[ She leaves early in the morning, while the hyenas are still asleep. It is easier that way, to avoid their complaints and demands and insinuations. They have grown brazen under Haran's watch, thinking they belong in the House, thinking that Qetzi is somehow indebted for her continued survival. She is not their servant, and what cleaning she does within the House is for her own satisfaction, not theirs.
She leaves early in the morning after another night of ghosts and whispers. She is used to it by now, and perhaps in a way looks forward to the familiar voices of her sisters, even if they come in wails and screams now. She knows what they want from her, but there are other calls which much be answered. The call to preserve their blood, the call to escape. The two conflict, and never so stridently as when she is in the House itself. And so she leaves, early in the morning.
She takes no path on her way into the woods, looks for no markers amongst the mist. The trees will open the way for her as they see fit. Past the river where her mother had once walked in the night, past the abandoned coal mines where once strangers had thought to find fortunes and instead found death, past the little unconsecrated cemetery where the first settlers of the Hill lay. And then the flowers are before her, wild and brambling, sprawling in every direction, clawing their way up trees and strangling the life from them. A secret place that she had found as a child, and now returns to as a woman for the solace it provides. No demon will find her here.
She spends the afternoon tending to her wildflowers. Coaxing the stems of smothered flowers up into the light, up around branches to receive more sun. She scatters cinnamon and coffee at the roots to keep slugs and infections away. She pricks her finger on the stem of a blackberry and shares her blood with the fruit. Once there had been such a patch by the House, tended to and beloved by her grandmother, long since torn up now. When the sun becomes to hot for such a night-born creature, she takes to the shade of one grand Elder Tree untouched by the invasion of wildflower. Its mossy boss is comfortable and she sleeps there for a time, she dreams of dancing and soft kisses and she awakes with purple wisteria braided into her hair. As the sun begins to set, she clips a few flowers to take back to the House, collects a small satchel's worth of berries. ]
[ The girl who returns to the House at sundown has an armful of vibrant flowers. She is dressed functionally, but feminine. Her dark dress made of strong canvas, her boots sturdy and tall and caked with mud. She is not surprised that the visitor is there, she knows who comes and goes from the Hill as well as Haran does.
However... she is perhaps surprised to find him in her kitchen.
She hesitates in the doorway for a moment before she carries on with her business, laying down her bundle of weeds on the square wooden table where once daughters and granddaughters had helped to prepare dinners and potions. ]
[ The most troubling part of the stranger's presence in the kitchen, possibly, is the thoughtful repose in which he seems to have been caught. Standing, so conscious that he does not belong there, but with one hand resting at the edge of the table like one might on a horse or dog: measuring, analytical. As if one could take the pulse of the House, or perhaps it's the kitchen specifically that caught his interest.
As she enters, he turns smoothly and unhurriedly to face her, the hand slipping from the table just as she deposits her flowers, quite without any obvious intention to do so. Guileless in the face like a child, though he is tall enough to make that effect disconcerting at times. ]
Good evening, mistress.
[ The honorific is a bit antiquated to him as he grew up much more working class than his affectations with Haran would have suggested, but it seems like the right word. Haran is the master of the house, yet Brandon would guess he does not do much living in it. Not in the way he guesses, looking at this kitchen, that she does. And no shirking is possible; he must begin finding out how good at guessing he's been, from now until he's ejected from the premises, bodily or fatally. ]
[ The kitchen is the heart of this House. When entering in the front door, there is only a small landing and two sets of stairs. One leading down into the depths of the cavernous basement where the monsters still cry in the dark, and the other upwards, the first doorway leading into the galley. It has some oddly modern conveniences for a witch's scullery: a small white refrigerator, a gas oven and stove top, dingy white laminate countertops, and even dingier ceramic tiles on the floor.
When the House had been full, so had the fridge, brimming with cuts of meat and pickled organs and drying herbs. It is mainly abandoned now, there is no family to feed and no more meat besides. Haran and the hyenas have picked clean the clan of hill folk who had bred for and fed the witches and their beasts for generations upon generations.
With her home in such a sorry state... the 'mistress' hits Qetzi'ah oddly, like some kind of needling little insult and her mind reels for a moment with odd thoughts: a witch's cruelty, a faerie's mercurialness. She blinks slowly and pushes both away. ]
Qetzi'ah will do. [ She states that cooly. ] And you are?
[They've had the chance to meet, sometime when Haran wasn't - didn't care to - be around, probably tending to another capture in the city. None of the people leftover in this house care much for the guests he chooses to bring in, and he's sure Brandon is just another one.
Still, the boy knows his way around... He knows how to talk to the Morrisons and wants to learn how to appeal to them, most of all Haran, which the spoiler brat likes. The hyenas are restless with the new presence, desperate to snap their teeth at fresh meat, and Haran may just decide to send it to them if he's proved wrong.
Do the others feel anything new about him, though? They must have had the chance to talk and form an opinion by now. Even Tavor, stuck in the basement with the other monstrosities, watches from the shadows.]
Qetzi...
[A sing-song mutter, playing with one of the flowers she's left in the kitchen.]
[ Qetzi'ah sighs to herself softly when she hears his voice floating down the hallways. Once upon a time she may have been able to like him, she was an amiable girl much to Kandake's disapproval and there was little that truly put her off. Haran now represented all things ugly and disruptive. And she was not a dog to be called for in such a manner.
She remains in her window seat for a moment, trying to focus on her book but her annoyance makes it impossible to finish the page. She snaps it shut and forces herself to find some composure. Showing her hatred would do her no good in this situation. She lays her palm over the mourning brooch on her dress, taking strength and protection from her sister's memory.
Only then does she come down the hall, the heels of her little leather boots thumping dully across the dirt-caked wooden floors. ]
Yes, Haran?
[ Her tone is flat and slightly peevish, but in no way expresses the full breadth of her disdain for him. ]
[He hears it all in her voice, sees it in her manners, but he pays no mind. For all the tyranny he has brought upon this house, he has refrained from dictating how the few survivors should behave. It was made clear he would tolerate no disloyalty, however, even if only in the number of cadavers buried around the house. So long as Qetzi'ah allows him to be King, he will allow her to be annoyed all she wants.
Haran trusts that Brandon will pick up on it very quickly. Qetzi does like to talk.]
Have you seen the boy? The young wizard I invited to our house?
[Saying 'our' to her is nothing more than a favor, even if it is also the truth.]
[ Dinah is rarely alone. She had been born into this world in a squirming, messy litter full of teeth and laughter. She had devoured her sisters before she could even open her eyes, could even walk, and that was the world to which she belonged. A simple place between animal and mankind, between life and death. Magic and mayhem.
Their mother had been a half-breed, the daughter of a demon dead woman and the Cerberus demi-god whose duty it was to keep her behind the gates of Hell, to guard her in the upper world when those gates should be unlocked. Neither of them human, at least not any longer, and neither of them what one could call truly, fully, alive. Spectral and immortal, and so was their daughter who wandered in twilight feasting on the corpses they would leave behind as they wreaked death upon all things they touched.
Their father had been witch through and through. He is gone now, and this... does not trouble Dinah. He had only ever gotten in the way of things when he had lived. He had prevented her from disciplining the pack as she saw fit, instead injecting his ugly witch family's strange laws where they did not truly belong. All it had done was fuel their frustration, like dogs chained together in a pen, snapping at each other for lack of space.
Things are better now in Haran's hands, the demon spawn is more alike to them. More mercurial and disinterested, like their mother had been. She had left them when they were young because they did not need her, and she did not need them. And now the hyenas stay for comfort not for obligation. She can even tolerate Hekate's return now that things have gone on for so long, the mad little bitch had proven herself with her survival. With the witches gone... what was there left to fight over. The House was theirs, the Hill was there.
They would pick it clean. The thought graces Dinah's daydreams and it feels right to her as the daughter of Anubis.
She is not usually alone, in the usual there are her males always beside her, larger and stronger than the rest, but she has left them sleeping in the den to come out into the quiet of the woods and admire its barrenness now that the dark-eyed women of the House no longer extend their tendrils out into the mists. ]
[ The girl lazing on the steps of the House does not quite look like the other Morrisons. She is taller than them both, her shoulders are wider and her legs look very strong. It is easy to see in the loose clothes she wears, wet hair trailing over her shoulder after a dip in the stream. Her eyes are more deeply socketed than the witches he has met, and the eyes set so deeply are intense and wild.
She tilts her head at Brandon as he comes back up the path, her tongue pressed to the back of a canine tooth in a thoughtful, hungry smile. ]
[ Demure and unthreatening as a boy wearing his father's coat, Brandon seems to feel the chill of this land no matter the weather, which has as much to do with his own nature as it does the nature of the place. His heavy peacoat only makes him look more scrawny, but it is necessary for the carefully pieced together charms in its lining, as are the boots with runes and sigils carved into the soles. He leaves no footprints on the path, and he stops as soon as he sees her — all the little human signs of wariness and vulnerability in him easy to read. A change in breathing, tiny movements in the eyelids. The way his hand rises to the middle of his chest, something feathery fluttering in the cage of his fingers like one might imagine his heart to be.
Though it isn't. Not yet. He looks at her fleetingly, searchingly, and lowers his gaze again. Two Morrisons left, and she is not one of them. ]
Greetings. I've come to pay a tribute to Dinah... if that is you.
[ Not quite as sweet as he was for Qetzi'ah in the interest of being far more direct. That is his guess for what a hyena might prefer, if it is her. Haran seems to enjoy some artfulness, he should bow his head to Qetzi, but for Dinah, he will make every attempt to immediately prove more useful or entertaining alive and unhurt than as a mouthful of flesh. ]
[ Her interest in what he has to say is a dull raising of an eyebrow, and then she sniffs at him, inhaling deeply. She memorizes him, his subtle magic and the vaguest inkling of an upturned cemetery. She licks something from between her teeth and rises from where she lounged. Her height becomes more obvious then. She and her three males are the largest, alike to a man Adina Morrison had chosen to be her stud and bested in combat for the right. They are built like warriors, the four of them. The other hyenas are slivers of moonlight in comparison, starved out by the elders to establish control. ]
I am Dinah. [ She has a deep voice for a female. She shakes her wet hair with a jerk of her head, flinging water from the ends of tangled hair. She approaches him slightly too close, peering into his face. ] And what do you claim to be.
[ She does not ask him who he is, she doesn't care what his name is. If he is here, Haran has allowed it, and that is all for now. ]
[The sun sets. The hyenas have fed and are content for the night; Qetzi arranges dinner as per Haran's request, and Brandon is invited to be at the dinner table by eight. Haran dresses well; he steals one of his grandfather's best jackets to wear it primly, confident that Qetzi will hate him all the more for it. The worst part, perhaps, is that it fits him perfectly.
Once the clock ticks to the first second of the hour, he places down one of the poppy moth larvae he's carefully placed on display in the master bedroom, considering whom to use them on first. Perhaps one of the hyenas, just to start. There are plenty of them and the majority are perfectly disposable; plus, their magic and strong connection with the most vicious side of nature makes them prime sources of energy.
Later.
He steps into the room, hand sliding lightly on the back of the main chair. He looks at his cousin first, then at the wizard, sitting down until he's well settled. Then he gestures at them with a deceitfully kind smile, allowing the two the honor of sitting with him.]
We've arranged tonight's meal especially for you, wizard.
[ To handle the family's food is an honor, not a sleight, in this house. The kitchen is centrally located, no way to go up into the House without passing it by, and when the family still lived there was always a witch inside of it, hard at work handling the meat, preparing grand dinners for the family. Qetzi'ah would not let Haran cook in her kitchen even if she wanted to, and so his cavalier statement that we did anything annoys her, she leaves it alone and simply carries on setting up the table.
The table is one of great character, heavy and ancient, its surface dented and scratched with the years, like the scars of a living thing. It is also a table of ghosts. So many empty chairs stand watch over their little farce, like an unseen convocation. There's ignoring it, the huge table and its large chairs and fit claustrophobically into a large side nook, as if to trap those at the table in their places until released.
When all is set in place, Qetzi'ah sits down in a chair that belongs to her, the three of them scattered oddly along the length. She tucks herself behind a cup of tea, not meeting either of their eyes. She had attempted, in her own off-hand way, to warn Brandon off of eating in this House.
This meal will taint him in a way she is not entirely sure he has been foretold of. They still eat the flesh of humankind here, although not nearly so voraciously as they once had. The hill folk they breed and feast off of have almost become prosperous, it's a pity. They aren't as frightened as they should be. ]
[ Earlier this evening in his room, Brandon has spoken out loud (to the messenger, he pretends, so he can let the House and its whispering inhabitants listen in on his thoughts), imagine this, I didn't bring a dinner jacket. A joke with layers, though it's been years since he's eaten out of bins when there was nothing at home, and no one to help him get anything.
So he's dressed as usual when Haran finally arrives with the exception of a silver lapel pin in the shape of an anemone, staring almost dreamily at the table. He shifts his attention to Haran immediately, like the well-mannered diplomat he was sent to be, and evinces no impatience with this elaborate charade. Everybody needs games, utterly spoiled, tyrannous witch-demon boys most of all.
As he takes his oddly placed seat further down the table, he says in the same tone of voice he might use to thank the mother of a friend who invited him to stay and eat: ]
[ Which is sure to scrape at Qetzi's good will, but everything about this dinner was most likely going to, and she's already making an effort to detach — Brandon could guess one or two reasons why. One doesn't have to know Haran longer than a few minutes to figure he won't let that stand, so he might as well factor into the inevitable tension and awkwardness. ]
I hope you won't find it forward if I propose a toast. To family.
[ His voice is so calm and clear, younger than he is, innocent only in its unflinching straightforwardness in going there. ]
[ Tavor has always resided in the cavernous depths beneath the House. There was never another world for him; no other option. There was no way for him to feign humanity, and neither was he witch. He is a monster, in far more depth than even the other creatures housed in the labyrinthine cellars could suggest. Half-breed abomination, one of a kind, a mistake in nature, and too barren to ever replicate himself. He will live and he will die, son of the black dirt more than he ever was of the Morrisons.
With pure-blood Sapphira gone, if anyone is emissary of the true spirit of House, it is Tavor crawling in the squalid under-layers. He maintains the last of the menagerie, the pieces that could be contained after the communal will of the family was vanquished by Haran.
'Maintains' may be a strong word. He can be moved to feed them on occasion, speaks with them when it suits him to, but he is quite an absentee guardian. His mother would be disappointed in him, but then he had always been disappointed in his mother. So they would, at last, be even. This disappointment is his feeling for all of the witches, an ever present disdain that he does not hide and does not need to. He is inconsequential to them, a stain on their lineage they would rather forget but cannot quite sever.
He appears when he is summoned, he disappears again when released, finding his way ever deeper into the heart of the Hill. ]
[ For all the long studious hours set bending his mind toward the Morrison mentality, Brandon would admit if truly pressed that some of what they hold to be abominations puzzles him. There are cultural elements at work, probably, and his own lesser affinity for creatures that he raised up and stitched together himself. Incestuous, cannibalistic, murderous - what, exactly, could be so profane about Tavor that his domain is the basement?
Oh, well. He's about to find out, as unenthused as he is at the prospect. His dedication to giving gifts to all remaining living Morrisons is partially lip service; it's one thing to strive to please Qetzi'ah, who remains above and clearly in a position to do something, or not do something, but the way Haran speaks of Tavor makes Brandon think that's less likely to be true.
Which does make him twice as valuable, then, as a potential ally... yet Brandon doesn't feel confident it's doable. Chalk it up to the atmosphere as they descend.
He wears his coat with its clever linings, his shoes with the soles that leave behind faint imprints of little symbols. No weapons, no armor, no seven league boots (which would do him very little good underground, if he were to take fairy tale relics seriously), no sacred bough as a wand. He's just not that kind of magus.
Better than all those things, though he can't possibly think of taking advantage of it this early, is the pressing sense of the dead. All the bodies and death that have sunk deep into the hill. One might expect him to look wan and trembly down here in the dark. Wan, sure - there's nothing he can do about that pallor - but Brandon is steady of eye and limb, though he keeps his gaze low and humble as always. He doesn't want to display anything like strength right now. ]
[ It smells like animals. Like the close claustrophobic smell of dirt and refuse and hay, a distant dampness that rises from the subterranean lakes, turned sour and copper from all the sweat and blood soaked into earthen ceilings, walls, floors. There's a haze of smoke from the torches which burn here at the entrance to it all. The room at the bottom of the stairs is the only place lit so well. Once, this was the place where little witches would load up their baskets of food to take into the depths. Now it is empty, disused, hauntingly silent.
Tavor comes up out of the dark without a sound. He too is quite wan, an underground creature with sallow skin and beady eyes. At first, half hidden in the shadow, he looks like little more than a somewhat ugly man, but as he comes closer he is exposed. There is something animal about him, about his gaze, about the way he holds himself, the suggestions of the workings beneath his paper-thin skin under which all veins can be see. He has sharp teeth and sharp claws, a long thick tail the color of flesh which thrashes and coils behind him. His clothes are ancient and ragged, filthy, the white collared shirt beneath the dark blazer and slacks is an amusing play at civility.
He curls his clawed hands, placing them into his pockets, posture slouched, expression contemplative. He sniffs at Brandon. Smells his clever little magicks but makes no mention of it. ]
Magus. [ A shrug of a greeting. ] Do you know why you're here?
[ In her own way, Qetzi'ah does not expect the magus to return. She hopes that after seeing the basement and Haran's pathetic sense of 'amusements' that he has thought better of this entire game, reported to his masters that there is nothing worth their time nor flattery. It wouldn't be entirely true, there are generations worths of arcana and magick collected, some of them utterly invaluable. But... she would slit his throat long before she parted with a single piece of it, and were that feckless slug Haran to attempt to undermine her-- Well. Everyone is curious to know how far he will have to push her before the rage bubbling just beneath the surface will finally spill forth. Does she have it in her finish him?
No, not yet.
But as she throws cards and bones the image the knife comes again and again, precarious and too close to the past, present and future. It is all roads.
In her own way, Qetzi'ah also hopes desperately that the magus does return. He is the wind of change in the air, disrupting the stagnant routine that she and Haran have fallen in to. A catalyst and distraction, something that might pull Haran's attention away, might weaken him enough for her to drive the dagger home. But then what would she do with the magus... Morrisons are hoarding folk, it seems a waste to simply kill him but he's far too sickly and weak for breeding. But what other choice would she have? He was what was left. No villagers remained in the hovels of the surrounding hills, where once this would easily have been solved.
The crystals and entrails show her nothing in that regard, she even grows desperate enough to go out into the meadow in the dark and ask those pretty things that dance beneath the moon.
[ He'd taken a detour after bidding Tavor what he flatters himself was a congenial farewell, and sure of the path he'd marked (twice now, first by himself, second by messenger). However steeped in decay Brandon had found the house, the beast warrens below are worse. Yet the carelessly flung aside nephilim skull is still discernible in all of it — older, keener, and familiar. A frigid wisp of a curse escapes its mandible when he lays hands on it again, like sudden exposure to outer space. He laughs and tucks it into his coat again.
Only later, in his room, does he think to ask it about Qetzi'ah. It is obdurate as always, refusing questions it deems inadequate or imprecise, giving poor answers when backed into a semantic corner. Brandon is familiar with its ways, and clever enough, though he has yet to realize that it's his lack of power, his vulnerable mortality that forces it to answer in a way it wouldn't answer the real necromancers.
And so... an answer, of sorts, to the pressing question of what Qetzi'ah would accept as a gift. This time the skull is the one who laughs.
He doesn't loose another messenger just yet. It is not necessary, given Kaevyn's skills. All he has to do to put this plan into motion is make a call. ]
There are hooded figures in the forest. Dark creatures, Kaevyn can immediately tell, watching from one of the branches of the tallest trees. With his poor eyesight there isn't a lot of detail he can see, and with the spells they cast all around him he becomes almost blind to their traps. He is still angered by the invasion, he is still reckless, so he throws acorns at their heads and flees to hide between the leaves. Capturing the little fae who has no allies is almost instantaneous after that. He's placed in a container from which he can't escape, isolating his magic so he can't interfere with any machines that cross his path on the way to who-knows-where.
He weeps, threatens, he laments, he curses. It is the longest time of his life and he keeps switching between furious and terrified. Finally, he arrives at a dark forest, where the messenger awaits Brandon's arrival to pick up the bottle. ]
[ Qetzi'ah's room is lined with dried flowers. Across the ceiling and up the walls, the bundles of flowers are each neatly tied with twine and strung to thin trellises that make a barrier against the true walls of her room. It gives the illusion that the little area has been thatched in with herbs, as if it is its own little world. But then, every bedroom in the House has such a feel when you step across the threshold, although that surety has been waning surely night after night now that all of the inhabitants are gone. Qetzi can do nothing to prevent this, and every time she enters one of the old rooms to dust, she feels that sense of their death. Their nearness fading. They are no more, and their energy bleeds from all that had once resonanted with them, whispering out into nothingness.
Aside from the flowers, placed carefully on dresser tops and shelves are Qetzi's other little knicknacks. Her sentimental hairworks from each of her fallen family members, the moths and butterflies pinned carefully beneath glass... Every part of Qetzi'ah's room is something beautiful but dead. Delicate but decaying. She lives in a twilight place, an in between where she does not quite flourish but neither can she truly allow herself to wither...
She places Kae's jar on her desk, an uncluttered space where he has a clear view of all that goes on in the room, although at the moment that is nothing much. Just Qetzi'ah unlacing her shoes, taking off the outer layer of her dress to sit in her shift, then reaching with little enthusiasm to brush her hair out. Her expression is both sorrowful and irritable, and she is tired in a way that is more emotional than physical.
[ Kaevyn stays quiet for a long time, full of sorrow, irritated as well. The anger of a faerie, as petty as it is, is mighty and gluttonous, thinking of every single reason to turn back against the causer of its spite. How dare he, how dare he, how could he. Kaevyn tries to cook up new recipes for all the horrible poisons he would have Brandon drink before Qetzi sets him down, and the clink of the jar brings him back to reality.
With a glare, he watches her. There is little interest in what she's doing - surely nothing about humans should ever interest him again - but there's a quiet elegance, a beauty to it. There is no understanding of the intimacy of watching a witch undress and brush her hair. He sees what he sees, and that is what strikes him. As for everything that makes up the room around him, he will have to pay attention to it before he makes a proper note.
The glare has transformed to something without curiosity, only the eagerness to observe. But he is still sorrowful, and so his wings droop. ]
[ Hekate and her brother-consort keep unusual patterns upon the Hill. Almost as if strangers to it. They do not fit, they do not blend into the shadows with their pale hair and blue eyes. They are ethereal, ghostly, but always tipped in blood, crusted into their nails, stained at the hems of their clothing. They keep apart from the others. Hekate clearly does not even particularly mourn the other males left of her litter. She has deemed them weak and unfaithful and left them in Dinah's care. It does not matter, she has realized she only has care enough for Ivor. When she takes the House she wants him at her side, the father of her litters, the soft-hearted adviser at her right hand. It fills her body with certainty and lust, every time she looks at him. And it is not so very different for him, they belong to one another in a way that defies all else.
There is something untapped in them. Something that rings between them, something that comes into focus when they stand at the correct angles to one another. Like two beams of light through separate prisms overlapping to expose something forbidden. Something cryptic, ghostly, which they acquired from their mother's side of the bloodline, just as they did their blonde hair and blue eyes. Their mother was a magical thing, the jackal-hearted girl that should never have been born. Her own mother was a corpse in kind, her father the ghost of a monster, each of them tainted with the infernal. What kind of beastliness could they make, if they could unlock the secret. What kind of demon, what kind of magic...
At night, they dream in tandem of a grey world covered in fog, where all the eyes lurking in the mists are their own. A distant land where it is just they two and the magic of the world. How strange, how unlike the goals that Hekate espouses in waking: her desire to the Hill, her devotion to the black. Has she merely never known any other height to ascend? She never remembers the dreams when she awakens, and if he does Ivor says nothing.
At least not to her.
When she is not looking he takes the golem away, to be alone with it, to try and find the grey country where they run free in the night... ]
[ In their use of the golem that Brandon simply calls a messenger, they might have felt the vague presence of the others. The messenger he kept for his own use was made at the same time as the one he gave to them, and would be easiest to sense; the others, he called to him afterward (not daring to make more himself as long as he's on the grounds), and are are more like the occasional filmy sweep of an ancient curtain in the breeze.
The messengers don't have feelings, exactly, no affection inherent for each other or their masters, past or present. They are easy to dream with, their jittery sharp instincts subsumed to obedience when guided. On their own, however, to and fro on their errands, they must fend for themselves. So they do have strange little reactions from time to time, jolts of something like feelings, too animal or alien for recognition. And they recognize each other, of course.
It's that recognition that sends a restless flutter through the golem in Ivor's hands, concurrent or perhaps just a moment before he himself would be able to pick up on Brandon's presence. The so-called magus has their messenger's kin in his own grasp, eyelids low as if in communion with it. He's tucked into a sort of alcove formed by the eccentric lines of the outside of the House, a little shielded from the wind but otherwise relying on his coat, a line in the dirt at his feet, a dreamy, vulnerable look on his face. He seems to register Ivor's presence slowly, though that is not really the case.
Somewhat languidly, a certain respectful wariness brimming behind the relaxed expression: ]
[ As the litters of hyena had been born, Anubis's mother had come to assist in the births. Catherine Mary St. Croix had made her way to her daughter's side through both Hell, and high water. It was Mary who gave each of the little wriggling creatures, with their closed eyes and many teeth, their wide variance of names. She had traveled all across the world called Earth in her hundreds of years, been to many places, killed many men, tempted many women into covenant such as she held. She had liked the idea, of naming her jackal daughter's pups in many ways, rather than confining them only to the biblical canons the Morrisons found so amusing to befoul.
Aziza, the beloved.
It had suited her well, when she had been a pet of the House, when she had been the warmth in Sapphira's bed. When she had taken magicks, the family secrets, as gifts straight from the pure blood daughter's mouth. Those days are gone now. There is no one to love her here, and the demon usurper is everything that her mistress had hated; everything she had hated and been unable to change. Sapphira had burned with a feverish madness, daughter of twin brother and sister, she was more closely tied to the House than anyone before or after her would ever be. It should have made her powerful, capable of taking a whelp like Haran down at the knees, but she had been conflicted. Did she want the Hill's throne... or did she want to burn it to the ground and cleanse its bones so that no more Morrisons would live and die there ever again.
Aziza too looks up at the House, and wonders on its demise. She does so now as Haran summons them all into the clearing before the House. All the hyenas, and his cousin and then his... pet, Aziza supposes is what Brandon must be. He looks docile enough, has caused little enough trouble, but... Sapphira had always told her that looks can be deceiving. She crosses her arms, in the back of the crowd of her siblings while they jostle and snap at each other impatiently.
On the steps to the House, Qetzi'ah has a mistrustful expression set upon her lips. Aziza takes note. ]
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[ She leaves early in the morning, while the hyenas are still asleep. It is easier that way, to avoid their complaints and demands and insinuations. They have grown brazen under Haran's watch, thinking they belong in the House, thinking that Qetzi is somehow indebted for her continued survival. She is not their servant, and what cleaning she does within the House is for her own satisfaction, not theirs.
She leaves early in the morning after another night of ghosts and whispers. She is used to it by now, and perhaps in a way looks forward to the familiar voices of her sisters, even if they come in wails and screams now. She knows what they want from her, but there are other calls which much be answered. The call to preserve their blood, the call to escape. The two conflict, and never so stridently as when she is in the House itself. And so she leaves, early in the morning.
She takes no path on her way into the woods, looks for no markers amongst the mist. The trees will open the way for her as they see fit. Past the river where her mother had once walked in the night, past the abandoned coal mines where once strangers had thought to find fortunes and instead found death, past the little unconsecrated cemetery where the first settlers of the Hill lay. And then the flowers are before her, wild and brambling, sprawling in every direction, clawing their way up trees and strangling the life from them. A secret place that she had found as a child, and now returns to as a woman for the solace it provides. No demon will find her here.
She spends the afternoon tending to her wildflowers. Coaxing the stems of smothered flowers up into the light, up around branches to receive more sun. She scatters cinnamon and coffee at the roots to keep slugs and infections away. She pricks her finger on the stem of a blackberry and shares her blood with the fruit. Once there had been such a patch by the House, tended to and beloved by her grandmother, long since torn up now. When the sun becomes to hot for such a night-born creature, she takes to the shade of one grand Elder Tree untouched by the invasion of wildflower. Its mossy boss is comfortable and she sleeps there for a time, she dreams of dancing and soft kisses and she awakes with purple wisteria braided into her hair. As the sun begins to set, she clips a few flowers to take back to the House, collects a small satchel's worth of berries. ]
" YOU WILL LIKE MY COUSIN. "
However... she is perhaps surprised to find him in her kitchen.
She hesitates in the doorway for a moment before she carries on with her business, laying down her bundle of weeds on the square wooden table where once daughters and granddaughters had helped to prepare dinners and potions. ]
Good evening.
[ Polite, but softly chill. ]
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As she enters, he turns smoothly and unhurriedly to face her, the hand slipping from the table just as she deposits her flowers, quite without any obvious intention to do so. Guileless in the face like a child, though he is tall enough to make that effect disconcerting at times. ]
Good evening, mistress.
[ The honorific is a bit antiquated to him as he grew up much more working class than his affectations with Haran would have suggested, but it seems like the right word. Haran is the master of the house, yet Brandon would guess he does not do much living in it. Not in the way he guesses, looking at this kitchen, that she does. And no shirking is possible; he must begin finding out how good at guessing he's been, from now until he's ejected from the premises, bodily or fatally. ]
May I introduce myself, if I won't be in the way?
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When the House had been full, so had the fridge, brimming with cuts of meat and pickled organs and drying herbs. It is mainly abandoned now, there is no family to feed and no more meat besides. Haran and the hyenas have picked clean the clan of hill folk who had bred for and fed the witches and their beasts for generations upon generations.
With her home in such a sorry state... the 'mistress' hits Qetzi'ah oddly, like some kind of needling little insult and her mind reels for a moment with odd thoughts: a witch's cruelty, a faerie's mercurialness. She blinks slowly and pushes both away. ]
Qetzi'ah will do. [ She states that cooly. ] And you are?
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Still, the boy knows his way around... He knows how to talk to the Morrisons and wants to learn how to appeal to them, most of all Haran, which the spoiler brat likes. The hyenas are restless with the new presence, desperate to snap their teeth at fresh meat, and Haran may just decide to send it to them if he's proved wrong.
Do the others feel anything new about him, though? They must have had the chance to talk and form an opinion by now. Even Tavor, stuck in the basement with the other monstrosities, watches from the shadows.]
Qetzi...
[A sing-song mutter, playing with one of the flowers she's left in the kitchen.]
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She remains in her window seat for a moment, trying to focus on her book but her annoyance makes it impossible to finish the page. She snaps it shut and forces herself to find some composure. Showing her hatred would do her no good in this situation. She lays her palm over the mourning brooch on her dress, taking strength and protection from her sister's memory.
Only then does she come down the hall, the heels of her little leather boots thumping dully across the dirt-caked wooden floors. ]
Yes, Haran?
[ Her tone is flat and slightly peevish, but in no way expresses the full breadth of her disdain for him. ]
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[He hears it all in her voice, sees it in her manners, but he pays no mind. For all the tyranny he has brought upon this house, he has refrained from dictating how the few survivors should behave. It was made clear he would tolerate no disloyalty, however, even if only in the number of cadavers buried around the house. So long as Qetzi'ah allows him to be King, he will allow her to be annoyed all she wants.
Haran trusts that Brandon will pick up on it very quickly. Qetzi does like to talk.]
Have you seen the boy? The young wizard I invited to our house?
[Saying 'our' to her is nothing more than a favor, even if it is also the truth.]
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[ Dinah is rarely alone. She had been born into this world in a squirming, messy litter full of teeth and laughter. She had devoured her sisters before she could even open her eyes, could even walk, and that was the world to which she belonged. A simple place between animal and mankind, between life and death. Magic and mayhem.
Their mother had been a half-breed, the daughter of a demon dead woman and the Cerberus demi-god whose duty it was to keep her behind the gates of Hell, to guard her in the upper world when those gates should be unlocked. Neither of them human, at least not any longer, and neither of them what one could call truly, fully, alive. Spectral and immortal, and so was their daughter who wandered in twilight feasting on the corpses they would leave behind as they wreaked death upon all things they touched.
Their father had been witch through and through. He is gone now, and this... does not trouble Dinah. He had only ever gotten in the way of things when he had lived. He had prevented her from disciplining the pack as she saw fit, instead injecting his ugly witch family's strange laws where they did not truly belong. All it had done was fuel their frustration, like dogs chained together in a pen, snapping at each other for lack of space.
Things are better now in Haran's hands, the demon spawn is more alike to them. More mercurial and disinterested, like their mother had been. She had left them when they were young because they did not need her, and she did not need them. And now the hyenas stay for comfort not for obligation. She can even tolerate Hekate's return now that things have gone on for so long, the mad little bitch had proven herself with her survival. With the witches gone... what was there left to fight over. The House was theirs, the Hill was there.
They would pick it clean. The thought graces Dinah's daydreams and it feels right to her as the daughter of Anubis.
She is not usually alone, in the usual there are her males always beside her, larger and stronger than the rest, but she has left them sleeping in the den to come out into the quiet of the woods and admire its barrenness now that the dark-eyed women of the House no longer extend their tendrils out into the mists. ]
" THEY HAVE THEIR OWN RULES. "
She tilts her head at Brandon as he comes back up the path, her tongue pressed to the back of a canine tooth in a thoughtful, hungry smile. ]
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Though it isn't. Not yet. He looks at her fleetingly, searchingly, and lowers his gaze again. Two Morrisons left, and she is not one of them. ]
Greetings. I've come to pay a tribute to Dinah... if that is you.
[ Not quite as sweet as he was for Qetzi'ah in the interest of being far more direct. That is his guess for what a hyena might prefer, if it is her. Haran seems to enjoy some artfulness, he should bow his head to Qetzi, but for Dinah, he will make every attempt to immediately prove more useful or entertaining alive and unhurt than as a mouthful of flesh. ]
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I am Dinah. [ She has a deep voice for a female. She shakes her wet hair with a jerk of her head, flinging water from the ends of tangled hair. She approaches him slightly too close, peering into his face. ] And what do you claim to be.
[ She does not ask him who he is, she doesn't care what his name is. If he is here, Haran has allowed it, and that is all for now. ]
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happy dinner times
Once the clock ticks to the first second of the hour, he places down one of the poppy moth larvae he's carefully placed on display in the master bedroom, considering whom to use them on first. Perhaps one of the hyenas, just to start. There are plenty of them and the majority are perfectly disposable; plus, their magic and strong connection with the most vicious side of nature makes them prime sources of energy.
Later.
He steps into the room, hand sliding lightly on the back of the main chair. He looks at his cousin first, then at the wizard, sitting down until he's well settled. Then he gestures at them with a deceitfully kind smile, allowing the two the honor of sitting with him.]
We've arranged tonight's meal especially for you, wizard.
hateful dinner catastrophe
The table is one of great character, heavy and ancient, its surface dented and scratched with the years, like the scars of a living thing. It is also a table of ghosts. So many empty chairs stand watch over their little farce, like an unseen convocation. There's ignoring it, the huge table and its large chairs and fit claustrophobically into a large side nook, as if to trap those at the table in their places until released.
When all is set in place, Qetzi'ah sits down in a chair that belongs to her, the three of them scattered oddly along the length. She tucks herself behind a cup of tea, not meeting either of their eyes. She had attempted, in her own off-hand way, to warn Brandon off of eating in this House.
This meal will taint him in a way she is not entirely sure he has been foretold of. They still eat the flesh of humankind here, although not nearly so voraciously as they once had. The hill folk they breed and feast off of have almost become prosperous, it's a pity. They aren't as frightened as they should be. ]
Well. I hope you enjoy it, boys.
after dinner hate mints
So he's dressed as usual when Haran finally arrives with the exception of a silver lapel pin in the shape of an anemone, staring almost dreamily at the table. He shifts his attention to Haran immediately, like the well-mannered diplomat he was sent to be, and evinces no impatience with this elaborate charade. Everybody needs games, utterly spoiled, tyrannous witch-demon boys most of all.
As he takes his oddly placed seat further down the table, he says in the same tone of voice he might use to thank the mother of a friend who invited him to stay and eat: ]
Thank you, Qetzi'ah. I'm honored, Master Morrison.
[ Which is sure to scrape at Qetzi's good will, but everything about this dinner was most likely going to, and she's already making an effort to detach — Brandon could guess one or two reasons why. One doesn't have to know Haran longer than a few minutes to figure he won't let that stand, so he might as well factor into the inevitable tension and awkwardness. ]
I hope you won't find it forward if I propose a toast. To family.
[ His voice is so calm and clear, younger than he is, innocent only in its unflinching straightforwardness in going there. ]
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I WISH THE GOBLINS WOULD COME AND TAKE YOU AWAY RIGHT NOW
wow is that a thing. a delivery service. can brandon have their number
plot twist: haran dethrones and becomes the new goblin king
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" COME TO THE BASEMENT WITH ME. "
[ Tavor has always resided in the cavernous depths beneath the House. There was never another world for him; no other option. There was no way for him to feign humanity, and neither was he witch. He is a monster, in far more depth than even the other creatures housed in the labyrinthine cellars could suggest. Half-breed abomination, one of a kind, a mistake in nature, and too barren to ever replicate himself. He will live and he will die, son of the black dirt more than he ever was of the Morrisons.
With pure-blood Sapphira gone, if anyone is emissary of the true spirit of House, it is Tavor crawling in the squalid under-layers. He maintains the last of the menagerie, the pieces that could be contained after the communal will of the family was vanquished by Haran.
'Maintains' may be a strong word. He can be moved to feed them on occasion, speaks with them when it suits him to, but he is quite an absentee guardian. His mother would be disappointed in him, but then he had always been disappointed in his mother. So they would, at last, be even. This disappointment is his feeling for all of the witches, an ever present disdain that he does not hide and does not need to. He is inconsequential to them, a stain on their lineage they would rather forget but cannot quite sever.
He appears when he is summoned, he disappears again when released, finding his way ever deeper into the heart of the Hill. ]
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Oh, well. He's about to find out, as unenthused as he is at the prospect. His dedication to giving gifts to all remaining living Morrisons is partially lip service; it's one thing to strive to please Qetzi'ah, who remains above and clearly in a position to do something, or not do something, but the way Haran speaks of Tavor makes Brandon think that's less likely to be true.
Which does make him twice as valuable, then, as a potential ally... yet Brandon doesn't feel confident it's doable. Chalk it up to the atmosphere as they descend.
He wears his coat with its clever linings, his shoes with the soles that leave behind faint imprints of little symbols. No weapons, no armor, no seven league boots (which would do him very little good underground, if he were to take fairy tale relics seriously), no sacred bough as a wand. He's just not that kind of magus.
Better than all those things, though he can't possibly think of taking advantage of it this early, is the pressing sense of the dead. All the bodies and death that have sunk deep into the hill. One might expect him to look wan and trembly down here in the dark. Wan, sure - there's nothing he can do about that pallor - but Brandon is steady of eye and limb, though he keeps his gaze low and humble as always. He doesn't want to display anything like strength right now. ]
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Tavor comes up out of the dark without a sound. He too is quite wan, an underground creature with sallow skin and beady eyes. At first, half hidden in the shadow, he looks like little more than a somewhat ugly man, but as he comes closer he is exposed. There is something animal about him, about his gaze, about the way he holds himself, the suggestions of the workings beneath his paper-thin skin under which all veins can be see. He has sharp teeth and sharp claws, a long thick tail the color of flesh which thrashes and coils behind him. His clothes are ancient and ragged, filthy, the white collared shirt beneath the dark blazer and slacks is an amusing play at civility.
He curls his clawed hands, placing them into his pockets, posture slouched, expression contemplative. He sniffs at Brandon. Smells his clever little magicks but makes no mention of it. ]
Magus. [ A shrug of a greeting. ] Do you know why you're here?
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WAITING
[ In her own way, Qetzi'ah does not expect the magus to return. She hopes that after seeing the basement and Haran's pathetic sense of 'amusements' that he has thought better of this entire game, reported to his masters that there is nothing worth their time nor flattery. It wouldn't be entirely true, there are generations worths of arcana and magick collected, some of them utterly invaluable. But... she would slit his throat long before she parted with a single piece of it, and were that feckless slug Haran to attempt to undermine her-- Well. Everyone is curious to know how far he will have to push her before the rage bubbling just beneath the surface will finally spill forth. Does she have it in her finish him?
No, not yet.
But as she throws cards and bones the image the knife comes again and again, precarious and too close to the past, present and future. It is all roads.
In her own way, Qetzi'ah also hopes desperately that the magus does return. He is the wind of change in the air, disrupting the stagnant routine that she and Haran have fallen in to. A catalyst and distraction, something that might pull Haran's attention away, might weaken him enough for her to drive the dagger home. But then what would she do with the magus... Morrisons are hoarding folk, it seems a waste to simply kill him but he's far too sickly and weak for breeding. But what other choice would she have? He was what was left. No villagers remained in the hovels of the surrounding hills, where once this would easily have been solved.
The crystals and entrails show her nothing in that regard, she even grows desperate enough to go out into the meadow in the dark and ask those pretty things that dance beneath the moon.
They giggle and they tell her nothing. ]
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Only later, in his room, does he think to ask it about Qetzi'ah. It is obdurate as always, refusing questions it deems inadequate or imprecise, giving poor answers when backed into a semantic corner. Brandon is familiar with its ways, and clever enough, though he has yet to realize that it's his lack of power, his vulnerable mortality that forces it to answer in a way it wouldn't answer the real necromancers.
And so... an answer, of sorts, to the pressing question of what Qetzi'ah would accept as a gift. This time the skull is the one who laughs.
He doesn't loose another messenger just yet. It is not necessary, given Kaevyn's skills. All he has to do to put this plan into motion is make a call. ]
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There are hooded figures in the forest. Dark creatures, Kaevyn can immediately tell, watching from one of the branches of the tallest trees. With his poor eyesight there isn't a lot of detail he can see, and with the spells they cast all around him he becomes almost blind to their traps. He is still angered by the invasion, he is still reckless, so he throws acorns at their heads and flees to hide between the leaves. Capturing the little fae who has no allies is almost instantaneous after that. He's placed in a container from which he can't escape, isolating his magic so he can't interfere with any machines that cross his path on the way to who-knows-where.
He weeps, threatens, he laments, he curses. It is the longest time of his life and he keeps switching between furious and terrified. Finally, he arrives at a dark forest, where the messenger awaits Brandon's arrival to pick up the bottle. ]
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[ Qetzi'ah's room is lined with dried flowers. Across the ceiling and up the walls, the bundles of flowers are each neatly tied with twine and strung to thin trellises that make a barrier against the true walls of her room. It gives the illusion that the little area has been thatched in with herbs, as if it is its own little world. But then, every bedroom in the House has such a feel when you step across the threshold, although that surety has been waning surely night after night now that all of the inhabitants are gone. Qetzi can do nothing to prevent this, and every time she enters one of the old rooms to dust, she feels that sense of their death. Their nearness fading. They are no more, and their energy bleeds from all that had once resonanted with them, whispering out into nothingness.
Aside from the flowers, placed carefully on dresser tops and shelves are Qetzi's other little knicknacks. Her sentimental hairworks from each of her fallen family members, the moths and butterflies pinned carefully beneath glass... Every part of Qetzi'ah's room is something beautiful but dead. Delicate but decaying. She lives in a twilight place, an in between where she does not quite flourish but neither can she truly allow herself to wither...
She places Kae's jar on her desk, an uncluttered space where he has a clear view of all that goes on in the room, although at the moment that is nothing much. Just Qetzi'ah unlacing her shoes, taking off the outer layer of her dress to sit in her shift, then reaching with little enthusiasm to brush her hair out. Her expression is both sorrowful and irritable, and she is tired in a way that is more emotional than physical.
Brandon should not have tried to bribe her... ]
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With a glare, he watches her. There is little interest in what she's doing - surely nothing about humans should ever interest him again - but there's a quiet elegance, a beauty to it. There is no understanding of the intimacy of watching a witch undress and brush her hair. He sees what he sees, and that is what strikes him. As for everything that makes up the room around him, he will have to pay attention to it before he makes a proper note.
The glare has transformed to something without curiosity, only the eagerness to observe. But he is still sorrowful, and so his wings droop. ]
Oh, what a fate. What a terrible fate...
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[ Hekate and her brother-consort keep unusual patterns upon the Hill. Almost as if strangers to it. They do not fit, they do not blend into the shadows with their pale hair and blue eyes. They are ethereal, ghostly, but always tipped in blood, crusted into their nails, stained at the hems of their clothing. They keep apart from the others. Hekate clearly does not even particularly mourn the other males left of her litter. She has deemed them weak and unfaithful and left them in Dinah's care. It does not matter, she has realized she only has care enough for Ivor. When she takes the House she wants him at her side, the father of her litters, the soft-hearted adviser at her right hand. It fills her body with certainty and lust, every time she looks at him. And it is not so very different for him, they belong to one another in a way that defies all else.
There is something untapped in them. Something that rings between them, something that comes into focus when they stand at the correct angles to one another. Like two beams of light through separate prisms overlapping to expose something forbidden. Something cryptic, ghostly, which they acquired from their mother's side of the bloodline, just as they did their blonde hair and blue eyes. Their mother was a magical thing, the jackal-hearted girl that should never have been born. Her own mother was a corpse in kind, her father the ghost of a monster, each of them tainted with the infernal. What kind of beastliness could they make, if they could unlock the secret. What kind of demon, what kind of magic...
At night, they dream in tandem of a grey world covered in fog, where all the eyes lurking in the mists are their own. A distant land where it is just they two and the magic of the world. How strange, how unlike the goals that Hekate espouses in waking: her desire to the Hill, her devotion to the black. Has she merely never known any other height to ascend? She never remembers the dreams when she awakens, and if he does Ivor says nothing.
At least not to her.
When she is not looking he takes the golem away, to be alone with it, to try and find the grey country where they run free in the night... ]
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The messengers don't have feelings, exactly, no affection inherent for each other or their masters, past or present. They are easy to dream with, their jittery sharp instincts subsumed to obedience when guided. On their own, however, to and fro on their errands, they must fend for themselves. So they do have strange little reactions from time to time, jolts of something like feelings, too animal or alien for recognition. And they recognize each other, of course.
It's that recognition that sends a restless flutter through the golem in Ivor's hands, concurrent or perhaps just a moment before he himself would be able to pick up on Brandon's presence. The so-called magus has their messenger's kin in his own grasp, eyelids low as if in communion with it. He's tucked into a sort of alcove formed by the eccentric lines of the outside of the House, a little shielded from the wind but otherwise relying on his coat, a line in the dirt at his feet, a dreamy, vulnerable look on his face. He seems to register Ivor's presence slowly, though that is not really the case.
Somewhat languidly, a certain respectful wariness brimming behind the relaxed expression: ]
Hello.
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i wanted real icons
he's a delicate buttercup
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[ As the litters of hyena had been born, Anubis's mother had come to assist in the births. Catherine Mary St. Croix had made her way to her daughter's side through both Hell, and high water. It was Mary who gave each of the little wriggling creatures, with their closed eyes and many teeth, their wide variance of names. She had traveled all across the world called Earth in her hundreds of years, been to many places, killed many men, tempted many women into covenant such as she held. She had liked the idea, of naming her jackal daughter's pups in many ways, rather than confining them only to the biblical canons the Morrisons found so amusing to befoul.
Aziza, the beloved.
It had suited her well, when she had been a pet of the House, when she had been the warmth in Sapphira's bed. When she had taken magicks, the family secrets, as gifts straight from the pure blood daughter's mouth. Those days are gone now. There is no one to love her here, and the demon usurper is everything that her mistress had hated; everything she had hated and been unable to change. Sapphira had burned with a feverish madness, daughter of twin brother and sister, she was more closely tied to the House than anyone before or after her would ever be. It should have made her powerful, capable of taking a whelp like Haran down at the knees, but she had been conflicted. Did she want the Hill's throne... or did she want to burn it to the ground and cleanse its bones so that no more Morrisons would live and die there ever again.
Aziza too looks up at the House, and wonders on its demise. She does so now as Haran summons them all into the clearing before the House. All the hyenas, and his cousin and then his... pet, Aziza supposes is what Brandon must be. He looks docile enough, has caused little enough trouble, but... Sapphira had always told her that looks can be deceiving. She crosses her arms, in the back of the crowd of her siblings while they jostle and snap at each other impatiently.
On the steps to the House, Qetzi'ah has a mistrustful expression set upon her lips. Aziza takes note. ]