#Zilly drabbles

[zillyeh]

L'appel du L'eau

Characters: Miles, The Racketeer, The Oddsman (ancestors w/ no pages unfortunately soz) Pre Smiles Miles thing hi<3

Under the bright Alternian moons, the lower Delhon docks swayed. The trolls walking the uneasy planks grew sparser and sparser as sunrise grew closer- returning to their ships or the various other places sailors spent their time during the harsh daylight.

Rare was it that a certain pirate didn’t stay in the company of a particular jadeblood until the madame kicked him out. Rare as the weather being this nice in this season. Rare as that jadeblood choosing to be out on the docks rather than seeing clients.

His short mane of curls blew behind him at the speed he walked, striding as long as his little legs could muster. It would be a run if he didn’t want to look as desperate as he felt. The heels of his buckled boots clicked fast, his catlike eyes darting between ships until he found the one his companion had described. The Scull Kraken stood tall, proud and purple in the moonslight, the squid patterning carved into her hull shining a brilliant gold.

Amillo felt like he could burst into a desperate, desperate sprint. Domnik’s horns also shone under Alternia’s three moons, next to him the seadweller he could only assume was the “brother” he’d heard about.

“Domnik!” Milo shouted down the dock when he was just close enough. The both of them startled, the taller violet’s hand flicking to his side.

“Amillo?” Domnik asked, confused. He swatted his captain’s twitchy fingers away from his firearm.

“I thought I’d never find you before you left,” Milo said, breathless now that he’d stopped. “I was thinking about your offer. Also hello, you must be Rothan. Amillo Ariika.” Milo straightened himself, smoothing his coat before offering his hand.

The taller of the pair of highbloods eyed it with disdain. Milo faltered slightly, but he daintily switched the offer of the handshake to a loose hanging wrist- fingers to kiss if he were so inclined.

He was not.

“Amillo what are you doing here?” Domnik asked gruffly, lowering Milo’s hand with his own.

“I have been turning that offer you proposed to me around my head for nights, Dom,” he said, chin high in the air. The vertical feet between the jade and the other two trolls was almost laughable. The flowery fins of the seadweller shifted as he tilted his head.

“You’ve been proposing things to…” Rothan eyed Milo’s least frilly pair of puffy shirts and tight trousers with disdain, “Suckerfish?”

“Rottie-” The blueblood’s pale face darkened noticeably.

“Is that a problem, captain?” Amillo asked with a polite defiance.

“Milo-” Domnik attempted through gritted teeth. Rothan shut him up with a hand on his chest.

“What does my idiot brother offer you, eh? More money than your domineering lady takes from your affairs?” There was a joking tone to his voice that made Amillo’s ears twitch annoyedly. 

“Something like that.” Milo cast his sharp gaze to Domnik, uncomfortable and bracing for impact. “Perhaps I’m a bit too romantic, Domnik? To think perhaps you had more intent with me than most?”

“Will you get on with it?” Rothan interjected before Domnik could take a breath in. “What do you bother me for, jade?”

“I am coming with you,” Milo said, as if that were an obvious fact. Those five words hung heavy in the air, Rothan seemingly waiting for a punchline. He did not receive one.

That didn’t stop him from laughing.

Cruel and cartoonish, doubling himself over to hold his knees, exaggeratedly wiping a tear from his eye. Domnik chuckled uncomfortably, but Milo remained unmoved. He crossed his arms over his chest, tapping his foot as he waited for him to be finished.

“Oh that is rich- oh.” Rothan paused, something in Amillo’s eyes giving him reason to you. “You think you’re serious.”

“I am serious,” Milo said firmly, tugging on Domnik’s sleeve to pull him to his side. Domnik, for some reason, allowed this. “My matesprit said he desperately wished I could come with him, and as it so happens, I’m free tonight.”

The violet looked between Domnik and the jadeblood, some bioluminescent anger pockmarking his neck around his bud shaped fins.

“Dom- fuck’s sake, idiot get your ass back over here.”

“Maybe we hear him out?” Domnik asked sheepishly, “Rottie-”

“Captain now. I sooner throw you off this dock before I take your dainty little screwtoy out on the water.”

“Don’t talk about him like-”

“Oh so it iiis more than that, da? Of course it is. You get softer every fucking time we dock this port.” He jutted his chin out to Milo. “You think that thing can survive my ship?”

A low hiss escaped Milo, Domnik’s hand instinctively moved to stop him going further.

“Shows what you know about this port, Lilyfin.” Milo shot, looking like a child being held back by Domnik’s trunk of an arm. “You would think that someone who’s name precedes him as far as it does would look into what role the suckerfish on these docks play.” 

Milo kicked in the back one of Domnik’s knees, sending him down with a yelp. His head was just level with Amillo’s chest. The glint of his blade at Domnik’s throat was immediately preceded by the click of Rothan’s gun. Milo hardly blinked, keeping Domnik’s head in place by his horn.

“Could I survive this province were I not half as much a savage beast as you are, captain?”

“Let him go,” Rothan snarled, trigger discipline waning. Miles barked out a laugh, gripping Domnik’s horn tighter.

“Or what? You’ll shoot me? Like I have anything to lose? Like I won’t come back from it?” Milo’s skin rippled as he taunted, the undead alabaster glow sending a shiver down Rothan’s spine.

“I will shoot you in your head,” he said, a hitch to his voice that made Milo’s smile widen.

“I’ll make it his,” he said, jostling Dom around by the horn.

“Milo-”

“Quiet, Dommy.”

Rothan paused, weighing his options, but quickly came to his senses. Something in Milo’s eyes must have scared him.

"You think I'll let you on my ship one step after this?" He straightened himself, lowering his gun. "I say yes, you let him go, I shove you in with the sharks to play chew toy."

"Rottie‐?!"

"Shut up, Domnik," said both Milo and Rothan at once. 

"I would never hurt Domnik if I get what I want, captain," Milo reassured, keeping pressure on the blade at the blueblood's throat. "I can be a model addition to your crew if you let me."

"Right."

"I think we should give him a chance, Rottie," Domnik strained, trying to keep his throat unopened. Rothan swore in his upper province tongue, swinging his gun around as he spoke.

"Still, dipshit? How often does he have you on your knees that you want to bring him with us?"

"If he disarmed me, couldn't he-"

"He disarmed you because you're stupid." Rothan raised his gun again. "Get up, Domnik. Get back over here."

Dom didn't move. Amillo wouldn't let him, or perhaps he was on his side after all. Rothan let out a frustrated growl and stomped. He holstered his gun, but Milo's hand was steady.

"You actually know how to fight?" he asked exasperatedly. "Not just this little trick?"

"It's a miracle none of us got hired for your head, Lilyfin. Yes I can fight. I can shoot, run, and steer if need be." The breeze brushed Milo's hair back for him. The smell of the ocean was nothing new, but tonight it smelled like freedom. He was so close to leaving this place behind. For good. 

"I know you're down a crewmate as well," Milo continued. Rothan swore again, staring daggers through Domnik.

"How much did you fucking tell him you gulper-mouthed moron?!"

"A little- I- You know how it is when you're-"

"No I don't because I don't need to pay for port whores every time we dock!" Captain Lilyfin stomped again to exaggerate his anger. Or maybe he was just that dramatic. “I can keep my mouth shut.”

“Oh I've heard that,” Milo said, tapping on Domnik's horn. “Daylight is approaching, captain. I'm offering myself for nothing more than the ability to get away from Delhon. I want nothing more, I want nothing less.”

“Kitten,” Dom whispered, “Could you, perhaps, let the knife down a little, I'm-”

“Shut up, Dom,” Milo and Rothan said at the same time. Dom did as he was ordered. Rothan paced at the end of the dock, then stopped with a heavy sigh.

“Fine,” he growled, “Persistent little he-wench… I have three conditions.”

“List them.” Milo's undead heart could be mistaken for alive at the pace his pulse was thrumming.

“Release the idiot.” Milo did so, keeping his dagger raised. Domnik scrambled to Rothan’s side. He received a hard slap across the face before the captain continued.

“Your fangs don't touch me. My crew will not be weakened by your diet either.”

“Understood, captain.” Rothan rolled his eyes. Domnik rubbed his cheek. Captain Lilyfin paced closer, enough to make Milo tense.

“I need you to prove you want this, kitten,” he sneered. “Not enough to yes yes yes me- I need a display of loyalty.”

Rothan got close enough to touch, if not for the blade in Milo's hand. He leaned down anyway, baring his sharp teeth.

“I want your finger.”

“Rotti-”

Captain Lilyfin shot his first mate a deadly look over his shoulder. Milo bristled, briefly looking back to the docks, then to the waiting black of the ocean.

“Which. One?” he asked through gritted teeth. Rothan barked out a laugh.

“Forefinger. I'll let you pick the hand.” He pinched Milo's nose, despite the threat of the dagger. “And since you so kindly brought your own blade… do it yourself.”

Domnik made some noise of protest, but Rothan shut him up with another stomp on the pier. Amillo hesitated, eying the dagger in his left hand. It would be such a small price… they can make new ones, right?

“Well, koshka? Or do you not want boarding before the sunrise?”

“Of course, captain,” Milo said with hostile grace, switching his blade to the right. The jadeblood felt the knuckle on his left hand. Bone or joint… Bone would be more difficult, but joint could take more hand with it. 

Good thing his blade was sharp.

He positioned his dagger against his forefinger, holding it in place with his teeth. 

His new captain let out a low hum, holding Domnik back by the jacket. Milo was eerily silent as he turned his head like a predator shaking its prey's neck to death. Barely a grunt of pain when steel sliced through solid. The loudest noise any part of him made was when digit hit dock. His skin rippled white again. Most unsettlingly, so did his finger, until it couldn't and lay there dead on the planks. He bled surprisingly little, but what could one expect from something undead? That wasn’t to say no blood stained the dock, his dagger, or his face, but not nearly as much green as one would think.

“Satisfied?” he snarled, sounding more like a wounded animal than a troll. Rothan still held Domnik back from him. Though, his efforts to get to him paused when he licked his own blood off his blade. All without breaking eye contact with Captain Lilyfin.

“Fucked up little thing, aren't you?” Rothan leaned down to pick up his severed digit as if it were a dull coin on the ground. “Satisfied enough. Get whatever shit you’re bringing, ninefingers.” He wiggled it at him as if to beckon him. “Unless they don’t let suckerfish keep more possessions than the frills that cover your asses.”

Milo let out a low hiss and grabbed Domnik’s arm to tug him back to his side. Without a word he sheathed his dagger, wrenching a handkerchief out of Dom’s pocket to wrap his hand with. 

“Uh, Milo-”

“Show me around the ship, won’t you, first mate Abroka?” he said with a far too wide grin and far too sweet a tone. “I am here on your offer, aren’t I? Plus, it’s almost daybreak.”

#Zilly drabbles #Smiles tag #Mr. Smiles #Racketeer tag #Oddsman tag #L'appel du L'eau #this ones kinda long lol #siiigh ninefingers siiigh

[osmoticeel]

About Me

Rubi or Lal (yes like Data’s daughter! Not a kin thing; my mom calls me that)

rubiconstellation > my-dear-mr-garak > jadzeanna > ensignhoshisato > tposhi > jadzeanna 2: electric boogaloo

Icon is Hoshi over my personal favorite lesbian flag 

main (gen/shitpost) blog is @squidong

22 years old

Massachusetts, USA (EST / GMT-5)

White-passing Punjabi Muslim

genderqueer cis woman (she/her)

queer (I almost exclusively like women but I’m bi in the sense that I would go straight for Harry Kim)

Feel free to block me for any reason; no harm, no foul.

Ask me to tag anything I don’t!

please correct me if you find anything I say offensive! I have a thick skin and anon is always open.

idk if this blog is kid-friendly. I joke about sex a lot but try to appropriately tag anything that veers toward actually explicit.

Block "#discourse long and prosper" for a fun time; the tag is mostly about politics and defending my right to fuck aliens.

I don’t really know what to put here tbh so let me know if you think something would be a good idea to add! love you and thanks for stopping by <3

Fanfiction

My ao3 (jadzeanna) has longer works.

Check my prompt drabbles tag for shorter ficlets.

Also check out the tag rubi writes (writing-themed content. lots of memes) 

I take requests but can’t guarantee I’ll accept them or a timescale. If I’m not into a ship or a kink I will probably reject the request but please do ask anyway 💕

Tags I Use Regularly

captain’s blog (original posts) /  fame is getting to my head (popular)

stardate: shitpost

hailing frequencies open (ask memes) / we’re receiving hails (replies to asks)

rubi writes /  prompt drabbles

watch notes (episode liveblogging)

ships: garashir - culmets - t'poshi - jadzeanna - zilly

tos: jim kirk - spock - mccoy - chekov

tng: tasha yar - deanna troi - geordi la forge - data - jean-luc picard - riker - guinan

ds9: ben sisko - julian bashir - garak - jadzia - ezri - kira - ziyal

voy: janeway - torres - seven - harry kim - tom paris

ent: archer - t’pol - malcolm reed - hoshi sato 

disco: ash tyler - michael burnham - sylvia tilly - paul stamets - saru

#man i needed to do this for a while #those links were Hell to make. there's so fucking many

[zillyeh]

From the Cracks

companion piece to this one

Characters: Zipper Anthem, Castel Baclef

The near open walls of the Serpent’s Hands breezy cathedral let in every sound from the Old North. The repairs that had been done over the sweeps were never structurally sound enough to keep out the elements. It seemed like this time the ON was really putting in some effort, though. They had the funds and manpower for it now. Crumbled walls had real supports jutting out from the top, reaching past where there once may have been stained glass windows to touch the well abused roof.

At the base of the construction, looking far too long and gangly on the floor, squatted a purpleblood. The old drone-brick that still stood strong behind the pulpit interested him, much to the chagrin of the Undertaker.

She thought she was doing enough for him- keeping his uppity little south city bakery from getting Smiles branded bricks through his window- but no. His little bestie twisted her arm with another bribe to let him up here. In her church. 

If money weren't such a problem she never would have entertained this.

"Have you found what you're looking for yet or what?" Undertaker Anthem demanded, her voice rough and annoyed through her mask. Castel flinched at the sound of her voice, but let out a gentle hum in response.

"I may be getting close," he said, leafing through his old, battered book. "It is supposed to be low enough for the damage not to have reached…" The lilt of an Enfaris accent kissed the edges of his words, making Zippie grimace more. Clowns. He lacked the paint, but that didn’t matter. It couldn't. She couldn't afford to not be on edge.

"You could always help," he continued, "It might be-"

"No. I'm staying parked right here." For all her posturing and glares, her voice nearly gave way to the fear underlining her behavior. 

"Relax your shoulders, then." 

"Excuse me?"

"I feel your tension from here," he said with a flippant wave of his hand. "Even if I did bite, my teeth are rather flat, no?"

When she didn't respond, he turned. He flinched once more, struck by one of the daggers she was glaring into his head. He huffed, making some show of not looking away, pretending she wasn't scary. She was. Even seeing past the hardness in her silvery eyes- to her exhaustion- didn't change that.

Castel tilted his head curiously, fixated on her for a moment,  before shaking his head back to the bricks.

“It’s a spiral of names,” he started as if she’d asked. “Small, barely meant to be noticeable. Etched with an errant piece of metal off of one of my ancestors’ companions’ hands.”

Ancestors. The ones that truly existed were nothing but trouble. Bessba’s? Jackass. This guy’s? Forcing him into her church to look for more clues about his silly little existence. Those who could trace their lines like that- who knew that someone specific was responsible for them- were just so…

Annoying.

He traced his long, skinny fingers along the brick, continuing to talk to her (or himself, it was hard to tell) as he scooted further down the wall.

“It's supposed to be at about sitting height, thank goodness. It would be helpful if these walls weren't so dusty, but who am I to- oh!”

Castel's sudden noise and spring to action made Zippie jump. The purple grabbed a brush from his pocket, enthusiastically sweeping at a cracked brick near the middle of the wall. Zippie clenched her teeth, watching him with something beginning to approach curiosity. Some dusty graffiti was that exciting?

“Find what you're looking for, finally?” Zippie asked, tilting her head slightly.

“Shush- I mean yes, sorry, I just don't want the integrity of the brick to be compromised. Oh look at that, that must be all of them…” It sounded like he found what he was looking for. As much as she didn't want to turn her back to him, she had other things to do. He'd be done soon enough. Zippie turned back to her pulpit as he talked to himself, sketching in his notebook.

“Baclef of course, Payark, Sclera, Humera… Goz…. jam or is that silent? H sound maybe, Aarika-”

 Castel’s mumbling suddenly felt like a brick to the back of the head. For a moment she thought she misheard him, but the goosebumps on her arms were too solid for that to be the case.

“What did you just say?” she asked lowly, dangerously. She did not turn to face him.

“...Aarika? Sorry, I know I shouldn't speak that name too loud, but-”

“Before that.”

“Oh! Goz-Gozjam?” The sitting purple adjusted his glasses on his long broad nose. “Am I pronouncing that incorrectly?”

“No, you're not,” Zippie said before she could stop herself.

“Okay!” he said cheerily. He then paused and looked to the Undertaker, who'd turned to face him. The purple's fear of her had been overridden with curiosity. He looked at her, really looked at her and said:

“Your eyes… your pupils are teardrop shaped.” Given his tone, that meant something to him. Zippie hissed lowly behind her mask, straightening her posture further. He flipped through one of the weathered old journals he brought with him, but didn't look like he was reading it as he continued.

“‘It's a funny thing, seeing Gozjam with her eyes uncovered. Rare a sight as it is. So many of us have heavy eyes, it's the nature of our species, but the droop of her lids and the shape of her pupils truly ice the cake of her melancholy. Were she anyone else, I'd only call them droplets- but with her? To refer to them as anything but tear drops would do a poetic disservice to her character.’”

“Stop it,” Zippie ordered as he took in another breath to speak. He stubbornly opened his mouth again.

“‘It's a shame she has to hide them, and the unfortunate rest of her face. She is more lovely than-”

“I said enough,” she snarled this time. She felt something dangerous under her skin. Electric. Defensive. “Are you done over there? Did you get what you wanted? I didn't say you could be here all night.” He paid her bristling no mind, fully facing her on his knees. Examining her from his distance away. Seeing her.

“You don’t even know, do you?” There was something soft to his voice that made her want to punch him. “Anthem, my intention is not to distress you, but-”

“You’re failing, Baclef. I think it’s time for you to go.” It didn’t sound like she’d take arguing well. He sighed, glanced back at the wall, and began to stand. In that same instance, something dawned on her that turned her blood to ice- and her behavior violent. She tugged him up by the collar while he was still knelt down. Her eyes were wide now, showing off the entirety of those teardrops.

“What else does it say about her in those books of yours?” she asked with a panic that didn’t suit her. The rasp in her voice was more prevalent when she raised her voice like that, making her all the more terrifying. Castel stammered. He was unused to being roughhoused, even more so at this angle.

“N-nothing, they were friends that’s-”

“Physically,” she growled, shaking him again. He let out an honest-to-Messiahs eep. 

“He didn’t- tall? Skinny, robot arms-” Another shake interrupted him. He frantically searched his memory for the correct answer. When he looked her in her eyes, damaged red sclera and silvery pupils above a tight leather mask, it clicked.

“Oh, oh- nothing, nothing. I swear on my life he never described her past shape. It was a secret that he kept until they destroyed this place. I always thought it was rather obvious, since- ah!” 

Zipper shoved him back, looking like a snake about to strike. Castel dusted himself off, scrambling back towards the wall as she approached. Unbidden sparks lit up the rivets at the back of her neck, letting off small, ribbon-like bursts of electricity.

“I could be wrong?” he offered, clearly wishing he was less motor mouthed. “I could be way off. It doesn’t matter. Even if I knew I wouldn’t- I couldn’t. For the obvious wrong it would be of course, but-”

“But?” she said through clearly clenched teeth behind that zipper. Her sparking wasn’t getting worse, but it wasn’t stopping.

“...Our ancestors were friends.”

That stopped her in her tracks. The Undertaker swayed on her boots, clenching and unclenching of her fists without taking her eyes off of the heap of giant purpleblood on the ground.

“Get the fuck out of my church,” she said, something almost airy about her tone this time. The shift startled him enough to grab his things in one swift motion.

“Yes ma’am. Sir. I’m- I’m sorry.” Castel scrambled to his feet, still making her wince when he was drawn to his full height. He nearly dropped his books in his haste to leave.

“I’ll have, um, our mutual contact compensate for the trouble,” he called back as he strode towards the doors. “I really am-” He stumbled a bit over a piece of rubble that hadn’t been moved yet, making more of a show of leaving than this already was. 

Zippie stayed unmoving where he left her, staring at that corner of wall. The slam of the church doors woke her back up, and with a shake of her head she said:

“Annoying.”

#Zilly drabbles #Castel tag #Castel Baclef #Zippie tag #Zipper Anthem #i didnt edit this goodnight

[zillyeh]

Sundowning

CW: violence, mentions of self harm, very brief bit of gore

“Can you just go over it one more time? Like I’m stupid?”

“I don’t know Zee, there’s only so much stupider I can go before I start making animal noises.”

The smaller troll threw a handful of water from the swamp shoreline at her purpleblooded friend. The taller of the two giggled, splashing her back. She pulled her twin braids over her shoulder, picking up a stick from the ground. As she spoke, she drew in the mushy mud between them.

“Okay, so. It’s basically astral projection-”

“Stupider than that, En.”

Endara let out a huff, drawing two circles with lines coming out of the top on top of two triangles.

“The stuff that keeps you awake,” she said slowly. “It’s like if that got up and left… it’s the same thing as when I teleport, except it’s not as hard. Y’know, cause my body doesn’t need to come with me.”

“So it doesn’t make you cough up blood?”

“Anyway-”

“En-”

“Anyway,” Endara insisted, “Other people can do it too. Subconsciously. Not on purpose. People with powers because of the brain stuff.”

You miss her. You don't know if it can fully register to you how much you miss her. Your mind is used and broken, and hardly your own anymore. It's these lucid hours in the daylight when all you do is miss her and hurt yourself and everything around you. The walls. The floor. Everything. You don't know who she is- you hardly know who you are- but you know you need her.

“Brain stuff,” the anon repeated with a scoff. It was a rare moment where her friend could see her face fully, uncovered by its wraps. It was hot in the swamps that night, both from sulfuric vents below and the season beating down on them from above. Her teardrop pupils were barely visible in her eyes, too dark for her age. It was a game to find where the line of her pupils started and the dark gray ended. She also eyed the hardness of her jaw, too skinny to hold too much of the roundness that was quickly leaving Endara’s face. Then the rest… She couldn’t keep her eyes there for too long, or she’d cover her mouth with her hands.

There was something tugging at Endara’s heart as she scratched more lines into the ground.

“Yes, brain stuff. I haven’t met her yet, but my ancestor up in the mountains uses her powers to get the big dragons used to her.”

The long horned anon bit her tongue to the disparaging remark she always made when En talked about her ancestor. She was too invested in her lesson.

"Is it hard to get into people's heads?" the anon asked earnestly. "Do they have to let you?"

"Sopor leaves people more unguarded than you'd think," she said with a sage nod. "Animals are harder, people who just like, deal with the nightmares are just as hard."

"Fucked up," the anon said, furrowing her brow. "You're the only one who can do that though?"

"Nah, plenty of people can mess with dreams if they try to. There's only one way to tell if someone's actually in there or not." Endara made a crude drawing of her friend's face, including the wraps she usually wore. "Most people's brains can't fully reconstruct a face no matter how much they look at it. There's always something off.”

“I dunno, En,” the anon said with a tch, “That thing in the dirt is shitty looking enough to match the real thing…”

Endara threw mud at her. She wondered if she could tell. Those occasional fleeting touches that gave her access to Endara’s nerves firing off. Nevermind her pulse. She wondered if she thought about her half as much. 

“Shut up, Zee,” Endara scoffed. “You’re so annoying. Basically if you're awake enough, you can tell when someone's in your dreams if you see them. Their face is too real.”

“If I show up in someone's dreams do you think I'd have my mask on? Or if someone came in mine?” It sounded like a genuine question. Genuine worry. Endara bit her lip.

“Hard to say. You wear that nasty thing enough that it's basically part of your face now…” 

A mass of ugly gray wraps, eyes that look so tired for her age. The scarring she’d given herself after you two did something, you two did something terrible. You did so many terrible things. The worst thing you did was convince her to die. The worst thing she did was want you to live. How long ago? The sun streaming through the cave mouth wants you to remember. The comforting darkness wants you to forget. You know you should, you know you want to, but something coherent rings through your head like the clear gonging of a bell.

If you survived, what if she had?

“Have you ever been in my dreams before?” she asks, her dark eyes searching her’s for something. A purple flush warms the other troll’s cheeks. She would notice her if she did again, wouldn’t she? Now that she knows?

“A couple times. Just to see.” 

I could probably do it half dead.

It’s daytime. If she’s alive then she should be asleep. Trolls sleep during the day. Your memories return enough in the daytime for you to know that. Your memories return enough to know that if she’s alive, you’re this thing for nothing. The part of your soul that is still a troll makes you sit. Makes you close your eyes. You can still see the sun through your eyelids, but it doesn’t hurt. Or maybe it does. You can’t remember if you feel pain or not.

A look like Endara hadn’t seen from her flashed across her friend’s face. The color she so desperately tried to hide dusted her own cheeks before she looked back down into the dirt.

“I always wondered why you looked like that in my dreams,” she grumbled, “Nobody else ever looked like that.”

Zippie’s insomnia always gave way to the worst nightmares she could possibly have. One of these nights she was worried she’d hurt Bess in her sleep, even despite the precautions she’d taken in her bedroom. Bed was more comfortable than cupe by a long shot. It was a rare night where she practically couldn’t keep her eyes open.

Were you that strong? That you could find her? Force her to sleep from this far away?

Of course you could. You have part of her. Stability that It thought you needed but she didn’t. Why would she? Treating her like a person and not a battery would have been more energy than either of those two monsters would expend to her.

A the crack of a branch sounds off like a gunshot not too far from the pair at the edge of the swamp. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone out there. Not at the edge of Zee’s property. She can’t help it. She looks up. Hoodless. Maskless. Her face on full display for the adult violet that had wandered too close. Her slow eyes kept her safe, but her lower face?

There was a reason she never took the wraps off.

Endara had always wondered what would happen when she got found out. How much of her fear was justified. How badly an adult troll would hurt what they understood to be a child at first glance.

The answer was very, very badly. 

She didn’t even hesitate before barrelling towards the two. Like a predator that knew this was it’s only chance to strike. Before Endara could move, she’d been shoved roughly aside and Zvejia hauled off the ground by the shoulders. She’d guarded her throat, but the adult was struggling for it. Zvejia bit anywhere she could find purchase, down her arms and on her face. The violet winced and swore whenever her bare skin made contact with her hands. Zee must have been using her powers on top of tearing as much skin as she could.

As much as this troll’s face was burned into Zippie’s memory, she’d never see it properly in her dreams again.

Endara coughed up blood even before she’d teleported behind the troll mere feet away. She hadn’t perfected the art of rematerializing while partially in an object, but this would do.

She wasn’t strong. She was weak. Sickly. Worsening by the day. But she didn’t need strength to do what she’d intended to do if this night ever came. The reason she’d stolen so many of Zvejia’s medical books. The reason she’d practiced to the point of bleeding eyes at all was for this.

The muscle and tissue being displaced made a more horrific noise than either of them had ever heard. It took the violet seconds too long to realize where the lanky purple’s hand was, too long for her to try to formulate a shriek, long enough for her heart to crush all too easily in the hand that had been delivered through her back. 

“Endara!” the anon cried as the violet released her, not dead but certainly not alive for long. When the soon to be body tumbled to the ground, she slid right off of Endara’s arm. Like a glove. Leaving her the gory prize she’d won, and a purple haze around her vision. 

“Why is it always this?” rasped a voice where Zvejia would have fallen under the violet. Where she did fall under the violet, when the two of you actually lived through this. The part of you that is the troll holding that adult’s heart understands immediately. She’s on her feet already. Hornless. Maskless. Lacking the black that once hid her from danger, and the fins she’d nearly killed herself cutting out of her face. The scars were just as ugly, covered in the other ones she’d given herself as well that handn’t healed. Her wounds never healed right. You two always thought it was part of the mutation. 

The rivets in her wrists match your own. Tattoos cover every inch of skin you could see exposed. On her upper arm you see a band of purple that makes you choke out a sob.

She glances towards you. Then she double takes. You can sense her fear here, standing on either side of the first body you two ever made.

Her breathing is shallow. All she says is:

“No.”

“Zvejia…” Your voice is not the voice of the young woman that just killed for the only friend she ever had, but of a monster. Guttural and too big to ever have come out of that girl before she was made into what you are now.

Her next “no” comes as a plead as she drops to her knees. She’s so much bigger and so much smaller than you remember her being. You approach and she stumbles back. That hurts the part of you that forgets what you look like now. The black claws of your toes dig into the soft swamp dirt to keep you from doing it again.

“You can’t,” she said, her razor soft voice begging as if this were a nightmare she could beg her way out of. “You c-c- that’s not- I’m so sorry, En. This has to not be real, this has to not be real.”

You tilt your head like the animal you are. She grips her head. She refuses to look at you. Not like you look at her.

“The… sun… is… going… down…” you murmur, the part of you connected to your body still feeling the cold of the night start to settle in. A shiver runs through the incorporeal dream, making it feel cold within. She looks at you again. She grew up so handsome. So tired. She got to live. It’s what you wanted.

It’s what the part of you that lives in the daylight wanted.

The part of you that lives in the darkness hunches you back over onto all fours, chitinous claws digging into the hardening dirt underneath you.

“What did he do to you…” is the last thing the troll in you hears. Whatever thing you’ve invaded the dreams of this time you are going to tear to shreds like all the rest of those who dare trespass your territory. Except this time something is different. 

This thing smells like you. 

Enough to stop you long enough for it to rip itself awake, leaving you too unstable to stay dreamwalking like this.

You wake with a wet face, howling in what could have been pain or could have been agony, if you were the sort of thing that could understand emotions that weren’t territorial or hungry. The new black of the sky outside helps you reorient yourself. 

With any luck, you won’t remember what you’ve seen come sunrise.

Neither of you will.

#Zilly drabbles #Dreamwalker #Zippie tag #Zipper Anthem #E tag #rubs more zippie secrests onto the dashboard #Sundowning #<-am under the impression this tag won't catch in any sort of search bc it's the 6th one in

[zillyeh]

Broken Boxpin

Ink fingers gripped the rim of the slate gray tub, the ones opposite them clutching at the matching shower wall plastic. Being submerged at all was not the troll in this bathtub’s ideal scenario, but she knew better than to go for sopor when she was like this. The water was certainly also subtly hallucinogenic- who knows what chemicals were in the Old North's supply- but its warm embrace was preferable to the mild hallucinogens of that slime. It made her worse. It made the hers and hims at the edge of her vision and hearing more tangible. Whatever calm it brought the average troll, if it did at all, it did exactly the opposite for her.

Water, warm and familiar, wasn’t that good of a replacement. Her aching joints rejoiced for it, and so did the electricity lurking dangerous just under her skin. If she wasn’t careful in this soothing little bath, she could level half a city block. Maybe more than that. Her last leveling had been when she was starved and sickly. She wasn’t un-sickly now, under her skin disguising tattoos, but she’d put pounds of muscle on underneath them. Stronger places for those sparks to latch onto.

He blew bubbles in the water. It was still slimy, at Bessba’s insistence. With some fizzy, citrusy little ball she’d thrown at her head before she left. It was orange and pink like everything else Bess had brought to their now shared apartment. The swirling foam’s pleasant smell made a good anchor. A dock in the waters of her growing wet panic attack.

She gripped the side of the tub harder, eyes darting around the room. Seeing too much and too little all at the same time. The chitinous plastic of the tub rim would have broken if not for the fact that the projections of her brain made her weak. All that strength of his wiry muscle seemed to leave his body the further back she went. 

The cool drone concrete of the underground compound underneath her bare legs. The stark but sparse fluorescent lights. Her. Him. Tendrils of His hair at the edges of her vision, the heave of her breathing in her ears. Never the her she wished would haunt her. If she wanted that at all. 

Her old warden's fingers curled on the side of her bed. The tub. Her black painted fingernails and wrist rivets were solid. Touchable. Tangible. The troll in the tub- the medical bed?'s eyes fixated on her knuckles. Rough with use, but soft enough for the scalpel. He knew that all too well. The rest of her could hardly fit in the room. Funny how they'd found this place, but couldn't accommodate the hulking monster that called herself a surgeon.

She smelled like citrus. No. Someone he loved smelled like citrus. The one that was alive- not the one that was buried in the crater she'd made with the bomb in the bed. With Cerayn. With…

His eye swirled above her abdomen, bright red and orange with wisps of hot yellow and near white. His blackened claws grabbed her legs. Black hair dancing around his swirling eye- no, pink, pink pink. The swirl was pink and the dark of the water was her own tattooed skin. Skin that was not sick and cast with the vile color in her veins, if it ever had been anyway. 

With a gasp she pulled her head above the water. Her long black hair clung to her shoulders like a second- or in her case third- skin. The warden's hands still clung to the tub, still tangible, but almost silly looking without anything higher than her forearm to connect to. His eye disappeared with a swat of the water, but his arms remained. Multiplied. Crawled in and out of the water like spiders, then as spiders hissing at the edge of the tub. All of them had his terrible eyes, but all of them were also trying far too hard. Like a dream that isn’t quite right when you try to close your eyes and get back to it.

“Fuck off,” she grumbled, grabbing the hosed shower head above her and turning on the water. Spraying the bare wall made them disappear. Disappear enough, anyway.

“Babe, you okay in there?” called En- called Bess. Gods he couldn’t start drawing that line. Then she really would blow the Old North to nothing.

“Fine,” Zippie croaked hoarsely. Citrus. She’d always found the scent unpalatable. Those were hard fruits to come by in the swamp. Now it was the only thing that drew her out of her head- or at least helped. She glared at the warden’s hands. She flipped them off. They did so in return. Their tangibility faded as Bessba spoke more through the door.

“I made that tea that doesn’t bother your stomach if you’re up for it…” The warm of the bath had faded, sending a shiver through him. How long had he been in there for? Too long if Bess was knocking.

“Okay, I’ll be out in a minute.”

He sat up with a cough. Then hacked a more significant amount until he felt new wetness on his pruned fingers. The purple glob in his hand gave him one last spike in adrenaline, making him splash the water as he scrambled out of the tub. Seeing her shadow with such clarity should have snapped her out of it immediately. The logic of her glasses on the edge of the sink didn’t make her heart slow, however.

Tall. Overstretched. Some shape of her dual braids curling behind her like snakes. Her eyes were that same color, glowing like that false smear of blood on the tub. She was entirely shadow otherwise, but Zippie didn’t need her mind to reconstruct her. She could never forget every agonized angle that the warden and that demon took from her.

One of the shadow’s hands extended, warped into claws to punish her once she got close enough. Her voice rattled- falsely high and far too scratchy to belong to the young woman in question as she attempted to speak.

“Zvejia…”

All of that electricity seemed so alive now. Just under the surface. So close to the pool of water under her.

“Zippie!” Knuckles rapped on the door three times in quick succession. “I need you to not be in there like, right now.” 

It was easier said than done, but she pulled herself shakily to her feet, not taking her eyes off the shadow. Was this the first time? In how many sweeps? She almost didn’t want her to fade. She knew she deserved her ire, but more than anything she wanted to be able to manipulate this one. To have the half-real thing say she forgives her and that she did was for the better. Or have her slap her as hard as her own hands could.  

It’s eyes only narrowed. Disappearing as quick as it came. She coughed again- no blood this time- and grabbed a towel. One of the fluffier robes Bess brought with her as well for good measure. He’d almost forgotten he was in his apartment when he opened the door to Bess.

“I feel bad,” she managed to say through chattering teeth. Bess pulled her close.

“I know,” she said, planting a kiss on her temple. “Amy’s gonna be here in a little bit… Are you gonna be okay?”

Zippie gave her an exhausted, wry smile.

“Have I been since you met me, sugar?”

#Zilly drabbles #shortie but sigh. zippie. #Zippie tag #Bessba tag #E tag #Zipper Anthem #Bessba Vionyi #Broken Boxpin #no editing we die like men #zippie menchal illness reveal i guess lmfao #i feel like ive at least hinted at this one other time but it is a part of her very important to me #uuuh anyway good night.

[zillyeh]

Good Evening, Sunshine

CW for mentions of gore, body horror

"Dr. Cerayn," came an echoing chorus of voices, nearly making the troll in question punch a hole through their owner. The small room in the South-Del cathedral was the last place she thought Sunseeker would appear in person.

"Call first," she growled, buttoning the last few buttons on her romper. The troll shaped thing that appeared in the corner of her room laughed his terrible high choral laugh.

"How am I to call when you so often have company warming your bed?" he tutted, "I need you in person. Urgently."

This sort of anxious barking of orders was uncommon for the unshakable Sunseeker. Spiral quirked an eyebrow, looming over the smaller thing. The taller of his corkscrew horns barely reached her collar.

"What is so urgent that you disturb me with no warning, my lord?" she asked, watching the yellow sparks in his eyes flicker. His hair swirled around his shoulders like tentacles, coiling around his arms as he steepled his fingers.

"Thasha has found my corpse. You're going to bind me back to him."

Spiral weighed his tone to the expression in his dead flaming eyes. No treacherous grin curling up his malleable cheeks, no hint of test. Spiral shifted. She stood up a little straighter.

"I am surprised he is recognizably you, Jeltik."

Sunseeker let out a low hiss. He stepped to her side, digging his claws into her gloved forearm.

"My body is better than decay, Cerayn," he said arrogantly. "Hold your stomach, I know how terribly this treats you."

Before she could prepare or protest, the world flashed purple, then black, then purple. The pleasantly warm air of the cathedral attic was suddenly replaced by frigid frosty wind. Spiral shivered, choking down a dry heave as Sunseeker released her.

"Are we in the Breath?" she asked through coughs, trying to reorient herself. It wasn't quite snowing, but it was shockingly cold. Forest to what Spiral could tell was the north, shallow hills on either side of that. The ground was covered in a dust of white, but dark ground still dominated the landscape.

"Almost," called the half dressed olive Spiral hadn't registered yet. "Caught this thing gnawing on some poor redblood across the way there." 

Beliza gestured to a sitting living corpse, bound by the hands and muzzled. It was clearly ancient, however most of its meat clung to its bones under sun bleached skin. Most of its hair had fallen out and its face was more a skull than anything, but its horns were nearly pristine, if not pale. They stretched up in a high V, curling at the very tips in a shape not unlike Spiral's own.

“Impressive,” Spiral said, approaching the thing. She greeted Beliza by placing a hand on her lower back.

“Isn't he gorgeous?” Sunseeker cooed, traipsing to the mindless thing's side. It was soaked in blood and caked in dried and frozen gore, the freshest of it a deep maroon. Sunseeker caressed under its chin with his claws, prompting it to gnash its teeth under the muzzle.

“Oh I wish he still had his lips so I could give him a kiss before we're one again,” he sighed. Both of his assistants grimaced at the thought of Jeltik sharing necrotic spit with his own corpse. By the way he cooed at it neither woman was certain he wouldn't. Regardless of lack lips.

“You never did explain the process to me, Jeltik,” Spiral said, interrupting his examination of the thing's remaining hair. He pursed his lips, then dug his claws into the corpse's bleached flesh. It howled and hissed and thrashed, but even from the short distance they kept the two women could see gashes and chunks filling and knitting themselves together with reawakened purple flesh.

“You're going to have to kill me, or close to it. I'll take it from there,” Sunseeker said casually, the shrieks at the edges of his symphony of voices more prominent now. “No particular way, just destroy this form. I'd say watch the face but I'm not particularly attached to it.”

Sunseeker’s gravity defying hair faltered. The canvas of a handsome troll stretched itself over the corpse's face, rebuilding sunken socket and loosening sun leathered skin. Under the muzzle a prominent nose- once again not unlike Spiral's own- formed itself, snapping the band holding its teeth back all the way off.

“Fucking hell,” Beliza swore, unbothered by her own volume echoing through the air around them. Spiral absorbed every disgusting second interestedly, noting the noise skin makes when it reconstitutes for the next bounty she would torture.

“Lips at last my darling!” Jeltik said giddily when his face was finished. A lovely handsome heart with a dimpled chin, still gnashing and drooling teeth, eyes whiter than the snow blowing from the higher north of Halosa's Breath. He looked pristine, aside from the insides of other trolls he wore on the outside. That and the bald patches. Spiral chose not to look too hard at his face when she approached the two. Jeltik's hair had fallen limp, or close to it behind him. His claws still dug into the struggling body's shoulders. He seemed to almost be struggling to keep it still. Spiral held her hands on either side of Jeltik's head, pulling at the power he'd given her ages ago. So much trust he had in him. In her devastating curiosity about the processes he'd put her and so many others through. She could have destroyed him so long ago, were she not so loyal. Her hands glowed a soft white. At the edges of her vision she could almost see Anna again.

He grinned his Cheshire grin at Spiral, then flicked his eyes over her shoulder.

“Do look away Liz, I know how sensitive you-” 

With another, more aggressive swear from Beliza, and a- to Spiral- familiar crunch between her hands, the mostly decapitated purple body fell onto the corpse unceremoniously. 

“Eugh,” was all Spiral could muster as she shook the gray matter off her hands. The glow was gone in an instant, but Spiral could feel a nose bleed threatening her between her eyes.

“You can just fucking do that?” called Beliza, the air around her practically boiling at her distress. She paced and circled and ran her fingers through her swirling hair. “With your hands?! What the fuck!”

“Would you like to suck the blood off my fingers before he’s back, Liza?” Spiral teased, stepping away from the struggling daywalker. “I believe we have a few minutes.”

“You are not flirting with me right now,” Beliza punctuated her frustration with a hard, hot punch to Spiral's arm. 

“I offer only out of politeness, madam.” Spiral bowed deep enough for Beliza to roll her eyes. “I am well aware of your tastes.”

Spiral's estimation of a few minutes was proven to be a few minutes too generous. A loud popping noise sounded through the shallow valley. Then another, and another as joints popped into their proper places. Simultaneously, the corpse Spiral made seemed to fizzle into black ooze that the new… old? body soaked up like a sponge. All that was left of what Suneeker was were the old bones he'd reconstituted on so many sweeps ago. The skull of which was now in pieces. The body panted and heaved with its new lungs, ripping through the bonds Liz had put on it with ease. Black, silky hair rapidly grew out from those decayed patches. Blacker claws sprouted from its fingers. Its pale eyes rolled back into its head and came back a violent, broken swirling orange and red. Its neck cracked painfully and loudly in places that would have stopped a normal creature's thrashing all together. Steam began to rise from the places its skin touched the ground. The shreds of clothes it had quickly burnt to nothing, and with it all the troll chunks.

The body heaved forward, digging its newly formed claws onto the dirt. It hacked up what could only be politely described as ‘what would be inside a several thousand sweep old zombie.’ It stretched, extending its long spine fully, sitting back on its knees. Unnatural tar black began to stain its limbs, stopping just above the knees. It continued all the way up its arms and collar, bleeding up its throat just under the chin.

When he stood fully, pale, naked, and terrible against the dark, his face contorted into the cheek breaking smile Spiral was accustomed to.

“Oh it's good to be back,” he said, chorus of voices centering something more baritone than soprano now. He carefully rolled his neck as he approached his favorite creations. Half of the floating hair he'd forced out of his body's head coiled around his body, reconstructing the same clothes he'd had before. He was broader in the shoulders. Thinner at the waist. He was shaped rather elegantly, with long dancer’s limbs, but he was still egregiously underfed.

“I think I liked the old one better,” Beliza said, eying Jeltik's new form with some fear-masking disdain. He laughed, pinching her chin.

“Oh I'm sure we can get you used to this one, my dear.” He looked to Spiral, eyes the same but unnerving in new sockets. He stood taller than before, but still not as tall as her. He put his hands on his hips and looked her over with a hum. 

“I want to do something fun before we get back to work, Dr. Cerayn,” he said as if the echo of her face on his was something they'd never address. “12th perigee's perhaps? I haven't been to a ball in my own skin in absolutely ages.”

#Zilly drabbles #Spiral tag #Sunseeker tag #Divine Heretic tag #Spiral Cerayn #hie guess whos getting redesigned

[zillyeh]

Business Arrangements

Featuring: Castel, Voss, the he-queen of Delhon City Synopsis: The Castle bakery has been operating in south Delhon city without paying its Underground tax for a long time. Its owner, Castel, takes a little trip to fix that. In the least lethal way possible.

Closing the cafe was always a relief at the end of the night. As much as Castel loved to bake all day, flopping face first onto something soft was far more appealing right now. Gatsby had gone home ages ago- Cas needed to prep a few things for tomorrow- so the only company he had was the sound of his keys jingling as he locked up. Even the street was dead.

That was, of course, until the near silent vehicle pulled to a stop at his curbside. He didn’t notice until the sound of the door rolling open startled him.

“Mr. Baclef, I presume? Heard you was real tall,” called the troll who got out. He was armed unsubtly-two holsters at his chest- and freckled as Castel could ever hope to be. He was also a good two feet shorter, but that sort of thing often didn’t help Cas as much as it should. He wore a lazy, serene smile, and deeply tired looking eyes. They were green in all the places they weren’t teal, and looking in at Castel in a way that bordered on lecherous.

“Uh, C- I prefer Castel, but yes.” He stammered, foolishly shoving his keys into his pocket. “Can I… help you?” The tealblood rolled his neck, perhaps thinking of his answer for a bit longer than necessary.

“Wellllll, not me exactly,” he said, stepping in the direction Castel did, drawing one of his guns. “Y’see, an associate of mine, big blue guy, you know him? Yeah you know him- y’see he told me-” He blocked Castel again. “-that-” Once more. “-geeze, you’re awful rude to a guy with a gun aren’t you? Can you at least let me finish? There we go, atta boy. Now. I heard you said something to one of my associates, to the effect of “If your boss wants my business so bad he can talk to me in person”? That you, big guy?”

“I- I don’t recall.” Castel had a knife on his belt by Orphia’s insistence, but it felt more than useless right now.

“Mm, sure you don’t,” the tealblood hummed, haphazardly twirling his weapon in the air. “Well, I’m here to take you up on that. Name’s Voss.”

“You…” Castel cleared his throat a bit, straightening up. “You’re not what I expected.”

“Oh, no, no, no sugar pop, not me. Though I’m downright flattered.” Voss paced a bit closer, almost within touching range. “Uh, why don’t you think of me as say… your chauffeur. Mr. S don’t like to come out in person too much, y’see. Not for this, anyways.”

“I…” A rock sank to the pit of Castel’s stomach and lower. That van was certainly just big enough to fit him.

“Is this a kidnapping?” He asked, a deer in headlights, almost literally. Voss let out a laugh.

“Only if that’s your thing, Castel. Can I call you Cass? I like Cass, less syllables. Anyway. Get in the van please.” Cas tried as subtly as he could to twitch his fingers to his belt.

"And… if I don't?" It was a stall for time- if he could just-

"Oh the list of things that I'm allowed do…" Voss sighed, idly pointing his gun at Castel's sneaking hand. Finger ready on the trigger. "You definitely don’t wanna hear it. If you're half as smart as you are cute you'll go for a drive with us. Hour or two. Tops."

The van was more… comfortable than Castel thought it would be, given the circumstances. Even with his knees nearly folded up to his ears. Voss had bound his hands in front of him for “Safety purposes, y’see.” He also took his knife, just in case. Voss sat cross legged in the back of the van next to him on the floor. At some point after Cas was properly restrained, he’d produced a rubix cube from somewhere.

“So, like.,” he started, fiddling with it without even looking. “Big fan of your blueberry muffins.”

“Ah, you’re the one Dale picks them up for, then?” Castel watched his hands, one side already totally red. Focusing on his hands was perhaps a better idea than thinking too hard about the bumps in the road.

"Uh huh. Got a bad sweet tooth on me. Been tryin' to make a batch half as good, but there's something… missing."

“I use my own blueberries,” Castel sighed, wondering if all kidnappings were this… relaxed. “From my garden.” Sure he’d been threatened with some intense weaponry, but aside from that he’d hardly been touched. Or even yelled at. Maybe he was simply too much of a pushover to be worth that, though.

“Oooh that’ll do it,” Voss said with a nod, orange side done. “I’ll have to see if I can keep one of them bushes alive. Never been great at the whole gar-”

The van went over a bump that jostled the both of them hard. The seats had been removed just to fit all eight something feet of Castel in the back, so he shot up nearly to the roof. Voss just fell over.

“Watch where the FUCK you’re going you dumb asshole!” He shouted, banging on the black glass divider between them and the driver. “We got precious cargo back here! Not to mention our purpleblood buddy!” He sighed frustratedly, then turned back to Castel. “Amature drivers, amiright, Cass?”

“Uh… huh.”

The ride could have been long, could have been short. Anticipation made it feel like days. Every second they spent on the road smacked Castel in the face. He'd told no one to expect him- they know how long it takes him in the back sometimes. He wondered if they'd somehow known that when they sent Voss to pick him up.

"Where exactly-" 

A knock from the other side of the glass cut him off. He hadn’t even noticed that they stopped moving.

"'Bout fucking time," Voss grumbled crawling to Castel's side. He used the pink knife he'd taken off Castel to undo the several zip ties it took to properly restrain him.

"We both know you're smart enough not to try anything, don't we big guy?" Voss said to Cas' puzzled expression. Castel opened his mouth to say something, but lost it when the door rolled open again. He could see nothing past the massive head of the feline that appeared there.

"Oh, oh no, no no, absolutely not-" He started to scramble back further into the van. Voss rolled his eyes, yanking him back through the door with more strength than Cas was expecting. 

"Princess don't bite unless you scare her, Cass." 

Voss shoved him out into a surprisingly large courtyard, with an even more enormous mansion attached. It was not the sort of place that looked like it should fit within city limits, but their drive couldn't have been that long. Could it? 

Taking in his surroundings was low on his list of priorities at the moment. He could only have eyes for Voss and the big cat that was, at the very least, a lusus. The door slamming behind them again jumped Cas out of his thoughts. 

Princess let Voss push Castel past her, following dutifully behind them up the small ramp to the front door. On either side of the double doors was a massive olive and a bigger blueblood- the blue Castel recognized.

"Dalein."

"Hey Cass," he said, more sheepishly than a door guard ought to be. "Uh. Sorry?"

"Don't talk to him," Voss said to either one or both of them. The olive pushed the door in for them. Princess brushed past Castel's long skinny legs, making him jump closer to Voss.

"Aw, skittish much?" Voss teased as they entered the manor. "Would holding my hand help?" Cas wrinkled his nose and said nothing. When his eyes properly adjusted to the inside he gasped.

For as big as his own home was, it wasn't this extravagant. There couldn't possibly be enough marble on Alternia to line those floors and walls, could there be? Certainly not anymore. The lavishly decorated foyer could have fit his bakery in it twenty times at least- not to mention that he could have stood on his own shoulders three times and barely brushed the ceiling. It made him feel… small. He wasn't sure anything ever had.

"Pretty, ain't it?" Voss grinned, pushing him forward. "Where's Mr. Smiles at, huh Princess?"

The tiger made some small noise in the back of her throat, seemingly as acknowledgement as she slinked forward, taking the lead in place of Voss. He held tight to Castel’s arm as he led him deeper into the manor. Dozens of paintings and statues lined the walls, but Cas couldn't absorb what any of them looked like.

What sort of person owned a hive like this? Who needed ceilings high enough to accommodate the tallest trolls on Alternia and then some? That lusus' eyes were an unnaturally bright emerald, but that didn't mean anything. Was he a mutant? Could he be? It would make the secrecy make more sense, as if it already didn't. 

Orphia had warned him once about doing business in the city. He wished he had listened to her- hadn't kept Dale's visits quiet so she didn't worry. Now he was deep in the lion's den with no one expecting him for… hours… 

The shock of being kidnapped was starting to wear off now. Cas wasn’t sure when he’d started shaking, or if it was ever going to stop, or if he’d live past the next twenty minutes, or if he’d ever see anyone again… “Ors” and “what ifs” started piling up in his mind, somewhere between Voss and the tiger. They threatened to topple him over, if his clumsy, jittery legs didn’t do it first. 

He had powers didn’t he? But what use was he like this- anxious, without practice and his actual eye? 

"Ay, Alternia to Castel," Voss said, snapping his fingers up in his face. They had reached a door near the other end of the mansion. Cas didn't realize they'd walked that much already. He swallowed nothing, mouth too dry to even form words.

“Aww, cat got your tongue, kid?” Voss teased. He and Princess swapped places so he could open the door.

The room might as well have been a closet compared to the rest of the hive. The ceiling was just high enough to to accommodate Castel's horns, and the room- office? had about as much space as his bakery's back room. The white walls were interrupted by dark panels of blue and expertly decorated shelves, making it feel like an airy prison.

It wasn't the room that made Castel's heart nearly burst out of his chest, but the jadeblood sitting at the dark wood desk. His horns were familiarly shaped, but far, far taller. Wrong shaped pieces of Salvad's face, weathered and wrinkled, looked at him with a polite smile. His old capped fangs glinted dangerously as he stood. Castel wondered if Salvad knew about him. If his insistence that he didn’t have any curiosity about ancestors and things like that was because he knew about him.

Because he wanted to keep him away from him.

"Mr. Baclef," said the troll with his friend’s beauty marks and moving fangs. “A pleasure to finally meet you. I’m sure you understand my inability to do this sort of thing entirely on your terms, hm?” He extended his hand over his desk. Castel stood frozen until Voschi nudged him in the room. 

“Y-you,” Castel stumbled forward, reaching for his hand as politeness took over his body before his brain. “You’re- I-” He whipped his head around for support or perhaps escape, but Voss stationed himself between him and the door. Smiles’ metal finger was cold against Castel’s clammy hands.

“You can call me Mr. Smiles. Take a seat,” he said, gesturing to a heavy leather chair facing his desk. “We have a couple things to talk about. Won’t take long.” Castel did as he was told, only half hearing him over the sound of his own pulse. He’d screwed up majorly. He should have listened to Orphia- he should have told her the second Dale had started showing up. The second he’d heard Smiles’ name. In his naïvete he’d almost certainly pushed Mr. Smiles to something drastic.

As he spoke, Castel tried to focus on something, anything about him to ground him. He sauntered around his desk, leaning up against it as he gave his pitch.

“I understand how difficult it is to start a business in Delhon, believe me I do.” His accent betrayed old Delhonian. The type of old only heard from the sitting Delhon heiress’ advisor. He had earrings dangling in the mane of his hair. Gold. Shaped like little suns. Eclipsed by black every time he moved his head.

“That section of the city is terribly dangerous, you know. Or it can be, if you’re unlucky. I feel like I’ve been very patient in waiting for the answer I want.”

His curls framed his face the way Salvad’s did on the rare occasions he left his hair down. Thin scars marred his arms, barely visible but very present. Even small in stature, the man was solid. Scarily so. He held himself up about ten feet taller than he looked with centuries of confident violence.

“I won’t let you leave without us coming to an agreement, Baclef.”

He had two guns at his back. Both of them were teal trimmed, but not exactly Voss’ color. Some part of Castel’s stomach churned, but he couldn’t interrogate why before Smiles shot:

“Your ancestor wasn’t this quiet.”

Castel’s attention fully snapped back to what he was saying. Smiles raised his eyebrows, almost amused.

“There you are, hello, welcome back to Alternia.” Smiles poked one of his horns, metal digit sending uncomfortable vibrations down to his scalp. “I was under the impression that La Corps was going to end the lineage of you terrible, terrible people. Unless you crawled out of one of my caverns? Tsk. Wonder if I still have Father Jortis’ number.”

“What do you want from me?” Castel’s mouth was too dry to make the words fully form, but Smiles’ big ears caught every frightened syllable. He flashed him a smile. Cas felt like his veins were full of ice. Perhaps lead, with how difficult fear made it to move.

“Only to keep you safe in Delhon, hon,” he said with a genuine air of concern in his voice. “I have a vested interest in small businesses started up in my territory.”

“I didn’t know,” Castel whispered weakly, head swimming with his ancestor’s journal entries. Was he there? He knew about Jortis, was Smiles hidden on those pages somewhere?

“No, of course not, but it’s an easily rectified situation, isn’t it?” The sweet of Smiles’ tone almost made Castel want to cry. “Give me half The Castle and I’ll keep it very very much not on fire. Maybe even keep your little… caverns breach a secret, hm?”

No! He wanted to yell and fight and tell him off, but Castel was weak. Weak and between four guns, and being threatened with the only thing his ancestor had ever been afraid of catching up to him. What Syraah had been reluctant to say she’d hid them both from when she brought them here so many sweeps ago.

Castel looked Smiles in the eyes for the first real time. Long lashes, deeply tired, feline pupils wide and black with a hate that his tone didn’t betray at all. Without them in little slits, they almost resembled his friend’s. He wasn’t capable of hate like this, though.

“Salvad,” was the word that came out of Castel’s mouth. Thinking of him put him on the tip of his tongue, made him slip. Perhaps he thought evoking him would make him pop out from behind the desk and save him.

To Castel’s surprise, Smiles’ ever present polite smile faltered to a frown. Voss stiffened at the door.

“Excuse me?” Smiles asked, pretense of sweetness entirely gone.

“I- I don’t know why I said that, I’m sorry, please don’t- he has nothing to do with this, if you know where he is leave him a-” 

Smiles pinched his fingers in front of him, and Castel immediately shut his lips. His eyes flicked back to Voss, who shrugged when Cass’ eyes followed. Smiles swore under his breath, something cracked in him from hearing Salvad’s name alone.

“Boss…” Voss’ voice was soft near the door. Almost… sweet? Smiles’ brow knitted together as he closed his eyes, biting his thumb in frustration.

“I know,” he said. “That doesn’t change this.”

Smiles put his mask back up as if he hadn’t been rattled. Leaned against his desk, relaxed. Gripping the edge like he was about to rip it off.

“Mr. Baclef,” he said, his voice dripping venomous sugar now, “You’re going to give me The Castle. You get to run it as you like, I’m just going to keep preventing bricks from flying through your windows.”  

Emboldened by his distress, Castel said:

“No.”

The left handed open slap across the mouth made him wish he’d said anything else. The edges of Smiles’ finger cut under his bad eye, sending immediate rivulets of blood down his cheek. Castel gripped the arms of his chair, stunned that he hadn’t shot him first.

“Fine,” he snarled. “I’m sure your establishment could use some broken glass and scorch marks.” His angry eyes met Voss’. Castel could swear he heard growling outside the door. “Get him out of here. Don’t touch him either.”

“Yessir,” Voss said with a heavy sigh, opening the door again. “Up, kid.”

Castel wiped the blood from his cheek as he stood, neary stumbling his way into a concussion to boot. Voss led him back out- when had they gone upstairs?- past more furious looking orange big cats, past all of Smiles’ fancy things, past Dale again at the door. All of it was a blur, even the van ride back to the bakery. His shaking was too bad, his mind was racing too hard for him to notice anything. It almost felt like a dream- one that was only proven real by the cut on his cheekbone.

Once Castel had been dumped back outside the bakery, he collapsed to the sidewalk. Voss shouted something out after him that he didn’t catch before it drove off again. Sobs wracked him, reoriented him as he scrambled back against the building to ground himself. It was a a type of panic that made him feel like he was going to die. Right there. His heart would give out. None of his street neighbors would dare check on him. Not after tonight, he was certain.

Coming down off of it felt like he’d been punched in the chest a hundred times. Painful in every part of his aching body, but especially his eyes. The only thing he could think of was to pull out his phone. He had to tell. He needed someone. There was only one thing that could help him now, and he was certain she’d react similarly hearing what just happened.

Finding her contact was instant. Calling her made his teeth chatter.

“Cass?” She picked up almost immediately.

“Orphia,” he said, a dry sob interrupting him, “I messed up really, really badly.”

#Zilly drabbles #if you can tell where i stopped editing no you cant. mwah #Castel tag #Castel Baclef #Voschi tag #Voschi Horjan #Smiles tag #Mr. Smiles #Business Arrangements

[zillyeh]

Scrying Mirror

hi im going thru my wips out of any sort of order that makes sense. here's some pre-Sunseeker Sunseeker content :) (roughly 160 sweeps prior to "current" timeline)

“Ailkan,” a voice in his room made the man in question jump. He hadn’t even heard the door to the small workshop open.

“God, woman, if you moved any quieter you would make a better assassin than Arthur,” he said, scrambling to throw a sheet over the small standing mirror on his workshop table.  

“What do you need, my dear Goetia?” His sarcastic sneer around his kismesis’ least favorite pet name made her grimace. Or perhaps that expression was already on her face. The Mystique was not often one for pleasant moods- at least not when it came to him.

Tonight seemed no different. Her dark purple eyes narrowed- all three of them. The headband she usually kept the third covered with kept her thick, graying coils up with the rest of her hair, and out of her face. Her black, floor length dress was unusually muted for her.

The eye in the center of her forehead looked past him, yet seemed more severe than either of the ones she had full control over.

“Do you know what you are doing?” she asked, not moving from the doorframe. What a question- hardly a question at all. A soft demand for information. Ailkan huffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Might I know what you are referring to, Shia?” the taller purpleblood asked aloofly. “I’m hardly a mind reader. More your thing, non?” A jab that would always get under her skin- It’s future sight! she’d protest. She did no such thing now. She moved silently into the room tracing her fingers along the walls, her middle eye keeping him in her sights.

“I would love to. If I knew where to begin,” she said, picking up a sparkling bottle of… something and turning it over in her hand once. “I find it difficult to reprimand you for actions I cannot see.” 

“The great and mighty Mystique can’t pull our future with her ghosties?” Ailkan tutted, receiving another threefold glare.

“My life goes dark around you like I’ve never seen before,” she said seriously, picking up another pretty trinket of his, turning it over, and putting it down. “Soon. You are fading from my sight, and I fear you are going to take me with you.” Ailkan kept his gaze forward, some cold feeling creeping up his neck. He pulled his long ponytail over his shoulder and began to braid. A nervous habit that would hopefully distract her from the covered object behind him

“You are dramatic,” Ailkan said with a roll of his eyes, feeling a reassuring pressure on his shoulders. “You see something you do not understand, and you simply fear the worst. Père Jortis would probably know all about your shadowy little vision, you know. Leaving Enfaris was likely the worst thing you could do for your powers.”

Goetia paused, fingers brushing up against a marble bust of an older clown. Her lower eyes trained on him, something close to hurt falling on her features.

Too condescending. That pressure on his shoulders was no longer so reassuring.

Be quiet. Ailkan rolled his shoulders back, stretching.

Goetia opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Her small dotted eyebrows furrowed, her mouth falling to a grimace once more.

“Are you too far gone in your foolishness now then, Kanna?” she hissed, middle eye darting around the room for something. She approached him, her hand moving to her other palm, seemingly on its own. 

“What are you meddling with, Ailkan? Spirits?” she demanded  “Your mind is not built for them, you have too much chemistry in it.” Her forefinger traced something into her hand, but she did not seem to notice. “I understand my sight fine, you idiot. I have gone over it several times- with Gozjam present even.” Her eye slowed its movement, resting on him. He swallowed, combing the braid out of his hair with his fingers. His face betrayed something that made some tension leave her shoulders.

“I know what death feels like, Ailkan,” she said, almost a plea. “Even if just from the outside, it is nothing like this. If you were going to kill me, I would see that- would have seen it ages ago. What you are going to do to me is far, far worse. And I don’t know what it is.”  

Her right hand slapped her left, grabbing it by the wrist. Tightly. Her eye flicked behind him, to his Mirror. A pressure built up in Ailkan’s chest, making it so difficult to breathe that he needed to grip the table for support.

Don’t let her have me, my love. Ailkan’s thoughts clouded with fear that was not his own. She means to ruin me. To ruin us.

“Ailkan…” Goetia said slowly, her right hand pulling her curious left back, as much as it tried to reach behind him. She found him. She found his Mirror, his one lifeline in this godforsaken province, his Jeltik. Ailkan should have known better, he should have hid him better. But the wards that would have kept him safe from her would have drained the life out of Jeltik. His ghost was just that fragile.

Ailkan’s chest hurt so much he was starting to see stars. He didn’t remember when he stopped breathing.

“I am going to ask you again,” Goetia continued, her smarter right winning over her left. “Do you know what you are doing?”

“I know exactly what I am doing,” Ailkan wheezed, the constricting around his lungs squeezing once more in caution. “You think I am too stupid to dabble in science and ghosts at once?” More pressure released as he found some fire to use against her.

“I think you are too smart to be fucking around with malevolent spirits!” she cried, an incredibly rare raising of her voice. “I think that unless you are possessed you should know better!” 

That word hung heavy between the three of them. Possessed. Such a nasty, nasty accusation. 

Ailkan was a partner, not a possession, wasn’t he?

You are, you are.

“I know what I’m doing," Ailkan said firmly, feeling lighter than ever. Jeltik needed his defense, she could never understand what they had. Who he was.

Who he was going to become.

But then again, neither did Ailkan.

“Proving yourself to me should not come at the cost of us both Ailkan,” Goetia pleaded in earnest, the sclera of her middle eye turning dark as it strained to the mirror behind him. She took one of his hands, tightly, searching for something in his eyes. “You are a worthy rival because you are frustratingly intelligent and arrogant in that. If you continue down this path, I will have no choice but to end you before you end me.”

Ailkan paused. She was so calm. How calmly she threatened his life, his love.

How arrogant she is to think your traipse beyond the veil has anything to do with her.

“You would end us like that, Goetia?” Ailkan asked breathlessly. Something in his pained face must have made the part of her who loved him falter. Relenting was not often a word used in associated with either with them, but she took a step back. Her own possessed third eye remained fixated behind him.

“I value my life more than yours,” she said simply. “Would you allow my life to darken the way I’ve seen?”

Ailkan hesitated for a few moments too long.

Goetia took another step back. Air began to properly flow into Ailkan’s lungs again. For a moment he though she was about to leave his cluttered workshop until she said:

“Get out.”

“Shia-”

All of her eyes were hard on his own, her expression stony like he’d only ever seen Arthur pull off.

“Take that thing out of here, and don’t come back unless it’s gone.” 

No! Jeltik’s pressure came right back, this time something shaky in the way he held Ailkan’s chest. He still held him tight, painfully squeezing another wheezing sentence out of him.

“Surely you don’t mean-”

“You are to be out of this church within an hour of dusk fall or you will be buried underneath it.” Her voice did not waver. She must have made up her mind before she came down here. Knowing more than she let on just to trip him up… 

"If that's how you want it, then fine." Alkain coughed when Jeltik fully released him, nearly stumbling forward. His gasping breaths weren’t lost on Goetia who- even in the midst of kicking him out of the church- reached to help him. The moment his fingers brushed the bare skin of her arms, she hissed. Dropped him to the floor like he’d burned her. He scrambled up from the heap she’d left him in, trying to fill his lungs before Jeltik’s presence clawed them shut again.

In the dark, the faint glow of her sclera was gone now. Entirely black like Ailkan had only seen one other time. The third oozed her dark blood down her forehead, glowing brighter than anything in that dark room.

She took a step towards his desk.

“No!” he shouted, clambering up to put himself between her and the Mirror.

“Ailkan,” she said, her voice deeper, fuller, as if there were overlapping souls speaking to him now. “You don’t get the choice anymore, give it to me. Now.”

Ailkan wrenched the black mirror from its covered stand, holding it behind him. Her approach was slow and calculated. Like she knew he was no match for her if he tried. He held his precious cargo close to his chest, cradling it like it would shatter him to lose. Jeltik’s presence had retreated so far back into it Ailkan feared that just her touch had killed him. His eyes darted around the basement lab. Clutter made finding a route out difficult, but he was fast when he found it.

He threw a statuette from his desk at her, distracting her for long enough to dart towards a pedestal with some clown’s bust sat atop it. His things, his precious precious possessions meant nothing anymore. Anything that stood between bringing his lover to the light could explode to bits for all he cared anymore.

With an effortless heave, he threw down the pedestal with a loud crash. She lunged after him anyway, knocking through boxes as he raced her to the door. Ailkan threw everything he could behind him. The light of the upstairs- that’s all he had to reach. He’d run through the streets, to the woods. Places she would not dare go without the rest of the heretics upstairs. They would finally be safe. Together.

 That glittering bottle she’d handled earlier shattered on the floor. Whether it was the glass, gooey liquid, or the sickeningly sweet smell that tripped her up finally, Ailkan didn’t care. He flew up the stairs, toppling over whoever had come to check on the noise. That body made some sort of noise like a swear, but Ailkan didn’t bother to process it. There was more shouting behind him, but it didn’t matter. He was already halfway down the pews lining the nave, long legs and adrenaline carrying him through the double doors into the sunlight.

#Zilly drabbles #Mystique tag #Possessed tag #Sunseeker tag #Scrying Mirror

[zillyeh]

Turned Tides

Technically an immediate precursor to this drabble. only cws i can really give is talks of bombing towards the end, lmk if i need to add anything here<3 Synopsis: Around 150 sweeps ago, Heiress Halosa Delhon discuss what to do with the den of rebels in the north of Delhon city, with the added input of some unfortunate guests.

Your heavy footsteps echo across the marble castle floors. The mere sound of your approach had always been enough to quiet a room, but since the execution? A pin could drop upstairs and you could hear it. You almost miss her air headed giggling as she draped herself over the throne.However.

You admit that you prefer what it's done to Heiress Halosa.

She sits motionless on her throne. Hollow. She is a shell of the Delhon you knew. You'd behead Bridal again just to watch the light leave Halosa's eyes.  

The heiress did not wear her mourning whites for long. She was already back to her caped fleet uniform. The golden rank pauldrons sat spiky and and important on her shoulders. They glinted with the rest of the gold inlaid in her uniform in the jade and pink moonlight. Even this subtle combination of colors bouncing on her lap seemed to be grimming her already sour expression.

You greet her with a kneeling bow. 

"Your highness," you say. She hardly moves but to flick her wrist- an instruction to stand. 

"Steris," she says, the gravel of her voice deeper than you've ever heard it. "Approach. We don't have time for a round table. Visitors."

"Visitors?" you ask incredulously, climbing the short few steps to her side. "Now?" A quiet Delhon castle is a Delhon castle in shambles. To bring in others before you get a moment with her is… inconvenient. For you.

"They have a solution for me." Her voice is robotic. Halosa is running low on willpower. Anyone but you would think she’s just as hard as ever, but you can see her foundations beginning to crack. Mentioning Bridal in just the right way could break her, bend her to your whims, but you need her alone.

She hums, shifting in her seat. With an unenthusiastic flourish, she bangs her serpentine scepter on the ground. The ornate main doors of the throne room open, and the quartet of trolls that enter makes your thin lip curl.

They aren't clowns of yours, but they are clowns. Masked laughsassins with Enfaris' signature gaudy frills, all except for the tall elder in the front of them. He was certainly as Enfarian as the rest, but he had the decency to mute his colors and show his face. His paint was obnoxiously intricate- they have so much time for it don't they?- and did work to fill the deep lines of his face. His hair fell around his face in thin, tight braids, beaded in green and red at the ends.

"Your 'ighness," he greets. The phlegmy yet airy dust of his accent on those two words alone make your skin crawl. The beads in his hair clatter softly as he shifts. He bares his throat in place of bowing. Whatever ailment requires his cane seems to prevent his fellows from dropping to the floor as well. Disrespectful.

"Father Jortis, I take it?" Halosa asks, not looking for an answer. "I apologize for having no announcer to your entrance. It is no secret that my court is in unacceptable disarray. Please, speak."

"It is quite alright, Madame Delhon," Jortis says, gripping the cane in front of him. You do not hide your grimace when you realize it has a honking horn at the handle. 

"My church received most disturbing news from someone in zis province," he continues, "A rather eloquent plea for assistance. I 'ave an embarrassment of my own you see: in short a few, shall I say incorrectly zealous of our church stole some of our‐ qu'est que ce- 'idden members. I am to believe their fleeing brought zem 'ere, based on my informant's descriptions."

"This should be our priority why exactly?" You can't see his angle. You don't like that. "What do you mean by hidden-"

Halosa puts up a hand again. 

"You will be addressed when you are addressed, Steris." She can't make her voice sound as scary as it used to be. Regardless, you shut your mouth, narrowing your eyes at the clowns in front of you. 

"My advisor does make a fair point, Father. You bring this to me now for the reasons I hope you do, yes?"

Jortis nods once.

"Not zat I would be so brazen as to peek into your mind, but I believe so. My informant claims to 'ave been abducted by rebels and forced to labor for zem- ones zat match ze description of my missing flock."

"Fascinating," you say, having never shut up for long before this. "Is your little informant with us tonight, Enfarian?"

"'E should be," Jortis says easily, catching you off guard. His aloofness to your own disrespect annoys you. Enfarians are so difficult to rile. "If 'e manages to-"

The doors behind the troupe open again, spilling in the last person you'd ever thought you'd see in Delhon's throne room. The guards who escort him in look like they can't get their hands off him fast enough.

"Ninefingers?" You almost can't believe your eyes. He looks genuinely afraid in a way you've never seen the Exacerbator look. He wrings his lopsided hands, warily moving beside the quartet of clowns before dropping to a bow for the Heiress.

"Your highness," he says with a shake in his voice. Closer you can see barely healed scars on his arms, and a bruise under his eye. His first finger has been replaced with something made of… wood? How barbaric. His curly hair had been pulled back tight. He looks even smaller than he already is without his mane. Crushable underfoot or under ax.

Halosa signals for him to get up, casting a wary eye at you. You step forward. He winces.

"I should strangle whatever information you have out of you, Aarika." You crack your knuckles, but Jortis and Halosa both put their arms out to keep you two from each other.

"Vionyi, fucking behave or I will force you to leave."

"Yeah, okay."

Halosa stands. She strikes you across the mouth hard enough to reverberate through the high-ceilinged hall. You swallow the bit of blood in your mouth, clenching your fists. Oh how you hate fighting the urge to do something back. Tears sting at your eyes, but you are well practiced in biting back pain. Closing your clear false lids also helps.

"We can have this conversation over your corpse if need be," she says, some of the real danger in her voice back. You grit your teeth, the hand shaped print on your face stings. Hard. 

"I apologize for my insolence, your highness," you say through tight lips. "I shall not let my emotions get the better of me again."

For a split second, you think you catch a smug little smirk on Aarika's face.

"If I may-," Aarika speaks up with the well practice shake of a fearful child. Halosa seats herself again. "I apologize as well for my- everything. My unacceptable transgressions against the Empire, what I assume is a nasty scar on the back of your leg-" You want to kill him. Never in your life have you had to contain it quite this much. Cleaving him in two would only be the start. "-all of it is my fault. After those pirates took me from- kept me under the deck until I was so wound up and starved that I-" he interrupts himself with a sob. Jortis places a hand on his shoulder. Pathetic. This was what had become of Exacerbator Ninefingers? 

"I- sometimes I feel like I'm still not fully come to. I'm sorry. That's not what I'm here for. Please forgive me." He clears his throat, shaking as he finds his composure. "When they landed last they took me here. Taking to the rebel groups. The Underground practically found him- us first."

"The Underground?" Halosa seems interested. That was your pet project for sweeps. He's going to take this from you, right under your nose. Or lack thereof.

He nods. "There’s a church, on the north side of the city. They call it the-" he shudders, as if remembering something terrible, "-the church of the Reverent. That's what they call their leader. He and a handful of others are Enfarian. You can hear it- and I've overheard things-"

Jortis seems to think that Aarika's frantic ramblings are enough. 

"I would like your permission to retrieve ze 'eads of my missing flock, your 'ighness," he says, gesturing back to his laughsassins. Ah. That's what they were there for.

"Infiltration is incredibly difficult," Aarika interjects. "There are tunnels they will use to evacuate at even the slightest hint of smoke, the-"

"Old snake tunnels, I am familiar," Halosa says, more lively than you've seen her in weeks. Ugh. "Do you know them well enough to block them off?"

He hesitates, but nods.

"They could be… encouraged to certain routes."

Halosa turns her gaze to Jortis.

"How much time would it take you, Jortis?"

"Twenty minutes if we linger," he says. His little trio of freaks nod in unison. Aarika looks just as uncomfortable as you feel with them. The welts he came in with are slower to fade than you thought they'd be. Exacerbator Ninefingers had been rumored to heal as fast as you could cut him, but you suppose not all pirate tales are true.

You are very aware of the chunk he cut out of your thigh as you stare him down. He balks under your scrutiny, reluctantly leaning towards the subjugs. You want to find something, anything about him that you can use to get him dead. His crimes against the Empire are enough, but if he uses this leverage to beg for his life now? After giving up the location to the biggest thorn in Delhon’s side?

Halosa was far too weak not to let him have it.

"If you intend to do this, I would suggest you do it soon," he says, freaky teeth moving as he speaks. "They are intending to mobilize somewhere- I'm unsure where, I would assume further north to disperse into the woods, or south to integrate into the city."

"Two very different directions," Halosa hums.

“That is by design, your highness,” Aarika says with a solemn nod. “They listen to me about… tactics. They know who I was, not who I am. I will do anything in my limited power to make sure that the one who stole your m-”

He stopped himself with a hand over his mouth, looking like he fully expected Halosa to strike him down. You wish she would. She sits up straighter in her seat, the hardness of a several thousand year old war-ender back in her eyes. When she speaks again it is a demand.

“Who stole my...”

“The unspeakably blooded rebel who stole your beloved, your highness.” Aarika dropped to the floor again in another bow. He was really laying it on thick, though you must begrudgingly admire his commitment to keeping his neck and his head attached. “You must know she is one of the Enfarians in that church. It’s where-”

“Enough.” Now Halosa Delhon’s voice was a thundercrack, reverberating off the walls louder than when she’d slapped you. “Father, you can personally see to the unmerciful, gruesome end of your ex flock?” Jortis nodded. Aarika looked up, still frightened, but for a moment the mask slipped to unfettered glee. You would see his teeth pulled out of his face and reintroduced into his eyesockets if you could. 

“Unmercifully shall tack on an ‘andful’s worth of minutes, but it can be done, easily. One of our riders has a vested interest in seeing at least one of zem dead. If I understand correctly, it is the very same.” Riders. They would have taken one of their noodly, violent dragons here. Enfarians have them to spare for every law enforcer over there. You wonder which of his troupe it is. If they aren’t out tending to it.

The shadow of a smile finds itself creasing the severe lines around Halosa’s mouth. This is bad for you. If they can just kill their leaders and get the few spies stationed to get the more egregious mutants, your position as her tactician is practically-

“Steris,” she says, alive. You stiffen. “You had plans for the city north, did you not?”

Is she serious?

“Your highness?”

“To simply kill the perpetrators of so much strife against my city is not enough,” she says cooly, rehearsing words you’d spoken to her already almost verbatim. “The rats nest must be wiped out, lest more vermin crop up. Wouldn’t you agree?”  

Something in the way you shift almost makes Aarika snort. You feel almost lightheaded. Is this truly happening? This is one of the best nights of your life. Aarika and the foreign clowns at the edge of your vision be damned, she’s actually going to go through with it.

“Of course, your highness,” you say breathlessly, “An example should be made to the rest of the city- rest of the province that you-”

“Won’t stand for this behavior from our citizens,” she finishes for you. “Contact Felzee and the other two, tell them they’ll have thirty minutes. Anyone else you find terribly important as well. Everyone else figures it out when the drones come.”

You give her a short nod.

“Shall we be walling off the rest of the city then?” She nods in return. Her control over Delhon’s drones could rival even the Empress. Shielding off just the north side would be nothing.

“Get Ninefingers to mark a map for you and Jortis.” You grimace, and he winces at being mentioned by name. “I will offer you one singular favor, Amillo Aarika, aside from sparing your life.” 

Of course she would.

Fucking of course she would.

That won’t sour your mood. Aarika could ask for a room in the castle and you’d still be over the moons. This is your idea, she’s listened to you, you are getting everything you wanted to do to that hole and more.

“A floor of the greenhouse tower in the center city,” Aarika says as if he’d been expecting this. “If you would be so generous. I- I want my life to be simple, all I’ve ever really wanted is to make-”

“I don’t care. It will be done. All of you come with me. This must be done now.”

When she stands, turning her back to your company, something in Aarika changes, shifts ever so slightly that you barely catch it. His shake stops. He seems more relaxed. He catches your eye and flashes you a smile, which you meet with a sneer. You know then that he’s also just gotten exactly what he wanted. Even if it doesn’t seem like much, you and he are united in this one desire- to see north Delhon torched.

That doesn’t sit well with you, but you have to ignore it. Right now you have a city to raze.

#Zilly drabbles #BY POPULAR POLL DEMAND!! #Grotesque tag #SHE tag #Smiles tag #Mr. Smiles #Jortis tag #Jortis Immacu #Turned Tides

[zillyeh]

Many sweeps ago... Zippie!

Doc version

Delhon’s worse storms rarely came as far inland as the swamps, but those rare times were always bad. Hot, sulfury swamp water mixed to steam with the cold bullets pouring down from above, making it nearly impossible to see. It had come fast and aggressive. Delhon storms always did. Unluckily for you, your terrible finicky doors decided that tonight was the night you needed to be locked out. Figures. The rare cold always did this. Marija was going to pluck your eyes out for real this time. Wherever she was.

You curl yourself as much as you can underneath the small amount of door frame you have for shelter. Enny’s lusus had taken her again, but even if she were here- running out in the rain was dangerous. Beasts that lurked under the surface were bold in this weather. Trolls were even bolder. Not you, but you’d barely been something one would consider a troll in all your five sweeps alive. Marija was supposed to keep you safe. So far she had, but that night was more than unsafe, and she was nowhere to be seen. 

The soft, childlike part of you wanted to cry. It might not matter in that much rain, but you hadn’t yet mastered the art of being quiet yet. Being loud would be just as much a death sentence as someone finding you.

But you were five sweeps old, and you were cold and wet and hungry. The solution to all of those things would be so easy to fix if your stupid hive’s doors weren’t so shitty, like everything else you had- your soaked through shoes and the paper thin hoodie that clung to your face and horns. It comes out of you- a sob that almost sounds like a waterfowl’s honk. Your tears warmed your face, but not enough for comfort. Not enough to be worth doing this. You curled up further, pressing your knees to your forehead as you cried. It wasn’t fair, it was never fair. You don’t get fair.

A splash from the swamp mere yards from your doorstep only amplified your cries. You were really in it now- whatever it was was coming fast. Why not make it easy? If En was there she’d shift the both of you inside, as much as it made her nose bleed. You wondered if she’d miss you when her lusus dumped her back here again. Maybe there would be bones for her to offer her.

The wet slapping sound of your lusus’ webbed feet didn’t reach your ears until she was right up on you. You flinched as she ran up the few steps to your side. That was probably worse. 

To your surprise, the horned goose snuggled close. Marija pushed herself into your lap, her body warm and surprisingly dry. Her wide wingspan was enough to tuck your rain soaked head into. She made a series of trilling noises- that little three note tick you’d picked up from her- and rested her neck down your back. You make those clicks back as well as you can through your tears. She’s here, she’s here. As tough as she is with you, anything else that comes here would have hell to go through before they reached you.

Your crying didn’t stop until you slipped into unconsciousness in under her body weight. Your shivering wouldn’t stop for the next week.

#Zilly drabbles #yeenteefies #whatasks #Zippie tag #Zipper Anthem #okay bedtime i will do the rest tomorrow <3 #this is short but it has a lot of para breaks ghifnkg

[zillyeh]

Amillo many sweeps ago?

Docs version

"Milooo," called one of the bronzeblood castle servants, her voice bouncing through the marble halls, "You're needed in the bedchambers of her highness again."

Her companion elbowed her as they nudged into Amillo's shared studio. The handsome troll he'd been capturing in paint moved before he did. He sighed and put down his brush, turning to look at the intruding pair.

"She summons you to the throne room, sir Aarika." The olive corrects, nudging his companion. Miles stands waving for his model to take a break. It was a shame about losing the light, but she was more important than anything.

"She requires more than one of you to tell me that?" He asked, amusedly quirking an eyebrow. "Escort me then."

"Clearly one of us only tells saucy lies, sir Aarika," said the olive. The bronze made a face at him. 

"Ah, of course. Though desiring me for court is nearly as saucy as desiring my courtship, no?"

The bronze giggled, swishing the edge of her dress.

"Ooh is that what you talk about during? Gets her fins flapping, does it?"

Milo pinched her cheek, a terrible smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

"Decorum, sweetheart," he tutted, flipping his hair over his shoulder. "That's between me, her, and the tactical plans in her bedside table…"

All of their steps in unison echoed down the hall. Milo smoothed the robes that barely covered enough of him to be considered decent. This early in the evening was rare for any sort of summons, but who was he to refuse? One of the big cats he’d been permitted to keep lurked near the throne room entrance, along with about a dozen hivecats that all perked up to greet him.

The large room the two lead the Adherent to soaked in the brilliant colors of the moons- once white marble half pink and half green due to their positions. In that middle overlap it looked almost gray. The Nameless Province's regional heiress sat stunning and impatient in the pink before that line.

"My love," he cooed, bowing deep enough that the servants regretted their position behind them.

"Adherent," Heiress Irtena said cooly. Milo changed his posture immediately. 

"Your highness," he said more seriously. She laughed, standing with her trident to approach him. Tall and imposing, as was right for a tyrian of her station, but a sight of beauty nonetheless. Gold jewelry attached to her crown twinkled under her eyes, just as polished as every golden bead in her elaborate braids. The deceptively soft looking curves of her body under her half sheer robes had more power beneath than any purpleblood, any other tyrian even.

To say he was smitten with her would be to say that the sun was a bit warm.

"I do so love how quickly you play the roles I need you to, kitty," she said, tilting his chin up with a finger. He grinned, her praise welcome music to his ears. 

"Which shall I play this evening, my darling heiress?" He asked. Irtena's eyes flicked behind him, dismissing his escorts with just one look. As they scurried out of the room, Irtena pulled him close.

"I fear for my life," she said as if cooing something sweet to him.

"Does the horizon look uncomfortably pink, highness?" he flirted back lowly, brushing his fingers over the tattoo that matched the scars on the other side of her face.

"Purple," she replied, attempting not to grimace. 

"Ah, worse then…" Milo entwined his fingers with hers, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Is your war strategist not more suited for this conversation, beloved?"

A dark look passed over her face, one Milo knew all too well.

"When?" he asked, stiff now in her arms.

"They found her on the beach hours ago,” her flirtatious masking was slipping, “Just long enough for the sun to sting, but not enough to burn over the marks in her neck.” 

Amillo swallowed, surely she didn’t think-

She pulled him closer, trident scraping the floor as she nearly lifted him off his feet.

“I trust you, Amillo. The fact that is not common knowledge will work well enough as cover. I need you to evacuate who you can. Make it look like traitorous disarray, make those spies watching think I don’t know what’s been done. Now.”

Again. It was happening again. The fourth time now? This province would never let him rest, never let a decade or a century turn without his life entirely flipping upside down. Would it ever stop? Would the whims of the tyrian tyrants who felt they could collar the Nameless Province ever stop resetting whatever normalcy he found?

“Now?” he asked, pained as she released him. “What about-”

“I stand here, Milo,” she says, “Halosa’s serpent was seen off the coast not long ago. If she wants her castle back, she’ll give me her other leg for it.”

“Delhon will-”

“Will have to put up one hell of a fight,” she shoved him in view of one of the throne room’s wide open windows, the view of the ocean and a sparkle of too familiar white scales made his stomach sink.

“You’ve been better than I could have asked for, my Adherent,” Irtena said softly with a small smile, “Know that.” She swung her trident high, pointing the recently sharpened fork at his neck.

“Give me a reason I shouldn’t execute you on the spot, you snake!” She shouted, loud enough to ring through the hall. 

“Your highness, you know I would never betray you,” he pleaded, just as loud, real wetness forming at the corners of his eyes, “You think me another serpent waiting to strike? Tonight of all nights?”

She swung, he ducked. She spun, and he ran back out those double doors, gathering the minds of every cat he could reach. The two servants listening outside stared at him wide eyed. 

“Snake!” the bronze shouted urgently, following some of the cats to other parts of the castle. The olive followed suit as Milo ran alongside his tiger, feeling something die within him as he herded more castle staff out.

The Nameless Province was about to overturn once again, and with it would drown the Adherent. As the Liontamer and the Aesthete had before him.

#Zilly drabbles #dis-asterism #thank u <3 i am having fun with these #adherent miles is my favorite miles actually i just decided #whatasks #Smiles tag

[zillyeh]

To Asphalt

cw: murder, thats just really the whole thing that happens here

The air in the church of the Reverent was heavy, hard to breath. And it hadn’t even been set ablaze yet. Azveja’s shaking hands struggled to tend the wound on Kerath’s shoulder. Reverent, revered Kerath Baclef, who was nothing but another set of arms that held her too close to the Messiahs, and too far away from freedom.

No, lack of freedom was never his fault. He was many things, but not blameworthy. Her fate was only ever the fault of Alternia. The law. The Gods. 

Azveja pressed her lips together. The slit across his shoulder was deep. Painful. The metal of her hands couldn’t conduct her powers if she wanted them to. To help. To heal. To ease that pain. They could barely hold the fucking needle.

He placed a cool hand over her free, shaking fingers.

“Azveja, chère," he said softly. “Might I have your permission to calm you so you do not rip my shoulder further?" 

“You don’t trust me,” she said, her voice too shaky to hide how close her tears were.

“Could you forgive yourself if you made it worse?” he asked, soft still. A harsh question coming from anyone but the Reverent. Of course not. He knew that. He knew her like no one ever bothered to.

No one still alive, anyway.

The moment the word “fine” hissed out of her mouth, she felt calm. Clear of mind. But not calm enough to forget her urgency. The tremors of her miserable cybernetic hands were at least bearable when not compounded by nerves.

“We can’t make it out of here,” she said simply, binding his wound with swift stitches. She dressed his wound just as quickly, buttoning his robe back up.

“Azveja, your pessimism is truly the least charming thing about you, have I ever told you that?” 

“I am realistic. We have fifteen minutes.”

Kerath sighed, not moving to stand. He preferred her here at eye level, though she wouldn’t allow him to see hers through her mask. He took her hands, releasing some of the hold he had on her emotions, but not all. Hers were always so much stronger than he could handle, even on her bad nights.

“Amillo, Bruice, and Domnik will return for us, Azveja. If we have to take the tunnels out, we will. We have time. I cannot leave until I know everyone else is out of here.”

“That’s stupid,” Azveja said, standing. He was still almost to her chin sitting down. What a silly, silly angle people looked like from underneath, he thought. “You should have gone first. With the young.”

“Funny, I was about to say the same about you.”

Azveja pressed her lips together, turning away from him.

“I cannot fight with them. My primary purpose is to tend the wounded,” she said. “That’s you.” Kerath smiled, standing to his full height. It was one of the rare moments that this small action didn’t make Azveja flinch. Kerath, however, winced at the motion his shoulder made.

“I understand,” he said, taking in the room of his church, seemingly for the last time. Red illuminated the walls of the small building, bright enough that the rainbows of stained glass were nothing to it. The empire carapaced drones above, the blazing sun just beginning to dip under the ocean waves. Red. It was all so red. Azveja sighed and pulled the mask from her head, looking up to him.

She was like a stranger to him, for how little he saw of her face. One thing he could never forget, and never truly bring himself to fully describe were her eyes. That color she couldn’t stand to see, those teardrop pupils. He once thought it poetic in a way, given her melancholic disposition.

Right now she just looked sad.

“Kerath, I-”

Her ears twitched, and in that split second she barrelled into him with all the weight her body had, throwing him to the ground with enough force to split his shoulder again. In that same instant, the church roof fell directly where they had been standing. The whirring of drones was distant above, nearly impossible to hear over the beating of the dragon wings directly outside that newly gaping hole. 

The long, serpentine thing snarled, smoke at its nostrils, more debris in its claws as it found purchase to land. More roof shattered until the two could see its rider, masked and severe but unmistakably from the church. The old church. Le Corps.

The shape of her horns told Azveja it was her old ex lover. The pounding on the barricaded church door told her this was not a coincidence.

Kerath’s groaning told her neither of them would make it out of here alive.

“Vennen!” Azveja coughed, attempting to pull up a man nearly two feet her superior. 

“Don’t you dare address me, salope!” the rider shouted. The Firebringer’s lusus snarled underneath her. The door snapped all the way off the hinges. Kerath and Azveja scrambled back to the podium as a quartet of familiar faces from their old church poured in. The final purple stopped Azveja in her tracks. With Kerath’s arms around her, she felt fear shoot through him like lightning.

“Père Jortis,” Azveja breathed, shaking now that Kerath’s calm was gone. He silently stalked through the broken pews, scowl on his painted face, cane in hand. 

“A travesty I find only two and not the six who left me,” he said in their home tongue, the disappointment in his voice enough to make Azveja feel nauseous. Kerath straightened himself, wincing as he attempted to put himself between the much smaller troll and the array of enormous purplebloods. Jortis scoffed. All three other clowns and the jade above looked to him for instruction. He ignored all of them in his approach, stopping just at the rubble Vennen had made.

“Where are the rest?”

Azveja gripped Kerath’s robes, bullying herself out from behind him.

“Fuck you!” she spat, eyes wide and wild. Jortis regarded her with a disgust more intense than could possibly be put to words. It made her shrink, even with Kerath’s hand on her shoulder.

“My my, lost your obedience and your arms then, duckling? Fine. I don’t have time for this. Seize them both and kill anyone you can find before our twenty is up. Heiress Halosa has granted us that right.” He rolled his head around his shoulders, casting his gaze to Kerath. “I want Baclef’s head. Do with her what you will.” 

The speed with which his clowns moved was astonishing. Nauseating. Kerath, in what new adrenaline he’d been able to muster, he shoved Azveja toward the side door, the one to the basement. It was a sweet thought, but the laughsassins of La Corps du Serpent Mourant were better than that. Faster.

One caught Azveja before she fell, throwing her unguarded face into the back wall of the church.

“Kerath!” she shouted through the blood in her mouth, dizzy but more resilient than one of her stature should be. The other two had caught him by the arms, the taller of the two forcing him to his knees. Jortis drummed his fingers against his cane, ascending the rubble and the stairs to meet him. 

Azveja jabbed her metal elbows wherever they would find purchase, her struggle nearly useless against the clown who held her face. The purple reared back her head again, but this time Azveja twisted her head just right to rip the hood off of her horns, losing her cloak as she escaped her grip. In the split second between realizing that worked and having to decide where she would go, that clown caught her around the middle. She crushed the wind out of her, blood still spilling down her face. She had a perfect view of the horror about to take place in front of her. 

Kerath did not fight back. He couldn’t. He was weak for his caste. Nothing against three well trained purplebloods- especially not the patriarch of Le Corps.

Azveja may have been strong for her caste once, before her arms fell to disrepair. Powerful. A touch that could calm or cause pain as she felt like, just from skin contact-

Her upper arms were free. Real. In contact with that purple’s cold clammy arms. Azveja struggled, digging her fingers into her skin, loosing whatever pain she felt through her shoulders, through the nerves of her captor’s hands. The clown shouted, distracting her companions, but only loosened her grip. Azveja’s teeth in her arm did the rest. 

She dropped to the floor, her desperate struggle to reach Kerath brought her close, but her body was not made for fighting, not like this. Not gushing blood from her head the way she was.

“Kerath!” she shouted again, hoarse and miserably dragging herself along the stone. The sickle Jortis had around his throat was close to drawing blood. Tears ran freely down his face, but he was otherwise silent. Kerath made a brief eye contact with Azveja, but only to offer her one final reassuring smile. The monster. The idiot. The only person who never gave up on her, who’s reverence for life extended even to the lowest, unworthy caste. 

The Reverent, Kerath Baclef.

The corpse.

Jortis pulled Kerath’s horn and his sickle in opposite directions. Funny how such a clean cut causes so much blood. Funny if you are perhaps a subjugulator, to which that type of horrific violence is entertaining. Not so much if you are a miserable, abused healer watching your best friend be beheaded. Your best friend who you’ve been a miserable wretch to your entire life, who most certainly did not deserve your pessimism or your agony, but received it anyway because he chose to stay close. Because he cared. Cared enough to smile at you before his execution, when all you could do was cry.

To spare you- no you are not the Slitbinder in her final breaths. A cruel, cruel thing to put on you, that would be. 

Jortis called his clowns to him, wingbeats from above growing loud and impatient. Azveja could hardly hear them. She could hardly hear what he shouted upward as he and his trio fled, Kerath’s head in hand. She was left unable to move, his body the only thing in her sight, that body she had tried so hard to fix mere moments ago. So they could leave. Be safe.

In those last few moments there was more shouting from above: her name, her caste, the misery she had put Vennen through. Another thunderous growl from her lusus before everything went hot. Bright. Suffocating.

Red.

#Zilly drabbles #tee hees and sobs #Slitbinder tag #Reverent tag #Jortis Immacu #i couldve sworn i posted this. guh #also why diesnt fhe app gave readmores anymore. excuse me

[zillyeh]

"Many sweeps ago" for Spiral

Docs version

Assisting her old professor with hands-on demonstrations had been nothing new for Spiral. She had deft hands and impeccable precision. Interested minds were able to attend this one, in the fleet campus' operation amphitheater. Her intimate knowledge of the nervous system- the psionic nervous system in particular- was… more groundbreaking than one would expect from such an advanced Alternia. And from a clown- one who'd not once wavered in wearing her paint. Even after putting distance between the rest of them for medical pursuits. 

The exploratory procedure net her much positive attention after: questions of her methods, whether her own powers contributed to her understanding, when Dr. Cerayn would be doing lectures on her own. It was all very charming- until the last one.

The unpainted purple wasn’t one Spiral had seen before- she made a disdainful mental note of all the ones she passed. His tight spiral horns complimented the curls around his shoulders and down his back nicely. He barely came up to her chin, but something about his grin made her skin crawl.

“You put on quite the show, doctor,” he said with an overdone flourish. “I am more than impressed by your expertise around the nerves. Astonished that your talents are bound to this fleet hospital.” 

“As are most, Mr…”

“Dohiir,” he said, holding out a sharp and darkly manicured hand, “Jeltik Dohiir. Jeltik is fine. Might you allow me to run a proposition by you, Dr. Cerayn?”

“Perhaps,” she hummed, sensing… something in him. It wasn’t the regular sort of fear her powers picked up on. He wasn’t afraid of her- at least not that much. No. It was something else… like a cloud that surrounded him. Guarded, she followed him down the hall as he spoke.

"You are incredibly bright and curious, that much is very obvious, my dear,” he said wandering down a hall Spiral had never bothered with before.

“Stick to doctor,” she said airily, some looming threat behind that suggestion. He smiled, offering a small tilt of his head in apology.

“Of course. Tell me, does that curiosity not ever… push you further than what you are allowed to get away with here?” Some look of disdain passed over his face. “With the… batteries?”

“Do you mean to catch me out on malpractice, Jeltik?”

“Heavens no, Dr. Cerayn. I only suggest you may have a higher calling than this. The line through curve of your paint sugges- hrk!”

Her hand closed around his throat faster than he could intercept. His head bounced off the wall she slammed him into painfully.

“Do not speak to me of the Messiahs’ plans for me, bare-face,” she snarled, “Interpretations of my face are for my Highblood to interpret, not any suspicious character who decides he’d like to.”

“Seen her recently, have you?” He chuckled through her grip on his skinny neck. “Ooh, there go the eyes all big-” He was cut off by a cough before he could continue as she smacked him against the wall again like a ragdoll.

“I am known for my temper,” Spiral threatened evenly, “I would suggest you make your point before I pop the head off of your shoulders.” He let out an astonishingly loud laugh.

“I’d affix it right back,” he said with a grin. Before she could react, he fell through her fingers. The mass of troll in her hand became a black smear on the wall, then the floor underneath her before pooling up behind her. With a disgusting squelch, he was back again- this time painted more elaborately than Spiral had ever seen. She swore in her northern tongue, instinctively reaching out with her powers to find his fear center. Something blocked her though- a maze with a thousand dead ends that she could only just find the exit to. He laughed again, pressing his blackened fingertips together.

 “I do prefer my associates less feisty,” Jeltik tutted, twirling one of his curls around his head. “Though you would make an excellent guard, were I to need it… But that is not what I am here for, hm? I would like you to join me in my path laid forth by the Messiahs.”

Whatever he was, it was either divine or unholy to the highest degree. Spiral couldn’t decide which, but his sickening air made her lean towards the latter. And yet… her insatiable curiosity made her wonder what this thing could want her for.

“There are less feisty than me in this very building,” she suggested, wishing she’d brought her clubs with her to the operating room, “Why seek me?”

“You have something I sorely lack… both knowledge and extra hands… I can only do so much myself. I wouldn’t ever entrust my divine purpose to someone who lacks devotion either, doctor. My divine, elaborate pattern seeks your stability, just as the sun seeks to snuff the night again and again.”

Spiral hummed, intrigued.

“Mm. What use would my hands be to you, then?”

“Would you believe that I could imbue the powers of our gods into the mortal?” He asked excitedly, gripping one of her hands between his. “That I have, as arduous as the process is? You could make it easier, faster, to elevate more to this level?” She felt a pulse in her hands, a tingle, then a burn up her arms and into her temples as something inside her unlocked. Fearful patient’s internal cries from floors above and below, doctors doubts, regrets, and anxiety all in her mind and in her ears. The man in front of her’s grin widened unnaturally, and that is when she heard what was so muddied before.

Spirits, blackened dozens of them that clung to the surface of his aura, attached to him, afraid of him, in anguish. Souls that resided within him, like the superior of their Messiahs, as if he were-

She pulled her hand back, and immediately all extra noise ceased. His heavy curls no longer seemed to be bound by gravity, swirling around his shoulders like a cloud. Spiral stared at him for a good minute, saying nothing. Something divine indeed. 

“Alright Jeltik,” she said, popping her knuckles. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

#Zilly drabbles #hi hello thank u #Spiral tag #Spiral Cerayn #Sunseeker tag #ase-trollplays #whatasks

[zillyeh]

Sparks

“Dammit!” 

The spark the troll had been trying to throw at the bottles about two feet away from her had backfired. Rubber banded as if she had let go in just the right way to smack herself in the face. Again.

“You’re not going to get any better by shouting naughty words at trash, Zee.” Mused the tall, lanky highblood, watching with a grin from the other troll’s open back door. 

“How about I start shouting them at you, huh?” Zee shot, rubbing her forehead. Her fingers didn’t stain this time, which was good, but she could tell there was going to be a mark. Maybe this wasn't useless! She'd build up enough forehead strength to headbutt all her problems! 

Ugh.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to use your psiions like that anyway.” The purple said with a shrug. “Just because you can make them spark doesn’t mean you-”

“They’re not useful if I can’t defend myself, Dara.” Zee’s exasperation was palpable even through the bandaging around her face. “Besides, I thought you said you’d help me.”

“Easy goosie, I’m seeing what we’re working with. It would have been easier if they-”

“Came up earlier, yeah, yeah, I know. I-”

“Hey look, I’m interrupting you now! Geez you’re chatty tonight.” A soft, hollow womph sounded by the door, then behind Zee. Dara’s long fingers found themselves on her shoulders. For once she didn’t flinch, but the cooler air around the two of them brought an involuntary shiver.

“Ugh.”

“Get used to it. If you’re slinging lightning around, I’m voomphing more.” 

“Is that what we’re going with now, En?”

“Yes, shut up. Now focus. Where do you feel your powers coming from?”

Zee closed her eyes, sighing through her loose bandaging. It was warm enough in the swamps, especially this season, for her not to want to wear them. Still though, her mouth was… ugly enough that she didn't want her companion to have to look at it. No matter how many times she'd seen what she'd done to it.

"My wrists?" She guessed finally, brow furrowed. "No, wait." She stood up a little straighter, rolling her arms back.

"Shoulders. Mid back. Around there."

Endara hummed, tapping her fingers against her back thoughtfully.

"Fix your posture. More than that. Good. Focus on where my hands are."

It was hard to focus on much else when she was this close. Even through the light fabric of her hoodie she could feel her determination, her patience. Surprisingly not her irritation, though. Zee of course also felt the thrum of her cool pulse through her palm, going at a much steadier pace than her own. She wondered if Endara could feel that.

"Zee. Quit poking around."

"Sorry." Zee said. pulling her hood down a bit to hide the blush visible over her face wraps. "Right, focus."

Zee drew herself up, pulling once again at her own strength. This time she could actually feel it. The energy in the center of her upper back. It did not want to be tapped into like this, but that was simply too bad.

Zee pulled that energy, stretching it like a tight muscle in her arms. All the way down to her fingers, pointed like a pistol at the bottles on the fence. Sweat beaded her brow from the effort, and the heat. There was more power in her hands than ever before. She was almost reluctant to release it.

"Don't hold it too long, dummy." Endara chided. "You'll explode or something." 

Zee huffed, and let go. This time the blast was much bigger, sending the two of them flying when the energy recoiled back. They landed with a loud thud and a louder crack mere feet from the smaller troll’s back door.

"Shit, shit Endara are you okay?" Zee panicked, scrambling off of her. That movement nearly dropped her to the ground. Zee wasn't injured, but whatever she'd just done had drained her nearly dry.

"I'm fine." Endara groaned, sitting up. "Your big dumb horn cracked me in the jaw but I'll- holy shit."

Endara shoved Zee's head around by the horn, forcing her to look at the mess she'd made. 

The top fence rung was cracked almost entirely in half, her bottles nowhere to be seen.

"Woah." Zee said before everything went dark. 

Oh no you don't. 

The fingers of Endara's consciousness pulled at Zee’s, forcing her eyes back open. The two were still outside, mere seconds after her brief slip into the darkness. Only now there was an enraged honking coming from inside the house. 

“Put me back under.”

"I'm not dealing with her."

"I'm dead." Zee said, unable to move her arms. "I can't feel my fingers or uhh. Anything else."

“Then you’re going to get the shit beat out of you by a goose.” Endara shrugged, standing to her full height. She was well over six feet tall before her eyes had even filled in. Now that they were mostly purple she had a hard time getting through Zee’s hive.

Zee would be lucky if she even brushed six foot at this rate.

“Dara, come on. Voomph me upstairs or some shit.”

“Why miss Gozjam, you of all people want to be voomphed? After last time?” She dramatically whipped her long braid over her shoulder, a smug grin on her face.

“I’m gonna beat your ass, Dara.” Zee groaned, trying to find some strength in her body to move. It didn’t come. Marija was close enough that her silly but threatening little footslaps could be heard rapidly plapping down the stairs.

“You and what arms?” Endara teased. Still, she hauled the smaller anon up with some effort, her limbs loosely dangling over her shoulder when she did so. Endara watched the door until the furious little beast burst out of it, voomphing to the other side of it as she made a beeline for them.

On the other side of the back door, Endara kicked it shut before teleporting the two of them to the couch.

Zee gagged when Endara flopped her onto the cushions, little purple flecks at the outside of her vision.

"Uuuuugh." She groaned dramatically, attempting to move again. Her fingers twitched, but her efforts were mostly unsuccessful.

"Whiner." Endara kicked one of Zee's limp legs up onto the couch. "If you can't move anymore I'm gonna have to do that a lot."

"I'd rather you throw me face down in the mud." Zee said with a grimace. "Why is this so hard?"

Endara sighed and leaned against the arm of the well abused grey couch.

"It's not what you were built for. You know that."

"I don't care. I'm almost out of time to figure out what I'm gonna do when the empire comes knocking. Or, y'know. If someone else sees me."

"Look-" Endara shifted her friend so she could actually sit, placing her head in her lap. Zee felt her throat go dry looking up at her. "Your eyes still haven't even filled in yet. That might be good for you." 

Zee's expression remained sour. She was just into her ninth sweep. It was frankly embarrassing that her eyes were still nearly black. Less dangerous for her, but still. Another addition to the list of things that made her wrong.

"They started, so it's really only a matter of time. Plus, fleet shit, uh… m-m- other... drones... could come around." Endara and Zee both flushed at the inevitable drones she was talking about. When Endara pushed some of Zee's hair out of her face, she felt a few conflicting emotions coming from her.

"I know." Endara sighed after a few moments. "But-"

"But shit, Dara. We both die if I'm found, you know that. I'm not strong enough to protect either of us, and all your skinny ass can do is haunt people's dreams and voomph- what seven, eight feet? We're both dead bitches."

"What about my lusus?" Endara offered, though she sounded unsure of herself. She felt even more unsure, and… sad. Zee wasn't incensed enough not to feel bad for her, but too much to be gentle.

"When was the last time we saw her? Counting on her to give a shit is about as reliable as chucking rocks at a drone."

"Wrong, a drone is guaranteed to kill you. Very reliable." Endara sighed. This conversation wasn't new. She sounded tired of it. Zee certainly was.

Endara bit her lip and tucked a stray hair behind one of her short, angular horns. Sensing weakness, Zee sat up as much as she could.

"Dara… Is that Carnival coming around any time soon?"

"Zee I can train-"

"What's the guarantee I don't just blow us both up? Or lose my arms? We don't know what we're doing. You saw that ringleader. He definitely knows what he's doing." There was a light in her dark grey eyes that Endara didn’t trust.

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Please, Dara, can we just think about it? I can’t go without you.” Endara rolled her eyes at her friend’s pleading.

“Can’t? For why? No one cares as long as you have paint on. Especially the traveling ones.”

Zee bit her lip under her wraps, glancing to the back door that was being abused by her lusus from the other side.

“I’m… scared to go alone.” She said finally, bracing her forehead against her shoulder. Endara looked at the anon for a good few seconds. Of course she was scared, why wouldn’t she be? Being around any clowns, especially with her conditions, would be more than dangerous. It would be stupid. Stupid for the both of them as well, but at least Endara could play the part. Take some of the heat off her.

E touched the tender part of her own jaw, wincing at the sting of the rapidly developing bruise. She was too fragile to keep doing this. 

“Someone’s gonna find her, Dara.” Zee continued in a whisper. Endara shivered, not wanting to think of the “her” they buried not long ago and too close to home. “Then me, then you…” She mentioned herself quickly, as if whatever terrible things could happen to her were negligible to what would happen to Endara. The worst that could happen to Zee was death. The worst that could happen to Endara… Was the Carnival proper.

Endara sighed, removing the hood from her friend’s horns and head, brushing her hair behind her ears. Color rushed to her cheeks, but her eyes remained fixed on Endara.

“I’ll chaperone your carnival trip, goosie. We’re dead women one way or another, right?” Zee opened her mouth to speak, but Endara stopped her. “On one condition.”

“Oh boy. Yeah?”

“I get to do your paint.”

#Zilly drabbles #idk titles <3 #Zippie tag #E tag #Zipper Anthem #i jsut write and dont post it but i am thinking about this one. sighs. baby zippie #Dreamwalker

[zillyeh]

Dominos

The cool underground of the brooding caverns did little to settle Arthur’s nerves, but then again little ever did. Aside from fussing, but fussing time was over. The grubs that made it past the first cull comb of this batch were quiet. Sleeping in that pit with Delhon’s mother grub close by, other jades keeping watch.

He’d had enough for now. The disconnect was harder to make some nights, even for him of all people. 

It seemed it was the same for his moirail. Slightly up the outer spiral’s steps, she stood with her arms under her robes. A tall, severe woman with half her wrinkled face scarred, her long curls tied in a loose ponytail behind her. The Delhon Province cavern’s matron held her jaw steady as Arthur approached her.

“Layooa.” Arthur sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. She regarded him with sympathy, moving to touch her forehead to his.

“Alright, Vačice?” She asked, tucking a hair that had become unbraided back behind his rounded ear. Her other arm stayed close to her abdomen.

“You know the answer to that, revered mother.” He said, flourishing his wrist and pressing a hand to his forehead. In all honesty he did look pale- paler at least in the places vitiligo hadn’t made it impossible to tell.

“Don’t start with me, Dramatique. ” Layooa said with a roll of her eyes, nudging his shoulder. “You look like shit. Up.”

“Not overseeing through the day, then?” Arthur asked, allowing himself to be shuffled in front of her as they ascended the caverns’ stone stairs. “Can’t blame you, bloody fucking daymare down there.”

“Madrea can handle it.” She said, looking over her shoulder, as if checking whether or not they were alone. “How many were on our list?”

Arthur chewed the inside of his lip, hesitating to glance back at her.

“None.” He said tightly. “Hard to tell, but I don’t think any are going to escape that he’d have our heads over.”

“Good.” Layooa replied just as tightly. “I-”

A small, grating hiss, muffled by fabric sounded at her abdomen. Arthur stopped dead in his tracks, whipping around to look at her. Her eyes widened, and the grip on whatever she had under her robes tightened. Stoic, hard assed Layooa, who’d taken her job as head culler of the Delhon caverns so seriously- who’d berated Arthur on more than one occasion for being too soft for cavern work- stood before him, a step down from him, grub noises emanating from a concealed lump in her arms.

“Yooa-” He started slowly. He hardly had time to form a second word before she’d shoved him up the landing, and into a supply closet. Even encumbered as she was she was faster than him, stronger. She kicked the door shut, holding her hand over his mouth.

“What are you doing?!” He cried, muffled against her gloved fist. 

“Shut up.” She breathed over his shoulder. Another hiss from under her robes, followed by a series of clicks that filled his veins with ice. His stillness made her let up, if only slightly.

“That’s not-”

“Arthur.” Layooa’s robotic eye glowed brighter than her real one as he searched her face in the darkness.

“Let me see her.”

“Not here.”

“Layooa-”

“You can’t fucking see in here anyway, Arthur. Up.” 

Arthur pushed out of the closet, practically running up the stairs. He slowed only to mask his urgency to passing colleagues, letting the fatigue he still felt usurp the electricity bottled in his chest. Layooa’s grimace and status were not something any of them dared to make eye contact with anyway, even with wiggling in her arms becoming more apparent as the lighting got better. He fumbled for his ring of keys as they ascended, walking as fast as his little legs would take him to his moirail’s quarters.

Arthur shoved himself into Layooa’s block once they reached the landing, pacing in her living room until the second she locked the door behind them.

“Arthur, relax.” Layooa chided as he ran his fingers through his abused braid, nearly jogging circles around her coffee table.

“Relax. R-relax, she says! Relax? Relax! Do you have any idea how-”

“Do you want to see her or not?” Layooa huffed, pulling her robe aside, though covering her precious cargo with her sleeve still. 

“Yes, yes show me her.” Arthur scrambled across the room where Layooa met him, shiny grub in her arms. Her horns were smaller, but identical, long and curving up at the side of the head, with two pointy little bumps near her skull. More importantly, and perhaps more shockingly, her shell was-

“Black.” He breathed, the tiny little thing’s outer carapace like an oil slick under the light, swirling colors that did not reside under that protective layer. Purple seemed to dominate the color visible to the eye, above all others. Even in her eyes.

“Explains how she got to pupate in Enfaris.” Layooa said, stroking the thick little shock of hair on her head with her thumb.  

“She d-doesn’t have the-” Arthur made a motion to his lower face. Layooa met his eye.

“I pray she never does.” She said firmly. “Do you want to hold her?” Arthur was practically already taking her out of her arms as she asked. “I warn you she-”

“Ow.”

“Bites.”

“Ow!”

“Hard.”

The now cranky grub in Arthur’s arms hissed, wriggling to get out of his hands, chomping wherever she could find purchase. Layooa snickered, watching him struggle.

“Oh those are G-Gozjam teeth al- ow- ow! Take her back, take her back!”

“She doesn’t like the stress you bring, Arthur.” Layooa hummed, the grub immediately relaxing once again in her arms. The few bloody spots on Layooa’s exposed fingers were not lost on him.

“Evidently.” Arthur winced as he held the finger her teeth split open the worst. “Identical to Azzy, then.”

The name of their late friend finally being spoken out loud shifted the air between them. The Gozjam grub clicked her three little clicks in her throat, and Layooa took a breath.

“You’re insane.” Arthur said before she could speak again.

“Yes.” Layooa said, a look in her eyes that told him he was far beyond talking her out of whatever plan she was formulating.

“Layooa he will kill us b-both if we- we’re lucky enough he hasn’t found out we didn’t give him his d-descendant, Yooa. It’s only a matter of t-time before-”

“He can have my head.” Layooa said firmly. “You didn’t know about this.”

“You know god damn well that isn’t how Amillo operates, Yoo! You and I are exactly the same to him and you know it!” Arthur was frustratedly trying to keep his volume down, but finding it difficult. 

Layooa pondered the grub in her arms, almost as if she didn’t hear him somehow. 

“What are you going to do, Yooa, raise her yourself?” Arthur practically pleaded. “He will absolutely f-find her if you keep her down here.”

“Arthur.”

 “The other jades will-”

“Arthur.”

“What about Fallon? He’ll go right after him next once he kills me and then-”

“Arthur.” Layooa demanded dangerously. “Shut. Up. You forget that I am not entirely a sentimental moron, I suppose? Come here.”

Layooa draped her robes back over the grub. She took him by the arm, leading him further into her quarters. To a set of stairs Arthur had never ascended before just off the kitchen. The claustrophobic walls reminded him why. 

After what felt like too long, they came out of a hatch, daylight blazing through leaves above. Warm, air breezed past the two of them, like nothing Arthur had felt in ages.

“You can get t-to the surface from your room?” Arthur asked, squinting so his eyes could adjust.

“Matron’s perks.” She said, putting her hood up. “In case of emergency, I have no obligation to any of you. Except you, I suppose.”

“Thanks.” Arthur said, rolling his eyes, following her a short way to their destination. Arthur could hear where they were going before he saw. The shrill honks of horned geese were unmistakable. There must have been a half dozen of them in the little pond beyond the treeline they stopped at. Only some had lusus coloring, but even they seemed to be just as interested in tending to the fuzzy goslings learning to swim.

“Azveja always said her lusus would have been some big mean bird.” Layooa sighed wistfully, eyeing the largest of the bunch. Arthur looked to her, then to the goose that was eying her right back.

The bird made a noise that sounded like three consecutive little ‘ah’s.

“You’ve been planning this.” He breathed, some ache growing in his chest.

“If anyone deserves a second chance, Arthur…”

Arthur bit his lip, resting his hand on the grub under her robes. The grub stirred, but this time did not have such a violent reaction to his touch. Layooa watched him, as the bird on the other side of the clearing watched him. Its eyes shone the color Arthur knew was at his finger tips, underneath the only thing that could have possibly saved her from the cull tonight.

“You will be the death of me, Caheen.” Arthur sighed, bumping her shoulder with his forehead.

“Go for Miles’ eyes when he figures us out, Artie.” She said, tucking  his hair behind his ear once more. “You were always better at that than me.”

“Yes ma’am.” Arthur said with a roll of his eyes. “Do you… think she’s going to be alright?”

Layooa snorted, peeking into her robes at the now snoring grub.

“As long as she stays away from the city, or- god forbid- clowns, she’s golden.”

#Zilly drabbles #ask to tag ? idk what to tag caverns activities as. lol. its not mentioned much more than the start bit tho i prommy #Dramatic tag #Ballerine tag #Zippie tag #Zipper Anthem #reads this over once instead of 80 times and hits post

[zillyeh]

35- insomnia for smiles! <3

The sleeping quarters for off caste performers weren't... nice. They were hardly better than the seats in the main tent- something some might actually prefer sleeping on or under. Rare was the privilege to not be under somebody's watch, though. Rare, but not unheard of.

The Lion Tamer found his own special spot in the tiger cages. That spot being snuggled into a pile of big orange cats- a pile he made with his growing feline suggestion powers. He was probably the most comfortable one could be as someone under purple. One of his cats' big paws stretched over him like a blanket, the other was more than content to be used as a pillow. It would almost be sweet if this arrangement didn't require him to lock himself in with them

Unfortunately for him and his short lived rest, clowns often woke during the day- power induced nightmares, general restlessness, the desire for.

Well.

"Ariika." Came a hissing voice at the bars, along with a bang that shot him awake, and nearly made his blanket rip his legs off. Calming the two of them took a dangerous few seconds.

"Can't you harass someone else for once, Jeltik?" He groaned, pushing his short curls out of his face.

"And have you miss me?" Tutted the tall purple, metal rod clinking against the bars in a way that made Amillo want to remove the hand that held it. "I could never do that to you." Jeltik's unnerving grin was met with a tired scowl. He rolled his eyes, kneeling down to eye level, tilting his head to the side. His long horns curved back and out, almost like a second, curling smile.

"How about you get out here and entertain me until I'm tired, hm? I have a new dance for you to try."

"How about you go shove that rod somewhere it'll really entertain you, asshole?" Milo scoffed, stroking the cheek fur of both his cranky cats. His weight on the one underneath him seemed to be enough to keep her calm, even without his powers.

"Big words coming from the little man inside a big cage!" Jeltik teased, sticking his fingers through the bars. To both of their surprise, the tiger on top of Milo growled. Jeltik's eyes narrowed, that nasty smile of his faltering.

"I didn't make her do that." Milo said quickly, relaxing her. The cat's eyes stayed fixed on the clown outside her cage, but her posture remained calm. Until Jeltik banged the bars again, this time with an even louder CLANK.

"I don't care. Out." He turned the key left in the lock and let it drop to the floor. Milo felt his stomach lurch, and not for the reason it should have. His hands moved his tiger's paws off of him. Not of his own volition. His body jerked awkwardly as Jeltik forced his muscles to move him toward the door.

"His again?" Milo asked through gritted teeth, apparently not allowed to speak this time.

"He's asleep." Jeltik said, some humor returning to him as he watched- no forced Amillo to trip over himself as he exited. "What's he doing with them, hm? I need them more." He dropped that rod with another angry metallic noise, using both hands to pull Milo back up. Almost too up, seating him just enough on the balls of his feet to be uncomfortable standing.

Milo could just let go of the tigers- say it was an accident. Let them do as they would with him, if anything at all. Sure he'd still get the full blame for it despite... this. He should, he wanted to, and both girls- rapt at attention- wanted him to as well. Something in the back of their heads almost demanded it. He could feel it. But he knew his ringleader, and she would make him watch whatever they did to them first. There would be no way that he could make it through that.

It would have to be this, being at the restless mercy of the clown that'd taken a shining to him, until the next wave of violent takeover took the Nameless Province again.

Amillo's hand's flopped loosely over his head, and he pushed higher on his toes.

He hoped it would be soon.

#Zilly drabbles #Smiles tag #whatasks #indig0g0 #1st lion tamer era miles has me in fits always #agian these prompts are. im bad with taking prompts well LMAO #also spoilers ig if you dont remember what his name is bc i cant help it #Sunseeker tag