crouchingtiger28

[crouchingtiger28]

3: Switchblades and Swords

(This is a continuation of The Bone Cats, originally a short I wrote based on @deepwaterwritingprompts's prompt #2965)

Warning: This story is centered around self-harm (cutting) and feelings about self-harm. There are also mentions of depression and emotional abuse.

She had done a bad job of hiding the evidence. Bad enough that, had anyone bothered for a second glance, it would have been blindingly obvious. Nobody did.

Oh, she left the vicinity clean enough. She didn't get into dousing things with bleach, but she wiped away the obvious blood from the floor, the knife, and the wall the few times she messed up and got blood on the wall. She even used the scented candle in the bathroom to sterilize the knife.

Her mother wouldn't stand for anything but a spotless house, and Cass didn't want any infections to set in.

No, she did a bad job of hiding the more personal evidence. Haphazardly wrapped cuts, blood showing through the gauze, a barely-there limp… but she didn't care. No one cared, and so neither did she. After a while, she forewent bandages entirely. The fabric of her pants from the knee down to about mid-calf was perpetually spotted with blood.

She didn't care. She didn't. And whenever she found herself caring too much, she slipped into the bathroom with a lighter and a knife.

Cass knew for a fact that her mother hated cats. Hated them with a deep and abiding passion, and only partially because she was allergic. However, Cass was sure that, if her mother had to pick one, she'd choose one of the bone cats. Cass was equally positive that the cat would be right at home in her mother's house.

It was a surprise, but only briefly, when Cass swung the bathroom door open and was met with round, golden eyes. Not human eyes, certainly, but also definitely not cat eyes. They were set into a body made mostly of wood, with what appeared to be sand beneath the shifting plates of bark and sprays of lobed leaves. Smoke rose languidly from its back, drifting up into the air in lazy curls.

Cass slipped through the open door and closed it softly. The cat continued to watch her calmly, moving only her head to keep her eyes pinned on Cass.

Stepping around the cat, Cass set her lighter on the counter and flicked her knife open. It wasn't anything special, just a switchblade she'd bought at a corner store when she'd saved enough to stop using cheap razor blades. She glanced, briefly, at the cat.

The cat who was still watching her, sitting in the same place with her head turned almost a hundred and eighty degrees.

Cass jumped, almost dropping her knife, then forced her racing heart to calm down. She had been aware, distantly, that the bone cats weren't exactly alive, and the 'cat' in her bathroom could be nothing but a bone cat. To see her completely ignore things like how spines were supposed to work was something else entirely.

It didn't matter, though. The cat still wasn't moving, and Cass could get on with it. She lit the candle.

A few minutes later, she methodically wiped blood off her knife. The floor was clean already, since she hadn't gotten any blood on it in the first place. She'd found that if she used the knife fresh after being sterilized, it would mostly cauterize the cuts.

She flushed the paper towel she used to clean the knife down the toilet. She couldn't put it in the trash can, not because it would make it clear that something was wrong, but because she was only allowed in the bathroom that any company also used. If someone snooped around and found a bloody paper towel or two, it would look bad on her mother.

As she finished, Cass felt something like sandpaper swipe up her leg, tearing at her new cuts. She spun, knife still in her hand.

Behind her, the bone cat, who had been still and silent the whole time, had finally moved. The sandpaper had been her tongue, swiping at the few dots of blood on Cass's leg. Cass nudged the cat away with her foot, ignoring the sensation of warm polished wood on her skin.

"Just because you're the bone cat of blood doesn't give you free reign over mine." Cass's voice came out soft and hoarse, shaking slightly. It had been a while since she'd said anything. Maybe a day and a half? The cat only gave her a sad, piercing look and turned away.

The cat became a staple after that.

She was nowhere to be found most of the time, which was a blessing in and of itself. Cass had the faint inkling that the cat had been drawn to her, and that would be bad publicity for her mother. Instead, whenever Cass slipped into the bathroom for more… selfish purposes, the cat was always there before her.

Every time, the cat would sit as still as a tree in one place, watching her like a hawk… or an owl, based on the flexibility of the cat's neck. Then, when Cass was done, the cat would move.

Sometimes she would 'clean' whatever unhealed cuts Cass had, her tongue literally made of sand. Other times, when Cass lingered on the bathroom tiles, the cat would move to sit next to her, leafy tail flicking silently. Rarely she would merely walk out, not looking back.

If Cass sat on the floor and the cat sat next to her, then Cass would absently run her hands over the cat's head and side. Her head was made of thin slats of polished wood, and her back and sides were larger plates of rough bark. Where a normal cat would have had tufts of fur in her ears, on her ankles and elbows, and at the end of her tail, the bone cat had bushy clumps of what Cass had come to recognize as oak leaves.

"Cassandra." Knuckles rapped on the bathroom door, startling Cass out of her stupor. "Open this door immediately!"

Cass scrambled to her feet, lunging for the door and fumbling frantically with the lock until the door clicked open. He mother stood sternly in the open doorway, staring through her special gold-leaf glasses at Cass.

"You need to be ready in five minutes," She said briskly, "The mayor's wife is coming to tea today and you need to look presentable. Do something about your nasty scars, too!"

Cass nodded numbly, still holding the door handle. Warm bark brushed against her leg, and then her mother screamed.

"What is that!? What is that demon creature!?" She stumbled back a step, her face gray with terror. Cass glanced down, confused. There was no way the bone cat was normal, but she wouldn't call her a demon at first sight-

The wood-and-leaves cat Cass had come to know was gone. In its place was a true hell creature made of molten glass and blood-red fire. The calm golden eyes were gone, replaced by burning yellow embers and the cat was spitting blue sparks, her back arched with flame.

Without a second thought, Cass grabbed the cat around the middle and yanked her back. The bathroom door swung shut, seemingly of its own accord.

Cass knew what fire was like. She had an intimate knowledge of how it felt to be burned. Even before she dropped the cat on the ground in a flurry of instinctive wariness, she knew she hadn't been burned. As always, the cat felt only mildly warm.

The cat wound around her ankles, and Cass watched in wonder as she transformed in real time. Flames died slowly, and molten glass hardened and shattered at the same time into grains of off-white sand. The sand simmered and sifted, and the familiar bark and leaves and polished oak wood appeared as though they were driftwood bobbing to the surface.

The cat nudged Cass with her head, and a voice spoke directly into her mind. It was a voice of banked fire and ever-growing always-dying forests.

'Hello,' it purred, 'My name is Sword. I am yours to wield.'

_^. .^_

#The Bone Cats #magic #cats #magical cats #tw: knives #tw: self harm #tw: emotional manipulation #tw: emotional abuse #tw: depression #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

2: Arguing with Liars

(This is a continuation of the short I wrote based on @deepwaterwritingprompts's prompt #2965)

I deal in lies. Little lies, big lies, fakes so good they're almost real, falsehoods so slick they're almost true. Almost. The almost is always the killer.

I'm not good at telling the truth, but I do feel like maybe I should. No, there I go again, telling half-truths and white lies. I know I need to. The truth needs to be told, at least just this once.

It began for me several years before anyone else noticed. It is my stock and trade to do things when no one else notices. It began, in fact, with a particularly clever lie.

I'm beating around the bush.

There was a company. It sold magical items. They were all fake. Alright, they were mostly fake. Some of them had magic in them, it just wasn't the magic that was advertised. Some of them actually did what they were supposed to, but I didn't advertise them for what they were. Some of them were useless tchotchke and trinkets.

There was a skull. Its origin was unknown, certainly not human, and it sat on my counter to watch my customers.

Ah. My apologies. The mysticism comes naturally now, I suppose.

I had a cat skull on my counter. It looked sort of arcane, I guess. As mysterious and magical as any skull looks, sitting on the counter of a shop of mystical things.

In the end the skull, like everything in the shop, got sold off. I recall only vaguely; I think I sold it to a blonde woman who stopped into the shop to look around. She was strange, but she had good money, and I, too, am rather strange.

I told her it was the skull of a bone cat, one of Satan's runaway pets. That was before they'd become so widespread, only a rumor on the wind, and she believed me. The next day, the cat was there.

From what I can gather, most of the bone cats have some facsimile of life. Skin made of ice or fur made of fire. This one – the one I would grow to call Scrappy – had none of that. He was just bone, yellowed and worn. Not even a likeness of eyes.

I was skeptical at first, of course. Wouldn't anyone be? I had just been telling tales of bone cats, and one shows up on my doorstep. Before they were anywhere near as widespread as they are these days, too. It must be an illusion, or a construct, or some such thing. What else was I to think?

Oh, dear. There I go again. I'm lying.

I knew, somewhere deep down, that he was truly a bone cat. I tried to pass it off as some sort of trick, but I, at least, knew. I had just been telling false tales of bone cats. Of course one would show up on my doorstep.

Of course I held the door for him. The absence of his eyes almost- ah, nevermind. If this were any other time, I would tell you I felt compelled to let him in. Do something evil or wicked or whatnot. I wasn't. I just have a soft spot for cats, and I learned that day that my soft spot extends to the undead pets of the devil himself.

Scrappy didn't take me up on it. That time.

After that, though, any time I glance out the window there was a good chance he'd be waiting. Watching me with his sightless gaze. After a while, I gave up on letting him in. He didn't want to come in, so I stopped trying.

I don't even know the first time he got into my house. My house, not my shop. He just appeared one day, sitting on my counter while more living cats milled around my feet.

Well, that one's only a little bit of a lie. I didn't know it was him when he first showed up. Honestly, looking back on it, I should have realized. I only learned after I knew him for a while that the bone cat of silence haunts liars.

He came in under a disguise.

It wasn't at all what I would have expected of him, and I say that completely honestly. For one thing, he was healthy. Healthy enough that I couldn't believe he had been a stray for long, though his fur was dirty enough. I gave him food anyway, since I wasn't going to turn a cat away and only the most desperate of strays cared to stick around for the dry brown pellets I dished out.

It was weeks after that when, as I was filling bowls of water, he stopped in front of me. I had gotten used to his false appearance by then, and merely nudged him away with my foot. He bit me. Hard.

He's no ordinary cat skeleton, I can tell you that. Having had a cat skull sitting on my counter for so long gave me a decent working knowledge of how long their teeth are. How he even fit those in his mouth, I don't know.

The instant his fangs hit my skin, I could see through his illusion. That was a bit of a shock, I'll tell you that much. Okay, so I jumped out of my skin and dropped the water all over myself and a few very disgruntled strays that were standing around me.

After I replaced the water, I went to treat whatever Scrappy's dagger-like fangs – and I say this as someone who has a great deal of experience with daggers – had done to my leg. Scrappy came back to me as I was attempting to disinfect the bleeding gouges in my leg. He rubbed his head against my wrist, and his voice spoke directly in my mind.

'Hello,' He said, short and to the point, 'I am Pitfall.'

_^. .^ _

#The Bone Cats #magical cats #magical cat #necromancy #I guess?? #writing #my writing #writing prompts #deepwaterwritingprompts #creative writing #fantasy

[crouchingtiger28]

Whenever Merram can't handle the rest of the gang, he climbs up the wall of the building and smokes on the roof. Without fail, the cat always turns up.

Her bones are so white they outshine the snow, though to be fair, the snow in Wanderdell is typically off-white: a stained cream or gray or minty blue. The rest of her – muscles and fur and the gleaming orbs of her eyes – is made of ice. Thick, dark blue ice for her muscles and shards of transparent ice for her fur. Her eyes are a cloudy white, shot through with bubbles and swirls of silvery crystals.

He often brings her treats and snacks – whatever cat-safe food he can scrounge up or the occasional bag of cat treats he buys special – which she usually eats, despite the fact that she's made of ice. When he forgets himself, he talks to her.

"The guys are getting antsy again." He says one cold, cold morning. Smoke drifts into the air from his cigarette, and she sits above him on the roof and watches him.

"Racer is breaking things. Pete and Lionel are getting in fights." Merram sighs, running a hand through his chair. "They're working themselves up for something. Something big. Dangerous."

He takes a drag on his cigarette, staring distantly into the skyline.

"Everything we do is dangerous, I guess."

The cat flicks her tail, but otherwise remains still. Merram looks at her sideways. She's always been an enigma. The bone cats are dangerous, people are sure. There are rumors that Satan still favors them, even after they ran off. Like any normal cat owner. They've got access to all his power, or so the rumors say.

Merram sighs again and glances around. No one to overhear him, no listening spells anywhere near him.

"It's the governor." He admits to the cat and the cat alone, "They're planning to kidnap him. Or maybe kill him."

She sits down, her icy fur scraping and splintering on the shingles. Merram turns to look at her, and they meet eyes. She's dangerous, he is sure of that. He's never seen her do anything but watch, but she carries the mantle of a threat like she was born to it. If she was born at all. Merram looks away and takes another drag on his cigarette.

"If they get away with it, they'll be rich." He says idly. "But if they don’t…"

He twists his cigarette out on the shingle next to him, watching the smoke trail out of it. Another small black circle to add to the cluster of small black circles beside where he always sits on the roof.

"They won't get away with it." He says softly, staring at the circle on the shingles, "They aren't good enough for that. At best, they'll give up halfway through. At worst, the mayor dies."

He snorts bitterly, "Dunno when I decided that the mayor dying is worse than any of them dying. I think we used to be something like family."

Something like family. What a funny word, for the only companions he's had for years. He's out of cigarettes, and the bone cat is still watching him, unblinking. It's uncanny, her eyes. He's pretty sure she doesn't even need eyes. They're just there for show.

Merram sighs and stands, balancing easily on the shingles. He slides down the roof and clambers back into his room. He tucks another box of cigarettes in his pocket and wanders out the door. Down the stairs, to the main living area. No-one is there, and there are still glass shards on the floor from the cup Racer threw at the wall.

Merram moseys down the street, lighting another cigarette that he grips loosely between his teeth. He loiters outside the sheriff's office for several minutes, hesitating. Just hesitating.

Finally, he stamps out his cigarette and steps inside. He knows he looks suspicious. He's cultivated a suspicious look for quite a while. Dangerous and up to no good. He's only ever seen intentionally, and whenever he is, it's always to draw attention off the others.

"Howdy, sir." The sheriff is in, sitting behind his desk.

"Howdy sheriff," Merram nods, tipping his hat. "I have a tip for you. Anonymous, in a sense."

"A tip?" The sheriff leans forward, taking his boots off his desk to inspect Merram. Merram catches sight of the handgun as he hides it behind the thick wood of the desk. The sheriff's desk is heavy and high quality. It looks like it could survive a shootout.

"Yessir," Merram says, folding his arms to avoid reaching for his own gun, "There's a group of boys comin' to the governor's place, some time in the next week. They aim to take him hostage. They won't succeed."

"Won't they now?" The sheriff of Wanderdell wasn't chosen for being stupid, that's for sure. Merram can see the canny glint in his eyes.

"Nah," Merram says, "They aren't that good. Just… give them a warning, would you?"

"I don't suppose these boys are the WanderWitches, are they?" The sheriff says. Under the casual question there's a thread of steel lining his voice.

"Could be," Merram says, "could be. Depends. If they are, will they hang?"

"Not the ones that are underage." The sheriff says, finally leaning back in his chair again.

"All right." Merram says at last, turning to leave the station, "I guess we'll see, then."

He expects, the whole way out, to catch a bullet between the shoulders. It never comes.

Instead, waiting for him on the street is the cat. Merram stops for a moment, confused. He's never seen her not on the roof. It's strange, to meet her in the normal every day of the city streets.

"You know," The sheriff says, standing in the door behind Merram, "they say the bone cat of frost hunts traitors."

Merram does know that. He also knows that the bone cats – or at least the one bone cat he's interacted with – are not entirely like their reputation. That they hate criminals and will kill sinners with impunity. And he knows he's a traitor. He's here for a reason, after all.

He ignores the sheriff, digging in his pocket. Sure enough, he's got a mostly empty bag of cat treats folded up in his pocket. He offers a treat to the cat.

She shifts, and the sound of glaciers cleaving in miniature echoes through her. She sniffs his hand, his fingers, and finally the treat. With utmost dignity, she takes it, crunching elegantly.

'Hello' she says in his mind, 'my name is avalanche.'

_^. .^ _

Text: They say the bone cats were death’s pets, before they got bored and left. Wicked smart, tough as nails, they are nigh impossible to lure into domesticity, but ridiculously useful once you do.

#The Bone Cats #Magical cats #fantasy #writing prompts #creative writing #writing #my writing #cats #deepwaterwritingprompts

[crouchingtiger28]

I couldn't resist. Here's my 30-minute (inferior) artist's rendition.

I hope the kid who painted this knows this is fabulous.

#my art #art #unicorn #redraw

[crouchingtiger28]

Illumination

“Welcome to Angel Antiques!” Angelina choruses as the door clinks open. Warm wind gusts through the open door, letting in the hodgepodge scent of sunshine, pavement, gasoline, steel, and a variety of pastries and foodstuffs.

The door thumps closed, muting most of the scents again, and footsteps make their way into the store. Three sets of footsteps, all of them heavy and sure. All adults or older teenagers, then.

Angelina leans against the counter and listens idly as they wind through the store, picking up items to make a remark or point something out before setting them down again. They bring the dozens of small scents that people don’t realize they have with them when they pass by the register, and Angelina absentmindedly sorts through them.

Dog, dirt, grass, oil, a bit of blood, the cinnamon-sugar from the churro cart on the corner, fancy soap, detergent, sawdust, nail polish, makeup, hair dye.

The scent of sunshine is still lingering in the shop over the background smells of dusty fabric and old wood, so Angelina can’t pick out some of the more subtle scents.

The man snaps his fingers and one of the women giggles. The other woman has wandered off to the other side of the store.

“Excuse me?” The man asks, voice directed towards Angelina.

“Yes sir?” Angelina tilts her head up so she’s vaguely facing him, automatically pushing her glasses up to make sure they’re covering her eyes.

“This doesn’t have a price tag on it, does that mean it’s free?” He waves something absently in the air – it smells like old paper and ink, so Angelina assumes it’s one of their books.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I have the prices of everything on record here if you can just tell me what the title is…” she trails off, standing to reach the records shelf. She runs her hand gently along the spines until she finds the one with ‘Books for Sale’ stamped along it. She slides it off the shelf while the man chuckles and the woman still standing next to him giggles.

“Sir?” She prompts, propping the book open.

“Can’t you see it?” He drawls, gesturing with the book, “Just look right here. It’s just about the size of your sun-touched head.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Angelina says, not a hint of bitterness in her voice despite the insult, “I’m blind, I can’t see it at all.”

The man goes quiet. The woman goes still. Across the store, Angelina can hear the other woman almost drop the item she’s holding.

“Ah…” The man trails off, seeming unsure how to respond to that. He defaults to pretending it didn’t happen. “It’s, er, it’s called ‘The Facts and Foci of the Fae’.”

“All right, let me look that up.” Angelina chirps, running her fingers down the page. It’s a book she recognizes as having come in not long ago, so it doesn’t take her long to find it.

“That would be eight hundred and fifty American dollars, sir.” Angelina tells him.

“That’s outrageous!” he exclaims, clearly gearing up for a rant on the price of books.

“Oh my goodness, that cheap!?” The woman across the store hurries up to the register, still absently carrying the item she was inspecting, “Adam if you don’t buy that I will!”

“But- it can’t be that expensive.” The man – Adam – protests, turning to her.

“It’s a college-level textbook,” The woman says, exasperated, “that they don’t make anymore, they don’t teach the classes for, and it’s illegal to practice what it teaches. Of course it’s valuable.”

Adam surely would have replied to that if the first women doesn’t finally overcome her shock enough to speak.

“You can’t be blind!” She blurts, shoving her friends out of the way, “Stop lying to us!”

“I assure you, ma’am, I’m not lying.” Angelina says, baffled, “I truly am blind.”

“That’s bull!” The woman snaps, “Blind people can’t run stores!”

“Kathy, leave it!” Adam hisses, a rustling of cloth and a sharp jerk from Kathy suggesting that he grabbed her arm and she pulled violently away.

“No!” Kathy screeches, “You’re lying, you aren’t blind you’re just faking it!”

Angelina’s temper is fraying dangerously fast, and her mind keeps straying to the small container of dried human blood stowed under the counter. She’s in her own place of business, so a transformation isn’t automatically illegal, but short of being actively assaulted she won’t be able to convince the Enforcers it was self-defense.

“I am not lying.” Angelina repeats, teeth gritted, “I’ve been blind since an accident when I was twenty-three.”

“Liar!” Kathy howls. Before Angelina can stop her she lunges across the counter, fingers scrabbling at Angelina’s glasses.

Angelina yelps and automatically tries to fend Kathy off. The woman is unmoved, clawing at Angelina’s face until she has one of the lenses clutched in her talon-like nails. Kathy retreats back to her side of the counter with a self-satisfied ‘humph’, Angelina’s sunglasses in hand.

Angelina has a hand up to cover her face in time to prevent… unfortunate revelations, and she reaches out with the other.

“Please give me my glasses.” She says, as calmly as she can manage. It isn’t very calmly. She can feel the hand over her eyes shaking with rage, and the roof of her mouth aches from holding her fangs up.

“No.” Kathy says smugly, “not until you admit that you aren’t blind.”

“Kathy,” The second woman starts, “I don’t think you should-”

“Nonsense.” Kathy interrupts her, “She shouldn’t be pretending to be blind if she doesn’t want to be called out on her lie, Sophie”

“I am blind!” Angelina protests, pulling her outstretched hand back to hide it as she clenches it into a fist.

“Then you shouldn’t mind showing us your eyes.” Kathy says, “Hiding them just makes you look guilty, you know.”

Something in Angelina snaps, and she retaliats the only way she legally can. She obeys.

Angelina knows – vaguely – what her eyes look like. She’s seen a few vampires that have been sunscarred, and she’s seen her own Transformation Lines on her hands and feet and even in the mirror on her eyes. Sunscarring is tragically beautiful. It’s perfect lines and precise angles frozen in a brand of pain and loss.

Angelina pulls her hands off her eyes and glares – as much as she can glare – through Kathy. She stops resisting her instinctual threat display and let sher mouth drop open and fangs fold down behind her human teeth. The whistling hiss that always accompanied the threat is actually breathing out through her fangs, narrow holes in the bone that allow her to suck blood or inject venom.

Kathy screams. Adam shouts and the book thumps to the ground. Sophie yelps, fumbling the item in her grip again and dropping it for real.

In moments, Kathy is out the door and down the street, letting the chaotic scents of the outside in yet again. The smell of sunlight has only gotten stronger as the sun rose, and it makes every already-tense nerve in Angelina’s body stand on end.

She can hear each person’s individual heartbeats, even her own thumping slower than a human’s in her chest. Adam’s breath comes in erratic stuttering gasps and Sophie is hardly breathing at all. Angelina can practically taste the sunshine in the traces of warmed stone, thriving plant life, and hot tar on the air.

Adam stammers something, tripping over his words, and Angelina automatically turns towards him, hissing erratically. His flow of half-syllables abruptly stops and he follows Kathy out the door.

Sophie is still in the store, and every one of Angelina’s senses is trained to the max. She can’t hardly smell anything, not under the overwhelming scent of sunshine that seems almost all-consuming in her panic. She can’t see, can’t smell, can barely think.

“Hey.” Sophie says, calm and collected, and it slices neatly through the building crescendo of panic crashing through Angelina.

“Hey,” Sophie says again, in the same level voice, “I don’t want to hurt you. I have your glasses if you want them.”

Yes. Angelina does want them. Despite herself, Angelina reaches a tentative hand out, expecting… she doesn’t know what. Instead of some unspecified terrible thing, Sophie deposits the sunglasses in Angelina’s hand. Angelina scrambles to put them on so fast she almost stabs herself in the eye.

“Thahnk yu.” She manages, fangs blundering her speech slightly.

“Of course.” Sophie says, and Angelina can hear the smile in her voice, “I’m sorry about them. I had no idea they would react so… brainlessly, I suppose.”

“I’s fin’e.” Angelina says, trying to muster a smile, “I’ used tu it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have to be!” Sophie snaps, abruptly angry, “No fae should have to be constantly hated like that.”

“I’s fin’e.” Angelina says again, straightening the record book in front of her, “Du yu ‘an’t tu ‘uy that ‘ook?”

“Ah, yes, thank you.” Sophie says, though she doesn’t sound especially willing to let the matter go, “I’ll pay you nine hundred dollars for it.”

“It’s only priced for-” Angelina starts, finally managing to pull her fangs back up to stow along the roof of her mouth.

“I know.” Sophie says, “I figure you deserve it after what Adam and Kathy were up to, anyway. Plus, it’s still an absolute steal at that price.”

“Alright,” Angelina consents, ringing her up with the ease of much practice.

“Also, uh. I was wondering- well.” Sophie clears her throat, and Angelina can tell she looks away from the way her voice changes, “Well, do you know where I could get… more materials like this?”

And just like that it makes sense. The smell of sunshine that hung around the shop when it should have dissipated, Sophie’s strong interest in the book for training wizards, even the way the scent of sunlight surged so strong when Angelina was angry. Sophie is a wizard. She brought the sunlight to the shop, and it spiked when she was frustrated and scared.

“Yeah,” Angelina says instead of laying out her deduction and accusation, “Let me get you his number.”

#vampire #blind character #blind vampire #in fact #wizard #Eddyverse #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Solarize

Eli takes a deep breath, hands clasping each other. He looks up, towards the sky, and mourns briefly at the lack of sunlight. The sky spins with writhing, billowing clouds, their bellies full of lightning and their voices full of thunder. The clouds are necessary, though.

Thunder rumbles, and the clouds split open. Torrents of rain pound towards the earth, and Eli can feel the magic in every drop. It isn’t the sunshine that his Focus is always crying out for, but it is just what Mara needs to keep the clouds in place.

Beside him, only feet away, Mara sprouts scales. The cheap inflatable kiddie pool they’d brought for her rapidly begins to fill up with rainwater, and Mara flicks her new tail into the bounds of the plastic rim. Her eyes are luminous, glowing pinpricks even under the torrential rain.

Eli feels the rain shake when Mara opens her mouth, and somehow the sky – already dropping buckets – tears even further apart. All visibility is gone. Eli can’t even see Mara anymore, and he’s pretty sure he can only hear her song from the sharp thrill of magic that it shreds into the air.

Eli waits, and Mara sings. The clouds thunder and rain falls, but no lighting shatters the sky. Not a single flash of light breaks through the storm, and Eli would be jumping at shadows if only he could tell the difference between air and water.

He almost startles out of his skin when a hand touches his shoulder. It’s clawed, black talons tipping the fingers and black lines spreading jagged, geometric lines up the arm almost to the elbow. Eli doesn’t want to know how much human blood went into the power overload Nathan has.

Wet fur brushes his leg, and Eli glances down to find Mason, his were-form looking like a miserably wet cat instead of the fluffy arctic fox Eli knows he is.

Eli takes a deep breath of rain-soaked air and sinks slowly to the ground. Nathan crouches next to him and Mason presses his soaked side to Eli’s equally-soaked shirt. Mara watches him, glowing eyes fixed on him even while she sings. Eli ducks his head, focuses on the little flash of magic that comes from every single rain drop, and dunks his hands into her pool.

Effulgence is – according to what little information Eli could get – entirely metaphorical. It still feels real to all his senses, though, when he opens his eyes on the ice floe.

The only other practicing wizard Eli ever met described Effulgence as ropes, hanging from glowing heights. Eli doesn’t know if they were making it up or if Effulgence is so metaphorical that it’s different for different people. He does know that – at least for him – Effulgence is ice floes.

The ice floes are white and perfectly cylindrical, like someone took a cookie cutter to a snow-covered lawn, and the water they float on is golden sunlight, gleaming from some unknown source. His own ice floe is the same color, a pure, molten gold that blends so well with the sea that he’s always afraid he’ll lose it some trip.

Eli breathes the warm, sunlit air and looks out across the sea of sunshine. There are three ice floes right next to him, each one with a perfect sphere settled in a small divot in the center. He knows them well, but the only way to tell them apart here is by their foci.

Nathan’s focus and floe are black, writhing inside the transparent sphere like an angry snake trapped in a marble. His focus is also huge, larger than Eli has ever seen a focus before. Mara’s focus and floe are blue, a dark gray-blue of storm clouds that sloshes gently inside its orb despite the lack of movement. Mason’s fox sits calmly and patiently in its sphere on his silver floe, the same position Mason had – and probably still has – outside of Effulgence.

The focus sphere that rests on Eli’s ice floe is not actually touching it. It’s the same gently-waving orb of water that Mara has, and it hovers just barely over the golden surface of Eli’s soul. No man can be two fae at once, and Eli’s golden ice floe marks him as an unchangeable wizard, for better or for worse.

Eli scoops the orb into his hand. In this form, with no one to give it extra power, the orb is only about the size of a tennis ball. The water inside it doesn’t move the way it should, slowly undulating in smooth, even waves no matter how carefully or recklessly the sphere is handled.

Eli tucks the orb into the harness hanging from his belt and steps boldly into the glowing ocean. Or, rather, onto. Effulgence’s ocean has always reminded him of a science project he did in school, where they mixed corn starch, water, and food coloring to make a material that flowed like water most of the time but hardened like stiff rubber when under force. It doesn’t take much force to solidify the sunshine sea, but that in and of itself is a terrifying possibility if Eli ever lets himself sink in.

Eli lines himself up between Nathan and Mason, facing away from his own island, and starts off. The occasional ice floe shows up near him, and Eli takes brief moments to rest on them when he needs it, catching chaotic glimpses of who they belong to, but he eventually moves on.

Finally, after an unknowable amount of time, Eli finds what he’s looking for. It’s a huge gathering of ice floes, drifting slightly in the sun-sea and sometimes clattering against each other. Eli jumps off the surface of the sunshine sea and begins stepping from floe to floe. It’s much less nerve wracking to step onto floes than it is to dance across the sunshine sea, and Eli manages to relax enough to look for his target.

Vampires are easy to hide in the physical realm. As long as they never drink human blood it isn’t hard for a vampire to go undetected for their entire lives. Creating a vampire is also easy, though. Just a vial of blood poured into an open wound is all it takes to make a vampire, and any vampire worth their salt can tell exactly where an open wound – even a tiny scratch – is.

Eli finally spots his target near the center of the crowd. The senator’s focus is just large enough that he’ll have felt his fangs appear and start to put two and two together.

Eli jumps across a dozen ice floes and lands – finally – on the senator’s. The golf-ball sized focus on the ice floe sits in a tennis-ball sized divot, freshly carved by the introduction of vampire blood into his system.

Eli has done this switch before, but never on a fae so freshly Turned that he barely has his fangs. It’s incredibly easy. The shadow from the vampire’s blood is small, and not being fed as it should be right after a Turning. The senator’s soul – for all that his mind objects – wants something to fill the space in it.

One neat, Indiana Jones-style switcharoo later Eli is holding the tiny focus and the senator’s ice floe has the orb of water in it, waving gently as ever.

Eli barely steps off the floe before the whole thing turns vibrantly blue. It’s a true ice-blue, like the frozen side of a glacier. The senator must have been drinking some sort of flavored water for him to start Passing Through so quickly after a focus swap.

Eli books it.

He sprints across the sunshine sea in the direction he thinks he came in, not stopping until he sees the trio of silver, black, and blue that marks his friends and his own ice floe. He skids to a stop just long enough to leap the half-step up onto Mason’s ice floe then jumps from there to his own.

In a final flash of light Effulgence is gone, leaving Eli in the real world with his friends pressed around him. Mara is still singing, and the storm is still raging, and Mason is still pressed encouragingly to his side. Eli takes a breath of dark, wet air and it seems to billow and condense in his chest.

Mason barks and Nathan and Mara both turn to Eli. He smiles at them as best he can, but he knows its thin and wan. He’s never been in Effulgence for so long before, and the sudden lack of sunlight and magic are like a deep, bone-shaking loss.

Nathan hoists Mara into his arms and she finally stops singing. The clouds will still take at least half an hour to clear, which is far longer than they need to get out, but it’s better safe than sorry. Mason shifts from his wet-cat of a fox form to his equally wet-cat of a human form, wearing tight exercise shorts and a tank top. Without a word needing to be exchanged, he hoists Eli into his arms, and they set off.

They’re done. They did what they came here to do. Now, senator Turned to a mer and traces wiped from the scene, they’re going home.

#mer #mermaids #vampire #werewolf #werefox #wizard #Eddyverse #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Still Waters

A good way to find a smuggler, pirate, or poacher in Silthaven is to look for the fishermen who claim to be only fishermen. You can’t earn a living as a fisherman in Silthaven, no matter how often you go out or how much you bring in. Most split their ships between fishing and other – more lucrative – careers. If they don’t advertise it, it’s typically less legal.

A good way to find an adventurer, hero, or undercover enforcer in Silthaven is to look for the fishermen who claim to be only fishermen. They don’t know the docks, don’t know how much fishermen really make or what they ought to be doing different.

The tricky part, Dylan knows, is figuring out which one is which.

The port of Silthaven smells like saltwater and fish, pitch and oil. There are ship hands and port workers tromping over the floating docks, carrying crates, ropes, barrels, and nets. One side of the dock is roughly full of charter ships and the other is for working ships. Makeshift shops are set up on the shore, selling last-minute supplies for travelers and always-needed supplies for the workers.

Dylan strides through the crowd, glancing at boats and men propped against the wall. Someone catches his eye, and he inspects them closer.

He’s sitting on the edge of the dock, boots hanging over the edge. His hand flashes in neat, practiced motions with the netting needle. There’s a small knife at his side, unornamented but it looks like good quality. His skill with the netting needle means his can’t be an amateur, so probably not an adventurer or hero, and he isn’t paying more attention than necessary to those on the dock, so most likely not an enforcer.

Pirates – when they can help it – don’t do much actual fishing and poachers use harpoons mostly, to spear larger game like mermaids and kelpies. Dylan settles onto the dock himself, pulling a whittling knife and a chunk of wood that will eventually be a whistle from his satchel. He keeps half an eye on the dock to watch for thieves or trouble and another half eye on the ‘fisherman’.

He sits there for about fifteen minutes, whittling his whistle. The fisherman stays too, then stands when his net is mended.

“Ho there!” Dylan calls at the fisherman, and he stops and turns behind him. “I’m looking for passage out of Silthaven. Do you think you could help me?”

The fisherman-smuggler watches him with an unreadable expression, “The charter boats are over there.” He gestures with a rough hand.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya’. But there’s some close scrutiny on the charter boats.” Dylan says, his tone and manner are casual even as he pushes his bangs slightly to the side. The brand on his forehead – a spiraling, jagged symbol that everyone across the continent recognizes as a convict’s mark – is visible for a brief second before his bangs settle back into place.

“I’m Hyd.” The fisherman says, dark eyes flicking back to Dylan’s, “You will pay me double for the trip.”

“But of course, captain Hyd!” Dylan says, shouldering his bag, “anything else?”

“I leave at sunset,” Hyd tells him brusquely, “I will not wait for you. I will not fight for you. I will not lie for you.”

“I expected nothing more.” Dylan assures him, “Can I stow my pack on your ship now?”

“You may,” Hyd says, “She’s Wave Singer, the mosaic one.”

Dylan gives him a smile and a wave of acknowledgement before turning to the main dock. He saw Wave Singer before, and the ship stuck in his mind as an oddity on the dock. It is certainly a mosaic, as its hull is covered in hundreds of thousands of pieces of sea glass. They’re every color imaginable, even ones Dylan hasn’t ever heard of being found: green, white, brown, blue, purple, red, yellow, gray.

Dylan hops into the boat, swaying as it rocks underneath him. It’s like a typical fishing boat, but also not. The decoration encrustment continues on the inside of the boat, but it’s no longer sea glass. Instead, it’s sand dollars, bones, scales, shells, and other things Dylan can’t determine the origin of. The sail has feathers and nuts sewn to the bottom of it.

Dylan drops his pack on the deck of the Wave Singer, near the dock so potential thieves won’t see it on a passing glance. There isn’t much of a ship to poke around, but Dylan doesn’t want to spend any more time on the dock. Docks are full of travelers, and the wrong traveler could recognize him.

Dylan settles down with his wooden whistle.

Hyd leaps into the boat a few hours later, just before sunset. “Sit here.” He says brusquely, gesturing to the wall right in front of the tiny cabin “Do not move. I do not need your help.”

Dylan sits. He watches carefully as Hyd brings them out of the port and under way. The boat continues for quite a ways from the port, sailing elegantly over the waves like a fanciful bird. They stop far enough out that land is barely more than a speck on the horizon.

Dylan has been on many boats before, from clunky river rafts to sleek pirate ships, and he’s never seen a ship handle so smoothly. Not only that, but a one-man fishing boat of this size so far from land and so long past sunset would be a difficult craft to control. Hyd handles it just fine, though, with only the occasional tug on a rope or twist of the steering wheel.

“I am fishing here.” Hyd tells him, “It will be a while. When I am done, I will take you on.”

Dylan nods his thanks and pulls the whistle from his bag. Hyd casts nets and sets a few lines with bait that Dylan doesn’t recognize. Even the ropes of his nets are woven of a strange black-and-white fiber that Dylan hasn’t ever seen before.

Hyd settles onto the deck after all his nets are cast, watching the moon rise. There’s a long span of silence, then Hyd glances at Dylan’s work, which by now looks mostly like a whistle.

“You a sorcerer?” Hyd asks bluntly.

“Of a sort.” Dylan says, peeling a slice off his whistle, “I appreciate a good bit of magic every now and again.”

Hyd grunts, then heaves himself up to check the lines and nets. Dylan keeps carving his whistle, but he keeps an ear trained on Hyd. Most people that aren’t from Nimbus couldn’t tell a burglar from a serial killer, but the combination of magic-craft and a convict’s brand leads some to make a very deadly connection.

Hyd is apparently not bright enough to put it together, or smart enough to not let on that he has. Either way is fine with Dylan, as long as he keeps up the façade for long enough.

Hyd knows too much now. Luckily, Dylan knows all he needs about how to sail the fisherman’s boat, and he’s never had qualms about murder.

Dylan stows the whistle in his bag, then draws a different whistle out of it. The one he had been carving was small and weak, a simple thing for starting fires and lighting torches without the need of flint and steel. The one he draws is a war whistle, though its really more of a flute than a whistle. It’s long and sleek, made of a silver tube with grenadilla keys that form a striking contrast.

It takes Dylan an instant to position his hands, fingers falling into place instinctively after years of practice. The first note he plays seems to still the night air, freezing everything in place. Everything except Hyd.

The fisherman startles, spinning around from where he’d been bent over the wale. Dylan doesn’t pause his attack, and Hyd, too, begins to slow down. Only a few measures in, the world is entirely still, with only Dylan’s music breaking the silence.

The wind doesn’t blow, the boat doesn’t rock, and the fisherman doesn’t move from his half-lunged position, even his eyes frozen wide in shock.

Dylan stops playing. The wind slowly picks back up, but just as it took Hyd longer to slow down, it will take him longer to regain his speed. Dylan has a knife drawn and raised to slice Hyd’s throat before the man can take a single step.

The knife bounces off.

Dylan stares at the kife for a solid moment, baffled. It’s a moment too long.

Hyd – not as slow to recover as he had seemed – lunges forward.

Dylan raises an arm over his face and finds it abruptly lacerated by the razor-sharp talons that sprout from Hyd’s fingers. The fisherman’s eyes – initially a queer blue gray – have gone a pale, glowing gray with tiny, slit pupils.

Dylan barely ducks under a snap of rows upon rows of serrated teeth and scrambles for his war whistle.

Hyd screams. It’s a sound like shattering glaciers and too-close lightning, drowning out every sound Dylan makes and replacing the stillness with roiling waves and gale force winds.

Dylan stumbles on the bucking, lurching deck. Clouds swirl overhead in mere seconds, and rain bristles from them in pounding sheets. Dylan can’t see, and his balance is completely shot on the suddenly wild boat.

Hyd pauses to take a breath and Dylan hears what’s truly bringing the chaos. A trio of voices, too perfect to be human, singing a wordless, winding song. Mermaids.

Dylan doesn’t get more than an instant to give his realization, as just as quickly as Hyd stops screaming he lunges forward again. Dylan’s hand drops to the deck, war whistle still clutched in detached fingers. Dylan’s body rapidly follows it, and his head a second later.

–––

Hidden-depths-of-cold-waters rides his ship through perfectly gentle waves, the deck stained with only the faintest traces of blood. His nets are empty and his lines untouched, but he had half expected that when he accepted the magical stranger onto his craft. The ahuizotl and makara he hunts normally would cause far less trouble than a warlock. Better to be done with the later before going after the former.

Hidden-depths-of-cold-waters will make a profit today anyway. The warlock’s war whistle is only one of almost half a dozen high-end whistles he had stowed in his bag. Each will bring Hidden-depths-of-cold-waters more than he could have gotten from a week’s worth of hunting, and that’s without the bounty the warlock no doubt had on his head.

Spray, Froth, and Crest leave him as he nears the port, and Hidden-depths-of-cold-waters steers under his own power without their songs to carry his little ship. He has had a great deal of practice, though, and Wave Singer glides to port as effortlessly as if she had carried herself.

Mermaids are not often friends to sirens, the two having a rather predatory relationship, but Hidden-depths-of-cold-waters could admit – and his three friends would very much agree – that arrangements could be made. After all, they got their human corpses to eat or trade, and he got enough gold to last him a lifetime on a yearly basis.

#mermaids #sirens #magic #detached head #tw: death #canibalism #I guess? #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Lunacy

As were-beasts go, Lucy hadn’t ever considered herself especially dangerous. She wasn’t quite a housecat – no were-beast she’d ever heard of had been a domesticated animal – but she was pretty much as close as could be. She wasn’t any sort of canine, so there was no chance of her bite being infectious. The worst thing she could do was bite someone with allergies.

She’s hungry tonight. She’s always hungry as the full moon rises, no matter what she eats. She never gives in to what she truly wants to do – go hunting for things with beating hearts and running blood. Even though she’s a mostly harmless were-beast, her life will be forfeit if she’s caught outside her house after moonrise.

The most danger her were-form poses is to herself.

Lucy used to have cats. The moon-mad were-coyote that mauled her also killed all three of her cats, and no natural animal has ever liked her since her infection.

The moon rises higher, and Lucy feels it singing in her blood. She has solid blackout curtains – the kind they market to older vampires – on her bedroom windows to block the moonlight and she’s taken her sleeping pills. The night should be smooth sailing.

Something wakes her halfway through the night. She knows in her blood and bones that the moon has just barely passed its summit. She’s always on a hair trigger on full moon nights, and her senses are sharper even in the complete darkness of her room.

The sound comes again, of shuffling fabric. Lucy flicks a sensitive triangular ear she doesn’t have, senses strained to the max. There’s a hint of chill in the room from the window she’d left open. The room smells like night air, blood, and – underneath it all but still painfully penetrating – silver.

Lucy is out of her bed in an instant, sliding to the floor on instinctively silent feet. Something in the room moves with the faintest brush of motion and Lucy darts towards it.

A muffled thump of something hitting the floor breaks the tense silence seconds before Lucy reaches the intruder. It sounds light, much too light to be a person. A sharp hiss fills the darkness and Lucy flinches away on instinct. She dances back, away from the snake.

It takes a moment of fumbling to find the light switch, and every second Lucy can hear the steady rasp of scales on hardwood. When she flicks it on her eyes adjust in a split second to the dazzling light and Lucy knows her eyes must be slitted and narrow like a cat’s.

It certainly is a snake, but not nearly what she had expected. It’s barely over a foot long, with a dark brown strip along its back and paler gray-brown belly and sides. The most startling feature are its eyes. They’re a vibrant emerald green and seem to take up a solid third of the snake’s angular face.

The snake is halfway across the floor, frozen by the sudden light. Lucy pounces before it regains its wits, snatching the snake around the throat, close to the head so it can’t bite her. Her fingernails, she notes worriedly, are retracting into her fingers under a pale sheath. It looks eerie and wrong on human hands.

Lucy finally stops to catch her breath, strange snake squirming weakly in her careful grip. Her heart is racing with adrenaline and her moon-mind is urging her to kill and eat her prey.

Instead, Lucy props open the lid of the decorative fish tank on her desk and settles the snake into it. She clasps the lid before the snake can slither free and settles into her desk chair. She won’t be sleeping tonight. Not now she’s woken up.

Lucy types ‘brown snake big green eyes’ into the search bar and clicks on images. The second one looks just like her visitor, and a bit more searching reveals that it’s not only incredibly venomous, but native only to Africa. None of the nearby zoos have boomslangs.

“You must be a were-beast.” Lucy tells the snake. She feels a little strange talking to a snake, but if it really is a were-beast it should be able to understand her.

The snake shakes its head in an incredibly awkward, human way. Lucy raises an eyebrow at it.

“Either you’re not too bright, or you’re really deep in denial.” She tells it, “In case you hadn’t noticed, snakes don’t typically respond to questions or shake their heads.”

The were-boomslang sinks down close to the floor of the fish tank, hiding behind a plastic castle. Lucy’s going to interpret that as embarrassment.

“If you promise to behave, I’ll take you out of the fish tank.”

The were-boomslang rises out from behind the castle. Lucy isn’t great at reading emotions, and she’s never had the pleasure of trying to read a snake’s, but it looks surprised. Lucy cocks an eyebrow at it. You heard me.

The were-boomslang nods, another awkward, human gesture that doesn’t fit its body at all. Lucy unlatches the lid and reaches a hand into the tank, and the were-boomslang readily slithers up her arm just in time for the doorbell to ring.

Lucy looks up. The were-boomslang looks up. With a put-upon sigh, she slides her flip flops on and starts for the door. She flaps noisily down the stairs and into the entryway, flipping lights on with her left hand.

“Come into the mud room.” She says into the intercom system. “I must warn you that it’s the full moon and I am a were-beast. Enter at your own risk.” The door swings open and bangs shut, and Lucy waits for a moment and pulls the door on her side open.

Three people stand in the mud room, each one bearing the dark vest and silver trappings of a Stalker. Two men and one woman, their faces impassionate and their uniforms impersonal.

In the face of Stalkers, Lucy is made painfully aware of her yellow slit eyes and the tapered ends of her too-high ears.

“How can I help you?” She says, as cheerfully as she can manage just past midnight on the full moon.

“We’ve been tracing a new were-beast.” The man in front – evidently the leader – says almost over Lucy. “We found a similar signature in this house.”

He’s looking at the were-boomslang on Lucy’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” She says as lightly as she can manage under the abrupt, crushing realization of just who he’s hunting, “No-one’s here but me and Max.”

He watches her steadily for a moment, and Lucy wonders wildly if he can hear how much her heart has sped up. She sure can hear it pounding in her ears, and every part of her screamed at her to run, hide, get away from the threat.

“He’s Max, then?” The female Stalker asks, gesturing at the snake.

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Lucy holds up the arm with the snake, begging every deity she can think of that this will work, “This is my friend, Max. He was visiting me tonight.”

“Why was he visiting you?” The leader asks, staring at the were-boomslang.

“Helps to have a friend.” Lucy makes up on the spot, “To deal with the moon-mind.”

“How come he’s shifted?” the third Stalker finally chipps in.

“The curtains weren’t drawn properly in the bathroom.” Lucy says, forcefully resisting the urge to over-elaborate. She’s learned to lie very well in her time as a were-beast.

There was a long, weighty pause, and Lucy can tell she’s being examined closely. She keeps her – now fully feline – ears perked and free of guile.

“Very well then.” The lead Stalker, apparently deciding there isn’t anything they can prosecute her for, spins on his heel and strides for the door. Before Lucy has the chance to react, he flings the door wide open, and moonlight floods into the mudroom. The other stalkers followed him, leaving the door hanging open.

Lucy stumbles towards it, one hand reaching out to close it, but it’s far too late.

The were-boomslang drops to the floor with a thump as fur courses up Lucy’s arms and her feet lengthen to the point of uselessness. Unprepared for the transformation as she is, Lucy manages to shuck her flip flops and shirt, leaving her in just her sleeping shorts and a sports bra. The transformation is too fast for much else, and Lucy lets it overtake her.

Lucy drops to her feet, sniffing the air. It smells dirty and stale, but oh! There are many wonderful scents coming from out there!

She turns to the open doorway, tail swishing behind her. She’s hungry, and she can smell sleeping night creatures ready for hunting.

Something makes a sound, a dangerous sound, and Lucy flicks her head towards it. It rises up in front of her, tongue flicking, hissing its threat. Lucy hisses back, ears pinning back and spine arching. She darts a paw out, then snatches it back just as quickly when the snake lunges for it.

Lucy spits angrily, batting at the snake again. It’s unmoved by her attack, staring her down with huge eyes. Predator’s eyes.

She edges to the side, trying to get around the snake to the outside full of prey. The snake matches her slither for step. It hasn’t bit her yet, just hovers and hisses threateningly. That’s… strange. But Lucy has no time for strange. There’s a snake! Between her and her prey!

Lucy pounces forward, claws flashing. The snake sways away from the attack but doesn’t retaliate. Why…?

Lucy’s human mind abruptly rushes back to her, shoving the moon-mind away. She can’t go outside. She can’t leave the house in this form or she’d be killed out of hand. The were-boomslang had saved her life. Just as she’d saved theirs.

Lucy pushed her puffed-up fur back down and stretches, flicking her tail at the were-boomslang. They flick their tongue at her and lower themselves back on their belly. Lucy bounds inside, then waits for the were-boomslang and nudges the door shut. The mudroom will be fine with the door open the rest of the night, and she doesn’t want to give the Stalker’s any ideas by getting close enough to close the door.

The house is still lit up, but Lucy can jump high and the switches only need to be turned down. The door to her room is a lever handle, and Lucy can manage that too. The were-boomslang follows her the whole time, watching with huge green eyes.

The darkness and night scents make her moon-mind want to hunt, but Lucy’s pesky human mind insists on sleep instead. If she hunts anything, even in her house, her moon-mind will take over, and the window is still open.

Lucy curls up on her pillow and nods off. The were-boomslang curls around her. Lucy allows it cause she remembers vaguely that snakes are cold-blooded, but she knows it’ll be awkward in the morning when they both wake up as barely-clothed humans.

#werewolves #werebeast #werecat #weresnake #Eddyverse #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Despite what most will tell you, Soulblades are as rare as they are famous. Any shady online website will try to sell you one, and every two-bit blacksmith will claim they forged one, but they’re just as likely to be telling the truth as the government who claims to have tamed a wild dragon.

Soulblades aren’t bought, forged, or traded. They’re inherited.

At the time of writing this there are exactly three Soulblades in the world, each gifted from one of the thirteen oldest gods.

The Sword of Strength by Wisdom is sealed deep in a cliff in Scotland, supposedly waiting for the correct wielder. The bloodline it was gifted to must still be alive, but as of yet no one knows which one it is.

The Tessen of Cleft Hearts rests in, of all places, the British Museum. It belongs to an ancient bloodline in Japan, but in most the blood is so diluted and the museum security so strict – despite the fact that none but the true bloodline can touch their Soulblade – that none have yet been able to claim it.

The Arrow of Unerring Resolve was supposedly lost to history. As with most things ‘lost to history’, that is just as much bull as the aforementioned wild dragon story. No, the Arrow has been faithfully passed down through its bloodline, through countless tribal skirmishes and hunts, eventually the revolutionary war, the civil war, and two world wars.

As far as most people know, The Arrow is long gone. As Chroniclers, though, we know things most don’t and there is a very important story associated with The Arrow. Our duty is, of course, to share stories.

–

Her name is Alexander, and she is the second least fortunate her bloodline has represented. In a newfound world of plenty and people, Alex is alone on the streets, living out of dumpsters and the occasional kind – or incautious – person. She owns just enough fabric and improvised insulation to keep her from freezing to death.

Most recently, though, Alex has… found, so to speak, several expensive watches and bracelets. She herself is unaware that the pawn shop she intends to sell them at is semi-perpetually guarded by a handful of disreputables.

At the moment one named Jake stands at the intersection, waiting for a target to pass him by. He wields a rusty sharpened butter knife and is the lowest his bloodline has fallen since the gift of the Soulblade was settled upon it.

Soulblades, for the most part, care nothing for who has the moral high ground, or who deserves them the most, or even who is most worthy. But Soublades are built of magic and divinity, and they follow their divine calling.

Jake wants a great many things. He wants to live like a king, he wants an endless line of beautiful women, he wants everyone in the world to fall down and worship him. But there is a very large difference between wants and desires, and things that are truly hoped for and decided upon.

Alex hopes for another meal tomorrow and a night not spent shivering under clumsily handmade plastic blankets. She has decided on a course of action to achieve it, and in her determination she makes a perilous mistake.

There can't be much that draws the Soulblade more than Alex’s experience, but only it knows that.

Jake emerges from the shadows, knife in his hand and greed in his heart. Alex stands her ground, determined to escape with her life and her future. The knife changes hands without either of them moving.

Alex stands her ground with a sleek knife, blade of ink-black stone and handle of rough wood worn smooth. Jake freezes, weaponless and unmotivated. Then, he runs, and Alex is the Soulblade’s bearer, now and forever. It has chosen her, not the other way around, and there is little anyone could do to separate them.

-

She has taken the name Alexander, protector of mankind. She feels mankind will need Her soon. Now, though, She follows a new, faithful bearer of Her blessed blood. The sliver of her power She had gifted them – initially an arrow that flew true and saved a life and a hunt – is bound to this one, and She is always interested in Her bearer.

In the modern day Her soul is most often a modern weapon. A golden semi-automatic that fires diamond rounds, a silver taser that lets off sparks of superheated violet, a glowing pastel handgun with rainbow-bismuth bullets, even once a copper canister of bear mace that hisses clouds of lamp-black dust into the air.

This daughter of blessed blood bears not a golden gun or bismuth bullets, but a rough, primitive weapon of discarded parts, wound together by work and dedication and desperation.

This story kind of ran away with me, and it strayed a lot from the original prompt, but I had the prompt in mind when I wrote it, so here it is.

Legendary weapons always change form to reflect their user regardless of their original designs, with common forms in the past being swords of pure light, spears of diamond and bows of pure gold. The man before you has a rusty butter knife, but it emanates an unmistakable aura of power

#magical weapons #blessed weapons #knives #tw: knives #The Gods That Humans Made #Consequential Chronicles #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Pledge in the Dawnlight

Ainsley stalked through never-ending tunnels and hallways. They snapped into their proper shape at his presence, illusions dripping away like molten glass. Darkness pooled in his footsteps, monsters following murderously behind him, unable to touch him but unwilling to let him leave without a fight.

Nerves rubbed raw,Ainsley finally emerged into the lobby. The Mojave Desert still waited outside the glass doors, and the sun was rising over the scrub. It had only been one night since he had arrived.

There was someone else standing at the doors, someone Ainsley didn’t think he’d seen before.

“Sorry, sir.” The night man – his name tag says Ciaran, so that isn’t his name – bares too many teeth in a disturbing imitation of a smile, “we’re only accepting new guests at this time.”

Ainsley kept walking.

“Sir?” There was something wrong with his voice, something that made the solidly human part of Ainsley ache and shiver, “Feel free to… check out, Sir, but you won’t be permitted to leave.”

Ainsley knows better. There’s more than one meaning to the term ‘check out’, and if he lost his concentration now, he would be torn apart in seconds.

“I agreed to spend a night.” He managed through clenched teeth, “’A’ here meaning one. I have spent one night. You have to let me leave.”

“Very good sir, but the night is not yet over.”

Ainsley stared at Ciaran, trying to think and keep his shield of ‘human, human, entirely human’ up. He turned slowly and stared out the window at the sun that had just peaked over the horizon. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the image of the sun and sky started to melt.

It dripped away seemingly at the speed of molasses, revealing the barely-lightened pre-dawn sky. A final illusion, hoping to make him break his word to Oriana and leave before the night was done.

Ainsley shuffled to a bench in the lobby and sat down. Hellhound prowled inches in front of him and basilisks gazed unblinkingly through him, but Ainsley kept his aura high. He didn’t know how much time passed, how long he sat there focused purely on brandishing his humanness in a protective layer.

The sun had risen completely when he left the Moonshadow Lodge, magic pulling on his limbs like he was running in a dream. He settled into his car, still waiting patiently in the tiny, overgrown parking lot, and the magic vanished.

The Moonshadow Lodge was gone, vanished to some other lost traveler or wandering fae. It left behind only the old parking lot and the ruined building that had once been attached to it. Ainsley, sitting in his warded, reinforced car, finally reunited with his full arsenal of monster-hunting equipment, found a new goal. He had been hunting aimlessly all this time, wandering from chase to trap with no real aim. Now he knew what he needed to do. He was the only human to ever escape the Moonshadow Lodge, and he would use his newfound knowledge to tear it to the ground.

#fae #unrealism #liminal #song-based writing #Moonshadow Lodge #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Hunting in the Torchlight

The ceiling was lined with mirrors. Ainsley knew they were real – unlike most other things in these long, twisting halls – because jingxiang dropped from out of them, reaching quicksilver claws towards him. Ainsley dodged talons that fractured the flickering torchlight and raised his gun to shoot the mirrors above him.

Werewolves howled in the tunnel behind him and murocorrers skittered along the walls. Ainsley could still smell the ‘pink champagne’ that had signaled the beginning of the hunt. He didn’t think he’d ever drink champagne again, not with that image that had burned itself into his mind forever.

Ainsley’s footsteps muffled suddenly as the bare stone changed abruptly to thick carpet. He almost slowed, almost paused to gain his bearings, but a banshee thrummed her song of death and Ainsley practically stumbled over his own feet to move faster.

A door loomed in front of him, sturdy and thick. With the hallway behind him seething with fae and magik, Ainsley had nowhere to go but through it. If it was a magik door it would be locked no matter what he did, but if it was a fae door or an unused room it may be open, and Ainsley was relatively sure he was near the outside wall. It was hard to tell in the confusing winding hallways that went on longer than they should.

The door was unlocked.

Ainsley shoved through it with barely a shiver of foreboding to slow him. It was ominous for sure, but there was nothing he could do about it. He barely caught a glimpse of the room, but it was enough. Rich red furnishing with darker red stains. Glossy stained wood shining with the presence only real things can have. A circle chalked into the ground, warding the inside from the out and the outside from within.

With no other option available, Ainsley stumbled into the circle. Magiks and monsters spilled into the room, seething and swarming in a ghastly hoard. Ainsley could feel his mind failing looking at the crowd and quickly averted his gaze to the chalk circle on the floor. He knew it was a trap. He knew. There wasn’t any other reason for a protection ward to be drawn here. Better the devil you know, though, right? Ainsley knew all the high-ranking devils and demons. His heart wavered then soared reading the name written in the rim of circle.

He wouldn’t lose his soul today. The master of the Moonshadow Lodge – for so long sought after and hunted by his associates – was not what any of them have been searching for.

Ainsley gathered himself together, reaching deep into his soul to find what he needed. Every other hunter he’d ever met was special. Grandson of a demigod, blessed by a dragon, unicorn rider, Phoenix friend. None of them would survive here.

Ainsley summoned every drop of pure, true humanness he had. Every incorrect assumption and mistake. Every clever moment and stroke of genius. Every chink and crack in his mind and personality, fear and hatred and guilt and greed and laziness. Every virtue and strength in his soul, courage and love and redemption and generosity and hard work.

Immundus, demon king of corruption – once the angel of purity – can’t touch humans. They’re perfectly balanced in the middle of corruption and purity, born to be right and wrong, light and dark, good and evil. His servants and guests also can’t harm a real, true, untouched human.

Ainsley stepped out of the summoning circle and walked through the crowd. Silver claws skidded off of his skin and teeth shattered on his unprotected limbs. A screech that would have blown out his eardrums faded and died into strangled silence.

#fae #unrealism #liminal #song-based writing #Moonshadow Lodge #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Diamonds in the Firelight

Ainsley stood with his back to the wall, staring hard at the ground beneath him. He knew it was the same scuffed and cratered stonethat the hallways were made of, but the illusions layered so heavily over it that he couldn’t actually seeit.

The whole room was imitation and lookalike, smooth marble floor and glossy wood panelingmere thin layers that hid the true purpose of the courtyard. Ainsley didn’t know how much was real, where the wood paneling blended with the illusions and where the sky startedand magic ended. He wasn’t sure if any of it was real at all.

An array of counterfeit people swirled around Ainsley, their auras and voices and magiks blending together. Some, Ainsley knew, were fae themselves. Shining hooves unhidden by any illusion danced between polished boots and bloodstained claws.

None of the other fae that wandered near him touched him. Ainsley had heard very little of the Moonshadow Lodge – none that entered ever lived long – but from internal reports he had heard that there was a sort of honor among they fae that were permitted there. Ainsley had already been claimed by Oriana, and none would risk the retaliation of the Lodge’s master if they interrupted the hunt of another.

Oriana herself was somewhere in the throng, and Ainsley could hear her laughter – just a little too wild – cut through the low thrum of noise. When he chanced a careful look up, he caught brief glimpses of beings that had once been human. They glittered now with real diamonds and another’s fire, a lost wildness in their eyes that no true human had.

They danced with reckless abandon, whirlwinds of sparkling motion. Some clutched small items in their furious motion, eyes blown wide and trained unmovingly on the item they held. Others clenched their eyes tightly shut, unaware of anything around them yet never once colliding. Both sent chills down Ainsley’s spine and urged him to reach for his rosary.

He ached with his own memories and the urge to dance them away. Memories of his old hunts, losses and failures. Memories of this last night when he fell prey to the Moonshadow Lodge’s curse. Memories of his weakness again just before midnight, when he gave into the Moonshadow Lodge once again to follow the alluring voices down the halls and to the dancing courtyard.

‘Come dance’ the sourceless music hummed through his veins, ‘you are safe and encouraged here, leave your shameful past behind you. The courtyard is beautiful, and those who dance are delighted. Come and join them. Forget your guilt. Never remember again.’

Ainsley pressed his back to the wall and his lips tightly closed. He hadn’t danced since his first hunt years ago, and he knew that someone in his profession – someone who chases fae and captures sirens and mimics– could never afford to give in to the call of music.

He also knew he wasn’t truly welcome here. Not until he let the magic in the music pour through him and danced like the sparkling, perfect victims that flocked to Oriana’s flame. He had no proper piece of etiquette to excuse his refusal to dance, and the fae that saw him braced against the wall would be free to press their magic against his mind in an effort to force him.

He stayed against the wall, tracing lines in the floor with his eyes, and struggled to shrug off the looming pressure of magic and expectation that poured onto his shoulders from sharp, watching eyes.

#fae #unrealism #liminal #song-based writing #Moonshadow Lodge #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Blood in the Candlelight

Her name tag read Oriana, but there was certainly no way it was her real name. She lit a candle with a touch of her fingers, and only in the firelight was her true form visible. Before Ainsley could catch more than a glint of elongated fangs, she had turned away, gliding effortlessly over the pitted, scarred stone.

Whispers echoed across the bare walls, eerie music and inhuman singing. From personal experience, Ainsley could pick out the distinctive notes of a Siren’s song and the warbling tremor of a mimic’s true voice. He tried to shut out the music, focus on the number of turns Oriana led him through.

Still the unearthly song drifted in his mind, and despite all his training Ainsley couldn’t pinpoint where it came from – if it was even still audible.

‘Welcome’ the music tingled darkly in his soul, ‘you are welcome here, let down your guard. The building is beautiful, and the people are kind. Welcome. You are welcome. Never leave.’

On instinct, Ainsley put his hand on the wall. The rough stone scraped against his fingertips, helping to ground him in reality. Oriana glided past rows upon rows of doorways, some closed and forbidding and some cracked open ever-so-slightly to let firelight or darkness or soft murmurs into the corridor.

Ainsley trailed behind her, gaze locked on Oriana in a desperate attempt to keep it away from the tantalizing magic trailing from the open rooms and calling voices. He had to focus now. His life and soul depended on it.

Oriana was dressed much better than Ainsley remembered. Diamonds – real ones, as far as he could tell – glinted in the candlelight, spilling down her shimmering silver dress. Her talons clawsnails shone with real gold leaf, and Ainsley couldn’t tell if they reflected the fiery glow of the candle lighting the path or if they were heated with their own internal flame.

His question was answered when Oriana finally stopped, turning towards him. Her eyes glowed with blazing desire, and her fangsteeth were stained faintly pink with what Ainsley knew without thinking was the blood of many, many unlucky souls.

He entered the room Oriana ushered him to without a conscious thought to do so, and as the door slid shut behind her, he couldn’t help the shiver that ran down his spine. A hunter he may be, skilled and experienced enough to live this long, but he couldn’t help but think that he may be Oriana’s next unlucky prey.

#fae #unrealism #liminal #song-based writing #Moonshadow Lodge #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Mirage in the Moonlight

The sun sank lower over the rolling scrub brush and Ainsley knew it was too late. The air was already cooling, and the moon glinted in his rearview mirror. This far from civilization, with only the never-ending expanse of the desert around, the fabric of reality was thin. The full moon only compounded the problem.

Right as he was going to give up completely and stop to fortify his car as much as possible, something caught his eye. In the distance, a little to the right of the road, was something blue. He might not have noticed it if the sun had been any higher in the sky, and he might have given it up as a lost cause had the sun been any lower.

Moonlight gleamed around him, transforming the desert into a hazy, otherworldly landscape. Ainsley’s vision darkened at the edges, magiks and Presences distorting the frayed reality. The line between real and fake was blurring and swirling, and Ainsley could barely keep his head up and eyes fixed on the blue.

The blue light shimmered with the promise of safety, and Ainsley stepped on the gas. He was going far, far faster than the speed limit, but no one was here to witness it. He pulled into the parking lot and barely had the presence of mind to turn off his car before stumbling to the dubious safety of neon lights and glass doors.

Had he been more aware, he would have hesitated, inspected the building closer. He would have noticed the fresh, bright paint contrasting keenly with the pitted, overgrown parking lot. The glaring neon signs and flashing lights that would fit better on the Vegas strip than in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The real gold but fake silver. Too-large doors and too-high ceilings. Hoof marks on the floors. Claw marks on the walls.

Ainsley staggered into the light and through the automatic door. There was a woman standing in the doorway, her smile just a little too wide, her eyes just a little too bright.

“Welcome!” She chimed merrily, “will you come and stay in our fine establishment tonight?”

Ainsley could barely focus on her face. He knew she was beautiful, and there was something wrong with everything about her, but he couldn’t remember why that was a bad thing. He nodded unthinkingly, automatically agreeing with... whatever she had said.

Somewhere, deep in the depths of the building, a bell tolled. In a heart-stopping instant, all the dizziness and confusion left Ainsley’s mind, and reality hit him like a collapsing stone wall. He had agreed with a fae – she had to be, there was no other way to explain it – without knowing what, exactly, he had agreed to.

“Wonderful!” She was just as cheerful and bright as before as she turned to lead him away, “Follow me, then, and I’ll show you to your room.”

Ainsley’s body followed without any thought of his own, and the door slid open in front of the woman. Behind it was darkness and stone, marked from claws and hooves and acid. The woman turned and smiled at Ainsley, her teeth too long and her eyes too vibrant.

He really should have waited it out in his car. A desert full of Presences and magik would have been a far safer option than the Moonshadow Lodge.

#fae #unrealism #liminal #song-based writing #Moonshadow Lodge #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

The Lost Ones, Found Again

Dragons can’t get rabies. This firm tested knowledge is one of the only reasons the wild dragon got this far. Had it been any other animal, rabies would have been the obvious, unmistakable conclusion. All the signs were there, the staggering, uneven gait, the unfocused, wild eyes, the drooling and frothing at the mouth.

Bounty Hunter knows that dragons don’t get rabies. There are no ‘new variants’ or ‘splinter strains’ that could change this, not unless someone specifically built a version of magical rabies to affect dragons.

It’s not rabies, it’s something worse. Not a sickness, desperation. It came to the town for a reason, and there’s only two things a starving dragon would come to humans for: to kill or be killed. From the way the dragon is drooling, saliva mixing with the hyperflammable liquid some dragons are known for, it isn’t the latter.

Idiot civilians cluster to the street as Bounty Hunter watches, murmuring and gossiping. Some are laughing, mocking the ‘high and mighty’ dragon. Some are disgusted, scorning the dragon amongst themselves. Bounty Hunter is almost tempted to let the dragon kill them.

Instead, when his oldest child gives him the signal, Bounty Hunter fires a single shot from his gun, a blank, but they don’t know that.

The townspeople scatter, flustered and panicked like a flock of startled peacocks. The dragon locks eyes on Bounty Hunter and he braces himself as well as he can. Two thousand pounds of muscles and scales rocket towards him, sparks catching in between the dragon’s teeth.

Bounty Hunter and two of his older children dig the buts of their spears into the ground. It’s an old trick, used for hunting wild boars, but it works just as well for many kinds of magical beast. The dragon, mindless as it is, plows directly into the spears. The dragon screams a dying roar as Bounty Hunter feels his spear hit home, shearing through the dragon’s thick scales and emerging bloodied on the other side.

The dragon writhes, lashes out with huge talons, and goes limp. Bounty Hunter steps back, and waves his children back too. He carefully lifts the dragon’s head, drawing his prized enchanted knife, and decapitates it. The monster is dead, now comes the hard part.

Bounty Hunter and his children – those old enough to hunt – tie on their protective amulets and shield charms and get working. Every magical threat has a cause, a root purpose that will only spawn more if left unchecked.

Bounty Hunter follows the dragon’s trail back to its nest. The nest looks comfortable and warm, padded with soft furs and decorated with pretty rocks, carved wood, feathers, seashells, and other bits and bobs the dragon may have found. Bounty Hunter can tell the dragon is young, though not a juvenile. The layers upon layers of furs, leaves, and feathers lining one section of the nest point to a dragon preparing to have a child.

There’s another obvious path leading away from the nest, and Bounty Hunter follows the well-worn trail while his daughter pokes around the nest for more clues. He ends up in the next nearest town, a stringently religious place where the church building takes the center spotlight.

There are claw marks on the church’s back porch and dragon saliva on some of the windowsills. Bounty Hunter picks the lock and opens the back door. The floor is hardwood, and the claw marks show up clearly, only one set scrabbling fiercely. The room they lead to is empty, but the window is broken.

After searching the rest of the church and a great deal of the surrounding area, Bounty Hunter calls it a day and heads to the inn he rented. He counts his children. Youngest is missing.

As soon as Bounty Hunter and his older children work themselves into full-blown frenzies, the door opens. Its Youngest, cupping something in her arms.

“Daddy, I found a lost child.” Bounty Hunter freezes. Lost child, to them, doesn’t mean a child who’s lost their way. Lost child means a child nobody wants, cast out of the village or orphaned by the magical threat.

Working half on instinct, Bounty Hunter holds his arms out towards Youngest. She deposits her bundle in his arms, and Bounty Hunter looks down to see a dozing baby dragon, belt around its snout and heavy iron collar around its throat.

Bounty Hunter looks at Youngest. Her eyes are filled with trust, and he know that she wholly believes that he will take in this dragon child. It’s a lost child, after all, and he’s never turned one down before. He can feel the other children’s eyes behind him, and even Oldest is looking at him like it’s a foregone decision. And maybe, Bounty Hunter realizes, watching the baby dragon fuss in his arms, it is.

#dragon #adoption #adopted dragon #found family #I love found family #found family my beloved #bounty hunter #bounty hunting #magic #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Silent Feathers, Silent Songs

Songbird families are respected but feared, under constant supervision. I’ve felt the eyes on me since before I understood what they meant. I wasn’t allowed to speak at all when I was younger, not unless an older Songbird was present. As I grew, and my wings molted and changed color, the enforcement of silence was never lifted. 

My cousins and siblings were taught to speak in riddles, never to give direct orders. I was told to be silent. My sisters learned to sing the crops to life and thrum life into the injured and lost. My brothers were taught to chant down earthquakes and fires and command cities to build themselves. I learned that my feathers were a disgrace, and my voice should never be heard. 

When they were born, my siblings had gray-brown feathers, their wings thin and almost sleek. Mine were gray-white, like snow mixed with ash. The overseers said I was dangerous, that I would grow up to be a monster. My parents told them I was only young, that I would grow into my plumage. My siblings called me little one, and showed me how to groom my sooty-snow feathers.

I did grow up eventually, forced into complete silence. I didn’t scream as I toppled over the edge; I didn’t even consider it. It wasn’t a betrayal, or even a surprise. The overseers had made no effort to hide their intentions. It was only a betrayal when my parents appeared above me on the cliff, standing just behind the overseer. It was only a surprise when my siblings joined me, plummeting towards the ground.

My sister figured it out first. She had the blue-brown wings of a tree swallow, and they were always moving. The wind caught in her feathers, throwing her up instead of down. 

My brothers caught on quickly, but I figured it out faster. They spread their wings, scarlet macaw and checker-throated woodpecker feathers soaring above me. I fluttered my ugly, speckled white feathers in a display that would look convincingly like attempted flight to the overseers above.

Much, much later, when we finally reunited, Catherine will tell me it had been terrifying. Max won’t ever say it, but it will be clear that he was devastated by my supposed death. Only Archer understood, in that split second before I hit the canopy, what I was doing.

The trees below the cliff were huge, towering monstrosities whose branches wove a thick canopy above the forest floor. At the last second, I pulled my wings in tight and crashed through the branches. The trunks were far apart, far enough apart for my not-insubstantial wingspan to fling open twice over.

My siblings had only just learned to fly, and the overseers would never send them after their own sister. My parents were, as all parents of Overseen families are, unlike us. They were normal. Humans. They could never fly. For the first time in my life, as I spread my silent wings under the wide Mountain Tree leaves, I was free.

Text: Songbirds families are respected but feared, and under constant supervision. Those that speak find funny little ways to say nothing that could serve as instructions. 

#avians #magic #avian magic #prompt #deepwaterwritingprompts #Underblind #writing #my writing

[crouchingtiger28]

Silver Sunshine

This is the first installment of my Matchmaker Mountain series, though it is not necessarily the first chronologically.

Rune shuffled through her stack of mail, sorting it into neat piles. Checks, IOUs, thank you letters, wedding invitations, and gifts all went to their respective dragon’s inbox, and Rune settled down to consider the three job requests.

The first two were easy. A viscount’s daughter in love with a scribe went to Curlicue’s inbox, waiting for her to accept. The second was the daughter of an earl stuck in an arranged marriage requesting a magical rescuer, which was quickly sorted into Onyx’s stack. The last letter was more difficult.

Rune tapped her claws on the thick parchment, staring past the walls of her home cave. She could send her to Onyx, for a magical match, but the challengers that show up for Onyx’s jobs were more wizards and sorcerers and hedge witches than half-humans. What if…

Rune picked up a quill, hesitating over the decision. The parchment curled in on itself, retaking the shape of a rolled-up scroll. She huffed, stretching it out and signing her true name on the form. If you want something done right, you ought to do it yourself, after all.

–––

Princess Torny sighed, tracing invisible lines on her windowsill. Her parents knew she didn’t want to marry the foreign prince, and they agreed with her, but Regalia was a larger, more influential kingdom than Ejder, and when the engagement papers had been signed an alliance had been formed. There was no getting around it. Except...

Torny tried not to think about the form she had filled out. She didn’t know if Prince Kendrick had brought mentalists with him, and she wasn’t willing to risk it. It was probably too late, anyway. No one had come to her yet, and the wedding was minutes away.

A polite knock sounded on the door behind her, and Torny turned around. “Enter.”

A handmaid glided through the door, an apologetic smile tracing her lips as she curtsied respectfully, “Your highness, the procession is ready.”

Torny followed the handmaid down the stairs and to the huge open-air garden courtyard that the wedding was to take place in. Five other women joined them, and a bouquet of flowers was shoved into Torny’s hands. This was it.

Two people – Torny hadn’t the willpower to look behind her and determine who they were – lifted her train off the ground. Her flower girls walked in front of her, scattering flowers on the path.

The prince stood on the podium, and the pope beside him. Torny could barely breathe as she stepped up across from her fiancé. This wasn’t how her wedding was supposed to go. Everyone in her family had married for love, why couldn’t she? Distantly, Torny heard wind buzzing rhythmically, as if... as if... as if there was a dragon.

The pope was staring at the sky, horror scrawling across his face, and Prince Kendrick had turned to follow his gaze. Torny looked up, and barely stopped a relived grin from spreading her lips. A dragon glided towards them, huge and deadly.

It was silver, with layered translucent wings that blurred out the sun as it descended on them. Torny had never heard of a silver dragon before, but she had decided as soon as she saw it that even being abducted by a normal dragon was better than marrying the prince.

The right side of the audience scattered with panicked shouts, King Royston and Queen Philippa leading the uproar. The left side of the audience filtered calmly out of their seats, moving to the cover of the castle. The pope, who had been brought by the Regalia royal family to oversee the marriage, panicked along with the other Regalian nobles.

Torny stood stone still, barely daring to hope.

The dragon swooped down, skimming over the courtyard, and collided with Torny. The dragon’s hands wrapped around her shoulders and her talons gripped Torny’s waist carefully, and then they were off.

The ground dropped away terrifyingly quickly. In seconds they were higher than the castle’s tallest tower, and the people below them were mere splatters of color and motion. Up, up, up they flew, until they soared over the clouds.

There was another dragon waiting for them, this one with the matte black scales and small flightless wings of a male. Huge indigo wings stretched from his shoulders above his normal ones, clearly made of magic, and the sorcerer perched on his back wore a similarly colored robe.

In a slippery blur of magic, Torny was somewhere else.

Colorful walls and packed bookshelves met her eyes, smooth stone floor under her feet. The room was comfortable and cozy, a fireplace and chimney nestled into one wall and an array of low-backed chairs and squishy bean bags scattered across the floor.

Unsure what else to do, Torny sank into the nearest chair, examining the vibrant frescoes and mosaics that made up the walls. She had heard a great deal about the dragons of Matchhead Mountain, and she picked out each one in the colorful decoration.

There was Stratus, stained in pale sky blue and sandy orange against dark thunderclouds, huge, feathered wings painted in three different places to show their swift movement. Snow was in the next image, smooth wings spread wide and stormy eyes glowing, silhouetted against the opening of a dark cave behind her. Curlicue was tiled in a mosaic, brown glass diamonds set into gray plaster to imitate the stone-like skin under her scales. There were more, flying across the walls and roaring at the celling, each of the dragons – including the unfamiliar silver one – represented at least twice.

Torny examined the frescoes with awe. They were masterfully done, and the bright pigments and real silver and gold embedded in them would cost a fortune.

“That is not an adjective!” the put-upon voice startled Torny and shattered the room’s silence. Torny spun towards the door, watching it fly open.

“Sounds like quitter talk to me!” The woman in front retorted, sashaying through the room and throwing the opposite door open. The woman behind her huffed, leveling an exaggerated squinting glare on her companion.

“I can hear you glaring at me, -” she made a hissing, whispery noise that brought swift winds and heavy fog to mind.

The woman – presumably the rustling hiss was her name – rolled her eyes and huffed, following the first through the door. The door closed behind them, and Torny blinked. The queer silence had been thoroughly shattered, and a more natural, empty silence remained after the womens' departure.

The door opened again, and Torny realized she was still looking at it. A new woman stepped in, with a sturdy, tall build and silver hair cut to just over her shoulders. Her skin was dark gray and shifting glowing runes seemed to be inlayed in it.

“Welcome, Princess Torny, of Ejder, I am -” The sound she made in place of her name was almost like the sound of a sharpening knife, but more hollow and slow, shimmering and wavering slightly, “but you may call me Rune. You submitted a commission to Matchmaker Mountain as a princess in an unwanted engagement and I – as of April 27, 1412, three days ago – accepted. I’m sure you read the synopses and have heard about our organization from other customers, but I need to give you a quick rundown of the rules, expectations, and organization.”

Torny blinked twice and nodded for her to continue. She had read the pamphlet in its entirety, and she had heard stories from her ladies-in-waiting and her friends in court, but she hadn’t imagined Matchmaker Mountain to be so... formal.

“Alright, follow me please.”

Torny followed Rune out the door and the dragon-turned-human started on a long – but incredibly interesting – explanation of Matchhead Mountain. The hallway outside the door was more accurately described as a tunnel, wide and tall enough for three dragons to walk astride, and their wings stretched as high as they could go wouldn’t brush the roof of the cave.

Every dragon had a similar tunnel, apparently, leading to their personal cave. Each personal cave had at least one entrance on the outside and one on the inside of the mountain. Even Stellan, the male dragon acting as Sorceress Amethyst’s assistant and familiar, had his own cave. Finally, after quite a trek, they reached the internal exit of Amethyst’s personal cave system.

The heart of the mountain was hollowed into a huge room, separated by natural outcroppings of stone, wooden sliding panels, and magical supports. Seams of magic hemmed the air, threads of indigo light stitched among the silently churning machines. A river, emerging from one side of the cave, flowed through the floor of the cavern and disappeared down a frothing waterfall to a pool deep and wide enough for a dozen dragons to fit in comfortably.

“I live on the upper ground level,” Rune started, startling Torny out of her awe, “but should you need to access the other’s caves they all have ladders and stairs built for humans to reach them. You’ll get a map of the tunnel system in your information packet, along with a few other items of importance. We have three other commissioners with us at the moment, Viscount’s daughter Charlotte, Countess Gloria, and Duches Amarylis. They're staying with Curlicue, Onyx, and Stratus. This way.”

Torny followed her through the cavern to the opposite side, the opening of the cave almost hanging over the edge of the waterfall’s cliff. On closer inspection, there did appear to be a sturdy wooden staircase and handrail zigzagging down the cliff face. The wood and metal of it were embroidered with indigo magic, and stray drops of mist that got near the stairs flickered away into translucent indigo buttons and then disappeared entirely.

Rune’s tunnel seemed just as long as Amethyst’s, but eventually they ended up in the main cave in her personal system. Rune directed Torny to a human-sized door – now appearing ridiculously out-of-place in the dragon-sized mountain – and handed her the promised information packet.

Through the door was a human-sized living space that was an almost perfect replica of the dragon-sized one. The only noticeable difference were the floors, ceilings, and walls meeting at sharp angles like human architecture rather than the smooth, rounded corners of the dragons’ hollowed-out cave.

Torny sank onto the couch, gripping the packet to her chest. She would pick through the information later, visit different dragons and negotiate her payment, sift through whatever records or documents they needed translated. For now, she needed time to decompress and think on the day. And what a day it was.

–––

Rune barely let the door close before she was shifting back to her true form. Onyx had told her that humans sometimes panicked if they met you first as a dragon, so Rune had greeted Princess Torny in her human form. After that, she hadn’t been able to find a good time to shift back. She hadn’t spent that much time as a human in years.

Four legs under her once again, Rune made her way to her office. In the three days it had taken her to set everything up for Torny, a myriad of work had accumulated. Letters – the typical mix of Checks, IOUs, and Wedding or Christening invitations – were the least of it.

Assignments from her long-distance education program had also piled up. She had learned years ago that she had a knack for Conduction Magic and was slowly but surely pursuing an education in it. Her Conduction was much stronger than her Mental Magic but had been overlooked because she had been tested for magical proficiencies before the components and conditions of Conduction was widespread and acceptable.

And, of course, her managerial tasks. Rune was the official manager of Matchmaker Mountain, along with Amethyst, but she was also the unofficial manager of Matchhead Mountain. Organizing things, remembering things, making sure Stratus focused on her own work long enough to get it done, making sure Terra and Curlicue and everyone else paused occasionally to hunt or even just eat something Rune caught for them. Almost every schedule and calendar was run past Rune, whether she wanted them to or not.

Rune’s desk was piled high with papers and parchments in every color and style.

Rune sat down in front of it, her personalized chair styled to fit her true form perfectly. She twitched her tail and picked up a letter. She read it three times before she admitted that she was getting nothing from it and put it down again.

Rune sighed and stood up again. It was times like this she wished Star was around. He was off in Regalia, acting as the familiar and assistant of one of the many royal casters. The weight of what she had done finally hit her, and Rune flopped to the floor in front of her office fireplace.

She was on the radar now, existing in the eyes of the public. She was considered a legitimate threat and there was a sign that pointed to her cave entrance. She had kidnapped a princess.

Rune rubbed her light-eyes with the back of one hand, keeping her eyes closed against the glow of the fire.

The door creaked open behind her, and Rune turned to look. Terra stood in the doorway, pale orange lilies blooming in her wings.

“You doing alright?”

Rune got to her feet, planting all six legs on the ground, “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“I saw you pass with your new princess, and you looked kinda... stressed. Just wanted to make sure.”

Rune smiled at her, but it fell a little flat, “I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“I know you’ve never done this before, and, well, if you need anything – help or advice or just support – you know where to find me.”

“Me too!” Stratus called from behind her.

Terra scooted to the side to let Stratus squeeze in next to her, “I’m sure Onyx or Stellan would also be willing to help.”

“I bet I could bring Dad here if you needed it!” Stratus added confidently.

Rune smiled at them both, this one more real and whole, “Thank you for your offer girls. I’ll be sure to ask if I need something.”

“You can count on us!”

Terra and Stratus tangled in each other trying to leave, and made it out of the door in a giggling knot of scales and feathers and leaves.

Newly energized, Rune plopped into her chair and picked up the abandoned letter again. She could do this! She was going to ace this whole princess thing, set the girl up with her beau, and get invited to their wedding and all of their christenings. Yeah.

–––

Torny pulled a stitch through the fabric, reaching out for that tiny tremor of magic that came with the motion. As with the dozen times before, it slipped through her grip like unknotted thread through loose knit.

“Let’s try something else.” Amethyst told her finally, retrieving the fabric and thread, “I’m not at all gifted in it, but some soulsmiths use singing or dancing as their triggers.”

Torny gamely followed her to the most open area of the room, and stepped through the careful motions Amethyst showed her. The thread of indigo in her mind grew immensely from the few simple steps. Power gushed through her mind, flooding between her fingers like ribbons caught in the wind. Torny almost stumbled, but continued the simple light spell. She finished in a carefully balanced pose, and the room erupted into blinding white light.

Torny yelped, shutting her eyes. It did nothing, of course, since the light wasn’t actually there, and the spell only made her perceive an illusion of illumination.

Something whirred behind her, and the light vanished. Torny blinked stars from her eyes and turned around to see Amethyst standing by the hearth, one hand on the switch to the antimagic field. She flipped the switch again, and the whirring stopped. The room fell into silence.

“Well, that worked pretty well.”

Torny laughed at the dry statement, “You could say that.”

“I’m afraid that’s all I can do for you, though.” Amethyst told her once she had calmed down, “As I told you before, I’m terrible at souldancing. I can, however, send you to a very skilled Spirit Sorcerer who’s usually glad to take apprentices. With that level of reaction, you’ll end up being a thaumaturge at least.”

Letter of recommendation and pamphlet for ‘Sorcerer Loria’s Souldancing Gymnasium’ in hand, Torny left Amethyst’s personal cave, heading down the endless passageway to the main hub. She had a meeting with Snow to decipher the elegant calligraphy inlayed into the neck of one of her violins.

As her payment for their services, Torny had offered to translate anything they wanted in any of the dozen languages she knew. She had already visited Terra for translations to etch on her newest creation, Onyx to figure out where some of her gold coins and bars were from, and Ink to look at some old magical runes on his gizmos. Each one of them had seemed surprised when she told them she hadn’t been called in by Stellan.

Torny wasn’t sure she wanted to know what exactly Stellan would need her help with. She could cross that bridge when she got to it.

–––

Rune was compiling a list of necessary components for her Displacement assignments when a knock sounded on her office door. She paused and set down her quill. She couldn’t think of any planned thing that would need her attention, and she really didn’t want to stand up.

Before she could deliberate further, the door opened, and Amethyst stepped through.

“Hello, sorry to bother you. I have challengers making their way up the mountain for you.”

“Ah, yes.” Rune stood and turned to her, but didn’t bother shrinking to her human form. Amethyst was used to her conversation partners towering over her, and held out the page. Rune accepted it with one hand, the other snatching her glasses off her desk.

Her eye ridges lifted slightly at the information, “He’s an orc?”

“Yes, evidently they weren’t sure who to send your way, so they picked some they figured were halfway between.”

Rune hummed and slid the page aside. The one underneath it was an elf half-duke, and their final companion was a librarian who dabbled in both Binding and Beast magic.

“They seem... indecisive.” All three of them had answered the defeat questions with undecided, which, according to the other working dragons, was rare.

“Nobody knows what you can do yet, Rune. They don’t know what your tricks are.”

“Ah. Should I ask Torny then?”

Amethyst blinked, then hummed and nodded, “I hadn’t considered that.”

Torny was quickly consulted, and immediately made her disdain for both the elf and the librarian known. The elf was an arrogant rat who had only gotten worse when his biological mother married a duke and he became said duke’s adopted son, and the librarian was a stuck-up know-it-all who considered women to be inferior and incompetent. The orc was fine, though, a knight of the kingdom that Torny had been almost-friends with when she was younger.

A few minutes conversation and Rune had a plan of action. Amethyst and Torny returned to their own business, and Rune emerged from her cave.

The sun was bright, and the sky was clear, and Rune felt the moon beginning to rise on the other side of the mountain. The shifting runes under her scales fractured the sunlight into dancing colors playing across the ground and walls.

Rune towered over the three challengers, sunlight splintering off her scales, “Who are you to challenge me?!” She had practiced pitching her voice to rattle the trees and send birds fleeing the area but leave elvish ears unharmed.

To her immense surprise, it was the librarian who stepped up first, “I am Edwyn Schulte, Librarian of the Royal Archives and Bicolored wizard of the court of Ejder. I am here for Princess Torny, taken by the dread dragon-” He paused only briefly in his recitation to glance at the sign on Rune’s cave, “-Rune! Stand forth and do battle, if you choose to oppose me, foul fiend!”

Rune roared her acceptance of the challenge, an echoing wordless cry like thunder in a clear sky that would probably be heard through the whole mountain. The orc and elf had already retreated to the tree-line, leaving enough space for Rune to ‘battle’ the librarian.

Edwyn shouted something in the language of summoners, and violet ropes started winding themselves around Rune. She reared back, fluttering her wings against the dragging, pulling sensation. The ropes snapped with a sound like ripping paper, and Edwyn staggered back.

Before he had a chance to cast again, Rune moved. For a split second, she tapped into the luminous potential around her, warping the light to her will. In the exact time it took light to spread from Rune’s cave entrance to the opposite base of the mountain, Edwyn found himself stranded at the bottom of the path, light blinded and drained of magic.

From under the shadow of the trees around Rune’s cave, the second challenger approached.

Stratus had told her – and Rune was inclined to believe her – that most lords were not nearly as skilled as Haze’s knights or even Snow’s princes. She had said that they were generally more competent than Terra’s scholars, but this one couldn’t even live up to that.

He didn’t wait for Rune’s question to issue his demand, and he didn’t even try to follow the proper format, “Deliver the princess to me, dragon.”

Rune had barely met him, and she didn’t like him already. Still, Rune was a professional, and she wanted to make a good first impression for people whose opinions actually mattered. She roared, the same Challenge Accepted roar she had spent too long practicing with Star years ago.

The lord, somehow, despite being a third her height, managed to look down his nose at Rune. He abruptly found himself up a tree at the bottom of the mountain, light blinded and sunburned lobster red.

Finally, the orc. He was well-spoken for an orc, had probably taken speech therapy to work around his tusks. His pronunciation was almost perfect, with only slight slurs on his ‘F’s.

“I am Resilience Falkson, Knight of the Royal Army. I am here for Princess Torny, taken by the dread dragon Rune! Stand forth and do battle, if you choose to oppose me, foul fiend!”

Rune was glad to accept his challenge.

His orc blood made him strong, stronger than the knight Rune had once fought when filling in for Haze, and he was fast. Rune would be hard pressed to fight him magicless, without tapping into the power of the sunlight.

She let his battle drag on longer than the other two. Part of their unspoken agreement with Ejder was to ‘train’ those who came to free princesses. Finally, after several minutes of careful battle, Rune pinned the orc knight.

“You have fought valiantly, Resilience, but your strength is no match for the light of the stars!”

Rune slid herself and the orc halfway into the realm of light and in an instant she had dropped him at the base of the mountain.

Finished with her first official fights, Rune breathed deeply in the light of the setting sun, cleared away the toppled tree that had fallen victim to her tail, and returned to her den.

–––

Stellan carefully sorted through his hoard, stacking loose pages and shuffling piles of books into roughly neater piles. Stratus stepped past him with a box of tightly wrapped scrolls in every shape and size.

Terra loitered in the doorway with another box, watching hesitantly.

“Put that over here, Terra, I’ll take it next.”

Terra edged past Stellan and set the box next to Torny. A puff of dust billowed out of it, and Torny had to squeeze her nose to prevent herself from sneezing. The box was a tangled mess of long thin messenger pigeon correspondences, ranging from flaking yellow pressed onionskin as old as Torny herself to crisp white new-fashioned paper that was translucent but sturdy and brand new.

Apparently, Stellan exclusively hoarded writings in languages he didn’t understand. He didn’t want her to translate anything, he just wanted it sorted.

Torny pulled a message from the box, disentangling it from two more. She couldn’t read the spidery, complex letters, but she recognized the language as Teikokun and set the scroll on the correct pile. More scrolls followed, Dyflin, Imperiyan, Krolish. The most common were Royen and Regnian, but there were scripts from all over the known world.

Someone knocked on the door, and the three dragons turned towards it. The door was behind her, and Torny didn’t have a prehensile neck, so she let them figure it out.

“I have Princess Torny’s requested suitor on his way up the mountain. How close are you to being done here?”

Torny barely stopped herself from shooting to her feet and scattering fragile messenger pigeon scrolls.

“Pretty close,” Stellan said, shifting a box with his talon, “We just have this one and that one left, and this one is books, so it should be pretty quick.”

“I only have five scrolls left from this one.” Torny piped in.

“Alright, I’ll start prepping to be defeated. Head to my cave when you’re done, please.”

“Very well.”

The door closed again, and Torny returned to the scrolls with renewed vigor. She was done in minutes, ending with a tricky book that was actually a Dyflin to Krolish translation dictionary.

She was hefting her skirts in preparation to run to Rune’s cave when a talon tapped her on the shoulder.

“Do you need a ride?”

Torny blinked at Stratus, the dragon’s neck bent to leave her head at eye level, “A ride?”

“Yeah, I can carry through the tunnels if you want. To get you to Rune’s faster, if you want to freshen up beforehand.”

“Oh! Sure, that would be lovely, thank you!”

Stratus settled onto her belly, cocking one leg, “Here, step here and swing your leg up over my back. Like mounting a horse.”

Torny gingerly stepped onto the spread talon, sliding onto the dragon’s smooth back.

“Great, now grab my wings at the shoulders and hold on tight!”

Stratus rocked to her feet and Torny scrambled for a handhold. Once she was situated, Stratus started down the tunnel in a smooth, ground-eating lope.

The emerged in the heart of the mountain in moments, crossed the cavern in a blink, and were in Rune’s personal caves just as the challenger was calling his challenge.

Torny changed to a fancier dress, splashed water on her face, quickly braided her hair, and hurried to the mouth of the cave just in time to see Rune’s ‘defeat’.

Volk lunged forward, spear in hand, and Rune reared back with a roar. Her form shimmered, the sunlight gleaming off her scales suddenly shining through her. A second later, she shattered, dissolving into splinters of silver light that scattered in the wind.

Torny stared, awe-struck, before she shook herself back into the present and slapped a smile on her face. Her rescuer was here, and she was ready to be rescued.

–––

Rune shuffled through her stack of mail, sorting it into neat piles; Checks, IOUs, thank you letters, and... wedding invitations.

Princess Torny & Volk Silversmith

Joyfully invite you to their wedding

Rune

of Matchhead Mountain August 27, 1412, Ejder Castle

Despite what the others had told her, Rune hadn’t really considered being invited to the wedding. She hadn’t done anything, really. At least not that she knew of.

But she had been invited. Rune set the message aside and quickly sorted through the rest of the mail. Then she left, making her way to Amethyst's cave.

If she was going to go to a wedding, she was going to need a dress.

#dragons #dragon #Matchmaker Mountain #Rune (Matchmaker Mountain) #kaleidoscope magic system #writing #my writing