Mood: The Vibe When You Have A Really Cool And Tragic Character, But No Artistic Talent, Writing Skill,

Mood: The vibe when you have a really cool and tragic character, but no artistic talent, writing skill, or money for commissions.

Latsu Villeforte, maker of beautiful dresses and causer of 70% of her stepmother's headaches.

I've been obsessing over this particular character of mine for weeks so prepare for lots of info dumping about her and all related stuff.

Made in LoveNikki

Literally crying rn

Hanamusa Wedding!

The Storm Strikes A Village

You are a child. Young enough to still naively believe in whatever your parents tell you, but old enough to look around and notice the way the people in your village are. Everyone is tired, overworked, underfed, bordering on destitute. If the crop fields ever failed, the village would be ruined.

Despite this, you are friends with the other children. You all play in the fields while the adults smoke and unwind from a long day of farming. You have a hard life, but it's still a good life. It's all you've ever known, so maybe you're a bit biased.

Then soldiers begin marching through. They're all clad in armor. Even the horses wear armor. They troop through the village, following the twisty, dusty road that cuts through the ramshackle buildings. Sometimes the soliders set up camp for the night by the road. You and your friends are warned to stay away, but you're all too curious. Some soldiers mention that they're off to fight The Storm, but other soldiers hush them sharply. To mention The Storm is to bring calamity upon them.

You ask your parents. They have no idea what The Storm is. They tell you it just means a really big storm, like the thunderstorms that roll through during summer. You believe them.

More soldiers come and go. Eventually there are no more soldiers, and everyone forgets quickly. There are crops to tend to, after all.

Then it begins to rain.

The rain is not clean and fresh, like a refreshing kiss upon the dry land.

The rain is hot, and dark, and red. The rain stinks of sulfur and blood. The rain makes you feel sick.

Soldiers are coming again. This time they're coming from the opposite way. They are more tired than the villagers. Most of the horses are skinny and limping, struggling to pull carts piled high with blanket-covered lumps. The soldiers' armor is dented, dirty, stained by the rain and smeared with damp soot. The villagers are avoiding the rain, but the soldiers don't bother. They're already dripping and drenched.

The ground starts rumbling constantly after a while. It started off small, barely perceptible. But now, it's so strong that your bones rattle. Your head hurts and your tongue aches from being bitten by your chattering teeth. Mother fell and hurt her knee because of the trembling, and she looks seasick from laying in bed.

The shaking ground intensifies so much that cracks appear in the muddy ground. People are falling in, breaking legs or twisting limbs. Eventually everyone just stays inside to wait it out. What else can they do?

You're sitting at the window, making faces at your friend, who sits in her own window across the alleyway. The rumbling is so strong that your vision is vibrating, but you're determined to ignore it in favor of your silly game. So determined, in fact, that you nearly miss the shambling figure coming up the road.

It's a soldier, a straggler from the group that came before. He looks... Wrong. His armor is strangely liquid, silvery metal mixing with the muddy red rain. Your young brain struggles to comprehend that the man is being melted by the rain. His skin bubbles and sizzles, steam rising off his body, and the metal mixes with the goopy flesh that sloughs off his bones.

Someone else has noticed the soldier. Faintly, you hear screaming, then more screaming, then more. People are staring in horror from the windows as the soldier collapses in the street, unable to shamble further. The rain has melted too much of his body. All that remains are bones, strangely untouched, while the rest of him spreads in a pool of ugly liquid gore.

Then Mother starts screaming. You finally break away from the gruesome scene through the window. You run to your parents' room, ready to ask what's wrong.

The roof has begun to leak, right into Mother's side of the bed.

"How tragic of the fate of the lover who was left behind..."

Gonna slap a big ol' trigger warning on this one.

TW: Repeated mentions of death and suicide. Nothing is written in explicit detail, but it is mentioned multiple times towards the end of the story.

So, for those who are curious but don't want to read the story, I'll provide a safe lil' blurb up here :)

Basically, I was inspired by the autosave mechanic in Skyrim (which I've been playing an unhealthy amount of lately). I began to wonder, what would it be like if a character actually experienced going back in time after dying. I ended up writing a pretty extensive story based on such a character; the condensed version of said story is what you'll see below. It's set in the world of Skyrim.

Also I was inspired by "Left Behind" by Reinaeiry. Idk, it's pretty good imo

Anyways enough rambling

Despite being born to a family of accomplished and well-respected mages, Mynarae had little interest in magic and mages. Her passion lied in alchemy, which she had practiced since she was old enough to read and stand at an alchemy table. She was content to craft potions for use by her family, or to sell to other upper-class families, until she learned of the White Phial. Fascinated by the alchemical artifact, she left home to travel to Skyrim in search of it. After learning that its location was unknown, she gave up quickly, but remained in Skyrim to collect as many of the unique alchemical ingredients as she could carry.

During her stay in Skyrim, she settled in Markarth, then began formulating an immortality elixir. Not for any specific reason, but to simply see if she could. The new ingredients provided the creative spark she needed to devise the formula. After years of work, she believed she had finally created the immortality elixir, but held on to it for the time being. There was only one dose, after all, and she did not want to waste it. Her journey and success was shared with a friend she’d made at the local inn, who expressed great interest in her creation.

Shortly after sharing her success, Mynarae was out to gather ingredients in the wilds, when she was accosted by a bandit group. Her “friend” was among them, having told the group about the elixir, and the bandits demanded to have it or they would kill her and take it. Refusing to give up her work, Mynarae fled from the group, drinking the elixir as she went. Enraged, the bandits attempted to kidnap her instead. Too proud to allow herself to be captured and trusting her own elixir to work properly, Mynarae threw herself off a cliff into the river to escape.

She died upon impact against the rocks in the river.

Mynarae found herself back at her rented room in Markarth, just before she shared her success with her friend. Though bewildered at first, she quickly realized that rather than becoming immortal, the elixir had sent her back a brief amount of time. Armed with knowledge of the future, she severed all ties in Markarth, then set off to return home. During the journey home, she joined a caravan, where she met a man named Sidduk, a fellow alchemist. The two bonded over their shared interests, sharing notes and recipes, and grew close enough to fall in love. She decided to move to a little farm with Sidduk, where they would grow their own ingredients…

Then, one day, Mynarae created an elixir that exploded, killing her and Sidduk in the process. She was transported back in time, and averted the disaster. Then Sidduk died from illness, and Mynarae killed herself to go back and cure him. He later died from inhaling toxic alchemical fumes. She killed herself to save him.

He was mauled by wild dogs while tending the farm. Then he was crushed when a support beam gave out and collapsed the roof. Was murdered by a thief while going to town for supplies. Chased by a sabrecat that wandered onto their property. Burned alive when he accidentally spilled flammable liquid onto the fireplace. Got sick again.

Mynarae grew increasingly desperate to save him from ever dying, while becoming desensitized to the act of suicide. She had to save him. HAD TO SAVE HIM!

Then, one morning, she awoke to find that he had left the farm, leaving only a letter. Sidduk had noticed her abrupt shift into a feverish state, and was going to fetch a healer. She chased after her love, only to find his lifeless body amid the wild grasses, torn apart by wolves. Distraught, Mynarae killed herself again…

And woke up in bed. Sidduk’s letter was on the bedside table. No matter how many times she went back, she woke up in the bed every time. No matter how fast she ran to catch up, he was already dead when she found him.

Sidduk was gone.

All her work to save him, only to drive him right into the jaws of death with her behavior, and now he was gone forever.

The grief never truly went away, but it eased slightly after a few months. She buried his body on the farm, then tended to the crops for a while. Sidduk would have been sad if the farm went to ruins, she told herself. He would have wanted her to carry on. She just had to carry on… Until one night months later, Mynarae realized that there would never be an escape from the hell she was now living. If the elixir simply sent her back in time when she died, then she would never know peace. She would never join Sidduk in the afterlife.

Something snapped in Mynarae at that moment.

The grief melted away, replaced by fury and a deep-seated resolve. How dare her own creation treat her this way! She created the elixir, so she would create another that would break the effect! No one would keep her away from Sidduk! Not even her own past actions!

Mynarae became obsessed with finding or formulating a cure. Gone were thoughts of taking care of herself. She would eat just enough to not starve, sleep just enough to keep her mind sharp, protect herself just long enough to gather as many alchemy ingredients as necessary. She couldn’t afford any setbacks. There was too much to do.

She had to find a way to kill herself for good.

Merciana was a patient person. As a noble and a woman, patience was a requirement for survival in the cutthroat world of upper society. She prided herself on her patience and on her ability to maintain a polite, demure facade no matter the massive annoyance she faced.

But Latsu? The child had made it her life's mission to push every button the woman had. For fifteen years, her stepdaughter had made every waking moment a chore. For fifteen years, Merciana was forced to live with the constant reminder of her inadequacy. It roamed the halls of her home. It ate her food; slept in a room on the same hall as her; demanded attention from her daughter and husband.

Her husband... Merciana could barely remember a time when she loved the man. It felt simultaneously like eons ago and just yesterday that she was a child herself, swept up in the beautiful promises of a glamorous wedding and a dignified life. He had been poor back then. Son of a baker, apprentice of a merchant, barely three steps above destitute. But, oh, he was so handsome... Merciana's family was firmly middle-class, and Nanny often took her to the general store where he worked. They were the same age. He whispered in her ear that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

Merciana often wondered how many girls he'd said such things to. How many before her? How many after her?

Mother and Father would never have agreed to her marriage to such a poor boy... But Mother died of fever when Merciana was fourteen. When she was sixteen, Father was mauled during a sport hunt, and died of poisoned blood. Merciana's elder brother oversaw her care for four more years, and he was far more lenient about her marriage.

Merciana became engaged to Ferdinand when they were seventeen. Then her brother died, and the two were wed a week after Merciana's twentieth birthday.

People whispered disapprovingly, of course. They married too young--they were not engaged for long enough. A proper lady should be engaged at fifteen, then married at twenty-five. A proper lady should marry equal or above her station. A proper lady this, a proper lady that. Merciana had hated the whispering and staring.

Ferdinand blessed her with a baby after three years of trying and failing. He wanted a girl; she couldn't care less if it was a boy or girl. Carmana was born, and they both rejoiced. Merciana loved her baby with every ounce of her being. Carmana was precious, beautiful, perfect...

Merciana loved her baby so much that she failed to notice how distant her husband was becoming. He became absorbed in his work, expanding their family's influence and wealth, pouring every waking second into his work. What few moments he took for himself, he dedicated to drinking. With drinking came women. With women came more moments away from work. With more moments, more drink, more women, more moments...

She knew about it, of course. She may have been involved in caring for her baby, but Merciana was no fool. She knew what was happening, but it still stung when he rejected her martial advances in favor of barmaids and working girls. She begged him for another child, but he steadfastly refused. Too busy, he always said. Not enough time for another baby.

Then Latsu showed up.

A priestess came to their door early one day, a baby in one arm, a note in her other hand. The baby was Ferdinand's, given up because the mother refused to keep her. Ferdinand took the baby in, gave her a name, and oversaw her care himself. Where Carmana's care was Merciana's domain, Latsu was solely her father's responsibility. Merciana agreed it was for the best. Why should she care for--or about--the product of her once-beloved husband's foolish behavior?

He did not even know the mother's name.

Merciana couldn't care less.

The child would not be her problem.