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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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The Family Tree is... a Disaster

Takes place in the TCW Leverage AU. It does contain a few deviations, namely that the narrative ended up shifting Plo's role in Ahsoka's life, and Ventress's role overall.

This is mostly just dialogue where I outline the fuckery that is the disaster lineage family tree, not actual fic. It stemmed from my incessant need to justify "25yo Obi-Wan somehow got custody of 9yo Anakin without Shmi dying."

Warnings for: canon character death (modernized), canon violence (modernized), and references to Nazis and white supremacists (Palpatine collects WWII weaponry as a parallel to his canon display of Sith artifacts in his office as chancellor, and Ahsoka thinks it's sketchy)

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"Okay," Cody says, setting down a glass of whiskey as he drops into the seat across the table. "What the hell is your family tree like?"

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, and continues cleaning off the definitely-not-stolen crystal komodo dragon he'd won in today's job. "I beg your pardon?"

"You and Skywalker," Cody says, gesturing between Obi-Wan, who is just sitting there minding his own business, and Anakin, who is across the closed-for-tonight bar and doing something inadvisable on the pool table. "You've said he was your brother, and mentioned raising him, which, sure, I'm over twenty years older than my youngest brother, people take over parenting roles all the time. But you have different last names, have mentioned stepfamilies that the other doesn't have, reference things as 'your aunt, not mine,' and I am just getting... very confused. I figured it was personal and I could leave well enough alone, but considering your older brother almost shot us today--"

"Okay, Xanatos is not my brother," Obi-Wan immediately says. "Just. I just have to stop you right there. Xanatos was a student of my father's for a time, but I promise he's not family. Nobody except maybe Komari would consider him even close, and she doesn't count since she's in prison for life and the farthest thing from stable."

Cody gestures. "That, Obi-Wan. That's what I'm talking about. I don't even know who Komari is."

Obi-Wan purses his lips in a failed attempt to not smile. "Do you actually want the explanation? It's long and unnecessarily complicated."

"So's mine," Cody snorts. Obi-Wan waits, patient and pleasant, and is rewarded when Cody sighs. "Please."

"Of course, my dear. To answer your first question, though, Anakin is my half-brother." With a smile, Obi-Wan digs a piece of paper and a pen from his briefcase. "So, center of the chain: me, my father Qui-Gon, my grandfather Yan, and my great-grandfather Yoda. With me so far?"

"Easy enough. Do you have to go back that far?"

"Great-grandfather Yoda is still alive and regularly escaping the old folks' home to terrorize younger relatives, so yes," Obi-Wan says. "Given that you may just meet a tiny, meddling relative of mine when he's bored, we do in fact have to go back that far."

"...how old is he?"

"We don't know for sure. A hundred and eight-ish is the best guess." Obi-Wan shrugs. "It's not a huge deal, mostly he likes bothering Anakin these days. Anyway, grandfather. Yan Dooku. Inherited a minory duchy from his maternal grandfather decades back. Mostly hangs around there because he's on terrorist watchlists in the States."

"Oh, lovely."

Obi-Wan grins. "Trust me, it gets worse. Anyway, grandfather never actually married, but spent most of his time with his 'best friend' Sifo Dyas, who died about a decade back."

"Gay?"

"Well, we know that now, but they got together in the seventies, and this was back when they were both working government jobs, so, you know. It happens."

"Good to know," Cody says. "So, Yoda's kid is Yan, who inherited a title and land from a maternal relative, and had a life partner but never married. With you so far."

"All of Yan's kids were adopted," Obi-Wan continues, sketching out the first branch away from the Yan/Sifo partnership. "Rael was actually grandfather's cousin, maternally, and ended up in his custody after getting orphaned at five. These days, he does most of the stewardship duties at the Serenno Duchy. His daughter Nim is teaching military history at a university in Germany."

Cody nods. "Uncle number one is named Rael, technically your dad's cousin, has a daughter. Got it."

"About a decade after Rael, they adopted my father, Qui-Gon. He and grandfather fought, frequently, but they did care for each other. My father was a botanist, did bio-engineering. We'll get back to him later, because he's where things get complicated." Obi-Wan made sure to leave room around the name. "Just a few years older than me was--is--Komari Vosa. She is... serving a life sentence. I think she fought Jango once."

"She fought my father?"

"To the best of my knowledge, they both almost died, yes," Obi-Wan says. "She's in maximum security these days. She was an assassin. I'll get a call if she breaks out, and I'll let you know along with everyone else."

"Bad news auntie, got it."

"Last adoption, sort of, is Ventress," Obi-Wan finishes off. "A few years younger than me, is technically grandfather's personal assistant and does secretarial work and the like, but we all know he's planning to leave as much of the inheritance to her as he is to the rest of us. She's aggressive and unpleasant, but she takes care of him and hasn't actually threatened to kill any of us yet, so that's fine."

"How'd she join?" Cody asks.

"Ky Narec was a friend of Qui-Gon's; Ventress was his daughter. Ky died a few years after Qui-Gon did, and Ventress was a mess, after." Obi-Wan shrugs and scratches that connection into the little sketch of a family tree as well. "Grandfather offered her a job until she got herself back together, and then she just kind of... stuck around."

"Youngest aunt, more of a cousin." Cody summarizes. "Now we go back to your father?"

"Qui-Gon Jinn was a man of many skills," Obi-Wan says drily. "Adequate birth control was not one of them."

It's almost a pity that Cody wasn't drinking anything, because going by the way he chokes, Obi-Wan's pretty sure the spit take would have been spectacular.

"I'm sorry," Cody says. "Can you repeat that?"

"I was an accident," Obi-Wan says, not even bothering to hide his smile. "So was Anakin."

"So that sounds like... a story."

"It is," Obi-Wan confirms. "My biological mother has never been in the picture. They had a fling, she wasn't sure if she'd want to abort or give me up, just that she wasn't ready to be a parent, and Qui-Gon volunteered to take full custody so she could go back to her life after the birth. I've never met her, but I kept her family name. You can consider her irrelevant beyond that."

Cody nods.

"So, when I was about a year old, Qui-Gon reconnects with an old flame, they get married two years later. Step-mother number one is Tahl. Lovely woman, I absolutely adored her, and she had a daughter, my stepsister, Bant Eerin."

"I met her, right?" Cody asks.

"Yes, she was the doctor who patched up my bullet wound a few months ago," Obi-Wan says. "With the giant glasses that make her look a little fish-eyed."

"She was nice."

"She is," Obi-Wan agrees. "At any rate, that was our family for a while, and then Tahl died when I was fourteen. Bant wanted to go to a magnet school for medical studies, and Qui-Gon's grief was... not optimal for taking care of multiple teenagers, shall we say, so Bant moved in with her paternal uncle, Kit Fisto, and Kit's son Nahdar. He's a marine biologist, incredibly friendly, and has no idea of any of the rest of my side of the family's questionable activities. If you ever meet him, you will pretend that we are a legal firm with a team of security consultants."

Cody raises a brow. Obi-Wan despairs. "Best you could do?"

"We're not that likely to run into him." Obi-Wan draws out a new line. "So, Qui-Gon deals poorly with grief. This is also around the time that Xanatos came around to ruin our lives a little. He was a very rich and unpleasant man, but he's dead as of four hours ago, so you don't have to worry about him. Or his son."

"His son?"

"Anakin handled that," Obi-Wan says. "Thoroughly. Granta Omega is no longer an issue. He's not dead, but... well. Anakin has his ways. Er--I should probably mention Feemor; he was my father's assistant at the university for a long time. Anakin and I still call him our uncle."

"Also a person to avoid mentioning criminal activity to?" Cody prompts.

"Well... no, but only because I don't think he'd care. The man is, forgive me, more of a 'walking sweatervest' than I am. He's a very bland and unassuming man. He once described himself as the background character of the soap opera that is my family's existence."

"Sounds like a charmer."

"Oh, he's very kind and clever, and witty as well. I adore him, and he really is family. He's just also very, very normal. Not boring, but..." Obi-Wan trails off and shrugs helplessly. "He's an editor for an agricultural research journal. Also not someone I anticipate us running into."

"Noted."

"Right, so, Qui-Gon dealing poorly with his grief didn't involve much drinking, but there were a few months of him trying to... lose himself in the pleasures of the flesh?" Obi-Wan tries, and then deflates at the look on Cody's face. "He was slagging around. Shmi got pregnant with Anakin, who was born when I was sixteen. Shared custody at first, Qui-Gon got him weekends and every other holiday, that sort of thing, and then they got married because they actually did like each other well enough, and it was easier on the taxes."

"So Shmi is stepmother number two."

"Shmi is stepmother number two, yes." Obi-Wan sketches in Anakin and Shmi. "About nine and a half years after Anakin was born, Shmi and Qui-Gon were in a car accident with... well, it later turned out it wasn't an accident, there was a hitman called Maul involved, he's actually Ventress's second cousin or something, I don't know. Grandfather handled most of that problem. Qui-Gon died, Shmi was in intensive care, and I got custody of Anakin as his nearest adult relative. We weren't very close before that, because I was off at university by the time he was old enough to form memories, but that changed once he started living with me. I more or less raised him as a single parent from that point."

"This is why he jokes that you're like a father to him."

"Precisely," Obi-Wan says. "Shmi took about a year to recover enough to move again, and grandfather covered the costs. She still had to live with a dedicated carer and attend daily physical therapy. At that physical therapy, she met Cliegg Lars, whose son Owen was also a patient there. They hit it off, and three years later, they married. When Anakin refers to his stepfamily he's talking about the Lars out in Nevada."

"Nevada?"

"They have a farm. A very, very normal one. We don't drag them into our activities, unless we have an at-risk person who needs a safe house." Obi-Wan pauses, and then decides this really needs to be stressed. "This is important to me and Anakin, that we don't get them involved unless there's absolutely no other choice. Shmi's been through a lot, and the Lars are busy enough running the farm."

"Works for me," Cody says. "We've got enough safe houses that it shouldn't be an issue. I'm guessing this story doesn't end there, though."

Obi-Wan grimaces. "My own love life has been... a bit of a mess."

"I already know about Kryze, at least."

There's that. "I was temporarily engaged to a friend, Siri Tachi, shortly after high school. We were in a relationship, but this was mostly something done to appease a relative of hers that was getting overbearing to the point of absurdity, and she couldn't just cut them off. We broke off the engagement after the relative passed, and we're still friends."

He notes that down, then adds the other embarrassment of his early years. "First marriage was actually a drunken joke between myself and my best friend when we were in college. We got it annulled a few months later because we just didn't have time to drop by the courthouse before then, and he's actually engaged to Asajj now."

"Asajj?" Cody asks, watching in fascination as Obi-Wan tries to mark in both his own short marriage and the newer, long-term engagement without crossing any lines. He settles for just writing the name twice and including an asterisk with 'this is the same person.'

"Ventress," Obi-Wan clarifies. "Yeah, Quinlan's a fun guy. His little sister, Aayla, treats Anakin like a beloved younger cousin."

"Are they also off-limits for criminal activity?"

"No, Aayla's the one that taught Ahsoka how to vent-crawl," Obi-Wan says. "And I'm pretty sure Quinlan has contacts in every major government branch, criminal organization, and Fortune 500 company on the planet. I reach out to them regularly."

"Resources, then."

Obi-Wan nods. "Some time later, I married Satine. We had a son; you've met Korkie. We split due to incompatibility a year and change before Qui-Gon's death. Satine doesn't engage in criminal activity, but Bo-Katan is..."

"I've met Bo-Katan. I know what she's like, Obi. You don't have to explain."

"She works with Maul sometimes."

"...the man who killed your father?"

"Yes. It's all very stupid and convoluted." Obi-Wan still writes her in. "So, that's them. Korkie goes to boarding school, and I try not to involve him in anything. Anakin and Ahsoka like to teach him self-defense and the like, but Satine is adamant that he stay unaware of my less legal dealings until he's an adult."

Cody shrugs. "Makes sense. Is that every--wait, no, Skywalker's married."

Obi-Wan grins. "Yes, and Padme's got twins on the way."

"I was there when he told us," Cody says drily. "He was very loud about it. Okay, how does Ahsoka fit in?"

"Hold on, I forgot Beru," Obi-Wan mutters. "Owen's fiancee. Same rules as the Lars. Okay, you asked about Ahsoka. Right. So. Um."

He dithers. Cody waits for him, and then Obi-Wan just gives up. "Ahsoka, dear, would you like to explain how you joined the family, so to speak?"

Ahsoka looks up from whatever she and the boys are doing--there are multiple beer glasses and straws and duct tape involved, and Obi-Wan doesn't really want to know--and then flips off the table and over to Obi-Wan and Cody. She looks over the family tree chart, and then says, "Oooh, did you tell him about the cult?"

"You were in a cult?" Cody demands.

"No, Komari was. She was head priestess or something. I dunno, it's why she's in prison and stuff."

"I did not tell him about the cult," Obi-Wan mutters, already regretting this. "The Bando Gora aren't a problem anymore. I've already gotten to explaining how you and Anakin know each other."

Ahsoka rolls her eyes, steals his pen, and starts sketching in around Quinlan's name, over by Asajj since Obi-Wan's section is too crowded. "Okay, so, Quinlan's adopted. His dad is Tholme, and Tholme's dad is Plo Koon. Plo Koon is good friends with my Auntie, Shaak Ti, who raised me. They live next door to each other, out in the country, and I'd play in his yard a lot, because he had puppies, and he took me to visit his bees. Whenever Auntie needed a babysitter, she asked Quinlan or Aayla to do it since she knew and trusted them, and Aayla needed pocket money."

"This is so unnecessarily complicated," Cody mutters.

"It is!" Ahsoka chirps. Her grin is far too sharp. "So, this one time, Aayla was watching me when I was fourteen, and she was just helping me with my physics homework. BAM, the door slams open, and in stumbled Skyguy with his arm missing. I've never met him before, and my first introduction is him shortly after he's gotten an unplanned amputation."

Anakin, on the other side of the room, giggles. Obi-Wan just sighs. The Fett brothers appear to be in the land of 'horrified fascination.'

Ahsoka revels in it. "There's blood everywhere, I'm screaming, Aayla's panicking, Anakin's halfway to unconscious and insisting we can't call the hospital, and nobody can get Obi-Wan on the phone. Quinlan's in another country, and Auntie Shaak and Uncle Plo are at a movie, so they've both got their cellphones off. Tholme was faking his death at that point to get away from an incident with the Irish Mob, so we didn't even try him."

"What the actual fuck," Rex breathes.

Ahsoka continues with relish. "We get Bant to pick up, and she's there an hour later with Padme, because Padme knows how to drive the way Skyguy does, and the entire drive there is just Auntie Bant on speakerphone telling Aayla how to stop the bleeding and get him stabilized while Padme's screaming at traffic at the top of her lungs."

"I owe Aayla a fruit basket," Anakin muses aloud. "The anniversary of her saving my life is coming up, it's warranted."

"Five years, baby!" Ahsoka crows. She fist-pumps.

Obi-Wan just drops his head into his hands. "You're killing me, children."

Anakin shrugs, grinning. "You know, I think Fett Senior might have been involved in that fight."

"My shitty dad cut off your arm?" Rex demands.

"No, I think he was busy fighting the Interpol guy," Anakin says. "But he was definitely there. I think. Blood loss kinda got to me after a bit, but I'm pretty sure Jango Fett was there, and also Boba might've been hiding in the getaway car?"

"I need another glass," Cody mutters. He doesn't stand up, though.

"Wait," Rex says. "So who cut off your arm?"

Anakin shrugs with an unsure noise. "Someone tried to convince me it was Grandpa Yan, but he was in the middle of a court case in Italy for some kind of parole violation when it happened, so he had an alibi."

"...did he actually violate parole?" Cody asks, and Obi-Wan thinks he looks like he doesn't know if he actually wants an answer.

Ahsoka shrugs. So does Anakin. Obi-Wan carefully looks at a spot behind Cody, and doesn't explain anything about wine tastings used as covers for illicit arms deals.

"The arm?" Rex prompts, sounding a little desperate to get back to the question he likely thinks is the most important.

"I still say it was Skeevy Sheev," Ahsoka chimes in.

"It wasn't Palpatine," Anakin snaps.

"Your creepy older friend who took you to operas and gives you fancy gifts and knows way too much about swords who was conveniently there to talk to the police and cover for you so you didn't get arrested for getting in the middle of a gang war in the first place, yes," Ahsoka says, dropping into a chair and sighing dramatically. "The guy who definitely hasn't been trying to convince you for a year and change that your wife is cheating on you with your older brother."

"Ahsoka!"

"What? He is."

"Anakin," Rex says, "your life sounds like a trainwreck."

"I'm not going to assume a frail, elderly man cut my arm off!" Anakin protests. "Even if he wanted to, he doesn't exactly have the muscle for it!"

"Grandfather's older," Obi-Wan points out, even though he knows it won't help. "And he definitely still could."

"Ha!" Ahsoka shouts.

"He could have hired someone?" Cody suggests. "Doesn't need to do it himself, if he has enough money."

Obi-Wan has a sneaking suspicion that Cody is deliberately stirring the pot as revenge for Anakin sending him eighty-seven cat memes inside an hour during last night's dinner.

"You all suck," Anakin declares. "Also, what the hell do you mean 'knows way too much about swords,' Ahsoka? You know way too much about swords!"

"Yeah, but I'm like ninety-percent sure that his antiques are Prussian and mid-century German military officer dress uniform relics, and pairing that with the Nazi pistols he's got on display--"

"He's just a history buff! And his family's German, of course he prioritizes that region, it's not like he doesn't have Russian or French or English antiques in there too, it's all sides of the war and--"

"I'm just saying he's almost definitely sending me sketchy glances like he thinks I'm planning to steal the silver on the three occasions you've had me with you when you stop by, and I'm pretty sure it's got less to do with my criminal record and more to do with me being, you know, not white."

Anakin looks ready to blow, so Obi-Wan interrupts. "Ahsoka, you were explaining how Anakin passing out on Aayla and scaring us all half to death led to your friendship?"

Ahsoka blinks at him, and then sticks her tongue out at Anakin and turns back to the chart. "So basically, Skyguy had to recuperate in Uncle Plo's living room for a week or two, and I kept showing up to bother him because he was bored and nobody would give him a laptop for 'security reasons,' because he had to lay low and stuff. He made me help him sketch out designs for a prosthesis and do all the writing for the math he had to do for the 3D printer, and we got to chatting."

Ahsoka hops up and back onto a table, legs swinging below her. "I decided he was cool and started following him around while he was getting used to only having one hand, mostly because I was bored. He showed me how to hotwire a car, and explained the best places to put a bug if you were looking to make it sneaky, and he picked my pocket to show off so many times when he was walking around Uncle Plo's house that I made him teach me that, too. And, uh, then Aayla found out and they got into a shouting match about it and decided they both needed to teach me parkour so I could get out of any mess I got myself into, since I was obviously going to follow them into a life of crime."

"And you did," Anakin says, far too proudly. "You're the best thief in this half of the country."

"Only because Aayla moved out east."

Anakin rolls his eyes and pulls Ahsoka into his side, digging his knuckles into her skull. "Best thief! You are the best thief! Be proud of yourself!"

"Let go!"

"Never!"

Obi-Wan sighed heavily and rubbed at his forehead. "Children, please."

"You're not my dad," Ahsoka growls out at him. "Skyguy, I'm going to bite you!"

"Good luck, the only arm you can access is the one that's going to break your teeth."

Ahsoka shrieks in outrage and stomps on Anakin's instep.

It's almost funny, for all that Obi-Wan's seen it play out a million times before, but the really interesting part is seeing Rex's look of fond dismay.

Obi-Wan thinks he might be adding a branch out to the Fetts soon. He's not actually sure if Rex is interested in Anakin or Ahsoka, and he's smack dab between them in age, so that's not a help either, but... well. The expression is familiar enough.

"Please tell me you don't match-make," Cody mutters to him.

"No, I plan to let the pieces fall where they will," Obi-Wan responds, just as low, and far more amused. "I'm simply trying to predict where those landings are to be."

Cody looks at him, and then back at the roughhousing trio, and sighs heavily. "You know, I really didn't think that you technically being minor royalty was going to be the least convoluted thing in your story, Obi-Wan."

He laughs, because it's true. "I'm first in line to inherit the title, since Rael denounced his claim. Nim isn't interested, and Qui-Gon's dead, so... I'm next."

Cody makes a face. "Delightful. I'm guessing that's not a connection we can safely make use of."

"No more than the Kryze or Naberries, I'm afraid." Obi-Wan claps him on the shoulder. "Chin up, I've plenty others in the metaphorical rolodex, all far less legitimate and far more amenable to work with our little outfit."

"Rolodex, really?" Cody snorts. "You're not that old."

Obi-Wan smiles winningly. "You don't know how old I am, Cody. All my IDs are fake."

"Anakin's twenty-four, and you're sixteen years older than him, going by the story you just told me," Cody points out. "I do know how to do basic math, Obi-Wan."

"I had to try," Obi-Wan admits. "I threw a lot of information at you all at once; I'd hoped you missed some of the ages in there."

"I have eight brothers," Cody scoffs. "And literally dozens of cousins, plus niblings, uncles, aunts, and so on. I have experience on this."

"If I asked you to list of the age of every single relative you have, you'd be able to do it?"

"Do you want me to draw a chart? I can draw a chart."

Obi-Wan can't help but laugh. "I'd be delighted, my dear."

Cody rolls his eyes, but Obi-Wan thinks--it's hard to tell in the dimmed lights of the closed bar--that there's a hint of a blush on the man's face. Obi-Wan lets himself slouch to the side, drops his head to rest on one fist, indolent debauchery in every line of his body. Cody does his best to ignore him, but Obi-Wan knows how to smile lazily and blink slowly and draw a man in.

(The whole 'indolent debauchery in every line of his body' phrasing is Anakin's, from back when he was a teenager trying to read highbrow literature to impress a cute girl... and to come up with new insults for his older brother.)

"So," Cody says, with a cough meant to somehow distract Obi-Wan from whatever's showing on the man's face. "Why, uh, why is your grandfather on terrorist watchlists?"

"Well, he didn't initially do anything," Obi-Wan says. "He was just a gay man who didn't hide it quite well enough, and had too much money and too white a face for someone to just call the cops on a faulty report. The Red Scare was technically over by that point, I think, but if a few people made suggestions that he was more loyal to the country that gave him a noble title than to the United States... he received a few warnings, of course, and it could have all blown over..."

"But?"

"But my grandfather is not a man to do things by halves, and instead decided that if the government was to list him as a threat, then he would oblige and make himself a threat," Obi-Wan finishes. "Living up to their labels, rolling with the assumptions, whatever you'd like to call it. It all irked him, and so he made some incredibly questionable decisions to make the government's lives harder. Some weren't bad, like donating to anti-war foundations that were protesting the Gulf War and the interventions in Yugoslavia, that sort of thing, and some were... nobody really looks well on gunrunning, you know."

"For fuck's sake..."

"Indeed," Obi-Wan chuckles. "Ironically, he has minimal opinion on the optimal form of economics, for all that virulent xenophobia and the remnants of anti-communism were involved in the whole mess. He just wanted to create problems for the people that were causing him problems."

Cody shakes his head. "I want to judge that, but you've met my father."

"Jango Fett is, indeed, also not a man to do things by halves," Obi-Wan agrees, attempting to nod gravely but breaking into a smile at the end. "That man is absurd."

"At least he's not dragging Boba into it anymore," Cody mutters. He drags over the fresh sheet of paper and pen that Obi-Wan offers him. "Okay, right, let's start with Jaster..."

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princeanxious · 4 years

Text

The Royal Librarian- Chapter 1

Chapter 1- “The Road to Perfection is Destructive.”

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Ships: Future analogical, future sidelines royality, sidelines established dukeceit, background remile

Word Count: a little over 3k

Warnings For This Chapter: Virgil’s got anxiety and is a bit self depricating, brief mentions of panic attacks, Virgil stays up and works himself for so much longer and harder than is healthy for a normal person in one session, boi highkey overthinks a ton when he’s not occupied. Don’t work yourself for 24 hours straight like Virge does, it’s not good for you.

Minor notes on Virgil’s mental state in this fic: Virgil has ADHD(as reflected by my own life experience) that shows up in different ways here and there, and he suffers from RSD(Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) which drives Virgil’s need to be perfect or fail till he damn near collapses from exhaustion, which also just feeds into his chronic anxiety. Thats all for now!

Chapter one(you are here!)|Chapter two(coming soon!)

Bonus stuff:

-the Rough Library Layout

[[MORE]]

Quiet. Such a word was practically synonymous with Virgil’s existence. The young adult practically grew up in silence, sought quiet spaces out like a moth drawn to a flame. And like a deer spooked by a snapping branch, he often fled from loud groups larger than three. He had been a quiet child, content to lose himself in any book he could get his hands on, reading for hours in any quiet atmosphere he could find. Alone, and content because of it.

So it was really no surprise he picked up a local library apprenticeship when he’d turned fifteen, and was a well-versed and well-read librarian by age nineteen. He had his lifelong friend Patton to thank for making him apply alongside hundreds of others to the opening position of the Royal Astra Family’s castle Librarian position, a year later. And, to be fair? He’d only applied because he’d been sure his resume would never have been seen, let alone selected, if only to simply placate his best friend’s excited begging.

He didn’t account for Patton’s connections as the Royal Head Cook to shift that margine of possibility to reach at least being seen. Though Patton chalked it up to the fact that he’d always talked about Virgil around the royal family anyway, long before the position had needed a replacement. It seemed to be just Virgil’s luck that ‘Virgil’ just happened to be a very uncommon name.

The panic attack that followed after he received a letter that his resume had been selected alongside a select few others for further evaluation had been a rough one. Still, he held out hope that his perceived inexperienced youth would save him, the stress and responsibility of such a serious job couldn’t be trusted with some ambitious kid like him, could it?

And, besides, it’s not like Patton’s constant praises carried that much weight, right? That's just how Patton was, a personified ball of sunshine! It was why Virgil was never surprised to hear Patton mention the royal family and staff by name on accident, or mention a silly story involving them in private, he’d clearly become close to them as the Head Cook. Though, the more he thought about it, he realized that.. Well, it’s not like the royal family had known Patton as long as Virgil had. Patton could be too trusting, and tried to see good in everyone, and well, perhaps the royal family trusted his judge of character over just simple skills. And wasn’t it just peachy that Virgil was lifelong best friends with said ball of personified sunshine? (Not that he’d ever trade their friendship for the world, never. It was just Virgil’s problem that he could never seem to tell Patton no, huh?)

Eventually, a nerve wracking week passed before Virgil finally had his answer in the form of an acceptance letter hand-delivered and an accompanying uniform and granted permissions to traverse and move into the castle grounds, all ordered and signed by King Thomas himself.

Apparently, his suspicions over Patton’s influence had indeed won out.

Three days later, Virgil finds himself silently saying goodbye to the home he’d made on his own, not as terribly forlorn over the loss as he thought he’d be. The small cottage he’d been renting didn’t feel much like home to him, anyway, not like a library did. Still, there was a longing to hide from the large change crashing into his life, and thrice he’d hid under his covers and cursed his weak will against Patton’s puppy eye’d pout. Eventually though, he’d talked himself out of his panicked haze, just in time for his first shift the following day.

“I can’t believe I let Pat talk me into this.” The ravenette grumbled as he leaned to the side. Using his weight and momentum to shift the sliding ladder he was perched on, he slid closer to the next book he’d been reaching for.

“Become the castle’s new Librarian! It’ll be fun, he said! It’ll help sooth my anxiety to work with even more books and even less people, he said, the head cook who works with at least 20 other staff each hour to maintain a steady meal plan for the entire castle staff daily!” The little librarian huffed to himself, resignation seeping out with each controlled breath.

His first day hadn’t been an easy one, and though he hadn’t expected it to go smoothly, he certainly hadn’t expected it to become such a mess. It wasn’t his first time working as a librarian, but leave it to good ol’ Virgil to let life make his days as eventful as possible!

From the moment he woke to the time he had his lunch break, not that he would actually willingly take a break nor need one yet, the day had been.. busy, to put it lightly.

It’d been storming when he woke, and though he was on time to get ready and leave, he’d only realized that his umbrella had broken the month prior. It had left him to make a twenty minute dash in the pouring rain when he found no other options.

He was plenty grateful for a bathroom stationed just inside of the library building entrance, where he hurriedly rushed inside to change out of his soaked attire. He’d been smart enough to pack away his official Royal Librarian uniform into a water resistant bag with a few additional dry essentials, and let his common clothes get soaked instead.

In a short six and a half minutes, Virgil was changed and mostly dry, though there was little he could do about his damp hair aside from comb his fingers through it. With his wet clothes packed away, he made it into the library on time to begin his first very long shift.

He’d already been sworn into secrecy when it came to occasionally dealing with the royal family’s history and artifacts in the future, and with his first and hopefully one of very few ever meetings with King Thomas out of the way, he was officially the new Royal Librarian. And now, also the only. As he was told in no certain terms that the last had retired and fucked off into obscurity before anyone had realized that the library had been left in disorganized chaos.

The old coot had apparently made his own system for everything, and hadn't bothered to write any of it down. From sorting sections to assigning books to genres, none if it clear and often very, very unorganized.

Virgil’s first big task was to comb through the entire damn building and use a new system, one that made sense. He was to reorganize every book and every section, using the appropriate genres and sorting. This way the royal family could actually functionally use the library and not waste time sorting through chaos.

This was where Virgil found himself three hours later, on the verge of a minor mental breakdown as he’d just barely sorted an eighth of the books on the main library floor into the Dewey Decimal system.

He’d had plenty of empty tables at the beginning of his journey, and right now every single one had some few stacks of books on each, labeled accordingly. Aside from his muffled ranting and the pattering of rain, the library was relatively silent.

It was odd, being alone in such a gigantic library. It almost reminded him of home.

He paused for a brief moment, having set down the final few books taken from the bookshelf he’d been working on. He’d gone through just one row of 6 bookshelves, and had 7 rows left to go, and that was just barely counting putting books back in the previous shelves as he went. A whine left him as he realized just how long this project was going to take.

“Fucking fuck.”

Somewhere between the second row and the third, Patton had stopped by to check in on Virgil. He found him hard at work sorting the fiction section on the left side of the building, tables half forgotten as Virgil attached unobtrusive non-damaging number labels to each and every book. Stacks of books lay carefully placed on the floor against each shelf, seperated by label and lack of label.

“You already look so at home, Virge!” The head cook whisper-shouted, though the sentiment was not necessary as the only other being in the library was the librarian himself.

“Yeah yeah, hush you. I’m a bit too swamped for ‘I told you so’s at the moment. So, what's up?” Glancing up at the taller man, Virgil briefly noted a small package wrapped in cloth was held in his hands.

“Can you spare a minute to eat?” Patton giggled, but Virgil knew better. He’d known Patton since they were kids, it wasn’t a question. Or a decision to be made. With a sigh, he placed the book he was holding in its place before turning to the cheery cook. “Yeah, I can.”

“How’s the kitchen today?” He asked lightly, having eaten the light meal quickly in order to get back to sorting. Patton hadn’t commented, nor had he been shooed away when Virgil began sorting again. He contently sat out of the way to finish his own lunch, his original goal having been accomplished.

“Oh! It’s going great today, honestly. Not too many mishaps from the newbies today either, so that's a bonus! And well, you know, making mistakes is in human nature but, they’re learning so quickly, I’m so proud of them! They’ll be taking my place by fall, just you wait and see! And, well, Roman stopped by earlier to swipe some snacks for Prince Logan, his brother, and himself. You know, the usual.” Patton chuckled, and if Virgil had looked, he’d seen the besotted look Patton always had when he talked about the head knight of the prince, he’d seen it a hundred times and was bound to see it a hundred or so more.

“Oh, speaking of,” Virgil butted in playfully, “I’ll finally get a chance to meet this knight and shining armor you’ve been swooning over for over a year now, huh?”

He watched Patton’s freckled face flush bright red, sputtering and then coughing on his mouthful of food. Virgil just cackled delightedly, stepping over to give Patton a few hard pats on the back to be sure his friend didn’t choke.

He laughed again when Patton gave him a pout and a soft “You’re so mean to me, Virge!” Eventually Virgil was able to placate Patton with a gentle hug, and the cook was sunshine and smiles again.

A finished lunch break later had Virgil finally sending Patton off, back to the warm bustling kitchens in the main castle building while he moved on to the next portion of his task.

He quickly found the steady back and forth rythme soothing. Pick a few books up, put them away. Pull a few books out, sort it by number as per their section of genre, set it in the right place. It was a blessing to find that there was just enough of a consistency to the previous plan that he could find up to five to six books in the same category in a row, and each set of books could be similar in subject, usually ending up just one section away. Often was the wayward book that found itself out of place, though he had assumed that these were often books just placed back haphazardly considering their subject patterns.

Often the most scattered and random books had ended up being of a few select categories. Without fail, he found that it would end up being a book on Space and Astronomy and/or Mathematics, in-depth Anatomy of Plants and Animals, young adult Fantasy Adventure novels, or Horror novels. It was.. Sort of odd, how there had been no section for each and all of these books, and yet there were so many evenly scattered. Perhaps that had been on purpose then, not haphazardly placed. But why?

Too busy to think deeply about it, he designated spots fitting each book type, and decided he’d figure out what he’d do with the puzzle later.

It was 6 pm by the time he’d finished the fourth row, and Patton had stopped by briefly to check on his best friend. He watched Patton’s merry expression drop some, concern seeping in as he took in his best friend’s progress.

“It’s almost 6:30, Virgil. Have you had another break yet?” He asked, watching his best friend continue moving back and forth. “Aren’t you tired? It’s been a little under 12 hours at this point, kiddo.. dontcha think it’s time to call it for the day? I mean, you’re already halfway there!”

“Library hours, at least Librarian work hours, don’t end till 9. And yeah, I guess I’m a little tired? But I’m in the zone, Pat. You know how I get when I’m in The Zone. If I stop now, who knows how long it’ll take me to finish sorting the other half?” Virgil rambled, half distracted and still trying to keep a vice grip on his concentration. “And besides, King Thomas said he’d be checking in on me tomorrow.”

“But Virge, you know he doesn’t expect you to have it done in one day. Thomas isn’t like that! That’s why he gave you a whole week to settle in, so you could move into the Library’s living quarters-which you haven’t done yet, might I add!- and get the library situated.” Patton stood stiffly, knowing he was fighting a losing battle. Virgil was as stubborn as he himself was when his mind was made up.

“Look, Pat.. just, I’m sorry. You know I hate to worry you. I’ll try to stop at 10, go home and get some rest, and tomorrow i’ll move my stuff into my new home here. And, i’ll take a break from sorting for a few hours. Okay?” Virgil reached out, taking Patton’s hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze. He let Patton pull him into a tight hug, and didn’t resist when Patton briefly rubbed at his tense shoulders.

“Okay. Just, take care of yourself, Virge, okay? If I find out you stayed out an hour later than 11 pm, you’re gonna be in big trouble mister!” Patton giggled, lightening the mood the way he knew how.

“Yeah, yeah, hear ya loud and clear, Dad.” He watched Patton beam at the nickname, and moments later he watched Patton disappear behind the library’s main entrance door as his friend left him be, reassured. Virgil gave a heavy sigh, looking down guiltily at the stray book clutched in his hands.

“Let’s just hope ‘trouble’ just means a week of disappointed reprimands like last time…”

Hours later, Virgil’s head jerked up from his sorting as a father clock somewhere in the library dinged, signalling 10 o'clock. Biting his lip, he walked to the front doors and examined his options. He found he could lock the library from the inside, and pulled down the shutters. Briskly, he moved to cover each large window with their thick drapery, finding the adorning cloth thick enough to keep the low artificial light from seeping out. He dimmed the inner library lights so the library looked closed, but otherwise the building was still functioning from within.

Unless someone else had keys to the doors of the library, no one would know that the librarian was still stationed and working within. No one could see out, and more importantly, no one could see in. Which meant that Virgil was safe from Patton’s wrath if the Cook came to check on him, temporarily at least.

“Fuck, Patton’s gonna be so mad..” He muttered to himself, leaning against the librarian’s desk with a deep sigh. He’d briefly admired the beautiful desk earlier in the day, from the intricate carving to the beautiful dark mahogany. It would serve him well in the future, he hoped, after the thorough ‘grounding’ he knew he was going to get from Patton.

He shook his head to free his thoughts. There was no sense in getting in trouble and feeling guilty about it if he didn’t do anything to learn from in the first place. It was time to get back to work, and if he was lucky, he’d finish the main body of the library by the time his next shift started. Then, he could try and play it off, like nothing had ever happened, he’d just keep Patton out of the library till tomorrow to hide his finished work.

11 pm came and passed as he worked, and when he looked next at the clock, he found it was nearly 4 am. Tired but determined with only one row left, Virgil trekked on with a new vigor. All-nighters weren’t anything new to Virgil, not in the slightest. He was a creature of the night who rarely got a full night's rest to begin with. And sure, it was rare he worked his body so hard and for so long, but fixations were hard to break once in The Zone, it’s not like he could feel it past the hyperfixation haze.

Patton had often told him off for it when they were young, but as time passed they’d come to realize that’s just how Virgil was. Laying down did nothing to lure his mind to sleep on even the tiredest of nights if his insomnia had something to say about it. Better that he used the extra time to be productive, rather than spend 6 hours tossing and turning in bed, numbers and thoughts crowding in his head, and only getting up more restless than before. Patton often just tried to ease the aftermath if he could help it.

Sliding the last book into place was like sliding a final puzzle piece into a massive puzzle. The triumph of accomplishment had never felt so good, not like this.

Though, he quickly found himself aimless not 10 minutes later, seeking errors to fix and lost books to give a home. His brain wasn’t ready to let go of it’s fixation just yet, but as each second crawled by, he found himself recentering into the real world.

His body ached, and he was exhausted. His stomach gnawed at him weakly in hunger and his eyes watered from staring unblinkingly for so long. He eyed the chair behind the librarian’s desk, his desk now, he reminded himself.

“Screw it.. The Library’s sorted enough, I've got the rest of the week to make it perfect. A ten minute nap won’t hurt, right..?” He huffed to himself as he pulled the window curtains open one by one. Shuffling over to the main library doors, he unlocked them and raised the shutters. Soft morning sun rays fluttered into the connected windowed hallway just beyond the doors. He smiled at the tiny beauty of life, spotting the main library windows letting in the same comforting, dappled light.

Pulling his cloak tighter around himself, he plopped into the chair at his desk, finding it soft and comforting. Leaning forward, he rested his head on his arms, and under the fluttering morning light, succumbed to sleep’s gentle embrace.

Unknowing of the rude awakening that was soon to come.

Chapter two

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kalle-and-lita · 3 years

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"Are you ever going to show me what's in here?" Aiko rapped a knuckle against the hard steel door. Kalle gave her a glance, his brow cocked with a frown on his face. She gave him an innocent look, but he knew the curiosity had to be burning her up. He snorted,

"Not if I can help it."

She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue, "Why not?"

He turned back to the project in his hands, "Because there's nothing in there you need to see, that's why."

He felt a weight on his shoulder, and he hid his laugh with a cough, "But Old Man...!"

"I said no, Aiko, and I mean it. Now don't you have a date with Lucius, or something?"

Aiko sighed, but still rested on his shoulder. Her head leaned into his, "Yeah, but that's not until later." She nudged him playfully, "So maybe you can show me what's behind the door?"

"Aiko, I try not to make it a habit to repeat myself." Kalle warned dryly, he felt his patience start to thin. If she noticed it certianly didn't bother her. Instead she made a face before kissing his cheek and sweeping out of the room. Kalle shook his head in amusement.

It was Aiko's nature to be so curious about everything, and Kalle could hardly blame her for it. Yet, there were things she didn't need to know or see. The secrets behind that door were among many; artifacts of great age and terrible power best kept out of sight. Roboute was the only one who knew what lie behind that door, for not even Cato was privy to the knowledge.

All the better to protect him, and Aiko as well.

A notification signal drew his attention to the data slate sitting on the table. He rose with a grunt, his joints popping as he investigated. He scrolled through several mundane messages until he found a summons from the Primarch Guilliman himself. Curious as to what could be so important, Kalle dressed and left within the half hour.

He greeted passing marines with a silent nod, a silent shadow in the halls all the way to the lower docks of the Maccrage's Honor. It was clear that the Victrix guard had just returned with their Primarch, several marines were already in the process of unpacking when he arrived. He spotted Cato overseeing the guard on the far end of the bay, and he exchanged a passing smile with him.

It was nice to have him home again.

Primarch Guilliman hovered in the threshold of an empty transport, a nervous energy about him as Kalle approached. The old Night Lord dipped his head in greeting,

"Primarch Guilliman, I take my presence here means you found something?"

"Yes." The large man turned on his heel with Kalle quick to follow. He hit the button next to the ramp so the pair could have privacy. The artificial lights of the docking bay gave way to near darkness save for the eerie glow of the artifact.

It was stored in a reinforced steel and glass container that sat square in the middle of the isle. The faceted sides of the decahedron were engraved in glowing runes that emitted a blue and green light.

"We don't know what it is. We found it in a subterranean ruin surrounded by Tzeentch iconography."

Kalle stooped to his haunches and carefully turned the container, "Did anything happen when you went to contain it?"

"The first two marines who approached were hit with a lightning arc and aged in moments. They were dead and dust before they hit the ground."

The old Night Lord hummed under his breath, but continued to observe,

"A few of my Librarians managed to create a containment field so we could properly transport it. I wish to destroy it, but wanted your opinion on the matter before I carried out my plan."

"A smart decision. It's aura is intricately tied to its surroundings and to the warp. Who knows what chaotic energies might have been unleashed should you have tried."

Guilliman shifted on his feet, "Permanent containment then?"

"I'll have to study it first before I can design a vault to effectively seal it. With your permission, of course."

Kalle stood with a grunt; Guilliman considered the artifact for a long moment before giving him a resolute nod. "You're sure the vault in your room will be strong enough to contain any accidents?"

"Yes."

"Then proceed, and report your findings to me. I will clear the halls to your stateroom so you may transport the artifact."

Kalle was left with the artifact, to which he paced around in curiosity. Already he was forming his theories just from the Primarch's report alone. He was careful to pick up the container when he was finally given permission to move it. Any sudden movement could set off a reaction, and the last thing he wanted was an accident.

The halls were quiet, not a marine or guardsman in sight. He studied this curious object in his hands as he walked, eager to get it into his vault so he could experiment. His stateroom was empty as far as he could tell; he sent a quick report to Guillman that he'd arrived and would start his studies. Another was sent to Cato stating he would be missing dinner.

Sure that everything was in order Kalle opened his vault door. He ran a talon down the full length of the hard steel. Intricate arcane lines hissed in esoteric patterns from the touch, dissolving right before his eyes. As the last of the sigils disappeared he pressed his palm into the door and pushed his mind through the steel to force it open. The steel barrier split and opened with a pop. A thin veil of mist swept out from within, thick swirls dissipating with each of his steps.

The room was far bigger than the outside implied. It took Kalle several months of work to complete his vault; a separate space not quite in real space but not quite in the warp. A tenuous dimension where the rules of neither plane really applied. Here he could contain the artifacts too dangerous to destroy.

Or experiment on them to his heart's content.

It was a wide, windowless expanse separated into three floors. The ground floor, which connected to the vault door, contained several glass cases meticulously displayed across the space. Each cases was organized with care, its contents as varied as the next. Several firearms sat in locked containers, interesting to look upon but deadly to wield. Another held Arcane Foci of various designs ranging from jewelry to glowing crystals of bright colors.

The second and third floor contained all manner of tomes and mural fragments. Forbidden collections that he had hoarded over the eons and best kept from mortal hands.

At the far end of the ground floor Kalle cleared off his work table with a flick of his wrist. Papers lined with runes and writing, along with several books, put themselves away as he set the decahedron on the table. He braced himself on the workbench and eyed the artifact. It seemed stable enough, yet he projected a barrier around himself just in case.

Carefully, he flipped the locks of the container and opened it. A static charge filled the air as he lifted the decahedron with a shadowy tendril, not at all eager to physically touch it. Thankfully, there were no adverse effects and he set the artifact on the table.

A thousand and one thoughts rushed through his head. Another flick of the wrist summoned empty parchment and quills that hovered midair, and wrote his theories as they came to mind. Runes and symbols crossed several pieces of paper in mere minutes while Kalle circled the table, his gaze trained on the artifact in fascination. He pushed at it with the warp and it hissed in reply, a thin arc of lightning sparking off the table.

He pushed again and another angry arc sparked, this time off the floor at his feet. It was like the artifact had a mind of it's own, as it exhibited signs of displeasure at being touched and harrassed. He pushed again and the static charge intensified enough that a glow filled the room and the sparks from the decahedron lifted it off the table for a moment. Kalle reached out and suspended the artifact, pulling the warp to keep the ambient energies at bay.

They fought, Kalle and this strange artifact, vying for power over one another. And he was winning, and he allowed himself to gloat over the idea of experimenting on this thing.

A shadow of movement just beyond artifact caught his eye. Kalle hesitated and broke eye contact with the decahedron, gaze widening as he spied Aiko among his collection.

"Aiko! What in-"

His lapse in concentration was all that was needed.

"No!"

A loud crack echoed through the room and nearly deafened him. Kalle wrapped the artifact in shadow and forced it back into its container as a large arc of lightning lit up the room. In the span of seconds he closed the lid and leapt over his work table. He called to the warp, begged it to make him weightless, fast enough to intercept the temporal arc heading straight towards his daughter.

Aiko's scream filled the air as it impacted, sending Kalle off his feet and onto his back from the blast. He grunted as he landed, rolling onto his knees with little thought about the pain.

"Aiko!"

He stumbled into a display case, disoriented from the noise and the impact. There was a loud ringing in his ears, even as his heart pounded away in his chest.

No, no, no...

Your fault, your fault. You didn't lock the door behind you, and she followed you in. She's gone and it's your fault!

Tears spilled down his cheeks, as he found the black stain on the carpet. His heart clenched, every breath felt painful as he fell to his knees.

No, no, no!

"Aiko!"

Kalle cradled his head, his shoulders wracking with his silent sobs. Guilt washed over him in relentless waves. How could he face Cato, and tell him that Aiko was gone because of his carelessness? How could he face all who had come to love her?

Your fault, your fault. The monster once again strikes, some things never change.

"Da?"

A small hand touched his shoulder. Kalle looked up to find bright, half pitched eyes gazing at him and full of tears. Long, thick black hair fell over the shoulders a tiny girl who looked no older four years old. His heart stopped and his blood froze, disbelief racing through him. His own hand reached out, almost hesitant as he traced her cheek.

His gaze flicked to the display case just behind her, a pile of Aiko's clothes and her boots haphazardly strewn underneath.

"Aiko?"

The little girl hiccuped in reply, the sleeves of her top comically large on her slender arms. It was Aiko's top, and this small little thing wore it like a dress.

"Da!"

The girl, no, his Aiko threw herself into his lap and clung to the fabric of his tunic. Kalle wrapped his arms around her and cradled her close, relief replacing the guilt with the silent shed of his tears.

Am I doing a regression fic? You bet your sweet bipbies I am. I have a need for small Aiko and dad Kalle and I will not be denied!

#Kalle #Aiko #warhammer40k #my writing #my muses #regression fic #baby Aiko

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themculibrary · 3 years

Text

Action/Adventure Masterlist

Links Last Checked: August 15th, 2023

part two

Across the Universe (ao3) - antigrav_vector steve/tony M, 7k

Summary: During a mission, Iron Man vanishes. Captain America isn't about leave a man down -- or missing -- on the field. Going after his missing teammate reveals a bit more than he really intended, though. Now, he has to decide what -- if anything -- he wants to do about the feelings he's finally had to acknowledge.

Amateur Theatrics (ao3) - galaxysoup T, 26k

Summary: In which Thor’s primary problem-solving method (a mighty blow from Mjolnir) fails to have the desired effect on a magical artifact, and his secondary method (a mightier blow from Mjolnir) proves to be actively disastrous.

Armed and Dangerous (ao3) - AlchemyAlice bucky/steve/tony, phil/pepper T, 82k

Summary: Bucky wakes up. Tony takes a liking to him. Steve frowns a lot. Also, there is some Avenging going on. And tech porn.

Heroes (ao3) - Overlithe sam/bucky E, 29k

Summary: It’s their first day off in a month and after an exhausting mission all Sam wanted to do was to stay home instead of being dragged by Bucky on a tour of DC’s touristic highlights. But a superhero’s work is never done, especially not when there’s explosions, problems you can’t punch, and a screening of the Greatest Film of All Time.

A slice-of-costumed-hero-life story about loss and hope, the past and the future, and killer bird gifs. (Set a few years after TWS & CA:CW and featuring BuckyCap and FalCap. Also, they make out while in costume, which I feel is the most important part of this summary.)

Iron Man: Unavailable, Tony Stark: In Trouble (ao3) - navaan steve/tony T, 40k

Summary: After what happened in New York the Avengers with the help of Tony Stark are trying to become more independent. The team has grown together and for Steve Iron Man is a big part of that, although he has some trouble getting along with his employer. Then Steve faces a bit of a mystery when Tony Stark gets kidnapped – and Iron Man, who is supposed to be the man's bodyguard when he's not an Avenger, is nowhere to be found.

Keeping Secrets Isn't Healthy (ao3) - slightly_salty_ace steve/tony T, 91k

Summary: Tony Stark adopts Peter after his aunt is killed in an accident. Only, he doesn't tell any of the Avengers about the adoption. Two years later, and the team is starting to figure it out. Or so they think. More and more secrets are revealed as they dig deeper, and the Avengers are finding it just a bit more difficult to trust one another. New villains are on the rise, pushing the team ever closer to their limits.

It isn't long after the team starts to fall apart that Peter goes missing.

Man Out of Time (ao3) - samptra steve/tony E, 39k

Summary: Closing dark eyes he tried to center his wildly gyrating thoughts. “This isn’t happening this isn’t real…” he wacked his head a few more times, “I did not go through a weird tear in the air again. There was no crazy terreract driven machine…and I defiantly did not go back in time.” This was all some sort of dream he was having a nightmare one that he’d awake from in his bed, in Avengers Tower, in the year 2013.

Nameless (ao3) - AvaKelly bucky/clint M, 101k

Summary: A gun is pointed at him before he can even move from his position, the Soldier's metal arm steady in its aim. Clint sighs.

"Nemo," Clint says. "It's tattooed on your wrist, right here," he lifts his right hand and taps his left index finger where his palm ends.

The Soldier's eyes widen. "How do you know this?"

"I put it there."

Spellbound (ao3) - missbecky steve/tony E, 31k

Summary: After their alien hosts witness yet another heated argument between Steve and Tony, they are hit with a powerful magic spell in order to teach them a lesson. Now they are stranded and alone on a hostile planet. One of them can't see and the other can't hear, and the only way back to safety is on foot. And the Forest is full of dangers…

Strange Seas (ao3) - 27dragons, tisfan tony/stephen E, 74k

Summary: Defeating the Mandarin had come at the cost of the Ancient One’s life, and while Stephen Strange was trying to save her, the Mandarin’s ten rings of power slipped away in search of new bearers. Now he and his faithful (if dour) companion, Wong, must try to recover them before a new Mandarin can emerge to terrorize the world. Stephen is prepared for fell magics and formidable warriors -- but Tony Stark catches him entirely unawares.

Tony Stark was sailing to London to take possession of his father’s offices and factories there when his ship was beset by pirates. Now he’s a prisoner with a magical and semi-sentient artifact buried in his chest, tasked with the impossible and his life on the line. The appearance of a pair of sorcerers seeking the ring that keeps him alive is the very last thing he needs.

Thawed Out (ao3) - auburnnothenna (auburn), eretria steve/bucky E, 159k

Summary: He's not the Asset. He's not the Winter Soldier. But neither is he Bucky Barnes. With the help of Steve, Sam and the Avengers, James takes the long, slow road to recovery. Nothing is as easy as either of them thought it would be.

The Chains that You Refuse (ao3) - OddityBoddity bucky/clint M, 21k

Summary: That time Bucky and Clint broke into Asgard.

The Lost and Forgotten (ao3) - Litcraz T, 272k

Summary: In order to save everyone's lives, Peter is forced to give up memories - their memories of him. As a result, he is left entirely alone in a world where no one knows he exists. After finally moving on with his life, a new threat arises, bringing Peter back directly into the Avengers' path.

The Many Doors of Níu Heimar (ao3) - nixajane loki/steve M, 77k

Summary: In the weeks before Thor's coronation, Loki almost dies, not once, but twice. (An AU in which events conspire to keep Loki from the choices he made in Thor, a war is on the horizon and the chosen battlefield is Earth, and the Avengers assemble with an extra teammate and one less villain to fight).

The Rest of Our Lives (ao3) - Sineala steve/tony E, 11k

Summary: It's the next year of the weapons expo, and Steve and Tony are back in Madripoor. Where there is one hotel with vacancies. Which has only one available room. Which has only one bed. Also Batroc is after them again. But that's not really the important part here.

The Royal Circle (ao3) - Darkyu steve/tony M, 25k

Summary: True love is not always a blessing when you have to hide it from the world. That doesn't mean it isn't worth it for Steven and Anthony, though.

Treasure, Explosions and Romance (ao3) - runningondreams steve/tony T, 13k

Summary: There are three main ingredients to a good adventure. The fighting for your life and running away parts are just added fun.

#themculibrary #mcu #marvel #action #action masterlist #adventure #adventure masterlist #masterlists

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huntertales · 4 years

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Part Three: I’ll Get You, My Pretty. And Your Little Hunters, Too. (Slumber Party S09E04)

Episode Summary: The reader and the boys call in I.T. expert Charlie Bradbury to help track fallen angels with technology found in the Men of Letters bunker. However, they soon discover something more in the form of the one and only Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Everyone joins forces to take down the Wicked Witch and her evil plans. Warning: Mentions of past miscarriage, slight twinge of angst if you squint. Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader Word Count: 5,340.

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NOTE: This is hella unedited, oops. All mistakes are my own. I’ll fix them tomorrow. I just wanted to get a new part out for you guys!

Charlie shouldn’t have been excited as she was to be given the opportunity to poke around Dean’s belongings while he tried and searched for the same key the wicked witch was looking for. As if today couldn’t get any better it seemed it was. She noticed right away how the older Winchester’s room contrasted his brother’s. Dean made an effort to decorate the space how he liked and made it his own. You added small touches to make it clear you shared the room like any other normal couple; a pile of your folded clothes sitting on the couch, a book you were halfway through reading bookmarked on the nightstand. Yet you gave him the opportunity to call the space his own from the lack of opportunity he had growing up. You and him had no problem making it your home. It was easier when you had memories to help you lay down your roots.

The redhead found herself smiling when she spotted a few personal photographs leaning against the desk. One was of a blonde woman holding a small child that looked to be no older than four or five, she guessed it was Dean’s mother. A rare moment from his childhood before it turned bitter for the family. The other picture was of the couple from several years ago from the looks of it. She felt her smile grow wider from the way you both looked at each other in the photo, the love you had for one another was clear in your faces. You looked at each other like a couple of kids head over heels. Even after all the tragedy and heartbreak you had to endure over the years, the love you had for one another was still going strong. Maybe it even brought the both closer together. She only wished to find a woman to share the kind of affection and adventure like you both had.

Charlie found herself drawn to a stack of magazines when she caught sight of a beautiful woman wearing little clothing luring her attention when she helped on the search to make things go faster. She quickly realized she had stumbled upon Dean’s personal stash of skin magazines that looked like they dated back into the early fifties. How he managed to get his hands on something like this was a mystery to her. She went through them to see they ranged from over sixty years ago to a little more recently. She chuckled to herself at how the man prioritized.

“You keep your porn meticulously organized, but not—” Charlie picked up the copy on top of the pile, raising her brow in curiosity to hear the man’s answer.

“Don’t judge me.” Dean defended himself from the woman’s playful teasing.

Charlie shook her head and bit back a laugh. She opened up the magazine in the middle, wanting to take a peek at the spread they had back in the day. Charlie found her attention quickly drawn away from the naked woman when she noticed something slipped out and fell down to the ground by her feet. She stepped back and looked down to see it was another photo. She reached down and picked it up, slightly fearful she might find a picture of you in a compromising position for the older man’s enjoyment, only it was worse than she could ever imagine.

Dean was the one who called her to let her know about the technical problem you and the boys were facing that left all of you scratching your heads. It’d been a few months since the last time you got in contact with her and the things you had been up to since last speaking. She asked how all of you were doing and excitedly wanted an update about the baby, you were almost due in a few months. The way the other end fell eerily silent made Charlie’s heart drop into her stomach. She was familiar with the pause between words before giving bad news.

“Y/N, she…she lost the baby, Charlie.” This wasn’t how he wanted to find out. She could hear the pain in his voice, how it cracked from retelling of the news to one of his only friends. His words had come true. What the young woman found odd was the request he had given to her prior to her arrival. “Please don’t mention it to her. We don’t like to talk about it.”

It had been over a month. People eventually move on from these things. You didn’t mention it when you saw her. You didn’t even seem sad. You acted like you had forgotten all about what happened. A blissful ignorance, or you had the best mask at hiding your grief. Not that Charlie was expecting for you to pull her to the side and explained what happened. It wasn’t her right to know the details. She couldn’t comprehend the trauma you were going through.

Losing a parent was an inevitable part of life every child would go through, no matter the age they lose them. But to lose a child before they were able to take in their first breath? It ruins people with a sort of pain Charlie hoped she never would have to understand. She remembered how excited you were for the baby. How it slipped off the tongue when you first met her, the way you looked at Dean when the both of you talked about your future plans of getting married.

Charlie regretted the gifts she had given you, the tiny outfit and the book. They would be nothing more than a constant reminder of a life that was no longer. You might have said your goodbyes and found inner peace with the situation, but Charlie still felt the need to give you her grievances. She wanted to wrap you into a tight hug and be reminded you weren’t alone in these troubling times. But Dean had made it quite clear he wanted the situation under wraps.

“How are you holding up?” Dean momentarily stopped searching from the odd question that came out of nowhere. Charlie held the ultrasound picture for a few seconds longer before tucking it back into the magazine from where she stumbled upon it by accident. “I know you said you didn’t want me to talk about it, but I gotta know. Are you guys okay?”

“We’re hanging in there.” He admitted to her. “It’s been a little while now.”

Charlie should have understood from the man’s short answer and behavior that he wanted to be done with this conversation. It wasn’t the right time to be discussing the past when you had a wicked witch running around the bunker as well, looking for a magical key that opened the door to Oz. She was more excited than anyone to have another hunt filled with magic, it was the very thing she had been searching for since she started hunting on her own. But she couldn’t help herself when her mind drifted away from the hunt and to the news that had been lingering in the back of her mind since the phone call.

“Still, to lose a baby the way she did…” Charlie had a habit of pressing further into a conversation, despite given the social and audio cues someone wanted to drop the topic. Your behavior rubbed her the wrong way for some reason. You were so excited, over the moon in fact. “Are you sure she’s okay—”

“I told you Charlie, she’s fine. You know how Y/N gets with the kinds of things. We said our goodbyes, came to terms with the things that happened. We moved on from it. And so should you.” Dean hadn’t realized the tone he used on the woman until he saw her expression change dramatically. He didn’t mean to lash out at her. Weeks of anger came boiling to the surface without a second thought. And she was the victim. A caring friend who just wanted to give her condolences, all she ended up doing was making him feel worse. “I..I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Charlie muttered. She shook her head and went back to searching, pretending like everything was fine once more. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Dean let out a quiet sigh of frustration from his short temper before going back to his search, digging through a few more artifacts until he found a small box that looked familiar. He opened it up to find the exact key he’d been looking for over the past few minutes. His lips stretch into a victorious smile. “Ah!” He quietly shouted to himself. “Yahtzee.”

Charlie looked up to see her friend discover the key. She shared a matching smile, enjoying the moment, all before it was ruined a few seconds later by an unexpected guest. Neither one of them noticed a puff of emerald green smoke sneak its way into the bedroom from the air vent and transform into the very person they were hunting. Charlie’s eyes moved away for a split second when she noticed something out from the corner of her eye. A gasp of surprise escaped from her throat at the sight of the wicked witch standing behind Dean, giving her no chance to properly warn him from what was about to happen.

Dean quickly turned around and spotted the witch, but he had no time to properly defend himself. The witch snatched the key from his grip, using her unexpected drop-in to her advantage of the situation. She easily flung him across the room with enough force to make Dean bounce off the bed and stumble to the corner of the room, knocking his head roughly against the concrete wall. Charlie had no time at all to properly defend herself. She saw the gun lying on the bed and dived forward to get it, but the witch was faster, hitting the young woman with some kind of spell that would be her demise. All Dean saw when he got his head back on straight was Charlie falling to the ground, a piece of furniture doing nothing to break her fall.

The witch let out a scream of pain when she felt another poppy bullet aim into her chest. Dean stood behind the loaded gun after firing off his only road into the witch in some kind of way to stop her. It wounded her like how Charlie said, but it was not enough to stop her. He watched as the witch disappeared the way she came, and with exactly they were trying to keep from her. Dean couldn’t focus on the trouble he landed them all in. His eyes wandered to the body lying on the ground, not moving. Not…breathing.

Dean crouched down to the ground so he was at level with Charlie. He softly spoke the woman’s name as he pushed her so her body was now lying on her backside, hoping he might be able to see her breathe, or her eyes moved underneath her lids. Anything to show him that she was still alive. He waited a few seconds. He watched her chest to see if it would move. But she remained on the ground, lifeless. Dean shook her body, and when that didn’t work, he cradled her head into his hands. No amount of times he kept repeating the woman’s name roused her back into consciousness. Dean felt his breathing come out into shorter ones from everything that was happening.

The older Winchester picked up Charlie from the ground and carried her over to his bed, trying to get her more comfortable. He kept repeating her name over and over again, despite her only response being deafening silence. Dean gently moved a few strands of red hair out of her face, feeling no hot breath tickle his skin like how he hoped. This wasn’t happening. He couldn’t lose another person so soon. Not now, not like this. Charlie deserved so much better...He needed to find a way to fix this.

“Dean?”

Your voice echoed from out the bunker’s hall, making a blossoming sense of hope fill into Dean's chest. He knew there was someone else in your body that could help bring Charlie back to life. The name that wasn't your own slipped off his tongue before he realized the consequences that might be waiting for him down the road. All he cared about in the moment was bringing his best friend back to where she belonged.

“Zeke!” Dean called out the angel’s name when you stepped into the bedroom, checking out the room to make sure it was safe. You immediately dropped your gun down to your side as your eyes flashed blue, the angel in your body coming to the driver's side. Your body stood in the doorway and stared at the dead body lying on Dean’s bed. Dean appeared to be desperate, fearful for the young woman's life that was no longer. "You have to help her."

Ezekial approached the edge of the bed, inspecting the woman for a moment to inspect the damage inflicted upon her. The angel knew from the sight of her that she was no longer. "She's gone."

"No. You can bring her back like you did with Cas." Dean told the angel, his tone of voice making it clear it was more of a request than anything. The older Winchester was desperate, asking for a favor from the angel after someone close to him got hurt. It was starting to be a habit Ezekial wasn't happy with.

"I cannot keep doing this." Ezekiel warned the hunter.

"Why the hell not?!" Dean questioned the angel, his tone bleeding with frustration at the hesitation of the angel's willingness to help like how he had before.

"I am barely back to half strength, Dean. Every time I use my power, it weakens me, which means I will have to stay longer in Y/N, longer than you want—longer than we both want." Ezekial informed the older Winchester about his unwillingness to do what was asked of him. Dean was left at a crossroads of the choice he was to make. "The witch running around your bunker is very powerful. I can help with the witch or save your friend.”

Dean fell silent for a moment about what the right thing to do was in this situation. He took into consideration the sort of complications he’d been facing since you were possessed by Ezekial, and how your reaction would be upon hearing the death of Charlie. A woman you had doted over since you first met her. Dean swallowed and looked down at the young woman lying on the bed. He made his decision. It might not have been the right one, but he didn’t care. He was doing it for his family.

“Save her.” Dean instructed.

Ezekial nodded his head, “As you wish.”

The angel made his way over to Charlie and kneeled down on the ground so it would be easier for what he was about to do. He pressed two fingers to her forehead and shut his eyes, slowly healing the young woman from her internal wounds that lead to her demise. The wounds were far worse than the ones Cas had been endured with. Dean watched with fearful eyes as your expression changed into an almost pained out as a grunt slipped out from your mouth at the amount of power Ezekiel had to use in order to properly heal Charlie. A few more seconds before it was complete. Charlie shot up in bed with a sudden gasp of air as you stumbled back, landing roughly into the dresser that was behind you.

“Merry Christmas!” Charlie groggily spoke her first set of words after coming back to life. She looked around the room in a daze, not sure what was going on, or how he managed to get on the bed from the floor. Dean rushed to the young woman’s side and softly spoke her name, wanting to make sure everything was okay. “Hey, I know you.”

“I told you to stay in the dungeon.” Dean told the young woman of his previous warning. He felt himself suddenly be filled with a rush of relief at the weak chuckle that escaped her throat.

“Bet you say that to all the girls.” She mumbled a joke, making him smile at how she was able to joke even after coming back to life without even knowing it.

“Dean?” Your voice broke the older Winchester’s concentration from Charlie, making his eyes wander over to you to see that you were coming back around as well. Both of you not having a single clue of the events that took place just a minute ago. “What the hell just happened?”

“The witch—the witch was about to put a whammy on me, and, uh, Charle jumped in front.” Dean explained the situation to you, the lie slipping off of his tongue without a second thought. He gave the young woman a proudful smile at her heroic move. "She got zapped, and then the witch got the drop on you."

“Okay. This has been happening to me way too much.” You muttered to yourself at your clumsy behavior. You rubbed the back of your head from the rush of pain you felt from getting back up to your feet. You have been off your game for weeks now since the trials. It wasn’t like you to be so lousy. Despite your rusty hunting skills all of you were somehow still in one piece. “Then why aren’t we dead?”

“That’s a good question.” Dean agreed with you, shrugging his shoulders. He quickly thought of an excuse that might help fill in the gaps and keep you from growing suspicious. “I clipped her with a poppy bullet. She got the key. I think she’s gone.”

“No, she’s wounded.” Dorothy came out of nowhere to correct the man with some good news. She rushed down the hall and stopped in the doorway with Sam catching up to the woman a few seconds later. "We should still have some time. She could still be in the air vents."

“No. No, no. She’s right. We—we have to—we—” Charlie foolishly thought she was capable of swinging her legs off the bed and standing up without a problem. Dean managed to stop the woman from crashing to the floor when her body involentarly tipped forward.

“Just go.” Dorothy told you and the boys. “We’ll catch up.”

“My gun’s over there.” Charlie pointed over to the desk you were standing next to you. You saw it was exactly where she was, lying on top of boxes that were stacked on one another. “There’s one bullet in it.”

You warned the two women to be careful and made your way out into the hall with the boys, handing the gun over to Dean so he could have another round to defend himself if all of you came into contact with the witch again. The three of you cautiously made your way through the bunker, peeking down every hall and looking over your shoulder to make sure the witch didn’t get the drop on you again. The next time you came in contact with her you wouldn’t be as lucky.

The mystery to how you were even still breathing after your first run in with her, along with the events that landed you with a dull ache in the back of your head was starting to make you feel frustrated. You remembered making your way into Dean’s room and then waking up on the floor, everything in between was blank. It was happening to you frequently. And it was more than just a few minutes at a time on hunts. Bits and pieces from months were gone. Sometimes you tried to think about the trials, but you couldn’t remember. You wondered if your mind repressed them in some sort of attempt to protect yourself from dealing with the pain you endured. But now that it was happening more frequently...you were hearing things, it was starting to make you worried.

“Who’s Zeke?” You knew it wasn’t the proper time to drop a question on Dean when you turned a corner and followed behind the older man as his brother led. He gave you a confused look at the name you thought he might have never heard before. You swore you heard it. “When I came into your room, before I got zapped,” You pointed your gun at an empty room when you passed by another one, only to move on to the next. “I thought you said the name Zeke. Who’s that?”

"Um..." Dean mentally cursed at himself for the dilemma he found himself in. Sam turned his head slightly to look over his shoulder at his brother, wondering what kind of trouble he'd gotten himself into this time. And what excuse he was going to use in order to keep from the situation escalating. "I think you're still a little punchy, sweetheart. You and Sammy head for the front. I'll meet you two in the library."

You were disappointed from the answer you were given by Dean. You expected his response to be drastically different from what you were given...

You thought to yourself. Maybe he was right. You had been out of it for the past few weeks. You had been so stranger to the sort of tricks your mind was able to play on you. You let out a quiet sigh and followed behind the young man as you made your way to the front entry of the bunker in some kind of hope you might be able to find the witch before it was too late.

You and Sam made your way into the war room and cautiously looked around to make sure the coast was clear once more. The only people that were around so far were just the two of you. You lowered your gun slightly and looked over at the younger Winchester, remembering the conversation you had overheard when you were catching up with them after splitting up from Charlie and Dean. The both of them were discussing homes, and the lack of importance it was to them. A strange subject for the both of them to bond over. You still didn’t understand why Sam was still hesitant about letting himself feel comfortable enough to call the bunker his home. You knew he had a rough childhood of sleeping in the backseat of the Impala and strange motel rooms. But this was good as it was going to get for the both of you. Hell, it was better than either one of you could have hoped to call home for your family.

“Why haven’t you moved in?” You understood your question was poorly timed when you spoke it out loud, bringing up a conversation the younger Winchester really didn't feel like discussing right now

“Is now really the time for this, Y/N?” Sam’s tone made sure to reflect his annoyance at your conversation topic you butted heads over just a few hours ago.

“Well, I’m just asking.” You muttered in your defense.

“Look, I never had what you had with your family, okay? Or Dean for that matter.” Sam decided the truth was the most important answer to lead with. You stopped in your tracks and gave him a confused look at his response. “I don’t have any memories of home. And whenever I’ve tried to make a home of my own, it really hasn’t ended well.”

“Yeah, but a lifetime of abandoned buildings and crappy motel rooms. Not to mention living in a house all by your lonesome wasn’t exactly paradise on my part. I mean,” You let out a sigh and looked around at the bunker with all of its glory that you felt it offered. “This is about as close to home we’re gonna get as a family, and it’s ours. Why can’t you make this place yours?”

Sam found himself overwhelmed with the need to give you a reason why. He wanted to tell you the truth about how he tried to make the bunker a home, and for a little while it did. He psyched himself up with the reality of dealing with another human to the bunch. A small baby that would fill the quiet bunker halls with their cries and laughter. Make you and Dean panic when they got to the age where they started crawling, leading you to find out the dangerous things they could get their hands on in the bunker. You even picked out a room for that baby, expecting to have the chance around this time to take out all the old furniture to make it a nursery. Sam was honestly excited for the things that were to come that would make it truly feel like home. But all he felt now when he passed by that room was pain.

“I tried, okay?” Sam managed to speak out three words that might help you understand. Only it caused you to look at him with even more confusion. The look you gave him was clear; you wanted to know why. What was the reason that he couldn’t call the bunker home? He hated himself for lying to you. He hated how easy it was. “I tried for months. But I can’t force myself into believing something that doesn’t feel right.”

“I’m gonna go check on your brother, see what’s taking him so long.” You said. You took a few steps backwards, trying to hide your disappointment in hearing what you thought was the truth. It was the tip of the iceberg for the reason Sam was giving you. But you didn’t know that. “Holler if you see the witch. I’ll be back.”

Sam let out a frustrated sigh from the conversation veered into a direction he hoped wouldn’t have gone in. He should’ve known better than to think you might leave a conversational topic alone without being given the full reason. It was enough to drop it once and for all.

You retraced the steps you thought Dean might have taken, wondering what was taking him so long to catch up with the both of you. You kept thinking about Sam’s reasoning for not thinking the bunker of home as you had hoped. He pressured Dean to stay here permanently. He was over the moon to discover what this place had to offer. You guessed he couldn’t miss something he never really had. It broke your heart. You could only wish that one day Sam might be able to change his mind and find a reason to call this place his own.

When you ended back up where you split up with Dean without finding a trace of the man, you gave up on the search, deciding instead to make it back to the library where you agreed upon to meet up. You found it odd as you made your way back that you hadn’t found a trace of the witch anywhere around here. Most likely she was around here, trying to open up the door to Oz. But not without taking care of you.

You found yourself stopping in your tracks when you stumbled upon a sight of your worst fear in the war room. The witch had found the boys. She had an arm wrapped around Sam’s neck and a finger pressed against Dean’s forehead, doing something to the both of them that didn’t kill them. But put them under her spell. You mumbled a curse word underneath your breath before you booked it out of there, needing to find Dorothy and Charlie before it was too late.

You looked everywhere for the two women; Dean's bedroom, Sam's, yours. Anywhere that was close by. You managed to send off a text to Charlie in some kind of hope that she would respond as you raced around the bunker, trying to dodge the witch and the two men under her spell. You didn't know what she had done to them, and you really didn't want to find out. Luckily the red head answered your text, leading you to somewhere you didn't expect to go, a little secret you had kept to yourself since discovering it—the garage.

"Y/N!" Charlie shouted your name with excitement when she spotted you running up the stairs, and out of breath for that matter. "You didn't tell me this place had a garage!"

“Sorry. Slipped my mind. We sort of have more pressing matters." You didn’t mean the sarcasm that slipped off your tongue. You made your way to the women when Dorothy was busy rummaging around her motorcycle, looking for something. You furrowed your brows when you saw her pull out what appeared to be a severed mechanical head. “Is that..”

“Yeah. He didn’t make it out.” Dorothy said, hinting of the poor Tin Man’s demise. You watched as she frantically searched through her bag until she pulled out exactly what she was looking for. A pair of ruby red slippers. “Yes!”

“I don’t believe it.” Charlie laughed at the sight of the famous shoes. “Did you really walk down a brick road in these?”

“No. I never actually wore them. Seemed kind of tacy wearing a dead woman’s shoes.” Dorothy said. “Plus, I’m no good in heels, you know?”

“I don’t suppose we could pop those on and wish the witch away?” You wondered.

“Sorry. Another thing the books got wrong.” Dorothy said. You rolled your eyes in annoyance from how these sorts of things could never be easy as you wanted. “But, like the poppies, these have magic from Oz—sharp magic.”

“Death by shoe? Huh.” You examined the shoes both of the women were holding, the very thing that was going to kill the wicked witch. “Well, that’s not the first time I’ve seen that.”

“There you are.”

You quickly turned around at the sound of a deep, growling voice coming from behind you. You gritted your teeth from how quick they were able to find you, despite the goose chase you had to deal with before finding them here. Charlie didn’t seem to figure out what the problem was.

“Was that your Batman voice?” Charlie asked the boys, smiling to herself at the impression she thought was funny. You quickly whipped out your gun and pointed it at them when you saw their eyes glow an emerald green. “That’s definitely not your Batman voice.”

“It’s her.” You told them, pointing the weapon at the boys when they started to approach you. “I saw her possess them.”

“I’ve missed you my pretty.” The witch used Sam’s body to pass on the message to Dorothy, smiling at the trouble all of you landed yourself into. “Killing you a second time will be just as sweet as the first.”

“Guys, I know you’re in there.” You tried to somehow speak to them, hoping your voice might be able to reach them before they could do something stupid at the command of the wicked witch. "Dean, don't make me hurt you. I don't want to do this."

“Oh, but I do.” You suddenly felt a grip around your throat with a tight enough of a grip to cut off any oxygen you tried to breathe in from the unexpected attack from Dean’s hand. He used what strength he had against you to his advantage to get you out of way, even momentarily. The man tossed you across the room without much of a care where you landed. His focus landed on the red head that stood before him, looking rather terrified at what he just did.

“Dean, come on.” Charlie hoped there might be a way to speak to the man, despite her doubts when you miserably failed. “If she opens the door, she’s going to destroy Oz.”

Charlie miserably failed when Dean grabbed a hold of her and roughly shoved the woman into a window, shattering the glass into pieces. She was pinned into place with no real chance out of this. Charlie knew what kind of skills and strength Dean he could use to hurt her if she didn’t find a way to get out of his grip before it was too late.

“I have no intention of escaping to Oz.” The witch said. Charlie watched as Dean’s lips stretched into a smirk as Sam told them about her true plans she had all along. “I’m going to bring my armies here.”

[Next Part]

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churchyardgrim · 3 years

Note

#2 from the d&d ask meme? it is a fantastic question

before they met their party, what was their main goal?

oooo excellent opportunity to plug my boy’s four page backstory that i just realized i never posted here!

tldr Silas wants to study a perfect immortal in order to defeat death, bc death insulted him once and he never got over it hghdfg

Silas Edelhart has a problem. That problem is death.

He was born to minor nobility, old money making use of their hereditary ambition to generate new money on the merchant routes, and he was lucky enough to not be his father’s preferred heir; he was allowed to take to academia, or else join some priesthood and curry favor with the lesser sons of other noble houses. He chose academia.

He was enamored with it. The libraries! The minds to learn from. The men. The women! The men. The only disappointment was that apprentice physicians did not get invited to many parties, something Silas was hard at work remedying when he was presented with an unwittingly significant patient.

A farm hand from outside the city had been delayed in reaching them for medical care, and his injuries - an accident with a plow, they were told - had gone gangrenous. He was insensible with fever, and would have lost the leg even if his people hadn't taken so long in getting him to the medics; as it was, despite amputation and efficient treatment for blood poisoning, he expired overnight, in Silas's care.

Silas was crushed. He had done everything right, double and triple checked his protocols, and still the man had died. “No one blames you, of course,” one of the senior physicians said to him, “these things simply happen.”

Maybe they ‘simply happened’ to other people, Silas thought bitterly, but he was better than that. He had decided the man would live, and his performance had been flawless! The terminity of a mere natural law to stand in the way of his will was intolerable. Incensed, Silas threw himself at his studies, dead set that it should never happen again.

Resurrection magic wasn't what he was after initially; he only wanted to keep the living where they were. But he found quickly that the popular consensus was that healing magic could only do so much, and most simply accepted its failures as they did any other misfortune. So he hunted out spells to wrench the dead back, hidden and fragmented in books his instructors only grudgingly let him read. Time would tell if they would be enough, however; none of the accounts of their use he had read gave any indication of the effects being permanent. It would be so embarrassing, to put so much work into defying death only to have his prize killed in a careless accident! He would not settle for anything less than complete immunity from death.

His practice only pushed him deeper into this conviction; plenty of his patients lived, much improved from treatment, but a few still died despite his efforts, reigniting his rage at death every time. He began to get a reputation for it, and some of his peers started tactfully funneling away those patients that seemed likely to die with or without medical care, to spare themselves his rants. Many of them thought his anger came from an insult to his skills, but this was all wrong; he knew his skills were exceptional, the failure was not his.

It is the gods’ fault, Silas decided. The gods had set this wretched law in place, to kettle and humble mortal creatures. But... no, the gods themselves are yet subject to death, have died in scores. So, death is a greater power than even them.

But in one book, ill-used and forgotten, Silas found mention of a god returning from death. A resurrection on a divine scale. And once that possibility had revealed itself, the hints between the lines of other books made themselves apparent; someone had performed that resurrection, exercised mastery over death in such a way that it left Silas’s mouth watering. How? How had it been done?

The next few months of frantic research and evasion - the concern from his tutors was enough to warn him that no one wanted him to go looking for this - led him eventually into the university’s vaults. To a broken-legged construct, dormant, containing a withered, desiccated hand. Not the hand of the godly resurrectionist, no, but the hand of someone who, certain books implied, might have been a devotee of that individual. A relic of a necromantic saint.

Silas stole it, of course he did. Made use of a debt owed by an engineer of the local guilds to repair the construct housing, and treated it as a treasured prize. Such mysteries, opening to him now with the artifact’s communion; he graduated quickly from books to practice, retreating into his own rooms to make frogs twitch and test ancient ideas on the animation of flesh. He took on fewer and fewer patients, withdrew from the society of his peers… for the most part.

Sera Mournleaf was brilliant. Sera Mournleaf was intense. And some days, Sera Mournleaf was the only thing that could distract him from his work. An elf with connections, she did him many favors in getting him subjects to work on, meat with which to test his theories, and had an insightful and sparkling mind with which to discuss the less publicly acceptable aspects of spitting in the face of death. So what if she stayed up later than him some nights, reading and rereading his notes. So what if every time she visited her aging human father she came back slumping with worry. He cannot expect things to be about him all the time!

Besides, he had little focus to spare for things not his research, now. He had been forced to take up the shovel himself, more than once, to find fresh bodies that would be more difficult to trace back to him - they keep a close eye on the university morgue, he learned better than to try that more than once. And he had had no small success, stripping corpses of their unnecessaries and stitching the most promising parts to one another, speaking to his prized relic with equal parts demand and prayer.

The results infuriated him at first. Lurching, wretched things, no better than flesh constructs, most of them had to be destroyed; that shriveled hand granted Silas holy fire as easily as it had clues to the resurrectionist arts. But he persisted, and grew to view them as necessary stepping stones towards a greater perfection. He grew more bold, more reckless, and felt himself forever on the verge of a cataclysmic revelation.

It was not to be. He was found out. The right word in the right ear brought the law crashing down on his shoulders, and he watched them burn his experiments with a guardsman kneeling on his back. It was broken, all of it, his research carted away in boxes (fewer boxes, maybe, then he thought there should have been), and Silas himself thrown in prison to scream his rage at the uncaring stone.

The trial was a farce. Somehow, Silas's family managed to find reason enough to pull half the lawyers in the city to his defense, while at the same time making it very clear that under no circumstances was he to darken their doorstep ever again. In the same two hour span his prospects went from life imprisonment to a mere slap on the wrist of exile, and then summarily informed that he had been neatly removed from the last will and testament of his every living family member. It was a very trying day.

At the end of it he was stripped of his qualifications, most of his wealth confiscated, and ejected from the city with his mouth sewn shut with wire; an archaic punishment for heresy, invoked here merely as sorry consolation on the part of the law that they couldn’t execute him outright. In the proper spirit of the thing, he should have left the stitches in place and let himself starve, and in deference to the bare truth of his crimes Silas endured it for three days before getting sick of the whole thing and cutting himself loose.

He had managed to keep his precious relic in its construct housing, the only thing worth bribing a minor official to sneak out of evidence lockup, and he quickly put distance between himself and wretched Misthaven, thinking nothing but bitter thoughts towards his betrayer. Selfish, horrible Sera; she had gotten cold feet, most likely. Come over all moral about what he had been doing, let slip to the magistrate that perhaps she knew who had been plundering the city's burial grounds at night. Well! She will just have to wait and see, won't she. Wait until he can begin his work again, reach as yet unseen heights of resurrection. Then he would return to Misthaven and enact some fitting revenge, on her and all those who had a hand in ruining him.

(Miss Mournleaf could have argued, the better part of a year later, that his unwitting parting gift was revenge enough. Babies scream like they’re being murdered, and the damn thing looks just like him. She left it with the nuns and got on with the business of saving her father.)

And so he wandered, working as a physician in small towns and middling cities, trying his damndest to reestablish his research in some capacity. But his funds never stretched that far, and neither did the patience of his neighbors; more than once he had to flee under cover of night, for misdeeds real or imagined. Most of these were unmemorable affairs, and only irritated him. Once, the mercenary paid to kill him proved a delightful match, in combat and energy, and the man made an affair of running away with Silas, and Silas ended up growing remarkably fond of Cassian Hellier, for all his unrefined brutishness. They still keep in touch, whenever either of them is in civilization long enough to hire a messenger to carry letters.

A decade passed in this fashion before Silas began to hear rumors. Travelers between worlds, fading in and out of unearthly mist, serving a genuine immortal. He seized upon these threads, passion alight again; a near perfect undead, far superior to the wretched things he had managed to raise back in Misthaven, yes. He would follow the travelers, seek out their master, see what, if anything, of the rumors were true. If they are... he would study, and learn, and replicate the results. And if not? Well, the corpse of even a lesser undead would be a beautiful thing.

#dnd #silas #boyo's a death cleric/graveyard rogue and i LOVE HIM #Anonymous

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penninstitute · 4 years

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Case #9981121

Statement of Naila Pesti, regarding her old dentist. Original statement given November 21st, 1998.

I've never really liked going to the dentist. It's awkward, right? They have you open your mouth, they stick their tools in, and then they start to talk to you. Like, hello? I have several metal sticks and tools in my mouth right now scraping at my teeth or whatever and you expect me to hold a conversation with you?

At least, it used to be awkward. I prefer a chatty dentist to… this last one I had.

I'd been going to Aspen Dental for the longest time. My dad brought me there as a teenager, and I just kinda, y'know, never really switched to another service. Like, sure, it's kind of a chain, and they try to sell you braces or something every time you go, but it was simple enough and I just never really felt like trying anywhere else?

At least until I moved to Arlington, Ohio, and, uh, there was actually a place right in town that I could go to. It was better than driving about half an hour to go to the dentist when I could just walk five minutes or drive two.

I'll just, uh, get right into it. About three weeks ago I had an appointment with them, and when I went in, the place was practically empty. Bare-bones waiting room, there were like, three uncomfortable chairs tucked against one wall and a shitty, wobbly table with a few old, old magazines sitting on it. There was one receptionist, and she barely even spoke to me, just checked me in and told me the doctor would be out to see me soon.

I sat there for maybe an hour. The receptionist was on the phone for most of it. Barely looked my way. There was nobody else in there except for me. There was no TV, or speakers or anything, so I was just sitting in silence, listening to the receptionist mutter quietly into the phone.

I ended up playing games on my phone for most of the waiting time. Started out at 70%, ended up at like, 22%, it was real bad.

Eventually the doctor came out--Dr. Nabatov, I think his name was? Called me in, smiled at me real creepily.

It was really weird. Like, there was nothing wrong with the smile, from what I could tell, it just didn't… sit right on his face, y'know? Like, it'd be fine on anyone except him, maybe. He seemed like a friendly guy! Maybe he just… smiled too wide, or… I dunno, it seemed like he had too many teeth, which would explain… later.

For the most part, the appointment was fine. I mean, it was standard stuff. Got my teeth cleaned, all that fun boring dentist stuff that everyone fucking hates. Seriously, fuck dentists! I don't want to tell you about my day, and even if I did, I can't, because you're shoving tools in my mouth.

Anyways. Sorry. I'm really bitter about that today, for some reason.

Towards the end, he said he had this extra service they do, just as a little thank you for customers, since supposedly they don't get a lot of business these days.

I should've asked more questions. I was expecting like, free toothpaste or something. He said it was free of charge, and I just kind of… said sure, I should have asked about it at least, I just… I dunno, I was tired, and was hardly paying attention already, I don't know why I agreed.

It's… this next part is a bit fuzzy. I remember the first part very clearly, though.

Dr. Nabatov opened his mouth, and ripped a tooth out.

There was no blood. What there was, however, was a thick, oily black substance that dripped out with the tooth. I couldn't move. I was terrified.

He pressed the tooth into my arm. This is where it all gets fuzzy. It hurt, but it didn't open a wound or anything. One moment, the tooth was pressed up against my skin, the next, it was embedded in it, like it had grown from my arm this entire time.

He did this a few more times until there were about a dozen teeth embedded in my arm. Just jutting out, white and pristine, regular human teeth. His mouth didn't look like he'd ripped any teeth out at all. When he smiled at me again, he beamed, and it looked like there were dozens and dozens of teeth in his mouth, and I'm amazed I didn't vomit right then and there.

He told me to be careful of the "implanting site" and said that the mouth would come in soon, probably two to four weeks. Rolled up his sleeves to show me his arms, which were covered in mouths filled with these teeth. He made them grin at me, told me I should be pleased with the results, this looked to be the best one he'd done all month.

I don't know how I didn't scream. I just stuttered out a numb "thanks", got up, and walked out. Didn't even pay. They didn't charge me.

I ran all the way home and pretty much puked the moment I got inside. I, uh, cut the teeth out of my arm. I don't remember a lot of it. I ended up at the hospital, said I'd had an accident while cooking, I didn't… say anything about the teeth, obviously. What do you even say?

My arm itches, now, more than it hurts. Maybe I'm just paranoid about it, but I'm worried that just taking the teeth out didn't do anything to stop… whatever he did.

I… have the teeth, if you want them. I doubt you do, but I'll… I'll leave them with you anyways. I don't want to look at them again. I should've just thrown them away.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

- The Dr. Nabatov described in this statement seemingly does not exist. While it was hard to find records due to a lack of a first name, there were no records of a dentist with that last name working in Arlington, Ohio, around the time this statement was given.

- The statement giver supposedly left the teeth with us, but there were no attachments for the case file found in Artifact Storage. I don’t want to know what happened to them, if I’m being honest.

- Additionally, Ms. Pesti could not be reached for a follow-up interview. She was reported missing June 8th, 1999, and has not been seen since.

- While her disappearance would seem unrelated, it is notable that the only thing out of order found in her home after her disappearance, was the fact that a full set of adult human teeth was found sitting on the kitchen table. No blood or viscera attached, just the teeth. I don’t think I want to know what happened there, either.

#statement #9981121 #tma #the magnus archives #body horror

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mikauzoran · 4 years

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Lukadrien: Nachtmusik Chapter Twenty-Seven

A Little Night Music (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) Chapter Twenty-Seven: Finding a Voice

There was a gentle tapping at Luka’s cabin door before Rose turned the handle and slowly nudged it open.

“Knock, knock,” she called quietly, voice low.

Luka’s throbbing head appreciated this immensely.

“You up?” she whispered as she tentatively approached.

“Unfortunately,” Luka groaned, pulling the cover over his head.

Rose sighed, hiking up her leg to rest one hip on his mattress.

Her right foot kicked back and forth like a metronome.

She was silent, but Luka could hear her eyes boring into him through the blanket.

Rose was like that. She looked small and cute and harmless, but, within, she was fierce, unyielding, and deadly.

Luka reluctantly pulled down the cover to peek up at her with crusty, bloodshot eyes. “Yes?”

She sighed again, voice soft and kind, cajoling. “Are you thinking about getting up today?”

“More important things on my mind right now,” he mumbled emotionlessly.

“Oh?” Rose reached out to brush greasy bangs out of his eyes with all the tenderness and care due to cleaning off an ancient artifact.

A hint of bitterness stained his weary voice. “Like how much I wish I were unconscious right now so I wouldn’t have to feel the shock of having had a limb hacked off without being put under first.”

“Okay,” Rose replied patiently. “I realize that that’s very important.” She purposely left out the “but” before continuing, “It’s also important to focus on taking care of yourself. Why don’t we switch tracks and do that a little bit before you go back to focusing on how bad you feel?”

Luka shook his head slowly. “Sometimes I still wake up expecting him to be curled up next to me, and then it hits me all over how I’m never going to see him again.”

Rose winced. “…I’m sorry, Lulu.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you think you could slip me one of Juleka’s sleeping pills?”

“Luka,” she replied sternly.

“It’s been a few hours. The alcohol should be all out of my system. I wouldn’t take it if I’d been drinking. I promise, Rose. I’m not suicidal,” he insisted, hoping to convince her to help him.

She shook her head resolutely. “Maybe you’re not actively suicidal, but you’re sure not trying very hard to stay alive, Luka. I’m not helping you get your hands on anything that could hurt you. We locked those sleeping pills up for a reason.”

Luka blew out another sigh, running a hand through his thick, slightly stiff hair.

“…Why don’t you get up and shower?” Rose suggested. “You’ll feel better once you get clean and put on some fresh clothes and eat something.”

“I don’t want to feel better,” Luka grumbled, rolling over so that his back was to her. “I want A-Adrien.”

His voice cracked in his anguish, putting a chink in Rose’s heart as well.

“I know,” she whispered, “but if you take care of yourself a little and start feeling less miserable, maybe you’ll start wanting to feel less miserable.”

He didn’t reply.

She stared at his back for a long moment. “Luka, Adrien loves you. He wouldn’t want to see you like this,” she tried.

Luka snorted ruefully. “Well, good thing he doesn’t have to. Ever again.”

“Luka, you know that’s not what I meant,” Rose replied, trying not to sound as exasperated as she felt. “Adrien wouldn’t want you to be like this. He’d want you to take care of yourself and be happy.”

“I’ll take care of myself and be happy when Adrien comes and asks me himself,” he retorted in a mockingly sweet tone.

Rose sighed and fell silent.

Remorse slowly welled up in Luka’s chest, overriding the throbbing in his head and the bitterness in his heart.

“I’m sorry, Rose. I know you’re just trying to help.” Luka rolled back over and tentatively placed his hand on top of hers. “Sorry I’m such a toxic wreck. I just…This is what grief looks like. I thought I was in love before with Honoré…with Marinette…and maybe I was. Maybe that was love, but this…Adrien…he’s my soulmate. I don’t think this is something I can get over.”

Rose was quiet a minute or two more, reflecting before replying patiently, “Lulu, we’re not asking you to get over it. We just need you to get out of bed and eat some real food and not drink so much. We need you to try to go back to school…try to go back to work…not get drunk and nearly die in motorcycle accidents.”

Luka sucked in a breath, not daring to point out that his bike was totaled, so another motorcycle accident wasn’t happening anytime soon, and that he hadn’t “nearly died” in the wreck. As drunk as he’d been when the idea to storm the Agreste Mansion and force Gabriel to let him back into Adrien’s life had entered his head, Luka had still remembered to put on his helmet…the black one with cat ears that Adrien had given him. Luka had gotten banged up a bit in the landing, but he’d walked away from the crash.

“Sorry,” Luka whispered. “I know I’m driving you all mad with worry.”

“Because we love you, Big Bro,” Rose sighed, flipping her palm over under his to grasp his hand. “Can you please shower and put on fresh clothes sometime today? Maybe try to eat some toast? Or, if you like, I can make you an egg or some bacon? Come on. Let’s try to do the bare minimum and see if maybe we can do something else after that,” she urged, trying to sound encouraging. It came off more like desperate.

“Maybe if you get up and get dressed and you eat something, you’ll find the energy to…to play guitar,” she suggested optimistically. “You haven’t played in months, and we all miss your music. What do you think?”

Luka slowly shook his head. “I can’t. I’ve tried periodically, Rose. I’ve tried to get these feelings out of me, to work them into a song, but the guitar just isn’t… It doesn’t work. A guitar can’t express what I’m feeling. Sure, I can play sad, heartbroken songs, but that’s not what I need from an instrument right now. I need an instrument who can scream in bloody, violent agony, Rose.”

She bit her lip, getting up and going over to the far side of his room where the usual assortment of instruments was either lined up or stacked. Her eyes skimmed the organized mess, searching for something to help.

She came up empty.

Well, there was one candidate, but…she didn’t think it would be good for Luka to try the keyboard he and Adrien had often played together.

With a sigh, she slunk back over to his bedside. “Please get up. Juleka’s really freaking out. Just…shower, get dressed, eat, and let me switch out the sheets for you. You can go back to bed for another couple days after that, but…please, Luka?”

Luka took a long, slow breath. As he blew it out, he pushed down the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “All right, Little Sis. Shower, new clothes, food, but then I’m going back to sleep.”

“Thank you.” Rose nearly cried as she watched Luka trudge across the room to the bathroom.

“Sure thing,” he mumbled. At least, that’s what she thought he said. He didn’t put much energy into make his words audible.

“I’ll just tidy up a bit while you’re in the shower,” she replied, already plotting how quickly she could change the linen, pick up the assortment of empty alcohol bottles and junk food wrappers, and clean out the minifridge (surely filled with molding specimens more fitted to a research lab than a bedroom).

Twenty minutes later, when Luka finally dragged himself out of the shower, he found his room completely overhauled. All the filth he’d been working on stockpiling the past four months had been summarily evicted. His bed was made—sheets now smelling fresh and not like Bvlgari Blv. Though, to be honest, they hadn’t smelled like Adrien’s bath products in months.

Rose had left the comforter alone as asked back in September when she’d first tried to wash his sheets.

“Asked” wasn’t really the right word. He’d freaked out when he discovered she’d washed his bedding while he was passed out drunk in the main cabin. Luckily, the nail polish stain on the comforter from Adrien and Luka’s last night together when Adrien had asked Luka to paint his toenails with a Viperion-inspired design had survived the washing.

Luka let his towel drop to the floor. He slid into the fresh clothes Rose had set out for him and then grabbed the comforter, wrapping it around himself, pressing it to his face, trying to smell some hint of Adrien left on it.

He wished he had Chat Noir’s keen sense of smell.

The comforter didn’t smell like anything.

This wasn’t really surprising. Adrien and Luka had shared warm months from the end of March until the middle of August. They hadn’t used the comforter on the occasions when Adrien spent the night. True, they had curled up on top of the covers to watch movies, but there was no trace of Adrien left save the nail polish stain.

Luka tossed the comforter haphazardly up on the bed and trudged out of his room, into the main cabin where Anarka was lounging on the couch and Juleka and Rose were busy in the kitchen.

“Lulu,” Rose called chipperly. “I made eggs and toast. Come eat.”

Anarka looked up from her book, taking in the emaciated wreck of her son. “Good morning. It’s nice to see you up. How are you feeling, Luc?”

Luka sank down on the opposite limb of the wraparound couch from his mother, too tired to go any farther. He contemplated his response for a moment as Rose brought over Luka’s plate and a glass of water.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, forcing himself to pick up a piece of toast and chew.

Luka swallowed and replied honestly, “Like my insides are dead but somehow my body won’t stop moving.” As an afterthought, he added, “I should write a song.”

Anarka swallowed hard, reminding herself that she wasn’t allowed to cry now. That had to wait until night when she was alone in her cabin.

“It wouldn’t be a very nice song,” Luka continued distractedly, spearing a fluffy globule of egg and transferring it to his mouth. “Probably something ultra-serialist. Nontonal. Maybe I could use the twelve-tone method so I really had to concentrate on the composition of the piece.”

A tense silence fell as Luka took another bite of toast, suddenly realizing that he was famished.

No one knew what to say, and all three of the women were desperate to change the subject.

Luka helpfully obliged. “My head is killing me. It feels like it’s about to split open.”

“Because you’re dehydrated,” Juleka suggested. “Drink some water.”

Anarka gave a snort. “You’d think he’d be overly hydrated with the amount he drinks.”

Luka ignored his mother lashing out in frustration in favour of taking a long swallow from his glass.

“Be nice, Maman,” Juleka chided meekly as she set down the towel she’d been using to dry dishes and came over to sit beside Luka, tentatively resting her head on his shoulder.

He tipped his head to the side to nuzzle her hair and then went back to eating.

Anarka sighed, picking up her book once more and staring blankly at the pages, unable to concentrate on the words. She wanted to strangle Gabriel Agreste and give his son a good shake and a slap upside the head.

If she never heard the name Agreste again, it would be too soon. She’d never forgive them for what they’d done to her boy.

“Would you wanna jam a little bit after breakfast?” Juleka suggested, a frailly hopeful tone in her voice. “I’ve got this killer bass line just waiting for a guitar part to flesh it out.”

Luka slowly finished chewing and swallowed the bit of toast he’d been working on. “I’d love to hear what you’ve come up with, but I’ve kind of got a headache at the moment. Maybe a little later today, okay? I really want to head back to bed for a bit.”

Juleka nodded, trying not to let her disappointment show. “Yeah. Sure. Later.”

He turned his head to give her another nuzzle. “I promise, Jules. Later today. Just let me sleep a couple hours.”

“All right,” Juleka agreed, feeling a little better now that she was sure he wasn’t just brushing her off.

“Luka,” Anarka sighed, snapping her book closed. “It’s eleven o’clock. I hate to harp at you, but you can’t just sleep the day away. You need to get up and do something productive.”

“Maman,” Luka groaned. “Not today. I’m not feeling well.”

“Why? Because you’re drunk again?” she huffed.

Juleka tensed.

Luka put a hand on Juleka’s leg as he corrected, “Hungover. Let me sleep for a few hours, and then I’ll get up and listen to Juleka play, okay?” he bartered.

“No.” Anarka put her foot down. “Luka Couffaine, this has gone on long enough. I’ve let you wallow and try to destroy yourself for four months. Now, I’ve had enough of this, young man. I’m sorry that you’re hurting, and I would do anything to make it better for you, but, obviously, supporting you while letting you ride this out isn’t working,” she sighed in frustration.

“Maman,” Luka tried to coax.

Anarka wouldn’t hear it. “No,” she repeated forcefully. “I thought you’d snap out of it after nearly killing yourself on that bike on your birthday, but you haven’t gotten any better. I’ve tried to be nurturing and understanding and supportive, and it’s gotten us nowhere. I am at my wit’s end, Luka, and if I have to be a drill sergeant to get you out of bed and back out there with the living, so help me, I’ll do it.”

Luka squeezed Juleka’s knee gently as her trembling started to grow worse.

“Maman,” he replied in a slightly tense, entreating tone.

Rose quickly wiped off her hands, coming around to the side of the couch. “Okay, you guys. Let’s all take a deep breath, okay?”

“Luka, this behavior is unacceptable,” Anarka continued intently as if she couldn’t hear Rose. “I understand that you’re heartbroken, but this is getting ridiculous. There are plenty of other people out there. Adrien isn’t worth killing yourself over.”

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Luka snapped with venom as he shot to his feet.

Anarka, Juleka, and Rose collectively flinched.

Luka turned to Rose, tersely commanding, “Take Juleka somewhere else. Please,” he remembered to add.

Rose nodded, snaking her arm through Juleka’s. “Come on, Honey. Let’s go to your room. Show me the bass part you’ve been working on, Juju.”

Juleka obediently followed after her girlfriend but couldn’t help casting a worried glance back at her brother and mother.

Once the girls were gone, Anarka sighed, opening her arms down at her sides in a “come at me” gesture. “All right,” she encouraged tiredly. “Let me have it. I’m a hypocrite?”

Luka didn’t pull any punches. “Do you remember when Father left you?”

Anarka winced and opened her mouth to reply, but Luka cut her off.

“—No! You don’t! Because you spent a year blind drunk and moping around the house afterwards!” he accused, jabbing a finger at her.

She lowered her eyes and sighed. “Luka—”

“—No!” he snapped. “I don’t want to hear your sorry excuses. Do you know who held your hair back as you puked into the toilet? Who cleaned you up when you spilled vodka all over yourself? Who got odd jobs running deliveries so we’d have money for groceries? Who figured out how to pay the bills so we’d have water and electricity? Who made sure you ate? Who fed his sister and made sure she went to school and did her homework and took her medicine and went to the therapist and had clean clothes? Who took care of her in the middle of the night when she woke up from nightmares because her father was suddenly gone and her mother was a wreck? Do you know who held this family together while you were busy wallowing in self-pity, Anarka Couffaine?”

With each accusation, she sank further into the couch cushions, feeling smaller and smaller. She couldn’t look at him. He was right. He’d done it all and never complained, never mentioned it. When she’d come back to herself after a year-long void in her memory, he’d smiled and told her he loved her. He’d never held it over her head, never told her everything he’d done.

“Your ten-year-old son,” Luka hissed, lowering his voice to a hurt murmur. “Father abandoned me too, but I didn’t have time to be sad and angry. I had to put every ounce of energy into taking care of you and Juleka. I don’t resent that, Maman. I love you two so, so much, and even though I was terrified and overwhelmed, I was happy that I could take care of you. I was proud that I could keep it all together and protect my family.”

His voice softened. “I don’t resent you, Maman. I’m not mad, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I just want you to remember what it was like when Father left. Now I’m the one who can’t get out of bed and doesn’t want to eat and longs to slip into an alcohol-induced oblivion to make the pain stop.”

“Oh, my baby,” Anarka sighed, rising to her feet, going to him, and pulling him into a fierce hug. “My poor boy.”

He rested his head against her shoulder. “I can’t push my feelings down and pretend I’m okay this time.”

“Luc,” she sighed, running a hand up and down his back. “Oh, Luc. Ma Baleine, it’s all right. It’s going to be okay.”

“I don’t think so,” Luka mumbled.

“It will,” she insisted, squeezing him tighter. “We’re going to get you through this.”

They stood there for a minute or two before Anarka spoke up again. “Why don’t you go sleep a little more?”

Luka gradually disentangled himself from his mother’s arms and nodded. “Could you go check on Juleka? Tell her I’m sorry for snapping.”

“I will,” Anarka assured. She bit her lip and tentatively asked, “You’ll get up again in a couple hours?”

Luka nodded, pulling away. “I promised Juleka I’d listen to the song she’s working on.”

A relieved look slowly took hold on Anarka’s face. “Okay. Thank you.” She watched after him as he trudged back towards his cabin.

Her teeth sank further into her lip. “I—…I love you, Luc.”

He turned slightly to smile tiredly over his shoulder. It didn’t really reach his eyes. “I know. Thanks. I love you too, Maman.”

Luka kept his word, getting up again a few hours later to listen to Juleka play. He said he’d think about a guitar part to go with it. He really couldn’t come up with anything at that point. His head was still a cacophony of angry, anguished notes with no outlet in any of the instruments currently in his possession.

The following day, Anarka knocked at his cabin door in the mid-morning, peeking her head in without waiting for his response. “Hey.”

“…Hey,” he mumbled groggily.

His sleep schedule was completely messed up. After his mid-afternoon nap the previous day, he hadn’t been able to fall back asleep until nearly four in the morning, and he was feeling it.

“You thinking about getting up today?” She waited expectantly.

He groaned.

“Maybe a little later?” she tried. “For a few hours?”

“Okay,” he relented. “Later for three or four hours.”

A relieved smile spread across her lips. “Okay. Thank you. When you get up, could you maybe go to the old storeroom and go through some of the boxes? Maybe just one box?” she revised. “I’m trying to free up some space.”

The thought of expending that much effort made Luka feel exhausted already.

He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he loved his family and could do this one thing to make them worry about him less.

“I can at least start on a box,” he conceded. “I didn’t sleep well, so I kind of want to get a little more rest before I do anything.”

“All right,” she compromised. “Rose or Juleka will bring you something to eat in an hour or two. Is there anything in particular you want?”

Luka closed his eyes and sighed. “Pain au chocolat and passionfruit macarons? Maybe some sour cream on the side?”

Anarka frowned. “Odd choice, but okay.”

“They’re comfort foods,” Luka muttered.

Anarka hummed thoughtfully, wondering whose comfort foods they were because Luka had never displayed a preference for any of those. She had her suspicions, but she wasn’t about to ask. “Hey, if you’ll eat them, I’ll have the girls run to Tom and Sabine’s.”

“I will,” Luka promised.

“All right then. Go back to sleep,” she urged, quietly pulling the door flush with the frame.

True to his word, Luka ate the pastries and the glob of sour cream when they were brought to him.

Later that afternoon, he got out of bed and headed to the storeroom, intent on making good on his promise to start going through one of the boxes of his old stuff.

The Couffaines were all packrats, and the storeroom was piled high with junk, not all of which had actually made it into boxes. Luka decided to start with the loose articles, making two piles as he went: stuff to keep and stuff to give away or pitch.

More items were ending up in the pitch pile than not. Luka couldn’t believe how much detritus had built up in their lives. Who had decided that they needed that many lawn flamingos or that they might someday have use for pool floats with holes in them?

The Couffaines had never been well-off, so they’d always been thrifty and resourceful, careful to reuse and repurpose whenever they could…but, even then, Luka couldn’t justify holding onto some of the stuff that had ended up in that storeroom.

With an exasperated sigh, he lugged an old clunker of a sewing machine over to the refuse pile. Maybe he’d consult Marinette and see if she thought it could be fixed. Maybe they could give it to her or sell it if she didn’t want it. She’d probably think the antique machine was neat, but he suspected she’d prefer to work with something modern that could do zippers and buttonholes.

Luka turned back to the junkheap, eyes scanning for the next most-likely target. He paused, spotting a gem amid the rubbish.

He grabbed the stepstool and climbed up to retrieve the violin case from on top of one of the box towers near the back. A layer of dust had formed over the case, and Luka tried to remember the last time he’d seen the instrument.

He’d never actually played violin seriously, but he had a passing familiarity with how to play it. Although not infallible, he possessed a good ear for pitch and had faith that he could figure it out given time.

They’d had the violin for as long as Luka could remember, and it was one of the many instruments he’d messed around with growing up. It had probably been three or four years since he’d last played.

The violin had never struck a chord with Luka the way the guitar had, so he hadn’t noticed when it went missing.

He carefully climbed down from the stepstool with his prize and set the case on a shorter stack of boxes so that he could open it up and inspect the instrument. He popped up the clasps keeping the case closed and gingerly raised the lid.

In general, the violin and bow looked a little neglected and in need of love, but all of the strings were accounted for, and it looked playable. It was probably horribly out of tune, but…

Luka picked up the block of rosin and rubbed it back and forth along the hairs of the bow, not sure if he’d applied too much or not enough. He figured that he’d probably find out once he started playing.

Carefully, he scooped the violin from its case as if it were a baby and lifted it into position, tucking it under his chin. He raised the bow, not pressing down on any of the strings with his left hand, leaving them open and free to ring as he drew the bow across them.

The violin squawked indignantly, insulted by Luka’s attempt.

Luka let out a short burst of laughter. He tried again, pressing a little harder until he could feel the hair of the bow gripping the strings as he pulled it across.

The violin shrieked dissonantly—as expected, horribly out of tune.

Luka chuckled as he lowered the instrument, setting it along with the bow down in the case to rest while he got out his phone.

He was used to working with six strings on his guitar, so he wasn’t sure quite where to start with four. A Google search quickly revealed that the strings were supposed to be G, D, A, and E. He followed each string up the neck of the violin to the corresponding peg, gently plucking each string as he carefully turned the peg back and forth until it sounded true.

Taking a deep breath, he drew the bow across the strings once more and beamed as a rich sound vibrated to life, high and sweet and resonating with his bones.

He set the instrument to the side once more and reached for his phone again, looking up a finger chart for first position. He found F sharp on the E string and grinned like a madman as the violin wailed beautifully.

That was the sound his sorrow needed to transform the agony of having his beloved torn from him into a melody. His guitar had worked to express joy and melancholy and frustration and amusement, but the violin was the voice he need to give his sorrow form. This was the instrument he needed to allow his soul to cry.

Hours slipped by as Luka experimented, getting to know the instrument and figuring out how to produce the sounds he needed to put his feelings to music.

Frankly, it was rough. Luka had always been a talented musician, easily able to pick up an instrument and befriend it, but the violin was not something to be taken lightly. It was a proud, prickly instrument that knew it deserved respect. It wasn’t forgiving like a harp or piano. It demanded precision and discipline before it would deign to sing.

The violin was a prima donna whose heart Luka would have to work hard to soften. He’d need hours, days, months before he could successfully woo her. He was patient and willing, knowing it would be worth it in the end. It had been months since Luka had wanted anything besides Adrien this much. It had been since August that something had felt this right.

The violin resonated with Luka in a way only his guitar had before, and he knew he had to learn to play her. She could understand his pain like no one else and transform it into something cathartic. She could help him get the misery out so that it didn’t eat him alive from the inside anymore. The violin could draw out the venom.

He just had to practice until he was able to match the instrument’s potential.

It was dark when Juleka went to fetch her brother.

“You still at it?” she called from the doorway.

He didn’t respond.

She wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t noticed her the other three times she’d come to check on him, and she was familiar with the way he went into a trance sometimes, unable to register the world around him when he was caught up in his music.

“Hey.” She carefully reached out and tapped his arm, fully expecting the way he jumped at her touch.

“Juliet! Hey. You startled me,” he gasped, heartrate still in the stratosphere from the scare.

She snickered, grinning smugly. “Yeah, I know. You got caught up in the music. Are your fingers bleeding or did your guitar callouses help?”

Luka looked down at his left hand and inspected the damage. His fingers were a little sore after not playing anything for a few months, but it didn’t look like he’d hurt himself. “Nope. Seems okay.”

Juleka nodded. “Good. Why don’t you pack up and come eat, Luc?”

Luka’s brow furrowed into a frown. “I just ate an hour ago.”

Juleka shook her head, letting out a fond sigh of exasperation. “No, you didn’t. You’ve been in here for hours playing that thing. Come have dinner.”

“Dinner?” Luka pulled out his phone and sucked in a breath when he saw the time. “Oh, yikes.”

“Yep,” Juleka confirmed. “Come on.”

Obediently, Luka cleaned off and packed up the violin and took it with them into the main cabin where Rose and Anarka were sitting on the couch, waiting with the herb-roasted chicken, baked potatoes, salad, and fresh baguette on the table.

“You found a violin,” Anarka observed with a satisfied smile.

“We heard you playing,” Rose added brightly. “You sound great! Well…not at first, but the last two hours you’ve sounded great!”

Luka smiled sheepishly as he headed to the kitchen to wash his hands before joining them. “Sorry for the noise.”

Anarka waved away his concern with a roll of her eyes. “Couffaines don’t apologize for making noise. Besides, like Rose said, the last few hours you’ve been sounding downright tonal.”

“Small miracles,” he sighed, breaking off a piece of the baguette and scooping some salad onto his plate.

“Seriously, Luc.” Anarka rested a hand on his arm, catching his gaze. “You sound good. We’re all happy you’re making music, so go for it. It’s okay if it’s three in the morning. Go for it.”

He looked down at his plate, chewing on his bottom lip, and then gazed back up at Juleka and Rose. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Juleka agreed, and Rose nodded, looking earnest.

Luka looked back to his mother. “Do you happen to know if I have any money in my account? I’d like to take the violin into the shop to get some love. I’m honestly surprised I didn’t break all four of the strings today. I have a feeling I’m going to be playing a lot, so I’d like to get her in working order.”

“If you don’t have the money, I do. We’ll get her playing for you,” Anarka assured, giving his arm a pat before pulling away.

“Thanks, Maman,” he replied, a little surprised at how readily she was supporting this whim of his.

“Mmhm. Now, eat up, Luc,” she encouraged.

Rose reached across the table to deposit some of the chicken onto his plate with a grin.

He returned the grin with a small smile of his own even as he thought about how Adrien didn’t like chicken.

As it turned out, the violin was not a cure-all.

Some days Luka played obsessively. Instead of sleeping the entire day, he practiced the hours away. Instead of lying awake at night, he played mournful tunes somewhat unskillfully.

There were other days where he lacked the energy and didn’t get out of bed, and once or twice a week he still drank himself senseless.

It did feel like things were slowly getting a little better, though.

At least Luka now had an outlet for his feelings.

#Lukadrien #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction #Adrien Agreste/Luka Couffaine #Luka Couffaine #Rose Lavillant #Anarka Couffaine #Juleka Couffaine #Adrien Agreste #Juleka Couffaine/Rose Lavillant #Mikau's Writings #A Little Night Music (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik)

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bountybossier · 4 years

Text

Until Dawn | Morgan & Nic

Takes place the day before the sun yeeted itself. Vampires, snowglobes, the family business.

with: @mor-beck-more-problems

The diary Morgan had borrowed from the Scribe archive had lead to some interesting revelations. First, that the scriptwriters for Final Destination might have been casters with a mean sense of humor, and second, that one of Agnes’ nieces had buried a chest under the homestead shortly before she met a gruesome end in an accident with some clothesline. The homestead had been lost some six years later, of course, but it was entirely possible that the chest remained, and with it, some dirt on what Constance’s deal was, or some artifact that explained why they had been targeted in the first place. And so,scuttling straight from a staff networking dinner at the University, still in her skirt set, Morgan found herself back in the bend at sunset, traipsing through some overgrown grass in search of a magic answer.

The tracking amulet in her hand tingled hot in her hand, leading her towards one of the glorified shacks along the street and around the back. Morgan crept awkwardly into the overgrowth and began to dig, unaware of anyone else nearby. The sooner she got in, the sooner she could get out.

The hunter treated himself to a small six-shooter of whiskey before he left to deal with the night’s bounty. It wouldn’t be a complicated one from what he read over. A palate cleanser in comparison to the other fuckery that poked about in White Crest’s moldy and sea-cured corners. It didn’t surprise Nicodemus that most of the bounties came for shit out in The Bend. The rundown motel he stayed in was somehow the safest, yet still one of the shadiest fucking buildings in that particular godforsaken corner of White Crest. He checked himself over subtly as he walked. Vest on, stakes in jacket, guns on hips, knives in boots and one strapped around a thigh. Holy water in a nice iron flask. The dark didn’t matter to him as he took back alleys and precariously hopped over decaying fences. The place indicated wasn’t too far and when he finally got to it, he nodded an affirmation.

Yup, sure looked like a fucking vampire drug den. Quiet. Foreboding. Sounded about right. He was just in it to get some dust. Except it wasn’t all entirely quiet. He stopped walking and listened. Something digging? He didn’t smell dog or any other type of critter. His senses would be no help. He stepped into the overgrowth with a crunch. If he knew that someone else was there, only fair that he did the same? He continued until he reached the end of the overgrowth and stood in a disgusting backyard. A brow rose as he made a slow 360 turn. He spoke up, voice low and level.

“This your shitty house?”

Morgan yelped at the sound of another voice and wheeled around, shovel raised high. “No!” Wait--that made her sound like she was trespassing. Which she was, technically, if this place belonged to anyone still. But the large scary man in front of her didn’t need to know that. “I mean, it’s not shitty, it’s--rustic! And what are you doing here, exactly?” She positioned herself over the hole she was digging. Until the stranger had shown up, she’d been sure she was almost there. “Weird time of night to be wandering around with--” She eyed the gear bulging from his sturdy frame. Shit. “--all that. Could be dangerous.”

“Rustic’s just a fancy way of sayin’ shitty,” Nicodemus grumbled out as he looked at her, a curious brow lifted ever slightly. At her question, he frowned and glanced up at the house. “...Scavenger hunt.” Was the only explanation he gave, flimsy and half-assed. He didn’t have to explain anything and who knew, maybe she was one of those sympathetic types like Orion? “What are you doin’ diggin’ around then?” Given his own shit explanation, he didn’t expect much from hers either. And that would be fair. What wasn’t fair was the crunch and rustle that had his nerves immediately on edge. Something hostile was getting closer and wasn’t likely to stop. “Yeah, likely could be.” He grabbed for one of the three stakes he had brought with him and immediately lunged, body slamming into a vampire that had started to run up on them. From behind them, he heard more. A hell of a lot more, maybe eight or so. Shit. “God fuckin’ damn it,” he grunted as he wedged the stake in the vampire’s chest, the body poofing. A young and dumb one. Hopefully the rest were like that. He turned to look at the woman and gestured to the house before he started to head up, not moving too far from her. “Fuckin’ A, come on! They ain’t happy!”

“Scavenger hunt,” Morgan repeated, voice shrill as she found herself caught between fear and incredulity. She didn’t exactly feel like doing anything to upset the big scary man with too many weapons on him, but his excuse seemed even thinner than her own. Morgan shifted and tried, discreetly, to reach down into the earth for the chest. “What? Don’t you ever bury things for safekeeping ever? That’s like one of the safest oldest ways in the book.” And if the chest really was just there beneath the surface, if she could just picture the simplest, most obvious way it looked, and pull-- a shape appeared out of nowhere, lunging her way. Morgan stumbled backwards with a sharp cry of fright. Big Scary Man took out a stake and wedged it into the chest as if he’d been doing it his whole life.

She followed his gaze into the dark and-- Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Better to be with the big scary man with the stake than the big scary vampires with the teeth. Morgan sprinted as best she could behind him. This wasn’t how she died, and it wasn’t going to be how she got maimed again either. She scampered up to the house and skidded to a stop, digging her fingers into the dirt and pressing down with her forearm until her cuff was firm in the ground as well. Morgan pushed with all the ‘I really don’t wanna get maimed today’ energy she had brimming at the surface. The earth in front of her dipped and sandy bricks walled the space between the vampires and the ramshackle house. Morgan closed her doors before she could form a whole perimeter. Bricks would never hold for long in the first place, but maybe she’d have a few extra minutes to come up with something better. She darted inside and shut the door, kept running. How many ways to get in were there? “So! Uh, how many of those stakes do you have? And uh, how many doors in this place do you think we got?”

Nicodemus glanced back in time to catch the dirt shift and pull at the woman’s beck and call. Alright. Infinitely in a better spot than he would have been had it just been a regular person digging in the dirt for whatever fucking reason. “Nah, not a scavenger hunt. Sure I had you goin’ for a second,” he deadpanned, a less-than-pleased frown on his face as he started to move through the house. “Lookin’ for treasure then, huh?” The bricks would do what they could, but hungry vampires could get through anything when they wanted to. He grumbled angrily to himself as he pushed open a weak door and it collapsed right off the hinges. Fucking fantastic. “I got…” Fuck. He’d left the one he used outside. “I got two.” He took out one and handed it to her as he checked corners. The house was much larger on the inside than it was outside. He swore in French. Listening, he heard the bricks breaking apart against each other. “Looks like three. One front, that back door, and a side door. Maybe a...” He rattled off the information to her as he pulled open a basement door. “Yup, a basement. That’s not countin’ every goddamn window.” They were shuttered and planks hammered over them but still. He shook his head and looked at her. “I’m thinkin’ basement or upstairs. Funnel ‘em.”

“Two! Okay! One for me, and one for you! That’s fine, that’s totally plenty, definitely not gonna run out and wish we had more!” Morgan was rambling with panic. She was getting distressingly familiar with tumbling headfirst into near death situations; if she barrelled on determinedly enough, her mind and body might not catch up to each other in time for a full blown freak-out to set in. “There wouldn’t happen to be anything super special about stakes would there? Like could you rip the floor open with your big scary hands and use that in a pinch? Is that a stupid question?” Bricks crunched outside as the vampires burst through her wall. Morgan’s brain flitted between her options. Upstairs: a long way to fall. Basement: a lot of house to collapse. Not much of a way out either way. The house trembled. Glass rained down overhead, unseen. Some of them were coming in from above. Morgan gave the Big Scary Man a horrified look. “So, Scary Basement?”

Whatever it was that compelled the world to spin, it truly was testing Nicodemus. He didn’t know how to deal with panicking people. That was the main reason he tried to keep things out of sight, out of mind. A month or two in White Crest proved that trying to keep up with that method would be useless. “Just don’t fuckin’ lose it and you’ll be fine,” he said to her, expression grim. There wasn’t much confidence behind that statement but it was something at least. “Nah, if it’s wood and got a stabby point, it works.” He glanced at his hands, brow furrowed. Yeah, he supposed they were big and scary. Big and scary enough to work against potentially drugged out vampires. He stared at her. “Ease up there, you ain’t gonna die. Probably. I don’t plan on dyin’ so just...stay by me or some shit.” His gaze flickered up at the crash of glass and windows. To the side at broken brick. “Basement, come on. Probably got shit down there too!” He opened the door and gestured in. As he stepped down, a minute-long stretch of French swears flowed out of him at the sight of empty coffins. “Well, that’s just real fuckin’ groovy.” He thought back to her question about stakes. “Lose that, use that.” The basement door cracked open and the first of the vampires started to filter down. The hunter didn’t wait and barreled at the first as soon as they came down, stake in hand.

“Who said anything about dying? You think we’re gonna die?” Morgan shrieked. Footsteps thumped overhead, sending dust down on them. Don’t lose it. She wasn’t losing it. This was only the what time she was questioning fate and mortality in the past month? Was this why her mom hadn’t wanted her in a supernatural hotspot? Because freak falling accidents could turn into chased and maimed by vampires in the hands of the curse? But Morgan wasn’t losing it! She scampered down to the basement, her mind only thinking a few seconds ahead. Don’t trip on the stairs and break something! Don’t run into the terrifying coffins! Morgan didn’t have time to say, we’re totally cornered, before there were vampires coming down the stairs.

“Fucking stars!” She squealed, jumping to the ground. The big scary man was handling things on his own just fine, with all the punching and slamming and staking. She looked at the stake in her hand. She wasn’t sure how she could work up that much force in her arms to make that happen, but then again, there was one jumping the rail and coming at her, fang bared and eyes blazing. “No!” She put out her hands and pushed, not with physical force, but with the energy around her, with her fear and her exasperation. The vampire flew against the stair railing, hard enough to crack the wood. Morgan looked uncertainly at the big scary man. At least she hadn’t been hit yet, right? Then again, the vampire was already getting to its feet and looking several kinds of unhappy. Morgan moved her attention to her stake. How much force would she need to use that again?

“Fuckin’ Christ, no! We’re not gonna fuckin’ die.” His hearing and her shouting forced him to flinch. Nicodemus was preoccupied with the vampire quite literally at hand. The hunter a year ago wouldn’t have thought much of the swarm of vampires, alone or not. But now? White Crest opened something in him, or maybe it tried to put something messily back together with schoolhouse glue, that he had left well enough alone in him. He glanced over at the stranger as the vampire underneath him burst into ash and dusted the basement floor. His heartbeat was slow and steady in his chest even as the swarm of--ten, he counted--fell in line on the stairs. What he wouldn’t have given for a big fuck off spear.

He reached for the iron flask on his hip and took a swig of it before he swiftly closed it back up. Another vampire crashed down on him and took him off balance. Fangs tried to close around his neck but he spat holy water straight into the vampire’s open eyes and mouth. Undead skin sizzled and in their momentary daze, Nic shoved the stake up and into their still heart. Alright. That made two. He felt eyes on him and he snapped up onto his feet. “In and up! Leverage it.” Ah hell, the vampire she’d shoved away was pissed and he was dealing with another one bearing down on him. “Fuckin’ A, take this! Holy water!” He passed over the water to her and quickly knelt down to grab one of the coffins. With his strength, they weren’t too heavy and he flipped it toward the closest vampire to smash them against the wall along the stairs that led up into the main house. Broken bits of wood burst everywhere. He grunted and rolled his wrist that held the stake. His expression grew slightly more enthused. “Yeah, they ain’t gon’ make it easy, huh?”

Morgan had the stake in the air, primed to thrust. When the vampire she’d thrown lunged, she sent it in, full force--in and not quite up. For an awful moment she and the vampire looked at each other, expecting something very different. Fortunately, a small scary bottle of holy water came her way. Morgan popped it open and swung, letting water arc over the vampire and turn its flesh into something much less stable than marbly skin. This was her chance. Morgan knew it. Still, she couldn’t help but whine wordlessly as she rushed forwards and worked the stake upwards as the man had instructed. She kept her hands fastened on the stake and shoved it upwards. The writhing vampire turned to dust. Morgan didn’t have time to contemplate her victory, a vampire was grabbing her by the arm and shoving her against the wall. Morgan cried out and shoved the stake in again. She had to get out of this corner. Morgan reached with her power for one of the coffin splinters and sent them outward to the next one chasing her as she scrambled to join the hunter (he had to be a hunter, right?) on the other side of the basement. At least one had to land, right?

As the vampire on her collapsed to dust, Nicodemus breathed just slightly easier. He wasn’t getting tired but he was concerned they’d run out of goddamn resources. Fuck, this was why he didn’t commit himself to the hunter mentality of protect all from certain, supernatural death. He shook his head, cracked his jaw as a vampire slugged him. He knocked the vampire in the nose and scraped his knuckles on sharp teeth, but managed to use the shock to his advantage as he burrowed the stake in with cold calculation. He laughed with bloody teeth. “Good shit,” he grunted out as she came to stand by him, both equally covered in vampire ash and dust. The splinters of wood she sent out seemed to pepper the remaining vampires and one gave a sharp scream of an inhalation as a particularly large one dug into their chest. He would need to look into some kinda stake launcher if he kept this shit up.

Either their numbers were starting to slow down or they were doing a decent fucking job for a ragtag team. And just when he almost started to feel good, another showed. He glanced up, to a small boarded up window. If that was blown open, they wouldn’t be able to hide from the dawn that would steadily creep up. “Got an idea. Gonna need your help, alright?” He flexed his fingers around the stake and reached with a free hand to grab the handgun on his hip. “Gonna bust that fucker open--” He gestured to the window. “And block that door. A few hours, sun’s gonna come. Take care of this shit. Can’t go anywhere.” He spoke fast as he shifted and glanced back. “Plenty of wood and shit we can barricade with back there, I think. Keep ‘em back.” He glanced at her. “Sound good?”

There was something strange about the Big Scary Man as he spoke to her that made Morgan uncomfortable. Something that was almost warm. It was out of place in a room full of vampires and their dust. But this wasn’t time for uncanny epiphanies or evaluating the guy as anything other than the person helping her to not die. “Block the door,” she repeated. “Got it. Easy enough! Y-you’ve done this before, a lot, huh?” She began to inch towards the door. If there was any metal in the lock, it would make a good start. There was still the wall. She was feeling kinda tired, almost spent. Again. But not getting maimed was always a good reason to blow the magic piggy bank. She braced herself for the sound of his gunshot and tensed to run.

“Yeah, more than I fuckin’ care to admit. Just punchin’ in time,” Nicodemus muttered to her before he spat blood. Without much of a warning, he free-aimed at the window and blew five 9mm holes into it. In the basement, the gun was loud and he braced against the impact of his sensitive ears. The wood was old and hadn’t much give to it, the way that it fractured and splintered outward. Moonlight spilled in. He grunted and turned on his heels, eyes between her and the undead that stood between them, their gazes unsure of where to look. Bracing his gun hand underneath with the hand that held the stake, he spent the rest of his clip hitting skulls as he backed up toward the small room at the back of the basement that could be made into a temporary safe haven. Behind the smoking gun, he peered over at her and loaded another clip. Bullets wouldn’t put them down but they’d be enough to stun. “You got it?”

Morgan sprinted as soon as the bullets were done flying. Guns. Of all the fucking things, it had to be guns. Worst of all, she was relieved he had one so they didn’t have to separate. Once inside the smaller room, a storage cupboard, by the looks of it. There were even some questionable looking cans still on the rotted shelves. She reached for the table by the door and shoved it in front of them. Then the shelves. “Help me!” She said. When there was a sizable pile, Morgan reached down with a ‘this is seriously not the time to get maimed or die’ push and turned it all into a heavy mush of wood and metal that was definitely not supposed to exist but would, in all events, keep them safe. “So,” she said, backing to the end of the room, breathing hard from the rush, “You um, have a name?”

“Give me a fuckin’ second.” The hunter followed close behind and followed suit in stacking as much heavy shit as he could against the door. A grunted string of Cajun French happened under his breath as Nicodemus gently tested the barricade just to be sure. If that’s what it could be called. Yeah, it’d hold for the next… He scrubbed vampire dust off his watch and squinted. Couple hours. Christ. At least by the end of it, the sun would be out and there’d be more dust than he or the client ever asked for. To little success, he tried to clean his bloody and dusty face. With ash stuck in his eyelashes, he turned to look at her with a frown. “...yeah, fuck it, might as well start a damn campfire…” For all his grumbles and French swears, he was too tired to be genuinely bothered by the circumstances. It worked itself out. He sat down heavily and tipped his head back against the wall. “Sure do. Nicodemus. You?” He peered over at her. Fuck, his head was killing him. “Magic, huh?”

Morgan sank down to the floor and sent a quick message to Cece about a change of plans for the evening. She didn’t want her falling into the same vampire trap she and Nicodemus were in, and if this was the brand of fuckery her curse wanted to throw at her now that she was on a hotspot, she should get used to handling herself without her help anyway. She tucked her knees up to her chest and forced herself to breathe evenly. In. Hold. Out. “Morgan,” she replied at last. “And, yeah. Not usually like this, but yeah.” She offered him what she hoped was a winning and ‘don’t hurt me’ smile. “I have an Etsy store, but I can do real things too. Not healing, unfortunately, but if you need to turn stuff into other stuff? Um, I do a lot with rocks.” In. Hold. Out. “What, um, what do you like to do, Nic? When you’re not, um, doing this? O-oh, Is it okay if I call you Nic or do you hate that?”

It didn’t take much to piece together that Morgan, as Nicodemus now knew her, hadn’t exactly seen shit like a vampire swarm before. “Shitty meetin’ like this an’ all, but hell, it fuckin’ worked. Can’t complain.” The fact she had an Etsy store sealed his prior thought and he nodded, a sound of affirmation coming from him. At her smile, he offered a slight frown and a slight dip of his head. “Reckon it takes a lot of you but I don’t know a lot about that whole thing.” The hunter was content to sit in silence but that wasn’t an option. If talking might keep her from assuming the worst would happen, if she even did, a momentary sacrifice could be made. “Can do my own healin’ so I got that bit covered,” he offered gruffly. It was likely she had pieced together what he was and he never felt particularly compelled to cover it. “What’s that? Ain’t that--Shit.” He paused to find the word. “Alchemy? Nicolas whatever his fuckin’ name is?” He snorted and shook his head. “Me? I make snowglobes and…” He trailed. Shit, he really didn’t have any other hobbies. “And Nic’s fine. You good?”

“Alchemy, yeah. And I’m not totally spent, but when we get out of this, you’ll probably be the one dismantling uh...all that, once I zap it loose.” She offered him another smile. “And you’re thinking of Nicolas Flamel.” Stupid Harry Potter, spilling all the wrong secrets and getting everything in a twisted, backwards blender for the world to eat like candy. “He wasn’t that special, you know. Most everyone in my family could do this stuff, for starters. But not many people know even as much as you do, so.” She shrugged. This was way more information about a hunter than Morgan was comfortable with. Granted, Nic’s gear seemed pretty vampire specific, and Morgan didn’t have any reason to protect them. If anything, under better circumstances, this might be the time to ask if he knew anything about pretty blondes who liked to hurt witches. But she couldn’t not think of Remmy. Would Nic be kind if they were in this room with him, instead of her? And yet… “Snow Globes?” Really? “...How do you make those?” She asked gently.

“Yeah, think I can do that,” Nicodemus said with a small nod. He shifted to sit cross-legged, elbows in the bends of his knees as he used a hand to crack his neck. That fixed one issue. He looked at the floor as Morgan talked, not keen on eye contact, but continued to listen. “‘Fraid I only know the name, that’s about it. I don’t deal with, uh, magic much. More that shit and other shit.” He gestured to the noise beyond. Given the circumstances, he didn’t mind offering that information freely. Didn’t care all too much either. Just about everyone he had met so far knew what he was in some way or other, for better or for worse. Magic made him slightly uncomfortable but seeing how she used it, how it had helped… His gut instinct wavered some as logic came through. Morgan could have crushed him with a wave of her hand, mashed him between stone, wood, and dust. But she didn’t. He didn’t want to think further than that. Not right then. The hunter smiled to himself, small and only barely hidden. “Yup, snow globes. Ain’t too hard.” Oh shit. He was actually excited to talk about his snowglobes. That was fucking weird. Morgan might have been the first to ask him that in...awhile. “Do the, uh, lid part first. Glue all the shit down and let it set, then water, glycerin, and whatever fancy shit you want in the mason jar. That’s what I use. Put ‘em together and let it dry overnight. Sometimes use holy water too.”

Morgan nodded along to Nic’s explanation. “Kinda glad to know you don’t deal with magic much. This uh, would’ve been a really bad time to find out you moonlight as a witch hunter.” She couldn’t help but laugh nervously. There was a decent amount of scuffling outside as the surviving vampires got up to stars only knew what. She needed to think about something else. Like the snowglobes. Snowglobes out of jars. “Holy water? No way. Isn’t that hard to come by?” Maybe not if you killed vampires like Nic did. Morgan didn’t know what to make of it, putting his weapons into something fragile and pretty to make it happen. “It sounds like really delicate work,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you have any pictures on your phone? I’d like to see what kinda stuff you put in them.”

Nicodemus snorted and shook his head, ran a hand over his face. Dust fell out of his hair and joined the must of the rest of the room’s mustyness. “Nah. Ain’t for me. Other assholes do that. ‘Sides, magic’s...You said you don’t do healin’, but--” He might as well ask while they had another half hour or so to kill before dawn arrived. “--Know anythin’ for headaches? Excedrin ain’t doin’ shit for me.” With his hand, he made a so-so motion. “Just need a faith healer and some water. Ain’t much to it, I don’t think.” Sure there was more to it, the holy logistics or whatever the fuck, but he didn’t pay attention to that. “It can be, yeah,” he looked at her, waited for her to laugh at him. She didn’t. Slowly, he slid his phone out and unlocked it. He showed her a recent one. One with a tombstone and a small raven on top of it. Small skulls hung in the water, along with black glitter. “That, uh, kinda stuff. Whatever shit’s around.” He raised a brow by a slim margin. “Your store...what's it, uh, got?”

“Not really,” Morgan said apologetically. “But my mom had a lot of herbalist recipes. I don’t know if they work harder than Excedrin though. I can brew you a mean tea from her recipe to find out. Give you the card of an acupuncturist who knows a thing or two about this sort of thing.” She took the phone into her hands and looked at it. Deirdre must have been rubbing off on her, because the skulls in the graveyard looked kinda cute. “Do you make them for other people too? I’d like to have one like that. With the little tombstone, and some bones?” She handed it back, almost warmed by the careful craftsmanship. “Oh, nothing like that. Crystals and candles, mostly, and I started working in bath salts. They’re good for easing your muscles, if you’ve got some tension and time for a good soak, but there’s nothing special about them.” It was all so normal, so nice, and yet Morgan’s skin was crawling in the wake of these revelations. Kaden all over again, except worse because Nic wasn’t much of an asshole. He was rough around the edges, a little scary looking, but all he’d done since they met was help her. “Nic, can I ask you a weird personal question? You don’t have to answer, obviously, but… how did you get sucked into this?” She nodded towards the vampires at the barricade. “Why do you do it?”

“Tea’d probably work better than the fuckin’ whiskey I’ve been nursin’,” Nicodemus admitted. “If it...ain’t weird after this whole damn mess, yeah, that’d be...nice, I guess.” He watched her face as he showed her the snowglobe. Still, she didn’t laugh. Morgan actually seemed to appreciate it. Unlike some assholes that laughed it off as something stupid and a waste of time. Early in his life, he hadn’t counted on snowglobes keeping him sane, yet there he was. Stuck in a supply closet with a witch, discussing business tactics while covered in the remains of even deader vampires. The hunter might even consider it surreal but nothing fucking surprised him any more. Might as well be getting too old for that shit. “Bath salts? Be careful with that shit if Florida’s got anythin’ to say about it…” he trailed off as he listened to the vampires outside. They seemed to grow increasingly restless. Good. Sun would be up soon enough. “Never thought about makin’ ‘em for other people but...could give it a shot or somethin’.” Never had anyone around to make them for, admittedly. He didn’t expect his life to transition from bounty hunter for hire to professional snowglobe maker anytime soon, but it was a funny thought to entertain. As soon as he heard the words personal question, he had a feeling what it might be. “Ain’t weird, Morgan. Most people ask the same shit,” he said, words harsh but tone less so. He was too tired for that and he sighed heavily before he spoke. “Same way as most hunters. Family business an’ all. Pays like anythin’ else.” Monotone and straight to the point. From the corner of his eye, he looked at her. “That bother you?”

“I would get one from you,” Morgan said, risking a look Nic’s way. She wasn’t sure what her face was doing, if he could see that she was scared, or that she was trying to understand, to reconcile his hard-edged kindness with the deeds that had brought him here. “I’d pay you, or at least offer a fair trade.” He could be capable of more than just hurting people. That was the strangest and saddest thing of all. She turned her attention back to the barricade. Family business? LIke he’d been raised into it, without a chance to know better, or be better? Morgan was starting to understand a little, but the picture didn’t make her feel any less sick. “Do you like it?” She asked. “Is it just all you know, or--” She shook her head, unsure how to finish her thoughts. “I ask because I know people. They just want to be good, and get from one day to the next. They just want to get to be themselves, to be known by people, and be safe. And back home--” She hesitated. “I mean, that’s all I want too. I want a nice, small life. But back home, there were a times where that was unnecessarily hard, because of laws, and casual cruelty, and because I knew if I tried too hard--” Well, her curse might snatch that up for one thing. But for another, “Someone might decide to hurt me. Or kill me, just for that. And so I just...I can’t help but feel for them. These people I know. Does that make sense…?”

“Holy shit. Really?” The response was immediate, completely unfiltered. Nicodemus blinked, stared straight ahead at the mess ahead of them. Her face was moving but he couldn’t tell what way she was looking at him. “I mean, fuck. Yeah, sure. Whatever.” He kept his gaze straight ahead at her question, but his fingers started to tap against his thigh at an unsteady rhythm. Damn it. It would have been better to not say anything. In his experience, it usually was. His jaw worked, teeth quietly rubbing against each other. He didn’t have to look at Morgan to get a sense of how she might be looking at him that time. “Ain’t about likin’ it,” he said stiffly as he back stepped into nigh-unbreachable stoicism. “If I liked it, I’d be dead.” Young hunters always got too zealous, too in over their heads with the black-and-white morality that older hunters tried to peddle. Like Samson tried and nearly succeeded to do with him. He didn’t say much else as he listened to her talk. It was a strange place, a strange situation, to be discussing morality or how one went about surviving. Or maybe, with vampires trapped behind a blockade of their own making, it wasn’t. What the hell did he know? He remained impassive as she talked. When the quiet settled, he checked his watch. The dead would be burning soon.

“Yeah...Yeah, it’s what I know,” he finally said as he looked at Morgan. “I decide what I do. What, who, I go after. I used to not. I’ve met...people too. Here.” The worst part of it all? Maybe, somewhere, he was starting to feel for them too. Every fucking day. Every person he met took slim shards of him away. Even after this, she likely would too. And still, he kept on how he did. He didn’t know how to cope. Didn’t know how to be without that torch he carried, the bonfire he promised to start all on his own. “Sometimes I decide not to. I could’ve decided not to tonight,” he said as he ran a hand through his short hair and sat up straighter. “Best that I did, huh?” It wasn’t the right time to laugh, but he did in a hollow sort of way that didn’t dig deep. In a few minutes, his watch would chime. The laugh faded fast and he rolled his head back against the dirty wall. “I ain’t gonna hurt you, Morgan. Want you to know that.”

“Yes, really,” Morgan said softly. “They’re beautiful. And that one reminds me of someone I care about. I’d either give one like it to her, or keep it to think about her. And aren’t snowglobes meant to remind you of wonderful things anyway? It’s perfect.” She wondered if Nic saw his potential beyond death, or if all the blood and this, what was it hunters told themselves? The word of some god? Another fucking duty to break their souls into pieces over? Nic, at least, had some kind of code, some kind of discretion. He said he knew people and Morgan wanted to believe him. Someone who could use their hands to make beautiful, fragile things out of the ordinary should be the kind of person with at least a little kindness, and the awareness to exercise it. “I am glad you decided to, since it’s the only reason I’m alive right now,” she admitted. There wasn’t much relief to be had there however. “And I am, still alive and breathing and not a vampire or a zombie, so I do feel safe enough with you. And I do…” Shit. She couldn’t stop and change her mind now. “...I do think you want to be a good person. That counts for something. And, I mean, sometimes being big and scary can save the day. But sometimes what makes things better is more like a snow globe. You can do lots of things, Nic. I hope you know that.”

The hunter thought of the one kept right on his nightstand. All purple, green, and gold. That dumb alligator looking at him every morning. Discomfort rose up in Nicodemus like sickness. Morgan was kind, impossibly so, to him. She could have just as easily not said a fucking word to him, sit it out in silence and wait for the dust to settle. But she didn’t. She got him talking, even got him to show a snowglobe. The things he felt so peculiarly protective over, even if his rough hands fumbled the glass and there were slim nicks in his skin to prove it. He chanced looking at her as she spoke. “Yeah, might’ve been dead myself,” he said with a shrug. “Here’s to buried shit, huh?” His gaze went to the mess ahead of them and his head cocked some as the infernal screaming started. An awful sound to most ears. Nic just wanted it to be over. How that stacked up against her statement of him wanting to be a good person, he didn’t know and he grunted. The line of his jaw softened by a thin margin as he stood up. Being big and scary is what would get them out of their makeshift sanctuary and as the vampiric screaming startled to dwindle, he cracked his neck. Later, he could consider the depth of her words. How they didn’t just stick to his skin like burs but instead, burrowed. “Got all that from a snowglobe?” The hunter forced a faint smile as he braced himself and started shoving against the mass, pushing until it started to give under his own weight and hell-given strength. “...Guess I do, yeah.”

Morgan didn’t laugh. There was a horrible, too real sound coming from the other side of the door. She wouldn’t have done anything different. They’d given chase, and attacked, trying to take her life. This was fair. And sometimes, fairness wasn’t pretty. Morgan breathed slowly, carefully, and waited for it to be over. She shrugged at his question. “More like from you, but sure,” she said. She got up and waited for Nic to move her barricade out of the way. He was so strong, she didn’t even have to zap the parts loose after all. “Um...I’m glad, that you do. Don’t forget anytime soon, okay? You’re not a thing. You’re more.” She exhaled with relief when the door opened. Ash and sunlight, and a way out.

#wickedswriting #chatzy #chatzy: until dawn #c: morgan #// this broke me #kat and morgan broke me #i loved this SO SO MUCH #A GIFT AND AN HONOR

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thebickedwitchoftherest · 4 years

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This Witch Empty, Yeet || POTW: Cece & Morgan

Cece reveals her secret to Morgan. Then the two track down a magical artifact known as the Imperium, bringing them one step closer to solving the mystery of the chest on the beach.

Cece and Morgan had done their research. Luckily for them, the library had surprisingly well kept records on all different sorts of the town’s history, including a small but formidable group of women who lived as one with nature were frequently seen passing through the woods at night. Though they may not have gotten the happy ending they may have wanted, the headlines about a few of their death had made the news enough that the two were able to learn more about them, including tales of eye witnesses seeing them around Dark Score Lake. Which probably only added fuel to the fire regarding the creepy stories that were told about the place. It could all be a dead end. But Cece had to admit that this chest had piqued her curiosity and she wanted to know more about it. So, the two loaded up in Cece’s car and began driving to Dark Score Lake. She had no idea what the two were looking for, and even less knowledge on how dangerous it may be. All she knew was that she was looking for an artifact that should help her get that chest open and hopefully end all of the weird shit happening around the town. But as the two drove into town and towards the lake, Cece remembered that she hadn’t disclosed anything to Morgan yet about what they were doing or the truth about Cece herself. Still not sure exactly what she was dragging Morgan into, she figured now was better than any. “So, I need to tell you something.”

Morgan was using the drive over to practice her mindful breathing. White Crest had been pushing her anxiety more lately and this, this marching into a purportedly haunted place to follow the story of some mystery thing that maybe killed people was bringing her back to that kind of feeling. She drummed her fingers on her lap. What if something truly bizarre and magical happened? How was she going to explain that? “Oh, yeah?” She asked brightly, maybe too brightly for the situation. “What’s up?”

Cece had planned on living magic in the past. A plan that had already failed gloriously within the first month living in White Crest due to the arrival of the chest and by proxy, the karkinoids. More people than Cece had been comfortable with already knew her secret, and the more that knew the more danger Cece would be in. But Morgan had helped Remmy, and she hadn’t seemed dangerous. When push came to shove, Morgan was the first person that came to mind when she realized that she may need help to find this artifact she knew she was searching for. Morgan and Cece got along. They talked and they laughed, which made the tension even more obvious from the silence that hung in the car. “That chest on the beach, I think there’s a way to open it.” Cece began, which was simple enough. “There was a coven in White Crest that buried an artifact called the Imperium that can be used along with a spell to open up the chest.” Cece adjusted the heat in the car so that it wasn’t blowing directly on her face. Her mouth was dry enough as it is. She reached for her coffee in the cup holder and took a long sip. “I know this because someone sent the spell over to me. The spell speaks in circles but it has the same idea, that somebody with Power or Pure of heart can open it.” That would at least catch Morgan up on the current drama. Now the real juicy bit, “And the reason I know all of this is because I’m a witch.”

Morgan went still the moment Cece said she had a way to open the chest. In all the weeks since she’d pulled the blasted thing out of the sea with Ricky, she’d mostly come to accept her aura of cold. Just one more thing to carry, and not the worst one at that. But now an alternative hung like a gold plated carrot at the end of a stick. Now there was a reason and--- “You’re a what?” A witch. Cece was a witch. A witch who could read spells, who could look for signs of honest-to-universe arcana in a library. “Holy shit. This whole time?” Wait, that was stupid. Morgan began to re-evaluate what she’d left out in the living room, things she said, signs that might’ve been given. “Does that mean you know, uh...about me too?”

Unsurprisingly, Morgan was a bit taken aback by Cece’s confession. Morgan had been very open about the magic prior to even meeting in person. There had been opportunity, ones that she had opted against and blatantly denied her background. She couldn’t feel bad about her decision, not when she knew what was at risk. But that didn’t mean she didn’t hope that things could be different. “Well, at first I couldn’t be sure if you were serious or just claiming to be a witch to be edgy or whatever. But I noticed some of the stuff around the house which all seemed legit.” Cece pulled off of the main road and onto the road that led down to Dark Score Lake. It was coming up, soon. “Look, once we get here I need you to be on guard. I don’t know exactly what we are looking for, but we should be looking for anything that you can sense some magic coming off of.”

Cece was taking all of this pretty much in stride, but then, she’d had however long to sit on and process it. Morgan, on the other hand, was playing catch up. Nothing was really wrong, she supposed. Cece had magic, maybe even alchemy, if she was such a chemistry wiz, and she didn’t mind Morgan’s being the way she was. It would’ve been nice to panic so hard about her finding out about Skylar, or Remmy, but, heck, maybe she knew about them too. Morgan looked at Cece, trying to make sense of her, of why it took the chest on the beach to tell her. “Um--yeah. Right! We should probably have our witchy heart-to-heart later, after we find this Imperium thing.” The car began to slow as they reached the place. “Since we’re disclosing, I’m assuming-slash-hoping you know ghosts are totally real, right? And mermaids, apparently terrifying. I think they just live in the ocean, but this place is spooky enough that it seemed to bear mentioning.” She reached into her bag for the rod of iron Deirdre had sent her and touched it to her pop socket to shape into a knife. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to figure out how to use it. “Ready when you are, I guess.”

Cece was thankful that Morgan seemed to be taking this well. Especially considering the circumstances that the two were in. If it were a perfect world, Cece would have sat Morgan down over a drink and the two would have watched Bewitched when she dropped the bomb. Although in a truly perfect world, she never would have ended up in Maine at all. So maybe this wasn’t the time to worry about the way the universe worked. “Yes, and yes. Though I’ve never actually seen a mermaid myself. A scale from one can be used to make a great potion that lets you breathe underwater. For a short time at least.” That wasn’t important at the moment. Cece pulled the car into a parking spot and glanced back over at Morgan, eyeing the weapon in her hand. “Nice weapon. I like the spirit.” If they were lucky, no weapons would be needed. Just a simple snatch and grab. Cece pushed herself out of the vehicle and stared out over the lake. It had a creepy reputation, but it was hardly something that could scare Cece away. “Remember, we’re out here looking for anything magical. If it’s strong enough, we might be able to just feel it in the air. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.”

“Yeah, well, better than going in without anything, right?” Morgan said, hoping a good stiff smile would keep a lid on her nerves. This was fine. If the Imperium was connected to the chest, there was a good chance it would practically reek with magic. And hopefully in the same vein this iron knife would send off ‘please don’t possess me because I mean business’ vibes to any ghosts lurking beyond the veil. “Any clue on how big it is?” She asked. “Or if it’s buried? Because if it’s buried--” Something invisible rustled the grass ahead of them. Morgan went still “It might be a little hard to sense.” She took stock of the land around them. This was a pretty good spot for hiding something you didn’t want to turn up accidentally. But where would you feel like it would be safe?

“I’m not even sure what the thing looks like, honestly.” Cece admitted, unhappy to proclaim that she was coming in almost as blind as Morgan herself had been when she agreed to help Cece with almost zero prior knowledge. Cece was a planner, though the personality trait may surprise some people. When it came to fun she was all about going with the flow, but this was serious business and Cece treated it so. She hated that she knew nothing about the Imperium down to what it looked like or what exactly that thing did. It bugged her, and like a puzzle to be solved, Cece knew it was going to drive her crazy until she put all the pieces together. “I’ve heard there’s a cemetery around here. If I was going to bury something that I didn’t want dug up, I’d try there.” Cece shrugged, a little too familiar with that exact scenario. “If I had to guess there’s probably a protection spell around it, so we may have to work a little magic.” Cece trailed along the grass beside the lake, stopping only when she heard the grass rustling. After a long moment, she figured the coast was clear and began walking again. “How are you feeling so far?”

“Oh, I’m good! You know, just getting in some girl-bonding time. Plodding around a creepy lake, for buried treasure, making a note to call my therapist back.” Morgan replied, brightly as she could. “A little positivity is good for the anxiety, although at the rate this town is going, I might need something a little stronger.” she explained. “I guess I should tell you now that the living room didn’t get messy that one time over a LARP crafting accident. Blood-clingers. I don’t know if I’m a hundred percent clean yet, from the bite. But it’s been awhile since then, so--” Another sound. Just the breeze of life over the water. Or the creature from the black lagoon. Either way, Morgan stepped a little faster away from it. The cemetery was at least within sight, flanked by tall, ancient looking trees. “How old was this coven again?” She asked.

Things started making a bit more sense now that the two were being more open. Cece remembered the LARPI-ing incident and had believed Morgan despite the obvious signs implying that she shouldn’t have. Honestly, who actually LARPs in Maine? If people legitimately did then Cece offered her apologies. “Blood-Clingers? Well that explains the blood.” Cece shrugged. At least the truth was out. “I have some stuff back at the house that I use to make my own Hot Toddy. Drink that and it’ll clear anything left out.” Another movement out into the forest caught both of their attentions. Cece sure hoped that Morgan was prepared to use that weapon if needed. “The last article that I read about them was around the 70’s.” As they came up to the cemetery, Cece slung the backpack that had been on her shoulders onto the ground and bent down to rifle through it. She eventually pulled out a flask and left the bookbag on the ground. “The spell my source gave me talked about the former coven, saying it was hidden in a veil of mystery. My guess is its some kind of illusion or protection spell. If we can cancel that out, I bet we find it easily.” Or easily enough. Cece uncapped the flask and tipped out, beginning to walk the perimeter as the thick, red liquid poured from the bottle and dripped onto the ground.

So they died out in the 70s, but who knew when they started. Old enough to have planted a tree over something, to mark its place and render it impossible to find? Morgan wasn’t sure. She was about to ask Cece when out came a flask. Morgan screwed her eyes shut. “What did I say about the bloodclinger!” She squealed, and put a hand over her face for good measure. She was familiar with this sort of thing. And, sure enough, the spell began to bubble, boil and spit. They were close to whatever it was. Really close. Morgan could almost taste warmth in her mouth, it was so close. She reached out a hand blindly for Cece. “Wherever it’s leading us, take us there!” The sooner they had it, the sooner things might actually turn around for her for once.

Admittedly, Cece should have thought twice about the blood after Morgan had come clean about the blood clinger. “Whoops! Sorry!” Cece whispered at Morgan apologetically, feeling instantly guilty. “It’s not human blood at least! If that helps at all.” Cece tried, hoping that may help the situation, even if it’s just a little bit. But regardless, this tracking concoction Cece had whipped up was the best bet they had to track down a protection spell. If there was magic around here, this would find it. Unsure if Morgan would be familiar with it at all, Cece decided to explain as she walked. She hoped it would double as a distraction from the blood. “It’s like a game of hot and cold. My own little tracking spell. It looks for magic, if the blood steams when it hits the ground then we’re heading in the right direction.” And so the followed the trail, changing direction when the blood stopped steaming. Eventually, the two came across a tree. Steam billowed from the ground and the blood boiled as it hit the ground around the area. This must be it. “So, would you say this tree was about 40-50 years old?” Cece asked Morgan curiously.

Morgan kept her eyes closed and followed Cece’s lead until they stopped. It was the tree. She opened her eyes and looked. It wasn’t the oldest pine she’d ever seen, but it was robust, certainly far from a sapling. Maybe? “Yeah,” she said, touching her hand gently to the bark. “I think it...it might be?” There was something coming off it, like pin pricks up her fingers, but Morgan couldn’t tell if it was real magic or just her own anticipation. If she could actually do something to make this be over, if they could find this thing together-- “See if it works.”

They must have buried the artifact with the tree. That, or they planted the tree when the buried the artifact. To act as some sort of marker for the Imperium. This close, Cece could feel the magic from the protection spell. Alone, breaking a protection spell would be difficult. Together, her and Morgan had a better chance against a coven’s protection spell. Though Cece couldn’t be sure just how much experience Morgan had with this sort of magic. She realized that while Morgan had been fairly upfront about the magic thing, the talks had all been fairly surface level. She didn’t actually know much about Morgan’s history with magic. “How much do you know about protection spells? And more importantly, breaking them.” She flung some of the blood onto the tree and watched as it sizzled against the tree. She had to admit that was impressive, some kind of protection spell hidden within the tree they had grown. Cece could dig it.

Morgan didn’t have time to duck her face away but, to her relief, her vision stayed clear and she watched, gobsmacked, as the blood mixture seeped into the bark of the old pine, seeped until it was saturated. Then the trunk groaned. “Shit--” She stumbled back. “Okay! That’s-- that’s definitely a sign! That is a hundred percent full of magic!” She clapped her hands with delight. “So, how do you want to get that protection ward down? My dad was really fond of the ol’ corinthian incantation, but I’m not super practiced in it. How about you?”

It was adorable seeing the excitement on Morgan’s face. Cece wasn’t ready to disclose much about her life with the coven, too many gray areas and lines crossed, but she would have to sit with Morgan and talk magic some night over some wine. Without specifics, Cece could think of a few stories to share. Cece hated giving the coven any credit, but most of her experience with magic came from them, and it had made her well versed in the supernatural world. So it hadn’t been all bad. “The Corinthian incantation?” A little biblical for Cece’s taste, but against a coven’s magic it would probably be pretty effective. She liked it. “I can work with that.” She pulled a knife from her bag, one that she had stolen from the coven. It had been soaked in witch blood and used as a ceremonial piece for many spells before this. It served as a sort of good luck charm for Cece. At least, all those spells had worked in the past. She stepped forward, carving a symbol into the tree, a groan escaping its roots in protest. When she was done, she stabbed the dagger into the center of it. “It’s mostly Latin. If you know any of the words, follow along. If you don’t that’s fine too. I just need you to help feed magic into the spell. Here.” She held her hand out to Morgan. Not exactly necessary during a spell, but it seemed right in the moment. “You ready?”

Morgan nodded and squeezed Cece’s hand. She hadn’t done magic with anyone but herself since before her mom passed. But she slid back into it with ease, opening up, filling with want for this twice. Damned. Tree. To open for them. She skimped on the Latin, until the end, the only part she truly remembered. Her voice raised, as if she could sharpen her intent with raw noise alone. As if lightning shot up from the earth, the tree snapped from root to tip. Leaves screamed from their stems and scrambled for air. In the new magic scorched wound was a dark hovel and a heavy wave of power even Morgan could sense from her standing spot. “You’re amazing!” She cried, and raced forward to investigate. She stopped just short of plunging her hand in. “You don’t think it can freeze me twice over, do you?” She asked.

Morgan and Cece’s magic mixed well together and it made the spell even easier to perform. Their magic flowed together and complemented each other. Towards the end of the spell, Morgan jumped in with her own Latin and Cece could feel the spell’s growing even more in power. Then, just like that, the tree snapped with a loud cracking noise. Leaves scattered the area and fell down onto the ground around Cece and Morgan. “Shit. We’re amazing, you mean?” Cece laughed incredulously. Take that you hippy witches. “I won’t let that happen, don’t worry.” Cece promised. Once they got that chest opened, Cece would be able to fix the curse that was afflicting Morgan. And she assumed other people in town as well, but they weren’t really her concern at the moment.

“Okay! Great! I guess uh--we’re going in!” Morgan stuck her arm down the wound in the tree and searched. Her fingers skimmed just over the edge of something wooden and damp. Of course old school witches couldn’t be trusted to make something with an easy grip handle, it just made too much sense. Morgan stuck down her arm nearly up to the shoulder to reach and at last found a grip on a corner and a latch, enough to scoop the thing into her palm. Funny, it didn’t smack her with its whatever-force the way the chest did. She brushed the dirt off and ran her fingers over the latches. At least it looked like it could be open if someone one wanted to. “Huh. Pretty nifty. Feel like the name Imperium is sort of an oversell, but--” Morgan’s body began to feel clammy, like the chills you sometimes got after a flu shot. She looked at it closer, brushing the dirt away to read some of the markings. There had to be something familiar here, right? And there was, it just wasn’t in the right. “Oh, shit--!” In a panic Morgan hurled the Imperium as hard as she could away from herself, and somewhere in the direction of Cece’s face.

Despite the confident look that Cece was forcing, she caught herself cringing slightly as Morgan’s arm reached further down into the tree trunk. She was confident that they had bested the barrier the old coven had set up. But that hadn’t meant they couldn’t have another trick up their sleeves. Luckily for both of them, mostly Morgan, that hadn’t been the case. Morgan pulled out what appeared to be a small wooden box. From afar, Cece examined the artifact that Morgan held in her hand. So this was the imperium? There wasn’t much to it. Until suddenly Morgan was yelping and the ancient, magical artifact was flying at Cece’s face. She flinched back and caught the box in her hands before it could collide with her head. “Jesus, Morgan what the hell?” Then it struck her too. The prickly feeling, the way the world suddenly felt heavier somehow. The Imperium was draining magic. Cece dropped the box to the ground, not wasting any time to consider if thee magic box could survive the 4-foot fall. “Holy shit” Cece muttered, bending down to get a better look at it. Instead of picking it up, she used her finger to gently push at the box, tilting her head curiously when it seemed to be unfold. Woah. It was unfolding. Tilting around and uncurling itself into a different shape. “This thing drains magic.” Cece finally spoke aloud. All this time, Cece had been so dead set on finding this hidden artifact that she never stopped to consider why it had been hidden in the first place. A device used to drain magic? There wasn’t much more dangerous to a witch than that. It would be dangerous for the two to bring the artifact back, with it this hungry for power. Unless…. “I think this thing needs energy. We need to charge it.”

Morgan was taking awhile to stagger up to her feet. That had been one heck of a doozy drain. “Yep!” She called, wobbling over to Cece like a baby deer. “Yep it does!” She caught up to her at last and stared down at the thing. A box that unfolded. Kind of cool, mostly unnerving. Who went around making stuff like this? Why were old witch covens so cruel? Couldn’t you make a magic box of good luck? Or protection? But no. Had to be something dark and awful like this. “Wait, we have to let it drain us on purpose? Isn’t that maybe not the best idea right now?” Then again, it wasn’t like they knew anyone else who could readily take the hit instead, did they?

Cece pondered Morgan’s statement. She was right, of course. Neither of them had any clue to what extent this box could drain energy. It may be enough to drain the magic from a witch permanently, maybe even kill. “It’s definitely a terrible idea. But maybe our only one.” They had Cece’s bag, but until that thing had some energy inside of it they didn’t have a way to guarantee that they could transport it safely. Even if they could get it inside Cece’s bag, without the magic of a barrier spell she wasn’t sure that a bag could keep them safe either. “We may not need to charge it up entirely. If we can give it enough juice that it doesn’t drain us as soon as we touch it we may be able to get it back safely.” Cece sounded more confident than she was but being with the coven had mostly taught her that there was some real merit in faking it until making it. “I have an idea.” Cece exclaimed, resting on her knees in the dirt and eyeing the Imperium. “If we do it together then maybe we can charge it enough without draining one of us too much.” As long as Morgan was down, it was at least worth a try.

Morgan looked down at the box. Her gut instinct was no. Absolutely not. Do not give away free ‘fuck with me’ coupons to the universe. But if she ever wanted to be warm again, if she wanted to claw one tiny bit of normal back from this town, someone had to do the thing, and she really didn’t need a de-powered Cece on her hands. That wasn’t fair, she was trying to help and--damnit. “Okay,” she huffed. “We do this together. But just a quick charge! We still have to be able to drive out of here.” She hovered her hands over the Imperium and waited for Cece to touch it first before gritting her teeth and doing the same.

As soon as her palms touched the wood, it felt like the boxed clamped onto Cece’s hands and held onto them against her well. It felt like needles poking into her skin, and goosebumps travelled up at her skin as she felt the energy dragged from her body and into the box. She could only imagine that Morgan was feeling the same way. The box was strong, stronger than Cece had imagined. It was draining too fast, too powerful unless her and Morgan could regain some control. “Take a deep breath.” Cece managed to speak, trying to follow her own advice. Her hands clenched at the box even tighter, but she kept going. Eventually, after what felt like hours, Cece noticed a slight shift. A change in the flow, as the distribution between the box’s magic and their own seemed to even out. They had matched each other. That had to be enough. Cece forced herself to let go of the box, all but falling backwards to get away from it. “That’s it.” Cece said through deep breaths. Once she regained her composure she moved forward again, running her hand along the box. She could still feel it, the Imperium’s magic pulling at her fingertips, but it was not like it was before. It was more controlled, less hungry for the power that Cece and Morgan held within them. “Fuck. We did it.” Cece laughed, incredulously at first before erupting into a billowing of triumphant laughter. “Fuck yeah, we did it!”

Morgan was still wondering if she could wait a few more seconds to make up for having to pick it out of the hole in the first place when she felt the pull of the Imperium. Her hands fell on the board, fused and locked. “Shit, shit, shit--” This was a really bad time to find out the Imperium was just going to zap them dry for good. The worst time, the absolute worst time ever. Morgan began to panic and pulled with everything she had. The Imperium let her go and Morgan toppled back into the grass, flat on her back. “Shit,” she breathed again. “Are you still alive, Cece?” Then her roommate laughed. Yep, still alive. Did that mean-- “We...we really did it? I did something and it worked?”

Cece was still celebrating in their triumph. What a rush. It had been years since she had done something like that. It felt nice to be able to work through a spell and the magical adrenaline like that again, even if it was just this once. After this chest, Cece would be back to her limited magic, normal life thing. But today? Today she celebrated. “Of course it worked!” Cece danced around, stopping to offer a hand to Morgan and help pull her up, “Because you are amazing!” She reached for the box, picking it up and tossing it into her bookbag with relative ease. “Now let’s get this back to the house! I need to get some stuff together and phone a friend. Then we’re going to make that chest our bitch.”

@mor-beck-more-problems

#c: morgan #morgan #potw #chatzy #wickedchatzy #chatzy: morgan

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niuttuc · 4 years

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The Cursetamer and Annalise Casselant’s sheets

Two in one today, The Cursetamer and her wife, Annalise

The Cursetamer

Name: Ange Casselant/The Cursetamer

Pronouns: She/her

Species: Lich (Human)

Age: 77

Plane of Origin: Ferely

First Planeswalk: Innistrad

Colors: Blue, Black, Green

Appearance: She often looks how she wishes to. When she lets her corpse go, she looks very much the lich part, dry skin on bone, but she can revitalize her body temporarily, for as long as she bothers holding it. Always richly dressed, she still carries with her some relics and tools. No obvious weapon. And always, always an ornate leather glove.

Physically (and when revitalized), she's a 5'6", blonde woman and slim woman, always confident and somewhat scary. She has brown eyes. Her carefully picked clothing and body sometimes falls victims to her thinking about other things. Sometimes, she forgets to do things like breathing and having her heart pump. Sometimes, her hair will be messy.

Backstory: Ange Casselant was born heir to noble parents, her family owning a large estate not too far from the capital of their country. She was sent from the age of eight to the Church of Infinite Reflections, to learn and join the order. Alongside her was sent Annalise, a servant’s daughter, who’s education was provided for by Ange’s parents.

During their formative years, the two learned to know and appreciate each other better. They both had their strengths and weaknesses, of course, but managed to ascend through the ranks while developing a budding relationship. Up until Ange’s seventeenth year, during which they were getting officially together, planning their marriage for when they’d have reached the higher ranks among the church, until…

The church told Ange that Annalise had been sent on a mission they couldn’t divulge anything about. From one day to the next, she disappeared from her life, without a word or a letter. Ange was angry. Then, later, when the church told her Annalise had died serving the church, she was sad, and angry, at the church this time, for stealing her love. She was more determined than ever to climb the ranks to change things so that it wouldn’t take anything from her again.

It succeeded, and her own trial for ascension came. Upon drawing her glove from it, the Reflecting Pool declared her cursed, and to be Apostate upon her death. From one day to the next, she disappeared from the church, and was banished. Then, she understood. It had been the fate of her love as well. Her anger, frustration and contempt for the church was magnified to outright hatred, enough hatred to ignite her spark and send her to the plane of Innistrad, where there was no Cursed or Apostates. No Church of the Reflections. There, she pursued other studies. Studies of what was forbidden by her church or by this one. Study about power, study about her own life and fate, study about souls and death.

In less than a year, she understood that her being Cursed could be exploited for her own gains. In less than five, she’d devised a way to kill herself, melding lich rituals with her own nature to become a powerful lich, unbound by the limits of her flesh, and immortal, making the indestructible Apostate she should have become her own phylactery. It was made to hold and protect a soul, and that what it’d do.

In less than ten years, she’d learned enough to cast a spell to find back the soul that was connected to her own. Annalise. She found her on a backwater plane. Annalise had died, and fused with her Relic to become an Apostate as well. A sword of power, nesting perfectly in her own glove. Tears were absent from the reunion, but only because both of them had been stripped from the ability to have any. Annalise and Ange, now calling herself the Cursetamer, swore eternal loyalty to one another, and married by nothing but their voices. The Cursetamer swore to free Annalise from her prison of metal, whatever the cost.

Over the next fifty years, this quest would lead her to amass more power. More influence. More knowledge. More Apostates, that she learned to use and give to agents to further her goals. To get subjects for her experiments, she created a hamlet in a gigantic cave under her manor on Innistrad, dug with the use of one apostate and lit the same way. She populated it with refugees from the surrounding country, escaping the creatures of the night. She’d give them shelter and protection, and in return they’d provide people when she needed them. She was still a noble and able to keep them content.

She was still working on Annalise’s new body a few months ago, while trying to deal with two planeswalkers that kept intervening in her work. She’d managed to create a spell that should transfer her soul and consciousness into a new body seamlessly. She’d made her a new body out of angel parts, undecaying and powerful, that she’d gathered during their madness prior to the eldrazi attack. The two interlopers almost got the better of her when they interrupted her during her final ritual, but she managed to overpower them both while maintaining it long enough that Annalise was safely transferred to her new body.

The Cursetamer was overjoyed, and the planeswalkers managed to escape while she tended to her wife. But complications appeared within days. Angel parts don’t accept stitching as well as humans’. They were fighting each other, putting Annalise in tremendous pain and weakness, and there wasn’t enough time for the Cursetamer to create a new body or ritual in the time she had. She scoured possibilities, and found one. She tracked down and kidnapped one of the earlier interlopers, an Esperite, and forced them to help her. With his help, Annalise’s stitches were replaced by etherium, keeping them separate but life functions flowing through them.

Since then, Annalise and the Cursetamer have been enjoying their time with each other, at long last, on Innistrad.

Magic, gear and/or abilities: The Cursetamer is one of the most powerful planeswalkers currently active in the multiverse. While no Bolas or Ugin, her undead body can channel a lot of magic without fear of damage, she’s very hard to destroy, and her constant experiments and study have led to her creating powerful magic. Her glove, phylactery and Apostate supplements her powers on souls, allowing her to pass her gloved hand through anything she wishes and grasp at souls and magic alike. She wields powerful soul and bodily magic by herself, and also has studied a number of Apostates, being able to replicate their powerful curses at smaller magnitudes for her own uses. She sometimes can be carrying Apostates, artificial or not, herself, cursed artifacts powered by a sentient and formerly living souls. Artificial ones are less powerful and easily destroyed, the real deal… Less so.

Card:

Annalise

Name: Annalise Casselant

Pronouns: She/her

Species: Zombie Angel?

Age: 79

Plane of Origin: Ferely

Colors: White, Black, Red

Appearance: Her toned body is one of an angel. Well, multiple. It's a skaab made out of angel body parts, floating slightly away from one another along the stitches, attacked by a small quantity of etherium. She doesn’t have wings. She's 6'2", brown hair, and is often dressed practically. She's a sword woman, and it shows. She generally carries the sword that used to be her with her. Rarely, her wife will convince her to dress more ceremoniously.

Backstory: Annalise’s father was a baker coming from a lineage of (voluntary) servants of the Casselant family, and a mercenary who settled down in the Casselant’s estate as chief of security. She took a lot from her mother, and was envisioning a career adventuring and in arms from a young age. It wasn’t to be, however, as Annalise was sent by her parents alongside the Casselant’s daughter, Ange, to educate herself and join the ranks of the Church of Infinite Reflections, at the age of ten. The two were unfamiliar with the others, but within the Church their common origins got them to talk and keep close.

While there, they both learned and progressed in their studies. Annalise never put down the blade and become an accomplished swordwoman, as well as a respected cleric. In her teenage years, her bond to the Casselant heir strengthened, and by the time she was nineteen, they’d promised already they’d marry each other.

Then came Annalise’s trial, necessary for her to climb in ranks. She was told she had all the making of a Cursebreaker, helping the church protect its citizens. When she went into the Reflecting Pool, she was overjoyed to come back with a gleaming sword… Right before she was deemed Cursed and banished from the Church and city, without anything but the sword bound to her soul, and magically compelled to not talk about what happened, who she’d been or come back in the city. Her sword was cursed by her magic, by inertia, and using it escaped her skill for more than a year. In two, she’d mastered it, and was doing well for herself as a duelist in a far-off town. She’d tried and tried to go around the magic on her and get a message to Ange, but nothing worked. She fell to a more talented blade during a duel after another year. Or maybe that mistake of hers wasn’t an accident.

As she died, her soul was absorbed by her blade, and she became an Apostate. Prisoner of the item, relying on someone’s mind, and her curse amplified a hundredfold. The Blade was used to wreak havoc through the town, until the Church finally heard about her and sent a Cursebreaker to take care of her. She was neutralized, put in a box, and thrown into a hole.

Her next memory is being picked up, restoring her consciousness. By none other than Ange. Or as she called herself now, the Cursetamer. The hole had ended up leading to another world. They declared themselves married, and Ange wore her wife to her belt for the next fifty years, vowing to find a way to free her from her state. She finally did, a few months ago, and managed to transfer Annalise’s consciousness into a body stitched from angels. After some issues with rejection, solved by replacing the stitching by etherium keeping the parts separate, Annalise can finally enjoy her new life alongside her wife.

Magic, gear and/or abilities: Annalise has very little gear outside of her sword (now devoid of any power other than being very sharp) but she maintains control of the magic she was cursed with for so long, being able to control inertia at will, be it reducing it to nothing or amplify it until the slightest movement pushes one through an entire field. She was out of practice, but regaining her skills with the instrument by the day as she learns about her new body. Her angelic body is also stronger and tougher than it might appear.

Card:

#Fan Character February #fanwalker #mtg #Cursetamer #Annalise #Planeswalker #Creature #mtg oc list #custom magic card

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multific · 5 years

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Crash

Dr Stephen Strange x Reader

Summary: You were in your car, going home, in front of Dr. Strange’s car when he crashed. You thought that is was your fault, tried to visit him in the hospital, but he’d already left. Not long after, you find him…or he finds you?

It was a rather tiring day, you were on your way home. You always drove safe, you figured there was no point in risking your or others life just to win a few minutes.

You were comfortably driving and listening to music, when the car behind you went to overtake you and lost control and rolled off the road, you immediately stopped and called an ambulance. You have never seen such a serious accident in your life. Your car suffered minor injuries, but you couldn’t care less.

The police took your statement and then let you go. They told you that it was an accident and thanked you for calling. A paramedic examined you and told you that you were okay, just a bit shaken up.

All you could think about if the other driver was okay. Because for some reason, even though you weren’t even close, you convinced yourself that it was your fault and that’s why he ended up crashing. You will never forget the way his car was dangling from a wire, and all you could do was stand there and wait.

A few days later, you read it online that the driver of the car was in fact alive, but he had serious injuries and due to the major injury on his hands, he couldn’t be a surgeon anymore. You decided to visit him in hospital. So, the next day, after work, you stopped by. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there anymore. A nurse was kind enough to inform you about the fact that he decided to leave.

You went home that day disappointed.

A whole year went by and there wasn’t a day when you didn’t think about the accident. People told you to move on and be thankful that you were alive, since, because of the rain, it could have ended even worse. But you couldn’t until you met the other driver and saw him alive and well. You thought that to be the only way for you to move on.

Another month went by. And slowly, you got better. Yes, it took you a longer time than usual, but you managed.

Since you worked as a florist, you had to put on a happy face every time a customer came in, and as you got better, your regular customers started to compliment on you and say that they can see that you are better now.

One day, you got an order. Your co-worker told you that he got a call for a bouquet. You prepared the bouquet and headed to the address in New York.

177A Bleecker Street.

It was about a 20 minute with the subway. You tried to ring the bell but no one answered. You tried for the door and it was open.

“Hello! It’s delivery! I brought the bouquet you asked for.” But no one answered. You went a bit further inside. You decided to call out once again and if no one answers you’ll just leave. You didn’t want a lawsuit because you “broke in”.

“Hello? Is anybody here?”

“Yes.” came a voice behind you. It was so sudden, you got scared and as you turned you nearly fell. You collected yourself quickly.

“Hi. I came from the flower shop. I got your order. It’ll be 15$.”

“Are you Miss Y/L/N?”

“I am.” This was when you noticed the strange clothing that he was wearing. Who wears a cape at home? but then again, this wasn’t a normal home as you noticed.

“My name is Dr. Stephen Strange, I believe you have been looking for me, let’s have a chat.” You immediately recognized that name, although you never saw his face, before you could answer he started to walk up the stairs, you followed him.

As you got a better chance to look around the house, it looked even weirder. He had to be some kind of collector, there were artifacts all over the place.

He finally stopped in front of two sofas and turned to you.

“Let me get that.” he referred to the flowers and took them. Meanwhile you sat down and waited for him. He was back awfully quickly. It surely takes more time to find a vase and put the flowers in them.

He sat down and waited.

There was an awkward silence between the two of you, as if he waited for you to start. Which you did.

“I have been looking for you. You know my name, but do you know who I am?” you asked

“Yes. And I have to tell you that I’m very sorry. After everything that happened to me, I desperately wanted to find a cure for myself, yet I was selfish and forgot to check on the other driver. I want you to know that it was my fault, completely. I was on the phone and I didn’t pay attention.” you listened to every word of his.

“I have to ask. Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m much better since I came here. The people here healed me.” to that, your face dropped. This certainly sounded like some kind of weird cult. “It’s not like that.” he answered as if he knew my thoughts.

“Okay.”

“And how are you? I know that you still don’t drive to this day and that you had depression and blamed yourself.”

“I am a lot better now, especially since I know that you are okay. And now that I know what happened, I can fully move on.” this was all so weird. How did he know your name? How did he know where you worked? Did he only order the flowers to get you there? Was it a trap?

“I am happy to hear that. But I must know. Were you injured?” you shook your head, no.

“I wasn’t, just shaken up according to the paramedics.”

You talked with him about an hour more. You only noticed the time when your co-worker called you about your where being.

“Thank you for the chat. It helped me a lot.” you told him.

“You are welcome. And please, by all means, if you want to, you can come by any time. Wong would be happy to have a visitor.”

“Thank you.” he paid you for the bouquet and you left. As you walked back to your work place, you thought about it. Visiting again. After all, this little talk did help better than any psychiatrist ever would have.

Little did you know that Stephen saw the future, and he already knew to prepare another cup of tea for your arrival on the next Friday afternoon.

PART2

Taglist: imreadinggoaway fleursirvart v-2bucky ehsebastian crunch-time-sports pxstelrainbow ablogbypeteparker liamssmiler smexylemony greenarrowhead feelingsareharddd thisismysecrethappyplace sincerelyfan theoneanna aestheticsandmarvel rororo06 castellandiangelo avengers-r-us

~Masterlist~

Feedback is welcomed ~

#stephen strange imagine #stephen strange x reader #stephen strange imagines #stephen strange headcanons #stephen strange x you #stephen strange x y/n #stephen strange oneshot #dr strange imagines #dr strange imagine #dr strange x reader #dr strange headcanons #dr strange x you #dr strange x y/n #dr strange onehsot #avengers imagine #the avengers imagine #the avengers imagines #avengers x reader #the avengers x reader

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redknight3996 · 4 years

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The Demon Lord’s Generals 3

Chapter 3 – The Infernal Educator

Tokru 10th, 2924

The Demon Lord Oglizu IV is killed in battle against the Chosen Hero, Cyril Corner of Rosiava, on the fields of Naloriva.

At the same time, within the town of Gravelane, Inrapaba, the third son of the Samore family is born to Marwen and Dorothea Samore. He is named Hans, after his grandfather, who died in service to the Demon Lord. This event is not yet significant to history.

Jubi 27th, 2931

Hans Samore, at six years old, meets and befriends Florent Linsal, a nineteen year old college student at the nearby Losgrum Institute of the Infernal Arts and Mystic Sciences and a childhood friend of Hans’s oldest brother, Ludo.

Linsal had been studying to become an instructor, and liked kids. As such, he encouraged the quiet, well-read boy to study further and explore the true mysteries of the world they lived in. Twelve years later, Linsal would kill seventeen people of varying races and rob numerous graveyards in several attempts to form a unique type of “flesh golem” at the behest of an unknown sponsor. He was caught, convicted, and executed by the Fevokin Clan of Olafiba.

This event was not relevant to Hans, who spent his youth studying, learning, and speaking with the other scholars of the Institute. From them, he gained a love of learning, and a dream of teaching like those proud professors who lectured in their great halls.

This decided his eventual fate.

Ludo Samore would inherit his parent’s pottery shop, and live a calm, peaceful life. Kurt Samore would join the Land Guard of Inrapaba, take a severe amount of bribes, and inadvertently drown himself when a drunken, miss-timed step sent him into a canal within the city of Lordsgrave.

And Hans Samore would become a warlock. While teaching was most certainly his deepest passion–a dream he wanted to pursue more than anything–he discovered what he would pursue as his central discipline within a far more beautiful place.

The Written World–crafted by scribes and scholars and formed into those grand bastions of knowledge known as libraries–drew him in as the sun above draws flowers birthed by its light. And it was there, within the pages of some great tomes, Hans found that he quite adored demons.

Neroh 20th, 2942

Hans Samore officially enters the university portion of the Logrum Institute as the first semester of the year begins.

He promptly entered into the field of “Demonic Studies”, majoring in both Infernal Magics and Education, and began his higher education career without hesitation after many years of learning at a variety of libraries and the lower levels of the Institute. He met many people there, friends and acquaintances; some he kept, some he lost, many he was glad to know, and none he truly hated.

There were a few he didn’t like, certainly, and there were others he liked a great deal. Elizabeth Maribelle Tealmarn–Eliza or Liza to her friends, never Lizzy or Elly unless one wanted to get stabbed with a foreleg–of the Starshire Coterie was one individual who fit in both categories, albeit at separate times.

She also happened to be a vibrant blue and white-flecked aranae–in essence, a giant sapient spider–much to Hans’s immediate fascination, which she promptly found annoying, and that was how he wound up being stabbed on his second day of university. A good start, all things considered, and the two of them quickly became something of academic rivals, though they did gradually drift apart for some time.

Hans wanted to be an educator, and Eliza wanted to be an arcanist; the two had overlapping interests, but not fully concurrent ones, so he eventually did have to say goodbye to his friend as the focuses of their courses changed. That, and Eliza decided to join up with the Demon Lord Fearon, who wasn’t a particularly impressive lord and barely lasted two years before being challenged by a rival by the name of Orast, who lasted a good deal longer.

Not that such matters mattered in the slightest to Hans, who was occupied with other matters of greater importance, at least to himself. Namely, he had obtained his first teaching job.

Pibri 27th, 2947

On this date, three years into his job educating a number of adolescents at the Fierview Academy, Hans Samore lost his right arm.

The entire right arm. All the way up to his shoulder.

Suffice to say, that was rather inconvenient.

Certainly, he would later refer to this incident as an “unfortunate poultry accident” in good humor, but at the moment, there was a great deal more screaming of curses at the typhonic cockatrice that had quite literally ripped his arm straight from its socket in a messy spray of gore and gulped it down like an owl would a rat.

It certainly didn't help that the beast had caught him off guard when some students came running through the campus halls. Three of his students had apparently thought they could take down the terrifying cockatrice through their combined might, confident and self-assured in that foolish way many teenagers could be. They were very wrong, and the trio learned that lesson well.

Thankfully, Hans was able to keep it from being a fatal lesson, though if there was one thing he regretted about that day, it would be that he was unable to finish the beast himself. Blood loss along with severe pain tends to prevent one from focusing long enough to cast spells, as he would learn that day. Equally thankfully, he managed to defend himself long enough for his fellow teachers to save him.

If there was any form of short term benefit, he would have said it would be that he was able to catch up in his reading while he recovered. That, and cockatrice organs did make for good materials...

However, for Hans, life would never be the same. He had to take some time off teaching to recover, and he had to get used to only using his left arm. The phantom pain was also certainly a pain to deal with.

However, he did find one method that would change his life, also ensuring that it would never be the same, but in a more positive manner.

Ondru 3rd, 2947

Contracting with a demon was certainly a tricky thing to do. While some people might assume that a demonic contract would always be with an Ouzan, otherwise known as a Demon God, that was rarely the case, and it certainly wouldn't work well in his case. As much as he adored the demonic, he knew his desires would not be fulfilled if he tried to beg the gods for relief.

Why, who would give someone like him godly power simply because his wanted arm back? It was still a shame though, he would have loved a meeting with the Ouza, though that most likely would have ended with his death for calling upon one for something so petty. The Ouza were amazing, wondrous deities, but that did not make them nice.

As such, he did the next best thing: summon an Acedian.

It was a logical move. He certainly wasn’t the first person to make an arm out of a demonic entity–really, the natural metaphysical nature of demons and how they could be subjugated made them extremely useful entities for creating any sort of weapon or artifact–and he wasn’t seeking a great power or strength from the deal. He just wanted a new arm. So why not go for the laziest variant of demon out there?

And so, after several months of studying and preparation, he called forth the demon Ko. She was a half-ethereal being, her blue skin phasing between flesh and water, with long, drooping, royal blue hair that looked as though it had never been cut, flowing down her body like the loose fabrics draped over her.

And thankfully, it appeared she was willing–speak, trade–to negotiate. All things considered, he was quite lucky. Acedians were, of course, incredibly lazy beings, it came with their nature, but their dispositions could vary. While one would regard a summoning as a slight diversion, something to go along with to get through it easier, a different one would have tried to lop off his head if he hadn't put down a containment seal on the circle. Sometimes laziness meant laxness, other times it meant hostility towards those that would ask for any type of effort.

Ko was the former, and at the cost of one eye–easy trade, nothing to worry, good value–he formed a contract with her, and he was able to regain his arm. Or, to be more accurate, he gained a new arm, which came with its own set of problems.

It was certainly odd; with just a thought he could reform his arm at any time–albeit one made of cloth–and yet it took more than a thought to master. Simply growing accustomed to writing with that arm took months, a good deal of which was spent gaining enough control to not snap what he held. Legibility, on the other hand, took much longer, not helped by his sharp decrease in depth perception.

He would never fully regain the ability to feel with that arm. It would always feel dulled at best, as though he was gripping objects through a thick glove.

His contract with Ko did allow him full use of his arm, and a guarantee that she would never try taking control of it at any inopportune times, though it did come with the further cost of her running commentary in the back of his head. She did tend to sleep a great deal, so it wasn’t too constant, but she had a surprising energy for complaining when he went for more strenuous activities.

Ah well, such was life. Of more concern, though less immediate to him than his physical issues, was the worsening situation in the Dark Lands. Fearon was not dead yet and was stubbornly clinging to what territories he had claimed in the swamplands, while Orast had gained a great deal of power up in Olafiba, which put Inrapaba straight in the middle of an increasingly aggressive and personal war to become the “True Demon Lord”.

It was a fascinating conflict and certainly an interesting time to live it, but Hans did not want to get involved in any of it, so he came to the conclusion that a sabbatical was in order. He’d lost a great deal, and learned just how little he knew. Not merely about fighting and killing, but about the world. About expecting how strange and sudden the world could be.

So off he went, to new lands.

Ecta 4th, 2955

Pianaro de Liorzula was a lovely city situated in the “Third Country” of the Sun Lands, the northwestern portion of the southernmost continent, dominated by rivers, canals, and great lakes. As such, it was a naturally humid and often sweltering portion of the vast continent, though one wouldn’t think that if they lived in Pianaro.

Unlike a majority of the hot and sunny Sun Lands–something of a redundancy there–Pianaro was a surprisingly temperate location, located, as it was, on one of the many lakes dotting Liorzula. An odd place for the grand mix of library and dungeon known as the Paper Church, certainly, but one that seemed to work well for it.

Hans certainly didn’t mind the intriguing change of scenery. The way sunlanders would raise the very earth up from the bottom of lakes to form their cities right on a source of freshwater was quite inspired. He’d seen more than his fair share of ramshackle docktowns back along Inrapaba’s marshes and Ostrotoba’s swamps, so to see such grand stone structures–mostly composed of lighter, white stones decorated with indigo and violet paints and patterns–rise out of the waters like cresting whales frozen in place was inspiring, in a way.

Though, supposedly, the “Written Church” had not been built on a lake. Rather, the lake came to it, according to legend. Supposedly, some followers of one of those Rakuli Elders–the “divine” or “angelic” counterparts to the Ouzan Ancients–had declared the Ouzan Church to be blasphemous and heretical, and did what most zealous sects were want to do; namely, they attempted to destroy it, and failed miserably. No fire could catch on the pale stones of the palatial church–each bearing inscriptions and writings from perhaps thousands of scholars–and the stones would not obey the fools’ demands to sink it into the earth.

As such, the zealots decided to drown the demonic library, and, as such stories often went, wound up ending their own lives in the folly. Sources argued on whether the zealots had unleashed the demonic guardians of the church, who then drove them mad, or if they drowned in their attempt to sink the structure, but regardless, they were said to have died gruesomely, so all’s well that ended–

“Hans, we have a guest,” Bishop Hashid spoke, interrupting his musings and drawing Hans’s attention away from the tomes he’d been cataloguing into the Church’s libraries. A number of demonic ones, newly recovered from one of the sunken pyramids, though they were copies rather than the originals, which needed to be kept– “Hans.”

Hans blinked at the marid. “Er, yes?”

“We have a guest from the Dark Lands. I want you to show her around. You need some time out of this backroom, you know?” He smiled, the action shifting the blue markings drifting down his dark, bearded face.

“Ah. Of course, sir.”

He sighed. “You don’t need to call me sir.”

“Er, yes, sir.”

Bishop Hashid just sighed again, then walked on out, folding his hands into his white, word-covered robes. A second later–well, a few seconds...maybe a minute or two–Hans got up from his desk and headed through the vast shelves to the main foyer of the Church, which was as lovely as ever.

Brilliant white lanterns illuminated the mosaic floors, which had four “paths” snaking out from the main doorway and leading into the four primary sections of the library: one on the left, one on the right–which Hans was coming from–and two directly across from the entrance, one with a staircase leading upwards and the other going down. There was also a central desk–manned by acolytes of the church–and in front of said desk was a rather fascinating individual:

An arachne, clad in a deep indigo, high collar dress that was laced in and button with a number of sapphires–the cold-associated gems certainly explained how she appeared to be fine wearing such thick garments in the heat of the Sun Lands–and matched by a wide-brimmed hat that covered her otherwise shaved head. Further of interest was her rather unique skin tone, compared to most arachne, which featured a primarily blue chitin flecked with white spots, almost like freckles–

“Hans?” Oh.

“...Eliza?”

“...” Elizabeth Tealmarn eyed him for a moment, all eight of her upper pupils examining his form. “...You look dehydrated.”

He was missing an arm and an eye, and yet that was what she chose to notice. Odd. “I have been busy. Water would ruin the books.”

“Good to hear you’re still an idiot.” She sighed, then seemed to brighten and smiled. “Well, I suppose this is fortuitous regardless. Now I don't need to force pleasantries with someone I don't know.”

“Does that mean it won't be forced with me?”

“Oh gods no, why would I be pleasant with you?”

Hans chuckled. “It’s good to see you too, Lizzy.”

Oh, he actually dodged the stab that time. Wonderful! Though he didn't dodge her leg smacking against him. Less wonderful.

Anyhow, as it turns out, once it became clear the–now deceased–Demon Lord Fearon was going to lose, Eliza metaphorically jumped ship, leaving his forces behind and making her way to the Sun Lands to lay low for some time. The Demon Lord Orast was rather annoyed at her, after all, and the remnants of Fearon’s forces weren’t happy either, so a trip to another continent seemed quite warranted. And it appeared that she wished to spend her time there studying, hence why she came to Scripture's church.

And so, it came as no surprise that Hans was tasked with being her guide while there. The church was rather protective of its books, and–regardless of who they may be–all guests needed someone to keep an eye on them to ensure nothing was damaged or taken. Thankfully, it appeared that Eliza did not abruptly gain a hatred for the written word since they last met, and she was even able to use her multiple sets of eyes to quickly transcribe whatever caught her interest onto any paper she brought with her, her lower ones constantly reading, while her upper ones stayed trained on what she was writing.

A handy talent, and one he honestly wanted, but likely could not obtain due to actually having one less eye than the average human. And he could not replace it due to the deal he made. And adding more eyes would likely involve some intense bodily modifications so–Yes, bad idea, dropping that idea.

However, her talent did mean that her time at the church wasn't particularly long, and she would soon come to part with the church. Although she wouldn't be going alone.

Hans enjoyed the church, certainly, and he greatly enjoyed reading the tomes available to him, but he wanted more experiences from life, and Eliza did insist on having him come along with her. Not because she didn’t have anyone around and was feeling lonely, but because he could be useful, “for a cripple”.

Suffice to say, he enjoyed showing off his demonic arm when the first occasion came, though it did result in her deciding he could carry her bags after all, so there were gains and losses there. More losses, particularly when Ko awoke and started complaining in his mind–what, no, book place comfy, good place, go back–about leaving the comforts of the library.

Ah well. Such was life.

Neroh 5th, 2967–

“HANS! GET UP HERE ALREADY!”

Hans sighed, and closed his book as he got out of his bunk, ignoring the mutterings–irritating arachnid, make her quiet, easy to kill–of his demonic partner in his brain.

“We won’t be killing Eliza, I’m very fond of her,” he replied as he made his way up on deck, where the storm clouds overhead roiled and the seas toiled.

“You’re damn right you won’t be killing me,” Eliza snapped, frowning at him first, then at his arm, “Is it talking again?”

“She is, yes.”

“She, yes, right. No matter, we’re here.” She turned, her arms crossed over her chest as she looked over the side–portside, if he remembered his nautical terms correctly–towards the heavily forested shoreline of Ostrotoba.

“Ah, the Swamplands. As beautifully dreary as they’ve ever been,” he commented, smiling. Really, the land there was more mud and water than actual soil, but still the trees persisted. Stubborn plants, as befitting a very stubbornly untamed land.

“We both come from Inrapaba. Do we have any right to be calling anywhere in the world ‘dreary’?”

“You forget, but I grew up in the eastern side. Mine hometown was a snowy wonderland, though I doubt it compared to the Starshire caverns, Lady Tealmarn.”

Eliza did not huff, as that would not be polite. She did, however, shoot him a glare. “...Our privileged upbringings do not decrease the dreariness of the rest of those sodden marshlands we’re forced to call home.”

“By dint of some borders established long ago, quite.” He grinned up at her. “Is that a sense of awareness, mine lady? Our travels certainly have been good for you.”

“I can and will throw you overboard.”

“I have a water demon for an arm.” Wash spider, sea take. “She can swim, Ko.” Fehhhh…

“Do you even realize how eerie it is when you do that?”

“I realize, and I find it fun.”

“Hmph.”

And so, Hans Samore returned to the Dark Lands. It wouldn’t be the last time, certainly, but it was good to be home. Well, on his home continent.

He did visit many of his old haunts–his family’s pottery shop was doing well, and Fierview Academy was undergoing some much needed reconstruction after a series of unfortunate conflagrations–and yet, his wanderlust remained, despite Ko’s frequent, if half-hearted and somewhat sleepy, protests; as such, the siren song of adventure–nooooooo...–called!

And he did have a great many adventures, most of which did not involve an immediate threat of death. Not all though, and those ones did tend to stick in his mind, for obvious reasons.

One even involved sirens! Fascinating beings, really, if very odd; they were somewhat like a mix of harpies and mermaids, with forms consisting of folkish upper bodies covered in fish-like scales, feathers in place of body hair, avian wings in place of arms–noticeably mimicking the wings of seabirds, specifically–and piscine lower halves. It was certainly strange to see them move, and they had the most delightful of singing voices, though the hypnotic quality of said voices was an issue, as was that particular tribe’s penchant for robbing and murdering their unwary victims.

Thankfully, with Ko's help–hey hey hey hey, ignore noise, focus–he was able to remain unaffected on his own journey to their small island off the coast of Skiritaba, even if it was only because the demon only acted once it seemed like he would die.

Despite the fact that his initial meeting with them had gone rather poorly, a part of him was hoping to meet more people of their species. Hypnosis was a rather rare art, so for an entire species to be able to innately use it was fascinating. Unfortunately, it appeared the majority of their race lived within the Dusk Lands, likely being a native race to the mysterious sub-continent, so his chances of encountering a peaceful tribe were rather slim.

Especially considering how every expedition to those lands failed miserably. The deep, dark, nearly black fog covering that entire region of the sea meant anyone entering would either find themselves lost until they successfully left the fog at another end, or they would simply never come out. Supposedly, the fog could tell if one's intentions were peaceful or malicious, and those with evil intentions would never leave…

But no matter on that. Hans had other things to focus on, and while he often spent his time in the Dark Lands as a tutor and educator–primarily for the families of nobilities though he did spend a number of years traveling from various academies and institutes to provide an education in the demonic arts to a broader audience–he’d often spend a great deal of time on expeditions as well.

Really, throughout the majority of the 60s and entirety of the 70s, he was traveling around the Dark Lands and its various regions, studying the cultures and offering his own learnings to those interested. He even published a multitude of books focused on demonology and the infernal arts.

Granted, that did bring him some unwanted attention from those seeking power. For some reason, a number of idiots seemed to believe his fascination with the demonic meant he would be interested in joining their efforts in whatever false rhetoric they felt like spouting at the moment. Ridiculous excuses for their violence would always spill from their lips so readily–declarations of vengeance against the cruel Light Land kingdoms, pledges to overthrow the “tyrannical” Rakuli, promises to promote some sort of “natural” rights, etcetera–and Hans had no patience for any of them.

Certainly, an evil soul that was honest about their evil wasn’t any better than one that pretended they were working for a greater good, but the insistence that they were working for higher purposes grated. It was like they thought he was stupid.

Though, perhaps he was? In the 80s, as the first successful Demon Lord in some time began to rise–some idiot called Irascagan with more power than sense and a disturbing lust for blood–he’d decided to travel back to the Sun Lands once more, to study those lands again and avoid the conflicts, which he successfully did for a number of years. Yet for all his vaunted intelligence, he really didn’t see it coming when, on an expedition to the South Pole, a member of his own research team went mad and butchered every single person there on the 5th of Ondru, 2989.

Aside from Hans–and Ko–of course.

Suffice to say, Hans decided it was best to stay at his own home continent after that one. The South was just too heated–booooo…–for him. Really, the fact that the South Pole was a burning land of eternal Summer should’ve clued him into its volatility...

Besides, he had other things to do. He was in his sixties by that point, and relaxing for a few years sounded like a good plan. Eliza had her own Conservatory set up for some time, with an apparent focus on cataloguing and preserving various specimens of monstrous species from around the world, and while he did enjoy his time with her–though she could be rather obtuse at times–he still wanted to travel, and if there was one thing the lightlanders were good for, it was ridding the Dark Lands of annoyingly violent leaders.

So he traveled once more, with some slight idea in mind of perhaps, maybe, finding an apprentice. He’d had students, certainly, a great many students he adored a great deal, but he’d never taken on a singular pupil directly into his tutelage to pass on every detail he had of his craft and knowledge.

It wasn’t an immediate concern to him; he certainly had no fear for his own mortality, but still, there was that thought, sitting in the back of his mind.

Suffice to say, he didn’t think he’d find a shockingly good candidate so abruptly on a small trip to Fallrein, on one warm summer evening.

Seta 12th, 2997

“So, was there a particular reason you chose mine hotel room to burgle, young one?” Hans asked the youth once he had them properly restrained at the room’s tea table. Conjured crimson chains–layered multiple times because the youth had an intriguing talent for dispelling magic–kept them secured to one chair as Hans sat in the other, pouring tea for them both.

“...” The youth simply glared at him, their bright, vivid emerald green eyes narrowed in anger beneath their fiery, orange bangs and the dark hood they wore, yet there was no hint of shame.

“You noticed the enchantments and wards I had set, I’m sure,” he continued as he added and stirred some honey into his cup, “Eyes are windows to the soul, and yours shine with infernal magic. You had to have noticed, yes?”

“...Of course I did,” the youth replied, shifting only slightly in their restraints. Perhaps testing how tightly they fit? Not that it mattered, the chains were being maintained by Hans’s will and would tighten or loosen at his discretion. “Someone with so many protections would have to be rich. That makes them worth robbing.”

Hans couldn’t help chuckling at their reply. “True, quite true, unless they happened to be impoverished but skilled.”

“Then they wouldn’t be staying in a hotel. They’d make their own place.” Surly, but a good answer.

“You do make a good point, young…?”

“Lady.” She scowled deeper then, showing her very white teeth, which were quite unlikely to be seen in a presumably homeless thief.

“Oh ho? Lady is an interesting choice of words. Are you not a common woman then?”

The girl stiffened, then glared right at him. “Fuck you!”

Hans did his best to keep himself form smiling there as her voice cracked. Decades of experience–and a simple understanding of people–informed him that teenagers were not happy to be condescended to and if he gave the young lady the impression that he did not take her seriously, she was bound to react poorly. “I beg forgiveness, young lady. How may I offer my aid?”

Her anger flickered out, a candle snuffed with a confused frown. “...What? Aid?”

“Of course. I am a tutor of nobility, you see, and a young lady in obvious trouble does naturally prompt mineself to take action. So, would you like for me to purchase a room for you here?”

“...No. I don’t need charity.”

Hans raised an eyebrow and made a very deliberate point to look over the dark, stained and torn cloak and equally patchy pants she was wearing. And… “Are you using stones for shoes?”

“...I-It’s easier. Rock magic makes it...Sh-Shut up.”

Letting out a sigh, Hans brought his hand up, and with a flick of his wrist, her rock shoes fell apart.

“H-Hey! What the fuck was that for!?” she exclaimed as she tried to move away.

“Oh my, my apologies, it now appears as if I owe you one.”

“W-Wha–Fuck you!”

Hans remained quiet and kept a neutral face as he took in the blisters and bloodstains covering the young lady’s feet. It took a great deal of effort to avoid sighing.

“Well, since we are at a hotel, I shall be going to get something to eat. I hope that would make up for mine accident?”

“What? Why would that make up for anything?”

“Oh? I had assumed a meal would, at the very least, make up for mine accident, but if you believe I owe more, I would certainly wish to repay you promptly.”

“...U-Uh...W-Wait, you meant...You’re giving me a meal?” Oh, the hope she tried to hide there nearly broke the old man’s heart. He wouldn’t show that though.

“A meal, and a room, if you want. I owe you, and debts need to be repaid.” Hans smiled. “And no, this is not something you will ever need to ‘pay me back’ for. This is mine repayment to you. That is the terms of our agreement, and will be the end of any interactions between us, if that is what you wish.”

The girl visibly swallowed, her nervousness obvious, and yet, she took a chance. “Th-Those...Those shoes were, uh...p-pretty important to me. So...w-with the sentimental value, a-and all…” She was tense, wary of pushing too far and upsetting him.

But Hans was a patient man, and he had interacted with many children in his long life. So he smiled again. “Then yes, I do believe I owe you a great deal more, in that regard. So it is mine solemn promise to you, young lady, that I, Hans Samore, shall repay mine debt to you in full.”

Despite his promise, it took a great deal of time for that wariness to fade. The young lady was a cautious person, one who only told him her name was Miriam–though she stated a preference for shortening said to “Mira”–after he’d fully paid for both her meals and room. Still, he was glad to have met her, and would have been satisfied with leaving her a new pair of traveling boots and a coinpurse of gold to fully repay his “debt”.

Then he noticed she was following him.

Now that was quite different.

He even took some rather sudden turns and yet she never strayed far from him.

No matter though. If she just so happened to be going on the same path as him, who was he to stop her? Besides, having another companion after so long would be fun as well–no, she's loud...–even if Ko didn't like her at first.

As such, when next he sat, he invited Mira over to his table within the city’s park, itself a leftover from the defeat of a long dead Demon Lord. She went stiff at that moment, then walked out from the shrubbery she had been using for cover with the bearing of one embodying grace–ratty, weird–and dignity. And so, they talked some more.

It appeared as if she had been traveling by herself for some time before they had met, and as someone with Hans’ nature that simply wouldn't do. First things first: making sure she was properly clothed instead of the rags she had. Of course, she wouldn't allow him to buy clothes for her, but if he just so happened to walk into a tailor's shop and spent enough time there that she started looking at some clothes–plus some sly handing over of some coin for a worker to go over and help her out–then soon enough, she had new clothing.

Though it did take a bit of trial and error since she didn't seem to care for the dresses first offered, and insisted she changed clothes by herself, without the attendant’s aid.

She really did seem to want to be self-sufficient, and did take great care in keeping track of her things; she even noticed when he attempted to slip in some more coins in her bag due to her habit of constantly counting them whenever they rested. But if he had her act as an assistant of sorts, well, getting paid was only natural.

Though, she wouldn't be that for long.

Neroh 9th, 2998

He hadn't known her for long, but Mira had become quite the fixture in his life. She even proved to actually be quite the helpful assistant once he gave her the chance. However, what he found most astounding was how eagerly she seemed to soak in knowledge of the arcane. So, today would mark the day he took on his own apprentice; provided she agreed to being his apprentice, that is.

However, two things happened first; the first being him being interrupted before he could ask by an annoying person by the name of Count Gideon Montgomery Opalcreek. A rather unsavory vampiric noble who frequently demanded his fealty. Frequently, because Hans had no intention of joining the pompous count’s retinue, regardless of what he offered.

Certainly, Opalcreek had a reputation for being an arcanist and researcher of the infernal–hence the iratan bodyguard he had at his side and his interest in Hans–but he also had a reputation for being an eccentric madman who had likely breached numerous ethical standards in his pursuit of whatever. Hence Hans’s refusal.

“Why must you reject my sincere offers? Haven't I been more than generous?” A pompous, platinum-blonde man dressed in a white, pearl-lined coat and matching pants, along with a fuschia waistcoat and white ascot, Opalcreek spoke with an amused condescension, as though Hans was merely being silly for failing to accept his “generosity”. “Or perhaps there is something you wish for that I haven't offered?”

“Not at all. I simply do not wish to be in the service of anyone at this point in mine life,” Hans replied with a smile of his own. Polite, though not especially genuine.

In hindsight, it was easy to see how much his reply angered the noble, and yet, Hans wouldn't realize his mistake until it was too late.

The count’s white face barely moved, his pale lips still curled in that same, false smile. “You honestly can't expect me to accept an answer like th-”

“Hey! He already told you no, so just fuck off!” Mira snapped, glaring up at the noble in a moment of obvious frustration

The second thing he failed to expect to happen was Mira so readily leaping to his defense. Opalcreek had been pestering him, certainly, and he did interrupt the special lunch Hans had planned, but still, he didn’t think she would speak up so vehemently. It made him smile in the moment, so he didn’t even think to reprimand her.

“...”

“What? You got noth-” For the rest of his life, Hans would curse himself for not acting sooner. Mira, who had pushed herself to her feet in that moment of fury, fell straight to the ground, clutching the ruin that was once her shoulder as she cried out in pure pain, a heartrending shriek echoing out as Opalcreek tossed away the torn arm he held so casually.

“Now then, with that ann-” To this day, Hans had no idea what Ko did to the bastard, but in the next moment, Opalcreek was gone, and Hans’s arm was settling back into place as he knelt by Mira’s side, whispering assurances and knitting her flesh together with a push of magic. Something to stop the bleeding, though gods knew it would only make things worse later on.

There was another noise, a faint roar of rage as the crimson-armored devil finally spurred into action, and, in an instant–protect–Hans had a pulsing, fiery gem clutched in his hand.

“Thank you for your contribution, I will make good use of you,” he muttered to it, his mind already racing as he stood with Mira in his arms, hurrying from the restaurant with only the slightest glance toward the coughing, gagging vampire writhing on the ground, trying to pull the shattered remains of restaurant wall from his punctured torso.

Shame the wood missed his heart. Hans would’ve liked a confirmation on that old legend.

Life had a proclivity for cruel consequences though, and while Hans would have liked to keep Mira safe in a hospital for her recovery, apparently there were consequences to “assaulting a count”. And no, it did not help Hans’s case that the count assaulted his student first. Really, it just showed his “motive” to whatever court decided to put that bounty out on him.

Not that Hans ever bothered to defend himself in a court. He had no expectations of justice there–wealth and nobility tended to get its way, and Opalcreek had scores of both–so staying at a friend’s place sounded like a far better idea. Particularly when that friend was set up in the Swamplands, quite far from any Inrapaban jurisdiction.

Neroh 21st, 2998

“Must you take up an entire desk?” Eliza groused as she walked back into her–well, perhaps “their” would be more appropriate at this juncture?–starry-ceilinged office, “And no, it’s not yours. You didn’t pay for any of this, and you’re mooching off of me.”

Very well, still her office–with, as stated previously, a rather beautiful ceiling that mimicked a starry sky and a number of other such lovely, celestial artworks along its walls–then. “I do recall you owe me far more than I owe you, Lizzy-Ah, no stabbing, Ko might hit back.”

“Would.” Oh, an actual vocalization. That was rare. Ko tended to have Hans speak for her. Or just played music to set the mood instead of speaking. He certainly did enjoy that trait of hers; it added to the atmosphere when he traveled.

“Hmph.” Eliza lowered her foreleg back to the floor. “What are you busy with anyhow?”

“Arm ideas.”

She blinked, then leaned over his shoulder at the rough sketches he’d made. “Hm. Why can’t you simply do the same thing you did with your…’Ko’, but for this Mira girl?”

“Mine trade with Ko was an informed decision I made as an adult. Mira is barely fourteen. I am well aware of her capabilities as an elemental mage. The demonic arts, however, are a field requiring many years of study, and I intend on repairing mine mistake as soon as possible.”

“It wasn’t your mistake. Put the blame where it belongs.”

He gave her a frown. “Where would that be?”

She raised a set of eyebrows in reply. “With the Count you decided to throw through a wall, making both yourself and your little student fugitives.”

“True!” Hans brightened and grinned. “I really should have killed him when I had mine chance!”

“You should have, yes, though I imagine word still would have spread of your transgression.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not, though-” Hans paused and glanced over at the black oak door as someone knocked.

“Well?” Hm? Eliza was staring at him-

“I am sitting. You are standing. You are also closer.”

Eliza frowned, then glanced back at the door with her upper eyes. The lower were reserved for glaring at him, as usual. “It’s open.”

And the door creaked open as Mira peeked in, her eyes still somewhat sunken and the empty left sleeve of her jacket–which she was wearing over a black dress Eliza had bought for her–pinned up against its shoulder. “You two arguing again?”

“What? Of course not. What do you want, child?” Eliza demanded.

“Hello Mira. Do you need anything?” Hans asked.

Mira shrugged–she winced there at the gesture, maybe still some pain… “There’s a lady asking for you, Lady Tealmarn.”

“Ugh, fantastic...what kind of lady? Swampfolk? Anuran? Incubus?”

“Uh, no-Wait, Incubus?”

“A type of Luxurian demon, embodying and characterized by sexual dominance, in contrast to succubi and in comparison to concubi,” Hans elaborated.

“There’s a bloody coven of the harlots living out in the swamps by Smaltrist,” Eliza added, scowling, “Preaching about the inevitable return of their grand ‘Lust Lord’, always knocking on doors and offering pamphlets.” She hissed the word as though it was a grievous insult.

“...Y-Yeah, um...no? It’s a human lady. Sorta pretty? Um, tall, and brown-skinned.”

“Oh, Valondrac then.” Hm? Well that was an unusually positive reaction. Eliza was actually smiling. As for that name…

“Would that be the ‘Arch-Countess’?” Hans asked with a glance towards Eliza. He’d heard rumors, certainly, of a quite ambitious–lord-like–Countess rising up in Blekhon and making a number of moves to expand her influence outward. Alliances, other nobles swearing fealty, activities in Olafiba, Brunzaba, Skiritaba...

“The very same, though the proper title here, as she so uses, is Marquess. One few have used in recent centuries, but a valid one.” Eliza was smirking now; likely enjoying having information that Hans did not. She could be quite amusingly petty at times.

“Huh. Fascinating...And how would you know her?”

“How wouldn’t I? You realize she moves in quite similar circles. More so than the average ‘count’ as well, as she actually deigns to speak to those of a far more productive mindset than those useless old bats hoarding their wealth and scurrying into the dark the second any danger appears.”

...Hans decided he really shouldn’t comment on the nobility of the Dark Lands and their tendency to “scurry” whenever a new Demon Lord declared themself. Particularly since the more arachnoid nobility weren’t exactly ones to fight against rising powers. More likely to join them, really. “So you’ve met her directly?”

“Of course I have, I mentioned her by name and knew precisely what she looked like. Inference is a skill you sorely need to learn, Hans.”

“Ah yes, mine apologies.” He smiled and stood. “Shall we go meet with your new friend then?”

“She’s not a friend, she’s an acquaintance, it takes a great deal more than being a person of interest to me to garner my friendship. Now, come along, old friend.” Hans blinked. Well, that was a very rare display of affection- “That means now.” And she was already leaving, very well then.

So Eliza led Hans and Mira to her parlor, where the most fascinating person Hans had ever met was reclining in one of the large, plush cushions Lizzy had in place of actual furniture. Granted, “actual” furniture was not made for an individual with the lower half of an arachnid, so her choice in furniture was apt for her needs.

Oh, and there was a second, also rather interesting person there; a blonde, orcish woman, who was outright lying on top of another cushion, her hands folded on her belly as she audibly snored, likely fast asleep and earning a poorly hidden giggle from Mira.

"My apologies for my companion, she insisted on taking full watch last night, and fell asleep as soon as she laid down," the other woman explained. She was dark-skinned, black-haired, and yellow-eyed, clad in black robes lined with red, her hands gloved in matching colors. Furthermore, she appeared...mostly human. Her ears had points, that much was clear, so perhaps an elvish or cambionic ancestry?

“You need not apologize, Marquess Valondrac. My cushions are indisputably comfortable.” An odd thing to brag about, but Eliza was nothing if not proud of her...accomplishments?

“They really are,” Mira agreed, promptly going to the nearest one and flopping into it, earning a frown from Eliza.

“That was not permission.” Mira didn’t move. After a second, Liza sighed and just sat on a cushion of her own, her legs curling into the plush as she made herself comfortable. “My apologies, Marquess. My friend’s apprentice is young and ridiculous.”

“Hkh yh tuh.”

Valondrac’s lips twitched, then she shrugged, smiling. “It’s no problem. Oh, though, weird thing, apparently it’s supposed to be ‘Marchioness’. Feminine version or something.”

“...What? But Marquess already sounds feminine.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Jonathan has books about the subject and they don’t explain anything. Apparently an old alternative was marquisess, but everyone agreed that sounded stupid and tried to change it.”

“...” Eliza sighed. “Is this a vampire thing? It’s a vampire thing, isn’t it.”

Valondrac shrugged. “Possibly. The lightlanders supposedly used to have titles like Landgrave and Margrave before transferring to their current Baron-Earl-Duke system, so perhaps we stole it?” Hm. That may be something to research–boring, bad idea–Ah, definitely something to research then–noooo…

“Ugh. So many damn titles. Why not just use Lord, or Lady? Or president.”

“Well they’re not merchant guilds, so-Ah, wait, sorry to interrupt, but I actually do have a point to being here today.”

“Ah, of course you do, no one ever just wants to talk. What is it?”

“It’s not a request for you, Lady Tealmarn, unless you’ve rethought my offer?”

Eliza paused, then sighed and rolled her eyes. It was quite the sight, all of them turning at once. “No. I already did the ‘demon general’ thing once, I’m not interested in trying again.”

“That’s still a shame, but I appreciate your candor.” Then Valondrac turned her gaze towards Hans–Ah, so that’s where this was going. “Professor Samore, it’s nice to meet you.”

He smiled politely, largely because she actually bothered to use his title. “It is nice to meet you too, Marchioness Valondrac. However, I am not interested in becoming your general either.”

She pouted. “You could at least hear out my offer first.”

Hans shrugged, then climbed onto and sat cross-legged on the cushion across from Valondrac. “I could. I doubt you will say anything I have not heard from other aspiring Demon Lords. Your current title is a curiosity though.”

“I have three Ouzan patrons.” What. what.

“...Pardon?”

“If you want, you are in trouble with Count Opalcreek, after all.”

Hans blinked at the non-sequitur. “...I...Mine apologies, but I don’t understand.”

“I have the ability to pardon you, if you so desire. Count Opalcreek, the spineless psychopath, pledged his loyalty to me when I made it clear I wouldn’t be content with the bats scurrying into their hidden caves while I seized power.”

She grinned. “He wronged you and yours. Would you like to be there when I make him pay for it?”

“...” Almost involuntarily, Hans felt his eyes go to Mira, who had turned and was staring at Valondrac now.

“...” Mira glanced at him, a question in her eyes, and Hans...gave her a slight nod. “...You’re that asshole’s boss?”

“I’m his superior, yes. I’m sorry he hurt you.” Valondrac suddenly stood from her cushion, and...and bowed. She bowed to Mira. A noblewoman, higher in rank than a vampiric count, apparently to the point that the undead beings that ruled Inrapaba swore

fealty

to her, who had the audacious claim to have

three

Ouzan patrons, actually was bowing to a thirteen-year-old girl scarcely higher than a commoner. That...didn’t happen. “He will suffer for it. You have my solemn oath on that matter.”

“...A-Ah...th-thanks?” Mira was blushing. That...huh.

“No problem!” And then Valondrac straightened, a grin on her face as she looked to Hans again. “So, my offer is simple. I’m not a Demon Lord yet, but I fully intend to be, as is obvious. To facilitate my actual success instead of going the way of some idiot warlord, I’m going to be conquering the entire Dark Land continent. I would like your help with that, in exchange for pay, legal protections, and access to whatever demonic lore you need for your studies, Professor Samore.”

“...” That...well...what? “...Why?”

It was in her smile, then and there, that Hans found true conviction. “Because I am going to rule the world.”

“...” She’s crazy.

She was. She most certainly was. But...But? There was certainly something about it. Something that made him almost believe her. Dumb. Be skeptic. Think. Right.

Right, that was necessary. “I admit mine interest, Marchioness. However, could you prove the truth of your claim? A showing that you are, indeed, the power you profess to be?”

“Of course! Ah, Lady Tealmarn, may I use your floor?”

“No, you may not. We have a room for spellcasting that doesn’t have a nice carpet.”

“Aw, but it will only take a second! Please? Wouldn’t you rather get it out of the way now instead of having to move around?”

“No, of course not, and there is nothing you can say that would convince me.”

And with a two hundred platinum “donation” to the Conservatory, Valondrac proved Eliza a liar. And then she proved Hans a fool because mother of all devils, she summoned the daughter of Rot right into Eliza’s parlor room.

“Hey Labatu! Thanks for coming so quickly!”

“Ah, no worries Claire. And thank you for hosting me, Lady Tealmarn.” The easily 8ft tall demoness bowed politely to Eliza, her white leather-gloved hands placed over the lap of her long, white skirt. She looked a great deal like some type of hunter, with a hooded white coat strapped with bandoliers of knives, similar sheathes at her waist, and a white, long-beaked bird mask covering her face. Her very presence was making Hans feel like he had to cough, and Ko was shrinking back in his mind from the pressure she exuded. That, and the singularly unpleasant reek of burnt wax emanating from her body.

Put simply...it was one of the most impressive displays of strength Hans had ever witnessed. And it made him want to be better, to work again and get closer to attaining that level of absolute power-

“Now, do you have any suggestions for who I should bring in for Marrow and Drought? Do you have any cousins?” Eh?

“Hmm...No, not that I recall, though Mother does tend to keep things from me...I suppose Auberich would be around my level?” ...the Blood King? What?

“Oh, that’ll work! Thanks Labby!” Wait, what, why was their already a runic circle forming, was she actually-

“Ah, Marchioness!” Hans tried to grin as he stepped in front of her, his arms outstretched as though he’d somehow block her from bringing one of the most powerful demons in the 7th Circle into Estus. “Your display was sufficient to convince me! I thank you for such a showing, and would like to request that you do not summon a demon quite literally known as The Painbringer.”

“Oh, alright.” She let her hand drop, then frowned. “Is that really what he’s called? That’s a terrible name.”

“...Well, he brings pain, Marchioness. So I believe most demons consider it apt.”

“Sure, but what does ‘bring pain’ really mean? It’s not a solid thing you can carry. ‘Paincauser’ would be more accurate.”

“...” Hans glanced at Eliza, who just smirked back at him. “...I suppose that is more accurate, yes. Nevertheless.” He placed his mortal hand over his heart, then kneeled to his new liege. “I pledge my loyalty to you, Marchioness Valondrac. You have proven...fascinating, and I endeavor to aid you in your goals.” Then he raised his eyes. “I would ask though, that you do allow me to finish Mira’s apprenticeship first. Mine responsibilities lie with her, foremost.”

“Certainly. Though I do hope you two come to visit soon.” Her grin widened into something deeply malicious. “I would like you to see when I strip Opalcreek of every title and land he once held.”

“I would enjoy that, mine lady.” And, in a moment of rather ugly satisfaction, Hans was quite certain he meant every word.

And, as for Ko...She felt a strange stirring in her muted mind. Was she...happy? Odd. Very odd.

But as her partner kneeled before his future Empress, a mouth formed and spread into a wide, giddy smile beneath the eye on his shoulder. “Make it painful.”

And the empress answered her too as the onlookers gawked and her partner chuckled. “Of course I will.”

Heh. What a lovely world to live in~.

#writing #fantasy #warlocks #story #my writing #the demon lord's generals #dlg #demons #sirens #arachnid #aranae #fiction

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