So, your name is Hermes, right? You are some guy called Hermes, self-proclaimed last name Clay, and you really, really, really want to stab someone.
(It’s yourself. You really, really, really want to stab yourself.)
…
First off, apologies for the attention-grabbing title; no one is quite getting stabbed today, or at least not just yet. There are a multitude of creative and often war-crime worthy ways of murdering someone in this side of the Bronze Sea, and if you take a look at that extensive arsenal and defaulted to basic stabbings then really, it’s your loss. Go take some time off. Get a new hobby. Consider self-help.
Or don’t. Either works, but let’s ignore stabbing as an option for now, as basic and semi-reliable as it can be. You existing as a water conjurer and therefore sticking a sharp metal stick into flesh can be considered generally painful in the not so good way may also have things to do with that, so, stabbing is unfortunately out of the question. Again, only for now.
So, what’s next? Poisoning? Gods, no. You are an alchemist! Or, well, an aspiring alchemist, considering the only non-poisonous thing you can feasibly brew are some vaguely stable water-breathing potions, but it’s the thought that counts! Probably! No alchemist worth his salt dies from a poison of his own creation, and even if you have the self-confidence of drying cacti you can at least ensure your legacy won’t be as the third-rate whose pipe-bomb-esque murder seasonings turned on their careless creator.
That, and the thought of physically, knowingly consuming toxin sent shivers down your spine. Most of your poison works as fast acting, something corrosive and spreadable that collapses its victim’s body from the inside out, organs to bones to muscles. It just doesn’t seem like a pleasant way to die, not that you would know! Definitely.
(Poison, slick and bitter as it burns down, down, down, liquid fire against blackened flesh and the pain, the overwhelming, all-consuming pain that demands attention, demands screams and cry that can’t be extracted, unable to leave its dissolving prison. Throat, stomach, blood, brain, forever, endless. Pain.
When your proudest creations are turned towards you, bitter and cold masked behind too sweet honey and whispery smiles, what do you do? Shout? Cry? Lay over and let it cores you inside out, until blood burst from pulped flesh and you drowned in the screaming silence of your foolishly betrayed mind?)
So no, no poison. The jar of spiked oleander honey that sat on its pristinely dusty shelf glowed, soft and sensual in the fire that dances its flickers from a stubbed candle, and you looked away in despair at the thought of consuming the dusty jar of honey your cracked brain had just considered soft and sensual.
It is considered common curtesy to hang yourself in some semblance of privacy, as to prevent further traumatisation for the poor fools who would inevitably stumble upon your swinging body. Starving intentionally for prolonged periods is unpleasant at best and entirely masochistic at worst, and even if history says otherwise, you considered yourself not-quite-passively suicidal, not a masochist. Dehydration goes the same, or as dehydrated as one can be with water pooling under your beck and call. Muskets are just plain messy, and you are mentally unstable, yes, a bit mad, but you are not an asshole, thank you very much!
You are rather picky when it comes to your death, ok! So what? Best choice would be to dig a nice, dry grave, toss yourself down and nap for a century or five, but grave-digging is a chore and really, you never buried the body of your past victims- enemies and therefore it is quite unfair to give yourself better treatment than those felled under your apathetic blade.
That- That narrows the list down to a lot, actually. Perhaps you should go with a classical stabbing, after all.
(Perhaps this is a sign, says the ignored whispers lingering on the back of your mind. Perhaps you shouldn’t try to die. Once, someone may’ve said that to you, between soft hugs and gentle smiles and midnights spent tangled in blankets and pillows, conversations whose hushed laughs and cozy lull something obsessively sought for, their easing comfort chased after with almost fanatical desperation. Maybe, someone would have looked at you with fondness and maybe even love in emerald cut green eyes and silver hair threads through with gems.
Someone would have, someone could have, if not for burning cold poison and dissolved voices that drowns in the cold, northern wind under apathetic, glacier blue eyes. Someone may have, still, and maybe you can still dream of warm hands and soft laughs and the chimes of stained glass beads amidst clouding purple hazes that numbs the pits of your soul, maybe, one day, when the sight of pulped flesh and melted skin and silver hair streaked in blood, of black hair and dull blue eyes and the burn of a fire mage’s blood against bare skin doesn’t plague your mind, dance before your eyes with each waking moment, haunting your fragile sanity until the only reprieve is death.
Or drugs. Sometimes drugs work. Sometimes.)
Stabbing is boring, though, and painful if you don’t do it right. How about…
Hmm…
Drowning! Drowning is good, right? Something about the cold lull of abyss blue, gently uncaring as it drags any and all souls in its domain under with warbled whispers, of peaceful promises and eternal rest, watery threads firm around your limbs as you sink, deeper, further, dragged to the freezing depths below, never let go, tied to where the sun don’t shine and the winds don’t blow, cherished like the most precious of treasures.
How would you drown as a water mage? No one knows! You’ll think about it later, after the purple haze high left your brain and the pain finished slamming into your chest with the vengeance force of a fortified caravel. Assuming you remembered, of course.
….
You remembered.
In fact, it’s the only thing you remembered from yesterday poorly disguised shitshow, barring the twenty and something cargo of fermented berries and the questionable decision involving sharks, sausages and shark-stuffed sausages, no you will not elaborate, and isn’t that an absolute scam and a half on its own already. You woke up and your first thought, besides early morning regret and general existential dreads, is that along the line of Oh dear Hades, I should really drown myself!
How hard could it be? You never drowned before, surprisingly, probably due to Poseidon and your own water nature working overtime to stop its vessel from their self-caused demise, but you read somewhere it is an arguably peaceful way to go. Probably. The people you drowned in your extensive murder career certainly didn’t think so, but they are dead, their souls burning down below with Hades and All He Rules, so what do they know, really.
(You could think of several other souls burning down below with Hades, think of cracked stained-glass beads melting into shaggy silver and fanned out black hair with singled edges and bright flaming eyes that burns, burns, burns like an oiled torch, fragile and no less bright even in death.
Fire and flame and passion and love fizzled out under your blade, yet your soul burns anyway.)
The question remains: How would you feasibly drown as a water conjurer? Silverhold stood tall in all its glory in the distance, the Grand Navy flag proudly flying in the wind, and you had what might be the idea ever of your admittedly short life.
And thus begins a water conjurer’s journey to go fuck himself.
…
Admittedly, as you reflected on the questionable, made at fuck-all hours in the morning decision, fuelled by dread, regret and passive suicidality at its finest, this probably wasn’t the wisest idea. Fortunately, you are not the wisest person around. Possibly. The bar is set quite literally on the ground, but you are fully prepared to bring one or sixty-eight shovels.
Or enough anti-arcanium chains to drown a Navy fleet. That works too.
Works a tad too well, possibly, but it’s too late to turn back now! Besides, the poor Navy receptionist who voluntarily (read: was coerced into) provided you the chains and shackles was even kind enough to teach you how to lock them, although looking back it might not be a very nice thing to do, but it doesn’t mattered because she wasted her time teaching a child with blown pupils and purple veins how to lock arcanium and you might as well put the knowledge to good use, damnit!
And what else are you going to do? Drag your half-drenched self back to Silverhold and hope no one laughed in your face? Yea, right, what a joke. Papa raised no quitters, after all!
(But Papa didn’t raise you at all, so maybe you should quit. Maybe.)
Ah well, you lamented, shimmery metal cold and heavy as they wrapped around your thin, purple-veined wrists, sapping at your energy slowly, steadily, almost gentle in its methods. You look forlornly at the key placed conveniently out of reach. Well, too late to turn now! The only way is up and all, even if going up is heavily optimistic thinking for you and chances are you should prepare for a free fall drop instead.
It was a nice day. Ocean waves lapped gently, softly at midnight blue hulls of the Atra Corvi, comforting sea-glass green gleamed in the iridescent sunlight, a patch of spilled gold on ink-coloured wood. The sky shown an azure blue, swathes with fluffy white clouds, the wind blows a gentle, cheery tone through the wings of squawking seagulls above, waiting for their next meal. Too nice. Achingly pretty, even.
Too nice for you, but it really is great to have a cake and eat it too.
You dangled over the railings, ankles manacled, wrist chained, shimmering silver shackles weaved almost delicately on too pale skin, bitingly cold on fragile flesh and ok, it’s such a nice day, maybe you should have second thoughts, rethink this out a little. It would be smart, right. There must be things you could live for, a purpose, a higher destiny, maybe. Friends, family, the simple joy of life waiting to be discovered.
Maybe you should’ve took up a hobby. Knitting seems nice.
You cycled the list. Cycled the list again. Third times the charm, right? Third time was, in fact, not the charm. There’s nothing. That’s… really depressing. And probably bad.
You looked at the crumbling mess that is mental sanity and life both and decided more shrooms are needed. You turned around.
Then you slipped! Accidentally? Maybe on purpose! Completely coincidental, assured you to Poseidon as you fall into his domain, a common wrench in faced with gods. These chains aren’t arcanium! You aren’t going to plummet to your planned demise! The wind whistles in your ears, your stomach churned in the stretched insanity that suspended you between blue sky and bluer waters. You fall.
Gods , was your last thought before icy water engulfs your senses, frozen depths embracing you in its suffocating limbs, the metal wrapped around your ankles and wrists and chained around your parched throat dragging you down deep and deeper below. This should be a lot more dramatic. As it was, you were left severely disappointed.
And cold. Because you didn’t choose a better, warmer location to die, like the Southern Ocean! Except no one likes the Southern oceans, as shark infested as it was, so maybe this was one of the few choices you got right in your life after all. You would love to feed the local marine system, but its preferable to be dead before the sharks start swarming for their early dinner.
Down, down, down you go, a gentle yet forceful drag of languid limbs and cotton stuffed senses that blurred your vision, ears popping at the gradual pressure, tongue leaden and eyes half-lidded, pale lashes stuck together with water and salt crystals. There wasn’t much room to resist; even without chains, the feeling of water pressing on and around fragile body, the steady descend of solid metal-bound limbs brought some sense of acceptance, of peace, of letting go and trusting your soon-to-be not-life in the arms of an uncaring, unrelenting force.
It was… nice. Peaceful. Almost safe, if you could still feel that, before, at all. Maybe you still can. Maybe. Chances are… horrendously low.
Then your lungs start burning, and that’s probably when it went to shit.
Saltwater turns to liquid fire as it streams deeper down, down below, into your flesh prison. Your eyes snapped open and your limbs seized in panic and you breathe, breathe in deep and felt the ocean rushing into your body, water invading your throat and streaming down your lungs. You opened your mouth, screamed, struggled. No sound came out except vague gurgles.
Salt burns. Life burns. Sunlight streams through the weaving ocean, serene and peaceful, casting the struggling body sinking below it in some glowing mockery of a halo as you violently twist and turn and tried to rip cold and colder metal away, agitated magic lashes out under your skin, swarms of bee humming angrily without release. Your ears popped under the pressure and you clawed at pale flesh with blunt, jagged fingernails in increasing, instinctual panic.
Down, down, down. Everything slowly glazed over, a mosaic of frost draping over bruised skin scattered with silvery cuts. Sunlight shifted and glowed, shimmering gold turned sea glass green as you drifted below, failing limbs growing weaker with each weighted swing, energy seeping in silver chains, into the voiding ocean. You struggle and kick and tried to scream, and more water enter your body, coring at your insides until all that’s left is a bleeding, hollowed shell of something never were, never will be, destroyed by its allies, its controls, its creations.
You are going to drown, you realised. You were drowning, dragged down below by the element that once danced at your fingertips, now dangled just so out of reach. Death by the watery depths of your control, drifted away in the overwhelming silence. It’s hard to hear, to think past the ear-popping pressure and numbing limbs and the bitter taste of blood and salt all-consuming as it congealed on your tongue.
You are going to drown.
You are going to drown by your own foolish notions, die with salt in your eyes and water in your cold, logged lungs, with drugs in your veins and no one left to mourn, to miss you. Your soul forgotten, your body resting in the ocean floor, all cracked bones and rusted metal, forever down below, forever ignored. No one would know. No one would care.
Isn’t this what you want?
It isn’t. Right?
Right, says something that isn’t you, that sounds like a god dead and dying who forgot to get insurance for one of multiple world-saving chosen ones. Right.
Magic and panic and magic explodes, desperation channelled through what’s left of Poseidon’s will combined with a sinner’s resolve into mania, pure and simple and straightforward. The world exploded, a sphere of water and pain and shimmering chains shattered, broken open from the inside, overloaded with ill-gotten power.
Everything hurts. Everything hurts. Why does everything hurts, Why are you alive? Why did you do this? Make it stop- Make it stop, what did you do to deserve this? Why are you here? What did you do? What had lead you to this point, who was it that drove the breaking point? Why are you here? Why? Why? Why why WHY WHY-
WHY?
SOMEONE?
ANYONE???
HELP?
You can’t do this- He- You-
Who are you? You are Hermes, self-proclaimed last name Clay. You have too pale eyes and freckles and brew poisons for fun and profit. You are Poseidon’s chosen and a shell of someone whom the world had forgotten. You burst stones with water beams. The god wants you, wants your soul whole least until this dying world stays dying and not dead. Your friends are dead. You killed them. No one is coming. You have no one.
You are alone.
You are alone.
Water logged into your lungs, cold and heavy and it burns, burns like the judgemental fires of a hell imagined, and you shut your eyes tighter, again and again and wished you had actually drown, became part of the one constant in your accursed life. You have no voice, no name. Not anymore. You don’t deserve that name anymore.
You screamed. No sound came out.
Sunlight drifted over the ocean, and you along with it, weightless, shapeless. Somewhere above, seagulls squawked.