Adrian Blackwood

Last week, Adrian had invited Yelena and Lydia both to watch him bury his heart and properly claim the land. Lydia, because he thought that a fellow practitioner would appreciate watching a ritual of this size, Yelena because...well, if nothing else, he figured that she'd enjoy having something else to tease him about.

He'd brought out a nice picnic blanket and some refreshments, including several bottles of his homemade fruit beers that he'd shared with Logan, water, fruit juices, a light herbal tea, sandwiches on a thick, hearty bread (made fancy because he'd cut them into quarters), and a nice, freshly-baked cake that he'd cooked because he'd wanted to, not because he was nervous.

"You're fretting," Boston noted, sunning himself in a tree while Adrian made sure that all the utensils and plates were just so for his guests.

"I'm new to hosting," Adrian said. "I want to make sure that everything is nice for them."

"Uh-huh," Boston said. "...You're going to do fine." He wasn't talking about hosting. "We've practiced a hundred times back home."

"I know," his witch replied. "I just kinda wish it had been a hundred and one." Or maybe a hundred ten.

***
Once his guests had arrived and seated themselves, Adrian pulled out his trunk, went over to the black steamer trunk that he'd flown in with and, after rooting around amongst various things (he really needed to unpack this), he pulled out a beautifully carved wooden box and clutched it reverently to his chest. "Would you care to hold it while I finish preparing?" he asked, offering the box to Lydia. Boston made a grumpy sound, but forewent commentary as Adrian knelt down in front of the oak tree, plunged his bare hands into the acorn-covered ground, and began to dig. He moved handfuls of soil with surprising efficiency. "This has to be done by hand," he explained, figuring Yelena, at least, might be wondering why he wasn't using a shovel. "I'm a good digger, though. It won't take me long."

He wasn't kidding. Adrian Blackwood dug a three-foot-deep hole through hardpacked, rocky soil using nothing but his hands. He worked calmly, methodically, but fast, and didn't so much as rip a nail. There had to be some magic behind that, but he didn't say a word the entire time. He just kept going until he had a neat, knee-deep, root-filled pit wide enough to sit in, finished. A hole that size should have taken hours, even with a shovel; Adrian had finished in maybe twenty minutes. "There," he said, brushing the earth off his fingers as he stood up. "Now we're ready."

Adrian took the wooden box back from Lydia. The moment his hands touched it, a hush fell over the clearing. Whatever Adrian was doing had the attention of the whole woods - or at least, the section he'd claimed for himself. Silently, reverently, he climbed back into the hole he'd just made and got down on his knees, placing the wooden box into the nest of roots at the bottom. When everything was positioned exactly where he wanted it, he removed the box's carved lid. The wood came off with a delicate scrape, revealing the object inside, which looked exactly like a human heart. A live human heart. It contracted as they watched, the dark-red muscles pumping in the deep, regular motion of a heartbeat. It didn't look bloody or wet; it was just a heart beating in Adrian's hands as he removed it from the box and began to bury it in the ground.

The hush got deeper with every handful of dirt he scooped over it, and then a pulse began to run through the soil under where they were sitting. The thumping sound got louder and louder as Adrian filled in the hole he'd just made. By the time he stood up to press the dirt flat with his boots, the whole hill was pounding with the beating of the heart. It shook the trees and frightened the birds, filling the air with flapping wings and the crushing feeling of something huge and ancient, something larger than human. The weight of so much power was palpable, pushing down on all of them in a way that made it hard to stay upright. Just when they might have become certain it was going to flatten them to the ground, Adrian brought his hands together in front of him with a clap, and the horrible pressure vanished like it had never been.

"Well done!" Boston called from the branches he'd climbed up into. "That went even better than it did in practice."

Adrian was panting too hard to answer. He'd been perfectly calm the whole time he was filling in the hole. Now that he was finished, he collapsed onto the needle-strewn ground with a gasp, sprawling under the trees with a triumphant smile on his face.

[Text taken and adapted from Hell For Hire by Rachel Aaron, because you know how I love me some perfectly normal canons. While the two ladies mentioned were invited, post is open for other folks, either before or after the ritual.]