#Kindle Fire without understanding a single word written. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saphirered · 3 years

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I had a cute thought today after getting sunburn lol - imagine the exu peeps are on the road during the colder months, and one shares a night watch with the reader who is like a walking furnace (maybe tiefling for infernal bloodline) and the reader just... scooches over to their chilly companion and hold them close so they don't freeze 💚💚💚💚🔥

Okay here we go. Hope you enjoy! 😘

(Dorian)

Never did Dorian think he’d be the one to be so cold. It’s impossible to repress the shivering no matter how much he tries to huddle up in a ball pulling his knees to his chest, arms closely tucked under his armpits. It’s like ice runs through his veins and there’s nothing he can do about it. He has half the mind to just put his hands in the campfire until he feels the heat burn but he’d rather not have to deal with burns for the rest of his life just because he felt cold one night.

You’re seated on the edge of camp paying close attention to the road nearby for any passerby's that may threaten you and your group. Once you deem it safe and its late enough to be sure no one traverses the roads at this hour you return to the camp to see Dorian trying to cocoon himself up in whatever he can find. You sit down in your previous spot not too far from him as he tries to get comfortable but simply can’t. The shivering is quite pitiful if not a little adorable.

Dorian’s eyes turn from the fire to you; completely unfazed by whatever cold he’s experiencing. When you take off your scarf and hand it to him he doesn't think twice about taking it and quickly wraps the warm fabric around his hands. How is it your scarf feels this warm? It’s almost unfair. You laugh as he blows air into his fabric clad hands to preserve heat.

“Are you laughing at me?” Dorian accuses with a hint of jest though he might actually just be very jealous of you.

“Maybe a little. Don’t take this the wrong way but you look terrible.” Dorian fake gasps because how dare you tell him he doesn’t look tiptop.

“Well since you seem to have me at a disadvantage, how about you share your mysterious ways to stay warm?” You laugh and scoot closer offering him your hands. Hesitantly he removes one of his from your scarf and when he feels the body heat preserved within you he pulls you in, wrapping his arms around you and making you his own personal heater.

“You’re welcome.” You say as Dorian’s grip tightens in recompense for your comment but mutters a ‘thank you’ somewhat muffled by your shoulder.

“As long as you know I will not let you go until the cold fades.” Dorian pulls away slightly to properly speak to you and regrets his words the moment your smug grin becomes apparent. Maybe he shouldn’t stroke your ego as such but right now the benefits far outweigh the downsides. When you don’t protest and instead welcome his wish he returns to your warm embrace fully burying his head into your shoulder once more. You get some weird looks from the next shift at the genasi having wrapped himself around you without any intend to let go until you have to move again.

----

(Orym)

Orym is no stranger to the cold. He usually sits it out and through until it passes or he’s on the move again. Now when it’s his turn to take watch he can’t really just fall asleep and let unconsciousness carry him to the morning away from the cold night. At first he sits twisting and rubbing at his fingers, wiggling his toes to keep the blood flow and feeling going but when that’s not enough he picks up his sword following the familiar steps of his routines keeping his muscles warm. It preserves some heat but he knows the moment he stops he’ll be freezing again.

You sit and watch Orym go through the deliberate paces, light on his feet, nearly inaudible. The motions are much akin to a practiced dance and you find yourself staring, ears still listening for possible dangers. He repeats the same routine a few times before moving on to a different one and another after that. While he keeps his breathing under control you know he’s exerting himself the longer he keeps this going so you get up and make your way over to him making sure to stay clear of the swinging sword. Not that you’d think Orym would be careless enough to hit you.

“Orym, while I appreciate the entertainment during this uneventful night, don’t you think you should sit down and take some rest too? You’ll be exhausted in the morning if you keep this going.” You gently remind him and Orym doesn’t stop moving but you know he’s aware you’re there and he’s listening.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” He speaks timed right with another move as of not to throw off his breathing pattern too much. You carefully move in placing a hand on his shoulder and his movements halt. By just a single touch he can feel the radiant heat run through him like a divine light. Orym takes in a sharp breath, tensing up. There goes his routine but then again, he appreciates the warmth running through him.

“Come sit with me?” You ask gently guiding him over towards the fire. Orym obliges and puts away the sword taking a seat next to you. He can already feel the lack of radiant heat drain from his body when you remove your hand to take your seat. He rubs his hands together and even being in your near vicinity you have a warmth around you. He finds himself scooting closer inch by inch to go from frozen wastes to warm summer night but still he longs for just a little bit more.

“Hey, do you mind if I-“ Orym gestures to the space between you two and before he can finish his question you’ve pulled him into your side. He doesn’t refuse the embrace and instead welcomes it taking in a deep breath warmth returned to him.

----

(Fearne)

When you wake up for your shift with Fearne it’s still very cold in the early morning, a little over an hour or two away from the sunrise to hit at the end of your shift, you can’t afford a fire right now being chased and on the run. The smoke and light alone might put you all in a dangerous situation so the group would have to suffer the cold. Sleeping through the cold isn’t the problem. Being awake to keep watch is. At least for some. Not you. You’re fine. While it may be a disadvantage in certain circumstances or when facing the judgement of others, in these cases the infernal bloodline really shines through.

Fearne is huddled up pulling the hems of her dress close around her to keep in the heat. The lack of fire really does her no good. She could create one with the snap of her fingers but doesn’t have the luxury to do so now. Not even Little Mister curled up on her lap does much to preserve her internal warmth. Yet something calls her closer towards you like a moth drawn to a flame. She tries to resist the effect but whenever she moves, changes her position or the likes she feels as if she’s moved another inch closer to you.

You sit carving away at a piece of wood with your knife to pass the time and keep a look out but you’re aware of Fearne moving closer little by little. You don’t want to say anything as you’d probably get an answer you wouldn’t understand anyway and just let her do her thing. The faun’s got her reasons so just let them be. Besides, you don’t want to accidentally wake up the Little Mister again or you might just find monkey excrements stuffed between your belongings again.

“Oh! I get it now!” Fearne speaks to herself, ears perching up when she looks at you you raise an eyebrow and stop your whittling. She begins moving closer towards you carrying the monkey with her. Mister rolls onto his back when she’s seated right next to you and you watch as the previously puffs of smoke turn into puffs of ember. Fearne feels herself get warmer and warmer, heat rising to her cheeks and limbs.

“Looks like my kind of fire and yours aren’t so different after all.” She smiles and it takes you a second to figure out she means the hellfire from your lineage, the Plane of Fire flame of Mister and the wildfire within her. Just being close together raises the temperature for you enough to provide some comfortable warmth. Fearne waits for your permission and when you nod she curls up next to you putting her head in your lap mindful of her horns.

----

(Dariax)

Dariax glares into the campfire. It’s so not fair the fire gets to be warm when he is not. Yes he can warm his hands but the rest of him will remain cold and he’s not putting the rest of him any closer to the fire than he already is. He’s not stupid. A little oblivious at times, maybe but not stupid. He finds himself praying to whatever entity gave him his powers will bring him towards some warmth. A coffee would be nice, or a good roast. He could even do with a stew or some soup but every time he looks at the compass around his neck the arrow points towards you, adding another log or kindling onto the fire to preserve it throughout your watch.

“Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I know you stupid thing. I know fire is warm but I can hardly throw myself into it without getting burned, now can I!” Dariax grumbles half the mind to throw the thing into the fire to see who’d have the last laugh. Why must this divine shit be so cryptic one moment and completely and utterly useless the next.

You stare at the dwarf in confusion at the sudden outburst as he keeps grumbling. Something’s clearly up but luckily from your peripheral you can see the others are still fast asleep none the wiser about Dariax’s frustrations.

“Everything alright, Dariax?” You ask. Frustration is written over his face but lessens when addressing you and turns a little more spiteful at something inward.

“Yes! Yes! Everything is completely fine.” He grumbles and you raise an eyebrow knowing full well that is not the case. Dariax knows you see through whatever poor attempt of an act he may have tried and failed to put on.

“If you say so. I guess I’ll keep this nice hot cup of tea to myself then.” You pour some water into a cup and use your magic to heat it until it’s steaming. Dariax looks on as if he’s a man stuck in the desert finding water for the first time in days. He hurries over and takes the cup from you before you can take a sip, downing it in one go.

“Ow. That’s hot. That’s really hot.” Dariax instantly regrets downing an entire cup of steaming hot tea. He can feel his throat burning an has no feeling left in his tongue and mouth in general but the warmth settling in his stomach is nothing short of being worth the pain.

“Thank you for calling me hot.” You grin and Dariax is about to say that wasn’t what he meant but it’s not like it’s not true. You are hot. Wait…. oh… Now he gets it. The compass wasn’t pointing at the fire. It was pointing at you. Without any hesitation he scoots closer to your side until he’s right up next to you. You wrap an arm around him and pull him closer into your side allowing your body to exude the heat and share its warmth.

----

(Opal)

Opal fiddles with her thumbs. Why did she agree to take first watch again? Oh right, because you’re there. What she does not appreciate is the temperature decreasing slowly to the point where she can feel the difference, her body not getting enough time to get used to the drop before it grows colder again. What she can’t stand is you seemingly unaffected by this all humming a sweet melody leaning back on your elbows to watch the stars above every so often. Opal is jealous and it’s not hard to tell.

You feel a glare burn into you with the heat of the hellfire your patron draws their power from. All you can tell is that it’s not something you’ve done as moments before you’re still holding pleasant conversation. Opal isn’t upset by something you’ve said or done. She may just be a little petty when it comes to directing her jealousy of your indifference to the cold at you.

“Hey Opal, are you cold?” You ask the girl as she pulls her cropped jacket closer around her shrinking within herself intensifying the glare.

“No. Why do you ask?” Opal scoffs biting her lip to prevent it from trembling as an icy cold gust of wind blows through.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just very nice and warm over here closer by the fire. I thought you might enjoy it.” If you know Opal to be anything it’s stubborn and now is no different. Ted must be scolding her as her mood sours considerably.

“I’m good out here. It’s nice and cool in the breeze.” You hear her mutter something else under her breath but can’t make out what from the distance.

“Okay, whatever you say.” You go back to your business letting the human wallow in self-pity. No one but Opal is able to convince herself to get over herself and give into the help of others when she’s trying to prove a point but that doesn’t mean you can’t persuade her to give in and let her take credit for doing something you suggested.

“You know, for a human you’re holding up very well. I don’t think I could sit all the way over there away from the fire weren’t it for my infernal blood keeping me warm. It’s always nice and handy to not need to carry as many layers just to stay warm. Though, some people are bothered by the warmth of my skin upon contact. They say my blood must be boiling in my veins. I just take that as a compliment.”

As you continue on listing the benefits of your infernal ancestry Opal grumbles to herself getting up from her spot and strides over to you. Without a word of warning she sits down in your lap wrapping her arms around your neck.

“Comfy?”

“Shut up.” You’re not going to push your luck and allow the freezing human to cuddle up with you and bask in your natural body heat. Secretly Opal is thankful but Ted’s little ‘I told you so’ does not do well for her mood. Better get used to being her personal heater because Opal is not forgetting this.

#critical role x reader #critrole x reader #exu x reader #exandria unlimited x reader #dorian x reader #dorian storm x reader #orym x reader #fearne calloway x reader #fearne x reader #dariax x reader #dariax zaveon x reader #opal x reader #critical role #exu #exandria unlimited

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xmoonlight-serenadex · 4 years

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SLAMS HAND DOWN

I'm hooked. I can't focus on anyone else, dammit you perfect little demon!

I've never written for him before, but I can't stand it. He wins

Kindled Desires — [Xiao x Reader]

Words: Roughly 630

Genre: Fluff

Gender Neutral

It was never meant to come to this, to his hands trailing along your legs, long caressing touches underneath your knees, gently bending to his every command without so much as a whisper shared. Up and over your thighs in a slow dance only known to you both, his fingers carefully dipping into the curves of your hips, gliding over your torso in perfect smooth waves. His nails leaving behind a soft bitter sting in their travels, a gentle sort of fire that burned even as he moved on. Moved further.

Xiao was never meant to have his lips against your neck, small sharp fangs buried deep within the curves of your shoulder. Leaving a lasting mark with a sweet scarlet hue, his tongue lashing out to collect the small fragments of crimson that crept away from his visible claim. Not a single part of you would go to waste beneath his hands, his strong hands that held you ever so softly. Careful caresses amongst his needy lingering fingers, existing in a delicate harmony.

He never thought for a moment, when he first locked eyes with you. That his hands would wander every corner of your body, that his lips would dance with yours underneath the gentle glow of night. Xiao never considered the way you would ignite the emotions hidden deep beneath his carefully crafted walls.

Pressed against your body, chest to chest and hand in hand. The intimacy he felt burning, aching within him, would never be replicated, the heat of your searing touch and the cool of your light kisses spun his head in ways he never thought possible.

It was never meant to happen.

He was never meant to touch you.

Yet.

He was addicted.

Addicted to you in ways he couldn’t explain, even with all of the words he knew, old and new. Nothing he would ever speak, ever whisper against your ear. No words lingering on his tongue would ever freely pour the contents of his rapidly beating heart. The butterflies swirling in his stomach would never be set to fly again, nor would you ever truly know of the way you invaded his every thought like a moth to flame. His every move had him thinking of you, every single action had him craving your presence.

Xiao had never wanted someone so close before be it god or mortal, never needed someone to be by his side so desperately, never craving someone’s touch quite like he had yours. He never wanted to be with mortals until he met you. He never wanted to know the touch of a fleeting soul yet you did just that, you gave him everything he never wanted. You changed the pathways of his heart, the restraint of his mind and washed away the tension locked deep within his core.

He never wanted to experience these kinds of emotions, the desire that flowed so deeply through his veins, dripping into every thought, every touch. Mercilessly pulling him back to you time and time again. He never knew he would ever feel this way.

He never knew he would understand the ways of mortals. Never knew that one touch was all it took, to drag him to the darkest depths of desire. He never wanted to experience the life of a mortal. To feel for another so deeply it pained him to be cast apart.

But he was brought undone. His walls caved in and his heart began to beat, to ache, to crave in a way he never wanted to let go of. He wanted more of your touch, to hear more of your voice, to be with you in every way. He wanted to feel it, and he did.

Xiao, finally felt Love.

For you.

#genshin impact #genshin impact xiao #xiao #original writing #fluff writing #Xi's Literature

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lit-in-thy-heart · 3 years

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you know what, what's the point of being on this platform if you don't get to bellow into the void about your interests in the hope of finding someone with the same interest?

in light of this, let me inflict a lowdown of the victorian literature (mostly novels because poetry is difficult to collate) that i've read for my module this year upon my mutuals

i'll do a separate one for vampire novels and reblog with the link

because what are the victorians without vampires? straight

bleak house (dickens): what a ride that was! yes, it was nearly a thousand pages and, yes, some chapters i was like can we move on please, but that's dickens for you. honestly, i loved it. if you're looking for thinly-veiled lesbianism, this is the book for you (esda all the way, if they even have a ship name). unfortunately i already knew one of the plot twists due to watching dickensian five years before, but there are plenty more to go around! if you can get through the first chapter describing nothing but fog and the law courts, you're in for one hell of a treat -- just don't google anything about it until you've finished because you will get spoiled (or don't share a house with me, where i'll tell you the entire plot as i'm reading it). definitely recommend, but marking it down for the heteronormativity with allan. (9.5/10)

villette (c. brontë): where to fucking start. i, quite frankly, do not care for charlotte brontë, and when reading the earlier novel agnes grey by anne, i could see some more things that charlotte has filched for this travesty. no victorian novel is going to be without problems, but this one was xenophobic, ableist and, of course, racist. the protagonist doesn't really give anything away, which is meant to make her more mysterious, but it just renders her an empty vessel. oh, and she tells you stuff that she's figured out waaaaaay after she says she's figured it out, a bit like she's allowing you to feel smart for making a connection before going 'oh yeah i knew that like twelve chapters ago, keep up'. some of the passages are really striking and there's maybe one character who's likeable but that's about it. i'd say it's more a story of omission than repression tbh. (4/10)

janet's repentance (eliot): wait, have i even finished this? no, no, i have not. it's fine, i wasn't going to tell you the ending anyway. i did get hooked eventually, there were just a LOT of names thrown around in the first few chapters, and a word that i didn't know was used frequently (turns out it was a name for the followers of this guy). i did get strong hester prynne/arthur dimmesdale vibes from some of the main characters, but janet is a very sympathetic character which, after reading villette, was nice. slightly depressing in some places, but a good enough read if you're not cramming it in the day before your tutorial, because it is mildly dense. (7/10)

the wonderful adventures of mrs seacole in many lands (seacole): not what i'd been expecting to read on my module, what with it being a biography, but enjoyable nonetheless. horrible histories lied to me, though, she was in her 40s/50s when she treated people in the crimean war, not in her 20s, but that's minor. it was actually quite funny??? like she was very reluctant to give away to give away her age and almost slipped up a couple of times, and also made some very biting remarks about people who were passing comment on her skin colour. for a biography, it wasn't hugely biographical, in that she was married for what seemed all of five minutes before her husband died, when in fact they were married for several years, but if you want an in-depth depiction of war, this is for you. not what i'd usually read, but some of the descriptions are so vivid that it does read like a novel in places, though sometimes the descriptions were so detailed that i did tune out at odd intervals. (9/10)

the happy prince and other stories (wilde): if you're feeling low, don't read these. don't. especially not 'the nightingale and the rose', because that was honestly heartbreaking. really well-written, some passages were just beautiful, i just wasn't in the right headspace to fully appreciate it. it also has a lot of death, i should probably explicitly say that. (8/10)

agnes grey (a. brontë): chef's kiss, honestly. if i'd read this last year then i think it definitely would have hit a lot harder, what with agnes moving away from home for the first time and struggling with loneliness around people who she is different from. beautifully written, i'm irritated at myself for not reading it sooner, even though i've owned a copy for about four years or so. agnes does come across as a bit wet sometimes, but those moments are rare and far between, she's overall a resilient character who is trying to make her own way in the world. seeing as i managed to get through the whole thing and didn't lose focus on what i was reading, i rate it higher than jane eyre (which is a rip-off of this anyway). we stan anne. though i am marking it down for the underdeveloped romantic relationship that just pops up (9.5/10)

now for some old classics that weren't taught on my module, but i can't not mention them

a tale of two cities (dickens): this was my first dickens book and oh my word what a book. yeah, okay, lucie is a bit of a wet dishcloth and has basically no personality, but there is definitely something there between her and her maid. sydney is my baby and oh so gorgeously dramatic ("you have kindled me, heap of ashes that i am, into fire"), which was perfect for the pangs of unrequited love. the plot is slightly confusing, and you don't really understand everything until right near the end, but i loved finding parallels in the chapters set in france with the chapters set in britain. oh and the showdown between miss pross and madame defarge is wonderful. i had a tradition of reading it on the run-up to christmas, just because that was the period when i read it for the first time, but i haven't done that for the past two years just because of exams and stuff. now, bleak house just pips it at the post, but i still love it dearly. (9/10)

wuthering heights (e. brontë): i couldn't review victorian literature and not include this. there are very strong similarities between this and villette (seems charlotte really drew on her sisters' work), particularly in terms of me not liking a single one of the characters except hareton. everyone is called cathy. literally. and heathcliff/cathy one is a toxic ship that should not be boarded. it is obsession, not love. the second volume is basically a repeat of the first one, thus showing that humanity will never move past its vices and will be caught in a vicious cycle of self-destruction for the rest of time. again, though, beautifully and vividly written. the characters are the type that you love to hate. (8/10)

the tenant of wildfell hall (a. brontë): what. a. book. this was a book that was simultaneously loved and condemned as scandalous when it came out. there's mystery, there's a woman escaping a horrible situation and making her own living, and there's a well-developed relationship! and the characters are likeable (i love rose, she's great, completely goes off at her brother when she has to do things for him all the time), which always puts it onto a winner. there's one chapter with gilbert that i have to skip just because i hate what he does in it. there are quite a lot of religious references, with redemption playing a huge part in the novel, but even the religious views brontë expresses went against a lot of the teachings of the anglican church at the time. do i even need to say that it's beautifully written if it's anne? marking it down for gilbert's behaviour and arguable control of helen's narrative. (9.5/10)

far from the madding crowd (hardy): i love this book. a little more uplifting than tess but still with the drama and murder you'd expect from hardy. maybe my review is influenced by my tiny crush on bathsheba: she's not the best role model but damn what a woman. gabriel isn't quite bae but i love him all the same, i'm so glad he's happy in the end. (9/10)

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nonbinarybrainstorm · 4 years

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Thunderclash Ruins Normal Spike for TFA Roddy

So, by popular demand or at least high interest, I’ve written my tfa!Roddy and ll!Thunders fic idea

Content: size kink, tummy bulge, excessive cum, kindling feelings

Enjoy!

Shots fire over the battlefield with resounding explosions as they make impact on the gray stone around them. Rodimus Prime pushes his back against a low outcropping and checks his bow, cursing as he takes in the damage. It was going to need extensive repairs after this and as it is now, he probably would only be able to get a few more shots in. Well, better make them count. He whips around to aim above his cover, targeting towards the Decepticons charging at him at full speed. Shutting his optics for just a flicker of a moment, thanking Primus that at the very least his team had managed to getaway. He pulls back and is just about to release as a sudden flash of light and a thunderous boom shakes the thin atmosphere, startling him and making his shot fly wide. Everything goes still as the dust begins to settle and a large silhouette lifts from the ground. It’s a mech like none Rodimus has ever seen, large and powerful like a Decepticon but land-bound like an Autobot. All Rodimus can think this mech could be is back up for the Decepticons here but they were far from needing any. What was going on?

Thunderclash looks around, dazed and confused, trying to gather his bearings and make sense of what just happened. Oh, right, Brainstorm happened, his processor finally provides helpfully. He turns to spot some unusual looking transformers emblazoned with the Decepticon insignia making him go on guard immediately. The war may be over but that certainly didn’t seem to stop any Decepticons they’ve met so far from wanting to continue hostilities. Realizing they were already on the attack as he puts his stance wide, he traces their line of attack to find their quarry. His optics land on a small bot, a mini and at that moment Thunderclash recognizes his shape, his colors and realizes he must be in another universe for he’s staring at a small replica of Rodimus Prime. He doesn’t need to spare a moment more to think about it, whatever the current situation, these Decepticons were going down. He wasn’t about to let any incarnation of Rodimus come to harm, not even that one evil one they met.

Rodimus watches in slack-jawed awe as the new arrival swiftly knocks the front-most Decepticon back like he weighed nothing more than an annoying stack of datapads. The mech’s movements were practiced and elegant like he’d been doing this all his life, a true machine of war. It didn’t make any sense in Rodimus’s processor as to why this mech who should be among Megatron’s most elite was defending him and he knew this mech was defending him after seeing that look in his red optics. Before Rodimus can come to any kind of census in his processor, the Decepticons who had been on the verge of bringing him to his end are retreating with heavy wounds of terribly dented armor and rips through their plating leaking energon. The mech turns around now covered with blast marks and scratches that don’t even seem to phase him with the occasional splatter of energon here and there. None of the energon could be his with how there wasn’t a single significant wound on his body. The strange mech smiles down at him and Rodimus can feel his frame heat inexplicably.

Thunderclash slowly walks towards the small Rodimus and kneels down to reach his hand out to him.

“Are you alright?” Thunderclash calls softly to him, not wanting to startle him.

The mech has an Autobot brand on his chest but he’s so tall and big, Rodimus can’t fathom it. Without thinking, Rodimus reaches it out and places his hand on the mech’s outstretched one. Upon the light touch, the mech’s hand wraps around his completely, encasing it gently but firmly in a warm embrace before he’s helped up from kneeling. Rodimus stares up mech and feels very small as he stands to see he only reaches the mech’s spike cover which serves to fill his processor with very unseemly thoughts that make his faceplates heat up. He blames it on the high of battle and pushes the thought roughly away.

“Yes, thank you,” Rodimus keeps his optics firmly trained on his face.

Thunderclash smiles down at this mini Rodimus and then feels his face heat in embarrassment as he realizes he hasn’t even introduced himself yet, “Oh, uh, I’m Thunderclash by the way.”

“Thunderclash,” Rodimus repeats and clears his intake, embarrassed at how dreamy his voice sounds saying this mech’s name.

“You must be Rodimus Prime, the Rodimus Prime of this universe that is,” Thunderclash says and releases his hand when he notices he was still holding it.

Rodimus blinks up in surprise and nods, “Yes, you’re from another universe? Do you know my alternate there?”

“I am,” Thunderclash’s smiles warmly again making Rodimus’s spark stutter, “He’s my captain, the captain of the Lost Light. I’m rather proud of that claim.”

A burst of jealousy that Rodimus knows is completely unreasonable bubbles up in his spark as he puts on a smile for Thunderclash.

“That sounds nice,” Rodimus scratches the back of his helm nervously.

Suddenly, his communicator beeps and he sees the message is coming in from command. He looks up apologetically at Thundeclash who waves him off with understanding. Rodimus nods his thanks and walks a few steps away to answer his communicator.

“Rodimus Prime,” Ultra Magnus’s strong voice pops in with a burst of static, “What is your situation?”

“I remained behind to give my team a chance to escape,” Rodimus reports, chancing a glance at Thunderclash every so often seeing him on his own call, “The Decepticons retreated after I received some aid from…”

Rodimus stalls as the ridiculousness of Thunderclash’s existence crashes over him. He couldn’t just tell Ultra Magnus he’d got help from a giant Autobot from another universe, that would sound insane.

“Rodimus?” Ultra Magnus prompts him, sounding concerned.

Rodimus shakes his head and responds, “I received some aid from a surprisingly adept civilian who helped me beat back the Decepticons.”

“That is… surprising,” Ultra Magnus says over the comm, thankfully sounding more surprised than doubtful, “We will have to give this civilian a commendation. A transport is set to arrive at your destination in two cycles with a Red Alert. We anxiously await your return.”

“Thank you, sir,” and with that the call ends.

Thunderclash walks up to him, “I’ve been told that I’m going to be picked up in just a few hours. So, I guess I’m here until then. You?”

“Transport is on its way,” Rodimus shrugs then tilts his head, “Hours?”

Thunderclash shrugs, “Earth time. It caught on pretty quickly on our ship.”

“Okay…” Rodimus says not sure how else to respond.

They stand there awkwardly for a moment, neither of them quite sure what to say. Thunderclash pats his legs for a moment and looks at an outcropping of rocks, thoughts flitting behind his optics.

“It’s going to be a while until I can get back, until either of us are going to get back,” Thunderclash points to the outcrop and looks back at Rodimus, “I’m going to go sit over there, maybe catch some recharge. Feel free to join me if you wish.”

Thunderclash walks over to the outcropping and slides down its surface so his back is to it and stretches his strong arms out before resting them on his knees. Rodimus watches him, feeling a sudden sense of indecision. There was a real possibility he was never going to see this mech again and Rodimus wanted… He didn’t know what he wanted really or, rather, he wanted to many things. He knew exactly what he wanted what was he kidding himself for? If they’re never going to see each other again after this then there was no harm in testing the waters or even taking the plunge. If he asked the worst that would happen is that he would be embarrassed for two whole cycles and that would be the end of it. Making a decision, Rodimus walks up to Thunderclash and rests a hand on his knee, getting Thunderclash to look up at him with an open expression.

“Uh, I would like to give you my thanks,” Rodimus drums his fingers on Thunderclash’s knee, “for saving me, I mean.”

Thunderclash smiles sweetly at him, genuinely touched, “It was no trouble.”

“No, I know,” Rodimus gets closer, moving his hand to Thunderclash’s shoulder, leaning in closer with his spark spinning a mile a minute, “I saw how you defeated them with barely straining a cable. I just want you to know…”

Thunderclash doesn’t move as Rodimus leans in, optics traveling to his derma and staying stock still, not entirely believing that this was happening. Rodimus leans in close and presses a kiss against his lips which Thunderclash would like to say that he had a bit more self-control and didn’t immediately melt into it but he did. Having this small version of Rodimus in his arms was like a dream. He doesn’t remember when he pulled Rodimus into his lap, but there he was, kneeling and kissing Thunderclash like his life depended on it. Thunderclash trails his hands over Rodimus’s frame, unable to resist the mech in front of him, feeling how small he is with his frame fit perfectly into Thunderclash’s hands. One of Rodimus’s knees rubs Thunderclash’s panel and it snaps open to let his spike pressurize between them. He tries to apologize to Rodimus but his words turn into a gasp as he feels Rodimus grab the head of his spike and run his thumb over it.

“Is this okay?” Rodimus pants out and Thunderclash just nods.

Thunderclash feels his processor practically melt as Rodimus starts stroking his spike, eyeing it with a hungry optic that Thunderclash had never even imagined on the face of his captain. Then, Rodimus uncovers his valve and lowers down in front of Thunderclash’s spike so he can push up against it with his wet valve. Making a choked off sound in his intake, Thunderclash grabs onto what he can of Rodimus as he balances on Thunderclash’s knees and starts grinding against Thunderclash’s spike. Thunderclash just moans and watches as Rodimus’s, this alternate Rodimus’s valve lips hug his spike as Rodimus moves his hips along it, gasping whenever his node rubbed against the head of Thunderclash’s spike. Rodimus’s legs begin to shake so Thunderclash takes him in his arms and moves to his knees so he can keep grinding his spike between the hot folds of Rodimus’s valve. He looks down at Rodimus whose optics are blazing with light and his face is practically split with how wide his smile is, optics firmly locked on Thunderclash’s spike.

Thunderclash moves his hips faster, getting Rodimus to cry out sweetly and pant, hot to the touch in Thunderclash’s hands. Then Rodimus grabs the head of his spike and squeezes, sending a jolt through Thunderclash that makes him stop cold, panting and moaning heavily.

“I want you to overload inside me,” Rodimus leans up and captures Thunderclash’s derma in a slow, gentle kiss before breaking it with a swipe of his glossa over Thunderclash’s lower lip.

“I don’t think…” Thunderclash vents out between pants only to screw his optics shut as Rodimus lines himself up with Thunderclash’s spike.

“Just go slow,” Rodimus trails his hand down Thunderclash’s length with one hand as grips Thunderclash’s arm with the other.

When Thunderclash still hesitates, Rodimus pushes himself down onto his spike some, the head of Thunderclash’s spike already stretching him obscenely so his node rubs against Thunderclash’s spike. Leaning down to steady himself on one hand, Thunderclash pushes in at a painfully slow pace, terrified of hurting this Rodimus. As the spike pushes deep inside of the wet heat of Rodimus’s valve, he relaxes to let more and more in. Rodimus moans as he sees how his plating shifts to let Thunderclash in, a bulge forming on his abdomen where Thunderclash’s spike is. Thunderclash feels himself shaking as he tenses every cable in his body to keep him from simply sinking into Rodimus, his valve impossibly tight around his spike. He can feel heat gather in his array and pressure build in his spike, waiting to be released.

Rodimus grips Thunderclash’s chestplate and tugs him down sharply to look him in the optic, “You’re not allowed to overload yet, not until you’re all the way in then you can.”

Something ignites along Thunderclash’s lines and he bites his derma as he continues to push in slowly, using every ounce of his willpower to hold back which comes harder as more of his spike pushes into Rodimus. Rodimus feels Thunderclash’s spike twitch in his valve as he’s stretched wide and filled so completely his hips twitch and spasm, unable to escape the almost overwhelming sensations. Finally, Thunderclash feels Rodimus’s valve lips press against his pelvic plates and sighs with relief, pausing as he vents heavily, heat and charge clouding his processor. Rodimus runs a hand over his lower plating over the shallow bulge and bites his derma as he writhes on the spike, gasping as the ridges rub against the walls of his valve.

“Well come on,” Rodimus pants excitedly, his optics flaring erraticly, “I know you’re desperate to overload. So, do it, I want to feel you overload inside me.”

Thunderclash chokes off a groan and practically overloading upon Rodimus’s command, filling him with hot transfluid, so that some pushes past his spike to drip onto the gray stone below. Rodimus cries out as he’s filled, overloading on Thunderclash’s spike, his valve unable to tighten anymore around Thunderclash’s spike that’s filling him so completely. They come down from their overloads rapidly rather than gradually and charge immediately begins to build again in Rodimus’s systems and he moves his hips however much he can.

“Keep going,” Rodimus begs, gripping desperately onto Thunderclash, “Please, I need more.”

Thunderclash swallows a moan and pants out, “Say that again.”

Rodimus groans in frustration and all but shouts, “Just frag me! I want you to use that spike of yours to- Ah!”

Thunderclash thrusts and Rodimus digs his fingers into Thunderclash’s arms, unable to form words, barely even able to think as Thunderclash’s spike fills him over and over. Unable to control himself any longer Thunderclash let’s loose, pounding into Rodimus as he keeps him still in one arm, his hand holding Rodimus’s hip tightly. It’s fast and rough, with the obscene sounds of Rodimus’s wet valve being used. Overload takes them both more violently this time, charge licking their frames in broad arches as Thunderclash spills again into Rodimus’s valve, making Rodimus feel warm and heavy in a way he’s never known before. They calm down completely this time and Rodimus winces slightly as Thunderclash’s spike depressurizes out of him, letting cold air hit his valve. Rodimus scrambles to hold onto something as Thunderclash stands up rapidly and walks him over to a taller bolder and sets him down gently. Pulling a clean rag out, Thunderclash begins cleaning him up, muttering under his vents.

Rodimus puts a hand on Thunderclash’s chest, getting him to stop for a moment.

“What is it?” Rodimus asks and Thunderclash looks incredibly chagrined.

“I should’ve had more control, now look at you, you’re all…” Thunderclash rubs his fingers into Rodimus’s abdomen plating soothingly, encouraging them to return to their normal extension.

“Stretched out?” Rodimus offers teasingly but Thunderclash only looks regretfully.

Rodimus pulls Thunderclash’s face down and kisses him again.

“I liked that a lot,” Rodimus smiles up at him, “I hope you did too.”

Thunderclash nods sheepishly and stares down at Rodimus, a faint pang forming in his spark. Wanting every moment he can have of this fantasy, he finishes cleaning them both up then pulls Rodimus to him, to hold him and kiss him sweetly until he gets a notice that just in a few minutes, he’ll be able to go home. The swirling blue vortex appears suddenly in the air and with one last farewell, one last kiss, Thunderclash walks through the hazy portal, returning to his own universe and leaving Rodimus alone.

Later, his transport arrives right on time with Cliffjumper and Red Alert in tow. He boards it with barely a word, feeling a strange kind of melancholy that he didn’t know how to describe. Red Alert guides him to the small medbay and checks him over. To lost in his own thoughts, he misses the concerned glances of the transport crew and the critical gaze of Cliffjumper. Red Alert smirks and that’s what catches his optic.

“What?” Rodimus asks, his tone reflecting his sour demeanor.

Red Alert just shakes her head, “Usually, mechs are a bit more cheerful after getting fragged to within an inch of their life. Have fun with our hero did we?”

Rodimus splutters and Red Alert waits patiently for him to form coherent words. He has to clear his intake of static, her comment throwing him so off guard.

“How do you mean?” he asks as flatly as he can even though he’s completely on edge now.

She points to his abdomen and explains simply, “Your plating is distended at quarter capacity. That only happens for two reasons and seeing as how I didn’t have to turn you the right way out again, you got fragged.”

Rodimus looks away, faceplate heating to a bright red, “Oh.”

“Oh indeed,” Red Alert chuckles, “I guess your hero got all the commendation they wanted then?”

Rodimus doesn’t say anything at first then very quietly says, “He was… nice.”

Red Alert stops and turns around at that to see the melancholy from before return. She walks over and pulls him into a tight hug.

“Oh, Rodimus, I’m sure, you’ll see him again.”

They journey back to Cybertron and Rodimus tries very hard to forget a mech with kind red optics, and a sweet smile.

#valveplug #rodimus #thunderclash #rodiclash #thunderrod #tfatws #ll #you ever take two steps back and realize you've written some p indulgent shit?#yeah

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elisende · 3 years

Text

Wild Game (3/3)

Characters: Halsin/OMC

Warnings: Dubcon Rated: E

Words: 2416

Part III

The moon rose.

Around him, the forest seemed to sigh as the ritual wore into night’s deepest hours.

Halsin, sated, was uncertain he had the stamina for more hunting this night. Even the prospect of a year’s passing without another’s touch didn’t move him. The bear was lazy, and not given to a great deal of forward thinking, and sometimes that served him ill. Perhaps he would spend the rest of the night in meditation, listening to the moans emanating from the dark.

So he was thinking as a lithe figure crossed the path ahead of him. Tall--though not as tall as Halsin--and nude as the day he was born. Another hunter.

He carried a bow of beautifully carved ironwood. He had to be rich, important, or terribly beloved to carry such a weapon.

Halsin leaned forward and the minute sound of his thigh brushing a maidenhair fern stopped the elf mid-step.

The hunter turned, the watery moonlight a glimmer in his blue-green eyes. He was young, Halsin realized. As young as he’d been his first time. A century, perhaps.

As if sensing Halsin’s gaze, the young elf tilted his head fractionally, the moonlight illuminating his high cheekbones and the clean angle of his jaw. Halsin sucked in his breath; the youth was beauty personified, a demigod in flesh.

The hunter jerked his head at the noise, raising his arrow to point into the shadows where Halsin crouched. Eyes narrowed, he bared his teeth.

The druid smiled, his lassitude forgotten. This one showed promise.

Halsin emerged from the shadows, his silver-tipped club resting on his shoulder, a slight smile on his lips. They locked eyes.

The ritual of the look was a battle of wills, and if the will of prey and hunter were both resolute, could go on for minutes. The young elf did not wish to lose, but Halsin was older, wiser--and stronger. Yet the youth wouldn’t concede, even as the moon began to lower in the sky and the night grew stiller, paler--fading almost to dawn.

Urgency nearly broke Halsin’s will; he must have the youth, his loins insisted, before day broke and the ritual ended. His own mind betrayed him with images of taking the young elf on the ground between them, feeling the hunter shudder beneath him as they climaxed together.

But Halsin remained firm and something in the other elf wavered and he dropped his blue-green eyes to the forest floor, his lips twisting bitterly. Defeat.

With a growl of victory, Halsin closed the gap between them in a single stride, grabbing the youth’s fine bow, nocked arrow and all, and tossing it aside as though it were dead wood for kindling.

Up close, the wildness in the elf’s eyes was apparent. Halsin wondered if he was drugged--but no, it was panic. He even smelled of fear and why not, if it was his first Wild Game? Tenderly, Halsin took the youth’s chiseled chin in his hand, tipping it so their eyes met again. Words were forbidden, but with his gaze he made the youth understand that he was safe, that no harm would come to him. At least, nothing that wouldn’t heal after a few days of rest.

He started slowly, his hand moving up to caress the youth’s temples and then down his throat, the firm plateaus of his chest muscles, pausing to circle the young elf’s hardened nipples. The youth gulped audibly, but he didn’t flinch or break away. That was good--to turn back now was to desecrate the Leaflord’s offering.

Already hard, Halsin leaned forward to kiss the youth, and half of him still marveled at his beauty, even as the other half was distracted by his other qualities. The barest moan escaped his pillowy lips as Halsin teased him with his tongue. The druid dragged his hand through the youth’s dark auburn hair, as long and soft as a girl’s, eliciting another barely audible groan.

Now he trailed his hand downward, skimming the lean muscled ridges of his abs and closing around his hard cock, hot to his touch. The youth cried out, and the sound was both a plea and an exclamation. When he pulled away, need was written on his face, along with the fear Halsin had seen before. This youth had been ill-treated, once, Halsin realized. The thought enraged him, waking the bear within. He kissed the young elf fiercely, raking his fingers down his side, growling into his gasping mouth.

And then the youth fought back, pushing him hard against a lichen-slickened trunk. This was not in accordance with the ritual, but Halsin welcomed it, laughing in appreciation at the young elf’s spirit, his will to survive.

Smiling now, the youth took Halsin’s cheeks in his hands and pulled him into a deep, lingering kiss. Electricity shot through his body as their cocks brushed against one another, and it was Halsin’s turn to gasp.

The youth tracked his hand down the druid’s body, achingly slowly, still wearing a sly smile. The druid’s breathing became shallow and rapid as the young elf’s limber, strong fingers circled around his pelvis, knuckles just brushing against his balls. He knelt, his lips so close to Halsin’s cock that he could feel the hot sigh of his breath on it.

Halsin’s desire was building up into something dangerous, he felt, like an unslakeable fire that could incinerate an entire forest.

As if in answer, the youth took him in mouth, his tongue first hesitantly lapping the weeping tip of the druid’s cock, then his entire thick shaft. Halsin groaned, thankful for the support of the tree trunk behind him, as the youth ran his tongue up and down, holding the druid’s hips as they thrust rhythmically. He licked him as flames lick against a log, consuming him as he went.

He felt his climax coming, too quickly. “Stop,” Halsin said, breaking the ritual, but the hunter wouldn’t stop until his work was done. He took him in deeper, to the back of his throat, and looked up at the druid with those piercing eyes of blue-green, entreating him.

He lost control and came in the youth’s mouth, grasping the slick side of the tree as his body shuddered and spurted against his will.

The youth fell onto his hands and knees, gasping and wiping his mouth. A streak of black earth marked one lean thigh, up to the hip, like an ugly brand.

Halsin felt frustration and desire in equal measure, looking at the beautiful young elf crouched before him. This wasn’t how the ritual was supposed to go, but… it had all become a bit rote after all these years, hadn’t it? Worn thin, like a threadbare cloak.

As much as he wished to position himself behind the youth, to carry out the rite with a few powerful thrusts--and despite the pleasurable interlude, he felt eminently capable of doing just that--he also wanted to see into what territories this new approach led them.

The young elf regarded him from the ground, as though privy to his thoughts. He smiled--inviting, or mocking?--and Halsin made up his mind. They would complete the ritual but with perhaps a bit more license than the ancient priests had intended.

A growl in his throat, Halsin pinned the youth to the ground, looming over him, their faces nearly touching. He knew he was an imposing figure, and he used it to his full advantage. His big, callused hand found the hunter’s erection and he squeezed and stroked, enjoying the mingled pleasure and pain on the young elf’s face. As one hand worked, the other reached for the silver tipped club he’d dropped. The youth had a nice, polite dick. It was big without being offensively large; straight and long, clean lined as his beautifully worked bow. He took it into his mouth and the youth groaned, losing himself in the sensation of Halsin’s tongue sliding along his length, running his teeth ever so gently along the less sensitive length of his shaft.

Just as the young elf was about to lose himself, Halsin took his club and teased the silver tip against the youth’s ass. The cold metal made him gasp and struggle, but Halsin put all the weight of his muscled shoulders onto the hunter’s hips, pinning him down as he slid the first inch of the shaft inside of him.

It was nearly dawn, and the youth’s cry shook a flock of nearby ravens from their roost. The boughs of the pine trees loosed their silvery drops on the two figures below, who were insensible to the disturbance.

Halsin didn’t stop pleasuring the young elf with his mouth even as he began to thrust the club deeper and deeper into him, his own cock hardening with every thrust of the runed weapon.

The youth had begun to pant and moan, the volume increasing as the powerful druid put his weight onto him once again, pinning him down as sucked and thrust inside him at the same time. Deeper, and deeper still, until several inches of the club were inside of the youth, his face a mask of naked gratification.

His rhythm increased as he sensed the youth reaching his climax and at the critical moment, he pulled away from his cock and sank his teeth into the muscle of the youth’s inner thigh like a feral beast. The young elf sighed as he came, a strand of opals garlanding Halsin’s chest and neck. Halsin slid the silver-tipped club out from the young elf’s body and rested against his lean thigh as he caught his breath.

The sky was lightening; the ritual had ended. But Halsin still was not finished.

Slowly, he rose to his hands and knees, looming over the young elf. The wildness had returned to his eyes, but desire remained there, and now, too, trust. Halsin dragged his hand through the elf’s hair once again, kissing the back of his neck as he rose to all fours beneath him. Now, the ritual would be complete.

He was already hard again, and the youth was ready for him. Without preamble, he grabbed the youth’s pelvis and entered him, just a shallow dip at first, teasing himself as much as he was being careful not to injure him. Halsin knew his girth was too much for most to comfortably accommodate.

The young elf hissed in pain as he went deeper and Halsin had to remind himself to go slowly, gently. He was so tight. He rocked him, leaning in close to whisper sweet words into the young elf’s ear.

The first birdsong echoed through the wood as their tempo increased, and Halsin was fully inside him, gasping with every thrust, his hair, loosened from its binding, spilling across the youth’s back. His cries began to sound ever more urgent, pleading. Like the woman, he begged Halsin, “please,” as the druid’s thrusts became less gentle. The youth bowed his head, dropping his shoulders and raising his hips in a gesture of total submission, and only then did Halsin come, spilling his seed inside him for the second time.

When he withdrew, the youth’s face had been ground into the earth, leaving dirt in his dark eyebrows and grime across his cheeks, which Halsin brushed off tenderly before losing himself in another depthless kiss that tasted of wild thyme and chestnut honey. He wanted to break all the rules, to ask the youth his name, to travel with him--wherever he was going. To protect him from whatever it was that haunted him, perhaps even to avenge him.

But before he could speak, the young elf had broken away, snatching up his precious bow, thing of beauty that it was, and vanishing into the morning fog.

When Halsin returned to the grove, no one noticed that he was even sulkier than when he’d left. They were simply relieved to have his gentle tyranny over Kagha’s outright dictatorship.

“Please Master Halsin,” said the drow priestess, shaking him out of his reverie one dinner evening. She grabbed his arm. “Please,” she repeated, inevitably drawing into his mind the soft skinned woman and the beautiful, wild elf. “Don’t ever leave us again.”

And for some years, he didn’t.

Halsin, in his wild shape, paced from one side of his cage to the other. The opportunity to end Ketheric’s wickedness--finally, to end the blight he’d put on the land--had been simply too tempting to pass up. He would make the same decision again, though with perhaps more reliable companions. The distant, rational, elven part of his mind realized that, even as the bear simply raged at his incarceration.

Once the goblin spawn had discovered the entertainment value of baiting the bear, they quickly returned. Their torments did not serve to diminish the bear’s rage.

Just when the druid was almost entirely subsumed in the fury, he heard a familiar voice echoing down the cavernous hall. A figure strode down the stone steps to his cage, and before him, as though by some magic charm, stood the young elf, still carrying his beautiful bow. The bear’s anger faded to the background, and Halsin’s mind returned, dizzy at seeing him again.

He could not know him in his bear shape, but all the same the youth’s face crumpled in sympathy to see his wretchedness.

“He’s helpless, let him go,” he commanded the goblins. His voice so strong, certain. Had they met again in the forest, now, would the youth have prevailed in the battle of wills? Halsin thought the answer was perhaps yes. The goblins cackled and jeered. Halsin growled, for a battle was sure to follow. And it did, gods help them. The youth moved with a grace rare even among elves, nocking, drawing, and shooting in a single fluid motion. The walls were shining with goblin blood and the bear’s mouth full of foul entrails by the end of it.

When the last goblin was skewered by the youth’s arrow, a shot that pierced her skull right between the eyes, Halsin reclaimed his elven shape.

The youth’s eyes widened in recognition, but he said nothing as the druid whispered a few healing words. Halsin smiled, though he wanted to laugh, or perhaps weep. Both.

“You aided a bear without knowing whether it would savage you?” he said. The laughter bubbled up in him and he was helpless to repress it. Fate had brought them together, again, in this vile place--and where, now, would it take them?

#halsin #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #fanfic #fanfiction #bg3 halsin #langoth #halsin/omc

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akitokihojo · 5 years

Text

Enchanted - Part 6

“He wants a marriage to his daughter to be the ties of our alliance. I’ve accepted for you.”

Inuyasha flashed cold, the spit of his swallow hitching in his throat as his brother’s words processed. He’d given him away. He’d given him away like a stray to the pound. There was no warning that told Inuyasha this was even in the works; he was completely caught off guard. The cold shifted to temped, and the temped shifted to the kindling heat of a birthing fire, and that then shifted to a furious scald that brought his scowl to form and twitch and his fingers to ball into tightly-bunched fists.

“You did what?” The prince seethed.

“I did what is best for our country.” Sesshomaru stated, ember eyes rooted to his brother’s.

“How the hell is a marriage best for our country?”

“Inuyasha, it’s what’s behind the marriage that matters; the message it puts across.”

“Oh, it’s the message you’re going for. Here’s a thought: make a banner!”

“Don’t be so closed-minded.”

“I am not getting married!”

“You are."

“He is not getting married.” Kagura spoke. Her tone was level, but dictating; a rule-all note drawing her husband’s attention. She crossed the gap between them, holding out her hand expectantly, cocking a thin brow as she stabbed him with deadly, crimson irises. “What’s in the envelope?”

“The agreement.” The king replied, placing the parchment in her hand. The queen took out the paper from within the opened seal, carelessly discarding the now-empty envelope on the table beside her before unfolding the letter to see what was written. Hardly reading through, her eyes flashed straight to the bottom where the signatures sat, an intrigued hum leaving her pursed lips.

“As I suspected,” She started, condescendingly. “This isn’t endorsed correctly.”

He furrowed his brows, shifting his chin further down towards her as he awaited an explanation.

“I don’t see my signature anywhere. It’s unofficial. In fact, I don’t remember you bringing this matter to my attention at all. Do you have a habit of talking to me while I sleep, or…”

“Kagura-“

“Fix it.” She ordered.

“I’ve already accepted.”

“Improperly.”

“The deal has been made.” Sesshomaru said, the hint of frustration bringing a click to his tone.

Kagura took the top end of the paper between both hands, shredding it down the middle and dropping the pieces to the floor. “Arranged marriages are medieval. There hasn’t been one in this kingdom in-“

“I know the statistics, but sacrifices must be made!”

“And as king, you are the one that must make the sacrifice!”

“Kag-“

“You fail to realize that I am not talking to you as your wife. I am talking to you as your queen.” She was the one to raise her chin this time, staring him down as if he were a criminal waiting for his sentencing. “Since you have such poor communication skills and I’m not in the mood to wait around for your plan of action, let me lay it out for you. You are going to get in touch with Onigumo. You are going to tell him that you spoke impulsively and that a marriage to his daughter is not suitable terms. You are going to offer him something else in trade. If he declines, you will find another kingdom to ally with.”

“Do you understand how bad that will make us look!?” Sesshomaru bellowed.

“Now whose fault is that?”

“You are being unreasonable!”

“I wouldn’t have to be if you’d consulted me beforehand.”

The tension in the room was sliceable, dense, hard to breathe through, and Inuyasha watched through slanted eyes how his brother, though angry, latched his gritted hand to the table so as to control his temper, his nails dragging across the forgotten envelope. His nose twitched with his snarl, and his jaw was set forward. Kagura stood her ground, staring at her husband with the perfect amount of indignation, a challenging glimmer in her eye that rivaled the king’s vehemency.

With an extraordinary amount of control, Sesshomaru spoke as levelly as possible, the snarl in his tone cooling to refrain from further pushing his wife’s mood. “What do you suppose I offer them in trade, Kagura?”

“Oh, now you want to talk it through with me? Now you want my help?”

Too late.

“Inuyasha, leave. I need to have a discussion with your queen.”

“Inuyasha, stay. Your king’s word has no power right now.” She fired, eyes boring into the burning glare of her husband’s.

“You would have been against my decision; that’s why I never told you.” Sesshomaru growled.

“Yes, I would have told you it was stupid! I would have told you to act rationally! I would have told you that you would be risking the relationship you have with the one blood-related family member you have left!”

“It’s for our kingdom! We must do what is right!”

“After executing all other resources! What have you done, oh great king!? Did you offer him money, horses, food, materials, livestock, grain, a statue - if that’s what he’s into!?”

Sesshomaru didn’t answer, his jaw still contracted and set, breathing so heavily it huffed loudly from his nostrils. A moment passed where he willed himself to steady, to calm as much as possible given the grilling he was receiving, closing his eyes as he fought back the disgruntled growl and raking his fingers through his silver hair.

“You didn’t even try to negotiate, did you?” Kagura questioned, her tone soft yet holding heavy shock. “He told you his terms and you took it.”

“Yes.”

“You would have gone head-to-head with your father if he even considered doing the same to you.”

He said nothing.

“You need to fix this.”

“It may be too late.”

“You better hope it’s not.”

Sesshomaru’s begrudging gaze slowly shifted over to Inuyasha, and the prince could easily see how demolished his brother’s pride currently sat. Through gritted teeth, he spoke.

“I will try to renegotiate the contract. I will try.”

He could tell by the emphasis that the deal may already be solidified. Though in their country decisions were not set unless one was reached by both the king and queen, it didn’t always matter in different jurisdictions. A signature was received. There was a chance, and a good one at that, that the alliance was set, he’d be betrothed to their princess, and if the deal was withdrawn it was grounds for war. Especially going against a ruler as redoubtable as Onigumo. The breath was tediously pulled from Inuyasha’s lungs, a hollow hole beginning to be carved within the center. His life, his freedom, everything he’d worked for up until now was balancing on the line.

Sesshomaru stomped past him, his cloak hitting Inuyasha’s arm in his tenacity, throwing the door to the office open as he stormed out. Kagura, roiling in her steam, let his footsteps fade before storming out the door, herself, and heading in the opposite direction. And Inuyasha was left alone. To wait for the decision of his own future.

—

As the days passed, Inuyasha had quickly grown rough around the edges. He was never very good at waiting on other people, always preferring to get the job done, himself. That obviously wasn't possible in this case, and that fact, alone, had his blood coursing through his veins at an alarming pace. His brother had nothing to say to him since that day, and though Inuyasha could live without a single interaction given his degree of resentment, no news from the king meant no change. The more he walked passed without a word of update, the more uneasy Inuyasha became.

He didn't want to be around anybody, found himself only replying in grunts, and focusing on his work was entirely impossible and all the more aggravating. He hadn't been able to bring himself to go see Kagome. Not with the information he had plaguing his mind. How was he supposed to face her knowing he may have to leave her? How was he supposed to pretend everything was alright when he wasn't one-hundred sure it was? He couldn't tell her. He could hardly handle the anticipation, how would it be fair to string her along, as well? Just the thought of tears swelling in her eyes when he told her - no, he couldn't do it.

Not if he didn't have to.

Though, as the eighth day came and went, even he hated being around himself. He was intolerable. He was angry, unbearably nervous, and his stomach had been in shambles. No matter how many doors he shut himself behind, though, a certain little girl always knew where to find him.

There was a small, isolated room connected to the library full of aged novels with golden trim. It wasn't frequented by anyone as it served more as an altar of his late father's collection of books he favored; no one wanted to disturb the dust the magnificent dog demon king left behind. The room was initially intended for a place to read in solitude; it had a window that peered over the forest grounds with a cushioned alcove to rest along, and against the opposite wall was a medium-sized couch - big enough for slouching into, but not quite spacious enough to sprawl over in supreme comfort given the proximity of the room. Now, it was more of a closet. The couch was covered by a white sheet to protect it, and around the rest of the room were various items and boxes. Inuyasha had taken it upon himself to shove it all to the far corner, allowing the nook in the window to be one his retreats in the castle.

He'd heard her tiny footsteps coming, treading slowly and carefully on the carpet. She'd recovered well, the only thing tiring her out being her lingering cough that would take more time to fade, but she wasn't allowed outside. Not until the bitter season warmed and her chances of falling sick again weren't so detrimental. That meant she was stuck in the midst of the thick animosity plaguing the castle. No one really spoke other than for business-related matters, but that didn't mean the tension wasn't clear to observe. Even for an eight year-old. The handle twisted and the door opened at a meager pace, her head poking through the gap. Inuyasha turned toward her, gathering the cautious expression on her face and downward curve of her lips. Immediately, he grew concerned that something was wrong, bringing his legs down from the seat so he could swivel to face her.

Rin sauntered forward, allowing the door to close with its own weight, the soft click shutting them in. She'd seen her papa upset numerous times before and knew very well to steer clear of him until whatever had upset him was settled; sometimes that took ages considering his habit of harboring grudges. She'd seen her mama's temper, too, though her mother was a bit more attentive and capable of hiding whatever bothered her whenever Rin was around. What she'd never seen before was her uncle so distraught. He was more outspoken than her papa, more likely to act impulsively, more passionate in his endeavors, and sometimes needed space to recoup. Not once had she seen him like this, though, and not once had his mood stretched out for so long. She was worried.

With the way he spun toward her, she could tell he was pushing his own feelings aside in case she needed him for something. He was good like that. And that's what she was there to try to do for him. Wordlessly, Rin moved forward, stopping just before his knees as he bent to prop his elbows on his thighs, meeting her height perfectly. Bringing her hands up to his cheeks, she gently ran her thumbs beneath his lackluster eyes, missing the vibrancy they held not too long ago.

"What's wrong?" He whispered.

"I wish I was a knight." Rin quietly admitted, copying the caressing patterns he usually traced on her own cheeks when she cried. "That way I would be strong enough to fight off whatever hurt you."

Inuyasha shut his eyes defeatedly, feeling whatever defenses he had up crumble away as he sighed and leaned into the little girl's touch. He was that obvious, huh? She was so tender, so caring, and he wrapped his arms around her waist for the sweetest hug he hadn't realized he'd needed. She gripped the shirt at the back of his neck, her grasp on him tight and sorrowful, like she was trying to take the pain and angst away from him. Even after the hellish week she'd previously had.

"Can I stay with you for a while?"

He didn't answer, just dragged her closer to easily bring her into his lap.

Inuyasha settled his legs back onto the alcove cushion and leaned to rest along the wall. His niece sat comfortably between his legs, cuddling into his chest as he combed his fingers through the length of her hair. The feeling of her breathing, her arms holding him, her minuscule body weight laying against him, settling further and further as she continued to relax grounded him like nothing else had recently been able to.

The prince realized soon thereafter that seeing Kagome may be better medicine than staying away from her. He was in a slightly more rational place now. Slightly. He didn't have to say anything. He just wanted to see her and slip away from the pressure of his home. Five minutes. If he was allowed that, he'd be better balanced to wait a bit longer for an update from his brother without losing his temper. His aides stayed behind, both of them understanding the weight on his shoulders and the desperation in his voice.

The snow had melted and absorbed into the earth, the soil along the forest path finally firming from the softened muddy state it had been for the majority of the last month. The crisp air felt so different outside the castle walls; lighter, colder, distracting. It helped the drawl of his steps even out to a level pace, his eyes lifting from the ground to scout out the curve ahead where her cottage would be found.

"Hi!" A bright voice announced from behind him, startling a chill up his spine. The prince spun around to see a thoroughly shocked Kagome, brown eyes wide and brows raised high, visible through the few parts in her bangs.

"Christ." Inuyasha groaned, clutching his chest over his heart.

"Woah, are you okay?" She approached, a curious smile curving her lips. "I didn't think it was possible to sneak up on you."

"Did you even make a noise?" He asked exasperatedly, still not recovered.

"No, because I'm stealthy."

"You're the furthest thing from stealthy."

Kagome gestured to his current, crumpled state in an opposing manner, bringing the prince to eat his words just as quickly as he'd said them. He laughed, gliding his tongue over his teeth and nodding as he admitted defeat to the cheeky girl.

When he didn't move closer or reach to pull her in as he normally would, and his smile gradually faded, so did hers. He felt off and distracted, and with the way his shoulders weren't held as high as they normally appeared, she felt like she could literally see a shelf of lead weighing him down. Stepping forward, Kagome cautiously reached for his fingers with her own, moving at a pace to respect his dubiety. Inuyasha sighed out when she entwined themselves together, standing so close to him she had to tilt her head back to see his face.

"Something's wrong." She pointed, tone faint and welcoming.

"It's nothing." He quickly dismissed, shaking his head though never taking his eyes from hers.

"You're lying."

He only shook his head some more, leaning down to rub the tips of their noses together. Hers was cold and soft, and he could feel himself quickly growing precarious as she established a firmer grip on his hand.

"You can tell me if you want to." She breathed, and Inuyasha ducked his head to bury his face in the curve of her shoulder and neck, withdrawing his hand from hers to wrap both of his arms within the confinements of her warm cloak and around her waist. Instantly, Kagome fastened her own arms over his shoulders, her fingers threading through the short, silver hair at the nape of his neck. The concern wringing at her stomach was nearly debilitating. She never thought she'd see the day where the stoic prince appeared so unsteady. Even his hold on her was tighter than usual, his breaths hot against her skin, his fingers clutching the fabric of her dress at her back. "What happened?"

Reluctantly, Inuyasha peeled himself back to look at her, giving a wane smile. "I don't want to talk about it. I just came to see you. I can't stay long, though."

She gathered the expression he maintained, returning his smile with a little more warmth behind her own. She understood, and she wouldn't push. Slowly, she pressed to her tiptoes, just barely skimming her lips over his to get him to inch down her way. His breath was warm against her mouth, soothing when she wasn't the one that needed it, and she gave him a soft kiss, skimmed her lips again, then kissed him fully.

How could he possibly leave her?

He was aching inside at just the thought, refusing to allow the kiss to end quickly and holding the crook of her jaw to soak her in. He'd missed her. He'd made a mistake staying away when he didn't have to. More than anything, he wanted the hollow that had expanded an inch in the last week to be filled by this singular moment.

"I'm sorry I haven't visited recently." Inuyasha sighed, resting his forehead along hers. He felt the small shudder her body released as she breathed, shaking her head against his to dismiss his apology.

"Don't be. I understand. How’s Rin doing?"

The prince stood up straight, smoothing her dark hair to the front of her shoulders. "She's fine. Better. Much better. I never got to properly thank you for that."

“No need." Kagome smiled, trailing her fingers back and forth over the long sleeves of his forearms. "It's my job. I'm just so glad she's better."

Inuyasha leant down for another scant kiss, lingering just above her mouth where their lips tenderly grazed.

"I have to go."

“Okay. I love you."

He kissed her forehead, forcing himself to step away and walk back toward the castle.

Her chest felt heavy as she watched him stride away. In the small moment they were able to share with one another, she didn't feel like she'd done everything she could have to help alleviate whatever troubled him. Sliding her hand into a small pocket in the side of her dress, her fingers fumbled over a thin chain, dancing over it ambivalently. As she found the thick adornment to it, she swallowed the feeling and called out to the prince, clutching it all and holding it tight. Inuyasha turned back and Kagome made her way to him, reaching for his hand and turning it upward. Covering his palm with her own, she allowed the necklace to trickle from her grasp, curling his fingers shut to hide the item within.

Inuyasha peeked as soon as she let him, analyzing the golden chain with the heart attached at the bottom and cocking a brow her way. Kagome's cheeks were sprinkled red, her brown eyes wavering from the necklace to the floor.

"It - uh - papa gave it to me about a year before he died." She began, finally looking up at him. "He'd had it for ages and I always loved it. He said it was one of those trinkets where the more you wore it, the luckier you were. A good luck charm. Keep it."

"Kagome, your father gave you this."

"I have a million things that used to belong to him sitting in my house. I want you to have that -" She paused, the flush of her face deepening slightly. "Because it used to belong to me. And maybe it’ll work for you.”

Once more, he studied the necklace, letting it dangle from his fingers and noticing the engraved markings in the shiny, golden heart. The hole was closing in his chest. All at once, he felt at peace, calmed, a smile inadvertently growing on his face, his stomach igniting in a homing, encouraging flutter. His attention flickered back to the girl, and he feigned a grimace.

"So, remind me, what type of cheese are you, exactly?"

"Alright, give it back!"

"I'm just curious, because that was a fondu-level move." He laughed, raising his arm so she couldn't reach the necklace to snatch away.

"You've ruined the moment, you can’t have it anymore!"

"It's just a question!"

"You're the worst!" Kagome hid her face behind her hands with a groan, and Inuyasha, though still chuckling, stepped forward, lightly flicking the back of her hand to get her to drop them. When she did, rolling her head begrudgingly to look at him, he gently pushed some hair behind her ear, smoothing the pads of his fingers over the softness of her cheek.

"Come here." He whispered, kissing her, starting off tender and deepening it as he pulled her closer to him, both hands curving around the back of her neck while the heart of the necklace rested along her clavicle. "Thank you. I needed this.”

—

It was almost unfair how used to waiting Inuyasha had grown. His mind had adjusted and convinced him that no news may be a good thing. Maybe they were working on different terms, maybe Sesshomaru was just being prideful and if it didn’t concern Inuyasha anymore, there was no reason to report it. He wouldn’t put it past his spiteful, older brother. But when his messenger came for him during swordsman training, boisterously calling out his name in the middle of a match and getting him jabbed with the blunt end of a wooden, makeshift blade while his attention was diverted, the pain of his stomach sinking hurt far worse than the force Koga inflicted him with.

The prince followed the imp down the corridor, a heat beginning to bubble in his core. It could have been something completely different that was about to be reported to him, and he tried convincing himself so, but the dreadful feeling kept building, growing, rising. His fingers tingled with the anticipation, and he flexed them over and over to get the sensation to leave. Nothing worked. Nothing in him would settle. Instead, as the door to his study came closer and closer, Inuyasha felt himself becoming angrier and angrier.

Inside, his brother sat behind his desk, ember eyes already braced on the opening as he entered. The king’s elbows were propped on the wooden surface, hands folded in front of his mouth, and irises flexed with consternation. No.

No.

“No.” Inuyasha spoke, voice strict and scowl forming.

“Inuyasha.”

“No.”

The door shut as Jaken bowed and backed out, leaving the brothers alone - the most irresponsible decision in Inuyasha’s opinion.

Sesshomaru took in a slow drag of breath, pushing forward the creased papers before him for the prince to observe if he so chose. “I’ve tried to renegotiate. He won’t take anything else. The alliance has been signed; he won’t allow us to back out.”

Inuyasha chuckled all too incredulously, feeling more and more rocky as each word left the king’s lips. He dragged his fingers through his hair, spinning around as he walked towards the opposite side of the room because the sight of the bastard who’d signed his life away made him furious, sick, and as he approached a small, wooden table with a few books sitting atop it, he swiped his hand beneath and tossed the entire thing, not bothering to pay attention to what it collided with.

“Inuyasha!” Sesshomaru bellowed, standing from his seat in an authoritative form. “Maintain yourself!”

“Go fuck yourself!” He retorted, facing him once more and stalking forward. “How the hell did we even end up here!? You said you didn’t fight it at first, so why the hell not!?”

Sesshomaru’s jaw visibly tensed, lips curving down in condemnation. He made no approach to explain, but Inuyasha could see it all written clearly on his face.

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me! Are you really that petty!?”

“At the time I had been proposed with this, your relationship didn’t exist.”

Inuyasha scoffed.

“It had no business existing thereafter! I accepted once the line was crossed!”

“There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, stating a royal can’t be with a commoner! It’s ill-advised, but not illegal!”

“What sort of message does it send out, Inuyasha!?”

“Unlike you, you pretentious jackass, not everything I do is a political statement!”

“You will watch your tongue.” The king narrowed his eyes, raising his chin a few inches.

Uncaring, Inuyasha shook with rage, his veins boiling as he stared Sesshomaru down. “What the hell for!? To show respect to the shit show you’ve become!?”

“Inuyasha!”

“You signed me away without debate in order to get me to conform to your idea of what’s right! And you used our country as an excuse!”

“Kill two birds with one stone, as they say.” The king slighted. “You can’t possibly tell me you’re this upset over a girl.”

Again, Inuyasha laughed, the cynicism in his tone perfectly evident. “You think this is all because of Kagome? You think this doesn’t remotely have anything to do with the fact that I’ve lost my freedom to choose my own direction!? You took it away from me! You gave me away like a fucking object using a tradition that hasn’t been practiced in over a century! This is about me! My life!”

“Get over it. Like I said, I’ve tried renegotiating -“

“Am I actually supposed to believe that!?”

“Whether you believe it or not, it doesn’t change the fact that I have. I understand that you’re upset with me, but that won’t change anything either. I thought I was doing what’s best, and quite frankly, I still believe it’s for the better. Nonetheless, given the offers I’ve extended, they’ve all been rejected and the original treaty is in full swing. If I withdrew from the agreement entirely, I not only risked making the entire kingdom look uncoordinated and disgraceful, but also risked backlash from their ruler. I had to make a choice, and when it's between my people and my brother, you should understand which way I obligatorily had to lean. There will be a marriage. Soon.”

The prince clenched his fists, seething from the way Sesshomaru seemed to state everything so calmly; like it wasn’t a big deal to him. All expression seemed to vanish from the king’s eyes as he sat back into his cushioned chair.

“I apologize for the way this had to be.”

He wasn’t sorry.

“As royalty, we must be prepared to make sacrifices for our kingdom. I made a rash decision, but there’s no way out of it. The alliance will strengthen our forces and lessen our chances of an attack the sooner it’s known, though. Sometimes, we must swallow our differences and accept the change that’s to come. As prince, this is your responsibility. Your duty. You understand that, don’t you?”

It was like his tone carried a condescending backhand to it, smiting Inuyasha, but he was plagued by the tail end of it all. No matter how much he fought, it didn’t change the fact that he did have a duty to his people. There was an attempt to breech their forces months ago, and though he detested the route his brother had taken to rectify the situation, it was done. Their alliance with the kingdom of Naraku would protect their people. It would protect Kagome. And this was the sacrifice he rancorously had to accept.

“Yes.” Inuyasha ground out, ember eyes falling to the side dejectedly. "I can't help but wonder, though - if you disagreed with our relationship so strongly, why is this the first I'm hearing of it?"

"Would it have mattered? Would it actually have made a difference if I spoke of my objections to you?" Sesshomaru rhetorically asked, cocking a brow at his younger brother. "You're living out this rebellious stage of your life, and quite frankly, it's not my problem. I considered it a fling. One that was going on too long - quite like a show you've expected to end about five times over and it's continuously dragging out. You've had your fun. Now it's time to grow up."

The prince absolutely seethed, as if Sesshomaru was implying he'd been so kind as to allow his relationship with Kagome to exist in the first place. It was patronizing, disrespectful, impudent, and cold. His blood was boiling maddeningly, and it took an extreme amount of self control to reel in his temper and not lash out, wanting one more thing explained.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Your Majesty, but there seemed to be a hint of regret when you first approached me with this bullshit. Pointedly, it's out of character for you, but -"

Sesshomaru sighed grittily, blinking slowly as he rolled his eyes, propping more on one elbow now than the other. "Inuyasha, do you think I enjoy disappointing people."

Inuyasha shrugged a brow in response.

"I'll admit, I hadn't realized how much you'd come to care for the girl. I asked once and you didn't seem sure. Even afterward, when you spent more time with her, I never heard a thing. It wasn't until I personally saw the way you looked at her that I understood."

"These feelings are between she and I. Why should I share them with anyone else, no less you? The only two people that information concerns are well in the know; I didn't think I had to get on my knee and sputter out my feelings for you too. Should I have reenacted the kiss, as well?"

"Then how was I wrong to assume it wasn't serious?" Sesshomaru asked, ignoring his brother's spewed sarcasm.

"How were you right to assume so?"

A pause. A feint waver in the man's eyes before steadily gluing back onto Inuyasha's. "Believe me, if I had known the storm that was coming from Kagura, I would have thought more carefully."

"Right. For Kagura's sake." Inuyasha scorned.

"Inuyasha -"

"Spare me. It's done, isn't it?"

The king sighed out, leaning forward to lean evenly on his forearms. “It is. Understand that your relationship with the girl is hereby over, too.”

“As is ours.” Inuyasha said with no hesitation, resentment evident in his words. There was a falter in his brother's straight-set lips, a particular hardening in his jaw setting it forward. “I will go to Kagome tomorrow. I’ll tell her.”

“No.” Once more, the king slid the papers forward for Inuyasha to study, but he didn’t move to take them, knowing full and well Sesshomaru was about to tell him everything he needed to know. “King Onigumo and Princess Kikyo will be here in two days. I won’t risk you being seen with another woman and offending your fiancee. You may have Kagome brought to you.”

Fiancee. It was too thick a pill for Inuyasha to swallow just yet.

“Two days?”

“Two days. I’d tell you the series of events that have been organized, but I risk you tearing up the rest of my office. I think we'll save that for later.”

Inuyasha swallowed the rumble in his throat, feeling a grimace contort his face. Truthfully, he didn’t want to know what was going to happen anyway. He’d heard enough for the moment. What disturbed him, brought his stomach to churn and ache, the hollow in his chest once more returning with an abysmal vengeance as he already began to feel emptier than he’d imagined, was the thought - the fact - that he would have to break this to Kagome. That he'd have to break her.

“I will have her brought in tomorrow.” He conceded, the growl escaping as he spoke.

“The sooner the better.” His brother raised his brows, inferring he wanted it done immediately.

“Tomorrow. Let me gather what I’d like to say to her. She deserves a rational explanation.”

The king gave a curt nod, and as nothing more was said, Inuyasha spun on his heel, heading toward the door. He needed to put distance between them. Quickly. He needed to quell the colliding winds of his fury and vacancy before he accidentally dropped the defenses that had inadvertently formed and showed Sesshomaru the weakness he swelled in.

“Inuyasha.”

Without a sign of acknowledgment, the prince threw the large door open, a bang erupting as it slammed against the wall while he stormed away.

—

Kagome stood on the thin, front steps of the small cottage, waiting patiently for someone to answer her knock. She held the two looped drawstrings of the small pouch daintily, fiddling it between her fingers. It was hard to stay still in the cold, even beneath her deep green cloak, her muscles forcing her to tense or fidget for any source of friction.

"Kagome." A soft, woman's voice spoke from the side, and she turned at the familiarity of it. Sango and Miroku stood feet away, their expressions mostly solemn with the hint of a forced smile. Taking a moment to look around them, she noticed no one else; no other companion that was usually at the head of their pack.

"Hi," She breathed, a fog appearing before her mouth and dissipating upward. When their hardly curved lips faded to somber-pressed lines, Kagome began to feel the beginnings of uneasiness swaying her form. "What's wrong?"

After a small moment, as if the two knights were silently debating who should be the one to speak, Miroku opened his mouth. "Would you mind coming with us? Inuyasha would like to see you."

The door opened beside her and Kagome's attention jolted back to the purpose she'd come here for. The elderly woman stood with the door cracked, a quilt wrapped around her frail shoulders. The skin of her face was a little brighter than the last time she'd dropped by, and Kagome was confident that her illness was finally starting to pass.

"Kagome, you sweet thing. I would have sent my son to pick this up later." She spoke, gently placing her hand to the back of Kagome's.

"I wanted to drop it off, myself, so I could check in on you. How do you feel?"

"Much better." She smiled, though she could see the fatigue behind it all. "Still battling this god forsaken cough, but better."

"Good, this will knock you right out then." Kagome opened the small, velvet pouch, pulling out the little container of syrup. The old lady gratefully took the medicine, glancing over the woman's shoulder and noticing the castle guards behind her.

"O-oh! Knights! Is everything okay?"

"Yes, of course." Sango smiled. "We're friends of Kagome's. There's nothing to worry about, ma'am."

"Well, alright." She shrugged deeper into her blanket, giving one last courteous smile to the apothecary assistant on her steps. "I'll just blend this with some tea tonight before bed."

"To drown out the taste? I'd do the same." Kagome winked, waving goodbye before the door was shut. Carefully, she stepped down the three steps, approaching the two aides that hadn't moved. That uneasiness from before had unnoticeably been pushed aside during her interaction with the woman, but now it had returned, increasing an ounce as she noticed how unsure Sango's expression was. Something was wrong. The prince wasn't here and they were bringing her to the castle. There was no helping the irrational thoughts coming through. "Has something happened? To Inuyasha?"

"No," Miroku assured with a shake of his head. "He's fine, I promise. He'd just like a moment with you."

It didn't take anything more than that to get her to nod and follow behind them. Something still felt off. The knights weren't talkative, and the air about them was dense and sullen. The uneasiness sank into her stomach, roots slowly stretching out to make home in the organ as they stepped through the gates of the castle, her fingers continuing to fidget along the small pouch, more so out of nerves than the chill this time around, hoping the texture would help to soothe. She wished they'd talk to her, tip her off on what was going on, say something. The less they spoke, the worse it all sat.

Peculiarly, as the three of them crossed through the gates, she noticed housekeepers and groundskeepers scampering about almost frantically. Granted, Kagome had only been in the castle once before, but she was willing to bet the hurried paces, the amount of people tending to hedges and vines, the meticulous care while waxing the bannisters and decor inside, the fresh sheets and bedding being carried to bedrooms on the upper floors, and the amount of profuse apologies she'd received after being bumped into during their frenzy wasn't exactly normal. What was going on?

"He's right through there." Miroku gestured with an extended hand. They'd hiked up to the third floor and followed the curve in a hall to the right, entering through a door that only led them to another, albeit smaller, hallway. There weren't maids storming around this area, though; it was quiet in comparison, untouched, and seemingly private. She looked at the double doorway Miroku pointed her towards on her left. With how intimidated she felt, one would think the carved patterns in the wood were the thing that brought the shaky exhale to leave her nose. The two aides stood back, and with a push she had to give herself, Kagome stepped forward, her fingers wrapping around the cold metal of one of the arched and curled handles and twisting it open.

There was a little corridor in the entrance, and after shutting the door as quietly as possible, she stepped through, her eyes immediately taking in the polished wood of the walls and ceiling. It was a deep brown with a hint of red, the trimming resembling dark chocolate. Towards the far wall sat a large desk, papers scattered over the entire surface while an unorganized stack sat on the side. To the right of the desk, almost in the center of the long wall that stretched the room, was a large fireplace, a fire burning within and warming the room. As Kagome walked further, she noticed her prince. He sat on the couch along the opposite wall of the mantle, his elbows propped on his thighs and face buried in his hands, ears pinned low against his head. And her heart plummeted.

As she stepped closer, drawn to him, pained by his crumpled state, Inuyasha glanced up, finally noticing her. His lips were parted but he said nothing. His ember eyes were bright and illuminated by the crackling fire just across from him, and they conveyed a message she wanted to calm. Kagome kneeled just before his legs, so close that her own knees grazed him on her way down, the black dress she wore catching on his pants which she adjusted to sprawl out along the carpet.

She hadn't sat back to wait for him to speak. She couldn't. Not when he looked so torn; so anguished. Kagome filled the space between his thighs, her hands pulling his own to wrap around her waist, and when they gripped exactly as she wanted, the heat of his palms soaking through her clothing, she leaned forward to hug around his neck. It took a moment, a very small moment, for him to relax and sigh out some of the tension that held him still, tucking his face within the safety of her hair and throat.

"What's wrong?" Kagome whispered.

Inuyasha only held her tighter.

She figured she was there so he could finally tell her what had been bothering him for so long; she had a feeling this was correlated with his mood during their last meeting too. If she weren't kneeling on solid flooring, the anxiety of it all would have her swaying like she was on a boat out at sea. What was so bad that he couldn't talk about then, and had to have her brought in now? What had him so distracted and muddled that he didn't hear her approaching or sense her presence? It was harrowing, that was plain to see. What was worse to see was his state, and she didn't know which one she was more afraid of.

"Please, talk to me. I'm here."

And for the first time since meeting Kagome, he'd wished she wasn't. He felt nauseous even trying to gather his wit, the words he'd have to eventually say sinking into his stomach like a pill taken without food. He could only pray she hadn't become as attached to him as he had her. He knew where his responsibility lied. He knew that even if he had a choice, when the two options were put before him there never actually was one. This was his role as prince. It wasn't just a fancy title with a large house. He was born and raised to do whatever needed to be done to provide for his people. Given the route the king had chosen, it paved the path he now had to take. Whether he liked it or not.

Slowly, he released his hold on Kagome, unable to drag himself far as he tenderly stroked the soft curve of her jaw, resting his forehead along hers. If he could just selfishly keep her there until the very last moment, if he could just hold her to him until he was no longer allowed, he may be able to gather the courage and strength to face his coming fate.

"I love you." He sighed. "You know I love you."

"You're scaring me." Kagome meagerly admitted, feeling an emptiness begin to tingle in the center of her chest. He was saying it like there was a counter to his feelings, and she was so afraid to hear the rest.

"Just listen, okay?" He made no move away from her, the fingers of one hand instead curving around the back of her neck. "This isn't easy, so just listen. There's a possibility the country is in danger. We don't know by who, and that's a huge problem, but we've been threatened. It's not something we can take lightly. In order to strengthen our forces and provide additional safety to everyone under our watch, the king has decided to create an alliance with a nearby kingdom. There's a catch, though. A stipulation that we were unable to negotiate away from."

His pause gave the information enough time to sink deep into her abdomen, grabbing her stomach and bringing it to drop with the weight of his emotion. She had nothing to do with country affairs, and there was a specific reason he'd brought her in to inform her of all of this. Kagome felt sick, a hard lump climbing up her esophagus, heat crawling uncomfortably over her face. Pulling away, she took in his unsteady expression; an expression he was energetically trying to maintain, but the slant in his eyes and the way his brows furrowed and lips curved down gave him away ruthlessly.

“What is it?" She asked, dread evident in her quivering voice.

Inuyasha breathed through the trepidation, his entire body hot. Her lips progressively became more pink as she pinched them together and worried the bottom with her teeth. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were shadowed, he could physically feel the apprehension riddling her small body, and it was killing him. God, this entire thing was killing him. Like a nervous tick, his hands shakily traveled over her neck and shoulders; whatever skin was available to him until her dress drew the boundary, even going so low as to graze over the softness of her chest in his angst.

It was hard to get the words out, each letter sticking to his tongue like they'd been glued there and he had to peel them off one-by-one. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to leave her. He didn't want to lose Kagome.

But he had to.

"I have to marry their princess."

Everything in her abruptly halted and stilled, and she felt whatever composure she had in her lips drop as her mouth parted with his admittance, the thin skin peeling apart slowly as the only reaction her shattered heart could muster in that moment. She tried pulling herself back together, tried swallowing the rock and the information simultaneously, but it was proving to be harder than imagined. In order to regain even a small portion of her form, she had to look away from his eyes, his broken eyes, staring at his thigh beside her until she became capable of exhaling fully and pushing the initial impact of his statement away.

"You what?"

"I'm engaged. To someone else." Inuyasha forced out, abhorring every syllable he spoke. Watching her nod, watching her disbelieving smile appear, watching her eyes flutter to him, then away, back to him, then to the wall only stabbed him further.

Her eyes stung, and she blinked profusely to prevent the tears from spilling over, but the ache in the forming hollow of her chest was nearly impossible to ignore.

"Kagome, this wasn't my doing." The prince pushed on, pulling her closer once more. "Please believe me when I say I had nothing to do with this. Sesshomaru made the decision without consulting anyone else, and that was it. Nothing could be done to take it back."

"And you tried?" Her tone was almost desperate, and she suddenly didn't know what to do with her hands. She wanted to return his touch, but was she allowed? Was it appropriate? Would it make the situation worse or more bearable? She was weak with the temptation, though, and couldn't continue to hold back her fingers as they gripped at the cloth of his forearms, venturing further to hang onto the curve of his muscle.

“Yes! He made them several different offers, but the alliance had already been signed. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Inuyasha said passionately.

Somewhere along the lines, Kagome felt like she'd forgotten he was royalty. Not because it wasn't how they were introduced, but because she'd come to know the man beneath the crown so well. On top of that, she was beginning to feel foolish to think she could have actually belonged in that fairytale. She wasn't of any noble blood. She didn't understand his world. It was vastly different from her own, and it was one of the reasons he’d hidden himself for so long. It was clear how much he didn't want this; she could see it in his eyes, his rigid tension, feel it in the twitch of his grasp on her, hear it in his voice. All she could do was take that for what it was. And as hard as gratitude was right now, she could appreciate that not a single part of him was cold.

She loved him. So much. And countering, or arguing, or showing how much she was hurting would only make things all the more harder on the prince. She couldn't do that to him. Kagome bowed her head slightly, pressing her lips together to fight the quiver of her chin, taking in a deep breath in a fighting attempt to compose herself.

"I understand." She said, finally looking back to him. "It's okay."

She noticed the tiniest of flinches in his brow.

"My only wish is that this wasn't something forced on you."

"What?"

"That it was something you wanted."

"Why would I want this?" There was a hint of incredulity in his tone, his hands falling to take hers from his forearms and hold them in his palms.

"So that you'd be happy." Kagome's demeanor began to waver, the ache in her chest intensifying as she imagined him with someone else. She pushed herself to breathe through it, to smile as well as she possibly could.

"Stop."

"I just want you to be happy."

"Being with someone else is not going to make me happy."

"But I can wish it, can't I?"

"No! I don't want to hear that! Stop masking your feelings for my own sake, I can see right through you, idiot!”

"I don't know what else to do!” Her voice betrayed her entirely, cracking, a feeble sob breaking through as she held his hands tighter at the moment it clicked inside that she needed to let him go. She needed to stand. She needed to walk away. Because this was so despairingly difficult on both of them, and she was the one that had to leave, that could leave - to end the torment sooner. It hurt. The thought of losing him. The picture of him no longer in her life. She'd felt this emptiness once before, and it had crippled her then. It hadn't hit her fully yet, but as she loosened her hold she knew it would stab her through her heart the moment she couldn't see him anymore.

As she dragged her fingers over his open palm and out of his own grip, she noticed the prince glance to the side, his body hunching slightly. Her hands trembled horribly, chilled when taken from his warmth, but she reached for the little, velvet pouch on the floor that she hadn't realized she'd dropped and busied her fingers along it to quell the shaking. Unsteadily, Kagome rose to her feet. It was too hard to pretend she was collected, so she just focused on doing one thing at a time without crumbling over.

"I should go." It came out as a hoarse whisper. Broken. Soft. Weak. She had to go, she had to turn, she had to walk, but god it was so grueling to leave Inuyasha. One step at a time, her boots, hidden beneath the dark black of her dress, stepped along the carpet until she pushed herself to turn toward the door.

The tremor in her voice was more painful than what he had to bear alone. He hated that he was the one that put it there. The prince stood from his seat, tensing to keep himself in one place because he knew he'd reach for her if he didn't.

"If I could, I would choose you one hundred times over."

After a small moment, her expression folded as the sadness she felt became so overwhelming that crying was the only form of relief available. "But you can't. And I understand that."

She turned to leave once more, and he couldn't take it. Another step and he would have shattered. Inuyasha lunged for Kagome, grabbing her wrist and spinning her back to him to kiss her so rampantly, so heatedly, so incredibly emotionally driven so that maybe, just maybe, she'd understand the crushing weight of his love for her. It was amazing to think how quickly she’d become his everything, and a part of him feared he’d never be the same after she left through those doors.

Kagome was fracturing in his arms, gripping onto the sides of his shirt as she failed to fend off any sobs that broke through their kiss. The tears were hot, pouring from her eyes and searing her cheeks, but he never relented in his fervor and she never pushed him away. Through the whimpers that escaped, proclaiming her effervescent weakness for her prince, the prince, she kissed him back with just as much unwavering devotion. Because he’d always be her choice.

“I’m sorry.” Inuyasha breathed gruffly, willing himself to take a brisk step back.

It was a long minute before Kagome could compose herself, hiding her contorted face behind her hands as she held her breath to prevent the violent sobs that threatened to rack her body. When she could feel her clenched muscles calming, the cries she muffled subsiding, she released a full exhale, prepping herself to get through thirty more seconds. She swallowed the thickness in her throat, and ignored the expanding pain in her chest, and took a few more breaths before she ducked her head another inch and wiped as much evidence of her tears away as she could. When she was ready, she looked up at Inuyasha, her lips still tingling from the pressure of their final kiss.

“I have to go.” She said. The expression on his face was dull and anguished. Kagome reached up, grazing his cheek with her thumb which he hastily leaned into, shutting his eyes to take in her touch. Then, with a control she didn’t know she had, she pulled away and headed out the door before she could be stopped again.

The corridor outside was empty, so she used the space from where she stood to the exit to appear as if nothing was wrong. The last thing she wanted was for the entire, busy castle to see her like the mess she felt she was. With a final swipe at her eyes, Kagome took a deep breath and opened the door to the main hall where Sango and Miroku waited with even deeper, solemn faces.

They knew. That’s why they’d looked at her that way from the beginning.

If she was asked if she was okay, everything would boil over and spill out, and she could see the question on Sango’s lips. Kagome needed to be alone, and as the knight’s mouth parted, she moved to beat her to the punch.

“I should be getting back. Kaede might get worried soon.”

“Kagome -“

“It's still light out. So - um - please let me walk myself.” She trudged passed them, her fingers aggressively fiddling over the small pouch as she shrugged the cloak snuggly over her shoulders, bracing for the cold outside.

#Inuyasha #Kagome #Kagome Higurashi #inukag #Inuyasha fanfiction #inuyasha fanfic #inuyasha fic #inukag fanfiction #inukag fanfic #inukag fic #inuyasha au #royal au #enchanted #my writing #akitokihojo

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fides-in-ira · 4 years

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In the grim darkness of the far-flung future--peace is a transitive lie told to the beaten and downtrodden. Peace is what planets needed to recover. Peace is what parents used to deceive their children, cushioning their curt fall into reality. Peace is what soldiers needed to close their eyes for but a moment of precious stillness. Peace is what politicians used to revel in debauchery and base desires. Peace is what heralded the advent of a new life. Peace is what bred rebellion and heresy. A child was born on a peaceful world. The child was born on an inconsequential planet lost in the bureaucratic nightmare of the Administratum’s archives to two guardsmen, identities wiped from the record, during an interim between deployments. There she was baptized by one of the many missions dotting the surface of the world, christened “Mallia.” Said word could trace its roots back through High Gothic’s branching etymological tree. It was said to be synonymous with loyalty, questionless faith and was befitting of one who conquered in the God-Emperor’s name. Yet neither of her parents spoke this sacred tongue, thus such complexity was lost on them. All they were concerned about was the fact their daughter, with His blessing, would live to see so much as a single birthday. There was so much working against her, after all. Food was provided as it always would to those brave men and women who strengthened the Hammer of the Emperor, yet for those who started a family during the downtime before deployment, rations were often stretched thin. People who shared a barracks with either parent hoped luck favored them when the dice roll came around to decide which spent the night with the child. Their higher-ups couldn’t afford to anger the commissariat by allowing either of them more than the standard allotment of recreational time to care for their infant. PT and fire drills always disturbed the newborn’s slumber and begot a lengthy bout of screaming her lungs out until passing out. On and on went the list of factors that worked against Mallia’s survival, yet she came out the other side with the same grit and determination found within her mother. By the time she was two years old, her parents had done their very best to raise her as an upstanding Imperial citizen. They poured every ounce of their hearts into their child despite how much more difficult she made their lives. It was a private thing, the joyful minutia they shared as a familial unit. Even when laughter was spread out among the soldiers who did what they could to help raise this bubbly little girl, there was something precious only those three could indulge in. Perhaps, then, that is why receiving the notification of deployment came as such an earth-shattering revelation, a reminder. Peace was a lie. There was no life outside of the guard for those who’d spent their whole life in, and retirement came at the end of a charge or a campaign. Resigning was something your commissar determined with individual bolt shells--there was no exception afforded to anyone, even those who’ve begun a family. And while the life of a guard was grim indeed, the life expectancy of a child brought on deployment was grimmer by far. Suffice to say, Mallia could not stay by her parents’ side any longer. Doing their best to wear a brave face, Mallia’s parents sat her on the steps leading up to the mission she’d been baptized in. She cried worse than she had whenever she scraped her knee or bumped a limb against furniture than even when her head is filled to bursting with fright at the monsters threatening to take her parents away at any moment. They explained to her why they were leaving and she was staying with the women they visited every time they went to pray to the God-Emperor. They did their best to reassure their child that she’d be well cared for in the arms of the Sororitas, for they were His daughters--that they’d return for her when the bad things up out there were gone. But their words were cold comfort for a girl whose whole world consisted of the very men and women now being shipped out to fight and die on some far-flung world, out there, in the void. So before they had no time left, they placed in her hand the same worn-out doll of a guardsman they bought for her a year prior. It was a simple little thing, something stitched together by someone whose face she’d forgotten already, a means to help her sleep at night when the nightmares refused to abate. Black button eyes sewed onto a stuffed burlap face gazed forward with a sewn smiling mouth stretched across plump cheeks. The parts of limbs connecting to the body were thinner than the ends, yet the fabric stitched on to resemble a uniform did well to hide this fact. “Whenever you feel alone with a head full of fear and a heart full of sadness,” they told her “just hold onto this little guy as tight as you can, and then you’ll be just a little closer to us.” She’d take this burlap doll in her tiny hands and hold it tight, watching as her parents gave her one final hug. “And never forget... we love you with all our heart--always will, no matter how far away we are.” That was the last thing they said to their darling daughter before shipping out on the next shuttle. She held on to the hope they’d return come the following year, and when they did not, she held out hope they’d return the next year, then the year after that, and the year after that; the light in her eyes bleeding out with each second elapsed. No amount of clutching onto the doll, no amount of crying into it, no amount of pleading or praying ever brought them back. ____

During her stay with the Sororitas mission, Mallia’s life changed from the boisterous laughter and amiable jubilation of the barracks to the ascetic adulation and regimented worship practiced by every branch of the Adepta Sororitas--a seed to germinate within her still-developing psyche. Yet she was not the only one to feel the strain of such a peculiar circumstance. Indeed, the sisters of this mission were not accustomed to taking in orphans for longer than it’d take to hand them off to some orphanage elsewhere. It was through one influential member’s efforts that she was allowed to live within the confines of the sacred premises at all: Cassia de Deirdre, one of a handful of superiors supervising the affairs of the whole mission. She was the one Mallia’s parents approached when making their request. And she was the one responsible for acting as the child’s primary guardian, her chief tutor and advisor during her stay in the mission. Cassia de Deirdre was a stern, humorless woman who’d served as a hospitaller for the mass majority of her life. The horrors mankind had inflicted upon it, by within and without and beyond, left her heart naught but a stony effigy numbed to the crying and complaints of a toddler. She did not tolerate either or whilst the babe was in her care; this was evinced every time Cassia had Mallia prostrate herself to endure the punishment of lashings whenever she acted out. “Thou art within hallowed halls erected in His name--show respect, for He is who shall bring thy parents back to thee should they not be found wanting,” she’d always say in between lashes. Yet despite the rather callous manner in which she treated the child, moments arose between the two that provided Mallia solace in her newfound isolation. When clinging to her ragdoll did naught, Cassia brought her before the Emperor’s altar and placed her in her lap to direct her in prayer. When her back cried scarlet worse than her eyes did water, the grizzled veteran sighed and relented to begin stitching and cleansing the profuse lacerations. And when studies left the child confused and frustrated, the hospitaller did her best to sit down and guide her through what it was she couldn’t understand. She was the only one Mallia did not recoil from, did not flinch when she raised her voice. It did not take long for Mallia to start trailing after Cassia wherever she went. However, the hospitaller couldn’t be with the babe all the time. And with every day that passed with nary a sign of her progenitors’ return, her increasing refusal to be apart from Cassia’s hip prompted the veteran to change what she taught her. It happened without warning. Mallia, four years old, awoke one day to discover Cassia had transferred to another mission halfway across the world. She scrambled and searched for any sign or hint to where she might’ve gone to, to no avail. Everyone she spoke to kept their lips sealed on the matter, always repeating the same thing, “This is your next lesson.” They were not the ones who abated the terror in her sleep, who helped wash her, who wiped the tears from her eyes. So she’d wait a day, two days, a week, a month, but just like her parents, Cassia had abandoned her. After a month without bathing, though, the other sisters of the convent could no longer tolerate the stench her presence carried. But she showed no signs of so much as wanting to even get near the washroom. Thus a handful decided to take matters in their own hands--bringing the washroom to her. Suffice to say, it was like taking a bucket of water and soap to a cat. Despite how she protested and resisted, though, the women treated it like the most entertaining thing they’d done in the whole decade. They laughed, some hard enough to cry. They poked and needled each other as much as they did the child. For the first time in three years, Mallia remembered what it was like to laugh and play. Following her impromptu bath, the reserved child willingly left her room to go out and join the Sororitas in their day-to-day activities. She picked up the chores she neglected after Cassia’s sudden departure. Her studies resumed with a fervor kindled by talking with her sisters, as well as her exponential desire to memorize and learn the language their psalms and prayers were written in. The women she shied away from were now the people she came to with inquiries and jubilation at having learned something new, that she joined during their ritualistic bathing. By the time Cassia de Deirdre was informed of this shift and returned, the light she watched trickle from Mallia’s optics had returned in full force, brighter than ever before. Thus the lesson on the value of sisterhood was concluded--just in time for the lesson in galactic dark humor to begin! How or when it began, Mallia could not recall, but corruption managed to wriggle its way into her homeworld at some point. Its clandestine spread suffused almost every facet of the planet’s society, not even the highest government officials were safe from its cloying touch. With each passing day, the number of heretical thoughts gripping once-loyal citizens’ heads skyrocketed. The occasional rumor could not be suppressed in time before coming to the attention of the public, yet no one paid them any mind. Heretics? Chaos? On their world? Perish the thought. But even with more rumors slipping through the cracks in the vain attempt of alerting the world’s populace of imminent danger, naught could prevent the tragedy that followed on Mallia’s fifth birthday. It began when a cathedral’s head priest died in writhing agony after a cultist among the congregation lobbed an improvised firebomb at him. The conflict escalated when a mass majority of the same congregation took up arms against those still stunned by the prior act, spilling their blood in the name of their dark god. This scene played out in countless other places of worship across the world, the heathens’ profane ritual progressing without contest before any effective resistance could be amassed. And so it was that the end result would come to pass--from the malign Empyrean emerged a wave of daemonic cretins. Yet the emergence of such foul taint was what galvanized the remaining loyalists into mounting a retaliatory strike. The PDF untouched by Chaos’ perversion rose up in defiance alongside the detachment of Guardsmen stationed on the world, both of which were joined by the nonmilitant order of the Sororitas who acted as stewards of this once unspoiled world. Missions and churches were turned into bases of operations, field hospitals and refuge for the displaced faithful. While the more zealous martyred themselves in the noble pursuit of punishing those who strayed from the Emperor's light and those who held the knowledge to guide remained with the faithful to act as shepherds to the lost and panicked. What donations the planet’s populace gave were now used to ensure they had the means to tend to and care for those brave men and women fighting back against the sacrilege of the heretics. But these places were not safe from the cult’s touch. Mallia’s home was not safe. The frontline was pushed back from the initial zones of contact, everyday supplies and manpower dwindled. Civilians were butchered and soldiers offered up to the pyre of war. Eventually, those Sisters who concerned themselves with tending to the wounded now prepared themselves to join their more brazen sisters as martyrs. Armor was dawned and weapon took up, each Sororitas taking the time to arm and instruct those who were able-bodied on how to erect fortifications and handle firearms--their foremost shield, those poor lambs, would still be faith alone. Then the war chants and sacrificial hymnals were belted out in a choir’s symphony unlike any other, the kind they taught them to give voice to when naught more could be done save stride, fearlessly, towards His light with head held high and bolt clips empty. Everyone, even children, were ready to die in a glorious last stand. Everyone save for Mallia, the mission’s precious child. Cassia de Deirdre took the child from the dire flock and their shepherds and hid her away in a cupboard in the backmost room of the building. Despite the child’s protests at being taken away, how she cried and pleaded for her to not leave again, how Mallia begged Cassia to let her stand with her sisters, the veteran was firm. “Under no circumstances are thou allowed to leave this cupboard, do thou understand? Thy advent was a sign from Him, His gift to us. We fight so thou may live--so hide, hide until He brings to thee salvation.” She did not understand, not that she didn’t want to but that she never wanted to be alone again. But Cassia’s word was absolute and there would be no allowance for rebuttal. So when she was finished, the hospitaller slammed the cabinet doors shut and locked it tight before returning to join her fellows and their amassed congregation. It is from inside this enclosed space that Mallia screamed and hollered until her throat felt like sandpaper, cried and wept until her eyes were puffy and stung like a bruise, and beat her hands and scrapped her fingers against the sturdy wood until they were a warm scarlet mess. No matter how she thrashed against it, the door locking her inside would not give. Thus she was forced into the cold companionship of quiet darkness, something made only just bearable when she clasped her hands together and further curled inward in fervent prayer. Seconds became agonizing minutes that fed into each other without any sign given that one minute had transitioned to the next. Her voice was like a mouse squeaking its desire for crumbs to the giant dining on succulent morsels. So minuscule were her wants to He--surely this was something He could afford her? This small, infinitesimal request of hers... That’s when the first gunshot shattered the tense silence. That’s when the first chorus of screams and shouts renewed her beating at the door. That’s when the shriek of reality straining to maintain even an iota of normalcy made her cover her ears with shaky hands as the world quaked, the lock breaking as a result. That’s when the light beyond burned her eyes, forcing her to squeeze them shut as she rocked back and forth. That’s when the silence deafened her. It was a blanket woven from split human hairs, this quiet. A chafing swaddle constricting her every sense like an immense serpent. So domineering it was that her very thoughts were cowed, the terror of breaking it keeping even her breath from escaping. Then the echo of footsteps, ragged breathing and the scraping of metal against stone shook her from the tyrant’s grip. Not long after, a string of curses and other foulmouthed language poured out from an unseen mouth. From the gap, door bereft of locking mechanism, now peering out into the room beyond, the child watched as a half-nude man with the chest of a woman and half their genitalia gelded limped in with one arm clutching at a massive hole blown out one side while the other dragged the limp body of a woman by her bloodied hair. Thin pink and purple material clung to his body in scant patches here and there, never serving the purpose clothing was meant to serve. Indeed, it seemed this ensemble was attempting to do the exact opposite of what cloth was meant to do for the physical form, each scrap working to bring attention to areas rather than ward eyes off. Makeup was smudged and applied without care over his scabby face, twin scars trying to keep a perpetual grin played on his lips that ichor and ruining beauty products now trailed and bled into. Both lithe and muscled, this man had broad shoulders that tapered down to slender, elegant hips. Barely noticeable were the scars of crude home surgeries dedicated to ripping muscle and wads of fat from one spot and shoving them into another. Yet this barbaric mockery of precise medical procedures was touched by something indescribable, for what should have been lumpy and uneven managed to achieve a refinement his own clumsiness could never hope for. Lacerations peeled the man’s backside open like a present on Christmas day. Runic symbols had been etched into his flesh until scar tissue could no longer form scabs over the gaping wounds. One, in particular, was repeated more than any other, yet they were all meaningless to the youth. These things were made even more meaningless when her teary eyes fell upon the woman the man-thing was dragging behind him. Adorned in the power armor synonymous with the Adepta Sororitas, scarlet gushing from where an arm and her legs had been violently sheared off. Dents and pockmarks that still gave off trails of smoke marred where sections of her armor had not been hewn off. Running across her abdomen was a grievous gash that allowed ichor to pour out, sparks to flutter like ephemeral fireflies and about a foot of intestines to squirm about on the stone floor like a handful of maggots tossed onto a spinning saucer plate. Crimson essence and transparent liquids were not the only fluids staining her--these things Mallia had no words for seemed most abundant where the armor had been peeled off to evince bruised flesh. Her face was not saved from the ruin the rest of her body had endured, yet there was still enough left for the child to recognize her identity. Cassia de Deirdre, her caretaker. Cassia de Deirdre, her teacher. Cassia de Deirdre, her mother. That’s when a match was struck. The man-thing managed to make it halfway into the room before Cassia, still kicking, used where he gripped her hair as an anchor point to facilitate a near 180-degree swivel to turn against the foul cretin manhandling her. Despite having been robbed of almost every limb, whatever blasphemous heretic had reduced her to such a sorry state failed to remove from her the arm that wielded medicae equipment. She summoned forth every ounce of righteous wrath still left in her body and ran the various syringes, filled with some chemical concoction, deep into the inner thigh of one leg. Squealing like the disgusting pig it was, the man-thing tried to rip its leg away from Cassia to no avail. She kept hold by digging tooth and nail into the naked flesh. By the time it finally tore away, her mouth taking a chunk with it, whatever was in her vials had already been administered. A toothy smile crept up either of Mallia’s cheeks as the man-thing swore and spat at Cassia while clutching at its bleeding leg. “Mine life may ebb this day, foul heretic...but know that...thy life ends with mine,” Cassia spat. “Damn coy harlot! Could’a jus’ said you wanted a bite, would’a given you so much more!” Its voice was a grater against Mallia’s ears, a husky parody of demur that reveled in the imitation of someone too shy to expose themself. And the laughter that rang out as Cassia collapsed to the ground with a sputtering cough was full of cloyingly hollow pretenses of naive youth. The man-thing hissed from between clenched teeth, one hand caressing the wound before it hobbled over to Cassia as her heaving chest stilled with every passing moment. One of its putrid hands grabbed towards its own pelvis and cranked at something Mallia’s point of view did not permit her to observe. Its other foul mitt, strands of snowy hair clinging to calloused skin, reached down to paw at Cassia’s head, yanking it up towards the ministrations of its opposite hand. “Can’t really stand it when they get cold... so ya better be ready to hang’on fer as long as you can, corpse-fawning bitch--I aint got my fill yet!” That’s when the struck match was flicked forward and ignited an inferno that spread like wildfire during a drought. It consumed Mallia totally and utterly. She does not remember what transpired next very well. The first and clearest thing she could remember was a golden voice booming in her ears that uttered a single phrase, “CHOOSE AND ACT”. Next came an overriding drive spurring her to burst out of the cabinet as radiant flame leaped to flood every corner of the room. Then she screamed as she rushed the shrieking pig, fire trailing behind as the blaze threatened to consume the center. There was intense pressure and a symphony of cracking stone, unrelenting heat scalding every inch of being as reality strained to contain her overwhelming outrage. And when the haze finally cleared, Mallia found herself standing amid the smoking ruin of the temple she once called home, coated in the dry maroon of caked-ichor--stone and flesh alike had been burnt to an unrecognizable black. There were no corpses to be found, no sign of the faithful having struggled against the heretical. All that was left was a little orphaned girl with dull, greyed eyes. ___

When Mallia was located among the survivors of her world by the reactionary forces sent to quash the heretical cult, she was placed aboard a ship with many other children facing the same circumstances as herself. Their crying, whining and worried questioning of what was going on, where they were going and how they wanted to go home was naught but bleating in her ears. Every touch and every sound came to her as though filtered beneath tepid water. And whenever one brushed up against her or approached her to try and find comfort, she regarded them with wordless indifference. They tried to speak to her, some of the older children attempting to assure the little girl everything was going to be alright, but none of them ever got far into their spiel before her unblinking, lusterless eyes unnerved and discouraged them from continuing the interaction. Then, when they finally left her be, she would return to sitting on her calves and staring at something unseen on whatever wall that happened to be in front of her. The same happened even when an adult came to check on her, although it took them longer to feel uneasy enough to decide avoidance was preferable to anything else with this child. Of course, this abnormalcy of hers was an attractant for the uncouth youths who took to harassing others they thought weaker than themselves when faced with such high-stress situations. In the few months it took for the vessel to reach its destination, several groups of children congregated together and took to picking on those kids outside of their possies. Several of said groups decided they’d try their hand at cementing their place at the top of the food chain by taking on the one person everyone, even the adults, was unsettled by. Chief among these groups was one headed by a surly girl with a tangled mop of golden curls atop her head. A few years older than her, maybe about eight or nine? And her eyes are as vibrant and full of luster as ever. Her hands balled up into fists. Mallia made note of the haughty air of authority wafting off her, and the scuffed remnants of fanciful attire she tried her best to maintain. A flimsy veneer of whatever life she led before the squealing beasts reared their ugly heads on her world. And when she spoke, it was the same muffled monotone as everyone before her. She carried on with her diatribe, heedless of Mallia’s blank stare boring into her forehead. But the sheeple who stuck to this bleating brat were not blind, they did not fail to notice when she stood up to face them. These boys and girls took two steps back for every step forward she took towards their leader. And when the brat finally took note of the proximity, she had just enough time to acknowledge these strange deviations in Mallia’s behavior before the child’s fist came crashing into her nose. The first startling impact was followed by another and another until the brat fell onto her back, at which point the five-year-old leaped on top of her and continued to pummel her face with nary a frown or smile. She screamed and cried as those she called friend either watched or fled, crimson and green mucus soon joining the welts and bruises forming on her face. Yet the light in her eyes remained. For all the bluster Mallia never paid mind to, this bleating brat couldn’t fend off someone almost half her age and half as big as she was; what a sad joke she was. In the end, it took two adults one of her “friends” brought to pull Mallia off the girl. Noone aboard the ship bothered her after that. Yet while the incident became all anyone could talk about for the rest of the trip, all Mallia could think of was how the light in the brat’s eyes remained even after the beating. All she could think about was the bubbling sensation throughout her body when smashing her fists into the girl’s face, how it was so similar to when she rushed that squealing, filthy pig. All she could think about was how alive she felt, pummeling that girl. When they finally arrived, the droves of orphaned children were offloaded and given over to the Drill Abbots, faculty members and staff in charge of overseeing the lives of the Schola Progenium’s next batch of students. Over the course of a week, every student was stripped of their past: belongings, tattoos or insignia scrapped away, clothing shredded and burned, titles abolished and more until naught was left of the lives they once lived. Then they were separated and thrown into barracks with other orphans and told to ready themselves for the worst--and the worst is what they would be served until they graduated from the Schola one way or another. None of this created in Mallia a sense of obligation. Try as they might, all the beatings and the lectures of the Drill Abbots and faculty broke through her lifeless ennui--everything, even physical pain, came to her as through a tyrannical filter. It would seem she had no future in the Schola, and as such, no future to speak of at all. Thus they tasked Abbot Constans with the process of removing the child from her more prospective peers. And being the pious man he was, he brought the child before the Schola’s shrine to the Almighty, the God-Emperor of Mankind, so as to hear His verdict on this lost lamb. He whisked her from her barracks late in the night, taking her by the arm and throwing her down before the immense golden statue erected in His honor. When she tried to stand, Constans took from his back his blessed warhammer and brought it down on the small of her back like a gavel, slamming her back to the tiled floor--this was not an unusual sight for those filling the cathedral’s interior, lining the pews. He was not like some ecclesiarchal priest, softened by a peaceful world, trying to appeal to the senses of his fellow kinsman. Nay, he was a righteous man who’d seen the horrors His enemies could dole out to His children--he would not tolerate anything less than perfection from such selfish lambs like her. “Remain prostrate, ye epitome of sloth! Bow ye head, bow I said! Looking skyward is only for those who have earned the right to behold what He sacrificed to afford ye! Now bow ye head and gaze nowhere save the tiles or His gaze for judgment! And then we shall see if ye deserve the fate this Schola has decreed!” Any deviation from the position Abbot Constans demanded resulted in another crack of his hammer against Mallia’s frail frame. He did not hold back any of the strikes against her, even when the crack of bone and rupture of meat accompanied the impacts of metal against flesh, even when the sting of burnt copper was poignant against her tongue and bright scarlet stained the floor. Yet Mallia offered neither resistance nor response to the abuse, for her eyes were anchored onto the downcast gaze of Him. There was no light in them like there was the brat, nor was there pity or irritation. Filling His all-seeing eyes was a ravenous, implacable inferno like stars, shrieking against the cold desolation of Void. Said fire suffused His stoic visage, racing down His shoulders and past His waist until He was a burning man wreathed in golden flame. The heat was akin to that of industrial furnaces as they blasted incredulous minerals into unbreakable metals, washing over her like a wave. And it only grew in intensity as the inferno spread, eventually creeping down off the plinth and blanketing the whole room in an instant. Those who paid no mind to the Abbot’s beating were cast to ash on the floor and the Abbot himself was charred to cinders. When it consumed her, the muted anguish of the Abbot’s hammer was blasted away and replaced with the euphoric agony of His vindication. He knew, He always knew, she realized. There was nothing she could hide from His gaze, from His heat and His pain, from His fire and flame--just as it was on that day. All that she was and all that she’d ever be; all that she’d endured and suffered; all of this paled in comparison to what He was and what He’d always be, what He’d endured and suffered just so she might have a chance to see even a single day. And then she heard a booming voice, louder than ever since that day, fill the room to bursting with a single phrase, “CHOOSE AND ACT”. So she did just that, choosing to act as the fire and the heat and the pain receded. When the next hammer blow threatened to flatten her back against the ground, Mallia whirled around and struck the hammer’s bloodied face with a righteous fist. The clap of thunder resounded throughout the vast interior of the congregational hall as a blinding flash of light threw even the furthest corner’s shadows into the light of His radiance, shattering the many panes of stained glass depicting the many feats of the God-Emperor of Mankind and His Sons. But these glass panes were not the only thing to shatter in a thousand pieces--the head of the Abbot’s hammer, something many believed only the God-Emperor Himself could harm, was obliterated from the collision. And the Abbot himself was tossed onto his back several feet away from where the once listless girl now stood, head held high, nostrils flared and eyes burning with righteous indignation as thin wisps of air trailed off her clenched knuckles. All were rendered speechless by the outlandish display, even Abbot Constans himself. But then the stoic man, grinning for the first time in Emperor knew how long, nodded on the ground before standing and saying in that baritone of his, “So be it, then.” So it was that the child’s pardon, on personal recommendation by Abbot Constans, from disposal came to pass--this did not mean easier times awaited her. Quite the opposite, actually, as Drill Abbot Constans was infamous in this Schola. He instilled in her the tenents of the Imperial Truth during long stretches of forced isolation, left with naught but scripture in a freezer unit--she did not leave nor did she get to eat until she could recite to him every word. And if she could not tell him what each line meant, then she suffered summary flagellation before His shrine before returning to the same room. He taught her how to hold her own, swordsmanship and the importance of adaptability in battle by having her duel her peers, those further along in the Schola’s curriculum, servitors, full-fledged commissars and tempestuous scions, and finally himself in brutal sparring sessions--seldom did he give to her a weapon during these. He forced her to strengthen her body regardless of injury or state of mind, often putting her through torturous physical training at four in the morning or with broken bones. Even if every other prospective Progena’s PT had concluded, the echo of live ammunition being fired off could still be heard from the Abbot’s gun. He sharpened her mind through rigorous sessions of lectures and study, one exam after another thrown at her without warning until she could achieve perfect marks without question--missing so much as half a percent ended in a summary beating. No wound she sustained would be treated lest she could physically go no longer, at which point she’d receive treatment without anesthesia--if she could not endure the simple pain of His life-sustaining medicae, then how could she ever hope to stand up to His many foes? When Drill Abbot Constans became the personal instructor of a prospective Progena that piqued his interest, they seldom survived--he was far worse than any Abbot who’d come before in this Schola. Yet, despite it all, Mallia survived. The blistering inferno raging in her eyes, a light that’d died with Cassia, never waned. And so it was that this glorified torture played out for over a decade without end until Mallia reached sixteen years of age. Then her seventeenth birthday came and with it, her Trial of Compliance. It was not something Mallia was kept informed of beyond that she would have to perform some arduous task to prove she was worth passing. And when the day arrived, she awoke in one of the many chambers of the Schola dedicated to providing its students with a realistic medium in which to perform accurate simulations of the many military operations they’ll likely be assigned to. Deprived of all personal effects save for a micro-bead, she heard Abbot Constans voice come through loud and clear from wherever he was observing her. “If ye still have the fear of the Emperor in ye, then ye might want to get moving soon lest ye fancy going and meeting Him in person today...” At this, she stood up and surveyed her surroundings for any sign of movement; something rustled in the underbrush. “Oh, I am not sure if this will matter, but just so ye know... the girlie in charge of hunting ye down? Killing ye is her and her team’s trial, and she has a bone to pick with ye--something about ye owing her a broken nose and then some.” The shrill snap of twigs cracked through the air as several searing crimson lights lanced forth from the underbrush, singing leaves they pierced through and cauterizing the holes punched through her shoulder. Of course, this was considered the best outcome considering they were aimed towards her center mass--they would have hit their mark had she not already sprung to one side. Yet this did little to make up for the sudden flash of white-hot pain that now wracked her body. Once to the side, the now-adolescent Mallia proceeded to reach up with the arm that’d just gotten shot in the shoulder thrice and ripped out the comm-bead fitted into her ear. Then she held it flat in her palm, eyeing the device a moment before letting it drop and crushing it underfoot. And that was the last Drill Abbot Constans heard from her until she emerged, alone, from the simulated jungle-covered head to toe in layers of ichor. When no one else showed up, a pair of instructors were sent out to locate whatever remained. The ten corpses they retrieved from the depths of the foliage was her graduation ceremony’s conclusion. On that day, Progena Mallia was henceforth known as Sister Mallia de Deirdre, a proud member of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. And the flunkies were recycled into corpse dust rations for the closest detachment of Krieg guardsmen.

#📿 Faith in Life 📿

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club40audio · 4 years

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The Olde Towen Buffet

I will be posting, Chapter by chapter, my #Lovecraftian #CosmicHorror #Horror Novel “The Olde Towen Buffet” If you enjoy what you are reading, I encourage you to get ahead of the curve and buy the complete book for $5 (Kindle, $15 in print), or read it #Free on #KindleUnlimited. Also this novel is written, edited, and corrected by me alone, I would be grateful to you #GrammarNazis if you would point out my missteps, and how to correct them in the comments. So that I can improve the #Kindle book. Respectful Criticism, is welcome. I am interested to know your thoughts Chapter by Chapter! (I will not be correcting the bad "returns" and such that seem to be happening as I copy and paste. If this is a problem for you, again, please read the book off of the Kindle book, where these problems do not exist.:) )

Prologue:

He stood there in the darkness. The sound of chanting voices filling the chamber. He could feel the power pulsing through him, the same power that held him in place and made him unable to move, like a painless, paralyzing, electricity. This was it. This was what he had longed for all his life. He wanted this. When the time came he would do anything for it. The changes had already begun to take place in him, and oh how wonderful they were. There had been no resistance. When the work was begun in him he hardly knew anything was happening at all… But soon it had been undeniable. Now he stood in the darkness as the flames danced before him casting his shadow on the wall. From somewhere off to his left, he heard the distant wailing cries of the woman he had once thought of as his wife; the woman who he once thought the most important thing in his puny existence. But now he understood so much more. Now he was part of something bigger. Something... cosmic. She was nothing. Her sobbing would soon be silenced and no longer of any account. She cried his name over and over; pleading with him to break free, to come away with her, but freedom was an illusion, and it meant nothing without power. And this was power. Her face was beaten and bloody, and seeing that might have once elicited some emotion from him, but now he was beyond such things. Let it happen. Let it come now. No more waiting. He wanted it to be over. He wanted it to begin. He wanted the power; the strength. All the might which had been conveyed upon him this night was but a taste of what was to come. When he had fully given himself over, when the darkness was embraced, then he would know this strength a thousand-fold. He would do anything, give anything; be anything that was required of him, so long as he could have this. He had always thought that if somehow this boon was bestowed upon him, that his first goal would be vengeance. He had been sure that he would hunt down all those who had wounded him every day of his life; his father first and foremost of all. He remembered the plans he had for the boss at the job he had so recently been fired from; Mr. Williams. The man for whom he had worked for nearly fifteen years and who now had ruined him. His life and career were over, not only at his law office, but for all legal work. He thought of hunting down the girls who had rejected him in High School and even the bullies of the playground. Yes! How they would have all paid for what they had done. Anyone who had ever laughed at him, or made him feel small. He would grind their bones to meal. He remembered when he was a child how nearly every day, they had circled him chanting, “Stubby Stanley! Stubby Stanley!” and “Fatty fatty, two by four, can’t fit through the kitchen door.” and the perennial favorite, “U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi!”How they had guffawed when he couldn’t reach the monkey bars from the highest of the supports, let alone hold himself up as he tried to make his way from one bar to the next. Every time he would flop down in the hard-packed dirt below like a sack of moldy potatoes. Then his memories swirled round to the girls who had rejected him because he was shorter than they, and the slow agony he would have extracted from them. Even now when he was becoming something beyond any of their understanding, their words echoed and raced through his mind, solidifying his choice: _“What girl wants a guy they have to get down on one knee to kiss? Tony, now there’s a real man! Six-foot, two and he might get even taller!” __“Maybe I’ll let you take me out when the school has a “Date a Hobbit Dance!” “Do I look like my name is Esmeralda? ‘Cause I sure ain’t walking around on the arm of no Quasimodo!” _“Hey, short stuff! Get that ball from off the wall rack!” The coach had shouted at him, knowing he would have to climb up the rack to reach the only ball that was left at the very top. And when the rack had tipped over, as he knew it would, smashing him to the floor bruising his ribs, the coach had called out as the other boys laughed, “If you can’t get hold of a ball when it's sitting on a rack, how do you ever expect to play on my team? Get off the field, and don’t come back Short Stuff!” Then there had been his father: _“Look at him Natalie, he’s sixteen and he barely comes up to my chest! He’ll never bee any good at sports! He’s too small and weak for football. He’s far too short for basketball and he’s got zero hand-eye coordination! My only son is a runt! He’s not even good at academics! And here you are, mollycoddling him! He’s never going to amount to anything!”_ All this and more swirled about in his head, but now he had no thought for revenge, it was all behind him. So small and petty. Now he had worlds to conquer, soon all would bow before the might that was flowing into him. He could feel it coiling through him like a plant; like a vine, it was wrapping around his limbs and sinking into them, imbuing them with a virility he had never known, never could have known, but for the events of this strange night. The sound of chanting in the darkness had ceased. Had it only stopped now, or was it some time ago? Trapped in a delicious trance of power and haze of remembrance he couldn’t be sure. But now the shadows on the wall were changing, were different, undulating with a light far stranger than any fire could produce. He knew, at last, the time had come. He was about to gaze upon his new master for the first time. He would joyfully submit. He would accept any contract, make any deal. This was all he had ever wanted. He felt the restraining power lift from him, and he could move once again. He lifted his eyes to see a sight that might have driven others mad. But to him it was beautiful. It was this one who had made a new life possible, and from somewhere deep inside himself, he heard his master’s voice speak his name for the first time.

1 “Doggone it!” Ally cursed, straining, stretching as high as she could, “Who built this place! Andre the Giant?” “No, it just wasn’t built for Gnomes.” Said her husband, effortlessly reaching up and taking down the suitcase, he had placed on the rack the night before, the handle of which had just evaded his wife’s grasp. He handed it over to her as she huffed a begrudging, “Thanks.” And then mumbled, _“For nothing.” _Under her breath. Mark laughed, “Hey don’t hold it against me, I didn’t write your genetic code.” He flopped on to the bed, making the suitcase wobble, as his wife was reloaded it with all of her do-dads and whatnots that seemed so necessary for the care of her appearance. The trip was only going to last a week, but she seemed to have brought enough clothes for three. Then there were the two extra, small suitcases, full of nothing but beauty care. The total of 4 suitcases had taken up all the space that was leftover in the trunk of Marks Chevy Malibu, once the small toolbox, jack, and four-way lug wrench were pushed to the side. Mark had to put his one small suitcase in the back seat. Now, three days later, they were on their way back from California to Chicago. They had spent the night in Aurora, about 35 miles south of Boulder. They were now only 17 hours from home. It would have been 15 hours, but a major road construction project had begun just after they had passed through on Route 76, on the way to California. Already at 9 am, traffic was backed up. According to the Mapping app on their phones, going back that way would have added nearly five hours to their trip. Mark had asked his wife to remind him to take route 70, in the morning so they could avoid that nightmare. It came to her mind as she fit her curling iron and hairdryer back into the already cramped suitcase. “I wish we didn’t have to go around the construction, I hate Kansas.” “What’s the matter with Kansas?” asked Mark, “I love all that farmland, especially this time of year, just before the harvest. All those fields of green. It's beautiful.” “It's boring. Flat straight and goes on for what feels like forever! Did you know there are more single-vehicle accidents in Kansas per-capita than any other state? People get hypnotized out there driving on the roads alone, and when the road turns, they don’t. They go flying off into a ditch somewhere, and drown in a creek bed.” “Where did you read that?” Mark asked laughing to himself. “Oh on the internet somewhere…. Which reminds me I better check my phone while we still have service, I just know we’re going to get out there and lose signal.” “Our service plan covers 95% of the landmass of the continental US, according to the commercials.” “Yeah, and we are going to be driving right through that remaining 5%.” She said snapping the clasps on the suitcase into place, “I guess that’s everything.” “Don’t forget your make-up kit, Shawty,” Mark said, affecting an accent. Ally looked up and groaned. There, on top of the rack was her black plastic make up kit, with all her various blushes and brushes. “I’m never going to reach that. Why did you put it up there?” “Why did you even unpack it?” Mark replied, not moving from the bed, “When we were in LA, that made sense, you were getting all gussied up for the dinner. That made sense.” He repeated. “But last night you were getting ready for bed, and you took it out of your suitcase. There’s nobody here but me, and you know you shouldn't wear makeup to bed. And then, you didn’t even use it.” “I was setting it out for the morning, I was planning to put my face on before we left, but I couldn’t find it. I figured it had gotten buried in the clothes and I didn’t want to dig it out.” Ally said, annoyed. “Put your face on? For what? The drive home? You and me and miles and miles of corn?” He got up off the bed and moved toward her. “Besides I think my wittle munchkin looks so much better without her make-up.” He said affecting a “baby-talk” voice. She punched him in the bicep, hard enough to sting but not to truly hurt. “Ouch!” he said, playing it up. “Stop picking on my height. You know I’m sensitive about it.” “But you are just so cude!” He said, still in baby-talk, wrapping her in his arms, which from fingertip to fingertip of the opposite hand, were exactly 5 feet, 11 inches, perfectly proportionate to his height, “I wuv my Widdle Baby Wifey!” He picked her up and spun her around. “Stop that!” She said half laughing, “Put me down!” she said, even though he already had. “I may be only 5 feet tall but I’ll kick your butt anyway.” He laughed and reached up for the make-up kit, handing it to her. “Here you go Smurfette.” She ignored the jibe and reopened her make up suitcase, “Why’d you put it up so high?” “Because you had it on the sink and I needed to shave. I didn’t want to ruin anything, with drops of water flying everywhere…. And I did that so you’d need me to get it down for you later… I have to remind you how much you need me every once in a while… Just in case you get complacent, or think you can do better.” Ally laughed, snapping the suitcase closed again, “I know I can do better, I’ve just grown accustomed to you.” “You know, that’s right.” Mark said with a toothy grin.

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sidhewrites · 5 years

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Coriander, Chapter 2b

Previous Installment found here. Approx 1400 words. Feel free to send Asks or Messages about what’s written or anything you’re curious about.

Content warning for emotionally manipulative behavior.

CORIANDER LIVED IN A SMALL STONE HOUSE, perched on a hill just on the edge of town, with three glass windows, a chimney with a flue, and an overlarge spice garden behind it, as well as a small pen for the two goats and chickens, all kept in by a low stone wall. Her mother made wreaths and garlands for every event in town, and they provided a good quarter of Knittelnau’s spices, placing them just to the wealthier side of families in the village.

Seeing the perfectly kept home reminded her of her own sorry state, with a torn skirt and messy ribbons. Her mother would be ashamed of her, and how many people must have seen her that day in a state like that.

Still, she had to go home sooner or later, so she made herself take the well-worn path up to her front door and let herself in. “Ma!” She called, setting the basket on the table in front of her. “I’m home.”

Bestina’s voice echoed in from the back room, which had the only window looking over the flower fields and farms that encircled Knittelnau. “I’m just waking up from a nap, darling. Be there in a moment.”

Coriander waited patiently for a moment, but she found herself wishing she could go into her mother’s room, which also had the only mirror in the house to see if Jasper had been telling the truth about her eyes. They were only brown, weren’t they? Plain as dirt, just like the rest of her. To keep herself from fidgeting, she began unpacking -- first the shoes, which she set dutifully off to the side, to keep anything from spilling on them. Next, the apron and tablecloth, folded neatly on a chair, before carefully moving on to lift the flower from the basket.

It was six inches above the table when the bag tore. A cloud of white exploded around her, and cleared just in time to see her mother’s shoes, now covered in flour -- and her mother, standing before her, face gone as pale as the shoes.

Coriander felt her stomach drop. She froze, staring open mouthed at her mother in the doorway to the kitchen, unable to think at all.

Bestina rushed forward with a wail. “What have you done?” She cried, hurrying Coriander out of the way to snatch them up and try dusting them off. “Oh, look at what you’ve done! My shoes -- my beautiful new shoes.”

Coriander could do nothing but watch as her mother fussed over the shoes. In the end, there was nothing to be done. Bestina sat down on an empty chair, defeated.

“I’m sorry, Ma.”

“It’s…” Bestina sighed. “It’s fine, dear heart. You’re clumsy. It’s my fault for thinking you could handle this by yourself.”

“I -- I’m sorry, Ma.” She looked down, fighting the guilt that stung in the back of her eyes. She’d already cried once today, and in front of a stranger, too. She couldn’t bear the idea of doing it again.

“And you must not have sold the garlic, either, right? Not for a single ha’penny, right?”

Of course not. “I’m sorry, Ma.”

Another sigh. “It’s fine, dear heart. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can.”

Even if she was, it didn’t make it good enough. Coriander’s guilt weighed her down until even looking up from her shoes seemed an impossible task.

“Just...go put things away, would you, dearest? And don’t break anything else, please.” Bestina’s voice was sweet as ever, and she made herself smile for Coriander’s sake. But the way she looked back down, putting a hand against her forehead, it was clear another headache was coming on.

“Should I go get you some mint?” There was always plenty growing in their garden. It eased her headaches enough.

“No, no. I have to help with chores and get dinner started. I don’t have time to deal with my headache.” Bestina didn’t move.

Coriander hesitated, waiting for her mother to act. When it became apparent she wouldn’t, Coriander made herself speak: “Maybe, um. Maybe I could get something started for you?”

Bestina looked up with a weary smile. “Oh, yes, dearheart, that would be wonderful of you.”

She did just that, making first for the flint box besides the hearth. She pulled the stone from its case, but didn’t get very far before Bestina spoke up again: “No, here, let me get the fire. I don’t want sparks to get anywhere. Wouldn’t want anything else to go wrong, of course.”

“Oh, of … of course.” She wasn’t sure she had ever made a mistake with the fire before, but her mother had a point. She had ruined the shoes and flour all at once. She didn’t want to ruin anything more today, and let herself be brushed out of the way as Bestina got up and took her place in front of the hearth. Coriander handed the flint and stood helplessly by.

“My Coriander, you know I love you so.” She spoke in that sweet voice Coriander knew well, and dreaded. “And I would do anything to make you happy, you know that, right?”

Guilt settled heavily into her stomach, and she looked down at her feet. “I know.”

Bestina lit the kindling before turning back to Coriander. “It’s just so hard sometimes, you know. With my headaches, and all the messes I have to clean up around the house.” Messes Coriander made. Problems she caused. It wasn’t right for her mother to have to deal with it all.

“I’m sorry.” She wondered how many times a day she apologized. She was sure it wasn’t enough.

“Clean that one up, would you? Rescue as much of the flour as you can, and then go wash your face. Understand?”

She nodded, doing as she was told. Coriander went for a bowl in the cabinets, and had barely put a hand on one before --

“No, not that one!”

Coriander shot her hand back, heart in her throat for a split second before reminding herself how ridiculous it was to be afraid of her mother.

Bestina had gotten out a loaf of bread, and she gestured with it as she spoke. “You know that I don’t like that bowl to be used for flour. Put it back, and use another one.”

Despite what her mother had said, Coriander was fairly sure she’d never heard anything about what the bowl was used for besides, well, holding whatever it was needed to hold. But she did as she was told, and took another down.

“Much better. Thank you, dearheart.”

Coriander nodded, swallowing again, and swept the flour she could into the bowl while her mother prepared dinner. Eggs, bread, butter, and a bit of cheese, mixed in with herbs and spices.

Bestina chatted as she worked, sighing heartfully. “And it’s so hard to find someone who’ll help, you know.” She moved from the hearth to the stove, lighting it as well for something simple. “We live on the outskirts of town, and you never finished your schooling. It isn’t fair to think I can do this all by myself, but I have to, you know. I have to get used to it, when a man finally comes in and steals you away from me, you’ll be happy and cared for, while I’m here all on my own, to grow old and die without a soul to talk to.”

Coriander’s heart broke. She rushed over, putting a hand over her mother’s shoulder, overly concious of the white print she’d be leaving behind. “I won’t marry, Ma. I won’t leave you alone, I promise.” She’d promised it a hundred times before, and she’d promise it a hundred times again. “No man is going to steal me away from you.”

Bestina stopped her moaning and looked over with a watery smile. “You’re too good to me, dear sweet. I don’t know how I’d get on without you.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

“Now go wash up -- you’re going to get flour all over me, and I need my dress presentable tomorrow.”

Coriander pulled her hand back, and did as she was told.

#writing #writeblr #coriander #coriander draft 1 #coriander chapter #coriander chapter 2

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musashi · 6 years

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why do you hate miyamoto? she did what she could with the best in mind for musashi and it's not her fault mew led her to wherever, in canon musashi would know almost nothing about her too. i don't have a dad (bc im satoshi) and i don't know who he is nor do i care, don't blame things on miyamoto just because she was absent for her reasons

let’s break this Bad Ask the fuck down

1. why do you hate miyamoto?

i don’t. weird how u assumed that because i made some shitposts about her grey morality.

my tag for her is literally “miyamoto my goddess” and i have written several thousand words on her at LEAST but yeah i def hate her. fuck u mom.

2. she did what she could with the best in mind for musashi and it's not her fault mew led her to wherever

i agree with u. however, the flippant way she talks about her daughter LARGELY offsets this fact. “anyway, i got rid of my kid before she drained my pockets.” is basically how miyamoto talks. she uses a word/phrase that is often translated as “prodigal,” in fan subs--wasteful. lavish. recklessly draining of money/resources. this is the word she uses for musashi, a child she decided to have. she more or less calls her daughter a burden in the same breath as crying about giving her up.

does this mean her actions are somehow tainted? no. she knew she couldn’t provide and she could very well be doing the same shit her daughter does: coping w/ callousness, waving off problems and making them seem like small annoyances when actually they weigh heavy on her conscience. in fact, i 100% believe that is what she is doing, because her and musashi are mirror images of each other at times.

i agree w/ u.

3. in canon musashi would know almost nothing about her too. i don't have a dad (bcim satoshi) and i don't know who he is nor do i care

this might come as a shock to you, twerp, but you and i are wildly different people with wildly different ways of processing our emotional traumas or lack thereof.

4. don't blame things on miyamoto just because she was absent for her reasons.

no, actually, i’ll blame her all i want, because it’s my past and i am free to feel about it how i please.

(second ask)

5. kojiro's parents are more abusive than miyamoto.

miyamoto isn’t abusive.

6. parents neglecting their children is abuse, parents giving up their child to give them a better life than one they could have with their parent is not abuse.

no duh.

7. miyamoto did nothing wrong, really.

i mean, she's a criminal in the fucking mafia. that aside

this is debatable, but you smothered the debate by padding it with a bunch of irrelevant shit i had to address instead, so hopefully some sunny day we can get around to having that conversation, because i have a lot to say.

8. i thought you would love her, at least she loved musashi

if you paid any attention to how i spoke or what i said or every single time i have ever mentioned her, you would know i love her. i love her and i am fascinated by her, the sight of her in fanart makes my heart ache like literally no other thing can. she is my fucking mother. i never had to know her a day in my life to know i was born with a fire that i inherited from her, a tenacity and self-confidence that began as a small spark she placed within me on the day of my birth. i was the one who kindled that wild fire, but i would have to be an idiot to deny it was her who knocked rocks together until her hands were raw.

and all that said, i am allowed to scream to the heavens about how much she hurt me. i am allowed to write long fucking meta about why i am angry with her. i am allowed to feel destroyed and alone and utterly fucking ruined, i am allowed to seethe with rage at her. my life is a long list of watching people’s backs as they faded from my view, and mommy dearest was patient zero. i grew up in dilapidated shacks alone and freezing and dirt poor anyways. at least in the alternate timeline, i could have been starving alongside my own.

the isolation i experienced as a child, the trauma of growing up poor, of never being able to keep up with all the girls around me, of being constantly bullied for my ratty clothes and messy hair and average face--and the perpetuating cycle, where i became hard and nasty and a textbook definition bitch to survive it, and was then chided even more for my uncouth attitude--all of that, all of that would have been bearable if i had one friend i could always count on to never, ever leave me. all of that would have been bearable if my mom had just stayed.

i love her. i love her so much, and i resent everything she is. her voice fills the cracks in my heart with honey, and the way she speaks makes me want to burn the world to cinders. she is me without my anger, my trauma, my pain--she is all my confidence and beauty and love without the ego and the dull-wit and the jealous wrath. my mother, in body and mind and spirit, is every beautiful thing i would have grown to be if she had never left me.

knowing why she did what she did doesn’t take away the pain she caused me, and if it did, i would take that opportunity in an instant, because i feel things fully and completely, and they are unbearable. i do not want to feel this way. i never have.

people do things all the time that have good reasons, and those good reasons can still breed trauma and pain. if you do not understand that intent does not justify outcome, you have a lot more life to live. i hope you find that out in a less painful way that i have in lifetimes across lifetimes passed.

my mother loved me, and she did was she believed was best, and i am allowed to grit my teeth and curse her name for as long as i live, and no one can take that from me but me.

#kin ramblings #wendy rants #wendy rambles #Anonymous #wendy answers

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sending-the-message · 7 years

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Do not go gentle into that good night by TobiasWade

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas said that. My grandfather. I'd heard the name thrown around the house a lot when I was growing up. It was a point of family pride to be descended from such an acclaimed poet, but it never left much of an impact on me. He'd died before I was even born, time reducing even the most brilliant souls to little more than trivia.

After-all, how could I have known that an archaic poem buried away in some dusty volume was written as a warning for what was yet to come?

My father knew better though. And I had the feeling something more was coming too, but my vague foreboding was answered with nothing but his thundering scowl. For the last week he hadn't talked much. He stopped reading like he used to and barely eats at the table, although sometimes I'll hear him prowling the house in the early hours of the morning.

And always, always of late I feel him watching me. From over his newspaper, or parked outside my friends house after dropping me off. I even caught him sitting outside my room in the hallway, holding a mirror to get an angle through my partly closed door.

"Just checking if you're ready," he mumbled, seeming momentarily embarrassed.

I didn't reply, but it was getting weird and I would have spoken up if he didn't say something first. "Camping trip before school starts," he'd said. His voice carried the insistent authority of a policeman ordering someone to drop their gun. He didn't ask our opinion like he usually did when making plans. Mom must have sensed it too because she volunteered to start packing without hesitation.

"Don't bother," he told her. "It's just going to be me and the boy."

6 AM the next morning, he was hammering on my door. Time to go. He didn't need to tell me not to ask questions. Those sunken eyes and hard-pressed mouth left no room for argument. He was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday when he got in the car.

I kept quiet while he drove. Stoic silence, heavy silence, suffocating all opportunity for conversation. Every now and then he'd pull off the road a little to get out and look around. It felt like he didn't have any clear destination in mind, and it didn't take long for me to realize he wasn't going anywhere in particular; he just wanted to get away.

When he stopped to use the bathroom and get gas I checked the back to see what kind of gear he brought with us. Nothing in the trunk except a backpack. He brought me a sandwich, and after a brief break we were on the road again. A dirt trail cutting straight through the country finally satisfied him. The mood was so dark that I was half-expecting to be murdered the second we'd passed the last hallmark of civilization.

It was night by the time we'd stopped. The sky was a cosmic masterpiece, untainted by the erosion of electric lights. The scattered maple trees we'd passed along the way had grown denser, and dad didn't have any trouble finding some kindling to start a small fire. We didn't have a tent, or sleeping bags, or even food. I couldn't take it anymore.

"What's going on, dad? What are we doing here?"

He grunted and stirred the fire. I was pacing with agitation now, the restless energy from a day in the car overflowing into jerky, frustrated movements.

"Why didn't you want mom to come?" I tried.

"It's none of her business. This is between you and me, and my father before him, and his father before that." He looked up at me, the guttering flames reflecting dolefully in his deep eyes.

Before I could press for more, he'd sat down on a rock beside the fire and produced an ancient book from his backpack. He held it more reverently than a mother with her child, caressing the dust from its thick leather binding.

"From New York, back to Wales, and then Ireland before that," he said, handing me the tome. "Come now, take a look."

I stood beside him as we flipped through the thick vellum pages of the manuscript. Every sheet was dedicated to a single entry, each written in a myriad of separate handwritings and styles.

"Five centuries of verse," he told me. "Each generation has inscribed lines for the last five hundred years, going all the way back to someone named Brodie in 1522. You'll notice some of the earlier pieces written in Gaelic, but they've been reliably English since around the 18th century. Tonight you're going to add yours to the end, and maybe if you're lucky, the book will be finished after that."

He flipped past the continuous stream of thought through the ages to the last few entries. My eye immediately caught the name of Dylan Thomas, who in his own hand had printed his famous poem "Do not go gentle into that good night."

I quickly began to scan the next page where my father had written:

Bloodied, sickened, broken down, we tarry while we may. For though life has wearied us, from death there's no escape. One prayer, one stand, one wild charge, before it is too late, For though dark and dreary thus, there's nothing left to hate.

But father slammed the book shut and pulled it away before I could read on.

"Wait - show me what you wrote," I pressed. He shook his head, roughly dropping the book that he once cradled. "But how will I know what I'm supposed to write then?" I asked.

He was staring at the fire again, not looking at me even when he finally spoke. "Not long now. You'll know when it's time," he said. "You can't see something like that and not have something to say about it."

I didn't have to wait long, but it was unbearable while it lasted. Every rustling leaf turned to the ominous approach of some nameless horror. A snapping twig was re-imagined into the brittle bones of its latest victim, and even the whispered wind became an unpredictable adversary breathing down my neck.

And always, always, my father's eyes - fixated on me, boring into my skull. His rigid attention sent waves of tension down his face at my slightest movement. That should have been a clear enough sign of what was to come, but I didn't see it then. I just kept watching the woods, or the fire, or the great empty sky, peering and straining my ears against a world which was deaf to us.

But then in the absence of all other sound I heard what he was waiting for: the catching of my breath. I lifted vain hands in feeble disbelief, clutching at the invisible noose around my neck. I wanted to scream, but I could barely draw enough air to breathe. Dad's eyes lit up as the wheezing gasp involuntarily escaped my closing throat. Each breath came shallower than the last; only a few seconds until they stopped altogether. I was getting dizzy, and with the passing seconds mounted a desperate crescendo of my flailing heart and smoldering lungs.

Dad was solemn as the dead, still sitting a few feet away, his eyes an inferno of reflected flames. He didn't say anything, but he withdrew the paper bag which contained my lunch and tossed it into the fire. Blue ribbons of light danced across the open air, although I don't know whether these were a product of my oxygen starved brain or some covert substance revealing their purpose.

My body thrashed and revolted against the grasp of some unseen specter, yet my whirling consciousness stubbornly refused to abandon me. I felt my body lifted by the pressure around my neck, pitching me to and fro: a cresting ship on its last voyage. The world bled together like running paint, and the meager fire roared into cascading heights to spit sparks like a thousand falling stars.

The dizziness mounted until I couldn't tell left from right, up from down, living from dying. My legs were numb where they beat the open air; my fingers frozen where they scraped helpless against the unrelenting force. Even if I didn't pass out, it was surely only a matter of time before my neck broke. Past the point of all thoughts and prayers a persistent recollection stormed against the closing dark.

Do not go gentle into that good night...

And then another thought that was not my own, coming from within me as though my mind played puppet to its presence. A lighthouse beaming words which carved their way through the midnight of my fading mind. I was struggling again, kicking and biting and clawing at the open air. My wild lashing finally connected with something solid, but the running drool of colors flooded my vision and made it impossible to guess what held me.

Every sense, every muscle, every feral instinct begged for me to close my eyes against the nauseating tumult of color. To let go of the insurmountable force I was thrall to; to find acceptance in defeat, and peace in death. But louder than the diminishing throb of my heart were the words:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And so I did. I swam through the sea of melting colors, fixating on the black blemish which refused to relinquish my throat. I fought back, tooth and nail sinking into yielding flesh, kicking and screaming as stale air tore through my howling lungs. I lunged after that, digging my fingers into the thing that attacked me until warm wet rivers bubbled over my hands up to the wrist. I wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, pouring all my love for the light and rage against its defiler with one unified assault.

Not until it lay still did I allow myself to fall gasping onto my back. One reluctant star at a time unraveled from the tapestry of madness to find its rightful place in the heavens. My body ached to the core, and were it not for the last utterances of my internal voice still coaxing me back to life, I would have been confident that I had died.

I didn't wake until the next morning. My first shock was that I was alive; my second that my father was not. His body had crumbled beside the ashes of his fire, deep craters gouged into his throat to match the width of my hands. I didn't understand until I had a chance to read the whole book: my unequivocal inheritance.

I wasn't the first, and I won't be the last. My family has been blessed to pursue the secret of the divine spark, and through the years our trials have brought us closer to its unveiling. The voice I heard on the edge of death is the same which inspired my ancestors to write their verse: a further puzzle piece in the enigma of creation. And when the final piece is set to place, then born again is the next God to walk this Earth.

I regret to tell you that such wisdom has exhausted all efforts toward its discovery so far. When we have given up, as my father did and his father before him, it is our place to pass the torch for the child to carry on. Until the day when he too sees his child's mind flare more brightly than his own and knows it is time for them to continue the search in his stead.

I am only writing this now because I have grown so weary of doors without handles and windows looking nowhere. I wish my father had explained this to me before I was thrust upon this quest, but I suppose he thought me too cowardly to end his life and begin my search when such an end was already written by a hundred hands.

That's why I am writing this, my son, so you can make that choice for yourself. And so armed with five centuries of verse, you will listen for that whisper at the end of all light and learn from it what you may.

Open the book, when you are ready, and your trial will begin.

This letter from my father was tucked inside a leather bound book, delivered to me the day of his funeral.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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delwray-blog · 5 years

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PEOPLE, HELL SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF GOD

You and I can never imagine all the depths of hell. Shut out from us by a black veil of darkness, we cannot tell the horrors of that dismal dungeon of lost souls. Happily, the wailings of the damned have never startled us, for a thousand tempests were but a maiden’s whisper, compared with one wail of a damned spirit. It is not possible for us to see the tortures of those souls who dwell eternally within anguish that knows no alleviation. These eyes would become sightless balls of darkness if they were permitted for an instant to look into that ghastly shrine of torment. Hell is horrible, for we may say of it, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the horrors which God hath prepared for them that hate him.

As a man lives and dies, so will he be throughout eternity. The drunkard here will have all a drunkard’s thirst there without the means of gratifying it. The swearer here will become a yet more ripe and proficient blasphemer. Death does not change but fixes character; it petrifies it. “He that is holy let him be holy still; he that is filthy let him be filthy still.” The lost man remains a sinner and a growing sinner and continues to rebel against God. Would you have such a man in heaven? Shall the thief prowl through the streets of the New Jerusalem? Shall the atmosphere of Paradise be polluted by an oath? Shall the songs of angels be disturbed by the ribaldry of licentious conversation? It cannot be.

We know that when impenitent sinners are gathered at the last their characters will be the same. They were filthy here, they will be filthy still. Here on earth, their sin was in the bud; in hell, it will be full-blown. If they were bad here they will be worse there. Here they were restrained by providence, by company, by custom—there, there will be no restraints, and hell will be a world of sinners at large, a land of outlaws, a place where every man shall follow out his own heart’s most horrible inclinations. Who would wish to be with them?

Beloved, the eternal torment of men is no joy to God.

Scripture does not speak of the fire of hell as chastening and purifying, but as punishment which men shall receive for deeds done in the body. They are to be visited with many stripes, and receive just recompence for transgressions. What can there be about hellfire to change a man’s heart? Surely the more the lost will suffer the more will they hate God.

What will be the development of an unregenerate character in hell I cannot tell, but I am certain it will be something which my imagination dares not now attempt to depict, for all the restraints of this life which have kept men decent and moral will be gone when they come into the next world of sin; and as heaven is to be the perfection of the saint’s holiness, so hell will be the perfection of the sinner’s loathsomeness, and there will he discover, and others will discover, what sin is when it cometh to its worst.

If you anxiously desire to see sin at the full come hither, and gaze down the fathomless abyss. Listen to those blasphemous execrations. If you have the courage, hearken to those mingled cries of misery and passion which come up from Tophet, from the abodes of lost spirits. Sin is there ripe; here it is green. Here we see its darkness as the shades of evening, but there it is ten-fold night. Here it scatters fire-brands, but there its quenchless conflagrations flame on forever and ever. Oh! if we have but grace to be rid of sin now, the riddance will save us from the wrath to come. Sin, indeed, is hell, hell in embryo, hell, in essence, hell kindling, hell emerging from the shell: hell is but sin when it has manifested and developed itself to the full. Stand at the gates of Tophet and understand how fell the disease for which heaven’s remedy is provided in the stripes of the Only Begotten.

Then, O ye impenitent, there shall come to your eyes a tear which shall drip forever, a scalding drop which no mercy shall ever wipe away; a thirst that shall never be abated; a worm that shall never die; and a fire that shall never be quenched. There are two flaming jewels of Jehovah’s crown which shall be terribly seen in hell; his wrath and his power. “What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction?”

The torments of the lost will be self-inflicted, they are suicides to their souls, the venom in their veins is self-created and self-injected.

What, if it could be proven, as it never will be, that there are no pains of hell and no eternal wrath, yet is not this enough—to have lost this immortality of glory, this immortality of honor, and of likeness to God? This pain of loss, may none of us ever incur it: for it is hell to lose heaven, it is infinite misery to miss infinite felicity. I am not like yon flatterers who tell you that there is a little hell and a little God, from which you naturally infer that you may live as you like. Both you and they will perish everlastingly if you believe them. There is a dreadful hell, for there is a righteous God.

There they come, streams of them, hurrying impatiently, rushing down to death and hell—yes, eagerly panting, hurrying, dashing against one another to descend to that awful gulf from which there is no return! No missionaries are wanted, no ministers are needed to plead with men to go to hell. No books of persuasion are wanted to urge them to rush onward to eternal ruin. They hurry to be lost; they are eager to be destroyed.

The Lord will, at the last, put us among those whom we are most like; in the day when he shall separate the people gathered before him as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, the sheep will be put with the sheep and the goats with the goats. If you have lived like the wicked, you will die like the wicked, and be damned like the wicked.

Hell is sinfully developed,—a man’s own soul permitted to go to extreme limits with that which it now carries out in a mitigated form, and so, becoming like a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, tormenting itself beyond all power of imagination.

There is a place where there is a dreadful prayer-meeting every day, and every hour in the day; a prayer-meeting where all the attendants pray,—not merely one, but all; and they pray, too, with sighs, and groans, and tears; and yet they are never heard. That prayer-meeting is in hell. There is a begging meeting there, indeed. Oh, that there were on earth half the prayer there will be there! Oh, that the tears shed in eternity had but been shed in time! Oh, that the agony that the lost ones now feel had but been felt beforehand! Oh, that they had repented ere their life was ended! Oh, that their hearts had been made tender before the terrible fire of judgment had melted them!

Moreover, we are persuaded that the penalties of sin will differ; and that, albeit all the wicked shall be cast into hell, yet there will be degrees in the anguish of that lost estate.

Would it not be better to go to heaven side by side with a poor old almshouse-woman, or a chimney-sweep, or a pauper from the workhouse, than to go to hell with a lord, a duke, or a millionaire?

No human preacher ever gave such graphic and harrowing descriptions of hell as did Jonathan Edwards

Yet the only greater was Christ who has given sublimely more. You say you believe the Words of Jesus; you do not suspect a loving Saviour of exaggeration. Oh, my readers, I ask you now in the name of God, if it is true, why do ye not believe it? You do not believe it; that is clear enough. Would you sit quietly in your seat this morning, young man, if you really believed that in one instant you may be in hell? Old man, old in years and old in sin, would you be as quiet in your soul today as you are if you knew and believed that there is but a step, one heartbeat and just a single breath between you and the flames of hell,?

I do not wonder that ingenious persons have invented theories which aim at mitigating the terrors of the world to come to the impenitent. It is natural they should do so, for the facts are so alarming as they are truthfully given us in God’s Word, that if we desire to preach comfortable doctrine and such as will quiet the consciences of idle professors, we must dilute the awful truth.

Diminish your idea of the wrath of God and the terrors of hell, and in that proportion, you will diminish the results of your work. In some professed Christians their pity for the criminal has overcome their horror at the crime. Eternal punishment is denied, not because the Scriptures are not plain enough on that point, but because man has become the god of man, and everything must be toned down to suit the tender feelings of an age which excuses sin but denounces its penalties, which has no condemnation for the offense but spends its denunciations upon the Judge and his righteous sentence. By all means, have Sympathies manward but at the same time show some tenderness towards the dishonored law and the insulted Lord.

The doctrine of no punishment for any man is popular in this day and threatens to have even greater sway in the future. Believe me, dear friends the Words of God about the doom of sinners are very dreadful. Hence, there are some that try to pare them down, and cut the solemn meaning out of them; and then they say, “I could not rest comfortably if I believed the doctrine about the ruin of man.” Most true, but what right have we to rest comfortably?

Suffice it for me by saying, that the hell of hells will be to you poor sinner, the thought, that it is to be forever. Thou wilt look up there on the throne of God, and it shall be written “forever!” When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torments, they shall say, “forever!” When they howl, echo cries “forever!” Forever knoweth no end; eternity cannot be spelled except in eternity. Still, the soul seeth written o’er its head, “Thou art damned forever.” It heareth howlings that are to be perpetual; it seeth flames which are unquenchable; it knoweth pains that are unmitigated; it hears a sentence that rolls not like the thunder of earth which soon is hushed but onward, onward, onward, shaking the echoes of eternity, making thousands of years shake again with the horrid thunder of its dreadful sound, “Depart! Depart, depart ye cursed!”

A million years shall not make so much difference to the duration of his agony as a cup of water taken from the sea would to the volume of the ocean. Nay, when millions of years told a million times shall have rolled their fiery orbits over his poor tormented head, he shall be no nearer to the end than he was at first. The eternity of punishment is a thought which crushes the heart. You have buried the man but you have not buried his sins. His sins live, and are immortal; they have gone before him to judgment, or they will follow after him to bear their witness as to the evil of his heart and the rebellion of his life. The Lord is slow to anger, but when He is once aroused to it, as He will be against those who finally reject His Son, He will put forth all his omnipotence to crush his enemies. “Consider this,” saith he, “you that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.” It will be no trifle to fall into the hands of the living God. He will by no means clear the guilty. Forever must his anger burn. We have nothing in Scripture to warrant the hope that God’s wrath against evildoers will ever come to an end. Oh, the wrath to come! The wrath to come! The wrath which after ages and ages will still be to come, and still to come, and still to come! It needs a whole eternity to set forth, in hell, all the justice of God in the punishment of sin.

Do you hear this man as he speaks to himself? “Oh! If I could ever escape from this dreadful dungeon, it would be a heaven to me. If these awful fires could be quenched, if this gnawing worm would but die, then I would be content. If, after ten thousand, thousand, thousand years, I could hope to make my escape from this pit of woe, I would set all the bells of my heart a-ringing for very joy at the bare possibility that, At last, I might escape. But what is it that I see written before me? Forever! Forever on my chains; forever, branded on my limbs of pain; forever, on those waves of fire; forever in the angry gaze of an incensed Deity; forever in those hungry depths, which seem to yawn to suck me into deeper woe; forever, forever, forever, forever!” It is the hell of hell that everything there lasts forever. Here, time wears away our griefs and blunts the keen edge of sorrow; but there, time never mitigates the woe. Here, the sympathy of loving kindred, in the midst of sickness or suffering, can alleviate our pain; but there, the mutual upbraiding and reproaches of fellow-sinners give fresh stings to torment too dreadful to be endured. Here, too, when nature’s last palliative shall fail, to die may be a happy release; a man can count the weary hours till death shall give him rest; but, oh! Remember, there is no death in hell; death, which is a monster on earth, would be an angel in hell. But the terrible reality is this, “Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”

He speaks of the “fire that never shall be quenched.” Now, do not begin telling me that that is metaphorical fire: who cares for that? If a man were to threaten to give me a metaphorical blow on the head, I should care very little about it; he would be welcome to give me as many as he pleased. And what say the wicked? “We do not care about metaphorical fires.” But they are real, sir, yes, as real as yourself. There is a real fire in hell, as truly as you have now a real body, a fire exactly like that which we have on earth in everything except this—that it will not consume, though it will torture you. You have seen the asbestos lying in the fire red hot, but when you take it out it is unconsumed. So your body will be prepared by God in such a way that it will burn forever without being consumed; it will lie, not as you consider, in the metaphorical fire, but in actual flame. If the wooing of Christ’s wounds cannot make you love Christ, do you think the flames of hell will? A piece of news about a fire in another continent makes a sensation in all our homes but the fire that never shall be quenched is heard of almost without emotion.

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deadromance619 · 6 years

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Most of the legends of Azeroth are already written in books, told in inns, and are reenacted in plays, but history is written by the winners, where would the Banshee Queen Sylvanas Windrunner be if she hadn't liberated herself and accepted her defeat. Where would Varian Wrynn be if he died in the sands of the arena? We, the survivors, some of us are happy that we fell into the background of these great hero's. We can only hope someone will listen to our story, even though we didn't fight our way to greatness. That doesn't mean we didn't fight for our survival.

My name is Vorioia Ace, for what it's worth I am married now, but I can only speak one word at a time. I can write though, so I'm writing in hopes someone will read and understand. I've been able to sing for quite some time now, but speaking I am stopped. For the most part I choose not to speak but forming the words without stuttering takes effort. There's also this cold icy chill the comes over my throat and the sound won't break through my wind pipe. So, I've gotten by by taking these long pauses to make my point. I can still write, so I'm writing now. Before, while aboard the giant necroplis the banshee's taught me to connect my words without the pauses, but the words need melody, harmony, or this cold chill will form, take over, and I may not be able to breathe for a few minutes. But that came later, when I was able to form words without effort or without song, I was almost completely tone death, but I miss my voice, I miss being able to speak to my husband, to anyone. How did I get like this, well, if you want to know that, I'll have to start from the beginning? This is a forgotten story of Warcraft.

I, like most people I was born human, a child overprotected by my three older brothers, my father killed by savage troll tribes that littered the forest to the north, before I was born. My brothers say he was a strong man with enough strength to match or break any orc, but the people with him were his greatest asset. They knew how to fight as one with heavy shields that could trap in anyone more skilled with blades. That is why we humans beat them, not because we were stronger, faster, or more skilled. Because we knew how to fight as a single unit, but trolls use different tactics, my father, and his team were shot down with arrows on a patrol. This was the image my brothers gave to me, but he died before I can remember. I remember myself so strong and full of life, Vorioia Pride was my name, and even as a child I wanted to be a hero like how I envisioned my father and so did my brothers. So, I was tougher than most girls, I had very few friends, and was more often than not, short tempered. When I first met John he was so fragile, soft spoken, and would cry even when grownups would yell at him a little. If there was anyone that was the polar opposite of the image I had of my father or how boys should act it was John. John Ace had two sisters one older and one younger, Jandice the older and Ada the younger. Jandice knew quite a bit about the arcane but didn't display it as much as she loved to talk about it. When people would ask her to show them some magic she would show off some tricks, and for a long time that's what she did, magic tricks, with traps, mirrors, and sleight of hand movements. Hardly anything that could be used in combat, but the other mages did say she had the gift, she just chose to be more of a magician then a proper mage.

John’s parents were somewhat poor, but once Jandice’s shows started getting more and more attention from town folks she started to get attention from the nobles of the Barov family and she was adopted into them. With a whole bunch of gold for John's family of course.

John on the other hand, he was so shy and somewhat afraid of his parents. They said, Jandice Barov barely acknowledged them as their daughter, and that he should forget he had a sister. When we were kids I had helped him when I saw him being bullied by a bunch of girls, but I told him that I wouldn't be doing that again if he didn't stand up for himself. I told him, "Just get really mad and hit one of them as hard as you can."

I remember I saw him getting bullied like he always did, and he looked over at me, and I shook my head in disapproval. I wasn't going to help him, and next thing I knew one of the girl’s hairs was on fire. John ran away but I never laughed harder in my life. The bullies' friends did get her some water. I ran after John. John was crying like he always did, but I told him not to be sad, those girls shouldn't mess with him again. He wasn't crying because of what he did, he was crying because he was going to have to change schools and he might be sold to the Barov family if his power developed. So, I connived the girls that were bullying him not to say anything. But John would have to show me his magic whenever I asked. Even though John was a child he could kindle sparks and fire, water and ice at a moment's notice. I had seen arcane magic before, but to see shards of water and ice, or sparks of fire and heat form in his hands so slowly was so pretty. Most mages did it so fast I couldn't really know what was happening. I told John; sooner or later the other mages are going to find out that you have magic. They will be able to "feel it" so to speak.

Stratholme was a pretty big town and we eventually told his parents and since his older sister was basically sold to the Barov family, they didn't want that fate for John. With the money they got from Janice he was sent to South Shore Beach to an acquaintance of the Barov family that would acknowledge his family and protect his home, Kel Thuzad.

So, I said goodbye to my friend, I was sad and missed him, but I didn't have the drive I do now. We were both children so when I reached my teens I thought about him a lot.

But a few years later he was back in full mage robes with a proud strong demeanor. I never realized how attracted I could be to someone. I mean I had crushes before but seeing him come back so handsome and capable, women couldn't leave him alone. He swore his life to the people of Stratholme and despite him now being one of the most skill mages in town he was still too young to join the guard. For once I felt like the shy one, but he saw me. Out of all the people in our city he still wanted to spend time with me and my family. My brothers weren't too happy about it; they were always over protective of me which might have been the reason why all my would-be crushes never had a chance. I remember John never even wanting to spend time in my house. My brothers sharpen their swords and flexed their muscles, but John wasn't even phased by it. Laughed off every joke about mage dresses and even beat my youngest brother in an arm wrestling match. When we finally had some time to ourselves he told me how he felt. That he had thought about me every day he was training, and once he got done with the Arcane University he would marry me. We made love that night, but it didn't seem fair to me that he had just gotten there and now he was leaving again. We spent about three weeks together being a couple and when he was away he wrote me about how his life was at the University. But a year after that both of his parents were killed by highway bandits. He came back for the funeral and it turned out that he had taken up drinking while at the University.

I thought it was because of his parents had just died that he was drinking so heavy, but he told me he had been drinking way before that. His letters were so kind and sweet I never thought he could be like this. He tried to make an advance at me when he was drunk. He told me that I was going to be his soon anyways and he tried to hit me with one of those sticks you beat your kids with. I knew I was stronger than he was, but I knew he knew magic and I was somewhat afraid. I was able to take away the stick and kick him to the floor. John threw a tantrum, yelled, and froze my feet to the floor, it was so cold. I had never fought a mage before, but I had fought more boys and men to not lose. I broke out of the ice and clocked him under the chin with the stick. He fell backwards falling back like a broken wooden doll. I thought the impact with the floor would have killed him, but he was out. I heard a snore from him and carried him off to my bed. I slept in my rocking chair watching him for a few hours making sure he didn't choke.

When he woke up, he was in pain from more of the impact with the floor, I told him, "I'm not marrying you if you think that you’re going to own me. I told him that David my oldest brother had joined the king's Knights of Lordaeron and I could easily join as well."

I told him that my mother was happy that I had decided to marry John, but if this is what married life is going to be like I would take my chances killing orcs, highwaymen, and trolls for the King.

John cried just like he did when he was a kid, "Both of my parents are dead, how am I supposed to act and now you're the second woman to have beaten me in a duel." He complained.

"At least you knew them both, you know. You know that my father died before I could remember. So, I never really knew what married life was like." I told him.

John apologized for what happen and promised he would never use magic on me again. He didn't walk as proud as he used to when he first came home, but it was more like we were kids again. He had no idea of my skill with swords and duels. I at least showed him how to use a single-handed blade and he showed me everything his master Kel'Thuzad the Demon Slayer showed him. I know John would never make a pack with demons, but he knew how to summon them, but not control them. It wasn't a complete nightmare though. I did get to test my steel on demons but there was one he could control, well, it didn't try to kill us.

A flaming horse, not a dreadsteed with horns and black scales, but with fire from its mane and tail, but an actual arcane fire horse. John told me that this horse will let you pet him, but he won't let you ride him.

I thought its flames would be hot but as I approached my hand the flames subsided like steam or like water on a frying pan. Most of its coat was red as a sunset, but it had one yellow spot from the top of his head to its mouth. The rest of the flames subsided as I touched the horses face with the rest of my body. The horse looked almost completely normal, there was a complete loss of mane and hairless tail, but he looked like a completely beautiful chestnut breed. I completely forgot that a few minutes ago John had just summoned him. John looked at me in shock, "How? How did you do that?" John asked.

"Love is the key, John. You just have to listen with your heart." Without asking I jumped on his back like I would any horse. "Does this horse have a name?" I asked.

"Master called them 'Nightmares' and even he couldn't ride one of these like you are right now. He would need to summon two, each on one foot." John explained.

"Nightmares?" I said in disapproval, "No, no, no, you can't call him that. How about Helios, it means the sun."

John shrugged, Helios turned around toward John, sprayed him in the face with frost and water from its mouth. I patted Helios on the side, "I wonder if he'll wear a saddle?"

Helios buckled, and rose up on two legs, I knew that he wasn't happy about my last statement, so I jumped off before it could knock me off. John said one word, "Dismissed."

And it was gone, in a mess of flames and ice, it hurt like a hundred bee stings in the areas it hit. But I knew this wasn't John’s fault, I knew I was playing with fire and now I was the one burnt. John took me to a healer, but I was still bedridden, I needed to wear bandages in the areas the frostfire hit me.

"You're lucky you know? I've seen Kel'Thuzad use those to set entire forest on fire." John explained.

I grabbed John, "Helios, he's not some projectile to be cast into a wooded dummy. He's a mage just like you."

John nodded, "I'll try to remember that from now on." He said

By the time I fully recovered John needed to go back to the University. I received letters from John that he was able to summon two more mage horses and sent me drawings of them. One was white and blue, and another was purple, so I named them Avalanche, and Violet. Helios eventually let John ride him, but he didn't listen or go anywhere that John wanted to go. I wrote back to him and told him that there were shaman's that could ask the elements for aid, and I told him to think of his relationship with them like his relationship with his horses, not a skill that is grown with repetition.

After that people of Stratholme started hearing more and more about the war with the Orcish warlock clans, then demons, and then disease. The boarders of Stratholme where strong, there was no way they could bring an attack to our city, but many soldiers were sent away and never came back. I wrote to John that maybe I should join the guard. Not a full-fledged knight just enough to defend our people. John wrote back saying no. That he wouldn't join the Kirin Tor station because he would be sent to Kalimdor, he would join the Silver Hand as a soldier, only a two-day’s ride away. He said not to join, not because I didn't know how to fight, but these new enemies were riddled with disease and I couldn't fight that off with a sword. But if I must fight, take up my brothers offer and join the Knights of Lordaeron. I knew how skilled those knights were and how heavy their armor was, but their service was to the king, and they never saw much outside combat. So, I was torn, I could defend my people here with my own sword and be married, and free to have as many children as I wanted. Or I could join the knights and leave my people to their fate, but be closer to my lover, but also our relationship would have to be kept a secret. I started writing letters to my brother and started training with the heaviest weapon I could afford. My brother taught me to use my fist and sword and shield. So, every technique I did with a two-handed sword was somewhat improvised, sometimes clumsily depending on how tired I was. I remember my mother trying to show me how to dance with a stick and ribbon and I was somewhat surprised I was able to do a lot of the same movements with a steel chain. So, I attached a chain onto my sword. I was able to spin my sword around over my head and whack the training dummies head clean off. That drew a bit of a crowd, I was a natural when it came to dance, dancing with a chain and sword was pleasing and fun. Once I heard music, but I knew I was going to need armor sooner or later. I couldn't afford to dance, spin, pull, and push in heavy armor. So, my days I spent in armor I only trained in the normal boring way, ate, slept, and if no one was looking I tried to sword dance. My mother was somewhat disappointed that I had taken up swords over dancing, but once I told her that I was joining the knights to be closer to John, she said I was just like my father, he wasn't supposed to get married either, and so she let it go. My brother came home to take me to a training camp and when I saw him I was so happy I passed out.

When I woke up I felt like the over training was finally taking its toll.

My brother said I was deathly ill; I could not go to Lordaeron like this. Every knight had their own healers to help them fight but their service was to that king and the knight that would protect him, not to a family member. The healer said even if he were to heal me on the way there I wouldn't make the trip, better yet survive training, but if I stay in bed I should recover. He said he came all the way to this commoner's city to find a promising knight, not some sickly sister. My brother wasn't too happy about that statement, he slammed the healer into the wall. "She isn't a sickly sister; she is the promising knight and we're not leaving until she is cured."

The healer tried to regain some composure, "That's not what I meant," he said, "I came along to cure simple wounds and maybe poisons, but this, didn't you smell it when you came here. She needs rest, a proper diet, and if you want a speedy recovery I'm going to need herbs. All of these things I don't have."

My brother put him down.

"They rationed out grain a few days ago." I said.

The healer shook his head, "No, empty carbs are not going to fix you, if anything it will make you worst, you need water, meat, vegetables, and a very big bed pan. I can do my best to nurse you back to health, but your brother is going to have to buy me the supplies I need. But I do have this."

The healer pulled a large metal canteen, "Nothing, never mind, it's silly." He put it back in his robes.

"If it will cure my sister let her have it." My brother said as he tried to grab it.

My brother reached for the canteen, but the healer pushed his hands away, "I got the recipe for this tonic from a bear when I was on Kalimdor. He said a bear sold it to trolls as a cure all."

My brother repressed a laugh, "A bear? Now's not the time for jokes and if it's for trolls why do you have it?"

The healer smiled and repressed a laugh, "Because one drop of this to any alcoholic beverage will get any human shit face drunk. It's made from ten different reptile and insect venom's and few poison plant roots." He said laughing.

"This isn't funny Jacob; my sister could die if you gave her that, and a bear, do you think I'm a fool, you're telling me you learned this from a talking bear. I guess the next thing you're going to tell me that a giant turtle told you the meaning of life. " My brother kneeled by my side.

"Well not like that I'm not, it was actually more of a panda. Talking bears are Furbolg's." The healer said. My brother just looked at him.

"Man, you should see the look on your face." I couldn't help but laugh either.

"Vorioia, you think this is funny too. This is not a laughing matter!" My brother demanded

"Well if it can fix me, I don't see why I shouldn't take it," I stated, "but come on, a talking panda that's just funny." I finally said.

"Yeah about that, troll's can recover from any wound and can even regenerate from torn off limbs but there not free from disease and sickness. Chen, uh, the panda, said it would put the trolls in a deathlike sleep and in three days they were cured of any illness that threaten their lives. I keep some with me if there is ever a time when your brother is slain, I would have the perfect possum remedy." The healer explained.

My brother looked at him questionably, "Have you ever tested it on anything?"

The healer half smiled, "Rats died, dogs died, one horse recovered in one day. Humans, only a single drop, but a full amount could kill her. But I know the people in this city are sick, I can feel it in my bones. Maybe I could buy some rounds and it will cure them, I mean we'd all have a pretty good time."

My brother crossed his arms and thought, "Save one shot for my sister. But we'll test drops of this remedy at the local tavern. Kalimdor, you know I will never fully understand how people can actually live there. Can you imagine if we actually packed up and moved there?"

The healer laughed and shook his head, "Right? What was that guy thinking, but fate is a strange thing, I had completely planned to sell this to local taverns but if it's a cure all for humans it will make me rich? I think I was meant to come here with you."

My brother let out a sigh, "If it cures my sister I will have to agree with you, but that's all I care about."

"Wait, what are you guys talking about? Why would we move to Kalimdor?" I asked.

"Some wizard or sage or prophet said we should pack up and move to Kalimdor, he was probably just crazy." My brother answered.

"Yet war and evil has come to our lands." The healer said.

"Our father's destroyed evil once when they came through a dark portal, now it's our time."

They left a shot for me and I put in under the floor boards and wrapped it in cloth, I wasn't trying to hide it. The remedy sitting there by my night stand made the whole room smell terrible. Wrapping it in cloth helped but it was still faint. So, they tested it. I never heard so many cries of drunkenness and singing coming from one place. I needed rest, but I couldn't really sleep with all that noise. When my brother and the healer Jacob came home they were singing, "Were going to be rich!" and passed out on the floor.

When they woke up a few of my towns people were dead from "alcohol poisoning" and some were still sick, but a lot of them were completely cured and felt that a good night of partying was just what they needed to get back on their feet.

When my brother and his healer recovered from there hangovers, they were debating whether the cure would actually fix me. There were a few people that had died that night from one drop, but not all had recovered. My brother decided to take the safe route with enough bed rest and a proper diet and for a few days I was able to walk around my house and prepare my own meals.

Then the unthinkable happen. I was woken up to the battle horn sound through the whole city; we were under attack without warning. But when I looked outside I didn't see any orcs or demons killing our towns' people, they were wearing the same armor my brother wore. One of them shot a crossbow arrow at me but I moved before it could hit me. I was still wearing a purple night gown and I couldn't put on full plate armor, but I could at least grab my sword. I ran down stairs and Jacob the healer ran through the unlocked door, "THE TONIC, WHERE IS THE TONIC?!"

I told him, "Wait, what's going on?"

He looked frantic, "Arthas, our prince, he and his knights, there killing everyone. Your brother tried to explain to him that he and his men weren't infected but Arthas killed him anyways. Don't you see he won't stop until everyone in the city is dead?!" The crossbowmen fired an arrow at Jacob's back and he fell to the ground dead, I was still armed though. While he was reloading I pledged my sword through his armor and kicked him out the front door. For a while I just hid hoping they would past my house.

"What killed this soldier, this doesn't look like a wound from an undead or demons and why hasn't this house caught flame yet." Someone loudly demanded.

I tied a really long chain to my sword and tied the other end around my wrist. "Well I could fix that. These demons do use swords you know." The guard did as he was ordered and lit a torch.

I opened the door and threw my sword at the soldier with the torch. It nailed him in the neck and I dragged him into my house as fast as I could and pulled out the sword.

The soldiers around screamed out as they saw their comrade fall and drag. I hid behind the wall in my house. "A very skillful attack, woman." Someone said.

"Arthas, was she wearing a night gown?" One of the soldiers said in disbelief.

"Arthas was it?" I said, "Prince Arthas, I'm not infected, I was sick for a few days, but I've made a full recovery. You don't need to kill me or the healthy; quite a few of us have recovered as well."

"Come on, Arthas, she's just a girl if she isn't infected we could use her in the war." One of his soldiers said.

"Have you eaten any of the grain while you've been here?" Arthas asked.

"Not lately, no." I answered.

"But you did eat the rations, yes or no?" Arthas asked.

"Yes." I finally said.

"I'm sorry, but I can't take that risk, put down your weapon and I will grant you a clean death. If you don't surrender to me and my men we will go into your house and cut you down. Besides you already killed two of my men." Arthas demanded.

"ANY OF YOU TAKE ONE STEP INTO THIS HOUSE AND YOU'RE NEXT WILL BE IN THE TWISTING NETHER!" I shouted. I heard them all stop in their tracks.

"What is your name woman?" Arthas asked.

"Vorioia Pride!" I shouted.

"Then I will let it be known that you fought and died with honor." He claimed. "Men bring me her head!"

"Wait my prince; she's just a girl trying to defend her home. We all have wives at home that would do the same if our homes were invaded." I thought at the time Arthas wouldn't listen to reason from me, but maybe he'd listen to one of his own men. "I signed on to join the fight against demons and orcs that wish nothing but war and slavery! Maybe she's infected, maybe she isn't, but if we kill her now that will make us no better than the orcs that invaded our homes. We could just walk away and if she does turn into an undead we will deal with it when the time comes! For now, let's just walk away and deal with the larger problem at hand."

I looked outside, this soldier had his hands spread out between my house and Arthas. I never knew how big Arthas was; he looked like he could knock over this whole house just by slamming into it. The other soldiers looked at each other and agreed.

"You're smart, what the heck are you doing with all them?!" I shouted. I saw him look back at me and laugh. And a second later his head was completely gone smashed like a red pumpkin.

"YOU MEN ALL KNOW HOW DANGEROUS THIS WOMAN IS AS A HUMAN. AS A UNDEAD THINK OF HOW MANY MORE OF US SHE COULD KILL IF WE DON'T DO SOMETHING NOW! I WILL GO IN THERE MYSELF IF I HAVE TO, BUT WHEN I COME OUT ALL OF YOU WILL MEET THE SAME FATE AS HIM!" Arthas smashed his hammer onto the dead soldier he just killed. I ran upstairs and grabbed the tonic. And jumped out the upper window and ran to the streets. The soldiers shot me with crossbows but missed, but Arthas came charging with his hammer. When he was just within striking distance he spin 360 degrees and strike for my body. I backed away in the nick of time and slide my sword to the back of his knees as he tried to recover his hammer. He fell landing flat on his back and head. But more of his men showed up. I ran away from them and when I got a good distance I dropped the sword on the floor and spin the sword around over my head. It hit a few of the soldiers but when it made contact with their armor, it pinged, and stopped me from building up speed. I can tell it was stinging them, but I needed to take some of these guys out. I stopped the spin by slamming the sword and chain on the floor. It was a complete miss of any of Arthas's men, but it made a loud sound that made most of the men flinch.

"Where did she learn to fight like that?!" One of the soldiers asked Arthas as he helped him recover. "Men fall back, this one's mine."

"Sometimes improving dance and swordplay is the best way to win a fight. I won't hold back this time Vorioia Pride." Arthas stated.

Arthas held his hammer with two hands and walked forward, protecting his face with the butt of his hammer. I pulled the sword by the chain and put it in my hands. "Then you will die!" I yelled

I said it almost out of breath.

I regained some composure and threw my sword at Arthas, he blocked knocking it to the right. I used that momentum with the chain to strike to the left, blocked again. With every strike the next one came faster. I never knew it, but my mother's dance lesson proved more useful in this fight than my older brother's teachings with the swords. I could feel every strike of the sword and chain and I moved with the rhythm of the dance. I could remember all the music and I felt I was moving to a beat of a song. But it was having no effect on Arthas, he was almost dancing to the same beat. Blocking every attack of my spinning blade almost like a waltz and held his hammer almost like it was a lighter woman. Finally, the blade broke in half. Arthas looked at the remains of the broken sword and looked at me, "My turn!" Arthas screamed in a creepy loud way.

He charged toward me like he did before, this time he aimed the hammer at my face. I ducked this time looking for the opening he left open before, but he hit me with the back of his weapon. I backed away, and he actually drew blood. I touched the side of my head, "You still think I'm infected?" I asked

"No, but you killed too many of my men to let you leave here alive." Arthas stated

I finally had a moment to take it all in. The areas I grew up and played were burnt, the people I knew were dead, the houses and shops I would go to were looted. Arthas had killed my brother, and for what reason, because a few people got sick? "Arthas, have you taken a good look around? This was my home; do you really think I won't kill as many of your people as I can?"

Arthas half smiled, "Why do you think I'm choosing to do this now and not later. You think I want to keep watching my back my whole life?"

I wrapped the rest of the chain around me. I realized this wasn't a fight; this was a dance, and I spin the loose end around. "Come then Prince, defend your murderous people."

Arthas spin his heavy hammer and circled me. I was somewhat surprised that he could spin that hammer while doing that same 360 strike he would always use but this time it was coming overhead. Still to slow, his hammer slammed into the cobblestone and stuck. This time he left his head completely open and I wrapped the chain twice around his overgrown neck. I could hear him choking and I whispered in his ear, "I will let it be known that you refused to listen to reason, you refused to walk away from someone who posed no danger to you. You killed women, children, and even your own men, and in the end, it was a woman in a night gown and a chain that took you down."

I felt the burning pain of an impact sting on my back, and I was knocked to the floor, I heard Arthas gasp for breath. I felt a painful sting from a cold metal spiked shield as I tried to recover. And then the demon curses that fell on me like a hundred bee stings, I couldn't see or feel. But I could feel my life slipping as I fell to the ground. One of his men took my change purse from my gown, the chain around my waist, put it into his backpack, and passed the coins around to four oddly dressed men. "Don't kill her yet, I want her head." Arthas said.

"Your highness your hurt, let me heal you." One of his priest said.

The priests healed him and the wounds on his face and neck closed. "Thank you, priest, that is much better. This woman fought honorably, she deserves a quick death, and to be remembered."

"I WON'T let you take my life!" I yelled, and I swallowed what was left from the tonic. It tasted just as bad as it smelled and burned my throat as it went down. I felt it ooze down my throat and I tried to throw it up, back out. I saw Arthas and his men hold their noses as I breathed in their direction. Then everything went numb, I fell to the ground and breathed as hard as I could, feeling the tonic burn my lungs and coughing it out. I felt myself slipping. I didn't know if this would cure me or kill me, but it felt like it was killing me, but I couldn't let him do it, I heard Arthas as I slipped away.

"So, in the end she chooses the cowards way out. Leave her; I don't need her skull to decorate my chambers." And he walked away.

"That stuff is still on her teeth, it smells worst then the undead, move the body someplace away from our men." I heard someone else say.

#diary #arthas #kelthuzad #mage #lordaeron #sylvanas #varian #varianwrynn #fanart #fanfiction #blizzard#blizzardentertainment #blizzard2018 #wow#wowgamer #battleforazeroth#worldofwarcraftfanart #worldofwarcraft#warcraft

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