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eliashirsch · 21 days

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God Tier Top Gun Fanfictions. A Masterlist. (1/3)

As of 15th May 2024, these are some of the BEST stories I have read in the fandom. Of course, this is completely subjective and there are many personal factors as to why I crowned them God Tier.

Mainly:

Reading it for the first time: ‘Oh, this is really good, I’m going to be thinking about this for the rest of my life’

When compiling the list: ‘Oh my god, this fic, man, this fic!!’

There are many other fics that match the first criteria, but for it to be on this list, I needed to have these two reactions.

REMINDER! READ THE AUTHORS' TAGS AND WARNINGS!!! They’re there for a reason. PLEASE make sure you understand where the story is going to be before reading!!

Without further ado, I present to you, my roman empires:)

Winner Categories:

1. Best of the Best Authors (1/3)

2. Best of the Best Series (2/3)

3. Best of the Best Fics (3/3)

4. Honorary Mentions (4/3)

Best of the Best Authors

Authors that I trust with my life, whose work are ALL incredibly well written.

COMPACFLT @compacflt

They’re the first person to pop in my head when I was thinking about making this list. No amount of time and words will be enough for me to describe how good their work is. Seriously. It’s on a level I’ve never seen before for fanfiction. The world building, the characterization, the prose, everything. COMPACFLT has a way of understanding these characters, it makes so much sense and fits so well with canon. I’m just at a loss for words. Genuinely the reason I converted to Icemav supremacy.

When We Get Around to Talking About It

Goose has been dead for a week and a half when Iceman loses his first wingman in a dogfight with six Soviet MiGs over the Sea of Okhotsk. Goose has been dead for thirty years when Iceman loses his second wingman to a surface-to-air missile on the tail-end of a mission he's responsible for: he's sent his family on a suicide mission to destroy a uranium enrichment facility in Russia's Far East. This is the story of those thirty years in the middle. (Or: Tom Kazansky rises through the ranks while trying to stay a good man. If he ever was one to begin with.)

This was the first story I’ve read from them. And it’s so… I don’t have words. It’s told from Ice’s perspective, filling the gaps between TG and TG:M with added Icemav and Hangster. In my mind this is canon:D

Debriefing (& Other Stories)

"We can start here, I guess. If we're talking about us," Pete says. "Nineteen-eighty-six. The first thing I thought, when I saw you in that O-club, was: Iceman is off-limits. Capital O, capital L." Despite himself, despite the fear, Tom laughs a little. "Oh, yeah? Why's that?" "Well, first off, we were competition. And yeah, you were attractive, but then you opened your mouth and I swear. You were just an asshole. Goose is trying to introduce you to me and here I am thinking about how much of an asshole you are. Shut up about Cougar, asshole." "It was supposed to be a friendly competition!" "Yeah, right. So that's what I was thinking: he's attractive, clearly doesn't know how to talk to other men, might be into the proposition if I framed it the right way. But he's an asshole, so this competition is just gonna be friendly." Pete pauses. Then he says, "Ice, you wanna get married?" And that's how they start talking about it. (Or: they finally get around to talking about it. Plus a couple extra stories for good luck.)

Sigh and send COMPACFLT a loving look. This Maverick's POV adds so much to the story without being repetitive. COMPACFLT deliberately tells their story like puzzle pieces, and they complete each other—just like Icemav, if you will.

The Slider oneshot is truly something else. I was so eager for the upload and kept an eye on their account for updates religiously. To flesh out a character that barely has any source material is an incredible skill to have. And the Bradley oneshot… Omg… My favorite characterization of Bradley, period.

Tremors & Aftershocks

They both come back to their senses and stop openly crying again eventually. The stitches fall out of the thirty-year-old wounds and the scars fade back to skin-color. Life stops being so painfully raw after a couple weeks back home. You get used to miracles the way you get used to anything else. One day at a time. [Or: 40 years of extras, from 1982-2022. Some true love, some heartbreak, some miracles.]

To me, this one has a different feeling from the other two. More focused on Ice and Mav’s relationship as opposed to the whole plotline. It’s tender and bittersweet and feels like being hugged for the first time and then told that you wouldn’t get another hug in thirty years time.

What impresses me most is that, if you go to COMPACFLT’s Tumblr account, you’ll see the thought they’ve put for these stories are INSANE. They’re so educated on the military and its history and it adds so much to these characters. I’m not American and all my writing for Top Gun will always stem from google searches and other fics. If you’re a nerd like me and like to read about other’s analysis about topics they know nothing about, I suggest you go to their account and have fun.

COMPACFLT, you have captured my soul with your writing. Thank you for your service and I wish you well in life.

AortaArgent @aortaargent

If you’re looking for an author who can write smut like nothing else, go to their profile. Better yet, click here, and scroll down to the threads they made about girl!Mav and get horny real quick. It’s a shortcut to heaven really. (And yes, I’m still upset that they seem to have left the fandom, but I still hold the stories they’ve left behind close to my heart:)) My favorites:

like a shotgun (needs an outcome)

“Ice gave me a handjob when we did this,” he argues. “Oh, that’s what gets you moving? Seeing who comes first?” With that, Slider takes hold of him, wrapping his hand around and keeping his fist steady. “Go on, baby girl. Fuck it like a good little -” He squeezes Slider’s balls a little harder than he’d imagine is necessarily pleasant. For Slider. It's definitely nice for him. “Fuck,” Kerner chokes out, weakly. Ice sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. “I told you he bites.” In which there are multiple realisations, improbable numbers of pilots hanging out in a shared shower, volleyball games and verbal tennis. Yes, it's compulsory to wear your dogtags in the shower - never know when you could need identification. (Only kidding, it's for added fuckability.)

It’s so hot... but believable at the same time. BDSM is just one of those things where you read about it and can tell if the author has experience or is just extremely well-informed.

Eye to Eye

“Maybe it’s not just us looking to get a piece of you,” Wolf says. He’s right by Maverick’s head, and a shiver rolls down his shoulders in a sweeping tide at the soft click of each word against his ear. “Maybe we offered. You’re so pretty, Mav. It’s not a hard sell.” His hands twitch with the effort of not reaching up to tear off the blindfold and find out if they’re telling the truth or just winding him up. It’s possible. Occupied, blindfolded, he might not have noticed the door opening. More guys could have been in the showers. Two hands circle his ankles, firm over his boots, and hold him steady. Someone else has his left hand, kneading the tendons down the back of it. Anyone and anything is plausible. A continuation. Finally.

HOT DAMN. That’s all.

AortaArgent portrayed Ice and Mav’s relationship as absolute and secure while having fun with Mav’s dynamic with the other guys. All of their works are mind-boggling and simply amazing!

thecarlysutra @icemankazansky

Need I say more? Carly’s one of the most prominent members of the Top Gun fandom. Actually, I trust any member of the Top Gun Old Guard. With Carly, there’s something about their writing that makes me think of discovering an old box of CDs you used to watch relentlessly, dusty and worn, but the nostalgia rushes back and it’s achingly familiar. You can tell they’ve been writing for Top Gun for so long the characters kind of became their own. And when you click on any fic they wrote, you can fall and trust they’ll catch you. My favorites:

and i promise, you're the locksmith

“Is something going on in your neighborhood?” Maverick asked. “Like … a pest problem or something?” “You could say that,” Ice said. “Like … a coyote or something?” “Suitors,” Ice said. Maverick's attempts to woo Iceman are somewhat complicated by the promise Ice has made: Anyone who wants to marry him must catch his cat, which wears the key to his house around its neck on a silver chain. Inspired by the Tumblr legend.

This one’s so cute!!! Ugh, I’m never going to get tired of reading Icemav fall in love over and over again.

Dreams of Impact

Maverick's trip in Darkstar takes him further than he ever imagined possible.

Sigh for the second time and send hearts Carly’s way. Basically, Mav gets transported to another universe and weird things happen. I love fics that dabble with the universe, the what-ifs, the what could’ve been. Do you ever have that moment when you make a decision, look back and wonder how life would be if you chose differently? Click on the link and read 🫵

aelibia @topgunreacts

God. aelibia’s just too good. It’s like banger after banger after banger. If you’re looking for an author whose work is a guaranteed good read, click the link and it’ll show you magic. They have Icemav ranging from tender and soft to angsty, portraying all different sorts of love and a way of writing explicit sex that I’ve never found anywhere else.

I can’t even pick which one’s my favorite because they’re all my favorite. Especially the series they wrote, oh my god. I love them all. However, one that I reread religiously and being giddy over is this:

Wine Dark Sea

Raised by a selkie mother bound to a human man, Ice returns to the human world as a teenager with a singular purpose: to find the source of human strength, and claim it for himself. But after a careless mistake binds him to another human man, Ice is forced to reconsider his most fundamental beliefs: What is the meaning of strength? And what is the cost of freedom?

It’s so silly at times and heartbreaking most of the time. I especially love the later chapters where the evil is defeated and Ice is just being a silly seal while Mav’s being the supportive partner that he is. This fic is the SOLE REASON that my favorite animal is a seal. Thank you for opening my eyes to something that has been so obvious from the start, your majesty aelibia.

I also humbly present these seal drawings because the image of Ice galumphing around a Navy base, complete with wet smacks and people shrieking in horror makes me laugh everyday. That, and the scene where Mav is surrounded by four fat harbor seal pups and reading a story to them. Eleven out of ten.

This one’s my favorite:}

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spookyspaghettisundae · 3 years

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The Crow or the Sparrow

Drops of blood and footprints marked the snow, visible in broad daylight for even the worst of hunters to follow with ease. But no sane hunter would dare pursue such a trail. Neither animal nor man had left these tracks.

Claws that had slain countless men and women and children. Walking upon two legs.

A slight limp, owed to injuries from which it had bled, pushing forward, ever forward, lurching, and shambling farther and farther away from the city.

Snow crunched under every light footstep taken by two shadowy figures. In pursuit of their inhuman quarry, they strode across uneven terrain, far away from man-made roads and paths. Garbed in heavy jackets, with trouser legs and boots and coattails caked in the white powder of snow, their slender silhouettes almost blended in with the forest around them when they came to a stop.

Even in broad daylight, the canopy of barren trees that made up the sprawling Blackwood sufficed to blanket it in a dreary, dreamy gloom. Little clouds of condensing air puffed away from the mouths of the two hunters, forming beyond the scarves and tricorne hats that covered their faces, then dissipating in the cold breeze.

One of them looked around, as if confused. The other stared at him, then followed his erratically wandering gaze.

Were they being followed by something else?

“You sense something?” asked the other in a hushed hiss. The sound of her voice sliced through the wintry air like a knife. “Is it here? Watching us?”

“No,” Johnn muttered. “It's—I’ve been here before.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed at him.

“What is that supposed to mean? You’re a bloody bandit that has been robbing the king’s men in this fucking forest for years. I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” Nora said.

He almost swiveled, glared at her, then swallowed a response.

The two of them breathed heavily, using the brief respite to recover from their forced march through the layer of unforgiving snow.

He finally replied, with a voice that trembled, “The Blackwood is huge. There’re parts no man has ever stepped foot in. Parts no man should ever step foot in, what with the fair—”

“Shut up. Don’t waste breath on their wretched name. Is this their domain? Is that why we’re stopping?”

“No. Like I said—I’ve been here before,” Johnn repeated.

He pointed to a large boulder, now covered in snow, near a fallen tree, where a tangle of gnarled roots stood out from the ground, where a storm had uprooted the ancient tree. A natural landmark, no doubt.

“You can hear the ocean from here, yeah?”

Nora only nodded.

“And the trickle of a brook nearby?”

“No, what—”

“Well, I can, and I know this place. The brook leads to a cave. You have to dive through water for a bit, then you reach a larger cave, connecting to an even larger one. A cove where some slaver pirates used to hide out.”

“So what? Are you thinking he—”

“I don’t know. But it’s where Terry died, and where I killed their captain. And it is giving me the creeps just thinkin’ about it.”

“Then what in the hell is there to give you the creeps anymore? Thought you Merry Lot did all those windbags in,” Nora said, every word mumbled more than the last.

“I killed Shark-Eyes,” Johnn said, the sentence riding on a sigh. “Have the scars to always remind me and can’t taste sugar anymore where I bit my tongue to break his spell.”

“What—he some kind of warlock?”

“How should I know? The unnatural is your specialty,” he quipped.

Nora’s heartbeat picked up speed when she sensed Johnn smirk underneath his bandana.

“All I know is that he is dead, he used to work some sorta black magick, and his hideout used to be ‘round these parts. Now, what do you think the odds are, that—you know, possibly—the alchemist we’re chasin’ is a bit balmy on the crumpet—what are the odds his magick has got something to do with old dead Shark-Eyes and his warlock—warlockery? What do you even call that shite?”

“I call it bad news. Who cares what it’s called?” Nora said, ending her question on a sharp note that left no question.

Johnn pointed past the uprooted tree and the boulder sticking out of the pristine snow. Before he could say something, Nora said, “Fine, who knows—maybe there is a connection. Maybe not. What say you, though—hear me out—you stop being a poodle-faker, we ignore this for now, and we follow the fucking blood trail we’ve been following since bloody Lesterfield?”

She drew her flint-lock pistol for emphasis and tapped the brim of her hat with the weapon’s fine barrel—now adorned with intricate etchings of crucifixes and mystic seals used to exorcise demons. Johnn’s shoulders heaved and then slumped in a shrug, punctuated by another sigh.

“Fine,” he groaned. “But if we end up following this trail into that cave, then…”

“Then what?”

Johnn stammered several broken sentences that failed to connect, prompting Nora to tell him to shut up. She sprung into motion before he could protest, trudging through the snow. He followed.

Their breathing and the crunching of frosted grounds accompanied them for dozens of paces more, as they gained speed and vigor, staving off the cold. The rest of the forest stayed eerily silent. Not even the crows dared to caw that day.

Johnn murmured behind her, “You could wear a dress if—”

“Shut up.”

He did.

Dozens of paces more they followed the trail. Passing snapped branches, here; holes in the snow turned vermillion, where droplets of blood had fallen, there. And always those lurching motions, like the creature sometimes moved on all fours, then on his legs again. Claws had scarred a tree trunk in his path where the alchemist had braced himself and caught his breath. Now long gone—but the huntress could almost smell the ghost of his presence, only hours ahead of them passing through here.

The trickling sound of water grew louder as they hiked, loud enough that even Nora could hear it despite the noise of their march.

The red dots in the snow and the tracks spoke volumes: Nora read immediately how the transformed alchemist, Baxter Hanrahan, had trampled down the grounds around here, splashing himself with the cold and refreshing water. Cleansing his wound.

A singular bullet rested in the brook, water flowing around it where it jittered. The stream of water was not strong enough to carry it away. He must have extracted that from his injury.

Then he had followed the natural path leading down the flow of the brook. Because it had stopped snowing several hours ago, and these trails had been left after the snowfall, she knew they were gaining on the wounded monster.

Standing still and letting her gaze sweep in the direction in which the thin stream of water flowed, framed by the serene, shining and glistening teeth of ice that lined the brook’s edges, the tracks led right into a small, cavernous opening, yawning with a deep darkness that her eyes could not fathom.

Nora clicked her tongue and raised a hand to silence Johnn before he could utter any stupid remarks about having been right. She swallowed the urge to swear up a storm of profanities that could have made a sailor blush.

More than him having been right, she hated the idea that they had to go search a cave for the damned alchemist. More than that even, she hated the idea that this might somehow be connected to another damned sorcerer.

“We’re better off not going in that way,” Johnn said. “Unless you like your gunpowder wet, I suggest we climb down the smuggler’s cove, rather than crawling through the thief’s entrance.”

Clicking her tongue again, Nora shook her head.

Johnn pulled up his crossbow and she could hear the smugness riding on his voice as he added, “Of course, if you chose to use—”

Pointing a finger at his face and then turning her head to follow the gesture with a furious glare sufficed to shut him up again this time. Seeing only his gray eyes sparkle out from in between his hat and scarf sufficed to convey the smugness he found in his small victory. She knew his face too well.

Then that sparkle froze. His gaze hardened. Stared through her. Past her. At something that only now caught the corner of her eye, like the shadow she always spotted at the edge of her vision. Only tangible now.

Within a split second, they aimed their weapons at the third figure; bodily reactions and instincts that happened without thinking. Nora stared down the sights of her pistol and blinked once her gaze met that of yellow, strange eyes. Wide, with a strip of black glistening wet in them, like looking into the eyes of a goat.

Indeed, the two hunters stared into the eyes of a bestial man, whose face resembled a goat, crowned by a harmonious pair of winding horns, a lot like those of a ram. A figure that resembled a man in that it stood upright, though he stood upon hooves for feet. Garbed in layers of thick linen cloth and a dark red robe, frayed around the edges. His clawed hands clutched an old wooden staff, against which he leaned.

Like the two, this goat-man was frozen. In shock.

Nora recognized the sentiment. She recognized the goat-man.

“No,” she said, clipped.

Lowered her pistol and raised an open gloved palm towards Johnn, adding, “Lower your weapon, he is harmless. Well, maybe not harmless, but—not harmful.”

Johnn’s hesitation surfaced in form of the crack of his leather clad finger loosening from around the trigger of his crossbow, but the tension in his defensive posture remained.

“Isn’t it—isn’t he—”

“Not all fair—not all of them are bad, I suppose. Well, at least he isn’t,” she said, peeling her attention away from Johnn and looking back to the goat-man.

The beast-man tilted his head and his intelligent goat eyes betrayed a fearful intelligence as they darted back and forth in between Johnn and Nora. Cutlery and tiny wooden carvings, hanging from threads of twine attached to his belt, clacked, and jingled softly. How he had appeared out of nowhere, without a sound, such a thing only the fair folk could explain.

Goat-man not only leaned on his staff—he hugged it, as if it offered him protection, yet only rendered his appearance more vulnerable and innocent. Johnn finally, audibly, lowered his crossbow.

Nora had rescued the goat-man in this same forest. Slew a vicious witchcrafter who wanted to eviscerate the creature for his innards, for divining secrets or some nonsense.

Over a whole year prior to this day.

Understandably frightening in appearance to most, Nora still sensed the same softness in the fair creature as he stood before them. The bushy hair on his chin swayed gently in the breeze, almost underlining that notion.

He had helped her before—returned the favor—when she escaped from the penitentiary and almost perished in these same woods, injured and alone, at the mercy of autumn’s chill.

The goat-man nodded his head. Stayed silent, as he always did. A greeting, perhaps?

Nora suspected they spoke no common tongue that they could share. They had yet to exchange any words.

But the goat-man pointed to the cave entrance upon which he stood. To where the brook continued to trickle away, flowing into that gaping shadowy hole. Where a greater, more sinister darkness awaited them.

The goat-man shook his head. With purpose and deliberation, he shook his head back and forth, warning them of the danger below.

“We have no choice, friend,” she said, speaking those words with a softness that felt even alien to herself. She, too, shook her head.

They could not speak to one another in words they understood. Not like this. Yet they both understood.

The goat-man turned slowly, carefully, and raised a hand. He pointed one of his long, blackened claws to the trees behind him, following with his own eyes to draw all attention to it. To where the soothing sound of ocean waves lapped against jagged cliffs.

“Is he showing us where to go?” Johnn asked. “I mean, we would have gone there anyway.”

Nobody answered.

The goat-man turned to peer back at Nora. She nodded deeply at him in return.

“Thank you,” she said.

The goat-man tilted his head again and stood still. Watched.

Nora started in the direction he had pointed to. She shot a glance at Johnn and waved at him to follow.

She stopped again as the goat-man descended from the rocks above the cave entrance, approaching her. Not frozen in fear, but unsure what to expect, she studied the goat-man’s every motion until he halted in front of her, standing only one pace away. He looked so old. So ancient. His fur grayed and silvery. And he smelled of pine resin, and campfires, and a unique, strange musk.

From inside his tattered robes, he produced something, held caringly.

As his sharply clawed fingers unfurled, he presented a tiny object in his weathered palm. There rested a small bird, intricately carved from wood. Impossible to recognize what kind of bird it represented, she locked eyes with the goat-man to discern what this gesture meant.

He stretched his arm out further to her, splaying his fingers to the limit, motioning her to take the carved keepsake from him.

Nora took it and closed her gloved hand around it with the same loving care that he must have applied to craft it. She nodded again to express gratitude and the goat-man mimicked the motion.

They withdrew from him and walked on towards the bluffs, where the sound of the ocean’s upset waves beckoned them.

Looking over her shoulder, Nora found the goat-man to be watching them leave, observing their steadfast march to doom. She found herself studying the carved bird in her palm every few steps.

It reminded her of both of a sparrow and a crow. Which—was unclear.

It felt more like a symbol. Like a charm or talisman.

Spiraling, harmonic patterns, mirroring those upon the goat-man’s staff had been shaved into its surfaces and painted dark, also reminding her of the old ways, the old days of the kingdom that only survived in museums and ruins, driven into fading obscurity by the church’s relentless efforts to quell ancient evils.

She eventually shoved the tiny item into one of her coat pockets and when she looked back to where she expected to see the goat-man still watching them, she only saw the slender black trunks of cold and naked trees. He had vanished. As silently as he had appeared in the first place.

Johnn stared at her till she met his gaze.

“What was that about?”

“I don’t know,” Nora muttered.

She trained her eyes on the snowy grounds before her once again. The ocean grew louder with every step, heavier with every herald of the waves. More powerful. Foretelling the danger they knowingly approached. The crunching of snow underfoot ceased once they reached the edge and naked rocks and gravel crackled underneath the soles of their boots.

They overlooked a steep rocky drop to the crashing waves, reaching from one end of the Red Coast to the other as far as they could see. Fog and clouds swallowed the horizon beyond the sea.

Johnn nodded his head to indicate something on the cliff’s face beneath them. A shadow between the rocks. Likely hard to spot from the water, barely visible from their vantage point. Truly, a perfect location for dubious seafarers to hide out.

“Down there. Hard to spot, but that’s where they ran their boats into the cove. We climb down, there’s a natural ledge we can use to enter. Really—watch your step now,” he said.

They did as he foretold. Nora’s hand slipped once, her boot in a different instance, causing a chunk of rocky earth to plummet into the depths, bouncing down the unforgiving cliffs, and disappearing into the waves far down.

But they took their time. If the mad chemist, Hanrahan, was hiding in these caves, then they would execute him sooner or later. Better than tumbling down these jagged stones, breaking bones, and landing in the icy cold embrace of the sea.

Slowly, cautiously, they descended, bit by bit. As Johnn dropped down the final stretch of a few steps, he landed on a rough and natural surface, staggering as he regained his poise, then readying his crossbow and pointing it at something Nora could not yet see from where she clung to the cliff’s wall.

Nora waited before dropping down, ensuring that he had only drawn his weapon as a precaution. He looked up at her and then nodded to confirm she could safely follow. His stern gaze carried the same tension that she felt in her every joint.

Then she followed, descending with continuous caution, until she dropped down herself and landed on the natural ledge with a stifled grunt.

The darkness of the cave here felt far less foreboding and oppressive at first glance.

Broken and shrunken by the ridges that jotted out of the sea in clusters near the cliffs, the waves sloshed more gently at the edge where they stood. The gaping mouth of this hidden entrance overlooked a deep and wide cavern, large enough to house a significant sea vessel.

Standing in stark contrast to how hard it would be to spot the cave from afar, the natural structure opened to almost monolithic proportions. Stalactites hung from a high and vast ceiling like rows of teeth. Very deep inside, far from where they could see, the darkness swallowed the cavern’s depths.

Somewhere, even deeper inside, a small light glimmered. A torch, or a gas-lit lantern perhaps. Its tiny flame danced, distant and forlorn.

Nora’s hand crept to her pistol, then decided against it. Metal rustled against leather as she drew her cutlass instead.

Their quarry was here.

The two hunters exchanged glances and carefully traversed the grounds, weaving in between broken stalagmites and advancing only slowly to prevent any unwanted noise from announcing their arrival. The ocean swallowed the few sounds they made.

Rotten, old wooden planks creaked once Johnn left the rocky ledge and stepped foot onto the hidden pier. He froze in place and waited, as did Nora, both staring into the darkness, letting their aim travel back and forth, expecting their prey to be hiding anywhere where he could pounce from a place of hiding.

Something blotted out the tiny light in the distance for a split second. Just enough that untrained eyes may have missed it. But both Nora and Johnn had noticed. Not a word was exchanged.

The shadows were many. Many blind spots silently stared back at them, unblinking, unmoving. Testing their courage. Nora felt her scarf in between hat and hair growing damp with sweat, colder, and colder as they lurked deeper and deeper into the cavern, until the shadows engulfed them fully.

Hanrahan had ample space and opportunity to hide and hide well. To watch his hunters and gauge the appropriate reaction.

For as slowly as they progressed, their eyes adjusted to the dark. The gloomy twilight of the fog-covered ocean behind them, they crept closer and closer to the tiny light. Entering a meandering, narrow cave, with only the light of the lonesome lantern left as their guide. Just enough to see where they were going, but not enough to discern the depths of branching paths, through which a cold breeze softly whistled, and Nora’s tension grew, expecting the alchemist to attack from anywhere now.

Johnn had taken the lead, advancing with a certainty that reflected his claim of having been here before. He seemed to not notice a roiling fog or smoke that crawled across the well-treaded rock of the cave floors, coiling around their legs like a carpet of misty serpents.

Nora wanted to say something but refused to alert their monstrous quarry to their presence if she could.

As she reached out to grab Johnn’s shoulder, the unnatural fog expanded rapidly, filling the corridors with a thick soup of gray mist, drowning out that tiny light and delving everything into pitch-black. It strangely smelled like honey. Her gloved fingers connected to Johnn’s shoulder.

He slipped from her grip, jolting forward without a word. Tiny rocks crunched under pressure. Something stifled a gasp from her beloved, as if covering his own mouth.

But carrying his crossbow, he had no free hands to do so.

The leather of Nora’s glove cracked again as she clutched her cutlass tightly and withdrew it towards her own body, flipping it down just in case she bumped into Johnn.

In the ensuing silence that draped itself over her, she hissed like a snake, “You will pay.”

The mists swirled as if they obeyed unspoken commands. Unnatural as it was, commanded by sorcery, this fog dissipated, having served its purpose. A presence loomed above, standing atop an elevated platform. There stood Baxter Hanrahan. His humanity long gone, now an abominable creature of unholy proportions.

Hideous lips parted to display rows of crooked, jagged teeth, no longer a maw that resembled a human’s mouth. Garbed only in rags and torn remnants of fabric, most of the chemist’s mutated body stood exposed. In the faint glow of the gas-lit lantern, his skin looked pallid and deformed, thrumming as if disease wracked every limb or multiple heartbeats pulsed inside his chest, bulging with veins and pustules and patches of mangy hair. A third eye blinked upon his shoulder, making Nora’s stomach knot at the sight.

In the clawed clutches of the monstrous creature, Johnn trembled. He had lost his hat and scarf, which now rested together on the stone floor of the large chamber they all stood in. He did not squirm against the iron grip of his captor, whose massive hand clamped down tightly over the brigand’s mouth—the long, blackened claws twitched with dangerous closeness to the artery on his neck. Another hulking arm gripped Johnn tight, crushing his own arms against the creature as it held him, and leaving him no space to wiggle free or fight back.

And the monstrous Hanrahan just leered at Nora. The pistol hanging from her belt weighed heavy against her hip now, and she burned to sling it out. But the creature’s cruel smile said one thing, and one thing clearly: one wrong move, and he would rip Johnn’s throat right out.

Cages made of wrought iron lined the sides of this sprawling cave chamber, where old pirate pickaxes had roughly hewn its walls into shape. The cages all stood eerily empty, manacles dangling lifelessly from their top bars, their floors littered with old straw and stains of human blood and refuse.

Nora sensed the despair of those who had once been kept here and tasted the evil of those who kept them. She raised her blade, but held it sideways, raising her other, empty hand alongside in a clear gesture: to display surrender.

A throaty, baritone guffaw emerged from the monster’s bulging throat. Johnn squirmed now after all, provoking the creature to grip him more tightly. The tips of Hanrahan’s claws scraped against his captive’s exposed skin, drawing out thin rivulets of blood that quickly ran down Johnn’s neck.

Nora removed her hat and tossed it aside. She pulled her scarf down. The smell of sea salt and rust overwhelmed her senses and a quick scan of the room revealed only two exits. The one she had entered from, and one beneath the ledge upon which Hanrahan and Johnn stood, supported by old, wooden, rickety beams.

“I know what you did in the city, Baxter Hanrahan. I know all about you, Outer Wall Ripper,” she said. She clenched her teeth, holding back the anger that welled up from her gut. Good, she thought. It would mask all else. “Like I said—you will pay. If you think taking another hostage will help you, then you have made a grave mistake.”

The creature growled, “I can tell you what I told all before you.”

His voice sent shivers down Nora’s spine, defying her expectations as she had not anticipated such a creature to be so capable of complete and comprehensible speech.

“You will never stop me. You are just human,” he snickered. “You are just—beneath me in every way. Just a woman.”

Teeth still clenched, so hard they threatened to crack, Nora could only imagine how hideous her own grin must have looked now. She would spite this awful creature.

“I have slain ladies, high and low, strong and sickly alike. I have slain men, one of them three heads taller than yourself, and I have sampled the supple flesh of children. You all fight, you all run, you all whimper and beg for mercy, but there is none. You are all game to me. All sport. All walking sacks of organs that can be harvested for a greater purpose. All your suffering amounts to my victorious innovations and to my pleasure.”

Nora kept her eyes focused on the creature, awaiting his first mistake. They always made a mistake. Especially when they talked this much.

Did all monsters enjoy hearing their own words out loud? Vampyria, wolf-men, demons, wraiths, fair beasts—everything she had ever read of in the Bestiarium Nox and seen for herself—they all monologued.

“Yes, yes. Keep talking. There’s not one ounce of this bunk I haven’t heard before,” she said. As the awful toothy grin faded from her face, a melodiously mocking tone entered her next sentences as she rendered them, “We little humans are weak prey for you to play with. Let me guess—you’ll keep me alive for as long as possible, because you have oh-so-much-worse things in store for me. Am I close? I apologize, it is all the same drivel to me. Please do correct me if I’m wrong.”

She shot a lop-sided smirk at the creature and both Hanrahan’s and Johnn’s faces fell simultaneously. One taken aback by the sheer audacity of this short woman—the other surprised and fearful that she was taunting Hanrahan into slashing his neck.

“You know nothing,” Hanrahan snarled. His claws clamped down. Blood refused to exit Johnn’s neck this time, awaiting only the right amount of pressure and pull to slice through his flesh. “What do you know of me? I am like a god amongst men. Alchemy has made me god-like. You are a fool if you’re too blind to recognize divinity in the flesh, staring back into your wretched little soul. Yes, I can taste your darkness, too. You have killed so many that you have forgotten what it’s like to be human, naked in their innocence and justified in their wrath. To one such as you, I am as a god.”

Nora whistled out a sharp tone, just piling on more derision.

“A god you say? You are out of your bloody mind. The last so-called ‘gods’ I met all bled out like the regular jossers who get the tar kicked out of them by sailors in seedy bars. I’ve just had about enough of you petty pretenders. Why don’t you just slash that fool’s fucking neck already and we can get on with this?”

Johnn’s eyes went wide with dread. All air of superiority had drained from Hanrahan’s presence. Only a glimmer of fury remained, reflecting the tiny lantern’s light, now growing into a flame behind the monster’s eyes.

Nora smirked once more and tilted her blade to show the alchemist the sharp edge of her cutlass.

“Come on, you tosser. Let’s see how godly you are after I gut you like a bloody pig.”

The glint on her blade caught Hanrahan’s eye.

This was the moment. The moment she had been building up to.

Time grinded to a halt.

Defying all, she slung out her pistol with her free hand and fired. The flint struck; a cloud of smoke exploded with the bright jet flame shooting out from the intricately marked barrel. The silver bullet might help, but all she needed was the surprise.

Blood sprayed from the platform, splattering the rocky floors, prompting her to sneer, but Johnn had elbowed Hanrahan and broken free from his grasp, tumbling down onto the ground, and coming to rest on his side, chest heaving and struggling to get back up on his feet after the hard landing.

Only little blood pooled beneath Nora’s beloved fool. As he looked up at her, she saw the vermillion dripping from his collarbone rather than his neck, and the spray of blood had come from Hanrahan’s forehead where her bullet had struck.

The alchemist pawed at his own skull to assess the damage, causing the rage in Nora to make way for fear. A bullet to the skull proved insufficient to stop the abomination, and as he saw his own blood in his monstrous palm, his eyes darted up until they locked with Nora's—a fiendish gaze, saturated with murderous intent.

She reacted quickly but not quickly enough. Her empty pistol had yet to clatter against the stony ground when Hanrahan flew at her like a living boulder, catapulting himself at her with unbridled rage. Her hand had gone to grab another pistol from her belt, but the force of a whole horse-drawn cart barreled into her, knocking the wind out of her lungs, and provoking a shriek of pain as she felt ribs crack upon being crushed between iron cage bars and the monster.

In a frenzy of flailing claws and inhuman screeches, Hanrahan quickly slashed Nora’s coat to ribbons, tearing her shirt to shreds and leaving her with countless cuts in a matter of seconds. The blade in her hand sliced as she swung and jabbed and jabbed at the alchemist-monster, barely connecting but forcing him to retreat a few steps.

Pain soared from a deep cut where a claw had lacerated her leg. Nora groaned and one of her knees threatened to give out under her own weight, but she held the blade out in front of her, in between herself and the monster, who now grinned at her again, baring his crooked and vicious fangs.

One wrong move, and those teeth would tear out her neck.

The sadistic smile wiped itself from his face when a barbed arrowhead emerged from his neck. Both Hanrahan and Nora stared at it with surprise, watching blood drip from its pointy tip.

Following its origin, the bolt from Johnn’s crossbow had lodged itself into the alchemist’s neck. Johnn, still lying on the ground, now held his discharged crossbow in his hands, leaned up against a cage, grinning smugly at the monster, his own bloodied teeth on display. That grin also faded when Hanrahan whipped around.

Undeterred by the projectile sticking out of his nape, he grabbed Johnn and tossed him aside like a broken toy, eliciting a pained shout as Johnn crashed into another cage, collapsing as soon as he tried to get back up after smashing his head against an iron bar.

Hanrahan howled in pain, reacting to Nora ramming her sword into his back—and then twisting the blade. He spun around again, shoving her away, thus disarming her with the masterless blade now sticking out of his back.

That throaty and deep laugh repeated itself as Hanrahan guffawed at her. He laughed at their attempts to kill him. His laughter broke and his newfound grin faltered as he choked and coughed, almost sounding human for a moment. Almost pitiful.

Almost.

Giving no quarter, Nora slung out the other pistol from her belt and shot him in the side of the head. The smoke cleared quickly, and something gravelly and menacing emerged from his throat—a furious growl. Blood sputtered from the injury, yet he wobbled only slightly where he stood.

His rage simmered, ready to unleash his full frenzy. Nora could feel it, like waves of heat and hatred emanating from his hulking, deformed body. Up close, he smelled like rotten fruit and excrements and vomit.

She quickly looked around for something, anything, but pulled a silvered dagger from behind her back—it would serve until she could retrieve the cutlass from Hanrahan’s back.

The alchemist ignored her and picked up a small object from the table upon which the gas lantern sat. A metal syringe in his clutch, Hanrahan’s paw dwarfed it. He laughed again, erupting into another hacking, wheezing cough, and then jammed the needle into his own neck. The sickly pale flesh thrummed and pulsed there, and his veins turned pitch-black, like a disease running from the injection and spreading quickly throughout his monstrous body.

The huntress was not going to find out what this meant—the silver-lined dirk in her hand flashed twice, reflecting the small light’s flame as she stabbed Hanrahan twice with quick jabs, trying to circle around him.

But he turned with her and his left arm grotesquely almost doubled in size. The claws tipping his grotesque fingers shot out to twice their length, rivaling Nora’s dagger.

Her heart skipped a beat, and he swatted the knife from her hand. The pain of several cuts on her arm flared up with delay, upon which she clenched her teeth and paced backwards.

Hanrahan continued to grow, all over, hunching over and bracing himself against the floor with his meaty fists, like a gorilla she had seen in the zoo.

“I am not merely like a god,” he spoke, now sounding like four voices spoken in unison, so deep that they threatened to open a yawning abyss straight to hell. “I am god.”

The crossbow bolt lodged into his neck now snapped under the roiling masses of his transforming flesh. The cutlass shot out of his back, clanging as it rattled and rolled across the stone floor. Johnn crawled towards it, but nowhere nearly as fast as he needed to be. His strength waned.

Hanrahan lunged at Nora again, leaving several gaping cuts across her chest despite her attempts to leap back, and causing her to roll backwards across the ground, away from him. The grit and dust burned in the many scratches where stone all chafed against her injured skin.

The dirk had rolled right out of reach.

“Time to die, worm.”

This was it.

Nora steeled herself, ready to finally meet her end. Out of options.

Out of all the places, to die in a dark cave, forgotten by its owners, unknown, unseen, in a haunted place where nobody would find her. Would she join its phantoms?

Hanrahan lurched forward and he arched backwards, raising that hand of lethal claws high above him, ready to bring it down and impale her once and for all. Ready to rip her heart out with the ease his new form afforded him.

Something whipped out at the alchemist. Coiled and wrapped itself around his wrist in the blink of an eye. Something like twine, or ropes. Or rather: vines. Covered in dark, sickly leaves. And thorns.

Thorns everywhere.

He grunted, surprised as much as Nora over this turn of events. He looked from the tangle of thorny vines that bound his arm and yanked at them. Despite his tremendous, ghastly frame, and swollen mass of muscles, whatever had projected these bindings at him proved far stronger. His eyes bulged and he roared like the foul beast that he was, teeth protruding outward and bloody spittle spraying through the air. So loudly he roared that it filled all these caves and left an unpleasant ringing in Nora’s ears.

They both followed the vines to their source, a dark silhouette that stood upon the elevated platforms where Hanrahan had held Johnn hostage, just outside the sphere of the lantern’s faint glow. The flame within the lamp dimmed and nearly went out, as if it tried to conceal the presence.

A woman cackled from there. Awful, piercing, like a fork being scraped across a metal plate. The vines tugged at Hanrahan again, yanking with far greater force, and he stumbled away from Nora, now fully turning to face his greatest foe yet.

The vines constricted around the alchemist’s arm, causing pus and black tar-like blood to ooze out from the grinding cuts. He howled in pain, roared, and thrashed around, grabbing hold of the vine, and then howling yet again as its thorns pierced his fingers when he gripped it. He tugged and pulled with all his might, yanking left, then yanking right, not once managing to counter the unnatural force that had seized him.

And the cackling continued.

Gritting her teeth and stifling her own groans of pain, Nora scrambled onto her side, then back up onto her feet. She limped towards Johnn, who had fallen unconscious with the hilt of Nora’s cutlass buried underneath his hand.

Another tangle of thorny vines shot out from the darkness and enveloped Hanrahan’s ankle. He fought its pull, but it suddenly jerked towards the shadowy silhouette, causing him to lose his footing, dropping him onto his back with such weight that the stony floors quaked.

Nora’s cutlass came chopping down. His incessant thrashing prevented the blow from cutting into his neck, so it shattered his front teeth and hacked into his cheek, provoking more pained howls from his monstrous maw.

Her boots skidded against the floor as she lurched back, right underneath one of his claws swinging at her in retaliation and only narrowly missing her.

More vines shot out at him, seizing that same claw, and limiting his motion. It curbed his thrashing to the point where Nora’s next blow struck his neck, causing a violent crimson explosion to spray her own face.

Hanrahan gurgled, choking on his own blood, desperately attempting to fight back and to utter more inane threats, but Nora continued her dirty handiwork that she had grown accustomed to inflicting upon all these monsters.

The vines multiplied, pinning Hanrahan down and turning the hulking monster into a quivering ball of helplessness. Blow after blow, Nora cut deeper through his neck, until only a deformed spine held body and head together, and even that soon severed after more overhead swings of her cutlass. The same blade that had executed so many creatures before Hanrahan, adding his life to the many it had dulled itself in claiming.

His eyes had lost all light of so-called “divinity”, having made way to terror. And pleading.

No amount of thrashing or resisting helped the alchemist in the end. The vines held him too tightly, joined by more tangles from the platform, restraining his every limb and allowing Nora to end him.

Between heavy breaths and shuddering as she shrugged off the numbing pain, she spat a gob of saliva and blood onto Hanrahan’s twitching remains. The thorny vines loosened, revealing how they had ripped devastating wounds which may have slowly bled out the alchemist, had her sword not removed his head first.

Those same vines now withdrew, controlled by some otherworldly force. They slowly slithered back from whence they came, like leafy, eyeless serpents; rustling and trembling as they moved. Thorns scraped against stone, scritching and scratching.

Still consigned to death, Nora turned to see their source, ready for them to take her next. For whatever abomination had shown such force in stopping Hanrahan, it would have a far easier time in ending her life next.

She winced, clamping her eyes shut to blot out all pain, fires across her body from the dozens of cuts and bruises she had suffered. Blinking, her vision blurred, in part owed to blood flowing into the corner of her eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and blinked again.

Wanting to see the face of her killer, she snatched the lantern from the table, where other mysterious metal syringes clanked against each other. She ignored the alchemist’s supplies and raised the lantern high, stumbling forward. The blade of her cutlass lazily scraped across the stone as she lurched forward, mirroring Hanrahan’s final motions. Nora could barely stand.

In days past, that platform supported the slaver captain, housing a wicked little wooden throne upon which he once sat, allowing him to observe his miserable captives in their iron cages.

Whoever now perched upon that platform, Nora could barely make out any features. Though draped in a rugged, dark cloak, the huntress identified a vaguely feminine figure. Devoured by the shadows of a black hood, almost no face could be perceived. Only shriveled, gray skin and chapped lips that had curled into a devious smile. Teeth, rotten and black, glistening wet.

Hands folded serenely before her hunched figure, like a praying woman, and the vines creeping evermore back to her, shrinking in volume, and disappearing underneath her robes, with cloth so deep that no feet could be seen, only fabric sweeping the platform’s wood and the vines slithering into the void underneath the cloak.

“My pretty little birdie,” spoke the hag. A thick accent, one from up north. Raspy, riddled with phlegm, a voice rife with ridicule. “So nice to see my beautiful little monster in full bloom.”

Nora groaned but it spilled over into a clipped burst of laughter.

Another one of these self-indulgent ghouls, she wagered.

“Get in line, witch,” Nora sighed. Truly exhausted, some part of her preferred the thought of instant death over having to hear another monster ramble on. “I’m sure there are a dozen others who all want to take their pound of flesh from me.”

Nora gripped her head and wheezed with another stifled groan. Eclipsing all other pains, numbing all her senses, her head began to throb in agony. That typical invisible knife sliding into her skull again.

The hag cackled once more, sadistic, and amused.

“No, my pretty. I have all I need now, I am quite alright,” replied the hag with unsettling melody in each syllable.

“And just who the fuck are you, now?”

She cackled again in response. Frosthearte never shared her name lightly. Not even to her chosen orphan.

“I am the decay that gnaws at the roots of the world’s tree. I am the curse that haunts wicked men with eternal suffering. I—”

“Oh, bloody spare me already. If you’re going to kill me, fucking hurry it up.”

Nora spat impotently, nearly fell as she lifted her cutlass to point it at the hag. Her cry, more defiant than ever, echoed through these empty caves.

“Come on, then!”

The lips of the hag drooped down, yielding a displeased frown.

“Sparrow, or crow, my pretty. Are you the crow, or the sparrow?”

“Make some fucking sense!”

“Are you the harbinger of death, or the herald of new blood?”

Nora stumbled as soon as she launched her sword up at the hag. The blade’s metal sang as it rang out, clattering across the wooden platform and striking nobody. Nora’s vision continued to blur, never clearing. Blinking again, she saw:

The hag was gone.

“Death awaits you on your path,” whispered the hag.

Nora swiveled, losing her footing, and falling backwards and banging her previously unhurt elbow against hard stone in the process. She cringed.

But no hag had appeared behind her. Johnn lay unconscious nearby, face down in the dirt. Paces away from him, the body of Hanrahan had stopped twitching in his death throes, motionless and devoid of all life.

No hag in sight. Nowhere.

“You must face Death, the pretender,” the hag’s voice continued in creeping whispers, echoing through the halls, and invading Nora’s mind. Riding on that knife of a headache as it sank deeper into her skull.

Nora gripped her head and—unable to escape this hag’s merciless and incessant whispering—curled up into a fetal position, oblivious to all pain as the headache grew so intolerable that it muted the searing agony from dozens of bleeding cuts.

“I will uphold my end of the bargain, and you shall not see me or mine for a long, long time. But the necromancer who dares call himself Death—he shall stand in your way, and you need be prepared. Prepared to put your old ghosts to rest, one last time.”

Nora groaned in pain, almost bridging into an angry shout, but it died in her throat and she gritted her teeth to stave off the incapacitating pain. She wanted to tell the hag to shut up and get out of her head.

The words she spoke made little sense, but the warnings resonated with her.

She knew exactly what ghosts the hag spoke of.

“This is my parting gift for you, my sweet, beautiful monster.”

The last word echoed not only through the cavernous corridors but reverberated in Nora’s thoughts until it reached a deafening crescendo.

Are you the crow or the sparrow?

Those words arrived not in whispers, but echoes inside Nora’s mind. Memories. Older.

Words she had heard spoken before.

She had met the hag as a child. It all came back to her now.

Never forgotten, only buried. Things that made no sense until this very moment.

“Are you a crow or a sparrow?” The hag had sounded so much more pleasant and nice back then.

The weird witch reached out to take the little sobbing girl’s hand. Little Nora’s hand. The little girl who once stood as the sole survivor in a small village, where pestilence had taken all souls to heaven but hers. The hag looked nowhere as frightful then as she did now.

Before Nora even reached the walls of Crimsonport, huddled with the forlorn masses of all the other refugees who sought to escape the Blight, the hag’s willowy hand held hers, guiding her, and nurturing her. Feeding her soup and potions, by the many campfires, providing poisonous words that jaded her from such an early age on.

“They all abandoned you. Not out of malice but borne of weakness. All may crumble under the might of the Blight. All but you, my pretty little birdie. Eat, grow strong. Defy those who wrong you. Trust nobody. None but me. And never surrender. Never stop fighting. Slay all of them and feed the forest soil with their blood.”

I will always be watching you. The shadow in your wake.

How had she survived a plague? Nora’s mind reeled, but the crippling headache blocked the thought from reaching its rightful conclusion.

Curled up into a fetal position, just like when the hag had found her as a child, the body of fully-grown Nora unfurled again, sprawled out as she reclaimed her fading senses. The dim glow from the gas-lit lantern on the desolate table. In this hopeless, abandoned dungeon. The cold, biting air, removed from the wintry outdoors but carrying the smell of rust and sea salt with it. The smell of death all around.

More than anything else, the pain brought her back. The warmth of her own sticky blood. She winced and stifled another groan as she turned over onto her side. And then onto her belly from there. She crawled, dragged herself over to Johnn. Too exhausted to get back up again.

His shoulders heaved softly, rhythmically. Not dead, merely out of it.

Gingerly, she brushed his long, bloodstained hair from his face, curiously absorbed by the old scar that missed his now-closed eye and ran down the length of his chiseled cheek.

Crow or sparrow? Life or death?

Nora resolved to not let those words reach her. To not let them lead her astray. To do as the hag had told, but not in a way she would like. If it was defiance this hag desired, then she would happily oblige.

She refused to play some sinister game. Refused to accept the strict separation of elements thus proposed. Nora’s fingers curled into Johnn’s hair, running through them, until they found purchase on his coat’s collar, which she gripped. She softly shook him. And then again when he refused to awaken.

Seeing opposites aligned, finding together, she would defy such unnatural severance.

Crow or sparrow? Life or death?

Why not both?

Johnn gasped and his eyes fluttered open.

—Submited by Wratts

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themidnightfarmer · 3 years

Text

Babes in Mimeland || Nora & Jared

Timing: This past week sometime.

Location: The common.

Tagging: @fearfordinner

Description:

Triggers: Mimes?

Jared wasn’t completely comfortable to be away from the farm that day, but he’d given his word, and he wasn’t going to go back on it. Surely everything would be fine for an hour or two while he did this. So there he stood, in a t-shirt that implored passing customers to support the performers behind him. He was holding flyers and smiling as wide as he could whilst flagging down passers-by to take them. A mime he’d started to consider a friend had mimed that he should come and help them out that day, the mime in question part of an air-band as a side hustle for working at Yours, mime, and ours (where Jared was a frequent customer). “Don’t forget to support your local mime performers! They’re good at what they do and they have mouths to feed at home whilst working on their passions!”

A music box was an odd reward Nora decided twisting the box around in her hands. The eyeball, a necklace that she’d taken to wearing frequently, was a much more satisfactory prize. Nora was about to flip open the prize she’d come to winterfest to claim when her eye was caught by the mime band. Oh great! They were performing. Music box forgotten and shoved into her pocket, Nora trudged through the crowd to admire the artists at work. There were no hard feelings on her part that her last encounter with a mime had left her rainbow colored for a week. There were hard feelings to deal with on her part with the idea that her favorite mime had died right in front of her. Ideas that she refused to acknowledge. A shout about helping mimes made her ears perk up. Nora snatched a flyer from a giant, glancing over it. “I want to help.” She announced. “The mimes are great.”

Most people passing Jared by were trying their very best to ignore him, he watched many fliers find their way into the trash. It was a little disheartening but overall expected, you didn’t have shirts like the one he was wearing unless there was some serious stigma going on. His head tilted down and a more genuine smile bloomed on his face as someone actively approached to take a flier. “They are! One of my friends is in the band, they’re honestly great at what they do and everything helps, people in town aren’t so forgiving for being different…” he trailed off before he could add just how strange he found that considering the variety of species that you could find in all corners. Jared blinked away the thought and returned to focus on the person showing interest. “So-” He was cut off by an obnoxious laugh off to the left towards the gingerbread house. He couldn’t quite hear what was said but the way the group of people mock mimed along with the band rubbed him the wrong way. His face soured.

Friends? With a mime? Was that legal? Wouldn’t that be like being friends with mythical legends who are way cooler than you? Like the real babadook or maybe the boogyman? Even goatman. They were all famous figures Nora admired but wouldn’t know how to befriend if they were before her. It was a sudden moment of awe as her blank gaze passed between the giant and the band. If she helped could she be friends too? Nora dug in her pocket and pulled out her beaten up old wallet. She was ready to pay a large sum of money before laughter met her ears and she could see a group of adults, probably in their late to mid thirties, making fun of the mimes. A different way to help crossed her mind as she watched them enter the gingerbread house. “What if we scared them?” Nora asked, her monotone making it sound like a serious and reasonable suggestion. “Make a point that people can’t keep mocking mimes because they are quiet.”

He’d forgotten what he’d planned on saying next to the other when she piped up with an idea. Jared looked after the group as they laughed and joked at the expense of his mime friends before heading into the gingerbread house. He nodded slowly before deciding it was a perfect idea, no amount of money fixed hurt feelings, but a little bit of revenge might. “Yeah, yeah that’s a good idea. People are always doing stuff like that.” Jared frowned and tucked the fliers into his back pocket, ready to so what it took to have those meanies regret their choices. “Let’s do it.” he said only pausing a split second before moving towards the gingerbread house (that had already closed its door on the group, trapping them) to ask “What’s your name anyway? Since you’re leading the charge, what’s the name of the commander? I’m Jared.” he offered preemptively.

Commander? Nora liked being called a commander. She could see it now, a field of dead bodies around her as she stood tall, proud on a rock, wearing a military jacket. There’d be some life in the people somewhere, and they would be full of fear. Life changing fear. The kind of fear that made for a meal instead of just a snack. She’d paint that picture later. “Nora.” Nora answered, her affect betraying nothing of the mental spiral she’d just followed. “Are you good at scaring people?” Nora hadn’t noticed the door close behind the other group. She pushed through the crowd and to the door, pushing it open and holding it for the giant - er - Jared. She wondered if he’d hit his head on the door frame. This Jared, friend of mime, was about to see things. She hoped he’d enjoy them as a fellow lover of mimes.

“I’m not sure, Usually it’s by accident, but I could try and make something work.” He wondered briefly if he could get away with using his glamour to help spook the group, without his partner in crime noticing. It would be far easier to do some scarring in the name of the mimes if he could make himself look like he had stripes like some sort of angry chameleon. Jared ducked in the door that was held open for him, and it pulled shut behind him. The inside was dark, the windows were as they tended to be on small gingerbread house kits that you could buy at the store, the windows were painted on in icing rather than cut out. It was pitch black aside from the gaps around the edges where the icing hadn’t fully sealed the walls in place. The group were in the next room of the house whispering now that it was dark as humans tended to do, as if the dark was suppressing any noise. Using the quiet he mimicked one of his kids' cries as loud as he could just to start them off. The angry call of a bies sounded from his lungs abruptly and clearly for a singular second before cutting off to return to silence again.

The noise that came out of the giant’s mouth was absolutely brilliant. Loud. Jarring. Inhuman. No animal Nora could recognize. She gave one slight nod of approval. Maybe this stork, now nicknamed for being a giant bird and not just a giant, accidentally scared people more often than naught. Reaching inside herself, Nora lit the string of her magic. Her fingertip traced across the gingerbread walls as she walked. Icing started to coat her finger but she ignored it. Instead she concentrated on making the screeching noise of steel on steel. She’d seen it cause the hairs on people’s neck to rise. She hoped her cover of dragging her finger would be enough to fool new friend Jared. She’d claim it was a party trick or something. Damn, she really hated frosting.

Jared extended his glamour past his usual skin cover to also alter his clothes just that little bit, the mime shirt was a little too telling after all. Instead he added stripes subtly in the darkness, only really put in place for his own peace of mind rather than for any impact. He hoped it was too dark for anyone to notice, so that he didn’t have to explain to Nora either. The noise she was making sent a chill up his spine as well for a half a second before he settled into it, it was easier knowing where it was coming from...sort of. He had no idea how she was doing it, but he was certain it was Nora doing it at the very least, no other way a gingerbread house could make that noise. The group were muttering to each other, clearly unsettled as they headed into the next room trying to find the backdoor to escape. Jared spotted a runner rug down the hallway, so he stooped to tug on it and send the last straggling person flying into the rest, holding back a snicker as they toppled like bowling pins.

Was the stork looking a little stripy or was it the shadows of the gingerbread house? It wasn’t very well lit. Probably because it was made out of ginger and not wood. Nora found herself wishing she bore the strips of those they came to protect. An illusion manifested itself across small patches of her clothes; black and white alliance patches. The group they’d followed in were becoming less of a snack and more of a meal. Nora took a deep inhalation in, enjoying the rewards of Jared’s carpet tug. They piled to the ground obviously scared of what was going to happen. “Where’s the exit?” One shouted. “I-I don’t know, I don’t see any. How can this place be this big?” Panic made their voice high pitched and frantic as they shouted over Nora’s noise. She let the noise fall, leaving them and their prey in a sudden silence. “Boo.” Her monotone was briefly followed by an illusion monster appearing behind them. Black and white stripes mime meets masked monster with a giant maw and sharp rows of teeth. It gurgled towards the fallen group. Slowly. Leaving a trail of stripes behind it as it went.

Jared was unaware that it was Nora that had created the mime monster, he himself had seen the mimes do some incredible stuff so he wasn’t put off at all. It was a mask of only a slight surprise, thinking that they might have stopped performing to aid in this situation for themselves. This is why when a striped goo seemed to seep in the cracks of the gingerbread house (to form into another more ‘traditional’ looking mime on the ceiling) he didn’t even flinch. This mime turned it’s head like it was an owl to look down at the monster curiously for a split second before scuttling down the wall towards the now scrambling pile of humans. Jared flattened himself against the wall of the gingerbread house and increased his glamor in the moment to look more like the mime that had appeared on the ceiling, although not able to move his head like it had. He didn’t have quite the same energy, but he tried his best. The group screamed and swore and scrambled past Nora and Jared being chased by both Nora's creation as well as the mime who had come to see what was happening, only to be delighted with its findings.

This scene was beautiful. Perfect. Picturesque. The gaggle of bullies trying to run away. The mime manifesting. The illusion chasing, gurgling, gnashing its giant teeth. Nora was almost satisfied with the scene and the meal but it was missing something. A soundtrack maybe? Oh. She had the music box. Maybe that would add some ambiance to the whole shindig. It took a minute to windup the old box. It popped open displaying a couple wrapped in each other's arms dancing an eternal waltz. The music began, gentle, haunting, almost mournfully and her eyes fixated on the waltzing couple. She was met with an absolute need to waltz. Carefully she placed down the music box and held her hand out to Jared’s, the silent question to dance. A question that only had one answer as everyone around them started waltzing together. The gaggle were screaming in terror now, practically drowning out the beautiful music. “Why are we dancing?” Why can’t we stop dancing?” “Why am I dancing with a mime?”

The screaming had drowned out the ticking of the small music box winding up, so when the tune started Jared almost didn’t notice his body was moving towards music. Taking Nora’s hand they began to dance through no action of free will. The screaming did not die down, it seems the music was taking their movement alone, their voices would remain their own. Spinning around the room he was sort of delighted to have noticed that one of the group of humans had paired with a mime, who had turned its head all the way around again to watch the scene unfold in full rather than focus on it’s partner. “What kind of music box is that?” Jared asked Nora, his voice only faltering when her platform boots came down on his toes, yelling over the screams and panic of the humans with as wide a smile on his face as he could muster. Acting as is if the extra noise was only part of the song. He suspected magic, but he didn’t want to outright ask.

“I do-” Nora had never been good at dancing, and despite the dance being magically pre-choreographed for them, that didn’t go away. “Oh sorry.” She mumbled. “I don’t know anything about the box.” Nora nodded at the mime as they twirled past the beautiful friend. “It was the reward I got for getting second place.” First place shouldn’t have won. Her art was masterful. Oh well. Beggars couldn’t be winners. But apparently second place could be dancers. “I wonder how long it lasts.”

The screams and music could be heard by passing townsfolk for a while and they all ignored it, as was usual in white crest.

#P: Chatzy #C: Nora #fearfordinner

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heli0s-writes · 5 years

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I. Soulmate Series and Peculiar Pairs

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes Summary: An introduction to the mystery of soulmates and love. You’re just another person lost in the world, trying to find yours.. until you give up. You meet some Avengers on the way. A/N: Part 1 of Mystery of Love.

The world had a very singular definition of soulmates: Two people, entwined by fate, perfectly right for each other, destined to meet and exist as one. The cosmos willed this. God willed it. The universe willed it. Whatever anyone’s religious or personal beliefs may be- there was a reply.

Children were told stories of their parents’ meeting and The Words they said to each other that sealed their future. These prophesized utterances would form onto their skin and scratch itself onto a special place in a script unique to that person’s handwriting. The lore of The Words were in every fairy tale and film. No wonder it had always been your dream to meet yours.

Your own parents met in Kindergarten, when your mother moved from Jersey to Manhattan because her father had been transferred to a higher position. He was hesitant at first, to leave their small city and large family behind, but changed his mind in early spring. The first day she set foot in her classroom, as she’d tell you over and over again, she was seated next to a chubby, freckled boy who shook her hand. With a firm grip, he yelled “Hello, beautiful!” and before she could respond, she had doubled over to scream.

When the teacher rushed over and your mother finally stopped crying, she’d lifted her paisley cotton shirt to see the askew “hEllo BEaUtiFul” letters circling her belly button. She pointed a finger to your father, blubbering uncontrollably, and yelled, “It’s you! You’re my soulmate!” and then it became his turn to double over.

The teacher called both their mothers and their mothers had taken them out of school for the rest of the day. They spent it in each other’s company, learning each other’s names, playing, eating ice-cream, and then took a nap, pinkies touching. They were inseparable ever since.

At age 4, it was your favorite story, and you wanted to hear it every night before bed. Your parents were the essence of perfection: your mother’s hair was always impeccable, your father’s shirt was always pressed, and they always kissed at the door when he’d leave for work.

At age 6, you began to wonder about your own soulmate. “Does it hurt very bad, mama?” “Why haven’t I met him yet?” “What if he’s mean to me?” “What if he moves away, mama?”

Your mother always assured you that it was meant to be. You were designed to be loved. The universe would never, ever, leave anyone out. Soulmates were destiny, and destiny was final. You were pleased with the answers she provided, and happy to hear them every time she reminded you.

At age 8, you’d forgotten all about soulmates. Boys were meant to be chased away on the playground, wrestled with in the grass, beaten in a game of soccer. Girls were your confidants, your sisters, who’d braid your hair and dance with you through the living room. Soulmates were for adults, and more than that, you were afraid of the pain of someone’s Words carving into your skin. There were rumors of 5th graders who found their soulmate in the fall, but they were big kids and you put off thinking about it for many years and stopped asking questions.

At age 14, it was no longer something you could ignore. Many girls were going through changes, some had looked like they were already finished, while you had barely started. Boys changed too. Everyone began to notice each other. And you began to notice yourself in this extant space. High school was extremely daunting, and on your first day, you promised yourself that you’d find your soulmate in this large campus.

Some juniors who had soulmates were already married with their parents’ eager approval. There was a club dedicated to meeting as many students in the school as possible to find your soulmate. On Thursday mornings they held “speed-meeting” sessions where one side held a notecard that said, “You are mine” and the other side, “I am yours” there were many variations that were available such as, “You are the light of my life” or “I’ll love you forever”.

You tried many times, afraid that if your soulmate was a senior and they graduated this year, you’d have to wait forever to meet them. After December, it was taking a toll on your heart. All of those sessions of sitting down and staring into the eyes of new started out exciting, but slowly turned banal and drove you into melancholy. Being bound to one person was supposed to be magical, but the recurring meetings felt disingenuous. You didn’t want to meet your soulmate in a sterilized setting, reading a notecard of words that were not from your heart.

Around winter vacation, you were so despondent and anxious that it began to manifest in severe and constant stomach pains. Your parents began to discuss the possibility of counseling. You refused them, afraid that you’d be labelled as a lovelorn freak for the rest of your life. They did relent, and instead gave you a very nice digital camera for Christmas, hoping it could be a hobby to distract you from your worries. Your very first picture was of your parents under the Christmas tree. Your second picture was of their Words, side by side. It took five months for your spasms to ease.

In your later teens, you began to branch out in earnest to find that person. You had worked as a hostess during senior year to maximize your chance of meeting someone, and even landed a barista job at one of the busiest cafés in Manhattan your freshman year of college at a small conservative university. You joined a sorority and lost count of all the events you’d attend and all the fraternity boys you’d met during that year. It was too much, in the end, you were focused on your studies and couldn’t stand another year in that tiny white picket-fence house always reeking of hairspray and Victoria Secret body mist.

You continued taking photographs and enrolled in art classes the following year. You had won a small scholarship and the funds went into a new professional camera. Mid-sophomore year, you quit your job at the café and began to take pictures for the University’s paper, penning food and entertainment columns here and there, primarily about your local college town. You submitted in group exhibitions and struggled to balance classes, a job, and your own inquiries of love. Most of your friends had met their soulmates, and when your roommate came home breathless, freshly inked in beautiful cursive script, and screamed, “It’s a girl!!”, you broke down.

You had never thought of the possibility of being with a woman. But what if the universe decided that it was? Could you love a woman, like that? You spent the rest of the weekend curled up in bed, ill with stomachaches, questioning everything you knew about yourself and your capacity to love.

You called home to ask your mother, “What if my soulmate is a woman?” and the audible gasp on the other line confirmed the feeling in your gut. You weren’t done yet. “What if my soulmate is a hundred and ten on his deathbed? What if he’s a murderer? What if… god forbid, a child?” the tears wouldn’t stop. You were hysterical. You no longer searched for “the one”.

Junior year, you spent a brief fall session abroad in Italy. It was a small group of 5 with one of your favorite professors and you were free to explore your own body of work in your specialty. This was the perfect opportunity to build your portfolio with historic sites and modern culture. Italy was beautiful, romantic, and being there felt like a dream. One of your cohort members met her soulmate while asking him for permission to sketch his picture. He was a green-eyed man with dark, curly hair swept in a low ponytail. Her Words appeared on his arm, “Excuse me! Do you mind?”

And his Words, “Non parlo inglese” Meaning, “I do not speak English”

After their shock subsided, they shared a laugh and you took their picture together, matching tender forearms side-by-side.

As intended, you didn’t find your soulmate in Italy, either. But you did find a spark. The whole soulmate business was breeding so many questions that were turning into criticisms inside you. The picture of your friend in Italy started churning the gears of your body of work. You began to seek out silly or strange First Words to photograph, and at the end of your spring semester, you held a solo exhibition back home. It was a smash and featured in the local paper on page 5. Soon after, it became viral on the internet.

Reviews raved about the humor of your photographs (one set of First Words read, “You think I’m cute, huh” and “You’re a fucking nightmare-boy”. Another, “Bless you” and “That wasn’t a sneeze” your personal favorite, "Give me your wallet" and "Oh hell no").

People were alarmed at some of the less traditional pairs you found: differing intense religious beliefs (Roman Catholic, and Satanist), age-disparity (15 year gap between them), familial relations (they were first-cousins), those encumbered by illness (one had been in a coma for 5 years), and something that was so rare you’d only read about it happening twice, ever: multiple soulmates.

In that particular case, you had put an advertisement online and received an e-mail that night from someone who wanted to refer you to their uncle and his family. You went the next morning to Prospect Park and met John and his soulmates Francis and Marilynn. You spent three hours with them that day. The photos you took were beyond lovely.

In senior year, you had a portfolio that was known world-wide. You were receiving so many e-mails a day about photo opportunities that your business address bounced back at least twice a week for 24 hours. Most of them were very desperate calls for attention, struggles for their 15 seconds of fame, you rarely had the time (or patience) to give an e-mail a second look. You put that body of work on hold, but still opened an online store to sell prints and gave the occasional phone interview. Between that and the various photography jobs you received elsewhere, you were self-sufficient and hardly struggled. You lived in a one-bedroom apartment and looked forward to travelling in the U.S. after college.

It was winter of senior year when you received a message in your personal e-mail that caught you by surprise. It was from Pepper Potts. The Pepper Potts. You were holed up cozily during a blizzard and almost spilled your tea in your lap. It was an invitation for you to visit Stark Tower headquarters, take a few pictures, and go home. The way she worded it was extremely delicate, making sure to flatter your work but also very strictly state the terms of agreement. She made sure to mention that you would be paid generously, of course.

When the snow melted, you made your journey, camera bag across your chest.

At age 20, you met Iron Man, Tony Stark, self-proclaimed billionaire, philanthropist, playboy, genius. You also met Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow.

Ms. Potts had met you at the door, opening it and extending her hand. She immediately thanked you for coming in the cold and praised your photographs. It surprised you when she admitted that as famous as your Soulmate Series was, she was more intrigued by the tenderness of the candid shots you routinely represented in your work, not your actual choice of subject. She had also done some research and found various college articles where you took pictures of local businesses and restaurants. “The intimacy that you captured of the most mundane of places… they were beautiful. I knew you were the person I wanted.” You laughed about your naiveite in those days, being only a newbie at photography, but Ms. Potts shushed you.

She led you to a conference room and slid a contract in front of you, asking for your patience and understanding at the long document. After the end of nearly an hour and a half of reviewing, questioning, and a sneaky interview process, you were ready to begin. A lanyard was placed in your hand with your picture and a keycode, giving you access to certain floors of the building.

The contract was complicated, but it boiled down to this: You were hired by Stark Industries to photograph their employees (and future employees) as well as any floor you had access to. It was your job to deliver simple and tasteful photos to represent the Stark image. You understood it to mean that your job was to create a cult of personality for Stark Industries somewhere in the realm of capable, trustworthy, and familiar- as if these people could be your close friends. The contract spanned a 30-day period where you were able to enter the tower at your leisure and convenience, wander as you wished, ask any questions you may have, and ultimately submit a binder of no less than 50 pictures with your detailed notes (including personal opinion on each photo).

Ms. Potts strongly suggested that if this assignment went well, she had high hopes for your future at Stark Industries. She kept her promise and continued to reach out to you about assignments.

At 21, almost immediately after your graduation, you met Thor, Hawkeye, and Dr. Banner- you prayed you would never meet his other half. That same year, you also met him.

Captain America. Every child in America knew about Steve Rogers. When news leaked that his body had been found frozen and that he was living in New York, it stunned you. He was a (newly) living (dead?!) legend; the idea of him was too much. When it dawned on you that you would be photographing him, you immediately threw up.

You would never forget that day. Your stomach hurt all night. It hadn’t done that since you were a child.

When you entered Stark Tower- you were too nervous to even notice that it had been transformed to the newly dubbed Avengers Tower. You rode the elevator up to the conference room where you scheduled to meet Ms. Potts, but Mr. Stark was there instead. Next to him, was the unmistakable physique of Captain Rogers. Your stomach twisted itself into a pretzel and you had to suck in a deep breath to continue walking upright.

You were so nervous that when Stark asked you for the umpteenth time to please call him Tony, you nearly twisted your ankle by mis-stepping. Sadly for him, you wouldn’t utter his first name for another few years. Captain Rogers had narrowed his eyes at you and the camera bag hanging limply on your hip. You could not stop trembling under his scrutiny. Even Tony offered you a drink to take the edge off.

Finally, he spoke.

“Good morning,” he said quietly, giving you a gentle nod.

You didn’t stop to look as you bolted out of the conference room and down the hall. As soon as you reached the toilet, you threw up.

The bile and acid that burned a path up your throat lingered all day and flared constantly in Captain Rogers’ presence. Your chest burned like a blaze. He in turn, gave you inspecting, worried glances and never tried to come any closer than 10 feet. You thanked him silently from across rooms and hallways. Mr. Stark joked that the best candid moments with Captain Rogers were in the showers, but if you kept getting sick like that, you’ll never get a chance. Your stomach did not appreciate the insinuation whatsoever.

Ms. Potts was infinitely more helpful. She sent you down to the infirmary but they could find nothing wrong with you. The nurse helping you, however, did notice that you had suddenly formed a bright pink rash right in the middle of your chest after watching you nervously rub your torso.

You thought nothing more of it, and by the time you got home, it had vanished.

The contract Ms. Potts emailed you that night detailed the next assignment, and upon completion, you would be paid 20 thousand dollars, more than double the amounts you’d previously received. Her postscript thanked you for your hard work with the Avengers, specifically, your patience with Tony and his constant quips, but that she wanted you to take some time to yourself and explore the world. Twenty-one, she said, was a tremendously important year for young women, and that she hoped to see more of your photography that was special to you, rather than necessary to her.

That night, you broke your apartment lease and made plans to travel at the end of the month. For the next 30 days, you took some of the best photos you had ever taken of the Avengers. However, you deeply regretted every photo you took of Captain Rogers. They were never as detailed or intimate as any of the rest. He was always either in a group setting, or far off, jogging, training, perhaps reading a book… across the kitchen, on the other side of a window.

You were afraid of him. Or rather, you were afraid of how your body reacted to him. From time to time, you’d see him look at you apologetically, which made it a million times worse.

After your assignment was finished and the rest of the payment was deposited in your account, you sold your furniture and packed two bags. For the two years, you spent time in Thailand, Russia, Italy, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and even a few icy weeks visiting the Arctic.

Once again, you picked up your Soulmates Series. This time you solely focused on what you lovingly called peculiar pairs.

In Thailand, you found a pair of non-gender conforming soulmates who lived in a large community of entirely non gender conforming people. Most of the country itself was extremely accepting and kindhearted, something that pained you to think about in regard to your own home. You learned so much about sexuality and identity in your time with them, and at the end of your trip, you felt entirely changed about your perspective on what it was to be male and female- and whether or not it actually mattered!

In Russia, you met two people who identified as asexual- one being intersex. On the day you met, he identified as male and wore trousers and ordered the strongest coffee you had ever tasted. The next day, you hardly recognized him in a lavender gown, and were surprised and happily obliged when he asked you to use feminine pronouns. Upon your departure, he was back again in trousers and let you use masculine pronouns in your writing. It broke your heart to learn about their struggle in a country that shunned and viewed them with contempt.

Your travels brought you to many identities and many facets of love. There were couples who never engaged in romantic activity, but cherished each other more than you’d ever felt from another soul. There were others still who’s lives were kept secret from their families and their society, at large. There was a household in Italy with a husband and wife, not soulmates, living with another man, whose soulmate had been the husband. They met by chance on the train. The wife was 7 months along, and there was incredible tension under their roof. Most days, they made it fine, some days, she expressed to you, she couldn’t help but fall asleep crying.

Sometimes, you would meet soulmates that made you truly question the work. These pairs haunted you.

In New Zealand, a man was 65 when he met his soulmate; he had waited all his life. She was a young volunteer at the day care center where he worked. He thought she would reject him because of their age difference, but she loved him. They spent one blissful day together. The next day, she was involved in a fatal accident on her way to work. You sat in silence in his living room as he held onto a picture of her and sobbed.

At the end of your travels, departing from Saudi Arabia, your heart was full of grief about soulmates. The last pair you visited was in a dimly lit home, where the husband smoked profusely, and you could not see his wife until the very end. When she came into the light, her eyes were both blackened, and she could not speak due to the stitches in her mouth.

Returning to Manhattan, at age 23, you had given up on not only your own soulmate, but all soulmate indoctrination. Your heart was hardened by the knowledge that predestiny could usher in such suffering, and that love could be so terrible. You began to resist.

Next Chapter

#steve rogers #bucky barnes #stucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #steve rogers x reader #reader insert #mcu x reader #Mystery of Love heli0s #soulmate au

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the--sad--hatter · 4 years

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No Survivors - Chapter One

Fandom: None, this is an original work of fiction.

Genre: Sci-fi, fantasy, space opera

Rating and warnings: 18+ ONLY. Contains scenes of graphic violence, death, gore, cursing, and scenes of a sexual nature.

Disclaimer: All content and characters are created and owned by me, and my work is NOT to be reposted anywhere else without my explicit permission. Reblogs are fine, and very much appreciated.

Masterlist

Blurb:

6000 years into the future and humanity is thriving, having made their home in The Emerald Galaxy, light-years away from their home planet. They’ve come a long way since the days of Earth. Lifespans have tripled, interstellar travel is a daily occurrence and humans have successfully integrated with alien species. All is well.

But for Captain Ice, nothing has been well for a long time. The once distinguished Captain is now a disgrace and a liability, carrying the weight of the cost of war on her shoulders. All Ice wants to do is carry on drinking herself into an early grave pod, but the Emerald Empire has a use for her yet.

Deep in The Emerald Galaxy lies Sector 12, or The Empires armpit as it’s referred to in polite company. When Sector 12’s Captain retires, General Felicity Hart decided to rid herself of a nuisance and instructs Ice to form a new crew and take over the job of glorified janitor.

Humanity survived the annihilation of its home planet and a journey across the universe, but can it survive the adventures of a disgraced Captain and her mismatched crew, or will there be… No Survivors?

A/N - This is a short tester chapter from my series, to see if it has potential as a Webfic.

Deep in space, beyond shining nebulae and lonely asteroids, amongst stars that are dying and suns that are blazing, there is the colour green. Swirling Hues of Chartreuse, Jade and most notably, Emerald. An Emerald galaxy that shines bright, bright enough to beckon humanity to it while they drifted through space searching for a home to replace the one they had fled. Nestled inside The Emerald Galaxy they found thriving solar systems, planets capable of supporting life. Some of those planets already had lifeforms on them, and more were soon terraformed. Why have one new planet when you can have hundreds? The hubris of humanity did not die with the Earth. They spread out over the galaxy, planting themselves like seeds, and for thousands of years, they grew. In the centre of the Galaxy, in the Oz Solar System, or Sector One as it came to be known, was the planet that became the beating heart of the new human order, the crown jewel of The Emerald Empire. The Planet called Heart.

In the year 8372, in the tallest spire of the tallest building in the main citadel of Heart, General Felicity Hart’s boots clacked loudly on the marble floors of the Empire’s main Army base as she strode through the winding hallways. She didn’t pause to acknowledge the respect shown to her by everyone she and her retinue of guards passed, eyes boring ahead instead of flickering across the people who stood to attention and thumped their right fist over their hearts. She’d been General of the army for long enough to grow unimpressed by the shows of obedience, but more importantly, she had a task to fulfil and it was her singular focus. A wordless twitch of her hand had the four men flanking her halting immediately as they approached a set of iron doors and she proceeded through them alone. Silently she stalked down the hallway of the Citadel prison wing, ignoring the empty cells that lined it until she found the one she was looking for. The cell in question was as empty as the others, the metal cot untouched. All she could see was the flicker of her own reflection in the reinforced glass that sealed the cell, but she spoke aloud anyway.

“You were supposed to be here two weeks ago Captain. And I don’t remember telling you to crash your ship into the loading dock, landing it would have been just fine.” She said wryly, contempt and impatience bleeding through her professional demeanour in a rare show of emotion.

The shadows in the back of the cell shifted as a figure unfurled themselves from them, pushing herself lithely away from the wall. As she stepped into the light, she flinched away from it’s brightness, her bloodshot eyes squinting as they adjusted. Adjusting the dark worn leather Captains coat draped around her body she shuffled over to the glass, leaning against it casually and peering up at Hart as she cleared her throat, not managing to shake off the croak in her voice.

“Landing and crashing are the same thing, ones just a little more hap-hazardous.”

Hart narrowed her eyes at the impertinent tone in Captain Ice’s voice and straightened her spine, elevating her already imposing height. One sentence from Ice was more than sufficient to invoke her ire. The loathing she had for the woman before her was very specific kind of hatred, the kind of hatred that in another life could have been friendship if the two of them weren’t constant opposing forces. If Ice were the kind of person she could have been instead of the woman she had allowed herself to become. The war torn soul of Captain Ice was a waste of potential, a waste of prowess, a waste of power.

“You’re a Captain of the Empire’s army, you can’t drunkenly crash your ship into the citadel!” The general snapped, though why she bothered, she did not know. Reprimanding Ice had never proved successful before.

“I think recent events prove that I can in fact drunkenly crash my ship into the citadel.” Ice rebutted, her lips twitching in amusement.

Hart took a deep calming breath, clenching her fists as she fought the almost overwhelming desire to wring Ice’s neck.

“Open the cell, she’s sobered up.” She hissed at the security cameras, trusting the AI’s to take her orders as seriously as their flesh and bone comrades did.

The glass slid open and Ice nonchalantly stepped into the hall, walking past Hart and rolling her shoulders to ease the crick of discomfort. Her bones clicked and creaked, sounding like the old tavern the Captain smelled of.

“Those mattresses never get any easier to sleep on.” She muttered, falling into step beside Hart.

“The simple answer would of course be to stop getting yourself put in the holding cells.” Hart suggested, rolling her eyes in irritation.

“You’ve known me for years and you’re still holding out hope I’ll do things the simple way?” Ice said bemusedly.

“Yes actually, it’s why I asked you to meet with me. Two weeks ago.” Hart said dryly, sighed impatiently as Ice reached the vacant warden’s desk and vaulted over it, rummaging around the drawers and boxes until she found her confiscated things.

“You’re lucky I came at all Hart.” Ice pointed out as she pulled out a box full of guns and knives and began re holstering them all.

Six guns, and fourteen knives later, Hart raised her eyebrows as Ice continued to stow weapons on her person. Finally Ice took the final item out of the box, an intricately designed silver hip flask, and took a long, satisfying a swig from it, ignoring Hart’s disgusted glare.

“I see you’ve got your priorities in order.”

“You summoned me and I’m here, granted I didn’t arrive in the time or fashion you’d hoped but let’s be honest, it could have been worse.” Ice pointed out, gurgling whatever foul concoction resided in the flask.

“You are always drunk Ice and it’s never once affected your skills; I know you crashed that ship on purpose.” Hart accused.

“So, reprimand me.” Ice challenged.

“I can’t and you know it. The engines on your ship failed, the crash wasn’t your fault and you’ve spent the last day under medical watch. That’s the official story.” Hart snapped, venomous resentment dripping from her tone.

She was the General of the most powerful army in the entire Galaxy and still she was little more than a babysitter, cleaning up all of Ice’s messes. She ground her teeth together so hard that Ice heard it, eyes flickering over the General smugly as she neatly leapt back over the desk and stumbled towards the door, forcing Hart the stride after her. her soldiers falling into step behind her as she passed them.

“Captain Erskine retired, which means Sector Twelve needs a Captain. I’ve recommended you for the position.” Hart called at Ice’s retreating back.

Ice stopped dead in her tracks, forcing Hart and her soldiers to a sudden halt as well.

“I don’t do responsibility, especially not of that shit hole.” Ice told her vehemently.

“You are a disgrace to The Empire, covering up your antics is a full-time job and in the last few years you haven’t done any real work. This is the first time you’ve been inside the citadel for years. Enough is enough Ice, the war is over. You need to move on.” The General snapped, finally at the end of her tether.

“If I am such a burden, relieve me of command.” Ice’s voice dropped several octaves and it felt like the temperature dropped with it.

She slowly turned and faced The General, face blank and eyes devoid of any traces of emotion. The soldiers rested their hands on their guns, aware of the dangerous change in Ice’s mood.

“Except you can’t do that, can you? After all I did for the Empire, everything I sacrificed for it… You can’t get rid of me. You want me out of the way but there’s nothing you can do. If you weren’t so afraid of me, I’d have probably met with an unfortunate accident by now.” Ice taunted, her eyes flicking from the General to the obnoxiously brave soldier who was slowly unholstering his gun.

“If you pull that gun any further out of your holster, soldier, I’ll make you eat it.” Ice drawled, glaring at him.

“I am not afraid of you. Step away from the General. Now.” He said autocratically, raising his chin to stare ice down.

He stepped forward, towards Ice and General Hart hissed a warning through clenched teeth “Wilson, stand down!”

But it was too late. Before anyone could even think about reacting, Ice had Wilson on the ground whimpering in pain and his gun in her hand. The other three soldiers leapt into action and attempted to disarm her. She tossed the gun in the air and grabbed a soldiers shoulder with each hand, using the two men to lift herself into the air and kick the third one in the face. Pulling the other two to the ground and slamming their heads into the floor, she caught the gun just as Wilson got to his knees. Spinning spun the gun in her hand she used the butt of it to whack Wilson in the jaw. Blood and teeth flew from his mouth as he hit the ground again, this time unconscious and Ice brought her arm up, the barrel of the gun aimed at Hart.

“I am literally holding the General of the entire army at gunpoint and you still won’t relieve me of command will you?” Ice asked derisively.

Hart stared down the barrel of the gun, listening to the almost inaudible whirring of the laser beam inside it heating up.

“No. I won’t.”

Ice scoffed and lowered her arm, tossing the pilfered Gun onto Wilson’s battered form and turning away from the chaotic scene like it meant nothing.

“Nobody cares about Sector Twelve, you can do whatever you like. It’ll be your own personal playground.” Hart tried as the loathsome woman swaggered away from her.

“Not interested.” Ice called back over her shoulder.

“You can pick your own crew, from anyone in the Citadel.” Hart enticed.

Ice just ignored her and continued walking away.

“You’ll get a new ship, your choice of ship.” Hart sighed, playing her final card.

Ice faltered and slowly turned to look at Hart.

“I want a Phoenix SS92.”

“They’re out of production, I don’t think we even have one.” Hart said exasperatedly.

“There’s one on sub level four, she’s called The Bellator. Her engine is shot to hell, but I know I guy who can fix her up in no time.” Ice said.

“Fine. She’s yours. Enjoy Sector Eleven Captain, now go and pick your crew. You leave as soon as possible and good riddance.” Hart snapped, relieved and exhausted in equal measure.

Ice smirked and walked away, leaving Hart stood looking pissed off with her four unconscious soldiers on the ground.

A/N - If you read this, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I mean it. Thank you.

I’ve posted quite a bit of fanfiction on here but never anything like this. Original, mine, and completely untethered to anything. It’s terrifying. If you liked it, please let me know. If you didn’t, that’s ok, and I’d like to know why so I can try to grow as a writer and improve.

If this is received well then I will post the chapters quite regularly, but they will be much longer than this slight tester. And it may be hasty of me to say, but I will start a taglist if anyone wants to be on it.

If you liked it at all, please consider reblogging. This story is so dear to me and I really want to tell it, which is why I decided to make it a webfic rather than try to publish it.

Click here for the official No Survivors Tumblr Blog

#no survivors #webfic #sci-fi #space opera #non fanfic

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fuckit-hero-of-trains · 4 years

Text

Alone Together Ch 2

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311754/chapters/53599858#workskin

Chapter Summary:

“What are they like?” Four asks, staring up at the ceiling, trying to imagine the images that must be dancing before Sky’s eyes. “The Loftwings, I mean.”

“They are…” a prolonged beat as Sky finds the words he is looking for, “a blessing. At least, that’s what we were told since we were children. It was said that the goddess Hylia created the Loftwings to protect us, to make our lives in the sky easier. Happier.”

Or: A series of fics focused on Four and his interactions, inside and out.

One second, Four is standing beside the others in one of the vibrant forest regions of Sky’s Hyrule. And in the next second, he is not.

The ground falls out from underneath Four’s feet, and yet, he doesn't fall. Gravity is not working properly. He does not fall, and yet he does not stand nor float nor fly either.

Some part of him would be more interested in this if not for the fact that he felt like death this is terrible Holy Hylia we promised we wouldn't throw up again.

He is being pulled and pushed and squeezed and battered, a sword pulled from the flames and beaten into the correct position. But there is no correct position. Not yet. Instead, the force continues to slam and push and prod, throwing him in all directions and yet ultimately gaining nothing from the effort. A net zero.

A dizziness pulses in his skull, making his eyes go half lidded at the pain, but something inside forces his eyes to stay open because we closed them last time we need to see what is happening, No we don’t No we don’t No we don’t .

Curiosity over this, unfortunately, repeated occurrence wins out, and his eyes remain stubbornly open, despite the increased dizziness it brings.

The green of the forest has melted away into a miasma of purple and blacks, fractals of light and other colors blooming and withering faster than Four can make sense of them. He thinks he sees flashes of locations; a beach, an island, lava, ice, stone, castles.

His eyes slam shut.

Different worlds Who cares Where are we When will this stop?

His brain tells him that he is turning circles and flying through summersaults, but his body remains still, the movement and momentum somehow separate from his skin and bones. His stomach is in his feet and in his throat at the same time and his heart has somehow become his entire body, raw and pounding.

He isn't screaming, but somehow there is no more air in his lungs. He can feel himself choking and coughing but there is no sound and he just needs to breathe in–really it's not that hard– but he can't do it .

Just breath! In for four! Haha, real funny. Shut up. Guys!

There is something solid beneath their feet. Ground. They hadn't even realized. Their eyes are still sealed shut as their knees give out beneath them.

“Everyone okay?” Older voice. Male. Time.

Can’t focus on that, focus on us. Shut up! We need to listen Where are we Concentrate

Their body curls up.

Different minds begin to sort through their sensations.

There are too many sensations.

They can feel gravel beneath their body, small rocks poking uncomfortably at their ribs. There is dirt on their face, thick, dusty, and flakey. Wherever they have landed, it smells like grass and moss and wet stones. It is cold here. The air is stagnant, dead.

Sounds echo around them. A cave? Stone on stone. Cloth on cloth. Groans of other voices. And a faint, but incessant whirring.

Focus, focus on what we share

“Everyone sound off.”

They throw hands over their ears. Voices. Voices to the right and left. Older younger higher lower. Inside voices, outside voices. Too many voices for them. Need less voices.

That’s it! What do we all need?

Quite!

We need to be we need to be we need to be…

we are...

“Four? Did you say something?”

Right.

Four forces his body to relax. His spine releases its rigid curve. Tight muscles unlock. The smallest hero lets himself sink into the dirt on the floor for a moment, reveling in the singularity of the experience. Even as more rocks poke into his ribs. And more dirt gets on his face.

Ow. Gross. Okay, enough of that.

“Four?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Four says, closing his eyes and shaking his head for a second, a pantomime of clearing his thoughts. Oh, if only. What a joke.

He looks up to see concern flash in Hyrule’s hazel eyes. The shorter boy offers a lopsided smile to his brunette friend, hoping to dispel any concern as he takes the traveling hero’s proffered hand up.

Once standing, he swipes his hands firmly down first the front and then the back of his tunic. Dust sputters off him in small clouds. “I guess I’m still not used to this whole, ‘falling through time and space’ thing.”

“Oh, you’re preaching to the choir,” Hyrule says with a sympathetic shake of his head. “At least you landed on your feet before falling over this time. I went face first into that moss pile over. I think I swallowed some on accident.” The other boy opens his mouth and bares his teeth at Four. “Do I have anymore stuck in my teeth?”

Four dons a serious expression, his lip quivering with the effort to keep a straight face as Hyrule pokes a tongue over his canines, checking for any offending foliage.

“Oh, no more than usual, I suppose, “ Four says, somehow able to keep his voice calm and conversational despite the laughter threatening to bubble up from his lungs.

“Hey!” Hyrule says, words coming out an octave higher with mock indignation as he gives Four’s shoulder a push. The two go back and forth pushing for a second, laughs bouncing between the two of them.

A warmth, like entering the heat of the forge on a cold winter’s day, spreads from Four’s chest to his face, spurring on his giggles. Oh . A part of him– warm and glowing red like the hearth–that part of him had missed this kind of easy friendship.

They eventually pull themselves together long enough for Four to actually check out their surroundings.

Well, at least they won't have to wonder who’s Hyrule they’re in for very long.

Glowing aquamarine in the center of the room stands one of Wild’s shrines, it’s luminescence painting the entire area in a flickering blue, like the sun shining down through a layer of ocean water.

They seem to be in a very tall room of sorts. In front of him, near the moss pile Hyrule had fallen into, is part of a wall meant to separate their room from others. The topmost part of it has crumbled away from the ceiling, leaving massive stones laying in fallen heaps on the ground and exposing more rooms beyond the one they seem to be occupying.

Four vagley notes that all the others seem to have recovered much faster than him. He wonders how long he had been curled on the floor mumbling to himself. He hopes, for his sake, it wasn't long.

Near the only way in or out of the room– a lone, stone arch way– Time, Wild, Warriors, and Twilight stand, heads bowed low in quite discussion. Wild is shaking his head emphatically as Warriors peaks his head around one side of the archway.

Several beams of red light flash onto the hero’s face and body before Wild and Twilight grab the scarfed hero’s shoulders and forcefully pull him back. The four resume speaking, Wild pulling out his Sheikah Slate and pointing at it as he explains something.

To the left of them, Legend and Wind sit together talking. Or, if Four is going to be more accurate, Legend is going through his bag, filing through its contents while Wind chats away at him, either unaffected or in spite of Legend’s glares and lack of response.

Hyrule seems to follow Four’s eyes and sighs at the sight of his predecessor’s hands becoming more rough a he sorts through his belongings, a sure sign of the pink haired hero’s quickly thinning patience.

“I’ll go over and save him,” Hyrule says, already stepping toward the duo.

“A true hero of courage,” Four calls to the brunet’s retreating back, which is met with a blank look that has Four snorting.

He knows Hyrule will be fine. Legend has a soft spot for the kid, even if he tries desperately to hide it behind heaps of sass and emotionally stunted, backhanded compliments.

Like someone else I know … Drifts through his open mind, cool as the stones around him.

Watch it. Fires back another, a rolling wave cascading onto a beach.

Get a room . Commanding, but with a fondness softening the edges of the words.

His thoughts swirl to a stop. Quite again. For now.

Four belatedly realizes that he had been mouthing along to the words and forces himself to stop. The smithy takes what he hopes is a casual glance around. No one seems to have been paying attention to him.

Good.

He heaves a sigh. It was difficult to break the habit of talking to himself. When he was alone, he would either separate–letting the parts of himself become the individuals they sometimes craved to be– or let the words of the others flow freely from his lips, a running commentary that both comforted and amused him.

Having to keep all of, well, him to himself was a full time job. However, it was one that Four would gladly bear if it granted him the companionship he hadn't even known he was missing.

The short hero turns away from the newly formed group, resuming his examination of what he is beginning to think is a temple– and not one with a stupid amount of needless traps and puzzles and with a giant monster at the end of it– but an actual place of worship.

Four runs a hand down one of the nearest pillars. It is craggly, the gritty nature only broken up by soft, spongy patches of moss.

Though most of Wild’s Hyrule is demolished ruins, there is something about this place that makes the short hero think this temple is older than the other structural remains they had found.

Parts of it seem reinforced with bricks where the stones have fallen away, an attempt to restore what had been lost. Not only moss but vines and roots cling to every surface and burst out from between stone. If he squints real hard at the ceiling, Four can see cracks in the rock where water has leaked through, small stalactites naturally honing themselves into stone daggers above their heads.

It’s the kind of natural reclamation that takes more than a hundred years. Maybe more than a thousand.

Much older, his mind lands on as he idly brushes his fingertips across the carved stone. An ancient temple, crumbling long before the land it sat in ever felt a touch of The Calamity as Wild called it.

Old. Older than the decay around it. A fossil: hard stone, weather beaten and hidden yet undeniably present.

Four can’t help but feel awed.

Looking up a bit higher than he can reach, the smith can see some kind of image carved into the stone of the pillar he is touching. He thinks he can make out large, circular looking eyes and a sharp, downward V shaped mouth. A beak, perhaps?

He turns around, finding the exact hero he was looking for.

“Hey, Sky, can you…” he trails off as the chosen hero does not turn at his words. “Sky,” he tries again. Yet, the man remains static, back to the small hero and deaf to his voice.

The smithy steps over a fallen rock to stand next to the taller hero, peering up at his face. The normally relaxed Link is staring forward and up, eyes wide and eyebrows furrowed. Like he’s seen a ghost.

“What are you…” Four begins, following Sky’s eyes.

And then he sees it.

Or rather, her.

“Oh,” he says.

How in the Four Elements did they miss that?

If he didn't know any better –or have Sky standing right next to him for scale– Four might have thought he had accidentally stumbled onto a portal.

But he does have Sky standing next to him and he does know better; there are no portals in Wild’s Hyrule as far as he knows. He’s checked every time they have landed here to no avail.

Regardless, even without being the size of a minish, she is massive.

Standing silent and stalwart in the back of the temple towers the largest statue of the goddess Hylia Four has ever seen. She looms over the back room, the crown of her head almost touching the ceiling. A sort of indentation has been carved out in the wall behind her, a semi-circle of terraced stone creating a halo around her head.

Though clearly touched by time like the rest of the temple, her face remains free of significant erosion; her eyes clearly downturned in thought while her lips pull upward in a gentle smile.

The blue, flickering glow from the shrine catches in the folds of her dress and the ridges of her feathered wings, giving the appearance of movement despite the rigidity of the stone.

Words flood over the banks of his consciousness unbidden.

She’s beautiful Incredible craftsmanship How did they even get her in here The temple was built around it.

The last comment sticks in Four’s mind.

Looking at the statue again, he can’t help but agree. There are no drag marks on her sides that he can observe. Obviously he cannot see her back from here, but moving such a large piece of stone would create a significant change in its shape. If she was dragged here on her back, it would flatten out that part of the statue, but he can see no change in her curvature. She looks perfectly cylindrical.

It’s like she just dropped out of the sky or something

Four turns to Sky intent on asking the older hero what he knows about it, seeing as he seems to have some sort of connection to it based on his reaction, but is interrupted by a sharp whistle from the front of the room.

Sky jolts next to him, coming out of his revere. The two turn to see Wild beckoning them over.

The two heroes stride over, joining the group already gathered near the entrance to the shrine. Four slides into the semicircle next to Hyrule while Sky merely stands behind Wind, able to see over the boy’s head easily.

“Anyone up for a rousing game of ‘Good News, Bad News?’” Legend whispers none to quietly from the other side of Hyrule. The traveling hero shushes him, but Four can see a slight upturn to his lips.

Four could say a lot of things about the veteran hero, but at least the older man helps Hyrule to come out of his shell every once in a while.

Although, Four muses, he may be a bad influence on the traveling hero. They don't need two pessimistic little shits with too much magic on their hands in the group. One is enough.

“So we have good news and bad news,” Warriors says. Four hears Legend snort and watches as Hyrule’s shoulders fight to remain still under his stifled laughs.

See. Bad influence.

“Good news is that we know where we are,” Warriors continues, though he eyes Hyrule then narrows his eyes at Legend as he speaks. Without even having to look, Four is sure that Lgened is shooting the Captain a smug grin. Typical.

“Bad news is that there is almost no way of getting out of here safely,” Warriors finishes.

“So, where are we exactly?” Wind pipes up, head tilted to the left and eyebrows furrowed. “Like, yeah, we’re in Wild’s Hyrule, but what makes here so dangerous?”

Warriors looks back at Wild in question and then waves the long haired hero forward as he steps backward to rejoin the semi-circle of heroes. Wild takes his place, pulling his Sheikah Slate from his belt as he does so. He taps on it for a second before flipping it around for the rest of them to see.

“We are here,” he says, finger tip indicating a small yellow arrow on the screen. The five heroes not already in the know lean in to get a better look. Four can see that their arrow seems to be next to a darker, jagged seam cut into brown of the map. A ravine.

“This place doesn't really have a name,” Wild continues, looking a little sheepish at the lack of concrete information, “but I call it The Forgotten Temple. It is a historical excavation site dug into the side of this canyon. We found 100 years ago while we were searching for the Divine Beasts.”

Clear blue eyes cloud over for a second. Twilight places a hand on the younger hero’s shoulder.

“Anyway,” Wild shakes his head, long hair flying behind him, dispeling whatever images had entered the young hero’s mind. “We are in the back room of the temple. So, the only way out is through the front.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say there is a reason we can't just do that,” Legend says, voice flat with wearied humor.

Wild nods grimly, lips pressed into a thin line. “There are about thirty Decayed Guardians in the next few rooms. And all of the rest of the passageways between rooms have been destroyed so the only way to get out is using a paraglider.”

“Do I even want to know how you got back here to activate the shrine in the first place?” Legend asks, one hand rubbing at his left temple.

Wild’s face absolutely lights up. “Well I took this pot lid an–”

Twilight uses his hold on the younger hero’s shoulder to pull him out of the middle of the group. “Not now, Cub,” he says, shaking his head, exasperation coloring his words. Four gets a feeling Twilight knows the story already and hates the idea of reliving it now or –even worse– Wild giving a demonstration of what happened.

“No, no, let him speak!” Wind calls, bouncing on the balls of his feet, eyes wide as he stares at Wild. “You used a pot lid to do what?”

Time steps forward, silencing the group with a single well placed glare before they have a chance to devolve any further. Part of Four greatly respects the man’s ability to bring together and command a group as rowdy as this one.

But then, another part of him hates being told what to do on principle, so, eh, it evens out.

“We’ve decided that the best course of action is to use Wild’s Sheikah Slate to teleport to Rito Village,” the Old Man says.

The room erupts into groans of disapproval that Four can’t help but agree with. He had once watched Wild use the slate, the ragged teen disappearing into ribbons of dissolving icy-blue light. Just the thought of disassembling one place and reassembling somewhere else makes him feel queasy.

Well, that sounds a little familiar. Maybe if we think about it that way, it's won't be so bad! Blossoms into his brain, warm and hopeful.

You know for damn sure that's not what it's gonna be like. A hiss.

It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. Harsh wind, a reprimand.

“Maybe we should all shut up and listen to what he has to say before arguing about it.” Stone cold and pointed, like an icicle inches from falling.

Wait...

The groans stop. Several heads turn to Four with wide eyes. The ice from his unintentional words drips down, over his ribs and into his stomach.

Oh shit we just said that out loud Dammit It’s not that bad I’m… sorry I didn't mean…

Time recovers the fastest from the very out of character outburst from the smallest hero and inclines his head slightly to Four. “Thank you.”

“As I was saying,” Time continues, and as the other heroes turn their attention back to their leader Four feels himself unwind. Lucky break. “Rito Village is the closest settlement to this location. Once we all regroup there, we can begin to ask around for information on monster attacks in the area.”

“I can carry up to two people with me when I teleport,” Wild says, picking up where Time left off. He quickly turns around for a second, the tapping and chirping of his Slate the only sound for a moment, before he turns back to the rest of the group, a handful of what appears to be wheat stalks in the teen’s hand. He grins as he holds out the grain. “We’ll pull wheat to see who goes when. Longest first, shortest last.”

They go around the circle, starting from Wild’s left and working their way around. Four doesn't really pay attention to the other’s or how long their stalks are– in fact he pointedly ignored Warriors and Legend’s absolutely asinine comparison of lengths, the children that they are– instead only tuning back in long enough to grab his own.

He pinches the top of the stalk, pulling it from WIld’s hand and...

It’s tiny, only an inch of stem beneath the spike containing the grain, a pitiful looking leaf hanging from the cut off end.

Legend, drawn from his squabble with the scarfed hero for the moment, laughs derisively in Four’s direction.

“Aww,” he says, words dripping with false sugar. “It suits you!”

Hyrule elbows the legendary hero in the side, sending Four an apologetic look. Four simply rolls his eyes in response, not dignifying the comment with a response.

Well, at least not externally.

One of these days, I’m gonna punch that smug prick so hard, the pink comes out of his hair!

Those in pot filled homes should not throw stones.

Right?! He’s barely taller than us!

Aw, come on guys, you know he's just joking. It’s his way of showing affection!

My foot is about to show that pantless dick’s shins some affection!

Four lets the dialogue play out in his head, taking care to school his face into a neutral mask even as some of the funnier comments threaten to make him laugh aloud. Soon the rest of the heroes take their turns, cementing the order.

First to leave would be Time and Wind, followed by Warriors and Legend– and wasn’t that great, their stalks were actually the same length– then Hyrule and Twilight, and last would be Four and Sky.

The first three gather together, Wind linking arms with Wild while Time sets a hand on the Champion’s shoulders.

“See you soon!” Wild says, and with a soft chime, the three disappear into flowing blue ribbons of light.

The six remaining Links glance around, unsure what to do with themselves in the interim between trips. The soft whirring from the Decayed Guardians the next room dominates the area for a moment.

A cough.

“So,” Legend says, going through his bag again. He pulls out a small, square paper envelope with a pair of purple bunny ears painted on the side. “Anyone wanna play cards?”

…

Sky immediately and graciously bows out of the card game, citing the need to take a nap for his absence.

As the others begin debating what game to play, Four watches as the chosen hero walks away, the brunette already pulling on the edges of his beloved sailcloth, wrapping himself up even before he sits. The man treads slowly, almost reverently, up the altar, before sitting down and leaning back against the statue, head thrown back against the stone in preparation for sleep.

He seems sad.

However, before he can do anything else, the others settle on BS, a game that appears to transcend the bounds of Time and Space because apparently everyone loves lying to their loved ones, and Four is quickly pulled in.

The game only lasts five rounds– five rounds of Warriors accusing Legend of cheating, Legend not actually cheating because it’s freaking BS, Hyrule’s terrible poker face, Twilight’s incredible poker face, and Four counting cards because he plays to win. Five very entertaining and loud rounds of BS before Wild returns to pick up the next batch of heroes.

And then there were four. Well, three if you didn't count the sleeping Sky.

With their game taken away, Twilight, Hyrule, and Four sit themselves on the edge of the shrine and start to chat. Their conversation roams from their home town– or equivalent home area, cave thing for Hyrule– to their favorite activities to do in their down time to their favorite foods.

Twilight is just wrapping up a fascinating tale of the best soup he ever had while in the company of some yetis when the soft whoosh of Wild’s returning form cuts him off.

“Looks like that’s our queue,” Twilight says, offering a hand up to Hyrule, which the other hero takes.

The two quickly approach Wild, but the teen waves them away for a second, instead striding up to Four with a question in his eyes.

“Hey,” he starts, eyes flicking away from Four’s face for a second before flashing back again. A nervous tick. “Some of the others are getting a bit antsy for dinner. Is it okay if I cook something up really quick and then come grab you two?”

Four raises a hand in a placating motion and offers Wild a small smile.

“That sounds fine to me. I know how some of them can get when hungry. All things considered, this is a pretty interesting to be stuck in. Besides,” and here the shorter hero throws a thumb over one shoulder toward the statue, “I don't really have the heart to wake him up just yet.”

A relieved smile flits onto Wilds face. “Okay, cool.”

“You sure you’re okay with waiting that long by yourself?” Hyrule asks, earnest concern in his words. “I can stay and you can go if you want. I’m used to the quiet.”

Four shakes his head, a wry grin on his face. “No, no, it’s fine. I’m good at keeping myself entertained.”

Hardy hardy har.

Oh come on, that was a good one!

“Well, if you're sure…” Hyrule trails off. Four nods one more time and sends the group off with a wave. Hyrule waves back, until he too dissolves into nothing but streams of light evaporating into the night air.

As the light from the transportation fades, Four takes in a deep breath, holds it and then lets it hiss from between his teeth. He relaxes his mind and tension he didn't know he was holding bleeds from his shoulders.

And then there were five.

“Now what do we do?” his voice asks, a slight grumble to the words.

“I say we get a better look at that statue,” he replies to the open air.

“Seconded.” “Me too!” spills from his lips and Four nods. Good. They’re all in agreement.

He meanders around the shrine, running a hand over the gnarled stone, the smoothness of the glowing glass.

It truly is a marvel, he thinks. Last time they were here, Wild had showed them the almost mystical qualities to the Sheikah weaponry that the Champion used during his travels. Apparently, the way to make such weapons had been all but lost to the Sheikah people during their period of persecution. However, Wild had told Four that one researcher was able to find and repair an ancient Sheika blacksmith automaton capable of recreating the weapons. So far, none of their travels to Wild’s Hyrule had ever spat them out close enough to the research facility for Four to warrant a visit, but he held out hope that they would be able to go at some point.

The small hero comes to a stop in front of the altar, head tipped back to stare up at the statue.

“It really is beautiful,” he breaths. “I wonder how old it is?”

“Ancient. Older than the concept of Hyrule itself.”

Four feels something inside him tense up once more. His head reels as he pulls himself together, dizziness blooming behind his eyes. His sight fills with black and white spots, the back of his skull pounding and heavy.

Despite his clouded vision, the smithy’s gaze flashes toward the voice and finds Sky. He is evidently not asleep, and based on the exhausted look on the older man’s face, he never was.

He is leaned back against the statue, head lolling back as he stares unseeing at the stone that looms over him. His sailcloth is pulled over his shoulders like a shield, with the corners of the fabric held in clenched fists crossed over his chest.

“What?” Four asks, confusion and pain melting together into a disoriented tone.

“It’s from my time” Sky reiterates. “It was from Skyloft.”

Four nods his head slowly, letting the information sink in.

Sky had told their group about his home among the clouds; an idyllic floating society above the world that had been ravaged by the war between the goddess and a demon known as Demise. From Sky’s description, the place seemed wonderful; a location that Four would love to visit if given the chance.

A small, fond smile pulled at Sky’s lips.

“It used to be sort of the centerpiece of the city. Everything happened there.”

“It must have been magnificent,” Four assures the older man, unsure what else to say.

Silence stretches out between them, thick and awkward.

Four is at a bit of a loss. The shorter hero had never seen Sky look like this. The man was usually bright and sunny, offering kind words or constructive ideas to any interaction he was a part of. He had an easy smile and was even easier to talk to, regardless of what the topic of conversation was.

Sure, the brunette often had his head in the clouds – you’re still not funny– but never had Four seen him so out of it.

The chosen hero looks… lost. His face seems to be unable to settle on an expression, turning from nostalgic, to worried, to down right sad and then right back again. If Four wasn't the way he was, he would probably be impressed with how many emotions Sky was jumping through so quickly.

“Had you ever heard of Loftwings before I told you about them?” Sky asks, eyes suddenly locked onto Four. There is something in the look, something intense. Something desperate.

Four shakes his head.

Sky sighs and leans his head back against the statue once more. His eyes trace the stone above him in small circles and figure eights, tracking something that Four can’t see.

This isn’t going well. Forms in Four’s mind, concern dripping from the thought.

Really? What gave it away? Snappish, but with an undercurrent of emotion.

What a helpful addition. Truly, where would we be without your input? Sarcastic but frustrated. No answers.

You guys are terrible at this. Fond.

Four gently lowers himself next to the sitting hero, setting his back against the statue and stretching his legs out in front of him. He brushes his shoulder against Sky’s own and when the other doesn't pull away, leans fully into his side.

It isn't exactly comfortable–the stone is harsh against his spine– but at least it’s warm.

“What are they like?” Four asks, staring up at the ceiling, trying to imagine the images that must be dancing before Sky’s eyes. “The Loftwings, I mean.”

Four nods his head against Sky’s shoulder so the older hero knows he is listening.

“Everyone had one. Every few years on a special day called Meeting Day, the kids who had come of age would gather under the statue– this statue– to greet their partner. Their other half.”

A chuckle pushes its way past Sky’s lips.

“I was late for my Meeting Day. I overslept on accident.”

“You oversleeping? I never would have guessed,” Four snickers, nudging Sky lightly, eliciting another laugh from the older hero.

“Not much has changed I guess,” Sky admits. “Zelda though, Zelda was so mad at me. Told me I wasn't taking my life seriously enough. It was brutal.”

“I think she was mad because it was her Meeting Day too,” he continues. “She wanted everything to go perfectly.”

“But it was a complete mess,” he says, nostalgia apparent in his words. “There were actually three of us having our Meeting Day that year. Me, Zelda, and another guy. He didn't even wait for the ceremony to finish before he was whistling for his bird. Dumb thing nearly knocked Headmaster Gaepora off the statue.”

Four watches as Sky shakes his head in fondness at the memory and wonders if the other boy and Sky eventually became friends, even with their rocky start. He imagines they did. Who could hate someone like Sky, afterall?

The older hero sobers a bit then, smile falling from his face.

“And then it was our turn to go. We whistled at the exact same time. Zelda wanted us to take our first flight together. We had been talking about it for years.”

He sighs. “Her Loftwing landed before we were even finished whistling.”

“And yours?” Four asks before he can stop himself, a pit in his stomach already telling him where this story was going.

Sky smiles ruefully, glancing down at Four’s face before returning his gaze to the ceiling.

“I whistled over and over again, but nothing happened. Eventually, they went through with the rest of the ceremony without me.” A breath in. A breath out. “I had to watch Zelda fly for the first time with my feet stuck firmly on the ground.”

The older hero sighs. “I don't blame them. No one knew what to do with me. No one had ever failed to call a Loftwing before.”

Four stares at Sky’s face, watching as his expression grows more grim, his frown and the furrow between his eyebrows growing more pronounced.

“I kept trying for hours. By Noon, most people had left. Better things to do, I guess,” he laughs without humor. “By sunset, Zelda was forced to go home by her father. But I stayed there. I stayed beneath the statue, whistling and whistling and whistling all night.”

“I must have fallen asleep at some point because when I woke up,” Sky says, finally regaining some light, “there he was. I thought it was the sunrise playing a trick on me, but he was actually there. A real Crimson Loftwing.”

A smile, warm as the sun. “He was mine and I was his.”

And then suddenly, the sun is gone. This is it, Four thinks as whirlwind of dark, heavy emotion blots out the sky that is the older heroes eyes. The storm that had been brewing since the other hero had laid eyes on the stone edifice.

“But they’re all gone now.” Sky says, voice empty. He gently pushes Four away from his side and then turns to more fully look at the smaller hero. The smith is suddenly hit with how cold it is here without Sky’s warmth.

The brunette stares intently at Four, cornflower blue eyes locked onto whatever muddled, chaotic shade has overtaken his own. Four is trapped under the other’s intent gaze, a leaf in a tornado, unable to escape.

Clouds of pain and uncertainty darken the normally bright blue of the chosen hero’s eyes. Something lurks behind those clouds, Four thinks, like the presence of lightning unknown until the moment it strikes the ground.

Then, thunderous understanding rings through Four’s bones, rattling through his body, shaking him down to the fault lines of his mind.

Swarming in Sky’s eyes is a need to be seen. A need to be heard. A need to be recognised.

“They’re gone and no one’s ever heard of them. Or the Mogmas or Levias or Ghirahim or Skyloft or Demise,” he continues, words picking up speed as he does. There is something frantic about the list. A desire to have it all down, catalogued and out in the open air for all to hear. An auditory library of things lost to time.

“My whole life: everything I was, am, or will be is dust by the time you come along.”

The chosen hero suddenly deflates, leaving behind a lost looking Sky. He falls back against the statue.

Above them, the goddess does not move. Her eyes remain gentle, and her smile stays set in unmoving stone.

“Is it selfish of me to be afraid of being forgotten? Like I was never there to begin with?” Sky asks. “Is it selfish to wonder if this is it? If this all I leave behind?” he question, voice going softer and softer.

“Just a sword, a statue, and a curse?”

“No.”

Sky sits up at the tone of Four’s voice. Four pushes himself to his feet, fists clenched at his sides and for the first time in a long time, he feels tall as he stares down at Sky’s bewildered face

“No, I don't think it's selfish,” Four says, and he means it. By Hylia he means it, his chest brimming with some thing hot and cold and too much and too little.

Some part of him wants to punch Sky for thinking this way. Another part wants to hug him. All of him wants Sky to understand, to know that he is not alone.

“What could be scarier,” Four whispers, “than the idea of not existing?”

(he sees four boys: in forest green, ocean blue, flame red, and dusk purple. each one holds a sword above a single pedestal, ready to plunge the blade back in. back where it belongs. but something holds them back, each one barley gripping the pommel as their hands shake.

is this it? everything I did? it was all for this? where will I go? where will they go? where where where where?

am I going to die?

but they need to do it. Vaati had already taken so much from them. they couldn't leave him free. he needs to be sealed.

this is the only way.

together, they drive their blades into the ground and disappear in a flash of light.

a single boy emerges, tunic green but eyes a rainbow of color.

they hold themselves.

no, he holds himself.

no, they hold themselves. four times the amount of tears drip down one face and they smile and scream and laugh and sob)

“It’s not selfish to want to know that you exist somewhere, anywhere, when you're gone,” Four insists, conviction and strength in his words. The pulsing glow of the shrine illuminates his eyes in flashes of multicolored, unnatural fire.

“So no,” Four continues, “I don't think it's selfish. But I also think it's not something you have to worry about.”

The smallest hero reaches a hand down to Sky. The other glances back and forth between Four’s face and the offered hand before tentatively taking it. The smith, strong despite his size, pulls and the Chosen hero follows, stumbling to his feet.

“Look around!” Four says, letting go of Sky’s hand to splay his arms wide. The smith steps away from the alter, spinning on a heel as he does, wide arms indicating everything around them.

“Here we are, goddesses know when, in a kingdom you helped to create. A kingdom that survives through demon kings, and wind mages, and floods, and calamities. It survives.”

Four throws a gestures over Sky’s shoulder, indicating the green and purple pommel peeking out from behind his back. “You left a sword that has protected so many of us. A beautiful sword that cuts through darkness like a torch in the night.”

The smallest hero places a hand on his chest, feeling the familiar stitching marking the border between his blue and green tunic beneath his calloused palm.

“And most of all, you left us the spirit that unites us together. Without it, I never would have met any of you. I never would have found so many new friends.” Four leaves the ‘New brothers’ unsaid.

“Nothing is ever forgotten,” Four says as he points at the pillar he was examining earlier.

Circular eyes. V-shaped beak. Splayed feathers. Not just a bird, but a Loftwing, flying eternal in stone.

“Maybe just lost for a bit, but not forgotten. Never.”

Four turns back to the other hero. He can see a smile on Sky’s face, the silver lining finally emerging despite the rain that threatens to fall from the older’s eyes.

“And if it means anything,” Four continues as he comes to next to Sky once more, placing a hand on his elbow, “I know of at least eight people who won’t be forgetting you anytime soon.”

Sky nods, taking a second to rub his face– physically wiping away emotions that had been plaguing his mind– before turning his smile back to the smithy.

With one hand he takes the edge of his sail cloth and drapes it across Four’s opposite shoulder and then guides the two of them to be sitting back against the statue once more, now bundled together rather than apart.

Four is grateful for the warmth. He hadn't even noticed until that second that his breath was clouding around his face or that the trembling of his hands might have been from cold rather than sheer emotional force.

“You always seem to know just what to say,” Sky says as he pulls Four more effectively into his side. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re great at giving advice?”

Two ‘Yes’s and two ‘No’s collide in his skull.

Four merly smiles.

“I like to think I bring new perspectives to conversations,” he says

Hylia, it would be quicker if you just killed me.

You’re no fun.

“Because no one else has your vantage point on the problem?” Sky asks, cheekily.

Aaaand we’re back to short jokes.

Oh, it’s on, Bird Boy!

Wait, speaking of birds...

“I will let the joke slide just this once if you answer a question I meant to ask earlier. You mentioned specifically that your Loftwing was a Crimson Loftwing. Is that significant in some way?” Four asks.

Without looking up, Four can feel Sky nod from the way his shoulder gently shifts. “That’s because no one had seen a Crimson Loftwing for many, many years. They were assumed to have gone extinct.”

“So the fact that yous was Crimson would have been very important,” Four cataloges. And then, “What’s his name?”

Its goes silent for a moment.

“Well, uhhhh,” Sky says, floundering for a moment.

His voice drops into a defeated tone. “You have to understand, I was pretty young at the time. Children have their Meeting Day when they turn 8 and–”

“Sky,” Four cuts off the brunette’s rambling, a grin slowly growing on his face. “What did you name your Loftwing?”

The brunette pulls his half of the sailcloth closer, muffling his already mumbled words.

“Hmm? What was that?” Four asks, voice going high at the end of the question, ready to tease thevfirst holder of the Spirit of the Hero into oblivion.

“I named him Apple,” Sky says, the voice of man repentant of his crimes.

It’s like an explosion goes off in Four’s head; all four different parts of him howling with laughter.

“You–” Four cuts himself off to take a breath in, steadying his voice, “You named the last known member of an endangered species Apple?!”

“I was eight!” Sky hisses.

Four absolutely cackles.

“Oh come on,” Sky groans, “Like you never gave something a stupid name when you were younger?”

And that shuts up Four. Kind of.

He does have us there.

Oh fuck off, Violet.

I didn’t come up with names, Red did!

Four lets his mind turns into a battlefield but ignores it, instead relaying another question about the intricacies of riding Loftwings to Sky, who readily answers.

Pressed up against the other’s side, Four can feel the older hero's voice reverberate around him. He can feel the steady rise and fall of Sky’s chest and the heat radiating off him beneath the makeshift blanket.

Back in his time, Sky is long gone, lost to the ages. But here and now they sit together and wait, the ever shifting blue pulse of the shrine in front of them and the immovable stone of the goddess behind them.

…

The soft hiss and crackle of Sheika teleportation erupts in the silence of the room, the blue flecks coalescing into one frantic looking blonde teenager.

“Four, Sky! I’m so sorry, there was this whole thing with Wind and a weird pear that one of the Rito children ate and–”

“Shush!”

“What? Is something wro– Oh.”

Sky watches as the younger hero turns the corner of the shrine, catching sight of the pair of them.

They must make quite the sight if Wild’s hand twitching toward his Sheikah Slate is any indication.

Curled against his side, Four breaths deeply and evenly, mumbling every so often in his sleep. The smithy had grown quite a little while ago as his questions slowly petering off into silence.

“Sorry,” Wild whispered as he joins them on the altar. Sky isn't sure whether he is apologizing about his tardiness or almost waking up Four.

“It’s fine,” he assures, turning his head down to look at the small hero while trying to move his body as little as possible.

“Sometimes I forget how young he is. He always seems so,” and here Wild cuts off his whisper to smooth his face out into a flat, unimpressed look.

Sky nods forcing down his chuckles at the look.

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

They sit in the quiet of the temple for a moment just looking at the small teen.

“We should wake him,” Wild decides. “He’ll want dinner when we get to the village.”

But Sky shakes his head. “We’ll wake him up when we get there. I don't have the heart to do it just yet.”

Slowly, Sky bundles Four more fully in the white cloth and then shifts the teen onto his back and stands. He gives Wild a thumbs up which the long haired teen returns with a shrug and a look that says ‘Your funeral, not mine’ before turning to step off the alter.

And as Wild turns around, Sky catches a glimpse of the shield strapped to the teen’s back. On the blue background, a crimson bird soars, cradling the triforce between outstretched wings.

A smile quirks at the corner of his lips.

Never forgotten, huh?

Well, wouldn't you know.

#alone together #lu alone together #lu four #lu hyrule #lu legend #lu sky #linked universe #chapter two baby #here it is #its a long boy #I only tagged characters with significant speaking parts but all the boys are in this one #oh wait #lu wild #there we go #he has enough lines to get a tag too #train writes

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thosch3i · 5 years

Note

40 if you're feeling up to it!

hhh okay hello I decided I was not done dropping characters under that plum blossom tree and making them sad but then shen wei didn’t seem like the type to talk to himself anyway so–

hmm where am i going with this

oh yeah! sorry i got emo about shen san again hahaha also it got kinda long (a little over a thousand words, which is…not a drabble, apologies) so it’s below the cut. if i’m not lazy i may drop it on ao3 later for organization purposes.

send me a prompt from here! (i will probably only write weilan fair warning)

Edit: read more is not showing up on mobile this is fine

Prompt 40: “Do you promise?”

“Do you promise?” Zhao Yunlan smiles coquettishly, dark eyes gleaming with lecherous mirth—an entirely too common expression for him. The question he asks follows several related inquiries about Shen Wei’s plans for next Saturday evening, catching Shen Wei entirely off guard on the way to Dragon City University. When Shen Wei had expressed a tentative willingness to accompany him to a local art exhibition, Zhao Yunlan had gleefully pounced on the opportunity like a predator hunting from the shadows.

By all means, it’s a simple question.

“Do you promise?”

A question that grips his chest in an ice-cold vice grip and squeezes his last breath from his lungs. The set of Shen Wei’s jaw tightens, and he blinks rapidly to dissuade the burning behind his eyes from erupting into an outward show of grief. His hands, resting neatly as his sides, tense almost imperceptibly, but he keeps his palms flat against the side of his thighs, resisting his heart’s warring urges to reach out and pull Zhao Yunlan into his arms and never again allow him to leave, or flee the scene altogether.

Zhao Yunlan picks up on Shen Wei’s distress regardless, and his expression turns from teasing to calculating in a flash. “If something at the University happens to pop up last minute, I won’t hold you accountable, of course,” he says, scanning the length of Shen Wei’s body with a piercing gaze. “But you’ll have to make it up to me later,” he adds, a hint of lascivious humor returning to his voice, lips curling once again into a pointed smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I…” Fishing for a legitimate reason to retreat, Shen Wei is left floundering for several nerve-wracking seconds. “I’ll let you know,” he manages to force out, haltingly. “But I have a meeting with a colleague in fifteen minutes; I need to…go.” The lie flakes on his tongue, as flimsy and as tasteless as rice paper. As flimsy as his promise to—?

“Apologies,” Shen Wei adds, voice tight and restrained.

“It’s no problem!” Zhao Yunlan responds cheerily, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets and bumping his shoulder against Shen Wei’s. “Professor Shen shouldn’t lose his impeccable reputation because of someone like me.”

“I…goodbye.” Shen Wei doesn’t waste another second before breaking away at the next intersection, knowing that being trapped by Zhao Yunlan’s shrewd gaze—a clever ruffian with endless devotion in his smile—is the worst possible position to be in.

He hardly wastes his time rounding a corner before vaulting himself into a portal and stumbling out back into his apartment, almost uncaring, for once, of being caught by Zhao Yunlan or anyone else.

His bedroom is dark, and Shen Wei flicks on the light switch. The portrait of Kunlun remains the largest, but painting next closest in size…

How many years had it been? He knows exactly how many, down to the month, to the day.

Didn’t he promise?

“Xiao Wei, wait for me. Don’t leave, just stay in this yard. If there’s a next life, I will come to find you, alright?”

Zhao Yunlan shares the same whiplash smile, crafty mind, casual indifference towards society’s expectations, and firestorm of a heart. A fiercely burning flame that had been snuffed too soon.

It’d been Shen Wei’s fault, then, how it had ended.

Shen Wei doesn’t know how long he sits in his room, staring unseeingly at the endless wall of paintings and photographs, lost in memories of what had been, what could have been, what never will be. When he eventually forces himself onto his two feet again, his heart has already decided on a destination.

The cottage remains untouched after centuries have passed, tucked into a corner of the fabric of existence, away from mortals’ greedy, prying eyes.

Shen Wei clutches a jar of wine in one hand. It’s silly, but he thinks the wine would’ve been appreciated more than flowers. He had nearly brought a chessboard on impulse, but who would he play against? The fleeting memory of someone’s smile?

A lone plum blossom tree stands across from the cottage, branches dancing gently in the crisp breeze. It’s not the same one from those years gone, but Shen Wei had obsessively returned every decade to collect cuttings from the last tree and plant a new one.

Shen Wei sits with his back ramrod straight against the bark, legs folded neatly. He rests the jar of wine beside him.

The ground where the body lies had long been covered by mossy green grass, but Shen Wei always knows where it is, a few meters from where he sits. There would be nothing left after all these years, he knows. Not a shred of evidence that a singular, spectacular man had crashed into the quiet solitude of one ghost king and had never left him, not really.

The air is thick with humidity, the taste of rain only hours away.

What is he here for? Every year, without fail, when the plum tree is in bloom, Shen Wei finds himself resting against its stolid trunk, beneath its waving branches. The delicate early spring petals thrum with the blooming of a new life, a stark contrast to the homely, abandoned mountain cottage, wearing away at the seams.

A stark contrast to Shen Wei himself, with a soul darker than the depths of the Underworld, draining the life from the sole person he cherishes with his whole, just-as-black, heart.

“It wasn’t the next life, but you found me.” Shen Wei is not one to soliloquize. His single statement drifts into the wind, equal parts melancholic reminiscence and placid statement of fact.

Perhaps there are hundreds, thousands, millions, infinite thoughts he can never bring himself to voice aloud. His hands, resting neatly on his lap, clench into fists. The faint pressure of his nails, no longer sharp enough to tear flesh, digging into his palm does little to dissuade him from sitting motionless, staring unblinkingly ahead, all his words lodged somewhere in his throat.

Didn’t he promise?

Shen Wei ducks his head with a faint, unamused laugh. Even now, all of his instincts scream for him to return to Zhao Yunlan, never let him out of Shen Wei’s sight, strangle him with his embrace, consume him whole. To indulge one more time, for just a fraction of his all-but-eternal life.

His suit is dusty and stained from the earth when Shen Wei finally stands up. He leaves the jar of wine and walks to the unremarkable patch of grass a short distance from the plum tree. “I’m sorry,” he says to an empty grave.

When humans visit a grave, Shen Wei’s heard, they speak about themselves—everything from new relationships formed to silly innocuous details of their day-to-day life. How they’ve survived, endured, moved on, with their loved one no longer by their side.

Shen Wei doesn’t say anything else.

He survives only to protect the seal. He endures only to watch Kunlun’s reincarnations from afar.

Move on? Move on?

It won’t end like last time, Shen Wei swears to himself. He’d die before he’d that happen again.

This promise, at least, is one he knows he can keep.

#guardian #weilan #镇魂 guardian #镇魂 #巍澜 #willowcatkinblossom #my fic #ask #shouting into the void

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cirvat · 5 years

Text

Writober- Husky

“This is ridiculous!” Auriel panted dragging a hand down her sword’s blade.

“You’re telling me.” Beside her Kaipo let out pulse after pulse of serenity mostly targeting the enraged water sprite that was currently launching Dorian across the lake. He skipped twice along the water before Chester caught him. The wolf-shaped forest deity snagged the half-drowned man, launching away just in time to avoid the pillar of water that followed them.

“Is there any way you can force the wards smaller?” Auriel turned to the man sitting cross-legged behind her. Minato had the fingers of his left hand plunged into the mud while his right hand hovered in front of his face in a sign of concentration. The solar flare-like streaks coming from his glowing red eyes brightened for a moment.

“No,” the reverberation in his voice was difficult to understand. “It’s taking everything we have to keep it away from the aquifer.”

“Fuck.” She rubbed at her blade harder, trying to keep the gradient of gray to black from spreading. “Come on! Don’t give up on me!”

“I don’t understand why we don’t just kill it.” Minato grumbled, one husky voice overtaking the other.

“Company policy, Shol.” Kaipo sighed, speaking to the god patron directly. “You know that.”

“Guys,” Dorian suddenly screamed as he ducked behind a boulder, “I’m not making any headway with this thing!”

“Gods damn it!” Auriel stood up. “We’re gonna have to call her in.”

“Call Abe first.” Kaipo sent out another pulse. The sprite faltered enough for Chester to launch several tree roots at it. “Her doctor appointment comes first.”

“I know. I know.” Auriel turned away and pulled out her phone. She scrolled through her contact list and clicked on ‘Science Dad.’

The call ringed three times before it was picked up with a soft, “Hello?”

“What’s the status on time?” She winced when gunfire cut over her voice.

“We’re almost done. She just has to finish up some paperwork. Why?”

“We’re calling in back up. The job has gone from a level six to a level five.”

“Give us about thirty minutes.” Abe cut off the call.

Auriel pocketed her phone once more and rounded on her sword. She gripped the hilt tightly and pressed a thumb to the stone at the center. ‘What do you need?’ She thought as hard as she could.

<<Shadow. Parasite.>> The words flashed lightning fast through her mind.

She turned on her heel and stabbed the sword into a tree root. She sent a quick thanks to the tree before taking off toward the lake.

“Dori! Tap out!” She cried. In an instant Dorian threw his gun in the air and dove out of the way. Auriel caught the weapon and opened fire.

“Did you call her?” He shouted, backing away.

“Yep!” She leapt back to avoid the wave of mud and stone that Chester launched forward. “Thirty minutes!”

“Thank fucking Christ!” He turned and sprinted for the safe zone. Auriel cut off the sprite’s attempt to grab him with a spray of iron rounds.

She began concentrating fire on the ball of solid ice in the middle of the sprite’s water form. It was no use in actually getting through the ice, but it distracted enough for Chester to send his roots at it again. The two of them fell into a rhythm of shots and roots or stone. When a soft <<Enough.>> echoed through her soul she almost dropped the gun in her haste to get to her sword.

Dorian snagged the gun and ran back in as she continued into the shadows. It took two good yanks to get the newly blackened blade out. As she sprinted back for the lake shore, she let out a single clear whistle. Chester appeared beside her helping her to climb on before carrying the both of them up a root.

She readied herself and as Chester got to the end of the root, she launched herself off. She dove into the water form and hit the ice with the full weight of her momentum. The cured steel sank a few inched into the ice and she instantly began using it as a prybar. The water around her began to heat. She wrenched the blade out just in time for Chester to pull her out.

“Any luck?” Dorian asked when Chester came to stop behind him. A wall of stone and rock gave them cover. Dorian dropped to reload.

“We can get a few inches in, but that thing is solid.” Auriel gasped, a shiver running up her spine while her shirt clung to her.

“Shit.” He snarled. He glanced up to say more but froze looking over her shoulder. “Oh, thank you.”

Auriel glanced over in time to see a young woman step out from the tree line. Lily gently picked her way across the shore, her pink sundress ruffling in the wind. The stone shield dropped as she passed. She finally stopped just at the waterline and as a wave came up to encase her, she raised a hand.

Everything froze.

“There’s no need for this.” Her soft voice carried across the shore. Her fingers curled and the water dropped. She pulled her arm back and the ice shattered. She held her hand out, palm open, and the creature that had been encased drifted over to her.

The sprite didn’t even shiver despite its apparent effort to break Lily’s hold.

“Minato.” Lily turned, watching the man jog to her with a bottle in his hands. She slipped the sprite inside and smiled as he began whispering sealing spells.

She turned just in time to get tackled to the ground by her brother.

“God damn, Lil!” Dorian squeezed her shoulders. “Your sense of timing is so fucking good!”

“Hi Dori.” She ignored the dirt pressing into her braid and hugged him back. “I’m glad you’re ok.”

“Fuck, Ms. Lily.” Auriel sighed as she sat beside them. “I could kiss you right now.”

“O-oh! I! Um!” Lily’s face flushed bright red.

“My many and various gods,” Kaipo groaned as he wandered over to collapse in Auriel’s lap, “you have no idea how much my brain hurts.”

“I’m so sure at least one of my ribs is cracked.” Dorian rolled over to let Lily sit up.

“So! Who am I driving to the ER?” Abe loomed over them with a grin.

“Give us, like, five minutes, my guy.” Auriel sighed. Chester nuzzled under her arm, resting his head on top of Kaipo’s.

“I could really go for some fries right now.” Minato sat and leaned on Auriel; the bottle cradled in his lap. He eyes had stopped glowing and his voice was now singular.

“Me too.” She patted Kaipo’s head. “All those in favor of lunch first?”

Everyone but Abe and Lily groaned.

“All opposed?”

“I really think-,” Abe started.

“The groans have it. Lunch first, then ER.”

#writober #auriel #dorian #kaipo #minato #lily #abe

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serakaran-archive · 5 years

Text

Location: Engine Room. Characters: Sera, Luna, Jasper, Roe, Lennox, unnamed ghoul. Premise: What went down in the Engine Room on the Charon. Tw: Mentions of suffocation, blood, weapons, general panic.

Tagging: @jxsperlee, @dr-roe-md, @xxmirage, @xlnxknight, @bloodkingdomrp

As if the reverberation of a gunshot in a narrow space was not enough to still the movements of everyone caught amidst a calamitous scene, the scampering of masked bodies and their abandonment became enough to draw confusion. They retreated like mice, skittering away through the singular narrow entrance before it locked soundly behind them, effectively trapping the lot of captives once more within a sealed metal tube. One which now sported a distinct hole in the engine due to the weapon Sera managed to wrestle from the singular figure who remained. It permeates the air in a matter of moments, the distinct odor of engine exhaust laced with a faint acidity only very few of them might recognize as carbon dioxide. The metallic object within her palm trains upon a captor turned hostage, daring him to move against them with both expression and barrel. “How do we leave?” He replies with a cough, the faintest hint of a near sickening smirk laced upon unfamiliar features, “You don’t.”

Arm braced around her chest, Luna froze where she stood, free palm facing the air before her. Eyes shut, she felt the warm, wet dampness of someone else’s blood on her stomach and hip, body frozen s the gunshot’s echo faded- quite like everyone’s diminished patience. She was cold, standing in the hull of some glorified dingy, trapped naked in a room with people she hardly knew, if at all. Luna’s hazel eyes shot open as the ship lurched; the gunshot killed its unsought target, sending her forward onto her knees. There wasn’t much to say, much to do, much to look at. The low hiss of toxic air filled the space left behind by the ghoul’s words. “Like hell we don’t,” Luna spat, standing slowly, careful to keep her distance between bare bodies. “Like no one’s gonna notice the boat dying in the middle of the lake. They’ll come.” Though she spoke, her words were far from confident. Some time earlier she’d left the lawyers side to mingle, now she stood- practically bare-assed in empty, acrid silence.

This was not happening. It couldn’t, Jasper rationalized, it simply couldn’t. But if the pain spreading out from his leg wasn’t telling enough as is- it was completely real and they were completely fucked. He hissed quietly with every breath, hands both scrambling to press down on the wound despite clarity to an inebriated mind. “Fuck,” he breathed before squeezing his eyes shut. Jasper backed up shakily, trying to avoid placing all his weight on his left leg and ending up limping back until he felt one of the cold walls surrounding them hit his back. A chill went up his spine from the touch. With something behind him to keep stable, he allowed himself to divert his attention to the people around him. His eyes darted to the gas, then to the man one of the women was threatening. “Why the hell not,” he all but spat, fighting the urge to let his breath hitch as a spike of pain ran through his leg, “they aren’t going to come fast enough. We’re too deep in this damned ship- and he’s wasting air.”

“What are you afraid of?” Ines had asked, hours ago. So long ago now. This. Roe thinks, but no he hadn’t thought to fear something this extreme. He couldn’t have predicted chaos that has currently enveloped the ship. He’s been teetering on the edge of dissociation since he stumbled upon the slaughtered body—carved up like an animal. Panic had followed with the bag shoved over his head, but perhaps it was better, he didn’t want to see what could possibly come next. But the horrors kept emerging as Roe is gifted his sight back. Jasper’s face is a flash of familiarity in a situation that is too foreign for Roe to believe he’s really experiencing it right now. Mind reeling, and eyes scanning, everything feeling too slow and silent—dreamlike— until there’s the deafening shot of the gun, engulfing Roe’s shout of protest. But it’s too late. Bullet fired, blood spattered, a hiss of pain, that still not enough to divert his attention away from the clang of shattered metal now releasing gas into the room. That’s likely deadly, Roe’s mind helpfully chimes in, toxic at best, but too big a task to think about conquering right now, his body still trembling as the gunshot echoes over and over again in his mind. He diverts his attention to a problem he does know how to fix, stripping his top layers off as he moves towards Jasper. Down to his undershirt, Roe doesn’t waste time completely removing it, just holds the thin material between his fingers and starts ripping strips from the hem of it. “Jasper, you’ve done a good job keeping pressure on it, but I need you to move your hands so I can wrap it.”

Years of training had led up to this moment. Witnessing the horror of a dismembered body had barely phased her- even at the sight of the blind eyes that were meant to be Luna’s she hadn’t shuddered. It wasn’t until the hood was over her head that panic set in. There was nothing quite like being blinded, and if she were being honest, Lennox was quite tired of being kidnapped and abused by men who thought it useful. She could only wonder why it was happening. Even as she’d fought their pulls, she could hear Roe struggling beside her and that was some relief. When the engine room was revealed, she blinked in the glaring light and only took seconds to allow herself to steady her heartbeat and resolve before she fought alongside the woman who was closest to the Kovali underboss. Funny how opportunities arose- and in the sudden chaos of sound at the gunshot she turned, only to be met with black and the body of another, to which she grasped to. Jasper’s voice drew her attention first, the agonized sound so familiar and when she glimpsed blood pouring from the wound she knelt to press palms against it, chest heaving before she looked to the most obvious leader out of all them. “Sera, time to take charge. What the fuck do we do?”

He’s wasting air. As were they all at this point, doomed to either suffocate in the confined space or inhale whatever noxious fumes were emanating from the leaking engine. Finally, without the madness of it all, Sera manages to recognize some of the faces trapped beside her and it brings only the welling of internal panic. She could not allow them to die, each one’s importance more weighted than the last, and as perceptive hues flitted throughout the space, the capo caught wind of Lennox’s determination. “Lenny, wrap him up,” she gestured using her weapon towards the now unmasked ghoul. “I believe the good doctor came with a tie. Make sure it’s tight, even a little painful if you must.” Attention diverts to the physician in question as she witnesses his attempts at stilling the bleeding for the unfamiliar, yet unfortunately grazed man in the corner. “Roe, are you able to absorb some of his blood and then give the fabric to me?” This needed to become a group effort. “We need to stuff what we can into the engine hole to keep the fumes from leaking out.” And then finally, she addressed her next question to Luna, “How tall are you?”

“Tie him around the throat- limit his air intake. We won’t have much of it soon; I don’t wanna waste it on this worthless shit stream.” Luna took a slow breath through her nose, hazel eyes flitting about the room as the others concerned themselves with other matters. It was a sterile room, large and stark white; it would be one hell of a place to die. A chill danced up her back, bare feet like ice crossing the painted concrete floor. Though safe from the lake, the engine room was certainly beneath the surface of it. The forecast swore a freeze; the churning water around them gave a solemn, silent promise to freeze them. There wasn’t much Luna knew academically, but she did understand a fair bit about little, odd things. One thing she knew that most didn’t; risk of carbon monoxide related deaths was higher during the winter time, when engines roared and worked harder to keep speed. Tubes and wires coiled along the walls and lead up and into the walls that sealed them inside the deadly room- all outlets sealed. Luna turned back to the commotion behind her, crossing toward the pile of clothes the good doctor left in his wake. “I’m borrowing your shirt, doc.” she remarked, bending forward. Turning her back toward them she buttoned the crisp garment over her slim form, the size of the button-down dwarfing the woman now wearing it. Body jolting with a shudder, Luna moved toward the man tied, kept in the makeshift brig that sealed the lot in their tomb. Bringing her arms across the front of her body, Luna crossed them, brows furrowed at the question that came her way. “Uh??? Five-two? Five-three? Short, okay, I dunno. Why?” Luna asked, shivering again.

Jasper was hesitant to move his hands from the wound, but if there was anyone in the room who he could trust to know what they were doing, it was Roe. Both his hands shook as he pulled them away. His risked a glance down. In the poor lighting, if one could even call it that, it didn’t look… bad, but he quickly realized he didn’t really have any grounds to base what good or bad bullet wounds were like. Jasper moved to drag his hands down his shirt to get the blood off before the slick feeling of his own blood was on his stomach as well. Oh. That’s right. Underwear only. A shuddering sigh left him before he could stop himself, the sweat on his skin suddenly feeling very cold. “What the fuck,” he mumbled to himself, voice leaning on the verge of sounding hysterical. His eyes darted from person to person, unable to focus his full attention on anything. The blood loss definitely wasn’t helping his cognition- let allow the drugs already in his system. He caught Lennox’s face by him, puzzled as to how she got there, but tried to ignore any distracting thoughts and pay attention to the events happening around him. He was losing blood; he was already at a disadvantage compared to the rest of them. Lennox had clearly dubbed the woman with the gun leader and Jasper didn’t feel like he was in the position to contest, nor did he really want to be, but he narrowed his eyes at her questioning the other woman he didn’t know. “What’s her being tiny got to do with anything?” He asked aloud, before realizing it’d be in his best interest to shut the hell up. Maybe his blood on the strips of Roe’s shirt would buy them time, sure, but such a rudimentary fix wouldn’t last long. It’d be wise to save as much air as they possibly could.

“It’s alright, you’re going to be okay. It’s just a graze, no shrapnel and it didn’t hit anything major.” Roe reassures his roommate, eyes flickering over to the younger man’s trembling hands, and then back down to his wound. It’s easier to focus his entire attention on Jasper and things he knows how to do, but he’s pulled back into the general conversation at Sera’s comment about his tie. He was rather hoping to turn it into a tourniquet, but he understands the appeal of getting their attacker’s hands immobilized. Though he can’t stop the wince and horrified glance at Luna for her suggestion. The man may send horror straight to Roe’s gut but he’s not ready to watch the life drain from him, he’s seen enough death for the night. “I don’t think that’s necessary.” He chokes out, eyes pleading with Lennox as he tosses her the tie, hoping she’ll view the situation with reason, if not mercy. The man may cooperate to having his hands tied but Roe doubts he would allow himself to be strangled without a fight, and Lennox doesn’t need to be wasting her breath exerting herself in such a fight. Speaking of wasted breathes, he sees the rise and fall of Jasper’s bare chest speed up—the man’s panic growing, which could prove deadly. Already having lost so much blood, Roe can’t have his roommate hyperventilating and sucking in more of the tainted air of the room. “Jasper, they’ve got this, they’re going to get us out, but I need you to stay calm and quiet right now. Lean your head back, close your eyes, and take your mind from here. Use a memory, a book, a movie—anything you want—but you focus on that.” He instructs, gathering one of the tethers of his ripped shirt and looping it around Jasper’s upper thigh. “This is going to pinch and create a lot of pressure, but it’ll slow blood from coming to this area of the body right now.” Roe explains apologetically. Once the makeshift tourniquet is secured, he’s able to remove the blood-soaked cloth he’d been holding there and hold it out for Sera, before his attention turns to Luna. “Of course. The shirt is yours to use, but would you mind helping Jasper into the jacket?” Roe requests, already working on getting new bandages around the wound, but wanting to try and keep Jasper’s body temperature up lest he start going into shock.

There were a great many options Lennox could take- cutting off the air supply of the masked person was feasible, but judging by the pleading on Roe’s face, he was likely to lash out at her if she did something quite the rash. The leaking of the poison in the air should have been enough indication that she do exactly what she’s told and not what she thinks will be best. The problem was, she didn’t want to move away from the wound in Jasper’s leg and though she knew roe was a Doctor, she didn’t trust him just yet. With palms covered in blood, she caught the tie, shifting quickly in the small room to subdue the ghoul and his wrists. Good thing she’d learned how to be breathe lightly in tight spaces- and how to hold her breath if absolutely necessary. Once the masked bastard was properly pinned and tied, with Lennox perched on the joints of his shoulders to ensure he didn’t move unless she wanted him to, she tilted her head back to examine them all again. By her count, three naked. Luna was the body they found. “You and Jas-” she nodded to Sera first, “knocked out and drug somewhere, yeah? Assuming- just like tiny over there-” Lennox was one to talk, “if I had to hazard a guess here, I think the two of you have body doubles somewhere. And from what I know about your partner...we better get you in his line of sight, fast. The carbon monoxide won’t do us in as quickly and brutally as he will.” A muffled noise came from beneath the palm that had pressed over the mask’s mouth, and she grinned before shaking her head. “No talking from you just yet. Is there not a first aid kit around here?”

Once the ghoul discovered himself bound fully, Sera felt a minor semblance of relief if only momentary before regaining her sensibility about the situation. Barely clothed, suffocating to death on toxic fumes, and entombed within the engine room possessing little hope of escape... Minus one alternative. The idea radiates within her mind as she assists the wounded man, Jasper, into said jacket suggested by the doctor himself. Pivoting to address Luna’s exasperation, she is momentarily distracted by the information produced by Lennox–– body doubles, Luna and Jasper also drug from their various positions aboard the Charon. None of it made sense save for one piece: Zephyr’s rage at the anticipation that something occurred to his other half. “He can wait,” she finally managed out, more concerned with their current predicament than potential outcomes. “We need someone to get up there.” Gesturing upwards to the flimsy grate above which housed the ventilation system, she returned attention to Luna. “I’m going to lift you and I need you to push with everything you have to break the grate, and climb inside once you’ve done so. Do you understand?” The plan was, admittedly, ludicrous even to her own ears, but they held no other option to seek out help. “Someone has to get outside of that door and you’re the only one small enough.”

“Body doubles?” Luna whispered under her breath, arms coiling around her middle, praying for warmth the overshirt could scarce provide. “Shitshitshit,” the words fell from her lips in quick succession, her hazel eyes dancing back and forth between the individuals in the room. “Theo and I got separated, so I went to the Billiards room because of Alp- I got this weird message from a blocked number and when I walked out-” She bit her tongue firmly, praying to staunch the panic as it began to flow out of her in waves. Brushing a hand through her dark hair, glancing up at Sera as she spoke. Following her gesture toward the duct above them, dread filled her from the bottom up. She felt the numbness first at her extremities, then up her arms and across her torso, knitting together her apprehension like a thread pulled taut. Still, Luna was their best hope at finding a way out. Stealing her reserve, the woman gave a firm nod. “Fine, but-” Luna began studying overhead. Quietly mumbling as she planned out her path, she took note of which way to turn. Snapping her attention back, she looked between the women before her. “Since we aren’t allowed to shoot him,” she gestured toward the captive, “Can I have the gun? If any of his buddies get in my way, a gun is pretty much my one shot at getting past any of them and save all our sorry asses.”

Jacket snuggly wrapped around him, Jasper pressed against the wall once more with his arms tucked into his chest. It helped, especially since Roe wore a bigger jacket size than him. He merely nodded to the instructions the doctor gave him, not trusting himself to speak without sighing and hissing through his teeth. He lifted his head to watch the others but quickly squeezed his eyes shut when a heaviness rolled over his head. Damn- how much blood did he lose? He couldn’t imagine it was much, but any loss of blood is bad, right? He shook his head loosely to try and clear both his mind and his vision to little success. Instead of looking at the others, he stared down at his bent legs and opted for listening in to their discussion. Trying to think back, what Lennox said added up. One moment he was listening to Nic talk and the next… were more blurred and confused than what he was used to in his little drugged escapades. “Why us three,” he murmured, mostly to himself than to the group, “... it doesn’t make sense.” Jasper narrowed his eyes once more. The man shifted somewhat, letting himself inch down further until one hand found the floor, than the other. With a muffled noise he sat on the ground, eyes trailing over to the bound man. “The hell do we have in common?”

“Thank you,” Roe breathes out his gratefulness at Sera’s assistance as she wraps his wounded roommate in the jacket; though his relief for her presence far extends beyond the simple action. She’s holding the room together, keeping things from completely descending into chaos. And, apparently, she has a plan. Roe cranes his neck around from where he’s still kneeling down tending to Jasper’s wound, staring up at the grate skeptically, but holds his tongue. The plan may be riddled with complications, but Roe doesn’t have a better one and they certainly don’t have time, or breath, arguing. “She has a point about the first aid kits.” Roe acknowledges, tying off the last of the makeshift bandages on Jasper’s leg, before scooting back, giving his roommate space to move into a sitting position and relieve some of the pressure off his leg. “If the boat is up to code there has to be one in this room. I imagine there’d be several masks in it as well.” Lennox had been making several interesting points, though Roe does not voice his concerns about her revelation about body doubles. He thinks back to the body they had found—even carved up, it was worth noting that it was meant to resemble Luna, meaning these people were not chosen by accident. But what cause would they have to pick them? Sera, Roe can hazard a few guesses about, knowing she is in some way connected to the Kovali family. Perhaps, Luna is as well. But, surely not Jasper, right? Roe doesn’t have time to meditate on such suspicions, more important to save the man’s life in the moment than question how well he knows him. “Jasper, if you can I want you to fully lie down, and I’m going to raise your legs up a little to promote blood flow away from that and towards the rest of your body.”

Considering their predicament- everyone seemed exceptionally calm. Then again, she knew at least three out of the five people in the room had either been trained for disaster situations or had encountered enough of them to keep a level head. “Luna, take shallow breaths,” she instructed, “and hope you’re not afraid of tight spaces.” Masks were a solid idea, and she nodded to Roe. She wasn’t able to shift off the masked perpetrator just yet- unless she took a chance to knock him out cold. Without waiting for confirmation that she should, she shifted, flipping him onto his stomach before hooking an arm around his windpipe. With his hands tied the struggle wasn’t as much as it would have been and in a few seconds, he stilled. Didn’t stop her from panting with the exertion of it. The lightheadedness came on like a freight train and she groaned, leaning her forehead into the space between the ghoul’s shoulders. “Somebody find the fucking masks, please.” The red glow of the emergency lights gave an eerie air to the entire situation- and maybe it was the poison but she felt like she was going to start seeing things soon and that did not bode well for anyone.

There were a thousand speculations fluttering about the engine room, mentions of commonality and how others had been taken from their various locations and implanted in the current predicament. Whilst Sera did not intend to regale her own harrowing episode in being kidnapped from Theo’s side, she did internally question what had spurned the decision to choose herself, Luna, and Jasper amongst the masses. Can I have the gun? It’s enough to draw her from any variation of reverie and whilst it clutches tighter within her palm, she considers how much more useful the other woman might find it compared to Sera. “Do you know how to use it?” Even as she questioned, the capo handed it gingerly to her counterpart before wincing slightly as her vision fuzzed momentarily around the edges. “We need to get you up there. Now. Doctor, can you help me? I don’t think––” Lennox’s exhaustion at subduing their remaining captor suddenly apparent, dark hues peered through the red overlay surrounding them to witness their immediately dire straits coming to fruition far sooner than she anticipated. “I won’t be able to lift her alone, not like this.” Vertigo is rising, she can feel it clambering up her spine and threatening to seep into her line of sight once more. Lowering herself ever so slightly to clasp at Luna’s thighs, she awaits Roe’s assistance to raise their petite member towards the ventilation system above.

She stood, shivering in her own silence. The others were talking, that she knew, but their voices seemed distant. Hazy. Dark gaze shifting from face to face, the woman took a step back as Lennox apprehended the bastard behind their imprisonment. Everything had been normal moments ago, but the longer she stood in their noxious coffin, the more fleeting her senses became; cold feet could scarce feel much but the firmness of the floor beneath her, ears slow to pick up speech, eyes seeming to lull back and forth. In an instant, the fog lifted, words reverberating from beside her. "Safety off, aim, fire." Luna said simply, gaze locked on some near distance rather than the girl in front of her. Finally, she turned, looking up at Sera for a moment. "Not my first rodeo." Hand coming away from its crossed position at her torso to lace around the handle of the pistol. Luna clicked the safety into place and held the cuffs of the shirt sleeve firm in her free hand. Not much made sense, but fabric on steel had a much better chance of gliding than cold, clammy flesh would. Luna shifted a bit, holding her arms above her head as two sets of arms coiled around her legs and hoisted her high. Barrel of the gun in her hand, Luna swung the butt and cracked the hinges off the grate. She wiggled her fingers through and pried the latticed screen away. Careful to toss it away from any of her fellow captives, Luna let it fall with a loud bang. Arms up, she pulled herself up, rocking back and forth on her elbows to get a firmer grip. Setting the gun down in the grate for better use of her hands, Luna winced at the cold metal as it bled through the shirt, core tight as she slipped into the narrow space. "Push my feet, I'm almost in!" She called, wincing at the echo that reverberated in the sterile metal cocoon that surrounded her.

At Roe’s suggestion, Jasper bounced his head in a nod. He tried to turn and slide down onto his back gracefully, but his limbs had become uncooperative. His back hit the ground a bit harder than he would have liked and he groaned in response, his eyes squeezing shut once more. It was becoming more and more difficult to focus on anything around him. The sound of something crashing in the room made his shoulders jerk, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift his head and investigate. The loss of blood made stars fill his vision, he felt clammy all over, and the urge to breathe in deep had finally left him but was replaced by his body taking in quick, uneven breaths. Definitely not his best moment. Jasper balled his hands up and stuffed them into the jacket, trying to avoid shivering.

His attention is immediately snapped away from Jasper as Lennox maneuvers their former attacker onto his stomach, arm snaking around his neck. Roe feels his own breath stutter in panic as if hes the one being strangled, heavy tongue slow to find his voice and limbs uncooperative as he tries to find his footing so he can move her off of the thrashing man, "Stop!" Lennox does but its of her own accord, releasing her grip only as the man stops struggling. Roe's knees crash haphazardly against the cold ground, his body leaning as far away from Lennox as he can while still being close enough to allow trembling fingers press against the pulse points of the man's still bound hands. It's there, faint but present, beating steadily- ironically probably now more controlled than anyone else's breathing in the room. He falls back, trying to bring his own heart rate back down, fixing Lennox with a perplexed look. Who was she? This woman who yielded violence so naturally, but had looked at Jasper with such concern in her eyes? Sera doesn't spare time for his contemplations redirecting him back to the task at hand of getting Luna up into the vent. Roe nods, knowing none of his questions will ever be answered if they all die here. Supporting Lunas other side they raise her slowly up, Roe feeling his vision swim and closes his eyes, placing his focus entirely on the task and pushing down the rising nausea. He wants to respond to Lunas, tell her to be careful, but it takes all the energy he has to reach back up and gives her legs an extra boost up. His vision disappears again, this time without having to close his eyes. Dropping his arm back down he finds himself collapsing down completely into a crouching position, palm pressed flat against the ground to steady himself.

The cacophony was giving her a headache- maybe it was the gas- it didn’t matter what the source was. “He’s not dead,” she muttered to Roe as he panicked, “He’s not dead!” The exclamation bounced around the room and she shoved at him to go and assist Sera. With the minor threat in the room knocked out, she felt she could relax enough to shift back over to Jasper. She watched as Luna was lifted into the grate. Vision hazy, she shifted until she could lift Jasper’s head and lay it in her lap. “Can we fill the hole in the engine with something? Cloth?” Her stomach rolled and the utter exertion it was taking to keep conscious was beginning to wear her resolve. Shallow breathing did nothing when the air itself was filled with poison. She stayed a few moments more, brushing Jasper’s hair off his forehead before she lifted herself and set him down carefully. She had to find the masks and the health kit or they were fucked. Clambering along the wall, she blinked as she felt around- the red glow doing nothing but worsening the tension in her forehead. Finally, her hand fell on a box with cross over top. “Here, she yanked it off the wall and slid it toward Roe, “health kit. The masks should be here.” There were four- behind a glass case and attached to the wall. “For fucks sake-“ she yanked off her stiletto and pounded the tip against the glass but it didn’t shift. “Sera, help.”

As soon as they’ve raised Luna into the ventilation system, a minor breeze of fresh air emanates from the open hole in the ceiling above and Sera manages to inhale what she believes might be her last supply of untainted oxygen. Something overcomes her then, a last ditch effort in survival perhaps, as she returns to the situation in the engine room to view various features illuminated in a faint red glow. Her head swims from both the poison lingering in the air and the disorienting light, unsteadily lifting the cloth abandoned by Luna and forcing it into the hole with her best ability. If they can just filter it for a minute… Just a few moments. Someone calls for her assistance and she pivots with less grace in comparison to her natural movement, near stumbling as the brunette attempts to narrow the distance between herself and Lennox. “Give it to me,” but she’s hardly asking, the pointed heel swiped from her counterpart. “Move, there’s going to be glass.” Once more she does not await confirmation nor obedience before utilizing her final surge of strength to smash the case of masks into a fragmented mess upon the floor. Fingertips reach in hesitantly, plucking one… two… three… Allah help them. The fourth, now held between nimble fingers which detected a distinct hole torn in the protective fabric, though she crumples it within her palm and shields its destroyed state from the others’ vision. “Doctor.” She tosses two masks in his and Jasper’s direction before relegating hues back upon the woman at her side, the third mask dropping into Lennox’s hand. “Here.” Her own remained curled and hidden from view, the capo attempting to breathe shallowly as her shoulders rested against the wall, lids fluttering.

“I’ll bring help!” Luna called, her voice reverberating against the steel walls and crashing back into her. Yikes. She was never one to shy away from small spaces; she preferred them, in fact. Slight as she was, she could stay hidden, kept from the dangers this world has to face. Yet, as she pulled herself into the darkened shaft, her vision seemed to warp and wane. Huffing her bangs from her face, Luna pushed forward beyond her reservations. There were other people dependent on her- scary as the situation was, she bit back her fears and clambored deeper. Arms stretched out ahead of her, Luna pulled herself forward, inching through the ventilation system. Methodically, not to strain her oxygen-starved brain, she closed her eyes, picturing the little map she’d traced mentally. Body pressed tight to the cold grate, she slipped through with surprising ease; the aerosolized lake air collected over long stretches of time made a slimy sort of lubricant that allowed her passage. Logically, she knew that this was nothing more than the means to a hopefully happy end- she’d crash through the ceiling into another room and get help that could do more than she ever could. Her mind, however, whispered hellish taunts back at her: This looks like a morgue drawer. You’re gonna get stuck and die. They won’t believe you. They’ll think you did it. You’re all going to die. -No. Panic rising in her chest, the escort pushed forward faster, wiggling, clawing, and thrusting herself around the second corner and into another expanse of ventilation system, slightly illuminated by the lights below.

#c: luna #c: jasper #c: roe #c: lennox #bkevent04

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caranelguild · 5 years

Text

Caran El, Rafe 15

Our adventurers, within inches of their lives (with the exception of Groá, for whom death is still beyond the horizon), fight to regroup on one side of the sewer flow churning with fierce balaii eels. Otato eventually makes a hail-mary leap and is scooped out of midair by Groá’s hammer, reaching over the distance and flinging the Drenn the extra few meters he would not have made by his own power. The impact of hammer to ribs blacks him out, and he recovers his senses being tended by. Gwyllt, who leaves Groá to combat the eels leaping out of the excrement at the group. As he begins to tear a strip of shit-sodden material from his sleeve to bandage Otato’s grievous neck-jaw wound, he remembers the fancy towels he took from the bathroom at Nakamoto Tower and elects to use those instead.

Eventually, the group makes its way to the greywater sewer above, where Esa tends to everyone’s wounds as they take a couple hours to rest after bathing in the runoff water there. Then they plan, and choose to avoid making Groá stealth to the above-ground servants’ entrance, electing to try the sewer entrance and hoping to find the Balaii calmed down in their hours’ absence. So they creep down. Otato finds the burnt out torch with his face and Gwyllt lights it by striking an iron key ring against the stone wall. They survey the door, handleless and made of stone. Groá tries ineffectually to kick it in before jamming the axe-side of her hammer into a seam. A number of shoves later and the door pops open enough to grab it, and Gwyllt swings it open.

A shiver makes its way down Groá’s spine as she recalls the last time she had been in this cold stone hallway. The group makes its way down it towards the corner ahead, from which a golden glow slowly becomes visible. Carefully, they turn the corner, and what meets their eyes is a surprise to all.

Not the kitchen Esa had told them about, not the genocide machine in a circular stone room as Groá remembers, but a large rectangular library carpeted in dozens of rich carpets and lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. In its center stands a painted marble statue of a Tulean warrior twenty feet tall. Behind it, a single door.

Gwyllt makes as to dart to the feet of the statue to better survey the rest of the room from the shadows of the figure’s feet, but as soon as he steps inside the room an omnipresent voice greets our adventurers. As the voice speaks and behind those of our group in the doorway, a wall of stone suddenly appears, followed by one of ice and one of shimmering hot air. Beside the statue appears as if by magic an intricate gold hourglass with trickling red sand.

Caran El & Co. do not hesitate, but head for the door on the far side of the statue, which opens easily into a room empty but for a small table upon which are lying two keys marked with the numerals I and II. The voice speaks again.

When the speech ends, our adventurers notice a stone fresco in one wall depicting two figure locked in mortal combat. One of the figures has driven his sword through the other, who is kneeling. Beneath each figure is an inscription in what appears to be ancient Tulean:

Figure 1 (Victor)

IVTONNANYRYZONZVVI IVNOTVVON

Figure 2 (Loser)

IVVVON INYDDTO

The first inklings of sense are arrived at when Gwyllt has an instinct to simply read aloud the characters, reciting, “I’ve tonnany reasons vye I’ve not Vaughn” and “I vuvuVaughn inny duh-duh to.” Then the group thinks, two Vs together looks like a W---perhaps two Ns together looks like an M, making the statements “I’ve too many reasons why I’ve not won” and---and honestly, at this point, Groá is confident that Key II will open the right door (the victor saying, “I’ve NOT won [‘one’]” clinching it for her), so the group moves forward with all haste, and are not drowned in molten metal.

Behind the door, they find a short hallway. In it is a small golden key upon a pillow on the floor, and inset in the wall behind glass is an hourglass.

They move forward to the second room’s door. When they open it, the voice speaks. Gwyllt stretches a foot into the room and places his toe down gently, then puts his foot down, then enters the room gingerly. Behind him, the door slams and seals shut, his companions on the other side. As soon as the door behind him closes the one ahead opens, revealing a grotesque creature that slithers onto the floorboards: a chimera formed of the tail of a giant snake and the torso, arms, and head of a Myradin man. Its eyes are listless and its face twisted. The joining was clearly not a smooth one; the body looks almost as if it had been melted onto the snake’s scales. The creature makes straight for Gwyllt, its grey clawed fingers outstretched.

Gwyllt does not stay to accept its greetings, and sprints with all haste past it and to the far door, which admits him into a hallway like that his companions were left in. Speaking of, Otato tries the door, not knowing what went on inside the room, and finds it once again unlocked. Groá volunteers to go next. Once again, the door seals behind her, and once again a snake-person chimera slithers out from the far door. Groá chooses to face it head on, and leaves the room with it head-off. Esa comes next, and arrives in the hallway with Groá and Gwyllt with a scratch down his upper arm. Otato is last, and fails to achieve what Gwyllt managed, only escaping the creature with a few scratches.

They all take a deep breath, glancing at the hourglass to see their progress before moving on.

The next door opens into a raw, cave-like room glowing softly with a blue phosphorescence, the uneven ground covered with dozens of mushroom beds. Two small jellyfish-like orbs on stalks sway in a faint, moist breeze. The glow is from them, and Otato thinks he can see that they are some kind of creature with translucent skin. Again, the omnipresent voice speaks. Gwyllt volunteers to do a bit of trailfinding and moves dextrously off, stepping from bare rock to bare rock. He slips on a bit of mud near the far door and his hand comes down on the edge of a mushroom bed, crushing the delicate blooms. The glow in the room suddenly grows whiter, and the jellyfish-orbs bob on jointless stalk-legs towards him with singular purpose. Gwyllt takes to his heels and sprints to the door, making it just in time. The creatures knock against the wood with their soft bodies and one expels a cloud of spores in frustration at his escape.

Caran El & Co. remaining exchange glances. Groá picks up Esa and, with Otato following close, sets off carefully across the cave. Not carefully enough. Her giant foot crushes a whole patch of fungi, and the orbs float angrily towards her. Otato makes a beeline for the door and makes it, but behind him Groá has less luck, slipping on mushroom mud every second step. The creatures knock their orbs against her, their soft flesh bouncing right off of her, but she inhales a whole lungful of their spores as they poof.

In the hallway, Otato takes a magical look at Groá, finding microscopic residue coating surfaces in and outside of her body, but is unable to immediately separate Dvargen from fungus. Gwyllt picks up the third key, and our adventurers look down the hallway at the next door . . .

#chapter nine: the nine rooms #journal #caran el #traverse

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anearthstruckalien · 5 years

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At long last, I’ve finally written up some kind of follow-up to Giegue’s last IC Journal entry about the ongoing main plot thing on this blog. That is, he’s gone to his own Magicant and destroyed the corrupting remnant lodged within it (via an ‘off-screen’ battle pffft) and this is the aftermath of it all. I admit that some point are a bit vague here (if only because this is written from Giegue’s perspective as with every other writing thing here) which... is why I will eventually get to writing an OOC post to note and explain the events that happened here with this. The entire writing thing is under the cut.

[ Empty. Symmetrical and uniform, with every dimension precisely the same. Pale blue in color from the walls to the ceilings and even to the airs themselves. Seemingly endless. Empty… yet again… now that the disturbing blaze of a blistering red which had previously warped and distorted this room seems to have disappeared, either chased out or destroyed by the memory of a beloved ghost. By the seemingly infinite strength an item he had extracted from a shallower (yet still deep and very close by) part of his Magicant had granted him just when the corrupting influence seemed too overwhelming for his fragile mind and turbulent emotions permeating everything about himself. Since then, like an elastic spring, the room had bounced back to its original shape with absolutely nothing usual remaining to indicate that anything had ever been here prior. A cursory glance down at his left wrist and he’s met with the continued sight of something pink gently wrapped around it and miraculously unharmed despite how intense the remaining moments of that conflict against the corrupting remnant had gotten.

This is just a dream. Or rather something between that and reality—as is the nature of one’s Magicant—and this item is just a representation of her influence upon his mind… and yet, it had still felt like he had been supported by her in all this nonetheless. It had reminded him of why he is doing all of this to begin with. Of what formed the very foundation of his continued association with the Earth and where this association itself had all started. Pale fingers curl into a determined fist. Yes. How could he have ever doubted it… –? Nothing was the same as it had been back then. Because if he truly were the same as he was back then… then he would have wanted to become that horror—the cosmic destroyer—and obliterate the universe using that horrifying and unfathomable power. But. No. Instead he had done everything within his power to eliminate that disgusting infection from his mind. And though there were many other reasons underlying this… ultimately he had done this because of her. Maria… since the very beginning… had been the most consistent and unwavering reason for which he had not only wanted to strive towards his goal of goodness and protect life on Earth… but also the original reason which had prevented him from trying to wipe everything out again no matter how excruciating the pain; in a way, her presence on his mind is what’s stopping him from losing it all over again.

An exhausted sigh and he tears a singular dark blue void away from the pink item in question, allowing for his arm to fall back by its side, and with a narrowing of his eye into almost a slit along with an uneasy wave of a rat-like tail, he cautiously glances about the room anew… for what may as well be the hundredth time now since the battle’s conclusion. Hmmm. Everything seems to be as it is meant to be again here. The room looks normal… and it certainly feels normal as well. The presence of the corrupting remnant can no longer be felt and—a twitch of an arm just to be positively certain—Giegue himself is still here. Still in one piece. Still sane and capable of doing this check at all. It is over. That nightmare is over and it is never coming back. Not unless he allows for it to return or makes a stupid miscalculation like he had before having all entrances to the Place That Time Forgot sealed off. He closes his eye for a moment. Then another. And yet another… before letting out a faint sigh as a strange feeling hits him with the full brunt of its overwhelming force. A slight shudder. Ugh. That was a bit much, but the feeling was not a bad one. It’s like a sense of peace… a kind of gratitude that something is over… –relief, was it? Relief. Is this what the Chosen Four felt upon seeing that horrifying form of his utterly obliterated at long last? Is this how it felt to have summoned up something beyond even PSI itself to overcome something so terrible and overwhelming… –?

A moment’s pause. Then a conclusion to his own inquiries comes: of course it was. This is what it feels like and if he had any doubts about how he was defeated before, then those would have certainly vanished now in the presence of this feeling. Not just relief but… something else instead. And that something else may perhaps be enough (contrary to what he thought before) to push himself into the correct state of mind to obliterate the after-image of what once was in that cave… –to do so in the only way he could conceive effectively doing at this point. Perhaps. Maybe. He isn’t 100% certain at this point and isn’t willing to stick around for any longer to think it over more. There are many other pending tasks that need to be attended to and a potentially troublesome encounter which may make itself known sooner rather than later; he had sensed it not too long ago after all –the movement of something else of great power into this universe from another. And so, with little more than a bit of concentration, the pale alien seems to de-materialize from his Magicant in a flash of pale blue light… and finds himself back in a dimly-lit room in a sitting position once again. It’s almost like the room from Magicant in its emptiness and symmetrical qualities, but the presence of rocky terrain and metal instantly dispel any delusions of this being the same place if such things ever existed at all to begin with for one such as himself.

Yet another moment’s pause before the pale alien slowly rises to his feet. Then pauses once again and glances down at his left arm anew… only to find the Magicant item still with him. A singular dark blue void immediately narrows down to a sharp point and he tentatively reaches out to touch it with his other arm. It’s… soft. Soft and warm and… real. Somehow he simply knows that this is real even if it had supposedly come from a place that teeters on a delicate point between dreams and reality. But. Even so, what is to be done with it…? Disposing of it is certainly out of the question. It was… special and strangely enough brought about a sense of peace about it—a much-needed peace and… and… comfort given the recent turn of events. He stares at it. And stares. And stares while seemingly contemplating what to do… until he properly grasps the pink fabric, unwinds it from his left arm, and instead wraps it around his neck like a scarf. There. That’s better. Now, he must return to carrying out his work. There is much to be done and far too much time has inefficiently elapsed as is. ]

#.writingpost #.giegue #.magicant #.timeline: interuniversal interference

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cutiecrates · 6 years

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Cutie Reviews: Tokyo Treat Feb 18

Hello Cuties! Here we are with the February Tokyo Treat- but before I begin I thought I’d let you guys know that the Tokyo Treat family has recently opened up Tokyo Haul! An online shop full of items and goods found within these crates; as well as special items available in prize form, and items that haven’t appeared in the crates too; from toys to snacks to makeup

There are also several ways to earn points upon signing up and purchasing items, so if you see anything you wanna try I recommend you check there!

(As you can see, they returned to the booklet format starting with this one, but again we’ve lost our favorite Mascots DX)

Personally I can’t wait to cover the DIY item ♥ Pretty Cure is yet another series I grew up with it and I really really liked KiraKira Precure~

Okay, so first up will be the special Strawberry Shortcake Pepsi you see in that first pic. It is a special Japanese Pepsi that comes out around the winter season- as I’m sure you can tell from the package. It also has 43kcal O_O

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

With promises of tasting a real shortcake I was pretty enticed by this strange Pepsi. It’s essentially a white, stronger version of a Vanilla Pepsi, if you have ever seen or tried that before. It tastes pretty good, and I have to agree- when I picture or see a shortcake this is the taste vibe I get (•’╻’• ۶)۶

Although... I don’t essentially taste any strawberry. I taste a bit of coconut, and I can’t say it’s a drink I would want often. But it isn’t bad. I can see enjoying it during the season when it’s out.

(Sorry for the relative in the background~)

I thought I’d switch things up by starting with favorite items- and due to the romantic sweetness of the Holiday, we were limited to two. A bit of a bummer but I’m still happy regardless.

First up is this large (but don’t be fooled by the size) bag of Koikeya Sour Plum Chips by a popular brand I’ve only tried once or twice honestly. Sour plums (or Ume) and Sakura flowers go together to create a lovely motif befitting of the pink sprinkled on the chips

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

When I took my first bite I wasn’t sure what to think about these. But they’re good if you like sour things; they reminded me a lot of those Salt and Vinegar Chips- which I like but usually avoid eating, since it usually burns my lips and is overall unpleasant ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡ But the flavor of these is lighter, and I didn’t feel any sort of pain while eating them.

Our other item is this Umaibo - Shrimp Mayonnaise flavor. I love Umaibo but so far I haven’t been a fan of fish ones. For a while I was on a shrimp kick and enjoyed eating it but as of late I haven’t touched any. But I do enjoy mayonnaise and I’m always up for trying a new Umaibo :3 so...

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I’m not sure if it tastes as good as real Mayonnaise Shrimp- but this was very good; so good in fact that I think this might be my new, second favorite Umaibo!

Next is our chocolate category :D Or at least part of it. It was pretty big this month.

First we have some Strawberry Barley Puffs, which I have reviewed ages ago so I’ll just summarize my first review on them; they’re kind of strange in taste and the strawberry shell doesn’t change it too much. But they’re not bad.

Another item I’ve tried before on the right-hand side is the Chocolate Wafer, which featured One Piece last time. This time it featured a series I know nothing about called Ultimate Muscle. I remember seeing and finding it very unappealing as a young girl- no offense if you like it though. Again I’ll summarize because these chocolate wafers usually do not change.

However- this one I didn’t like nearly as much as last time. I don’t know if it’s because I got to it a few months late (which I don’t think should matter because it was sealed), or if my taste was off. It just wasn’t as good as I remembered.

Next up is this came broken item that wasn’t listed in the book, known as Chocobar-Z (I think). It’s basically a chocolate Umaibo.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It being broken hasn’t deterred me from it’s taste. It’s really good x3 It has a crispy, slightly bitter taste but it’s also a little creamy~

Our last item in the picture is not actually on the plate. I kept it in its package- and it’s like a prior item I had before as well known as the Ice Cream Lolly, this time in Strawberry.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s basically a Strawberry Ice Cream Chupa-chups lollipop- but that isn’t bad if you like those

Now we’re onto the strawberry-chocolate! My favorite~♥

We’ll continue going in order, so first is this interesting box of Ginza Rusk in Strawberry. Rusk is essentially a dried dough or bread-like product that is usually covered in some type of flavoring or fried and coated in sugar.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

As much as I love strawberries, I wasn’t too crazy about this one. It’s packaging is neat, and I love it’s creamy-crunchy texture, but the flavor itself as a teensy-bit off putting to me.

I had higher hopes for this next item: Maroyaka Milk Chocolate - Strawberry Party Pack. Look how sweet they look, and look at that packaging~

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Not only do they look irresistibly kawaii and sweet, but they taste so good!! It tastes exactly like a strawberry dipped in chocolate, and while you taste strawberry chocolate, you also get the tartness from an actual strawberry. They’re also very smooth and melty; just how I like my chocolate~

Our final item is another object not in the booklet. I think this is because it was a last-second replacement for the Lotte Pie No Mi we were originally supposed to get. Something happened with it, I don’t remember the details but I got an email months ago about it .

Anyway, instead we have this really cute package of heart-shaped Strawberry Pocky. I’m not a huge pocky eater but I do love the strawberry ones, it also included these adorable illustrations of this boy I do not recognize. I wish I did though, he’s such a cutie ♡

The back of the box (visible above) also featured a profile on him. From what’s on the box, I guess he’s from a manga or game called Love With Pocky?? If anybody knows anything about this please let me know right away!

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I don’t really have special feelings for pocky- but how can you go wrong with the strawberry ones? Plus I adore this person, whoever he is so call me biased if you must~

Lastly are our unique items- including two cola products; my most favorite of favorites~

Our first item is a popular brand known as Sour Long Gum, a dagashi snack known for its sour take on sweet flavors.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It tasted good, but oddly enough it wasn’t actually sour. It got sweeter after a few minutes but I did not taste anything sour. At all.

Speaking of sour, we also have a 5-pack set of Cola Gummies. I know you’re recommended to share these but who am I kidding. I’m willing to share but I will be doing most of the eating ;3

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

They taste really good, I love them! But I also like the fact that they are soft gummies.

Our final item (and probably the most unique) is this elegant box of Rose x Berry Glamatic Tablets made by Lotte. These are perfect if you’re preparing for a quick smooch or suffer from last-minute bad breath- and they just make your mouth feel nice~

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

They taste like their name, Berries and Rose. I know rose is a flavor people either like or don’t, but I’m one of the people who does generally enjoy it so these taste really nice to me. The flavoring/effect lasts a few minutes in the mouth once you chew/dissolve the tablet, and due to their small size you’ll probably want a few to make sure they actually work.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Quality - 4 out of 5. I liked everything, although there was damage done to the choco Z-thing I got. I can’t really fault them on that though because I know damage happens. I can fault them for this continued trend of lessening items to give us a share pack set though. I mean if you actually have people to share with or like the item enough then great, but for someone like me who was drawn in due to the amount of items, it’s a little bit let down.

Content - 4 out of 5. I generally liked everything, I’d say maybe better than the prior months box. I was a bit displeased to get a handful of repeat items though.

Theme - 5 out of 5. Not only did the items fit the Valentines Day theme it went for, but they put extra effort in the booklet as well to make each item feel Valentines special~

Total Rank: 13 out of 15 Cuties. I do miss our cute toys/bonus items they would give us, which hasn’t been happening as of late unfortunately, and I’m not found out these 5-pack singular item gimmick either; but I still really love the box. I’ve never really come across one that displeased me yet.

♥ Cutie’s Scale of Yummy ♥

1. Cola Gummies - As much as I liked things, this was no contest.

2. Strawberry Milk Chocolate thingies - They are perfect~

3. Umaibo - I didn’t know if I would like this but it ended up pleasantly surprising me :3

4. Sour Plum Chips - They taste good, and they make a fun prank chip for people who don’t like sour things.

5. Rose x Berry Mints - I’m used to mint-mint flavors, so I really enjoyed this. I usually don’t buy them lately so I take when I’m given.

6. Shortcake Pepsi - It was good but I wouldn’t drink it frequently, even in season.

7. Cola Gum - It was good, but I didn’t taste the sourness and the flavor was overall lighter.

8. Choco Thingy - It was a little bitter but I like dark chocolate. I loved it’s crispy texture~

9. Ice Cream Lolly - Nothing too special. A different type of strawberry cream chupa-chups.

10. Barley Puffs - They seemed stale; not like before...

11. Wafer - This one was skimping on something- it just wasn’t as good as I remember.

12. Strawberry Rusk - For some reason I just did not like it much.

13. Strawberry Pocky - It’s my favorite flavor, but I was more attracted to the boy and the lovely packaging then a snack I’ve eaten a million times.

Alrighty Cuties, we’ve come to another end of another Tokyo Treat Crate! I recommend checking this brand out if you like what you see or read, and remember you can check the online stores as well for any specific items :3 next I’ll be covering the DIY product so stay Cute!

#valentines candy #strawberry chocolate #pocky #pepsi #japanese pepsi #ultimate muscle #cola candy #umaibo #kira kira pretty cure

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icytatribe · 5 years

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Order of the Eglessia League of Legends’s Skin Concept for Cassiopeia

Biography:

All things have their own armor. Some are mighty yet tend to attract. Others like ours are deceiving yet beautiful. - Kind’alya of Stone

Present-day Icyta (Arthfael’s Reign):

It was the young Arc’hantael II’s first Winter Pilgrimage. King Arthfael, Queen Isarili, and the prince led their tribe first to the Temple of Eglessia to seek blessings for their journey from the 5 Kind’alya Deities. It started with the Goddess Auriel’enya and Aadihama grasping a gentle puddle of water to bathe the waddlings. Down the line of statues behind Her, an eternal flame, tended by the few Dove Priestesses, lit of distinct colors for each Kind’alya. Down the line, the royals met with the Eglessian Priestess then to Waters, Stone, Roots, and Sap. When they stopped in front of Stone, young Arc’hantael II looked through her Flame of Red and became immersed into a story because he wondered why all the others were their singular form and only She had a figure of Aadihama:

The Kind’alya of Stone was named Cassiopeia. She came as a high-born Acyti Elf, raised by a band of Shadow Renegades, to serve as one of the King’s Duchess. She was the only least appreciated in the Court because of her disreputable serpent appearance, cursed on one of her bandit expeditions. Cassiopeia was allowed entrance due to the power of wealth by her Shadow Renegades family. She did find a budding friendship with Zyra, one of the Queen’s Caremaidens.

Cassiopeia had to remember though, the only reason she was allowed entrance, was to infiltrate as a fellow Duchess and plan out an assassination of the King. It was almost perfect. The venom that coursed through her veins could be made into the King’s favorite Cherry Wine. When Zyra noticed of her friend’s plan, she confronted Cassiopeia.

“Why are you doing this?” Zyra held tightly on her arm. “For the family, I must. The King doesn’t understand the world far ahead of his time, and his rules are ever so cruel, not even a little leniency and so much more than his feeble mind can comprehend.” Cassiopeia explained.

Fearing Zyra might tell on her, Cassiopeia targeted her Wine one night when everyone was sleeping on the Queen’s bouquet made from Zyra to ease her illness. When morning came around, the King mourned for the Queen who didn’t breathe anymore and veins that could be seen, rashed in red. The King blamed this on Zyra and forced her into banishment beyond the Gates of Miurauri.

Cassiopeia’s Shadow Family congratulated on such a defeat with the King. When she looked at Zyra’s eyes, it was something of distrust on her. And when she looked towards others, they cared not as her friend and always ignored her. It seems Cassiopeia was alone once again. Leaving behind the Shadow Family and the life she held, Cassiopeia followed a bit later after Zyra.

At the Gates of Miurauri, a voice could be heard, calling out, “ Go on.” She held her head under hood and walked forward. The strength of the waves pulled her in, down a long-winded path. It looked as if there was no end at sight. When she heard the voice again, saying her name, it suddenly reminded her of the Nightmare. The Creature came to her young self and granted her the gift of Prophecy. In return, she would be his wife. Cassiopeia was scared back then and rejected strongly. When she turned away, the Creature cursed her that no one believed her prophecies and turned her soul into an ugly serpent.

Cassiopeia ran fast through the long-winding tunnel and fell out of the light ahead. She collapsed onto soft snowy bedding. When she woke, a young penguin with double-finned wings stood above. He patted her on the forehead. Suddenly, she peered up behind the little one and noticed the figure of Zyra across a lake, tending a white garden. Her old friend had changed since she last saw her. Afraid of coming back to the friendship, Cassiopeia crawled away behind bushes.

The young penguin, confused of her actions, followed after her. He noticed a sudden sorrow in her eyes and went up on her knees to wipe her tears. Then the young penguin heard his name, “Aadihama”, being called out by his mother, Auriel’enya. He was found with Cassiopeia by Auriel’enya. The Goddess was surprised of another Kind’alya. She noticed of her sadness and took up a snow egless from her wings. Cassiopeia admired its beauty and, unaware, touched it. Her soul and appearance began to change. She felt like her young self again.

“There’s the goodness within you. Didn’t think you hide it behind all that darkness.” Auriel’enya smiled.

“I wasn’t like this before. He changed me when I rejected him.” Cassiopeia muttered.

Auriel’enya touched her and sensed a familiar, yet dark presence that Cassiopeia once encountered. It felt like Aedanisan to which she sealed at the Gates of Miurauri. “...Did you meet him?”

Cassiopeia nodded. But Auriel’enya still asked about another. The Goddess knew she met Aedanisan, but not of her First Kind’alya before Zyra. Cassiopeia just remembered she only met a dark winged creature and nothing more.

“Oh, I do hope he is alright. I shouldn’t have asked for such a favor, yet he insisted.” Auriel’enya said aloud.

“Who are you talking about?”

“First Kind’alya. Don’t tell Zyra this, but he was the first. I’ll tell you more later and about the winged creature. Speaking of Zyra, you know her before? I see it in your soul.”

Cassiopeia nodded. Auriel’enya and Aadihama realized of this and pulled her up to meet with the other Kind’alya, Zyra and Nami. When Zyra noticed of her old friend, she raised her hand as if to kill her. Auriel’enya stopped Zyra and explained the story. At that moment, Auriel’enya felt weak and collapsed on the edge of the lake. Out of her wing came a reddened snow egless. Zyra touched it and smelled. It had Cassiopeia’s poison which she didn’t mean to happen. Aadihama tried to shake his mother awake, but nothing came. He called out for his father, Enya, in which he swiftly swam up. Enya noticed of his beloved and blew a mint bubble. Aadihama held it within his purple seaweed circlet and gracefully upon his mother’s beak. The Goddess breathed again.

Cassiopeia touched the reddened flower and ran off to the deep forests. She apologized before then. Zyra never heard such sincerity in her apology. Zyra followed after Cassiopeia, leaving the garden with Nami to tend. Zyra hugged Cassiopeia, understanding her sudden change in this world. Goodness always comes out in this land. Maybe she didn’t mean to do it. She only needed a bit guidance of magic. Together, they helped shape the red snow egless, so it doesn’t harm the penguins. It kept its unique red as its idea was from Cassiopeia. When they returned back to the garden, Nami was down injured and the flowers were trampled. Nami told them it was the neighboring humans in the land. They grew attracted to this beauty and tried to steal the flowers. Nami wouldn’t let them, so they hurt the garden.

Cassiopeia realized of this and kneeled to the snowy ground. Her hands, within the ice, flourished with magic. She coursed it within the garden to revive the flowers and reborn them as a Blood Snow Egless. The flowers flourished well for the future, protecting its berries and encased within their snow petals tinted with red. The thought was the flowers protected itself from humans and poisoned their hearts if they tried.

Aadihama and Auriel’enya came forward at the beautiful garden tended by the three. It had its unique touch from Cassiopeia. Auriel’enya heard Cassiopeia’s apology again, and she always accepted it. The Goddess was sure she didn’t mean it. That’s what the snow egless does, and sometimes others react to it differently. Beautifully, in Cassiopeia’s case.

Aadihama hugged Cassiopeia and offered to be her guide in living in the snow lands and Icyta Tribe as he proclaimed to be the name for the penguins.

Cassiopeia couldn’t help but remember. “Auriel’enya. Who did you mean when you said if I met him?”

Auriel’enya looked towards her and smiled, “Oh. I guess I shouldn’t keep secrets. It’s not good for the heart.”

Back with Arc’hantael II, he lingered his eyes behind the Kind’alya of Stone’s statue. It was just nothing but the igloo wall. Yet he could feel something else. There must be a book in the Temple that Arc had to get his wings on.

#league of legends #skinconcept #cassiopeia

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ecotone99 · 4 years

Text

[SP] Digging Sharp Fingernails into the Soft of a Hand

He was slightly moving the change in his pocket while half listening to the girl in front of him. He couldn’t quite see her face, it was dark now and they were far from the fire. He couldn’t recall how this interaction began either, just that he was here now listening to her words. He knew her, she was friends of an ex-girlfriend of his. He didn’t know this girl’s name but remembered it rhymed with a car company. She was talking about a brother of hers and him learning to drive. The movements of his fingers were slow and precise, he didn’t want to move too quickly and have her notice his obvious signs of boredom. The girl in front of him shivered and so he seized the moment to try and leave the conversation.

“Cold?” He wrapped his arms around his torso to answer his question for her. “I guess Summer is ending ealy.” He put an emphasis on his words to make them sound as though they were said with a smile. She did not respond directly to what he said. Instead she began talking about a class she took about temperature and climate and - “We should probably get closer to the fire.” He spoke quickly to not fully cut her off. He started walking towards the group surrounding the fire and she followed; she also continued talking. She stopped talking once they broke the seal and fully entered the circle of people and thus entered into their conversation. They were talking about ghosts and someone looked at him and asked him if he believed in ghosts.

He had been haunted once before. When he was younger and still in elementary school, early winter. He remembered playing out in the snow that whole day. The snow was so special to him, its rarity sparked his attention. A blanket of snow, untouched, un-fussed with, just flat white. Just nothing. Just snow. It was a weekend day but he still put a spoon under his pillow the night before. It was something a girl in his class had told them all to do earlier in the week. Put a spoon under your pillow at night to make it snow so we won’t have to come to school. It didn't work that whole week, but it finally did for him when school closures didn’t matter much. Most kids would have saved their nighttime spoon magic for a more opportune time, but he just wanted snow.

He was passive at this age, not really caring about himself enough to care about anyone else. He would sometimes cry in private. When putting things away for recess he would volunteer to put the balls in the closet at the end of the hall, he could get a few moments alone this way. He would shed a few tears, allowing his body to tremble. And then he would wipe away those tears and sit by himself. He had awful handwriting and one day while learning how to write the letter z in cursive he broke down in class. He could not get away to somewhere undisturbed to let himself cry and he began doing it in his seat. He was frustrated and that is what brought about the tears but he felt nothing else. He could sense the ears of his peers and of his teacher eventually though as he sat there pitifully in his seat. Pencil shaking in his hand against the paper, a scratching sensation. Someone put their hand on his back and at that moment he felt embarrassed, but he stopped crying. He was embarrassed but calm at least. His head did not move, he just kept his eyes on his failed attempts at the curves of a z. He could never be certain who it was that put their hand on his back, so many of his peers had moved closer to get a better look at the crying boy. He had a feeling about who it was, Spoon Girl looked at him differently after that. She smiled at him in odd ways during math. She threw tiny cookies shaped like bears at him during snack time. He occasionally would throw a fish-shaped cheese cracker back at her and they would laugh. During writing practice she once took his sheet out from under his arms and filled in all the cursive capital fs and then slyly slid it back to where it was before her intervention. When it got cold he gave her one of his gloves before the class went outside. It is a funny image, a young boy giving a young girl a singular glove while he keeps one on. It shows an odd awareness of a desire to be kind, but not in a realistic way. It is the thought that counts, but a cold hand is a cold hand. Perhaps it was because of this blossoming friendship that she told him first about her spoon magic. She pulled him close and whispered it to him, pushing cold air into his ear with her words. She spent the rest of that day telling others in the class to do the same, as though they had all been planning some elaborate prank that the teacher could not find out about. He watched her all day as she did it, knowing that he was first. He felt very special. That feeling faded with each morning he woke up and saw grass. No one else at school seemed to notice the collective failure besides him and Spoon Girl. He wanted it to snow in part for his selfish love for the snow, and in part for her.

There was a hill and a pond in front of his house. Not a real pond but one of those man-made ones to help people who live in boxes in a row of boxes feel closer to nature. The hill wasn’t very impressive either, to call it a hill even is rather generous; it looked so much bigger the morning it snowed, the thin layer of the stuff created an illusion to make it look larger than life. He marched over to the top of that hill early in the morning and played for hours. He pretended to be on some grand adventure then lose his footing and begin sliding towards the ice-covered water. With his quick wit he would take his stick and put it in just the right spot to pull himself to safety. Only to lose his footing again and so the play session went.

That night his parents went to a neighbors house for a dinner party. He had been looking forward to this night almost as much as he had been looking forward to the snow. For the past week a documentary on African tribes had been airing on TV. He didn't care about Africa or its tribes but he had tuned in every night. The tribes included women who did not cover their breasts. He found this while flipping through the channels alone in the living room and he was glued for a moment but felt shame, as though he shouldn’t be seeing what he was. The next night he turned to that channel. This time he stood at the entryway with the remote in hand, ready to switch the channel should anyone arrive. The shame receded as the likelihood of being caught was minimized. He was mesmerized by how he felt watching these women walk around and perform normal tasks. It was new to him, the female form.

When his parents left he began his accent up the stairs to the TV. His excitement made his mouth wet. It was not sexual for him, he didn’t even know the word or what it meant at the time. It was a self dissection. It wasn’t on and he was disappointed. He watched cartoons instead. It was not a disappointment that stung for long, he was distracted soon enough and did not give much thought to breasts or their absence.

His parents came home the same time he heard the sirens, he can’t recall which came first. Mother ushered him to bed quickly. She was honest with him, told him a car had crashed in the pond and that was the end of it. It was a shallow pond, no one could drown. He was too young and too naive to factor in the cold. Cold had no danger, he played in the cold and enjoyed the cold. He had no idea the cold could kill. He fell to sleep with red and blue lights glowing in his room from the window. Tearing their way through every crack in his curtains. Pulling their figure and light and color into the undisturbed darkness.

The next morning he learned it was her, his classmate. Spoon girl. It was her, her mother, and her older sister. Spoon girl and her mother died at the edge of the pond. Her sister was in a coma for a week before passing away. They had been donating cloth or food, he couldn't recall and it didn’t make much difference either way.

The school counselor was in his classroom at the start of the week. They all sat like they were going to have a story read to them. Instead a long and drawn out conversation about grief and death and loss and life and ice. He thought of her father then, he was all alone; his wife and all his children were taken away in the night. Had it been his clothes they took to donate? Maybe his cooking? Maybe he felt bad about the last time he told his daughters he loved them. Had he slept with a spoon under his pillow lying in bed next to his wife for the last time wishing for snow, if he did, an image of curved metal flung from a window, hidden by what remained of the snow. Only to reappear as the seasons changed. This was all imaginary though, he knew only children put spoons under their pillows. Only he believed he could control the snow.

He told a highschool girlfriend of his once, early in their relationship. It was late and she called him, keeping it vague. He had wanted a girlfriend for so long. Boys in high school think of girlfriends and they think of going out to eat, blowjobs, and fighting other boys at parties. Girls aren’t real living breathing people to young boys, they are perfect. Baggage is non-existent and does not matter.

He had been to her house everyday after school that week, both her parents were out of town and her Grandmother, the caretaker in their absence, wouldn’t notice him sneaking in through the basement window. He did the same this evening. It lacked the same thrill. Sexily sneaking into his girlfriend’s basement in the day to fuck felt like a scene from a movie. It felt like what he imagined having a girlfriend would be like, it was thrilling. It was fun, he did it with a smile on his face. Very Romeo and Juliet is what he thought at the time and he probably said something like that to her. In the silence of the night it felt much more criminal. He walked the same steps he had early in the day but the pounding pressure of the darkness felt much more intense.

Her eyes didn’t belong to her. There was an empty wine bottle on the nightstand, the light from the lamp illuminated it in a way to expose its emptiness. It was a sad scene he was entering into, an inauthentic lived in feel. It was fake, that's what they had been doing all week. They had been pretending to live here, to make a home, to have a life. A rushed life as all highschool relationships were. The room smelt like the two of them, the decay was their doing. Somehow more unnatural now. Now it was a distortion of their distortion. From a room to a room pretending to be something it was not to just sad.

He hugged her before saying anything, a hollow holding. Her body felt foreign, and he didn’t want to speak. It was cold and quiet. It was in moments like this when he saw Spoon Girl. Moments when everything felt slightly off, when he felt like an observer in his own life. These movements, the hug, the silence, the chill, it was just movement. His mind was vacant, fixated on the empty bottle. He saw her in reflections mostly. Bathroom mirrors or rear-view mirrors in cars or empty wine bottles. She would be there, observing. She never moved, never spoke. She just was. She looked the same as always, young and cold. Her face would never move, her shivering would never stop, and her lips were never less blue. He tried talking to her when he was younger, tried treating her like a friend. That faded eventually, now he just looked at her and she looked at him. She always looked so cold that he couldn’t stare for long sometimes, a rip in his chest would tear his eyes from the reflection giving her life.

There is a girl in that corner. His voice blended into the silence of the room. She died when I was younger, we were classmates. Right in front of my house. He had never talked about it before. When she died he didn’t react. He was somber with the rest of his peers, but he still smiled at recess. He still ate cheese crackers during snack time. When he first saw her in the bathroom mirror he was scared. He was going to tell his mother but his feet would not allow him to move. He was stuck with her in the mirror and he realised she wasn’t scary. She was just cold. So, he kept it to himself and he continued going to recess and eating snacks and seeing her occasionally. Nothing changed, he just kept moving.

He locked eyes with his highschool girlfriend as she sat up, blocking his sight of the girl in the reflection. Her voice danced in this room, it moved slowly. He couldn’t quite make out any concrete ideas in what she was saying. Her voice was stumbling, drunk, failing to perform. Something about water. She began crying as she laid back down but her eyes were closed. Tears being squeezed through the skin blocking her eyes. She began to take her top off, it was a t-shirt, some band her dad liked. It was soaked in vomit. She threw the shirt at where Spoon Girl had been standing, but she wasn’t there anymore. She took his hand and put it on her left breast, she tried to speak again. His head panned to the bottle again, nothing but empty. That was the last time he saw Spoon Girl.

He left soon after that. He had covered her as he left. He was biting his nails the whole time, spitting the fragments into the trash can he had put by the bed as he cleaned and covered her. She continued to shiver no matter how many blankets her put on her. She said something as he left, perhaps it was a thanks. He couldn’t hear, he turned off the lamp, and he closed the door behind him. He stood there for a moment before departing, soaking in the darkness of this house. Letting his eyes adjust, letting the blood from his ragged nails pool where the nail meets skin. For such an odd night, the brightness and the sharpness should penetrate his memory. None of it did though, it was a blur by the time he climbed out the window. He knew it somehow that he would never see Spoon Girl again. He drove home in silence, a knot building in his stomach.

He laid in his bed for a long while before drifting off to sleep that night. He was too hot, then too cold. Were her arms bleeding? Was she bleeding or was the wet her vomit? Blood, he remembered blood the small drops from his serrated nails. He thought she might be bleeding but couldn’t tell. She was bleeding from three small cuts made with her right hand holding the same razor she uses to shave her legs. The cuts were between her shoulder and elbow on the underside of her arm, close to her armpit. It wouldn’t be until a year later he would notice the scars and connect the dots to his sleepily conjured thoughts that night. He fell asleep with the thought of blood on his mind. Not red, not sticky, not liquid. The word.

“No, I don’t think I believe in ghosts. I think our minds play tricks with us. Like if you are guilty or just really want your life to be interesting for a moment you can truly see a door open or a shadowy figure walk towards you. It is real because your mind says it's real, but nothing is actually there.”

The girl whose name rhymes with a car company began speaking next in response to the question. He took his hand out of his pocket and tore into his thumbs nail, peeling it away from flesh, it tasted metallic. When he got in his car to drive back to his apartment he took an extra moment to look in his rearview mirror. Half expecting his blatant denial of her existence to make her reappear. She did not and he was met with only silence.

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lnicol1990 · 5 years

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Dark Domain - Session 2

Been busy for the last couple of weeks, so I haven’t been keeping on top of my write ups. So! Let’s fix that, shall we?

Well, this session really tested my budding DMing skills about halfway through, but was still a load of fun.

Thankfully, my players are wonderful and were very patient with me as I dealt with the twist, one even put his character aside to help me with the massive plot twist another player had pulled. He’d done it completely in character, mind, and I had known that this was a possible outcome, but I still wasn’t prepared to deal with it.

But, enough cryptics. On with the story!

Let’s preface this session’s retelling with an alignment disclosure. Irah is Lawful Neutral, Kaieth is Lawful Evil and both Delirium and Rolfor are Chaotic Evil. That is very important for later.

We began this session where the last left off, with Rolfor entering Quain on his own and claiming to be the great druid of the forest. The townsfolk gather round him and he is able to convince them of his claim, but they are confused. One man steps forward, an aasimar, and asks if he is a Brother of Almin.

Rolfor knows that Almin is the God of Bounty and Fertility for the Empire, and declares that he is a Brother, to which the aasimar asks if he has come to visit his fellow. At which point, an elf calmly walks out of the treeline, dressed in simple, naturally dyed clothes. The aasimar greets the elf, calling him Keen, and elf addresses the aasimar as Saepin.

The two speak for a moment about who will house this druid newcomer, during which Rolfor deducts that they are speaking honestly and sincerely. Saepin is willing and happy to house Rolfor (who introduced himself as Torag), but feels it better that the druids stay together so they may discuss their ways in respectful privacy. Keen agrees and tells ‘Torag’ to follow the signs to his house, as he intends to go ahead to prepare for his guest. Rolfor objects, unable to read druidic signs, saying he would rather they go together and he help Keen prepare, as he has put his “fellow druid” out by turning up unannounced. Keen looks at him suspiciously but does not deny him. and leads Rolfor to his little clearing in the woods.

There, Keen drops his disguise and reveals himself to be an 8′ tall firbolg, explaining that his true appearance makes the townsfolk uncomfortable. He then asks Rolfor what he was trying to do by setting the forest alight earlier, and what had he planned to do if Keen had not been there to put the fires out. Rolfor reveals that he had had the situation under control and had ice magic to combat the flames. Feeling on edge and isolated, Rolfor makes a quick break for the clearing’s exit, but stops just as quick when Keen mentions that he had intended to teach Rolfor some magic that would help him deal with fire in the future.

The budding wizard, eager to learn more spells, backtracks and assures Keen that he would be honoured to learn some druidic spells. His persuasiveness is aided with a little magic, intended to induce a more friendly attitude. So, over the next two/three hours, Keen teaches him how to create and destroy small amounts of water. During the training, he expresses sympathy for the Domain’s overpopulation, saying the land itself cries out from the burden, but that he will not get involved with the expansion.

As Rolfor is being privately tutored, Delirium makes his way towards town, but stops short and hides in the undergrowth, a twisted idea forming in his mind and deciding that he needs to wait until nightfall. He waits there, silently, for the next eight or more hours.

Irah and Kaieth, having taken the seals of entry from the adventurers and stripped them of anything interesting (a warhammer and 50 pieces of Imperial gold), they dump the bodies out of sight and make their way to Quain. The previous crowd has dispersed by then and they are greeted by a singular man. The pair factually state that they are from the Domain and are there to establish trade, not cause trouble. The man is initially horrified at their admission, but calms down upon seeing their seals and with their assurances that they mean Quain no harm.

Saepin, the assimar from earlier approaches, who frightens Irah for a moment before realising the man isn’t a Scourge like he was. He’s the priest of the church and, while as nervous as the other man, cautiously welcomes them in. Father Saepin tells them that any trade deal will have to wait as they are in the middle of the Festival of Choosing, where they pick the town’s new governor as the last had died a month ago. With the other man, Matrim, being one such candidate.

Irah and Kaieth both see this as an oppotunity, if they can get a sympathetic candidate into power, they can take Quain without bloodshed. They enter the town and are greeted with a large party, people celebrating and socialising, and the pair are left feeling completely out of their depths. Neither have attended a party before and neither know how to mingle and have fun.

As the party begins, Rolfor finishes his training and sets off back to town. On his way he meets Eldon, a halfing bard who was late to the party due to his boat being stolen. Eldon mistakes Rolfor for a fellow adventurer and believes him when he says the others stole his seal. Eldon promises to help him get in and they make their way to Quain, singing and playing the lute all the way there. They are greeted by Matrim, who lets them in.

Eldon leaves to have fun, while Rolfor meets back up with Irah and Kaieth, making sure to avoid directly associating with them. He slips them a note that tells them not to blow his cover, and they leave each other alone for the most part.

A member of the town offers Irah and Kaieth a tankard of ale and they both drink to avoid looking like stick-in-the-muds, with the alcohol going straight to Irah’s head. After some... possible regretful decisions, Irah finds himself vomiting against the church wall, with Rolfor holding him up and Father Saepin offering him a glass of water and a lie down within the church. Feeling terrible and not thinking clearly enough to be worried about stepping into a church of the faith he abandoned, he takes the offer.

Kaieth, now alone in the town centre, tries to gather what information he can about the festival and how it works. He approaches a man called Seoran, who says that he is candiadte for position, and it is explained by the man’s friends.

The candidates get volunteers to sail out with them on a boat and go fishing. Whoever gets the most fish in the allotted time is said to have Almin’s Blessing and becomes the new governor.

Kaieth thanks them for explaining it to him and leaves them in peace. As he leaves, however, he hears Seoran mutter slurs against the Domain, and notes to himself that they probably don’t want that man to win.

He is the approached by Matrim, who is checking that he’s okay and comfortable. Kaieth explains that he doesn’t understand the volunteering, and Matrim explains that the party is meant to be an opportunity for the candidates to convince townsfolk to volunteer for them when the event starts. Matrim mentions that he’s been having trouble finding volunteers and he thinks Seoran is using his money to buy the townsfolk off. When Kaieth asks if outsiders are allowed to volunteer, he is told that that’s why adventurers are invited, so they can volunteer is the candidate is short of people. Matrim mentions that Nestor, the last candidate, is probably going to have to ask the adventurers for help as he isn’t very popular in town.

Kaieth considers what he’s been told and volunteers himself for Matrim, should he not find enough people for his fishing team. He has not met Nestor and decides that, of the two candidates he’s met, he would prefer Matrim to win, as the man has proven himself to be level headed and welcoming, albeit cautiously.

As much information gathered as possible and beginning to feel quite uncomfortable on his own, Kaieth retires to the church for the evening.

As evening turns to night, Delirium finally gets on with his idea. He had overheard that there was a competition for governor and changes his plan slightly to match this new information. Staying close to the forest and keeping out of sight, he splashes a house with the barrel of lamp oil and leaves a message that only shows once the oil lights. He leaves the severed head nearby, abandons the barrel and lights the oil. Chaos incited, he slips back into the forest.

The house quickly catches fire and an alarm is raised. People rush from their homes, the party from the church, and make their way to the burning building. many people see a message written in the flames on the cobblestone next to the inferno.

Vote Kaieth as the new governor or more will die.

Kaieth is understandably confused for a moment and then more than a little angry. He knows who the culprit is and the madman has just destroyed what goodwill he’d built over the day. He does nothing with this information, though, there are more important issues at hand.

Irah asks who owned the house, and the townsfolk start calling for someone; Jereb. When there is no response, the calls become more desperate, and Irah decides to charge into the burning building. He is followed by Kaieth, both of them now convinced that the owner is still inside.

Smoke immediately fills their vision and their lungs, Kaieth breathing in at the wrong moment and coughing violently. He can, however, hear coughing that is not his own and a quiet cry for help. He guides Irah towards the sound and they are met with a closed door. Irah kicks the door down and they are assaulted by fire as it leaps out at the new entry before dying down. They both narrowly miss being burned by it. On the floor of the burning room, they find the man in question and, after checking that one else is inside, drag him to his feet. They both grab an arm and help Jereb to the door.

As they begin their return journey, the roof collapses. They both throw Jereb to safety before the roof lands before them and tell him to continue out. Both warriors grab the fallen, burning structure and pick it up, straining, and move it to a side. They make enough space for them to squeeze through and they run out to safety and clean air, both covered in burns and coughing heavily.

Rolfor, seeing his teammates safe, decides to put his newly learnt spell to the test and creates a cloud of rain to pour over the flames... an oil fire.

It does not go well.

The water and oil mix badly, causing the flames to burst wildly. This sets off the barrel that Delirium had left by the house and the whole thing explodes. Thankfully, the burning debris manages to miss every building close by, but the flames engulf the neighbouring house.

Hopelessness setting in, Irah makes a quiet prayer for aid and strikes the newly burning building with his battleaxe. With a thunderous strike, he hits the building with enough force that the air quivers and pops, the detonation putting out the flames, and a thunderous roar is heard across the island, deafening himself, Rolfor and a portion of the townsfolk.

The first building has collapsed in on itself at this point and the other building, while shaken, is still intact. The fire message still burns quietly to itself, but the danger has now passed.

Kaieth sits down by the statue in the town centre. He knows that he’s going to be questioned, and there’s no way he can avoid it. Meanwhile, Irah checks on Rolfor, who was sent flying when the first house blew up.

As the excitement is dying down, Delirium sneaks his way into the nearby allotment. He plans on dressing up and taking the scarecrow’s place, intent on standing in the same spot during the next day. However, vines grow explosively at his feet and entangle him so tightly that he can’t escape.

Keen appears out of the treeline and admonishes him for putting so much in danger. He then calls for guards, who recognise Keen in his normal form and take Delirium away, with the druid releasing Delirium once hes safely secured.

The man yells out, his phrasing a bit strange as he’s speaking in Thieves cant. Rolfor, however, can’t hear him due to Irah’s thunderous strike on the house and Delirium’s message is lost to the wind.

Once Delirium has been safely taken away, Father Saepin approaches Kaieth. He is relieved to hear that the elf has taken care of his own injuries and is otherwise unharmed. Then he asks if Kaieth knew the arsonist and is told that they brought Delirium across because the man no longer wanted to be part of the Domain, and had disappeared. The priest takes the elf at his word.

After tending to “Torag”’s mild injuries and deafness, Saepin encourages Irah to tend to himself. The fallen aasimar (now sober and not so eager to take his brethren’s aid) treats himself. When questioned, Irah gives the same cover story as Kaieth and they avoid suspicion, though Irah almost blows Rolfor’s cover when the wizard speaks briefly with Keen, theorising aloud that was why they hadn’t seen him when they first entered town, although they are able to bluff their way out of that, explaining that Irah had seen “Torag” in the forest during their skirmish with the adventurers.

At which point, the hour is late and everyone is set to retire, with Saepin staying behind to tend to those injured from the fire. Irah offers to stay and help, with Saepin gratefully accepts.

Rolfor slips away into the church quietly, where they were offered a room and where Delirium is currently being held in the catacombs (as Quain has no proper jail). As Rolfor makes his way to where Delirium is being held, he hears a shriek of pain and a shout from one of the guards.

Delirium had had his hands restrained, but was still dangerous. He kicked one guard hard in the chest, revealing a hidden blade in the toe that cut through the guard’s leather armour, slipped between the ribs and punctured a lung, narrowly missing the man’s heart. Panicked, the other guard (a mage) burned his spell slots to cast a high levelled Sleep spell to knock out Delirium, catching their companion in the area of effect as well.

At which point, Rolfor enters the scene with Delirium and one guard down. The other begs him to call for backup, which Rolfor agrees to. He makes his way partly back upstairs before sneakily turning back and returning to the lone guard. Unnoticed, he slits the man’s throat and wakes Delirium. They finish off the sleeping guard and quickly leave the catacombs, retreating to the guest rooms, where Delirium hides under one of the beds to avoid detection.

And there, the session ends.

#d&d #The Dark Domain

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theseventeenthcentury-blog1 · 6 years

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New Musical Express 17 February 1996

LOOK BACK IN WRANGLER

His friends said his house smelt! His dad deserted him after a caravan holiday! And nobody ever understands the dysfunctional, heart-felt lyrics of his novelty Euro-electropop. LAWRENCE, aka DENIM, has a good old whinge to TED KESSLER about life, love and the trials and tribulations involved in recording his latest offering, 'Denim On Ice'. Agony and ecstasy: DEREK RIDGERS

The happiest day of Lawrence's life was when he came home from work to find his mum had finally killed the dog. And in the same week that his dad left home! How brilliant is that?

God, did he hate that dog. They all did: his mum, his sister, the rest of the village. Even his dad might have, but he'd stopped talking to Lawrence five years earlier so he couldn't be sure. Its fair to say, though, that dog had ruined Lawrence's life.

It wasn't just the smell of the thing; although, if we have to draw up a list of the beast's faults, that'd be top. He smelt so foul that Lawrence hadn't been able to bring his mates home since the day he'd returned from school, aged seven, with a friend who'd walked into the hallway and yelled, "Phroooar! What's that stink?"

Well, you know what kids are like. That was it. He'd have to do the visiting now. Everyone In the village thought he lived in a slum anyway. He wasn't going to let on that it ponged of a vicious dog that behaved like a mad pig.

So, when his mum woke to find his dad had left in the night, She decided to have the dog put down. Lawrence thought it was the coolest thing she'd ever done. He'd lost faith in her long ago when her response to his musical ambitions was, "People like us don't join groups", but, for a moment there, he'd seen a glimmer ...

When he moved away from Water Orton to live the life of an artist in the dull lights of Birmingham he cut all links to his mum. But killing that dog, man, killing that dog was very cool. Your dad splits but he leaves his dog so your mum kills his dog. Hmm ... maybe Lawrence had been a little harsh on her for that comment about his career ... Maybe there hadn't been a mistake at the hospital and maybe Lawrence really was related to his mum ... Maybe not speaking to her for the past 14 years was a little extreme ...

THE RACK by the sink is filled with freshly washed '70s RAK seven-inch singles, and although there is a pint of milk and a vacuum-sealed jar of nuts in the fridge, the only real source of nourishment in this kitchen is knowledge, because all the cupboards are filled with books. The living room has an armchair, a television, a stereo and cardboard boxes filled with old music magazines and the odd bit of fan mail. In the bedroom there's a futon, a swivel-chair and a tape-player. That's it. It's an immaculate, spartan, first-floor flat in a bold blue yuppie block overlooking the Thames by Tower Bridge. Now, who could live in a place like this?

There are two likely candidates: Luke Goss, former drummer with teen sensations Bros, and Lawrence, the most singular, visionary, driven and quietly ridiculed songwriter in contemporary British pop (Jarvis Cocker, Mark E Smith and Morrissey included). Since Luke Goss moved out a couple of months ago, Lawrence (he dropped his surname because it sounded too similar to two other singers: one in a '70s moody rock combo, the other in an '80s pop group; he keeps it a secret ... but it's Hayward) is the only pop star wannabe currently left in the block.

During the '80s Lawrence toiled with Felt, his labour of love, achieving his aim to release ten wildly contrasting albums (from guitar-fed indie angst to spooky jazz instrumentals to melancholic rock) in ten years. When Felt split he made for New York and returned with a new project: Denim. The idea for Denim was to mix his memories of the '70s with modern social comment and set it in a brash electronic '90s pop context. It would sound nothing like Felt, or indeed anything.

Denim's first album, '92's 'Back In Denim', was greeted with critical acclaim (nine out of ten in the NME), vilification (promotional copies were ritually burned by the missionary-position hacks) and commercial indifference. Lawrence, who'd hoped for pop worship after a decade of intense underground reverence, blamed 'Back In Denim's moderate sales on his then parent label London Records' insistence that the album be independently distributed. Now, he admits it may have been a blessing.

"A lot of the ideas I had for that record have since been very successful for others, although if you weren't paying attention it might have not seemed that way," he says wryly, on the edge of his bed. "But having seen what's happened to Jarvis, I may have been on the wrong track thinking I'd like to be famous. I'd like to be in the charts, but I'm not likeable enough to be a pop star. My views just aren't mainstream."

Next, he set about composing an even poppier follow-up called 'Denim On Ice', but last summer, halfway through recording it, his girlfriend called a halt to their four year on/off relationship, causing Lawrence a major crisis.

"I didn't even think of it as a relationship until she ended it, but then I totally changed my mind. It had been trouble recording the album before then, because it'd become really expensive and we were on a budget, but when she left it became double-trouble. I re-wrote a load of the lyrics and had to postpone doing the vocals for months."

What has eventually emerged is a cheesy pop album which sort of fuses Ian Dury with '90s Euro pop, and sounds like nothing you've ever heard, intertwining lyrical themes as diverse as pub rock ('The Great Pub Rock Revival': Lawrence imagines it's him versus the world when the NME endorses a Pub Rock revival next year), oral sex ('Grandad's False Teeth': when Lawrence's girl goes down on him, it's like she's wearing grandad's false teeth — she says the same of him. Walthamstow Kids Choir on one chorus) and junkies ('Glue And Smack': "When I wake in the morning/I greet the day with a smile/I pump stuff into my body/Then I reel around like a child"). When first aired in the NME office, some sat in awed wonder, others tried to throw the stereo from the window.

"I'm not surprised, becaust novelty has never been hip with people who think they're involved in serious music. I love music so much, I've had to form a novelty band because rock'n'roll is dead, It's over. As a serious art form, It's finished. All your heroes have blown it. No-one liked The Beatles during punk because there was so much else, but that's what 15-year-olds are into now. Electronic music has taken over and rock'n'roll will never have that force. Lyrically it will, if only someone out there could write. Why can't I make a record like Kim Wilde's 'Kids In America', but in a hip way?

"But I'm not wasting my time, I'm trying to do something new. Novelty music with a real social and personal comment on top. It hasn't been done before. What I liked about Lou Reed and Bob Dylan were the brilliant lyrics, but after 'Desire' why didn't Dylan use synths instead of saxes and soul backing singers? He wore flares, didn't acknowledge the new wave, and that dated him. It would be easy to do more Felt stuff with traditional instruments, but where's the challenge? Why not let the kids hear something different? But I'm not copying anyone. No-one does what I do. It's lonely out there."

LAST SUMMER, prompted by that girlfriend thing and the problems that recording 'Denim On Ice' provoked, Lawrence started thinking about his folks. He thought about his mum killing the dog, about his dad leaving home and about the fact that he hadn't spoken to his mum for 14 years, or his dad for nearly 20. He was approaching his mid-30s. They could die soon. He wrote his dad a letter.

It was a long, respectful, warm letter that asked why his old man had suddenly stopped talking to Lawrence when he came back from a caravan holiday.

"He wrote back, saying, 'Don't dwell on the past, son, look to the future!' That was it. It was so cold! My sister rang me and said, 'He's so happy you wrote!' I was, like, 'You want to read what he's written!' I went to see my mum and we talked about her washing machine. The emotional things of the past 15 years had been exhausted in 45 minutes. Didn't even mention the dog.

"It just made me realise how utterly alone I am. I feel totally isolated. I don't have a social life because I've got no rapport with anyone. I never bring people back here and get off on records because nobody shares my taste. I just sit here doing ... nothing, thinking.

"But I'm not alone. There's a whole generation of lonely, disaffected people out there and if they need someone to identify with, it's me, because I don't clock off. I don't get changed at seven and go down the pub because I don't even drink. Drinking's what old men do, and I've never wanted to be one. I think you can be a kid forever, gaining wisdom along the way. Life's a good journey, though, it's the one proper journey ..."

Time for the next leg. Lawrence is off to the studio to record a B-side ("It's called 'Wendy James' and it's pro: it's the one that will finish me off for most people") before rehearsals for Denim's Pulp support slot begin. He may feel like pop's Vasco Da Gama endowed with Howard Hughes' social skills, but the next album's already planned ...

It's called 'Denim Take Over'.

#felt #denim #lawrence #new musical express #1996

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