Practical Magic (1998)

Natasha O'Keeffe + WHEEL OF TIME S2 Bloopers

It’s perhaps enough to further brighten the spark of Pythia’s mood. The unyielding comfortability in her ability to brag without ever saying a word cuts like flame across her features as she emerges the crowd. Slipping through so many of them as they felt little more than a greater presence of magic and little else in her stead. As the woman steps to confront her, she pauses, just barely as the extent of her cruelty embellishes itself upon her features in a wry grin. “All that was necessary, Eve.” It cuts, like the tip of a freshly sharpened blade, through the loss she can feel surrounding them now. “Which is far more than anyone else has ever been willing to do.”

who: @fxllenpythia​ where: Mercuralia, following the return of the Labrinyth’s

Life never stopped surprising the Aspect since she had fled Eden and part of her wanted an unwritten narrative, wanted the days to pass colored with choice and mystery but this darkness isn’t what she wanted for the world. She wasn’t inherently tied to the First the way the druids were, she didn’t feel their death ripple through her but she did feel it. The way the world loses its color when an old friend leaves the Earth, she could feel the absence without explanation. A smug conquering smile parts through the crowd and Eve feels sick to her stomach, boldly confronting the other – she wanted answers. “What have you done?” 

BENSU SORAL   | 1.02  －  Tuzak

@sacrilcgiovs​ location: we’re out and about okay 

Although time didn’t exist as such a fickle imminence to Pythia, years had gone by since she’d last set foot upon the cobbled streets of Rome prior to October’s festivities. Every effort to deceive and thwart her brethren's efforts to find them over the centuries depicted the demonic fallen as little more than smoke between the fingertips of a child. And yet, every soul given over to the Necronomicon remained a connection held beyond all else. Seeking out one of the very first of the Asphodel had been akin to spotting blood on a pristine white surface, even amongst the crowd of the marketplace. Thoughts which circled his mind echoing across the void to her own until he just as surely felt her presence. “You’ve been a busy man, Kaan -- Narcissus, is it?” The playful tone in her voice just as easily menacing as she kicked out the wicker chair opposite her, hues barely flickering gesture that he sit. “Let’s catch up, shall we?”

“I suppose we’ll see how true that really is, won’t we?” The air of disbelief that caught the edge of each word as purposeful as ever, hues of near obsidian eyeing the wolf as if she wasn’t entirely certain that he wouldn’t bend the knee so readily. “Perhaps you’ll yet surprise me.” Though, she wouldn’t hold a proverbial breath. Useful, he claimed, and she had to wonder exactly where he found such use in the lead of a man none of them could truly know. Torture and callous treatment could change the very molecules of a man; of a creature among them. “My point is, that nothing happens in Rome that isn’t premeditated. Do you believe that your new alpha escaping the clutches of the eye just in time for your little wolf-fest is little more than coincidence?” She didn’t expect such a thought to sink beyond surface level, in truth - she wanted to find out exactly where the former alpha stood. Their alliance with the fey a rather tricky thing to navigate. “You pander to all that must be hard won, instead of seeking the path of least resistance. The hearts of changelings, no?”

fxllenpythia​:

“Don’t you?” A meandered response that truly held no weight - and yet, one in which she intended to make the former alpha consider. A leader didn’t fall without losing out on a future they’d envisioned. Change was as much a poison as it was the gift of freedom, it simply depended on which vein it fled to first. “Is this what you imagined the future of the Arno pack would be? Barking at the heels of the eye’s bitch boy?” Truly - she hadn’t yet discovered what methods had been used on the Lupo’s newly crowned alpha, but she had no doubt that they’d certainly made some effort to wield him to their own benefit. Whatever seeds of which she could plant; she would. “And an alliance with the fey?” Her tongue clicked against her teeth sharply as she turned a haphazard glance in his direction, “It’s certainly… questionable.”

Don’t you? Serkan made no reaction to the question. Whatever plans he had were tossed out the window the moment he had been defeated. If he wanted to do anything now, it would have to be planned very precisely. He was loyal to his pack and always would be regardless of leadership. The Wolf had hardly ever been one, only taking up the mantle because of circumstance. If Ermes had ever defeated him, he would have given up the spot, but he doubted the same respect would have been given as it was to Alek. Which was why he was quick to respond. “I don’t bark at the heels of anyone.” He would follow the new Alpha, but he would not blindly follow anyone. Every decision he made was going to be thought out from now on. “I only align myself with people that are useful. For now, they are useful.” His shoulders lifted in a shrug to cement his point, hands falling into his pockets. “Are you going to just circle around your point?”

One of the flaws of all mortals was their impending ability to lose sight far too quickly. So adept to instant gratification that the eons Python had spent piecing together each path of intentional destruction was so quick to doubt in their minds. Their wishy-washy desires formed of self preservation, rather than the desire to claw for everything they had. One did not seek out the powers of infernal darkness without getting burned in the process. The disappointment was wrought, but that was nothing new. The book was gone, and yet, that didn't dampen Leviathan's spirits. All she had to do was reassess. "Don't I always?" The maniacal leer to her tone is unforgiving. However bad it may have seemed - there are far worse fates to suffer, and the archfiend intends to see it through to the end, over and over again if they must. "Whatever it is they suffered you, Bastien, their forces do nothing but pre-empt their own by constantly fighting it. Regardless, we'll see it through. The books destruction is nothing if not history repeating itself - they're fools to think this would squander our intentions."

where. wherever this hoe be hiding who. @fxllenpythia

The Necronomicon had been destroyed. After thousands of years, he could feel its loss so keenly. As if a piece of himself was gone, lost forever. Which is why he could understand how Pythia may be feeling in the moment. After all their plans had been ripped from their hands, shredded before their very eyes. Bastien had been imprisoned for his connection to the Asphodel, had not questioned his loyalty for even a moment as his mind fractured within his cell. So now, he felt as if he did not know what to do. Did not know what direction to point himself in. "Do tell me you have a plan already forming."

"And what exactly would I need your gratitude for?" She spat, teeth bared as Pythia took in the form of the pathetic excuse for a man. The wounded animal, snarling as she came too close as if he'd ever come close to being the prey in this scenario, or any beforehand. Octavian, regardless of his obsessive desire and need for the book, was a fickle being. One that she neither needed, not sought to forget. Tsking lightly as he attempts to move, the sight shift of her fingertips brings about vines, sprawling from the depths of the Necronomanteion to the very tower they exist upon in that moment. "When will you people get it? I don't wish to leash anyone at all," not entirely true - there were certainly more than a handful of creatures she'd see chained by the end of this, "I have given your daughter everything that you never could. I've given them all that nobody else ever could. I don't wish to condemn them to an existence controlled by a bunch of egg-head Neanderthals who believe they know what's best for this.. thing you all consider to be a society." A hand waves in a haphazard gesture to the world beyond and the vines snap around Octavian's wrists, thorns sinking into his flesh, "You held so much promise."

who?: @fxllenpythia where?: he's still on the ground

❂🐦❂

He noticed almost immediately how difficult things were now that he was a man once again. Without his power, the whispers could rise to screams in his mind, still urging him to go find that book. It was so close, yet Octavian was too weak to do much of anything but lie there. He was disconnected from everything but his past, so at the very least the buteo's instincts ingrained into his being kept him alert despite his condition. Still, Octavian realized something as he bled out onto the floor of the Necromanteion: if he could still feel the Necronomicon beckoning him then it really had imprinted on his soul. "If you're wanting to try and make me feel gratitude towards you again, don't. I've forgotten how banal anger can feel without the fire to back it up." Octavian winces as he attempts to sit up but remains on the ground, clutching his abdomen. "Actually, I'm surprised you've found time for me at all. Aren't you supposed to be too busy walking my daughter on a leash?"

The weaknesses of humans would never seek to surprise her. Connection this, connection that. Tying themselves to others with such infinity that they truly believed such feelings could never be severed. It's enough to keep her from rolling her eyes. "Yes, yes. I'm sure it was a horrific shock." Though, perhaps Yurena was quick to forget that the Pythia knew all of them - their thoughts, their desires. The aspect had long since known all of her followers, well before they'd sworn themselves to the book. Regardless of what they knew, betrayal was not something the greater demon felt - that would indicate that she had to care about each and every one of them in the first place. It was a stretch, at best. She held interest in the fickle desires they held, in what they could do to serve her own purpose - not all of them would live up to such visceral longings. "Do not dwell within them too long. Clinging to them is a rather useless venture you lot hold onto for abysmal reasons," and undoubtedly, Yurena was already gone. "We," I, "Do not have time - we're almost there."

"We both know my connection with Alstroemeria," Yurena reminds them with a long sigh, the truth coming out reluctantly before a being she is very well aware that is more than ready and willing to destroy her if she does not give her an answer to her satisfaction. It is like walking on a tightrope, a careful balancing before she spills and falls to the darkness she has long welcomed as her own. "Kaan is an old friend of Erik's and his betrayal took me by surprise," beyond that, truly. She has begun to wonder— But it is not the time to dwell on that. "His pain is justified, as such, but I need a moment to disentangle all of my pesky emotions."

“I have long since considered what I might do if I ever faced him again, Roth.” For what felt like eons, she’d likely have done anything to draw even a glimpse of Ulthar’s immediate sense of presence but something so personal had long since slipped through her fingers of desire. Instead, the only thing left was to destroy what he loved the most. The realm they currently occupied earning the majority of their fathers love and respect since the day he cast them all aside. Offering the perfect world to those who would do nothing more than pick it apart and taint it to ruin. So, ruin she would give him. “Now, he could stand before me and beg, and I’d want nothing more than to flay him along with the others. If the world we were promised cannot be ours - he can have it returned to him, in dust and ruin.” 

          a gift for @fxllenpythia​,

          “Even if you were to slaughter Uriel and Michael where they stand it wouldn’t pull Ulthar down to face you,” they’d sort of learned from mortals that a lot of problems arise in life from daddy issues and certainly the seraphim, who predated even gender, were proof of that. They have this half-smirk that hints at Roth’s lips, it’s this tiny lilt of humor but its fragmented by understanding; sometimes one just vied to see the world burn. He’d thought of it often, after the fall, but it was more channeled at the divine realm than it had ever been for this piteous mortal coil. Roth had felt the splintering quake that rattled the Otherworld, could only figure it was Leviathan’s doing supplemented by their cult following. He’d had this itch to face their Blessed siblings, it would always remain as a buzzing in the back of the skull, but their mind could not grasp this need to destroy Ulthar’s second creations. For Roth, they were measly and insignificant in comparison to the Old God’s faced eons prior, meaningless in lieu of their Blessed counterparts who attempted to control the world under their own puppeteered reign. Still, Roth’s words offer this teetering point, this subtle cue that they’d align again if need be; there was always a damned side to choose.

@seraphimichael​ location: we’re in the colosseum baby.

Moonlight filtered through ruins in much the same way the cosmos scintillated the vast abyss above. Just enough to offer something beyond the premise of total darkness; a bleak, cold existence. Lithe fingertips that ghosted across crumbling echoes of a lifetime ago, Pythia felt near giddy as the dread and fear of all that lingered from the past flowed through her. The aches and pains of those that would never see beyond these walls; humans caught within the snare of their own kind and forced to cut teeth against stone to garner even a single day more.  “Michael,” the eerie drift of her voice carried across the stagnant air as if it’d been whispered upon the greatest of winds. Harrowing, the echo reverberated against the stone and kissed promise of the greatest haunting the mortal realm had ever known. “Oh, Michael..” The singsong sweetness to her tone near sickening as she slipped through the broken gate and laid onyx hues upon the one she’d avoided for so long. Not unaware of his plight to remove each of the fallen from this world like the stains he deemed them to be.  Saccharine lips turn upward and yet any who bore witness could pledge that nothing but venom would pass beyond her tongue, even as she meandered closer, not unlike a long lost sibling relegating a near stranger. “You look weary, brother.” Or perhaps rather, he felt as much. “Or perhaps it is the mundane vessel you continue to hold onto.”