Chapter Text
The Cell was typically a quiet place. On a normal day, the only sounds that echoed in its dark hallways were the footsteps of patrolling guards and the low humming of the magic nullification runes carved into the walls.
Which was apparently not the case today since the ruckus outside was still going on.
That meant only one thing, there was a new warden assigned to The Cell.
Shiori taps a finger disinterestedly on the armrest of her eternal throne, listening to the unusual commotion outside. She’d stopped counting after the 15th one.
The change was expected, not many of them held out for more than a few hundred years at most. Lifespan aside, most asked to be transferred more often than not, always with an urgency that would make anyone think they were in a life or death situation.
They say the place was slowly killing their souls.
She scoffs at the thought. What else did they think they were getting themselves into?
Hell always demands its dues, be it warden or prisoner. None ever leave the Cell without leaving a piece of themselves behind in its shadowy corridors.
The archiver closes her eyes and leans back against the mockery of a throne, feeling the bones in her spine shift and creak against each other. Maybe something would break inside her today, liven up the day a little.
She shouldn’t have wished for that.
In the next instant, Shiori feels a wave of pure panic slam into her, terror and fear of the likes that she’s never felt from this person in particular.
Her girls all carried a piece of her with them, the smallest bit of connection and comfort Shiori gets to provide them with. Patches of ink that live on their skin, little pieces of herself that she gifts to them.
She feels their emotions, hears their thoughts. The runes in the walls make anything else difficult to achieve.
And right now, there was barely a coherent thought coming from her connection with Nerissa, the raven’s emotions running haywire to the point that she was likely having a panic attack.
A single phrase comes through accompanied by an emotion that would sound like a choked whimper if translated into words.
“It’s her.”
The connection snaps.
Leaving Shiori alone in the dark with no answers, no way of knowing what terrified her raven so badly.
Not for the first time, Shiori curses herself for being powerless to do anything for her girls.
---
Shiori stares straight ahead, feels the sensation of the runes on her cell door being deactivated long before she hears the click of the locking mechanism turning.
The new warden must be what set Nerissa off, but she doesn’t know why yet.
She needs to find out. Shiori never wants to feel that kind of terror from the raven ever again.
The door slides open, and she sees the warden for the first time.
Tall and broad-shouldered with long flaming red hair, and wearing a white dress that had no right making her look as regal as it did. A monarch and a knight rolled into one.
The face of Nerissa’s oldest nightmares.
Shiori snarls the moment the realization comes to her.
Death. Carnage. The bodies of those who had been driven mad by the raven demon’s voice, tearing and clawing at anything in their reach until they stopped moving.
A lone figure left in the aftermath of the chaos.
Nerissa clutches at her head. Barely comprehending what she’d just done.
It hurts. Everything hurts. She didn’t mean to. She only wanted to sing for them, to share her music with the world-
She hears footsteps in the distance.
Nerissa forces herself to look up from where she’d curled up on the ground, eyes taking in the sight of crimson tresses and a familiar face.
She thinks she might lose it as she reaches out a hand, stained red from the still falling bloody tears. Backlash from losing control of powers she never even knew she had.
“Liz- I… It hurts…”
The only thing that answered her plea was the glinting tip of a sword, held by Elizabeth.
“Hold your tongue, witch. I will be deceived by your lies no longer.”
Silence rings in her ears, deafening and numbing.
“The gods have spoken, and they speak true of your vile nature, demon.”
The raven demon stares into crimson eyes, and sees the divine influence of the gods within.
Nerissa knows she’s lost Elizabeth to the manipulation of the gods, henceforth a weapon at their beck and call.
“I’m so sorry, Liz. I never meant for this to happen.”
A bloody tear rolls down her cheek. A final apology to the one she calls her love.
“Atone for your sins, demon.”
Elizabeth swings her sword down, and an important little part of the raven demon shatters for eternity.
Shiori recognizes the face in front of her, taken from a memory the raven entrusts to her on the darkest, coldest of nights.
Something that Shiori burns into her own memory, swearing to find the person that had hurt Nerissa so irrecoverably whenever they got out of this place.
And now that person stands less than five paces away from her, once more in a position of power, primed to hurt her precious raven again.
Hell would freeze over before she let that happen.
The warden takes a step into the cell, and the posse of guards behind her make to follow.
“Not a single step more, warden.”
A warning. A thinly veiled threat delivered in such a chilling tone that it sent shivers down their spines.
Shiori bares her teeth in a grin, all teeth and killing intent behind it. “Tell your little friends to stay outside, warden.”
The shadows cast by the dim red glow of the runes seem to grow just a little longer.
“Otherwise, I make no promises if they’ll leave this wonderful cell of mine alive.”
She watches as the warden turns around and speaks quietly to the group behind her, and the door slides back into place after an argument that the warden shuts down quickly.
There’s only the two of them in her cell now, but something feels off.
The archiver closes her eyes, and peers into a plane of existence few ever witness when she opens them next, all seeing and soul searching.
Amber eyes glow brightly as Shiori stares straight into the other’s soul, into the blue flame that burns brightly in the warden’s chest.
She sees something that makes her pause.
Elizabeth frowns when the prisoner speaks to her, a dangerous gleam in her glowing eyes. “Pray tell, dear illustrious warden of mine, what might your name be?”
Normally, telling her name to someone that looked like she was one step away from killing her on the spot was the epitome of stupidity. But the woman in front of her didn’t seem to be taking no for an answer.
“My name is Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame, bestowed upon me by the gods above.”
Elizabeth watches as the other woman’s grip tighten around the armrests of the throne.
“I assume that flame of yours was a ‘gift’ from them as well?”
She doesn’t miss the malice laced into the word.
“Yes, I’ve been blessed by the gods ever since I was a child.”
The air was silent for a moment before a hysterical laugh cut through it.
Shiori understands now. She knows why everything felt off when she laid eyes on the woman.
The person standing in front of her was the same as Nerissa’s Elizabeth from millennia ago.
A reincarnation.
But the gods above didn’t seem to think one lifetime of being trapped as their tool was torment enough.
The archiver sees the wisps of influence planted deep in the woman’s being, courtesy of the flame in her chest. A little bit of her soul that was deeply marred by the gods’ power.
They’d ripped out a piece of her to sink their claws into and given it back to Elizabeth under the guise of a blessing.
Shiori growls darkly in the back of her throat. Sick, twisted, cruel bastards.
She wants to make them pay.
Patience, she tells herself. Soon.
For now, she focuses on what she’s able to do.
“So, miss first day on the job. Here’s a little piece of advice for you.”
Elizabeth feels something drip onto her cheek, and touching a finger to it reveals it as ink.
She looks upwards and stares straight into an open jaw of vicious sharp teeth, ink dribbling steadily down its maw. The creature leans down slowly until it reaches eye level, its multitude of eerily glowing eyes boring into her.
She feels its breath ghost across her skin when it stops barely an inch from her face.
“If you mess with my girls, I will show you exactly why I deserve maximum security. Do I make myself clear?”
A shiver runs down her spine at the creature’s grating voice, and she tries her best to ignore that its head was tilted at an angle that would snap a human’s neck.
“Crystal clear, yes.”
The creature leans back a little.
“Good.”
Elizabeth blinks, and all traces of the ink creature disappears. As if it never existed.
From the eternal throne, the prisoner’s amber eyes stare back at her. Much too similar to what she’d just seen on the creature.
Elizabeth is not ashamed to admit that she left the archiver’s cell rather quickly after that.
---
Somehow, Elizabeth finds herself back in the same cell just a week later.
“What brings you to my humble abode today, dear warden?” Shiori slumps against the side of the throne, propping her chin up on her palm as she observes how fidgety Elizabeth was being.
Elizabeth hesitates before she speaks, she knows the archiver is not going to like this.
“It’s about Nerissa Ravencroft.”
She’s hit with the sensation of eyes burning into her back, like a predator circling behind her.
“What about Nerissa, warden?” Elizabeth pushes on through the unsettling feeling, the problem was only going to get worse if she turns away.
“She’s barely been eating and drinking for the past week. The guards have also reported that she’s been feather plucking in stress.”
Elizabeth was not familiar with the raven demon, but anyone could tell that Nerissa was not doing well.
“And why does that matter to you?” Shiori’s words were sharp, and Elizabeth knows one wrong word from her might set the archiver off.
Elizabeth thinks of the first time she met Nerissa a week ago, how the woman had curled herself into the corner furthest away from her, looking like she’d seen a ghost.
She thinks of the way the raven’s wings unfurled halfway when she tried stepping into the cell, like Nerissa couldn’t decide if she wanted to intimidate her or just tuck her wings around herself to hide away.
She knows that her higher ups and the guards all describe the prisoners here like they were monsters and the ultimate threat to humanity, but Elizabeth just cannot make that connection to what she’s seen in her week here.
Elizabeth can’t shake the feeling that there’s more going on than what she’s been told.
“I… Is it so bad to look out for the well-being of my charges?”
Elizabeth hears the prisoner snort out a laugh, taunting and disbelieving. “Oh, sweet naïve shining knight of justice, you might want to read the logs they have on us before you say that.”
The archiver’s grin turns dark.
“See for yourself what they’ve done to us.”
Elizabeth pushes down the bubbling uneasiness in her gut and files the information away for later, reminds herself of what she came to the prisoner for. “I need you to talk to her, see if we can at least get her to try eating.”
Shiori quirks an eyebrow, reaches a hand out towards the chains trapping her within. Looks the warden dead in the eyes as she makes contact with it.
Elizabeth flinches when the chains spark violently at the contact, smells something char and burn. The prisoner pulls her hand away and Elizabeth sees the charred imprint of the links on her palm, burns and blisters already bubbling up around it.
The message was clear.
What makes you think I can do anything about it?
Elizabeth ignores the urge to demand for the other woman’s hand, wanting to check on the injury. She has a feeling that trying that wouldn’t end well at all for her.
“Look, Novella. I’m new to the place, not clueless. I can sense your magic all over the others, I know you talk with them somehow.”
Shiori blinks at the observation. “Well color me surprised, never expected someone like you to catch on.”
Elizabeth frowns a little as she puts a hand on her hip, she gets the feeling that she’s just been talked down to. “Am I hearing this wrong or are you implying that I’m daft?”
Her only response was amber eyes sweeping her from head to toe, and a non-affirmative hum.
She groans softly, running a hand through her hair. “Do me a favor here, Novella. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go in personally, not after how she reacted last time around.”
Shiori knows that this Elizabeth doesn’t have any memories of what happened between her and Nerissa, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to strangle the woman for triggering the raven’s trauma.
Instead, she sighs and nods. “I’ll talk to her.”
Shiori pretends she doesn’t see the relief that washes over the warden, pretends she doesn’t hear the thanks Elizabeth extends before she leaves her cell.
Can’t have herself thinking that the warden actually cares about them.
She waits until late in the night before gently reaching for the connection. Shiori understands her raven well enough to know that Nerissa would be still awake.
Likely avoiding the lurking nightmares.
“Rissa.”
It always feels like knocking on a door whenever she reaches for one of her girls, and she waits patiently for a response.
She doesn’t get a verbal response, but she feels the raven’s presence.
“A little birdy told me you’re not doing too good, Rissa.”
Something that feels like a nod, and Shiori waits in the ensuing silence.
Eventually, she gets a soft whisper from Nerissa.
“I still see her face from that day, Shiori.”
She aches for the raven, for what she’s lost nine thousand years ago.
“…I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look her in the eyes and not remember what she did to me.”
Shiori closes her eyes, heart twisting a little more at Nerissa’s trembling voice. The betrayal is an old wound, left to fester and rot in the raven’s mind for millennia.
But acceptance had to start somewhere.
“…I’m here with you, Rissa. Every step of the way.”
A beat passes. And her brave little bird reaches for her.
“Mhm. Okay. As long as you’re here.”
---
Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame, the Scarlet Queen, a battle hardened warrior, feels sick to her stomach.
She read the reports, like the archiver suggests. Finds the many, many records from the previous wardens, of how they handled the prisoners.
How they separated the hellhound twins.
Of the extractions they performed on the gem.
The silence they forced upon the raven demon.
Elizabeth powers through the first three reports, the atrocities she discovers in the writing piling higher and higher still.
She opens the final report with shaky hands.
And reads of the things they did to the once human girl, in the name of obtaining forbidden knowledge.
Elizabeth does not get to the end of that particular report.
She stands in front of the archiver once more.
“I read the reports.”
Shiori watches her with a spark of curiosity. She’d actually listened.
“And?”
Elizabeth traces the runes carved into the ceiling with her eyes. Contemplates for a moment before speaking of the world changing realization she’d come to after a sleepless night.
“…Maybe the gods were wrong.”
Shiori gives a small hum of agreement, and the way she regards Elizabeth with changes just a little.
“And maybe you’re sharper than I took you for.”
Elizabeth exits the cell with a solemn decision made in her heart.
Shiori watches the warden leave, the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“I can see why you fell for her all those years ago, Rissa.”
She gets a soft sigh from the raven, still pained, still uncertain.
“She’s never changed.”
And from then on, they play the waiting game.
Elizabeth says nothing as the runes grow weaker over the years, ink slowly seeping into the inscriptions.
Conveniently makes herself scarce on the day of their breakout, away at headquarters for a meeting.
And if an ancient eldritch entity just so happened to slay the god holding the strings to Elizabeth’s soul, barely three months after the breach, well.
It’s weird how things like that just happen.