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podcastenthusiast · 1 year

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I read an article about Geralt's chronic pain in book canon, then I remembered Dr. Joachim von Gratz in Witcher 3 saying he could tell Geralt broke his leg at some point. So I took all that and ran with it for this.

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Geralt is in pain.

It's an odd phrase, he thinks as he trudges up the stairs to their room. Like pain is a physical place he could escape if he only knew how.

Vesemir had taught them long ago that pain is simply information. Its message should be acknowledged and the rest discarded as useless sensation. A witcher who can't handle pain is a dead witcher, after all; they were forged in agony.

Geralt can never figure out what all of the pain wants him to know, if anything. Why it flares up like this. It's just outdated information.

They're staying at an inn tonight. What used to be a rare luxury on the Path has become commonplace, at least in Jaskier's company. Good thing, too; an unrelenting spring rainstorm is raging outside. Thunder rumbles a mile away and he can taste electricity in the air, not unlike the pain that zaps through his leg with each step.

Jaskier had called for the tub in their room to be filled, thankfully. Geralt casts Igni on the water until it's almost too hot even for a witcher, and sinks into the bath with a relieved sigh. Warmth dulls the pain somewhat, like a blunted blade beneath his skin, but it's still there.

He eventually must leave the bath, however. Getting himself dressed somehow saps away the last of his energy, and Geralt deposits his aching body onto the bed after, letting his mind drift as much as it can. Jaskier is hovering in his periphery. He's talking, as ever, envigorated by an adoring audience, eyes a little wine-bright. Try as he might, Geralt can't focus on his words. There's a cacophony of sounds around him—rain and Jaskier's heartbeat and drunken revelry downstairs and animals in the forest just beyond the village. But eclipsing it all is the pain.

Years of experience and witcher training allows him to bear it without letting the weakness show. He can live with pain, like he lives with the foul taste of potions and their aftereffects, with teleportation sickness and wearing scratchy doublets to formal occasions. With human cruelty. The blood on his hands.

"Geralt, have you been listening at all?"

"Hm."

"Right. You're not even here right now, I see."

"Hmm."

He isn't here. He's not in this room or even this country; he is in pain.

"Move over, then. You're taking up the entire bed and I'm knackered."

Geralt does move. It nearly steals the breath from his lungs. He curls in on himself, instinctively, as if the pain weren't coming from within.

"Something is wrong. What is it?"

Jaskier sounds serious now. Geralt doesn't want to ruin his evening.

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"Geralt—"

"I said I'm fine. Leave it, Jaskier!"

He stands up then as if to prove it, but his treacherous knee refuses to cooperate with the simplest command and buckles under his weight. The pain, which had briefly lodged itself near his hip, suddenly radiates sharply down his leg in nauseating waves. He curses.

"You're hurt, aren't you. I thought I saw you favoring one leg earlier. Was it the griffin? Geralt, you have to tell me these things—"

"No," he grits out. "I'm not injured."

"And I'm not stupid, you know. You can barely walk! Clearly—"

"Old wounds. Just...still troubles me sometimes. All right? Nothing to worry about."

There is a long, uncharacteristic silence following his confession. Geralt fears he may have finally broken him.

"Well," the bard says at last, "You're a fool if you think that will stop me worrying about you."

"I can manage." His arm doesn't hurt much tonight, at least, and he gets to sleep in a real bed. Small mercies.

"Oh, I've no doubt of that, certainly. You're the most stubborn man I've ever known. I also know you rarely permit yourself even the slightest modicum of comfort."

"Jaskier..."

"Does anything help when it gets bad?"

"Potions. Meditation." Jaskier looks hopeful at this, and he feels a little guilty for having to crush those hopes so soon when he adds, "But not this time. I don't have enough potions to waste them like that."

"Meditation, then? I can be as quiet as you need, contrary to popular belief."

"Hurts too much," Geralt admits. Then, maybe to ease Jaskier's concern, he says, "The bath helped a little."

"Good, that's a start. Now, I know what works for me might not work for you, but I've a few remedies. Will you let me try to help?"

"Didn't know you were a priestess of Melitele," he grumbles.

"Sadly the temple refused to accept me for study, can't imagine why, so I had to become a bard instead," he quips.

"I thought you were tired."

Jaskier ignores this comment. He can hear the bard rummaging around in his bag.

"Where is it. This salve saved my life when I was a student at Oxenfurt. They had us practicing the lute for hours and hours; I thought my hands would fall off. My wrists still hurt sometimes. Then there was the— Ah! There. Geralt? Still with me?"

"Yes. What?"

"Normally I prefer to say this under much more pleasant circumstances, but: trousers off, if you please."

He groans. Doesn't Jaskier understand how much work it was to get them on?

It's a slow process, mostly because he refuses any help with it.

"Oh, Geralt," he says softly. The bard touches his knee, gentle as a summer breeze. "It does look swollen here."

In truth, he's strangely glad of that. It's much worse somehow when it hurts and yet appears perfectly normal.

"Are you allergic to any herbs? This has got, uh, let's see. Chamomile, willow bark, ginger, essential oil of—"

"I drink poison on a regular basis, Jaskier. Apply the damn salve already."

He does. Geralt closes his eyes. He isn't sure any simple salve will even be enough to touch the pain, but the way Jaskier massages his leg seems to ease a bit of the tension coiled in his muscles, if nothing else. After a while he starts to relax. He listens to the rain. He breathes.

"'M sorry I snapped at you earlier," Geralt murmurs into the pillow. "Wasn't fair."

"It wasn't. But you're already forgiven. Feeling any better?"

Geralt shrugs, because while it is becoming background noise again, he's still in pain. Pretty much always is. No amount of soft touches or herbs or magic can fix that completely.

Being here in pain with Jaskier, though, is better than being alone.

#the witcher #the witcher netflix #geraskier #jaskier #geralt of rivia #geraskier fic #witcher fanfiction #whisking canons and headcanons together until i get the hurt/comfort i need #geralt is disabled and ace and probably neurodivergent 'cause i say so #i have too many fics now. i should post them to ao3

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bookished · 6 months

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MOONLIT NIGHTS: THE CABIN CHRONICLES

ㅤㅤㅤNEXT PART

MASTERLIST | INBOX | TIP ME

-> Pairing: Geralt of Rivia x f!reader witch

-> Summary: Geralt of Rivia faces the impossible: he is defeated by a monster and, in the middle of trying to escape after being severally wounded, finds a cabin, where a witch who knows what he needs, cures him.

-> Rating: +18

-> Word count: 2.2k

-> Warnings: smut, kinks including breeding, rough sex, neck biting until blood comes out, degradation, domination, a little bit of praise kink, dirty talking

-> Notes: i've been rewatching the witcher and reading lots of fanfics, i got so in the mood of writing a piece and i hope you enjoy it! <3

Geralt of Rivia rode through the dense, ancient Caed Dhu forest, his silver hair glistening in the dappled sunlight that filtered through the leaves. He had been on the path for days, following rumors of a dangerous creature that plagued the nearby village.

As he ventured deeper into the woods, he couldn't shake the feeling that this particular hunt would be different.

In the heart of the treacherous Caed Dhu, Geralt of Rivia, the renowned Witcher, found himself in a dire predicament. A contract had led him deep into the ancient woods, where he faced a foe more formidable than any he had encountered before. The beast, a grotesque hybrid of wolf and wyrm, had proven to be a match for Geralt's skill and swordsmanship.

As the moon hung low in the night sky, Geralt's silver sword clanged against the creature's impenetrable scales. The battle had raged for hours, and his strength waned with every strike. Blood oozed from numerous wounds, staining his armor and leather boots. His trademark white hair clung to his sweat-soaked forehead, and his golden eyes burned with determination.

But in a moment of miscalculation, the beast lunged forward, its jaws snapping shut around Geralt's forearm. Pain seared through his body as his bones cracked, and he let out a roar of agony. With a swift, desperate maneuver, he wrenched his arm free, leaving shreds of flesh in the creature's maw.

Battered and bloodied, Geralt knew he was outmatched. With a heavy heart and aching limbs, he made a fateful decision. He turned and sprinted through the darkened forest, leaving behind the monster he could not defeat. His every step sent waves of agony through his injured arm, but he pushed himself to the limit.

As he escaped, he couldn't help but reflect on his countless battles, his victories, and his unshakable resolve. Yet, this time, survival took precedence over valor. The Caed Dhu closed in around him, a labyrinth of twisted trees and shadowy threats. Geralt, the fearless Witcher, ran for his life, vowing to return to face the beast another day, once he had healed and prepared for the inevitable rematch.

Deep within the heart of the dense and mysterious Caed Dhu, Geralt of Rivia stumbled upon an unexpected sanctuary. The cabin's solitude was a haven for a Witcher in need, a sanctuary where he could mend his battered body and prepare for the inevitable return to the treacherous wilderness.

The cabin stood as a solitary sentinel in the depths of the forest, its timeworn facade hidden beneath a canopy of thick foliage. With aching limbs and a resolve unyielding as steel, Geralt pushed open the creaking door and stepped into the dimly lit interior.

Inside, the air was heavy with the scent of herbs and alchemical concoctions. The flickering candlelight revealed a modest yet well-equipped witch's lair. Shelves lined with vials of potions and bundles of dried herbs stretched to the ceiling. A cauldron simmered with a mysterious brew, its aroma tinged with both magic and healing properties.

He needed rest and healing. Inside the cabin, a fire crackled in the hearth, casting a warm glow across the room. The scent of herbs and potions filled the air, a telltale sign of a fellow witch's presence. He knew he wasn't alone.

From the shadows, your hooded figure emerged, revealing the gentle features of a young witch. You had been tracking his progress and had prepared the cabin for his arrival.

He got a closer look of you, which allowed him to see the medallion of the Viper, which matched your dark green eyes, that were glistening under the candle's light. You were, definitely, one of the few Witches left after the Trials that erased most of them from the surface of Earth.

Without a word, you approached Geralt and began to help him remove his clothes, your touch gentle yet firm. As the clothing fell away, his battle-worn body was exposed, covered in cuts and bruises. He hissed in pain as you examined his wounds.

"I'll take care of you, Geralt," you murmured softly, your voice soothing. You mixed herbs and applied salves, tending to each injury with practiced care. Your fingers moved with a grace born of years of training.

Geralt watched you work, silently grateful for your presence. The pain began to ebb away as your healing magic flowed through him, knitting his flesh together.

Once the wounds were tended to, you stepped back, your eyes meeting his yellowish ones with a warmth that belied the harsh world they inhabited.

"Rest now," you said, guiding him to a nearby bed. "You've earned it."

As he lay down, his body slowly relaxing, Geralt couldn't help but feel a sense of gratitude for the kindred spirit who had tended to his wounds. In a world filled with darkness and danger, he had found a glimmer of light and solace in your healing touch.

Also, your touch brought up a slow burning fire within him, making him feeling the need in his body to bring you closer, to lick you, to taste you. He needed to show gratefulness by giving pleasure to you after healing him with such care and knowledge... as if you knew exactly how his body reacted to each one of the remedies you were using. That made the White Wolf groan in approval.

He couldn't help but grab your wrist before you stepped back, not applying so much pressure to hurt you, but enough strength to keep you where you stood. Your breath hitched in the back of your throat, making you stare back at his intense stare.

He started slowly and gently rubbing your inner wrist, where your pulse was accelerated, with his thumb calming it, you, without words, and no further movements needed.

"You're safe, Geralt. You made it home. Let me go, and you rest." You whispered, not wanting to break the calm and enchanted ambience. You don't know how you managed to sound firm, calm, steady and confident, but your tone left no doubts.

He kept staring at you, his jaw tense while the candles in the cabin lightened his skin, and you couldn't help but break eye contact and admire his body. His injured body. But, also, his fit figure.

Suddenly, Geralt pulled you into him without effort, and a groan escaped from him, low and deep. Something that made your body really happy, but you knew you couldn't risk hurting him more than he already was. You needed him fully recovered.

"If you want to keep that hand and arm, I'd suggest you let go." You had no choice but to warn him.

"I can smell you, Witch." He simply replied, his voice low and raspy, while not letting you go. You swallowed the lump in your throat, as you smelled his arousal, too. There was no possible denial in what was going around between you two, in that cabin, as the darkness of the night and the moonlit mixed with the candles surrounding you both.

With his other hand, he grabbed the Viper medallion hanging from your neck, pulling your face closer to his while keeping his firm stare at you. You could even notice the smallest of the dilation of his pupils in that position.

"After taking care of me, let me take care of your needs, witch." Geralt whispered. You knew fighting him was useless, and you couldn't deny the way your body was craving him, either. He tilted his body, not giving a flying fuck about his fresh wounds.

You stared down at his lips, and back to his eyes. He grinned a little before grabbing your medallion and pulling you close until both of your lips were a wet mess against each other, not even letting the air pass between you two.

You moaned against his lips, your groans and whines making him feel rougher and animalistic each passing second. His hands were everywhere on your body, not allowing even one millimeter of skin escape from his touch.

No previous warning, he ripped your dress from behind and continued tearing off your undergarments. You were speechless as you could only feel him. You tried touching him, but he didn’t allow that. He had you naked in front of him in a matter of seconds.

Furthermore, you looked into his eyes, waiting for his next move. "Geralt-" You were anxious for more of what he had to offer.

"You're exquisite, aren't you, witch?" He was appreciative of your exposed body in front of him, meanwhile using your condition as a pet name, which didn't annoy you at all.

He took your silence as an invitation to switch positions, grabbing you by a fistful by your long hair, having you bent over the same surface he was laying on not long ago.

Geralt directed his right hand to your pussy, moving his fingers between your folds while humming appreciatively at your wetness. The sounds filling the room, and the sights you had thanks to the little mirror that wasn't too far away on the wall in front of you, were too much to handle. It didn't take long for your thighs to begin to shake, and the White Wolf knew it too.

His hand, which was teasing you, was now wrapped around your small neck, pushing you down, taking out his digits, spreading you apart with his large girth, and slamming into your cunt.

As you wrapped your small hand around his, he tightened his hold on your neck, taking your gesture as an invitation to be rougher.

He tilted his body on top of your back, replacing the hold of his hand on your neck with his teeth burying in the delicate spot of your skin, as he kept slamming into your wetness, and you could feel his medallion swinging over you as his movement fastened, and his cock was buried deep, still pounding, into you.

"Ah, fuck, Geralt." You mumbled, not being able to keep your eyes out of the reflection in the mirror. The candles lightning his sweated skin, you underneath him as he dominated you on that unstable surface and his aura surrounding your senses.

Your hips began to move on his, as you needed that sweet relief. Geralt's bite on your neck became harder and you could feel and smell a bit of blood running down your skin, which heated up both of you even more, if possible.

His groans were louder against you, the slamming of his cock inside of you more frenetic and he dug his nails into the sides of your hips to keep you steady. He let go of your neck to press his mouth on your shoulder. "You're so fucking tight and behaving like a good girl," he moaned. "Keep milking me, witch, so I can breed you and fill you up with my cum until it oozes out."

The way he was talking to you, saying those things, had you closer to the edge. You needed to feel his cock pulsate inside of you, stretching you out and getting you full of him. Your moans were unstoppable as nonsense dripped out of your mouth.

"I wanna see those pretty thighs of yours covered with my cum." Geralt wrapped an arm around your waist to hold you in place as he circled your nipple with his thumb and index, pinching it.

“Yes, Geralt, yes." Your mind was blank, dazzled with lust and desire, almost making you forget your own name.

Your thighs began to shake, and he felt them, “Yes, witch, come all over my cock.” His encouraging, husky voice praised you. You called out the White Wolf's name, your orgasm hitting hard and uncontrollably, your head dizzy as you saw stars and lights in your vision.

You felt Geralt exploding inside of you, with a few more snaps of his hips against your ass you felt his girth tighten up, and a few more spurts of his cum filling you up as you rode off your orgasm.

"Fuck, you milked me so good, you emptied me, didn't you?" He moaned and grunted again as he felt your pussy tightening lightly on him. "What kind of witchcraft did you use on me, huh?"

He let go of your breast, not moving his position so you were still under his dominant figure while his cock rested inside of you, feeling your thighs sticky of his cum and other mix of fluids.

"Well, you loved the way I was curing you earlier and the attention I gave you, didn't you, Witcher?"

"I'm not one to turn down a healing session when I'm offered one." Geralt whispered in your ear, still not getting off you. "But what's the catch?"

You smiled, feeling chills down your spine. "The catch is, I get to pamper every inch of you and make sure you're completely healed."

"I think I can handle that kind of catch."

Did you enjoy it? Please, consider leaving a comment, reblogging, sending feedback in any way or buying me a coffee. If you would like to request something, go and message me. Also, if you'd like, you can check my masterlist or send me any prompts. Happy reading!

#geralt of rivia x reader #geralt of rivia x you #the witcher x reader #the witcher x you #uservolkova #geralt of rivia #the witcher #the witcher fic #the witcher fanfiction #geralt of rivia fanfiction #geralt of rivia smut #kinktober #geralt x reader #geralt x you #geralt x f!reader

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laminated-loser · 1 year

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Your howl fics are amazing!! I am so happy someone writes for Howl and Male and GN readers! :) Thank you so much.

Can I request a Howl x Male reader, where Howl is dealing with his own problems and is getting more annoyed by the minute, so when the reader comes to him with a small problem (like maybe they ran out of some magic ingredient idrk T~T), he just couldn't add a new problem to his list and snaps. He takes his anger out on the reader.

When this happens to me I usually snap, then go somewhere and come back home to sleep and forget about what I did when I snapped till the next day.

Maybe this can happen with Howl? Like the next day, when the reader is scared to talk to him he remembers what he did and comforts the reader.

Sorry if this is too long, I had ideas for Howl for so long but I can't write them out ;-; So you're like a miracle to me.

Take care <3

you are the sweetest anon ever. I can and will write this but it took a bit, sorry bout that. So here it is! Also, feel free to come to me with all your Howl x Male/gn Reader ideas I need stuff to fill my time anyways. I do apologize for this being so late I've been dealing with a lot of shit.

At the current moment, you were trying to make a potion that would help Howl recover less painfully after his little trips through space and time. That specific wizard was sitting at the table with his eyes closed and the bags under his eyes rather prominent.

You worried your bottom lip between your teeth. You couldn't find a certain ingredient you needed and Markl was out. You'd have to ask Howl.

"Eh- Howl?" Your voice started quiet. You fiddled with the hem of your shirt. "Uh, Y/n? Y/n, kid, you shouldn't do that!" Calcifer warned from the fireplace. "I don't know where the dried maple flowers are! And I doubt you know." You countered.

"Howl, sweetheart, I'm sorry but-" You just barely touched his shoulder when he jumped up. "Fuck off, Y/n!! Why do you have to be so fucking annoying?!" He yelled, his eyes full of rage.

You flinched back, eyes wide. You quickly left the room, leaving the ingredients by the fireplace. Abandoned. "Howl.." Calcifer sighed. They both looked after you with mixed emotions. "You don't deserve that boy. Never did."

~Next Day~~

The morning fell around and you woke with some difficulty. Your face was red from crying and you were glad that there was more than one bathroom in this castle.

You washed your face and listened carefully for any signs that anyone was around. None. You slipped from the tiles onto the wood and were met with the glittering eyes of Markl. "Hey, Uncle Y/n, I was wondering- Wait are you okay?" He asked.

You nodded. " 'Course. What's up?" He shook his head. "Nevermind. I'll be right back! I have to do something real quick." Markl ran off down the hall, his red hair floofing out a crazily.

You gave s small smile before turning around and being met with sapphire eyes. Your face fell and you suddenly felt scared. "Wait, Y/n, please don't go." The desperation in his voice startled you. You looked back up at him.

"Y/n.. Darling, I'm sorry. I really am." His voice was quiet, like you'd never heard it before. "..." He raised a gentle hand and brushed a stray lock of hair from in front of your eyes.

"I was just..." He seemed to be struggling with his words. "Angry. Frustrated. Overworked." You finished for him. Howl nodded slowly. "Forgive me?" His voice was no higher than a whisper now.

You thought for a moment, gently intertwining your fingers together. "Sure. But this is your one and only free pass. You kissed him softly, no more than a peck. "Do you still love me, at least?" You blinked. Then giggled. "Of course, you moron."

He swept you up in his arms before bringing you to bed. Howl buried his face in your chest and restricted most of your movement. You twirled a finger through his hair.

The door opened, just an inch. And a hand came through with a handmade craft. Markl placed his little gift on the dresser and left, thinking he was unseen completely. You chuckled. How darling.

~The End~

I hope this is to your standards, if not I apologize Again, I apologize for it being so late I've moved twice in the last year and moving schools is a pain in the ass. Doesn't do much mentally either.

#howls moving castle x gn reader #howls moving castle #howls moving castle x male reader #howl jenkins pendragon #markl #calcifer #x male reader fanfic #howl x male reader #howl x you #sweet and fluffy with a sprinkle of angst #fluff #bit of angst #love the anon's #<3

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quark-art · 9 hours

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got a lot of art from various ttrpg campaigns im in that i just never posted? so heres just all of it

campaign / character info under the cut:

1: thats milly! shes my character in a middle earth campaign i recently joined. shes a hobbit warden, which is basically a bard minus spellcasting. shes talky

2: atmos is a poppet kineticist (air/water) in a pathfinder 2e rp server i joined, theyre nonverbal and filled with rage

3: ACE-9, an autognome (flavored as a different race called "cairnicks") warlock/wizard (hexblade/war magic) i made for a one-shot. despite being a warlock/wizard, she was the tank of the party bc she had crazy high AC, which drove my dm crazy (hi @arclundarchivist <3). she ended up sacrificing herself to save her AI patron

4-5: ive posted about zaltus before, hes my leonin cleric, the other guy in those doodles is andanan, the paladin in the party, who zaltus has a weird crush on bc he reminds zaltus of his wife (seen in 8)

6: zaltus got wasted one session and was super normal

7: zaltus is a sub. moving on

8: zaltus's wife was super hot but shes dead now bc zaltus got zorped 600 years in the future. sad

9-11: buoy is an owlin barbarian character ive got prepared for a campaign way in the future that im still playing with the design for

12: joey is my backup character for another campaign the same DM is running, shes a human ranger and she loves pokemon!

13: jacob is an npc from that same campaign, hes a conspiracy theorist who is unfortunately uniquely incapable of seeing supernatural stuff

14: same campaign, these are the folks in the highschool dnd club joeys in. the witches think they have magic and dont, the hunters think magic is real and are right. they hate each other

15-16: a scene from another campaign from the same DM, in the same universe as zaltus! ive posted about chomphuphan, my ursine cleric, and the other character is jengen, the barbarian in the party whos sorta choms father figure now

17: chomphuphans adoptive brother is named onkhot and he broke his leg protecting chom from bandits. theyre angsty

18: jengen had long hair and i didnt know this when i drew him initially. anyway he and chom are friends and jengen drinks fire resistance potions to bang fire giant ladies

#quark art #dnd #dnd art #oc art #ttrpg art #pathfinder #milly goldfinch #atmos #ace-9 #zaltus dawnheart #buoy kandrividicaros #joey brower #jacob montgomery #chomphuphan thirat #jengen #onkhot thirat

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dropssofjupitter · 1 year

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Hushed Whispers - Part Two

Pairing: Tom Riddle x Reader

Summary: Your meetings with Tom have worn both your patience and your mental stability thin. You can’t get this language right. You can’t get your homework right. You can’t get anything right. With your frustrations growing, and Tom enabling every single self-depreciating doubt that comes to mind, you’re sure that you’re going to crack. And your breaking point might just be the vast cavern under the school that Tom claims is simply ‘a practice room’.

Word Count: 4.4k

Warnings: Tom uses manipulate, manwife, mansplain to the fullest extent possible, language, mentions of petrification

A/N: The long awaited and very delayed part two! (Holy shit it’s here). Thank you everyone for the huge amount of support on the first chapter I did not expect it to do as well as it did! Special thanks to the one and the only @lilmaymayy for being my absolute favorite person and Beta reader ever.

Masterlist Part One

You’d had the sneaking suspicion for weeks, but today confirmed it. Tom Riddle was undoubtedly trying to kill you. Or he was trying to get you to kill him. Either way, someone was dying. Merlin, you hoped it was you.

Everyday for the past month Riddle had forced you to meet with him in the small hours of the morning to go over the basics of Parseltongue. He berated you when you slurred your pronunciation, still rubbing sleep out of your eyes at 3 am. He sneered at you when you were unable to pick up on the apparent “distinct differences” between words such as ‘toward’ and ‘towards’. And on top of everything, his lessons were causing a less than satisfactory performance in your classes. Something that your teachers noticed.

You looked down at the detention slip in your hands, nearly burning with rage and frustration. You had fallen asleep in the middle of Potions class, causing your head to land with a resounding thunk on your desk, and your potion to overboil and release a noxious gas that filled the classroom in mere minutes. All of which could have been avoided if you hadn’t had to meet up with Riddle at three in the bloody morning.

A hand grasped your shoulder just as the edges of the slip began to smoke, knocking you out of your mental debate over whether or not it would be acceptable to jinx Riddle considering the conditions. You turned your head, meeting the eyes of your incredibly concerned roommate.

“Are you okay?” she asked, dropping her hand once she knew you were paying attention. “That wasn’t like you at all.”

“Yeah I’m fine, just really tired.” You offered her a weak smile, deciding to shove the offensive piece of parchment into your pocket for now. “Thanks for asking though Katherine. I mean, especially considering your last Herbology score.” You pulled a face, scrunching up your nose slightly. “Honestly, I think I should be the one worried about you.”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, lightly shoving your shoulder before crossing her arms. “How was I supposed to know that the Wiggentree would protect you from dark creatures, and not cause uncontrollable laughter?”

It was your turn to laugh, turning backwards as you walked so that you could fully look at her. “By doing the homework?”

“But it literally sounds like it would make you laugh! Even the name sounds funny!”

You laughed again, tilting your head back and forcing yourself to swallow a quip about Katherine’s less than studious mannerisms. You’d bring up a reduction in lessons to Riddle tonight, for now you just needed to focus on helping Katherine pass Herbology.

Quite unfortunately, three am rolled around quicker than you’d anticipated. The dark circles under your eyes had become bags, and you had to actively focus on walking, no longer able to trust your legs to carry you. No amount of caffeine or muggle heavy metal could fix this much sleep deprivation, and you should know. You’d already tried both solutions.

“You’re late.”

You had to physically hold back a groan of annoyance as Riddle’s perfectly grating voice cut through the air.

“Kind of sucks for you, doesn’t it,” you replied with a huff, making your way over to the windowsill that had become your unofficial meeting place.

“Need I remind you that I have nothing to gain from these lessons?” His voice turned cold as he picked an invisible piece of lint off of his shoulder. “You, however, have everything to lose.”

“Thank you oh selfless one,” you replied with mock respect, clutching your hands over your heart to seal the drama you were hoping to convey. “I would be lost without you, left to wither and die on my own! How could I survive without being oh so sleep deprived?”

His upper lip curled into a sneer, and you were reminded quite quickly as to just how terrifying Riddle could truly be. “You were the one who insisted on being discreet. If you have a problem with our lessons, you can find yourself another teacher.” His tone issued a sense of finality, and you realized that there would be no room for arguing.

“ . . I’m sorry,” you replied softly, turning your head away from him and hugging your arms. For some reason, angering him made you feel small, incompetent. Like you were always the one in the wrong. “It’s just that these frequent meetings have affected my class work, not to mention my social life. I can barely keep up.”

“That is none of my concern,” he said stiffly, holding up a hand to silence you as you opened your mouth to issue a retort. “We are behind schedule as it is. Come; today’s lesson includes a change in scenery.”

And so you walked behind Riddle, silently fuming as you mulled over a list of jinxes in your head, and not for the first time. Arguing with him was like yelling at a brick wall. You could do everything in your power to make him see reason, and he would still find a way to push back and point out your flaws. It was meaningless to even attempt to go up against him; but still, you had persisted. Which, didn’t necessarily mean that you had ever won an argument. The two weren’t exactly correlated.

Bringing yourself out of your musings, you realized that you had almost ran into the boy you were mentally cursing. He had stopped walking at some point, and you hurried to put some distance in-between yourself and him. Being too close to him felt dangerous, although you were just starting to realize that nearly every interaction with Riddle had left you with a curling sense of fear in your stomach. You hoped it was just your imagination.

Peering over his shoulder, you drew your eyebrows together in confusion. “Is this . . the girls' lavatory?” Why on Earth would Riddle choose this as a new location for your lessons?

He nodded his head, offering you no explanation as he pulled open the door and entered the room.

Shrugging, you followed him, letting the door close behind you and hoping that Filch didn’t hear the slam that echoed the corridors. You watched, thoroughly weirded out, as Riddle examined the sinks that lay in the center of the room, dragging his fingers over the pipes in a way that let you know he was searching for something.

“Look,” you started, hands raised in the air and poised to make calming motions as Tom would no doubt blow a fuse over your (only partially sarcastic) suggestion that for once the two of you just study in an empty classroom. Unfortunately, you were not permitted to continue, watching with barely concealed annoyance as he held up a finger to silence you. He gestured towards the pipe in front of him and uttered the most ridiculous sentence that you had ever heard the prefect say.

“Tell it to open.”

You froze, jaw hanging halfway open as your gaze bounced between the sinks pipe, to Riddle, and then back again. “Tell the pipe, to open?”

“Yes.”

“The pipe?”

“Yes, the pipe.”

“Riddle, do you need to go to the infirmary? Are you okay? Blink twice if you’re doing this against your will.”

His gaze narrowed and your stomach turned to ice. “Do you want to learn control or not?”

“This,” you replied, taking a few steps forward and gesturing towards the pipe in question. “Is not a snake. This is a pipe. This is plumbing.”

Steadily, without lifting his gaze from yours, he pointed a finger towards the base of the pipe, pressing it against the smallest engraving of a snake that you had ever seen. It was almost as if he was saying “There’s your snake you twat.” In fact, you could almost hear his voice mimicking those exact words, clear as crystal.

“Oh for fucks sake,” you muttered, rolling your eyes at the ceiling and dragging your hands down your face. “Fine. You want me to speak to the plumbing? I’ll speak to the plumbing.” With a huff, you placed yourself directly in front of the pipe, stooping down so that you were at eye-level with the snake. “Sewage,” you grumbled to yourself. “I am talking to sewage.”

Regardless, you decided to at least try to do what Riddle asked. Closing your eyes, you concentrated on the word that you wanted to say, letting it come to you naturally and rolling it on your tongue before finally attempting to speak it. You wish that you could say you got it on the first try, and that the lessons were paying off after all. But the truth is that what came out was a jumbled mess of hisses with too many curves and no edges. It was indistinguishable. Even for you. You cringed as you heard a foot tapping impatiently behind you.

“Again.” A pause. “And this time, make sure it’s actually a word.”

You could do this. You took a deep breath before attempting the word again. Another mess of jargon. Too many edges this time. Not enough curves. Merlin, this language was going to be the death of you. A third try. A nice mix of everything, but it sounded more like ‘unlock’ with a heavy accent. Still, it was closer than the first two.

“Again.”

If Riddle kept interrupting you when you were doing your best to concentrate you were going to swing your fist right at his perfectly turned up nose with malicious intent that would make the prisoners in Azkaban swoon. On the fourth attempt you didn’t even try, letting the letters and vowels fall flat on your tongue.

“That was pathetic.”

You rounded on him, seething. “Your interruptions and constant distractions are not helping me. Either stay quiet or piss off.”

His eyebrows lowered slightly, and you steeled yourself for a quick and concise comeback that would no doubt leave you wallowing in self-pity for weeks on end. Instead, he surprised you. Simply nodding his head before taking a step back.

Nodding to him in turn, you faced the pipe once more, doing your best to ignore the fact that Tom had just done something very not Tom-like and focus on the infuriating task at hand. “Merlin, why is this language always easier to speak when I’m not thinking about it,” you whispered to yourself.

“Might I suggest visualizing?” You glanced behind yourself to see Riddle with his hands clasped behind his back. “Unless you would like me to ‘piss off’, as you so eloquently put it.” He raised an eyebrow and your face flushed.

You hadn’t meant it that way. It was supposed to come across as ‘if you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all’. Unfortunately, he had taken direct offense to it, and was now using it against you. And, despite your better judgment, you were letting him. “I’m sorry,” you replied softly, awkwardly turning to face him with your hands folded over one another in front of you. You felt like a child. “Would you mind elaborating?”

He let you sit in silence for a moment, and then three, before deciding to grace you with his reply. “As it is, you are looking at the snake as something stagnant, inanimate.”

You drew your eyebrows together, confused. “Because it is?”

He released a puff of air through his nose, an action that you decided to interpret as something akin to a groan or a sigh. “Reality is simply what we make of it. You see the snake as a carving, I see it as a living being. And only one of us,” he directed a pointed look at you, “can actually open the doorway.”

You bit down a sarcastic reply, forcing yourself not to tell him that he could open the apparent bloody door himself if he was so proud of it, and instead chose to nod your head. Obedient as ever.

This time, when you told the pipe to open, it obliged, pushing itself back into the wall before the wall itself rotated and turned. You stepped back, surprised, and watched as a gaping passageway opened on the floor where you once stood. You heard a hum of approval from behind you, and watched as Riddle stepped towards the edge of the passage, peering down it with a look of surprise that seemed too well practiced to be true.

“Where does this go?” You asked, hesitant to step any closer to the edge. It’s not that you were scared of heights, afterall you most commonly found solace in the towers that guarded the edges of the castle; it was just that some part of you screamed ‘danger’ when you stared down into the hole. If you concentrated hard enough, you could almost feel something staring back.

“A practice room,” he offered, barely bothering to glance at you. “I came across it by accident, and decided that you might feel more comfortable if we studied somewhere . . secluded.”

You nodded, accepting his answer even though it seemed rehearsed. “And how do we go about entering this practice room?”

Riddle turned to you, raising an eyebrow in amusement before gesturing towards the hole.

You stared at him for a moment longer before realization struck. “Oh fuck no.”

A scream ripped itself from your mouth as you slid down the tunnel, hands pressing against the walls in a desperate attempt to slow yourself down as you took yet another corner at breakneck speed. The sound echoed, bouncing off the walls and back at you as you were finally deposited on the ground below, a curse escaping as you felt sharp rocks digging into your spine and legs.

You managed to clumsily move from the rocks, scraping your hands and knees before finally dragging yourself onto blessedly smooth stone. Only then did you allow yourself to look at your surroundings.

The cave itself was dimly lit by enchanted lanterns on the wall, casting a green glow over the entirety of the room. Attempting to peer down the corridor proved fruitless, and you decided that casting a lumos charm was the best course of action. Unfortunately, the light that the charm gave off also allowed you to see a few specific objects. Such as the pile of rocks that you had landed on that were definitely not rocks and were quite obviously bones.

You sucked in a breath, quickly scampering away from the pile as you resisted the urge to throw up. Further investigation showed that more, neatly stacked bones existed near the edge cavern, and you did not want to dwell on whatever monstrosity had shucked them clean. This was not a study room.

Riddle chose that moment to float effortlessly down the tunnel, arms crossed as he maneuvered around the bones that had acted as your landing pad and touched down on a clear section of the floor.

Your eyes narrowed at him, and you did your best to convince yourself that it was because he had worked a way around sliding down the tunnel, and not because he had seemed to know about the location of the bones ahead of time. Maybe he had just come down here to investigate before he decided to bring you. Make sure that the area was safe and what he was looking for. Yeah, that had to be it. But still, doubt echoed in your mind as you watched him step over a hole in the floor without looking down at it.

“This is not what you said it was,” you spoke, voice stronger than you thought it would be.

“Of course it is,” he replied with a measured level of cool indifference that you had heard on many an occasion. “It’s a practice room, is it not?”

“It looks like a mass grave,” you hissed, finally standing off of the no doubt filthy ground. Honestly you didn’t even want to look at it right now. Even the thought of seeing what bones and assorted trash that you had been sitting on was enough to send a shiver up your spine. “You lied to me.”

Riddle took a moment to think, walking a few paces away from you, taking deep and measured breaths. “If I had said what this truly was, would you have come?” He cut you off before you could reply, continuing on as if he had never intended for you to answer, and maybe he hadn’t. “We are down here, because of you. Because you are too cowardly and too hysterical to fully trust yourself anywhere else. You want someone to complain to? Go look in a mirror. I am done being the object of your frustrations when I have to accommodate for your actions.”

You didn’t know what to say. Weren’t even sure that the words would come to you if need be. He was right, you knew that he was. You probably didn’t even know a fraction of what Riddle may have sacrificed in order to teach you. It was just as possible that these early meetings were getting to him as much as they were getting to you.

But as much as his words made sense, they hurt. They caused an ache to well up inside of you, to settle in the pit of your chest and weigh you down. You don’t know how he did it. How he twisted words that seemed like they had come straight from your mind, how he made them seem like your own.

“I . .” You struggled with yourself, turning your head away to look down at the floor once more in shame. “I’m sorry.” The apology was whispered, and one glance at your companion would be all that you needed in order to know how utterly unaffected he was by it.

As if you needed any further confirmation, the way that he turned away from you and began walking further into the dark hallway without a second word cemented the thought in your head. Your apology was very much not accepted; but he would not hold it against you at this very moment. Most likely, he would find a way to warp it to his own whim later on in the day, or week, or month really. Riddle had a mind like a steel trap.

As you obediently followed after him like the dog you were feeling like, you imagined all of the ways that his brain could be organized, and how you could throw it all into unbridled chaos. If anything, you assumed his thoughts were collected in something akin to a filing cabinet. A small smile found its way onto your face as you envisioned yourself setting it ablaze.

After a few minutes, and many failed attempts at absolutely eating shit in the potholes that riddled the floor, you stopped behind Tom, staring at yet another dark cavern that lay ahead of you. “It might be due to invest in some sort of light fixture,” you mumbled under your breath.

Tom turned his head towards you slightly and you stilled. You heard something then in the tunnels. Something big.

A chill ran down your spine, raising the hairs on your arms and suddenly making you very alert. The same chill that frightened you in the library so long ago, had alerted you to Riddle’s presence back then. Except Riddle was right next to you. And the shiver along your back was not going away.

Something rough scraped against the walls. A dry, itching sound that had you clutching your wand for dear life. You looked next to you, mouth suddenly turning to ash as you realized Tom was observing you. Watching you. Calm and collected.

“Tom,” you whispered lowly, voice hitching in fright. “What the fuck is down here with us.”

When you woke up the next morning, your head pounding and your roommate throwing your uniform at you in a feeble attempt to get you to hurry the hell up because Bilborough does not like latecomers you thought nothing of it.

When you walked to the Great Hall, legs a little wobbly and hands shaking as they clutched your books to your chest; you brushed it off as morning nerves. Afterall, the last essay that you had turned in to your Transfiguration professor had been shoddy work. You were right to be nervous before his eventual criticisms tore you down a few pegs. You could even chalk it up to being jumpy around the campus after the recent petrification's. Another girl had been found just last night for Godric’s sake. Anyone would be on edge after that.

But when you sat down in class and stared blankly at the feather in front of you, not being able to remember the first step of a basic spell, you knew something was wrong. And when you realized that you couldn’t remember a thing from last night after that bone-gripping fear down in the tunnels had sunk its claws into you, it all clicked into place.

The second you were dismissed, you ran from your class all the way to the Astronomy tower. Your hands were clutching your sides, you were admittedly out of breath, and yeah you may have thrown up in your mouth a little bit from the exertion that your body was most definitely not used to, but you made it. The Astronomy class was just being released and you could see Riddle’s prim and perfect head.

Without a second thought you walked up to him, anger fueling you as you yanked him quite forcefully away from his group of asshole cronies and into a secluded alcove.

He was looking at you like you were crazy for both grabbing him and for daring to do it infront of his friends. If looks could kill, you would be dead. “What, exactly, is the meaning of this.” His voice was cool, measured and even. And his face was flat. That’s how you knew that he was well and truly pissed. He couldn’t even bother to put on a mask.

“How many times?”

“Whatever are you asking?”

“How. Many. Times.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed, looking like he was simply going to walk away. You grabbed his arm and all but threw him back against the wall.

“How many times have you brought me down to those caves and erased my bloody memory Riddle.” You were seething. Hallway lights were flickering near you, shadows were growing darker.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

There it was again. That impassiveness. God how you hated him. “How many times have you had me speak to that pipe? How many times have you watched me scatter at the sight of the bones? Grip your arm when I realized that we were not alone? How many times Riddle!”

“Should I take you to go visit the nurse?” Anyone walking by would simply see a concerned prefect attempting to comfort a fellow classmate. Eyes full with concern, mouth morphed into a frown and eyebrows drawn together. But you knew better. Those eyes were cold. That mouth was 5 seconds away from morphing into a grimace.

“You got sloppy.” You sniffed, stepping back from him, books clutched to your chest. “You got complacent. I don’t know what you had me doing in those tunnels, but I know that you don’t want anyone else to know.”

His face was blank again, eyes slightly narrowed and hands clenching at his sides.

“I wonder what Slughorn would think of his prized pupil lurking in tunnels under the school. I wonder what Dumbledore would think.”

“I wonder what they would think if they knew that they had a Parseltongue in their midst.” His tone was sharp. He wasn’t bluffing.

You stepped closer to him then, eyes narrowed in turn as you leaned in and positioned your mouth right by his ear. “I wonder what they would think if they knew they had two.” You whispered slowly, giving him a moment to truly hear what you were saying before leaning back.

“Hey! Hey!” Katherine placed her hands on her knees, doubled over as she looked up at you. “Bloody hell you can run fast.”

You blinked at her, feeling dizzy as you stepped closer. “Um . . Kat? Since when did we have Astronomy in second block?”

A confused frown fell over her face as she straightened, hand still pressed over her cramping side as she stepped towards you. “You tell me. You ran all the way over here. Are you alright? Can you see me okay? And what in Merlin’s name were you talking about with Riddle? And do his eyes really pull you in like two warm pools?”

You blinked. “I was talking with Riddle?”

“Yes?”

You took her arm, turning her back towards the way she had come as you shook your head. “Katherine, are you sure that you’re okay? I don’t even know Riddle, why would I be talking with him?”

“But -”

“Tell me the truth, are you just trying to get out of Herbology?”

“No I swear you-”

“Kat, come on. Just because you accidentally called Professor Bulst ‘mom’ doesn’t mean that you get to bail on her class now. In fact, it means quite the opposite.”

“Merlin’s beard that was one time!”

“It’s okay! It’s probably flattering that you see her as a maternal figure!”

~~~~~~~

Nagini found her way around the crook of his neck, resting her head on Tom’s outstretched hand. She blinked up at him with knowing eyes.

“She served her purpose,” Tom said lightly, placing the Queen’s chess piece face down. “Memory loss charms can be easily undone if need be, and really all I needed was a scapegoat. Her control over the Basilisk was . . . undesirable. She seemed to get worse at it every time.”

He leaned back, staring up at the ceiling as Nagini wound her way onto the chess board, knocking over pieces left and right. “Tonight, we go for the kill. No petrification this time.” He slid his eyes over to the snake and glared. “And I mean that.”

She nodded.

“Make sure that the girl is in the washroom at the appropriate time. It’s time that Hogwarts truly sees just how much of a threat this can be.”

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#tom riddle #tom marvolo riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #Harry Potter #nagini #jupe writes

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sundaybossanova · 2 months

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Witch's Love Chapter 3

Pairing: San x OC

AU: fantasy

Word count: 2k

Summery: It was a normal day for Sera, brewing potions, visiting the market and trying not to blow her cover but a sudden uninvited guest changes everything. Lying on her doorstep is a young man on the brink of death and she has no idea what she's gotten into after saving his life.

The leaves underneath San’s leather boots crunched as he went deeper into the woods. This part was rarely visited by humans, most of them too scared of the tales they heard of this place. Apparently a werewolf was once seen, others say a vampire roams around at night and some claim to have never seen anyone return from this part of the forest. To San and his brothers these stories meant nothing, knowing well enough that all of these were lies, tales mothers tell their children to prevent them from leaving the safety of their home. He and his brothers lived here since they were young boys, their parents dying while fighting for their beliefs, they dreamed of a world where no king could become a tyrant, using his people to fulfill his power hungry desires.

Memories of these dark times return, Seonghwa’s mother rushing all eight of them into the forest, telling them to continue until they see a small cottage. The young boys were scared, most of them were crying hot tears streaming down their faces. He remembered how Hongjoong forced back all his sadness, thanked the adult with a voice full of determination “I will lead them there, tell my parents that I love them. Whatever happens we will avenge you.” The woman was stunned by the boy's will to fight, he knew he took after his parents yet seeing him standing there with eyes filled with rage she couldn't be happier. “I know you will Hongjoong, you're a great leader just like your parents are don't forget that.'' She took a short pause trying to hold back tears herself as she looked at her son and his friends. “You all are so brave, my little warriors. Always remember that you guys are a family even when times are tough, together you will get through it.”

She knelt down to Seonghwa’s height, “I love you my son, never forget that. Love is the strongest weapon we have.” and with these last words she ushered them to run and find their hiding spot. Only when the last boy, little Jongho with his stuffed teddy bear, left her sight did she turn around to join her friends in their fight for freedom.

San remembers clearly how scared he and his friends were. Sitting in the little hut, Seonghwa gave all of them bread and water which their parents prepared for them along with other rations. The two oldest tried to act as brave as anyone but San could still hear them crying in the night when they thought all of them were asleep. Thinking back he is thankful to both of his older brothers, they gave them stability and hope during bad times, while still being there for each other.

With his thoughts lost in memories he doesn't realize that his home has come into view. The little hut has become a cottage built over the years by their own hands. It might not be the most beautiful house but to them it was home. He can see candlelight from inside the kitchen, probably Wooyoung preparing food for all of them. The small stable was already dark, Yunho must have finished looking after the horses and their little goats and chicken by now, ready to eat whatever has been prepared for dinner.

As San steps in front of the door he can feel his heart speed up. With a soft knock he made his presence known before opening the door slowly. Exhausted from the day's walk he didn't realize the man standing next to the door and before he could react he was tackled to the ground. “Who are you and how have you found our home?” the deep rough voice could only belong to one of his brothers. A tall giant, with sharp eyes and an intimidating aura yet San knows better. Under this whole facade lies a shy and loyal boy ready to play pranks on all his friends.

“Mingi it’s me San. Now get off you big oaf. Gosh you are heavy.” he put his arms on the taller guys shoulder trying to get him to move only for San to feel a stinging pain in his back. Groans left his mouth and that was all for Mingi to get out of his shock. “Oh my god, it really is you. We all thought you were dead. Where have you been?” He was bombarded by questions while Mingi helped him to his feet, all of the commotion garnering the attention of the other inhabitants of the house. “Are you talking to yourself again Mingi?” the words leaving their youngests mouth as he came out of his room.

“Is that you Sannie?” For the first time Jongho didn't know what to say, the sudden appearance of the person he thought dead stunning him. “What is going on here, I was trying to work out our next heist and all I can hear is you playing around” before their leader could say anything else San interrupted him “Hey Captain, good to see you too.”

After a long and heartwarming welcome all the boys gathered around the kitchen table waiting for Wooyoung to serve them dinner. “How are you still alive?” “You met a speaking dog?” “Are you sure you didn't hit your head?” With all of his brothers demanding answers San felt lost, he wasn't sure where to even start, only mentioning snippets of information. “All of you be quiet, let him tell the story. Ask your questions after.” and with the words from their oldest everyone shut up eyes fixated on San ready to hear the full story. While retelling them everything that happened he tried to be as detailed as possible to avoid another flood of questions but he should have known better.

“So your new friend, is she pretty?” Wooyoung’s voice broke the silence making San glare at him. “What type of question even is that? He should tell us what ingredients the witch used to heal his wounds in such a short time. Do you know Sannie?” Typical for Yeosang to be curious about herbs, the moment he saw Sera engrossed in her potion making he thought of Yeo and his love for collecting herbs as well as making remedies for all their injuries. Hearing these questions made San let out a breath of relief, nothing had changed while he was gone and for that he was forever grateful.

Until late into the night all the brothers stayed up, listening to San’s story, sharing what they were up to while he was gone and just reminiscing in each other's presence. Finally he was home, yet he felt that something was missing or rather someone.

The cold creeped up Sera’s legs, she felt the wet floor underneath her that sent shivers down her back. With desperation she tried opening her eyes, fighting the drowsiness away only to see darkness. Everything seemed to turn, the dizziness overwhelming her body who was ready to give up and go back to sleep. The only thing keeping her awake were the footsteps that came closer accompanied by the rough voice of a man. “Oh look, our little witch has finally woken. Ready to grace us with her presence.” On the ceiling of her prison cell she could make out an opening, soft moonlight shining down on her. Through the barricades of the door she could see polished leather boots and even without seeing more of her captor Sera was sure he had a wicked grin plastered across his face. “Where am I and why am I here?” her throat felt dry the few words she spoke not making it any better. “Asking questions now? You should know what you have done, killing an innocent child like it is nothing.” Chills ran down her back, never has she hurt a child nor a baby. Mind racing, she tries desperately to find what she has done wrong.

“I would never-” before she could finish her defense the doors to her little cell were opened, the man kneeling down to look at her. His face was round and full of wrinkles, showing his yellow teeth as he spoke to her. “You whore sold a potion to my wife, making her lose our child. How dare you plead innocent. I will make you pay for this witch.” With the words of this stranger Sera realized her mistake. “The young girl, she is your wife?” maybe she should have thought before speaking but the utter shock and disgust for this man overcame her. “She asked for this potion she probably didn't want this child, perhaps she doesn't even want to be your wife.” Not holding back she continued her venomous rant.

“And even if she doesn't want to, I bought that whore and I will use her however I want. She should be lucky I made her my wife and not just a servant I toy around with. I gave her everything and she dared to kill my son and go behind my back.” the stranger was beyond angry, Sera berates herself for speaking so carelessly in such a dire situation, she should have shut her mouth not aggravated her captor any further. “I already decided on a fitting punishment for my wife and I will enjoy it thoroughly.'' His smile made her sick to her stomach not wanting to imagine what he had planned for this poor young girl.

“Don't you dare touch her, she has only done what was good for her. If she doesn't want a child it's her right to get rid of it. Especially if the father forced himself onto her like a fucking pig.” If she wasn't going to get out of this cell alive, the young witch wanted to at least speak her mind. From a young age on she learned to stand up for her beliefs and that is what she will do until the day she dies. “How dare you speak to me like that you bloody witch!” The captor apparently had enough of her back talking, with his right hand he took a hold of his sword and with a swift motion he slashed it into the hole right at Sera.

She could feel her skin tearing, blood slowly pouring out onto her dirty clothes. The pain slowly overtook her whole body, groans leaving her mouth as she sacked to her knees trying to put pressure on her wound to stop the bleeding. “This is what you get for opening your rotten mouth and believe me the next time I visit will be much worse - if you're even alive until then.” With his last words spoken and a satisfied look on his face the stranger left the young witch to suffer. Sera could feel the last bits of her energy leaving her body. She became dizzy seeing black dots and before she knew it her head hit the ground and the world turned black.

Deep inside the dark forest leaves were crushed as a dark creature made its way through the trees, long legs running at high speed not caring for its surroundings. In front of a shabby looking hut the animal finally came to a stop letting out a long and painful howl, alerting the residents of the house. Within a minute the old creaky door was opened, two young lads with weapons stepping out, one taller than the other looking around and spotting the black wolfish creature. “What the fu-” before the shorter one could finish San pushed through his brothers running to the animal. “Bram, what are you doing here?” his eyes were full of confusion trying to figure out why the familiar would be here out of all places. “Where is Sera?”

The wolf's head sank in shame and with a hoarse voice it spoke what San had been fearing to hear. “The mayor of the village has kidnapped her, he wants her to burn for using witchcraft and being affiliated with the devil”.

borders by @cafekitsune

#ateez #ateez au #ateez fic #ateez fanfic #ateez x oc #ateez san #san x oc #ateez fantasy au #san choi

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faux-fires · 1 year

Text

(not a) drabble a day #3

Friendship ended with drabble-a-day, now random 5k handers fics about solitary confinement are my new bff

In this freedom we found (M!handers, 5119 words, look it's about solitary so it's gonna have dark themes & stuff).

The worst of it was the shame.

He'd told himself he wouldn't cry. He'd gone whole days without speaking when they brought him to the Circle, what was a week in the dark to him? He'd sleep through most of it, surely; he was made of stronger stuff than they thought.

But it wasn't about the silence, or it wasn't only about the silence. In the dark he realised that they could just stop feeding him. It was so small and so empty and he felt small and empty, even though he tried not to be. He tried to be quiet and contemplative and stoic but it had never really been in his nature, and so he had begun talking to them when they opened the tiny slot in his cell and shoved in his food, and then when that didn't help, talking to himself to fill the space. When they came to change his chamberpot once a week he found himself trying to make eye contact and then, gradually, as even that was denied him, to touch - to lay his palm on silverite just in case there was a human being beneath it, one with eyes and hands and a maker-damned voice, pathetically grateful even when his jailers just tore his fingers loose disdainfully.

Eventually he began to rage, and even as he did so he felt like a toddler battering his fists against the walls of his door and screaming until his throat gave out and kicking over his slop bucket, hoping some of it would leak out through the gap under the door, even though sometimes it worked and they'd open up the cell to sluice him down with a bucket of ice water, and he was so fucking grateful to just see them that he didn't even care that they were unhelmeted, and that they looked at him in disgust like he had chosen to live this way.

And worse was the silence and what it did to his control and his sense of himself, of his own courage and his own dignity and his own humanity: the intervals. Sometimes when he begged he could hear them laughing on the other side of the door; one time after he'd been hammering on the door for so long he'd broken at least one of his knuckles a templar flung it open, snorted, "You cracked sooner than most, robe," and shoved a healing potion at his chest; the way they spoke about him at shift change as though he were an animal (the runaway been good today? And the response, Yeah, managed to get most of his piss in the bucket for once, like it was his fault he couldn't see) and he was so raw, he'd thought he could live through it but in the dark he was nothing, they made him nothing, and even after they brought him back to the light the cell stayed.

It hadn't been a week. He'd known that on some level but they didn't tell him the truth for some time. They put him in the infirmary afterwards because his legs were funny and he couldn't walk and he couldn't chew anything or hold anything. Wynne treated him with a sympathy he hated (I'm sorry, Anders, there is no cat in Kinloch Hold - I don't know what you saw) and the templars at the door wouldn't look at him and he couldn't stop wondering if they'd worked any shifts down there and had seen him, weeping, bleeding, unravelled and broken. He didn't want to know.

At first he kept going back there at night in his head, woke screaming so loudly Irving had to get the Tranquil to put silencing charms on the infirmary doors, and that was shameful, too, that he couldn't just get better despite being a healer of no small skill. Nobody at Kinloch talked to him about it because all of them were aware it could be them, and as the months went by his shame and humiliation began to curdle, turn vicious and heavy in his gut, something in his eyes putting them off.

He'd been out the cell for six months when the Blight came. He stole a templar uniform and walked out with the rest of the bucketheads, fingers flexing inside his cold silverite gauntlets, and it was the dumbest escape plan he'd ever executed and should never have worked but it did. Maybe Kinloch itself wanted him gone. Maybe it could feel his rage and his hatred seething in his belly and wanted him out before Uldred split the veil, because if Anders had still been there he knew his Rage would have left no survivors.

At Vigil's Keep he talked too much and too fast, and he needled his new, fellow, Wardens, testing always the limit - what would it take to end up back there in the cells? He slept with Pounce on his pillow and a candle burning at his night table, and although Oghren bitched about the light when he was trying to sleep they all let it go, because Anders had been woken up by the screams of every single one of the other Warden recruits and most of them were to do with Darkspawn but maybe not all of them were, and not one of them would ever push.

He told the Commander, airily, and when she looked back at him with sympathy but no real understanding he didn't bring it up again. When she gave him the world's ugliest blue scarf he wrapped it around his wrist and played with it whenever he thought he wasn't real, which was happening less and less the longer he stayed with the Wardens, with people who called him Anders because that was the name he'd asked him to use and who treated him as annoying colleague and not a ghost haunting Kinloch without even the decency to die first. He wished he'd taken the scarf with him to Kirkwall but by then he had something better: light he carried within himself and another who slept beneath his skin and whispered in his dreams, What they did to you was wrong. It will never happen again.

After the Commander left he killed six templars with his bare hands and thought, pleased, now I am not nothing - even in the worst places of Kirkwall with the Chokedamp oozing through his lungs, even in the dark and the damp of the sewers. But at night sometimes he dreamed of walls and bars and silverite and blood under his nails, and he made his clinic in an old mine-shaft half open to the sea air and told himself it was because it would help circulate the bad air, and hated himself for that, too, the way he cringed from the truth like a beaten dog.

He didn't tell anyone in Kirkwall. Isabela waxed lyrical about her time in the drunk tanks of every port city from here to Rialto; Aveline thought anyone in a cell had to be there for a reason. Fenris carried his trauma so openly on his skin that it made Anders even more ashamed that he had come from his unmarked, which made him angrier, so much so Hawke stopped inviting them to Wicked Grace at the same time. Sebastian asked him once whether something had happened in the Circle and Anders picked a fight with him about demons, because his knees had gone weak just at the idea and that too was humiliating.

Hawke thought it was romantic that Anders slept pressed so tight to his side, his hand splayed across Hawke's broad chest so that he could track his lover's heartbeat even in his dreams, and Anders loved him so deeply and so selfishly that he never once told him because he didn't want Hawke to know, ever, that Anders had once been nothing. Hawke was a man he could have dreamed into being, strong and handsome and talented and so Makers-damned kind, and Anders hated that even in the safety of their bed - with Hawke's heart under his palm and the fire banked low but never extinguished - he sometimes thought not sweet nothings like a lover should but instead, I will kill you myself before I let them put you in a cell, and he hated the templars all the more for making him think it in the first place.

He was so angry, all the time, but it got worse after the Arishok died - after Meredith began to squeeze and Kirkwall began to crumble, and his anger was a self-stoking blaze, because the more it grew the more he hated himself for damaging his spirit in this way, of taking something as good as justice and warping it with his hatred and his fear. It was a cycle he couldn't get out of and his friends - Hawke's friends - began to avoid him as he became crueller and colder and even Hawke began looking at him with such concern, and that hurt most of all, because some part of Anders wanted so badly to curl against him - to draw strength from those broad arms and say, I am so afraid all the time. He never would because he knew with gut-deep certainty that if he said anything at all Hawke would leave him, because that well of cowardice and shame ran so very deep through the core of him now and had done for so long that he simply did not know who he was without it. Better that it was anger. Anger drove him onward, anger got the door open even if just to sluice him down with an ice-bucket, anger got the templars banging back on the door and yelling Shut up in there! and that was so very much better than being nothing.

Anger got him sela petrae and anger got him into the Chantry basement and anger got him through that last night in their room, the moon shining in through windows that Hawke never drew the curtains fully across. Anger got him through their last night of lovemaking, teeth and tongue and fingernails biting as Hawke held him close and he responded in kind. Anger was there for him when Hawke touched his cheek so gently to turn them face-to-face, expression sad and uncertain in the dim firelight that he had never once questioned and said, You'll tell me, won't you? If there's.... if you need me?

Anders wanted to say, I'll always need you, and he wanted to say, I am sorry I cannot be whole, and he wanted to say, hold me and show me I am real. But when he opened his mouth all that came out was a comment about the cause, and it played in his head all through the next day until they stood before Meredith in Lowtown and he cut through their bickering, and Hawke said, "Anders, what did you do?"

The red light was so fierce and so bright he could see it through his closed eyelids, and it felt like that bucket of ice water. It felt purifying. It felt like losing a rotten limb - a moment of sharp, intense pain, and then... nothing. He opened his eyes and looked at them, at the horror and fear on their faces, and thought, Nobody can ever say I am not real now.

He took a seat on some spare crates while they argued, and realised he didn't much care what they were arguing about. How had he forgotten how it felt, to be this peaceful? They were fighting, but the sun was going down, and for a time he sat and he watched the embers falling through the reddening sky with nothing in his head at all. There was no rage. No fear. No shame. There was a pang of grief for Hawke, who had loved him so well and so gently, but even that was distant, like his heart had been wrapped in such a thick suit of armour nothing could pierce it.

For a moment he simply existed in his body, worn and unkempt as it was. His socks were damp and there was a hole through which his big toe protruded; it was uncomfortable, he should have darned it. His coat was heavy on his shoulders. He knee twinged. His knuckles - never quite right after the breaks in the cell - ached a little, but nothing unbearable. His throat itched with the smoke. All the damage had always been on the inside, and he was suddenly glad that nobody would see it even after he was gone. It was the only thing Kinloch Hold had let him keep and it would be his now and... in whatever came next.

When someone touched his shoulder, he thought for a second it might be Meredith or one of her lackeys - but then Hawke squeezed gently. He had questions, which Anders supposed was fair, and he answered as best he could, for this brave man who had loved Anders and also spent so many years fighting for this city. The dead needed their Champion to be their voice more than he did, he supposed, until Hawke said, "Help me defend the mages," and everything turned upside down.

He rose, and Hawke clasped him by the cheek in a mirror of that last night in their bed. His face was unreadable. His eyes were clear and thoughtful. He didn't stop staring at Anders, not even when Sebastian swore bloody vengeance upon them, and Anders couldn't have moved out from under that gaze if he had tried. His heart was pounding in his chest, but he had no name for the emotion he felt - something quick and bright and growing by the second; something so massive and out of his sphere of knowledge that he felt almost a boy again, going for his first walks through the Fade, struggling to find the vocabulary to describe things never intended to be pinned down by words.

The fighting was brutal and bloody. He had known it would be but hadn't thought too much about it, having assumed that it was a part of the process he'd never live to see. Hawke fought as efficiently and cleanly as he ever had. Every time Anders glanced over he was focused on the task at hand, but at moments he thought he could feel the weight of Hawke's gaze on him. Even in the courtyard, when Hawke agreed to flee the city with him, to become fugitives, together (like it was that easy!), he thought maybe Hawke was keeping himself back. He wondered if Hawke was struggling with his own rage, if his hate was choking him the way Anders' was.

After they fled the city nobody would look at him at all. Hawke had given them time to go home and gather what belongings they wished to carry and they came to Isabela's ship one at a time, bodies exhausted and hands curled around both weapons and knapsacks. They gathered on the main deck and dropped their belongings where they sat and sank down atop them, one giant sprawl, and not a one of them watched him as he stepped carefully over and through discarded shields and daggers and swords and made his way up to the forecastle. The sky was grey now, smoke choking out the moon and stars, and the water was as black as the cell, but the fires raging across Kirkwall left enough light to see how filthy his hands were - coated with ash and blood, and little of it his own. He had always been a healer of no small skill. He set them on the rail and waited for the guilt and the shame, and none came.

Instead Hawke found him there, two ship bells later as the Siren's Call carefully managed her way out of the narrow shipping channel, slipping underneath the lifeless Twins on her way out to the ocean. He announced his presence in the form of a small ball of crimson magelight in the shape of a butterfly, which flitted onto the railing next to Anders' right hand and flapped its wings a few times. Anders could see how tired he was from the poor shape of the butterfly, the lack of detail in its wings, and turned so that his back was to the water to take him in.

He was covered in ash and blood. His trousers were torn mid-thigh, where one of Meredith's bronze statues had nearly taken his leg off. His face was filthy, and he walked slowly, like all his joints were creaking and old. Anders thought he looked magnificent, and only when Hawke's mouth quirked did he realise he'd said it aloud. "Are you sure you don't need any healing?" He asked the question carefully. He thought he'd healed them all completely before, when Cullen let them go, as they walked the damaged pier of the Gallows and tried to find a boat sea-worthy enough to take them back to Kirkwall's docks. There had been bodies floating in the water, and Hawke had been using his force magic to shove them out of the way so that they could leave the berth.

Hawke shook his head. "You got it all earlier," he said. He stepped closer, and in his own magelight Anders could see he was just dirty. The bags under his eyes came from exhaustion, not bruising, and the blood was old, or not even his. His expression was so hard to read. His mouth moved, like he was thinking about what to say, but all that came out was, "I came to tell you we're sleeping on deck - Isabela says she's not sharing her cabin with any of us while we look like this." Ruefully he plucked at his own sleeve. Anders watched him cautiously, waiting for the anger, the revulsion - the ash he was failing to brush off had been perhaps people. Instead, he closed the distance between them and leaned on the railing next to Anders, heavily, like he genuinely needed the support to stay up.

"I wasn't planning on sleeping in Isabela's cabin," Anders said slowly.

"Good," said Hawke. He glanced sidelong at Anders, who was shocked to see him smiling, a sharp cut of a thing. "I don't share."

"Are you -" Anders swallowed. "Do you mean that?"

Hawke just watched him, his eyes roaming over Anders' face, searching for something that Anders couldn't understand, and then he looked away, back over the black waters. "I packed a bedroll for each of us," he said. "I don't think I told you about the emergency packs behind the wardrobe."

"I, ah, already found them," Anders said. He winced when Hawke levelled an unimpressed glare his way. "I was - looking for a secret place to put something of my own. As I'm sure you can imagine."

He'd kept the sela petrae in his clinic, but the crushed high dragon fire gland Hawke had given him from the Bone Pit dragon needed somewhere else. The glass jar hadn't been very big and he'd wanted it close to hand, but when he'd lifted that loose floorboard in their room and seen the two stuffed knapsacks lying there - had realised why he'd mysteriously been running dry on socks and underwear and hadn't been able to find his favourite whalebone comb those past few weeks - he had replaced the floorboard and vowed to say nothing. Hawke was an apostate too. He understood.

He'd thought Hawke would start in on him for his own secret, which had been so much bigger, but instead he just nodded, like it was a satisfactory answer. "We've got money, weapons, and some travel rations," he said. "I've told everyone but Isabela we're heading for Ferelden, but I was thinking we could get off at Ostwick instead. A lot of people will be wanting to find us and the sooner we start being unpredictable, the better."

Anders felt like he had prepared a different version of the conversation than Hawke had. His stomach felt tight and tense. "But - your brother," he said, and when Hawke shrugged, pressed - because he'd never been able to leave well enough alone - "You're going to leave him behind? Your friends? For me?"

Hawke laughed bitterly, which was a relief. "Here we go," he said, to the great night sea.

The anger was back, albeit smaller, and Anders said, clipped, "What do you mean by that?" His voice was waspish, and got lower pitched as he stoked that fire in his belly. Hate me, loathe me, leave me - just don't look too closely at me. "I gave you a choice at the Gallows - if you didn't want to travel with me you should have said then. "

But instead of getting indignant or shoving back or anything Anders could use, could build on, Hawke just grinned at him crookedly, no humour in his eyes at all, and said, "When are you going to let the Circle go?"

"What?" Anders pushed himself off the railing, momentarily stunned, and then hissed, "This has been my goal from the start, Hawke. I've never been less than honest. I burnt it down -"

"You bombed a Chantry," said Hawke, "And then we killed some templars, and hopefully saved some mages. I know what you did, and what you wanted to achieve. And I hope that it works the way you planned, Anders, I really do. I don't give a shit about the Chantry. I know I should, and I have been trying all evening - maybe it'll come to me later, but all I see when I think about the body count tonight is fucking Orsino stitching himself into an abomination made from his own murdered apprentices. I see the bodies in the water at the docks with the stab wounds in the back as they ran away. I think about the mages we found in their cells butchered under their beds as they tried to hide.

"I meant everything I said in the Gallows," Hawke continued. His fingers were curling around the railing, the tips of his stylized talon gauntlets digging into the wood; the magelight flared a little with his anger and Anders realised there were wisps of smoke escaping between his palms, wrapped tight to hide the shaking. He was still staring straight ahead at the water. "For the sake of the mages I will follow you across Thedas, Anders. I'll kill more templars, I don't give a fuck. I'll support the cause no matter what because it is my cause." And now he looked at Anders, and his expression was terrible to behold because it was so familiar; lip curled in rage, but in his eyes nothing but fear and - helplessness. "I won't follow you if you're going to try to push me away because some part of you is trapped in Kinloch fucking Hold."

Anders said, too quickly, "What happened to me there -"

"Don't," Hawke begged, hoarsely. "Please. I'm not Sebastian. I'm not Varric. I'm not looking to - get into your brain or dig into your story. I am the man who has loved you for six years. I have heard you crying in your sleep. I have watched you find a reason not to follow us into caves. I was there in the Deep Roads when the campfire burned out and you panicked and set fire to half our bedding, do you even remember that? Anders, I'm not - I'm not your enemy," And his eyes were wet, now, and somehow this was the most awful thing of all the things that had happened tonight.

All the blood that had been shed because of him, all the lives that had been lost because of him - none of it mattered as much as this man, this one single man, looking at him with such awful despair and heartbreak on his face, and Anders felt a surge of shame course through him, so strong that when he opened his mouth to argue what came out was instead a humiliating high, keening noise, and he clasped both his hands over his mouth, horrified, but it wouldn't stop, and for a moment he was back in the dark, screaming I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry until his throat bled, begging for pity from people who had taken everything from him and deserved nothing in return, and he thought that there might be no way out this time -

And then Hawke pulled him into an embrace so tight that left no room for the nothing. He clung to Anders with a savagery Anders could never have expected - his face pressed tight into the side of Anders' head, and he was crying now like Anders had never seen him cry before, and Anders realized with a mix of abject embarrassment and deep relief that he was, too - horrid jagged, broken little sobs that came from somewhere deep inside even as he tried to force them back in, to seal shut his throat, to fill his chest with the comforting familiarity of rage.

But Hawke's tears were pooling in his ear, and it would have been awful enough if he hadn't been whispering, "I thought you were going to die, Anders, I can't lose you, I thought you were going to die," over and over again, and Anders thought - maybe we're in this together. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. But he hooked his arms around Hawke's waist and pressed himself closer, closer to that sweat-smoke smell and the uncomfortable wetness, the heat and light and warmth of him, and took everything he was being offered as he cried like he hadn't since the cell.

He didn't know how long they clung to to each other in the night. Nobody came to find them. They'd left Kirkwall behind for good now, slipping past the lighthouse, and were loose on the Waking Sea; with the smoke falling behind them the stars had crept out, and a faint blueish patch that must be Satina, lurking in her gibbous form behind the clouds. At some point Hawke moved them away from the railing and they sat, pressed into each other, under one of the cabin windows. Anders didn't think his legs would work if he tried, but he wasn't trying; he curled half into Hawke, his face tucked so tightly into his throat he could feel every exhalation his lover made as a cool breeze against his still-drying ear. Hawke's left arm wrapped around his torso but he had both of his hands clasped around Hawke's right hand, holding on closely.

They hadn't said anything, not since at least the lighthouse, and yet Anders felt... better. Fuller. Like some hollow part of him had been filled. It wasn't quite as peaceful as he'd felt sitting on that crate awaiting execution but it wasn't too far from it, either, and this time he could honestly say he did not expect to die.

He had fought so hard to keep Hawke from his weak places; the shame he felt in that cell, the hatred at his own cowardice, the fear that it could happen again. That he was himself everything they said about him - paranoid, crazy, twisted by Vengeance. Hawke hadn't turned him away. Instead he had shown Anders the parts of himself Anders could never have guessed at - the terror he felt at being alone, born from a lifetime of apostasy. The templars lurking around every corner. The desperate loneliness, the yearning for a connection inhibited by that fundamental need not to be caught. The stubborn, white-knuckle viciousness he displayed to the world on behalf of those he called friend and family.

Anders had always thought of Hawke as a Just man. Even sharing his life with the man - entangled in his bed, struggling their way through domesticity together - part of him had thought he could never deserve Hawke, not truly. He was too noble, too brave, too good to be trusted with those awful, deepest parts of Anders' own heart. He was coming to see that this was not the case, that Hawke had felt that same, deep-rooted self loathing, and had made choices not because they were good and right and just but because they kept him close to the people that he loved. He didn't care about the Chantry, for example, and Anders suspected he never would - which felt odd, given that Anders himself did care. He had made deals with monsters - like the boat they were on, for another; Isabela had traded it for an opportunity to catch a slaver lord, and Hawke had let her because he thought they might need an escape route. Anders still didn't know how he felt about that.

It felt strange to look at him as another human being, and not a man on a shining pedestal, a Champion and a hero. Perhaps these dark, wounded places were something common to all sentient beings. Or perhaps it was the magic, the shame they had both been soaked in by the Chantry and its adherents before they were even born. Anders rubbed his cheek lightly against Hawke's throat, stubble rasping against stubble, and considered this for the second draft of his manifesto.

Hawke said, his voice gummy and weary, "If it's alright with you I'd rather stay here tonight. I don't think I can face everyone else like this."

Anders wanted to say something sarcastic and light; he wanted to say something that slid off the edge of everything they had just been through. Instead he forced himself to take a deep breath and said, "I'm with you, love. To the end." After a moment, he added, "Fugitives, together."

The arm still wrapped around his torso tightened. In response Anders squeezed Hawke's hand where he held it between both of his, and eventually Hawke's bearded jaw scraped across his forehead as he pressed a kiss into the crown of Anders' head. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. They'd come through the darkness of the night together, and it had made them stronger.

He didn't tell himself he wouldn't cry again. In fact it felt entirely possible he'd cry more tonight. But he'd experienced the worst of himself, and the worst of Hawke too, and they were still here. Filthy, dog-tired, and with an uncertain path ahead of them: but still here.

He wasn't afraid any more.

#reikah writes recklessly #anders #hawke #handers #did i just want to write my favs cuddling YUP #drabble a day #<- YES I KNOW THIS IS NOT A DRABBLE I'M MAD ABOUT THIS TOO

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leftoverdinosaurbones · 4 months

Text

Chapter 5: The Feeling of Dread

Series: F!Reader (Dark Urge), Spawn Astarion, Haarlep, Raphael - NSFW (minors DNI)

[Major Spoilers - Set post BG3]

***

Here is the next chapter of the fanfic I've been working on!

You can read Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 here on tumblr or on Ao3.

Content Warning: Gore, Depictions of Anxiety

Summary:

You've made plans. You've packed. You've strategized. But nothing compares to stepping foot into the horrors of Avernus. Coming face-to-face with Zariel's indomitable Fortress.

Maybe you aren't as ready as you thought.

Chapter 5: The Feeling of Dread

The simmering rage at the thought of your imprisoned friends melted away any anxieties that accompanied you to sleep last night. By the time you woke up, your body felt nearly aflame with the need to get going. At times, your animalistic need to give into the instinctual pull towards delivering vengeance, towards justice, can make you sloppy. It’s what brought you in headfirst into situations like the Hag’s house after you found the bodies of the two dead brothers, without taking even just a moment to look around at your surroundings.

You need to rationalize with yourself, to take some time to make plans to ensure your success.

You sat at your desk to pen a note to Rolan and Shadowheart. You told them nearly everything (leaving out your ‘discussions’ at the House of Hope). It felt strange to go on such a mission without gathering around the fire to discuss plans with all your companions. Of course, you wouldn’t have to convince any of them to take up arms and free Karlach and Wyll from Avernus. The only arguments would likely be about how - and with your discussions with Raphael, surely.

You collect a few key items from around your home - a scroll of revivify, a couple health potions, a few pieces of cheese and bottles of water - and tuck them into your backpack. You pick up the Orphic Hammer and strap it across your back. It is heavy (heavier than you remember) but the feel of its weight brings you some comfort, along with the faint memories of the past. With one final, sweeping glance around your home, you step outside and lock the door behind you.

The restlessness vibrating through your legs and feet propels you forward. You drop the letters into the mailbox for the post officer and his pigeons to collect, and then continue along the streets of Baldur’s Gate.

You walked a brisk path along the cobbled streets, making occasional turns. Your mind was preoccupied as your imagination worked overtime, taking you through countless possible scenarios of what the rescue might be like. You were always one to (emotionally) over-prepare, at least.

The sounds of metal clanging against metal filled your ears as you rounded yet another street corner. The slight smell of a smoldering fire danced along your nostrils as the forge came into focus. There, you saw a man bent over at the furnace, consumed by his latest project. You can see the slight definition of his back muscles as he lifts a hammer and strikes it over the smoldering metal. His sleeves are rolled partway up his arms revealing the muscles of his forearms, contracting with every hit.

You step forward delicately to avoid disturbing him, and lean back against a wooden railing to admire his craft. You notice a fine sheen of sweat starting to gather across his brow as he continues to pound into the weapon, willing - demanding - it to take its necessary form. He quickly grabs the tongs and plunges the searing hot metal into the barrel of water. The weapons lets out a long hiss as the steam fills the air of the forge. He lets out a sigh, bringing his arm up to wipe away the sweat building on his face.

As the steam dissipates, Dammon looks up at you and smiles.

“Well, well. To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you?” Dammon asks with a smile as he continues to care for his weapon. You meet his gaze, greeting him with a smile that doesn’t quite match the fire burning in your own eyes.

“Oh Dammon, how I wish I were just here to watch your fine craftsmanship.” Dammon puts down his tools after hearing the seriousness in your tone, giving you his undivided attention. You explain that Karlach and Wyll are trapped with Zariel, and your quest to save them (again, leaving out the bits with Raphael).

Dammon’s eyes darken at the situation, particularly when hearing of Karlach’s capture.

“How can I help?” He asks, as much to you as himself. “Ah! Okay, how much do you know of Zariel’s Fortress?”

You shake your head.

He pulls out a quill and some parchment, and starts to draw you a map based on his memory.

“Here,” he points to a room on the map. “This is likely where Wyll and Karlach would be held.” He points to another area of the map. “Here is the forge where I used to work. If you are able, you should bring Karlach here. If you are lucky, the blacksmith will be a prisoner, and perhaps will be sympathetic to your cause.”

Dammon paused, his face clouding over, unreadable.

“I know how impossible that sounds, but this forge could be the only way to ever let Karlach come back to Faerûn.”

You nod, and pull Dammon into a tight embrace. You hear his voice, light as a whisper, against the hair on top of your head. “I think of Karlach often, and wondered what’s become of her. I thank the gods that she’s alive, but I never would have wished this upon her. If you can’t free her from Zariel’s clutches, she truly would be better off dead.”

“I will find her, Dammon. I promise.” Dammon turns away from you, and continues back with his work.

***

Just after sundown, Astarion emerges from a darkened alleyway to meet you outside of the Devil’s Fee. The Deathstalker Mantle dances along his heels as he glides towards you.

“Hmm, well aren’t you something?” you breathe.

Astarion is a sight to behold. He is dressed in simple black leather armor, contrasting sharply with his pale skin. His fingertips flirt with the hilt of one of his daggers, strapped to his hip.

Such a sin for a deadly man to be this beautiful.

Astarion lets out a low, soft laugh as your eyes drink him in from head to toe. He quickly closes the distance between you. Your breath hitches as he stops in front of you, just an inch away from your body. You can feel the electricity between the two of you as your skin yearns for contact.

“Hello, beautiful,” he smiles down at you, as he slowly brings both his hands up to cup your cheeks. You lean into his caress as your own hands find their way around his waist to draw him into you.

Even though you’ve touched him so many times, just like this, your fingers tremble slightly as you run your fingers up and down his back. Gods, the hold this man has over you…

Astarion rubs his thumbs across your cheek bones. A smile lightens up his own face, deepening the laugh lines around his eyes. He bends slightly to meet your lips in with a kiss. Your lips move against his, the heat of your desire for him cooling against his skin. You feel yourself fall into the love and safety of this embrace.

It always ends much too quickly. You both pull away, the pressure of the upcoming mission weighing heavily on your minds, particularly while standing in the looming gaze of the Devils Fee. You take Astarion’s hand, interlacing your fingers, and walk through the door.

***

“I’ve been expecting you.”

Helsik has her back turned to you as she organizes various items behind the front desk. As you approach, she turns to face you.

“Your entry is paid for. Which is good for me, because apparently you aren’t the type to make honest deals,” Helsik spat.

“Oh come off it,” Astarion rolled his eyes. “And I’m sure you simply forgot to mention what the payment for the previous journey was going to be? Something stolen from Raphael’s home? I’m sure Raphael would have completely understood and offered to recoup you the money you lost, no?”

Helsik scowled, not bothering to conceal her annoyance.

“You will be dropped into Avernus less than a day away from Zariel’s Fortress, so you can enter with less suspicion,” she continued, ignoring Astarion. She handed the materials to you without another word.

***

With a crack of fire, you appear in Avernus. The smell of brimstone and tar assaults your nostrils immediately as hot wind whips burning sand around your bodies. You clamp the visor of your helmet over your face as Astarion pulls the hood of his cloak over his head, though it did little to dissuade the multitude of biting flies that accompany each gust of wind.

Though the heat of this plane was inextinguishable, there is no sun to be found. The soft light seems to come from a permanent sunrise, just below the horizon. Clouds fill the sky, further obscuring the limited rays of light and providing a darkened overcast for your journey.

“Well, I suppose it was too much to hope for some rays of sunshine in the hells. I guess I should have been more specific when I said I missed the warm feeling of the sun, especially when we know our dear devilish friend is always listening.” Astarion let out a short, bitter laugh.

A fireball burst from the sky and lands about a half-mile to their left. The surrounding area was swallowed up in flames.

Astarion clapped his hands together. “Okay, well! Let’s get going then, and I’ll try to avoid any more jokes that might lead us to an ill-timed demise.”

You both walk in silence, the journey nothing like the companionship of your past travels. The terrain is rocky, and you need to be careful with your footing. Metal trees are adorned with swinging corpses, swollen and rancid. A river of burning-hot blood sludges by you on your right-hand side, winding up through the horizon as far as your eyes can see. Piles upon piles of corpses litter the grounds, the stench of their decomposing bodies made worse by the relentless heat. Ruins of collapsed buildings and broken-down war machines are scattered across the landscape, merely distant memories of what Avernus used to be. You never would have thought of the House of Hope as an oasis, a safe haven in the otherwise tumultuous lands of Avernus.

Dread filled your stomach, like the pangs of hunger when you couldn’t find food for days. Karlach and Wyll have been living here? For months? You’ve been here for only a few hours and the only thing that kept you going was your thirst for vengeance. You could not imagine living here with no end in sight.

***

Finally, Zariel’s Fortress emerges in the horizon, like a beast unfurling its wings. The Fortress is a massive, powerful sight to behold. Turrets lined the tops of the walls as flames burst sporadically from the ground. Details continued to become clear as you continued to approach the Fortress. More bodies were hung along the outer walls as some sort of obscene decoration. At first you assumed these were corpses - but then you heard the screams.

Suddenly, it becomes harder for you to breathe. Your throat tightens and your chest heaves, desperate for air. You rip off your helmet to take in glups of air, only to feel whipping winds lash at your face, filling your mouth with hot sands. You gag, spitting up the gritty sand as Astarion rubs rough circles on your back.

“It is truly hard to believe that this is the ‘Hero’ of Baldur’s Gate.”

You whip around to find the source of this unexpected voice, wiping your mouth with the end of your sleeve.

“I’m here to remind you of Raphael’s offer, one final time. Even if I am loathe to provide it.” Korilla looks bored, making an offer she desperately doesn’t want to fulfill.

“I don’t think an eldrich blast will make the difference between getting us inside or not,” Astarion sneered. “So hopefully you have something else more helpful to suggest.”

“Relax, spawn. I can get you inside. I just hope you are prepared to handle whatever may come at you once you are in there. Remember - you will be completely on your own once you are in there, if you reject Raphael’s offer now.”

You brush the few strands of hair out of your face, and wipe the sweat off your brow. You stared directly at Korilla, willing yourself to be as confident as you hoped to be.

“No, thank you. We will do just fine on our own.”

Korilla shrugged. “It’s your souls if you get caught. I’d much rather be bound to Raphael than Zariel.”

And with a snap of her fingers, you find yourself inside Zariel’s Fortress.

Read the next chapter here.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion x reader #bg3 astarion #bg3 spoilers #bg3 fanfiction #astarion x dark urge #bg3 post game #bg3 fanfic #bg3 Avernus #its a heist #bg3 dammon

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wolfwarden · 1 year

Note

For the WIP ask: I am, of course, gently and not at all curiously looking at the Malon mini-Whump? :3

Don't you hate it when you have a hundred fics you need to work on but you have amazingly talented friends that write whump fills that pull you in and you just can't help yourself? You know what you did, Rav. This pales in comparison to the original whump fill, but I have permission to play, so I'm gonna. Have an unedited snippet: ...

"Potion!" Warriors snaps, the bandages he’s pressed against Malon’s back already soaked through. They need a fairy. They have none, so he will take what he can.

A bottle is shoved in his hand, only half-full.

"Last one," Sky gasps, then spins to guard their backs, the fighting still ringing through the room.

Warriors rolls Malon over and tips her head up, ignoring the frantic scuffling of feet, the distant crash of splintering wood, and the ever-present screams of Time calling for his wife. He presses the bottle’s edge to her lips and lets a small stream trickle in. “Drink this.”

She lies still in his arms.

“Malon!” Time is a jerky blur at the edge of Warriors’ vision, arms slamming repeatedly to the far reaches of his iron restraints.

He’s someone else’s problem, Warriors’ mind snaps, shoving down the rising tide of sympathy and sorrow. He tries again to force Malon to drink. “Come on now…” Red potion trickles out the side of her slack mouth.

The chains holding Time to the wall shudder as he lunges forward again. “Malon, wake up! You can’t do this. You have to-” The word cut off in a wet sob.

Warriors’ fingers press at Malon’s neck, a part of him utterly unsurprised to find no answering pulse. He knew. Before his knees had hit this blood-soaked floor, he knew.

"Wars?” As if sensing his hesitation, Time has turned his attention to Warriors. “Please.”

There’s too much emotion wrapped up in that single word. Warriors lets it sweep over his ears, doesn’t let it fully register. He turns Malon back over on the floor, the gash on her back exposed again. A wound too wide to sew up, impossible to tourniquet, too deep to be anything but fatal. He pours red potion down the bleeding line. A waste, the callous part of him whispers. Potions don't work nearly as well when applied externally. It should be saved for someone who will benefit from it. He checks again for pulse. None. He watches for the slightest breath.

"Captain?"

Warriors raises his head, meeting Time’s gaze, keeping his expression blank with everything he has.

Time's eye widens. "No! You can't! Don’t let her go. Don’t you dare." The restraining bolt in the wall lurches, stone fragments pinging on the floor. “Malon!” A wild fury overcomes him and he thrashes forward, straining toward the woman on the floor, shackles cutting deep into his skin. “Malon, look at me!”

Hyrule collapses by Warriors’ side, blood running down his face. Hands go over Malon and the pink glow flares in the dim light.

Then it flickers, flickers, and stutter-stops. Hyrule cries out in despair. "I can't- I’ve nothing left!"

Time howls, desperate face turning to Hyrule, and Warriors can feel the rage and panic rising like a wave from their usually stoic leader. And Warriors understands. He’s seen it happen so many times. Too many times. Friends, loved ones, raging for ones lost to the war, searching for someone to blame.

He pushes Hyrule back from Time, placing himself front and center. His calm begins to slip, emotions splintering through and he teeters between weeping along with Time and wanting to put his fist through the nearest wall. Well, If he's going to feel something, he'll pick anger. It will hold him together when despair would not. It will sharpen his focus when grief blurs the path.

If he must feel, then anger it will be.

He knocks Malon’s hands to the side and centers himself over her, pressing the heel of his palm to her chest. He drags in one steadying breath, then shoves down with both arms, forcing her heart to beat. Useless. Hopeless. But stopping is unthinkable.

#lu time #lu malon #whump #blood #possible character death

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danpuff-ao3 · 1 year

Text

a love, your enemy fic.

Harry/Snape. Rated E. 1k. Secret relationship. Thunderstorm. Mild/brief breathplay. Possessiveness. Scars. Ceraunophilia.

It’s only Harry and Severus in all the world, or so it seems. OR: It's Valentine's Day, and they're in Germany for a potions conference, but alone in the hotel while a storm rages outside, they might be anyone, anywhere.

Read on AO3

A ficlet in the Contempt universe, set in a vague future. Can be read alone.

Written to fill prompts for 3 events:

@hpshipuary: Day 14: Free Day! (Snarry, of course.)

@kinkuary: Day 15 (a day early, oh well!): possessiveness

@yearoftheotpevent: February: Valentine's Day, established relationship.

Oh, also submitting for @houseofsnarry Drabbles & Drawbles. Team 🐝 all the way, baby!

#danpuff fics #self rec #snarry

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anacecherry · 1 year

Text

Ace Lore

Everyone in my friend cycle is posting their lore and Louie gave me the idea to make my own as well so here we go. Kept switching between 3rd person and 1st person because I felt like using both so the phrasing may seem weird

This isn't in any order I wrote them down as they came to my mind

Named Ace because of Among Us

Had a Danganronpa phase in 2020

Was a mod in dr-transparents

Also had a dr edit blog have fun trying to find that one

Used to be homophobic but one day during breakfast I asked my mom if being gay was a sin and she just thought for a second and said no so I stopped being homophobic

Dad in jail (out in march 9 😎)

Watched the entire mcu once

Goes to one of the greatest schools around the area and its shit

Watches how to learn Turkish videos despite being turkish

Has been pirating movies ever since I started using computers because I didn't know you had to pay for it until 3 years ago

Has an """uncle""" and """aunt""" thats younger than me (the aunt is a toddler)

First experience with the sonic franchise was that flash fangame based on sonic advance 2 and I thought Knuckles was a girl

Has an evil twin named Allo, who likes reddit and men

Knows every single frame of animation in Rise of the TMNT

funneylizzie follows me. I forget about that a lot.

The only person that never misread Penosh's og url

.w batman

Will :handshake: me

The CEO of Rise Casey Jones (Cassandra)

The mere sight of Cjj is enough to fill me with rage

Got kicked out of a toh youtubers server bc I tried to explain the owner that the potion coven was, in fact, a real coven and not just a track that they only teach at Hexide

Once woke up and saw a short weird girl with long black hair watching me from the side of my bed, she disappeared after I closed and opened my eyes again. No it wasn't sleep paralysis.

Has a sunflower seed addiction

I was Penosh's first follower I think that should be here

The 6 kittens we took care of after their mom died, most didn't last 2 months alive, the 5th one ran away like an idiot and the 6th lives with our neighbors and hates us

Most likely had a crush on my middle school best friend

Says "Lan" a lot in real life my friends think it's funny

Grew up near the sea so Im immune to the smell of fish

Remembers her first earthquake in 3rd person

When I clear out likes it takes a long time and I end up rebloging a lot of posts, and it might happen again & will be real big this time so be prepared

The Ralsei icon is traced from the og sprite from Deltarune and I will never ever change it it is a part of my identity now

Url used to be tsundere-blue-cherry before I changed it

The first time I remember throwing up might be one of my core memories. did you know you cant talk when you're just about to vomit

Has headaches forever ever since elementary school

Had a budgie named Şans that flew away because mom kept forcing us to keep the windows open

When I was ~6 I a dream where a Caillou toy that I had came to life and I got so scared that I tore it apart and ran. When I woke up I checked the drawer I put the toy parts in and he was still there and greeted me I screamed and slammed it shut and never looked at that drawer again

Ayıcık the teddy bear

Had 2 imaginary friends and one of them was a mirror

Diagnosed as American

I have cherry in my url but cannot eat cherries bc when eating cherries I realized it had worms in it and it happened twice and I have not been able to eat cherries without drowning in anxiety ever again

My youngest sister called my middle sister Dede despite her name not having those letters in it and the word dede meaning grandpa in our language. We started calling her that as well

Had a dream, before the sonic 2 trailer came out, where the trailer released and it was normal except Boom Knuckles was there as a separate character from normal Knuckles and had his model from the show

Made up number lore when I was younger

Uses light mode

#mutuals #ace's cherry

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the-whatcherof-89 · 2 years

Photo

Slimecicle AKA “five-eyes” Charlie Burgers.

CR 16 N Humanoid

XP 76,800 (if used as npc for encounter) Squole Druid 6 (Urban druid) Slime lord 10

Neutral Good Medium Ooze, humanoid Init +2; Senses Perception +17

AC 35, touch , flat-footed (+2 Dex, +4 shield, +3 deflection, +2 natural, +7 armor) hp 150 (16d8+32)

Fort +15, Ref +12, Will +20

Speed 30 ft. Melee Earthen flail+14 1d10+3+1d6 acid. Ranged Shortbow+15 1d6+2 (with+1 arrows)

Racial Boneless, Blind, Blindsight, Elemental resistance (acid), Humanoid ooze.

Traits Civilized (+1 knowledge local and nobility), Dependent (if you fail a diplomacy check, you are shaken for one hour).

Class features Spontaneous casting (alternate), Nature bond (Community domain), Wild empathy, Lore keeper, Resist temptation, A thousand faces, Ooze whisperer, Summon Ooze (tar jelly, emerald ooze, Ochre jelly, Black pudding), Slime shot 4/day, Acid resistance +5, Amorphous body, Ooze traits.

Spellcasting CL16 DC19 spells per day 4/7/6/6/6/6/4/4/3

Str 12, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 28, Cha 12

Base Atk +11; CMB +12; CMD +24

Feats Liquefy, Evade grasp, Honed senes, Cosmopolitan - Draconic, Acquan, Knowledge (Dungeoneering), Stealth, Augment summoning, Natural spell, Master crafter, Divine interference.

Skills Climb +5, Craft(Alchemy) +6, Diplomacy +7, Fly +6, Handle animal +5, Heal +13, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +8, (Geography) +4, (History) +7, (Local) +7, (Nature) +13, (Nobility) +7, Perception +17, Profession(Gambler) +13, Ride +6, Spellcraft +11, Survival +17, Swim +5

Languages Common, Druidic, Draconic, Aquan.

Combat gear Ring of protection+3, Amulet of natural armor+2, Warden of the woods, Slick Darkwood shield+3, Dusty rose ioun stone, Staff of heaven and earth, Corrosive Earthenflail+2, Short bow+1, 50+1 arrows, Headband of inspired wisdom+6, Deliquescent gloves, Robes of resistance+3, Jellyfish cape, Slippers of cloudwalking, Tome of wisdom+2 (used), Bag of holding type II, Wand of summon nature’s ally II, 2 Scrolls of reverse gravity, Ring of jumping, Potions: 4 Cure critical wounds, 2 Meld with stone, 2 Magic fang greater, 4 Protection from energy (fire), Druid’s kit, Alchemist laboratory, 14 GP.

Background Slimecicle is a really unique slime: he has evolved by observing and absorbing emotional events occurring in Las Nevadas when Quackity decided to build the casino. After a long unspecified time, he gained a sort of human-like sentience although it remained a little meek. Meeting the Big Q changed his world and granted him the understanding on how to be “human”(or at least in part). However, this relationship was cut short as Quackity was betrayed by Purpled and pushed the poor green boy into a lava pool. With a very little time available, Slimecicle said his (apparent) goodbye to to his adoptive father: “Thank you for showing me what it was like to be human. Maybe I almost was.” as he dissipated into lava. After the event, Quackity succeeded at retrieving what was left of him and Charlie went into a coma-like state. At some point, he started to wander, without aim and almost without a thought. He kept going unable to understand his surroundings: a world without form, smell or sound. While traveling, something washed over him like a raging flood of thoughts: “You wish to make a legacy for you and your friend? I can grant this wish. All you have to do is simple: find me. He has already accepted.” Slime, barely conscious, dragged himself over and tumbled down only to find himself changed and again… himself? “Quackity from Las Nevadas? Are you there? Can you dap me up?” But silence was the only answer in the middle of a strange ruined city in the middle of a forest canyon… filled with slimes of all sorts and shapes. “Well, at least i am close to my kindred.” Slimecicle observed the outside, a place unknown to him. “My wish that becomes true? It is something too big bear for one person only…” Suddenly, it came to his mind, the voice said that “he accepted”. Quackity? Someone else? And yes, it was a HUGE burden. A few moments later, he was running outside the ruins across the grass plains. “Wait for me strange voice from nowhere! I am going to lessen that burden from that person, whoever that is he shan’t be alone!”

BTW i forgot to mention that a slime folk race does not exist on pathfinder original books and this race comes from a 3rd party book:

Link for the image https://mobile.twitter.com/redtailfins/status/1349947695419465730

#minecraft #dream smp #slimecicle #pathifnder #roleplay game #slimecicle fanart

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unreluctantone · 1 year

Text

Dungeon 23, Week 1, 01 to 07/01/2023 - The Entrance Hall

Like many RPG creatives, I've been doing the Dungeon 23 challenge/exercise. It's been a bit of a learning curve, with the most notable lesson being to avoid putting detail along the crease of the booklet...

I've chosen to write up the Riddle of Riggby, a mega-dungeon in my Dreadful Mire setting that began as an adventure prompt from the awesome @dailyadventureprompts, Alkeron's Riddle. Now the former mage-tower of Roland Riggby (to use a slightly less IP-bound name), Court Wizard of the Sunken Kingdom of Calamaer, the Riddle sits atop a fortress-tomb of an ancient tiefling empire, the Dominion of Bel. A permanent storm rages over the tower, and rumours of magical treasure and valuable lore has driven many adventurers to risk the depths of the Riddle.

The High Doors

Stone stairs lead up to a carved landing in the side of the mountain. Set into the north wall is a pair of great iron doors, 15 feet wide, flanked by a bas-relief of horned warriors.

Touching the doors causes four suits of armour composed of arcane force to manifest out of the bas-relief and attack, pursuing into the next room. Use the stats of animated armour.

The Entrance Hall

Rune-carved pillars rise to a high coffered ceiling. There is a 2-in-6 chance to encounter another adventuring party here.

The doors to the north and south are identical: a pair of massive iron doors. The double doors to the west are stone and bear carvings of dancing bulls, close examination reveals the traces of gold plating that has been stripped away long ago.

The double doors to the east are made of lead, are bare of decoration, and are locked (DC 15/Medium difficulty). The lock magically relocks at twilight, and the mechanism reconfigures so that it can’t be unlocked the same way.

The Shaft

The far wall of this room is composed of shimmering magical force (as per wall of force) and blocks access to a shaft that extends up and down. A stone plinth stands in the centre of the room with an articulated hand extending out of the top of it. The hand is composed of iron and animates to grasp any objects placed in it; the right object from deeper into the Riddle will dispel the force wall.

If the force wall is destroyed or bypassed, people can try and climb the smooth walls of the shaft. This is made harder by strange eddies of gravitational force that tug and pull at climbers (DC 25/Very Hard difficulty).

There is a 4-in-6 chance that there is a masked ghoul here. She has 1d6 healing potions and 1d3-1 superior healing potions each day, which she trades for dead flesh (1 pound for a healing potion, 5 pounds for a superior). She will yell for assistance if attacked, attracting the attention of any adventuring parties in area 2, who rush to her aid, or the masked ghouls in area 4 if there is no adventuring party in area 2. She then defends herself, attacking with a stash of 1d3 flasks of alchemist’s fire.

The secret door to area 4 can be detected is DC 15/Medium difficulty, and swings open when a secret button in the wall next to it is pushed.

The Secret Stairwell

The spiral stairwell leads upwards and is guarded by 4 masked ghouls, one of which carries a bag that contains 5 bloodstones (each worth 50gp). The ghouls will move to assist the ghoul in area 3 if there are no nearby adventuring parties in area 2.

There is a lever in the south wall that closes and locks the doors between areas 2 & 3.

The Vulture Shrine

A 12’ tall vulture-headed stone statue stands in an alcove in the east wall. It radiates intense but harmless magical cold. The stone doors to the north have runes carved into them (DC 10/Easy difficulty to recognize them as symbols of elemental water magic).

Unless a prayer to elemental water is said in front of the statue (DC 10/Easy difficulty), this room and the next quickly fill up with freezing cold fog when the north doors are opened. The fog obscures vision beyond five feet and lingers for an hour after the doors are closed.

The Hall of Dancing Bulls

Bas-reliefs of bulls line the walls of this hall, depicting them dancing and being ridden by horned tieflings. The ceiling is coffered like the hall to the east.

A bone naga lurks in this room (DC 10/Easy difficulty to spot hiding in the shadowed corners). Its head has been replaced with a bull’s skull (reflavour bite attack as a gore attack, replaced poison damage with necrotic, use Guardian naga spells) and it reforms here at twilight if destroyed.

It doesn’t immediately attack, instead extorting intruders for an offering, a piece of golden jewellery or an art piece made of gold that must be worth at least 100gp. It has 1d4-1 such pieces at any one time. If no suitable offering is provided, it attacks to kill.

Concealed Lookout

Arrow slits along the south wall cover the main approach to the Riddle. A half-dozen barrels, empty and half-rotted, stand against the western wall; one is apparently still sealed and is secretly a mimic waiting to attack.

#dungeon23 #tabletop roleplaying games #d&d homebrew #fantasy art #elemental knights #the martello fells #the riddle of riggby #d&d monsters #dungeons & dragons

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booksteaandtoomuchtv · 1 year

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A Year Without (3/?)

Summary: After the curse returns Killian to the Enchanted Forest, he struggles to acclimate to his old life and his old ways. When a bird with a letter and memory potion arrives on his ship, he accepts the challenge to find Emma and help her save her family. Getting to Emma won't be easy and will cost him dearly, but what choice does he have when he cannot go a day without memories of her haunting him?

A03 | CH 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | CUTS

Day 35

Hook stood at the helm of the ship, breathing in the crisp morning air, hook on the wheel, and wistful look on his face and he stared down the horizon. He was free from the forest, the crew believed their captain ruthless and returned, and the ocean welcomed him back with breezes that filled his sails and currents that carried them endlessly onward.

Neither the ship, the looting, nor the best-spiced rum he’d recently acquired caused him to go back on his word. Every blonde lass at port drew his attention and immediate disappointment when it was inevitably, predictably, not Swan. He couldn’t stop the impulse, his heart was so determined to hold on to the hope that he would see her again.

She was only his ship for the short trip between realms, but he saw her everywhere. The sun gleaming off the water would turn into blonde locks flashing in the corner of his eyes. The warm salty air near the Southern Isles of the Enchanted Forest reminded him of the humid days and nights they’d spent in Neverland. He’d pulled his crew from the warm ports and sandy beaches earlier than planned and charted a course toward the icier waters, near the abandoned mountain region that was once ruled by giants and ogres.

The few men who’d dared to have opposing opinions on the matter were dealt with swiftly and replaced within the week’s end. Hook’s reputation for unpredictability and a tentative grip on reality seemed intact. The new sailors carried rumours that he was more dangerous because, with the death of the Dark One confirmed, no one knew what was the driving force behind the captain’s erratic actions. Perhaps, it was said, the captain had always been a bit mad after all.

Day 49

The sea was choppy, she’d woken up angry today. The sky was a dark grey that refused to clear. Killian’s stomach tightened and he clenched his jaw in anticipation; a storm was coming. They were too far to seek safety in port before the storm would be on them, the storm too close to outrun, so they’d have to prepare the ship. Fortunately, they’d recently stopped for supplies and the Jolly Roger’s holds were full, the ship at her heaviest.

“Smee,” he called for his first mate, who appeared suddenly near his right elbow, “rouse the crew, prepare the ship, furl the sails, the tempest will soon be on us.”“Aye, Capt’n.”

From the quarterdeck, he watched as the sky darkened, heavy grey clouds rolling in from the port. The waves began to stir furiously, beating against the hull, testing her for weaknesses before the upcoming battle. Hook gripped the wheel with a fierce grin, his adrenaline pumping, excitement wild in his eyes. A fight for his life was exactly the distraction he needed.

Water crashed onto the deck, causing the men to slip. The ropes secured to the masts and knotted around their waists pulled tight, keeping them from going overboard. Hook could hear shouts, since none of the calls were urgent, he figured Smee could handle the men. He would take on the raging seas and powerful gales threatening to take them all to Davy Jones before the day’s end.

Hook aimed the bow into the waves building with the storm, his jaw clenched tight with the effort of keeping the ship steady. The hull groaned against the onslaught of the wind and waves. The wheel pulled against his commands, his shoulders and back straining to keep the Jolly directed into the oncoming waves.

Rain began to fall, heavy fat droplets thundering on the wooden boards, hindering visibility on the ship. Hook could no longer see the main deck before him, no longer see the waves forming around them, keeping the ship upright made difficult as the waves tossed her from the sea again and again.

The Jolly landed hard, tilting to the starboard, the impact jarring Hook’s taut muscles as he strained to gain control of the wheel. The ship groaned in protest and leaned further toward the sea, the churning waters threatening to swallow them whole. Waves slapped the quarterdeck, the force enough to knock him off his feet, his own lifeline pulling tight.

A loud crack thundered over the sounds of the ship, seas, and winds. Hook stopped battling the wheel to listen, drowning out the sounds of the storm and focusing on the source of the noise. Eyes closed, listening closely, he was able to hear the sickening sound of splintering that followed, the snap of rigging suddenly freed and lashing around the deck, and the hopeless silence of the men on deck as the ocean claimed the main mast.

Hook let out a string of curses and fought to keep the Jolly Roger from sinking. The ship was off balance, awkward to steer, and he was exhausted - every muscle shaking with the effort he’d expended in the fight against the sea’s demand for their lives. Still, he battled on.

Day 52

The ale was as watered down as expected in a seaside pub, crumbling from exposure to salt and neglect; yet, it was quite possibly the best thing Hook had ever tasted.

He’d battled the storm for two days, his will to survive against the raw anger and power of the storm. Rumour at this port was that several ships and crews were claimed by the sea during the onslaught. Hook hadn’t lost a man to the tempest. His only casualty was the Jolly Roger’s mast, which he’d replaced prior to finding this fine establishment. Fortune and skill in equal measures responsible for his feat.

A drink, well earned, he’d decided. Several, actually.

“To Captain Hook, the only man crazy enough to take on the sea and win!” Mullroy shouted to the pub. The most recent of the toasts in his honour. Another full pint placed in front of him and emptied quickly.

The crew was delirious with the relief and sudden awareness of life felt by those who had climbed back from the brink of death. They all laughed more loudly and drank with an abandon Hook had never seen in his men.

Murphy, usually quiet and serious, led the pub in an off-key rendition of a love ballad. He seemed to recall only bits of the chorus, relying on his more sober crewmen to connect the gaps between his loud, enthusiastic deliveries. Salt did some sort of shuffling jig while procuring more drinks for the men. Smee was near the door, talking to the coat hanger as if they were old mates.

Hook watched as his men began to stumble out into the night, many would find bodies with which to pass the evening, to lose themselves in the company of others. Others he’d find in the alleys, asleep before they made it to their quarters. All of them satisfied with the lives they had been returned to after the curse and the storm.

Hook was pleased with his success and glad to be alive, but his heart was heavy with the loss of the man and the future destroyed by his own return to the Enchanted Forest.

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