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angelasscribbles · 11 months

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Hinge: Reconciliations

Series: Hinge.

Fandom: The Royal Romance/The Royal Heir

Pairings: Drake x Riley x Liam

Word count: 3,505

Rating: PG

Warnings: none

A/N: A place where I feel canon failed us was never really letting Liam truly confront Constantine about his hand in the setup, nor Drake with Bastien. So I wrote it. This would take place not long after Homecoming Part Two.

Everything else: Master List.

Liam x Constantine

“Finally, you come to see me!” Constantine struggled to sit up. A nurse hurried over to adjust his pillow then retreated quickly to give them privacy.

Liam felt so many emotions pull through him as he stood in his father’s presence for the first time since he’d learned that Constantine was behind the setup that had almost cost him the woman he loved.

He had been prepared with anger, hurt, righteous indignation, and condemnation. He would be well within his rights to express all of the above. But it lodged in his chest as his eyes took in the sight before him.

The hale and hearty man Liam had known all his life had been replaced. Constantine had gone downhill rapidly in the scant few weeks since he’d last seen him. The man in front of him now was frail, weak, and puny. He barely looked like the father Liam remembered from a month ago as he lay, pale and listless, against the stark white hospital sheets.

“You’ve been home for days!” A thread of his usual regal demeanor showed through as Constantine glared at his son.

Just like that, the anger was back as Liam returned his father’s glare, “I’ve been busy repairing what you tried to destroy!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Riley! You were behind the setup!”

A sliver of regret flitted through his eyes, before demanding, “Is that what all this is about?”

“All what?”

“This!” Constantine gestured around the palace’s private hospital room, “Do you think I haven’t noticed that I’m practically a prisoner in my own home? That my personal guards have been rotated out and replaced with men that I never chose? I may be dying but I am neither stupid nor blind!”

“I can’t trust you, Father!”

“I was trying to protect you, son!”

“From what? Being happy?”

“From being hurt and from being perceived as weak! And I was right! Look what happened! You broke an engagement, something that is unheard of for royalty, and a day after you announced your engagement to a non-council-approved commoner, the palace itself was attacked! You were attacked! She was attacked! Your best friend was shot and almost killed! Can you really tell me that you don’t believe those things are connected?”

“Yes, Father, I can! And I’ll tell you why! The attack on the palace was well coordinated and executed with precision. That took time to plan. Definitely more than a day. More than the few days between my broken engagement to Madeleine and the Homecoming Ball. That attack would have taken place regardless of who my fiancée was!”

“Hmph!” Constantine scoffed but he looked thoughtful for a moment before replying, “I’ll concede that might be true but Liam…son…I know you don’t want to hear this, but that girl isn’t trained for this! She-“

“She can learn everything she needs to learn! She’ll have advisors, friends, and plenty of support, she’s not like Leo’s mother who came here with nothing and nobody! She has the Beaumonts, she has Lady Hana and Olivia, she has Drake-“

“Drake!” Constantine snorted, “If you’re smart, and you really intend to marry this girl, you’ll send Drake Walker far away from here!”

Liam’s mouth fell open, “Why would you say that?”

“That boy’s in love with her and if you can’t see it, you’re a fool!”

“I’m aware of his feelings,” Liam scoffed.

“Yet you still plan to make him her cultural attaché?”

Liam laughed but there was no humor in it, “I see being confined to that bed under armed guard hasn’t kept you from your intelligence network.”

“Liam,” Constantine paused to catch his breath before continuing, “I’m not your enemy.”

“You certainly feel like my enemy right now,” Liam said brokenly as he finally sat, taking the chair next to his father’s bed, “Of all the people in the world, I never imagined it was you that tried to destroy me!”

“That wasn’t my intention, I love you! Everything I did, I did to protect you!”

“I want to believe that, to believe you, I really do,” he released a slow sigh as his fingers pinched the bridge of his nose, “please explain your reasoning. I’m listening.”

“Thank you. I just need a drink first,” Constantine reached for the water on the bedside table with shaking hands. Liam leaned forward and helped him steady the cup. When he was done, Constantine replaced the cup, took a deep breath, and began, “You know what happened with Leo’s mother, Helena.”

Liam nodded.

“I loved her. I was devastated when she left me. And weakened. It’s hard to rule from a place of heartbreak. I didn’t want to see that happen to you! I promised your mother, as she lay dying in my arms, that I would always protect you! I couldn’t watch history repeat itself, I couldn’t break my promise to Eleanor!”

Liam watched in astonishment as his father dissolved into tears. He had only seen his father cry once before, the night his mother had died. He shook his head as confusion spilled through him, “But why would you assume that history was going to repeat itself?”

“Because if a noblewoman from Cordonia, who was raised for it, couldn’t handle the pressures of the throne, I didn’t think that a waitress from New York could!”

“Even if that had been true, it was my mistake to make! But it wasn’t a mistake! Riley is not a mistake! She can handle it; I wouldn’t have proposed to her if I didn’t believe that. How can you entrust me with an entire country, but not my own love life?”

Constantine slumped against his pillows in defeat, “I thought I could save you pain down the road by breaking the two of you up before you got too attached. I didn’t realize that it was already too late. When I saw you after the coronation, I…I regretted my actions, but then the morning the engagement tour kicked off, you seemed in good spirits, so I thought maybe-“

“I was in good spirits because I had found the loophole! From there it was a matter of winning her trust back and finding Tariq so her name could be cleared. Neither of which was an easy task! Both of which pulled time and attention away from the very duties you wanted me focused on! All the pain and anguish I suffered was at your hands, not hers!”

“I know,” he croaked out, “I’m sorry son. I was wrong. Can you ever forgive me?”

“I want to,” Liam’s voice cracked, “but I don’t know if I can! I need a little time…”

Constantine’s voice trembled, “Time is something I find myself in short supply of these days.”

“I know,” Liam reached for his father’s hand, “that’s why I’m here. I’m not leaving until we’ve hashed this out.”

Tears streaked down the old man’s face as he squeezed his son’s hand and whispered, “Thank you.”

Riley x Regina

Riley pushed the food around on her plate disinterestedly. Her eyes flicked to the woman sitting across from her before dropping back to her plate.

Regina noticed, “I know you only agreed to this luncheon because Liam asked you to.”

Riley carefully placed her fork on the plate in front of her then leaned back in her chair, bringing her eyes up to the older woman’s face, “I would do anything for Liam.”

“Is having lunch with me really that bad?”

“I’m not sure,” Riley lifted the linen napkin from her lap to her mouth then dropped it onto the table before continuing, “Were you involved with, or did you have knowledge of, the conspiracy to set me up and cause a false scandal?”

Regina raised her eyebrows in appreciation as she lifted her glass, “Direct and to the point. I like it. That’s a good quality in a queen.”

“A position you never wanted me to assume.”

“Oh, my dear, that’s simply not true,” Regina waved one hand in the air as she sat her drink down with the other, “Yes, I advocated for my niece because she was better prepared for the actual job. But anyone with eyes could see how Liam felt about you. I was prepared to take you under my wing and guide you into the role. Then the scandal broke. Are you telling me that was a setup?”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t know that all along?”

“Yes, dear, I am.” Regina waited patiently while staff cleared the plates and then sat desert in front of them, “Who would do that, and why?”

Riley kept her eyes locked on Regina so she could gauge her reaction, “You should ask your husband that question.”

Regina’s fork faltered halfway to her mouth, “What?”

Riley noted to herself that Regina’s surprise seemed genuine as she replied, “Constantine decided that I wasn’t fit for the throne and took it upon himself to have the lock on my door disabled and to send a drunken man into my room under the mistaken impression that I wanted to sleep with him.”

Regina closed her eyes briefly then fixed Riley with a level stare, “Well that explains your chilly attitude toward me. I can assure you that had I known about any such plot, I would have intervened and put an end to it.” Precisely why her husband hadn’t told her. “My husband can be misguided and pigheaded, but he loves his children. Whatever he did, I’m sure he thought it was in Liam’s best interests.”

“But he-“

The queen mother held her hand up to forestall Riley’s protests, “I’m not excusing his behavior. I’m telling you that he’s old, dying, and terrified of not being there to guide his son into his new role. Do you know how long a new Cordonian king traditionally has the counsel of the former monarch?”

Riley shook her head no.

“Ten to twenty years. That’s a decade or two of having the advice and guidance of the last person to do the job. Liam is going to have his father for months, maybe weeks at this point.”

“I’m not insensitive to the fact that he’s dying,” Riley shook her head, “but he didn’t just hurt me, he hurt Liam and that’s the part that I’m having a hard time forgiving. I don’t care that he went after me. I understand that my credentials are not up to what he had expected and wanted for his son.”

Regina smiled approvingly as she turned her attention back to the apple pie in front of her, “You do love Liam, that’s clear.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, that gives us some common ground, then, doesn’t it?”

Riley studied the other’s woman’s face for a moment before begrudgingly conceding, “Yes, I believe it does.”

The rest of their time together was spent discussing matters of court, governance, and decorum.

When the meal was over, Riley pushed away from the table, “This has been illuminating, but I need to get back to the hospital now.”

“Do you really think that’s wise, dear?”

Riley paused, turning back to look at her future mother-in-law, “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“People are going to notice your devotion to your…guard.”

“I don’t care if they do! He took a bullet to save my life! And not just because he’s my guard, but because he loves me, and he loves Liam! Drake is not a liability and I think any monarch that seems indifferent to the health of the person that took a bullet to save them would be viewed by the public as cold and heartless!”

Regina took in her expression as Riley’s face darkened, “I can see you’re very passionate about both of them. Just…be careful. The press can be relentless. As you’ve already discovered.”

Was Regina tacitly acknowledging, and accepting, the arrangement between Liam, Drake, and herself?

“Yes, I have. Don’t worry, I will.”

Drake x Bastien

Drake looked up when the door to his room opened. He had been expecting Riley, but it was too soon for her to be back from her luncheon with Regina.

The last person he had expected was Bastien.

“How are you doing?” the older man asked as he made his way to Drake’s bedside.

“What are you doing here?”

“I guess I deserve that,” Bastien sighed as he sat in the chair next to the bed.

There had been a time when he would have been at Drake’s side the moment it was safe to do so. A time when he would have been in that ballroom to protect Liam. Instead, he’d been in bed asleep when his king, his country, was attacked. He was no longer in the loop so he found out like everyone else, on the news. He would have come to see Drake sooner, but the hospital was locked down in the immediate aftermath of the attack and he was no longer on the ‘let through security’ shortlist. He still wasn’t, but the entire hospital was no longer on lockdown, just the floor Drake was on and the guard at the top of the hallway had recognized him and let him through.

“You deserve a lot worse, Bas,” Drake was angry, and hurt. He felt betrayed by the man he thought of as a father.

“I understand why you’re mad, and you have every right to be…but….I just had to see for myself that you’re okay. I know I’m not great at showing my feelings, but I love you and your sister-“

“If you love me, how could you do what you did, huh? You just sat there and watched me go out of my mind trying to clear her name, the whole time knowing you had all the answers!”

“Constantine ordered-“

“I don’t care what Constantine did!” Drake roared as he sat straight up in the bed, causing pain to shoot through his shoulder, “Fuck!” His hand flew up to cover the wound as he slumped back against the bed.

“Are you okay?” Bastien moved closer to the bedside, reaching for the wounded shoulder.

Drake shoved his hands away, “I’m fine! Stop deflecting! I understand that you had to follow orders, but the moment Liam was crowned, your loyalty should have shifted. The Guard serves Cordonia and its leader, not any one individual man. You taught me that!”

“That is true. My only defense is that I was ashamed of what I had done, I truly believed what I had been told, that Liam was better served married to Madeliene, and I didn’t know there was a loophole. I thought it was too late anyway, that there was no way out of the engagement for him, so what was the point? And I swear, I honestly had no idea where Tariq had gone!”

“But you didn’t really look for him either, did you?”

Bastien dropped his head into his hands with a deep exhale, “No. I did not.”

“You could have at least given us a head’s up, Bas.”

The older man’s head swung up at the notes of hurt and betrayal in his godson’s voice, “You’re right. I could have. But I thought the girl was on a plane back to America that night. I had no idea until she showed up at Fydelia that she was still even here and if you’ll remember, no one bothered to tell me that an investigation had been launched to clear her name!”

“Yeah, well, turns out we were right not to trust you!”

Bastien stared at him in astonishment, “Had my king questioned me, even once, I would have come clean immediately. In fact, I did, once the question was asked. How can you doubt my loyalty?”

Drake’s anger faltered a little. Bas had a point. He had come clean the moment he was questioned about anything relating to the investigation, and he hadn’t known about it before then. But he had known Riley wasn’t on that plane that night.

“But you did know, Liam told you to release the Beaumonts and send them after her!”

“But that was the last time I was privy to anything regarding her! When she didn’t show back up at court in the days following the coronation, I assumed she had chosen to leave the country. When Constantine ordered me to track her down and ensure she had left the country, I refused, as I’ve already told you. Furthermore, I have never refused a direct order from Liam. My volunteering information would have moved up the date that you had all the information, but it wouldn’t have helped you find Lord Lambros any faster because, as I’ve said, I didn’t know where he had gone.”

Drake considered that. Normally he’d call bullshit, Bastien knew everything that went on under his watch. But he and Liam had gone to great lengths to ensure that no one had known where she had been until that night in Fydelia.

At most, Bastien was guilty of not voluntarily disclosing information about orders given, and carried out, under the previous regime. Not exactly treason but also not exactly trust-inspiring. “You knew she was innocent.”

“What does that matter? Neither the press nor the royal council care what I have to say, unless I were to divulge the former king’s role in the setup, a scandal that the crown can ill afford.”

Again, it was a fair point. But Drake wasn’t ready to let him off the hook just yet, “You knew how Liam and I both felt about her though! You could have helped-“

“No!” Bastien leaned forward as he hissed, “I told you I didn’t know about the loophole! Knowing that his father had been behind the setup would have only hurt Liam, I didn’t see how it could help him in any way! So, it’s not that I maliciously withheld information, it’s that I didn’t see the point in disclosing it! Tariq was gone, the damage was done, and Constantine was dying! Liam was weeks away from his wedding to Madeleine! I didn’t see the point!”

“But she was innocent-“

“And there was no way to prove that without either Tariq’s statement or revealing Constantine’s role in it, something that even Liam wasn’t willing to do! So, again, I didn’t see the point!”

Drake had run out of objections. Everything Bastien said made sense. He had only one question left, “But what about me? You knew how I felt about her, you knew she was important to me!”

“But she didn’t need her name cleared to be with you....”

Drake stared at him in stunned silence before whispering, “Please tell me that you did not withhold this information because you thought you were helping me!”

“I-“ his eyes dropped to his lap.

“Bas! No! I didn’t want her by default! I wanted her name cleared so she could make an actual choice and because she doesn’t deserve to have something like that hanging over her for the rest of her life!”

Bastien shook his head, “You deserve to be happy, too, Drake but that wasn’t why, I swear! I did consider that it might be a fringe benefit if it opened up the possibility for you to have the woman you loved, but again, if I had known about the loophole, and the investigation and thought that my input would have helped clear her name, I would have spoken up sooner. I promise on my friendship with your father!”

“Fine,” Drake huffed, “I believe you. I’ve made some stupid mistakes in my time so I can’t judge you too harshly. I just need to know that I can trust you moving forward.”

“You can. And for what it’s worth, I am sorry for the rift I’ve put between us.”

“Me too, Bas. Me too.”

The two men locked gazes, both with the same thought in their heads. Perhaps this was a start at mending that rift.

Drake hoped so. The scandal had been cleared, things had been set back to right and the future lay spread out in front of all of them.

Now all he had to do was catch the would-be assassins and shut down whatever this new threat was, help Liam reassure the public that Cordonia was still a safe place to live, and keep their allies from deserting the ship all while planning and executing security for the royal wedding, an enormous undertaking under the best of circumstances, much less while he was functioning at a deficit, Liam and Riley were being targeted and his faith in whom he could trust had been shaken to it's core.

The door opened again and this time it was Riley. He looked up, his breath caught in his throat, and his heart skipped a beat, just as it always did when he looked at her. Determination swirled through him. He couldn’t lose her. He wouldn’t lose her! He’d find a way to fix it all and keep her safe.

He had to.

#trr au #trr poly #the royal romance #liam rys #drake walker #hinge #the royal romance fanfic #choices fic writers creations #cfwc fics of the week #angelasscribbles #trr #choices #choices stories you play

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uzumaki-rebellion · 1 year

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“Black Boys Bloom Thorns First: Volume 4, Chapter 58″

Need to catch up? Masterlist HERE.

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"The chains bind my feet But they cannot bind my soul Which is free to live, to love and to choose I will claim victory Throughout suffering and woes You will see what we give of us to you…"

Young Disciples – "Freedom Suite"

The hours before dawn were always quiet for Juvay.

As some rested in full slumber huddled under blankets cocooned with soft dreams, there were others who adorned themselves for merriment to greet the sun. Yani was one of those people.

With Disa by her side putting on make-up, a flurry of activity behind them grew, the anticipation swelling in her belly to dance and cut loose. Sips of rum were passed among the women and there was no need to hide it from righteous aunties or bible-thumping parents… no… not for them. They were in Yani's home, grown, and free to drink and smoke at three in the morning.

Yani was going to throw much ass in a circle. Wind up her waist dressed like a Wakandan and St. Thomas Princess. The carnival costume adorning her body was decadent but still full of cultivated elegance with royal purple and regal gold plumes that ran down her back, creating two giant wings. She dyed her hair platinum again and glued crystal jewels all over her face. Twyla and Anika dusted gold flakes all over her skin, too. Her middle sister Felice helped refasten her sequined purple top that revealed flashes of her breasts amid glass-beaded necklaces draped around her neck. She forewent a thong bottom, but the tiny, skin-tight gold silky mini shorts hid nothing of her blessed rump.

Disa stepped from the mirror to look at her.

"Wow. Stunning," Disa said.

Since it was her first carnival experience there, Disa chose a more modest means of dress, opting to sport an aquamarine fishnet catsuit with fringe. Cut-off shorts covered her backside, but she tied a pink gossamer scarf around her breasts to decorate the bikini top that kept everything held high. She scooped her hair into a high pigtail where she glued costume jewelry all across the front.

Twyla helped Marisol decorate her face with squiggly lines and other shapes. Yani had encouraged her to bring one of her Sao Paulo costumes to wear, but Marisol wanted to blend into the crowd and enjoy a carnival celebration where she didn't have to perform or be the center of attention. Cute booty shorts and a t-shirt were all she wanted to go in. Her legs and hips were already moving fast to the music they played to pump them up. Three more of Yani's cousins prepared with them, and they passed a joint around. Yani smoked a bit and turned around to look at her ass cheeks. She clapped them and the others nodded with approval. Cupping her breasts, she checked the final ensemble and was pleased.

"Queen tings!" Twyla shouted, slipping a blunt between her gold-painted lips.

They took pictures, posing seductively for cameras and kimoyo beads. Yani passed her joint to Disa, and she puffed and passed it on to Marisol, getting a good look at her own backside in a standing mirror.

"Sexy!" Yani said, slapping Disa's backside playfully.

"You get older and things droop a bit," Disa said, wiggling her waist. "I could never get my butt to do that. One booty cheek will twitch, but I can't get the syncopation down like you and Marisol."

Twyla adjusted her feathered crown, and Yani helped make sure her costume was secured in all the right places. Yellow and orange were her colors, and Twyla's regalia matched the pageantry of Yani's. They both wanted to go extra fancy knowing that there would probably be a long time before they could do Juvay again all together. Returning to Wakanda weighed heavily on all of their minds.

The children spoke to Erik the night before. He was still in silent mode, but their babies didn't care, chatting off his ear. Yani never watched him when they spoke to their father privately on their kimoyos. But she'd ask about how he looked.

"He looks like Baba," Riki would say every time, annoyed by the question.

Sydette was more thoughtful.

"It's Baba, but his face is different. He wears his hair up and he has a nose ring now," Sydette said.

"Nose ring?"

Sydette drew a picture of a hoop nose septum ring.

"His beard has beads in it and his eyes are strange."

"Strange how?" Yani pushed.

Sydette shrugged, becoming uncomfortable with Yan's prodding.

"Strange bad?" Yani said.

"No. I don't know how to say it, Mama. It's like… he's new?"

"What did he tell you?" Yani asked.

Erik typed responses to them so the children could know his thoughts.

"He said he is fine and can't wait to see us."

Yani fixated on the word new. Yes, things would be new for all of them. She could feel a shift of change all around the entire family. She and Disa had put the finishing touches on Yani's presentation and there was a working mock-up for the birthing centers planned. Disa worked on her speech pacing with all of her experience talking on panels and moderating important conversations. The only problem Yani had with speaking was that she would get so excited about the work that she'd revert to patois mid-sentence, making Disa laugh with all of her enthusiasm.

"You're painting a picture," Disa said. "Talk to them like you used to speak to people on your Eco-Tours. Your passion will guide you. You're so cute when you fangirl about your own shit! This is just another type of performance, like when you sing in front of people. Your personality comes alive and you captivate people. You will do the same thing when you face the consortium."

The children slept as the women slipped out of the compound in two SUVs driven by Doras. Their Wakanda security wore civilian clothing to blend in with the crowd and left their spears behind. Vibranium shields would protect them all. Yani wanted to leave them behind, but T'Challa insisted that the Doras be there with them. Her fear was that the Doras would be shocked at all the carrying-on she was going to take part in. All the Dora Milaje with them seemed to enjoy their duties on the island.

They found parking reserved for them by Twyla's old job in a strip mall, and they strolled with the Doras.

"Yani! Yani!"

Several people along the way recognized her, and the Doras grew nervous at how comfortable Yani was letting people touch her. Juvay sound machines on flatbed trucks and other vehicles cranked up the music, and Marisol started gyrating and swinging her hair around the moment the sounds struck her chest. CeCe passed around personalized Juvay cups and the liquor flowed. Anika wasted no time turning up with her hands in the air, throwing her ass back on a sexy reveler with a slender build and a taut six-pack. The nice thing about having large wings on her back was that it made people give Yani room, and she danced steps that her cousins followed in formation. Marisol easily blended in with them, shaking hips, jiggling backsides, and shimmying down the street.

A vast crowd surged near Yani as word zipped through the crowds that the Black Mermaid had returned with Kendall. Rumors had swirled for years about Yani marrying a rich man and living a quiet wealthy life in a foreign. No one knew it was Wakanda because she forbid the family to reveal her wealth and status.

The dark hills were shiny with twinkling lights, and Yani beckoned the Doras to relax and dance, too. But they walked along with the spectators. The first rays of light changed the color of the sky from black to purple to blue by the time Yani met up with Kendall on the elaborate flatbed truck that housed his DJ and entourage. Soca made the people bounce wildly, and some began throwing colored paint already. Disa's eyes became enormous when a glob of purple powder smacked her on the side of the head and burst into a cloud of beautiful color all over her outfit. Yani laughed and shook her hips. Kendall's vehicle pumped out the sounds people wanted to hear, and Yani took it upon herself to lead a proper procession. Like a queen, she shook her body to the sensual rhythms, and the others followed as if they had choreographed a whole routine. They were all in sync and stopped along the way to let others rock it out with them. Marisol cut up then, bringing Brazil to the island, and Yani wished her new cousin had dressed up like the pictures she saw in Dante's photo album so the crowd could see the queendom within her. A priestess danced among them and Yani wanted them to know that.

Disa danced with Twyla until she became out of breath and lingered alongside the group to watch and drink water. Anika stayed with her and Yani loved seeing the woman laugh and have a good time in her home.

The DJ cranked up Kendall's most recent tunes, and the revelers went wild having a hometown favorite return and celebrate with them. Her cousin rapped on a mic and pointed out people as Yani twirled and kicked up her feet.

"We got a new one for ya!" Kendall shouted. "Where is Disa… Disa! Come here!"

Disa waded through the crowd and Kendall helped her get onto the vehicle with Twyla and Marisol behind her.

"This here is my cousin, and she produced this track in one day! An incredible talent. This mi other cuz from Brazil and she did her thing too, with Twyla here, and Queen Yani down there. Yes! We see yuh Black Mermaid. Run that track, Capa Don!" Kendall shouted at the DJ.

Remixed, the song was brighter and bass heavy. Kendall rapped along to his own vocals as the women bounced next to him. Yani pranced and shook her wings, listening to her voice sing about her own physical gifts. She jiggled her heavy ass and several men tried to rub up on her with their groins, but the Dora Milaje blocked them along with her sisters and cousins, who created a physical dancing barrier around her. She followed alongside the truck bed, leading a boisterous band of dancers, taking in her culture through sight, sound, the surrounding odors, and the feel of the air kissing the warm brown skin revealed all over her costume. Standing still, she closed her eyes and let the island music transport her to a peaceful place inside her homecoming before bursting with more energy and bounding down the packed road again.

On and on she danced and her family moved with her, cheering her to keep moving. Glancing behind, she witnessed Disa caught up in the music's rapture, holding hands with Twyla and Marisol. Yani bumped hips with her and they linked arms strutting to soca and shouting to passersby, "Fete it up!"

"Oh girl, I think I have cramps in my feet from dancing so much!" Disa shouted.

"No excuse!" Marisol yelled, grabbing Disa's arm and swinging her back into action.

Yani caught her breath by the time they met up with all her aunties, Dante, and the children hours later to watch the full carnival parade. She jumped back into the street when Kendall rolled back around again with another musical performer to entertain the throngs of fans. Sydette, Riki, and Joba skipped around in little feathered costumes with crowns matching Yani's colors. Joba's eyes were so huge when she peered up at Yani in all of her flamboyance.

"See me, Sunshine?" Yani called to her before picking Joba up and dancing with her on her hip.

The spectacle of so many people parading past them soon wore on the little girl's capacity to take in any more stimuli from strangers, and Yani was ready for them all to return to the compound for a huge spread of brunch. There would be more parties later, including one in her house with family. Drenched in sweat and colorful paints, the Doras led them all to their SUVs, stopping for ice cone treats before riding on. Exhausted, Yani stared out of the front passenger window and wished for more good times like that in the future.

Disa rubbed her swollen belly and pushed away from the table to put away her plate of food. There was too much food, but Leona insisted they feed well to soak up all the liquor they consumed.

Joba and the other children ran around the compound freely and there was no need to check on them because so many relatives there watched over them on top of Noxolo staying glued to them. She wandered down to the pool where Yani and Anika were already swimming and talking. Disa plopped down on a lounge chair and her kimoyo lit up. Yani's lips curled into a grin.

"Is it him?" Yani asked.

Disa knew it was Adebiyi's avatar, but she didn't let Yani know that, even though it was obvious by the way she rolled her eyes at them in the pool. She stepped away from the patio and walked down some steps that led to a lower level filled with plants and lovely flowers. Jerome sunbathed out in the open, one eye spying on her. She glimpsed the sea in the distance and headed that way. An indentation in some bushes caught her attention, and she crept closer to them, discovering another path she hadn't seen before. She walked through the bushes and descended into an entirely new section of the property that led to a beautiful cove. Sunlight dappled across the clear water and Disa sat down to admire the tranquility. Her kimoyo lit up again, and she answered it.

"Adebiyi," she said.

He stared at her face, and she touched it, forgetting she was still made up for Juvay. She became self-conscious of her revealing top that he could see from the waist up.

"Should I call you later, Lady Abdullah?"

"Disa, you can call me Disa when we're not in the office," she said.

His need for formality all the time drove her nuts. His hair was tied up with a green headwrap tucked at the nape, and without seeing his salt and pepper hair, Adebiyi could pass for late thirties instead of fifty. They started talking every other day with him giving her updates about the underwater earthquake and the findings for the Phase Two project.

"Disa," he said, as if he were testing the way it rolled on his tongue.

"Anything new?"

"A pod of humpback whales washed ashore yesterday," he said.

"Oh, God."

"We cannot determine if they were thrown off track because of the tsunami that hit Kenya and they grounded themselves on our coast, or if there is something else going on."

"Something else?"

"We detected sonar activity ninety miles off of our coast. Manmade. We are searching for illegal international military exercises. Five of the whales died, but we were able to help the others back to sea."

His face grew tight.

"What else, Adebiyi?" she said.

"We detected another underwater earthquake an hour ago. Not as strong as the others. This one was further out to sea."

"Do you think it's related to the sonar?"

"Maybe."

He tapped his kimoyo and another 3D image floated next to his. Pictures of the whales stranded and the Wakandan military helping to remove them.

"King T'Challa has advised a soft evacuation of our island citizens for safety precautions in case there's more seismic activity," he said.

He sighed, and his eyes darted away.

"I suggested to the king that we halt the Phase Two project indefinitely until we know what is going on. I did not do this to disrespect your authority—"

"No Adebiyi, I understand. It's the smart thing to do," she said, staring at all the whales lying in a dog pile so helpless on the beach.

She swiped the images away.

"I have other work that can take priority now," she said.

"I have an idea for the embassy I would like to share with you. If you are open to that."

Disa stared at him with an incredulous expression. Adebiyi offering her something freely? She became intrigued.

"There is a style of wood carving that hasn't been done in Wakanda for over a hundred years that we have used for meditation temples here. I thought maybe it is something you would like to see."

"Sure, send me holopics."

"I think you should see them in person. Holopics will not give you the full impact. There are three styles I think you will like."

"You want me to come up to the Jabari mountains?"

"When you have time in your schedule."

They were silent together for a few seconds, which soon stretched into an awkward, long silence.

"After the coronation would be best," she said.

"As you wish."

He looked away again as if he were fiddling with something offscreen to keep from staring at her again.

"Well, I hope no more marine animals wash ashore," she said.

She ran a hand over her hair nervously and forgot all the hair baubles she had glued there.

"Just got back from Juvay," she explained.

"Juvay?"

"It's a carnival celebration here. The name is really J'ouvert. It means "daybreak" in French. It's a big ass early morning party, and I danced with thousands of people and my feet hurt!"

He laughed. She watched his face, amazed at the transformation of the hard features becoming soft and quite handsome.

"After the morning breaks, there's a big carnival festival. People here party and drink… watch colorful parades. Throw paint at each other to feel free. It's a lot of fun, but I'm beat," she huffed.

She tapped her kimoyo and sent him a few images of their day with a short video. He watched it with her. The video stopped with Disa holding Joba in her arms.

"Your daughter looks like she had fun."

"Joba did, but it can get sketchy for her being around so many people at once. Her brother Riki helped her out a lot, so we stayed longer than I thought we could when they showed up."

"She dislikes people?" he asked.

"Um… she can be shy… but she is sensitive… gets overstimulated, and it becomes difficult for her."

He nodded in understanding.

"What about you? Do you have children?"

He grinned, and a photo popped up in place of the Juvay pictures.

"A son and a daughter. Din'o and Lali. Twenty and nineteen. My son is an apprentice under me and my daughter is studying to be an herbalist."

His face beamed as he admired his own progeny.

"Beautiful. They both look like you," she said.

"No, no… they get their looks from their mother."

"I would like to meet her when I come to see the structures up there."

He tugged on his red tunic shirt.

"We are not together. She is married to someone else now."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that… just out here assuming stuff—"

"It is fine. Our children flourish and that is all that matters to me."

Silence struck them again.

"You know, we have a celebration in the mountains that is like Juvay," he said.

"Really?"

"It celebrates the sun. Our people wear bright colors and parade around early in the morning, just as the sun rises. We make a delicious palm wine here that will make your hair shiny and thick while you dance!"

Disa touched her pigtail.

"My hair has been thinning a bit with work stress. Perhaps palm wine is what I need," she said.

She caught her words about stress and hoped Adebiyi didn't take it as a jab at his part in it. It was best to change the subject.

"Will you attend Challenge Day at Warrior Falls?" she asked.

"I will. It is rare for the Jabari people to be there. M'Baku was the first to stand there in a long time."

"I'm nervous about it."

"The father of your child will face the people and know how they feel about him."

"How so?"

"If no one faces him, the country is united. If someone does…"

"How do you feel about him?"

"I do not know him the way M'Baku does."

"I'm asking from an outsider's perspective."

Adebiyi hooked into her eyes with a solemn expression.

"I will know more when I see him up close."

"You're just scared to offend me. You think I'll run back to T'Challa and snitch."

Adebiyi tilted his head back, and his eyes narrowed.

"Prince N'Jadaka is bold and fearless. That can be a blessing or a curse. Since he has been accepted into the royal family and given the throne, then I believe King T'Challa and the Council of Elders must have good faith in him. Only time will tell. He may be different once the kingdom is his."

He leaned forward and his face became larger, floating in front of her.

"If he protects Wakanda first and foremost, I will accept his leadership."

She wagged a finger at him.

"That is a perfectly crafted answer to make me feel good," she teased.

He laughed, throwing back his head, and Disa warmed up to the sound of his voice. His eyes crinkled and then he held up his hands to her as a sign of respect.

"Until we speak again, Lady Abdullah… Disa."

His image blinked out and a warm ticklish feeling moved into her stomach. She touched her cheeks, and they were warm. Her lips upturned into a wide smile. Disa hugged her knees and watched the seawater come on shore. Charming. Adebiyi could be charming and pleasant, and she wished he was like that when they first met. Perhaps the invitation to go up the mountain was his way of extending an olive branch.

Noxolo broke her reverie by showing up at the cove.

"Sorry to disturb you, Lady Abdullah. The Royal Talon Fighter is here to take Prince N'Jadaka's grandfather and cousin back to Wakanda right away."

"Has something happened to Erik?"

Disa jumped to her feet and rushed over to Noxolo.

"King T'Challa sent the ship to escort them home. Priests at the temple requested their presence. Prince N'Jadaka is alright. They just need his people."

Disa rushed back up the path to the main house where Marisol and Dante's bags were hastily packed and carried to the Talon Fighter. Yani and Twyla greeted her as Marisol spoke to T'Challa on her kimoyo beads privately in a corner.

"Is he really okay?" Disa asked Yani.

"T'Challa said Erik is in the final stages of his preparation for return. They want Dante and Marisol to assist."

"Assist how?"

Yani shrugged. They waited for Marisol to finish speaking, but Dante pulled them aside. His face looked grim but hopeful.

"From my understanding, JaJa has to integrate aspects of his spiritual upbringing with whatever is happening to him on Mount Bashenga. My mother practiced Hoodoo, and he was raised with that and Candomble. T'Challa said that Bast has requested his roots be intertwined."

"Bast? Like the God? Their Panther God asked for this?" Disa said.

"Yes," Dante said.

"But he is okay? Right?" Yani asked.

"T'Challa said so. I believe him," Dante said.

Marisol ended the call. Her hair was already wrapped up, and she had changed into her white priestess dress. They surrounded her as she exhaled.

"He is well. At this final stage of his preparation, they want Granpop and me to help JaJa merge his belief systems into one body. It is more effective if we are there in person for them to do this. When this is done, he will go straight to Warrior Falls," Marisol said.

"We don't even get to see him before he faces the other tribes?" Yani said.

"It is what JaJa wants. There's more," Marisol said.

Disa squeezed her fingers together, and Yani put her hands on her hips.

"Two tribes have hinted at fighting him," Marisol said.

"Ohmigod," Yani wailed, covering her mouth.

"Which tribes?" Disa said.

"T'Challa wouldn't say. The Council of Elders informed him this morning of the possibility. There might be a third," Marisol said.

"Three on one?" Disa said.

"Not all at the same time. Back-to-back I'm assuming," Marisol said.

"They want to test him," Yani said.

Her voice was hard, and there was fire in her eyes.

"He will kill them all," Disa said.

Hugs were given and Disa watched Dante and Marisol escorted by two Doras onto the Royal Talon Fighter. Standing next to Yani, she held her breath as the ship shimmered with blue light and vanished before their eyes. Water from the ocean flattened as it streaked over it with invisible power. Disa turned to look at Yani.

"Let them all come for him," Yani said with grit in her voice. "He will break them, and then they'll know not to vex him no more!"

Yani stomped down the dock and left Disa standing with Twyla and Leona. The older woman slipped her arm gently around Disa's waist.

"The two of you will have to be strong. Be there for each other," Leona said.

"Yes, Ma'am," Disa said.

Twyla reached for Disa's hand and clasped it as the high tide brought water higher along the dock, making loud splashes as it smacked against the wood pillars.

"There will be trials and tribulations in the future. Yani will go hard for him and I know you will be there to back her up," Leona said.

Leona held her right hand out to sea, following the path the Royal Talon Fighter made across the water.

"Deliver me from my enemies, O God; protect me from those who rise up against me…" Leona prayed.

Disa rested in the wisdom of Dante and Marisol. They were on their way to give Erik the power of his ancestors and the assurances of Ogum. The tribes who dared go against Erik would need Leona's prayers more than he would.

After Leona ended her prayer, Disa headed back to the main house. It was time to mentally pack and prepare for Challenge Day.

Erik would finally be king. If blood needed to be spilled again, so be it. Insha'Allah.

Chapter 59 HERE.

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monsooninn · 27 days

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Berakhot 7a: 28. "The Broom."

The role of women in the geneaology somehow cannot be ignored. The Rab says "she" and "her" the Shekhina, the "the jealous one" is the King's daughter, the Princess Royal of Israel who maintains Israel's regal honor and moral compass.

She is jealous because she, like God expects to be given obedience and respect. As the sergeant at arms of the Court, it is her job upholf exemplary inner principals and ensure loyalty to the Nation and the Crown are maintained.

The following explains God's commission of the institution of a Princess Royal for the Kingdom of Israel:

28. Rather, he said to her: righteous and good for him - perfect righteous, righteous and bad for him - righteous who is not perfect, wicked and good for him - wicked who is not perfect, wicked and bad for him - complete evil.

The Value in Gematria is 9915, טטא‎ה‎, "the broom."

A broom removes the ashes. The Torah commands the Kohens to put on white linen garments and remove the ashes from the altar in order to clean it after a sacrifice and ensure the fire is not suffocated by old ashes which are replaced by new fuel. When the ashes are removed, the Kohen changes his clothes before he oversees another sacrament so the temple is completely free of the ashes of the past.

One does not want to be treated like ashes by the Princess Royal whose job it is to protect the line of Israel and get swept away. As the Rab says, it is the removal of the ashes that makes room for more.

As for the Prince, the Heir, his duty is to exact tribute from the people and this means they must find the prospect of the future worthy of their time, money, and emotions. This means the Heir cannot be shifty, manipulative, unscrupulous, skeezy, or disingenuous in any way. He must be the sort of person everyone will cheer for rather than jeer at.

It is a process the Mishnah goes on to say "for which one was given and one...was not given."

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sleepless-strawberry · 11 months

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[WP] The spell to summon a hero from another world failed and instead brought them their worst nightmare. But the mages were not deterred and tried again. After the tenth time though... hard questions started to get asked.

Whenever a dark evil arises, threatens the people of Cylligia and sullies the lands blessed by the Gods the kings and queens of Cylligia gather together their wisest mages and the most devout priests for a ritual as old as Cylligia itself, a gift from the Gods for their faithful servants to defend themselves. It is know as the Calling of the Hero, a summoning ritual more complex and grand than even the oldest of the Arch Devils. The Heroes are called upon from another plane, they hail from lands unknown, where their magics has shaped kingdoms far mightier than those of Cylligia.

Once a Hero or Heroine is called upon, they may not refuse the beckon and though the clergymen claim it to be their sense of noblesse oblige, records state that the heroes do not have a choice in the matter, a duty forced onto them by all powerful Gods of Cylligia. Yet the heroes do not hold it against the humble people, each one is more virtuous, wise, brave or loving than the previous. Each Hero and Heroine are revered by the people whenever one is made to be called upon in the generation.

The last blessed child that was called upon was Hero Akio of the island country Nihon, who with his merry lance of righteous knights slew the Wicked Dragon Jialong that has been terrorising the sacred lands of Cylligia. That was 48 years ago. And yet those that remember Hero Akio celebrate and preserve his honour and legend to this day.

Now the help of the heroes is needed once more for Níðingr of the Iceberg Planes and his hordes of undead are spreading like wildfire throughout the Northern kingdoms. Which is why all these practitioners of great renown, known as leading minds of the current day, are tossing and toiling on the site of the Calling of the Hero sacred ritual. Painstakingly they had drawn out the arrays of the Tridecagram with dragon blood, opal dust and holy water. Now, only the last few finishing touches remain. As Pope Clement the XXIVth comes up to the lectern, carefully holding onto the newly inscribed hymn that is to be used for the Calling of the Hero, he awaits utter silence from within the halls. Finally, he starts.

A slow melody flows out of his lips. Like a gentle stream it brushes against everyone present. Fills the air with a sense of harmony. As the otherworldly and undoubtedly sacred words humble the listeners. Though they can not make our it's meaning, for that would be a blasphemy against the heavens, the Gods have granted them the privilege to witness this monumental happening. Soon enough the sound stops moving freely. Syphoning into the Tridecagram as if water currents into a whirlpool. After the sound has been taken by the Gods, they take the light too. Plunged into the darkness the auditors dare not make a sound nor move, afraid to sully the efforts of their fellows and possible incur the wrath of the very Gods they worship.

An endless stillness later the Tridecagram finally lights up, returning the life into the sacred place. Relief sends loud sighs followed by the increasingly loud and joyous cheers of celebration. Taking the loud stirring of the mages and saints as a cue, the kings and queens enter the halls, trying their best to remain looking regal whilst being equally as excited. The royal musicians filter into the room, starting their orchestral welcome for the newly arrived Hero or Heroine. Everyone's eyes are glued to the pool of blinding white light onto the floor yet no one looks away as there may never be a second chance to witness the Calling of the Hero.

Finally, they emerge. Yet the jolly air barely lasts the full second. As people's breaths stifle. And the trumpeters stop in their tracks. Gasps and shocked cries echo throughout the once again quiet chambers. The Hero or Heroine now stands in front of them, it is hard to tell their gender as their appearance has been... warped. Enough so that if not for the odd garments hailing from their kingdoms the people of Cylligia would assume this was a new sort of Demon or Chimera.

The... thing. Stand on two stumps of flesh. No skin. As if large candles have been burned and the wax left to build up in humps and heaps. The torso resembles a bloated pig carcass crossed with a rotting tomato. The right arm remains human yet it's covered in swells and blisters worse than any plague even the most veteran of the holy healers have seen in their service to the common folk. The left arm however, brought to mind the giant crabs of the Cancer Isles in southern Lerne. The arm was swelled and made up almost as much of the body mass as the rest of the thing combined, with bone being shown at the shoulder, yet deformed too, resembling a pike that had been gutted into the thing. A pink winter coat from the other world that was somehow warm without any furs or hides being displayed apart from on the lining of the hood, tightly clenched around the back and sides, tears from some sort of ripping or stretching on it, usually the pink colour would be endearing and an appealing quirk of the Hero or Heroine's culture but now it only served to worsen the stomaches of all present as the colour meshed with the bloody mess. The head of what no matter how much anyone tried to convince themselves clearly belonged to what at least used to be human, looked by far the most unnerving. Half the side of the face looked as if a clay statue had been smudged, the things features running downwards and it's eye had long burst yet it's remain were staining the low, sloppy cheeks in a grimy sickening yellowish crimson. The other side was far more sinister. A sea urchin or bone seemed to have slowly made it's way out through the flesh, leaving only threads of tattered flesh behind, the bone spikes extending as far as the things more humane arm.

A young queen dropping to her knees and vomiting out onto her fashionable, regal robes staining it with bile and puke, set off the alarms in everyone else. Erupting into panic and screams every soul, apart from the summoned abomination, came alive with fear. Some scurried like ants, to flee or simply put distance between themselves and the horror that they had summoned. Others froze in place, as their legs shook before buckling and dropping them onto the floor. The sacred grounds sullied in tears, vomit, urine and faeces. Though perhaps not the most gruesome thing in all of Cylligia it has never been heard of for the Heroes to even be bruised thanks to their divine protection granted by the Heavens and the miracles of the other world both. A brave few priests began casting spells at range, aiming to heal the prior human yet it was to no avail.

POP! A loud sound like a wet ballon thundered over all the screams and once again all was plunged into silence. With but a single exception. A loud dripping sounds. Blood flowed from what was once the mouth of the creature. Chunks of flesh and shards of bone numbering throughout the short stream of sick blood, dark and viscous as black sap. The devilish waterfall stoped. And the champion sent by the Gods from a distant plane spoke.

W̷̻̘̋̃H̷̯͒͜Å̸̞̪T̵̨͝ ̷̹̆̓ ̶̳́͋Ą̷̂̕ ̵͚͆̒ ̵̱͇̌͠C̶̪̬͗̐R̵͎͆̍U̵̯̾̇E̷̗̿L̴͉̊ ̷͇͗̈́ ̷͈̊T̵͈͚́͝W̶̹̏̒Ḭ̶͘̕S̶̗͇̆T̷̖̝̓͊ ̸̨̫̍̕ ̴̪͙͒͘O̸̾͜F̷̮̪̐͑ ̸̻̤̾ ̸͎͑F̶̻͎̃À̴͔̤T̵͉͑E̸̺̓ ̸̹̭́̑

T̵̛͖H̶̹͇͋̚A̴͗͜Ṱ̶̓̀ͅ ̸̳̲̋ ̸̦͂̽Ȃ̷̮̗͊ ̴̟̇͝ ̶͔͋́W̴̜͉̊I̸̬͋̎͜S̶͙̄̈́H̶̹̩͐ ̷̛̩ ̴̖̚O̶͎͇̒̂F̵̻̪̈̅ ̴͚̕ ̴̺̂̚M̵͇̭͂Y̷͕̓͑ ̸̝͎̓ ̶̼͖̍͂C̴̡̤̆H̵̦́I̸̝͙̎͘L̶̛̫̻͆D̵͇̉Ĥ̷͎̻Ó̸̖̌O̸̘̽D̸̙͘ ̷͈̑ ̷̞͊̐W̷͇͒͒Ŏ̴͇U̴͓͝Ĺ̵̖͐D̴̟̩̒͝ ̶̟̏ ̶̯͠B̶͉̼͋͝È̶̳͇ ̵͛͜G̷̤̋R̸̝̓Ą̶͒N̸̯̝̋Ț̸̐E̷̤͘D̴͈̔́ ̸̼̕ ̶͒ͅT̵̠̀͘O̵̤̒ ̸̢͋ ̸͖̉M̸͓͓͋̌E̵̛̤͂

Á̵͕T̸͕̔ ̷̙͂ ̶̰̐̀S̷̱̀͆͜U̵̞͖̚C̵͉̮͊H̵̳̊ ̴̡̬͛ ̶̖̑̓Ą̶̑͒ ̴̜͉͠ ̵̑̽͜T̸͔͙͛̅I̸͓̎̓M̴̘̈́E̴͇̦̋͝

The abomination's words were gargled and rough like the grinding of glass shards against cliff stone spikes so they were carried throughout every crevice of the temple. Yet echoed far longer in the minds of those still conscious to hear it. And no one dared move, it didn't move either. But it did continue to speak. Softer this time. Not careful but rather exhausted. This time more like the thudding sound of heavy bags of grain being dragged across a gagged stone paved road. It accented each words, separating them, as if to be heard more clearly.

excuse my lack of manners

it has been a while

since I last had a chance to converse

and as much as I would like to simply talk

there is no time to waste

take my life

burn my body

punish me for my kind's hubris

for we have brought this upon ourselves

we have been and our now

forsaken

for there is no hope for those

who build the Tower of Babel.

#writing #writing prompt

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the-kingdom-poet · 2 years

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(Poem:) The Lord my God

Radiant rays of Your love, Your glory Refract, reflect throughout the heavens, Righteous, pious Lord my God, Royal, regal, majestic pure Lord.

Radiant rays of Your love, Your gloryRefract, reflect throughout the heavens,Righteous, pious Lord my God,Royal, regal, majestic pure Lord. Brilliant beauty contained within Your body,Bright glorious light from Your being shines forth,Boldly, boastfully, enlightening my eyes,Beautiful, gorgeous Lord my God. Wholly holy, different and set apart,Wise, inspired, is Your wondrous heart.Wonderful…

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#Christianity #God #Jesus #poems #Poetry

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snowbellewells · 3 years

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A Cottage by the Sea {Part Five}

Here we are at last! After months off (I’m truly sorry for that wait, by the way!) I’m back with the next to last addition to this @cssns20 story - only the final part/epilogue left to go. I meant to have this up much earlier today, but I had several different things come up that made me later. I hope you all who are still reading will enjoy... :)

Summary: Princess Emma has always been drawn to the shores of Misthaven, where the sea meets the sand near her parents’ castle. When an unknown boy washes up on the beach, with eyes as fathomless and blue as the waters that brought him to her, he soon becomes Emma’s best friend, her partner in crime, and her other half. But the tides give and the tides take away, and as her blue-eyed boy sails in her father’s navy and risks all in defense of those who made him family, unexpected danger and challenge will try to tear them apart, and might well show him just where he came from that day he first appeared to her from the sea…

From the beginning on AO3, and here on Tumblr

Part Five

Calypso looked on with a mother’s concern and doting affection, treasuring the chance to see her son happy. After so many years separated from her children, to have one of them here on her island where she could speak to him each day, brush back the wild dark hair from his face as she had done when he was just a little boy, no longer having to miss him, and knowing he would always be safe. It was nearly inducement enough to put a protective barrier up around her hidden home - an enchantment as she’d had before letting it down to allowing Killian’s princess passage, that would keep others out, and her son and his beloved in.

Yet, tempting as it was, the sea nymph knew better than most that she could do no such thing. Killian might find contentment here, now that Emma was by his side, but she could never force him to stay in such a manner. She would be parting him cruelly from the life he had worked hard to make for himself, and from the people who had taken him in - those who had become hs family when Davy had taken he and Liam from her arms. Having been forced to live with such loss, she would force no such thing on anyone else.

No, she would not make her beloved boy - long since become a man - remain here. She knew he would go, and even as she feared what might await him on his journey back to Misthaven; almost sensing that the threat from the deep was not yet over, she could only treasure this interlude she had been granted, to see Killian again, and to let him know he and his elder brother had always been loved and wanted.

~~***~~

Far below in the depths, fathoms beneath where Calypso watched anxiously, eyes drinking in every second of her son’s presence she could, and where Killian Jones and his royal lady love splashed and frolicked in the tide, another pair of eyes waited and watched, biding his time. True, he used supernatural means to do so - a dark orb of swirling greenish water housed in a gigantic open half shell platform brought the image to his underwater lair - but it was just as effective. Twice his younger son had escaped his clutches - once washed ashore as a youth before he could drag Killian down in his watery hold, and the second time foiled by the righteous nymph who fancied herself saving the whelp’s life. ‘Saving him? Bah!’ Davy’s glowering evil mind recanted. What could be more glorious than receiving his destiny? Sitting at his other side with Liam, ruling over the deep?

All these years, he’d been missing the set, the pair; he had his elder son - the wreck nearly a decade ago had seen to that - but he would not rest until both his sons were with him, his rule and legacy complete.

Of course, though he might hold his firstborn in thrall - unable to escape and return to the land of the living unless Davy released him, not after so long under the sea - that did not mean his eldest remained willingly. A dark glance over his shoulder gave him a view of Liam silently waiting and watching until orders were given him. Brooding, was more accurate, the immortal fiend thought angrily. Unlike the other souls lost and gathered into his unholy crew, Liam still looked much as he had when he had first been pulled below. He was not a mindless shade, hollowed and twisted beyond recognition as many of Davy’s captives for any length of time became. He still stood young, proud, and tall; broad-shouldered and handsome, just the sort of right hand a king of the deep would require, and Davy knew it well; it was just as he had envisioned long ago when he sent the typhoon that had claimed Liam’s young life. Unfortunately, the flaw in his plan was that it was meant to have brought him Killian as well, both his heirs to flank him and support him - his powerful living legacy. Instead his youngest had slipped through his clutches by chance or Fate - or interference from the dratted creature he had once charmed into loving him, who had borne him two strapping lads. To his way of thinking, Calypso had known full well just who he was and the darkness within him, but had then grown a conscience and set herself to oppose him at every turn.

“Liam!” he bellowed. Though he knew his eldest lingered just nearby, rekindled temper made his voice boom and reverberate in the small space, bouncing off the cavernous rock that encased his throne room. “It’s time my boy,” he pronounced, evil fire lighting eyes that had once been as blue and mesmeric as either of his sons’ but were now clouded and dark - foreboding whatever his mood. “Kilian will join us soon, as he should have long ago.”

The elder Jones brother, face steady and resolved, without flicker of emotion to betray his true thoughts came to stand at his father’s side dutifully when beckoned. He nodded at the boastful proclamation without comment, though if one looked closely - as Davy was too absorbed to do - they would have seen the strain in Liam’s every muscle, the tension radiating from his clenched jaw and tightly balled fist. His concern for his long-missed younger sibling would have been evident if one were watching, though he had learned long ago that luckily his power-mad sire noticed only what pleased him and related to his own concerns. He didn’t want Killian with him out of any genuine desire to reunite his family, but through some twisted ideal of dynastic completion.

Though he couldn’t hide all of his concern, Liam schooled his face into a mask of bland curiosity and obedience as he looked to Davy who growled, “You remember the job you are to do?”

“Aye,” Liam affirmed simply with a curt nod, leaving out that he had every intention of doing the opposite when the moment came.

He left soon after, knowing his keeper - all the moniker his pitiless sire truly deserved - would never suspect him to do anything other than exactly as he decreed. ‘Thank the gods for small mercies on that score,’ Liam thought as he swam from the lair with unnaturally strong, tireless strokes. Such blind tunnel vision was all he really had to count on in his hopes to turn the tide.

~~***~~

Emma was genuinely surprised by Calypso’s warmth and affection as the gracious sea numph accepted her thanks for her aid and guidance in finding Ogygia before drifting lost at sea interminably. Of course this otherworldly being - uncannily graceful and stunning in all respects - was Killian’s mother! Not wonder he had always been able to charm any person he met with a mere smile or twinkle of his eyes! The part that staggered Emma was that the woman would embrace her and bless them as a couple rather than begrudge her pulling Killian away when she had just found him again. Princess trained in regal bearing and dignity she might be, but all the same, Emma could only tightly hug Killian’s mother in return, blubbering an apology about not being able to desert her parents and her people, which Calypso acknowledged with a calm gesture of understanding, and then boarded the ship, trying to quickly wipe away the stray tears that had escaped down her cheeks. She was glad to be able to say she had met his mother, and Killian deserved a moment alone to say his farewells - at least for the moment.

“Your princess is truly a lovely young woman,” Calypso told her son warmly, squeezing his hands in her own, hating to think that soon Killian would once again be out of her reach. “She is as enchanting and kind as her lady mother, Misthaven’s Queen, is reputed to be. I have no doubt that she will rule justly and well when the time comes.”

“Nor do I,” Killian agreed softly, his assurance, and the pride her felt for his beloved clear in word and tone. “But Mother, I…”

“And she loves you,” Calypso continued, cutting him off because she knew she must tell him all before her emotions choked her. “Above all else, she holds you closest to her heart, my son. Right where you deserve to be. It does a mother’s heart good to see it.”

Killian bowed his head, flushing to the tips of his ears, pointed like hers he realized now with pleasure to have a trait in common with this mother he hated to part from. “And I love her,” he replied without hesitation, “But you know that I love you as well… don’t you?” He pressed their joined hands to his chest, just over his heart. “That I do not wish to leave you? Emma’s people look to her; they need her… and I have responsibilities as well. Her parents, they took me in…”

“Never fear, Killian,” Calypso soothed her son easily. “I do know. And you will never fully leave me. You will always be my baby boy. You - and she - will always be welcomed here, should you ever wish to return.”

For a long, heavily charged moment mother and son leaned into a lingering embrace - full of comfort, which neither wished to let go. Foreheads touching, Killian tried to breath in her scent, to memorize the sound of her voice - all the things he had forgotten before.

“I will always be here for you, Son,” she promised as he turned to stride across the sand and into the ship to sail home. “You know where to find me… whenever you need.”

Her son waved one last time before joining his princess at the bow, and soon their little ship was no more than a speck on the horizon, drifting further and further away.

~~***~~

They had been on the water some hours when a gentle bubbling and foaming disturbance of the surface appeared just ahead of their boat. Both Killian and Emma noted it, but were not terribly concerned at first. It was only when the waves around them began to roll and grow choppy, forcing Emma to grasp the sides tight-lipped and white-knuckled and Killian to eye the frothing, churning, and ever-expanding disturbance with worry he did not wish to voice. This was clearly no mere passing dolphin or larger tide as he had first hoped. He remembered too just how malevolently and suddenly the storm which wrecked his vessel and drowned the rest of his crew had blown up. He could not bear to see such a calamity befall Emma.

Glancing to his side, Killian’s heart swelled with admiration and affection for her as she braced herself and remained calm, neither crying nor panicking as many an untested sailor might have done. She was silent and steady - every bit as determined to hold her own as he was to see her home safely. However, he was about to caution her to wrap a length of rope around her oar-lock and then her waist securely, so that if she were tossed overboard he could haul her back in before she was lost, when suddenly their small craft bucked and lurched so strongly that she was thrown to the deck on hands and knees, and he nearly toppled down on her, despite his own more seasoned sea legs.

Before Killian could even reach to help her up, some unknown form broke the surface in the center of the spinning waters, and once it did, the worst of the pitching and rolling calmed. A head, then broad shoulders, emerged seemingly from the deep - as impossible as it should have seemed. However, they did just leave the island of his mother the sea nymph, so neither felt quite as supported by usual logic as they once had been. It was only as the figure glided toward them on the waves, as if they could simply float atop the water weightlessly without the effort of swimming, that Kilian recognized its build and look with a shock of disbelief. As the mysterious arrival raised unmistakably blue eyes to meet their awestruck gazes, the single word fell from his mouth on a harsh, ragged breath. “L- Liam?”

Emma’s head whirled to stare at him, then the aquatic visitor, and back, slack-jawed and goggle-eyed. She wanted to make sure she’d heard him correctly. Liam? The brother who had died when Killian was a child? Who had been lost to the sea at the same time it brought Killian to her? How was that possible? The thoughts cropped up in her mind one after another, but turning to see the intensity and confusion, the pain and the dawning joy on Killian’s face made her hold her tongue.

Tears started in the corners of her own eyes all the same, though he managed to speak again softly, “Brother? ...Is it really you? You- you drowned.” His face almost crumpled, and Emma wanted desperately to take his hand in comfort, but she held back, sensing that the brothers needed this moment - however it was happening. “I thought you were lost.”

Somberly, the shaggy head of hair lighter and curlier than Killian’s nodded to confirm his words. “Aye, it’s me, Little Brother.” He glided closer, out of the water up to his waist, until he was right next to their vessel, facing Killian as he reached out tentatively. “I was drowned… more or less. But I have not really died, not as one normally understands it. Oh blast, am I buggering this up!”

Emma knew her face must match the look of perplexity covering her sailor’s. The words this man was uttering didn’t make sense. And yet, Killian would not - could not - leave him hanging, regardless of his confusion. He reached forward and met Liam in a tight, frantic hug of reunion after so many years apart, She heard a strangled sob leave the younger Jones, muffled against his elder brother’s shoulder, which was in turn shaking rather markedly with a soundless anguish and relief of its own.

When they finally parted, Liam’s hands were resting on Killian’s shoulders as he peered into his brother’s eyes intently. “I will explain all - as best I can anyway. I swear it, Killian. I am sorry I could not make myself known to you sooner.”

Killian nodded in acceptance of those words, looking almost dazed - as if afraid to even blink or speak for fear his beloved sibling would vanish from him again.

“But first,” the elder Jones continued, “I must tell you how I have reached you now - and warn you to be on your guard.”

Tremors ran down Emma’s spine at the words themselves, and the tone in which they were spoken. This was not idle chatter, but a true threat, and she could only imagine who, or what, he might warn was coming their way.

Killian gave his older brother a curt nod of understanding, urging Liam on. It was clear how they would have worked impeccably well together - an unstoppable team on any ship - if things had been different, if they had been allowed to sail into adulthood side-by-side. They do not argue or waste time, but instead each obviously trusted the other at their word, without a second’s hesitation, and moved forward without fail toward what must be done - not allowing room for doubt nor fear.

Liam cleared his throat, eyes lowered to avoid quite holding contact with either of their faces when he continued, voice gravel-rough and low. “Of course you know of Davy Jones and his infernal locker…” he began..

Again, Killian nodded in confirmation, “Aye, naturally.”

“What most do not know - what I myself could not have known all those years ago, still just a lad, and would never have believed, is that Davy Jones and the legend surrounding him - his locker, his cursed crew, the Flying Dutchman - all of it is true.”

Neither Killian nor Emma spoke to interrupt him, though it was a near thing, both of them staring frozen and gobsmacked, trying to figure out how they must have misunderstood Liam’s words. Finally, Killian gathered his wits enough to sputter incredulously, “You mean to say that you’ve been held prisoner - a part of that villain’s crew all this time? How - how is that possible?”

Liam shook his head resignedly, answering with little more than a shrug and a low voice. “I do not begin to know the whys and wherefores, Little Brother. Until seeing you here before me, I had genuinely lost all sense of time passing, and much memory of who I once was and what I felt long ago - a sort of suspended animation, if you will.”

Emma had remained quiet throughout their exchange - partially stunned into speechlessness and partially from a desire to allow Killian the time and space to be reunited with the sibling he had mourned as long as she had known him. Yet, with this revelation, she found her curiosity overruling her previous restraint. “What allowed you to come to us now then?” she questioned, tilting her head as she attempted to study his face - familiar, but not as open to her as Killian’s had ever been. She didn’t mean to be mistrustful, but all of this tale was strange - straining belief, in fact - and his arrival to warn them at just the opportune moment seemed almost too much a coincidence.

“A fair question indeed, your Highness,” Liam answered respectfully, with a slight dip of his chin in differential bow. For a moment, his gaze slid back over to Killian with such proud approbation, as if congratulating him in finding such a sharp lass and valuing that about her, that Emma felt herself flush with pleasure.

He granted her a small but transformative smile; in truth, the way it lightened his whole aspect made him seem an entirely different person. Not only that, but the familial similarities between he and the brother she had grown up beside became all the more evident when his expression drew her in just as Killian so easily did. “In answer to your question - as fair warning, as much as it is in my power to offer you - Davy sent me to the surface anyway. He made me have you in my sights, ready to do his bidding at the moment he chooses to strike. I did not know whether I would be able to thwart his intent and show myself or speak to you ahead of when he wished, but it seems I can, and it was worth any effort for me to at least try. I believe he knows my loyalty is not fully his, in whatever degree I am free of his influence, and so he has not told me all. Have no doubt he will attack when you are weakest though, when the moment is most opportune for his victory. Please, both of you, be wary and ready. I will help you in any way I can, but I can never be fully assured how much of my will might be my own.”

Kililan’s brow furrowed in anger and disgust, his concern for the sibling he loved clear as he asked disbelievingly, “He controls you?”

Liam bobbed his head in grudging confirmation, but he wanted them to know as well as possible just what they were up against. “To a large degree, yes. If he wills it, that seems often to be the case, at any rate. Thankfully, he has numerous minions, most much more eager to serve as they are grateful to be - at least in some measure - alive. He is often distracted and not actively ordering me to do anything, and as such, I am often able to do as I will. Not that I have much to see or do here trapped within the ocean. It would have been better for me to have perished outright, but he did not allow that - not when he sent that storm to gather us both to his side.”

The elder Jones shook his head in frustration, gritting his teeth before concluding ominously, “I fear he will never rest until he has captured your soul as well, Brother… And I do not know how much I will be able to aid you or resist his orders when he directly states otherwise.”

Before he could divert his gaze, obviously ashamed that he could be used as a pawn, made to hurt those he most wished to protect, Killian brought his hand quickly to grasp his brother’s forearm, bringing Liam’s stormy gaze up to look on his own, clasping his long lost hero’s hand in a firm, brotherly grip. Killian vowed solemnly. “Understood. We will be on our guard. But do not think for a moment we will hold you to blame for something beyond your control, either.”

Emma stepped closer, looking into the slightly greyer, more muted blue of the brother she had just met’s eyes as well. “Take care of yourself too. See that you weather the storm as well so we can meet again. And thank you… for the warning.”

The shaggy head, which had once been carefully close-cropped and tended light brown curls nodded, seeming to know better - just as his younger brother always had - than to argue with a princess so prepossessed and determined. There was a sheen of unshed tears filming those wise, weary eyes as he hesitated every second he felt able, but in the end he dared not linger further, loath to draw Davy Jones’ attention to the princess and lieutenant if they could by pass his waters undetected.

Unfortunately, the entire sea was the evil being’s domain - and all those upon it a part of his purview. All three of them knew - and Liam from a sickening knowledge of seeing and living the aftermath of when struggle against Davy for survival ultimately failed - it was a battle that would take all they had, with the outcome Emma spoke of anything but assured. Still, the fact that they knew it was coming, could steel themselves and prepare for the worst, somehow steadied them. Neither Killian nor Emma had ever been people who had backed down from a fight - and they were calling on every bit of that resolve in the moment.

Though Liam was more than reluctant to leave his brother and Killian’s beloved - a princess! And a woman he already found himself feelings brotherly affection for - he knew he must do so soon. The last thing he wanted was to destroy their one advantage and let Davy know they were aware of his plot. Nor did he wish to lead his predatory sire right to Killian and Emma; let them get as close to their home and safety as they could before the nefarious, supernatural captain caught them up.

“Aye,” he finally managed to choke out harshly. “May we do so.” One more quick bow of his head, reverence in the gesture before he offered a warm, loving smile and then sunk so smoothly beneath the surface of the water that it barely rippled, unlike when he had appeared. Almost as though he had never been there at all; leaving Killian and Emma to turn to each other, vowing to fight through together, to find Liam again, their eyes promised it even if no words were spoken, whatever they were about to face.

~~***~~

Sure enough, they might have hoped otherwise, Killian and Emma felt Davy Jones’ presence approaching before they reached Misthaven’s shores. The otherworldly menace’s arrival was heralded as much by the change in the wind and the waters around them as the chill of foreboding that made the hair at their napes stand on end. Though he had not yet shown his cursed visage, the way what had simply been a pleasant breeze now picked up to whip at the sails, their hair and clothes, and to howl in their ears, and the way what had been a light blue sky turned a sickening chartreuse full of scudding grey clouds ever-darkening with ominous intent.

For an extended moment, Kilian’s eyes sought Emma’s across the small hull of their rolling vessel, being tossed more and more as the waves crested higher. “If we capsize, Emma,” he spoke slowly, firmly, as if to imprint his words on her memory if he were not still there at her side. “Swim for land in this same direction,” he indicated the way they had been traveling, over her shoulder. “We nearly reached the harbor. A strong swimmer - which you are, Love - might yet make it on their own strength.”

She wanted to ignore his words, to shake her head in wild denial that she might need knowledge he wouldn’t be there to provide. She had no intention of losing him again. And yet, the confrontation they had hoped to avoid was surely coming any minute; they would not outrun the master of those lost to the Deep. The little vessel that had taken her so far, and had nearly borne them home again was no longer managing any progress forward, merely struggling to remain afloat as it rode wildly up and down on the ever-rising swells.

And then, at long last, with a loud, whooshing roar, it was as if the ocean itself parted, a huge, dark shape, which solidified into the monstrous hulk of a ship surged up from the depths of the open chasm. As it leapt to the surface, righting itself to mount a wall of water, the split in the waves fell closed once more, leaving the blackened, ruinous black ghost of the Flying Dutchman towering before them not more than fifteen feet away - like a shark poised to swallow smaller fish too stunned or too late to flee.

No sooner had Emma been able to swallow hard in a throat suddenly parched with apprehension, her fingers clenched in the material of Killian’s sleeve, above all else determined she wouldn’t let him be taken from her again, when everything around them went horribly, unnaturally still. The waves, the wind, all their surroundings silently seeming to hold their breath before all chaos broke loose. For one last moment, she and her lieutenant fixed their eyes on each other; wordlessly swearing to see each other on the other side, whether or not it was within their power to follow through on such a promise. Then he turned to face his sire - if one could truly be made to believe that the monstrous captain towering over them at the prow of the other ship could have had any connection to the true and honorable man Killian had become. Intending to remain at his back, to do whatever she could to help him fight and keep them afloat, Emma straightened her shoulders and stiffened her spine as they waited and watched.

Sound and fury returned to the world around them as the accursed captain reached the very helm of his ship, bringing him fully into view as his low, malevolent chuckle at their show of resolve seemed to set the waves crashing and churning once more. “Oh ho, Killian, you’ve brought your intended to our long-awaited reunion, have you? Not particularly well-advised, but she is a pretty wench. I supposed I can see why you’d be loath to leave her behind.”

Killian’s frown deepend, the muscle in his jaw working as he bit down on his anger. Those eyes that she usually likened to the brilliance of a summer sky or the blue of his beloved ocean were instead lit with the pale fire of the hottest of flames at Davy’s callous words. “Hardly,” he clipped in a low growl. “I had no intention of meeting you at all. And I’ll not have you getting anywhere near Emma.”

“Is that so?” Davy snarled, his own temper seeming to erupt at his offspring’s defiance. “We’ll just see about that!”

The waves their little boat floated upon suddenly seemed propelled forward, rising on a towering crest of water as if drawn to Davy’s hand. Skilled a sailor as Killian was, there was no steering them anywhere else when the very elements were turned against them. The air seemed to quiver just as Emma found herself doing, in spite of her best efforts as they came face-to-face with the accursed being. The boards of the vessel beneath their feet groaned and creaked as the frothing sea bearing it seemed ready to dash it to kindling. The air whistled and howled, whipping her hair against her face until she was nearly blinded. And yet, she saw the horrifying shade who faced them, the dark cloud of obsession clouding eyes which might once have been clear and striking as the sons he claimed as his own. He stood taller than the average man, seeming even larger with the wild hair and wide-brimmed, ostentatiously old-fashioned hat atop his head. All his dress was from a more ornate and bygone age, and yet looked gone to ruin rather than impressive, almost mildewed, or perhaps it was a growth of some sort of moss or coral upon his apparel after so long within the sea. Beyond the visible appearance however, the aura of evil power practically radiated from his being, and Emma felt herself draw back before even realizing she had done so.

Pleased with the nightmare impression he never failed to make, Davy Jones chortled in maniacal glee. “Oh yes, I see you there, Princess. Try not to fret overmuch. No matter how brave, they always cower before me in the end.”

She wanted to contradict his words, to call back that Killian wasn’t afraid and that she believed in him, but Emma found her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, speechless and unable to react other than to stare, frozen, until with one last murderous crow, Davy cackled, “You’re both in my clutches, and no hope to escape. Look your last on the world above.”

Then they were falling, plummeting back to the surface with such speed and force that the boat rolled and cracked in two when it hit the water again. Swept underwater and swirled around dizzyingly, Emma fought to retain any sense of which way was up and to break free of the whirlpool ravenously threatening to suck her further down.

Her lungs burned; her rational mind knowing she would have to draw breath soon - and that it would be nothing but saltwater and spell the beginning of the end. She paddled madly, flailing for some sort of light, when suddenly, a solid arm caught her around the middle and pulled her back toward the air at last.

Certainly she had expected for Killian to have somehow reached her, though she couldn’t begin to account for the strength and speed with which she was fished from the drink. However, upon gulping her first sweet breath of air and catching a glimpse of her savior, she found not Killian, but his brother keeping her afloat. Coughing up the water she had somehow swallowed and attempting to speak her thanks, the words died on her tongue at the seeming blank and unknowing countenance Liam bore, nothing like the warmth with which he had looked at her mere hours ago.

“Liam?” she attempted to gain his recognition, even as an awful feeling stole her breath yet again. “What’s wrong? It’s Emma… don’t you remember me?”

Still he made no response, solidifying the frightened certainty that he was under Davy’s control once more and no longer acting of his own volition. Wriggling and kicking to try to break free, Emma found quickly that her efforts were useless. There was no escaping the iron grip he had on her.

Yet, even as her own panic rose to as crescendo, Emma found herself needing to find Killian, to know if he were better or worse off - and already praying that he had not somehow been swallowed by the vicious waves his sire had conjured to claim them. As her eyes flew across the distance, they came to rest on both a thrilling and blood-curdling scene. Her love stood feet planted on the overturned shell of their boat, splintered oar in hand as the only weapon available to him, and waiting as Davy drew near, magically skimming across the tops of the waves, ready to face him once again and for all.

She struggled anew against Liam’s iron hold, but he barely moved; her efforts to free herself having so little effect they might as well not have happened at all. He didn’t speak, though his expression was tormented, torn as if he were indeed in conflict between what he wished to do himself and the command that decreed his actions otherwise. Yet that did not stop Emma’s trying to reason with him, trying to break through. “Liam, please. You know me. I’m on your side, remember?” she pleaded, even as she continued to try to escape his hold. “We want the same thing. Let me go and we’ll help Killian, alright? Look, he needs us.” She flung her arm out desperately, hoping to make him see the real place they should be focused.

Liam’s gaze did move to his younger sibling for a moment, and Emma’s heartbeat quickened at the longing she saw in the elder brother’s countenance; the aching need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and fight together for something good and true once more. But then he jerked his gaze from the scene of impending conflict once more, muttering to himself as if to drive home a point he would not have himself forget. “Not yet, not yet,” his lips were moving as he repeated it almost like a mantra. “Must wait for the opportune moment…”

Puzzled, Emma worried that she had heard him say that very phrase before, when cautioning them that Davy would choose the opportune moment to strike. All she could take from that was the fact that he woudln’t release her and hadn’t yet gone to his brother’s aid was that his father did have him under his command. Yet, Liam also looked far from peacefully mindless; he might be under duress, but he was aware and hating every second of it. Even as she was in danger from him, even as every fiber of her being clawed to get to Killian’s side and help him any way she could, her heart still broke for Liam.

“You can beat this, Liam,” she murmured fervently, trying to catch his gaze and ceasing in her struggles to rest her hand over his much larger one in solidarity. “You’ve fought him this long, hang in there a little longer.”

Something sparked in his gaze at her words, something Emma didn’t fully understand - and yet, it gave her hope. It was conscious and alive, and truly him, not Davy holding his mind captive. Had she gotten through? Had he already broken free? Then what was he waiting for?

Both of their attention snapped back to the battle sides drawn before them once more at the taunting voice of Davy Jones. “Come now, boy. You had to know you would lose to me. A mere mortal - and with something so precious to lose. Join me, part of the ship and crew that sails forever, scourge of the sea. You’ll have power, your birthright, your brother with you again. Plus, as you can see, Liam holds my ace in the hole. We’ll see your princess safely to shore if you join us. Refuse and fight, and she becomes one of us as well.”

Even at a distance, Emma could see the rage in Killian’s eyes at the demon’s words - the threat to himself already known, but unwilling to stand for the threat to her. He glanced their way only briefly, but it was enough for Emma to see Liam give the tiniest jerk of his head to the side, an unspoken denial to whatever Killian had asked with his look. “Opportune moment,” she heard him vow in a whisper once more as he held his younger brother’s stare for a resolute second longer.

Then Killian whipped back to face their sire once more with a defiant glare and what could only be called a battle cry. “Never!” he snarled, fire in his eye and retribution in his bearing. Though Emma could do nothing but watch, and though the dire situation seemed completely unchanged, she was galvanized by her love’s certainty, believing that he would prevail. Whatever had passed between he and his brother, it had been the final push he had needed.

With a roar of vengeance, the taker of imperiled souls surged forward, Emma’s gasp swallowed by the howling, churning elements at his command swelling along with his ire. As certain as she had been mere moments ago that Killian could stand firm, she was terrified that she was about to see him consumed, and the rest of them with him. Still, just as Davy’s huge bulk and accompanying wave towered over her sailor, ready to cascade over his head and bury him in the rolling depths, Killian released another feral howl and charged forward himself, meeting his villainous father head on. Boldly welding the broken spar of the boat before him, he stabbed with a force Davy could not have reckoned on, sinking the jagged tip of the wooden stake into the monster’s chest.

For a horrible beat of time, their foe appeared unfazed, and then it was as if he began to deflate, then shrink - as if no one had managed to strike such a blow before, and his defenses were not actually equal to the task. Lurching with outstretched hand to grasp either Killian or his weapon in a final strike, there was suddenly an explosion so loud it seemedd to shake the very atmosphere. A blinding flash of light radiated from where man and monster grappled to the death, then darkness fell - equally blinding - and Emma was suddenly adrift. No longer held, unable to place anything in the black night that had suddenly engulfed her, she paddled to stay afloat, and seemingly alone. Lost and completely at sea.

Bobbing aimlessly on the surface, it was hard to tell how much time had gone by, or how far she had been carried by the waves. The huge crests and white caps had receded, leaving it a gentle rise and fall that Emma was in no danger from, yet she could not feel that all was well until she understood what had happened, where she was - and where Killian was as well. Trying she might to strain and peer through the darkness however, she couldn’t make out any recognizable landmarks; nothing but the waves surrounding her and buoying her up. It was as if she had gone from the center of battle to being the only person left on Earth or sea, the silence and dark felt so immense.

Eventually, the repetitive motion of the gently rolling swells soothed her into a doze, her eyelids fluttering closed. Despite her concern for her beloved lieutenant and her occasional unconscious paddle to stay upright, after all she had been through, Emma succumbed to a restless sleep.

~~***~~

Her eyes didn’t open again until her feet drug across rough stones, having finally been carried into the shallows and touching the rough bottom not yet become sand. She jerked back into awareness with a gasp; alarmed and not at all sure where she was. Blessedly, when she looked around herself, Emma could see once more - the endless horizon stretched out before her streaked with peaches, yellows, and pinks as hte sun rose over the ocean. Even more relieving, at her back she could see rocky, deserted coastline. Devoid of people or buildings, but land all the same.

She struck out for the shore, gladly swimming toward the land that was nearer than she could have guessed. Was this Misthaven yet? Had she been carried elsewhere as she drifted and slept? There was no way to know, and she found she didn’t even care in comparison to simply getting out safely. If only she knew where Killian was…

She had barely scrabbled out upon the rough, sandy beach, feeling water-logged and half alive and at a lost for what to do, when she heard her name called over the water. “Swan!” the moniker that only he had ever used, an affectionate shorthand between the two of them, hit her ears with the welcome impact of beautiful music.

Turning, her mouth fell open in awe at the sight of him rising out of the water with otherworldly grace - as if right in his element (which, in truth, he must be). There was an ethereal glow about him, gleaming from his dark hair and the tips of his rather pointed ears, outlining his strong arms and slender waist as he emerged from the deep, sent back to her on the tide once more. “Emma” he repeated, voice low and ragged with emotion though relief and joy showed across his face. “We made it, Love. He’s gone and we’re still here!”

Unable to hold back any longer, as impossible as it was to believe, when he opened his glowing arms in welcome, standing in the ankle deep water, she felt tears of joy spilling over as she cried out his name on a sob and ran to meet him.

Feet splashing through the shallows, the slap of her skin against the near-velvet texture of the wet sand as the water splashed up with each steps, Emma was laughing and crying all at once as she gained speed. The exhaustion and defeat that had dogged her mere moemtns before completely gone at the sight of his smile. She hit his arms in a flat out run, bowling them both over and into the water again, witha yelp of surprise from Killian, a laughing tangle of limbs.

She was kissing across his cheeks, his forehead, his chin, anxious to press her lips to every bit of his skin, having feared that he had finally disappeared where she couldn’t follow. Pulling back fro only a second as he tangled his fingers in her wet hair and cradled the back of her head in his palm, she tried ot splutter out enough words to make sense. “H- how is this possible? How did you - How are you here?”

Killian chuckled, a low, comforting rumble that vibrated from his chest to her palm where it rested over his heart. He licked those gorgeous lips, parting them to answer her, and suddenly she couldn’t stand not to be kissing them for even a moment longer. The explanation could wait.

Surging forward, she captured that luscious mouth with her own, just barely murmuring, “Never mind… it doesn’t matter. I’m just glad you’re here.”

Killian might have been taken aback by her enthusiasm at frist, but he recovered admirably. Pushing back, his tongue entered the fray in a delicious bid for control of the kiss, which she ceded, humming in pleasant abandon as he rolled her to her back in the sand and surf, breaking lightly and pleasantly against their bodies. Hovering over her, his eyes sparkled in enchanting glee, and he had the audacity to lick his lips as though she were a delicacy laid out before him. “Emma, my love,” he breathed hoarsely, lowering his ips to graze along her collarbone, licking and nipping in a way that made her squirm with blissful anticipation. “We’ve made it home.”

“Mmm,” she tried to answer, but the wordless sound was all the confirmation she could muster with her body humming pleasantly from his attentions.

“We should go to your parents, Love,” Killian suggested, though half heartedly at best. “Let them know we’re alive.”

She nodded, but made no move to go anywhere, merely sinking her fingers into the muscles of his forearms, gasping and arching toward him in supplication as his nose pushed aside her wet and slightly askew bodice and that wicked mouth latched onto the flesh it had been covering.

“Later,” she finally managed breathily, having all she could do to hold on for dear life to him. “We have all the time in the world.”

Tagging: @cssns @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @searchingwardrobes @laschatzi @whimsicallyenchantedrose @teamhook @revanmeetra87 @spartanguard @therooksshiningknight @optomisticgirl @tiganasummertree @thislassishooked @winterbaby89 @jrob64 @stahlop @elizabeethan @donteattheappleshook @drowned-dreamer @shireness-says @thisonesatellite @lfh1226-linda @ultraluckycatnd @gingerchangeling @xsajx

#cssns20 #cs au mc #cs au ff #a cottage by the sea #part five #enchanted forest au #lieutenant duckling au #fic update

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zelenacat · 3 years

Text

Chapter 1- When We Were Young- An Obitine Story

She was dressed from head to toe in ivory. Her voluminous gown glimmered in the sunlight, emanating a pearly sheen on the marble floors of the palace. The aureate doves and shields on her hem reflected their golden threads onto the shiny golden flats that caressed her heels. Clinched at the waist was a slim glimmering belt that rested nicely on her hips, bejeweled with citrine and opal stones interlocking with pearls. She was slightly uncomfortable with the tightness of her corsetted bust and how it accented the shoulders her maids had rubbed with oil.

“Your Grace?”

Satine straightened at her title, pushing her shoulder blades back and raising her chin. She stared at her face in the mirror, crystal blue eyes ablaze with righteous fire, slim cheekbones painted a pale pink, and with her hair in a low bun, Satine was about to face her destiny.

“Your Grace?”

Those words shook her from her revelry.

Satine swallowed, addressing the lady that had just appeared in the doorway, “Yes, Fesma?”

“Your train, Your Grace.”

Satine gasped, Mandalorians were not ones for frivolity, but this cape, the royal coronation train, was the most glorious thing she’d ever seen. Fesma stepped forward, Khaami, her other lady appeared in the doorway just as the purple velvet was draped over her shoulders and tied along her collar bone.

“Your Grace, the carriage has arrived.”

Satine placed her hands on her stomach and inhaled, steadying herself, this was it, the day.

“Let us go then.”

Satine rode in a covered aircraft that slowly crawled through the city of Sundari, headed to the glorious Jaru Cathedral. She’d been nervous all morning, but now it was real. The people, so many of them, cheered as they tried to get a glimpse of her behind the veiled windows. In the car behind her rode four of her coronation maidens, only Fesma and Khaami were with her now.

“You will excel, Your Grace,” Fesma spoke up.

Satine turned to her.

“Are you sure?” slipped out her mouth before she could stop herself.

“Quite,” Fesma answered firmly, “you are the Duchess.”

“It is true, Your Grace,” Khaami agreed, “it is your birthright.”

Satine tried to smile, “I thank you, ladies, for your kindness.”

Fesma and Khaami had been natural choices for her ladies, they were the daughters of powerful counts, and she had known them since girlhood.

As they arrived at the Cathedral, the trumpets blared. Satine’s sister, Bo-Katan, dressed in light blue with a violet sash, opened the car door.

“Here we go, Bine,” Bo-Katan held out her hand, “it’s time.”

Satine took her sister’s hand and climbed out of the carriage, the crowds roared. Satine looked up at the camera, and it was then she truly smiled, her people, they loved her.

“Ready, Your Grace,” Khaami whispered from behind.

Satine turned around to check, her ladies were holding the sides of her cape, it wasn’t allowed to touch the ground. Behind them, her coronation maidens were waiting. Steeling herself, Satine walked forward, with Bo-Katan on her right as her coronation maidens fell in line, she looked every bit as regal as she felt.

At the Cathedral entrance, Bo-Katan was given a sword, she held it upright and stepped in front of Satine, the trumpets blared again. Slowly, the nobles in the stands stood and Bo-Katan stepped forward. Satine knew that her sister had practiced for this moment, as she was not one for royal engagements, and for that Satine was grateful.

As they made their way to the end of the aisle, Bo-Katan stepped off to the side and Satine turned to sit on the grand throne center stage. Her ladies spread her cape around her off to one side, elegantly accentuating her posture.

“The Archbishops of Sundari.”

Slowly, two ancient men made their way from Satine’s sides, one on the right the other on the left. One carried a knife, the other carried a bowl, they stopped in front of Satine and bowed deeply. When they rose, Satine watched as one Archbishop held out his hand to her, Satine tried not to shake as she took the knife.

“Do you solemnly swear,” droned the other Archbishop, “that you are as pure and as holy as warrior King Korkyrach the First?”

“I solemnly swear.” Satine spoke.

“Do you solemnly swear” began the other one, “that you will lead Mandalore to greatness as the Queen Mara the First once did?”

“I solemnly swear.” Satine said sternly.

The Archbishop held out the bowl, and Satine made a shallow cut on her wrist. Gingerly, she poured some drops of blood into the ancient artifact.

“The Gods have accepted your blood,” the Archbishops stated together, “the Gods have proclaimed you worthy.”

Trumpets blared and the Archbishops moved to stand at her sides. Down the aisle came the High Justice, carrying a scarlet pillow with the most decadent crown upon it. Satine was conscious of her eyes widening, but she didn’t realize the rapid rising of her chest.

“Calm, little one,” whispered the old High Justice when she was in earshot, “this is your birthright.”

Satine straightened. One of the High Justice’s attendants took the pillow from him and the High Justice raised the crown above Satine’s head.

“As Jaru the Divine blessed the first Dukes of Mandalore, she now blesses you, Satine Kryze, as you are officially crowned, Duchess of Mandalore!”

Satine felt the weight of the heavy crown on her head and she closed her eyes.

“Long live the Duchess!”

Satine opened her eyes.

“Long Live the Duchess!”

Straightening, Satine focused on her breathing.

“Long live the Duchess!”

The High Justice and his attendant stepped to the sides of the throne as Bo-Katan walked forward. Just in front of the throne, Satine’s sister got down on one knee and took Satine’s hand in hers.

“I, Bo-Katan Kryze of Clan Kryze, declare myself to be your liege of life and limb, your sister in battle, and your servant in peace. May Mandalore prosper under your reign.”

One by one, the clan leaders came up and pledged allegiance to Satine, their new duchess, declaring that her reign would be a glorious one. When it came time for her to leave, Satine’s ladies and coronation maidens encircled the throne and Satine stood. The crowd surged forward as she appeared on the steps of the Jaru Cathedral, Satine smiled and waved as she got into the carriage. After a few minutes of her ladies arranging her cape, the coachman closed the door.

She made a speech on the balcony of the Summer Palace, facing all of Sundari as she repeated the practiced words she’d been preparing for weeks. The people cheered when she finished, the nobles clapped politely.

“Long live the Duchess!”

Satine didn’t expel the breath she was holding until after their backward march, when the panes of the palace balcony closed.

“Congratulations, Your Grace.”

Satine choked on a giggle.

“Your Grace?”

Satine sighed and turned to face her ladies and coronation maidens, “Thank you all.”

“Come, Your Grace,” Fesma held out her hand, “let us help you to your quarters.”

In her quarters, Satine took off the ceremonial crown and set it down on her toilette, then went her gloves, her diamond choker and pearls, and finally, her cape.

“Fesma, Khaami?”

“Yes, Your Grace?” the ladies looked up.

“Please return the ceremonial regalia and my jewels to the royal treasury.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

Satine placed the crown in Fesma’s hands and draped the cape over Khaami’s arms.

“Hm,” the Duchess stood back to admire her handiwork, then cracked a smile, “I think you should wear the jewels to transport them, don’t you think?”

Khaami’s mouth dropped open and she coughed on a gasp. Fesma’s eyes went wide, but she recovered.

“Are you sure, Your Grace?”

“Yes, Fesma.”

Khaami squealed. Satine placed the necklaces on her ladies.

“Be back quickly, I have to change.”

After her ladies left, Satine sat down in her toilette chair, staring at herself in the mirror. She’d done it, a proud expression crossed her face, she was the Duchess of Mandalore. Yet, something felt...wrong.

Satine inhaled sharply, she wouldn’t think of him. Satine wouldn’t think about how she felt when he’d taken harpoons for her, or how he made her laugh with her belly, or how she’d given him her body without a second thought. Where was he now? Did he remember her? Had he moved on?

“Your Grace?”

Satine looked up, she hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

Clearing her throat, she answered, “Yes, Fesma?”

Fesma frowned when she saw the Duchess, “We must get you dressed for the banquet.”

“Yes,” Satine wiped her eyes, “I am the guest of honor after all.”

Standing, the Duchess did not miss the look of concern that passed between her ladies.

“Your Grace, are you-”

“I’m alright, Fesma,” Satine interrupted, “but we must get ready.”

The coronation had been held at around 11 o’clock in the morning, but Satine had barely eaten breakfast; she'd been so nervous. So while Fesma prepared a bath, Khaami went to fetch food.

“Fesma,” Satine’s face darkened suddenly, “what was it like the year I was gone?”

The lady froze, swallowed, shook her head, and continued on with her task.

“Not even us nobles fared well, our houses were raided, food became scarce-”

“I’m sorry.” Satine confided.

“What about you, Your Grace,” Fesma asked, “what was your year away from home like?”

So many memories came back to Satine, dancing with Obi-Wan under a dark sky with stars as their only light, learning how to climb trees just so she could watch her Jedi protectors meditate, and learning how to swim with Obi-Wan’s hands guiding her.

“Your Grace?” there was a curious edge in Fesma’s tone this time.

Satine sighed, “It was an adventure.”

After Satine had washed herself, she ate while Fesma dried her hair.

“You’re late.” Fesma had observed when Khaami returned.

Khaami blushed, “I ran into Yorge.”

Satine grinned, “Is that why there’s extra cakes?”

Khaami returned her smile, “That and because it’s a special day, Your Grace.”

Satine offered some cakes to Khaami and Fesma before they continued getting ready. She never liked painting her face, so Satine waved it off, but Fesma did insist her hair be done the way her foremother’s had worn it, in braids for battle.

“They frame your face, Your Grace.” Khaami observed Fesma’s handiwork.

“Call me Satine,” the Duchess said suddenly, “like you used to.”

Khaami looked down.

“My father said that it's different now,” she said, “because you’re the Duchess.”

“Well as the Duchess,” Satine straightened, “I decree that you shall call me Satine.”

Fesma grinned, “I guess that’s that, then.”

By the time it was four o’clock, Satine was fully dressed. Her gown was a deep royal purple with golden embroidery on the hems. She had a golden belt with amethysts that hummed softly against the dark stone on her bust that connected to her layered pearl necklace. Satine ran her fingers along the navy sash across her body, clipped with all sorts of medals and regal symbols.

Khaami came up behind her, “And to finish it off.”

The Duchess smiled, Fesma took the tiara from Khaami’s hands and placed it on Satine’s head.

“You look lovely, Satine.” Khaami clapped.

“Thank you,” the Duchess turned to her ladies, “now go get dressed yourselves, the reception starts in an hour.”

Squealing, Satine’s friends ran from the room. The Duchess smiled sadly, it had been a month since Obi-Wan left, and it had been a month since she last giggled like a girl. Now, she was no longer a girl, but the Duchess of Mandalore.

Satine sighed, Obi-Wan was like a crushing weight on her chest everytime she thought of him, and her corset currently wasn’t helping. Why did he half to command such a power over her, the charming padawan with his roguish smile and twinkling eyes. He’d said he’d loved her, and she’d confessed the same.

Inhaling and trying to hold back her tears, Satine made her way out of her personal quarters and into the sitting room that adjoined it. There she would find something to do, but bookshelves and a piano didn’t hold any interest for Satine at the moment. Over her year on the run, she’d learned to appreciate the little things, unfortunately, the Duchess couldn’t seem to pull herself out of her sadness.

Finally, after running her fingers along book spines and fiddling with piano keys for an ungodly amount of time, Fesma and Khaami returned to Satine’s chambers.

“Satine,” Fesma whispered quietly as they took their places in the hall, “remember to smile.”

When her name was announced, trumpets blew and the grand double doors swung open, Satine smiled as politely as she could and descended the stairs, arms clasped in front of her. The crowds parted, ladies curtsied and men bowed as Satine walked by, making her way to the throne in the back of the room.

“Your Grace.”

Satine admired her subjects, they all seemed so radiant.

“Your Grace.”

And she was Duchess of them all, a great responsibility.

“Your Grace.”

Satine must earn their respect. Turning, she sat on the throne as Fesma and Khaami took their places beside her. The mingling began. Satine watched for the first five minutes, making connections in her mind as to who connected with who. Then she stood and took a turn about the room, she graciously greeted the clan heads and dignitaries from foreign courts who had come to witness her coronation. By the time it was announced that dinner was served, Satine felt like her brain was melting. So many back-stabing compliments and veiled unpleasantries, the Duchess wasn’t amused.

Satine picked up her spoon and took the first bite, the court followed.

“What a splendid performance, Your Grace.” the man on her left, Tarrei Vizsla commented.

“Thank you, Count Vizsla, that is most kind.”

“Have you considered what your first act as Duchess will be?”

Satine smiled, “Likely it shall be opening the new parliament.”

The Count’s lips twitched, and Satine wondered for a minute which side of the war he’d been on. The New Mandalorians, a peaceful sect, had just taken over the government and were picking their cabinet members, Satine had alluded to being a pacifist in her speech earlier in the day, but she hadn’t outright said it. Count Vizsla was probably seeing where she stood.

The Count nodded politely and returned to his food, Satine wondered if she had just made a huge mistake.

When Satine finished her meal, she allowed the man on her right, an ambassador from Onderon, to lead her into the ballroom. For the first hour, she danced with all the high-ranking dignitaries who asked to take a spin with her. Afterwards, she sat with Fesma and Khaami, claiming she needed a refreshment.

“This is quite the spectacle.” Khaami whispered, leaning into Satine.

“I agree,” the Duchess frowned, watching her people dance, “the last time we threw a ball my father was the Duke.”

“He would be proud of you, Satine,” Fesma placed her hand on Satine’s, “I’m sure of it.”

The Duchess grimaced, “I don’t know if he’d agree with my political views.”

Fesma shrugged, “Children have to rebel somehow.”

The Duchess danced a couple more times in the next two hours before bidding good evening to the guests that approached her before leaving. Finally, when Satine was free to leave the party herself, she practically ran back to her room.

“Thank goodness that’s over.” Khaami sighed.

The Duchess huffed in agreement, taking off her tiara and jewelry.

“I’ll take those downstairs if you like, Satine.” Fesma offered.

“Yes,” Satine smiled wearily, ”thank you.”

As Khaami began to help the Duchess shed her many layers, Satine felt a queasiness in her stomach. She opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it quickly. Just as her dress fell to the floor, she ran to the fresher.

“Satine?”

Expelling saliva infused chunks of her coronation meal, the Duchess began to choke.

“Oh, Satine!”

The Duchess heard Khaami run over to her and begin to smack her in the back.

“Khaami, what-”

“Satine’s ill.” Khaami explained to Fesma.

The Duchess regurgitated a chunk of meat into the fresher.

“Well hold her hair up, then!” Fesma ordered.

When Satine’s stomach had calmed down and she was able to speak again, she asked for a cup of water and to be left alone. Fesma and Khaami had shared a look.

“Alright,” Satine sighed, “I need you ladies to do something for me.”

“What?” Khaami wondered.

Satine turned to her earnestly, “Something that you can’t tell anyone you did.”

“It’s not illegal, I hope.” Fesma took a step back.

“No, no, it’s just,” Satine paused, “a lot happened while I was away.”

“Like what?” Khaami asked, still confused.

“I,” Satine’s hands began to shake, “I don’t think I have a cold.”

Fesma crossed her arms, “We should get you down to the medical wing to check.”

“No!” Satine roared, outstretching her hand.

“Satine?” Khaami questioned.

“I need you to get me a medical droid to examine me, in here,” Satine clarified, “and if my suspicions are correct, then we’ll have to wipe its memory.”

Fesma gave her Duchess a querying look.

“I still don’t understand.” Khaami confessed.

“Duchess,” Fesma began, “are you, I mean, do you think you might-”

“Yes.” Satine answered firmly.

“Khaami,” Fesma turned, “fetch a medical droid from the med wing, but take the servant passageways and let no one see you.”

The lady did as she was asked, and the medical droid confirmed Satine’s worst fear.

“You,” Khaami gasped, “you’re-”

“Expecting.” Satine finished.

“How-”

“The Jedi who protected me,” Satine looked down, “the padawan and I grew close.”

“Satine,” Fesma’s face paled, “Mandalorians aren’t fond of the Jedi.”

“And my enemies could use this against me.” agreed Satine.

“What will you do?” Khaami worried, coming back to herself.

Satine bit her lip, “Do you think I should tell him?”

“Are you going to keep it is the real question.” Fesma frowned.

Khaami covered her mouth.

Satine was silent for a long time, “I want a piece of what I can never have, this baby is my way around the rules.”

“But, Satine, how will, who will-”

“In secret,” the Duchess answered, “and I will.”

#satine x obiwan #duchess satine #satine kryze #obi wan kenobi #korkie kenobi #korkie kryze #fanfiction #fanfic

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thecalamitytimes · 3 years

Photo

HERE’S THE PUNCH

A plentiful and bountiful Winter Ball, as hosted by local club owners Evanora Bile and Dante Bacchus; spectacular hosts, an event that held true to its word; glorious. Hitch free and one for the history books. It remains to be that the only disappointment that the Nightkeeper themself did not make a personal appearance at their own event – it had been named after them of course. A mystery benefactor that funded every bag of Kochba, but it’s very clear the residents of Calamity are grateful for their silent overseer nonetheless.

A wonderful end to a year that some would rather forget as they start entering one anew.

Some notable reports – from our trusted sources scouted the Nightkeepers Winter Ball for the scoop –

A Matias “Matty” Desoto made quite an introduction up on a stage, a rather enticing offer issued to some of the more bloodthirsty of crowds, though, it appears, not a drop of his had been spilt. Lucky guy.

The grapevine speaks of one Max Roper and her tussle – but no more details were available, we assume she’s alive and in one piece, no?

Along the same thread, a Mer mysteriously vanished, as did another throughout the night – Josiah Maxwell and a Katya Tilka, we wonder what happened there?

Another drama for the Merfolk and their antics, someone’s now wearing an eyepatch – is this purely for a fashion accessory? We’re stumped on this one, reports say Quintus Zander decided to rock a patch, any reason for that?

The High Sage also getting a little close with a certain mortal? Zyler Fane and Rosa Malor, something blossoming? – what a dangerous path, though, one one source confirmed this.

The sweet residents of the State appear to be thriving in their elements, a strange tension that settles and rises in waves – but nothing of import, though, whispers of some problematic letters are going around.

AND THERE’S A KICKER

BREAKING !

Caught late – as we spoke so highly of the Winter Ball and its lavish and enjoyable evening as provided by the Nightkeeper. Later comes the reality; a sickness plagues a select few – an odd new form in a few who wake up the next morning absent their memories – answers seem far and wide.

It’s so little known – under wraps by all sides of the state, no weakness to display, can be assumed?

But some appear cured – by what? Answers don’t come in hard. Nephilims are out in force, blasts of light a little more prominent over in the West side as of later, is this related?

Or is something else happening?

REGAL, RIGHTEOUS AND ROYALLY DEAD.

Congratulations to the new King Andrew and Queen Saylor Zander of the Forgotten, the wedding and coronation filled with something so incredibly dark.

Not only was King Andrew stabbed, twice, may we add.

But our deepest condolences to the Zander family for the unasked for gift of the late Queen Aviana Zander, delivered signed, sealed, delivered on their gift table...

In all her dead glory.

I suppose... it’s one to remember, at least. A whole shutdown of the reception for interrogation that gave the Merfolk free reign to interrogate their guests. Yet, Queen Saylor and King Andrew have not released any formal statements about this potential assassination attempt and slandering of the most awaited day in Merfolk history.

Good luck, King and Queen, we wish you a long rule.

It’s obvious in the way the front page is slammed with article after article about the previous two events; so little time apart, so little recovery, that the residents of the State of Calamity feel overwhelmed; a kind of unease about the civility that remains between the fragile sides of the state.

The next page of the paper, calmer, the updates:

LATEST

There’s been some grand openings this week!

SINSATION is now stocking the most sought after supernatural substance; a high to be bought in rides and enjoyed across the masses. We imagine the owner Zane Saxena is glad for business, considering the rare tree sap can only be harvested three months of every year; once it’s gone, it’s gone for another nine months.

We know we’re going to be stocking up!

AND THERE’S A NEW LGBTQI+ CLUB ABOUT, WHITE SWALLOW opened this week, a wonderful grand opening that was manned by Harley Xhanthi and his absence from Restricted Emporium is already sorely missed, but we’re extremely excited for the newest Eastside Club to thrive in amongst the chaos that usually comes...

Has anyone noticed something different about the owner lately, though?

TIP THE TIPPERS

Did anyone else see King Andrew kissing Harley at the ball? Wonder what other dirty little secrets he has... - sent in by anonymous.

Anyone else see The Commander and the vamp Malcolm sneak off at the wedding? Is that not the second time now? - sent in by anonymous

I didn't think nerd was Axel's type, but bartenders reveal all and he definitely had his tongue down a scientists throat. Using your command to your benefit, are we? - sent in by anonymous

Hang the fuck on, Katya Tílkí and Damien Alanis were spotted?? How many people is this man seeing? Isn’t he supposed to hate anyone not human? - sent in by anonymous

You're telling me no one else saw the Wrathbearer throw a knife at the King? Just me? Aight. - sent in by anonymous.

RUMOURS OF SOME SHIT GOING DOWN NORTHSIDE THIS MONTH, BIG OL’ FUCKING DEMON SHIT - sent in by anonymous

I wonder how Evanora felt about HTN being destroyed by a fight between her favourite Davenport and a demon with an affinity for knives? Then they just fucked on her floor after destroying a wall. I hope she got them to cough up their kochba for the repairs. After they finished their show, of course. - sent in by anonymous.

Are we really just accepting peace like this? East and West are going to implode if the Northside Witch psychos don’t obliterate everyone first, we need a rebellion. - sent in by anonymous

ANY TIPS FOR OUR NEXT ISSUE READERS? WE’LL TRY BE HERE FOR IT.

#calamity.news

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circleslep · 3 years

Text

Second dream of last night

I dreamt I was the king of a kingdom, whose people practiced shadow magic. This magic was cast with cards, and no, it was not “evil” in the least. As the monarch, I had access to the most powerful magic that this art provided us--I could call upon a powerful shadow spirit (perhaps a deity) who took the form of a large raven, and command it while the spell was cast.

We soon received grave tidings that the warriors of another kingdom were approaching, ready to defeat us in some sort of righteous battle. I was told their royal family consisted of four siblings, and were guarded by a lion whose power was not to be trifled with. [It was literally Aslan and the Pevensies.]

Discussing this amongst ourselves as the night fell, my wife (she wielded a sword, wore armour and had straight blonde hair) and I decided we would face the family while our people fled. I assured her we would be protected by the raven deity, but she told me that we didn’t know what this fabled lion was capable of.

So, we met this rival kingdom’s royals, and their regal lion, in a battle on the ramparts of our castle. While my wife fended off one of the younger princes, I quickly took to casting spells with cards, and with my power I called upon the raven deity.

No sooner than the raven deity emerged from the card did it suddenly scatter and fade in the air. The lion looked me in the eye, and said something to the effect of “we are here to slay you, villains”

And I realised that the “plot” was against us--we were the shadow magicians and so in its eyes, we must be evil--and also, we were were hopelessly outgunned. I told my wife to buy us time. Pretending to surrender, she cast a spell that burned the ear of one princess as she spoke her words of surrender.

In that moment we fled in a hurry through the abandoned castle, got on horseback and rode through plains of wildgrass while the sun rose.

#royalty #fantasy #magic #shadows #narnia #inside a work of fiction #grand architecture

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 4 years

Text

the branches and the roots

post-Spirit of Justice. Maya, still in Khura’in, looks in old records hoping to learn a little more about her family.

[on ao3]

----

The heavy wooden door, when it creaks open, dislodges pounds of dust from its frame and its intricately carved face. Maya sneezes into the sleeve of her robe. She lifts her face up out of it, stares into the dark windowless room ahead of her, and sneezes again.

“Just wait a moment, if you think it is dusty now,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says.

He told her to call him Nahyuta, so there’s a teasing Cuz or Yuty on the tip of her tongue, because family is family however distant, and family she calls things like Sis and Pearly and Nick. But she can’t quite access it. The tip of her tongue hits the back of her teeth and her jaw sticks shut and she’s avoided addressing him as anything. Plus he still calls her Miss Fey so it’s not like he’s figured it out either.

She covers her face with her sleeve. “Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi arches one perfect eyebrow. He reminds Maya of what all the hanging scrolls of the former Masters depict; the old portraits are consolidated in the manor, a forest of women whose flaws are brushed away as they are enshrined in traditional inked artistry. He, and his mother, unreal, beautiful, the kind of elegance that Maya was told all her life to emulate and never could. The kind of regal grace that Pearly performed as soon as she was able to walk.

(Poor perfect Pearl, such a prodigy, but of the branch family, forever damned to be nothing. Morgan was the only one who acted on making Pearl the Master, but Maya knows with the way other elders of the family looked at her when she started spending longer and longer stints down in the city, months at a time with Nick, that they hoped she’d be just like her mother and never come back. That the city would eat her too.)

They step into the darkness, their only light a flashlight that Maya holds, and a lantern Prosecutor Sahdmadhi brought. “I wonder when it was someone last came down here,” he says. His voice is muffled a little by his scarf pulled over his face to shield him from the initial wave of dust. The orange-ish lantern-light turns his skin and his hair and his clothes gold, all gold, and warm and alive, a reminder that this is not a tomb and they are not buried. “I suppose I can get estimate a range…”

He turns to the shelves on the left, closest to the door, and picks up the first scroll-container there. This dusty room in the basement of the palace - Maya kept calling it the dungeons, and Nahyuta didn’t laugh, and she felt a pang of homesickness for the family that laughs at all her stupid jokes, and then she wondered if there are actual dungeons that Ga’ran and Inga used and that’s why he didn’t laugh, and her homesickness turns to sorrow - is an archive, of a sort, but the only information they are keen on recording in here is geneaology. Carefully preserved scrolls sit stacked on shelves around the room’s walls, a number she can’t estimate because she can’t see them all at once swinging the flashlight all around. A solid-looking wooden table stands in the center of the room. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi sets his lantern down there and spreads out the scroll.

“How did anyone do anything down here before batteries existed?” Maya asks. She shines her flashlight up at the ceiling, almost expecting to find eyes or a face leering down at her, like this is a horror movie and not still part of a very lived-in palace. Much as this room hasn’t been lived-in, or walked in, and certainly not vacuumed or dusted in.

“There are oil lamp holders on the walls,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi answers. “And candles.” He doesn’t quite sound disparaging but he’s pretty close to it.

“And risk setting everything on fire?” Thousands of years of the royal line up in smoke because someone was clumsy. Someone like Maya, who makes movements too quick and too big and takes up space in an unrefined manner.

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi doesn’t answer and moments later he’s murmuring, almost to himself, “So it’s been at least fifteen years since someone cared to come here and update anything,” he says.

“What do you mean?” Maya lowers her flashlight from examining the lamp holders on the walls so she won’t shine it straight in his eyes and approaches the table, to where he is pointing at something. The names are tricky to decipher, even after two years of extremely immersive study of Khura’inese, but one she knows is Ga’ran’s even without the little crown drawn above it, and the other is very, very long, so that must be Inga. A family tree.

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi taps his fingers between the two names, where a line is drawn between them to signify marriage, but no other line extends from that one, no other name beneath theirs. “They never put Rayfa down as their child, or as existing at all. There were rather more pressing matters when kidnapping your sister’s daughter, and forcing your sister to live as a nursemaid and your double, else you’ll kill them both.”

He says it all so dry, deadpan, because he must have gotten used to living with that over his head, become resigned to the reality of that, the way Nick almost laughs when he’s talking about his poker-playing years even if it’s an obviously bitter laugh, and like with Nick, Maya wants to hug him, but she doesn’t think he’d appreciate that. Certainly she would ask first but he’s already saying something else and the time for asking is passed. “This will have to be redone afresh on a new scroll.”

“Why?” Maya asks. “They didn’t write the princess down at all, so you could just add her under—”

Under your parents, but her eyes follow his fingers brushing across the parchment and all the muscles in his hand tighten when he reaches his mother’s name and the blackened, burned holes next to and beneath her name.

“Another reason candles are so practical for this work of genealogy,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says, and this time he isn’t dry or deadpan. His voice is dripping, anger barely contained, not swallowed and barely held in his mouth to stop him from spitting that fury that’s justified if unbecoming of a monk and prince regent. (Unbecoming of a Master, too. Maya’s spent two years in Khura’in trying to learn to be the Master, and she’s a stronger medium than ever but she still only sometimes knows how she’s supposed to act, how to become the Master and not Maya. Maya has too many feelings, Maya has too much righteous indignation to be as calm as the Master is supposed to be, but Her Benevolence Princess Rayfa is also full of fury and still a beloved princess, so maybe that’s okay. To feel things. To be angry.) “Fire right at hand to burn out the sinful heretics.”

“Cut off the branches,” Maya says. Morgan tried to do that literally, with her last plan, pruning the tree violently, and Ga’ran literally used fire to burn the Sahdmadhis out of the royal family. “You were a baby. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were as much the queen’s child as you were Dhurke’s.”

“I’m sure there would have been some contention over my expulsion from the family had I been a girl,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says. “You can’t turn a potential medium loose into rebel hands, after all. But I wasn’t, and so the only blood of mine that mattered was that of my allegedly criminal father.”

“How did you ever become a prosecutor like that?” she asks. She asked to come down here searching for something about their family long ago, wanting to find the place where Khura’in and Kurain broke apart forever, but the affairs of a thousand years ago suddenly pale in importance to what happened a month ago. What happened fifteen years ago, and twenty-three years ago. Living family more important than the dead.

(Especially since she hasn’t ever gotten the chance to speak with Nahyuta one-on-one before. Not even talk with him and Princess Rayfa and Queen Amara together. Prosecutor Prince-Regent Sahdmadhi seems to be everywhere at once, trying to do everything all at once, the way his brother is trying to take up every criminal and civil defense all at once. Maya’s spent more time with Apollo than she expected to, but she’s got more legal experience than Datz and Ahlbi who are also trying to help him run his law office, and they need someone who knows all about it. Putting on the skin of co-counsel and legal assistant is easier than trying to find the skin of Master. And she wants to help her family, and Apollo is family, two different ways. Via Nick, and via her distant Khurainese cousins.)

“When I emerged from the woods claiming to renounce the rebels and wanting to work as a prosecutor to bring an end to them” - Prosecutor Sahdmadhi snorts, his hands curling tight around the edge of the table - “Ga’ran made a great show of being a benevolent queen willing to forgive the child of her sister’s murderer and integrate him into her regime’s legal system. And then she dragged me out of earshot of her guards and snapped a leash around my neck and told me it would be Rayfa’s noose if I ever dared step out of line.”

Maya thinks of Shelley de Killer. A sword hanging overhead to force the desired result. Her mouth is dry. She nods. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi isn’t even looking at her anyway. “Her claims of forgiveness changed the minds of no other prosecutor, and there is a reason I started prosecuting internationally. Not just because there was no fear of facing my father’s friends on the stand and damning them in this farce of justice, but because my colleagues would not be cruel for my name, and because the leash choked me a little less when I did not have Ga’ran’s eyes constantly on me. Do you know, some of the other Khura’inese prosecutors called it favoritism that she had for me. Special treatment, that she often called me to the palace, tasked me with giving the princess a cursory understanding of the legal system or assisting her at crime scenes - it was all a sick game to her. I could spend time with my sister and no one must ever know it. I imagine she enjoyed watching me try to stay detached. Watching me squirm.”

“She’s a monster,” Maya says.

“Unfortunately not.” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi rolls the scroll back up, his fingers tight around it crumpling it, because this sheet is already tainted, already wrong, and it doesn’t matter if he ruins it. “She’s human, just as the rest of us are.” He sets the scroll aside, near his lantern, rather than put it back. There’s no reason to put it back when it needs to be redone. She wonders if he’ll burn Ga’ran and Inga out of the tree in retaliation. Like Pearly splattering gravy on the hanging scroll of her mother - destroy the records of the family that some other family didn’t want around. She doubts it, somehow, that Prosecutor Sahdmadhi would do that.

“Now,” he says, curtly, businesslike, like a prosecutor, “this ancestor of ours who founded your channeling school, how long ago did she live?”

There is not necessarily a guarantee that Ami Fey will appear anywhere in the genealogy of the Khura’inese royals. It may have been her mother or grandmother who left for Japan, and simply Ami who once there decided to turn their spiritual power again into real power, not as a queen but as a Master. A wise woman with the wisdom of the dead in hand. Or Ami Fey may not have been known as Ami in Khura’in; it may have been a name she took upon leaving.

Or she may, as they come to realize, have been a branch burned from the tree for leaving and taking their spiritual secrets with her.

“I suppose this must be her, then,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says, “as we have been through everything else and…” He gestures at the shelves on either side of them. They have searched the generations that lie around the era that Ami should have lived, finding no trace of her name or a Khura’inese equivalent. What they have found, what Prosecutor Sahdmadhi concludes is the junction where their families broke apart, is another searing burn, blackened edges of a hole through the parchment, the sole person to have been stricken from the family in half a dozen generations on either side. A daughter; in the scorch marks, when they squint, the light right on the page, both of them hunched over it and struggling to keep their long hair out of the way, they can see that this disavowed disgrace was a daughter.

“Her,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi repeats, “or whoever came to bore her, and taught her of the powers of our bloodline. Perhaps she had only some limited knowledge some mothers before her carried out of our homeland, that she came to make her own.”

Our homeland. Does he mean that Khura’in is home to her? It is tradition in the village for the Master to study in Khura’in; did her mother think of it as her homeland? (Did she keep secret her blood’s connection to the royal family? It would have been Amara’s mother on the throne then. How did she rule - did she lay down a hand of fear that would have left Misty cautious to confess her identity, as Maya had been?) What is home - is it Kurain, or Khura’in, or Los Angeles? Is it the village she grew up in, or the city where she found her truest self? She and Apollo share a fond longing for the perks of the city, of one kind of home, and the confusion of not knowing whether to call that place home, or instead consider home the place in the mountains where each of them formed their first memories.

“They disowned her for leaving, then,” Maya says. “They - they do that too, in my village. If you’re gone for twenty years, you’re considered dead and stripped of your rank and titles and - everything.” That’s what they say, anyway. No one has actually fully disappeared like that to test it. Her mother almost had, and then Maya would have found out whether the elders truly meant to erase Misty from the halls of the manor and the scrolls of the Masters, or simply, finally, pass her title along.

“Spirit channeling is a powerful tool, jealously guarded by individuals who want to hoard that power for themselves,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says. “For there to be some outsider who know the secret undermines its exclusivity and its power. It does not surprise me that the act of leaving would so be considered a betrayal, enough to leave one little more than ashes.” He touches his fingertips to the parchment.

“Or gravy,” Maya says. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi’s eyes dart suspiciously toward her. “Never mind,” she adds hurriedly. “So then, um, we read these right to left, when it comes to ages?”

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi nods. He taps his fingers along all of the other names in a row with the burn mark, the siblings of this persona non grata, and then the row up above, their mother’s siblings. “Yes,” he says. “And our subject here was the youngest daughter of a youngest daughter, and each of them with several sisters. Ami - we will presume, for ease of referring to her, that this was your Ami who has been stricken from the tree - had nothing in her future, no position of prestige or power waiting for her.” He sighs, stepping back, closing his bright eyes and pondering for a moment, as though he may begin a recitation. “Our royal line and our country was founded on a story of two sisters - the elder, a medium so powerful she was revered as a goddess by the people she led, and the younger, who lacked the power to channel spirits but nonetheless stood as the country’s loyal and beloved protector.”

His eyes open. “It should be a position of honor, even to be a younger sister, or even to be one who could not channel. But somewhere that was lost, and being unable to channel or become queen became a source of great shame - as though the only worthy and admirable position there ever is to hold is Queen.” Shaking his head, he continues, “My aunt should have been our people’s great protector, our country’s loyal guardian. Instead she nearly destroyed us, out of jealousy, because our family has come to be such a way that for younger daughters such as Ga’ran and Ami, no future awaits.”

The equating of the two of them - Kurain Village’s revered founder, and the evil queen - makes Maya uncomfortable. Yes, they were both the younger sister, as was Lady Kee’ra, and Lady Kee’ra the younger of two as Ga’ran was, but that is all that Ga’ran shares with either of them. And that is all that Ga’ran shares with—

“I’m the younger daughter,” Maya says. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi looks at her straight on again. Honestly, even Maya has gotten bored sometimes - often - with Kurain Village genealogy and whatever else, even while she’s come to be curious about Khura’in. She wouldn’t blame Prosecutor Sadhmadhi for not wanting to hear it. But he appears genuinely intrigued by what Maya has just said, to be waiting for her to continue telling him about her family tree in Kurain. Something in his eyes urges her to continue, but she can’t get more than one more sentence out through the tightness in her throat. “And so was my mother, the Master of the village before me.”

“What happened?” he asks. She wonders what his guess is. It would be reasonable to assume that they both had older sisters who died - reasonable in any other family, but they are not any other family, the Feys and the royals. If there’s anyone in the world who could make a guess that lands close to the truth of all that Morgan Fey did, it would be Nahyuta. He could know.

And she knows when she tells him, he’ll understand. “Aunt Morgan, my mom’s older sister, wasn’t a very powerful medium. So when the elders convened, they passed her by and gave the title of Master to my mother. And Aunt Morgan had been counting on the power and status that being Master would give, and her husband had too. Her - her first husband.” The implication there tells the rest of that story. It’s exactly what Prosecutor Sahdmadhi can assume it is. “And then my mother was consulted on a murder case, and was disgraced, and she decided that should mean that she should disappear—”

“That was the DL-6 incident of 2001, yes?” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi asks. Maya blinks. “After we witnessed your channeling prowess in your trial, and I returned to Los Angeles, I researched Kurain Village and your family.”

Yes, she was going to tell him about it all - but something about the fact that he already knows it feels like a betrayal of trust. Like she was going to welcome him into her house and then he pushed past her and pulled out a copy of her front door key and used it because he’d stolen it from her a week ago and had a copy made. Except in this analogy her key is a matter of public record. “So you know about all about that ton of murder cases we’ve been caught up in,” she says, and the words still fall out of her mouth bitter.

“Your aunt tried to frame you for murder,” he replies.

“Guess why.” That sounds bitter as well, but she didn’t mean it to. Morgan’s motive wasn’t part of the actual case as was presented in court, as became part of the transcript. But Nahyuta could know.

“I suppose I may reason that she had, at that point a daughter capable of channeling, whose only path to inheriting the title was through you.” He speaks with confidence, but his expression is puzzled. He wouldn’t know why she has suddenly soured on the conversation. She shouldn’t be mad - it saves her at least ten minutes of explanation if he knows DL-6, and then the incident in Kurain Village, beforehand - but that emotion reared its stupid head anyway.

“My cousin Pearly,” Maya says, shaking off her frustration. She can’t stay mad at one of the few people who can truly understand. “She’s about as strong as me and ten years younger. A real prodigy. But she was - we call it the branch family, the ones descended from whichever sisters didn’t become Master. And branch family meant, she’d be nothing. She doesn’t care about the titles, but Aunt Morgan sure did.”

“And your aunt was the older daughter,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi muses. “And passed by despite it. She acted as she did because you were the one to inherit the title - yet you are, as you said, the younger daughter, who should not have had that in her future.” He doesn’t ask a question, but his tone and his eyes make it clear that this is an inquiry.

“You said you researched my family,” Maya says. His family too, at a distance. “If you dredged up every court case with a Fey involved, you know why. You know why this younger daughter gets the title, and it wasn’t anything about who was the stronger medium.”

“I am sure I do,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says, “but please, I would like to hear from you - tell me about your sister.”

Maya swallows the lump in her throat and blinks to dispel the burning behind her eyes. “She was amazing,” she says. “She was - she left the village, for me. To try and find our mother, and so she wouldn’t have to compete with me to be Master. So we wouldn’t end up hating each other like our mom and Aunt Morgan did.” Her eyes burn again, after a few seconds’ respite. “I hated her sometimes anyway, for leaving me alone, but that was different than hating her like - like our moms and aunts.”

The plural emerges from her lips without really thinking, but when she does think, she realizes she doesn’t know how her mom felt about Morgan. Did she hate her for all she tried to do? Or did she love her older sister with both pity and anger instead? How did Misty and Morgan feel about each other when they were children? Did Ga’ran love her older sister or spare her only out of the practicality of needing a stand-in to channel spirits?

“She was a defense attorney,” Maya adds, knowing that Prosecutor Sahdmadhi knows it, but now he can hear it from her, like he asked. “She was Nick’s mentor, and she saved him, and she taught him all of his tricks that he used to beat you.” She grins, despite herself. A faint shadow of a smile crosses Nahyuta’s face. He’s glad he lost. She knows that now. “I wish you could’ve met her.”

The smile fades. “Do you?” he asks. “I put you through hell, and that I did it because I thought it the only way to protect my sister is no excuse, one I cannot imagine her tolerating, not when I am sure that she too must so have loved her own sister.”

Maya runs her hand over the beads of her necklace. Mia wore a magatama until the day she died, and every day she returned after; she kept that connection to a home that she abandoned not because she hated the place, but because she loved who remained there. “I’ve been accused of murder a lot,” Maya says. “Like, a lot, you know.” She glances away from him, doesn’t see if he nods. “And you know, some of the prosecutors who did that, tried so hard to get me convicted of murder because they had perfect win records to maintain?” Tried to act as heartless demons like Nahyuta did, because it’s easier that way, easier to turn cold, to never feel. “We became friends. And are, still.” Edgeworth paid for the flight, after all. “I forgave them. I forgive you. I’m sure Sis would too.”

“You think so?” Nahyuta asks. He sounds honestly concerned that a woman who’s been dead for more than a decade wouldn’t like him.

“Yeah,” Maya says. “She - I mean, she had experience with the blackmail thing. She spent years on a case like that. Building a case against the horrible man who leaked the news of our mother’s involvement in DL-6 to the press, building up evidence of all of the people he blackmailed to suicide and ruin. She knows you have to strike at the top. And she’d know that you loved your sister. That - that does mean something.”

They didn’t talk about it, really, but Maya knows that, like she herself did, Mia forgave Godot-Diego for his stupid, prideful plan that ended with him killing their mother. People with good intentions and hurting hearts do ugly, painful things for love. People get trapped and can’t see another way out. She’s forgiven Tahrust Inmee for framing her for murder. People do desperate, mad things for love. Khura’in is a country of mountains and on another mountain on the other side of the sea, years ago, Maya learned a lot that she carries with her.

“Did she ever find your mother?” Nahyuta asks softly. She thinks he must be thinking about his own lost mother who he only just found. She imagines the anguish he felt when she was shot, not knowing if he would ever see her again to catch up on the lost years. She remembers lying on a courthouse couch, her sister with Pearly’s robes smoothing Maya’s hair back from her face and telling her that their mother is dead. Maya remembers not knowing how to mourn a woman she never knew and couldn’t recognize. Nahyuta knew his mother for a time when he was old enough to remember; his situation wasn’t the same, and it didn’t end the same, and Maya is so glad for it.

“No,” Maya says, and Nahyuta’s eyes sadden. “She - she didn’t. Sis thought, I guess, that -

that if she could find out and expose that blackmailer for everything he’d done, then - then our mother would come out of hiding, I guess. Would come home. And instead, that horrible, horrible man murdered my sister, and tried to frame me, and Nick, for it.”

There it is again, the pain behind her eyes of sharp tears gathering. “Nick and I took him down but it was too late for Sis. And she was so - she was so young, I keep thinking now, because I’m - I’m older than she was when she died. Does that make me not the younger sister, anymore? I’m older than my older sister. Am I - what am I, then, by birthright? Of course I’m going to be the Master someday, because I’m - I’m the oldest daughter now, aren’t I? Only because I’m the one that lived.”

Nahyuta doesn’t say anything. What is there to say? More than almost anyone else in the entire world - more than anyone but Queen Amara herself - he understands, has lived such a same awful nightmare, and there’s nothing to say. There’s no consolation.

“Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have kids,” Maya adds. “Most of the time I think it. And if Pearly didn’t either we could just - put an end to this. Is it worth it? For the world to have this - us, to channel the dead, is it worth it if it keeps ruining the living?” How many more neglected sons and dead daughters will their bloodline see? Why are they the sacrifice for this power to continue to exist? Why should the dead be prioritized over the living mediums who call them back?

“Maybe I’ll adopt,” she says. “If I ever want kids. Like - Nick adopting a kid worked out really well for them both. Then I could get to have kids without perpetuating this - this cycle.”

“Our shared blood spilled again and again,” Nahyuta says.

“One of my cousins, who can’t even channel, still became a nun because our family is so fucked up,” Maya says. And that’s a bit of a simplification of Iris’ choice and situation, but it’s also exactly what happened, isn’t it? Shut herself away to atone for the crime of loving her sister and also those other crimes - willing to do whatever it took to protect Maya from Morgan’s plot because she knew no other way to atone for the sins of herself and her sister and mother. “I don’t know. Am I overreacting to say that we need to swear a pact, like you and me and Pearly and Her Benevolence, to not have any biological children so that we can end the bloodline? Like is that - is that blaming the wrong thing? The blood and not—”

Not us?

“Is our family always so damned to turn out this way?” Nahyuta asks, rephrasing her fumbling questions so elegantly. “Do we have a choice in what we become? Or say perhaps we should swear to do better - and perhaps we do, for a generation or two. And then what? The Holy Mother and Lady Kee’ra gave us the best example they could of how to protect Khura’in, how to rule and serve its people while loving each other, and look how that became corrupted. Look how Lady Ami left, and her descendants set out across the sea, and still in your faraway village older and younger sisters go to war with each other.” He gives her a sad smile, his eyes even sadder. “Of course it seems the inevitable fate of our bloodline, given what both your branch and mine have lived through, Cousin.”

“Shit sucks,” Maya says. She needs to ask Datz to teach her some good curses in Khura’inese. All she knows is how to damn people to various hells, and sometimes that just isn’t the vibe she’s going for with her swearing.

Nahyuta laughs softly. “Indeed it does.”

Maya reaches out and pulls the scroll back closer to her. Ami, the daughter who founded her branch of their ancient family, nothing more than a nameless scorch mark. What else should Maya have expected to find? She knows how her family is, home and here. Why not a thousand years ago, the same? She should have expected it, the fire and the pruned branches. Then and now.

“Does that mean you’re on board with the no-kids pact?” She glances back at Nahyuta. “Or do I just like, really not want kids actually and I’m just trying to find justifiable excuses when ‘I don’t want kids’ can be its own excuse?” She’s babbling. The Master is not supposed to babble. “Have you ever thought about if you want—?”

Something dark and sad crosses his face. “I have no idea what I ‘want’,” he says, making a sarcastic quotation mark in the air with one hand, and Maya almost laughs because that’s some of the most informal expressiveness she’s ever seen from him. “Until a very recent time, all I could hope to ‘want’ for the future was that I would die before I was thirty and be freed of this, for no hell in death I’ve ever heard of could be worse than the one I lived.”

Maya regrets asking. “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“I suppose that is some argument in support of your suggestion,” he continues, like the way Nick talks about being disbarred, where he blithely talks past anyone’s sympathy or acknowledgement of how fucked up it was. “Given that it was a hell my own aunt made for me. Is there anything else you wished to examine down here?”

Nick talks past it because he can’t let himself pause to consider how fucked up it was, because he’s treading water and has to keep moving and if he stops to think he’ll drown. Maya knows this because she’s done the same. She kept a smile on her face and kept moving because she had to keep Pearly’s head above water, again and again. Nick has Trucy. Nahyuta has Rayfa and the entire country of Khura’in. “No,” Maya says, rolling up the ancient scroll to return it to its place. “That’s all I was looking for down here.”

Nahyuta nods. He points her to the spot on the shelves, the carefully ordered archive of their family’s burdensome history, the spot where Ami was excised from. They stand there, after, silently, eyeing the shelves in the gloom, as though both reluctant to leave it. “I suppose,” Nahyuta says softly, barely more than a breath, “that it is not quite true to say that I have never given thought to the matter of children. What I want, I do not know. But that I am regent now, I have wondered too, as we said before, what will be next? Holy Mother forbid my sister ever become a tyrant, but what of her potential future daughters? What of - what, perhaps, of mine? How shall we safeguard our country from our own descendants?”

“I hear democracies work okay sometimes,” Maya says. And sometimes there are the Paul Atishons of the world who commit murder in the course of running for a village council position. Sometimes, there are people - greedy, selfish, ambitious people - and everything goes wrong.

Nahyuta’s mouth twists in a small smirk. She’s certainly hedging her bets with her phrasing, she knows.

“I guess even if you decided to not have kids so they or your grandkids or great-grandkids can’t ruin everything for everyone again,” Maya says, “you and Her Benevolence would still have to restructure the entire government because—”

“Because our entire line of succession is based on spirit channeling, yes,” Nahyuta says. “Thousands of years of tradition and direct descent, and we stand poised to overturn it all.” He shakes his head. “My most immediate concern has been piecing our legal system back together and undoing all the false verdicts that Ga’ran’s rule has wrought, as you and my brother are well aware, but I have had some discussion with my mother and sister about introducing a parliamentary system.” He folds his arms behind his back, shifting his wait like he is about to start moving, and then he doesn’t, and they remain there in the dark. “Even if our family should play out its bloody feuds again, we may at least limit the casualties. Our people should not suffer from a despot’s unilateral decrees just because one sister so envies the other.”

Envy, yes - it was jealousy, and ambition, and selfishness, and people died. It was Morgan expecting that she was owed her birthright and unable to cope when her more talented younger sister overtook her as Master. It was Ga’ran expecting nothing and wanting it all the same, desiring for herself the admiration that Khura’in’s people had for her older sister, the beloved queen, but only able to make herself feared, not loved. People are dead because one sister got what the other wanted.

Kurain Village teaches that channeling is a gift from the gods, but a gift shouldn’t come with a price to pay.

“What does Her Benevolence think of that?” Maya asks. She respects Rayfa, the princess wo held too much responsibility at such a young age and now has had her world shattered several times over and stepped up from it stronger, and she never should have had to live any of this. She should not have had to learn that her mother was not her mother and was a monster, and her father who was not her father by blood was a monster, and the other father she could have had was already dead. Like Pearly, if such a tragedy ever had to befall her, why did it have to be when she was so young? Everything Princess Rayfa went through, Maya thinks, might make her understand the same facts that Maya and Nahyuta understand.

“She agrees,” Nahyuta says, as Maya thought she would. “Lady Kee’ra and the Holy Mother were Khura’in’s great protectors. Perhaps this is what protecting our country means now - protecting it too from the worst of ourselves.” He sweeps a strand of hair back behind his ear and the shiny gold earrings there. “And I owe a great many thanks to Phoenix Wright, and you, for first helping Rayfa on the path to understanding these such matters. For teaching her what I could not.”

“I’m glad we could,” Maya says. “I really am glad. I think Khura’in is lucky to have you both now.”

Nahyuta glances away, like he doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to respond to genuine concern and compliment. How long was he under Ga’ran’s thumb? How many years of being unable to have a heart, because it was his heart that Ga’ran used against him - how many years was he in a pit of vipers with no one who was allowed to care about him? If Maya knew she doesn’t quite remember.

“I will do whatever I can to support Her Benevolence, and to repair all the wrongs that have been done to our country,” Nahyuta says stiffly, forcing the words out. “I owe - for all I stood complicit in, I—” He is still staring at the far wall, and he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a moment to compose himself. “I owe my father so much more, but this much I am able to do. This I may change.” He blinks his eyes shut again and twists his beaded prayer necklace around his fingers. “I cannot make it up to him, but I will try.”

Maya’s stomach sinks.

Only once has Apollo ever broached the topic of the three days she spent channeling his father, and that was just to know if she had any awareness of what was going on while she was channeling. The answer is no and a noncommittal vague shrug, because her soul vacates her body but spirits leave behind traces of feelings on their departure. When Tahrust left her she felt at peace, a sense of justice imparted and no regret remaining, for about three seconds until she remembered where she was and that she and Nick might be executed depending on what the high priest did or didn’t say.

After Dhurke left, she was exhausted, mostly, and a bit confused why he was already gone because she didn’t think he had yet accomplished all he meant to - but more than that sense of unfinished business, there was love. Love for all three of his children, love for his wife, love for his rebels and his country. Everything he did was for love, and for once, the choices made for love weren’t stupid and messy. And still they ended with such pain.

Talking to Apollo then, she remembered how much Dhurke loved his son, enough that for a moment she couldn’t breathe with it. (She wondered if this was how much her mother loved her.) And talking to Nahyuta now—

“You don’t need to make anything up to him,” Maya says. Nahyuta turns his head so that she can’t even see the pained expression on his face, but she can see his hands curled up to his chest, clutching the dragon tattooed on his palm close to his heart. “He loved you. He forgave you from the start. He understood why, and he loved you.”

“Don’t,” Nahyuta whispers. “You can’t say that—”

“I know he - hey!”

Nahyuta spins on his heel, heading for the door. Maya runs after him, grabbing onto his arm and hanging firm even as he twists in her grasp and slams the heavy doors behind them with a thunderous thud that makes the floor beneath their feet shudder. Nahyuta scowls at her; Maya scowls back, and when he breaks eye contact first, his shoulders slumping a little, Maya risks releasing her cousin’s arm. He studies his boots instead of leaving.

“I’d channel him so he could tell you himself,” Maya says, “but for one thing, I don’t know if that actually - helps. With getting closure.” Nahyuta looks at her from the corner of his eyes. A question. She goes on, her eyes stinging as she does. “Me and Nick with my sister, that whenever I’d channel her, or Pearly would, I wondered like maybe we were just picking at a scab and it’d never heal because she was here again, but she wasn’t here, not enough. She was always just out of reach, even when I got to hug her and tell her I loved her, I - I don’t know.”

She never considered asking Pearl to channel Misty so that Maya could talk to her mother for the only time ever in her life. Both because she thought that Pearly would find the guilt unbearable, and Pearly feeling in any way responsible for what happened on that mountain is the last thing Maya has ever wanted, and because she doesn’t know what to say or how to get closure with a woman she never really knew. She had never come to terms with her mother’s disappearance, really, but then just the knowing - knowing that she was dead and no longer somewhere just at the tips of Maya’s fingertips if she reached far enough and looked hard enough - was the closure. Not closure enough, never enough, but the best Maya figures she could ever get in that situation.

“Ask Lady Inmee if she felt the chance to say a final goodbye to her husband made the loss any less painful,” Nahyuta says. “To hear from him one last time that she loved him, when she knew that, and to tell him one last time that she loved him when he knew such.”

“Yeah,” Maya says softly. When Nahyuta resumes walking, it is to set a pace that she can easily keep beside him as he leads her through the maze of halls. She swallows her nerves, shoves aside the little bit of her mind that is convinced she is overstepping bounds, because when has she ever cared about that, and she already did once this conversation so why not finish it off?

“And for the other thing,” she says, and Nahyuta turns his head sharply, his hair swinging, to look at her, like he’d forgotten that she started talking in a way that signaled that she had more than one point about channelings and closure, “I don’t think it would really change that much about how you feel, for you to hear your father say he’s forgiven you.”

Nahyuta stops, but doesn’t make to flee. He just stops, waiting for her to finish before they ascend to the ground floor of the palace, out of the records of the dead and back to their living family who still need their help. “I think you need to forgive you,” Maya says.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything as they stride through the palace, passing guards in the lived-in halls, and she expects when they reach the front gates that he will throw her unceremoniously out. But he instead steps with her into the sun, out into the colorful, bustling streets of the capital, where here in the land of the living the people they pass have nods and bows of acknowledgement - for Nahyuta, mostly, of course but Maya too, and it never fails to amaze her. She spent two years here coming to know the people while hiding a part of herself, and now they know, and that and so much more has changed.

Nahyuta stops to chat with a sweet bun vendor, and through the quick conversation Maya gathers that the woman was one of the Dragons. They come away with a pastry for each of them, and it seems like Nahyuta has waited for her to take a bite and be unable to speak for him to finally say, “You make it sound so simple. As though it is easy to - how? How am I to...?”

Joke’s on him; Maya can easily talk through a mouthful of bun, even if it’s not helpful. “Wish I knew.”

Rather than stuff it in his face, Nahyuta breaks off a small piece of the bun and pops it into his mouth. The delicate, refined mannerisms he sometimes shows almost make Maya snort when she thinks about him learning manners while living in a shack in the mountains, that chaotic, feral childhood that Apollo has described a few times. Instead of laughing, she swallows her mouthful and says, “No, really, trust me, I do wish I knew.” How to forgive oneself a guilt of the kind so deep and painful it could drive a person to consider choosing death instead - that would be a power far greater than channeling spirits. Maybe that would be a gift that didn’t come intertwined with pain, but it isn’t the one Maya has. “I wish I was any help at all.”

She waits a moment to see if Nahyuta will reply right away, and when he doesn’t, she takes a large bite of her sweet bun again and raises her eyebrows in the best disdainful look she can muster, in response to Nahyuta watching her shove pastry down her face in the most undignified of ways. He rolls his eyes. She is still chewing when he says, “You were. Thank you, Maya.”

This deserves more dignity than talking with her mouth full can merit. The delay is at least two seconds until she can say, “Oh,” a reply that still surely lacks dignity. “You’re - you’re welcome.”

A warbaa’d roars and they both jump. A dog barks, and then another, another layer of noise over the loud bazaar. Maya closes her eyes to take in the ambience, all the voices chattering, catching up with neighbors and bartering for their groceries. “It feels different here now,” Maya says.

“What do you mean?” Nahyuta asks.

“I didn’t notice until it wasn’t, but there was always - this kind of tension, in the air, here. Even when everyone was trying to act normal, we were all - not. We were scared and - and hiding things.” Rebels, rebel-sympathizers, secret police, and Maya the spirit medium from abroad. “It feels like I can breathe now. It feels like - well, it doesn’t feel like home. My village is so damn quiet. Not like—” She waves a hand at all the bustle around them, looking over the shop storefronts, and then she is hastily halted when Nahyuta throws an arm out to stop her from walking into the path of a yak. “But it feels like it could be a home, more than it ever did before.” Even when before had the Inmees’ lovely hospitality. How hard as that is to look back on now, with all that happened since. “The thing I miss most though, besides Pearly and Nick and everyone - I wish I could get a burger. And ramen, but mostly a good burger.”

She watches the yak trundle of sight. Nahyuta looks briefly offended on its behalf until he asks, “Have you ever been to Burger Barn?”

“I can’t,” Maya whines. “The lines. I go in and I’m hungry and I smell everything and I’m so much hungrier but then I have to wait so long, and by the time I’d get to order I’d probably have eaten my own sandals, so no, I’ve never actually had one of their burgers.”

The law office comes into sight down the street; Maya has had trouble remembering where it is, and then Datz redid the outer walls yesterday and she barely recognizes it, but she can find her way now by the dragon he painted on the wall, to go with the office sign. Nahyuta’s eyes widen and he comes to a halt, and Maya realizes that he must not have been down here yet. She gives him a moment to take it in; she’s not going to try to get used to this visage yet, not when Datz is talking about redoing the roof too. “So,” she prompts when Nahyuta tears his eyes away and they resume walking, “you’ve been to Burger Barn?”

“I recommend going before you are hungry,” he says. “Then by the time the wait is over you are not positively famished. But I find it surprising that the wait would prove to you a challenge - it should pale in comparison to activities such as meditation beneath a freezing waterfall. The Burger Barn is only slightly cold from too much air conditioning.”

“I cannot believe you went to Burger Barn before me,” Maya says. “I can’t believe this! Was it as good as they say or is it overrated? I guess you probably haven’t had enough burgers to know—”

“I made it a point to visit several other burger joints in the time while I was in America, intending to make such a comparison,” Nahyuta interrupts, and Maya cackles at the thought, remembering Apollo lamenting his brother’s habit of obsessively over-researching anything that may tangentially cross his path. Like all the trials Maya has been involved in. Like burgers. Nahyuta raises his eyebrows at her outburst but continues, “From the samples that I have experienced” - experience a burger, that would be a great restaurant tagline, and Maya nearly laughs again - “I would rate it as the best.”

“Huh,” Maya says. She’s spent years convincing herself that they have to be overrated. “I guess we’ll have to go. And with Pearly too, it can be like another dimension of our training. I can’t believe I never thought of that trick before! Just treat it like training. I’ve been locked in cold mountain caves before, like oh no, the burger line is difficult somehow.”

“Oh Mystic Master of Kurain, cousin of mine, all your wisdom yet you missed this simple fact.” He says it so deadpan, only the corners of his eyes turning up with amusement.

Maya sticks her tongue out at him. “Nick’s got a challenger - that is the most sarcastic way of calling me wise that I’ve ever heard. But I’ll—” She stops as something occurs to her. “You - you will come back to LA someday, right?” He isn’t running from an evil queen any longer. He has a home to stay in.

“Of course,” he says. “I have people there I must ask forgiveness of, and I should like to visit your village someday, as well, to meet our cousin Pearly.”

She’s called her that so much that Nahyuta not knowing her doesn’t know that isn’t quite her name. She smiles. Maybe once she goes back to the village, she can convince Pearl that his name is Yuty and watch what happens when they meet. That would be funny. “And I would like Rayfa to be able to meet her, as well,” Nahyuta continues. “And for her to see more of the world beyond Khura’in.”

Pearl is only four years older than the princess, has had her world upended in much the same way to learn that her mother was not what she seemed, and by following her instructions Pearl was not doing right by the people she cared about. “That’d be good,” Maya says. They stand on the doorstep of the office, stare together up at the hand painted sign above the door. “I bet Pearly would love to meet you and show you around. Go to Burger Barn. Have a fun cousins hang-out. Get to know each other a little better.”

See if together they can find a way to do better than their mothers and aunts. Change the fate of their family.

Nahyuta smiles. “I would like that.”

#roddy fanfics #ace attorney #maya fey #nahyuta sahdmadhi #the fey family and the khura'inese royals pass down 1. the ability to channel spirits and 2. trauma #and sometimes their descendants don't even get the ability to channel spirits #i've been poking at this on and off since september but wrote the back half in the past two days. the working title was 'younger daughters'

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czvrtoryskie · 4 years

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&&. announcing their royal highness, ( sasha alex czartoryskie ), the ( 28 ) year old ( monarch’s heir ) of ( poland ). they are often confused with ( cara delevingne ). some say that they are ( whimsical & restless ), but they are actually ( principled & compassionate ).

it’s getting v late and i’m sleepy so pls... don’t judge lol

IF SASHA STAYS STILL THEIR SHOES MELT.

always in a hurry to breeze from one place to another, always chasing the next experience, always yearning to collect another memory. sasha never learnt patience and why would have they needed to ? with a good head on their shoulders and an endless supply of energy, there wasn’t a wall thick enough to stop them. sasha was made for seeing the world and learning its every secret. their curiosity could not be quenched. there was always another question to ask, always another answer to acquire. the day sasha turned twenty, they had seen more than most people see in a lifetime.

PERSONALLY PAVED PATH LEADS TO JOY.

individualism is something sasha values above all else. they are their own person --- not an extension of the savoy dynasty, not a regal czartoryski, just sasha. it’s why sasha picked everything that was just a bit different from what was expected. chose whichever school they fancied in the moment, carefully selected friends from people who were inspiring. the people sasha surrounds themselves with are all personalities. wild, fiery, and unashamed. easy crowd in which to be fearless. to be oneself.

high school for sasha --- or rather, samanta as they were known back then --- was a turning point. new ideas, concepts they hadn’t even heard of were thrust into their face. there was so much to learn and so much introspection to do. for the first time in their life, someone helped them understand exactly what felt so confining about the society. the suffocating molds they were forced in didn’t start or end with their royal title --- there was barely a single thing they were satisfied with. it was in sasha’s curious nature to question everything but with time and a few philosophy classes, they stopped wondering about the world they lived in and started criticizing it. the flaws, the chains, the needless expectations.

what high school started, university finished. with two years of law studies under their belt, supportive friends around them, and a reckless approach to consequences, sasha simply held an impromptu press event... via social media, of course. it was 2014 after all. ‘ samanta aleksandrina ‘ had to go, the name flew into the bin. ‘ sasha alex ‘ it was the name they chose for themselves --- not quite willing to ignore their parents’ penchant for names starting with an ‘s’. their parents had a lot to say --- more about the method than anything else. it was background noise at best. sasha was miles away in oxford, by the time they’d return to warsaw for christmas their parents would have, hopefully, educated themselves and gotten over the change.

THERE’S HONOUR IN THE RIGHTEOUS WORK.

sasha had a lot of drive. they had a lot of thoughts, ideas and ideals. sasha dreams of a free world, a fair world, a just world. they are perfectly aware of the power their title has, what kind of a privilege it is to have blue blood running through your veins. sasha has done their best to make their life count. first came the law degree and then came the meaningful work. sasha, in a sense, is the odd one out with their family. sasha doesn’t use their title for power or glory --- not even for the good of their family. whatever they do it is in the name of equality and justice. it may be that sasha has... occasionally.. referred to their family members as war criminals... but sasha gets a pass. there’s no malicious intent behind their words --- raw imperfections, no matter how close to home they are, have to be criticized. it’s just the way a better world works.

pinterest.

#idk wtf this is lol #hshqintro

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luna-paradoxz · 4 years

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Morgan’s little adventure

Summary - Morgan wishes to be a hero, and what better hero to look up to than his father who killed the Fell Dragon, Grima himself. But the road to be Ylisse prince and hero is hard but Morgan will make his destiny.

If you want to support me buy me a Ko-fi or you can commission me.

Little Morgan heads to the training area where he knows his father is going to come today. He had requested, almost begged his father for today's session and after one week of pestering, begging and crying his parents gave in and accepted. But only his father will give him this training session and the little boy is completely ok with it after all his father is a hero who defeated the bad god Grima. He smiles wide as he runs to the ground, he is wearing his small blue training outfit with blue gloves fashioned after his father's training clothes that he had begged his mother for. Because Morgan wanted to be a hero just like his father and he copied everything his father did so that when he grows up his will be a chosen one just like his father and will protect everyone from evils in the world.

And he will also defeat Owain finally. The boy was only one year older than him and yet he loses all the time but once he properly trains with his father, he will defeat his eternal rival.

Morgan grins wide as he jumps in excitement and rushes in the ground as he spots his father and rushes up to him, hugging him tight on his legs, the man is used to his usual leg attack so only laughs as he puts a hand on his son's head and pats as he tried to calm him down.

He looks up smiling wide, "Dad! Let's start on sword training!" He jumps excitedly and the man laughs,

"Yes, we will but before that Morgan we must do warmups, Frederick thought you that right?"

He pouts as he moves back a bit, "But dad I want to sword fight." He whines and the man sighs,

"Yes, we will Morgan but a warm-up is important or you will get cramps or get injured. You don't want to get hurt right."

He wants to start immediately but he guesses that is true, so he reluctantly nods and they both get in places and he follows along with his father as they stretch, redo the basics and share some dud blows. He properly does them as his father cheers him up and he feels very motivated to do everything properly. As soon as the exercises are done, his father finally brings out the main sword and his eyes twinkle as his heart jumps as he takes the Falchion and tries to swing it around. He immediately falls and his face falls, his father though pats his head and smiles proudly at him,

"We will work on its Morgan and you will become better in no time."

He looks up expectantly, "Like dad?"

Chrom feels his heart jump in pride, he is so happy that his son looks up so much to him, "Yes you will be," he ruffles his hair, "you might even become stronger than me."

His eyes sparkle as he jumps up, "I can become stronger than dad!?"

"If you work hard diligently and properly use your strength then yes you will."

With renewed motivation, Morgan jumps and he laughs as they both start the practice again. Chrom is looking forward to seeing how his son will do in the coming future, he won't say his rest of his family just yet, but he is silently rooting for his son to win the rite.

The sun is rising as Morgan puts his hand up and waits for the maids to finish putting the last touches to his clothes. He is wearing royal garments they wear in war, they might look heavy but they are flexible and free so he won't be restricted in any way today, they are similar to his father's usual uniform but a tad more regal because like Frederick put it, this is a rite and they must also present a good look. It is not completely public but mostly all the noble houses will be coming so they need to put a regal show, worthy of the princess and prince.

He smiles as he turns around and shows it to Frederick who nods approvingly and smiles.

"You look very handsome young master." He bows as Morgan grins and thanks to him, "His majesty and Her highness are with Lady Lucina, they will be here in a bit."

He nods as he takes a deep breath in, he has worked very hard for this day for last 4 years he has been working tireless, practising with Frederick, father and even other shepherds just so he can make sure he will win today, that he will be the one chosen not his sister. It is not like he doesn't think his sister is suitable, she is quite suitable. From a young age Lucina was able to take to swords and magic quite easily compared to her he had to work twice to learn both of them even then he has put off magic a bit so he can work on sword better, to at least surpass his sister in that. As a crown princess it would be better for Lucina to win the rite, everyone had been telling that but from a young age, Morgan has wanted to win it. To become like his father and today was the day he can prove everyone that he can be just like his father, a chosen hero just like him.

So, he will defeat his big sister even if she is more worthy or stronger than him.

Frederick takes his leave as he wishes him luck and heads to double-check everything for today. Frederick was a perfectionist his mother has explained, even if one tells everything is good, he still won't believe until he has verified everything on his own, he finds his knight's that quality cute. It has always been quite fun to see Frederick go above and beyond for the royal family and the two siblings have used that far too much then they would admit to their parents unless they want to get punished. Morgan grins at that as he waits for them, his nerves a bit jumpy.

The knock resounds quite loudly in the silent room and he jumps a bit as his parents let themselves in, smiling wide as they take him in. He blushes slightly as his mother has that proud mother look and starts gushing at him, squeezing him tightly as he asks her to stop. Why do mothers have to be so embarrassing, she laughs as he blushes and frowns at his mom. His father puts a hand on his shoulder as he grins at him and squeezes it tightly, his way of telling he was proud of him and Morgan had always loved that gesture.

"Nervous?" His mother asks,

He shyly looks down, "Is it obvious?"

"Don't worry even I was nervous," he laughs, "even though I was the only candidate."

"I can't imagine dad being nervous at anything." He says honestly and his parents laugh.

"I also get quite nervous at many things Morgan." Chrom pats his head and before he can think more the door knocks and incomes, a maid to tell the event has started.

They say their goodbyes as they walk out and he too makes his final check and walks out, as he closes the door Morgan knows this is the day it will be decided if his dreams come true or not. Falchion had allowed both to use her so now it depended on who was more the worthy master to wield the legendary treasure that had killed the felled dragon itself. Morgan wanted it, to prove he was worthy to be a hero and to prove to lose lipped nobles that he was not worthless compared to Lucina. He also knew this way Lucina too can finally openly start practising her tactician training that is why they all had been trying so hard from these many days.

And today was the day he will make his destiny.

He smiles as he enters the arena and looks around, bowing to his parents and then turns to his sister. The 13-year-old tactician in making smiles as she silently wishes him luck and they take stances, swords in hand.

The young man smiles as he picks up his ancestor's treasure Falchion and straps in on his waist, he walks out his room and heads straight to the cathedral. He is greeted by a lot of nobles as he enters the holy place of Naga and takes his place waiting anxiously. She appears on record time, as expected of the exalt, as she walks down in her regal gown and smiles at him with confidence as she holds a thoron tome in her right hand and other holding her gown in place. He takes a step back as she straightens her back and they walk in the chapel, as the newly crowned exalt and her ever-faithful knight. Their parents are waiting in front as their eyes shine with pride and he feels his heart swell in happiness as he stares at her back, he was truly glad they could make their parents proud. She kneels in front of there father as the priest reads scriptures and he stands behind her. She says her vows and the crown is placed on her head and his father helps her up as he looks at both.

"As of today, I pass my crown and my powers to the Exalt Lucina. You shall govern and lead Ylisse to another prosperous and righteous age."

She vows as she gives her final bow to her father, the last exalt and then straightens up, never to bend to anyone ever again.

He stands next to her as she turns to him, "Morgan will you vow that you shall always stay by my side. To counsel me, to advise me and protect me?"

He pulls out Falchion as he kneels and presents the sacred sword to her. To vow, he will use it only for her, and she puts a hand on it as she smiles and accepts his vow. She is truly proud of what her brother has accomplished like a true hero, he has faced every adversary and come out victorious. He gets up as he sheathes it and they both present themselves to their people.

As they complete their coronation details Chrom and Robin stay in the back, now far older as she leans on him and whispers, slight tears in her eyes but she will not cry on her daughter's coronation ceremony.

"We did good, didn't we?"

He leans too and whispers, "Ya we did good Robin."

She is happy, truly happy even after everything they had to sacrifice, they were able to fulfil the one promise they couldn't in another time. They made sure their children will be truly happy, and they were and as their parents, they couldn't be any prouder of them.

Chrom turns to the side as he senses something and beckons to the two people hiding as they smile in embarrassment and rush up to them. The family of four watches over their youngest ones as they take the next most important step in their life.

They all had changed there destines.

(And now finally, old ghosts can be forgotten about.)

#My writing #Sequel to Lucina's little adventure #chrobin #Lucina #chrom #f!robin #m!morgan

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minidigidestined · 4 years

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Fatal Mistake

CW: One shot sfw vore story with implied fatal and digestion. Sadistic pred and mostly unwilling prey, fearplay. Very whump-y. N/S/F/W blogs do not interact.

A quick little "AU" babble of two of my Digimon OCs from the POV of my digidestined OC featuring one of her friend digimon, Voltboutamon, as the pred. When the human servant to the illustrious digimon lord makes a messy mistake in front of her master's guests during a dinner party, he becomes enraged and has finally had enough of her ineptitude. Not so fun hijinks ensue.

I made sure to smooth out the creases in my apron and dress, my breath short and strained. I knew that for something like this, my lord needed me to look perfectly presentable--I was as much a part of the setting as the crystal wineglasses or gilded chairs, after all.

I adjusted the bloom of curls atop my head and steadied myself the best I could. I knew he could detect my fear and discomfort miles away and while it was usually a delight to him, tonight the smallest sign of irritation could be fatal.

I pushed open the heavy doors to the dining room, exhaling anxiety as another servant bustled past me with empty trays.

"Good luck," She mouthed as I emerged, the expensive scent of the guests' cuisine wreathing around me. I clutched the bottle of wine tightly in my hands, speedwalking out into the elegantly decorated chamber, the diamond chandelier casting ominous candlelight out over the decadent scene.

My lord sat at the head of the head of the table, perfectly poised in regal silence among the chatter. He cut an imposing figure, all sharp edges, straight lines and the finest silks. His red eyes burned like twin hot coals, his clawed fingers wrapped around the stem of his empty goblet. He impatiently tapped the stone floor with the toe of his boot, almost looking bored even though it was his affair.

His crimson eyes found me near instantly, locking onto my own earthy gaze and sending a chill up my spine. I bypassed his guests with shaky steps, robotically greeting and inquiring as to their pleasure. The stern line of his mouth relaxed into a self-satisfied smirk as I approached, his food still steaming and untouched.

I approached his side, his figure looming over me a good seven feet even while sitting. He leaned back luxuriously, his long legs crossed at the ankle.

"Human. You kept me waiting. I hope you brought the good wine." He said languorously.

"Yes, Lord Voltaboutamon. Only the best for you and your patrons." I heard the tremble in my voice and felt dread curl in my chest like a frightened child.

"Good." His tone was almost indulgent, his smirk all dark edges. "Get on with it then, woman."

I swallowed, my throat thick as he lowered his goblet, as royal as everything else in his gothic noir estate. I hastily uncorked the bottle, feeling more than one pair of eyes on me. With shaking hands, I lifted the wine to pour, praying to anyone willing to listen and--

My mind blanked into white hot panic when my wrist twitched, a product of anxiety and damaged motor skills. The wash of shame and fear froze me in place as the wine, dark as blood, spilled over me, my digimon lord and the floor.

I saw the moment rage blossomed in his breast, as dark as the splashed wine as his easy posture and icy smirk twisted into unadulterated anger. His eyes narrowed to thin slits--blazing hellfire--mouth curling into a snarl, his edges sharpening instantaneously.

"You stupid little brat," He hissed between his teeth, fangs gleaming dangerously. "Can you ever do a damn thing right?"

At his scathing tone I flashed back to his effortless grace in the art of killing. Back to blood and marrow and incomprehensible danger. Back to fear and insecurity and nightmares.

He's not like that...not with me, not anymore. He’s just playing it up in front of the guests. I repeat it to myself like a mantra, my entire sense of self on white-hot fire. No matter what I told myself, I knew the truth though. I knew how important tonight was and of course I fumbled it, like always.

Stupid.

He rose to his full height, his second pair of arms unfolding behind him like a reaper's scythes, tail uncoiling from his waist and twisting about in a hypnotic dance, like a snake ready to strike.

Yes, my master is as beautiful and deadly as a serpent, quick as a whip and more clever than most...if not all. Despite his lanky build, he seemed to encompass the entire room with his presence alone, his brilliance demanding absolute attention. I saw a certain hunger twist his features, the lust for violence in that moment carving out a hole in his very heart.

I watched his face, unable to look away as that hole began to fill.

"I have had enough of your fumbling and bumbling, maid," He sneered, his voice righteous and cruel. "I've given you chance after chance, and still you remain a thorn in my side, a leftover piece of a puzzle with no place to go. Nowhere you fit in."

"Please sir," I begin to beg, black tinting the edges of my vision in sheer panic. I thought of his blades, of his guns, even of the strength in his spidery limbs and whip-like tail.

"I gave you a chance because I pitied you, but now you're out of chances and out of time." He gripped my chin, taloned fingers digging into my doughy face. I looked up at him with tear filled eyes and found not a single shred of mercy there.

"Please."

"No," He growled, and if looks could kill, I'd be in hell. "I'm going to make an example of you. I know you neglect your job to sit and eat and read, lazing about like a useless stain. Even knowing that I won't settle for less than perfection. Even knowing that I see everything. But you'll be perfect for one thing..."

I stared blankly, shaking and not daring to move.

He smiled softly, his voice growing syrupy and taunting. He let one hand glide mockingly over his midriff, "I see how you stare at me and the annoying things you say to the other servants--I always thought your desires the most foolish thing I had ever heard. What better way to end you than by showing you how that particular brand of idiocy has made a bumbling fool of you and distracted you from your job? What its reality leads to?”

I felt myself flush, immediately trying to twist out of his iron grip. "I'm sorry, Voltaboutamon, please no--"

"Too late " He crooned, a lullaby and a death sentence all in one. "And this way, your end won't lead to the other servants having to clean up after you. Again."

My head began to swim, my chest tightening as his hand encompassed my entire head. My vision completely blacked out, and the sensation of becoming less overtook me, my mind, and even the humiliation.

Before I knew it, I sat on Voltaboutamon's hand, dizzy and still burning with the echoing pain of shrinking. I gazed up at him, his massive visage a blood moon hanging over my earth. Despite myself I panicked with a

eripping the wrinkled, wine-stained hem of my dress with utterly frayed nerves and tried to look anywhere else but the line of his rage-twisted lips.

It really was happening. Just not the way I'd dreamed. Not with the ending I hoped for. But still...his scowling mouth was mere inches away from me, to the point where I could hear the irritated breath flaring from his nostrils like wind.

Without anymore ceremony, he plucked me from his palm two claws pinching the back of my dress. I swung upwards--unable to even inhale one last breath before the finale--until I was impossibly high up, dangling up above the proud arch of his hat and the menacing sculpt of his mask.

I covered my face with my hands, a low moan of despair escaping me despite my near daily voracious daydreams. I felt as heavy as lead, as good as gone, as dead as--

He let go.

I dropped like a stone, his mouth snapping me up near instantaneously. I felt him struggle a bit to accommodate me in his narrow maw, the pinpricks of his teeth scraping against me and drawing blood. I cried out in fear, pummeling the muscle of his tongue with my slippered feet and desperately tried to scramble for an escape.

A low sound rumbled in his chest, whether it was one of pleasure or annoyance, I couldn't place--perhaps both. He seemed to enjoy the taste of the wine on my skin, but in a matter of seconds he was already bored and done, tilting his head back and gulping me back with a throaty swallow.

I whimpered when I felt his throat hitch, unaccustomed to such a sizable and girthy morsel of food, but he swallowed thickly once more and I was sent down without fuss.

Covered head to toe in his saliva, the muscles of his elegant throat crushed against me, sending me down toward the prison of his gut. I felt his slim fingers press inquisitively against the bulge I created during my descent, cursing my eternal foolishness as my cheeks set aflame.

As I was pulled downward, I heard the laughter and excitement of his guests--I'm sure they enjoyed both his melodramatics and his near playful display of cruelty. Classic Voltboutamon! Soon though, all I could hear was the rush of his breath and the steady tempo of his heart, my head popping into a slightly more open cavern and the rest of my body toppling down seconds later.

I struggled to right myself, slipping in chyme and stomach juices and struggling to breathe in my lord's unrelenting body heat. I pushed my hands against his stomach walls in desperation, trying to wipe the itchy fluids from my eyes.

I imagined the little bulge I'd make in his skinny midsection, considering the fact that I was locked in his belly for the rest of my short life and cringed when I felt my panicking heart betray itself even when there was no way out. It was as if flowers blossomed between my ribs, and even though I was nothing but a punished servant turned snack, I felt as though he had finally seen me.

He had noticed me and my lingering stares--and now I got to be part of him. Perhaps forever, if he truly was without mercy. That meant something, right?

I yelped, jerked out of my thoughts when something dropped onto my head. With a start I realized it was a bit of chewed up meat. So...he was still hungry. Delicately picking at his food while his stomach growled around me, the little human he hungrily gulped down mere moments away from digestion.

The feelings of insignificance and delight battled within me.

More and more food dropped over me, bits of the finest and most decadent the manor's kitchens had to offer, and soon the stomach began to churn away at its meal. The walls pulsed and pressed against me, flipping me all around and nearly drowning me in the stomach fluids and masticated food. I was tossed about like nothing, completely at the mercy of my vicious lord's equally vicious stomach.

I screamed, pressing harder against the stomach walls as my new home seemed to grow hotter and burn with the acrid stench of stomach acid. I struggled for air and tried to push back against the slick muscles, but found myself growing weaker and weaker... Wine soon flooded over me, making me sputter and flail even more, the smell of grapes sickly bitter in the pit of his gut.

I thought I felt his hand pressing against his middle, and found the thought of him stuffing himself into a bellyache to further punish and disgust me made me giddy--I wondered if I was making a bulge in his perfect diamond-cut figure and smiled. Oh, how the blush on my cheeks would spite and enrage him ever further, a fun little game between the two of us.

Unfortunately, whatever bit of heaven I managed to find in my demise still made me the loser of this game. After all, I was going to be nothing more than chyme and fuel for his graceful power soon enough... Truly this was the magnum opus of his callous sadism, the complete erasure of one's personhood. He and his ruthless nature would always win. It always did.

If only he heard my screams and cared. If only he'd set me free in a few more minutes... If only he coughed me up, revealed his heart, and we became true friends. Maybe more, if he confessed he loved me too. If only this really were a game, a playful cat and mouse, and not my execution. But I already knew there would be no salvation tonight. There would be no tenderness from the pitiless digimon, not after my constant failings.

My skin began to truly itch, burning from the thick juices pooling up around me, massaged deep into my flesh by the churning stomach walls. I slumped down in defeat, mind going blank--I was sure that Voltaboutamon and his extravagant guests had already forgotten about me beyond a silly and fanciful dinner story for future parties.

As much as I'd begged and screamed though, it wasn't so bad... Leaning back into it felt as if I became warmth itself, and despite the danger I was in, I almost felt cradled by my lord's body. I could pretend.

My head swam with the heat, my eyes fluttering shut as the stomach bubbled and churned around me, feeling as if the sensation in my skin was fading and my body was beginning to melt. Now, I was nothing but food, fallen prey to my decadent lord.

Nothing but food... Nothing but... Nothing...

***

"Why are you staring at me, Charissa?"

I started with a jolt at Voltaboutamon's grumble. He hovered at the edge of the small kitchen, disgruntled and dissecting a slice of pizza with a fork and knife.

"Ah! Sorry, I was zoning out..." I prayed he hadn't noticed my eyes on the bowed frown of his mouth, on the silky swallows he took of cranberry juice and steaming pizza. I returned my attention to my own slice, stuffing it into my mouth messily.

He looked down his nose at me and scowled even deeper with disapproval, huffing. "Well look somewhere else."

I rolled my eyes and gave a sarcastic salute, desperately hoping my blush wasn't enough to be noticed as I tried not to imagine disappearing down his long, elegant throat, slipping between his menacing teeth and into the cruel and unrelenting confines of his stomach...

I really needed to get a reign on this daydreaming habit. Especially before my reluctant new friend noticed.

Especially before my fixation on his guts and his heart ruined everything.

#soft vore #fatal #implied digestion #implied fatal #unwilling vore #unwilling #fearplay #whump #g/t #giant/tiny #my post #my writing

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