2026-03-15 14:50 - 17:46 PST
Kingsnake returned to Neres after a particularly long night1. She told her about what had happened, and when asked she mentioned she hadn’t heard anything further from Liam. Then, she asked if they could talk about blood bonding.
Kingsnake has seen Neres stare at people one particular way. Her serpentine eyes, dilating, trail the person. Hungrily, slowly. Like observing prey. Neres looks at Kingsnake this way, now. “Speak.”
Kingsnake shrinks under Neres’ gaze. She hasn’t looked at Phoebe like this before and it scares her. “They told me the details of it- Thalia & Kaveh I mean. I… I didn’t want to believe it at first, but… I’m blood bonded to you, aren’t I? I just want to know… I want to know why you did it, and why you never told me… Set teaches us to question the external forces guiding our choices… you taught me that… so why…?” She tries to bolster her confidence, but the blood bond eats at her foundations. Doubt wells inside her… why was she opposing Neres like this?
Neres is quiet for too long. But then, she smiles politely. “Why would you think such a thing, darling?” Her eyes don’t change.
“Well, I know I’ve drunk your vitae… and they told me… they told me how it works… I’ve bumped up against these feelings before… every time you asked why I was acting overly polite, or following some insignificant social practice… it was there, and I could never explain why I felt the way I did. It’s because you…” She falters. “I just want to know that my feelings are real…” She goes quiet, that same trembling, tearful expression from the night before, but laced with so much fear and self-doubt.
“My darling, do you truly believe the words of these people?” Neres steps closer.
Phoebe instinctually takes a half step back, but freezes. “I don’t want to believe them…” She manages, weakly.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to believe them. I asked if you do believe them.” Neres presses.
She’s terrified of her own answer. Everything Kaveh had told her last night, it feels like a burden, like the weight of reality was trying to make her choose the wrong answer, to say yes, that she did believe them. “…please Neres… you’re scaring me…”
At the cusp of where Neres would strike… She lurches forth! Holding Kingsnake in a loose embrace. “Darling, I have done as you say. This bonding was a test, to know how you may respond if you discovered the truth. You have responded well, Phoebe, and I am proud of you.”
After being successfully intimidated and gaslit, Neres asked if she was finally ready for the ritual. Of course she was. She followed Neres up to the attic where she saw a rug, a staked gangrel, a dagger, and a statuette of a serpent coiled around a cross. Liam screamed against the gag, terrified at the sight of his childe.
She makes the mistake of making eye contact with him, but only for a moment. She averts her gaze, steeling herself onwards. He’d caused her so much misery, intentional or not. She steps forward, and kneels atop the rug.
“Phoebe, do you choose to seize the dagger?”
She steadies herself. She’d needed to do a lot to survive in life. She could make this a matter of survival, of seizing a second chance for herself. She takes up the dagger. “…I do.”
“Do you choose to shed the blood of the old, and emerge from the blood of the new?” The gag slips from Liam’s mouth. “Please, please don’t do this.” Liam sputters weakly, desperately.
She remembers how pathetic he was when they first met, and how pathetic he was when they’d finally spoken. She’d almost felt bad for him. She had felt bad for him. It was like looking at all the weakest parts of herself. Her embrace was an accident, done without purpose. He’d just done it to ease his own conscience. She ended up apologizing, helping him find closure, because he was weak. She’d killed those first few victims out of hunger and ignorance. A purposeless unlife as a Gangrel, as an animal. Despite everything she tells herself, it still takes her a moment. The tears resume. She fights through it, shuts him out. This. This would have purpose. She brings the knife down.
Liam screams when he’s stabbed, but he’s powerless to further resist. The moment Phoebe draws blood, it spills and gushes forth in a torrential stream. Neres waves her hand, and the blood spills more neatly on the surface of the attic floor. Patterns begin to form along the ground, the winding, circular patterns of serpents eating each other’s tails. Neres looks at Phoebe with a faint smile across her lips. “Do you choose to fully pledge yourself to Set, awaiting and ushering in his return?”
She looks back at her mentor, tears lost amidst the spatter of vitae across her chest. A pained but determined smile crosses her face. “I do.”
The blood coalesces around Kingsnake, drenching her completely. It sinks into her skin, she loses her senses in its warm embrace. Then, the blood enters her body, transmuted into something new. Something that pleases Set. Something that pleases Neres. “You are now Kingsnake, a chosen of Set.”
The ritual was complete. She was a Setite now, Neres her true sire. Neres was proud. She loved her. She had purpose.
Additional Notes from Sand
# discord kitten plotline
kingsnake learned of some scraggly thinbloods seeking to end the bloodbond practice by overriding the addiction to blood with an addiction to intensely adrenaline-enhancing heroin
they let them proceed in exchange for sharing their research instead of apprehending them. kingsnake also learned she might be bloodbonded
while neres interrogates her about the mission, kingsnake shyly asks about her bond status
Neres pivots by gaslighting kingsnake into believing she bloodbonded her as a test of will and loyalty. kingsnake buys it without question
having narrowly dodged this bullet, neres speeds up her plans and has kingsnake kill her own sire as a hazing ritual for cult entry