Chapter Text
The theory of tragedy, as written by Arianna Clawthorne, age thirteen:
Anyone can write a tragedy to perform at the town square. And usually, the aspiring bard's career ends when the village decides that it is shit. Because a tragedy does not need to be good, just like comedy is not always actually funny. A good tragedy, at least according to myself, is one where it seems as if there is a million and one moments in which just a single character out of dozens with agency could have made a different call and everything could have ended up better, and at the same time, like nothing could have ever averted this terrible end.
When Shakespeare washes ashore from the humans, it's raved about. It is all the Isle can talk about, and it is because of character.
If you put Hamlet in Othello's plot, he'd kill Claudius immediately. And if Hamlet was in Othello's shoes, he'd outthink Iago in a heartbeat. But they're not. And it's because they are who they are, that tragedy ensues.
†
Arianna Clawthorne, the townspeople said, had from a tender age been cursed with rage. Perhaps, if she was born three hundred years in the future, she’d have a better outlet and use for it. Or, she wouldn’t have needed it any more than she did in her own time.
There were a lot of versions of that story.
Of how a little girl became a monster.
One barmaid insisted that she had the right story: that Arianna Clawthorne wasn’t just a child with destructive tendencies, but that she’d actually been cursed by the Boiling Sea, because as a little girl, she’d fallen in. Instead of burning immediately, she kicked with her feet.
What would usually be a death sentence turned into the source of her power, as she sunk into the waves and made a deal with the titan to spare her life.
Instead of dying, she’d come back.
She danced at the bottom of the sea and laughed with her teeth when the waves brought her to kiss the shore, wielding powers unseen by witches. Breed ruthlessness and hate that couldn’t be sanded down.
Of course, this story was only written down after Arianna Clawthorne’s death.
†
Phillip Wittebane was a lot of things.
Story told by schoolchildren, statue in the town square, lost but not prodigal son, the ruler of the Boiling Isles, congealed mass of horror, creator of grimwalkers and other assorted cruelties, Arianna’s unwilling roommate, Caleb’s brother and more.
But before all that, he was a boy.
Hate isn’t born, they say. Hate is moulded, bred.
†
Ninety-two.
They say that as you go, your life flashes before your eyes. And they say that it’s only the good parts. Everyone who says that is full of shit, and at least Arianna can feel gratified by knowing that they probably all learned the truth when it was too late for them to tell anyone.
Every moment is comparable to drowning in an indifferent storm in the middle of the sea, no land in sight, on steady ground beneath her feet.
There are tiny, infinitesimal things Phillip allows her. The choice of which tea to drink is hers—but the choice is between chamomile or jasmine and it’s only when Phillip graces her with his presence. She cannot choose to drink coffee, or simply nothing. It’s not a freedom she is blessed with.
Arianna makes a game because she always has.
The first thing she notices is that she can direct her fingers just enough to pick something different from the line-up of his mind, and so, she chooses matcha—something she knows Phillip has never tasted, but she liked in life, when she carried it home from slave ships she burned to the ground.
Phillip had given her jasmine since the first day and Arianna cannot bear the thought of it any longer. It didn’t matter that it had been her favourite when she was live, for the past couple decades, the experience of it will forever be tainted by the reality of her utter, unrelenting helplessness.
And the fact that no reprieve will come for her.
Phillip imposes labour on her. He understands that an inactive body and mind build the stairways to insanity, so he has her tend to the growing palace of lies within his own mind. For such a cruel warden, Phillip can be remarkably solicitous.
The meals she eats—and she doesn’t need to eat, but that’s another choice taken away from her in the maddening cycle, Phillip arrives and Arianna sits down without wanting to, and she brings the fork to her lips, and she eats in a way she never did and always laughed at Phillip for—are always homecooked, perfectly balanced, beautifully prepared recipes she knows, for a fact, that Phillip chooses because he knows her to like them.
It's another tiny way in which she is present, and another thought that she cannot dwell too long on for other reasons; the bittersweet exercise in memory that she’s required to accomplish whenever he feels like it.
And in the evening, she is allowed to choose something that’s bad for her—but she supposes, the memory of hard liquor or little white lines won’t kill her anymore—and she can direct her hands to make it through the overpowering control of Phillip; it speaks of the fatuous mercy turned meaningful by the cruelty which made it possible.
She had control of herself for the first while in here, and she will not forget that Phillip chose for her to lose it.
She doesn’t remember showering, but she knows that she’s not as disgusting as she should be, and she doesn’t remember sleeping, but she kneels in the mud all day, digging out secret passageways, and then she’s swinging her feet over a hammock, and she doesn’t smell like shit. She brushes her teeth after every meal, again, never remembering the procedure of it but never finding steamed broccoli in her teeth. Her nails are always trimmed and painted.
She’s stranded on the shoreline, and absolutely no one can hear her scream.
Arianna isn’t sure what to think about these choices. Phillip’s, not hers, because these are all actions over which not even the tiny threshold of option that she sometimes holds stands its ground.
Her body has never been this well cared for; she has never eaten, exercised, primmed and pruned herself with anywhere near this attentiveness and care in all her long existence. Arianna would laugh herself hoarse at the thought of it, but she screamed too much and now she couldn’t do anything and Phillip had proven with his little—big—breakdown at their predicament that there was nothing as merciful as an absolutely powerful tyrant.
Her internal clock tickles, warning her of the time passing, and she doesn’t remember making a fire—she couldn’t if she tried, she knows, she tried to set everything alight, both with glyphs and sticks back when she didn’t feel like she was wading through electric honey—but there’s a fire in front of her, with a roast on a stick, the meat tender and juicy and a beautiful meal that she would never have made for herself.
Even powerless and half out of her wits from a year spent as a prisoner in her own body, Arianna can smell the particular stink of Phillip the second he decides to grace her.
It irritates her sensitive nose, this much magic in one small, fragile vessel. It’s like holding jasmine right in front of one’s face and taking a deep breath. Phillip’s scent is as sweet as it is spicy, honeyed like Arianna remembers herself, treacherous in its bite.
She had just finished her meal when he knocks and raps against the beam of her makeshift tent. Polite, Arianna thinks. Meaningless and foolish, she adds as an afterthought. Her legs are going to carry her to the entrance, and she’s going to open it for him, whether she wants to or not.
Arianna opens the door with a smile, large and friendly and it makes her think about the stories of wolves swallowing children whole.
“Phillip, honey! What a surprise! A great one! I thought you’d forgotten little ol’ me in the hustle and buste of being Emperor—” they’re not her words and she wishes she could cry so hard she choked, “Come on in, come on in!” she motions enthusiastically at the hooded figure drinking her in.
Phillip doesn’t bother responding. He walks in, firmness in his steps. He flicks elegant fingers towards the walls of her tent, and Arianna watches, an empty smile plastered on her face, tears pouring without a single twitch of her eyelids, and she watches as the walls burn away into sparking glyphs, glowing red and orange like the embers of a real fire.
Phillip turns to her, then, and Arianna’s false breath leaves her.
The power emanating from him is dizzying, even like this. It had always been unmissable, after his curse, a constant looming presence, one not even Arianna is sure he could hide if he wished. Now, it’s a fucking beacon. No spells are left except those on Arianna, but if her fate wasn’t already irrevocably intertwined with Phillip’s, the power he’s flaunting for nothing now would have drawn her in like a moth to flame.
No messy history required.
“So, what have you been up to, hot stuff?” are Arianna’s final words.
Phillip taps her temple, fingers so soft and cold against her aching skin and Arianna breathes freely for the first time in what feels like eons. She stumbles back, away from this blinding, deafening source of power, of guilt, of rage, terror freezing her bones. Though, she hopes that she hides it well enough. She hopes that all Phillip notices is the expected overcompensation after so much time having to stain in order to perform the simplest action.
Phillip watches Arianna warily, eyes narrowed. If they sting, the redness Phillip surely sees can be excused as many things.
“Hello, Arianna.” His voice is low, clipped.
Arianna attempts to recompose herself. Her brittle smirk is as much for her own benefit as Phillip’s and she hates that they both know it.
“Let me guess—” and she startles at the sound of her own voice, too loud, too rough, too real. All the small, complex muscles in her throat are suddenly back under her own command and the feeling is intoxicating when moments before, she couldn’t even have groaned in pain if she was being burned alive.
Unless of course, Phillip allowed it.
But she’s not cowed yet.
“—you silly little wannabe witch realised that there’s a reason people tell you to walk before you run?” Arianna smiles unpleasantly and her lips tremble despite her best efforts.
Phillip stares through her. He looks different from how Arianna remembers in many ways, all small and meaningful to a woman who could no longer change. The edges of his face are sharper, his build slighter. Eating must be a boring, meaningless task when one has lost everything, huh? She recognises herself in him, and that is when she knows. There are bags under his eyes, purple and pale and stamped on. The nails on his delicate fingers that Arianna remembers breaking are jagged and long.
His hair is a mess of lifelessness and Arianna knows that at least, in here, Phillip could change it all in a second, barely half a thought required. He could make himself into the perfect vessel for the all-powerful magic swirling inside of him.
And yet, he does not.
That he doesn’t is both something to ponder over and be concerned about. Phillip stands here in all his unkempt glory, expression blank, shameless and omnipotent. That should be enough to make any intelligent life flee fast and far. This much power in the hands of a foolish, hot mess of man would give night terrors to any magic user worth their salt looking at him.
Luckily, Arianna’s always liked the edge. And she knows that the exact same things were said about her, and that’s even more terrifying.
Phillip frowns at Arianna’s cutting words, and it’s at once satisfying and a relief.
“Yes,” he answers simply, then looks away from Arianna’s stare. Arianna would hang herself if he gave her rope. “You’re you.” His voice is rough, his accent heavy.
Arianna wants to wrap blackened fingers around his struggling throat and squeeze until she can watch him fear her the way she’s grown to fear him. The snarl that adorns her face is not fabricated in any way, because at this moment out of all the many that came before, Arianna has never desired someone’s slow, torturous death more. She wishes not only for Phillip to die, but for it to be done by her hands, creatively, painfully, forever and evermore.
She thinks about the things she knows how to inflict on someone, and the ones that either drive you insane or leave you too damaged to survive and she thinks about how she wants Phillip to suffer them all. Repeatedly.
The torture this stupid human boy put her through was worse than the many things Arianna had suffered through in her long life, and here he is, broken, hurt blue eyes, asking for a friend in the storm while he can’t even hold Arianna’s gaze long enough to map the hurt, because he’s aware that he deserves it a thousand times over, but he is uncaring.
“Of course,” Arianna answers, a poisonous grin on her lips. One inch, she tells herself. A single slip, the smallest chance. And there will blood on Phillip’s sheets. On Arianna’s hands. She wonders if it will taste like jasmine.
†
Character is fate.