Work Text
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon --- his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple not yet understood;
I shall not even force him to confess;
Or answer. I will only make him goodNoMollymauk woke up in his grave, half decomposed, choking on his own rot in soil and remembered Lucien. He remembered the over-eager boy from Xhorhas, born to wealth and comfort. A boy born for devotion and blood. A boy who scarred himself, pursuing a god, tripped over his own ambition, blinded by divine light. nMolly remembers the tragedy in Lucien’s success, the bitter beauty as he laid himself in his grave and his friends, his followers, cheered for his death.Molly laid in the earth for a moment more, awake and mourning the loss of a brilliant man who was once kind but had turned cruel in his calling. Oh, he had been charismatic:. His penchant for punishment and extremes did not take away from his wild smile or his beautiful words. How easily he had nonbelievers worshipping at the altar of an unheard heathen god, with himself as the prophet and priest. He became Herald and God, taught his followers to bleed and to give thanks for the pain. Oh and they loved him for it, thanked him for the wounds and for showing them the way.All that gold and glory, for what? Lucien had been born for his god, he had been born to die.Lucien once was a creature of fire, Molly remembered, peering at the snow around him. He once would scorch the earth, rebuking those who dared to harm him. But now, his blood ran cold, freezing as it’s gifted magic hit the air. Magic, that, Molly supposes, he’s inherited.How strange it was to inherit something back.He burst through the hard winter ground, claws reached out towards the sky, tearing through the dirt. Sitting up, he realized that, in an effort to escape the Wild Mother's embrace, he had also torn the Platinum Dragon to shreds. He chuckled at the implications and shed his funeral shroud, the gaudy bright thing it was. There was a folded note, clenched in his hand and now lightly mangled by his claws. In messy letters, his friends told him his name and their destination. It was instructions for a far-flung possibility, a prayer for a miracle: a friend returned. (A prayer that would have been granted without the words.)Once he had finished digging himself out of a shallow grave (for the second time), Molly found his coat hanging on the branches of a towering wisteria tree (that definitely had not been there when he was buried) and retrieved it, draping it over half-there flesh and bare bones, numb without nerves to the cold.What a strange sensation, he mused, to not feel, to have no pain receptors. How strange it was that he had gotten used to physical sensation so quickly that it was now odd to be without. Two years, after all, was very little time to affect his perception so.Really, this whole situation was rather strange.It suited him, the strangeness.Him… what a strange word. Gustav had assumed that Molly was a man, and he had gone with it, accepted it like an ill-fitted suit; a blanket for a robe; a candle for a hearth. It was both too small and too big to truly encompass him, but Molly didn’t mind it. It was just such a strange concept: him.Even stranger, now, after his awakening. Molly dragged his hand carefully down the bark of the wisteria that served as his grave marker. He and this tree: the only color for miles in the muddied snow.His rusted horn trinkets clanked together, not so much tinkling anymore, as he stared up at the drooping leaves. This had grown from him, that much he knew, so to him it would return. His hand on a branch, he willed himself whole and the wood did not resistL trailing up the remains of his arm, filling in gaps where no flesh or skin remained. It continued to the rest of him, creeping under where his clothing had survived and weaving leaves into where it hadn't.Soon enough, Mollymauk Tealeaf stood whole again, looking much more like his surname, and the tree a little bit smaller. Examining his new form, Molly thought that, more than anything, more than the strangeness or the winter chill or the fact that he had just climbed out of a grave, he was grateful to have remembered. He was grateful to not be Empty, like the last time. Being Empty had been a strangeness that he hated, an unfamiliar cold that had settled heavily on his bones. It was a paradox, that being Empty left him heavy, but he would accept it so long as he never had to experience it again.He wasn't sure if he was quite grateful for remembering everything, but if the knowledge of his friends (of Yasha and the rest of the Mighty Nein, of his life as Molly), came with unfortunate baggage, well, he wasn't physically the strongest, but he would cope. Anyways, it was his baggage after all, so, eventually, he would have had to reclaim it. Better now, on his own terms, than out of the blue, laterMolly gathered up what was left of his things. He stooped down to pick up the remnants of the Platinum Dragon tapestry. It was strange how attached he had become to the massive, tacky thing but he did love it so, enough to try to salvage it for the memories it held, if nothing else. His cards were still there, but a quick, familiar shuffle revealed one was missing. His swords, too, were missing one of its number. His gold was gone in its entirety, but he didn’t care much for that. Standardized money, while it made life simpler, was a new-fangled invention that Molly, before, hadn’t had the time to fully understand. However, he was a little more upset about the other two pilfered tokens. He had liked his sword a rather lot, with its sunlight sheen and heady scent of magic, and his tarot deck wasn’t much use at telling fortunes when it was missing part of itself. It was an incomplete picture; a biased telling: both the future, and not.Molly was many things: a creature of comfort (hedonistic in the best ways), unbothered and careless of outside opinions, showy and opulent and flamboyant, selectively and fiercely loyal, (and maybe a good man?) but indecisive was never one of them. It was laughably easy to decide what to do now: destitute, alone and unarmed.Mildly annoyed at his friends' theft, the man god being that was both Molly and not, began walking towards Zadash.