Lovely, Lively

[Norsepal]

(*mood music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awFy4h6XMrQ *)

We spoke last in dizzying refrains, heady moments of blood loss amidst the frosted woods where you crept.

Were those moments reality? Shattered little flakes of ice, scattered about on a purple linen sheet, revealing fractals, patterns, rainbow-like in their splintering. You beheld The Woods, in all of its glory, and you were stripped bare by it, rendered down to your desires we saw each of them, you could not hide from our baleful witness.

That desire remains, doesn't it? You want to be a HERO it echoed like the pounding in your head, the iron in your blood recoiling, do you feel it? do you feel it?. You wanted it so badly, when we plucked you from that hollow, crying and clutching close a doll, having eaten some mushrooms that you most assuredly shouldn't have. You wanted to kill them all, every single last one of them KILL THEM KILL THEM, as the smoke and fires danced from the pitiful collection of huts you called home. No brave knights were riding to save you then not now not ever.

So! We gave you what you sought blood, vivid, violent, rich, redolent. You're a hero now. The bravest knight in all of Faerie, all of Faerun!

There isn't a foe you won't face! Not a quest you won't undertake! Not a maiden or prince, besotted and besotted, you won't save. And in your wake, you will leave desolation, death, destruction.

After all, isn't that what heroes do? it's exactly what heroes do

Rise from your knees knees knees knees, Dame-Errant Laevisi of the Autumnal Fringe. It would be unbecoming of a Questing Knight to be seen in such a pitiful state.

[Norsepal]

(* Mood Music: https://youtu.be/870j0RZhRD4 *)

"LIV!"

It shook her for a moment. Was that her name? Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. it's not your name they're saying, you know

"LIV!"

She felt a pressure right under her sternum. A pushing, up and down, up and down, up and down. Three was an important number, wasn't it?

"LIV!"

The first thing that returned to her was the cold. It sank into her deeper than an ocean. By comparison, the frigid air felt positively balmy. She coughed. Warmth spread like pinpricks pine needles spread through her body as she seemed to heave back to life, a roughly-garbed trapper standing over her with wide eyes.

"Wha..." The trapper looked at the woman, amazed, shocked, and so many other things they're afraid of you.

"Hello hello!" A beaming smile split her face, as she stood up from the snow that had covered her like a thick blanket like leaves on a forest floor.

She shook some of the snow from her mantle pushing up towards the sun, coughing, before regarding herself, ignoring the now slowly backing away man.

Everything seemed to be in order! Solid, comforting bronze, the armor of a Hero. Armaments that matched the same, with a vibrant tabard to even out the rest. Lovely.

The trapper, ignored. He isn't important.

Her direction took her towards wooden gates, getting lost several times along the way, but a Hero doesn't remain so for long.

[Norsepal]

(Mood Music: https://youtu.be/PUQ9S-MeldE)

A remnant of old, of a time when she could not be grasped tight enough.

Heavy, Cold iron in her hand, rubbed smooth by the passage of years, yet still able to be donned on a finger.

~

What are you looking at, dear?

The voice wasn't so much a voice as a suggestion of one.

It belonged to a curious thing that might charitably be considered a man, if you thought about it for long enough.

"Just tomorrow. Today. Whenever, as I do."

She spoke just like she always had, melody ringing in her voice, smile stretching wide. She didn't speak those words, but even still, they were spoken.

The thing looked like air and the space it occupied were shaken vigorously, in the vague shape of a man wearing formal clothing. Like the presence of it was something that could never be excised entirely, but something that could only be scrambled. Covered.

Other faces, portraits on walls, similarly nothing but crawling existence, flickering in and out in indecipherable machinations.

She stared down at the ring in her hand, the weight of it feeling greater than it should have been, but even so. As she witnessed it, the smoothed iron reshaped itself, the bare signet becoming that same boiled, hissing emptiness.

Or the ring.

It did not speak. Even still it suggested. The form shifted towards her, but it could not help but do so wrongly, the formlessness of its excisement only exacerbating its unnatural motions.

A smile came up from her, unbidden, like something that was painted upon her, like a fresh coat of varnish upon wood.

Something reached out from it, and it howled, like something from a nightmare, the closeness of its touch being like a cold beyond reckoning, but even though it tore, and tore, she leaned into it.

She couldn't help herself, after all. It comforted.

[Norsepal]

https://youtu.be/R4zq2yWJNH8?si=5tQ_EOT35nRBEi8s

Promises made, long long ago; can you not already feel the armor upon your flesh, Hero?

(More coming soon!)