#then pain as the last embers of a soul now long gone and dying boy who has to live become one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dreamiesformula · 4 years

Text

“A ... Stray Kid?”

This is set just before the barrier comes down but also before the fight with Audrey.

Theme: Soulmates AU , OC x Harry Hook

Warnings: mild swearing, slight angst, Maybe?

Rating: MA 15+ ¿

What is a Stray Kid?: a group of friends who refused to conform to the princess or culinary life and live in a small section between the isle and Auradon called District 9.

Starting now:

Y/N’s P.O.V

“So you went to take down Auradon’s rulers and ended up as an octopus?” I giggle at the girl in front of me in the shore or district 9. “Yes don’t laugh I just want a better life, a way off the isle for my family, my crew.” She replies longing in her eyes, is this a villain speaking oml what’s happened I scoff “I’ll get Felix and we will fix it so you can transform willingly” I call Felix through our connection ‘Lix please we gotta help get’, ‘ugh fine’ he groans “he’s coming he’ll be here soon” I smile at her. “My name is Y/N Lee, and you are?” I extend my hand “Uma!” The half octopus lady replies. “Y/N I thought I told you to stay away from the shore you know what happened last time” my twin brother Felix scolds “but I met Uma this time!” I smile I was never wholesome enough to make it as a princess or bad enough to be a villain until I felt a strong enough emotion to set me off, or at least that’s what Felix told me. We hold hands and mutter a spell under our breathe and next thing we know with a flash of red the girls standing onshore now able to control her morphs, “Welcome to district 9!” I smile taking her hand to show her around.

* Meanwhile on the isle *

The original Vks Mal, Jay, Carlos and Evie had picked up the 4 lucky new Vilian Kids to get their chance at a happily ever after, soulmates weren’t a big thing on the isle and sometimes happened between vilian kids and Auradon ones but only very rarely but such was the case with Mal and Ben, Evie and Doung & Jane and Carlos. Perhaps even rarer a soulmate being from district 9 and the isle as they never seemed to come in contact with one another, both with the same fate of dying painfully from a lack of love without ever meeting their “one”.

Y/N’s P.O.V

As Uma talked about the isle and all her crew I felt a intense stinging in my left arm Felix must’ve felt it too because he looked over at me eyes wide as the words H.Hook appeared on my forearm, “and then there’s Harry, he is the son of Captain Hook and he is my first mate!” She smiles softly she must miss them since she hasn’t been able to get back into the isle after the little incident. I pull my sleeves down and ignore it I hear Felix try to communicate to me through our thoughts ‘Y/N your soulmate is a VK’ and with that I get up and run off.

Felix’s P.O.V

“Uma tell me more about this Harry guy... I think my sister just found her soulmate” I say voice barely stable as I can feel the stress my twin is feeling. She’s crying but I can’t tell why, was she happy or sad, were they losing their connection, or was I going to lose her over this unknown pirate. That was until everything went blurry I ask Uma to find Y/N “We need to morph soon, please. Get my sister!” I briefly look down at my left arm there it was UMA in big curvier lettering, before my world turned black.

Y/N’s P.O.V

Sitting in the edge of my bed I read the journal I kept over the past 4 years when all of Stray Kids found their soulmates expect for Lix and I, ‘Sometimes I think I maybe be fated with a VK even Chris thinks so, I’m still not over Jin he and I really had something I truly thought he was my one, I don’t know what happened but I hope one day I’ll find them... but I’ll never leave Felix behind, I need him and he needs me forever.’ I start to feel fuzzy and immediately I know somethings happened to Felix I open my door to be greeted with Uma hold her left arm out I read it “F.Lee” shocked I try to tap into Felix but there’s nothing “where is he?” I frantically run back to where we all were before I found out about Harry there lied my brother face down barely alive. “I can’t touch him Uma or we will morph together, I need you to pick him up for me. How about we swim near the isle the bridge is up meaning someone from Auradon is gonna be there? I need to get Chris!” I rant frantically. Her tough exterior softens briefly “okay fine” she replies going into an octopus holding my a Lix in one hand I cast a spell that will protect Felix from the water and make it so he can breathe. We reach the bridge and Ursula tells me to catch whatever’s falling she lifts me up and I grab what appears to be hades ember “please no it can’t get wet!” I hear mal scream, “show me where Chris is and it won’t” I frantically shout as Uma places Felix down and I plead to Jay to help “he may have been spelled we can’t find him or Ben anywhere Audrey spelled everyone she’s gone manic and evil.” He explains then comes and hugs me, I throw the ember to Uma “please I can’t lose him you know that, he just found his soulmate.” I smile sadly pointing to Uma who’s now hugging two pirates one pointing to his arm as Uma waves at me. “And I did too Jay” I hug him tightly before Uma speaks up “Promise me every Vilian kid who wants off the isle will have their freedom.” She holds the ember over the water as Mal promises once in our way Jay grabs Felix and we all head back. “Why don’t you just morph again that worked last time Y/N” Evie asks, “we can’t morph until Chris’ assessment of him we don’t have much time left until we are fully bonded so for the sake of Felix and his soulmate I can’t morph until I know we can be separated again” I sadly smile and feel a hand on my shoulder as I look up there’s Uma “please tell me more Y/N, I want to understand this, for you, for Harry and for him.” She points to Lix whose currently around Jay’s shoulder I laugh at the fact that he looks so tiny. It’s not long until Harry comes up next to his Captain and I run off next to Jay “Jay he’s dying, I can feel it, I can feel his pain!” I wince as I hear a call “Y/N?” I turn to the water near the shores and find Jin all wet and washed up his long hair in his face I gasp and run over to him, “Jinnie, what happened?” I grab my jacket and put it around him “I don’t know why I’m here Y/N but somethings not right.” I grab his hand intertwining it with mine and walk to the group again “you’re telling me” I sigh and point to Felix and he gasps. Only the other Stray Kids know that if Felix does die then so do I, I can’t break that to Uma or my Harry yet.

Harry’s P.O.V

Something inside of me broke when I saw that Y/N lass with that boy “w’ose he?” I ask Uma, she shrugs but explain who she was “that’s Y/N Lee” I look to my arm and sure enough there it was Uma chuckles, “yes that’s your soulmate and that’s mine” she softly smiles pointing to the unconscious lad. “The isle’s barrier must’ve blocked my connection but she helped me when I couldn’t find a way back in it a hole, her and her brother are our soulmates and Harry for once in my life I feel happy.” Uma smiles “I just wish she’d talk with me aye, but she’s too busy holds hands with man bun” I scoff “he’s a stray kid too they’re like us Harry, a family.” She rolls her eyes walking up to her dead looking soulmate. I’m glad Uma gets to be happy but what about me huh. I can still feel the stinging but I choose to ignore it, replace it with anger and jealously although till never admit it. She was gorgeous, was she really my one?

Y/N’s P.O.V

“Guys I need to find him soon” I gasp as Jin holds onto me tightly “please Chris where are you?” I whisper.

As we enter Auradon I see a all too familiar sleeping figure, “CHAN!” I scream seeing the only older brother figure I’ve know “Jinnie, it’s Chris” I run over to him still hand in hand with the boy I crouch beside him “only true loves kiss can break a spell like this” Evie tells us. “No, I know a way” “Jin remember what Chris taught us last time when you were out” I smile “of course!” “Let’s start!” I smile as we chant the spell to wake up any stray kids from a sleeping curse, “Maneun gashideonggul dachin goseul jabgo, Jamshi shwil shigan eopne, Nan gwaenchana chamgo gyesok haeseo, Nae apeul barabomyeo ttwimyeon dwae.” Jin starts and I take over picking up the pace as we move our hands in circulation above a sleeping Chris “Run through the miro like a beast, Da biseuthan gireun da pihaega, Misukhajiman saeroun dojeon, Imma Bear Grylls nae kkumeul makneun geot deureun modu meogeo chiwo. Nan dallyeo nae kkumeul hyanghaneun moheom.” He jolts up from the slumber as “Stray Kids Whooo” we all chant as I hold onto Chris as tightly as possible Before I can even say another word Harry interputs all the bickering “I believe we’re being challenged” but is brushed off by Uma and make alike “GIRLS!” He shouts “we have a situation ere” Pointing his hook and shouting to 50 plus moving knights ready to attack us, as Audrey’s voice beckons through the amour, Cecilia the smaller girl takes dude this talking dog we found and Felix and hides behind the pillars in the enterence. “Are ye sure you can fight princess?” Harry winks at me “firstly not a princess and secondly don’t have much choice pirate” I scoff really this one was my soul mate. *sword fighting resumes*

I grab three swords throwing one to Chris and Jin “For Felix!” I scream as I go for the stack of three trying to attack Uma “Y/N, what are you doing you’ll get hurt!” I hear her shout over the sword clanging “don’t worry” I scoff as start chanting a spell again with Chris and Jin following. Our chant causes them to malfunction long enough for Mal to take over “Suit of amour strong and true, make this metal bust a move!” She spells eyes glowing green. And after an intense dance battle we all win!

I curl over in pain about to fall when a pirate hook catches me “wow there princess, fallin’ for me already huh” I smile before snapping back to reality “Lix” I run to where he lays. “Chris please I can feel it he’s slipping away” I gasp and the air is knocked out of me, with pleading eyes I look at Chris “he found his soul mate?” I nod “our connection, it’s fading right?” I felt overwhelmed with emotion “no, hes actually getting stronger, but he’s gone into over drive.” I have no words “our connection, it’s time right?” I sigh “sadly” he smiles before we even have the time to do anything “Chris take him and go to Evie’s cottage, he needs to lay down.” Mal orders “we will split up girls going to the cottage boys go look for Ben” I nod again “Jinnie stay with us, we aren’t as strong if we are missing someone, Carlos knows what we all look like call is if you find Min, Kai, Han, CB or Lee please” he gives me a thumbs up. “We stand a chance if we can all harness our power.” Uma smiles, “quickly please” Mal orders as we go to all split up Chan (Chris) speaks up...

“Hey Y/N go with the boys you’re the strongest out of us all you can handle your own hopefully if you’re not so close to Felix the pain will lessen.” Chan orders “But- Chris” I go to complain until Jay steps in “we got her” and takes my arm dragging me with them. The boys had paired up while walking leaving Harry and I to get acquented, “so lass what’s your name” I hear a Scottish accent whisper in my ear “Y/N Lee, and yours is Harry Hook I assume” pointing the the hook he’s carried around everywhere. “Indeed, a bit infatuated are we love” he winks okay so sure I was falling for it but Felix was my priority “perhaps I am hook, after all you and I, well we have something of a connection” I laugh walking towards Jay and jumping on his back “what if we can’t save him” I whisper “I’m not losing you okay” Jay reassures me after all when we went to Auradon he was one of my best friends when we met we got along instantly. While we walk along I hear the faint sound of the sirens from district 9, meaning that some of my friends where closed by that’s our warning sign when someone in danger. “Owww my ears” dude complains “tell me where that’s coming from boy” I lean down to the dog as he runs off me chasing after him.

Jay’s P.O.V

“Jay, um erm. So this Y/N girl...” I laugh “yeah I know you’re her soul mate, what’s up?” He looks shocked “she tells me everything, I’m the only one in Auradon she knows like her brother.” I smirk he goes to swing at me with his hook but I dodge it. “I FOUND BEN!” I hear Y/N scream as Harry takes off like the speed of light i not so far behind in tow. Seeing Y/N protecting the other 4 stray kids in a bubble of red as she ducks swings from a very angry looking beast, that beast being Ben.

Harry’s P.O.V

The boys and I each take turns in helping evade this beasts strikes something came over me and I wanted to protect her the wee lass that was with us that is, I felt something for her I haven’t felt well ever, I wonder what it was.

Y/N’s P.O.V

While the boys help the beast whose apparently king Ben with his issue I take turns making sure all the other stray kids are okay, “I’m so glad you’re alright!” I smile to them all as we huddle for a group hug. Once a girl comes along and sprays Ben with some liquid he turns back to almost normal “Y/N?” He questions “Hey Ben” I greet “where’s Felix?” My eyes soften “details to follow” Jay says while Harry shamelessly hits on Carlos’ girlfriend Jane! “Taken Hook” Carlos growls, Harry just laughs I walk with the other boys while we catch up on all the events turns out when Audrey spelled Auradon the District was also effected sending us all to different places.

“Y/N, your arm?” I frantically try to cover up “we both found ours Han” I smile sadly knowning soon enough I may be no longer. “We will save him and you it’s gonna be okay, you’ll get your happy ever after our princess” the say while bowing I just laugh shaking my head. We all walk back to Evie’s cottage without realising I walk next to Harry whose arm finds its way around my shoulder touching me close to his side, oddly enough I felt at home, I felt safe.

“Ye know, you’re a pretty hot soulmate for a pirate, badass too it’s so hot seeing Ye do that magic or yours.” Harry whispers to me sending my cheeks red “you’re not too bad yourself hook” I laugh before interlacing our hands the one that didn’t have the hook of course. Gil comes up beside us “Hi I’m Gil!” He smiles “hi I’m Y/N Lee” I smile as we begin to chatter “so whose the group behind us” he whispers “well Gil they’re my crew, my family.” I smile fondly hoping everything is gonna be okay.

Uma’s P.O.V

“Mal tell me it’s not true!” Evie sounds distressed for the 6th time I listen in on their conversation “yes Evie, it is. If Felix dies so does Y/N and vice versa, if they merge only Felix will be left either way Y/N loses her chance and it’s all my fault I knew she had a VK soulmate I saw Harry’s arm when we were kids, no one noticed what it was not even Harry...” Mal sighs “you mean to tell me this whole time he’s been slowly dying!” I scream I never even got my chance. Where was MY happily ever after huh?

“UMA!” They scream “if I kiss him that will work right. True loves kiss. Works everytime does it?” I frantically rush “no Uma, this isn’t a spell that can be broken we’ve already asked Y/N, either they both die or only she dies and he lives, until Chris can understand why it’s happened now instead of in 20 years when the spell was meant to act up again.” She stops before starting again “we thought we had cured them.” Sighing Uma angrily throws the cake she knew emotions would make her weak yet she was fated with this boy slamming the door to the cottage she going to take a breather outside.

Y/N’s P.O.V

As we arrive at the cottage I’m throw back into reality “guys it’s Felix” I yell as the 4 boys follow closely in tow as we pole through the bittage door I see him there pale as ever I feel a pair of hands snake around my waist as I breathe in leather and salty seas Harry was comforting me? Everyone else seemed just as confused “hey love don’t cry it’s gonna be alright we will save him.” He whispers “NO, YOU DON’T GET IT IF HE DIES I DIE. WE SHARE ONE SOUL I FEEL EVERYTHING HE FEELS, IF HE IS GONE I’M GONE HARRY IF WE DO NOT SAVE HIM ITS NOT A HAPPY EVER AFTER FOR ME. HE GOES I GO!” I burst screaming at him “BUT WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU CARE YOU ARE JUST A PIRATE” I didn’t mean it I know I cared for him but Felix was my other half literally, Harry goes to bite but Mal pulls him away before he can.

Mal’s P.O.V

“So ye tellin’ me either way I lose my lass” Harry looks like a broken man “yes Harry, she either dies because her brother dies or she’s trapped inside his body forever, it’s almost impossible to separate them” I calmly explain as he bursts punching the table with a bleeding wrist Han walks in “Mal, we are all going to be leaving, we will take Felix back to the district along with Y/N.” He explains “I’m sorry we couldn’t save them” I say Han looked up to Y/N as a sister and they were all very close “we knew this day would come we are just sorry you both hand to find out about them this way, we will stay in touch we wish you the best of luck but as you know we are only as powerful as your ember and the septer when we are all together.” He sighs it’s true they were the most powerful physical human beings known in the area not even Uma nor I could match them when they’re all together. “Can I see my lass?” Harry whispers Han nods before pulling everyone out of the room including a very still knocked out Felix.

Y/N’s P.O.V

“love?” I hear a familiar whisper, I sigh turning around “Harry I’m so sorry I-“ he cuts me off by pressing his lips too mine a emotional kiss which I didn’t expect from someone as rough as him. “I’m not mad just promise me that we will meet again princess” he smiles sadly “I promise my prince” I smile before pulling him in for another kiss.

*mal is fighting the evil Audrey*

I hear a scream for help as all of us turn we see Mal as a dragon fighting Audrey, we go up to Uma and Harry then an idea pops into my head. I whisper to Uma “take care of them for me” and I grab onto Felix’s cold hand before anyone can stop me, I look at Harry and say “I’m sorry Harry, I love you.” Before disappearing into Felix as his body jolts awake.

‘Well look who woke up sleeping beauty’ I sarcastically joke ‘let’s save this kingdom’ he smiles as Uma and him hug inside I’m screaming.

‘I can hear you stupid’ I hear Felix tell me off

‘Sorry’ I mentally shrug

Uma, the stray kids and mal fight and defeat Audrey saving Auradon.

I feel my energy drain as I feel light then feel nothing at all.

Harry’s P.O.V

She’s gone, the only woman I’ve ever loved, my soulmate, my one. Gone. All for a stupid princess.

Both Felix and Y/N’s bodies lay there lifeless I thought they weren’t supposed to split. I only grow more confused when her brother gets up and walks but Y/N doesn’t. She really is gone.

I pick up her limp lifeless body as I carry it to the boy referred to as Chris he silently thanks me before turning away to leave “Harry” I hear a deep voice call “I’m going to get her back mate, she’s not gone yet I can feel her love for you growing. Chris won’t let the only princess we’ve got die.” He smiles before turning to say goodbye to Uma I feel a slight gilmt of hope but it dies almost instantly.

I should’ve been able to save her, but I couldn’t.

Uma and I head back to the isle when they go to pick up hades of course they’ll do anything to save one of their own, the anger burns inside me. I haven’t left my room in the ship since that day.

“HARRY COME SEE THIS”

I get changed into the first thing I see and run to Uma thinking somethings wrong.

I watch as the barrier disappears and hug Uma tightly knowing she’ll finally get a happy ending, I watch as she runs to Felix whose on auradons side with 7 of the other stray kids all of them but it is the one familiar face missing that makes even this moment seem bitter.

I slowly walk the bridge as everyone including mal and Ben bow I look up and see her there. Y/N Lee my soulmate proudly standing smiling before running to me and gripping so tight neither of us let go, maybe life wasn’t so bitter after all “how love?” I whisper “Hades” she smiles before pulling me in for a long and very overdue kiss “you saved em princess” I pull her closer scared she’ll slip away “and you saved me prince” laughing she pulls away only to have me pull her back in “not again love, I’m not letting my lass leave me side ever.” Placing a soft kiss on her forehead ignoring all the whoops from her friends and just enjoying my chance to truly be happy.

#harry hook imagine #harry hook one shot #carlos de vil x reader #carlos x reader #harry hook x reader #stray kids imagine #descendants #descendants 3 imagine #descendants imagine #descendants x reader #Uma x reader #mal x reader #gil x reader #Harry Hook x y/n #harry hook

159 notes · View notes

skarsgard-daydreams · 4 years

Text

Howl

Description: Willard, struggling to cope with the loss of his wife and his shattered faith, finds a small light in the darkness.

Warnings: angst, depression, alcohol abuse, mention of war violence, religious doubt, some blood, strong language

Notes: I’ve never posted something like this before. I wanted to give Willard a chance to change his ending. Sorry if there are any typos.

In the months after he buried his wife, Willard sometimes thought he was going feral. He’d sent the boy off to live with his aunt and uncle and now wasted away in that old house in the woods with no one to keep him company save his demons. Nights he spent drowning himself in beer, or Jim Beam when he could afford it, and screaming at air in the woods behind his house. He was certain there was either no one listening to his prayers or he’d been praying to a spiteful God all this time, willing to rob a man of everything good in his life just to prove a point.

Tonight was a Jim Beam night and Willard hoped to drink himself stupid. He sat in his threadbare green armchair and tipped another swig of whiskey down his throat, grimacing at the familiar burn. He thought of the war, and how by the end of it each of the men had learned to smother that last bit of humanity in them and become nothing more than an animal. They were like dogs trained to fight, acting on raw instinct, trained to kill and desperate to survive. He wanted to smother that part of him again—to stop thinking and feeling and become a man of pure action and instinct. He was willing to do anything to win the war raging in his mind against a cruel God and numb the searing pain he felt every time he woke up in this house without her.

Willard swallowed the last mouthful of whiskey and hurled the bottle at the unlit wood stove in the center of the room. It shattered, sending shards of glass skittering across the hardwood floor to join the remains of dozens of beer bottles that had met the same fate. He rose to his feet and ran his fingers through his overgrown hair, pushing it off his sweaty forehead. He wanted to know why. He knew he wasn’t always a good man, but he wasn’t a bad one neither. What had he done to deserve this? And what about her? She’d never hurt anything if she could help it. She wouldn’t even kill a spider. She deserved better than this. If there was a God anywhere in the universe worth praying to, the bastard would’ve let her live.

The muscles in his jaw tightened as Willard walked to the front door, his boots crunching on the pieces of glass that littered the floor. He slammed the door and stalked through the overgrown grass, finding his way in the moonlight to the place where he used to kneel down and beg God for mercy. When he saw that rough-hewn cross he’d once nailed together and set upon a log, he no longer thought of that crucified marine. He no longer thought at all. He felt only a white-hot fire burning in his chest as he tore it down with his large hands, breaking the cross into pieces and throwing them to the ground. He added some sticks and dry kindling to the pile and tossed down a lit match.

In a few moments, the kindling began to smoke, and soon the flames lapped along the long flat pieces of the cross. Willard stared into the flames, breathing heavily. His ears were ringing the same way they used to during firefights in the war. He balled his hands into fists, his dirty fingernails pressing so hard against the skin that he drew blood. Where once he sensed the presence of God, he now felt nothing except His absence as a searing loneliness twisted within him.

Willard felt his knees hit the ground. He wanted to go feral. He’d howl at the moon and rail at the heavens if he thought anyone would hear him. Hot tears began to sting his eyes as he ground his fists into the dirt. Soon he was sobbing, his broad shoulders trembling as he knelt by the fire thinking of the last time he’d found himself on his knees in this grove. It was the day before he lost her, and he’d spent hours praying and begging for God to take him instead. But God hadn’t listened.

The people in town said Willard Russell was being punished for his lack of faith. If he’d been a church-going man, maybe things would’ve turned out differently. But hadn’t she gone to church every Sunday? Said grace over every meal? Paid their full tithe even when it meant cold nights and small suppers? And what had God done for her? Not a damn thing.

A violent twist of his stomach made Willard lurch forward. He could hear his heartbeat thrumming in his ears and he drove his fists back into the ground before screaming into the night as loud as he could. A wild, inhuman roar came out of him, more like the bellowing of a wounded animal than a man. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a dog howl and he felt he was howling with it into the dark void of the night. He filled his lungs with air again and continued to scream.

Willard didn’t know how long he was out there before he heard footsteps crunching through the dry grass behind him. His throat felt raw as he stared at the dying embers of the fire still smoldering around the remains of the cross.

“Mr. Russell?” came a soft voice in the darkness. Willard craned his neck to look behind him. He could just make out the girl’s face. Something clicked in his whiskey-soaked mind and he realized she was the girl who’d recently come up to look after old man Campbell next door. She held a light in one hand and her grandaddy’s Smith & Wesson in the other.

“I…” Willard stammered. It had been a long while since he’d had a reason to talk to someone other than his own demons and he didn’t know how to explain what he was doing on his knees screaming like a lunatic in the woods in the middle of the night. “I… I was…”

“It’s alright,” she said, her voice gentle, the way one tries to soothe a wild animal. She studied him quietly for a long moment, her gaze sweeping over his sunken green eyes and gaunt, tear-stained cheeks. She pressed her lips together. “I made some pecan pie earlier,” she said casually. “Come on over and I’ll cut you a slice.”

Willard avoided her gaze as he shook his head and wiped his face quickly with the back of his sleeve. “That’s kind of you, miss, but—”

“I’m not askin’,” she said. He hesitated another moment and she gave him a stern look before he could speak. “Come on now.”

The girl turned back toward her house, expecting him to follow. Willard rose slowly to his feet. His limbs felt like lead, but he didn’t have strength left to argue. As he followed her light through the dark path in the woods, he didn’t think of the searing pain in his chest or the unbearable silence of the grove. A numbness had finally settled over him like a balm to soothe his aching soul. And though it wasn’t enough to take away the pain, it was a start.

#bill skarsgard fanfiction #tdatt fanfiction #willard russell fanfiction #bill skarsgard #tdatt #the devil all the time #the devil all the time fanfiction #willard russell #willard

52 notes · View notes

thegeminisage · 3 years

Text

writing that’s not supposed to be writing but that’s just supposed to play the mental movie for you:

"I'm not trying to smother you, man," Dean says. "But I can't—if anything happened to you—" He stops again. "Sammy, let us handle the demons. God knows you've done enough." He closes his eyes briefly against the memory of Sam's face right before he fell. It's okay, Dean. I got him.

"Dean," Sam starts, like he's gearing up to dig in his heels on this one, but he's cut off by a distant boom. It sounds almost like thunder, but summer is long over and there’s no flash of lightning to explain the noise.

Dean squints out into the dark. "Did you hear that?"

Something massive and unidentifiable rises up behind the woods, blotting out the stars behind it, then swoops back down.

Sam grips the porch railing so hard his knuckles whiten. "Is that demon smoke?"

Boom. This one rattles every window in Bobby's house, close enough that Dean feels it in his feet. "Sam, get inside," he says, keeping his eyes on the treeline.

"Dean, what if that’s Balthazar? We have to—"

Something in the distance glows bright white and then fades behind the trees. The wind's starting to pick up. "I said get inside! Now!"

Bobby opens the front door. "What in the hell—"

"Both of you, get down!"

Too late. The light explodes—

When Meg’s perception settles, she's standing in tall dry grass that ripples in the sulfur-scented wind, dark wandering silhouettes barely visible against the deep blood-red of the sky. Something huge and jagged juts up out of the ground. For a moment everything is very still.

This is even worse than she thought. It's dark inside Sam Winchester's soul.

Then there's a sound like a thunderclap and the ground heaves beneath her feet. Around her, the shadows all stumble off their mysterious paths. She hears a child sobbing somewhere in the dark. That jagged thing the distance—it might once have been a wall—comes further apart, piece after piece crashing to the ground. The sky’s faint red light flickers dangerously.

Meg picks her way across the unsteady ground to the nearest shadow and turns it to face her. It's Sam-shaped, younger than the version outside, but its teeth are bared and its eyes demon-black. "It's a prison,” Sam’s voice snarls, "made of bone and flesh and blood and fear. And you sent me back there!"

"What the hell," Meg hisses, and lets go. She doesn’t understand why the words sound so familiar until she sees the brand, the binding link that she put on that arm to keep herself in Sam’s body. She’s looking at the memory of herself. And if the echo of Meg is here, then Lucifer's must be too.

One of the shadows glances over at her: little-boy Sam, clutching a parcel in his hand. "Dad lied to me. I want you to have it." Another shadow, twenty-two with floppy hair, passes by on her other side. "I have these nightmares. And sometimes—they come true." She wheels around. Another Sam on his knees, black veins spreading over his face, screaming: "Dean! Let me out of here! Let me out! Dean!"

Once Meg crosses the last of the wall, the sky gives way to absolute blackness save for a single spark in the distance. Were Meg able to feel, she knows she would be frozen to the bone. She recognizes this place; she spent decades of Hell-time studying it from the outside. This is the Lightbringer's Cage.

Like a camera lens zooming in, the spark rushes towards her until an endless wall of flames fills her vision. Behind the fire: bars, chains upon chains, and six hundred and sixty-six locks to hold the Cage closed. Many are broken, most by her own hand.

"Lucifer," she breathes, and pushes forward heedless of the flames. Fire, her old friend—it will not hurt her here.

Being inside the Cage is like standing in the eye of a hurricane. Two enormous shapes, incomprehensible even to her own mind, circle in the void above her, bleeding malice. The first has wings made of a hundred thousand quivering hands reaching out from a body with too many eyes. The second form is an undulating mass of razorblades and barbed wire and silvery scales, each engraved with tiny ticking clockwork, each razor-sharp. There's another Sam, bleeding and broken, curled around himself on the parched bedrock below. His screams are silent; she couldn't hear them anyway above the clash as the two shapes come together. Lucifer and Michael, still fighting after all this time.

Meg trembles. Even as a memory, the power of Lucifer's true form overwhelms her.

"Lucifer!" she calls. "Morningstar!"

He turns toward her, the attention terrifying and blinding, like being caught in a floodlight. Immediately his brother swoops in for the kill. With a shriek of grating metal and crunching bone, the angels slice into each other with a viciousness Meg has rarely seen even in all her time in Hell.

Finally they see it, a hole in the world opening up wider and wider by the second, dividing the stone that stretches up endlessly into the gray sky.

"Come on, Sammy," Dean says. The air is getting colder. "Come on, I know you know this song—"

"Please," Sam laughs, but he does; he's heard it so many times it could be his own lullaby, and when the chorus comes in— "Eeeeexit light!" he shouts, head thrown back. He can't hit a note either. The gate fills their vision; there is nothing else. "Eeeenter ni-ight!"

"Taaake my hand," Dean crows, looking at Sam instead of the looming oblivion before them, and he's smiling too, grinning from ear to ear. He almost looks young again. "We're off to Never-Never La—"

Castiel jerks his hand up, wreathing Meg's host body in flame, but she does not burn. "You think fire can hurt me?" she snarls, eyes gone yellow and glowing. The fire flies off of her, embers stinging his skin, and she slides back into smoke and hurtles towards him.

Castiel wraps his tattered wings tight around his vessel and then flings them open, sending Meg slamming into the wall of the barn. Chunks of wood and rot fall all around him as he squints to see where she's gone.

There—a sound to his right. She cracks a solid punch to his jaw that leaves him reeling; she must be very angry to fight like a human.

The lights flicker and go out. Dread crawls into Jesse's chest as he stumbles out of bed, limbs feeling clumsy and heavy, breath fogging in the air. A tall, hulking figure materializes out of the shadows on the wall behind Ben and raises something in its hand—a weapon.

A machete.

A frisson of terror, dark and inexorable, rushes up Jesse's spine. He lunges, desperate to stop that wicked blade before it meets Ben's neck, and feels the pain slice into his shoulder instead. That's nothing, his skin is already stitching itself back together, but the impact sends them both sprawling and it takes Jesse a few disorienting seconds to stagger back to his feet. When he finally jerks upright, he comes face-to-face with the ghost.

At first Jesse doesn't recognize him. It's hard to make out any features past the charred exterior: there's an empty space where the ghost's mouth should be, blackened and burned completely away. He sees blond hair, an upturned nose, strong shoulders. But when Jesse meets its eyes—

He knows those eyes. How they looked in the firelight; how they looked as their own light went out. Even after three years, there are some faces you never forget.

Argent forces himself up to his elbows, coughing. "Derek?" He tries not to jostle his wound too much when he rolls over. It's difficult to see through the dust the spray of bullets kicked up, but he's able to make out the black shape of Derek's shifted form lying motionless ground a few yards away.

Don't be dead, Argent thinks blankly, ice flooding his veins. Don't be dead.

Derek's not dead. He makes it to his feet before Argent does, then immediately staggers and falls over again.

Snow blankets the roof of the watchtower and slicks under Arthur's boots, and in such conditions it's nigh impossible to keep his footing. Visibility is wretched, for up here the wind blows the snow between them, buffeting them back and forth over the icy floor. His father is getting older, yes, but he's still a skilled swordsman, and Arthur, fighting left-handed, is at a distinct disadvantage. He has no shield and wears no armor, not even chainmail; the only thing standing between him and his father's blade is his very flammable cloak.

Arthur's not sure he could kill his father now even if he did want to. He's no match for him like this.

His father's crown has fallen off his head, rolled away to some distant corner. His cloak is damp with snow and singed by fire. His eyes flash gold, sometimes; when they do fire races up the edge of his blade, making him doubly dangerous. Arthur's magic has finally been brought to heel, but his father's is going mad, there one second and gone the next, the flames dying and rising again unpredictably. Presently his sword, still alight with flames, comes down in a hard overhead blow. Arthur blocks in time, but his father's strength is greater—Arthur stumbles all the way back to the battlement, his back leaning out over the open air while their blades are still locked.

"Did you not say once that I deserved to die?" his father hisses, golden-eyed. He looks like some kind of monster. "Think of the things I've done, Arthur. The innocents that have died in my fight against evil! Did you not want to put a stop to it?"

Merlin takes the stairs two at a time, gasping for breath. "Arthur?" he calls, heedless of the danger, but there is no reply. The tower is utterly silent, save for the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls. Just a little further, he's almost at the top—

Merlin stops short. A thin line of scarlet cuts through the frozen gray stairs, creeping towards him and pooling around his boots. He thinks he can hear something dripping. He follows the line with his eyes, up, up, and slowly it widens—

It's blood. The stairs are covered with it—the ladder, the trap door...

"Arthur!" Merlin shouts again, and scrambles forward, slipping through the blood, not caring that it stains his hands and clothes, only that it is still warm, it can't be too late, it can't be—

Cas has his feet propped on the table, his coat draped over the chair. He's got a beer in his hand. He looks like shit, because he always looks like shit; he's just got one of those vessels. From this angle, Dean can only see the back of him, and his face, angled to look at Sam, in profile. He's smiling.

"Nothing," Dean mumbles, and lays his cheek down on the cool surface of the table. His heart's going over-time again. He thinks about being in this kitchen a year ago and trashing the hell out of it. If this were the real Cas, Dean would beat his face in.

Dean hears the clink of Cas setting the bottle down in the sink. He feels rather than sees Cas come over to stand beside him. And then Cas kneels, so that Dean, head still down, sees his face there sideways. And he can't not look at him unless he moves.

Dean's vision swims. The pounding in his head gets worse. One of the vampires grabs Dean's hair and, yeah, no, that's more than far enough. Dean knees it in the balls.

Pain as the fangs tear out of his flesh. The vampire howls, hunched over—and then it stops dead, trembling, and begins to scream. Light and fire start pouring from all the orifices in its head, and every cell in Dean's body goes slack with relief. Dean knows it's Cas before the vampire's corpse falls to reveal him standing there.

The vamp behind Dean takes off. Dean shouts as the fangs leave his neck, but there's no way he's letting it get away that easy. He takes aim and hurls his machete after it like he's skipping a stone—it spins through the air and takes the vamp's head clean off. "Go get it," Dean pants to Cas. He doesn't have time to go back for it now. He slips his hand inside Cas's trench coat and pulls the machete out of its sheath on Cas's belt instead. "Thanks, Cas."

Mom squints at the projector as they crowd into the library. "Is that Hatchet Man? They must have made more of them while I was dead."

"Yeah, this is the last one. Came out in '89."

"Dean," Sam says, somehow putting decades of disappointment with Dean's taste in movies into a single word. "You're inflicting these on Jack?"

"Trick or treat," Hatchet Man says. "Time to slice and dice."

"We let him drink beer," Dean argues. "What's a few R-rated movies?"

In the movie, someone screams. They all watch Hatchet Man show some unsuspecting skateboarder his own insides.

The bunker's red emergency lights come on. There's a shadow standing in front of him. Dean blinks. Dad, he thinks, and his father's boots swim into focus. But—

Dean scrambles back, looking up, up, up—

Dean holds up his hands. Fine, whatever, let them have their fun. The pit itself is on the far side of the bunker, in a little dip that's mostly out of sight of the road, so it's not like anybody's gonna see. But the sun's been up for a few hours now, and the four inches of snow that fell overnight makes everything look so much brighter, and Dean's just not used to a daytime fire in a hole.

A realization strikes Dean then, and he smiles. "Hey, Sammy," he calls, and Sam looks up. "You forgot the salt."

Sam throws his head back and laughs.

LIIIKE idk if this makes any sense. but there it is. that’s what insane people do we write in a way that involves no words interrupting the mental movie. i am so bad at proper prose this is the only way i know how to do it

#personal #liz loves writing #got distracted reading my [redacted] fic and nearly regressed into accursed [redacted] fandom #not today satan

4 notes · View notes

magic-is-something-we-create · 3 years

Text

Before you read: This is a short-ish snippet from Veratrum K’Ron’s POV, and happens about 1000 years before the events of Firebreathers. It’s probably going to be an interlude chapter between parts of the book, though this isn’t the whole thing. I just wanted to share it, since I’m proud of this piece, and hopefully you guys like it, too!!

Content warning for death. Let me know if any other warnings apply, too!

Tieling stands at the Godwood altar, back as straight as his hair, gazing over the city below as only a born leader could, his expression as stoic and blank as stone. Arthur stands beside me, to Tieling’s right, hand resting gently on the rim of his shield, tapping the plated surface incessantly, stage fright radiating off of him in waves. They’re both young - too young to be crowned, as Tieling is about to be. A few years ago, I would have even said they were too young to be on such public display, in front of a crowd of tens of thousands.

Then again, a few years ago, I thought the magic flowing through my veins would have been gone by now.

Tieling’s aides pour his commissioned potion into three wooden goblets on the altar, then hand each of us one. With a nod from their new king, they step away. He takes a deep breath, and for the first time today, I sense an anxiety about the boy. A tense, fearful silence.

He downs the potion quickly - there is not much to drink - and gestures surreptitiously for Arthur and I to drink as well. I take it like a shot, swirling the coppery - bloody - taste in my mouth for an instant before swallowing the disgusting mixture.

Arthur is slow to reach for it. As his lips graze the edge of the goblet, he lets out a pained gasp. I think little of it, for a moment, but the gasp quickly becomes a scream, and more join him, and soon, there is too much noise for me to think.

I fall to my knees, cursing, gripping my ears, trying to halt the cacophony. My skull - no, my brain feels like it’s splitting, like an axe has been buried to the handle in my head. The screams of agony start wailing up from the crowd, children’s screeches piercing through the muffling of my palms. The tree beneath me begins to shake, the Life wailing in hellish notes through my bones, and swathes of broken, brittle wood come pouring down on us, splinters shattering against my head, and all I can think is I’m going to die here.

Tieling Evergreen, you snake-tongued bastard, I’ll take you with me.

As the screams closest to us fade, I’m able to open my eyes slightly, and everything I see is bathed in the furious heat of rage. The unholy prince is the first thing I see, panicked, pouring the last potion down Arthur’s throat, desperation clear as day on his usually calm face.

Through gritted teeth and the worst pain of my life, I rise as well as I can - one knee still firm on the ground, one foot bracing, ready to launch me across the room at this devilish child - and relinquish my grip on my right ear, reaching for a spear one of the guards dropped.

“What... Have you... done?” I can barely hear my own voice, though my throat sears in a pain that tells me I’m screaming harder than I did when birthing my child.

Tieling looks up, eyes wide and full of terror, his rosy skin now as pale as paper and marble and bone and somewhere deep, behind the rage, beneath the fear, at the very core of my being, I know he did not mean to do this.

The excruciating screams down below start dying off as the realization hits, but the tree around us is creaking, dust still raining down on our backs, and further in, a large portion of the ceiling falls. In the seconds it takes me to gain my balance, Tieling has found his feet again, and has started to drag Arthur’s barely-conscious form towards the opening beyond the altar.

He is weak, and as much as I wish to leave him here, beneath the collapsing Godwood, Arthur does not deserve that fate. And he would be devastated if Tieling were left behind.

I leap across the room, grabbing Tieling around the waist in a tackle, and shove him towards the opening. The shock on his face as he stumbles back over the sheer drop is satisfying, for the moment I see it before I turn back to Arthur.

He’s heavier, of course, and wearing thick plated armor. It’s all I can do to heave him over the edge, too, in the hopes that Tieling’s senses have come back to him in time to catch the boy.

I cast one last glance back into the chamber, into the tree, taking note of the corpses that have gone from living, breathing people to decaying skeletons in the last - how long? Minute? It had to be more, it had to be.

It wasn’t.

I take a running leap out into the open air below, and as I fall, I reach for the Life that should be all around - and I find nothing. None of the vines that would have swarmed to my aid, no grasping branches of the trees that would have responded to my call - there is a void around me unlike anything I have ever experienced. There is nothing left to catch me as I fall.

Am I truly to die among the Godtrees, away from my home, away from my people?

I was promised eternity, and this is what I get instead? Betrayal, pain, death - the corpses of my kin strewn everywhere. Every living thing in sight, my Magic, gone.

He said he would stop it.

Tieling Evergreen, I will be wringing your ichor from my hair when I’m done with you.

The silent oath is punctuated by the sudden howling of wind around me, as the boy calls on his Magic - he traded mine to keep his, didn’t he? - too late to catch me.

I land flat-footed on the roof of what was once a guild hall, momentum sending me into a somersault as the bones in my ankle snap and my shoulder hits the shingles with a crunch and I lose consciousness when my back hits the ground below, a final curse on Tieling dying on my lips.

I don’t see the guiding hand of Libin waiting in the darkness. Luma does not shine a gentle light upon my soul. Not even Erra, to whom I have dedicated my very existence, seems to want to help me, for her children do not rise from the soil to bring me home.

Instead, when I open my eyes next, I’m greeted with the sight of the Godtree branch nearest to me crumbling.

I don’t stop to think, to care, about the fact I just landed on my spine, that I dislocated a shoulder, that my ankles can’t carry my weight - I roll to my feet and run. It’s not until minutes later, when Tieling finds me, Arthur hanging from his arm like a child, that I realise I’ve somehow healed from my fall.

When Tieling extends his other hand, I stare at it, and the baby fat that keeps it fleshy still, and the flecks of gold that remain from the potion he forced into Arthur. And I understand.

His face is covered in sawdust and sweat and soot and the paths of tears that still stream from his eyes as he begs me to come with him, to get away. His face, that’s still round with youth and pale with fear.

And a new rage blossoms, one which I cannot ignore, and which will be sated with blood, when the time comes.

“Which one?” My voice rasps with the stick of a dry mouth, and the boy’s confusion grows.

“What? I - please, Queen K’Ron, we need to get to safety.” His voice cracks.

I take his hand. Let him summon the Wind, and whisk us to the cover of the Godtrees that still live. To the outskirts of the city that now burns and collapses and rots in front of our eyes.

We three stand silent, staring, for what feels like hours as Fahrial falls.

Arthur vomits, when the realization hits him. Tieling turns away, tries to leave. Falls to his knees and starts sobbing after a few steps.

I cannot rip my eyes from the destruction. Buildings burn, smoke billowing out from beneath the gargantuan husks of what once were Godwood branches. On the edges of the once-great city, charred bones still reach out from the wave of debris that was unleashed when the tree collapsed. Reach towards us, grasping, frozen in their finite desperation.

At the center of it all, the hollow, rotten bark of the Godtree stands tall and jagged and dead. A single, smoldering shell standing among it’s eternal kin.

Arthur is still heaving, though nothing remains to expel. Tieling has fallen silent, but for his choking breaths. I continue to watch the smoke, even as it begins to die.

The last embers slip away as the evening sun begins to turn golden. As Arthur curls into a ball, holding himself by the knees. As Tieling starts calming himself down.

As I find my voice, finally.

“Which one chose you, Tieling?”

His voice is fragile and hesitant. “Those of Nimia have no names.”

“Do you know her face?” I turn away, at last.

“Yes.” He watches me, eyes hollow, as I step up to Arthur. Knits his brows, when I take the knight’s shield and sword from where they lay beside him. “Why?”

“We will find the nearest town, and bring news of this tragedy. Send a portion of their guard to search for survivors. Recover as much of our wits as possible.” I tighten the shield to my arm with a tug.

”And then you will take me to Nimia, and show me the abomination who chose a child to be the Savior.”

#writeblr #writblr #original fiction #fantasy fiction #original fantasy #firebreathers #fb rewrite #veratrum k'ron #tieling evergreen #arthur coldstone #ehlverse #the eternal three #snip #ill rb with taglist later :)

17 notes · View notes

alottanothing · 3 years

Text

Left to Ruin: Chapter Twenty-Three

Summary: Ahkmenrah wakes to find chaos befallen his great city.

Previous Chapters

Word Count: 3212

Warnings: A N G S T

Tag List: @xmxisxforxmaybe, @r-ahh-mi, @hah0106, @rami-malek-trash, @diasimar, @sherlollydramoine, @flipper-kisses, @ivy-miranda-2390, @txmel, @sunkissedmikky, @concentratedsassandcandy, @edteche2

(Let me know if I missed you, or if you would like to be added to the tag list)

A/N: I don’t have much to say this week, just thank you for giving the previous chapter love, and I hope you can forgive me for this chapter, and the next. Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Again, as a disclaimer, I am not an ancient Egyptian expert and google only knows so much. So yeah, I took so historical liberties while writing this to make my life easier, but tried to keep it as “authentic” as possible

The walk back to the palace after a night along the shores of the Nile felt like a shorter journey than the same path they strode only hours before. Nevertheless, Ahkmenrah was wholly at peace, enveloped in the warmth that true love kindled. Hope swelled in his breast too, a dull ember of blissful bright light, stoked to a flame by the news of his unborn child. The thought and the threats of war were far out of his mind, lost in the tranquility Nouke showed him on the beach of the mighty river. And the pharaoh hoped, beyond all reason, that terrible dread would stay lost.

When their feet led them home, the king and queen took their time placing the stones back into their respective places—a puzzle that had become second nature after dozens of trips—and they left a single brick askew with the promise of another trip beyond their cage. They stood for a long moment, marveling at the majesty of their garden under Khonsu’s glow. The picturesque sight pulsed with a blissful aura, the familiar fragrances and sounds forever adhered to their happiest memories. With a content sigh, Nouke wrapped around Ahk’s strong arm, their fingers intertwined as she rested her head against his shoulder with a soft smile on her features.

Ahkmenrah’s expression was a mirror of hers, the muscles of his face upturned with an air of whimsy as he recalled visions of he and Nouke running and laughing amid the lush green. He watched as his younger self chased his best friend in loops around the fountain before she playfully shoved him into the crystal clear waters, laughing. All too quickly those phantoms of his past faded to a far superior scene. This time he envisioned his children running and playing the same games, laughing and screaming gleefully while he and his beautiful queen lounged nearby, watching merrily.

Ahkmenrah would always fight for that future; whatever it took.

When those illusions faded too, they made their way through the quiet halls, stopping just shy of their bed-chamber doors. Ahk turned and met his guardian with a smile.

“Have I ever thanked you for never telling anyone about our secret passage?”

A kindhearted smile ghosted over Kamuzu’s lips, “There’s no need, my King.”

Ahk’s smile grew as he thought of every venture he’d ever taken through that crumbled wall; Kamuzu was always there, and never had he tried to keep him in his royal cage or told a soul where he had gone. It made the pharaoh profoundly glad.

“Rest well, my friend.”

“And you, my king.” Kamuzu bowed his head to each of them. “My queen.”

“Goodnight, Kamuzu,” Nouke said with a sweet smile.

Ahkmenrah watched his Medjay protector go, the tendrils of his love-filled heart reaching out to the man who had kept him safe his entire life.

It wasn’t until Nouke gave his fingers a squeeze and his arm a gentle tug that he turned his attention back to her as she coaxed him to follow. The glow of the torches was both inviting and whimsical as he watched the flickering luminescence dance across his wife’s figure, making her seem even more ethereal than he already thought her to be. A yawn broke his concentration; the dull light soothing enough to also remind him of the weight of his day; sleep was a pleasure he longed to partake in.

Nouke surrendered his hand as she politely excused the maidservants and the guards with a wave, and the pharaoh thanked them for their service as they left. When the heavy thud of the doors falling shut echoed in the vast room, Ahkmenrah turned his sights to where his wife stood near their son’s cradle. The way she swayed gently—like reeds in the desert breeze—as she hummed a lullaby, was spellbinding to behold. She smiled down at the sleeping boy, her open palm caressing the tiny swell of her belly. Ahk’s heart fluttered, and he sighed as he fixated the picture in his memory.

Ahkmenrah’s bare feet barely made a sound as they crossed the room to wind himself around Nouke’s strong frame, pressing against her back, his chin resting on her shoulder.

“I hope we have a girl,” Ahk mused, dreamily fanning his palm over the slight bump of his wife’s abdomen. “A little princess as beautiful as her mother.”

Nouke hummed agreeably, and he could hear her soft smile.

“Whichever the gods see fit to give us will be a blessing.” She kept her hand over his and added, “Prince or princess.”

“You are right, of course.” Ahk laid a delicate kiss to the exposed skin of her shoulder, over a mark he’d suckled into formation as they made love on the banks of the Nile hours before. “But a king can hope.”

Nouke spun lithely in his arms and combed her fingers through his hair as her arms circled his neck. “Yes...a king can hope. But now the king must rest. Dawn will come early, and there is much to do.”

She kissed him before his lips could twist into a frown with the unpleasant reminder of duty, but she deftly chased it away. Nouke bled into all of his senses as he pulled her close: the texture of her lips and the nectary taste that coupled with every sweep against his. Every soft swell and curve of her body pressing against him as the floral scent of her perfume filled his lungs. Its sweetness was dull under the unique musk of sand and reeds: a fragrant remnant of their excursion on the shore.

Nouke was savoring him too; the pull of her mouth was a slow and sensuous expression of worship that made Ahk crave more than sleep.

When their kiss parted, his queen stayed close, circling the tip of his nose with hers before giving him a chaste peck, then led him to bed. Nouke curled against his side, and sleep found them both quickly.

The peaceful void of dreamless slumber had been elusive for the pharaoh of late, despite the joy in his life. His mind was overrun with concern and the well-being of those he loved, even without the threat of war. Some nights he would pace and ponder until his head hurt, or until Nouke coaxed him back to bed. She would lay his head against her chest, her fingers gently sweeping through his hair as she lulled his frazzled mind into submission—allowing sleep to, at last, claim him. Other nights he just laid with his eyes locked on the ceiling until the night sky was swallowed by the sun.

He hated those nights the most.

However, that night, the thoughts in his head were quiet and hopeful despite the threat they faced. For hours, or perhaps only minutes, the pharaoh found sleep restful nestled with the woman he loved until a strange commotion slowly pulled him from that dreamless void.

Ahkmenrah tired to ignore the somehow distant, but close, ruckus; clinging to sleep with a mighty grip. But when the sound of a shout mixed with the sound of the clamor, Ahk’s eyes fluttered open. It only took a moment for them to adjust to the darkness, his focus getting lost for a second in the peaceful sight of Nouke sleeping next to him.

The pharaoh smiled and carefully pulled free, standing to stretch his limbs as a yawn overtook his features. With a few lazy strides, he wandered to his son’s bedside; the upward curl of his lips growing as he looked at the sleeping boy.

There was where he lingered, watching Sekmen sleep—the strange commotion momentarily forgot—as he let his mind think more on the future awaiting him: evenings in his beloved West Garden with two children to play with. The notion filled his stomach with eager butterflies, his smile growing impossibly wider until that peculiar clamor hindered it.

All at once, the flitting butterflies in his belly lost their whimsy, quickly metamorphosing into sick, twisting knots. Smoke was drifting into the chamber from the open balcony much too thick to be from simple torchlight. Frightened screams registered next, rendering the pharaoh frozen as he turned his ear to listen.

More cries haunted the air, the sounds making his heart hammer and his skin coat with nervous sweat. Fear and curiosity coupled to urge him to investigate the billowing smoke and the refrain of laments as his breaths slowed.

Ahk could smell the fire—see the floating pieces of ash in the air—he could hear clearly the screams as he stepped onto his balcony. The pharaoh leaned over the rail, fear a curiosity writhing in his gut, and the devastation he found made his eyes grow impossibly wide, his mouth dry and his heart heavy with dread. Before he could take in the horror below, he hastily stumbled out of range, narrowly missing the strike of an arrow as if flew past his face. He gasped as he careened backward, falling to the ground, the pain of the impact dull as panic consumed his every sense.

Quickly, the pharaoh staggered back to his feet and once more took to the wall of the railing, peering at the mayhem below.

And suddenly, Ahkmenrah felt ill.

Men were scaling the palace walls, setting alight anything that would burn: wood, idols, plants, people. The metallic clang of weapon on weapon split the air like thunder between horrified screams. Soldiers, guards, and Medjay laid dead or dying while their comrades fought the slew of invaders trickling over the high walls.

It was a sight Ahkmenrah never dreamed of seeing, and never would he forget it. Fear spread through him, ripping like icy claws. Kahmunrah had been right; it was too late to negotiate. War had come to them, and Egypt was not prepared.

A chill shook the pharaoh as he fought to quell the flooding of tears in his eyes; every one of his senses working at an impossible pace to comprehend the chaos. He needed to be strong, and to stay calm; if he allowed fear to settle too deep, he would surely seal his fate.

With a deep inhale Ahk attempted to push through the pandemonium of his emotions only to choke on the tainted air. He coughed and gasped and tried again, filling his lungs swiftly—like a man drowning and wheezed once more.

With the crook of his elbow to shield his breaths from the ash and smoke, Ahkmenrah slowly backed away, unable to tear his sight from the siege of his grand palace until it became too much. In an instant, his fumbling feet spun and broke into a run, his heart pounding in his throat, the mist in his eyes a cumulation of fear and the burning sting of the smoke-filled air.

His voice was raspy when he woke his wife as softly as he could, not wanting to cause her any more panic than he could spare.

“Nouke.” Ahk shook her shoulder gently, but with enough force to pull her from sleeps grasp.

She threw him a look of irritated confusion, her heavy eyelids blinking slow.

“Get Sekmen,” the pharaoh ordered lightly. “We must find safety...now.”

Nouke shook her head slowly, still trying to fight off slumber’s laden trance, “Wha—”

A scream echoed through the chamber from outside, and the queen sat up straight, eyes blown wide.

“What’s going on?” she asked, fear in her tone as she threw on the nearest article of clothing she could find.

Ahkmenrah did the same and chanced another glimpse from the balcony to gauge the severity of their situation—a foolish hope of finding peace, gone. Mere minutes had passed, and everything was worse. Men poured over the walls like water from a pitcher, their weapons glowing a fiendish orange as the surrounding flames reflected from the sharpened surface. Each of them was poised and ready to strike, militant men who knew war and had mastered it, unlike the pharaoh they sought to destroy.

“How could it have come to this?” Ahk said to himself in quiet disbelief as he watched his home fall to ruin.

“What’s happening?” Nouke asked again from inside their chamber.

“We are being ambushed,” he finally told her, unsure of how to break the news without panic twisting onto her face.

Ahkmenrah crossed the room with purpose and retrieved the mounted khopesh on the wall nearest the door.

For years the weapon served as no more than a decoration—a gift given to him by his father for completing his lessons in the training yards all those years age—that until then, the pharaoh had forgotten about.

The moment it’s cumbersome weight was in his grasp, his memory flooded with visions of the summer his father taught him how to swing a blade. Even as a boy he’d never come close to mastering it—he should have tried harder.

Those few hours in the training yard, sparring with boys his own age, were lessons Ahkmenrah had allowed himself to forget. Those boys were always better than him, and it was those boys who became his soldiers, soldiers who were fighting and dying to protect a man who could not protect them.

Ahk’s stomach churned at the thought; they were fighting and dying—skilled men—what chance had he?

All at once, the pharaoh was too weak to wield his blade properly. Every ounce of strength he had he used to watch Nouke gingerly gather their son into her arms as he stood frozen. When her amber eyes locked with his, fear was hidden under her tightly bound composure. But Ahk could feel it.

“What do we do?” she asked, her voice impossibly calm.

“We need to find my brother.” Ahk knew she wouldn’t want to go to Kah, but the pharaoh could think of no better idea. Kahmunrah knew how to stay alive. “He will know what is best to do, and where to go.”

Nouke swallowed her prejudice and nodded, letting all her trust fall on his shoulders. “Okay.”

Ahkmenrah swallowed twice to fight the lump forming in his throat, suddenly more afraid than ever—he could not allow himself to let her down.

“Maybe they aren’t in the palace yet,” Nouke said, glancing towards the door.

Ahk turned his ear to listen; chaos rang, but it was impossible to discern where the clamor came from. Every scream that colored the air with shadow made the tension more palpable, forging a dreadfully crushing atmosphere. It stuck to the sweat covering Ahkmenrah’s skin; every bead at his temple feeling a thousand pounds.

When Sekmenrah began to fuss, the pharaoh wondered if his son could sense it too. His face was crinkled in fright, his tiny whimpers shaking his entire form as he clunk to his mother helplessly. The sight was like a knife in the pharaoh’s heart.

“Hush, my little prince,” Nouke murmured gently, rocking the boy to soothe him.

The sound of his mother’s voice and lulling gestures seemed to settle him until a loud bang hammered against the chamber door, causing them all to jump.

Instinctively, Nouke’s free hand gripped tightly at her husband’s bicep as she moved closer. “Ahk...” her voice was pleading and scared.

“Behind me,” he urged, quickly.

Another knock pierced the air, and Ahkmenrah stood with his shoulders squared, feet firmly planted, shielding his family as best he knew how. Adrenaline was beginning to eat up his fear allowing his focus to hone. Silently he prayed to any of the gods still listening to send him the strength to protect those he loved. Ahkmenrah could not lose them, he simply could not.

One more loud bang echoed, rattling his bones and some of his fear rekindled when the doors burst open like the sound of an explosion.

Medjay flooded into the pharaoh’s bed-chamber, their eyes lit with fire, blood on their weapons. Several barricaded the doors with only their joined strength, pushing against the entry with all their might.

Kamuzu was at their lead, shouting orders, his weapon stained red. The king was never more happy to see his dutiful protector. Kamuzu’s muscled arm was wrapped protectively around a young woman who was sobbing loud enough to muffle the clamor.

“Set?” Ahk squinted through the haze.

“Ahkmen!”

Setshepsut tore out of the Medjay’s grip and sprinted into his arms and he secured his footing so as not to fall as she collided against him. The abrupt onslaught of relief of knowing his sister was still alive crashed against the pharaoh with enough force he almost tumbled backward anyway.

“Set!” His own tone matched hers: glad but overrun with sorrow.

Setshepsut clung to him like a frightened child to her mother, sobbing into his chest as he held her. Nouke hugged around her too, as best she could, keeping her hand on Ahk’s arm.

A question pulled at Ahkmenrah’s brows, one that Kamuzu answered before the pharaoh even truly knew what it was he wanted to ask.

“Her husband was found dead at his post. Not two minutes later, this started.”

“Satauhotep?” Ahk pulled his sister a little snugger as he fought back the lump in his throat. “He’s dead?”

Kamuzu nodded.

The adrenaline vanished and suddenly, Ahk could feel his grasp on everything slipping. Each of his senses felt cold and emptied, as though his spirit was falling into a nightmarish black void. Nouke and Set clinging to him were the only tethers that held him within his crumbling reality.

He held all the power in the empire, and yet, the pharaoh had never felt more powerless.

“How did the Nehesyw and their allies get into the city?” Ahk asked, turning his gaze to Kamuzu.

His guardian pursed his lips as a strange somberness settled over his features that made Ahkmenrah’s stomach feel sick.

“No, my king. This is not the Nehesyw.”

“Who?” Ahk asked, his voice low.

Kamuzu hesitated, eyes drifting to the floor as he gathered his words, then he looked back to the pharaoh as though he was trying to save him from the truth by stalling.

“Kamuzu...” Ahkmenrah pleaded. “Who?”

The king’s Medjay protector sighed and shook his head apologetically. “It is your brother’s men who have lain siege to the palace.”

That bottomless black void returned, seeking to devour him, but this time, fire surged through Ahk’s blood, combating the lingering dread.

“Kahmunrah is behind this?” His voice was scarily calm despite the anger writhing inside of him.

Kamuzu nodded, “The men he collected—they fight for him; against your guard, against your Medjay.”

“And my soldiers?”

“Some fight for you, others, against you,” Kamuzu confessed. “Tahut-Mut leads his garrison against you.”

Of course, Ahk thought. How could I not have seen that?

The siege Ahkmenrah had caught Kah and Tahut discussing was underway, and Ahk would never forgive himself for missing that clue.

More unsettling, however, was the blatant fear smoldering in Kamuzu’s eyes. In twenty-five years, Ahkmenrah had never seen a look of such distress on his guardian's face. And when Kamuzu finally spoke, his voice was gruff and soft—mournfully broken—the timbre of a man who was completely blindsided.

“You are in danger, my king.”

And Ahkmenrah knew then, the odds were against them.

#Ahkmenrah #Ahkmenrah x Original Character #Ahkmenrah Fanfiction #Night at the Museum #NATM #NATM Fanfiction #Left to Ruin #Rami Malek Character #Rami Malek Character Fanfiction #Rami Malek Fanfiction #Rami Malek

23 notes · View notes

d3-iseefire · 3 years

Text

She Walks in Shadow Chapter 19

Bilba remembered everything about Ravenhill.

Everything.

Every second.

Every breath.

She still felt the cold, sinking through her skin to turn the very marrow of her bones into ice.

She still smelled the blood from the battle. It had risen into the air to hang over them like a thick shroud, coating everything in a scarlet mist. When she’d finished bathing that night the water she’d left behind had been the color of rust.

She didn’t need to remember the pain, for it never faded. It thrummed through her like a second heartbeat, twining and twisting its way through her soul until the two were so entwined that one no longer knew how to survive with the other.

She remembered it all, every scene etched in crimson, stalking her dreams at night and haunting the corridors of her mind during the day.

Every…last…moment, and every one of them tied to a single moment. A solitary image that stood above the rest. A lasting memorial to the moment when everything good and beautiful in the world had shattered, leaving dust and ash in its wake.

One image…

One detail that would ultimately cut through the pain to ignite a fire within her.

A rage.

One…

Single…

Thing…

And that was the smirk on Azog’s face as he drove a sword through Fili’s heart, and hers in turn.

It was as if something inside her simply…stopped.

A strange calm fell over her, and the world around her seemed to fall away. Her heartrate slowed, and the sound of her own breathing was unnaturally loud in her own ears.

Azog was speaking, or at least his lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

She didn’t care what he was saying.

Her body moved as if by its own will before she’d even fully formed the desire.

The sycophants Azog had brought along with him moved to block her, and something feral shouted with glee inside her.

The swords she’d picked up in Bree felt nothing like the ones she’d carried for decades, but they killed just as well. Her body fell into the motions with the ease of long practice, even if she intuitively knew it wouldn’t last nearly as long with her current level of fitness.

The first orc fell, and a second one appeared, swinging a club over its head. Moron. If one thing could always be trusted, it was that orcs didn’t have the first idea about how to fight defensively.

Bilba ducked, easily coming up under the creature’s guard, and drove her sword into his chest. The blade vibrated in her hand and she shoved, putting her body behind it as she allowed the orc’s own weight to drag it off her blade.

Movement came from behind her and she spun, raising both blades to block a blow from another orc. Dimly, she recognized the dwarves had joined in the fight and her mouth went dry. This wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want them fighting, didn’t want him fighting.

She snapped an elbow into the jaw of a third orc, and then a blinding light suddenly filled the landscape, followed by a voice of deep command.

Bilba caught the briefest glimpse of Azog before the light swallowed him. She threw an arm over her eyes, and lunged forward blindly, desperate to get to him before he had the chance to escape.

An arm closed around her waist and wrenched her back, locking her against a broad chest.

“No!” Bilba threw her head back, trying to headbutt her captor into releasing her, but Dwalin was far too used to her tactics and easily avoided her.

The light faded, and she struggled to readjust to the dark, straining to see past the fading embers of the fire. She pushed against Dwalin’s arms and fought to pull herself free from his grasp. She’d dropped her swords, but it didn’t matter. Her body felt nearly limp with exhaustion, but it didn’t matter. Her breathing was so harsh it made her throat burn, but it didn’t matter.

“I have to kill him,” she whispered. “I have to kill him.” She shoved at Dwalin’s arms again and lashed out with her legs, but he didn’t seem to notice the blows. “I have to kill him!”

“He’s gone.” Dwalin said. His voice was flat, and emotionless. The same tone he’d used when he’d left her behind to return to Erebor.

Bilba froze. All the air left her lungs, and it suddenly became impossible to breathe. She was barely aware of Dwalin releasing her. Barely aware of the crack of her knees striking the cold earth.

All she could see was the empty spot in front of her where Azog and the orcs had been.

All she could see was that she’d already had her first failure.

A second chance, according to her aunt.

She was wrong.

There were no second chances, not for her. Not after the reason it had all gone wrong the first time was because of her. Because she was too much of a coward to act.

She was here because of the cursed ring. Her curse.

This was no second chance.

It was a punishment.

An emptiness fell over her like a thick cloak and she mentally gathered it about her. Packed the emotions back inside the locked room they’d leeched from, and strengthened the locks.

Then, slowly, she got up. Her limbs felt heavy, and she knew she’d be sore in the morning. Fatigue hung on her, but she ignored it. Instead, she went to where the ponies were tethered.

“We need to leave,” she stated flatly to Thorin as she passed him. “He’ll be back, and we’ll be blocked in against the edge of a cliff.”

It was a miracle no one had gone over this time around. For the first time, she allowed her eyes to scan the group, passing over each one until they finally landed on Fili.

He was staring at her. He seemed to always be staring at her. Bilba tracked her gaze over his body and something inside her eased when she found no sign of injury.

At least she hadn’t screwed that up.

Yet.

***

“Did you know he was alive?”

Dwalin sighed and paused in the midst of shoving things in his pack. “Does it matter?”

“By what right did you keep this from me?” Thorin sounded angry. In the past, Dwalin might have cared. He might have tried to reason with his friend, would have carefully chosen his words and tone to reach through Thorins’ ire and find his sense of reason.

That was in the past, back when he’d been a different person.

Now, he was just…tired.

“Come off it,” he growled. He straightened and tossed his pack over his shoulder before facing his idiot liege. Thorin had thrown himself pell-mell at Azog seconds after Bilba, leaving Dwalin at a momentary loss as to which reckless idiot he should go after.

It had only lasted an instant as common sense had reasserted itself and he’d realized the idiot who was fighting with an untrained body and low-quality swords was at far greater risk than Thorin who, while also an idiot, was at least in his prime.

He started to stride past, only to stop as Thorin grabbed his arm. “You will answer me.”

Dwalin stared down at the hand on his arm, and then casually looked back up to meet Thorin’s eyes. “What good would it have done?” he demanded. “Would you have gone haring off like your grandfather did?”

Thorin grimaced. “I am not--”

“You act like him, sometimes,” Dwalin cut in. He shook Thorin’s hand off his arm. “I won’t be the one who facilitates you dying the same way he did. You want to abandon your duties and get yourself killed, it’s on you.”

Anger traced his voice, and he couldn’t be bothered to hide it. Bilba wasn’t the only one who’d been angry over Thorin’s failure to resist the same sickness that had taken hold of his grandfather. He’d have thought the passing of decades would have softened the edges but seeing Thorin run at Azog without thought or care had brought it back as strong as ever.

Thorin was silent, for so long Dwalin wondered if the other dwarf had suffered a head injury when he hadn’t been looking. It wouldn’t be the first time. Bilba, in particular, was notorious for getting her bell rung, and then not mentioning it until she passed out on him.

“Our burglar has history with the orc filth as well,” Thorin finally said.

Dwalin raised an eyebrow at the change in subject. His eyes tracked to where Bilba was aggressively packing to leave. To anyone who didn’t know her, it might seem she was angry or still running on adrenaline from the attack.

To Dwalin, it was clear she was unraveling at the seams. She’d barely interacted with Fili, and yet the boy’s mere presence was like a blade, slicing away at the gaping, rotting wounds the girl tried to pretend weren’t there.

She was well on track to doing something truly idiotic. Dwalin had been there for some of the things she’d done in the past and wasn’t particularly fond of discovering what new levels of insanity she might come up with now.

He briefly considered not responding to Thorin’s comment at all, but then decided he’d probably been obstinate enough for one day. “Azog killed someone she loved,” he said shortly. “In front of her.”

Thorin’s jaw tightened. “The filth has much to answer for.”

“That he does.” Dwalin agreed quietly.

Thorin hesitated, then nodded and returned to readying them to leave.

There was little time left to speak after that. The ponies were quickly loaded and saddled, and then they moved out in a tight cluster, all senses on high alert.

As they did, Dwalin maneuvered alongside Bilba’s pony and grabbed the reins. The sliver of moon overhead gave little light, and Bilba, unlike dwarves, couldn’t see in the dark.

It was also a convenient excuse to ensure she didn’t run off into the night to try and track Azog down. Given the baleful look she leveled on him, she knew exactly what he was on about.

Thorin gave a short command and then, as a group, they moved out.

***

Bilba didn’t relax until the sun had risen, and even then, she was still tense. The only difference between the night and day was that she’d be able to see Azog coming, rather than having to rely on the dwarves to warn her.

Dwalin had finally released her pony, and she now rode relatively alone on the outskirts of the group. As expected, her muscles had locked up during the ride. Added to that was the fact her body was unused to riding, and she had a headache.

In other words, she was miserable.

Miserable, and already having to think about what was coming next.

Trolls.

Maybe. She didn’t know anymore. They’d left earlier than the last time and been traveling through the night. Would Thorin push them through the day, knowing Azog was behind them, or would he stop them to rest? And, if he did stop them, where would it be? Farther from the trolls? Closer?

And, assuming things had changed, as they so clearly had, what then? Should she try to keep things on track, sure of the outcome if she did, or allow things to change in hopes of improving the outcome?

Improve the outcome, or make it worse?

Mahal, it could be worse. So much worse and she had no idea what she was supposed to do to stop any of it.

“So,” a voice beside her said, startling her. “What did Azog want with you anyway?”

“What are you talking about?” She asked Bofur blankly. She knew why she wanted Azog, but he had no reason to remember her at all, if he even did.

Did he?

He’d shown up early, but did that mean he remembered?

A shudder ran through her. Mahal, she hoped not. That was the last thing she needed, Azog knowing what had happened the last time, and having the same potential that she did to try and change it to ensure he lived, and the Durins didn’t.

“I was closest to him,” Bofur said, shifting in his saddle where he rode next to her. “I heard him tell one of his underlings to ‘get the girl’.” He shrugged. “Unless someone’s been holding out on us, figure that means you.”

Bilba pulled her pony to a stop. Her eyes went wide, and her breathing grew short. A wild, insane, idea presented itself to her and, before she could talk herself out of it, she urged her pony to a canter and brought it up alongside where Thorin and Dwalin rode at the front of the group. “I’m going to go scout ahead.”

Dwalin gave her an exasperated look. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s too dangerous to not,” Bilba shot back. “We can’t afford to have danger facing us from behind, and ahead.”

They couldn’t afford to have her.

Not if Azog remembered.

Not if he was targeting her.

However…

A strange, almost wild hope sprang to life inside her. Azog most likely thought she already had the ring. Of course, he would, no one but Gandalf knew when, exactly, she’d come into possession of it. If Azog were now after her, after the ring, and she could leave and take it as far as possible…

She could save them.

She could save him.

“Who says there’s any danger ahead of us?” That was from Fili, who’d come up from the middle of the group. They’d all stopped, largely because Bilba had physically put her pony in front of Thorin’s and forced him to pause.

“We didn’t know there was anything behind us,” she answered, keeping her eyes on Thorin. “We have no idea what else might be out there.”

Thorin was silent, studying her. He twisted around to study the landscape behind them, before turning back to look ahead.

“You’re right,” he said, finally. “We’re traveling blind.”

Bilba nodded and began to tug the pony around. “I’ll go and scout ahead.” Far, far ahead. Dwalin and Gandalf would remain behind, they knew everything that was coming as well as she did. They could protect the Durins while she led Agoz --

“I’ll go with you.”

Bilba’s heart stuttered. For the first time, she allowed herself to glance, if ever so briefly, at Fili. “I don’t need your help.”

His eyes narrowed, and he got a set look that was so achingly familiar it sent a lance right through her. “It’s not safe to go alone.”

“I’m not a crown prince,” Bilba growled.

“So what?” Fili demanded. “That makes you expendable? You’re no good to us dead.”

She was worse to them alive. Azog would keep coming, and there was no telling what else might come after her as well. So far, she, Dwalin, Gandalf and possibly Azog remembered, and she had a suspicion on a few others but, beyond that, who else?

Did Smaug remember?

The creature in the cave?

Sauron?

Gandalf said the dark lord was weak, but present during this time and if he remembered what had happened then there was no doubt, he’d be coming for her in whatever way he could.

All of which could only mean one thing.

She needed to leave.

“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. Her eyes flickered toward Dwalin. “Dwalin can come with me.”

“Dwalin’s not a tracker,” Thorin interjected. “The boys are trained, part of the reason I allowed them to come was for their scouting abilities.” He nodded toward Fili and Kili. “Both of you can go with her.”

Bilba gaped at him. Her mind raced, trying desperately to find something, anything to get her out of this. Nothing came to mind. She had no control, no authority over any of them, and now that she’d put the idea of scouting into their minds, they’d likely send them with or without her.

She sent a desperate look at Dwalin, but he was gazing back steadily with a blank expression. Clearly, he was going to be no help. Either he hadn’t reached the same conclusions she had or…or she didn’t know what.

Fili moved up beside her and, after a few seconds, Kili moved to the other side.

“Well?” Fili asked. His voice held a steel in it that told her he fully expected her to argue and already had a list of counterarguments to throw at her.

“I don’t need you,” Bilba repeated, even as her mind mocked her for the greatest lie she’d ever told. She needed him, just not on this trip. Anywhere but on this trip. She frowned at Thorin. “Should you really be sending both your heirs out?”

He shrugged. “They’ll be fine.”

Of course they will, Bilba thought bitterly. That’s what he’d thought last time and look how that had ended up.

Fili clicked at his pony, and started to move out, Kili with him. “Better keep up,” he called back. “Or you’ll be the one left behind.”

Bilba swore under her breath in three languages, shot a murderous glare at Dwalin, and followed. Now not only did she have to worry about the stupid ring, and Azog, but keeping the princes safe in the middle of nowhere.

The day just kept getting better and better.

Follow on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16547237/chapters/38767136

#Writing #My Writing #Fanfic #Fanfiction #The Hobbit #Female Bilbo Baggins #Biilbo/Fili #Romance #Bilbo #Angst #Tolkien #Happy Ending #Time travel fix it

7 notes · View notes

etheralisi · 4 years

Text

𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐞’𝐬 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

A03

𝙼𝚢 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚜𝚝

𝙴𝚗𝚎𝚖𝚢 𝙸𝚜 𝙼𝚢

𝙼𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚢

~ 𝚄𝚗𝚔𝚘𝚠𝚗

-------

He never forgets.

The feeling of his body being torn limb from limb, muscles stretching and convulsing, tested to their very limits, before feeble connections give way and his skin sheds, layer by layer, cell by cell. He peels like an onion, flakey, tear ducts long since run dry from his seemingly endless bouts of harrowing screams. It’s a pain of unimaginable levels, so excruciating he’s pretty sure parts of him have gone numb. But where he can feel it, pain tears through him like butter, always managing to climb to a new height of agony, and then when he thinks it can’t get worse, a step above that. And it hurts. Oh how it hurts. Burns like a star gone supernova. A raw energy that extends beyond his very boundaries of a self.

Dipper’s twelve, only twelve, and his life is flashing before his eyes. He’s alight with his last burning embers, soul aflame, and fighting for every second of life, every lick of fire. His spark kindles and hisses, a stubborn thing, the will of a boy who just wants to live. To reach the age of thirteen, so close, so very close, but always just a stretch ahead.

It’s a doomed battle.

Where the triangle prods, slithers his slimy existence into him, a small segment of himself freezes, crumbles into a cold amounting mass of something. Every fleeting moment is a moment where something is lost, forgotten, ripped away from him because the universe is just this unfair. It won’t play the game by the rules, will make up new exceptions as it goes, reality warping anew around his frame as he falls to a fate he never even wanted.

Dipper screams for a loss of a feeling he can’t recall, feels his throat run raw until there’s no vocal chords to scream through. He’s self-destructive at this point, ripping through his mind to find the perpetrator and let him squirm.

Bill is a virus, an infection that reeks of chaos and death and violates his very essence. Dipper’s memories crumble at the triangle’s presence, leaving nothing but dust and ash, and the trickling of Bill’s oily ooze as a residue, an unwelcome tenant where Dipper resides. It’s unsettling, and wrong, wrong, all wrong. Wherever those tendrils touch, reach into his own infinity of a mindscape, vast and now oh so barren, they succeed in taking something he’s never even been aware of having. They take and they take, and he’s left with nothing but loss and pain as if it’s all he’s ever known.

The pain, it’s all very clear, white hot as it tunnels through decaying marrow. Dipper’s a falling empire left to ruin. A bridge quaking on its foundations, creaking as the joints give way under rust. Nothing can ever cross safely again, repair now a far forgone option, because he knows it, there’s no coming back from whatever the heck he’s been plunged into. Any second and he will collapse, fall into the cavernous abyss below.

He would rather burn this bridge and push Cipher into the ruins.

Fierce determination fuels his tunnel vision, the screams of no, no, no. This won’t be his end, and he absolutely refuses to abandon his post. He stands his ground, even as he breathes his last breath, even as he feels his lungs shatter. A power surges from within, a fierce struggle from a captain who refuses to abandon ship. His death is imminent, irreversible at this point, fate from the very second he struck that flimsy deal for the laptop. But here, perhaps he can soften the blow, he would rather stare death in its skeletal face than hand himself over to the enemy.

He refuses to bend to the will of that triangle, will not play his game and fall into his hands as putty ever again.

If Dipper dies, Bill goes with him.

The decision is made. The last chord is plucked, and the bridge collapses. Bill — or the measly thing he’s been reduced to, desperate enough to claw into a child’s mind — cackles until he doesn’t. His silence speaks louder than words.

He knows what Dipper’s done. Caught him in Bill’s blindspot, bested by a kid who’s determined to see this through to the very end.

And to the end they shall go. A body is decimated, a clearing all but incinerated, and a triangular demon thrown into a cycle he has never meant to enter.

For a moment, a mere second, Dipper is limitless. Just a being. An entity with a lack of self. He only knows he exists, is something, means something, and it’s this feeling he clings to with every ounce of his nonexistence.

He knows not what he is, or who, but a familiar warmth pulls at him, strings of wool and comfort.

He wakes before he realises what waking is. Exists before he can wonder how. Sees before he realises he shouldn’t. Lives before it hits him he isn’t really living at all.

By all means, he should be dead.

Dipper sits on borrowed time, spins on clock hands of a clock that isn’t really his at all. An existence that belonged to a dying demon, Bill's expiration date, Bill’s sand timer. Bill who’s unleashed more chaos than thought possible with that spur of the moment decision.

The memory is a tarring mark on him. Ingrained so deeply in his mindscape it burns with a flame impossible to extinguish. A mocking thing, a reminder of his refusal to let his own flames die.

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel’s there, coaxing him with a stream of ‘it’s okay’s and ‘it’ll all be fine, see’s, and any other such hollow words, each disguised as fuzzy warm sweaters, because they both know, deep down, it’s very much not okay. Phantom pain laces his fibres — he doesn’t know what he even is anymore, he’s a something because pain can’t come out of nowhere — twitching in fits and starts of muscle contractions. It’s reduced to an ache of a memory, nothing more than a dull tingling throb. But he pushes through, shoots a smile of empty despair.

His eyes do all the telling. They’re not even brown anymore.

They’re both just kids, dealing with his death-not-death with hugs and tears. Promises that’ll snap and break beneath his touch, as his world comes clattering down around him at the speed of the supernatural becoming natural.

He never forgets.

Not when the truth emerges, a smack to the face even when he saw it coming. He’s a demon. Just like him. The thing he hated most.

It brings a whole other meaning to ‘you are your own worst enemy.’

Dipper abhors it.

Abhors the teething through bleeding gums, the wings that protrude from his back as two black stubs, the way his blood drips molten gold, loathes his claws that tear at flesh, cag on Mabel’s wool and shred her favoured clothing. But the pain is only mild in comparison to that, the moment that changed it all.

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel meets Henry, not when the triplets are born, not when he wrecks his brother in law’s life with a wave of eldritch flame. The Woodsman arises, a being of the forest sculpted by his own spur of the moment decision.

He’s doing the same. Exposing someone to a demonic power that creates something else entirely. Something not quite human. He weighs Henry down with antlers and served hands, a burden his brother in law should never have to carry.

He can never quite forgive himself for this. Much like the deal for Mabel’s soul, the decision saves a life, but it leaves scars rooted deep.

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel’s there, buried below mounds of dirt, little more than letters on a fast dissolving rock. His tears ebb away, too late to stop the ones that eat at the polished stone, acid on her grave. Grief consumes him in roaring waves, the what-ifs just as haunting as his presence, a strange ghostly boy clinging to a grave like his last anchor. Had Bill won, all those years back, that could have been him too. The Mystery Twins reunited by death.

Maybe, in the end, Bill wins anyway.

He never forgets.

Not with reincarnation after reincarnation. He watches over them, his ever growing family too until he becomes but a rumour. A protector of a family, even when his identity to them as a Pines is lost. He remembers why all this is happening, why he lives as he does, and it all links back to that moment.

He never forgets.

Not even when Bill’s soul emerges once more, a phoenix from the ashes, threatens to spill into the waking world and reclaim his domination plans centuries later. Nor at his second failure.

Dipper’s there, stuck with a cursed existence, a hatred that will never truly simmer down, fierce raging anger for the very demon who stuck him like this.

He never forgets.

It’s a pain that lingers from a body and life long lost, the death of a child and the birth of a new demon. Of Alcor. The memory stands there, in the eye of his storm, coals on his fire, a fuel for his unadulterated rage. Of all the memories he has, this is the one that stays, the pain and frustration hitting somewhere that all those happy memories can’t. It’s a second for the life of a demon, barely that. A speck of his immortal life.

But for him, the memory lasts an eternity.

He can’t forget.

#Transcendence au #Bread fic

32 notes · View notes

retvenkos · 4 years

Text

gone // kade & olinda (blades mc)

Blades of Light and Shadow - A Kade & Olinda (my Blades MC) Story.

ghost towns of my past are all burned and gone survivors in their wake, broken up by dawn.

a mother, once, haunts me now, swimming in my mind a father, too, of echoes past there is no more mankind.

we came from ash and broken bones we search for things unfound we fall upon weakened knees we wait until we’re drowned.

The earliest thing they remember was fire; red hot tongues reaching high into the night sky, embers becoming stars as they jumped from home to home, crop to crop. Their world was on fire, and they watched from the trees nearby. They were both little things, then, thin from the dying crops, scared from the cries of innocents, prepubescent and alone.

How old had they been? Old enough to run, to laugh, to smile. Were they old enough to mourn?

The boy, short and sickly, his eyes the color of emeralds, held onto the little girl. He grabbed fistfuls of her ebony hair, his fingers scattering through her scalp like stars in an inky sky. The flames reached higher, their tendrils dancing alone in a melancholy turn about the funeral pyre.

They watched the destruction from below, all watery eyes and shaky hands.

How old had they been? Old enough to fear, to cower, to hide. Were they old enough to know?

Could they comprehend all that they saw?

Did they know that everything they had and everything they had been was gone? (“They’re just children!” “They’re survivors, now.”)

Kade shivered in the cold, the damp settling deep into his bones. He coughed, ash lying in his throat, a sickness coating his teeth. Olinda looked at him, her big eyes searching.

The answer was dead and buried, burning at the stake.

The world was vast, but for all of its grandness, it was unforgiving. Harsh winds, churning seas, chilling monsoons, burning fires that towered higher than the great Temple of Light in Whitetower. Not all tragedies reached here, the outskirts of Riverbend - the edge of the world - where paved streets turned to dirt roads and weary travelers became cheap drunks.

But a tragedy of young orphans was common. Enough so that they were readily given a name; Nowhere Children. Coming from nowhere and going the same way. Towns like Riverbend were full of them - common tragedies that no longer brought tears to the eyes.

They were young, and it was for the best.

“They’re lucky. By the time they’re eight they won’t remember anymore.” The owner of the pub set the children up with drinks at a seat short enough for their stubby legs. The ale was just strong enough for them to sleep soundly, knock them out so the demons could be kept at bay a little longer.

A farmer looked at them, pity in his eyes and understanding in his head. He sighed with the weight of death and sorrow, “Disaster stay with you. It’s not going away. Not anytime soon.”

“Aye, perhaps you’re right. You’d know, brother.” Another drink slid across the counter.

The fire never left them, its embers never died in the caverns of their minds, the hollows of their souls. It raged against them, ravaging all that they were and all that they could be.

Kade had been touched by the flames and its effects lingered beneath his skin. It turned his complexion pale, his breath shallow, his muscles weak, and his emerald eyes dim. The town knew it as Ghost Sickness, a way the dead damn the living to a life of suffering and an existence of pain. Recompense for having survived, a promise of reuniting again, soon.

They didn’t expect him to last, so they entertained him with stories. (It was a way to wash away your sins, appeasing the dying.)

Olinda would watch him from his bedside, holding his hand, trying not to notice how stark the contrast of their skin was, worse and worse with every passing day. The pallor of his skin turned him closer to a ghost than the living as the bronze of her skin grew darker from long days of work. She held him tighter then, desperate to see the blood rush to the spot she cradled.

She would bring him flowers or bits of grain and he would tell her his stories by the light of the flame, it’s greedy tongue going this way and that, her eyes watching it in fear. He told of the past, of wars come and gone, of how constellations got their names, of how they came to be, the longing in his voice that of an old man who was seeing his final days.

She laid down next to him at night, making promises instead of prayers, vows instead of wishes. She had earned their keep in this farmhouse, this room where they could stay. She would earn their freedom, too, where they could make stories of their own volition and desires.

For now, she would make those necessary trades to keep them behind closed doors. For now, she would do what she must so that, at the end of the day, the only family she had left would not be gone in the fire’s wake.

Place after place. Alley after alley. Pub after pub. Door after door. Stone after stone.

They roamed Riverbend like the ghosts they had left behind, searching for a place of belonging, trying to carve a home out of the ruins they were saved from. Strength was hard to come by, but from high spirits Kade could spin powerful wills using a single song. Stories were his magic while memories were his poison. He bended the people to his will like a siren, leading them into the future he had been so certain he would never have.

He was cursed, some thought, leading others to treasure he could not possess. Olinda was haunted, said others; the fire put itself in her veins, an evil that, when forged, knew not what it was but hungered nevertheless.

She was a soul looking, searching, hunting for a life beyond what she had been given. She touched the lives of others but drifted, unsatiated. She could find places and people and bring them on her trail, set them on a new path and destiny, but could not change her own.

They would have to lose themselves before they found their home. They belonged to ash, now; they were remnants of the fire, pieces of a conflagration that had left very little in its wake. In the end, their home was the woods they had hid in, all those years ago.

How old had they been? Old enough to be gone.

The fire knew it. The long shadows that the flames threw knew it, as well.

The memories that plagued them had screams, beckoning them to the dark where the pyre had burned in front and the shadow engulfed them from behind.

It’s where they had come from, children born of shadow, lost to the fire.

It burns in their eyes now; anger, fear, sorrow, death.

Do you forget us, bard of darkness? Do you run away, worker of shade?

Olinda clinged to Kade, his light proof that her fears were not so, that they were not Nowhere Children with a sickness of ghosts, born to nothing but sorrow and dread. She held his aching bones, his aging soul. She looked into his emerald eyes, searching for answers. (He crafted some for her; prophecies of adventure, lore of good.)

He had his stories, a past that he could recount to make him feel grand, a past rich enough he need not think of a future that might not be.

But when she asked, all he could do was comply and fashion her a fate of dreams, a future fit for the bards in Whitetower, perfect for the Legends of Light. A life full of wonder, away from the dirt roads, long days, and bright fires they knew.

(He never spoke of his future. There was no telling what it held.)

She had taken his tales with a fervor, intent to drink the good spirits before they were gone.

Where did they go? Will they come back?

Kade was gone and a new story was being written for her, its dangers stronger than she could ever know. (What did she have, now? What could she bring back?)

A fearless will, shaped in her brother’s image, pushed her onward to what lay beneath.

#choices stories you play #choices #playchoices #blades of light and shadow #kade #blades mc #mc #oneshot #imagine #fic #kade of riverbend #kadebladesoneshot #olindabladesoneshot

12 notes · View notes

talesofpanem · 5 years

Text

A Wasteland No More

Title: A Wasteland No More.

By @mega-aulover

(Please note lines from Mockingjay were paraphrased.)

PROMPT: Wilderness means an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region; neglected or abandoned area of a garden or town; or a position of disfavor, especially in a political context. In religious context, a wilderness experience refers to a period of pain, struggle, discomfort, and trials.

Rating: M Mature subject as this deals with Katniss’ captivity in Mockingjay after she shot Coin, and her wanting to die. Trigger Warning - This goes right into the Epilogue. Canon Compliant.

A/N: Not the usual fluff I write, this is a little darker but the prompt spoke to me on many levels. I’d written about Katniss being Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman and this stuck with me. Both were used, dried up shells and were being abandoned by the very same system that created and fostered them. Un-beta’d all mistakes are mine.

She was the phoenix who burned herself at the altar. A sacrifice to rid Panem of another mutt. Unbeknownst to those gathered to see President Snow executed, there were plans to have another Hunger Game to continue the massacre of innocent children. In Katniss’s private opinion there’d been enough innocent lives killed, including that of her 13-year-old sister by the hands of that mutt.

Shooting the arrow straight at Coin was the only solution Katniss could come up with. In that moment Katniss self-imploded. Like, a Phoenix whose flame had been extinguished, all she wanted to do was die. Instead, she found herself locked up in a room, a cage of sorts, forgotten.

Her voice raw and cracked filled the air. “You are my Sunshine my only sunshine-”

She was a discarded scrap of human flesh, trapped in a wasteland of thoughts. Time stopped. There was no day or night, only the cosmic vacuum where nothing existed except for her voice. Her voice was raw and pink like the grafts on her skin. It filled the room, today, flickering like a small candle in the midst of darkness.

“The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping

I dreamed I held you in my arms

But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken

And I hung my head and I cried…” Katniss sang to an invisible boy.

Oh, how she missed those arms that comforted her in the dead of night. She lamented and cried over the steadiness they offered. “Peeta,” She half sang half wept, “She’s gone, my sister, my Prim.“

Like a Jabberjay her voiced mocked back. "PRIM, is gone. You couldn’t save her. You’re an evil mutt. The mutt. Mutt.”

The word mutt reverberated in the room, in her ears,and in her soul.

Shaking her head, Katniss began to sing again. “You are my sunshine…”

Katniss rocked back and forth on the floor recalling the moment she’d killed Coin. She’d tried to kill herself by taking the nightlock pill, but Peeta stopped her taking the pill away. Katniss bit his hand accidentally. The taste of his blood still lingered in her mouth as she foamed at the lips, like a feral beast. His desperate look was seared in her brain. The recollection of their last moments together like one of Peeta’s vivid paintings.

“Let me go!” she snarled at him, trying to get free from his grasp.

“No.“ He shook his head violently his eyes clouded. "I can’t,” he said, right before the guards grabbed Katniss and threw her here in this cage.

"Peeta,” She cried. Tears fell from her face. Laying down on the floor she held herself but her spindly arms were not the ones she craved.

‘PEETA’, her mind the logical, stoic part of her being cried out to her soul. Her heart the part that was concerned with her emotions, was far too damaged and whispered back.‘He’s dead, the Capitol killed him.’

The sweet gentle boy she’d known died at the hands of the Capitol. Everything died in the Capitol, Coin, Peeta, Prim, and soon her, for assassinating Coin. Katniss wondered why they were taking so long for her to be executed. Why not kill her quickly? Unless this was the plan. Abandon her to die. Exhaustion gripped her like a vice, forcing her to sleep as she waited for the end. Katniss became a willing participant believing she needed to die.

Time flowed forward like a river determined to reach the shore. To her great shock Katniss was set free from her prison and sent back to District 12. She settled in the Victors Village a different type of prison, a self-imposed one.

In a near comatose state, Katniss gazes out from her grey orbs into the world. Unable to speak or move. She does not dare close her eyes for what comes next are visions a senseless death and blood and burned children.

A dead useless Phoenix, whose beautiful feathers have been plucked or singed by the fire. Her gilded cage was her scared burned shell. A taxidermied mutt. Lifeless she’s stuffed daily with enough food to keep her from dying too quickly. She watches from her perch, hungrily waiting for something. No one has what she needs to shed the scarred chrysalis she’s formed around her beaten and battered soul.

Katniss watches Greasy Sae, who shuffles about the kitchen humming an endless tune. Katniss recognizes the tune, her sunshine song. ‘You are my sunshine,’ mocks her ears. Her sunshine, dandelion is gone, and she’s at the tree hanging waiting to be set free.

A slight movement to her left causes her eyes to shift. Greasy’s grandchild stands before Katniss. The child gawks like a visitor at a museum. Peering at an odd collectable item. Katniss stares as well until the girl leaves with her grandmother..

In the silence she watches the way a speck of dust floats in the air dancing about in the sunlight and settles on the floor once the light is gone. Night descends, and shadows invade her space.

In the darkness the struggle begins to stay awake and keep the nightly terrors away. Once more, she craves for those strong arms. She is in an unspoken agony knowing those arms will never find her again. Peeta is gone, her heart, mind, and soul tells her spirit. Her spirit once more tastes the sweet soft flesh of his hand as he denied her a swift end. He’s still alive her spirit whispers. But this is quickly shoved to the side, in favor of death. This path she’s chosen is longer but her end is near. And she waits for the void to consume her.

Katniss is nearing that point in the fabric of space. Time, like the river is nearing its final destination when the scraping sound of metal and dirt wakes her from her terror. The sound spills forth from her dream into her reality. In her dream she was being buried, dirt filled her mouth, and was clogging her throat. In her reality it’s the very air she breathes mingled with her screams that have clogged her throat. Her her eyes looked about the room. She expected to see a grave surrounding her not a couch and certainly not a cracked ceiling.

As she lays there something happens to the cage she so skillfully built. Katniss can see the cracks and the door swung open. She ran through the door. Katniss found herself standing outside. Staring at a wasteland until her eyes find him.

Peeta’s face is red from digging. An orange wagon has five small bushes.

“You’re back,” Katniss whispered incredulous. She thought perhaps she was hallucinating. But the light was blinding and she could feel something happening, stirring deep within her.

“Dr. Aurelius didn’t let me go until yesterday,” Peeta said. “By the way, he mentioned he can’t keep pretending he’s treating you anymore. You need to pick up the phone.”

Peeta looked thin and had burn scars like Katniss. However, his eyes no longer look tortured.

He was frowning at her, as though being able to detect she was morphing from the inside out. It didn’t matter if her hair was matted into clumps or that she was dirty. Her heart pumped with the smoldering embers of liquid fire. Katniss opened her mouth, to try to explain to him but her eyes fell on the wagon. “What are you doing?”

“I went to the woods when I arrived and dug these up. For her,” he said. “I thought we could plant them along the side of the house.“

At first she thought they were the odious roses people used for funerals. The very same roses Snow preferred. She’s about to spew righteous fire at him when she takes a close look at the bushes. They aren’t the dreaded rose, but evening primrose. The flower her father used to name her sister. Peeta has given Katniss back her sister.

The image of the burning girl is now replaced are the delicate flowers growing other side the house.

Running back inside she found the source of her discontent. A single perfect rose. With liquid fire running through her veins she tosses the hated bloom into the fire. Katniss feels her body change, her wings stretch from her shoulders and she once more begins to morph into the fiery phoenix. Snow nor Coin could not dampen her fire.

On that day Katniss rose from the ashes and soot. It was a long hard won path but slowly she and her boy with the bread are transformed into a glorious state. Katniss recognizes she is a tamer Phoenix, gentled by sunshine of love. The void is gone and where silence reigned now laughter and giggles fill the air.

Time brought Katniss not to a vast ocean but to a gentle lake. Where she set roots and grew. Today years after Peeta returned, Katniss watched her precious fledglings, as they leap and dance. One day they were take to the air, but for now she will hold them close to her bosom. Katniss hums once more as strong arms surround her.

"You are my sunshine…”

#tales of panem #talesofpanem #week 5 #wilderness #mega-aulover #submission

65 notes · View notes

themadlostgirl · 5 years

Text

Not Dead Yet (Part 82)

Pairing: Reader x Peter Pan

Warning: language

The moment my lips touched his forehead everything exploded. All my memories came back flashing before me. It went by so fast but I could see everything clearly. My life. My life was literally flashing before my eyes.

I don’t know how it happened but it did. I could remember who I was. I looked down at the figure below me and a wave of misery swept over me.

“No…” I cradled Peter’s limp body and placed his head in my lap. His blank green eyes stared aimlessly up at me. “No. I remember. Peter please, I remember. You can’t be gone now.”

I cried and cried without shame. No injury I have ever taken could come close to the pain that hurtled through my body as that one sobering fact settled in. I pressed my forehead to his, his skin already growing cold.

“P-Please…” I hiccuped through my sobs, “Please Peter, come back to me.”

I pulled Peter’s body closer to me. I don’t know how long I sat there holding his body, feeling the warmth drain away. The island itself seemed to be as dead. No trees rustling in the wind, the ocean was as still as glass, and the moon itself was paler in the sky.

Wait. If Peter’s dead then how is it the island is still here? If he died the island would plunge itself into the sea and cease to exist. I looked up and saw the Jolly Roger flying away from Neverland with the use of Peter’s shadow. Once the shadow is gone this land will turn to dust.

“Y/N!” Devin and the remaining loyal Lost Boys found me with Peter’s body. “Oh god…”

“Is he dead?” One of the boys asked. I nodded grimly.

“It doesn’t matter now. The island will be destroyed the moment the Jolly Roger leaves this realm. The only thing keeping this island intact is the shadow. We can’t stop the ship and the island can’t live without a host.” I held out the magic bean to them. “Here, get yourselves out while you can.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I then.” Devin wrapped an arm around my shoulder.

“Nor I,” Ben nodded.

“Same.” Nick sat down next to us. All of the remaining Lost Boys sat down along with us. The boys grew quiet, making peace with themselves before it was too late.

I laid my head against Devin. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this.” he murmured, “Peter Pan never fails. I hoped beyond anything that that was true. Now here we are...at the end.”

“Maybe not,” we looked up and saw Tigerlily had joined the group, “Peter Pan hasn’t failed yet.”

“He’s dead! I’d say that’s a failure!” I shouted at her, “And where the hell have you been this week? What help were you during all this?”

“Listen to me. You said that the island can’t live without a host, right?”

“Right, but what does that--”

“You’re going to have to trust me” she pulled the broken bit of wand from her satchel. “Give me your dagger.”

I handed her my dagger and she stabbed the wand with it. I watched as the last remnants of magic imbued itself into the knife. “Stand.” she ordered.

I did as she said and she went to work cutting into the sand around my feet. No, not the sand. She was cutting my shadow against the moonlight.

Once it was free the dark mass sprung away and flew around me. I shuffled my feet at the sensation of no longer having a shadow. I felt lighter somehow. “Oh this is weird.”

“Look,” Nick pointed to the sky where the Jolly Roger blinked out of sight. The island shook and my eyes rolled back into my head.

~~~

I was painfully aware that I was not in fact unconscious at least mentally. I couldn’t move my body nor feel anything around me. I was a thought floating through the air. An expanse of white surrounded me in absolute silence. Was I dying? Was this death?

“It’s not death, pet.”

An image appeared before me. “Peter? I remember! I can remember everything!”

He smiled sadly at me, “I know and that’s great but you need to listen carefully now.” his voice whispered to me as if he was across a large room though he stood right before me. “Since you severed your shadow from your body the soul of the island took you on as the new host. Your body is being tied to the island.”

“What? How can it--”

“Shh. I don’t have time to explain everything. I scarcely know what’s going on myself so you need to listen. Now that I am gone all of the magic is being transferred to you. Then you will be the new tie to the island. All your emotions and your very soul will shape the island like it had with me.”

“Does that mean that I’ll have my own hourglass? That my time is just as limited?”

“No. The hourglass was part of my curse. You carry no such thing. You will be surrogate to the island’s life. It doesn’t matter if you leave for another realm or even if you die, Neverland will stand. No hourglass. No curse. Just your soul being one in the same with the realm. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“Good. Cause once you wake up then I’m gone. My soul will no longer be intermingled with yours in this transfer and I cannot speak to you ever again.”

“Please no. I need you. I can’t do this without you!”

“Of course you can. You’re my Lost Girl. You are a survivor. A leader. If anyone can do this then it’s you. You’ll be just fine.”

“Peter...I...I love you.”

“Y/N, I--”

~~~

“Y/N! Y/N wake up!” A pair of hands shook me awake. The boys were crowded around me breathing out in relief. Devin crushed me in his arms. “It worked! Neverland stays!”

“No…” I gasped in horror. I clenched my eyes shut, “No, no, no! Go back! Go back!”

“What’s wrong? It worked. Shouldn’t we be a little happy?” Nick asked.

“Everyone back off.” Ben whispered to the others.

Hot angry tears rolled down my face as I tried in vain to go back to the blank space. It isn’t fair! I finally remember and he’s gone. He can’t be gone. One more moment. I just want one more moment with him. The others left carefully picking up Peter’s body and leaving with it.

After I was able to catch my breath and open my eyes without wanting to burst into tears again I got to my feet and followed the boys’ tracks into the jungle. I didn’t notice at first but everything was exceedingly dark giving that there was a full moon. I looked up and saw dark clouds as black as obsidian blocked the sky. What in the world? I wish they would go away. I can barely see anything. Just like that the clouds started to part revealing the moon once more.

Right. I’m the tie to the island. My will and my emotions control every drop of water and grain of sand in this realm now. When I got back to the destroyed camp the boys were fixing things up. They saw me enter and stopped what they were doing to stand before me.

“Where have you put him?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

They pointed to the center of the camp where Peter’s body lay next to the dying embers of the fire. “Shovel.” I held out a hand and after a moment I held a makeshift shovel. “Bring him.”

The boys picked him up again and followed me. I stopped at Peter’s Thinking Tree. I chose a space and plunged the shovel into the dirt. An old sense of familiarity took root as I upturned shovelful after shovelful of dirt. When it was deep enough I pulled myself out and nodded to the boys. Carefully they picked up Peter’s body to lower into the grave. “Wait.” I stopped them.

No one said a word as I brushed the hair away from his eyes and gave his lifeless lips one last kiss. I stepped back and watched as they settled Peter into the grave. With my shovel and their hands we poured the dirt over his body until it was full and the only thing laying before us was a long plot of upturned earth. I stabbed the shovel at the head of the grave to mark it till I could make a proper headstone.

One by one the boys left again until it was just me asleep next to the grave.

~~~

Peter sat up with a start as the connection was severed. He could still hear the trembling in Y/N’s voice echoing through his head as she spoke those beautiful final words to him.

I love you.

She loves him. His Lost Girl loves him...and now she’s gone forever. He’s dead and he can never tell her that--

Wait.

Where the hell was he?

Peter looked around where he woke up and froze. He knew this place. He used to come here all the time when he was younger.

“Look who’s awake at last.” Spoke a withered voice. Peter turned to see an old woman with a huge swollen thumb smiling at him.

“Cibil.” Peter glared. Looking behind the spinner woman he saw the other two with their drooping camel lip and huge flat foot. “Bain. Dabria. How terrible it is to see you all again.”

“Peter Pan, lost child, still so harsh.” they sighed.

“Yes, yes, whatever,” he looked around the weathered shack with its various odds and ends. “Nothing changes around here it seems.”

“Much has changed in your life, Peter Pan.” Dabria smirked at him.

“Well I’m dead so yes, a lot has changed. Why am I here?”

“We caught your soul on its way to the Underworld.”

“Thanks. I can have a last moment with my three favorite seers before I’m damned for all eternity in the River of Souls.”

“If you do not wish to hear what we have to say then you can be on your way to your death, lost child.” The three of them glared back at him.

“Apologies if I’m not in the best mood after dying and being separated from the one person I care about. But please, tell me what it is you have to tell me.”

“You are not damned, Peter Pan. Dead yes, but the damnation of your curse has been lifted.”

“What do you mean? I thought I--what changed?”

“True love’s kiss can break any spell. It restored her memory and saved you.”

“A kiss...why didn’t it work before then? When she first came home?”

“She didn’t believe in you. You were a stranger. She had to fall again.”

“And even before that? Before she got caught in the Evil Queen’s curse?”

“You know the reason.”

He did. Peter couldn’t let himself think like that. It would just hurt him to admit and his Lost Girl deserved more than that. If he told her he wanted to be there to enjoy it with her. At the end though he couldn’t deny it anymore. She had finally returned to him. He wouldn’t deny what he felt for his Lost Girl.

“Can I speak to her again? I need only a moment.”

“You know you cannot. Even now, we struggle to hold your soul here. You must move on to the next life.”

“Yes…” Peter nodded. He didn’t like this but at least Y/N was safe and he wasn’t going to suffer for eternity in the River of Souls. “Well, I can’t say it was a pleasure but it wasn’t terrible seeing you old bats again.”

“How that poor girl came to love you is a mystery even we can’t unravel.” Bain muttered.

“I don’t care that you don’t understand it. So, how do I get to the Underworld? Do I just--”

The hut around him melted away and he was now stood in the middle of a street. Peter didn’t recognize the town but it looked to be modeled after some town from the Land Without Magic. He probably would have thought he was there if it wasn’t for the red hellish glow in the sky and war torn destruction in the street. Peter imagined death and the Underworld plenty of times but he can say that this was nothing like what he was expecting.

With nothing left to do and no one left to care about Peter wandered down the desolated street. He felt something in a fold of his tunic and found a piece of parchment he could have sworn wasn’t there before. He unfolded it and smiled. It was the first drawing he did of Y/N. The one he drew when they were trapped in the Enchanted Forest and that the Neverbird burned to ashes. Guess not only people end up down here.

Peter continued to stare at the picture and sighed. “I’ll find a way back to you, love. My word is my bond.”

(First) (Previous) (Next)

#i fucking fucked up the first time #fixed this one though!#take two #slowburn #ouat peter pan #peter pan ouat #ouat #peter pan imagine #neverland #peter pan x reader

38 notes · View notes

selinaneveahcrystal · 5 years

Text

A/N: In honour of the answer that @bounding-heart replied to wanting a fic of Nagini being tragically drawn to damaged orphan Tom in the same way she was drawn to Credence.

Hopefully, it hits all the right nails and satisfies every criteria xD.

...

It’s been too long.

Far too long, that no one has understood her.

She stares at the tiny boy, handsome but oddly calm, the surprise only momentarily showing in his intelligent eyes as he tilts his head, glancing back at her.

There’s a beat of silence as her tongue flickers, and they both assess each other through their dark eyes. A hope that she knows could very well destroy her rises in her chest as the deadened leaves in the cave rustled under her belly.

Had he just understood her?

She hisses delicately in his direction, watching warily as his eyes brightened.

“You’re different too, aren’t you?”There’s a hunger that’s so familiar in his eyes. The desperation and yearning of finding himself to be something more than just what he currently was sending a pang into her deadened heart, coinciding with the fading image of another male, long ago. Fragile and broken, handsome and desperate for recognition.

She hisses in response, her body coiling around his right arm, her head rising to rest against his shoulder, her tongue flickering almost comfortingly as she hissed against his ear.

Yes.

He hears her, and brightens at her response as she preens.

It’s been too long that she’s managed to make someone feel better in ways that she could no longer respond in. It reminds her of the time that she used to be able to move on two feet, to comfort someone with words other than hissing.

He leaves much earlier than she’d like him to, but returns the next day with peace offerings.

Dead rats and mice, leftover foods from the table.

She prefers the leftover foods as compared to the rats and mice, her fading memory of delicious human food a more distinct memory than all others. There was nothing more than she missed than being able to consume warm food, well cooked and seasoned.

“You almost remind me of a human.”The boy reaches over to stroke the top of her head as she eats, voice a soft whisper. “And you’re beautiful.” She hisses her pleasure in response, and bumps her head against the palm of his very hand, a smile creasing in her heart as a peal of laughter falls from the lonely boy’s lips.

They spend their days in passing just like that, with him sneaking into the cave that she found refuge in every evening, bringing with him bulging pockets of food and game.

He’s playing and levitating fragments of stones in the air when the Muggle children find him, and the first thing he does is to hide her behind a pillar of stone.

“Stay here.”Affection is almost clear in his voice as he rubs his hand over her head. “I’ll chase them away. The adults will kill you if they know that you’re here.”His handsome face slips into a frozen mask of indifference, eyes darkened with hate and malice, and she all but curls against him, unsettled.

Don’t go.

The plea is clear in her hidden voice, the strong wrap of her body around his tiny hand.

He smiles lightly, prying his hand lose from her restricting body and steps into the light.

Credence!

A wave of her strongest human memory, riddled with pain and rife with heartbreak bursts into the forefront of her mind.

He knows where you’re from, not who you are!

Please!

The handsome but broken male in her memories glances back at her, torn but desperate, reluctant affection in the contours of his face as he drinks in her features.

Credence!

His hand slips from her own, and she screams in pure agony as he never returns.

...

His body is the only thing that they find amongst all the corpses of the dead in the aftermath of the battle.

“I’m..sorry..”It’s a word that she’s heard one too many times throughout the course of her life, and her hand shakes as his dark eyes stare back at her, blank and unseeing.

She hates the fact that the Mazoologist and his wife are standing behind her, watching her crumble and break over a corpse of a lover that she could never call her own.

Hates, the fact that all eyes are upon her with pity--an emotion she so detests, having been at the receiving end of it apart from amusement and greed throughout her life.

Credence is gone, and there’s nothing left in her cold heart that could ever let her fear again.

Everyone gathered around her flinches visibly as a broken keen rises from behind her parted lips, her face lifting to the bright clear sky as tears escape from her long lashed eyes.

It’s a cry that they all feel, broken and crushed, of hopelessness and endless despair.

Her body writhes, changes, deforms--and for once in her life, Nagini doesn’t care.

She hears the horrified cries wrenching through the air as she lets the beast in her consume her soul and body, feels the fading touch of Newt’s fingers as he reaches for her morphing hand, desperation on his face.

The beautiful dress that she dons falls to the ground as she slithers from its depths, her body curling upon the broken form of Credence almost protectively.

She is a beast.

Will be, a beast, from now on.

Her eyes turn towards Credence’s broken body as her tongue flickers, the last remnant of humanity that remained disappearing like the dying embers of a fire at its end.

There’s a beat of silence as they all wait, before she opens her mouth and swallows his body whole.

...

A cry of pain draws her back into the present, and her serpentine eyes flicker as she uncurls from behind the pillar, the sight of the boy that was kind to her sprawled on the ground, nose broken and bleeding as he lifts a hand to stop the endless blows.

The boy has magic. That much she knows.

So why isn’t he using it?

A long forgotten feeling of fear and anxiety rises in her chest as she watches the Muggle boy, twice his size, rain blow after blow on his fragile body.

He doesn’t know how to use his magic that well yet.

The realization strikes her like a cruel blow.

He’d been levitating rocks and playing with magic around her for so long that she’d forgotten that he was supposed to be a Muggle orphan, without anyone to direct him or teach him how to better control his magic.

Rage is clear on his face, and from experience, she knows that his magic will lash out soon enough, to detrimental consequences.

But it’s taking too long. Far too long, and the flash of the shining pocket knife in one of the child’s hands sends a cold chill racing down her bones.

No!

She strikes before any of them knows what’s happening, her teeth snapping at the hand of the boy holding the knife, cleaving it from the rest of his body before he even delivers a blow.

Screams of horror, pain and confusion burst from the rest of the Muggle children, and she registers vaguely as she turns to attack the rest of the children that the boy has his hand out, hatred and venom clear in his eyes as the two main perpetrators of the group dangle by their necks in the air, their bodies flopping around like kites in the wind.

She curls her body around his, tugging him back with a light squeeze of her strong body from the endless wave of rage and anger.

His magic responds to his wish, violently throwing the two Muggle children against the ragged ends of the rock wall.

A sickening crack of bone echoes in the cave, and the boy breathes heavily as she curls around his body, her huge size dwarfing his tiny frame.

She bumps his head with her own, trying to comfort him as his chest heaves with emotion and rageful anger.

There was no point dwelling on it now.

The boy that reminded her so much of him--was safe now.

Her hissing wakes him from his exhilarated stupor, the realisation that he’d used his magic for offensive purposes and protection twisting his features into something enlightened but wild.

“Nagini, you need to leave.”He breathes lightly as she hisses angrily in response to his words, snapping her tail around his wrist in protest. “I will find you, I promise. But you need to leave before they find you.” Footsteps of heavy feet and the stench of fire and smoke fill their nostrils as he pries her tail off his right arm and shoulder. “Go!”

She finally leaves at his behest, watching his tiny back as he stares down the orange flames in human hands, and the accusing eyes of those out for his demise.

...

She doesn’t recognise him when he returns for her, her days of hunting and surviving in the Forest of Albania having turned her into a merciless hunter and beast. Separation was never something good for her, especially when she’d formed a bond so strong to another that she treasured.

Leaving him that day so many years ago had reminded her of the day she’d failed to retain Credence, the overwhelming sense of weakness and failure something she could no longer accept and take.

She needed to be stronger, faster, better--deadlier, so that she would never have to lose anyone ever again.

“Nagini.”It’s no surprise that he recognises her. After all, she’s stayed the same throughout all these years, waiting for his promise, waiting, and making herself better.

But she doesn’t recognise the handsome boy that she once knew in the wisp of someone else’s body that is apparently him, and rage fills her entire being as she slithers up the man’s side, mouth poised open to devour the cowering man on the other end that had seemingly defiled him.

The boy that she’s waited for no longer has a body, she learns gradually through his recounting of his story. A mishap of people who misunderstood him and desired to eliminate him.

He feels her righteous rage at his words, smiling as she curls around his right arm protectively, tongue flickering and teeth snapping as she hissed.

How could they want to hurt someone as kind as him?

Rage boils in her blood as she recalls his tiny but strong back, standing in the light of the flaming torches, and his insistence that she get away.

She’d failed at protecting him, once again.

The ire in the contours of her body is conveyed over to him, and he glides a finger down her back soothingly.

What is the point of growing stronger when she could never protect him?

He laughs at her question, amusement in his face and dark eyes sparkling with hidden intent.

“What do you think of seeking another body for me, Nagini?”He asks her gently, relaxing as she uncurls her body from his shoulder to glance at him. “A body that will never allow anyone to separate us ever again.” His words hit her deepest desire, stirring long lost feelings of hope and desperation. “We’d never be apart again.”

His dark eyes turn to her own, and she sees a shadow of redemption in his figure, of long lost hope and missed chances, and she curls tightly around his right arm, head slithering up to rest on his shoulder.

Yes.

...

A/N: So the ending is set before the beginning of the Philosopher’s Stone. Voldemort has no body after killing Harry, and has just taken over Quirrell’s body when he meets Nagini again.

Also, there’s something that I included that draws parallels between Nagini and Credence and Nagini and Voldemort.

I wonder how many of you noticed that Nagini tends to attach herself to one side of Credence in the movie or in the promos

Almost as though she’s kinda wrapping round his shoulder.

She does the same for Voldemort in the movies too, in her snake form.

She’s always at their left side or favours their left side to make an appearance.

Its actually interchangeable for Credence, but in a way I used it as a way to express her imprinting her lost chances and image of Credence on him--her desire to be wanted, for companionship.

There’s another parallel too.

Remember when Credence walks through the flames to Grindelwald’s side?

I strengthened the parallel between Credence and young Voldemort by letting her see his back as she leaves, seeing him face fire just as Credence did when he chose to leave.

Did you see the parallels?

Also, before any of you whale on me for humanising Voldemort, remember that its from her point of view--when he returns, she’s never seen what he did before while he was outside in the world, and her only memory of him stops at the time when he protected her in his youth. So to her, he’s kind and cares for her, and its worse that his image is parallel to Credence, someone that she clearly cares for and loves.

Let me know what you guys think, and if you did see the parallels when you read this fic, before I revealed them in the A/Ns!

I’d love to read and hear all your comments hehe.

Shoutout to @english-coffee for betaing this for me :3 You and I relate on so many levels when it comes to Nadence

#fantastic beasts #crimes of grindelwald #nadence #credence nagini #credence x nagini #nagini #voldemort #young tom riddle #credence barebone #my writing #my fics #harry potter #fanfiction

84 notes · View notes

postedbygaslight · 6 years

Text

You’ll Be the One to Turn - Part 44: Lux Aeterna

These chapters have taken a lot out of me. I don’t know if there’ll be a proper chapter 45. I’ll probably write three epilogues. But I’m not even going to begin to think about that right now. I’m emotionally blasted, and I’m taking a rest.

He’s dead. He’s supposed to be. And yet, his eyes open. Only, are they really his eyes? Are these eyelids? Is this his face? Is what he’s feeling a feeling at all? Or just the dream of a feeling?

Or the feeling of a dream.

Or nothing.

Everything.

It’s dark, but, yet, not. It’s light so bright it’s blinding. It’s endless gray that never actually begins. And yet it always has been. Where did this start? He’s unable to grasp what he’s meant to do. Or see. If doing or seeing are actual things in this place he’s found himself. If this is a place at all.

Rey.

He can see her.

He can’t remember her face. He can’t forget it.

The future she showed him haunts him. It sustains him. He hasn’t had time to understand it. He’s known it so long, he no longer knows anything else.

Time, it seems, has no power here. One second is a lifetime. One lifetime, a second.

And the warp and weft of Force’s endless loom spools our before him, offering numberless causeways to travel, threads to follow. But he can’t see the one thread he’s looking for.

This shouldn’t be happening, he thinks. And then he falls into a rhetorical trap, debating whether he can think anything at all, and whether anything at all can happen to someone who’s already been torn away from the Living Force.

But has he been torn away? What actually happened?

He bled to death in Rey’s arms on Naboo.

He was killed by Rey in a duel on Starkiller Base.

He was incinerated on the deck of his Star Destroyer when the stormtroopers rebelled.

He died, a lightsaber scorching through his heart, at the hands of his uncle, while he slept.

How many futures have already been spent? How many pasts never were?

And all at once, he’s himself again. Whatever that means. He’s standing on the salt flats of Crait as the sun sets. The wind is high, sweeping across the barren landscape. There’s no battle here. No rebel base. No wounded hatred. No desperate need to burn away the weak parts of himself. Just the salt and the sun, and an endless cloud streaked sky.

“Ben,” a voice resonates across the distances, sage and knowing.

Ben turns to see him, much as he looked that day, walking toward him, a being of dim light tinged with an aura of gentle blue.

“Luke.”

Luke, dressed in his simple Jedi robes, comes to a halt a few paces from Ben. His face is tired and careworn, but peaceful.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Luke says, a deeply mournful tone in his soft voice.

“You said it once already.”

“And I’ll never be able to say it enough.”

Ben can’t see the point of this. His life is over. Whatever place or time they’ve come to, whether Luke is truly sorry, and whether Ben accepts that, the time has come and gone for that to have any meaning.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Luke says, walking a step closer to him. “It matters more now than ever.”

Ben remembers the night in his room at the temple. It’s a memory he’d nurtured and protected, returning to it again and again to fuel his terror, his fury, his abject hatred, and to let the cold of the cruel darkness take root in his heart. He remembers it so vividly that it strikes him now that he doesn’t have a single memory of Luke other than that one that seems to hold any meaning anymore.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” Ben says, an angry tremor stirring in his voice, even as he feels nothing of the rage that he once held in his heart toward Luke.

“You don’t have to forgive me, and I’m not asking for forgiveness,” Luke says, sitting on a large rock that Ben hadn’t noticed before. “I only want you to know that I know I wronged you. I didn’t trust you or myself, and I gave in to fear. I failed you. And I’m sorry.”

They’re words he’s wanted to hear. They’re words that remind him of happiness and a home he’s never sure he’s actually had, even as they stir vicious swirls of hatred deep within him. But there’s something in the way Luke said them, a note of revelation, that draws Ben in. He can suddenly sense the eddies and flows of the Force around them, and appreciates what this is.

This isn’t death. Or the netherworld. Or another plane of existence. He’s still right where he was before, cradled in Rey’s arms as he lies dying on the floor of the focusing chamber on Naboo. And he sees again his furious attempt to break the crystal’s will. His last entreaty to the phantasm of Anakin Skywalker— Darth Vader— to aid him. To bring him enough power through the darkness. And he feels again the totality of his failure, and the silence of the mask on the altar.

“I saw his memories,” Ben says, knowing Luke can sense his thoughts. “Your father’s. I saw him turn to the Dark Side.”

“Then you saw more than I did,” Luke responds, his worn expression filled with old hurt, struck through with loss and longing. “And understand more than I ever will.”

“I understand he was cruel,” Ben says, remembering Anakin’s exhilaration as he killed the Separatists, and his sense of righteousness and dark justice as he forced Padmé to submit. “And he wanted to hurt people.”

“And he loved my mother. And his fear destroyed him.”

Ben wants to refute Luke immediately. He wants to say that Anakin didn’t love Padmé. That he couldn’t have. That he wanted only to possess and control her. But Ben knows it isn’t entirely true. He could feel the warmth of their love, a peculiar feeling when compared to the bond he and Rey built together. And he knows now that the possessive rage, the desperate, urgent desire to protect what he loved— Ben recognizes the same in himself. Recognizes it, and knows how close he’d been to losing Rey to his own murderous impulses.

“Did he really turn back to the Light? At the end.”

“Ben, I’ve talked about it so much in those simple terms, and it took me years to really understand my father’s conflict. When I confronted him, I was younger than you. I was still a boy myself in many ways,” Luke looks off into the limitless gray horizon, the burden of his destiny still hanging on him like a shroud of chains. “The Jedi and the Sith have always talked about turning. It’s not about being on one side or the other. It’s about where you’re headed. Did my father reject the Emperor’s teachings? Yes. For a moment. But it was the right moment.”

He can see it as Luke looks up at him. Luke, a young man, his face clean shaven, his sandy hair swept aside. Dressed all in black, as though he mourned for someone he’d never known. Vader, a tower of metal and plastene, a clotted wound in the Force, bleeding decades of anger and hatred. And he senses what Luke sensed. Something so familiar.

The spark. A tiny, flickering light deep within the soul of Anakin Skywalker. Ben sees the child, crouching in the inky blackness. He is nine or ten. Blond hair. White and cream colored clothing— like Rey’s when she lived on Jakku. His face is sad and frightened, and his eyes betray the loss and sadness of a hundred lifetimes. He clings to the ember, racked with shivers, and cannot even bring himself to weep. There are no more tears that can be shed.

I feel the good in you. Let go of your hate.

And the shadow conceals the desert boy from view, as Vader’s black storm cloud cloak folds in around him like a predator protecting its young.

It is... too late for me... son.

Ben shudders away from the cold shroud of Vader’s presence. He looks to Luke, and then around at the stark, endless horizon.

“What happens now?”

“What do you want to happen?” Luke asks, standing.

“I’ve never had anything I’ve wanted,” Ben responds. “Not really.”

Luke slowly closes the distance between them, holding his gaze, his eyes deep with knowledge and understanding.

“She loves you.”

Even though it’s something he knows, something so fundamental and essential to his reckoning of who he is, hearing Luke say it takes him aback. And he realizes that he never truly believed Rey loved him. Not as he is now. Or as he was.

“She loves someone who I might have been,” Ben says, shaking his head, the grief of it too raw and near for him to fully grasp. “Someone who won’t ever be.”

“No,” Luke says, and the emphatic way he pronounces it shakes Ben to his core. “Loving someone for who they could be— for what they have the potential to become— is hope. And hope is the purest form of love.”

Luke’s gaze cuts deep into him, and he thinks of the ember shielded from the dark by young Anakin. Ben thinks of the blast of light that released from his own spirit when he bled the crystal in the cargo hold of the Finalizer. He remembers its power. And he knows now where he’s felt it before. The blinding light at the heart of the bond. Within the bloom of warmth, that blaze of starfire. A light that cannot be doused or diminished.

Hope.

“It’s a rare gift,” Luke continues. “And one not lightly given.”

Ben can see her. She’s holding him in her arms. She won’t let go of his body. He can feel her despair, and her acceptance of the finality of what is to be.

“It’s too late now.”

Luke takes another step toward him. He’s only a pace away now.

“It’s never too late.”

“How did you do it?” Ben asks, reaching for some way to understand. To accept. “How did you save your father?”

“I didn’t save him. He saved himself. I only reminded him that he could.”

Ben sees it through Luke’s eyes. The Emperor standing over him, his cruel yellow eyes thrilling in the pain he’s able to inflict, cords of lighting streaming from his fingertips, lashing Luke with violent blasts. Only now, at the end, do you understand. Gray teeth bared in a twisted, corpse-like scowl. And Vader. Standing there. Watching.

Father! Please!

And Ben feels Anakin Skywalker emerge from behind the mask as he regards the monster at his side. This man. My tormentor. My jailer. My master. He asked for my freedom, and I gave it. He asked for my name and my life as I’d known it, and I gave those, too. He will not have my son.

Ben sees Luke’s memory. Of a dark throne room. Of pain and electric smoke. Of sudden shock as Anakin Skywalker, imprisoned in the shell of Darth Vader, lifts the ghoul at his side into the air, summoning the last strength he has in his powerful frame, heaving the Emperor into the reactor shaft as lethal ropes of lightning snap through his metal body.

Ben steps back, shaken.

“B— but, how— how can I—“

“You already have,” Luke says, reaching up to touch Ben’s face. Ben can’t stop the tears, if there really are tears in this place, from spilling down his cheeks, and he shakes his head.

“After what I’ve done—“

“Reach out with your feelings. What do they tell you?”

Ben looks into his uncle’s sad, hopeful eyes. And he does reach out. And he feels it. His mother. Not the memory of her, but her. Bright and shimmering in the Force. And his father, joined with her there, his strength and love blended in with hers as they exist still, together, beyond the reach of pain or sorrow.

He meets Luke’s eyes, and he breaks. Whatever enmity he felt for his uncle strips away, and all he can feel now is a deep and lasting gratitude.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Luke says, stepping back from him and letting his hand drop to his side. “This is the lesson. My last lesson. The same one I tried to show you here. Those you’ve loved, and those who’ve loved you, they’re never really gone. They’ll always be with you. Just as I’ll always be with you. And your father will always be with you. And your mother will always be with you.”

Luke motions to the horizon, stepping back again. Ben can sense this place starting to bleed away into the Force around them.

“The past doesn’t ever die. Just as the future never actually is. What lies between the two is hope. And, hope, Ben, is accepting that you can’t make the future what you want. And recognizing that fear will drive you to destroy what you love even as you try to save it,” Luke says, shimmering with flashes of blue and white as he and the apparition of Crait blink away. “You have to trust. You have to trust enough to let go.”

And he does. He lets go of his hate. And the anger that fueled so much of his misery washes away like streaks from a windowpane. He feels the brilliant light of his mother’s love, and the earnest fierceness of his father’s. He feels Luke’s love, too: yielding, distant, but resolute and unchanging.

He finally understands. And accepts. And knows. The future spreads out before him in limitless causeways and paths, and he finally sees that he can’t make any one of them come to be. He has to walk a path, and let the future come as it will. He sees now, at last, that the only thing that can destroy the future that he wants is his own fear, his own inability to let be what will be, to try to take control and bend destiny to his command. He has to let go of that fear. He has to hope.

And as he is enveloped in the warmth and light of Rey’s love for him, he closes his eyes, and takes the first step forward on a new path, trusting to the Force that it will guide him home.

***

She’s still holding to him, even as his body is limp and lifeless. She clings to him so tightly it’s as though she hopes the ache of emptiness in her will somehow be comforted by press of his skin against hers.

Even as he’s gone. Even as he’ll never return.

The sobs coming from her now are so broken and violent that she doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to breathe again. And part of her wants to stay here with him, to sink into death, to go to the darkness to find him, because if this is what living will be, she doesn’t know how she can do it.

Perhaps that’s why, when the cold in her starts to blaze with warmth, she thinks for a moment that she has actually died. That she willed herself into the Force. That she could not go on alone.

But it’s not death. And it’s not comfort. It’s the familiar warmth of the bond. And she can see it again, the thread. It’s shining so brilliantly, it overcomes everything else around it. And confusion gives way to disbelief as she feels Ben take in a sharp breath and his hands close around her arms as though he’s been drowning and somehow reached the shore.

She pulls back to see him staring up at her, his eyes filled with wonder and gratitude, and she can’t stop the tears from flowing as her heart overflows, spellbound with a joy so pure and unencumbered that she doesn’t care at all how any of this is possible.

His arms are closing around her as he sits up and their eyes are locked in the shared awe of this new embrace. The warmth and fire shared between them blazes outward and crashes back in, the Force blooming and collapsing in rushes, a crackling blend of ecstatic energies all around them.

She sees it in his eyes, and she knows he sees it, too. The future she showed him returns in a thousand different paths, brilliant and shining with color, a slowly tilting prism of perfect crystal. For the first time since she’s known him, Ben Solo’s face is filled with hope, and as she kisses him, the Force swirls and keens around them in a balance of shadow and light so strong it carries their spirits aloft as though they’d never been parted at all.

They kiss, and kiss again, and hold each other, parting only in brief instances, their names on each other’s breaths as they embrace in the soft white glow of the kyber heart, finally together in the Light.

#reylo #reylo fanfic #star wars fic #rey #rey of jakku #ben solo #kylo ren #kylo x rey #luke skywalker #leia organa #han solo

125 notes · View notes

nikolaiward-blog · 6 years

Text

ashes to ashes, dust to mutants

WHEN: March 30th, 2017, sunrise WHERE: the remains of Nikolai’s old home WHO: closed, self-para WHAT: Nikolai sits in the ashes of their home, learning just what they are.

Smoke from the final dying embers mingled with the soft sunlight peering in through broken windows. It gently illuminated Nikolai’s tear-stained, soot-covered face, but bounced off nothing, as everything was covered in a thick, black layer of last night’s horrors. It all absorbed any bit of glow the sun offered as it began to rise, a house full of darkness sucking up any and all light within. The only witness, the only thing that envisioned the light, was Nik, but in this moment, they could not feel its force. Darkness consumed them, and quite literally, judging by the soot that covered the burns all over their body. Their clothes were in tatters. They had yet to feel the urge to change into a slightly-less charred pair.

Part of them wanted to sit and feel the pain. Nik wondered if it was their adrenaline that made the pain seemingly lessen, or if the exhaustion made them feel so numb. The answer was neither, as they would learn, the sun just barely illuminating their wounds beneath the soot. Only, there were barely any wounds; what should have been third degree burns looked like spots of first-degree, and even those appeared to be fading the longer they stared at them. Their eyes were dry from the smoke, and though they coughed upon inhaling some of the debris, their lungs no longer felt aflame. Dirty hands moved to rub at reddened eyes, trying to convince themself this was simply delusion. They were exhausted and had experienced trauma, they surely couldn’t be healing so quickly.

But they were, and as the remains of the wounds disappeared, leaving only tanned skin covered in debris, Nikolai suddenly found the energy to propel themself off the floor they had been wallowing upon. Adrenaline and love had sent them back into the house to their mother, whose body they could not bring themself to come near. The thought of it just made them sick, the horror of it all making them want to cry out with lungs that could surprisingly carry the sound. They couldn’t let that go. Their mom, the one woman who had cared for them in this cruel world that rejected them both, was gone so soon, and all because of her love for them. It made them feel as if two strong hands were wringing out their heart like it was nothing but a wet towel, the guilt twisting and crippling the boy, at least until this revelation pumped enough energy into their veins. Now, it was this shock and hint of fear that moved Nikolai, unsure as to what they had become, as to who they’d been this whole time.

They moved to their room, now charred over, black coating a childhood innocence they had long tried to protect. A stuffed Charrmander had ironically succumbed to the flames. Plastic melted into the floor where a Nintendo DS charged. Nikolai tried to fight off tears as they walked past them to the closet, and took the least-damaged clothes they could find into the bathroom.

The mirror in there, as they’d expected, was coated in the darkness that blanketed the entire home. Nik tried to remove it with what remained of their old shirt, and though they could not remove it, they smudged it enough to show the small amount of light in the room. It was almost a metaphor for themself as they tried to peer into the reflective surface, looking for answers the world could not yet provide. They saw more questions, however, as their skin was completely free of injury, smooth and unscathed under the darkness they could not remove - not while they were still in this house. The pipes wouldn’t bring water to the dirty sink, and even if they had, the layer of soot that shrouded their soul would need much more than a shower to cleanse it.

There was only one logical conclusion, only one explanation to how Nikolai’s physical pain has disappeared, even as the emotional scars still cried out. There was only one thing to call the boy who had lost everything and still came out seemingly unharmed, but sporting more damage on the inside than any eighteen year old should have to bear. It wasn’t a fighter, it wasn’t a survivor.

It was a mutant.

#this got longish so i just put it under a readmore #death tw #p: self #d: mar 30 2017 #p: atadtm #idk i wanted to write something for nik and then i got sad #is my writing rusty??? potentially

2 notes · View notes

homosexualsiriusblack · 7 years

Text

but you know what makes me really sad? thinking about the evolution of Remus and Sirius’s relationship over the years

Their first meeting on the train, going from strangers to cautious friends with a few well placed jokes by Sirius, trying to nudge at the walls this tiny, scarred, scared boy has up around himself. That friendship grows, blossoms over their first year, Remus feeling closer to Sirius than he ever has to someone else his own age. But he still keeps him at arms length for fear of his secret being revealed, and for the rejection that will follow.

In second year, they work out Remus’s secret, and they don’t reject him, and Remus weeps with joy. Sirius weeps with sadness, his heart aching for how much Remus has suffered. The pair grow even closer, now that this last obstacle between them has been torn down and the smallest embers of a softer sort of affection spark to life in their young hearts.

Over the next three years, Sirius along with his two fellow marauders work to become animagi, keeping it from Remus so it can be a surprise. They spend long, hard hours working at it, but Sirius would go to the moon and beyond for his moony (no pun intended). He pours his love in to the work, because thats what this is he realises; it’s love. He loves Remus, in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever love anybody. He spends whatever time he isnt working on the animagus spell at Remus’s side, the pair of them sharing secrets and stories and jokes and Remus thinks he might be falling in love with the black haired beauty before him, the thought pushing all other thoughts aside. I love Sirius, I love Sirius. He blushes as Sirius curls into his side in front of the fireplace, a soft warmth spreading through his chest. I love Sirius.

In their fifth year they finally succeed, and they show Remus what they’ve been working on, and Remus weeps again for all the work his friends have done to help him. Sirius's heart soars seeing the happiness flood his friend or maybe something more than a friend’s face. That night Sirius crawls in to bed with Remus when the room is dark and the stars shine through the window and the only noises are the soft breathing of the other two, asleep, and Remus tossing and turning in his sheets. That night is the first time that Sirius tells Remus that he loves him, and it’s the first time that Remus says he loves him too.

Their sixth year is probably the happiest year they spent at hogwarts. Sirius is there for Remus every full moon, and they fall more and more in love with eachother as the days pass. The war is growing around them, and Sirius tells Remus he loves him every chance he gets, My Moony, I’ll never leave you, I’ll never stop loving you, you know that right? to which Remus gives him his softest smile and kisses the top of his head, nodding silently and pulling Sirius ever closer.

Their seventh year arrives and they study for exams they know wont mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but they study anyway. They study, and they love eachother, and they ignore their anxieties and hope that maybe that can be enought, and for a while it is.

When they graduate, they all join the Order; it’s the only option that makes any sense. James and Lily get married straight away, and before he knows it Sirius is a godfather. Seeing the way Sirius dotes on little Harry fills Remus’s heart with more love than he thought it could hold, Love that he clings to on all the nights he spends away from his home with Sirius while on Order missions, missions he’s been forbidden from telling the love of his life about. Those same nights see Sirius lying in the bed he and Remus share awake, looking at old photographs and wondering why. it’s been weeks since he’s had a truly tender moment with his Moony, and the walls that Sirius tried so hard to pull down all those years ago seem to have gone straight back up, and Remus is so reluctant to let him in. Sirius weeps and curls in on himself. Their friends are dying around them, and their are whisperings of a traitor within the Order. Sirius wonders when he started to believe those whispers, wonders when he began to distrust the love of his life.

And then it all comes crashing down around them. The Potters are murdered, James and Lily, and Sirius understands everything now. It was Peter, it was always Peter, and the only thing that matters anymore is that he kills the one who ruined everything, who drove a wall between him and his moony, who killed the only family that mattered. But all too quickly Peter has vanished, and Sirius is clapped in irons, carted away to azkaban without even a trial, and he weeps, knowing that they’ll blame him for it all and Remus will never know the truth.

Until one day he escapes. He’s torn around the edges, and has spent the last twelve years seething with rage and with pain at the fate that befell his brother, and he’s trying not to let everything slip through the cracks in his mind, and killing Peter is the only thin that matters. Until he sees Remus again, sees his tired eyes and scarred face for the first time in over a decade, and what haunts him the most is the lack of any warmth in those eyes. Remus almost doesn’t recognise him, this skinny man with crazed eyes and long, straggly hair, claiming to be the elegant, beautiful young boy from his memories, memories he’s tried to block out for the last twelve years. Peter escapes and Sirius goes into hiding, and Remus is forced to quit his job, but he doesn’t much mind as now he can go with Sirius; look after him and try to repair all the distrust and pain between the two of them, and it’s hard. The years have changed them both, and there isn’t the easy love between them anymore that there once was. Sirius is a shivering, muttering shadow of a man, too paranoid to close his eyes at night for fear of nightmares. And even Sirius, in his broken state, recognises that the soft, self sure Remus he’s been remembering and clinging to for the last decade is nothing like the tired, skinny man who stands before him with a defeated look in his eyes. They’ve both been wounded by the years, in ways neighter of them a certain they’ll be able to heal from. But time passes and as the weeks turn in to months, slowly, slowly, Sirius becomes a little more like the man he used to be. His hair is shot with grey and isn’t anywhere near as sleek as it once was, and there’s constant shadows beneath his eyes and a shake to his fingers, but he feels human again, almost. Remus is still reluctant to completely let Sirius back in. The long years have taken their toll, and Remus doesn’t know if he can love anymore. He’s too weary and hurt, but finally knowing the truth after all these years lifts a weight from Remus’s soul and what settles between them is an uneasy peace, both wary of confusing the men they are for the men they were. They’re as nervous around eachother as they were back in their third year, small sparks of affection fluttering to life once more, but both too terrified to do anything that might shatter the fragile trust between them.And then the world is in war again, and they’re both terrified of what this means. The war has already taken so much from them both, and they dont know what else they could possibly lose. Remus wants to say something to Sirius, to tell him he loves him for the first time in over fifteen years, that he forgives him, but Sirius is locked inside of all the memories of torment that grimmauld place brings to life in his mind, and Sirius is beginning to unravel again and Remus isn’t sure whether such a confession would push him further away. And then it’s too late anyway. Sirius is dead, and even when Remus thought he had nothing left to lose somehow the world found more to take. He didn’t even get to tell him that he loved him.The next full moon, the wolf lets out a long, long howl, full of grief for the last good thing left in the world lost.

#my post #this got real long and real depressing huh #this started off as a stray though in the shower while i was washing my hair and turned into... this #and for that i apologise.#wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #moony #padfoot #siriusxremus #angsty as fuck #marauders #my writing #maybe one day I'll write a couple scenes from this properly

6 notes · View notes

thepathsofdestiny · 7 years

Text

Trail of Embers, Ch. 4 - Eyes in the Dark

~*~ Glory, Marta, and David have had a long week. As they head out onto the road and put Halcyon City behind them, the trio takes a moment a breathe, rest, and (re)discover each other- three wandering souls, out in the wild. Read it on AO3 here. ~*~ Marta dreams. She is sitting on a cliff, gazing out at the sea. Her legs dangle over the ledge and she kicks them, like a child. Her mother is with her, a smudged blur in her peripheral vision, robed in midnight blue- a memory from too long ago, coalescing from fog. She stands, and finds herself in a copse of trees- smoothly, seamlessly, as is the flow of dreams. There is a man sitting cross-legged on the grass before her. His head was a stag’s skull, crowned with antlers, lit from within by a gentle sapphire light. Vines spill out the back of his skull and lie draped across his shoulders, his arms, in a semblance of long hair. He smells like the land; of honeysuckle and tilled soil. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Marta lifts her head, sees the glint of red and gold, tastes the tang of smoke in the air. He is coming. The stag-headed man fixes Marta with his empty gaze, blue fire in an antlered skull. His voice comes out like gravel, like crumbling stone. Do not let him in. ~*~

Marta woke with a soft gasp, her cheek resting on smooth fabric. She instinctively nuzzled the cloth before she caught a flash of black and red and remembered where she was. She snapped awake, jerking back and banging her head on the low ceiling of David’s sedan. She mewled in pain, the beginnings of a blush coloring her cheeks. “I am… so… sorry,” Marta eked out, wincing. Glory stared at her, her dark eyes rimmed with red. Unnerving as Glory’s piercing, unblinking gaze was, there was a hint of mirth buried beneath the ice. Glory’s smiles rarely made it all the way to her lips, but they always started in her eyes. “It’s okay,” Glory said. “How did you sleep?” “Okay,” Marta shrugged. “Weird dreams. You?” “I didn’t sleep,” Glory said flatly. “And I don’t dream.” “Oh.” Marta looked past Glory and out her window. They were at a fueling station, framed by trees, fog, and a cloudy sky, with the dim yellow lights of a mini-mart only barely cutting through the gloom. “Come on,” Glory said, tipping her head towards the window. “I was just going to ask if you wanted anything.” ~*~ “Good lord, David, you’re still driving that hunk of junk? It’s so old it still runs on gas.” “Yeah, and you still sell it, so what does that say about you?” The shopkeeper grinned. He was an older man, in a denim vest over a white T-shirt, with a gray beard and a trucker’s cap. Steve Wilk, owner of Wilk’s Fuel Station and Auto Shop (and Mini-Mart), the last little island of civilization before trees and fog took over. “You going on some kinda trip?” Wilk asked, amused, as he scanned and bagged a veritable mountain of protein bars, energy drinks, string cheese and soy jerky. “It’s for a job,” David explained, a growing number of shopping bags hanging from his arms. “I’m going to be out of the city for awhile.” Glory appeared, silent and inscrutable. She dropped another pile of goods on the counter just as Wilk had finished bagging the first- aspirin, rolls of gauze, bottles of quick-sealing trauma spray. Marta followed behind, adding a number of boxes to the pile- tampons, teabags, chemical hand warmers. She glanced up at David. “...I get cold,” Marta said, sheepish. David reached into the pile and picked up a bottle of trauma spray. “‘For the instant sealing of open wounds’,” David read. “‘Like stitches in a bottle.’ ...Y’know, don’t all three of us have some form of healing magic?” “Say you’ve just received a traumatic, painful, bloody wound,” Glory said, tone flat as always. “What would be easier: concentrating on a healing spell, or shaking a spray can and pressing a button?” “Point,” David admitted. Wilk stared at the trio. “Just what kind of trouble do y’all think you’re gonna run into?” “Bears,” Glory said, deadpan. She took an armful of shopping bags and left, Marta following close behind. Wilk watched them go, shaking his head. “There’s an interesting girl,” Wilk muttered. “She’s my boss,” David cut in. “And she’s paying for all this, so-” “Easy, boy. Meant no offense.” David mumbled a non-response, handing over his credstick. Wilk scanned it and handed it back, along with the rest of the crew’s supplies. “Did you hear about the fire?” Wilk asked. David hesitated. “Which one?” “South side. Took out a church, a homeless shelter…” David’s expression darkened. “Yeah. That was a shame.” “There was another one, up at the docks. Some chemical fire. But this one, they’re saying, this one was the gangs. Bunch of thugs bombed the place. Can you believe that?” Shadows flashed across David’s eyelids. The Branded. The mob. The sorceress. The fight in a burning church. The daemon seizing his skin, fighting him for control. David sucked in a breath. “I really can’t,” he muttered. “Nasty. Nasty stuff. It’s shit like this that makes me want to get out of this city, myself.” Wilk smiled. “...Can’t, though.” “Why’s that?” “Come on, kid. I can’t skip town. I gotta wait for everyone else to do it, so I can fuel ‘em up on their way out. You think I’d miss out on all that business? I’d make a fortune.” David chuckled. Grinned. “It was nice seeing you, Mr. Wilk. I gotta go. Say hi to the dogs for me, would you?” “When was the last time you saw ‘em, huh? They’re gettin’ big. Real big. They’ve been dying to see you again.” Mr. Wilk reached out and gave David’s hand a firm shake. “You take care on your little road trip, son.” “Thanks, Mr. Wilk.” “Oh, and David?” Wilk called, with David halfway out the door. “The next time you want to buy me out of jerky and string cheese, you call ahead, first!” ~*~ Scarcely an hour out of Halcyon City, and already the urban sprawl gives way to one-lane roads, thick woods and log cabins. The sky remained gray and gloomy, and fog seemed to follow them wherever they went. It was as if the Nameless Queen’s ghost had risen from the burning ruin of her church, and had come to haunt their steps. Everywhere they looked, it was gray, gray, gray. It was gray in the misted woods closing in around them, and it was just as gray in the shifting shadows of astral space, where David now lurked. In astral space, the light of life blazes like stars. But as David scanned the lodge, he saw only the faintest traces of memory, echoes of its previous inhabitants, glimmering like moonlight through the trees. David blinked, and the faint glow of astral space receded back into the darkness of reality. He eased open the door, pistol drawn. He crouched in the shadows, reaching up to key in his comm. “All clear,” he whispered. The lights came on, and David practically jumped out of his skin- only to feel Glory’s hands on his shoulders in an act of questionable reassurance. “You’re okay,” Glory said tonelessly. Marta stood behind, smiling sheepishly beside the light switch. David exhaled, holstering his pistol. This lodge wasn’t quite like the one David was working at four days ago, when Glory charged in, killed all his coworkers, and only spared him because, he was forced to assume, he asked nicely. That lodge had two storeys, couches, and bedrooms on the second floor. This place, meanwhile, could charitably be called a lodge, when in reality it was more of a ‘shack’. That being said, it was still roomier than David’s car, so nobody was really complaining. “Nice place,” Marta said, glancing up at the lumen strips incongruously set into the walls. “Electric lighting kinda ruins the look, but- Oh! A fireplace!” “Let’s start a fire, then,” Glory said. “I don’t want anyone coming by and wondering why the lights are on in the middle of spring, with hunting season months away. Do we have any firewood?” David poked his head out the back door. “Hopper’s empty.” “I’ll go find some, then,” Glory said. “Do you have a hatchet?” Marta asked. Glory extended her hand razors with a click of metal. “I’ll manage.” She waggled her clawed fingers at Marta, a playful smile in her eyes, before stepping out. “Keeping the lights off is one thing,” David said, “but what about the car?” “I can take care of that,” Marta offered. “Come on. I’ll show you something cool.” Outside, David shut the trunk with a thud, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and stepping back. “Okay,” Marta said, cracking her fingers. “Watch this.” David watched, fascinated, as the tips of Marta’s hair began to shine like hot coals. Traceries of blue light flowed down her arms and gathered at her fingertips in a coruscating cloud of energy. Marta blew a kiss across her palm. The spell dusted across her hands and coiled around the car like wisps of smoke. David’s vision shifted and blurred, like heat haze, and just like that, his car had vanished. David reached out, groping for his car in the seemingly empty air. He could feel it beneath his touch, and could hear himself tapping on the roof. He blinked and slipped into astral space. There he could see it, tinged with the lingering traces of their auras- Marta’s in blue, David’s own in gold, with a shadow where Glory’s should have been- but to his eyes in realspace, his car was as good as gone. David whistled, impressed. “Whoa,” he breathed. Marta beamed. “It’s- It’s, y’know, not perfect. The illusion only works if it’s not moving, so no taking it with us on the go. We can run or hide, not both.” “Still. That’s a hell of a trick,” David said. He looked up at Marta, suddenly sheepish. “But, uh. You can make it visible again, right? All our food’s still in the trunk, and uh… I can’t see where to put the key.” ~*~ Glory returned from her firewood-hunt soon after with an apology and an armful of moist wood. (“It rained last night, remember?”) Fortunately, Marta then used her magic to draw the water out of the wood, making them properly dry and oh-so-flammable, and a spark from Glory snapping her mechanical fingers took care of the rest. Their little fire crackled in the hearth, borrowed, like so many other things- shelter, stillness, time. Who knew how long this safety would last? But despite everything, a moment of calm managed to settle over the trio- a trio who met under decidedly un-calm circumstances. Marta took a deep breath and sighed, savoring the moment’s peace. The three of them were assembled on the floor around a collapsible cot they were all using as a table in the sparsely furnished lodge. To her left was David, gnawing on a piece of soy jerky. He was fiddling with his PDA, putting together a playlist to sync to his comm. Marta could hear the first few muffled seconds of each track as he considered it; plaintive strings, melancholy piano, blaring synth and everything in between. To her right was Glory, also studying her PDA, her eyes fixed in her characteristic intense, unblinking stare. Glory wasn’t too close, but neither was she too far away. Marta was between them, facing the fireplace. She sat in the shifting firelight, their little borrowed hearth so unlike the blaze that had consumed her church. Scarcely a day ago, she’d been a nun, living a life of charity and piety in the service of the Nameless Queen. Now, look at her. She’d fought daemons and sorceresses, pulled people out of burning buildings… She’d stepped out of her life of quiet devotion for all of 24 hours, and now here she was, on the run, with friends old and new, both of whom had already saved her life at least once before. How much difference a day makes. Unlike David and Glory, Marta wasn’t looking at her PDA. She was shuffling her deck of Tarot cards, handmade and hand-painted. They had been a gift from Sister Shelley, long ago, when she’d first joined the abbey. ‘They’ll tell your fortune’, Shelley’d told her, ‘and if you don’t care for what they tell you, you can use just them like regular playing cards.’ Honestly, Marta wasn’t really looking at her cards, either. She was just shuffling them so she had something to do with her hands. It was Glory who really held her attention. Glory, who sacrificed herself, body and soul, to break free of Harrow and The Horned King. Glory, who literally carries the weight of that sacrifice everywhere she goes. Glory, who, even after escaping The Horned King’s grasp, dove right back into Hell to pull Marta and the other kids out. Glory, who, years ago, caught first Marta’s eyes, then her heart. Glory, who, even now, clung to Marta’s thoughts and wouldn’t let go. “Marta?” “Huh? What?” Marta blinked. “You’re staring,” Glory said, peering over the top of her PDA. “Do I have something on my face?” Glory’s eyes glinted in the firelight. Marta sucked in a breath. “Um. Yes, actually. D’you mind if I…?” Glory nodded her assent, leaning closer. Marta reached out with a tissue and dabbed at a few rust-red flecks on Glory’s cheek. In the firelight, one could almost believe they were freckles. Marta pulled away, trying not to dwell on how warm Glory had been beneath her hand. “Blood,” she said, simply. “Don’t worry,” Glory said. “It usually isn’t mine.” “Usually,” Marta echoed, watching the shadows flicker across Glory’s face. “Thanks,” Glory said lightly, returning to her work, while Marta gathered the willpower to finally wrench her gaze away. Marta fixed her eyes forward, embarrassed and annoyed at her own feelings. It had been years since she and Glory had been together. Even then, it was as part of Harrow’s Apostles, his inner circle of wives and, frankly, accomplices. They were just teenagers, then. Just kids. Marta could barely remember it all, through the intoxicating haze of The Horned King’s influence. Then Glory snapped. The Horned King pushed her too far- deceived her into killing her own mother. That moment of grief yanked her out of the fog, and she disappeared. She got the surgery that gutted her magical potential and cut her off from The Horned King, and vanished into the shadows, beyond Harrow’s reach. Then she came back, years later. She rescued Marta, rescued Harrow’s acolytes, and purified the Heart of Feuerstelle, the fragment of The Horned King that Harrow was using to force their obedience when words alone were no longer enough. Their reunion was short-lived. Marta left to rediscover herself, now that she was cut free from Harrow’s poisonous influence. And she promised she’d get back in touch once she’d figured things out again. Well, here she was, and Marta did not, in fact, have everything figured out. She didn’t have all the answers. But she sure kept the feelings- even after all this time, it was like riding a bike. You never really forget. Marta heaved a weary sigh, fanning her cards out on the cot. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and drew a card, holding it up to the firelight. A woman, robed in blue, seated between two pillars- the darkness and the light- with a banner or veil stretched behind her, separating the conscious from the unconscious. The High Priestess. Patience. Insight. Intuition. The unknown. Marta made a face. “You think that’s funny?” Marta muttered, and shuffled it back into the deck. ~*~ Marta dreams. She half-expects to see someone berating her for still carrying a torch for Glory. Maybe she’d be on a stage, under a spotlight, in front of a leering, laughing crowd. Maybe there’d be someone looming above her, mocking her. Maybe it’d be her parents. Or Harrow. Maybe even The Horned King himself. Marta doesn’t dream of any of these things. Instead, she is back in the Wood. The Heart of Feuerstelle sits before her, his antlered skull of a head lit from within by a tranquil blue light. He sits, serene, even as fires burn in the distance. Smoke drifts into Marta’s face and stings her eyes. One by one, torches appear in the clearing- rising up out of the ground in an eerie imitation of trees taking root. Six. The Heart’s voice rumbles through Marta’s head like a tremor in the earth. Six jewels in the crown of the Horned King. Six torches ring the clearing, but only four are ablaze. Two of them stand unlit, weeping black smoke into the air. The Heart leans forward. He sighs. Smiles, if a skull could be said to smile. A cool breeze passes over Marta, ruffling her hair and whistling through the trees, smelling of honeysuckle and tilled earth. The Heart speaks, his voice like thunder. You’re almost halfway there. ~*~ Daylight came- technically, if not literally. The weather stayed gloomy as ever, with clouds overhead and fog blanketing the road. The loamy earth and sweet honeysuckle of Marta’s dream gave way to wooden floorboards, charcoal, and a sizzling skillet. “I’m sorry about this, boss,” she heard David saying. “I’m, uh, not really a cook.” “That’s fine. These aren’t really ingredients.” “That’s the last time I go grocery shopping at a gas station,” David muttered. “But I meant more along the lines of, ‘this is my first time cooking in a fireplace’.” Marta blinked herself awake, her vision settling into place. She pushed off of her bedroll, sitting up. David was kneeling by the fireplace, Glory sitting nearby. He had propped a grate over the coals, and was tending to a small pan, the smoke making his eyes water. “I feel like I’m doing this wrong,” David grumbled. “I’m getting smoke all up in my face.” “Is there anything I can do to help?” Glory offered. “Yeah, actually. Would you mind chopping up some potatoes?” “Alright. Do you have a knife?” “Just use your claw-thingies.” “You want me to use my hand razors? Do you have any idea where those have been?” Glory turned, and caught Marta’s gaze. She smiled at her- figuratively, as Glory’s smiles so rarely made it to her mouth- and in the dim morning light her eyes glinted like lit coals. “Good morning,” Glory murmured, the warmth in her voice pricking Marta’s heart like a fishhook. “G- Good morning,” Marta returned. The flush across her cheeks was twofold; first, from the blissful thought of simply waking up to Glory, and second, from the embarrassment of such a little thing getting her so flustered. Glory held Marta’s gaze for a long moment. Their eyes glinted in the firelight, brown and amber edged with red, the mark of the Horned King’s influence lingering on them both. Marta swallowed. Even before the surgery, Glory had a habit of staring right through her... “Mornin’,” David chimed in, oblivious, and Marta exhaled, quietly grateful. “Good morning, David,” Marta smiled. She lifted her pendant, the icon of Venus, and slipped it around her neck. “What are we having?” “Breakfast! ...Sort of!” David announced, with something almost, but not quite, resembling pride. “We’ve got eggs, sort of, and uh, sausage, sort of. And potatoes. Those are real. I’m like… ninety percent sure.” “I don’t know if I like those odds,” Marta teased. David made a face. He held out the skillet and Glory dropped in a handful of chopped potatoes, hissing as they hit the pan. “Come on,” David protested. “Doesn’t that just smell delicious?” “Well. I mean...” “It certainly smells.” “Thank you, Glory. That’s… that’s real helpful.” ~*~ For all their needling, in the end, David really could make a halfway decent batch of skillet potatoes. Although, next time, he’d prop up the grate a little higher for better temperature control… and maybe put the potatoes in first, so they have time to get tender before the eggs start to burn. It was still miles better than soy jerky and string cheese, although, admittedly, that wasn’t a very high bar. Marta sat back and sighed, satisfyingly full. Glory and David were both poking at their PDAs; Glory, studying her screen and scribbling notes into a pocket notebook; David, his eyes darting quizzically between his PDA, the still-warm skillet on his lap, a spatula, and a little box of coarse salt. For one reason or another, Marta found herself smiling. It had been a hectic few days. To simply enjoy a meal with friends, old and new, felt comfortingly domestic and mundane. That is, until David snapped to attention. He jumped up and pressed his ear against the wall, the skillet falling off his lap and hitting the floor with a thud. “What-” Glory began. “Get down,” David hissed. Marta dropped flat, her pendant clanging against the floorboards. Glory followed suit. David crouched by the wall, his hand hovering over his thigh holster. Marta felt the rumbling along the ground. She exhaled, sliding into astral space. She saw Glory beside her, a shadow threaded with green, and David by the door, his aura glimmering gold, urgent, attentive. She saw them- a cluster of glowing red, ambling past like a meteor in slow motion. She felt the weight of their tires on the pavement, the rumble of engines. Marta exhaled, vision snapping back to reality. “Two vehicles,” David reported, peering out the window. “Red pickup, then a big white van. Probably driving slow ‘cuz of the fog. Gone now.” David exhaled, returning to his spot at the folding camp bed they were all using as a table. “Sorry, guys,” David said. “False alarm. Probably.” “Better safe,” Glory shrugged, returning to her notes. David glanced at Marta and Glory, looking up from his PDA’s extranet article on how to clean a cast iron skillet when you don’t have access to running water. “You know,” he began, shaking some coarse salt onto the pan and starting to scrape, “I’d meant to ask this earlier, before the, y’know, stuck-in-a-burning-building thing. But how did you two meet?” Marta and Glory shared a look. “It’s a long story,” Marta offered. “We’ve got time,” David said. “We met through Harrow,” Glory said. Her eyes were flinty and hard. “That’s all you need to know.” David withered under Glory’s stare. Eventually, Glory exhaled, tucking her PDA into a coat pocket and rising to her feet. “I’m taking a walk,” she announced icily, slipping out the back door. An uncomfortable quiet settled between them. Marta cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said. “No, I’m sorry,” David muttered. He set the pan aside, half-finished. “It’s a touchy subject. I probably shouldn’t pry.” “That ‘touchy subject’ is the foundation of this whole trip,” Marta said. “I’m just a bodyguard,” David shrugged. “...Who, admittedly, just let his primary walk off into the woods without him. But still. Glory doesn’t have to answer my questions.” “No,” Marta pressed. “If you’re going to help Glory in this hunt- if you’re going to follow her into Hell- then you deserve to know exactly who you’re after and what you’re getting into.” David considered that. Swallowed. Nodded. “Alright,” he said. “Fair enough. So… how did you two meet?” Marta let out a long, tired sigh. “It feels like a lifetime ago…” ~*~ Marta told David everything. Haltingly at first, then all at once, like a handful of misplaced pebbles triggering a landslide. How she first joined the cult as a teenager, sucked in by Harrow’s looks, his charm, his bright lure of freedom, the promise of independence from an unjust, uncaring society. How he put her to work, combing the streets for kids who’d be open to what Harrow had to say- and how, over time, they’d hang on to his every word. She told him about how they touched up an abandoned hunting lodge in the Schonbuch Forest and transformed it into Der Feuerstelle, The Fireplace, Harrow’s compound and castle. She told him about what she became: a face of the cult, recruiter, kidnapper, a den mother to the acolytes, a wife to Harrow himself. Harrow made her dye her hair fire-red, as a symbol of her status. She was favored among the cult; Harrow’s queen and right hand. All this time, Harrow hadn’t resorted to using dark magic to control his followers. He lured them and kept them, with words alone. Harrow’s poisonous charisma was enough to utterly consume Marta’s thoughts. She was obsessed. Poisoned by his words. Addicted to his body. And then, on a routine scouting sweep for potential recruits, Marta found Glory. Glory was homeless. Penniless. Young. Vulnerable. Beautiful. That’s what Marta thought. She couldn’t let someone so beautiful simply starve on the street. So Marta reached out her hand… and Der Feuerstelle swallowed Glory up. Over time, the influence of The Horned King began to grow. Little changes piled up over time, little things that went unnoticed in the haze of Harrow’s worship. His iconography spread throughout the house, in etchings, wood carvings, decorations on the shelves, the walls, the mantelpiece in the lounge. Antlers everywhere. Antlers and flames. Der Feuerstelle might have been Harrow’s house, but it was The Horned King who truly reigned. The daemon’s presence was intoxicating. Harrow’s followers hung on his every word, and leapt at the chance to please him, no matter what his demands. Petty theft. Robbery. Arson. Kidnapping. Assault. It didn’t matter. Harrow spoke, and his disciples obeyed. He was the king of Der Feuerstelle. A narcissistic criminal whose pockets swelled with blood money while lovestruck addicts clawed at his feet. And Marta was the one who gave Glory the invitation. Marta was Glory’s gateway drug. Glory was special. She climbed the ranks much as Marta did, and soon found herself counted among Harrow’s inner circle. Glory commanded respect from the acolytes, and soon became charged with carrying out Harrow’s will on expeditions outside the lodge. If Marta was the matriarch, then Glory was the muscle. Together, they formed the pillars of the household. But then something went wrong. Glory went out on an expedition and never came back. And with Glory missing, Harrow’s influence began to crack. No one knew why Glory had suddenly disappeared; or if they did, no one was saying anything. Some of Harrow’s followers proposed that they search for Glory, Marta foremost among them. But there was no search. Harrow set aside a room of the lodge, placed a shining stone on an altar and declared the room off-limits. And, just like that, the whispers of dissent grew silent. “I don’t remember much after that,” Marta said, her expression clouded. “There’s just a heat, and this stinging feeling, like smoke getting into your eyes. Anyway. A year ago, Glory returned to Feuerstelle with a shadowrunner named Poplar. They purified the spirit that Harrow had press-ganged. That snapped me out of my… trance, I guess. They broke us out; me and the kids that were still around. Glory went back to Berlin. I went to join the Sisters. And, well. You know the rest.” David sat, pensive, his fingers steepled. Marta watched him, wary. She was waiting for the judgment; waiting for the surprise, the outrage, anything. She was waiting, anxiously, for David to react to the years of messy, damning history she’d all-but-vomited onto his lap. She was waiting for him to berate her; to call her stupid, gullible, desperate, foolish. He didn’t say any of that. He didn’t say anything; only met Marta’s eyes in the dark, and kept his maddening quiet. David opened his mouth, as if to say something. Marta leaned forward, expectant. David slumped in his seat. He closed his mouth and heaved a sigh. “Man…” David’s caught Marta’s gaze. “That’s some fucked up shit.” Marta barked a laugh, despite everything. “...Yeah. I’m- I’m sorry to just dump that on you all at once. I just thought you needed to know.” David smiled. “It’s fine. For your part, I think you needed to tell it.” Marta grinned in return. David was right. In her time at the abbey, she’d only divulged her checkered past as a cult matriarch in bits and pieces, hiding behind imperfect memory and ambiguity. There was something truly refreshing about being able to lay the truth bare. She’d known David for scarcely a day, but Marta thought he could be a friend. He made for a decent enough confessor, at any rate. Marta shivered. Marta wasn’t sure what she’d expected David to say, but he’d taken her impromptu honesty hour completely in stride. Her anxiety left her in sighs, in smiles, only lingering in the tips of her fingers. “What about you?” Marta asked, shuffling her Tarot deck if only to occupy her restless hands. “What’s your story?” “Well, shit,” David shrugged. “I don’t have anything like all that. Honestly, I’m kinda boring. Even my aura’s boring. You can read me, if you want.” “Can I, really?” “Yeah. No skin off my nose.” Marta exhaled, sliding into astral space. David’s aura unfurled before her, a pale, smoky gray, threaded with luminescent gold. His magical potential coiled around him like smoke, only coalescing into two distinct spells: the ability to heal minor wounds, and the ability to sharpen one’s aim. Even these two spells didn’t crystallize in his aura like they would a professional, textbook mage. Self-taught, then. Intuitive. Adaptive. He could be an Air magus in the making, if he could get the proper training. “I’m nothing special,” David was saying, as Marta returned to realspace. “I’ve got a few drops of magic in me, but that’s never paid my bills. I never had any real aptitude for book learning, but I’m in decent shape, and I’ve got decent aim, so I went for a career in CorpSec. I was there almost ten years. I was even on track for a position at Knight Errant. But…” “But?” David let out a breath. “...I quit.” Marta blinked. “Why?” “I don’t know,” David shrugged. “It just sort of… happened. That’s when I went freelance, and moved to Halcyon City. I packed up my gear, my coat, my car, and tried to make it on my own.” David smiled, rueful. “It didn’t work out as well as I hoped. I was broke for a while. But there weren’t so many contracts, and there wasn’t as much fine print and corporate PR to sift through. So that was a plus. And, well… I got by. More or less.” Marta nodded. “So how did you meet Glory?” “Glory saved my life,” David said softly. He broke into a grin. “Well, more like she spared my life. I was on a job, guarding some little cabin in the woods. Easy money, standing on a porch and taking in the air. Turns out I should’ve looked into my client more carefully. They were there laying the groundwork for a Firepact cell.” Marta cringed. “...Yikes.” “Yeah, ‘yikes’,” David snorted. “So imagine my surprise when Glory charges out of the woods to kick our goddamn teeth in. Blows out a guy’s chest with a high caliber revolver round. Uses her claws to tear two other guys to shreds. Only spared me, I can imagine, because I asked nicely- in other words, begging and damn near pissing myself. I still wound up getting kicked into a tree because I said something stupid. Blacked out for a bit. When I came to, she was gone.” David shook his head. “Just left bodies behind.” “I’m sorry,” Marta said. “Don’t be too sorry,” David said. “Sergeant Castor was alright, but the other two guys were dicks. Besides, we were rent-a-cops. Mercenaries. Mercs who make it to retirement are one in a million.” Marta nodded. She shuffled her Tarot deck, somber. “Anyway,” David said, breezing past. “I ran into Glory again on another job. That night, if you can believe it. Long story short: she saved my life for real, that time. And then she offered me a job. As her bodyguard, which, y’know, only gets more laughable the more I see her fight.” “Still,” Marta smiled in gratitude. “I’m glad you were with her, even for a little bit. With how much danger she’s been in, with who knows many people coming after her… I hate the thought of Glory facing that alone.” “But she’s not alone, is she?” David asked. “She has you.” Marta’s Tarot deck slipped from her fingers. Her cards scattered across the floor, a flush coloring her cheeks. “That’s…” Marta bristled, crossing her arms across her chest. “...I don’t know what you mean by that.” “Oh boy,” David sighed. He started gathering up the fallen cards. “Look. I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business. But, if you’d like my unsolicited opinion-” “Which I don’t.” “-I think you should tell her.” Marta’s expression softened. She sighed, picking cards up off the floor. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marta murmured. “I think you two are adults,” David said, “and it’s better to have stuff like this out in the open instead of letting it keep you in knots.” David handed her his pile of cards. Marta took them, muttering muted thanks. David sighed. He reached out, snagging one last card that had slipped under the cot they were using as a table. “Why did you go with Glory?” Marta asked. “Honestly? A job is a job,” David admitted. “Nothing personal. But it’s personal for you, and for Glory, too. I don’t know this Harrow guy, but he sounds like a real scumbag. He sounds like he deserves every bit of karma coming his way. So if I can help you guys make that happen, I will. In the meantime, I’ll be happy just getting by.” “That’s all?” Marta wondered. “If you just wanted to make a living, you could have stayed in CorpSec. I’m sure that’d be a more comfortable life. If you stay here, you’ll be a fugitive. Is that what you want?” David shrugged. “You could’ve stayed with the Sisters, helped Sister Shelley rebuild the church. The Firepact’s gunning for Glory. Once she left the city, you’d have been safe- now you’re a fugitive, too. Why did you stay?” “Glory’s my-” Marta bit her lip. “...friend. I couldn’t let her do this alone. But you don’t know her, David. The Firepact is dangerous. What if you get hurt? What if you get killed? You don’t owe her anything.” “Yes, I do,” David said. “She saved my life, remember?” “I just…” Marta sighed. “I just don’t want you to die for her.” “Wouldn’t you?” Marta paused. She looked at the floor, shuffling her Tarot deck. “I’m a mercenary, Marta,” David said softly. “I know the numbers. Chances are I won’t retire. I could die working in CorpSec, or for Knight Errant, or as a freelancer. I could die, no matter who my boss is. But what Glory’s trying to do… I don’t know. I want to do this. This feels like something big. Something important. I haven’t known her as long as you have, but I know she’s someone worth following. Even into Hell.” Marta nodded. David handed her the card that had fallen under the table. She held it up to the light- an eight-spoked wheel, so like a compass, with no mortal hand to guide it. The Wheel of Fortune. Circumstance. Change. The hands of fate, spinning out of mortal control. “I don’t think Glory needs a bodyguard,” David said. “But I think she needs you.” Marta took a deep breath. She swallowed. Nodded. “Thank you,” she breathed. “I’ll-” Marta paused as a strong breeze buffeted the cabin, carrying the scent of coming rain. The back door swayed open. A figure slipped inside before the door closed again, a shadow in the dim light. Glory. “You’re back,” Marta blinked. “Where did you go?” Glory decided not to disclose that she had briefly stepped outside to escape bad memories, and then been promptly preoccupied by a stray cat that was wandering through the undergrowth. “I got distracted,” Glory said flatly. “Now’s not the time. Get down. Mr. Wen, the road.” Marta tucked away her Tarot deck and fell flat onto her stomach. David crept up to the window and peeked outside. They could hear it; the sound of engines, of tires creaking over pavement. The sound grew louder, got closer, before it faded into the distance. “Damn it,” David muttered. “Two vehicles. Red pickup. White van. Damn well the same ones from before.” “Pack your things,” Glory ordered. “We’ve stayed here too long.” ~*~ The rain came, haltingly at first, then all at once. It came down in fat, wet drops, turning the ground into mire in a matter of minutes. Marta, for her part, was untouched by rain. Since abandoning the Horned King as the source of her magic, her affinity for water meant she didn’t have to worry about getting wet. A bubble of Marta’s magic kept the driving rain at bay. David and Glory were grateful; but they still weren’t too comfortable, perched as they were in the boughs of a tree. “Four guys on foot,” David reported, squinting through his rifle scope. “Hunting dogs. Five, maybe six. There’s something up with their eyes. A glow, like fire. So, I’m guessing hellhounds.” “Fun,” Glory muttered. “The rain will cover our sound and our scent,” Marta chimed in. “It’s not too late for us to just give them the slip. We can circle behind them, get back to the car, and get out of here before they make it back to their vans.” “No,” Glory shook her head. “We slip away now, they’ll just be back on us later. We stop this tonight.” Glory turned, her eyes glinting in the dim light. “Marta, can you shroud this location?” “Yes,” Marta nodded, “but the dogs are magically active. They’ll sense us hiding, even if they can’t see us.” “The shroud will still keep the hunters from getting a shot off,” Glory said. She dropped to the ground with a splash, flicking out her hand razors. “Stay here,” Glory said, glancing up at Marta. “Stay safe. This shouldn’t take long.” “But-” “Don’t worry about me,” Glory smiled in her eyes, not quite reaching her mouth. “Just stay close to David until we get this over with.” Marta opened her mouth, then closed it again. She sighed. “...Alright.” “Mr. Wen? The dogs, if you please.” “You got it, boss.” Marta took a deep breath and sighed. Pale blue power gathered at her fingertips and coalesced in a glyph around the base of their tree, hiding them from view. David shouldered his rifle and swept his aim, while Glory turned, coat-tails flaring in the wind, and strode out into the storm… ~*~ Two hunters picked their way through the mud and the muck, rifles tucked under their arms, cheap plastic ponchos flapping in the wind. Their pack of hunting dogs had vanished ahead of them into the woods. With the fog, and the pounding rain, if not for their incessant barking, they would’ve lost track of them already. “Shitty day for a hunt,” one of them muttered, boots sloshing through the sodden undergrowth. “Pay’s gonna be worth it,” his partner replied. “The boys are gonna have steak tomorrow.” “Yeah, and if the fuckin’ dogs are having steak, imagine what we’ll have,” the first hunter grinned. “We’ll have some fancy shit wrapped in gold foil. Whassat called? Pheasant.” “Man, there ain’t no pheasant ‘round here. They’re in, like, China.” “We’ll import it, then. We’ll have the money-” An explosion rocked the woods, and the two hunters snapped to attention, their rifles shouldered, peering through their scopes and into the dark. The edges of a red-hot fireball curled into the air, rising above the trees. Seconds later, it happened again: a sharp bang, like a grenade going off, and a curl of flame and smoke. “D’you see ‘em?” the hunter hissed, urgent. “Man, I don’t see a damn thing.” And he really couldn’t. In the dark, and the fog, and the rain, there was nothing in those woods but the glow of distant fires and the shadow in the trees. Movement. Splashing footsteps, flashing steel- The hunter went rigid, reaching for his throat, fingertips hooked and numb. His blood fountained into the air in a ghastly mist, damped down by the rain. His partner swiveled and took his shot. Strong hands jerked his rifle up, and he fired over the phantom’s shoulder. The butt of his rifle slammed back into his sternum, the impact jarring it from his grip. It swung up and cracked him in the chin. He fell to one knee, and had his neck broken by a home-run swing. Glory dropped the rifle in the mud and kept on running. ~*~ The hellhound was huge, by dog standards. It was an English mastiff before its Awakening, already one of the biggest dog breeds out there. But when its spark ignited, its dormant magic transformed it into a beast- a three-foot tall battering ram, corded with muscle, glowing with magma beneath its skin. In realspace, it was a shadow through the trees, only given away by its eyes, smoldering like hot coals. In astral space, its aura, fire-red, blazed like a torch. Three rifle rounds punched into its body and cut its thread, its aura going dark. In realspace, its body did the opposite- it exploded in a huge, bright ball of fire and cooked meat, its volatile metabolism erupting in some catastrophic, arcane reaction. David exhaled, adjusting his scope. He slid back into astral space, hunting for targets, seeking the bright lights in the charcoal dark. “Is it always like this?” Marta asked from her perch, while David fired another aimed burst that set a hellhound off like a bomb. “You watching from a distance, while Glory’s out there, in the thick of things?” “In theory,” David said. He dropped another distant hellhound, its dying explosion throwing up mud and steam. “I mean, I’ve only been working for her for, like, four days. But that’s the plan. More or less.” “I see.” David glanced back at her, his vision sliding back into realspace. Marta was a shadow beside him, stricken and pale in the dim, misted light. “...Hey. She’s gonna be fine,” David said gently. He clicked out his empty rifle magazine, reaching into his coat for a fresh one. “You’ve seen Glory fight, haven’t you? She’s a monster. She can take care of herself.” “I know,” Marta murmured. “I just… wish she didn’t have to.” Marta suddenly grabbed David’s arm. He looked up, sliding a new magazine into his rifle. “What is it?” David wondered. Marta didn’t know. But she could feel it. A tremor at the edge of her aura. A distortion. A whistling- Marta kicked off the branch she was standing on and shoved David off his perch. Three magical bolts slammed into her and exploded in a plume of flame. ~*~ Glory ducked behind a tree an instant before a high-powered round tore a chunk out of the wood. She drew her revolver and coiled out of cover, firing into the dark. Two shots blew out chips of tree bark. The third yanked the hunter off his feet like a bad actor being pulled off stage. A bolt of magic exploded against the tree beside her, gutting its trunk in a burst of flame. The tree toppled over in a cloud of sparks and splinters, nearly severed at the waist. Glory ducked out of the path of the falling tree, only to spot a hellhound bearing down on her, charging through the mud. Fire gathered in its mouth, trailing embers in its wake. Glory spun around the bolt of magic the hellhound vomited in her direction. It seared past the small of her back and exploded against a tree behind her. The hound leapt at her, and Glory followed through with a spinning kick that pancaked the beast against a tree trunk. Glory shot it in the chest. It exploded against the tree, its arcane metabolism igniting like a firework. Glory jerked to the side, spun by torque. A hellhound’s jaws clamped around her wrist. Its weight and momentum wrenched her arm around, the heavy impact forcing her to the ground. Glory cried out in pain as she hit the muddy ground. She rolled to her feet, shaking her arm, but the beast had sunk its teeth into her augmetic musculature and would not let go. Glory grimaced and plunged her claws into its heart. The beast glowed white, and then exploded in her face. Glory dragged herself up out of the mud, dizzy with pain and fatigue. She clutched her stricken arm to her chest, the augmetics straining. An organic arm, she knew, would have been broken and dislocated, or worse. In the distance, Glory heard the frenzied barking of more hellhounds. Just how many of these damn things were there? “David, I need you to take care of these dogs,” Glory said into her comm. Glory coughed, gagging on soot. She tapped her commlink. “David?” ~*~ David hit the ground with a splash, his ears ringing. He should’ve known. The first rule of astral space is if you can see them, they can see you. And Marta was a Mage, more powerful than he was by a country mile. No wonder they’d be drawn to- “Marta,” David breathed, falling to his knees beside her. Marta was sprawled on the muddy ground, haloed by the burning skeleton of the tree beside them. For someone caught in an explosion, she was remarkably, surprisingly intact. Marta coughed, and blinked, her vision settling. She sat up in David’s grasp, the shimmering traces of a pale blue barrier lingering in the air around them. Her fingertips brushed against the icon of Venus hanging from her neck. “Thank you, Hecate,” Marta smiled. David blinked. “Who?” Marta abruptly pulled David behind her, her fingertips shining blue. A dozen bolts of fire sailed through the air towards them. At Marta’s command, a wall of water rose up to meet them. They struck the barrier and exploded into wisps of steam. Through the swirling water of Marta’s barrier, they could see the pack approaching: another half dozen hellhounds, their handlers undoubtedly close behind. The pickup truck and the white van from before. The ones that had passed their cabin twice. It hadn’t been the same ones, after all; there were two teams. Two hunting parties. And just because they managed to get the drop on the first one didn’t mean they were ready for the second. David swore under his breath. He shouldered his waterlogged rifle, misfired, and swore again. “Marta,” David began, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. The pack was closing in. “Can you gather all the water on the ground into one big puddle, deep enough that the hellhounds can’t just run through it? And can you do that while making sure the two of us stay totally dry?” Marta swallowed. Nodded. “I think so. Why?” David drew his pistol and racked the slide, a soft blue glow coming from the base of the grip. “No reason.” Glyphs traced themselves in the air around Marta’s hands. Magic thrummed in the air, the rain and water around them standing to attention, heeding her silent voice. Six hellhounds broke through the treeline. They charged forward in a frenzy, jaws trailing spittle and embers, scenting Marta’s magic in the air like blood in water. Marta’s wave surged around their feet. Their charge slowed to a trot, then a crawl, and finally, a paddle, as the water rose around them and they couldn’t simply run on through. The wave held them, halted in their tracks. In a circle around David and Marta’s feet, the soil became parched and pale. David fired. The gel-tipped phasic rounds burst as they struck the surface of Marta’s wave. Azure lightning cascaded through the pool, surging into the pack of hunting dogs. They shivered, convulsed, and went still, weeping smoke and steam from their singed bodies. Marta exhaled, and released her hold on the wave. The water receded back into the muddy earth, and for a moment, the only sound was the patter of rain. David turned to her and grinned. The rifle round punched through his chest in a spray of red. David staggered took two halting steps forward. Marta caught him in her arms, fear rooting her in place. She stared down at the ragged hole in the back of his coat, looked up and saw the shadow in the trees. The spent shell fell by the hunter’s foot. He slid the bolt back in place, took aim- His shot exploded off of Glory’s shoulder in a burst of chipped ceramite and sparking metal. She let the force of the shot spin her around. She drew her revolver, took aim, and fired. ~*~ Their healing power merged together, the scent of honeysuckle and tilled earth mingling with that of seafoam and rain. David gasped awake, coughing. He sat up too fast, clutching his head when the dizziness hit him. He groaned, prodding at the frayed hole in his shirt and the unbroken skin beneath. “Oh, man,” David muttered. “If I had a nickel…” “You’d have two nickels,” Glory said. “Three if you count the stun round,” David smiled, despite everything. Glory helped David to his feet with her good arm, clutching the other to her chest. Already, the soft green glow of the Heart’s healing power was coiling like climbing ivy around the damaged limb. He glanced behind her, to where Marta was lingering close at hand. “Everyone alright?” David asked. “Compared to you?” Marta asked. “Fair.” David shrugged. “Come on,” Glory said. “There’s something you should see.” David made his way over to the last of the fallen hunters, leaning on Marta for support. The hunter was lying in a puddle, bleeding out from a shot to his stomach courtesy of Glory. Blood darkened the mud around him. The man lifted his head and glowered at the trio. David’s lips curled in disgust. “You shot my dogs, boy,” Mr. Wilk spat. “Well, you shot me,” David grumbled. “So I guess we’re even.” David searched for the tell-tale glint of fire in Mr. Wilk’s eyes, but found nothing. He exhaled. “He wasn’t enthralled,” Glory said flatly. “None of them were. If they were, the Rose Compass would have sensed something, before.” David gritted his teeth. “Every man has his price,” David said, his voice cold. “Don’t you judge me, boy,” Mr. Wilk said, pulling himself up to his elbows. “I’m just a man trying to make a living. To provide for his family. You’re a mercenary too, boy, or did you forget? A job is a job. You would’ve done the same.” “Would I?” David asked. He reached into the mud and pulled out Mr. Wilk’s hunting rifle. He examined the scope, drew back the bolt, then slid it back into place. For a moment, Marta thought David might shoot him. Instead, David simply slipped the rifle into a canvas sleeve on his back and walked away. “...Little vulture,” Mr. Wilk spat, indignant. “Business expense,” Glory shrugged. She turned and left him there in the mud, Marta following at her heels. ~*~ The rain cleared, but the mood stayed sour. They drove just long enough to put their encounter with the hunting party behind them, before they stopped and found somewhere to make camp. David, normally the most talkative of the three, was quiet the whole way. When they stopped to make camp, he disappeared into the tent and fell asleep almost immediately. Driving must have worn him out, Marta thought. That, or being shot in the back just a few hours before. Marta sat on an uncomfortably moist log, shuffling her Tarot deck to steady her fingers. Briefly, she considered using her magic to dry it out. But after summoning that wave against the charge of hellhounds, re-casting the concealment spell on David’s car, and, most importantly, subconsciously shielding herself from that explosion… Marta sighed. She was spent; magically, physically, mentally. But when Glory took a seat beside her, her heart still skipped a beat. “I can keep watch,” Glory said, flexing her still-recovering arm. “You should get some rest. That tent is really only big enough for two, anyway.” “I’m okay,” Marta said. “Suit yourself.” Marta exhaled, gazing up at the sky. The clouds were clearing, and the moon was shining through. “So this is what you do?” Marta asked quietly. “This is what you’ve been doing, for all this time?” “Yeah. More or less.” Marta shuffled her Tarot deck, her fingers still trembling. “All this… danger. All this fear, and bloodshed. And for what? Nothing. Nothing but your own survival.” “Sometimes surviving is the best you can do,” Glory said, her eyes distant. “I can’t believe this,” Marta said. “All this time, while I’ve been at the abbey growing tomatoes and ladling out soup for the homeless, you’ve been fighting. You’ve been getting back at the Firepact, punishing them for what they did to you. For what…” Marta swallowed hard. “...for what I did to you.” Glory shook her head. “It wasn’t you. It was the daemon.” “Not in the beginning,” Marta pressed. “I fell for Harrow. No magic involved. I ate up his lies. And then I turned around and did the same thing to you.” Glory exhaled through her nose, staring blankly ahead. Her silence was agonizing. “Glory,” Marta asked, her throat tight. “Do you… hate me?” Glory took a deep breath. “A little,” Glory admitted. The words turned Marta’s insides to ice. “If you had never found me on the street, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I wouldn’t be hunting Harrow down, fighting off Firepact assassins at every step. I wouldn’t even have these,” Glory said, holding up her cyber-arms. “...So… yes. Part of me hates you. A small part. I can’t not, after everything that’s happened.” Marta’s voice was tight. “...I understand.” “But,” Glory continued, “I’m glad you’re safe. I’m glad you’re here with me, Marta. And I’m glad you got out.” “You got me out,” Marta whispered. “You broke me free of Harrow’s control. You saved those kids. You saved me. I…” Marta hesitated. “...I love you for that.” Glory stiffened. She fixed her gaze straight ahead, letting out a sigh. “...I think…” Glory said, choosing each word carefully. “...you may be confusing adrenaline for some other emotion.” She reached out, placing a hand over Marta’s. Beneath her cool touch, Marta’s shaking hands stilled. She exhaled, idly drawing the card from the top of the stack. A woman, bearing a sword in one hand and a set of scales in another, a blindfold around her eyes. Justice is blind. But so is love. It was the sign she needed. The courage she couldn’t find. “I love you, Glory,” Marta breathed. “I love you now, and I loved you then.” “What we had with Harrow was not love,” Glory warned. “I know,” Marta said. “He got in our heads, poisoned us to worship him- but what we had was real. What we had was not the daemon’s doing. We’re not the same people we were before. We can try again.” Glory heaved a sigh, squeezing Marta’s hand in hers. “Do you really believe that, Marta?” Their eyes met in the dark- brown and amber, ringed with red- both of them touched by fire, but neither one consumed. There was still some blood flecked on Glory's cheek, light enough that one might hope they were freckles. Marta didn't care. None of that mattered right now. Marta summoned the last of her courage. She traced a fingertip down Glory’s cheek and curled her hand beneath her chin. “Believe this,” Marta whispered. They were so close. They were haloed in moonlight; wreathed in rain. All that lay between them was just an inch of indecision. And very soon after, not even that. ~*~

#Glory #Shadowrun Dragonfall #fanfiction #my writing #Trail of Embers

1 note · View note