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thefreakandthehair · 1 year

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"You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin — to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours — closer than you keep it yourself." Eddie quotes at Steve, poking him in the chest. Steve watches as Eddie sways, just a tiny bit but it betrays the facade of sobriety he'd been trying to hold.

Eddie’d once had a better tolerance but he couldn’t drink throughout his recovery and everyone was finding that Eddie is a tactile, Lord of the Rings-quoting type of drunk as a result.

They’re alone in the corner of Steve’s living room, their arms wrapped one another, and it mustn’t be shocking because no one is looking their way. Only their closest friends are present and they’re left with plenty of room to touch without strange looks.

"But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo." Eddie finishes and flashes a warm smile at Steve and sure, Steve is a little less than sober himself but it’s the same smile Eddie’s been tossing him for fucking months and Steve is just tipsy enough to catch it.

“You tryin' to tell me something, Munson?” Steve asks, reaching one arm out to steady his friend. Yeah, sure, just a friend, his mind teases.

It’s been a solid six or so months since they’d been victorious against Vecna and shut down the Upside Down for good. And okay, he and Eddie have shared a bed more nights than they haven’t since then and it’s perhaps been a lot more than just friendly to Steve, but he’s learned not to make assumptions.

People don’t always feel about him the way he feels about them, and he can handle that. He can. At least, he can until Eddie starts drunkenly quoting the Lord of the Rings at him after a few shots at his New Years Eve party leading into ‘87. He’s got one hand wrapped around the back of neck, absently tugging on the hair at the nape, and Steve is trying to sober up enough so he doesn’t kiss his friend and read this all wrong.

“You were Frodo, Steve. And I was Sam. And I love you.” Eddie says, giggly but genuinely with both his hands digging into Steve’s waist now. The grin is real— it touches his glossy eyes and spreads across his face easily.

And I love you bounces around like a rogue ping pong ball in Steve’s chest. Steve sees that Eddie’s drunk— he can tell from the giggle, the tight grip on his skin, the glossy eyes. And Steve is heartbroken. He’s been head over heels for the man in front of him for at least the three months, consciously at least, and here he is, reminding Steve of everything he can’t have.

“Man, don’t say shit like that if you don’t mean it, alright?” Steve tries to make it joking, tries to laugh and smile in the way he thinks he should because Eddie's drunk but shit, if he hasn't daydreamed about Eddie saying those words to him.

Eddie though? Well, Eddie might be drunk but goddamn it he knows Steve. And he means it. He loves Steve so much, it feels like it's trying to claw its way out of his body. He's just tipsy enough to finally tell him.

“Stevie, I do mean it. I mean okay—” Eddie readjusts his Zeppelin shirt beneath his leather jacket and stands taller, fingers threading their way through Steve’s belt loops. “I may not be completely sober but I’m like, completely fuckin' in love with you? How dumb is that?” He laughs and ducks his head against Steve’s chest, wrapping his arms around back Steve's waist where this all began.

“Not dumb at all, Ed. Not dumb at all. Ball’s gonna drop soon, wanna watch it?” Steve feels Eddie's laugh against his chest where he holds Eddie tighter, suddenly afraid of beginning a new year. Eddie clings to him and Steve's brain begins a hysterical loop of questions like What if Eddie suddenly doesn't want to be this close when it's not 1986? When it's not the same year that we'd met and fought demons together? What if this fades, like everything else has?

"I dunno, do you love me? Be a hell of a way to ring in a new year, gettin' kissed by the one and only Steve Harrington!" Eddie's question throws a stick into the wheel of his looping brain, screeching it to a halt.

Steve knows this isn't the time and he knows Eddie probably won't even remember this in the morning but he does it anyways. He pulls back, takes a look around the room where all of their friends are cheering and counting down.

Robin had started the countdown at 60 seconds, just a touch too early, and they're only at 47 when Steve runs both of his shaking hands up and down the length of Eddie's arms. The last time they approach Eddie's shoulders, he keeps them there and inches closer, searching Eddie's wide, beguiled eyes for hesitation and finds none. Just finds what he always does: warmth, joy, comfort.

"39!"

"38!"

"37!"

"Ed, stop me if I've got it wrong."

"36!"

"35!"

"Definitely not wrong, Steve."

"33!"

"32!"

It's still 1986 when Steve Harrington finally kisses Eddie Munson. It's soft, gentle, close-lipped and tender without pushing for more. Eddie's fingers go numb and his toes curl in his boots, and Steve sees colors in a new way when they pull away and open their eyes.

"I do love you, Eddie." Steve says, breathless and happy in a way he hasn't been in years. He's still afraid, but even if he only gets this one moment, he's going all in for it. "So fucking much."

One palm comes up to rest on Steve's cheek, warm metal against his skin in the way of Eddie's rings. "It's not even the new year yet." He says with a laugh and a smile with his bottom lip between his teeth.

"19!"

"18!"

"Couldn't wait. I'll do it again in 1987, if you'll let me?"

"Any year, any dimension, Steve."

The countdown is getting closer and Dick Clark is yelling on the television when Steve grabs Eddie's hand and pulls him to join their friends, one arm slung over his shoulders and Eddie's around his waist. Steve gets a beaming smile and cocked eyebrow from Robin and his nod is all she needs.

"7!"

"6!"

"5!"

People start pairing off, and Steve's sober enough to realize that none of this would have made sense to him just a few months prior. Robin pulls Nancy closer with the hand not holding an obnoxiously loud noisemaker, Argyle smiles meaningfully at Jonathan, and Steve finds himself being spun back to face Eddie.

"Ready?"

"3!"

"2!"

"1!"

It's 1987 when Eddie Munson finally kisses Steve Harrington. They don't join the chorus of Happy New Year's! around them because it's Eddie's turn to kiss Steve, and he fucking does. A little harder, a little more tongue, a bite or two when Steve returns the same eagerness and impatience. It's Eddie who breaks the kiss, lips shiny and swollen.

"Gotta good feeling about '87, Stevie. Got a really good feeling."

#steddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #eddie munson x steve harrington #steddie fanfic #steddie fanfiction #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #st fanfic #myfic #fun fact: i wrote this in a draft on here last night while drinking and completely forgot about it until now #it's definitely not inspired by /me/ quoting lotr when i've had a couple of drinks (as several people found last night)#oops i gave eddie another personality trait <333 #alcohol tw #myblurbs

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anonymous-rendezvous · 8 months

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An Unconventional Relationship

💛 Luca Kaneshiro x GN!Reader

✦ — Written by Mod S 👿. Beta Read and Edited by Mod I ��.

✧ — Contains: Humor, strangers to friends to ???, & open ended

✦ — Word count: 3.3k+ | Ao3

Based on these prompts - "You're lucky you're cute." "Wait, you think I'm cute?"

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

The sun is just beginning to dip below the horizon as you take your usual route home after work. “Hmm, maybe I should order something for dinner…I don’t feel like cooking, plus I’m pretty sure I still have to do the dishes. Ugh, curse you past me!” You trudged your way down the street, practically sulking as you walked. This was virtually routine for you at this point: getting off work, walking home, debating about dinner, sleeping, repeat. It was a pretty average life, and you accepted it wholeheartedly; the motions and all.

Well, it had been pretty average until a fairly strange encounter happened; the monotonous routine led you to make a very unusual… friend(?) roughly half a year ago. You can still recall the night vividly; the events playing through your mind are more similar to a show than an experience that had happened to you.

You had worked overtime resulting in you leaving work much later than you normally did. The moon was already high in the sky as you attempted to rush home. That was cut short when you were suddenly pulled into an alleyway; a knife pointed right at your neck. Like any sane person, you were about to give the person all your money, until – inches from your face – you see your attacker get punched straight in the jaw. The force sent him tumbling further into the alley. Hardly having the time to process anything, you didn’t notice that the nice stranger had proceeded to pull you away, two people dressed similarly to bodyguards rushing past you towards the mugger.

“Are you okay?” With the moment of calm, you took in your savior’s form. Broad, blonde, a very expensive-looking suit and matching hat that almost hid his lavender eyes from view, and from what few words he spoke; an Australian accent.

“U–um…” You quickly collected yourself, looking down to take a deep breath before thanking the stranger. “Yes, I’m fine. Uhh, thank you for that, by the way. You sure got a punch on you.” Before you can mentally smack yourself for being so awkward, he laughs, causing you ease.

“Well, thanks! I pride myself on my good punches! Oh, but do you need a ride home? Don’t want you to get mugged for a second time tonight. Lots of unsavory characters walking around during this time.”

“Really? Well, sure, a ride would be nice! Although, in exchange, I’d like to know the name of my savior.”

He takes off his hat, and brings it to his chest, letting you see his face without obstruction. “Heh, I can’t give you my full name, but you can just call me Luca, okay?”

You accepted his generous offer, and he did, in fact, drop you off safely. Ever since then, he’d occasionally pull next to you in his very expensive-looking car to check up on you. Hell, sometimes you’d run into him on your later shifts, and every time he’d offer to take you home. In his words, “To make sure you don’t get mugged again, you know?”. Honestly, you have no clue why he cares so much about you. He dresses so expensively, his car looks like it costs more than your entire life’s savings, and he has what you assume are bodyguards. He seemed like someone very important. So why is he constantly coming back to check on your safety?

This question loops back into your brain again as you walk, so much so you don’t even notice the car that pulls next to you. It’s not until the person rolls down their window and calls, “Hey!” that you snap back to reality, head-turning quickly as they stop. You notice there are two people in the car, and they look very similar to the same bodyguards who were with Luca the night he saved you. “Heya, you're the Boss’s friend, right? He wanted us to come pick you up.”

“Pick me up?” You blink in confusion, shuffling closer to the car and leaning toward the window in order to talk clearly. “For what? I don’t remember us making plans or anything…” You rack your forgetful brain for a moment, but nothing comes up. Hell, you’d have probably made a memo on your phone about something like this.

“He made dinner plans so he could talk to you. Said something about feeling bad that he hasn’t had the time to properly talk to you.” The bodyguard has to hold back a laugh at the face you make, waving their gloved hand in front of your face to get your attention again. “He also wanted to make sure we tell you that you don’t have to come if you have prior plans.”

Shaking your head, you respond, “He’s very lucky I don’t have any plans. I’m not gonna turn down a free meal. I’ll meet up with him.” Lowering your voice to a mumble, you speak aloud to yourself, “Lucky too that I had no clue what to eat today…” With your confirmation, you hear the car unlock and, with slight hesitation, you slide into the back seat. As soon as you're all buckled in, they take off.

It’s not long before you realize the car is heading toward an area of the city that you rarely go to. Looking out the window, you watch as the car moves through the richer part of town. Fancy hotels and lights everywhere, you even pass a fountain show going on outside. When the car suddenly stops, your eyes move to the two bodyguards in the front seat, who are already getting out. You scramble to reach for the door, but before you can grab the handle, one of them has already opened the door for you.

“Don’t worry, I got it. My partner here will show you to the Boss. I gotta park the car, then I’ll be in there as well.” You give them a nod as you get out, patting yourself down to look more presentable; and to shake off your embarrassment. Looking up at the restaurant, your jaw almost drops at just the exterior. Suddenly, you feel like you might need more than just a pat down.

Now listen, you've been to some pretty nice places before. However, this part of town is way too expensive for you to even think about coming here too often. So when you take in what you know to be the most expensive restaurant in the city, your nerves start to settle in. You're brought out of your thoughts by the car starting and taking off down the road as the other guard calls to you. “Please, this way. The Boss will be super happy to see you. And don’t worry about being underdressed. I’m sure the Boss doesn’t care.”

Pouting a bit, you begin to follow them. ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the other people won’t think that…’ Preparing yourself for the telltale heat of judging stares, you keep your head down as you follow the guard inside. Eyes only watching the nice red carpet and the backs of the movement of the bodyguard's brown dress shoes – preoccupying your eyes with the stitches in the leather. It’s not long before you arrive in the section where Luca is waiting, only looking up when the guard announces so. “Here we are.” You look up and take in your surroundings, eyes widening at the amount of gold detailing in the room. The lights are warm and dim to give the space a sophisticated yet cozy atmosphere. Something you take in almost immediately is that there is no one else in this section of the restaurant, the only one being the person your gaze falls onto next. As soon as Luca hears his guard talk, he sets his menu down and gives you one of the most infectious smiles that you’ve ever seen. Your lips barely refrained from smiling just as widely, settling on a small polite smile and a wave.

The blonde opens his arms in welcome from his seat, energy radiating from his voice. “I’m so glad you could make it! I was so worried you’d have other plans since this was pretty sudden on my part. Next time, I promise I’ll get your opinion on future hangouts first.” Before he puts his arms down, he beckons you to sit, the chair across from him being pulled open by the bodyguard. “Come, sit. We can order and then finally have a proper conversation.”

You take the invitation, even if you are a bit nervous about what exactly is going on. After you sit and are pushed in, thanking the guard as they make their way to stand behind Luca’s seat. Picking up the menu, you immediately try your best not to physically cringe at the prices. Flipping through the pages, you go all the way back to the appetizers – probably the only thing you can afford on the menu. Luca seems to notice, and he tilts his head, voice laced with confusion.

“Oh, are you not hungry? Hm?”

Looking up at him, you give a nervous smile. “Uhh, well, everything here is pretty out of my usual price range. The only thing here that I can really afford is a soft drink and a small appetizer…” You’re about to wave it off as fine until he puts his hand up, stopping you from continuing.

“Oh! Don’t worry about that. I invited you so I’ll be paying. It’s the least I can do for springing this on you. So order anything, I got it.” He smiles, then looks back down at the menu.

Okay, now you're really suspicious. No one this loaded just… does this. Or if they do, they have a catch. Forcing your expression to remain neutral, you decide you’ll ask when dinner arrives. Even if this is immensely suspicious, he doesn’t seem to have anything malicious planned. Although you haven’t known him long, nothing has really set off immediate red flags in your mind. He’s been super kind and if this is a kidnapping or something, he wouldn’t go through all this trouble. He’d have just done it by now – he’s had more than enough opportunities. Taking a deep breath, you settle on a meal and let him talk you into sharing a bottle of some high-class wine with him. When the server arrives to take your orders, you notice the other guard has returned from parking the car, making their way to Luca standing behind him next to the other one. You're too busy giving your order and feeling nervous about the establishment, that you don’t notice how uneasy the server is; constantly looking to the side and shifting nervously. He scurries off pretty quickly after your orders have been filled, and before you can ponder it, you’re pulled into a conversation with the blonde.

Luca lets you talk about your life first, and you're surprised at how intently he listens. It’s not like you lived anything remarkable as he must have, but when he listens to you speak, you see the genuine spark of interest in his eyes. The wine arrives in the middle of your story, and you're about to thank the person, but they leave so quickly that you barely have time to. Maybe they saw you talking and just didn’t wanna interrupt or that could just be how the service is here. Either way, you finish talking about yourself before turning the questions back to him.

When Luca starts telling you what he does, you make sure to give him the same level of attention he gave you. He tells you how he’s the owner of a casino; explaining that they have passed it down to him through the family. Well, that explains why he looks so expensive. The bodyguards are still a bit weird to you, but you’ve heard that children of rich families tend to get kidnapped so that could be explained away. After he talks about his family business, you are actually glad he starts to talk about his hobbies and interests. The longer you talk to him, the more you realize just how down-to-earth he is. Admittedly helping you calm down as the minutes roll by.

The food gets to you just as he finishes talking about how he used to surf, and you can’t help but express how talented he seems to be. “Wow, you have so much skill under your belt. If you didn’t own the casino, you’d still be set for life.”

Luca laughs shyly, sipping at his wine. “Well, most of it my parents had me take classes for. They wanted me and my sister to be prepared, you know?” He sets his glass down and gestures to your food; changing the subject. “I hope you enjoy the food, by the way! That looks really good. I might have to get that next time I come here.”

You chuckle, picking up your utensils. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you my premium review of it after I’m done.” He laughs and follows suit in your actions. You both dig into your food, and you have to hold yourself back from letting out a noise of delight. This food was unlike anything you’ve ever had, really tasting like the high price it was. Being so engrossed by the food, you almost forget what you wanted to ask Luca, your brain circling back to the suspicions you had earlier. You wait a little while, but when you think enough time has passed, you call the blonde’s name. “Luca?” He pauses in his sentence, looking at you with concern at the seriousness of your tone.

“Y–Yes? Is something wrong?” His lavender eyes scan over you, trying to get any hint as to what might be bothering you.

“No! It’s nothing wrong, per se." You immediately reassure, seeing how he physically deflated. Luca perks back up, a look of anticipation on his face, encouraging you to continue, "I have an important question to ask you." He gives you a firm nod. Seeing his silverware down to give you his full attention. “Okay, this is gonna be a very uh… interesting question, but I have to ask. Is this like some sort of, uhhh, fancy dinner to win me over for favors? Like… convincing me to be your sugar baby or something?” The blonde in front of you seems to choke on a breath, one guard coming up to pat his back. Glancing at the three people in front of you, you realize there's a look of shock written across each of their faces. When Luca gets over his coughing fit, he looks back up at you, starting to chuckle, believing you're joking. He stops, however, when he takes in your serious expression – worry in your eyes – and quickly explains himself.

“No no no! This is nothing like that!” He’s a bit frantic with his tone, waving his hands in exaggeration as he speaks. “I just wanted to have a genuine conversation with you. I…” He pauses for a moment, brows furrowed as he thinks over his next words. “I’ve felt bad that I’ve never gotten to talk to you properly all those times I would pass you and say ‘Hi’.” His gaze re-meets yours across the table. “This is just a normal dinner with a friend, I promise.”

With a sigh, you cross your arms, “You realize how…” you struggle for the right word, “odd that is right? Like, you look like you own a private island and seem very comfy in places like this.” One of your hands gestures to the lavish restaurant around you. “I’m just a regular person you saved once from getting mugged. I'm nobody. What reason would a rich person like you have to constantly come to talk to me if not for some other motive?” Honestly, you almost feel bad about the way you're interrogating him. Though this is something to be questioned, and as nice and sweet as he is, it’s still good to have a sense of caution. Especially with the wealthy.

Luca’s silent for a minute, seeming to think over what he wants to say; eyes downcast, staring at his half-finished food. It’s only a few silent moments until his lavender eyes look back up at you, their determination shocking you. “Because you didn’t treat me like that when I helped you.” You blink for a second, confused, tilting your head as he continues to speak. “Well… how do I put this… You just seemed like a nice person who wouldn’t judge someone no matter their status, so I wanted to get to know you? I–It’s honestly nothing like a ruse or a scheme. Trust me, being in this business, many people do try to deceive me. I’m an excellent judge of character because of that, and you just seemed very kind and down-to-earth. It gave me the push to try to befriend you.”

As he speaks, you can feel warmth start to pool in your cheeks, causing you to look away, not expecting that answer. After a moment, you let out a deep breath and then turned your gaze back to him. “Well, honestly, that’s pretty surprising." You say with a light laugh. Slouching back into your seat, you continue. "I’m sure all of this is normal for you, but maybe when we hang out in the future, these places–” your hands raise to gesture around the restaurant once more– “are not really casual for people like me.”

His eyes seem to light up a bit, a small crooked smile on his face. “So… you still wanna try to be my friend?”

You have to hold back a giggle at how closely he resembles a puppy at this moment. Uncrossing your arms and picking up your utensils as you return to your meal. “Mhm, you're not a bad person. I can tell that you really are interested in my life, and if you did have any bad intentions, you would’ve done something by now. Plus, you’re lucky you’re cute. Hard to say no to the puppy dog eyes you’ve been giving me.”

He hears his guards snicker behind him, but chooses to ignore it as his cheeks begin to flush. “You think I’m cute?” He watches as you laugh, smiling at him as you take a bite of your food.

“Mmn, this is really good. Do you wanna try some? I can give you a bite.” Luca pouts a bit as you change the subject, but nods nonetheless. He’s happy as you converse for the rest of your meal, talking about nothing and everything. It’s refreshing for you and him, as you act like equals. Feeling like friends.

The pair of you stay for a while, but eventually, you do tell him you have to work the next day. He, of course, offers to take you home, especially since you’d both had a bit of wine. With the moon smiling in the sky as the four of you leave the restaurant, and the surrounding street was lit up by dazzling lights. The bodyguards escort you to the car, giving them your address. The trip gives the two of you a chance to continue talking. Luca couldn’t help the smile on his face, content with just listening to you speak, and this time remembering to give you his number so you could make future plans together. It wasn’t long before the car pulled up to your home. Luca, ever the gentleman, helped you out and up to your door. When you finally say goodbye and wave them all off, you feel warm, and you’re sure he shares the same sentiment.

To Luca, this experience feels like a blessing to him. To have a normal conversation – a normal friend – in his unpredictable life. And to you, this was an exciting change to your routine; being able to make such an excitable and interesting new friend. You only saw good things ahead, and you hoped that it’d continue to get better from here.

It could only get better from here. Right?

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

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#luca kaneshiro x reader #luxiem x reader #nijisanji x reader #luca kaneshiro #nijisanji luxiem #nijisanji luca #nijisanji en #nijisanji #luxiem #x reader #gn reader #gender neutral reader #Written by Mod S 👿

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thecreaturecodex · 5 months

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Quintessivore

Image © Paizo Publishing

[The quintessivore is a weird monster in a number of ways. For one thing, its PF2e category is "beast", when both its bizarre anatomy and unusual diet would make it seem to be a shoo-in for aberration status. Although maybe that's a result of the art; those proportions and placements of the limbs are truly bizarre, and I'm not sure if that was the original intent. For another thing, the Bestiary 3 entry is mostly taken up with explaining what quintessence is for readers not immersed in PF lore, leaving the actual flavor text for the monster rather thin on the ground. So I had room to expand, and to explain some things that the original entry leaves without comment.]

Quintessivore CR 10 NE Aberration This creature has a head like a deep-sea fish, with pointed teeth and beady eyes. It has four many-jointed limbs—two of them ending in three-fingered claws, and two of them ending in bladed appendages. Its color is a sickly gray, and its body is studded with short spines, ridges and strings of fibrous material.

Quintessivores are strange creatures that feed on quintessence, the raw material of souls and the Outer Planes. They are roughly spider-like in proportion, having long limbs holding up a relatively small body. Their exoskeletons constantly slough off strands of tough fiber, similar in texture to silk but greasier. Quintessivores cannot weave webs as true spiders can, but use their silk as if it were paper, recording their spellbooks and other writings on their secretions.

A quintessivore on one of the Outer Planes is often docile and talkative, as they have access to effectively infinite food. On the Material Plane, however, they stalk mortal beings in order to strip their souls and consume them slowly. While feeding on a soul, the quintessivore’s blade legs are faintly luminous, and patterns resembling waves, whorls and loops appear and disappear along their length. The process of feeding on a soul empowers their magical abilities, and souls that are more powerful grant longer lasting boons.

Quintessivores are despised by almost all outsiders, as their diet is soul-stuff itself. Psychopomps especially seek to eliminate quintessivores, and these aberrations typically flee from even rumors of psychopomp activity. On the other hand, daemons are rather fond of them, as their feeding reduces the net quintessence in existence, inexorably bringing the end of all things closer. Daemons still by no means respect these mortal creatures, and both the quintessivore and the daemon typically think of themselves as the superior partner in any allegiances unless the power differential between the two is obvious.

Quintessivore CR 10 XP 9,600 NE Medium aberration Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +19

Defense AC 25, touch 17, flat-footed 18(+6 Dex, +1 dodge, +8 natural) hp 136 (13d8+78) Fort +10, Ref +10, Will +13

Offense Speed 40 ft., climb 20 ft. Melee 2 claws +15 (1d10+3 plus 1d10 negative energy and ability drain) Special Attacks ability drain (1d3 Con, Fort DC 22), feed, suspend soul Spells CL 10th, concentration +17 (+21 casting defensively) 5th—feeblemind (DC 22), passwall, vampiric shadow shield 4th—arcane eye, black tentacles, contagion (DC 22), enervation 3rd—clairaudience/clairvoyance, fireball (DC 20), protection from energy, ray of exhaustion (DC 20), slow (DC 21) 2nd—cat’s grace (x2), invisibility, scorching ray, see invisibility, web (DC 19) 1st—comprehend languages, expeditious retreat, feather fall, mage armor, magic missile, ray of enfeeblement (DC 19) 0th—detect magic, mage hand, open/close, read magic

Statistics Str 17, Dex 22, Con 23, Int 24, Wis 17, Cha 16 Base Atk +9; CMB +12; CMD 29 (33 vs. trip) Feats Combat Casting, Dodge, Iron Will, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus (necromancy), Stealthy, Weapon Finesse Skills Acrobatics +22 (+26 jumping),Climb +27, Escape Artist +26, Intimidate +19, Knowledge (arcana) +23, Knowledge (dungeoneering, planes) +20, Perception +19, Spellcraft +23, Stealth +26, Use Magic Device +16 Languages Abyssal, Aklo, Common, Daemonic, Infernal, Undercommon

Ecology Environment underground Organization solitary Treasure standard

Special Abilities Feed (Su) By spending 1 hour with a helpless living creature, or a formerly living creature no more than 2 hours dead, a quintessivore can consume its quintessence, keeping it from reaching the afterlife. A creature fed on in such a way cannot be returned from the dead, unless its soul is freed from the quintessivore by killing the creature. A quintessivore retains the soul bound to it for 1 day per HD of its victim, during which time it gains a +1 on all spell save DCs, and may prepare an additional spell of each spell level. Once this time is elapsed, the victim’s soul is gone forever. A quintessivore can only have one soul bound to it at a time. Spells A quintessivore can prepare and cast spells as a 10th level generalist wizard. It does not gain other benefits of the wizard class, such as a specialty school or arcane bond, unless it takes levels in the wizard class. Suspend Life (Su) As an immediate action, a quintessivore can suspend the life processes of a dying creature within 15 feet. A creature so affected must succeed a DC 21 Fortitude save or be unable to gain or lose hit points for 1 hour. During that time, if the creature receives magical healing, it can attempt another DC 21 Fortitude save to break the effect. The save DC is Charisma based, and includes a +2 racial bonus.

#pathfinder 1e #pathfinder rpg #pathfinder 2e #quintessivore #aberration

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lumpsbumpsandwhumps · 1 year

Note

WHAT IF WHAT IF post torture cuddling bc poor jonie is so touch starved

Everything hurt.

This was not a sensation that Jonas was unfamiliar with, but it was still far from pleasant nonetheless. Dealing with the constant ache of muscles and stiff joints and stinging open wounds had almost become something of a routine for him. By the time old bruises had faded to yellow, new ones were blooming from red to purple elsewhere. Scabs were ripped off faster than they could scar close. Headaches and stomachaches woke him hourly, only occasionally placated whenever Malik remembered that human bodies need sustenance to survive. Really, the pains that throbbed in varying intensities should be nothing new to his battered self.

But this was much worse than he had endured over the last six weeks. The coldness that drenched him was bone deep, icy water soaked in his clothes and hair and plastering them against his trembling skin. His teeth clattered painfully behind blue lips, feeling like he was chewing on ice cubes instead of his own exhales. Not even his breath could keep him warm if he tried, though it would hardly do him any good at this point. Shaking limbs couldn’t pull in to huddle at his core for warmth, instead having to seek out relief in the form of a southern serial killer with a new fascination with ice water submersion.

Though maybe it wasn’t all bad considering how much worse Malik could have made it. The heir could have been left in the drained metal basin when he was done the impromptu photoshoot, surely succumbing to hypothermia overnight as a result. Malik could have refused to give him a towel for him to clumsily dry himself off with, barely making a difference for his sorry state but still removing most of the droplets running down his face. He could have been left to fight through the cold on his own, struggling to procure any amount of body heat no matter how tightly he curled into himself on the floor.

No, rather than prolonging his suffering like the older man was prone to doing, Malik had scooped the soggy boy up and dropped him in his lap, forcing Jonas’s bound arms to loop over his neck in a strange hug. The position had him flush against his captor’s chest, his thick sweater helping to absorb more of the freezing liquid off of his person. Beneath the black material was a delicious body heat that Jonas greedily tried to steal, nestling closer to the source as if he could merge with the warmth. If his icy skin bothered Malik from the few points of contact they had, the other man didn’t show it, content with having a trembling pretty boy caged within his crossed legs. Malik’s arms circled around him, further trapping in his wonderful heat to share with his favorite victim while he idly clicked through the pictures on his camera. Fond memories of mere minutes ago.

“I like this one,” Malik said, though Jonas moreso felt the comment from the vibration against his cheek. “You look so cute with your li’l nose all scrunched up like that.”

That was because Jonas was desperately trying not to inhale anymore water when he was able to be dunked under for a fourth time. Rather than acknowledging whatever sinister photo was displayed on the viewfinder, the poor boy squeezed his eyes shut as if he was hoping to conserve warmth in his orbitals as well. He pushed closer into Malik’s sternum, shuddering when he felt a burning hand card through his wet locks, separating a few tangles now that the knots had been loosened. It felt heavenly to have another touch melting away the freezing pain that gnawed every square inch of his body right down through the tissue. A few water drops were displaced from the petting, feeling like tiny electrical shocks each time they landed down his neck, but it was a small price to pay at this point.

“We should send this one to your parents,” The hand that had been stroking Jonas’s hair trailed down to rub the back of his neck, fire hot fingers helping to create a wonderful friction of heat against the knobs of his spine.

Jonas hummed, more accurately groaned, too enthralled by the warmth beating through him. Sure, whatever Malik wanted, as long as it meant he could soak up the offered comfort for a few more minutes. Regrettably, the hand left to tap through the rest of the picture catalog, eager to pick out a few more Pulitzer Prize winners to be shown off to clients and Jonas’s family alike. Or perhaps Malik would keep them all to himself, a personal treasure trove. It didn’t matter to Jonas. Nothing mattered to Jonas right now. All he cared about was his tormentor and his unfairly high body temperature.

“What’d’ya think it’d be like if we tried boiling water next time?”

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amenders93 · 8 months

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8 Weeks till Chicken Run 2

Two weeks ago, we have learned about how first impressions may not always be accurate when it comes to future movie couples. In this case, Ginger is starting to believe Rocky isn't as helpful as she first thought. Despite the "flight training" he's giving the chickens, all he's done thus far is slack off and take advantage of their deal. And on top of all that, the chickens have been training for several days and they're still no closer to freedom than before, especially since some strange deliveries have been dropped off in the barn which makes their situation even more dire. Then last week, we saw how our determined hen showed a certain dashing rooster that she's starting to lose her patience with him and demands results by the next day or else their deal is off. She's also annoyed with the fact that he keeps calling her derogatory names just to be coy. Now for this week's post, we're going to see our cocky rooster try to give a certain firecracker hen the results she expects from him.

Let's pick up from the next morning where we find Ginger asleep in her bunk in hut 17 when she's suddenly woken up by voices outside. She goes out to investigate and she sees Rocky having a conversation with Nick and Fetcher and the rats have also given the rooster a sack full of merchandise he's asked for. Ginger interrupts this scene and asks Rocky why the crooked rats are here; Rocky is a little surprised to see that she knows the rats. Fetcher tells the rooster that Ginger doesn't think they're valuable. Which means that the rats don't think that she appreciates their talent for being sneaky little thieves. I'm sure she appreciates their talent, but only when the price doesn't include eggs which the chickens need to keep the Tweedys happy, especially the Mrs., and not end up being sent to the chop. Rocky, on the contrary, tells them that they are without a doubt the sneakiest, most light-fingered thieving parasites he's ever met.

Nick and Fetcher are quite flattered by this modesty the rooster is laying on them. When Nick asked about their payment in eggs, Ginger is shocked by this. Just when she's about to confront Rocky about it, he breezily explains to her that he promised the rats every egg that he lays this month. Nick asks when they can expect the first installment pay; Rocky answers that he's brewing one up as they speak and he'll keep them posted. The rats then walk away, thanking the rooster for doing business with him. They think that they're dealing with a real sucker but actually they're the real suckers in this case because Rocky conned them. He'll never really give them any eggs because roosters don't lay eggs; only hens can do that.

Rocky waves them goodbye and smiling all charming until he notices Ginger glaring at him with a "Are you kidding me?" sort of look. He questions her about this and she responds that he just lied to Nick and Fetcher. It's bad enough that she thinks he's a lazy, slacking, derogatory playboy but now it turns out that he's also a liar. He's really not impressing this girl any more than he was before. Rocky says that he technically didn't lie but that he just omitted certain truths and he'll still give the rats exactly what he promised. Ginger reminds him that what he gives them will be nothing because he can't lay eggs; Rocky just calmly says that nothing is what he'll give them. As the rooster checks out the merchandise the rats give him, the hen asks him what he'll give the chickens. That's when our charming rooster pulls out some suspenders and says that what he'll give the chickens is thrust, saying the word in a Scottish accent like Mac. Does anybody else besides me think that Rocky's Scottish accent sounded both cute and funny?

Later on that morning in the chicken yard, Bunty is wearing an aviator's helmet and goggles that Babs knitted and laying on her stomach on a modified bunk on wheels. Looped around the back of the bunk is the suspenders and three of the hens are pulling back on the bunk, stretching the suspenders as far back as they could. Rocky assures Bunty that this is a thrust exercise to help get her going on the flying with Ginger, Babs, Mac and a few other hens watching. Actually Ginger is judging the exercise, Babs is doing more knitting (as per usual) and Mac is taking more notes and doing more calculations. Meanwhile, Nick and Fetcher are continuing their heckling in makeshift bleachers while watching this attempt.

Rocky orders the hens to release the bunk which they do. Bunty rockets across the yard and with the other chickens cheering her on, she starts to flap her wings. The length of rope that was attached to the back of the bunk uncoiled and then went taut. The bunk stops short, shooting Bunty off it. The hen is still shooting along and flaps furiously until she slams into the chain-link fence. She bounces off the fence and hurtles back toward Nick and Fetcher who are still laughing at their attempts but then turn to screaming as Bunty slams into them and sends them all tumbling past Rocky, Ginger and the other hens until they crash.

Ginger gives Rocky a look that says "I told you so" and Rocky just sheepishly says "Oops" and chuckles nervously. All of a sudden, the roll call bells starts to ring. As the other chickens get into position, Babs is panicking to Ginger that she hasn't laid any eggs in three days. Rocky is pleading with Ginger to hide him again but all she's concerned about is her friend Babs. With the farmers coming, after he pleads with her for the third time, our ginger hen just yells at the cocky rooster to hide himself since she has to scurry with the others to get in line. Rocky then frantically searches for a place to hide, which later turns out to be a watering can.

Now further on at this point, Ginger is still not getting any results that she's looking for even though Rocky is trying (if we can call it that). She sees that rather than being the miracle she prayed for, he's turning out to be a lazy, slacking derogatory playboy with a tension for lying. And dishonesty is something that our hen just cannot stand. However it will only get worse from there in next week's post. For those of you who saw the movie, I think you all know what's going to happen. But like I said in an earlier post, soon-to-be love interests might only bring out the worst in each other rather than their best but as we all clearly see in movies, things between couples can only get better after they get a little bit worse. Luckily next week's post will be the last one of the moments with Rocky and Ginger disliking each other. Then we get to the good moments - the ones that lead straight to romance.

Anyway this is my fifth weekly Rocky/Ginger moment post commemorating the upcoming sequel to Chicken Run. I hope you enjoyed this post. There will be 7 other posts about the first film coming up in the future as well as one monthly post about the sequel. Waiting for this long-awaited sequel may not be easy but these posts are making it easier as the release date draws nearer.

#chicken run #chicken run 2 #chicken run dawn of the nugget #dawn of the nugget #rocky and ginger #ginger and rocky #rocky #ginger #countdown

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bloody-spider77 · 8 months

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10 years (Part 2)- A small TicciWork fanfic by tic-toc-clock77

Part 1; https://www.tumblr.com/tic-toc-clock77/729273961267003392/so-remember-when-toby-and-clockworks-creator?source=share

10 years is a long time, they both knew it as they sat in the kitchen of the main cabin; Clockwork seated on a stool with Toby close to her on the counter. They'd been contemplating moving out since they're first attempt at getting some time to themselves resulted in Toby nearly being murdered by a proxy of Zalgo.

Not wanting to repeat their same mistakes, they struggled to find a way to keep moving with their lives without causing harm. Clockwork clicked her tongue as she continued to sew up the old stab wound, months ago now from Zalgo's proxy. It brought a pang to both their chests to recall those horrid two weeks they'd spent terrified for each other.

"I'm sorry, Nat." Toby sighed, looking down at his sneakers. Natalie forced a laugh as she sewed the stitches together, on the final loop, the stitch held together his skin. It would last probably a couple more months before they'd have to do it up again.

"It was a mistake on both our parts." She said, grabbing the scissors and cutting the remaining thread so it wouldn't droop. After it was finished, Toby hopped down from the counter and helped her put everything away.

"What do we do now?" Natalie asked as she peered out past the dining room into the living room at everyone running around and screaming. It was draining, truly to be around so many people at once but what could they do? With Toby's status as Slender's right hand man and his important role to play, could they go anywhere at all?

Toby shrugged, as he had done many times before since they started thinking to move. The two 27 year olds reluctantly made their way out to the living room. The TV was blasting and BEN and Jeff's screaming at each other was going right into Natalie's ears.

She gritted her teeth at the sounds all around her, her nails dug into the couch's arm. Taking notice, Toby grabbed her arm and stood, he lowered his hand down to hers, his rough and bandaid covered fingers ran down her sweater's soft fabric as they grabbed each other's hand as they'd done many times before.

Despite both their hands being calloused from holding their weapons tightly for so long, they felt soft to one another. Once they exited the cabins door, they jumped the two steps off the porch and took off running, Toby's sneakers and her boots hitting the crunchy December snow.

Despite it being midday and the sun shining down on them, it was freezing. It was slightly reminiscent of the first time they'd ever met, in the early snow of September which wasn't very frequent where they'd once lived but it had happened that year. That night when they'd killed her ex boyfriend together was something, though strange, they held very dear.

Running out of breath, they halted at a random spot, it's trees were much closer together and they could probably chop enough down to make a small cabin. It was Toby's first thought as he looked around, sure they'd have to steal furniture from their victims and maybe ask Helen and Judge Angels, two workers who lived outside the main cabin and had built their own together, for help but it still seemed like they could build a small cozy cabin in the spot.

"We could use this." Clockwork thought aloud, admiring the cedar, fir and spruce trees. She broke away from Toby momentarily to feel around at them. She ran her hand along the trees. She pictured it; some hard work and dedication could make it work out fine. "You think we could manage?" He snapped her out of her daydream, placing a hand on the other side of the tree. She nodded softly.

After a moment of staring at each other, she rushed herself toward him, wrapping her arms around his back, he did the same to her. She rested her head on his chest, despite the weather, they were both warm thanks to each other. It could work, it really could, all they had to do now was ask.

Part 3, coming soon! (P.s. all parts of this will be in my Ticciwork fanfic on Wattpad)

#creepypasta #clockwork #clockwork creepypasta #natalie ouellette #ticci toby #toby rogers #tobias rogers #ticciwork #toby x clockwork #🕷️'s writing

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moonfurthetemmie · 2 years

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Potential Meeting of the DS Verses

anyways hi i have writing

Heed the warnings please! Tell me if I need to tag for anything else

This is just like ‘hm what’s a horrible way for DS and H!DS to meet’

Dream looked up in surprise when a security alert popped up on his computer and started beeping loudly. That alert was only for when the Meme Squad had been found inside the castle. It wasn't a holiday, so they hadn't come to make mischief, and none of them had been captured recently.

Now that he had been pulled out of his concentration, however, he could feel a familiar negative aura. He sighed. Nightmare and his friends must've been awfully bored today.

As this man doesn't have a sleep schedule, he didn't realize right away that it was about 5 P.M. He'd be forgiven for not knowing that this is around when the Meme Squad has dinner, but they're almost never seen out and about around this time, and never once in the castle. Even so...

A strange chill went down his spine as he left his office. Something wasn't right. He couldn't put his finger on it, but the feeling gnawed at him from the inside.

He passed guards in the halls who were on high alert. Dream's office was, for the most part, sound proofed so he could focus, but now he could hear the alarms blaring throughout the building. They all nodded to him as he passed, confirming that the area was all clear. It did little to comfort him.

He sensed Nightmare a few floors below him, and made his way to the elevator. As he descended, that feeling grew stronger. He tightened his grip on the sword's scabbard, trying to figure out what was wrong-

He realized what it was, just as the elevator doors opened.

He could only sense three people on the entire floor.

A guard's body feel backwards into the elevator, their expression frozen in horror and confusion. Dream almost gagged at the stench of blood as he stepped out of the elevator. It was completely silent, except for the alarm.

He was no stranger to it. He'd been the head of this organization for decades, and in the beginning had to do most of the work himself. But this was different. This was his home, with people he knew and cared about.

And they'd all been massacred.

Dream's hands began to shake. This wasn't right. Nightmare might've been a criminal, often a thief and frequently a vandal, but he wasn't a murderer. Nor was Error, or Cross.

The few deaths they did have on their hands were self-defense, a result of lashing out in fear. This...

Dream looked around at the corpses. Throats slashed, heads cut off, stomachs sliced open. A handful had been hung, wherever there was something to loop strings around. There were crumbled piles of clothes in dusty piles here and there.

Some of the humans who'd been hung were still twitching and gurgling as they bleed out from the cut on their throat, their faces pink as the blood rushed to their heads. They weakly reached out to Dream, trying to lift their heads to see him properly as they'd been hung by their feet.

This was anything but self-defense.

With practiced ease, Dream smothered his fear. He'd seen scenes like this before. It wasn't pretty, of course, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle.

His hands didn't stop shaking, but instead of fear, now, it was anger. These were his people. And whoever did this--Not the Meme Squad, he was sure--had slaughtered them. They would not escape justice.

Fortunately, or perhaps not, he could tell that the murderers were fairly close. He paid close attention to their emotions as he made is way towards them, stepping over the remains of his employees (and, and Dream now saw, a few people who'd been in their care. Some victims and criminals who were being rehabilitated. All of them, indiscriminately cut down.)

As Dream got closer, he realized that there was, in fact, someone else on the floor, besides him and the three perpetrators. Their emotions were very weak, but now Dream could sense the terror and desperation. The murderers seemed to be standing around them. Dream could sense their amusement.

His knuckles turned white on the hilt of his sword. He didn't remember drawing it, but having the protection of a weapon was a welcome, if small comfort.

This floor had been full of guards. How had they all been cut down so easily?

For a moment, Dream's mind drifted toward another 'visitor' with a negative aura- Obsidian. That man had all the physical strength of a fully grown lion, and a cruelty and wickedness Dream had never seen before. But this aura was much, much weaker than Obsidian's, and Dream had all sorts of alarms in place to warn him as soon as Obsidian showed his face again, and even he couldn't cause this much devastation in the short time it had been since the alarm went off. If Jet had been with him, it would've been possible, but there was only one negative aura.

Besides...this wasn't Obsidian's style. It wasn't brutal enough. Not enough skulls broken against the wall, or shattered bones. All the wounds were made with a blade, or magic strings.

The strings looked disturbingly like the ones Error employed, but she didn't kill the guards if she could help it, even when she was breaking out her friends.

Dream's mind raced, running through all the possibilities as he approached a door at the end of the hall. The people Obsidian had working for him, some criminals that had recently broken out, a group of interest that had made is displeasure with JR well known. But none of them matched up with the evidence. The only one Dream knew with a negative aura like that was Nightmare, and those strings were very distinctive.

But...Surely, it couldn't be the Meme Squad. Surely.

He could hear voices from the room now. They weren't bothering to keep their voices down.

"...on, hold still. It's just going to hurt more if you struggle."

"It's not like you're going to survive this, anyway. Just let us make it funny."

A much, much weaker voice. Dream realized with horror that it was Finch.

He couldn't make out what Finch was saying, but it didn't matter.

"We- Oh. Wait. He's-"

Dream kicked open the door, interrupting the one who was speaking.

"...Here." The man sighed. "You sure took your damn time, didn't you?"

Dream stared at him. He looked chillingly like Nightmare. But Nightmare didn't have bloodstained boots, or a scar over his eye, or eyes like a predator sizing up his prey.

One of his friends, the one with the strings, who similarly looked far too much like Error for comfort, was using her strings to pull several different bodies into poses, including Finch. She looked Dream up and down, and snorted. "You look like shit."

Finch looked up at Dream weakly. His eyes were hazy. He was bleeding from a wound in his chest, opposite his heart, and his leg was bent at an odd angle, but if Dream could get him out of there quickly he might make it.

Dream was glad he'd called the guards and had been optimistic enough to tell them to bring a healer.

He pointed his sword at the other Error. Seeing his captain so badly wounded fueled his anger, and he had to keep himself from lunging at her.

"Release them."

She scoffed. "What, even the corpses? They won't care." She tugged on the strings, pulling on Finch's bad leg and making him hiss in pain. "Finch Number Two's not going to make it, anyways. Night's spear went right through 'em. I'm surprised he hasn't bled out yet already."

Dream narrowed his eyes. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and moved just in time to block the other Cross's sword.

The force of the impact made his foot slide back, and he grunted. She was much, much stronger than the Cross he knew. She grinned at him, taunting him. The edge of her sword was nicked and uneven, but still very, very sharp. Dream pushed, and unbalanced her enough to step back and swing. She ducked with ease and immediately went for his neck.

Dream barely managed to move out of the way.

"Hey, don't kill him," the other Nightmare called, thought he didn't sound very concerned. "I still want to meet the other me."

'Cross' huffed, and planted the tip of her sword in the ground. "You suck. Fine." She turned her gaze back to Dream, with the same look the other Nightmare had when Dream first entered the room.

Dream glanced at the three of them again. He could sense the guards coming down the elevator, but he didn't know if they'd be here in time.

They didn't seem super interested in hurting him, at the moment. Just curious. But he wasn't sure how long that would last, and he needed 'Error' to stop aggravating Finch's wounds until help could arrive.

"How did you three manage to decimate everyone on this floor in the time it took for me to get down here?" He demanded.

'Nightmare' shrugged, like it was no big deal. "Well, we'd already killed a bunch of the guards and stuff before the alarm went off. We didn't want to deal with too many armed people, y'know? That'd just make it harder." He summoned his spear and twirled it around as he continued. "Pulled one into a closet here, stabbed one and tossed her out the window there. It's pretty easy to thin your numbers and stay hidden. Either your security sucks or you really never thought a few serial killers to sneak in."

"Ehhhh..." 'Error' tied off a few of her strings. One of the corpses was now posed behind a chair, pointing across the table with their mouth open.

"...Yeah, okay, we didn't sneak in," 'Nightmare' said. "We just kinda accidentally dropped in. Scared us as much as we scared him," he said, nodding to Finch. Finch barely reacted. He looked like he was about to pass out.

The guards were close. And the other Nightmare looked towards the door, and frowned. He could sense them too. "Shit, we gotta go guys. He called the guards."

'Cross' groaned. "Fucking killjoy." She dismissed her sword, as the other Error dropped all her strings. She opened a portal, and before Dream could stop them they were gone.

Dream rushed to Finch's side instead, silently cursing as he saw just how much blood he'd lost. He might not make it, after all.

The guards entered with a small squad of healers, who immediately got between Dream and Finch and set to work on keeping Finch stable until they could get him to the medical wing.

One of the guards looked around the room. Her eyes landed on the strings, and the people who were tied up in them. She frowned. "...Isn't that that meme of the two women yelling at that cat?" She focused on the strings. "Those look like Error's strings. What the on earth-."

Dream sheathed his sword, and took a shaky breathe. "I believe," he said darkly, "We have another, much worse Meme Squad to look out for."

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feverinfeveroutfic · 11 months

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flowers for alexander | chapter twenty-two

The entire week, the circus wound its way all across California, beginning from the coastline down into Los Angeles and then San Diego, to which they then wound their way across the rolling, barren desert to the hole in the earth that was Las Vegas. At that point, fall had overcome the region, and the intensity of the summer heat had waned out from underneath the airships. However, given they floated above the desert floor, and Death Angel's airship had caved in upon itself, and thus the five of them had to ride with either Testament or Exodus which resulted in slightly crowded ships, things were still reeling with the heat from the unforgiving sun. The morning before they left San Diego for southern Nevada, Florence awoke next to Eric with a sheen of sweat on her brow, while he had rolled over all the way to the window and put his shirt on top of his head. He stirred and reached out with one hand to her body: though she still wasn't showing much yet, she knew it would only be a matter of time before she did, and she hoped that the tour would finish before she became too big.

And though it had only been a whole week, Florence could already feel herself growing with the life inside of her. She knew that she was about to grow some more before too long, and yet she was surrounded by so many people, one of whom was a young boy.

Andy and Rob both bunked with them, and thus, she and Eric couldn't have any time alone for the time being. The room was already small and cramped with the two of them, and even with Andy and Rob sleeping head to toe down on the floor, it proved to be quite a bit warmer than she would have liked: it was here she sighed a sigh of relief that she still had a long way to go in her pregnancy. But when Eric rolled back away from the window, and Florence was greeted by the milky twilight over the very brim of the horizon: she couldn't tell if she could see the Rocky Mountains off in the distance or if they had to fly closer for her to even so much as take notice.

Something inside of her moved. It was too soon, but she knew about it without question.

Nathalie.

“I already love her so much,” she confessed to Eric before the boys came into the room; there was something about the name that tickled her, something so familiar and yet so strange at the same time.

“I do, too,” he added with a gentle stroke of her belly. “I have to admit, though, I'm a little scared.”

“I am, too,” she confessed. “We're bringing the next Peterson into the world right as the world is crumbling all around us...” Her voice trailed off, and the memory of the night before faded with the limit of curfew.

When she and Alex were together, the feelings burned between the two of them, and she was certain that she had found her one and only, and it made so much more sense when he confessed that he wanted to marry her. The first time they lay down together flashed through her mind: it was the day that she brought him to the garage the first time. He wore nothing but a little black leather jacket that showed off a small sliver of skin on his waist, a snug T-shirt underneath, and skin-tight denim jeans. His long jet-black curls seemed a bit more plush back then as well.

Indeed, if her memory rang true, his jeans were so snug that they crinkled as he walked along the smooth concrete floor in that garage. It was such a strange and subtle noise, and something that she was all too unfamiliar with; when she heard it, she glanced about the room for a second before she turned to him and the befuddled look on his boyish face.

“Be careful, those things could crush your little nuts,” she teased him at one point with a wag of her finger.

“Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you,” he teased her as he slid his thumbs into the belt loops to keep them up over his hips. “Crush me under the dead weight of the machinery here.”

“I could never do that to you,” she assured him with a shake of her head. “I do think of kissing you down low, though.” She flashed him a wink, to which he raised his eyebrows at her. She lowered her gaze to his full little lips, perfect for the softest kisses.

“You're just a cute little boy,” she said as she tucked her rag into her pocket. She turned her head in either direction to ensure they were alone. Alone with a pair of cars up on lifts, one on each side of them. He cocked his hip to the side as if to flirt with her, but she put her arms around his slender little waist nonetheless. “Just a cute little—boy—” Though she was in her black jumpsuit, she had undone the zipper at the front so she could press her chest against his own without having to worry about wiping anything on the front of him. She gently kissed him on those soft cherry lips, much to his amusement.

When Florence held back to look into his face, he had turned as bright red as a cherry tomato.

“What's the matter?” she teased him. “Never had a girl kiss you before?”

He swallowed and bowed his head. Her hands were clean, and thus she ran her fingers through the soft silken curls on the side of his head, which only made his face turn even redder. How a boy could be so self-assured with that outfit and yet the moment a girl kissed him he was a speechless hot mess still remained a mystery to her.

“Come here...” Florence held him by the hand, and she guided him over to the other side of the garage, away from the cars and the slight depressions in the floor underneath both of them lest the lifts come down at one point. She led him over to the closet with the water heater inside, however, it had been encapsulated in a layer of insulation against the small space inside of there.

“You sure you want to be in here?” he asked her with a clearing of his throat.

“Positive,” she chirped with a twinkle in her eye. She closed the door behind her just enough so they had a sliver of light over them; Florence turned to him and the hooded look to those deep soulful eyes. He slowly nudged a lock of hair away from his brow with the tip of his finger: her eyes wandered down his beautiful body, to that small stripe of skin between his jacket and his jeans, to the way that his legs were shaped, especially when he crossed them down by his ankles; he had on those big white sneakers to accentuate the length and sleekness of his legs.

“Just a beautiful boy,” she breathed.

“You want to make a baby, don't you?” he chuckled.

“Unless you want to,” she told him as she put her arms around his neck. Florence pressed her body against his once more, to which he put his arms up over his head as if he was showing off his body to her. Her fingers caressed the small of his back, now exposed from the bottom of that jacket, and she held onto the top of his belt with her fingertips.

“I'm guessing you wanna take my pants off?” he asked her in a soft whisper.

“Let me show you how it's done, baby,” she began. “First, I want you to peel off my jumpsuit.”

“Like a banana?”

“Like a banana.” She chuckled at that, and Alex held onto the zipper pull underneath her chest and gave it a good tug the rest of the way down to her waist. He then reached up and peeled off the sides of the suit, off her shoulders and down her arms; Florence slipped her hands out from the cuffs on the sleeves so the suit hung halfway off her body. He then helped her the rest of the way out, only to find that she only wore her underwear beneath that heavy protective denim. She stood there in her T-shirt and panties before him.

“How perfect, right?” she asked him, and he swallowed again. “Now I want you to take my top off for me.”

He was hesitant, but he held onto the hem of her shirt for her; Florence raised up her arms so he could take it off for her. She stood there in her underwear before him, as he let her shirt fall to the concrete floor next to them.

“Now, comes the fun part,” she started again, that time in a husky whisper right in his ear. “I want you... to kiss every inch of me until you start feeling hard. When you start feeling hard, I want you to drop your pants.”

It was easy enough for him, and when she recalled it, he did in fact drop his jeans for her. She reached down inside to feel him, and he loved it. She kissed his neck, and he loved it. She ran her fingers through his black hair, and he loved it. She ground against him, low and slow, until he whimpered to her that he was coming for her, and she knew for a fact that he loved it.

She put her arms around him and kissed him again to seal the deal.

“I'll love you forever, sweet Nathan,” she vowed to him, once more right into his ear.

It was then she opened her eyes again, that time to a thicker veil of light over the horizon outside the window. Like a distant memory, nothing more than dust in the wind of the low desert at sunrise.

Nathan. Nathalie. Of course.

But then, there was Eric and what he locked away inside of him. There had to be a reason as to why he chose the name for her before she was even able to suggest it for herself.

Florence rolled her head over the pillow for a look at the compartment door next to them: those two boys were sound asleep down on the floor, which meant she had to take great care not to step on either of them once she and Eric climbed out of bed once daylight came about. On the other side of the door, across the narrow hallway, was Alex, sound asleep himself.

There was so much more there as she ruminated over their recent caresses behind Eric's back. If only she could undo things and return to his arms, to the softness of his body. But alas, she could not, not with a baby on the way and not with two boys down on the floor next to her.

It almost wasn't fair, and more so the case when she realized that Alex was still boyish after all this time. Still round and soft in the most perfect way, even if he had grown up a great deal since the breakup.

If only she could still hold onto him without Eric's knowledge, and if only she could find a way with Eric as well.

She thought about that night when she and Eric had gotten together for a round between them, and she found out she was pregnant shortly afterwards. How ridiculous it was of her to even think of leaving him, especially when she wondered more about the man who had married her, the man who lay next to her there on the bed, the man who planted his seed inside of her. This was particularly the case when she remembered that she and Alex only had actual sex that one time in the closet: the other times, they either used their hands or their mouths, or it was simply slowly making out with each other.

He loved to make out. He was a slow sensual boy, and everything echoed him whenever the mood struck between them.

Maybe that was it as she thought about it more, and as she finally dozed off again. Maybe Eric had given her what Alex could never give her, and that was somewhat a dream of hers.

She awoke again to the feel of Eric's lips on her neck and his hands on her belly.

“Mmm, good morning,” she blurted out with a break in her voice. She opened her eyes all the way to find that the sun had barely rose over the horizon outside, but she had a feeling that they were flying lower to the ground as those two boys down below them shuffled about as if they were preparing for landing. Eric kissed her again and lifted off of her; it was right then a quick, loud blare of the alarm pierced through the contented silence like an ice pick. She had heard that alarm once before in her life, and a part of her wished that she would never have to hear it again.

“What the hell was that?” Rob asked, slightly worried.

“Sounded like the radiation alarm,” Florence explained. “Don't panic, though. It's just a sign that we're getting closer to Vegas. You know, with the leftover radiation from all the testing they did up at the Nevada Test Site sixty miles away. There's some bits and pieces still lingering behind from all those blasts. The alarm will sound when there's a sudden rise in background radiation—” She was cut off by another bark of the alarm. “—like right there. It's residual amounts, not nearly as intense as it is up there, nor is it anything like... we're going to be exposed to Chernobyl levels of radiation, either.”

“It's just to tell us that the levels have gone up,” Eric followed along.

“Exactly! They've gone up suddenly and in amounts more than we're acquainted with as well.”

The alarm barked a few more times before they finally touched down right outside of the Strip, at the empty lot across the street from the airport. The Las Vegas Strip, still standing tall and glorious against the incoming morning light as they all filed off the airships. The view of Sin City, as Florence knew that she had committed a sin with Alex, and she knew that Eric had hid some sin from her as well. She had no idea as to how long they were going to be there, but she needed some answers from the latter in particular, and if that meant she had to cross some lines yet again like she did in Santa Barbara, then she would have to do it.

“I reckon it's gonna be a while, gang,” Zetro declared. “We may as well hang out around here like we did in Santa Barb, and in San Diego.”

Right as he said that, Andy, Mark, and Rob took to the curb with a little acoustic guitar and a big five gallon bucket, much to Florence's inquisitiveness. She glanced around for Francine, who had rode in on Exodus' airship, but before she could do anything about it, Eric clasped a hand to her shoulder. She turned her attention to him with her eyebrows raised.

“Alex, Lou, and I are gonna look for things to eat,” he told her.

“I'll stay here with the boys in case something happens to the ships,” she assured him.

“Anything special you want?”

“I'm really wanting something avocado and pork,” she replied, to which he wrinkled his nose. “Be lucky this is only the tamest of cravings I've had so far, big fella.” She then planted a kiss on his cheek, and he returned the favor for her. Chuck and Greg had already gone as well, and Florence took her seat next to Mark, who ran his fingers through his dark nappy hair. Through her tired eyes, she could see the beginnings of dreadlocks at the back of his head. Andy parked the bucket bottom side up between his legs, while Rob strummed his guitar with his fingertips.

“What's the matter, Florence?” Mark asked her.

“I think my best friend found her place with Exodus,” she said with a sigh. “Plus, I can't stop thinking about Alex. And I feel like Eric's hiding something that he won't tell me.”

“It's times like this, you gotta sing the blues,” he declared. “And, seeing as we're down here in Vegas, let's Elvis it up a little bit, too.”

Andy drummed his fingers on the bottom of the bucket to find the right groove. He tapped his foot on the pavement to imitate his kick drum, to which he moved at a slow steady rhythm.

“We need Alex and his metronome,” Mark joked, but Andy persisted. Florence nodded along to it once he steadied it out.

“Perfect,” Rob declared, and he plucked the strings on his guitar. He swept across the body in an upwards motion to counteract Andy's steady drumming.

Twelve bar blues.

“Do you know if they still test out there?” Rob asked her.

“Test? Like… nuclear testing?”

“Yeah. 'Cause I just think about the alarm we kept hearing in there.”

“Not in decades, no. I think they stopped when my parents were kids because World War II was over at that point and it had been several years as well. They also had fallout concentrated over southern Utah and lots of people here in Vegas complained. I also think the operation had just run its course.”

“Run its course,” Mark echoed her. “Run its course like a doomed romance.” He hummed a makeshift melody to tie what the two boys next to him played, to which he closed his eyes and nodded his head along to it.

“Is this going to be on the new album?” she asked him with a sly smile.

“Maybe,” he replied. “When we get the instruments together, we'll try and jam something out of this with Dennis and Gus.”

“Jam something out and let it mushroom,” Florence followed along. “Like a mushroom cloud.”

“Like a mushroom cloud,” Mark sang.

“Like a mushroom cloud of sin,” she continued.

“A mushroom cloud of sin—” He then stood up and gyrated his hips from side to side and swung his arm about as if to imitate Elvis, and the three of them laughed out loud.

“Let the mushroom grow in the garden,” she stated as a spoken word sort of fashion. “In the garden, where's there's flowers for Alexander—”

“For Alex!” Rob said as he continued to play the riff.

“And a fountain of youthful water for Eric Stanley—”

Mark turned to the side and jumped up and kicked one foot in the air: his hair fanned back from his head like a long mane from a galloping horse.

“Wouldn't be something if a mushroom cloud rose up over there when I did that?” he suggested with a twinkle in his eye.

“Do it again!” Florence quipped. He turned around and jumped up again, and that time, a rocket shot up from somewhere on the strip and exploded on the far eastern side. Mark turned to the three of them, stunned.

“Holy shit!” Rob decreed.

“Yeah, where'd that come from?” Florence demanded as the remainder of the rocket fizzled out like that of fireworks.

“Mushroom cloud of sin,” Andy said, and all the while he never gave up that steady rhythm on the bottom of the bucket.

“Mushroom blues, baby,” Mark said as he raised his hands over his head and slowly danced to Andy and Rob's jamming. “Where there's water flowing all super heated like...” Florence smiled at him, but she knew that she would have to dig up those mushrooms with that superheated water to find the truth with Eric.

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decks-writing-blog · 2 years

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Skeleton, Shade, and Slime: Chapter 2: Apparition

The odd little horned fellow quickly proved themself worthy of Beheaded’s initial wariness. In fact, of all of Beheaded’s occasional companions they were probably the most dangerous in combat, using their small size to their advantage to avoid damage while methodically cutting down their foes with their odd shaped blade.

And when they did take damage, they could heal. The exact method of which, Beheaded couldn’t quite figure out as they seemed to just focus hard, bending forward slightly, and with a flash of white light, the cracks in their head that leaked strange black fog instead of blood closed. The biggest downside to this was that they seemed to need to hold still for it and it took longer to perform than Beheaded took to down a healing potion, not by much but enough to be even more of a detriment. And against a particularly fast foe like the Scarecrow it was a pretty big issue.

On the other side of the Mausoleum, Beheaded could only watch as the Horned fellow’s attempt to heal was interrupted by the Scarecrow popping up out of the ground to slash its scythe directly into their already cracked and heavily leaking face. They shattered with a sound reminiscent of pottery being shattering, allowing the strange darkness inside them to burst out.

It was far from the first time Beheaded had watched a companion die and like every other such instance, the time loop would bring them back. Or perhaps not as the Horned being was from off the island and thus a stranger to the time loop. Even if it did though, they’d been doomed to be overtaken by the Malaise eventually anyway and that was worse than true death. But… but… still! How dare anyone or anything do such a thing to Beheaded’s new pal? They dashed over.

Already weakened and never particularly sturdy to begin with, it didn’t take long to finish off the Scarecrow. Their raged induced recklessness resulted in them getting a nasty couple of slashes across their torso that soaked their shirt in blood, causing it to stick uncomfortably to them. They hardly cared though as they stepped back from the Scarecrow's corpse to cast their gaze around on the ground, looking for whatever was left of their new companion’s body. If being from off the island did mean the time loop couldn’t bring them back the way Beheaded’s other companions always had been, they wanted to bury it. Or, that probably being too much work, they could put some rocks over it as like a sort of burial to make themself feel a little better.

They found no trace of it though. But instead, now no longer focused solely on vengeance, they caught site of an apparition hovering in the air a few feet off the ground. Its shape was very similar to that of the Horned being’s expect instead of legs its lower half trailed off into tentacles. Most of all though its form was made of the blackest black substance Beheaded had ever seen, so dark it looked flat, except for its white eyes. Making its head an inverse of the Horned being’s.

How long had that been floating there before Beheaded noticed it? It had to have something to with their Horned friend, right? It’s shape was too similar for such not to be the case.

Just to be safe, Beheaded quickly unhooked their flask from around their belt and took a drink from it, healing their body near to as healed as it could be. Putting it back, they took a step towards the apparition. Holding their knife tight in one hand, they lifted the other to wave at it.

It didn’t respond with even so much as a head tilt in their direction. Without pupils it was hard to tell for sure but it didn’t seem to be looking at anything at all.

Beheaded tried again, this time stepping firmly in front of it.

Still no response. Odd.

With a shrug, they stepped closer and poked it. Its form was cold and somehow without texture, much like the Horned being’s finger had been. That finally got its attention though as it slashed at them with a weapon that seemed to be made as the same substance as itself.

Beheaded jumped back, lifting their dagger, ready to defend themself. It didn’t pursue though so they did nothing yet either. Today – if such a term could still be use upon the island – sure was proving to be the most interesting in a long while. Even if the loss of their new companion still sucked, at least new stuff was happening, a rare thing when within a time loop. And hopefully, being from off the island wouldn’t mean…

The subtle sound of small rocks tumbling down had Beheaded snapping around to face it. It was… the Horned being, jumping down from the broken ceiling that served as the Mausoleum's front entrance these days. Whole and intact, their cloak was soaked anew from the rain.

Their head titled Beheaded’s way, acknowledging their presence for just a moment before they approached the ghost. As soon as they were within a few feet of it, it snapped to face them, rushing in for an attack.

Curious and trusting the fellow to be able to take care of themself, Beheaded stepped further back out of the way.

The Horned being met the ghost’s slash with on of their own, blocking it and knocking it back at the same time. They transitioned that momentum into another slash and then another, both connecting as the ghost seemed to have no interest in trying to dodge or block. The ghost’s shape shuddered and broke apart into a thousand little particles of black fog. All of which rushed into the Horned fellow’s being.

And just like that, it seemed whatever had just occurred was done. The Horned fellow shook themself off and hooked their blade onto the back of their cloak once more. They spared Beheaded another brief look before setting to exploring the room. Exploration and investigation seemed to be their goal here.

Beheaded would’ve loved to ask questions about what just happened but obviously couldn’t and so just settled into watching their new companion some more instead. They could speculate in their own mind about the apparition though. Not that they had much experience with such things to go off of but seemingly perhaps that’s just what happened with the Horned fellow’s body broke. Meaning… they couldn’t die in truth? That’d be pretty neat. If so, that was another trait they had in common. Making new friends was always a fun time.

#dead cells #hollow knight #crossover fic #mute buddies #beheaded #little ghost #halloween 2022

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currentlyprocrastinating · 2 years

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hi. another thing here. i got inspired and wanted to write something with pilot and saeran interacting. i find pilot pretty interesting as a concept alone, and i hope you guys do, too!

note: pilot is not the result of MPD or DID, etc. she's a product of squirrel's rifter blood, to put it simply. a means of protecting her mind from the insane, mind-bending things she deals with. her powers, after all, draw her into extra-dimensional situations. so, on a basic level, it's a similar concept, but yeah, it's not the same thing. just wanted to clarify in advance :)

Warnings: None! (unless you count unedited/not beta-read lmao)

Pairing: Squirrel x Saeran

Word Count: 1673

==============================

Her eyes were locked onto his, unwaveringly hard-set. Burning gold and dense green. A brick wall built in the form of his lover's face.

And yet, that was a stark difference between the eyes staring him down and the eyes of the girl he met:

Squirrel's eye contact felt natural, usually; was lacking at times; was slightly forced at others. Saeran knew she had struggled with it her whole life, that it was a learned, active skill for her. And even when she was trying to make a point or be silly about it, Squirrel wasn't very good at purposefully holding eye contact for long periods of time.

On the other hand, Pilot had been almost glaring at him for a solid twenty-seven seconds now, without so much as a twitch of the face, a flutter of an eyelash, a shift of her gaze. Saeran had been staring right back, albeit much less rigidly, not really knowing what else to do.

Pilot was rather unpredictable, despite her necessity for routine.

Saeran didn't know why she was out, but he hoped it wasn't something terrible. He only really saw her whenever Squirrel had to "recalibrate," but that wasn't what was happening here. Because she was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding one steaming mug in each hand, and staring tiny daggers into his very soul.

Had he... done something wrong?

He tried to think. He wracked his brain — had Squirrel seemed upset lately? Well, she had been stressed due to her new Trainer assignment, but she hadn't ever expressed any frustration at him.

His uncertain eyes took in her stiff form once again before settling on her tense face. He swallowed and hoped it was subtle.

"H-has... something happened?" Saeran asked quietly. He tugged nervously at a belt loop.

Her eyes darted to his shifting hand in a millisecond — like they never moved. She drew in a wavering breath and released it slowly. Her dry lips parted — her tongue wet them — and she spoke: voice rough, steady, and matter-of-fact.

"Yes."

"Oh." To be honest, he hadn't been expecting that answer. Wishful hoping, he presumed.

His hand found his collar, gave it a few fidgeting pulls. He found his voice.

"Ah, um... What... what was it...?"

He was one step away from asking if he had done something wrong, but he had been learning, over the last year, to not give into that insecurity.

She cleared her throat quietly, and her piercing stare finally fell away. Still, her tense posture and strange expression had his heart racing anxiously. He settled his hand over it, loosely clutched at his shirt, and felt some reprieve in the familiar action.

Her eyes were on his hand once more, but this time, they softened ever so slightly.

Pilot looked at his face again, then sharply looked away.

"Work problems," she answered tersely. Her gaze hesitantly passed over him. She took a few stiff steps closer.

She was starting to look less intimidating and more... uncertain.

"How bad?" Saeran prompted. He was certainly relieved to know that he wasn't the source of the problem, but that didn't take away from the fact that he didn't really know what it meant for Pilot to be out like this. The only time it had happened before had been... "bad," to put it lightly.

"...Bad enough for me to be stuck here," Pilot mumbled, again shuffling closer. "But it's not what you think," she added, raising her voice. "Probably." She stood just a few feet in front of him now. Their gazes locked again, and hers wasn't quite as sharp as before. "It's cumulative."

That didn't settle his worries much at all. If it was cumulative, that meant Squirrel hadn't been taking care of her mental health in one way or another. Whether she was downplaying her stress to him, pushing down certain things entirely, or anything else, it chipped at his heart. He knew she liked to keep work and home life separate, but Saeran still wanted to be there for her. And if not him... she had an on-site therapist to talk to. Was she not utilizing that?

He was well aware that sometimes emotions and mental states snuck up on people. That sometimes things felt fine, that one had no idea how bad things really were. And that, sometimes, talking things out just wasn't enough.

But this was total whiplash for him. He knew she had been stressed, but from his perceptive perspective, she still seemed to be fairing better than the month after they escaped Mint Eye. She had seemed... a little off, but again, he equated that to the stress she vocalized.

Saeran couldn't help feeling guilty that something this big had slipped through his fingers so easily.

"Hey—" Pilot stepped closer again, hesitation more evident than ever on her face. But it melted a moment later, and she held out one of the steaming mugs. "Don't give me that face, okay? We d— She doesn't want you feeling guilty about this."

He slowly accepted the mug from her, his fingers brushing over her hand as he did so. He didn't miss how she turned a little pink as her hand retreated.

"Hot chocolate," she blurted, nails clinking against her own mug. "I... I know you like it, s-so... I figured it would help. Uhm..." She exhaled and stared down at her dark drink.

Saeran's chest warmed pleasantly; a smile curved his lips. It was really sweet of her to try and bring him comfort like this. The guilt still lingered — he would have to talk this through with Squirrel later — but this gesture helped settle his nerves for the time being. "Pilot..." he started softly.

"Sorry." Her eyes darted to his. "I'm not used to... this. Having to, er, interact, uh... normally."

"You're doing fine," he assured her, offering her a warm smile. "It's a really thoughtful gift, Pilot. Thank you."

Pink dusted her face again. Her eyes averted. "Ah, um... Y-you're welcome." She hastily put the mug to her lips, sipping quietly from the sweet drink. Her eyes met his for a split second — and more color filled her cheeks.

He chuckled softly and took a sip of the special treat. It was almost too hot, but he could still perfectly taste the balance of dark chocolate, melted marshmallows, and cinnamon-nutmeg sugar. Just how Squirrel made it — of course.

"Thank you," he said again, lowering the mug. "It's perfect."

She hid her expression in another sip, and by the time she lowered the drink, she had retrieved her blankish mien. "That's good. So, uh... I'm going upstairs. This body needs to rest, as much as I hate sitting still. She'll be back around soon, I'm sure," Pilot added. "It's been a while since she pushed me out, and, uh... I can feel she wants to be with you."

His heart fluttered at the admission. His ears felt warm. "Well, n—"

"You can join me in the meantime," she cut in, looking a bit uncertain once more. "If you want. I understand if you don't, though. I'm... not opposed to doing the things you and Squirrel do. But I don't understand them. So you won't get much from me."

He smiled softly. "That's okay. I like being with you just as much. You're another part of Squirrel; I love you the same."

She grimaced, cheeks flushing, and he wondered if he shouldn't have said that.

"Er, sorr—"

"Don't," she interrupted, stuttering slightly. "It's fine. Just... strange. Not words I ever hear."

"Oh, Pilot..." His heart sank to his stomach, and it showed in his empathetic features. Like so many other times, she pounced on that in a heartbeat.

"I'm not human. I'm the part of her that is not even the slightest bit human, Saeran." (It felt so foreignly familiar to hear Pilot say his name so flatly.)

He shifted closer. "But that doesn't mean you can't be loved..."

She eyed him up again and tightened her grip on the warm mug. "I don't... feel things."

Well, that was a lie. He knew what she was getting at, but that was a blatant lie.

"And, besides our work team, people don't really know I exist. So, don't feel sorry for me. I'm just here to carry out a duty."

His eyes met hers, holding so much warmth and sorrow and compassion and effortless love. She had to tear her eyes away before she caved under that overwhelmingly lovely stare.

"Do I have permission, regardless, to love you?" he asked softly — and though his words sounded like a jab, his tone was wholly genuine.

She sipped her hot chocolate, lowered it just under her lip, ignored her warm face, and replied, "Yeah." Another long sip from her drink; more ignoring that prickling warmth.

More trying to ignore the pure, unabashed love in those gentle mint blue hues.

"I'm glad," he whispered.

"So!" she exclaimed abruptly, wanting to escape the fluttery feeling in her chest. She pointed, arm extended, toward the stairs. "I'll be there. You can join me. I... I'll probably watch something. I want to work out, but... this body needs rest. Squirrel, uh... yeah. She'll be out eventually. Maybe in... an hour. Maybe sooner. There isn't much predictability with this."

"I'd love to join you," Saeran told her quietly. "And I hope Squirrel knows that she can take all the time she needs."

Pilot nodded curtly. "She's listening."

He smiled.

Within her, she felt Squirrel sigh and sit back. Her tugs had been weak — a sign that she didn't entirely protest to being kept down a little longer. She needed the break, they both knew. Which was why Pilot had resisted her little nudges.

It most certainly was not because the way Saeran smiled at Pilot made her feel something new and warm and pleasant. A rare feeling, especially one reaching so deeply.

No, it was undoubtedly only for the benefit of their body. Nothing more.

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tailoroffates · 1 year

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Heads up 7 up tag game

Tagged by: @emelkae, thanks for the tag! I was given a choice between heads up 7 up, and last line. I've decided I'll do the heads up, as I enjoy putting up the snippets :P For this post I'm going to tag a few folks and then leave the tag open so anyone interested can participate! @luckyy19 @doublegoblin @charlesjosephwrites @the-orangeauthor @primroseprime2019. Also, please feel free to tell me if you aren't into playing tag games and I'll keep you out of the loop. Thanks!

From: The Garden That Burned series - Book 1, Kindling (my upcoming novel).

(Context: Danny stands inside the witches hut and is asked to travel to a different plane of existence in order to free an immortal guardian who has been sealed for centuries...)

“So this Karma person, she will guide me- wait... What do you mean the rings will protect us from each other? Is she dangerous? Would she hurt me?” I asked nervously as Rizza frowned. “No! Well, not intentionally. Look, Karma was sealed after the Tari Nova, but during the fall of Atlantis. She fell mid-battle, and she’s been there for thousands of years. You need to keep in mind most everything that she’s ever known is long gone, not to mention the fact that it was another Guardian who sealed her in the first place. We couldn’t possibly begin to predict her current mental state, so yes. Give her this ring and tell her I sent you and all should be well. Oh, but do make sure you use my name, don’t just say a witch or she’ll punch you into space.” She replied giving me a thumbs up. I continued trying to keep myself calm, gripping the banister hard as a small cope for the information overload I had just received. Punch me into space… can she actually do that or was Rizza joking with me? “I’ll go along with this because my gut is telling me I should, but this is a shitty idea…” I said as suddenly Rizza's hand shot to her mouth and she looked at me in shock. “Hey! Language!” She scolded, then pointing to a sign on the wall that I swear to all gods present and lost, was not there the last time I looked. It read: “In my home, mind your manners. Actions, thoughts, and language matter!” My focus shifted from the sign to Rizza, then to the sign again. My expression must have revealed that I was utterly unimpressed, because she simply started laughing at me. “I can’t just give you all the answers or you won’t learn how to learn. These are just things that you’ll have to do, and you’ll have to do them your own way. That’s the only way that’ll do, after all. Just remember, if you are going to do something, be it right or wrong, do it with conviction. Nothing worthwhile comes easy, Danny. So, unless you’re willing to put your best foot forward your desired results may be out of reach, hmm? Yes, you’ll do fine.” She said in a bashful tone while waving her hand in a playful fashion. We stopped in front of one of the doors. “Alright... What’s the plan then?” I asked, fidgeting with my fingers. A wispy carved symbol sat above the door and the plaque nailed to its center seemed to be written in Belani script. I frowned. I’d need to get closer to translate it… I thought as Rizza suddenly reached down and turned the doorknob revealing a strange, stagnant place with absolutely no color. Hues of black, grey, and white cascaded across this vast empty space where no ground or sky appeared to exist. Several faces appeared out of nowhere and began pressing themselves into the fabrics of their reality, creating dull silhouettes on the other side of the door. They desperately tried to force their way through the colorless sea of nothing, each releasing a gasping scream which made it through the doorway and echoed off the walls of Rizza's house. Just as they closed the distance to the door, Rizza slammed it shut and glanced at me quickly with a coy grin. “Oops, wrong door.” She said playfully as we walked forward two more doors before she stopped. “This is it, Kid. Last stop before you start to have an idea of what you’re doing.” She said as I frowned in response. I wiped the sweat forming above my brow. “Wrong door? Are they all like that?” I asked in terror as she laughed out loud.

#TGTB #heads up 7 up #tag game #writeblr

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nebulousnajm · 1 year

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encounter – a genshin fic

1,515 words. G rated. also read on ao3

•

"Albedo has no memory of any blood relations. From birth, he was already adventuring deep within domains with his master." – Albedo Character Story 3

What if in the time that Albedo traveled and adventured with Rhinedottir, they came across an unmoving weeping puppet deep within a cave in Inazuma?

•

disclaimer: this can be read as both preslash scarabedo and platonic. the main focus is on their lore and backstory really. scara is referred to as a puppet here with it/its pronouns. if that can be upsetting to you, then please keep it in mind. ur safety is most important so feel free to stop reading at any time or not read at all

Weather anomalies aren’t something they usually investigate.

For one, studying strange weather patterns doesn’t yield very useful or conclusive results. But mainly, they just do not last long enough for Albedo and his master to get to them after they first get news of their existence.

The storm at Inazuma’s Kannazuka’s island is a different story, however. According to his master’s contacts and even the locals, it’s been raging for months – the wind running frenzied loops around the island with no sign of stopping. Not only that, but it is purely a thunderstorm. Not a single drop of rain has descended on the land. Only decisive, violent, lightning that’s left the earth pockmarked and crops charred.

When they had approached the island, Albedo had clasped his cloak tightly at his neck. He knew it was secure, but the strong, relentless wind had its fabric constantly snapping at his ankles and he felt like it could have been ripped away from him at any moment.

Presently, they’re in a cave for both shelter and investigative purposes. They’re going off the assumption that the storm is the result of a leyline disorder; yet another aftershock of the Cataclysm.

His master had tasked him with holding the lantern and staying at her side –a simple enough task– and although Albedo is doing a good job of it as she crouches down to gather dirt and rock samples, the dark depths of the cave keep tugging at his mind. When he chances a few seconds to close his eyes, he could swear that it’s traces of Khemia curling in the dark and beckoning him closer.

He must have lost touch with his surroundings for too long because the next thing he hears is his master’s stern voice calling his name.

Jolted back into reality, Albedo’s eyes snap open and he hurries to the other side of the cave, where his master’s voice had come from.

The light of the lantern illuminates her slight frown and sets her platinum hair aglow – a white blaze in the dark.

“Albedo. What has you this distracted.”

His gaze drops to the ground. “My apologies… I keep thinking there are alchemical traces from deeper within the cave.”

Albedo doesn’t expect for her to hum thoughtfully. “Really?” He looks up to see her turn towards the cave’s continuation. “Would you be able to follow that sense to its source?”

Closing his eyes again, he tries to focus on the call, and thinks that yes, he probably could follow it like a breadcrumb trail in a storybook. “Yes. I can.”

“Good. That might yield us actual answers, then.”

––

It is strange to be the one to lead the way when he’s so used to treading upon his master’s footsteps, but it can’t be helped if it’s only him who can sense the pull of Khemia.

They don’t walk for too long and the path isn’t very difficult to traverse. It’s almost like a corridor, but he can’t think of who would carve out such a thing in the side of the mountain.

As they enter what sounds like an open space and the lantern he’s carrying reveals their surroundings, Albedo quickly realizes that auspiciously shaped pathways are the least perplexing part of this cave.

The front of an elaborate Inazuman building emerges from the stone, and fully grown maple trees frame its face. Traces of Khemia might as well be seeping from its walls.

“The source is in there,” Albedo says quietly.

His master is silent for a few seconds before she reaches her hand towards the lantern he’s holding and states, “it’s best if I lead from here.”

He wordlessly passes her the lantern. When she heads towards the entrance, he follows – falling back into their regular rhythm.

The doors don’t creak when pushed open, and although it was eerily silent and still outside, the storm’s shrieking has somehow nestled into the building and haunts the halls.

They only take a few steps before Albedo hears his master sharply inhale and stop in her tracks. It immediately puts him on alert – he has never seen her caught by surprise like this.

Leaning around her, his eyes go wide at what the lantern’s light has revealed:

A person lying on their back on a mat laid out on the floor, motionless.

They’re dressed in layers of pale cloth and some kind of pendant rests on their chest, likely hung on a string around their neck. As Albedo stares at the pendant, trying to distinguish its shape through the limited illumination and across the distance, he realizes with a start that the stranger’s chest doesn’t rise and fall. He’s only seen that with humans who have…

After what feels like an age, his master slowly, ever so slowly, steps towards the stranger on the floor. Albedo, of course, follows.

The form of the person becomes clearer, and his eyes are instantly drawn to the folded hands on the stranger’s abdomen.

Or, puppet’s, he should say.

Doll-jointed are the fingers and wrists, and visible fault lines run across the forearms and face. There is a subtle shine off of the puppet’s skin from the light of the lantern, and it gives Albedo the vague impression of a cool metal surface.

A mechanical puppet…

A creation implies a creator.

Was it abandoned? Left here to rust and degrade?

But if this is the source of the Khemia he’s felt outside, then the puppet is also alive. Or, had once been.

Again, his thoughts are interrupted by his master’s voice.

“A puppet that sheds tears… how fascinating,” she murmurs. Albedo doesn’t blame her for thinking she might wake the puppet if she spoke too loudly.

Until now, he’s avoided looking at the face directly, but he forces himself to and sees the tracks of tears flowing down its sides. Its frowning lips don’t move, but the howling of the wind through the walls mimics wailing.

His master surprises him by going to kneel by the puppet’s side. She holds the lantern above its face for observation, and when Albedo sees that there is no reaction for several moments, he feels emboldened to mimic his master and kneels next to her.

Now that he’s up close, he can see that the pendant on its chest is a golden feather. The puppet is very well-made, and quite pretty too. If there was a way to somehow conceal those joints, no one would suspect that the puppet wasn’t human.

Glancing to the side, he sees his master frowning deeply at the feather with narrowed eyes. Albedo hasn’t seen that expression often on her face and he doesn’t know what to make of it in this context. She only looks that way when the worst outcome she predicted for one of her studies has come true.

Looking back at the puppet’s face… it feels wrong to stare at it crying and not do anything, so with a cloak covered hand, Albedo reaches out to wipe the tears away. When he pulls back, however, fresh rivulets follow the path of old ones.

In a whisper, he voices what he thinks. “Perhaps this puppet misses its creator.”

Maybe it was abandoned, because why was it left here, deep in a cave? Maybe its creator is coming back and he’s just making assumptions? He hopes so.

“This puppet must have had a critical flaw for it to be discarded like this,” his master says calmly. Like it’s the most predictable finding. It unsettles him for some reason.

Unbidden, Albedo wonders whether his master will leave him like this one day and he immediately chastises himself on the thought. Why would his master ever do something like that? She had told him that he was the apex of her achievements; the perfect and polished product. He is a reliable traveling companion and research assistant. She always has tasks for him to do, and continues to set higher expectations for his work. She sees value in him. She wants good things for him. She will not abandon him.

But if mother birds throw their hatchlings from the nest to fly whether they’re ready or not, and this puppet was left behind…

Without warning, his master suddenly rises on her feet and turns to leave, lantern in hand. “Come on Albedo, it’s best to leave the gods to their own affairs.” She doesn’t bother to keep her voice low.

He can’t make sense of what she means by that when his head is a jumble of thoughts and emotions he’s unprepared to untangle. But he looks back at the weeping puppet and feels the strange urge to leave something behind; to let the puppet know that it isn’t alone.

Still, the pond of his master’s light is quickly retreating and Albedo doesn’t want to be abandoned either, so he settles for wiping another tear away before getting up and catching up to her with swift steps.

On their way out, Albedo wonders if he can convince his master to visit this place again, just to check up on the puppet.

#genshin impact #mine #my writing #scarabedo #albescara #scaramouche/albedo #albedo/scaramouche #scaramouche x albedo #albedo x scaramouche

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dreamsandroots · 8 years

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Revolution in Sussuration

This is a repost of a piece published on my Wordpress, (ex)exegesis

At times, it seems to me as if the sun, much like logic, exists merely so that we can run rings around it.

In bed I often lie awake for hours until the daylight begins to creep through the curtains next to my bed. Words drift, floating indefinitely in the space between image and idle definition. There's a streak. There's something in the mirror. Right there in the reflection there’s the semblance of a young man looking back at me. And although I feel the passion of skin and blood and bone in conjunction, I’m often finding myself back in a state of concern: it’s not enough, I'm going nowhere.

As the hours of the day roll on, it seems I become, in time, something of a diplomat, or perhaps, a mediator, tending to the demands of various voices who seek to guide me to places which, while unknown and ultimately unknowable, seem vaguely familiar regardless.

For instance, my father sometimes tells my siblings and I about how plants and trees could tell us a lot about the workings of time. According to him, when we move a plant about in a pot, or uproot a tree and put it back somewhere else, they travel through space in a way that is completely alien to them. He explained that to a plant—which moves, of its own accord, through space in a fairly determined (and recognisably linear) manner, inching its roots towards nutrients, or its leaves to soak up the sun's warmth—this transposition through space could be viewed synonymously with humanity’s flow through what we call ‘time’, and its unrelenting pull 'forward' in a straight line from one moment to the next. It’s up to us, he concluded, to find our own pots, so that we can learn to travel and understand the nuances of time and its interrelationship with space.

In an interview entitled ‘Spacetime Tsunami’, Terrence McKenna says "we and everything in our universe and everything in it are being sucked closer and closer into the presence of something which seems to be made out of pure idea." McKenna's account of the strange perambulations of the human journey rings close, it seems, to my father’s rendition of our perceptions of time in its relativistic flow. He says that due to increased connections in thought and movement and behaviour, we’re experiencing something of a transition from beings which perceive space and time as separate forces into ‘some kind of organometallic-human-machine-cultural-spiritual-material interphasing amoeboid something that is spreading like a coral reef around the planet.’

There are parallels in other, perhaps less bombastic, schools of thought. Hegel’s grand synthesis, which paired the union of an object-or-idea’s essence with its negation (that which it is not), seems to point in a similar direction, although his account was rendered within a distinctly Christian theological framework, in the geist of his time. Hegel wrote "[t]he History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom; a progress whose development according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate."

Baruch De Spinoza—who spent much of his life crafting glass lenses for telescopes—once wrote that "there is nothing objectionable in believing that god has a body." After barely evading an assassination attempt from an unknown assailant, Spinoza was excommunicated from his community in Amsterdam following an official banning from the Talmud Torah congregation in 1656. Despite this, Spinoza stuck to his ideas and went on to assert the formulation deus sive natura—in Latin, 'nature or God'—by which it seems he meant one might use either term interchangeably, to refer to the same thing.

When I was a teenager I struggled a great deal being at high school in situations where I didn't feel safe around people I didn't know well. This resulted in an extreme aversion to interact with anyone I didn't already know resulting in something of a feedback loop of isolation. As a way to combat such bouts of panic, my mother wrote a note for me to carry around in my wallet. It read:

Ask yourself: Where are you?, and What time is it?

As far as I remember I never actually took it out to read it, and if anything I probably felt rather indignant about the whole affair. Perhaps it was enough to have the protocol ready as a go-to solution, as the attacks soon ceased. This was a way to remind me to return to the gravity of the body in which I was safe.

As I write this I notice the time is approaching the first full moon since my 33rd birthday. Moreso than the night of the actual date, the evening feels infused with potential energy, a time to think about the ego, and the person, and the way that both struggle against the tide.

I first started using Twitter as a place to take notes and voice thoughts that I’d have usually kept hidden soon after reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I was enchanted by its narrator’s transcendence of his own microcosmic world, and his cognizance of ‘the antithesis of choice’ in the face of ‘the feasibility of the chutnification of history.’ In time, this translated into an instinct to follow a train of thought despite anyone’s approval and without expecting response and/or discussion. Much like Saleem in Rushdie’s novel, the formalist/abstract Twitter user acts as both the spider and fly caught in a web of their own meaning, casting out words that simultaneously fall away forgotten, and transcend any possible or fixed intent.

This evening, a friend on Twitter tells me in my DMs to do a search for ‘sun opposition moon natal aspect’. I’ve never been greatly into astrology, and I feel that any interest I do have for the practice is only possible when tempered with healthy scepticism, yet I’m filled with wonder as I learn that I was born under a full moon (NB: to be more precise, it was at 5am the day before my birth, but close enough to fire up my magical thinking). Somehow this discovery allows me a brief feeling of validation for my many random bursts of energy which would often seem in tandem with the occurrence of the full moon. For a moment I’m reborn a believer, and this intuitive resonance is impossible to shake. After posting the link on Facebook another friend comments (somewhat ironically, I assume) ‘citation needed’. Zing. They got me.

In response, I have spent much of the evening outside, from our little verandah in Marrickville, looking at the slowly waxing-gibbous moon as it ticks towards effulgence.

Accused of intellectual presumption by a former student, Spinoza replied to him: ‘I do not presume to have found the best Philosophy, but I know that I think the true one.’ Sometimes it seems the closer we get to the sun, the greater becomes our desire to be burned. Ego and formlessness. An eternal ossilation.

Often late at night, the only comfort I can conceive of lies in knowing that I live in a sleepless city. Not the sentimental land built on the backs of convicts and settlers, or the troublingly nostalgic tales of bushrangers and buried massacres. Not the land laid humble in silent homage to soldiers who died needlessly. That was their country, the Australia of yesterday—a long story with a forgotten middle and beginning, its ancient culture repressed in a quick power grab to control the narrative. Money is power, they say. Spinoza built telescopes.

Maybe if money is power, the negation of this statement is that thought is art in any culture, and its message will get out one way or another, whether through the voice of single agents or the collective calls of an entire generation. Maybe we’re better off in a culture where the only ones who bother to create art are those pushed into it—those who have become hungry to find some way to express themselves beyond the call of propagation—because that’s the only place that truth can be found. Maybe we’ve forgotten the implicit blessings of this semantic anarchy of cheesy money-grubbing pop-stars and rappers, McDonald’s wrappers and towers of empty discarded tin cans laying in landfills. Every problem is opportunity. Sounds like some kind of New Age Capitalist Positivism to me.

Maybe academia is a Jackson Pollock painting, instead of the chaotic interplay of splotches and streaks of colour, its pattern is the ongoing quest to reapproach and renegotiate the words and ideas of others into new constellations, backed by endless citations and the drive to synthesise one’s own thought within the confines of a narrative which transcends individual voice and intent.

Maybe art is whatever keeps us going.

In his essay Death of the Author Roland Barthes wrote that "in ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose ‘performance’ … may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius.’"

Maybe the desire to be burned itself burns out in the understanding that there is no object/subject relation in terms of our place within nature, or that is extant in our deviation from god, or existence, or whatever you prefer to call it. "God’s laws are not of such a nature that they could be transgressed," wrote Spinoza. Hegel called it becoming. McKenna speaks about the relationship between knowledge and the knower and the ways that these appear to be aspects of the same infinite timeline echoing eternally.

As I drift to sleep my body is thrust into a maelstrom of stray energies, pulling and contorting at my self-consciousness as it grapples with the material realm. Sometimes I sit watching myself lying there in the omnipresent attempt to reawaken. Maybe we’re all hungry ghosts grappling at a thought process: several billion voices trying to speak a word which might ring true in someone else’s temple. Maybe we're just smaller refractions of a planet, a heavenly body trying to breathe.

Maybe in the invariable push and pull between meaning and senselessness, it’s someone else’s thoughts that lead my way. Heraclitus said though, that "no man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man." I wonder what Heraclitus would have thought about the pot-plants and the trees.

When I reawaken, I always find I’m in a different world, with renewed energy, same but different, and in the end I’m never lead ‘nowhere’, wherever that might be.

#writing #creative writing #thought #time #space #terrance mckenna #spinoza #hegel

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frivery · 6 months

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eyyyyyyyyyy i just realized... I don't have a fae equivalent yet. Anyway, ancient gijinka ideas I've been thinking about, because moderns aren't the only one who need an equivalent.

Aberrations, these aren't any species in particular. Aberrations are the result of magic or science gone awry, practiced on the living or the dead, which changes the dragon/s involved fundamentally.

Aethers, being dragons from space I was going to make them githzerai to mirror the githyanki but the moth-look was just too cute so I'm going to make them Moth-lit. Moderns will often lump them in with beastfolk, Tundra, but some have taken to calling them 'mothfolk', 'mothkin', or even 'moth-lit'. Once treasured by their God, and then cast away when they did not go as planed, the Moth-lit are not a group that typically hurts at the silence of the Eleven. Most comfortable when among their crew, groups of Moth-lit are led by an immortal queen. While each Moth-lit is independent, and capable of making their own choices, many will follow the sway of the Queen as if they were still the crew of her ship. Some moth-lit have two arms in humanoid form, some still have four, it is unclear if the difference is perhaps subspecies of moth-lit or if it is the shifting capability of the individual.

Auraboas are dryads, often mistaken by the modern breeds to be gensai, elemental, or sometimes even beastfolk. Keepers of nature, shy, mischievous; while there have always been stories of the dryads they were believed to be only myth until recent times. Young dryads, now being disconnected from the loop that connects all of the ancients of their people, are culturally separate from their ancestors. Unable to connect in the same method as the dryads of past, these saplings have made an encounter with a dryad much more common than it once was.

Banescale are elementals, often perceived as a dangerous, more powerful, version of gensai... which is closer to the truth than moderns often get when facing an ancient. While gensai are born of, and connected to, an element they are not made of it. Banescale, the elementals, on the other hand are the physical being of a strong concentration of spirited element. While both are subject to be effected by the environment around them, the gensai are a more physically stable people. Both are incredibly rare with little of their own culture remaining. The concentration of element required to create an elemental seems to be so great that air around one seems to warp, as if its very existence shifts the world around it.

Gaoler are beastfolk, the same as tundra, they are just a much older version of the same people. Being a people frozen in time, from a place much bigger, wilder, and more demanding, the Gaoler are a larger people who often exist in a state in between fully humanoid and fully draconian. It is notable that the gaoler are one of the people that were accepted the easiest by the modern breeds, though their methods may seem a little strange their culture is not so alien.

Sandsurge, in a similar vein as the gaoler, are a earlier version of the Goliath, ridgeback, people. Even more fearsome, even more isolationist, they are known for keeping their scales even when otherwise fully shifted, as if to ensure they are always armored when dealing with outsiders.... a task they seem to loathe. Goliath may live in forgotten corners of the world, but the sandsurge live deep beneath the bones of forgotten civilizations. Vanished into the sands, like a mirage.

Undertides can be Laneshi, people of long-lost myth that are said to live in the tides in a way that even those blessed by the Tidelord himself could only dream of. The have a two-caste system with people being split into either the mystic or warrior caste. Tight-knit in culture, they prefer to spend their time in groups and can often struggle to acclimate to other lairs due to their higher social needs. Covered in small, toxin-laced, spines- they are dangerous to interaction too closely with.

Veilspun are changelings, capable of shifting their appearance entirely to fit wherever they end up. While the way they look can change entirely in an instant, Veilspun will almost always keep their hair at a length that is extraordinarily long for other species. Always capable of spotting another of their kind, with life spans several times of that of the average modern, decade long grudges between individuals of their species is not uncommon. Veilspun are a people who mirror their environment back and who have spreed through all of the land without notice. Like other ancients, the changelings often have trouble shifting entirely between forms and they will often keep a set of wings, horns, a tail, or claws.

#stuff for my silly fr lore #anyway i hope i didn't forget anyone and i still don't have fae

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