𝕬𝖗𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖘 𝕷𝖚𝖑𝖑𝖆𝖇𝖞 - [𝗞𝗮𝘇 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗸𝗸𝗲𝗿]

𝐥𝐢𝐢. 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥'𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘦

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐘-𝐓𝐖𝐎 — a child's tale

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 Nikolai Lanstov had done the impossible. He'd gotten Baghra to leave behind her little hole in the palace grounds. From the festering bruise on the poor sobachka's wrist, she'd set her cane on him, not to mention her stinging words... but if anyone was to drag her away and brush aside her insults with a winning smile on his face, it would be Nikolai.

 Baghra had never been one for talk. She taught and she observed... and she complained. A lot. Aleksa had spent much of her time simply sharing the silence with her... great, great, great — perhaps it was easier to simply call the old woman an ancestor.

 They were quite similar; from the shadows tracing their flesh, to the heartbreak of watching Aleksander becoming more and more of a monster as the days flashed by. They both cared for him, even after everything he'd done. After the way he'd treated them.

 But the heart was a foolish little thing, wasn't it? It drowned you in hope, it made you crave love... and when the wrong person managed to wrap their fingers around it, you were entirely at their mercy. But Aleksander was not merciful.

 The Spinning Wheel — the name of the observatory in the depths of frosty Fjerda — was surrounded by white-capped mountains sticking up like the points of a cluster of needles. Those particular mountains had certainly seen the brunt of both Aleksa and Alina's powers.

 Baghra had been the one to teach them how to use the cut. With Alina's amplifiers snug around her collar and wrist, she sliced through two at once... but Aleksa hadn't exactly fallen short on her own attempts. Even without Cas perched on her shoulder — he quite liked catching snowflakes, it seemed— she'd managed to slice directly through the middle of a broad hunk of land.

 Baghra's hands had flexed, her lips curling, and certainly not in a pleasant way. Too much like Aleksander, she had thought.

 On one particular day when Aleksa had escaped the chatter of those that remained, she'd worked her way to the top of the observatory and carved through the mountains. Cut after cut fell from her palms until Baghra tapped her cane on the ground.

 Apparently, it was time for her to understand just how their darkened blood had come to be. Perhaps it had been her use of the cut; so vicious and volatile... or maybe it had been David's loose lips talking of the Nichevo'ya she'd managed to conjure.

 Baghra spoke of a story she had yet to reveal to anyone but the little boy she had once known so well; the story of how Morozova's amplifiers came to be... the story of how her sister had died.