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blood-mocha-latte · 5 months

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godly, illegal, versed — gene and renée drabble

for an ask from @xxluckystrike || request an edit/drabble || i contemplated briefly writing this entirely in french and offering a translation, but figured that i wanted to go a different route, lmao. plus, renée is too wonderful to have to withstand my rusty french lol. there still is french in here and it’s all mine, so if there are fuck-ups that’s why asdfghjkl

When she closed her eyes, she always saw the windows.

Her mother had had a painting like that, years ago, when she was a child. People clustered around a shop window glowing orange with comfort, holding sweets or clothes or toys inside.

“Tout Paris brille ainsi.” She’d murmur, holding her close, pressing a kiss to her hair. “Nous irons là-bas et nous danserons dans cette lumière.”

“Quand?” Renée had asked, her breath shaky, running a finger across the texture of the canvas, wondering how man could make something so godly.

That didn’t much matter, now.

The windows of the Bastogne church did not glow, nor shine, and she did not dance under their light.

((Once, during an artillery barrage, a fire had lit against the bodies of those lined up beside the church. It had cast its deadly light every which way, not so much guidance as a flickering omnipresence.

She had stared at that light's reflections, watched it dance in pools of blood. The man she held, keeping one hand on the side of his face and the other across his collarbones, a poor facsimile of a hug, gasped under her. Une plaie par aspiration thoracique. A sucking chest wound. There was nothing she could do.))

“Mes frères me manquent,” Anna told her once, as they hid in the looming shelter of the church, breaking chocolate in between them. “Mais je ne pense pas que je pourrais partir d'ici.”

Renée had closed her eyes, just briefly, a facsimile of rest. She thought of her mother, her sister. “Oui.” She’d murmured.

Both of them would probably leave, in a moment. With blood on their hands, light gone from their eyes, in their hearts knowing that to leave these screaming boys was to be worse than the devil, worse than god. More illegal than murdering a man in cold blood and leaving him to rot in his lover's bed. But it was better to pretend they had a choice in what they’d chosen than not.

Everything was the same and different; a limbo of the church. Soldiers that were tired and sick and hurting. She wondered if she’d be better at helping them if she wasn’t also.

The boy was new.

She sat with him, on the crumbling bench, unwrapping chocolate. It tasted like ash. Everything did.

He was silent, after commenting on her hands. She wondered if she gave the wrong answer. I never want to see a wounded man again.

She had to think carefully about her words, next, and broke off another square of chocolate to distract herself.

“My mother was a nurse in the Great War.” She told the chocolate wrapper. The boy shifted next to her. Eugène, he said. His name. She’d had an uncle named Eugène. “I wanted to… to help, like her.” Eugène was quiet next to her.

“You are helping.” He said, voice low. He didn’t look at her, either. “More than most.”

No one who would notice will live. She thought, and did not say. The silence stretched between them like silk.

“My grand-père fought in the same war.” Eugène said. “But he killed people. Hurt them.”

“So you are not like him?”

Eugène huffed. “I think I might be.” He murmured to the snow trodden ground. Renée hummed. She thought of her mother. Of her sister.

“Stay safe, yes?” She told Eugène. “Run between the fire.”

Eugène nodded, eyes on the ground. “You too.” He said. Renée nodded back.

“Il y a un garçon qui n'a pas plus de dix-sept ans à l'intérieur.” Anna told her, later that night. The front of her clothes were stained with blood. Renée wrapped her fingers around her wrist and squeezed gently, just to know she was still there. “J'ai besoin d'aide pour le garder immobile.”

Renée let go of her to look briefly over her shoulder. The boy had gone back to his soldiers on the last van. She hoped he wouldn’t have to come back with another, screaming and bloody and calling him Gene, asking him to please help.

“Chirurgie?” She asked. Anna sighed, nodded to the back. A well versed dance.

“Bras.” Was all she said. Renée scrubbed a hand down her face. It left the coppery-taste of blood and chocolate in her mouth.

“Ma mère aimait danser.” She told Eugène. The surgeon called her down but didn’t need her help for long. She searched through torn up bedsheets and everything else for what the boy could bring back to his soldiers. “Elle a toujours voulu aller à Paris et danser sous ses lumières.”

Eugène hummed. His face was lined with exhaustion. She could see blood under his fingernails when he picked up a roll of fabric she’d torn from a dead boy’s bedsheets. “Si jamais vous voulez visiter Paris aussi,” He said, “Je pourrais venir avec vous.”

Renée nodded to him. She was mostly just tired. She doubted she could ever dance again without feeling it in her bones.

She didn’t hurt. The plywood was like a blanket.

She imagined she could feel her mothers lips press to her hair, her arms holding her. Her warmth.

“Ma petite fille forte.” Her mother whispered. “Viens danser à Paris avec moi.”

When she closed her eyes, she saw the windows.

#rie writes #hi and welcome to rie projects onto characters because this is what happens when she is given time a computer and a medicine tie-in #doc roe #eugene roe #renee lemaire #band of brothers #hbo war

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boredpathologist · 11 months

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He was dead. He was dead. He was dead. He was dead. And then he wasn't.

His eyes shot open, trying to focus on something - anything. A wet sucking sound emanated from his throat, in a bloody facsimile of a death rattle. Terminal respiratory secretions. That was the term. He knew that. It was something he could grasp in his mind, something he understood. Nothing else made sense.

Nothing made sense.

All he could do was move his eyes, blink. Staring back at him was the man who had made him - Corrado Giovanni. The man who had promised him the world, if he would be his for a decade. The man he had disappointed. Who he had been told was his uncle, but his grandparents had never talked about him as if he was their child. But… he couldn't be Corrado, Coraddo wasn't rotting. His eyes were not clouded over, gums not receeded back lengthening every tooth, skin not mottled with pooled blood. But there was no way that this was anyone but his Domitor.

Why was he not dead? Why did he have a body again? He had been in Hell - as far as he knew. The crash, the crunch of his own skull being the last thing he heard. The world around him going dark, and his waking up in the process of being ripped from the Earth. The being (demon? he had no idea) that had ripped him from the ground stood over him, inhuman hunger in its human face. He had tried to run, to escape. He had prayed, prayed as he had never prayed before.

Had his prayers been answered? Or was this another layer of Hell? The world decayed around him still, as his eyes finally focused on the ceiling and walls of the room in which he awoke. But it couldn't be Hell, he felt the body that he was in, he hadn't felt that when he was damned. He tried to ask Corrado what had happened, but he could only sputter on the blood that his mouth and throat had been filled with. The sputter gained him a harsh glare from his uncle. He stopped trying. A woman's voice sounded, raspy. "I expect payment now, Corrado, for saving your pet project."

He stopped listening as Corrado responded. The room - he recognised it now. It was one of the larger storage rooms in the basement of the clinic his uncle ran, emptied of all the goods that it normally contained. The ceiling tiles were cracked, and mold gathered in the corners where light refused to reach, but he knew where he was. He had spent too much time in this place to not know. As he turned his head (atlas shifting over axis), he saw careful red lines painted on the ground, running from where his body lay on a cart to another body.

Movement started to return to his body, as he slowly propelled himself to sitting upright. He had noticed by now a deep, gnawing hunger where his stomach should be, all-encompassing and slowly becoming harder and harder to ignore. He put his hand over his stomach, trying to see if he could feel it gurgling. But all he felt was cold skin, tacky with something, and a ladder of sutures that held his skin closed. Looking down, he saw that he was completely naked, and covered in the same red lines that painted the floor. They ended in swirls and other symbols at each of his joints, delicately applied. But the most glaring thing was the wide Y-shaped cut that had been stitched shut on his chest. He had been autopsied, that much was evident.

He felt a shifting in his gums as he tried to swallow what was left in his mouth, only for it to dribble from his lips. His teeth ached, and when he tried to speak again, to ask what was going on again, they garbled his words. Another glare from his uncle, who he saw now handing off a briefcase to another walking corpse. She looked far older in her decay that Corrado - skin barely clinging to her scalp, the cartilage in her ears long since losing its form. She turned back to flash him with a sharp smile, before leaving him, his Domitor, and the body.

The body that still lived, he realized. It looked sickly at first glance, but he could see the rise and fall of its chest. He recognized it. Jan, Jan Urban. His friend, his comrade, his partner-in-crime, the only person in the world that he trusted with his whole self. His whole self, including the news when he had been made. When he had been given the blood that sealed his place in his family. Jan, who had been sitting by him when he had died. Who he thought that he had killed.

These thoughts flashed through his head for only a moment before something deeper took hold of him. How could he forget how hungry he was? How much he needed to eat? Perhaps Corrado noticed the change in his eyes, as he felt his head locked into place between his uncle's hands. What was he doing? He needed to eat - he couldn't sit here and starve away. He didn't want to die again. He bared his teeth at the man, trying to rip his head away. Nothing mattered when Corrado looked him in his eyes and ordered him to stop. To listen.

"Mattia, my boy. I want you to hear me when I say this. Your friend here, is dead already. You killed him when you told him about our family." Corrado patted his cheek, gently, smiling wickedly. "Now you can seal his fate for good. It'll be our first lesson, Mattia. Kill two birds with one stone."

Mattia felt his head being released, but still felt the stupor of whatever his uncle's eyes had flashed with. With a grunt, he fell on his hands and knees as he was shoved off of the table he had been resting on. The hunger was returning, as he tried to stand, his joints still not working properly. But he could tell, somehow, that sustinence laid with Jan. Slowly, he shuffled his way to where his friend lay, already dead as he had been told.

When he had reached the second table, his brain had only room for one thought. Hunger. He could no longer close his jaw fully, his teeth having grown past what his mouth supported, sharp and deadly. Even if he wanted to stop himself in that moment, he wasn't certain if he could have. Something was gnawing inside his chest, his brain. Forcing him to lean down close to his sleeping friend's neck and bite. His jaws clamped down on both sides of Jan's neck, and he felt his own neck muscles tense. Before he realized what he had done, he had drawn his neck back, tattered flesh filling his mouth. He forced himself to swallow it as fast as he could, so that he could stop the blood pouring out of the wounds he had created. Jan's eyes had fluttered open now, but his sputtering was as effective as Mattia's had been at first. Reflexively, he noted the mauled larynx, that had to have been the cause of the impaired speech.

That was the last thought he registered, before the smell of blood had worked itself truly into the remains of his brain. Before something truly evil inside of him took over.

He was sitting next to the shell of a man when he came to. Still undressed, still covered in blood, but the patterns were not pre-ordained and neat. Now they were haphazard, messy, random. He couldn't recognize what sat next to him for a moment, his eyes still took time to focus on anything. The gaping wound over where the heart would sit if the cadaver still held one, the mangled neck, skin missing and torn. The eyes, glazed over. He wasn't hungry anymore, at least. He could close his mouth, he could speak.

His head snapped over to the sound of clapping. Corrado Giovanni, the man who had made him, stood watching. He had a wicked grin on his face, as he walked up to where Mattia sat and handed him a pile of clothes. His best suit, he realized when he had started to dress himself. The blood was getting all over the tie and staining his shirt, but he didn't care. He just needed to stop being exposed. To feel warm again.

"For an idiot who shared our secrets and killed himself, you've done remarkably well tonight. Congratulations are in order, Mattia. You've acquired everything I promised you, and a decade early at that!" He smiled. "And all you had to do was kill yourself, and ruin what I've been laying out for you all your life. So it's only fair that you still owe me a decade, right?"

Mattia nodded.

"We'll get you cleaned up, and then you can start your work, alright? You can get reintroduced to the rest of the family when you've proven yourself worthy. When your skills can make up for your face."

When he had finished getting dressed, his eyes caught sight of Jan again. He began to vomit, unable to keep what used to be living flesh inside of him.

#//just got struck by the desire to write a lot today for some reason.#//here's an attempt at putting down what my brain thinks of as Mattias Very Bad Time (Embrace)#cw: gore #cw: cannibalism #stories

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takingcourage · 3 years

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Can I request Simon Montjoy x MC for telling ghost stories? And bonus if I get to see Simon as a father 🥺

Thank you so much for this request, Nonny! Writing Simon as a father was an absolute delight!

This story borrows from Roald Dahl’s The Witches: not a “ghost story,” per se, but one of my favorite scary stories to read as a child. All excerpts are in italics.

_____

They were only an hour in, and Cassidy was already on her third flute of champagne. She sipped from the top of her latest glass, grateful for the fleeting moments when she had the the fizz of bubbles to counter the booming monotone of Viscount Kirkley.

Her grandfather-in-law really did have the most tedious taste in friends.

With a glance toward the opposite end of the room, she saw that Simon was in much the same state. Even from this distance, it was easy for her to see that his eyes had started to look a bit glassy. As he caught her attention, his mouth kinked up in a trademark smirk.

Returning the look with a smile of her own, Cassidy traced a finger over the stem of her glass and tried to give the appearance of being interested in the proceedings. Aside from decorum and the show of solidarity, her real motivation for hosting the evening's festivities was the promise of dancing. It had been too long since she'd had an excuse to dance with her husband.

Behind her, there was a brush of fabric and a quiet titter that sounded very much like an apology. Cassidy turned over her shoulder to find Celeste at her side, one lip caught between her teeth as if steeling herself for something unpleasant.

“I’m sorry to bother you," she sidled close with the whispered interruption. "But if you could join me outside, Ms. Davison would like to speak with you.”

“Of course.” Cassidy followed the other woman through the ballroom and into an adjacent hallway.

Even with a fair amount of alcohol in her system, her blood chilled on reading the distress in Ms. Davison's features. It wasn't the first time the nanny’s face had matched the color of Mitsy's roses, but the florid hue was still a rather unnerving sight to behold.

“I’m so sorry to disturb you, ma'am, but they've disappeared." In spite of her appearance, she managed to keep her tone even. With a deep, resolute breath, she resumed her explanation. "I was only gone for a moment, but I can’t find them anywhere."

“They’re quite good at that,” Simon remarked, sauntering in to round out the little gathering.

“Where were they when you left them?” Cassidy inquired, disposing of her glass on a nearby windowsill.

“The nursery.”

She shared a look with her husband. Even with the size of the estate and its extensive grounds, that could really only mean one thing.

“We’ll find them.” With a slanted brow, Simon downed the rest of his drink and set the glass beside his wife’s.

Following his cue, Cassidy continued, “Why don’t you take the rest of the evening off? We’ll take care of getting them to bed.” No matter what awaited them upstairs, it was preferable to enduring the rest of the night’s speeches. It wasn’t quite the distraction she might have hoped for, but she was hardly going to turn her nose up once it had appeared.

The relief in the nanny’s eyes was immediate. “If you’re sure, ma’am. Violet hasn’t been any trouble; she’s been sleeping since half past. I'd just gone to check on her when the other two ran off."

The news was hardly surprising. Their youngest was still too small to get herself into much trouble unless prompted by the other two. Somewhat unfortunately, the eldest Montjoy siblings were more than capable of producing enough mischief on their own.

"We'll see that the other two are tucked in soon."

She and Simon broke off from the group, finding their way to the staircase with purposeful strides. Now that the initial shock had passed, Cassidy was finding it difficult to keep a handle on the laughter that kept bubbling up in her throat. “This is all your fault," she accused, wagging a finger in the direction of her husband's nose. "You must be regretting your decision to show them those passageways last week.”

“And miss this prime opportunity to teach them a lesson? Absolutely not!” The wink he flashed her couldn’t mean anything good.

When he wheeled toward the left and away from the nursery on cresting the top of the stairs, she caught his meaning. With a quiet gasp of surprise, Cassidy followed close behind him.

“No doubt they’ve snuck in there to tell ghost stories or some such rot.”

“Like you did when you were their age?”

“I didn’t run away from my nannies in the middle of parties.”

From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the telltale tilt of his smile. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Well....” he equivocated, “circumstances were different. Mine knew about the passages and could follow after me if they wished. My disappearances may have been a nuisance, but they were never a hazard to anyone’s health. Did you see the vein in her forehead just now? I hope she goes home for a proper lie-down.”

“We really ought to give the poor woman a raise,” Cassidy considered as they passed into the Blythe Room. "Even with us, those two are quite a handful."

Simon slid an arm behind the headboard, easily locating the release for the passage door. "I wouldn't have them any other way: unspoiled by the world, free to let their imaginations wander wherever they may. They’re rather perfect."

Her heart clenched at the tenderness of his statement. Their children were curious and kind and compassionate, with a mischievous streak just wide enough to keep life full of excitement. It was little wonder their family and all the household staff were so fond of them.

"...though I shall need to have a chat with them about this particular scheme -- how they thought they'd get away with it, I'll never know."

"Do we have a plan of attack?" She joined him at the entrance in the wall, starting to feel the adrenaline thrum through her extremities.

"We sneak in and scare the dickens out of them," he shared matter of factly. “Does that meet your approval?”

“I can be pretty quiet when I need to be.”

“I know you can, darling.” The flash of heat in his dark eyes sent a thrill across her skin.

She was going to have to get him back for that later. Removing her shoes, Cassidy hooked the thin straps over her fingers and tiptoed into the tunnel after him. Her anticipation rose as the light faded behind them, leaving them in almost total darkness. As they rounded the corner, she could just make out the glow of a torch around the next bend.

“Shhh,” Simon warned needlessly.

With great effort, she managed not to elbow him in the ribs. If he thought she’d be the one to ruin a prank, he was quite mistaken.

They edged closer, Amelia’s voice growing more articulate with every step. "Don't stop! It's getting to the good part."

"How should you know? You've never read this book before."

"I can tell! My neck is tingling. Feel it!"

“Fine.” There was an indistinguishable grumble before Calvin resumed reading:

“Did you ever see that painting, Grandmamma, with the little girl in it?”

“Many times," my grandmother said. "And the peculiar thing was that little Solveg kept changing her position in the picture --”

From somewhere ahead of them, Amelia gasped at the revelation.

“One day she would actually be inside the farmhouse and you could see her face looking out of the window. Another day she would be far over to the left with a duck in her arms.”

Cassidy predicted Simon’s response even before she heard his measured intake of breath.

"Quack-wack! Quack. Wack-wack!"

The noises weren't terribly convincing, but it didn't matter: a pair of shrieks echoed before they'd even stepped into view. Two small bodies were huddled tightly against the wall, though they jerked apart as soon as their parents appeared. A flashlight rolled aimlessly before coming to stop at Simon’s feet.

"What do we have here?" he asked, retrieved the torch to spotlight each child in turn. Though the shrieking had stopped, they were still working to catch their breaths. Still clinging to the cover of the book, Calvin held his hand to his chest. "A pair of escapologists who think it's clever to scare their nanny to death?"

Amelia's brow plummeted at the accusation. "We didn't mean to frighten her."

"Yeah!" her brother joined in, dropping the book to his side with the force of conviction. "We just wanted to read! Ms. Davison said we couldn't because she thinks it's too scary --"

"--even though you and mama told us we could. It's not fa--"

Simon's level gaze ensured that his daughter’s pouting was short lived.

Heaving a sigh, Amelia dusted off the book cover and replaced the bookmark that she'd been worrying between her fingers. "We'll write a letter to apologize tomorrow morning. Is she still here? We could go and tell her sorry right now."

"We sent her home, but I think she'd be grateful for an apology tomorrow," Cassidy encouraged, wondering how it was possible to move from fear, to frustration, to regret quite so quickly. Amelia rose, coming to meet her with a hug that suggested the depth of her feelings.

"Can we get back to the book then?" their son piped up again. "We can’t stop in the middle of a chapter.”

Simon handed him the light and considered the question, carding a hand through his son’s hair in the meantime. Calvin made a show of shying away from the attention, though the attempt was halfhearted. “If you promise to pen your apologies first thing tomorrow morning.”

“We do!” the children chimed in chorus.

Simon chucked the boy’s chin and took a step toward the nursery. “Then perhaps we should finish the chapter together before we send you off to bed.”

“Really?”

Simon darted back at his daughter’s question. “You know I don’t joke about story time.”

“But the party!” Amelia objected, eyebrows slanting into a perfect facsimile of Simon’s.

“We’ll go back after you’ve gone to bed.”

Satisfied with the answer, she joined her brother in trekking back though the dim hallway.

“Don’t drag your heels now, into your jim-jams!" Simon cast an eye after them before falling back to walk with his wife. With practiced ease, he slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her near. “I rather like this turn of events.”

“We’re as bad as the children, running out on our own party.”

“It’s grandfather’s party.”

“That we’re hosting,” Cassidy reminded, making a mental list of all the ways their sudden disappearance must have violated conventions.

“My grandparents are more than capable of seeing to the guests. Besides, it’s not as if people aren’t used to us being a bit... unconventional now and then.”

As they made it back through the nursery passage, she considered the pronouncement. “I was never one for conventions.” His hold on her hip tightened, and she settled comfortably into his side.

“It’s one of my favorite things about you, darling. Now, let’s get these two miscreants of ours to bed. if we time it right, we’ll be back just in time for dancing.”

#playchoices #playchoices fanfiction #a very scandalous proposal #simon montjoy #simon montjoy x mc #choices vip #vip choices #long post

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pumpkinofthedale · 3 years

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Another excerpt from earlier in chapter 2 bc it is now 26000 words and i feel bad that I haven’t finished it yet haha....

...Maybe you could follow Roxy…?

No, she and Jane looked really happy eating cookies with their friends. You couldn’t dare impose on that. No…. You would just have to interact with people… like a normal person.

Yeah.

You could do that. (You had somehow convinced your roommate back in freshmen year that you were somehow extroverted… maybe you could pull something off like that again.)

You just had to go up to someone and say ‘Hi, my name is –

Oh god what if you forgot your name.

What if you said something stupid.

You poured yourself another mug of eggnog, grabbed a cookie off one of the many platters, and did your best to stand in the corner looking as inconspicuous as possible.

You managed to look up at just the right time (or perhaps it was the absolute worst time) as an incredibly beautiful troll in a low-cut gown looked over at you from her friend group, eyes locking on you and giving you an appraising look. She gave you a slight smile, jade green lips parting over fangs, before returning to her the conversation her circle was having….

Were… were they talking about you?

Oh god…. What were they saying? (Maybe if you strained your ears hard enough….)

A derisive snort met your ears and you tried your best not to turn to look at who made it. A nasally, lisped voice followed it. “Told me that he wasn’t black for me anymore so I should just back off. Like, seriously you astronomically pan-rotted degenerate piece of fish shit, I legitimately hate your stupid chumbucket guts in the most unromantic way possible. I’m not into him. I never have been! And even implying otherwise.... The next time he does it-”

“Ugh, Tunes, can we like, not talk about him? I’m trying to enjoy this rad as hell human-inspired party and even thinking about him gets my acid tract filled with all kinds of nasty bile.”

“Yeah, you're right. He’s not even worth the air to complain about.”

You almost wondered who they were talking about.

Almost.

You did your best to stare into your mug and not respond. It would be so easy. You could make some new friends and not feel so out of place at this stupid party that you were quickly becoming too drunk to abscond from… you couldn’t drive like this.

Maybe if you could commiserate with someone….

But no, the other troll already said that she hated even talking about him.

You took another swig from your mug and looked back up to people watch. That was usually fun at least.

Eridan seemed to be getting along with a small group of trolls and humans, and for once actually looked like he was enjoying himself as a wiry troll girl with an eye patch was speaking animatedly, gesturing as though she was telling a dramatic story as another girl in red glasses brandished a similarly colored cane. You couldn’t help the small smile creeping on your face… you really were tremendously proud of him.

And then of course, you saw Cronus practically cornering another troll. He was wearing a muted violet and white sweater with "Single and ready to Jingle" knit into the front underneath a mistletoe pattern. Both of his horns were capped off with a little Santa hat with what looked like jingle bells on it. (You begrudgingly admitted that the look could have been very cute if he weren't so gross). The other troll seemed far less than interested, not that the Ampora seemed to take a hint… or a direct and confrontational no.

And there was something immensely satisfying about the way the other troll just tossed their drink in his face, leaving him floundering as they walked away. You ducked into the next room as you saw his head turn towards the sound of your snickers.

Nope.

You were not dealing with him tonight. No sir.

Out of the corner of your eye you saw the tallest troll you had ever seen… and he seemed to be staring incredibly intently at you. You swallowed some more ‘nog down and looked back. He must have been well over eight feet tall, towering horns only a foot or so from the ceiling. His silhouette was almost skeletal, only enhanced by the bone suit he wore, face painted in the facsimile of a skull. The wild mane of hair on his head stretched out in all directions, and his deep purple eyes locked on yours with all of the intensity of a predator.

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thelightandthelens-su-imagines · 4 years

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Could you write one with Lapis where she helps a reader that has a severe fear of the ocean/deep water? Taking them flying over the sea to help them and comforting them when it gets to be too much?💜

Cute idea! Listened to Like The Dawn and In Memoriam while writing this.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

A hundred feet below you, the ocean is dark and calm. The vast, watery expanse extends from horizon to horizon, with no land in sight- you’ve never been this far out to sea before, never been so far from shore. You can’t tear your eyes away from the seemingly endless void below you, your breath catching in your throat as a primal fear bubbles to life in your stomach.

“Hey. Hey, (y/n), look at me.”

What are you doing here? You take a deep breath, trying to steady yourself, but as you breathe in everything suddenly smells like salt and rotting fish and there’s nowhere to go what are you doing this was a stupid idea you’re going to die here-

“(y/n)! Look at me.”

In a second, you’re flipped on your back, a strong pair of arms holding you securely in place. Lapis looks down at you, her face dimly illuminated by starlight.

“Don’t look down. Look at me.” She smiles, a comforting little thing, and you do as she says, concentrating on her. In a moment, your heartbeat slows to normal, and you hang on to her a little tighter in a facsimile of a hug. She pulls you closer and you bury your face in her shoulder, closing your eyes as your breathing steadies.

“Are you feeling better?” Lapis asks, after a minute. She pauses, and speaks again. “We can go back if you want to, (y/n). You don’t have to be okay with this.”

“N-no.” You take a deep breath, calming yourself. It doesn’t smell overwhelmingly of salt or fish. It smells like Lapis, like sandy beaches and old wood, like acrylic paints and ocean breeze shampoo that doesn’t really smell like the ocean breeze or anything that you can name at all. You do feel better, now. “I’m better. We can try again.”

Lapis nods and swoops, her wings stretching out and catching the air as she coasts down just above the waves. “I’m going to try something, (y/n).” Lapis says, hovering just a few feet above the water. “Trust me, okay? And hold on.”

Gently, carefully, Lapis lowers herself until the two of you are just above the surface of the water. The ocean spray kicks up and all you can smell is salt, rot. It makes you want to retch. “Lapis-” You croak.

“Just a second!” She says, a barely discernible note of panic in her tone. “Hold on-” She carefully steps onto the surface of the ocean, her wings withdrawing into her gem as she leaves the air. Your breath hitches as your feet touch the water, but as you’re forced to put your weight on its surface, it does not break. The water pushes back against the soles of your feet, solid as dry land.

Lapis loosens her grip on you, moving her hands to rest on your waist. “You can let go, (y/n).” She says, softly. “I won’t let you fall. Promise.” After a moment of tortured indecision, you loosen your hold, and Lapis gently guides your hands into hers, keeping a gentle but firm grip on you.

“Can you look down for me, (y/n)?” She says, gently. “Remember, I’m right here. You’re safe.”

You nod, and after a moment, pry your eyes away from hers.

You look down.

It’s…

It’s beautiful.

Tonight is a cloudless night, and the pinprick-lights of stars cover the entire night sky. The ocean is still, hardly a wave to see, and the flat mirror of the water reflects the night sky almost perfectly below you. It’s like standing in the middle of the void, here, on earth. Stars above, stars below.

“It’s…” you say, trailing off.

“I know.” Lapis says, smiling.

“Is this what its like for you?” You ask, unbidden. “The ocean? Is it always like… this?” She hums, lost in thought for a moment, and you tear your gaze away from the sea of stars below to look at her.

“It’s not always beautiful. I used to think it was.” She says, looking into your eyes. “But there’s something about it that’s like… flying, you know? All that water, all around you… it makes you feel free.” She smirks, squeezing your hand. “What about you? What do you think of it?”

“It’s…” You hesitate for a moment. “Pretty. Nice, I think.” You grin. “Not as good as you, though.” She giggles, stepping closer to you over the water.

“Right back at you.” She tugs at your wrist, and you stumble forward into her arms. “May I have this dance, (y/n)?”

“You may.” You kiss her on the cheek as she laughs, and the two of you spend the rest of the night like that, dancing your time away beneath (and above) the stars.

#steven universe #su #character x reader #lapis lazuli x reader #lapis lazuli #lapis #drabble #self shipping #sadanddefinitelybi #ask #again have proven i can only write at 2oclock in the morning #happy new years all #sorry this is another long one #long #added a readmore line

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hoodoo12 · 4 years

Text

Beetlejuice Squared (5/5)

NSFW. I’m not even gonna hint at what’s in this chapter. Enjoy! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

He grinned, and you returned to what you’d done earlier, licking his cock and taking him in your mouth. This time he slipped his hand to the back of your neck as you bobbed up and down on him. Once again, you felt his legs start to tense, much more quickly this time. It wouldn’t take long, you thought, to get him to come--

--until Beej pushed up against you. This position was a favorite, and it didn’t take much for him to find exactly where he needed to be. Your pussy was still wet and he’d primed you with his fingers, but his fingers weren’t as thick as his cock, so slipping his cock into you took a moment. He didn’t give you time to adjust, which made you pull off Beetlejuice and groan, dropping your head as nerve-endings lit up again.

“That beautiful sound,” the smoother voice of the Beetlejuice in front of you said. There was a hint of delight in his voice, even though he wasn’t the one who’d coaxed it from you.

You looked up at him again, panting, and managed a smile even as Beej set a blistering pace. His cock opened you up and the friction was divine, but you said you wouldn’t neglect Beetlejuice and by god you’d try to focus. You took him in hand and closed your mouth over him again. He jerked out of synch with what was happening at your groin, and you did your best.

Once again Beej seemed determined to undermine your efforts, however. Even if not being able to suck the cock in front of you like you promised made you feel guilty, Beej fucked you just how you liked it: hard, snappy, and deep. He gave you a random slap on your ass every once in a while, as you’d requested, and you loved it. You moaned wantonly and one hand slipped down to your clit for extra stimulation.

Beej’s hips slowed for a moment when your hand went to your pussy. That gave you enough fortitude to take Beetlejuice back into your mouth; this time instead of actively blowing him you just stayed still, and moaned with your mouth full as your pussy was pounded again. You let the movements Beej made telegraph through you, and that was a facsimile of a blow job, at least. Beetlejuice’s fingers tightened in your hair, and you heard him catch his breath above you. He bucked a little with your moaning too; the vibrations must have also stimulated him.

Still, you weren’t a porn star and it was hard to keep a dick in your mouth while you were being fucked hard. You pulled away again, just for air. Pleasure was peaking in you again; you put harder pressure on your clit and rocked back against Beej as he thrust into you.

He smacked you again, and you could hear a change in pitch in his own grunts. He was getting close too, you knew him well enough that you could tell when he was about to come--

With a deep groan that sounded like it came from the bottom of his lungs and an extra hard push into you, he came. Just that little bit more force and your fingers still on your clit toppled you over the edge again as well. Euphoria radiated through your body, and you couldn’t control the tremors it gave you. You probably looked shameless and used between Beetlejuice’s thighs, with your mouth open, a thin sheen of sweat coating you, and your cheeks flushed. Above you, he chuckled and cupped the side of your face.

Behind you, Beej shuddered too, through the last of his orgasm. After another moment, he pulled out. You both groaned at the loss, and you were left feeling a little empty, with wet dripping down the inside of your upper thighs. He gave your ass one last loving smack. “Fuck you’re the best, babe.”

You tossed a smile back at him. “You ain’t so bad yourself.” Beej gave you a lopsided grin, then he pushed himself up and collapsed back onto the other end of the couch again. Somewhere between you and the couch his pants reappeared. You worked to catch your breath, because there was still someone who needed to get off!

“Give me a second, Beej,” you panted. Beetlejuice’s eyebrows raised. “You called me Beej!” “Yeah . . . ?” “What the fuck else is she gonna call you, dipshit?” Beetlejuice snorted. “You want her to say all three syllables and banish you the fuck out of here without your clothes on?” He waved him off and leaned forward towards you. “I told you I don’t get called often,” he told you quietly. “And it’s even more uncommon to get a nickname . . . I wasn’t expecting that. I liked it.”

You smiled automatically at him, then were hit with a little wave of sadness for him.

“Let me make you feel good, Beej. Till the end this time, I promise!”

You sat up to get into a better position for him, ignoring that gravity was going to make all the wet from between your legs drip right onto the floor. You leaned forward, slipping your hand around his cock again, gave him a saucy grin, and licked him, right up the underside of his shaft. You opened your mouth to take him in again, and his long fingers dipped below your jaw to stop you.

You looked up at him in surprise. “Beej?”

“Your mouth is good, babydoll, but . . .” he paused for a second, and you didn’t know if it was because he was getting a hard stare from the Beetlejuice currently basking in the afterglow, or if you’d done something wrong. He gave you a fleeting smile that was more shy than you expected before he continued. “I love your tits. Any chance for a titty fuck instead of a blowjob?”

You almost laughed at how worried he’d sounded, like it was the most embarrassing thing he could have asked for. Beetlejuice did cackle, to which you flipped him off. “Yes, of course!” you agreed immediately, and shuffled closer on your knees. It spread his legs wider, but the position wasn’t exactly right; you urged him to lay back a little more and you raised yourself up further over him so your tits surrounded his cock. You sat up to suck him one last time into your mouth, coating him thickly with spit, then smeared more in the valley between your boobs for extra lubrication. Carefully, you leaned over him again and nestled his cock against your breastbone, squeezing your tits around him. You looked up at him; his amber gaze was locked onto your chest.

“Do you want to . . .?” you asked, nodding downward, asking without words if he’d like to do the honors.

For an answer, his hands came up and cupped your tits, keeping his cock trapped between them. Once he was settled and it felt secure enough to you, you lifted yourself up a little, letting his cock slide minutely. Beetlejuice groaned. You smiled and did it again, just a little, just a tease. His response was a deeper noise, so you repeated it with a little more speed and intent.

Watching his cock slip between your tits was fun, but it was even better to watch him. He only tore his eyes away from fucking your tits when you reached over his arms to gently tug on his nipple shields; the look he gave you matched the sharp surprise in his voice at the extra attention. His entire body trembled and he couldn’t seem to help bucking up a little harder between your tits; you gave a gaspy laugh. What he was doing didn’t stimulate you much, but you liked his obvious enjoyment.

You kept gentle pressure on his nipples; since you hadn’t complained about him thrusting up into you he continued, fucking your tits at a speed and pressure he wanted. His eyelids fluttered and his moans became an undulating waver. Beetlejuice still pulled gasps from you. His hands had warmed on your tits and his cock slid easily between them. You looked down as he squeezed you more tightly and the pitch in his voice ratcheted upward. You managed to drop your chin enough to lick the head of his cock, swirling your tongue around it. At the additional wet touch, Beetlejuice stilled, and in the next moment, he bucked extra hard up against you, practically lifting your chest off him as he came. His come hit your chin and lips. You laughed again and your tongue lapped at it, filling your mouth with the earthy taste salt with an underlying note of moss and rot. It wasn’t anything you hadn’t tasted before, with the Beetlejuice you knew best.

When Beetlejuice finally released the tension in his muscles and slumped against the cushions again, you carefully peeled yourself off him. The come painted the tops of your tits, and you pushed yourself off the floor to grab a handful of tissues to clean yourself up. You wiped a little off your chin with your hand because it was was going to drip before you made it to the box. Beetlejuice, once again lounging against the arm of the couch but watching you with sharp eyes, said, “Never thought seeing you dripping with someone else’s jizz would be a turn on for me, babe, but huh. Now we know.”

You considered flicking your come covered fingers at him, just to hear him squeal in protest, but didn’t. Pulling several tissues out of the box, you wiped yourself semi-dry and went back to the Beetlejuice still panting on the other end of the couch. You dropped a few tissues over his still leaking cock, shoved a few more between your legs, and sat down between them again. “You didn’t offer me anything to clean myself up with!” Beetlejuice pouted. You rolled your eyes. “You pulled your pants back on, Beej! Any residual come is smeared in your suit!”

He gave you a toothy grin that said he knew, and he didn’t care. You rolled your eyes again and he smirked, then offered you the same joint he’d had from the beginning. You shook your head, too sated and full of everything that had just happened to need anything else to alter your mood. You did, however, lean over onto him and kissed him. Beetlejuice accepted it lazily, his hand scratching lightly down your side as you pressed against his chest.

By the time it was over and you turned back to the other Beetlejuice, he was already dressed.

“Oh,” you said quietly, but tried to mask your disappointment. You left Beej’s side and moved to Beetlejuice’s.

“Sorry to see you covered those nice nipple rings up,” you told him. “Can I kiss you?”

Even after everything that had happened tonight, his temples shot through with a flustered pink. “Yeah, babydoll. I’d like that.”

You stretched upward to find his mouth, then melted a little into his side. It was a slow, deep kiss, your tongues lapping at each other, a teasing give and take. Your hands curled into fists in his shirt and his held your face and waist. When you finally ran out of breath, you stayed close to him, panting into his mouth. “That was sweet. Thank you.”

Beej made a snorting scoff behind you, and you ignored him. You ducked closer to Beetlejuice’s ear, and whispered directly to him, “Maybe I need to call you up again sometime, huh?”

He pulled back and you were met with wide-eyed, eager surprise and a quick nod. “Hey, I was here first, remember? Don’t go all sappy on him,” Beej demanded, and after a final quick peck on the lips of the other Beetlejuice, you threw yourself back at him, laying comfortably against him. “Yes you were, Beej,” you agreed, “but I’ll go sappy on whoever I want. And here’s some more: tonight was incredible. You’re both the ghost with the most, and I can’t believe I got two of you.”

You grabbed their hands and squeezed. They both looked at you and grinned, but their gazes became a little harder when they glanced at each other.

“Now kiss!” you ordered.

The startled, panicked look on both their faces was worth the immediate protests and disgust that followed. You laughed at them both, and continued needling them because it got such a rise.

fin!

#beetlejuice #betelgeuse #writing #fanfiction #musical beetlejuice #Bright!juice #Blum!juice #beetlejuice x reader

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tricktster · 5 years

Text

Where am I? The uncanny valley, my friend.

There is a trope in horror that I particularly love, where the protagonist realizes they are Seeing Something That They Were Not Meant To See. Maybe they open the freezer in the basement that their spouse always keeps padlocked and find a collection of severed fingers, or maybe they gaze on the unspeakable tentacled geometries of an eldritch god. No matter what The Thing is, though, the bell can’t be unrung. They can’t go back to living their life the way it was before they saw The Thing, and even in the happiest of scenarios, the ones where they get out alive, their discoveries haunt them in every frozen dinner or plate of calamari.

I am in The Villages, the largest gated over-55 community in the world, and as a non-retiree, I was Not Meant To See This Place.

Figure 1: Honestly some of the better art here.

Here is what happened: My parents, whom I love dearly and respect to my core, announced essentially out of the blue a few years back that they would be purchasing a house in The Villages, Florida, a retirement community that essentially occupies an entire county in central Florida. This was something of a surprise, since my parents, heretofore, had always presented as rational actors. I frankly never imagined they’d live in any gated community, much less The Villages.

I have now visited my parents in The Villages on three occasions, and each time, I have found myself somewhere mid-visit wondering if I actually know these people at all. My parents are both tremendously intelligent professionals who are highly regarded in their northeastern community, where I was born and raised. Growing up, my parents emphasized to me and my brother the importance of education and intellectual curiosity, but also hammered home that we were to be kind, generous, empathetic, environmentally conscious, and aware of the greater world. They (particularly my mom) are crunchy as hell. As kids, my mom used to take us for walks in the nature preserve and help us identify different plants, animals and mushrooms with field guides. When we went on vacations, we went to Yellowstone and hiked, or we camped in the rainforest at eco-tourism sites. My parents were early adopters of hybrid cars. They’re passionate about music and art, architecture and history. They bought a home in the tackiest place on earth.

When I think Central Florida, I think thick forests and swampland. There’s a certain romance associated with half-rotted trees covered in Spanish moss, and pools of still water only occasionally disturbed by primordial carnivores:

Figure 2: You know, this kind of thing.

The Villages, on the other hand, look like this:

Figure 3a: For fuck’s sake.

Figure 3b: Christ.

How bad is the aesthetic in The Villages? Let me put it this way: If Tim Burton decided to make a movie about gated Floridian retirement communities, and they shot it in The Villages, when I got around to watching it, I’d be like, jesus, Tim, going back to the well with this one, huh, we get it, it’s a parody of a soulless, conformist, suburbia. Oh, a “Declaration of Restrictions has been created for each individual neighborhood, which regulates design and operational aspects, such as landscaping, repairs and maintenance, placement of satellite dishes, hedges, etc. An Architectural Review Committee controls the composition and consistency of the exterior of the residential properties within The Villages.*” Fuck you, Tim, try something new, I’d say, very smugly because I am very smug.

Oh, but wait, Tim would say, what if I told you there were forty-eight golf courses within The Villages? What if I told you there were three “town centers,” and one is designed to look like it’s an old town from the American Southwest, and one’s designed to look like a coastal tourist town, and one of them is actually designed to look like the fucking Wild West, is that choice enough for you, huh? What if I told you that every place in The Villages is accessible by golf cart? What if I told you that ridiculous old men would trick out their golf carts to look like they’re sports cars?

Figure 4: WE GET IT, TIM.

In short, The Villages is a ridiculous place. It is a theme park without rides, a clear-cut swath of swampland transformed at great expense into a facsimile of a 1950s suburb where the citizens are permitted to live their lives free of meaningful community responsibilities. It is, at its worst, a dull and soulless celebration of wastefulness and excess, centering around one of the most historically exclusionary, and least environmentally sound, “sports.” It is all camp, and all artifice. You can go to one of three town squares every night and hear one of the rotating live bands perform, generally in front of large crowds of seated people while one or two brave couples sway awkwardly on the dance floor. Sometimes, a handful of line dancers emerge for a song to do an uncomfortable, unsmiling routine that looks more like solemn ritual than joyful performance. You can do this all while housing a three dollar Long Island Iced Tea to the dome.

Needless to say, it’s also super white here and the politics are off-the-charts awful.

Figure 5: A picture I took last night of a store selling honest-to-god oil paintings of a slimmed down Donald Trump enjoying various leisure activities with historical figures.

Oh, and let’s just address the elephant in the room: Rumor has it this place is horny as hell, with a population that’s just riddled with STDs. I can’t find anything to substantiate the popular story that this is a hotbed for swingers, it’s just a rumor everyone I talk to seems to know about. However, given that management in The Villages certainly knows about this rumor, since everyone else in the continental US does, it seems absolutely fucking bananas bonkers that they let the promotional magazine I found in my parents’ living room go out with the following headline:

Figure 6: Are we still doing phrasing?

I just don’t get it, man. I straight up can’t figure out what my parents see in this place, much less why they’d want to own property here. It doesn’t comport with the intelligent and engaged people I know them to be? Sometimes, it just feels almost disappointing, like the way I’m sure they’d feel if I’d chosen to go to a party school for college.

But look, kids, I’m here venting about this insane place to you guys because I’m NOT venting it to my parents, and I’m not telling my parents that this whole gated community can blow me, because this place isn’t for me. As a non-retiree with a decent amount of punk rock sentiment left in me, I Was Not Meant To See This Place, but while I’m horrified (and oh, lord, am I horrified) by a lot of The Villages, I’m choosing kindness towards my parents and leaning into it. For whatever reason, they love it here, and they want their family to love it too, so when they asked hopefully for the hundredth time if me and my brother and sister-in-law would come down to visit, we said yes. When they asked if we’d play golf with them, I swallowed my huge distaste for the Dumbest Game of All Time, and I agreed that the manicured lawns were beautiful in their own way, and the landscaping was impressive, and I spent several hours trying to hit a ball into a hole for some fucking reason.

Here’s a fun fact about The Villages: get up early enough, and you can find alligators ambling across the golf courses, locating the next water trap to spend their day in; the biggest are fifteen feet long. The American alligator has existed in and around Florida for around eight million years, but the family alligatoroidea has existed since the late Cretaceous - 70 million years ago. Alligators have seen the dinosaurs reign and die out, and gone on to survive the rise of birds, mammals, and relatively recently, humans.

When I’m in The Villages, sometime it keeps me sane to think that whenever this garbage place collapses, the gators will swim through the wreckage and hunt in the same place an oil portrait of a slimmed down Donald Trump once hung.

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strifescloud · 4 years

Text

blame not death’s cruelty, but cease your own

2.3k words, genesis rhapsodos/sephiroth, T rating

“Sephiroth, I need your help. My body is continuing to degrade.”

Perhaps it is too much to ask a friend who Genesis had betrayed, abandoned, and now irreparably hurt - but it is his last hope, a prayer from one monstrosity to another for a damned salvation, two monsters wrought of Shinra’s hubris who were both more alone than they had ever been.

read on ao3

Genesis follows Sephiroth to Nibelheim - of course he does.

He knows what is stored there, Hojo’s prized secret, an ancient and ruinous monstrosity whose cells run rampant through the bodies of SOLDIERs. The ploy is obvious, though he knows not its goal, but it is not what Hojo seeks to awaken by placing Sephiroth within Hojo’s reach that interests him.

What interests him is simply Sephiroth himself, as it always has been.

He stares down from the iron beams of the reactor’s roof in silence, eyes fixed on the light that reflects off the back of silver hair. The sight is familiar, as is the fire it stokes in his heart, resentful and adoring in equal measure - always chasing after Sephiroth, left in the wake of the world’s perfect hero, desperately trying to grasp the sparks of his attention even as they slipped through his fingers.

But the longer Genesis stares, he feels the gap between them widening, a yawning chasm that he cannot hope to cross.

Here was Shinra’s perfect monster, returning to the arms of his mother unharmed - the years had not withered him, had not stolen the strength from his limbs or the lustre of his hair and skin, had not forced misshapen growths through yielding skin in a haze of blood and pain and slick black feathers.

The bile rises in his throat at the rush of bitter anger but he swallows it down to fuel the fire burning in his chest, the sensation familiar by now like the embrace of an old friend - not that Genesis had many of those, these days.

His eyes hadn’t failed him even when his body had, and so he tracks the fine tremble of Sephiroth’s hands as he stares at the misshapen creatures, the discarded precursors to perfection. The facade that had been drilled into him was cracking, falling apart at the seams, the trembling questions Sephiroth throws at Angeal’s boy a swan song for Shinra’s flawless general.

He wishes fleetingly, though, that he had told Sephiroth he loved him just once, before he stopped being sure whether or not it was still true.

“Am I...a human being?” Sephiroth asks, voice pained, and Genesis smiles. He needs Sephiroth’s cells more than anything, the only path he has left, and finally he can offer something Sephiroth desires just as much - answers.

“No such luck.” He calls out, a sweet poison dripping from his words, “You are a monster.”

The tremble of Sephiroth’s hand stills as he deflects the blast - good, Genesis thinks.

“Sephiroth,” Genesis begins, but Sephiroth still won’t turn to look at him, “you were the greatest monster created by the Jenova Project.”

Face me, look at me - look at what they did to me.

“Genesis!” Zack calls out, face twisted and tumultuous “So you are alive.”

Am I?

“I suppose I am, if you can call this living.” He runs his hand down his face, highlighting the pallid cast to his skin, and feels it crack and flake beneath his worn gloves. His bones creak at the movement, the ever-present pain shooting through his muscles every time they shift.

He’s sick of it, sick of hurting, sick of the tremble in his limbs, the way he can barely hold his sword, the way it hurts to think through the fog that permeates his mind, and salvation stands right in front of him if he can just-

“What is the Jenova Project?” Sephiroth asks, Genesis focusing on the familiar voice as he slowly turns back to him. Sephiroth is facing him now - good, look at me, you can save me - brow furrowed but eyes as piercing as ever.

A fleeting memory strikes him, a flash of Angeal’s laughter and Genesis’s red gloves smoothing away the wrinkles in Sephiroth’s forehead - don’t look so dour at a press function, my dear, it’ll haunt you for weeks - and Genesis buries it beneath the way his chest aches as he takes a deep breath.

“The Jenova Project was the term used for all experiments relating to the use of Jenova’s cells.” Sephiroth turns away from him again, eyes downcast.

“My mother’s...cells?” The bewilderment on his face, in his voice, infuriates Genesis - how blissful such ignorance must be, to not know of the monstrosities that birthed you.

“Poor little Sephiroth,” he taunts, and some truth seeps into the words even though he intends them to hurt, “you’ve never actually met your mother. You’ve only been told her name, no?”

His muscles ache, and Genesis lowers himself to sit on the stairs, masking his weakness behind a cocky posture and bold words.

“I don’t know what images you’ve conjured up in your head, but…”

A shadow of delight unfurls in his bitter smile - let Sephiroth have his foundations crack under him, leave him flailing and alone in the dark like Genesis was, let them be equals at last.

“Genesis, no!” Zack yells, but Genesis pays him no mind.

“Jenova was excavated from a 2000 year old rock layer. She’s a monster.”

The shock painted across Sephiroth’s face is both familiar and unfamiliar - how unlike Sephiroth to be so shattered, but fear and anguish had been Genesis’s constant companion for so long.

We are the same, you and I, he thinks desperately, so please-

“Sephiroth, I need your help. My body is continuing to degrade.”

“SOLDIER 1st Class Sephiroth!” He calls, a reminder, and Genesis watches the way Sephiroth’s back straightens up. The sight of it makes him waver for a moment, the fog taking hold of his mind once more, but he shakes it off as he continues, “Jenova Project G gave birth to Angeal and monsters like myself.”

Genesis smiles, stretching out his arms in a facsimile of his old theatrics, but the movement nearly makes him falter from the pain.

Weak, feeble, pathetic-

“Jenova Project S,” he continues, ignoring Zack’s quiet murmur, “used the remains of countless failed experiments to create a perfect monster.”

And how it burns that even in their bodies wrought of an ancient aberration, irreverent mockeries of the Goddess’ work, Sephiroth is ever-perfect, while Genesis withers in the shadows.

“What do you want of me?” Sephiroth’s voice is low, venomous, his face a portrait of heartbreak and loss that twists something in Genesis’s chest, some lingering spectre of sympathy that was buried beneath his anger.

“Your traits cannot be copied unto others. Your genes can’t be diffused. Therefore, your body cannot degrade.”

Sephiroth would never feel the slow crawl of death like Genesis does, like Angeal had - but pity the dying, fair one, not the dead.

“Share your cells with me.” A last prayer as he moves to stand alongside him, both of them equals in monstrosity at last, Genesis repeating well-worn words in some measure of comfort to both himself and Sephiroth, “My friend, your desire is the bringer of life, the gift of the Goddess.”

Sephiroth’s glare burns through the dumbapple he holds out, cutting right through to Genesis’s decaying soul. His profile as he turns to gaze upon Jenova’s doors is achingly familiar, poised and proud, and Genesis feels his own fingers now begin to tremble.

Sephiroth, please.

Sephiroth’s shoulders set determinedly, jaw shifting, and Genesis wonders if he made a mistake.

“Whether your words are lies created to deceive me or the truth, that I have sought all my life...it makes no difference.”

Sephiroth reaches up, pushes the offered gift out of Genesis’s hand in disgust. The dumbapple hits the ground.

“You will rot.” Sephiroth says, and Genesis stops. The mako glow of Sephiroth’s eyes, this close, illuminates through the fog that settled over Genesis’s mind in a moment of sickening clarity.

You’re abandoning me. I’m dying, and you’re abandoning me.

I drove you away.

I love you, but it’s too late. What am I doing?

I hate you, I hate you so much, you’re just what Hojo wanted, an unfeeling monster-

Sephiroth turns without hesitation, away from Genesis, and leaves him behind.

“I see,” Genesis says to the empty room, to the Goddess, to himself, to his traitorous heart, “perfect monster, indeed.”

The familiar words of Loveless bring him no comfort. He will rot, but the world will feel the fury of his end - and let Sephiroth see him in Genesis’s final moments, and know he could have stopped the cold hand of decay.

He leaves the apple there, one of the last of its kind.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Genesis does not want to watch Nibelheim burn. The glow of the flames reaches his tiny hideout in the Nibel mountains, fire stretching across the sky, and he turns away.

He doesn’t have to look - he knows monsters, what Sephiroth can do. But curiosity draws him closer anyway, a perch far above the reactor, close enough to see - Shinra.

He thought he would find a triumphant Sephiroth, and yet all he sees are a swarm of scientists, and the sight of them makes him sick.

“Professor Hojo needs to know what happened to Sephiroth. Find out at once!” The tallest one says insistently, voice carrying to Genesis’s enhanced ears, and one of the more timid amongst them shuffles backwards slightly.

Hojo. Hojo is here.

“B-but the security footage - he fell into the reactor! Surely no one can-”

The reactor?

“Shut up!” The taller scientist barks, “We don’t leave until we have what Professor Hojo wants.”

No, no, no-

If he had not been degrading, Genesis’s tight grip would have shattered his sword’s grip in moments. But his feeble muscles can only summon a phantom of their old strength, and he simply flexes his fingers around the familiar shape. It’s not possible for Sephiroth to fall like this - before Genesis gets his chance to take the last life he values for himself.

Genesis waits, and waits, until the scurrying of scientists slows, until the snowfall blankets their footprints, before he ventures down from his spot. The area around the reactor is quiet, the snow crunching softly beneath Genesis’s feet, and as he climbs the stairs slowly he finds that his legs still of their own accord.

He wants to see it for himself, so he pushes on.

The security footage isn’t hard to find - Hojo’s men are sloppy, incompetent, no doubt blanketed in the security of Hojo’s own hubris. Genesis is sure that Shinra will come clean all of this up before long, but for now he fast-forwards through the endless blank days, trying to find a glimpse of his rival - his friend.

And then he sees - he sees-

The grainy figure of Sephiroth reaching its arms out in reverence, in belonging-

The trooper’s furious grip on Angeal’s sword, he would never have turned that sword on Sephiroth, it was never meant to know his blood-

The way the trooper dangles in the air, suspended by the Masamune-

Sephiroth, falling, swallowed by the depths of the reactor-

Genesis’s grip on the security console tightens, metal buckling beneath his grip, and he thinks faintly oh, so I have some strength left in me after all.

Sephiroth is-

When you hate someone, does it burn this much to lose them?

Genesis straightens, turning his back on the screen, on the truth he doesn’t want to see. He walks measuredly out of the reactor, down the metal steps that clink with every footfall, and back out into the frigid snow.

Genesis laughs.

He laughs until he is howling, bent over and on his knees as he supports himself with one hand. He laughs until he is crying, tears he forgot how to shed streaming down his face until his laughter turns into choked sobs, the force of them against his chest pushing until he coughs violently, breath strained. Flecks of blood fall from his lips onto the snow, staining the perfect white, pinpricks of red amongst the monochrome as the frost blends in with the grey of his decaying body.

Sephiroth is gone, defeated by some nobody trooper whose name wouldn’t be remembered.

What a terribly tragic end for a hero - and for Genesis’s last hope at salvation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The five years are not gentle - Genesis wonders, in fits of hazy irrationality, whether the snows of Modeoheim and Nibelheim had crept up through his limbs, regrets staining him with white.

But then the white is gone, the degradation healed, but Genesis is as lost as before - spurned by his Goddess for his sins, cast out from paradise, and so terribly, terribly alone.

Zack leans him against a chair, basking beneath the Banora sun, and Genesis turns his face into the warmth. The light glints off Angeal’s sword, that damned trooper who carries Sephiroth’s cells propped up behind him, and if Genesis closes his eyes he can pretend.

Pretend it’s Angeal’s broad shoulders that carry the buster sword, warm hands and an easy smile as he throws Genesis a dumbapple.

Pretend it’s Sephiroth that sits beside him, a smile that’s both stilted and genuine fixed upon his face, caught between his habits of decorum and the way Genesis’s arm slides around his shoulders, kissing him on the cheek, it wouldn’t kill you to relax, even for the great Hero of Wutai, the words lacking any real bite despite the spark of true bitterness Genesis had always held close to his heart.

A heart that aches now, to have loved and hated in equal measure, and to mourn the loss of it.

“Angeal, the dream came true.” He murmurs, even if it’s a lie.

He’d shattered his dream with his own hands, broken beyond repair.

#sephesis #strife writes #genesis rhapsodos #sephiroth #ffvii

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bennysiegcls · 4 years

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I don’t usually post these kinds of things, but considering how quiet I’ve been on here lately I figured it wouldn’t hurt to toss this out there for the fun of it to say I’m still alive. Not much context besides a post-full moon wake up call with the werewolf oc I posted art of a bit back- I wanted to try and delve a bit more into his headspace after having a ‘bad night’. Hope you enjoy!

He doesn’t pass out immediately after the shift this time around. There’s no reprieve, no solace to take in an endless void of black. His bones crunch under the weight of his body forcing itself back into a smaller frame, muscles rippling and clenching and spasming until he hits the floor on his knees with a strangled yelp. His body jerks like a puppet on strings, bows his back as his insides writhe and squirm around below his flesh, and his jaw is barely locked into place before he lurches forward with the force of his stomach emptying itself all over the hardwood.

He chokes, gags, retches again. It brings tears to his eyes; they sting like the back of his nose and his throat, and he claws his fingers over the floor and prays to whoever can hear him that it'll be over soon.

A snap- that’s his femur- and a crunch- that’s his spine- and he gasps a rough, ragged noise and almost instantly goes limp. He just barely manages to catch himself on his elbow when he teeters to the side to keep himself from hitting the floor like a sack of rocks. His head hangs, bobbing with each stuttery pant that leaves his lungs, and he stays like that for a long while. Everything hurts. Even in the aftermath it’s nothing but pain, this vicious ache in his muscles that leaves him feeling like he’d been backed over by a steamroller. He swallows, coughs, and slowly brings a hand up to rub at his eyes.

It’s sticky and wet when he touches it to his skin, slips and slides across his forehead and it makes him pause and pull it back.

Red. Squishing between his fingers, caked under his nails like he’d dug his hands into a chest and 𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥. He breathes in- it’s shaky and weak and full of every ounce of trepidation he feels crawling over his skin like a hoard of roaches- and brings his fingers back to his face. Red. Red, red, red everywhere, smeared over his cheeks and dripping off of his chin. He can taste it behind his teeth underneath the bitter bile and acid on his tongue, and it nearly makes him heave again. The beast under his breast shivers excitedly, like it’s proud of what it’s done. 𝘓𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰, 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘥. It’s satisfied at the same time that it isn’t, and the blood in his mouth reawakens something inside of himself that nearly sends him into a frenzy again. He wants it. He wants it, fuck, he needs it, he-

He cuts off that train of thought with a pained noise in the back of his throat. Shut the fuck up. 𝘚𝘩𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬 𝘶𝘱. 𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴. 𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨? The question is asked like he doesn’t already know the answer. The monster that has become him agrees.

Moving his hand away to the floor, he pushes himself up to sit and finally, after blinking the haze out of his blurry eyes, takes a moment to look around.

It’s a mistake. But it’s unavoidable. No way to run and hide his head in the sand without the blinding reminder of what he’s done.

He’s not even sure he can call them bodies anymore. They’re too far gone, piles of viscera and gore with the occasional limb or tatter of clothing. It freezes him where he sits; he stares for a long, hard few minutes at the remains of a woman closest to his side, throat working, jaw trembling, eyes searching again and again like he’s waiting for the whole thing to be a fever dream. Some sick joke of the mind- any second he’ll awaken to the woods and go on with his life while the beast stays angry and caged below his skin.

Seconds pass, minutes, maybe hours. The scene never fades. The smell of rot and innards and shit stings at his nose in an undeniable accusation of what he’s done. His whole chest hitches and catches when he tries to breathe in, and he tears his eyes away to the floor. There’s half of a face lying there, one eye and a bit of a nose staring up at the ceiling cold and foggy and blank.

It’s blue. He doesn’t know why he notices it so vividly, but it crawls under his flesh and gets his nails digging into the bloodied floor beneath him.

A turn of his head, and everywhere he looks there’s hunks of meat and bone and tissue. Two other bodies besides the woman, one male, one something he can’t make out. He sits there among them, a dead man surrounded by the dead, and he doesn’t get up until the rays of sun peeking in through the shattered windows have moved themselves halfway across the room.

He needs to- he needs to get clean. Shower. Something. He needs to focus on that, make it his one task to accomplish and occupy his mind.

His eyes flicker back over the mess around him a few more times- he feels numb. Carved out and hollow and charred like a fire ate away at him from the inside out and left him with nothing.

Maybe it’s shock. It’d be funny if it was, he thinks- he’s seen so much death, 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 so much death, that it’s become as much of a part of him as the beast since before the beast had even made its presence known. But there’s something about the carnage that lies at his feet now. He doesn’t know what it is, what makes staring into what’s left of the eyes of these unfortunate strangers send shivers of unease up and down his spine. But he looks to them and it pangs something deep and raw in his gut- a type of guilt he hasn’t felt before. A monster of a thing gnawing away at what’s left of what he tries to call his humanity. Carve another chip off of that block, one more point on the side of the wolf.

He goes to heave himself upright, but the floor is stained with red and slippery and nearly sends him careening back onto his side; he catches himself with both hands and pants, shifts his legs and tries again. He gets to his feet on the second try, and he keeps his eyes ahead as he stumbles and trips off down the hallway in search of the nearest bathroom he can find.

There’s splatters of blood painting the walls like some morbid facsimile of the art hung here and there in picture frames. He finds a fourth body with it’s belly missing and a hunk out of its neck on the floor in front of a door. The door leads to a closet when he opens it, so he shuts it back and continues on his way.

The bathroom finally reveals itself to him at the end of the hall. It seems to be the only room so far untouched by his bloodlust; the walls are a clean, crisp baby blue and the floor an unstained white tile. He ruins it the second he puts his foot through the doorway, leaving bloody prints of red in his wake. The door gets closed behind him despite him being the only living creature inside the house. He needs the space to himself. He needs somewhere to hole up for a while that doesn’t reek of death and corpses.

His reflection in the mirror catches the edge of his attention when he moves to pass it by, and he pauses, backtracks and takes a moment to look over himself even when everything in him is screaming to let it rest- some part of him wants to calculate the damage. Maybe he just wants to look himself in the eye so he can remember who it is to blame.

He looks like shit.

Eyes swollen and bloodshot, ringed with dark circles of purple and blue. His skin is sallow and pale beneath the exterior of red; he looks like he’s been fucking bathing in it with the way it coats his flesh like it belongs there. He stares at himself. Maybe it does.

A droplet beads at his hairline, slinks down the side of his face until it falls off of the edge of his chin to land against the rest of the blood caked to his chest. He watches it, and all he can think about is the rivers of red flowing out of the throat of that woman as she screams- he can see it plain as day, can feel the warmth of her body as he rips into her like a paper bag, and the man stands behind him and screams and cries bloody murder before he’s silenced with a pair of jaws to the jugular. Jax tries to swallow, then hunches over and empties whatever is left of his stomach into the sink.

The noise of the shower echoes against the walls when he finally heads over to flip the switch. He doesn’t step in until it’s scalding enough to sting his hand when he slips it under the spray to test the temperature, and he lets the fire consume him, ducks his head under the cascade and burns alive. It’s the only way he can find to wash off the feeling of the gore glazed over his skin enough to live with it; it never disappears, not truly- it stains him with a permanence like the neverending shooting pain through his bones- but it wipes away the outer layer. Fools his brain into thinking if no one can see the visible remains of what he is that they’ll never think to look deeper below the surface.

Jax’s eyes find the floor, tracking the way the red drizzles out of his hair and off of his shoulders and chest and swirls away down the drain. He reaches up and runs a hand over his head, shakes it out, and flecks of flesh and bone come away and fall to his feet to join the rust brown on its way down the sewer pipe.

Screaming- it bubbles up in his ears and he moves his head side to side like a tired old dog, trying to knock the memory of it out of his mind to no avail. He closes his eyes and sees the terror on her face, so he opens them up again and looks at his toes. They flex, and each movement pushes more blood out from where it’d been caked between them. He looks away.

Tipping his head back, he lets the water fall over his torso while he reaches a hand up to rest over his eyes. Something wells up in his chest- shrieking, crying, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘨𝘰𝘥, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦- 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱! 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘱! 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦!- and he locks his jaw like a dam against the emotions that threaten to swallow him whole.

He digs his fingers into his eyes. His teeth chatter before he clenches them to silence it. A deep breath gets sucked into his lungs, and when he finally releases it a whimper comes out along with it and his face crumbles for a split second before he moves his hand and pushes his face into the spray. It’s convincing enough to his mind that he’s drowning for a moment that anything other than blank panic gets pushed to the side to deal with later. He uses the time to clean the rest of what he hasn’t yet- scrubs his hands over his body and through his hair in quick motions until the water running down to his feet is clear.

There’s a towel hanging on the rack beside the shower, and he grabs it once he shuts the faucet off and buries his face in it for a beat before moving to dry off the rest of himself. It’s all on autopilot. His body moves but he’s not really there, gazing with unseeing eyes at the wall while he drags the towel over his arms. His mind keeps feeding him flash images of the night before. He’s stopped his futile attempt to fight them off; he lets it happen instead.

The towel ends up on the floor- he’s struck with the vague realization he hasn’t got any clothes to change into, and he briefly considers seeing if he can find something in one of the rooms before he leaves, but he shuts the idea down before he can think on it for too long. He’s in the middle of a forest. No one will see him here. He’s done worse than a naked trek through the woods to get back to wherever the hell he parked his truck.

No, the hardest thing he has to do now is make it down this goddamned hallway.

He’s procrastinating it, he knows this. The second he opens that door everything he’s been trying to pack away inside becomes unavoidable. He gazes blankly at it for a good minute, eyes the doorknob like it’s liable to bite him if he reaches a hand in its direction. He does it anyway; it doesn’t bite him in the end, but the smell of death that hits him like a slap to the face when he eases the door open nearly sends him reeling back and slamming it closed again. He twitches his nose and steels himself, tenses his whole body like he’s preparing for a fight, and walks forward.

Eyes up, keep your eyes up. Ignore the walls, ignore the squish beneath your feet, ignore the body on the floor. He steps over it, and that’s his first mistake; his foot glides a bit on the floor and on instinct he tips his head down to look at it as he steadies himself with a hand on the wall.

He meets their eyes; it’s always the goddamned eyes, every fucking time. The one piece that the beast always seems to leave behind, like it wants him to see them when he wakes the morning after. It wants him to know what he’s done in a way he can’t easily brush aside. They bore holes into his skin, burning themselves like a brand into his brain, and that’s the crack that starts the slow decline of the walls of steel and concrete he’d tried so hard to build around himself. He clears his throat, bites his tongue, and walks on.

His feet stop him in the living room again. He tries in vain to get them to move, to carry him forward, but there’s an invisible barrier that keeps him at bay.

He parts his lips on an inhale that catches and sticks to the inside of his throat. He’s still looking forward, resolute and stalwart in his stubborn attempt to keep himself together, but his eyes are traitors and seek out the most ruthless betrayal- they slip undaunted from the doorway ahead of him, slowly but surely until they land on a hand on the ground. It reaches for something it’ll never touch, and Jax’s gaze traces it back to the mess of a body it’s attached to. The crack grows larger, eats away at his resolve.

His hands flex at his sides, and his trigger finger is going wild, jumping and twitching without his say so in the same way his head, and then his whole body, starts to turn and move and shift with restless, almost disbelieving energy.

It’s easier to see them all spread out when he’s stood up like this. The damage he’s done, claw marks in the wall and tearing the floor to shreds, claw marks in their flesh where the beast- where 𝘩𝘦- wouldn’t stop digging even after they were long dead. He scrunches up his face in an aborted effort to clamp back the stinging behind his eyes- the emotion chokes him like a noose, and all at once the hollow void in his stomach is flooded with things he didn’t even know he could feel, building and building and building until he’s fit to burst with it all.

He wonders for a moment if he could. If he’d join them on the floor in a bloodied up pile of guts and gore. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘧. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘵. 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘸 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘪𝘵 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥.

He coughs out a little noise that tries to make itself a cry- he thinks about the worlds he’s ended, the future plans he’s snapped in half, the hopes and ambitions he’s crushed, and his walls tumble and break around him before he can get on his knees to try and build them up again.

The first tears down his cheeks do him in for good; once they start they can’t stop, and Jax raises his arm, presses the back of his wrist to his mouth to try and muffle a sob.

It doesn’t do much to help- he steps to the side, turns, lands his feet in a puddle of crimson and turns again. It closes in on him on all sides, inescapable, and he surrenders himself to it. Let’s the guilt eat him alive until he’s nothing but skin and bones and endless, echoing sorrow.

He screams.

He sobs.

He ends up on his knees, clutching the ankle of the woman with whiteknuckled hands as he dips his head and wails. The beast wails with him beneath his bones- they cry together, for who he used to be, for what he is, for the lives he’s ended, for the lives he knows he’ll end, the lives he’ll come to ruin and wreck. They cry for the hollow, never ending ache inside of them that can never be filled, they cry for the pain that racks over their body and leaves them shaking like a dog in the cold. They cry from exhaustion. He’s tired.

He’s so, so tired.

His body jerks and heaves with his sobs, tears dripping off of his nose and his chin to mix with the blood on the floor. It almost feels like a violation. That his grief dare get mixed with their sudden demise.

He stares blankly at where they land as they continue to fall, making soft ripples only to be swallowed by red. And he stays like that for a long time. Until his throat goes raw and his voice goes hoarse, and the numbness returns to take its place in the pit of his stomach like it’d never left.

He pants and he swallows and he pants again, finally unlatching himself from her leg and taking a beat to sit there before he fumbles and stumbles upright. His eyes flicker over the room once more.

He takes it in, ingrains it into his memory. There’s consequences for a thing like him.

And standing here, he knows, he must reap what he sows in spades.

#my writing #tw : death #tw : gore #tw : vomit #tw : blood #tw : mild body horror #tw : panic attacks #an umbrella of all the bad things that come with being a werewolf I'd assume #also guilt #lots and lots of guilt #werewolves #OC

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godsreprisal · 6 years

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Crossbreed Priscilla & Sister Friede

Being the only resident willing to speak with an outsider upon meeting, Crossbreed Priscilla is very amicable to the presence of the player, unless one turns on her in violence. She has only kind things to say about the painted world, which she shares as a home with the crow demons, snow rats, and various hollows. Though she is trapped inside, either by fear of the outside world or preference to stay inside it, she is safe and accepted there, which is a far cry from the way she had been treated on the outside. Whether she fled there, or was taken for safekeeping is unclear, however one can only imagine what the gods and their ilk may have done to her otherwise; she is called a bastard child abomination, and the “antithesis to all life”, and she wields a strange scythe imbued with the power of Lifehunt.

In spite of her undoubtedly fantastic abilities-- including, but not limited to becoming invisible at will-- she is gentle, meek, and kind, and offers safe passage back into the ‘outer’ world once we greet her.

It’s unclear if the Great Corvian Scythe, which mentions a mistress of the painted world who also uses a scythe, if references Crossbreed Priscilla, or the painting’s new mistress, Sister Friede.

The theme of dualities and of history repeating itself without proper intervention is rampant in the world, and the painted world seems to not be exempt from these rules, in spite of the fact that they seem not to exist within the same cycles as the ‘outer’ worlds of Lordran, Drangleic, and Lothric. While Priscilla does not exist in Ariandel’s painting, a facsimile of her may have come to take her place.

Sister Friede comes from the Sable Church of Londor, being the eldest sister of three, along with Yuria and Liliane. The trio founded the Sable Church together, and serve Darkstalker Kaathe ultimately, searching for the Lord of Hollows in order to bring about the Age of Dark. However some schism occurred-- possibly Friede becoming Unkindled, as it is confirmed she was “the first Ash” to enter the painting-- which caused Sister Friede to become excommunicated. It’s unclear how she ended up in the painting, but once she arrived, it is clear she took over as its ruling party. Having already been a leader in her home of Londor, it undoubtedly was no difficult task to influence the painting’s restorer.

Taking on the guise of Crossbreed Priscilla, or at least claiming to be cut from the same cloth as her, may have lubricated the process further. Her great scythe tells of her personal, preferred stance with it stems from her background in swordsmanship. It seems strange to switch to using a scythe-- coupled with dressing in a similar fashion, and upholding a similar role as Priscilla-- after becoming so proficient in dual-wielding swords, if the reason was in fact not to imitate Crossbreed Priscilla.

Moreover, there is already a “present day” analogue to Priscilla in Lothric: Yorshka, a dragon crossbreed, clothed in white, and trapped within a tower.

Upon entering a new world, one so unlike her own, echoes of colonialism show in her efforts to change this land into that which she was accustomed to. Unfortunately, this was much at the expense of the corvian people, as the painting must be burned away, before it rots completely, so that the next world iteration can take its place. Being from Londor, where all teachings preach against Fire and Linking the First Flame, it is no wonder why she was opposed to such views of allowing the world to burn. Whether she acted selfishly, or without fully understanding the consequences of her actions is uncertain, but the corvians are suffering at her behest, their own knights turned against them.

#vignette #[ some of these were originally written at like #3AM #so they may be disjointed #but I am trying to clean them all up a bit ]#dark souls #dark souls 3

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patchworkspringlocks · 11 months

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Y’know what? fuck this. fuck you *corpse-ifies your Michael*

#like and reblog if you’d scrunkly the when #let’s be real this is mainly an excuse for me to see how sagging skin works around the face #really wanted to drive home the fact that ennard fucking stole most of his bones #he wraps himself up like a mummy most of the time + hat and hood and face mask when outside #he’s gotten pretty knowledgeable on emergency bandaging to keep himself from falling apart #he also borrows stitches from patchwork for sutures as you can see on his mouth and throat #five nights at freddy's #fnaf #fnaf fandom #michael afton #fnaf michael afton #michael afton fnaf #michael afton fanart #body horror #tw body horror #painted facsimiles over the rot

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cerastes · 7 years

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I beat the tar out of DS3 with my bare hands every time I talk about it, and it deserves it, but for once, I will not insult it, and instead, I will talk about something it did well.

When you decide to write a story, be it a short one-off or a long, sprawling tale, you have to decide on the theme. Sometimes, the theme is overarching (it encompasses the entire narrative), and other times, the theme is episodic (as in, it changes from arc to arc), but it has to be there. It fuels your narrative and endows it with life beyond what words by themselves, well assembled as they may be, can ever hope to breathe into it. You take a moment to consider things, and you notice that most, if not all things in the narrative can be taken back to this spinal cord, this theme.

In Dark Souls 3, the theme is “legacy”. The events of the game, and the lives of those therein, revolve about the concept of legacy.

To start, the legacy of the “Chosen Undead”, big lie it used to be, has been broken. The player character is the end of a legacy. This is the world’s last cycle. The player character is an Unkindled, someone not fit to even be cinders, and it falls upon them to end the legacy of the cycle (”cycle” being the central theme of Dark Souls II), we either Link it to go into an Age of Fire, or we Snuff the flame and welcome to the Age of Man.

However, to do this, the Unkindled must search for the Lords of Cinder:

The Abyss Watchers, bound together by a pledge to hold back the Abyss, continue the legacy of Sir Artorias.

Yhorm the Giant, who became a Lord of Cinder to wipe out his legacy, the Kingdom of the Profaned Flame, and even made sure to make his close friend, Siegward of Catarina, promise to end him with the Storm Ruler, should he ever become a threat. This, in turn, became Siegward’s legacy and drive, in contrast to DS1′s Siegmeyer, who wandered looking for adventure without any specific goal.

Aldrich, descendant of the Old Gods, who embraced his legacy so obsessively and with such passion that he devoured his predecessors to become like them.

Lothric and Lorian, the princes who were born destined to be the greatest legacy of their kingdom, and yet they simply abandoned their legacy instead, locking themselves up in a tower to watch the world grow rotten around them.

In the journey, we meet many other characters, like Oceiros, who became so obsessed with Seath the Scaleless’ legacy that he ended up becoming a facsimile of Seath himself, and in his demented trance, looks for Ocelotte, his supposed child and legacy.

In the shrine, we usually see the Crestfallen Knight, Hawkwood, a man desperately in search of a purpose, of a legacy, to be part of. Initially, this is with the Abyss Watchers, yet he abandons that path and turn to the Way of the Dragon instead. Once he has finally found something he can be part of, the Unkindled is also part of it, and thus, Hawkwood fights the Unkindled, starved for identity, for a legacy to call his own, graciously admitting defeat with his death cries. In a way, Hawkwood achieved what he was looking for, as the Way of the Dragon, if you remember the DS1 and DS2 Way of the Dragon covenants, revolves around covenanters dueling with each other to the death. In this way, Hawkwood was, indeed, the last known disciple of the Way of the Dragon, in an era where they were long extinct.

Anri of Astora has taken the task of slaying Aldrich, who destroyed their village and everyone they cared for. By the time of DS3, Astora is long dead, and Anri simply dons armors and weapons reminiscent of the dead kingdom, in addition to adopting its name, as means to invoke the legacy of Astora, kingdom of heroes and righteousness, through their quest. Sadly, such a legacy lacks potency, and is ultimately hollow, donning the name of a long dead place that has no real relation to you just for appearances, well, hasn’t much meaning past the garlands and the decoration. It’s precisely how lacking Anri’s legacy was that leads to them going Hollow immediately after completing their mission of vanquishing Aldrich: “What now?”.

The Soul of Cinder, the final boss of the game, is a literal legacy: It is an amalgamation of everyone who has ever Linked the flame. Fighting the Soul of Cinder is to fight the legacy, and as previously stated, that’s what the Unkindled is: The end of the legacy. The Unkindled literally kills the legacy. In a more meta sense, the fight with Soul of Cinder is also the end of the legacy of the franchise: The second phase of the fight is a re-match with the first person who ever Linked the fire: Gwyn, final boss of Dark Souls 1. The fight, in its entirety, references several popular playstyles and moves, such as Soul of Cinder’s Dexterity form being able to use the Dark Wood Grain Ring’s “ninja flips” from the first game, or the Intelligence form using Soul Geyser, a sorcery associated with the Scholar of the First Sin, Aldia, from Dark Souls 2. The arena in which the fight takes place is covered in white flowers, much like arena in which you fight Gehrman, the First Hunter, in Bloodborne.

It extends to many more minor characters, too: The Corvians and their heretical story tellers are descendants from Corvians that escaped the Painted World of Ariamis, and the story tellers’ task is to tell younger Corvians the tales of their mistress, Crossbreed Priscilla. It is also why the Corvians wield large scythes that look almost identical to Priscilla’s own Lifehunt Scythe: They are evoking her weapon as a totem for protection, as well as keeping the legacy of their painted world alive even outside of it. Ringfinger Leonhard is the last living member of the Princess’ Guard from DS1, and steals Rosaria’s soul for what is implied to be his belief that he can use it to resurrect Gwynevere with it (it’s worthy to note that Rosaria’s Soul can be used to obtain the miracle Bountiful Sunlight, a miracle intricately associated with Gwynevere), in hopes to either protect his legacy or even revive it as a Princess’ Guard.

Cornyx, by far the most fundamental, follows the teachings of the minimalist discipline of Pyromancy, and simply wants a pupil to teach his Pyromancy to. Orbeck, on the other hand, wanted to form part of Vinheim’s prestigious Dragon School of Sorcery so bad that he became an assassin for them, if it meant he could take part of it. The Painted World of Ariandel, itself, (and, hey, spoilers), is part of this, too: Everyone assumed it was a new painted world, different from the world of Ariamis, but deep in the bottom of the ice valley, the tower where you fight Priscilla in the first game is there. This means the Painted World of Ariandel was painted on the same canvas that the one of Ariamis was on, which means that throughout the thousands of years between DS1 and DS3, the same canvas has been re-used over and over, explaining why it is so woefully rotted. Father Ariandel and Sister Elfriede wish to keep this legacy stagnant, in pause, so it remains frozen in time, and refuse to let it continue.

There’s more examples, but what I am trying to say is that they did good with it.

#dark souls #dark souls 3 #just something I think is worth of praising #about the only grain of identity the game has for its own as everything else is just ''Dark Souls 1 TWO''#it turned long before I knew it

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cchipnation-blog · 6 years

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Siren Song I

Summary:A love gone wrong?

Warnings: : mild language, gore, emotions, reference to previous abusive relationships

Wattpad : Just Write (you nerds) (on Wattpad)https://my.w.tt/FV9Et18P5L

Part Two > Part Three

I loved her.

I loved her so fucking much.

But how can you love a sociopath with a dripping knife? The one who carved a weeping smile into your best friend’s stomach?

My best friend sprinted to her, and my love could’ve moved the knife or the smile on her face. But, no. No, of course not, why would they-

No,

No, no, god no,

No, no- NO-!

...

The woodland was gorgeous.

The trees had dipped from the summer’s livid green to the lavish peach of autumn, individual bits and pieces falling from branches and coating the ground. However, we were in the beautiful lull where enough had fallen where the ground was coated for crunchy steps and piled into jumping pits, but the branches were still plentiful with oranges and greens for shade and sunlight-dappled ground.

We had decided to take a romp through the stunning landscape to get to our favorite lakespot- full of fun-loving faes and mermaids on the regular. The walk so far involved my lovely centaur-witch and cervitaur friends regularly leaving me in the dust, and me using the trees to chuck old acorns at their stupid horsey butts in retaliation.

We made it to the lakespot with no speed bumps. The lake was huge for its classification, feeding a delta that left the lake and traveled a few miles to the ocean. The lake, usually just called The Spot, was freshwater in itself. The sight of the light glimmering off of the miniscule ripples (mainly due to the currently unseen underwater residents) gave me a burst of energy. I proceeded to use this to sprint past my dumb friends- Honey, the cervitaur doe, yelping in surprise as I shoved past her and lept into the water.

In a flash of a second, I felt the coursing of clean water down my throat, choking myself for a second. Of course, my body quickly responded and I kicked off my shorts, legs tingling with electricity as they fused and I felt magick warp my body into that of my preferred siren form. I flared my gills and my frill, water rushing through the canals and soothing the old itch and ache. I felt along my teeth with my tongue, now sharpened and ready for munching on fish and, perhaps, the stray sailor.

“Illie!” I heard a shout from across the water. Beyond me, I watched as a beautiful golden-tailed siren sped toward me, pitch-black hair flowing behind her.

“Eve! You made it!” I laughed, hugging her.

“Yeah, I got here earlier ‘cause I caught a ride with some book club guys.” She shrugged, pulling back. She hooked her tail around mine, the golden color blending well with my kaleidoscope of a tail, blues and golds and greens in my scales. I felt the old feeling of harmonization with the friendly siren, we’d been friends since childhood.

Eve and I had grown up together on a reef that near the delta from the lake. We came of age around the same time and, being childhood friends, we decided to move out here together. We, of course, met Honey and Danielle (the centaur) at The Spot together, as well. Being together simply became facsimile by that point, but, of course, college separated us. We still met up often, of course, how could we not?

Eve grinned lopsidedly, her fins rippling happily. “Oh, guess what happened the other day? Y’know little Davie?”

“Yeah?”

“He earned his name, finally! He’s a late bloomer, but he earned the name Sunbringer, so it’s kinda worth it.”

“Sunbringer? Jesus- how did he earn that? He’s seven!” I laughed as we drifted along, Eve going into this crazy tale about how he managed a high-level illuminating spell on accident.

My naming was rather dull, my scales’ color came through like most sirens and merfolk when I was a couple years old. The mystical swirling of colors was similar to that like an eye- quickly earning Iris. Eve was more of a story: she earned her name after quickly learning spells and accidentally drenching the cove in darkness mid-evening due to a fire-off from a simple lamination spell. Not only was it in the evening, it was also on the Eve of the Day of Celebration, which was the anniversary of the officiation of the community.

I cackled at one of her jokes, shaking my head exasperatedly. “Alright. C’mon, we need to go see your girlfriend and Danni.”

There was a souring in our conversation at that, but she smiled anyway and we swam to the surface together. Honey and Danielle were chatting on the sand, relaxed on their haunches. Honey’s ears flicked against the soft breeze, said wind rippling her thickening light gold coat. Her coat retained the spotting from fawnhood, giving her a wonderfully graceful look on her twigs of legs. Her pale skin and blonde hair matched wonderfully.

On the other side of the spectrum, Danielle’s horse-half was a dark, chestnut brown, sleek and shiny in the sunlight. Her hooves were large and a little shaggy with white fur, her build large thanks to the Clydesdale-Shire genes. Her skin and hair were dark, as well, and the paint-esc blots of white complimented the pallet.

We didn’t bother with changing back to bipedal forms, Honey and Danielle had wisely chosen a spot that had been carved out so that the instant land dissipated, there was a steep four-foot drop into the water.

Granted, our tails were over six feet long- Eve refused to admit mine was larger, since she’d always been longer until late high school- but it was easy to let them flow behind.

“Eve!” Honey cheered, reaching forward and hugging Honey. They were such a good couple, really. They matched in the middle of everything and fit like two puzzle pieces.

A coil of hot jealousy built in my stomach.

Danielle gave me a knowing look.

After a long and soothing conversation and one or two drinks, we decided to head back together to my place for video games.

Eve was lucky- she wasn’t just a siren. She was also a fae and easily changed forms while still in the water. I grumbled angrily as I felt the slightly-painful transformation overtake my body, the skirt my only shield of dignity.

And so we set on back, Eve fluttering above us and soaring easily ahead. She joined in with Danielle and Honey in leaving me in the dirt. I was racing after them, shouting indignantly over the sound of Honey’s cackles and Danielle’s taunts.

“C’mon, Illie! Are you telling me the great siren can’t keep up with a measly doe?” She jeered.

“Hey!” Honey yelped, but laughter still bubbled past her lips as she bounced over tree logs. You’d think the extra weight wouldn’t let them bounce, I pondered, but somehow those toothpicks mana-

Thump

And I tripped.

I groaned, a long “eeewwww” from my lips as something sticky stuck to my hand. I pulled back as the rest of the group came back, laughter dying as Eve inquired if I was okay.

“Yeah, I-” And then the stench hit me. Like rotting flesh.

Well, that’s precisely what it was. A rotting corpse of, as I scrambled back and upset the leaves, what I thought as a fae, judging by the torn-to-shreds red bug wings.

I nearly vomited.

Danielle called the police.

Part Two > Part Three

#mild language gore emotions reference to previous abusive relationships #mild language #tw:gore #emotions #tw:reference to previous abusive relationships #Kas JW #but i mod:rose posted this #minormurdermystery #writing #original writing

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medicalmarijuana-news · 7 years

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High Horoscopes | February 2017

Now monthly: The HIGH TIMES astrological forecast, complete with strain recommendations!

Ask Aelie anything! Find her on Facebook and Twitter.

ARIES

White is the color of raw cotton, the hair of our grandparents, soft kittens that bounce on toilet paper and Casper the ghost. It is crisp linens, a flag of surrender, racist pointy hats and robes, clouds, and snow. It is the absence of color and yet it contains all colors. It is heavy with implications in society, politics, mythology, psychology and art. It is lighter than air. White is complex, as are you. There is no way through this month without blinding yourself in the bright light of revelation. A woke moment is upon you. Keep a grip on yourself during this time or the white you see could be from the padded cells of a hopefully symbolic sanatorium. Strain recommendation: Green Crack

TAURUS

Brown is the color of hair, eyes, skin, fur, and Mother Earth. It is natural things like tree bark and poop. So much of our living world is brown. It is comforting, organic and wholesome. It is real. It is your color this month. You are incapable of fakeness right now. You are so you: all over the place, all over your face, inescapably you. Some like it; some don’t. No matter: keep your chin up and get on with the business of doing you, to-the-max. And there is a lot to do. People need telling off, others need inspiring. You’ve been procrastinating but now’s the time to make your mark. You will be heard, believe me. Strain recommendation: Super Blue Dream

GEMINI

Pink is the color of little animal noses, party dresses, cotton candy, some people’s lips, genitalia and skin, a rare steak, a monkey’s butt, a flower. It is sensitive and raw, much like you are this month. Careful not to upset the pinkness of you, your friends and family are walking on eggshells. You are not the strong pink of the women’s march knitted pussy hat: you are the easily offended and hurt by everything light pink of a scraped knee. I send many pink candy hearts your way in hopes that some compassion will ease the sting of this month, but I also offer you a pink ribbon to remind you that many have it much harder than you right now. Strain recommendation: White Rhino

CANCER

Black is the color of hair, of fur, of skin and the night. It is the stuff of myths. It’s powerful and clean, containing all and consuming everything. Like white, it can represent almost anything to anyone, from mourning to fashion, from outer space to the sacred place behind our closed eyes. It holds all colors and is the absolute absence of it. It is taken seriously. You wear the color black on your soul this month. You are everything and nothing. You are the ALL. Rarely are you more capable of achieving what you desire. You have the strength and gravitas to make big things happen. Pick your direction, and GO, GO, GO. Strain recommendation: Tangerine Haze

LEO

Yellow is more than the color of Donovan’s true love’s hair. It is the sun, the moon, the stars and cake. It’s Big Bird and buttercups, jaundice and pee. Most yellow things are as frivolous and carefree as a Tweety Pie eating a banana. Your yellow month has arrived, and I encourage you to make the most of it. Be silly. Speak in nothing more than dad jokes and limericks. Give no fucks. Everything must slide like water off a rubber ducky’s back. You will be forgiven for peeing in the pool because you can’t help it: the cosmos have nothing serious planned for you at all. If something heavy does come down on you, put on your yellow rain coat and take it with a spoonful of golden honey. Strain recommendation: Honey Bananas

VIRGO

Green: nature abounds with vibrant shades of it. Verdant fresh cut grass: that is your smell this month. Spring forward, fresh and awake to all possibility. A brand new mindset is upon you, clean and unjaded. Beware however, green is also the color of gangrene, rot and infection. Keep your health up, take your vitamins and charge forth with the vivacity of a zesty lime. It’s no fun to be that person who refuses to shake hands in cold season, but you’ll have to take the social hit to secure your wellbeing. There is so much to do and this young frog needs to jump! Strain recommendation: Red Headed Stranger

LIBRA

Orange rhymes with nothing and not many things are naturally orange beyond the namesake fruit, pumpkins, some flowers and birds, and those rare freckly-faced beauties. It is a special color because it is somewhat scarce while also being the color of an element central to our survival as a species: Fire. You have an orange aura about you this month. We are, in fact, at the start of the Chinese year of the Rooster; being similarly hued might not be a bad thing. But what does Orange mean to you? Whatever part of you that is absolutely unique is the orange bit, and that’s what’s shining right now. Nurture it, love it, and revel in it. Be proud to be a ginger! Strain recommendation: Super Silver Haze

SCORPIO

Purple will always be associated with Prince. He, of course, chose it to underscore his Princely name, as it is traditionally the color of the monarchy. I’ve also heard it described as the color of mental instability, dreams, sensuality and pain. It is somewhat rare in nature though prevalent in objects meant to resemble desirable things: like flavored juice, candies, paintings of sunsets, semi-precious jewels (with the exception of the rare Purple diamond) and hair dye. You can be royal or you can be a reasonable facsimile at a reasonable price. Most people won’t bother to investigate any deeper than what you choose to present on the surface, so either way, it’s your call. Strain recommendation: Blue Dream

SAGITTARIUS

Beige is often knocked as being bland and insipid. Sometimes simple can be good though: it is a staple of a classic wardrobe for example. And beyond fashion, beige fur is a very handy natural camouflage for animals in a desert location. All in all, it is a safe and somewhat boring choice. Some people are beige, as is sand, paper and dry long grasses. If you haven’t guessed, the theme here are things that are mundane; exactly how your month should be—a careful, uneventful, lame month of regular household duties, easy work and a bit of telly before early nights to bed. You might as well act like you have the stomach flu and only eat weak tea and toast. Take it easy, you need the rest—to heal and to prepare for what’s to come. Strain recommendation: Purple Urkle

CAPRICORN

Blue is the color of almost everything. Ask most people what their favorite color is and they say blue. It’s the stuff of dreams, clear waters and bright skies. It’s too big to fail; it’s all they said it would be but more; it’s everything but the kitchen sink. It’s overwhelming and calming at the same time. This is your month in a nutshell. Endless streams of paper boats floating on still waters. Hunker down, take it one page at a time, enjoy the breaks, breathe deeply and hug your animals a lot (people are animals too). By this month’s end you will master the blue, and it will elevate you as reward. Strain recommendation: Blackberry

AQUARIUS

Gray used to be considered depressed, institutional, and monotonous: basically Kafka’s The Trial if it was a color. Then it became the new neutral: accent walls and button down shirts popped up in grays. After that it got kind of cool, like Black’s little sister who’s just old enough to party and is bringing some new Scandinavian friends with her to the museum rave. These days it’s cozy: a fuzzy microfiber blanket and a Weimaraner dog on a rainy day in a beach house. After an eternity as the stalwart color of stalwarts, it has drastically changed personas many times in the last 15 years. What a surprise it has turned out to be. This is your gray time. You are a chameleon, switching up your tactics and tones with the ease of a variety show performer. This should come in handy as you navigate the many worlds you visit this month. Strain recommendation: Panama Red

PISCES

Red is a heavy hitter color—it connotes passion, rage, fear, sex, hell, love, heat, boudoirs and Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day and clown noses, fire trucks, cherries, hearts and blood. You are dripping in red, my Pisces friends. So many oohs and aahs to be had this month. How exciting, painful, wonderful and terrifying. Brace yourself, eat well, grab whatever sleep you can: a rollercoaster is picking you up from work and a waterjet is dropping you off. A tidal wave is your shower and a cyclone your hair dryer. It’s elderberries and ackee for breakfast, puffer fish for lunch and Sannakji for dinner! But without the risk there is no chance for reward! Strain recommendation: Agent Orange

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