumped in her seat. "It's how we eat—animal or otherwise. Every one of us. Including the trees."
Akko played with the felt of her ascot. Her heart sank, and her gut writhed. "It's…really the only way to fix me, i-isn't it?"
Back at the cauldron, Sucy paused. Her whisper was a mere breath: "Yeah." Akko heard her swallow, and despite the hermit's iron-clad heart, she warbled, "It is."
"Just— S-Sucy, please just promise that…this witch won't feel it."
Akko didn't need to look. She knew Sucy's nod, and she knew her genuine glance for the table. "I'll have you give her the strongest sleeping draught I have. She wouldn't feel a thing."
Her words were a relief, a comfort, but the reality behind them was hardly so.
. \ .
The days in her tower felt longer than they had been a century ago. A mere few decades, even…
Diana Cavendish was by no means a recluse, per se, though the more her solitude forced her habits to flourish, the more the witch realized that she was more isolated than she had thought. Which, by definition, was to a detriment. (And potentially reclusive. Not that Diana would ever admit such a thing.) She never was good at gatherings, and though her closest friends visited—Hannah England and Barbara Parker, both originally from the mainland—, Diana felt that…any company beyond two would have her short-circuit.
And that wouldn't do.
But it was her pitiful reality. The past handful of decades did their part to destroy her social standing, and Diana could feel the last of it waste away by the hour.
Diana wasn't lonely, however. No. Cavendishes didn't get lonely. The lineage was well-accustomed to living in solitude for the search of old, reliable medicine, in spite of whatever steam frothed from gears and ironwork. And what a blotch on history did that kind of technology leave behind. Such loud and obnoxious pieces of pretty stone. Which spat grime and air. And—
She stared into the mirror mid-fold with her ascot tie. Diana pricked its fabric and glared into its cornflower hue.
Dammit. Four times, in that day, she went stewing about nonwitch technology. Verbally. Silently… Not that she knew which. Either way, Diana really needed to stamp the habit out. Fifteen years now, and it was truly getting on her nerves.
Diana fixed her cravat right, then folded it into the collar of her finest tailcoat. She smoothed it over the length of her dress. A dark midnight blue overtop a strong indigo, because it had been too long since Diana had seen the horizon meet ocean waters. Perhaps she could visit one of the pebbled beaches…
It would be close to their cottage, she ruminated. And not far from the Haven.
She scowled quietly. With Hannah and Barbara's cottage, and the Haven, Diana thought on patrols. The ones from the town on the opposite side, all of whom were witch-hunters. And between them and what disease plagued the land, Diana couldn't risk it. Not as the last Cavendish. Not as the world died around her.
Her eyes, like ocean, like pale hyacinth, slunk drearily to the modest portrait of her bedchambers. In it, a witch with the same eyes, and the same hair—pale greens and tainted white. Her mother's face was fuller, though. Fuller than Diana's narrow angles. Bernadette looked as youthful as ever, and Diana felt far, far older than she should've.
Perhaps living a year older than one's mother did that. Perhaps Diana was a lonely recluse after all…
She slunk down the stairs and into the focal point of her tower: the study, and with it, a wide, extravagant doorway that led to the main balcony. As Diana strode across the room to her lavish desk, her gaze roamed the diagrams and notes tacked on the wall. Of the heart, the lungs. Some animals. Some plants. Others, nothing but scrawled word. All, faded by dust. Left untouched for the past…
How long had it been?
Had Diana not so much as glanced at her family's legacy in the past year?
Few years? More?
A hand soothed over an eye, and Diana lingered by the corner of the desk. Failure, a thought chimed, a voice not alike her own. Your mother healed the island before her century.
And you've just crossed two.
Diana fiddled with the pin of her ascot, and she worked her jaw.
She did it all sick, and you were born healthy.
What kind of Cavendish—
She tossed her head and reared herself away from the desk. Diana shunted it all behind her. Instead, she reached for the tome set on a side-table, paired with a modest rocking chair. Candles lit themselves as she collapsed miserably onto its seat. She thumbed over the title, The Heart of a Pure Witch.
Pages were turned, and Diana read. Hours went by, and she felt herself drain away. The sun sunk into the horizon, and…
At the last hour of sunset.
She paused. The tome was closed.
A peculiar haze drifted through Diana's tower. Somebody was watching her… Not from a window, however, nor a shadow. These eyes were far, far away from her.
Diana waited until the moment passed, and the prickle down her neck cleared. The book was set down.
"I don't know any witch that has that breed of magic…" she murmured quietly, to herself. Diana crept to her feet and wandered across the room. While it had been fleeting, it was an omen. How Diana didn't notice the intrusion before it reached her sanctum was beyond her, and taste of it… Whatever magic it was, it tasted like snake. A silent, calculated spell. Deft in evading the likes of a Cavendish. Accustomed to lurking before the inevitable strike.
Dark magic was at play. Strong magic, at that. Of methodical, hellbent patience.
Oh… Oh no… Diana held herself and gnawed the inside of her cheek. Her complexion paled by the second. Her hands broke from her arms to wring each other by the wrist, then work the tension from her knuckles.
Not a witch. Not a spell.
This was brewed. This had been an alchemist.
For the life of her, Diana knew an alchemist with a serpentine temperament was by far the worst enemy to make. Other witches preyed upon each other as bears, stalking down their territory. Alchemists, however… They preyed in secret for however long it took to have the hunted forget their place.
And when an alchemist struck, when the time came that Diana had forgotten, all that would be needed is one potion, and some more time for the alchemist to wait.
Then crawl from whatever shadows they lurked.
Then find her body once it was done with…
But, Diana wasn't just any witch. She refused to forget. So, wand at hand, she whispered to the grandfather clock. Time stilled. The arms flicked backwards. And the face burned a hot, violent blue.
Diana and the tower lurched together.
As for the few bricks of the foundation left behind, those would join the tower again. Someday.
Hello! Another fic, I know. Updates will be slow on this, but I'm planning (hoping lol) to finish this by early October. So…yeah. If you're interested, keep an eye out I guess. I dunno. There will be 9 chapters in total, though that may change. It wouldn't be that long though. Will also edit as I go along as well.
Anyway, here's the first chapter of a fic that's essentially…Hanahaki apocalypse? But also…an excuse to write Sudiakko? Yeah. Obviously not true Hanahaki Disease. I think it'd be cool where there's an AU with legit Hanahaki Disease as an apocalypse, but tis not what suits this story. I have plans with the disease itself. Kinda just…mash a few fantasy elements here and there. Lol. But, the aesthetic is there, so I guess it still counts. xD Ah well. Hanahaki Apocalypse.
I hope you enjoyed!
:)