☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
you went to the furthest verse of daring / but there you tripped on the high pedestal of justice / and fell
dead, you destroy my life
He does not, unfortunately, lash out, but that is fine. She watches him watching her, observes the way that his gaze lingers on her injured leg – and something comes to her mind from one of her earliest battles as Solterra’s Emissary. She raises her head thoughtfully. He is an assassin. He will seek a weakness, and he’s found one, however minor. Perhaps she can use that to her advantage.
“I won’t run from my mistakes, Raum.” Don’t mistake me for your night king. She has made so many of them; they are lead weights on her shoulder, an ever-present collection of ghosts that would like nothing more than to swallow her whole. Sometimes, she thinks, that perhaps they already have. She was three years old, a girl on the cusp of adulthood, when she was made her nation’s head diplomat, and she was only months older when she ascended the throne; she had barely passed her fourth year when her regent betrayed her and what little she had remade of her kingdom burnt to the ground. Tensions with Denocte grew towards a peak not so much later than that, and then the gods returned, and then her kingdom was swallowed by ice and snow. Seraphina had never been meant to play this role, and she was only too aware of it. She had never been prepared to lose what it would take from her; she wondered sometimes if she ever had it to begin with. She was a child-turned-killer, a faceless drone to be used and used and used for greater forces until there was nothing left of her that could be taken away. She has learned a few things since her ascension. Loyalty isn’t enough. Determination means nothing. Cleverness and intelligence mean little in an unpredictable, shifting landscape. All that matters is resilience. She wakes at night sometimes, covered in blood, the smell of ash still choking her lungs. She rises, half-asleep, a spear stuck between her ribs, stumbling towards a light that won’t come for her yet. The dead occupy her as often as the living; she sees the eyes of dead children and burnt civilians staring at her between the bookshelves in the library, glassy and cold as polished stone. They watch her as she wanders the streets of the capitol, stalks the sands of the Mors. She knows the face of her own god, and she wonders, still, what he thinks of her; none of his blessings, magic and familiars and pretty enchantments, have ever fallen upon her. She is certainly not some chosen queen, and, years into her rule, she knows that she was foolish to assume that simply taking the crown and doing her best with it would be enough to fix what her nation had become.
Really, she has failed magnificently as a ruler.
Still, she keeps standing.
“My absence is one of them. But I wonder…do you really think that you can turn Solterra to ash and dust? I have watched my kingdom burn twice. I have seen it ruled by a tyrant – and I know enough of its history to know that Zolin was hardly the first. Still, we persist.” Her cold, uneven eyes narrow. “What damage you might do will be swallowed by the sands, in time.” This much is a certainty. Tyrants all meet their ends. Life goes on.
If he takes her crown, she will not sit idly by while her people break and burn for her mistakes.
Oh no. She will see his life bleed out, in this moment or another; neither crown nor king mark her loyalty to her people.
She watches him bow, his mockery rendering nothing in her impassive expression. “Ever the courteous one, Crow.” Her tone is cold as ice. She sees in front of her wreckage, and it is not unfamiliar. She knows how it feels to be used and thrown away, made into something monstrous. She knows, certainly, how it feels to be destroyed. “Why are you doing this?” She does not wait for the answer. She can hear it later, however this battle is to end.
She considers, and then she leaps into motion.
Still favoring the leg as she lunges towards him, she seems to stumble over an uneven ridge in the shadow-pocked ground, crumbling towards the ground; she falls towards him, tumbling low, eyes wide and lips curled in some manner of offended distaste. However, as she lunges towards him, convincingly unbalanced and apparently collapsing, she reveals her feint - still lowered, she catches herself – though the gesture was never truly uncontrolled - only when she is as close to him as she can muster, and, still low, hefts her weight forward and aims a vicious kick at his foreleg. Whether or not her hoof connects, she will be quick to spring back, tension running every inch of her wrought-iron frame. She moves to put as much space between them as possible, readying herself to guard as best she can against whatever assault might come her way.
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tags |
notes |I <3 Raum so much, even if he's a jerk. Celebrating the night before my 20th birthday with some good old seraphina suffering(?), as one should.
you went to the furthest verse of daring / but there you tripped on the high pedestal of justice / and fell
dead, you destroy my life
He does not, unfortunately, lash out, but that is fine. She watches him watching her, observes the way that his gaze lingers on her injured leg – and something comes to her mind from one of her earliest battles as Solterra’s Emissary. She raises her head thoughtfully. He is an assassin. He will seek a weakness, and he’s found one, however minor. Perhaps she can use that to her advantage.
“I won’t run from my mistakes, Raum.” Don’t mistake me for your night king. She has made so many of them; they are lead weights on her shoulder, an ever-present collection of ghosts that would like nothing more than to swallow her whole. Sometimes, she thinks, that perhaps they already have. She was three years old, a girl on the cusp of adulthood, when she was made her nation’s head diplomat, and she was only months older when she ascended the throne; she had barely passed her fourth year when her regent betrayed her and what little she had remade of her kingdom burnt to the ground. Tensions with Denocte grew towards a peak not so much later than that, and then the gods returned, and then her kingdom was swallowed by ice and snow. Seraphina had never been meant to play this role, and she was only too aware of it. She had never been prepared to lose what it would take from her; she wondered sometimes if she ever had it to begin with. She was a child-turned-killer, a faceless drone to be used and used and used for greater forces until there was nothing left of her that could be taken away. She has learned a few things since her ascension. Loyalty isn’t enough. Determination means nothing. Cleverness and intelligence mean little in an unpredictable, shifting landscape. All that matters is resilience. She wakes at night sometimes, covered in blood, the smell of ash still choking her lungs. She rises, half-asleep, a spear stuck between her ribs, stumbling towards a light that won’t come for her yet. The dead occupy her as often as the living; she sees the eyes of dead children and burnt civilians staring at her between the bookshelves in the library, glassy and cold as polished stone. They watch her as she wanders the streets of the capitol, stalks the sands of the Mors. She knows the face of her own god, and she wonders, still, what he thinks of her; none of his blessings, magic and familiars and pretty enchantments, have ever fallen upon her. She is certainly not some chosen queen, and, years into her rule, she knows that she was foolish to assume that simply taking the crown and doing her best with it would be enough to fix what her nation had become.
Really, she has failed magnificently as a ruler.
Still, she keeps standing.
“My absence is one of them. But I wonder…do you really think that you can turn Solterra to ash and dust? I have watched my kingdom burn twice. I have seen it ruled by a tyrant – and I know enough of its history to know that Zolin was hardly the first. Still, we persist.” Her cold, uneven eyes narrow. “What damage you might do will be swallowed by the sands, in time.” This much is a certainty. Tyrants all meet their ends. Life goes on.
If he takes her crown, she will not sit idly by while her people break and burn for her mistakes.
Oh no. She will see his life bleed out, in this moment or another; neither crown nor king mark her loyalty to her people.
She watches him bow, his mockery rendering nothing in her impassive expression. “Ever the courteous one, Crow.” Her tone is cold as ice. She sees in front of her wreckage, and it is not unfamiliar. She knows how it feels to be used and thrown away, made into something monstrous. She knows, certainly, how it feels to be destroyed. “Why are you doing this?” She does not wait for the answer. She can hear it later, however this battle is to end.
She considers, and then she leaps into motion.
Still favoring the leg as she lunges towards him, she seems to stumble over an uneven ridge in the shadow-pocked ground, crumbling towards the ground; she falls towards him, tumbling low, eyes wide and lips curled in some manner of offended distaste. However, as she lunges towards him, convincingly unbalanced and apparently collapsing, she reveals her feint - still lowered, she catches herself – though the gesture was never truly uncontrolled - only when she is as close to him as she can muster, and, still low, hefts her weight forward and aims a vicious kick at his foreleg. Whether or not her hoof connects, she will be quick to spring back, tension running every inch of her wrought-iron frame. She moves to put as much space between them as possible, readying herself to guard as best she can against whatever assault might come her way.
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tags |
notes |
Summary: Sera continues her back-and-forth with Raum, and she thinks about how much she sucks at her job for approximately the hundredth time because she's a broken record. This is what happens when you put an 18-year-old in charge of a
Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 0
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left: 1
Item(s) Used: N/A
Response Deadline: 2/13
Tags: @Raum, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
