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dastardly-imbecile · 25 days ago

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Mechanical Butterfly (IV)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

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Wordcount: ~3900

Silco has been out far more often, recently, but Jinx doesn’t mind. He keeps the nightmares away, fractionally, his presence, but she’s found something that does exactly the same: the task that Viktor gave her.

So refreshing! No rules, no admonishment, no telling her, Powder, stop messing around, or Powder, nobody’s ever gonna use anything you build, no, just letting her crawl into the belly of that great mechanical beast and come out victorious with its guts(soot and oil) plastered all over her.

She loves it.

What she doesn’t love is the late nights, when it’s too dark to build, and she has to lay awake in her bed and try not to think of the names she won’t allow herself to speak. Try not to flinch, when something explodes out there in the dark-dark night, try not to climb out of her small cot and find someone to run to. Because Sevika started locking her door, after the first time Jinx tried to find her, and normally Silco at least tucks her back in, but now he’s out quashing rebellions or whatever it was that he called it.

What’s worse is, two days later, when she’s finished with the filter. Technically, the third time she’s done so—the first two, there were tiny, minute things to fix, sockets a millimeter out of alignment or mesh not stretched taut enough, but now it’s genuine perfection and she looks at it and there’s the sound of voices creeping in the edges of her brain, nothing to block them out anymore.

There’s only one thing to do: which is to track down Sevika currently in the basement, punching at a sack of flour. Looking out at the room, something ugly and slippery flip-flops in her chest, because all the old couches and blankets and shelves have been removed to make room for the woman’s gym—and it’s so unfamiliar that she can hardly believe she used to share it with…

Jinx stands at the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, waiting patiently for her to finish—which she doesn’t for a long, long time.

“Sevika,” she says eventually. The woman throws two more punches before finally turning her way, brow furrowed in a scowl.

“What?”

“We need to go back.”

“What?”

“To Viktor’s,” she says, “I finished the assignment. He needs to give me more. And I can learn more.”

It’s a well-laid out argument, in her opinion, but Sevika’s face screws up, and she shakes her head.

“No.”

“What? Why?”

“Silco’s paying a damn bucketload for each lesson,” she starts, counting off on her fingers, “Silco’s out, and he can’t approve this, and I’m busy.”

Jinx stares at her for a moment. “But-”

“Take it up with the boss,” she growls, “but it’s gonna be next week.”

With that, she turns back to her bag, leaving Jinx to slowly ascend back up the stairs. There aren’t many others milling about in the space, the ground floor of The Last Drop, but that just gives her more room to appreciate the changes to the room. Most of the old decorations have been taken down, ripped, or otherwise disposed of, and now it’s a vast expanse of stained wood and nothing much else. It’s good, in a way, even if it makes the space wide and darkly unfamiliar, because it means that she can look at the wall and not imagine Claggor standing there, arms crossed, or Vi leaning against one of the ratty bar tables.

She can’t think of that.

Upstairs, it would be quieter yet, but she likes the level it’s at down here. Just loud enough to take the edge off her thoughts. Silco has yet to reopen the bar—he has to finish whatever street business it is that he’s working on, first—but some of his group hang around. They spare her no glances, used to her presence, and she doesn’t look at them too long either, afraid that she will see one of their faces, spark a bit of familiarity, be dragged back into the shadowed corners of her mind.

Warily, she proceeds to the door, tugging on the fringes of her hair as she does. The small braid that peers out from under the rest of the mop barely reaches her shoulder. Vi braided it for her. Abruptly, she snatches her hand away, as if burned.

Don’t look behind you.

She doesn’t. Stiffly, she pushes open the door. Still, nobody stops her—seems that most of the group is instead occupied in rifling through the liquor cabinet behind the bar. A spike of fury at that—they’re touching things that aren’t theirs, stealing—but then she remembers that nobody will be around to reprimand them, and her heart skips an uncomfortable, sputtering beat.

Nobody around, because of her.

It’s her fault.

All her fault.

No!

This is what she needs to go to Viktor’s for—because in those two hours, sitting and learning, it was all calm and clear and nothing but razor-sharp focus upon the gleam of metal upon her lap.

Deep breath.

Silco told her, weeks ago, in those early nights when she couldn’t stop crying, deep breath. Never reprimanded her for crying—so different from Mylo’s mocking tone, whenever he found her curled up under the pillows—just told her how to stop.

She likes that.

Deep breath, again, and she peers out onto the street. Midday outside, though Zaun sees near-none of that light, and all the neon signs are just as lit as in the dead of night. It’s quieter than usual, too—all the normal market stalls are shuttered and closed, their inhabitants fled into their teeny hidey-holes.

“Hey,” someone says from behind her, the words slightly slurred, “hey, isn’t that the boss’s kid?”

She whirls around, sees one of the gangly figures behind the bar point at her.

“Don’t let her leave,” another one cautions, coming around the bar, and in that brief moment that they disappear into the shadows, she sees someone else. Not Vi or Claggor or Mylo or Vander but some homunculus made from all of them, reaching and chasing and there’s smoke in the air and her hands are burnt from the heat of the bomb, and she opens the door and flees into the street.

As she runs, her hand snakes into her pocket, reaching for the small round ball tucked securely into the depths of the fabric. The last one.

Footsteps behind her, chasing, but she knows these streets around The Last Drop just as well as she’d know anything, and she ducks into one alley, scales a rusted ladder, jumps from one roof to another before sliding roughly back down a slanted awning, landing roughly on her feet. Her pursuers are drunk, and less agile than her, and not trying all that hard in the first place, so by the time she allows herself a moment of stillness, there’s nothing else.

She laughs, the sound bright in the open air. Ha! Take that! She’s still got it.

Now, slower, she progresses down the street. It strikes her that she could just go to Viktor’s herself, but though the idea is tempting on the surface level, there’s a tug in her gut that stops her from navigating to the alleyway shop. Part of it is getting in trouble, of course, but that’s not much, especially because she’s probably already going to be in trouble from fleeing. No, it’s something that almost feels like fear.

Not of Viktor, of course, because he’s kind, and if he wasn’t then she still thinks that she could take him in a fight, but it’s the other one. The other man, thin and tall and no more physically intimidating than Viktor himself, but she does not like his lab with all the creatures in the jars, does not like his experiments. Does not like the way that Silco carries himself around him: tense, careful, and wary. Whatever sort of person incites that sort of reaction from him, she’s automatically wary of.

Though she bemoaned Sevika’s chaperoning, the first time, now the prospect of entering that space without her tall, solid presence is more than a bit intimidating.

So, instead, she continues to wander. This road leads to the main market street, the largest one of them, and—judging from the babble of sound already reaching her ears—one that’s at least somewhat less abandoned than the rest. She’s got no money to her name, but that’s never posed much of a problem before—Ekko was always the best at pilfering from the edges of the stalls, at not getting caught—and, if spotted, at running away swiftly.

Ekko. Where is he? He didn’t leave her, not like the others, but he’s not where he used to live.

So maybe she can find him! Find him, and Silco will take him in too, and then he’ll ask where the others are. What happened to Benzo. What she did, the bomb and the blood and the screams, and she collapses against one of the grimy walls, clutching at her head. The world spins violently, everything flipping upside down, and she can still hear Vi—she can always hear Vi, it’s just now, she cannot suppress her—and there’s wetness on her cheeks.

Jinx!

“Jinx?”

A new voice. It muddles with the ones still pecking at her head, until the speaker repeats himself, “Jinx?”

Familiar. The world clears, somewhat, though it’s blurred now not by her headache but instead by tears, and she peers out from between her fingers. A man on three legs.

Except, not three legs, she realizes, wiping the last of the tears from her eyes, but instead two and a cane.

“Viktor?”

A simple look upwards confirms it. She knew already, from the tone of his voice and that soft accent, but this is visual confirmation. There he stands, tall and narrow-boned, cane in one hand and leather pouch in the other, packed with things she can’t see. Must’ve come from the market. He looks nervous, out of his element, and looking at him now, she can’t help but agree.

It’s not exactly that he doesn’t belong in the undercity. He looks Zaunite, no doubt about that, clothes simple and hardy, face set hard, worn. Clear in the way he holds himself, the little mannerisms like holding the bag close, so unlike the free, loose strides of topsiders. No, it’s less that he doesn’t belong in Zaun and more that he doesn’t belong on this street, in the open, away from his lab and looking like any random citizen.

“Why… ah, are you here?” He asks. Part of that nervousness might actually be related to her, she realizes, and suddenly she’s embarrassed to be here crying on the side of the road. She is no better than she was as Powder, crybaby and weak and runaway. “Are you alright? Lost?”

“No,” she says, “not lost.” The last part of that sentence is the need to clarify—because she’s not lost, no, but also perhaps not alright.

“Is Sevika..?” He asks, glancing around. The street is fairly empty, and none of the few shrouded figures meandering by are glaring or grunting or cursing, so he’s able to rule that out before Jinx even has to say no.

“I wanted to see you,” she blurts, which wasn’t really the reason she ran out of the lab, but is close enough and really the only thing that’s relevant now. “I finished it.”

But she forgot to bring it! She can picture it now, in her new room on the second floor of The Last Drop, haphazard on the floor and surrounded by scattered tools. Suddenly, she shrinks a bit, afraid that he will accuse her as a liar—but instead, he simply tilts his head, the corner of his mouth quirking into a smile.

“That was quick. I should’ve expected that, though, no?”

Unsure how to respond, she nods wordlessly. He takes a step back, gesturing loosely to the road with his cane.

“Perhaps you should be getting back. I’m sure your…” For a long moment, he hesitates, and she opens her mouth, Dad resting on the tip of her tongue. It’s so very close, but when she imagines saying it, she imagines Vander as he once was—strong and warm and laughing—and Vander as she recalls him now—laid low, snarling, screaming—and so she can’t bring herself to spill those syllables from her mouth.

“-I’m sure they’re worried,” Viktor eventually finishes lightly.

“Can I walk with you?” She asks.

“Where are you headed?”

“The Last Drop.”

A flicker of surprise in his eyes—he knows the place, of course he does—but he dips his head in a shallow nod. “It’s on the way.”

He doesn’t turn to walk until she pushes fully off the wall, following in his footsteps. As she blinks the last of the tears out of her eyes, she’s glad that he never asked why she was crying. She’s glad she doesn’t have to think about that herself.

From her vantage point slightly behind, she notices the further unevenness to his gait, beyond even that of the normal limp, showing clear strain trying to balance both his cane and the bag of supplies.

“Do you need help?”

“Hm?”

“I can carry that,” she says, indicating the bag. Eager to be of help—maybe, then, he won’t send her away immediately, and he’ll let her come back to the lab. The instant she thinks that, however, she also remembers the darkness, the sharp smell of alcohol overlaying the faint scent of blood, and the enthusiasm dies just as quickly.

Still, though, if only to help him.

“It’s heavy,” he says, but she crosses her arms.

“I’m used to heavy stuff!”

“...For a bit,” he finally says, twisting to pass the bag over to her. It’s simple leather, lifted by two straps made of the same material, and she grasps it sturdily, heaves it up to her shoulder. There’s a wary look in his eyes, that first moment, like he thinks she’ll fall—or run off with the supplies—but though it’s weighty, she stands straight and smiles and tries not to let any strain show on her face.

They set off again, and she smiles to see that his stride has returned to normal. The bag bumps against her hip, and she tries her best not to peek, but curiosity wins out in the end—inside, instead of the food and the like she’d been expecting, it’s simply bottles of darkly-labeled chemicals, scraps of metal, and, at the top-

“You can take it,” he says, and she startles, cheeks flushing at being caught in the act.

“What?”

“The box of tools,” he says, “I bought it for you.”

She blinks at him, uncomprehending. “I have tools.”

“They’re not very good,” he replies, tone nearly teasing. She frowns.

“Sevika bought them for me.”

“I guessed,” he says drily, and nods again at the bag. “Go ahead. Unless you would rather wait until next week, of course.”

She would very much not rather wait until next week, confusion aside, so she reaches into the bag lightning-quick to withdraw the heavy box at the top of the stack. It’s thin, but weighty, the edges lined in dark metal. Her face splits into a smile at the sight, and all insult from his previous words is struck down upon the realization that these are indeed way better.

“Thank you! These are…” no words to express it in her brain, so all she can do is look at Viktor and grin and hope it imparts at least a fraction of her happiness.

“Singed bought me mine,” he says softly. Singed must refer to that man—it’s a jolt of a reminder that they are, in fact, associated. “When I began to tinker. A brilliant mind can only be enhanced by quality implements.”

The way he parrots the last words makes it clear that it’s a quote—not direct words of his. Still, her mind snags upon that one word, brilliant, and she asks, before she can stop herself, “Am I brilliant?”

“It took me a week to configure my first filter,” he says, “granted, I assisted, but at your age, in two days? You could not be anything but.”

Nobody’s ever called her brilliant before. Impulsively, she rushes forwards, hugs Viktor. He stumbles back a single step, but skids the cane backwards, catching himself—and the other hand hesitantly settles upon her shoulder. He’s thinner than Vi ever was, bones where she had muscle, smells of metal and chemicals instead of leather and clean air. But they’re somewhere in the realm of the same age, and she clutches the box to her chest, and if she closes her eyes and turns her head it’s almost the same.

The embrace lingers only a moment later before he extracts himself, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“I’m… very glad you like it,” he says, “but I’m afraid this is where we part.”

Right. On one side, the path splits towards The Last Drop, and the other must no doubt eventually lead to his alleyway.

“Thank you,” she repeats, quieter this time, sliding his bag off her shoulder and proffering it back up to him. He takes it wordlessly.

“Next week,” he says, like a promise, and then turns down to continue stepping down the path. She likes that—a promise, because those can’t be broken.

—

So absorbed is she in the new tools, in the memories of the day, turning ‘brilliant’ around in her mind until it’s smooth as a river-worn stone, that when the door to The Last Drop opens, she startles. Sevika doesn’t know a thing about her escapade—must’ve spent the whole day sulking down in the basement—and the few subordinates that saw her escape aren’t breathing a word. Mutual silent agreement: because if they admit she ran away, then they admit they let her run away, so her little secret is tucked away just as safely as the blue gem still shimmering in her pocket.

Despite all this, when the door below opens, there’s a spike of unfamiliar fear in her heart. It’s Silco, and she confirms that by perching at the top of the stairs, hidden by the bannister, and watching the man stroll in. These past few days, she has always greeted his return by running down, grabbing onto his coat and sticking by his side for the rest of the night, but today, something holds her where she is.

Below, he looks around, expecting her as well—the confusion on his face is almost funny.

At least, until he looks up the stairs, and despite her hiding spot, meets her eyes.

Jinx! Someone says.

It sounds like all of them.

She flees back, back into her room, heart suddenly sparked into a quick hammer-beat, but there is nowhere to hide, no lock on the door, and what exactly is she hiding from?

Suddenly, she wishes Viktor had asked her why she was crying, because maybe then she could have told him something, and he’d have comforted her. Vi was always able to comfort her, with soft words, or failing that by gathering her into her arms and squeezing her until she started to laugh, so maybe he’d have been able to do the same, but he’s gone and Vi is Gone, capital G.

And it’s all her fault.

Jinx! Someone yells.

Footsteps on the stairs. She scrambles into bed, because she’s unsure of what else to do, kicks the covers up around her feet until she’s in a half-sitting sort of position. She doesn’t like sleeping alone, doesn’t like the absence of the other kids’ breaths. Misses, even, the occasional kick in the middle of the night, sometimes—usually between Mylo and Vi—leading to a short scrap. It’s penance, sleeping in silence, and she wouldn’t even know if they were in the room because they wouldn’t be kicking or breathing, would they?

JINX! They all scream.

The door opens.

“Jinx,” Silco says, stepping fully into the space, “where were you?”

“Up here,” she replies. He crosses over to the bed, sits down.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes,” she breathes out.

“I apologize,” he murmurs, “for my absences. Everyone in Zaun wants a piece of the power. It’s like setting rattraps, keeping all the vermin away.”

“Oh,” she says, more a wordless sort of acknowledgement than anything. She wants, so badly, to do what she’s always been doing, these past few weeks, bury her hands in the coat and her head in his chest, let it drown out the world around. When she thinks of doing that now, however, there’s the smell of fire, Vi’s voice, her wide blue eyes aglow with flames.

“Vander never did a good job of keeping them in line,” he says. The words coincide with a long, low scream that rings through her mind, and she flinches—lowers her head—only barely resists the urge to cover her ears. Vander. Vander. Vander.

“So it’s that,” he whispers. The blankets bunch as he scoots closer, places a warm hand on her arm, tilts her chin up with the other. When she looks up, it’s into his eyes, one green and the other a pinprick of red. “Are you thinking of them?”

She pushes herself back, further away, panic rushing bright and hot in her veins.

“I’m not angry, Jinx.” A pause, and when she still doesn’t answer, a peculiar sort of expression flits across his face. “Or would you prefer Powder?”

A blow so strong that it’s as if he’d cuffed her. She flinches back, and he follows, arm snaking up from her hand to the back of her neck, the other settling across her back.

“No,” she whispers, as he gathers her into his embrace. Not like the hugs of Viktor or Vi—this one is taut and poised on the edge of comfort, and she knows that it would be good if she melted into it, but she does not. “Not Powder.”

“She’s gone,” he hums, his chest thrumming with the motion, “and so are the rest of them. They left you all on your own, did they not?”

She relaxes just a bit more, cheek pressed uncomfortably into the buttons of his coat. When she nods, she knows he can feel it, because he continues.

“Vander was a coward and a traitor. Your sister ran to the enforcers, ran to her death, rather than stay with you. Did they help you, even before? Vander had money plenty. Did he ever find you a mentor? Someone to cultivate your gift? Or did they degrade you? Leave you behind?”

She nods. In her head, Vi is hugging her, and then she’s throwing her off onto the cold, wet ground, shouting Jinx! Silco’s grip tightens, and the image puffs away in a cloud of reddish smoke, and the voices are mercifully silent. She surrenders herself fully into the embrace, finally lets herself settle against him. This is how it is. This is how it will always be.

“There’s only us,” he says, hand rubbing circles into her back, “they’ll always leave you, Jinx, and as the ones left behind, we must stick together.”

One final time, she nods. He doesn’t speak again—for a long moment, they remain there, suspended in the silence.

Eventually, as all things must, they separate. He ushers her under the covers, pulls the sheets to her shoulders, departs with a quiet, “Goodnight.”

Her dreams consist not of the usual—faceless figures circling her, calling her name, flame burning bright in the background—but something new. Silco’s embrace, which morphs into that of a thinner man, the clatter of a cane, which then turns into a child’s, and when she pulls back all she can catch is a shock of white hair and crooked grin.

#arcane #arcane fanfic #jinx #jinx arcane #viktor arcane #viktor #silco #silco arcane #singed #singed arcane

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dastardly-imbecile · 26 days ago

Text

Mechanical Butterfly (III)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

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Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~2100

Singed is back by the time the knock comes, which he’s thankful for. He allows Viktor to answer the door himself, absorbed in methodically sorting through the brains of an overgrown rat.

Standing before it, in the alleyway, is the woman who’d come in Silco’s entourage the day before, and Jinx, the man himself nowhere to be found. Viktor can’t help but be glad for that—he doesn’t know how he’d possibly teach with that man peering over his shoulder at all moments.

Then again, looking at the sharp expression on her face, she may not be much better.

Jinx, however, is the picture-opposite to her—face bright, a smile already tugging at her lips, standing tall. A moment of hesitancy flashes over her expression, as she looks up at him, but it doesn’t quell the clear excitement thrumming through her.

He steps back, murmuring a quiet, “come in.”

She does so eagerly, and the woman slower, scanning around the lab, clearly looking for danger.

“Viktor?” She asks him curtly. He nods, though surely she recognizes him from the day before.

“And you?”

“Sevika.” The answer is sharp. Singed glances up at the name, some note of recognition in his gaze, though he soon turns back to the rodent’s cracked-open head.

“My room,” he says to Jinx, nodding towards the open door. It’s a small place, cramped, nothing but the bed and the mass of the half-built forge in it.

“Not so fast,” she growls, “let me check.”

She bustles off towards the room before he can tell her not to touch anything. For what’s essentially glorified babysitting duty, she seems rather serious about it all—then again, she works for Silco. There’s probably a lot of motivation to be good at her job.

He follows, finds her poking through the space underneath his mattress.

“I assure you,” he says, “it’s safe.” Not like he’s hiding a bomb in the room—what does she think he wants to do? Blow up a child, her, and himself?

She mutters something inarticulate, strides over to the far wall and leans against it. A vantage point to look at both the room and, in the lab beyond, Singed injecting the rat with a vial of glowing magenta.

“You can sit,” he tells Jinx, indicating the bed. She does so, padding over to the spot with the attention of a child in a schoolroom, as if he’s some sort of actual instructor.

On her lap, she holds a small brown bag. He nods at it.

“What’s that?”

“Oh!” She opens it, and from inside, withdraws a handful of crude, clumsy tools—a screwdriver that’s hardly more than a rusted rod of metal taped to a block of wood, a small mallet with a chunk missing from the end. They look like something a beleaguered shopper trying to exert minimal effort would scrape up in the cheapest parts of the market, which he suspects is exactly what they are. “I brought my own tools. And Silco told me I should make something for you, so I thought-”

Here, from the bottom of the bag, she extracts something else, holds it gently pinched between two fingers and extends her hand for him to take it. He leans forwards, unsure of what it is at first glance—it is only when she drops it into his palm that he realizes.

It’s a small butterfly. Deceptively delicately crafted—at first glance, it is nothing but a twist of wires, but as he examines it closer, he sees the shape of wings and even gossamer-thin legs. And, lining its back-

Gears. Experimentally, he prods at its wings, and they move, flapping up and down. Everything about it is so small, so carefully put together, that he could not imagine the patience it must have taken.

“You made this?” He doesn’t bother hiding the admiration in his voice. Just the minutiae of the body and wings is enough, but to attach the mechanisms for it to move is beyond what he’d expected of her.

She smiles wider, the last of the anxiety melting away. “Yes! Is it… do you like it?”

“I do,” he says softly. He glances at her fingers, the small hands of a child, thin and nimble, and has a sudden idea. “Come here,” he says, beckoning her forwards, towards the forge upon the ground.

She obliges, slipping off the bed and approaching it—it’s almost as tall as her, and he’s gratified to see similar awe in her eyes. Singed’s appreciation for what he does is nothing more than the occasional comment on his talent, always said in a detached, observational sort of tone. It feels good to be recognized.

“Inside,” he says, grabbing a flashlight off the top and shining it inside, “can you see that exposed panel?”

“Where it’s peeled back?” She asks, peering in.

“Yes,” he says.

Outside, there’s the clatter of a door closing.

“Where’s he going?” Sevika asks immediately, making him turn, peer out the door. The lab is empty—Singed must have left.

“I don’t know,” he answers semi-truthfully, “out.”

“Who’s he getting?”

“Nobody,” he says. Does she suspect an ambush?

Her eyes dart down to regard his twisted leg, and he gets the ugly feeling that she’s currently considering how easily she could beat him in a fight—the answer is, very easily—before they flick back up and she lets out a low sigh.

By the time he turns back to Jinx, she’s already halfway into the forge.

“What are you doing?” He asks. Her voice, when it comes back, is muffled.

“All you have to do is- is connect the green wires, I think, and then make sure to plug the switch in, and then I think you’re missing a part.”

“Missing?” he asks.

“Yes, you need something to ignite the spark with, right?”

“I’d planned on installing that later,” he says, but she makes a sound of negation.

“It’d be best here.”

He steps back, takes a moment to think on it—and, yes, it would be most convenient. For the first time, he smiles, and she extracts herself from the forge interior, blue hair a mess and a nervous cast to her mouth.

“...Would it?” She asks, and he realizes he never responded to her last point. Suddenly, all that confidence is gone, drained out and replaced with something vulnerable. “You know best, obviously, you’re the inventor and you made this and-”

“No,” he says, cutting her off, “no, you were right.”

Still, she doesn’t move. He nods at the forge. “You were doing a good job. If you wish, you can continue with the wires.” He holds up his hand, wriggling the fingers slightly. “My hands are a bit too large.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, and for what, he’s unsure, but he nods anyways, watches as she returns to the forge.

Must be an hour, maybe two, before Sevika steps off the wall. Currently, he’s walking Jinx through the construction of a filter, watching her fumble with the delicate meshes, but both of them pause as she approaches.

“Time to go,” she says, huffing out a breath, “boss wants you back. Same time next week?”

The last question, she directs at Viktor, who nods. Jinx stands without complaint, dropping the filter—and he hesitates before speaking up.

“No. Keep it.”

Questioningly, she reaches for it. He nods. “You know what to do, no? Finish it by next time. Consider it… homework.”

The delight on her face at the prospect is both startling and slightly gratifying. He tries to smile back.

Sevika fishes about in one of her pockets before withdrawing another brown pouch, this one jingling musically. She tosses it to Viktor, who just barely manages to catch it, the weight bowing his arm down.

“For you and your father,” she notes, and steps out without waiting for his response, escorting Jinx with a careful hand on her shoulder. Even as they leave through the front door, he stands immobilized, carefully considering the pouch.

Singed is not a father, not in the way that Viktor’s ever thought of him, even though he can perhaps see the logic in calling him that. But no, he had a father, one who died upon the bridge, and Singed is simply a man who fed, sheltered, clothed him, though he cannot think of an equivalent word for that at the moment. It has always felt faintly transactional in nature—always, Viktor has had a job, no matter how trivial, that he does in exchange for this bit of care.

First, it was caring for Rio, and then it was as an errand boy and lab assistant, spending long afternoons hunting down rats in the gutters or ferrying chemicals to Singed during his experiments. Then, as he began to build, to tinker, it became creating contraptions for the lab, and now it’s this work, bringing in enough money to buy things like food while the other member of the household is off experimenting in the cave.

Which, speaking of, he’s still not back from. Viktor leaves the bag of coins upon his desk before returning to his room, beginning the work on the nine other filters he needs to make. At least Jinx will take the load of one off of his shoulders.

—

It is not until late night that Singed stumbles back in, closing the door with a heavy thud. Late enough that Viktor is usually asleep, but he had work to do, and besides, he tries to stay up and wait for Singed if he can. Does not want a repeat of that night of the explosion, does not want to be sleeping while the man bleeds out in the next room over.

Tonight, he’s unharmed, though tired—he sits down at the lab table with a heavy thump, arms ridgid on the desk. Viktor approaches quietly.

“You remember Rio,” Singed says—a rare occurrence, him starting the conversation. He nods.

“Of course.”

“How did you do it?” He asks, swiveling around to regard him, “help her with the Shimmer. How was it done?”

“I… don’t know,” he replies, thinking once again of the giant salamander. Always affectionate, even in her last days, curling around his legs as he slept so she could share his warmth. He’d wanted to bury her, after she died, but Singed insisted on dissection—a process he was normally accustomed to, but in this case, sat out. Viktor left the cave during the process, spent those hours as she was cut to pieces sitting by the river and stretching his leg in the cool water. “Did you not find anything? In her blood?”

“No,” he says, “I’ve attempted distillation, but it is a fraught process. Little has come of it. Cannot preserve it, either—the meat spoils. Not physically, but the Shimmer inside does not take to being extended.”

He winces at the thought. Too soon, still.

“All the ones before,” he continues, “and all the ones after, the Shimmer changes irrevocably. It is some malady that runs molecule-deep. In small doses—” now, he indicates himself—“it heals, somewhat. But what I’m working on requires too much.”

“What are you working on?”

“A vast project,” is the answer, more crumbs of knowledge yet. The next words rest heavy on Viktor’s tongue, the words that he doesn’t dare say—that of his daughter. He knows, obviously, from seeing the room and the coffin, from doing his own bits of illicit research. Coming across the name Doctor Reveck, catching glimpses of a girl in Singed’s scratched golden locket.

And Singed knows that he knows, because how could he not—has alluded to the matter, dancing around the topic with all the grace of a spy.

It is part of the reason that he has never considered Singed his father, he supposes—because the spot of the child is long-filled.

So he doesn’t say it, and instead shrugs, an uncomfortable movement with the cane.

“I do not know how I did. Rio simply… survived.”

And how different it would’ve been, if she hadn’t.

Singed lets out a long sigh, the most emotion that he allows himself to show, before standing from the chair. “Perhaps you are uniquely brilliant. I’ll find the key. You should rest.”

Hypocritical words from the man that Viktor’s sure will stay up the rest of the night, but that’s another effect of the Shimmer. Honestly, that facet of the drug, the ability to need so little sleep, is almost as tempting as the prospect of fixing his leg.

“The money is on the table,” he says. Singed makes no move to grab it, instead striding over to one of the long rows of jars upon the wall, selecting one with a litter of baby rabbits floating within. With his other hand, he reaches for a loaf of bread that sprouts clumps of glowing pink mushrooms.

“Goodnight,” Viktor adds.

This, finally, garners a response.

“Sleep well, Viktor.”

He doubts he will, thinking of Rio as he is, but the sentiment is nice.

#arcane #arcane fanfic #jinx #jinx arcane #viktor arcane #viktor #silco #silco arcane #singed #singed arcane

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dastardly-imbecile · 26 days ago

Text

Mechanical Butterfly (II)

Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~2072

Despite Viktor’s origins, the undercity is unfamiliar to him. Much of the childhood he can remember was spent in Singed’s old lab—as close to topside as Zaun ever got, a place where the water was mostly clear, and children of both cities gathered to play. Shame to think that those golden years of early childhood, no Piltover or Zaun, just children scampering about in the sunlight, would soon rot into rivalry. The former becoming enforcers and the latter street thugs, all those tattered remnants of childhood simplicity gone to the wind.

Of course, he never got that experience of playing anyways—nothing about his body was quite built for scampering. No, what he remembers is the darkness of the cave, bioluminescent plants entangling along slick walls, the sound of running water always present in the darkness.

It’s dark here, too, deeper in the undercity, but in a different, more distasteful way. No sunlight manages to reach this low, blocked by smoke or the broken spines of jagged buildings, stacked one-by-one atop each other, crowding out the space like too many rats in a box too small. He misses the cave, for the fresh air and the open space and the lack of people.

He knows the necessity of abandoning it, though: possibly-impending war means that no borderlands are safe, and now that he’s getting actual work, it’s more convenient, and also the secret third reason that Singed always skates around: he’s working on something that even Viktor isn’t privy to, and the cave is now a secret storage for whatever that is.

He’s curious, but he knows better than to pry. If Singed means to tell him, then he will, and if he does not, then not a force in all of Runeterra will pry it from his lips. Something to do with his daughter’s coffin, he’s sure, something to do with the large, cloth-bound thing that he dragged into the lab after the explosion.

When the three leave, with promises of returning for the first lessons tomorrow, Singed looks at him wordlessly, waiting for his verdict.

“That’s Silco?” is the first thing he asks. He knows the name, of course, all of Zaun is passing those five letters around from mouth-to-mouth like a pipe. The new lord of this place, the source of the flaming plume of smoke that’s been clogging the sky for the past few weeks. He knows the face too: remembers it from years ago. When he was only a few months into working with Singed, insofar as ‘working’ meant feeding Rio and lurking around the cave, the man who’d come to talk on business. And business—that leads into the last way he knows Silco.

As the man who, directly or indirectly, almost killed the man standing before him. The explosion. The burn. Viktor remembers staying up late, working—because otherwise he would not know how to expel his nervous energy—hearing a commotion at the lip of the cave. Rushing out to see Singed limping in, skin scorched red and blistered, bleeding bright Shimmer from all orifices.

He’s healed, in the weeks since, preternaturally quickly—a process that most certainly has something to do with the Shimmer—but during bad nights, Viktor still sees it. He never screamed, through all the pain, simply collapsed upon the floor and reached for Viktor’s hand.

So ‘that’s Silco’ is a statement woefully inadequate, filled in only by the silent language that both of them have learned to speak in.

“He’s a powerful man,” Singed replies, rubbing absently at the right side of his face. The burnt.

“Was I wrong to accept?”

“I can’t say.” He turns, shuffles towards one of the tables, one piled with jars of preserved creatures. Vermin, mostly—rats, insectoids, all white-eyed and suspended in greenish liquid. He does not reach for the jars, and instead, a roll of stained bandages and a pair of forceps. “The girl is an anomaly,” he adds, like an afterthought.

Viktor steps forwards, leaning on his cane as he does. The leg is especially bad, today—has been, ever since they moved house to this new lab. Singed has offered Shimmer, or other modifications, more than once—but always, he denies. He’s seen what it does to the experiments, what it almost did to Rio, what it did to Singed after the explosion. Shimmer in the eyes, in the mouth, leaking from each pore of the skin and sparking where it touched burnt flesh.

“His daughter?”

Singed removes his mask, digs the forceps into the bandages running down his neck, slowly begins to peel. The skin underneath is pale pink and raw, bright magenta streaks running just under the skin. They pulse under the dim light. Viktor tries not to look away.

“No,” he says, “no. Vander’s.”

“Vander? The one he killed?”

He went to his bar, once, one of those rare moments that he wanted a break from the cave. A loud, energetic place, a crowd with strange looks for the crippled boy trying to force his way through. Never met the man himself—gave up before he was even halfway to the bar, let the chaos spit him back out.

Singed hums in confirmation, dropping the chunk of bandage into a thin metal pail, starting work on the one below. “He’s been planning for very long. He plans something for Jinx too, I suspect.”

“Dangerous for us?”

This next bandage is a bit of a struggle—it wraps around to the back, a place that Singed can’t easily reach. “No,” he repeats, “he’s an honest man. Admirable.”

Coming from the mouth of a man who is, if not dishonest, never unwilling to bend a few morals. Viktor watches him struggle for a moment longer before stepping forwards.

“Let me.”

With no protest, he relinquishes both the forceps and the bandages to him. It’s a ritual, at this point—the man does not ask for help, but he knows what’s good for him in the end. Without need for indication, he turns, and Viktor leans against the table so he can set his cane down and use both hands.

With the metal implement, he slowly unpeels the bandages that cross his back and chest, discarding them to the side. Once that’s done, he unravels the new roll, begins to methodically recover the wounds. It’s all horrifically unsanitary, but the new drug running through Singed’s veins takes care of that handily. How convenient.

“Did he not make that promise,” Viktor asks, once the final bandage is changed, “the first time?”

By which he means, of course, their original partnership—the one that ended with Singed collapsed upon the ground, waking only to tell Viktor they needed to evacuate. If that’s how this particular venture is going to end, he’d very much rather not.

“That was my own mistake. I became… greedy.”

“For?”

“You will see.”

Singed steps away, running a thin hand over the bandages. A hint, and a reassuring one at that—not a flat denial, which he’s certainly never been afraid to give.

You will see.

Viktor’s looking forward to it.

—

He misses Rio, at times, dead for about a year at this point. His introduction to Singed, the lab, and the thing that firmly enmeshed him into this place. The first success of Shimmer too: whatever dosage he gave her, it extended her lifespan by years past what it should have been. Of course, that success came with a thousand failures, rats and feral cats and fish, all of whom ended up swollen and bleeding and dying-

But it gave Singed hope for the project that he works on, the one they both pretend does not exist: whatever it is that has to do with his daughter.

At night, he works, as per usual—on the components that make up his first true job. Different from what he’s been doing before, crafting little curiosities or machines to help Singed in the lab, but an actual commission—from the Frederson Chem-forge, one of the many he’d reached out to, and the only that’d replied.

Singed is gone. Left at late dusk, and by all probability, will not be back until morning—off to the cave, to his secret experiments. It does not hurt to be excluded, not really, but it does concern him a bit—he’s felt nothing but a constant state of concern since the explosion, though Singed’s demeanor has returned to more-or-less normal.

He has better things to be concerned about than the scientist, though, at least right now—namely, teaching the child of the current king of Zaun. It’s the sudden realization that bowls over him, that being that he does not know how to teach, that has him frantically working so he can take his mind off of it.

It was his parents that taught him the first basics of machinery: both were mechanics as well, working in the dark, rotating underbelly of Zaun, among the pipes and the steam and the gears that stretched tall as people. They died storming the bridge when he was young—another way he knows of Vander and Silco—but he tries to remember how they taught him nevertheless. Can’t scrounge up much of anything, besides a faint impression of a voice, the phantom feeling of hands guiding his.

Useless.

Singed’s never taught him anything, at least not in this realm. He’s the type of scientist that dapples in chemicals and dead things, and though they’ve combined their talents on occasion, scraping the surface of mechanical biomancy, it was always an equal partnership, not mentor-student. He’d entertained the idea of going to the academy when he was younger, in that unreal, wistful way that all childrens’ dreams are painted in. Not by enrolling, of course, they’d never let a Zaunite orphan enroll, but instead somehow sneaking in—but Singed cleared him of that idea as quickly as it came.

“They’re small,” he remembers him saying, “small minds. I parted from Heimerdinger long ago, and there is nothing he could teach you that I could not.”

Now, though, he wishes he’d gone, if only for some idea about how it all worked. Teaching. Their refined mechanics up there in topside, all smooth and gleaming white, must be so different from the mish-mash of things he cobbles together down here. When he was younger, he used to painfully make his way to the top of Zaun, places where he could watch those sharp-clothed academy students stroll the streets, talking about things he couldn’t hear nor understand. Never worth the days of pain that the act of climbing brought his leg, but he kept doing it anyway.

Eventually, he gives up, both on trying to fix the section of chemforge and on considering this issue. Right now, he’s attempting to connect a few infinitesimally small bits in the back, but space is cramped and his fingers are not nimble enough to both screw, hold, and leave room to see in the narrow space. He may have to take the entire thing apart to get to it, and putting it together took two weeks on its own. It’s a beautiful creation, all gleaming metal and smoothly connected joints, and if he were to take it apart and put it back together, he has the sinking feeling that it would no longer be nearly so perfect.

Like digging up a corpse, trying to breathe life back into the skin. Couldn’t be the same ever again.

So instead, he hobbles out into the main room of the lab, and attempts to tidy up. Shove jars back into their rightful places, drop tools into drawers, clean the beakers laying around. All useless, because Singed both will not notice, and will have the lab redirtied in a day, but it brings him some measure of peace. The work goes by quickly, even with his limited movement, and by the time that night is truly upon Zaun—the streets lit by glowing signs, the only life drunkards staggering down the street—he still has not figured out a solution.

With a sigh, he slumps down upon his bed—a sagging mattress barely held up by cinderblocks and wood planks—and wishes he had not accepted. Shouldn’t have. Hadn’t been planning to, until the girl, Jinx, started speaking—until he saw the look in her eyes, bright and eager and full of more passion for the machine than he’s seen in anything but the mirror.

That look is the last thing that still lingers in his mind, even after all else is surrendered to unconsciousness.

#arcane #arcane fanfic #jinx #jinx arcane #viktor arcane #viktor #silco #silco arcane #singed #singed arcane

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dastardly-imbecile · 26 days ago

Text

Mechanical Butterfly (I)

Part 2 | Part 3

---

Again, silence, but this time because she’s thinking. Viktor watches her intently, waiting for a response, eyes a brown so light it borders on amber—both narrowed, focused. Reminds Silco of Singed, the way he decides upon a goal, does not let anything sway his course. He wonders what a child raised by that man’s particular psyche might turn out to be like.

He wonders what a child raised by his own would.

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~2600

When Silco makes the journey to Singed’s lab, the damp cave hiding between moss-slicked rocks, he does not expect a child to be there. The scientist makes no effort to hide the boy, but he seems to be of a shyer demeanor regardless—the first glimpse he catches of the child is a dark shape ducking behind a long line of glowing vials.

He pays no mind to it at first—believing it another one of the strange, twisted creatures that Singed tinkers with. One of the things that, by silent mutual agreement, Silco doesn’t pry into in exchange for similar courtesy. He does not ask about the creatures in vats of formaldehyde, about the locket that the other man occasionally fiddles with, and in exchange, he brooks no inquiries about the darker sides of his own business.

When he greets the man, however, with a quiet dip of his head, there’s the sound of a brief clattering behind him. He turns, sees a crooked wooden cane on the ground—seems it was dropped by someone—and a small, thin hand scrabbling for it.

“Viktor,” Singed calls, voice soft but not unkind, “come out.”

The hand grabs the cane, and, with the implement’s help, a boy rises from behind the table. He has the look that all Zaunite children have—thin and hollow-cheeked despite the roundness of youth, clothes dirty and patchwork, hair unbrushed. Even the twist of his leg, foot turned inwards, is not entirely unique. Silco’s seen enough children like these, sick street rats with nothing to their name but what they can steal, that he feels less pity and more simple curiosity.

Singed is a scientist first and chemist second, merchant far behind those two, and paternal not even upon the list. Logic suggests that the boy is yet another experiment, but the soft tone of the other man’s voice did not suggest that sort of relationship, nor the way he approaches without fear.

The only wariness to him, in fact, is centered upon Silco. He stops a good distance away, leaning heavily upon his cane. He’d estimate his age around ten or eleven, but ages get murky once malnutrition and grime are introduced into the mix.

“I apologize,” Singed says smoothly, “I did not know I would have a guest today. I hope his presence is not… objectionable.”

Silco cannot tell if he’s addressing him or the boy, which one of them is supposed to be the guest. Eventually, he settles upon a, “is he yours?”

Flat. Straightforward.

“No,” is the reply, equally neutral, “not mine.” No elaboration on what, then, he is—experiment is still a possibility. Assistant, perhaps, but Singed is the type of man to work alone, and, failing that, take on a competent fellow instead of roping a child into his delicate sort of science.

Doesn’t matter. Silco is here for one thing only—inquiries on Singed’s progress on Shimmer—and none of the man’s other affairs concern him.

“This is a private matter,” he says, shaking any curiosity out of his mind. Singed nods in acknowledgement.

“Go,” he says, waving the boy away with a pale hand, “feed Rio.”

The boy takes the dismissal swiftly, turning on a heel, limping away deeper into the depths of the cave.

Finally, solitude achieved, he’s allowed to return to his business.

In the progressing months and years, each time he visits Singed, the boy is nowhere to be found—not disposed of, though. He sees the signs. Various canes left leaning against the wall, outgrown or abandoned. Sometimes, the faint sound of uneven footsteps behind one or other of the walls. Most damning, a section of table cleared off in the corner of the lab, where a second inventor works with gears and mechanical trinkets instead of Singed’s signature chemicals. He finds a bit of interest in watching how the projects evolve, each time he drops by—simple at first, a toy boat, childrens’ trinkets, but soon they’re incomprehensible to his eyes, large sections of whirling gears and metal that seem to be only the base components of vaster things yet.

Interesting, but he doesn’t comment on it.

The moment of truth rapidly approaches, and that’s all he can occupy himself with, really.

—

In the weeks after Vander’s disposal, he does not contact Singed at all. After that final culmination of his plan, everything is a jumble of grabbing all those disparate Zaunite threads and tying them into a neat little bow. Stepping into the vacuum of power as easily as plugging a leak, placating the chem-barons and the gangs and scouring the streets of dissidents.

More pressing, somehow, is the girl. Vander’s girl. The blue-haired child, acting younger than her age of eleven, who’s done nothing but cry and attempt to cling to him, only peeled off by Sevika’s force—and who will, then, refuse to leave her alone. She’s a curiosity. An annoyance, at times, but those first nights, he watches her during the only times she’s quiet—when she’s sleeping—and tries to remember what she reminds him of.

The boy, he realizes eventually, Singed’s boy, lab assistant, whatever he was. If he was ten, that day so many years ago, he must be nearing twenty by now. Why does she remind him of that child?

More than the physical similarities—of which there aren’t many, actually; as Vander’s daughter, this girl is far better-fed and cared for than that boy was—it’s the way she tinkers.

He’s surprised, the first time he walks into his office and sees her taking apart his music box. It’s an old thing, a gift from some sycophant he can’t remember anymore, so the instinctive reaction is less fury at her touching his possessions than curiosity about what she’ll do with the parts. He stands there, watching her light fingers run over the fine gears, prodding and pulling, reassembling the entire thing into…

And then, she realizes his presence, startles and whirls around. There’s fear in her wide eyes, fear that he’s going to reprimand her, but it’s almost endearing, the way she clutches the box despite all that. He beckons her, stooping over slightly, doing his best to appear less intimidating than he knows he is. She takes the bait, pushes to her feet and slowly meanders closer.

“What were you doing?” He asks, lowering his voice.

“I… don’t know,” she murmurs, “I like crafting. I used to…”

She trails off, dangerously close to getting mired in the memories of times before, so he speaks before she can get too lost.

“You’re good at it,” he praises, though in truth he knows next to nothing about this sort of thing. He is, to use that old phrase, a politicker first, a lord, a fighter second, and scientist far third.

Her eyes widen at the praise, looking up to him with the first sign of joy he’s seen, and it strikes him that perhaps she will be useful. Perhaps he can mold her into something that can help him as much as any army of brute fighters.

To do that, though, she will need a mentor. A teacher.

Perhaps it is because he’s been thinking of Singed’s boy, these past few days, but the idea strikes him and it seems almost like fate.

—

The man has a new lab. Closer to the mainline of Zaun, though still hidden in a narrow back alleyway. Silco suspects that he still uses the one near the topside, hidden among the rocks, but this is the new location he was provided to visit, and he respects the man enough not to go snooping.

They’ve had little contact even before he disposed of Vander—once Shimmer was finalized, there was no reason to keep going back. Singed’s enthusiasm for their partnership seemed to have waned, as well, after the accident that burnt him.

He brings the girl himself. Vander named her Powder, but for some reason, the name doesn’t sit right on his tongue, and she flinched the first time he called her that—so, for now, she’s just the girl. Sevika lags behind them both—he technically needn’t have come; he has no doubts Sevika could do this errand adequately, but then again, this is unfamiliar territory.

Despite all their distance, when Singed opens the door—far different from how he once looked, now completely bald, right eye clouded a murky sort of green and burnt scarring rippling down his face, the last remains of Professor Reveck cleansed by fire from his being—he nods as if he’s expected Silco all along. Which, perhaps he has.

The new lab is larger than the old one, and already set up with tall vats that span to the ceiling, filled with glowing liquids and with misshapen things slowly spinning inside like dying tops. Jars cluttered along the shelves, bottles of miscellaneous chemicals, and—he notices—tucked into a far corner, a table cluttered with gears and tools.

He allows himself the ghost of a smile. He guessed right.

“I heard,” Singed says, no niceties such as inviting him to sit, offering tea. All familiar. Silco wouldn’t trust any tea the man gave him, anyways. “About your success.”

“Our success,” he says, “it was your invention, too.” Laying it on thick.

The other man simply nods in acknowledgement. He doesn’t respond, but the unspoken question is that of, so why are you here now?

“The boy,” he forges on, deciding there’s no use in beating around the bush—both of them appreciate directness—“Viktor, you called him? Is he still around?”

Surprisingly, when the reply comes, there’s a note of guardedness in Singed’s voice. “Viktor? Yes.”

“Is he yours?” He asks, the repetition of a question from many years before. This time, instead of a certain no, Singed takes a long moment to think.

“Not biologically,” he settles on, “but he has… lingered here.”

Interesting. As clear a declaration of affection that he’s given for anything outside of science, and also more clear tension to his frame than he’s seen before. The man has looked less uncomfortable elbow-deep in a bloody ribcage than he does, right now, at this line of questioning.

Perhaps he means to strike back, because he gestures at the girl clinging to Silco’s side—currently looking around the lab in a mixture of fascination and horror—and echoes the question. “Is she yours?”

She tenses at the question, hand tightening around his coat, craning her head to look up at him. He tries not to meet her eyes—since the previous night, his praise of her inventing skills, she has upped her clinginess by a factor of ten. If he were to say no, he knows she would break. Fracture. Too many people, in her life, have left—if not all by choice.

“Yes,” he says, and the lie comes as smoothly as all lies do, easily enough that a lesser man might think it was the truth. “Viktor is a tinkerer, is he not?” He asks, gesturing towards the corner table.

“He possesses some talent.” Singed pauses, before continuing. “I do not mean to insult, Silco, but I would prefer he stayed with me.”

Ah. So he thinks that this is a mission for conscription—which is not actually entirely untrue.

“I would not take him,” he says, trying to push all the reassurance he’s capable of into the words—he does not know what would happen if Singed believed himself backed into a corner, but he knows it wouldn’t be pretty—“but my… but here, I have an inventor as well. Young, but promising.”

The girl can’t suppress her smile at the promising. Singed’s eyebrow—or, perhaps it’s appropriate to say simply brow, given lack of hair—raises fractionally. “You want a tutor? Seek the academy.”

Just the mere statement is an insult, no doubt intentionally, but Silco controls himself. “As if they’d accept her, a Zaunite. Besides, is there not a reason you left?”

He doesn’t offer up a denial.

“I would pay,” he says, the final seal upon the deal—whatever secret projects that Singed is working on on his own, he needs money, as evidenced by their previous longstanding relationship—“quite generously. You’d have protection, too. Upheaval is coming to the undercity. I could ensure you’re unaffected by the changes.”

If it was just Singed alone, he doubts that the last bit would have much appeal—the man is slippery as a greased eel—but he’s banking upon his feelings towards the boy that’s his-not-his.

The gamble works. He knows it has, before the man even opens his mouth to acquiesce—by the loosening of his stance, the lowering of his brow.

He turns his head fractionally, says, “Viktor!” Turns back, quietly addresses Silco again, “it’s his choice.”

“Of course.”

In the back of the lab, a door hidden in the shadows swings open, and out steps a boy. Boy nearing man, really—seems Silco’s estimate of age was correct, as he’s now a tall, thin figure suspended in the limbo between child and adulthood. Still, he’s hollow-cheeked, features angular, though he doubts Singed starves him. Seems that thinness is simply inherent to him.

Otherwise, as he limps into the dim light, the broad strokes are the same. Still using a simple wooden cane, leg dramatically bent and braced with some sort of metal contraption. Even the expression upon his face calls back to the first time Silco saw him: wary, mouth drawn tight, curiosity hidden behind that veneer of caution.

“Did you hear?” Singed asks. He nods, approaching ever-closer, stopping only a few feet from the group.

“You-” he addresses Silco- “want me to teach her?” His voice is soft, faintly accented.

“Yes,” he confirms.

“What is your name?” He asks, and it takes a moment to realize that he’s addressing her. She shrinks back for a moment, looking up at Silco for reassurance, but he stays silent. Allow her to choose a name for herself, whether that be Powder or any other moniker.

“Jinx,” she says, after a long moment. It startles even Silco—strange name, and the way she spits it out suggests that it’s not one she even particularly likes. Still, he doesn’t contradict her. Viktor glances back at Singed, and then again, looks down.

“Jinx. Why do you do it?”

She’s silent for a long moment, puzzled. After a minute, he prompts her.

“Invent. Create. Why?”

He wonders what a child raised by his own would.

“It’s beautiful,” she decides, voice quavering with nerves, “it’s, like-” here, she falters, takes a moment to swallow before pushing on, “making life, and it can be anything you want it to be. And it can hurt, but also… beauty.”

It’s a child’s answer, all muddled and full of odd pauses, but Viktor draws back, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a smile, and Silco would wager it was the exact right answer.

“Yes,” he says, “the machine really is beautiful.”

With the hand not currently leaning upon the cane, he reaches out. A handshake. Not meant for Silco.

For the first time in days, Jinx willingly detaches from his side, taking a single step forward. Clasping his hand in hers, and now, independent and smiling and bright-eyed, she looks not only her age of eleven, but like a prophecy of something to come.

They shake.

Silco looks up, meeting Singed’s one-eyed gaze, and finds the other man is—if not smiling—satisfied as well.

This will be a good partnership.

#arcane #arcane fanfic #jinx #jinx arcane #viktor arcane #viktor #silco #silco arcane #singed #singed arcane #viktor and jinx are siblings ish

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dastardly-imbecile · 5 months ago

Text

Not the Dungeons Pt. 4

He has not been so content as the warden of this place to never look towards the sky, reach a hand out towards the lushness of the forest and try to snatch a leaf from the tree, a tuft of fur from a roaming wolf, hold it in his good hand and never let go. --- Interesting conversation. More interesting dreams.

---

Introspection, exploration, more introspection.

Wordcount: ~2700

Pt. 1, 2, 3

---

“We can leave,” the person upon the bed says, so delightfully naive that, for a moment, he wonders how they have survived so far. Of course, he saw—or, rather, felt—it all happening, but still, he must look down at himself and back up in disbelief. Down, at the thick wooden club sprouting from a shoulder, at the chest scarred from a thousand battles, at the beak always in this vision, crosseyed with the effort of capturing it.

And up. Up at them, still sprawled out, leg wrapped as well as his clumsy hands were able, flickering between a thousand forms at a time. He is unsure whether they are male, female, neither, both—it’s hard to tell both from the merit of a dirt-smudged face, bulky armor, nondescript hair, and from the twist of his eyes. Unused to evaluating anything besides how many hits it would take to kill someone. Still—that doesn’t matter, not much. Same sentiment either way. Same falsehood.

Slowly, he shakes his head, and they tilt their head, mouth—mouth, lips, not beak, so soft, so pliable—curving downwards. “You want to leave.”

Nod.

“We can leave.”

Shake of the head. A flicker of fear, deep in the eyes—he’s not sure why he registers this, and not gender. Perhaps he’s seen it so many times that picking it out has become second nature. “...We aren’t leaving?”

This one takes longer to consider. Eventually, he shakes his head again. It’s the we that’s the problem here. They can leave. He cannot. Tied to this dungeon, tied to the swollen guards, tied to the things that scream and things that crawl and things that do worse than that.

It seems that the explorer understands as well, because finally, they say it. “I can leave?”

One final nod. To imagine it is to blaspheme in some way over the ephemeral things that rule this dungeon, but he can’t help it sometimes. Sky a shade so blue that it scorches the eyes, air clear and sharp with dew and flowers, a palace too far away and a man within that.

…A man?

A knight. A… he stops in place, though he was not moving much in any case, and tries to think. A wall. He remembered this, he knows this, but already the memory is a tattered flock of crows soaring away, dropping a trail of feathers down upon the ground to follow. He picks one up, and then another, but by the time he reaches the third, the wind has already blown the trail all askew.

Someone important, in any case. He cannot spare much more thought for this—there are two things that he must know, right now. You are not the dungeons.

And, connected-

Keep the person safe.

If he loses one, he might lose the other. At the moment it is…. Unsure why this is quite so important, but if he doesn’t remember now, then he did at one point—and, hopefully, he will again. For now, hang onto two points, and solely that.

“Why not?” They ask, and then shake their head, forbidding his answer. “I apologize. Yes or no. Rudimer. Rudimer?”

Nod. The name hurts, burns, sparks some hidden, dried-out husk of kindling deep within his heart, but that is good. That is the same feeling he got when he studied this person, back before all this, when he knelt over their bed and counted the space between breaths. The burning, the purpose.

“I… heard of you,” they say, “vaguely. Before I entered, people talked—whispered, more like. About the dungeons’ danger. Said it had taken you and many others. Trortur, Isayah. More, unimportant.”

He knows them, if not by those names, then by a cobble-together of memory and personal experience. The man who inspires odd irritation in him, and who he took delight in beating down during their singular fight. The one with a mask and a hand disfigured—kindred?—who talks, in his sleep, of maps. And the rabble—the ones clothed in yellow, who follow the bodyless man, the dark-robed rats who crawl into corners with piles of books and glut themselves on blood.

He is still thinking, recalling, when they finish their sentence in a whisper. “...Le’Garde too, I suppose.”

Blonde man—at least at first. Favorite of the priestess. Victim of the irritating one. His companion’s… whatever he is.

Jerkily, he nods, unsure of what else to do. It’s true. The man is dead. Another life taken by the dungeons—another one in a line of deaths, one-by-one-by-one. Well- perhaps the others are not dead, including him, but he’s sure that this is worse somehow.

A moment of silence. He certainly cannot break it, not unless he wants to screech incomprehensive words to the heavens—or the hells—so it is upon the only one with a functioning tongue. “I can leave. You’re saying, yes. You… the dungeons? Are they keeping you? Rudimer?”

A part of them seems to delight in saying his name, and he cannot say that he minds completely. Perhaps it reminds them that he was human once, that he is not all hulking brute painted in scars and blood. Which is, of course, what he is, but humanity is comforting in ways that he cannot describe.

Response—what to respond? He deliberates for a long moment, turning the question about in his mind. It is not… well, he cannot say that it is not a physical bond, because it is, in a way. He has not been so content as the warden of this place to never look towards the sky, reach a hand out towards the lushness of the forest and try to snatch a leaf from the tree, a tuft of fur from a roaming wolf, hold it in his good hand and never let go.

Always, however, always, there is something that stills him, catches his foot before it crosses the threshold back out. Chirps and chittering behind his eyes, improbably throbbing in the wood of his arm, phantom pains from flesh that no longer exists.

The memory of… something. Someone? The man in the palace? He is dead now, he must be dead, or he must be something worse than that, but just as he thinks this, it occurs to him that he has never lingered on his presence beyond this moment.

For, always, he’s been simple vermin, been one of the many pests that come in and do not come out again. If he crosses paths with one of them, he will fight, as is his duty—duty from whom? From what?—but, usually, he puts little effort into seeking them out.

But it is not impossible to find. In his mind, floating somewhat suspended in a mire of half-eaten memories, is a vague awareness of the dungeon. Crude at the best of times—he is not able to pick out a stone from thousands, to track the lumbering patrol of a single guard—but it guides him when he wanders through the labyrinth, alerts him when trouble comes.

There are guards in the hallway outside. Above and below, for many floors. The deeper he goes, the larger they get, the darker their presence in his mind, until they’re indistinguishable from tarry feathers and subtly-shifting wings. There is nothing of note on the upper floors—a few of the quieter denizens such as the Pocketcat, casting his own sort of shadow, but outside of that, the only humans present are unremarkable and small. Even Le’Garde, infirm as he was, had a stronger presence.

So deeper. Blackness in his mind, and the chirping grows louder, and the beaks stronger, first cartilage and now bone, scraping scraping scraping.

So deeper. Even the crows shy away, now, and he has never attempted to extend his dominion so low—even in the days when he was not this god-touched creation, he’s sure he never ventured down here, never laid eyes on whatever rests in the depths—but he goes, keeps going, and still has not reached the edge. If he attempts to extend too high above, into the uncursed world, then he will scarcely get a touch of brightness before the crows start up a racket and begin smashing their heads upon the walls of his skull. But below, below, they are quiet—almost as if even they are afraid of drawing attention.

So deeper. He realizes somewhere, dully, that someone is calling Rudimer, but he’s unsure if it’s happening below or above. Maybe both. Maybe neither. There are monsters down here, scuttling in the darkness, away from his reach, but he does not know them as he knows his guards, even tremulously. Other things too, things near-indescribable, darker than the Pocketcat and brighter than Le’Garde both, and if he focuses upon them for too long, then he feels them begin to focus on him—so he does not do that.

So deeper. Finally, he feels something that is neither of those two. Small—not human, but not completely beast either. Familiar in a way that he barely remembers, in a way that floats just out of reach. It’s what he is looking for. He’s what he is looking for.

And then, he withdraws himself from those dark places whip-fast, and the idle movements of brutes and monsters in the lighted world is almost a relief compared to whatever roams down there.

As is the face before his, wide-eyed. In that first moment of return, confronted with the visage of a human, his mauler twitches and he half stands, but with a vicious wrench of his mind, he quells the motion completely.

You are not the dungeons.

He is not.

“Rudimer,” they say, and the thought resurfaces that perhaps it was them calling a name. His name. “Are you…”

He blinks. Is he?

Still, they have not flinched back, even with his initial early movement. Impressive, he’d say, except maybe it’s foolhardy instead.

“The dungeons,” they repeat. He remembers the question—still unsure how to answer it though. Eventually, he settles on a tilt of his head, neither a nod nor a shake, and they sit back.

“You do not know? Do… do this if you do not know.” They make a motion like the rolling of one’s shoulders, up-and-down, and he copies them, feeling the energy within those corded muscles, eager to bash. Not here. Not now. Soon? Perhaps. If he wishes to go down…

“The dungeons,” they say once again, “stopping you?”

He does the motion. Slowly, they nod, taking the information in.

“How?” They look down, searching for chains, maybe for evidence of some sort of pact. He almost laughs. If it was a voluntary contract that led to this, he would have learned how to break it long ago.

Not a question answerable by yes, no, or shoulders, but there’s another motion he can make.

He points-

Down.

To where all things go eventually. Always, he has been too wary of it to go fully, but he supposes that this prophecy must come true eventually as well.

Down he goes.

“That’s where…” they say, and then stop, shaking their head. “What’s down there?”

Roll of the shoulders again. Quite the useful motion. Struck by inspiration again, he raises his hand and points at his head, shakes it, rolls the shoulders, and points down again. I have impressions, but I do not know much.

To their credit, they seem to get it almost immediately. “So that is what keeps you here.”

Nod.

“We will set out tomorrow, then,” they decide, and he hesitates. Again, the most important of all those words is we—both of them? Slowly, he points at them, and then up. Out. Freedom. They asked him whether he wanted to leave, is that not an implicit indication of their own desires?

“No,” they say, “or not now, perhaps.”

He tilts his head. Inquisitive—it comes naturally. Perhaps it is the influence of the crows.

“I came down here for Le’Garde. He is…” they hesitate, shake their head, “he is no more. He wanted to find what lays below. Thus…”

He draws back, regards them, all of them—disheveled and dirty, armor the slightest bit ill-fitting. Fought through seven levels of creatures, survived here where few do, at least in the open.

They are not naive nor foolhardy, he realized, but insane. As all the living in here are. It should have been obvious, but he has not analyzed the mind of anybody in a long time, not unless ‘mind’ counts gray matter splattered against the wall.

Slowly, hesitantly, unsure whether it is the right thing to do-

He nods.

***

The last part of the day is uneventful, all things considered. Not after the mental foray into the darkness, not after the plans sketched out to travel below. Painstakingly as well—in the end, all that could really be confirmed between them was kill all monsters and keep each other alive.

Good enough. More than anything he’s had in years.

They sleep. He doesn’t. Not to keep guard—the monsters don’t breach this safe zone, not besides him, but because he doesn’t sleep.

And perhaps because he likes watching.

Force of habit. They fall asleep as they always do—slowly and with fluttering eyelids, a leisurely relaxation of their body, so out of place here. Soon, come the dreams, the faint twitching of limbs, the movement of their eyes behind the lids, flicking back and forth. He is used to it all, able to recite the steps in his own sleep, if he both slept and had a voice.

Tonight, though, something changes. They roll over completely, unusual—they are not an animated sleeper, not usually—and then, the movement behind the eyes grows quicker, grows frantic.

Moments later, the first sound. A cry, quiet, like a hurt creature, the noise that all things make when they die, monster or human or something else entirely. Momentarily, there is a brief flicker of excitement—is this the moment that it happens? The moment that the crows have found them? He watches, waiting for the beak, for the feathers and the transformation of limb to weapon, but it doesn’t come.

Only more sounds. Struggling sounds, hurt sounds. Thrashing—enough to throw the thin sheet thrown across their body off, onto the ground.

Eventually, the excitement fades, enough that he’s sure that tonight is not the night for them to become one like him. Perhaps, then, they will be able to talk, caw and croak in a language only the two of them understand, and the parts below will shake as both descend upon them, swinging and killing in tandem-

But, again, it is not the night.

Something else… he leans closer, looms, watches. There is another feeling in his chest beside that of excitement. Should he muffle them, in case this does attract some wandering creature? Not by force, surely, that feels counterintuitive, but…

He reaches out a hand. Draws it back. Extends both, and then brings the mauler down so quickly that he scratches himself. Not that. Only one good hand anymore—remember that.

One hand, carefully, so uncertain of the strength needed, upon their arm. That is all—he does not dare to squeeze, for fear that it will be the strength he uses to crush skulls.

The sensation is unfamiliar. Cold metal against colder skin. He cannot remember if he’s done this before—not touch metal, but touch a person with such calculated softness.

Perhaps he has. Not since the dungeons took him.

The thrashing stops, but the sounds continue—quieter though, at further intervals apart. He can’t help but feel it’s because of him. Is this pride? It’s the same bubbling feeling as when he communicated his words with nothing but pointing and jerks of his head, the same feeling he got when he bashed his mauler into Trortur’s head and sent the man stumbling away.

Must be. For however long it is, he’s content to sit there and watch, wait with a single hand upon their arm.

All the sounds thus far have been incomprehensible, simple noises of surprise—wordless exclamations.

Right before they awake, however—as he can feel the beginning of sunlight barely warming the dungeon stone in the highest level—there is a word. Or at least an amalgamation of letters that sounds more like a word than anything else. They jerk harder than they have since he put a hand upon their arm, and from their mouth comes an exclamation of, “Ma’habre!”

#fear and hunger #funger #f&h #crow mauler #crow mauler x reader #x reader #x gn reader #edward cullen who?#maybe noncanon in some way i gave up before i finished the game

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dastardly-imbecile · 8 months ago

Text

Not the Dungeon pt. 3

I've accepted i'm continuing this.

---

His gaze snaps to the person in front of him, still laid out upon the bed. For a moment, they are a thin white creature marveling over a stone cube, and then they are a dark priest trying to comprehend the speech of crows, and finally the flicker of a knight, eyes wide, forgotten words spilling frantically from his lips.

---

Flashback episode?

Wordcount: ~2500

---

Rudimer is standing in the grand hallway of a palace. Around him, marble columns do the work of giants, holding up a ceiling splashed in vivid murals, old saints and prophets conjoining and copulating in cracked glory.

“Rudimer!” Calls a voice from behind, jovial and perhaps touched by too much wine. Tonight is the night of his promotion, of a sort—no longer is he a mere knight, one cog in the wheel of thousands, but instead he is a Captain.

Of the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger no less, an ominous name if he’s ever heard it. He turns, already knowing who he will see—Seril, brother, who throws a heavy arm around his shoulders. “What are you doing away from the party? We’re all celebrating you.”

“I don’t know,” he admits, placing a hand upon his brother’s. “Is it not all an elaborate excuse to drink?”

“Yes,” he admits, but surges ahead, “and that applies to you as well.”

“I cannot afford it. I’m setting out tomorrow.”

More than that, his true goal was to make it to the library. Find out what this dungeon truly is—for the sixth sense inside him, honed from years or battle, says that it is not all of what it seems.

“We will miss both you and the stick up your arse,” Seril remarks fondly, and Rudimer musts a half-smile.

“Me as well.”

Tomorrow, he will leave, and after that, he will see what these dungeons truly contain.

***

Rudimer is sitting in the darkness of his office, watching the snow fall in gentle flurries outside. It is a stark contrast to the rust on his blackened walls—he tried his best to clean this room out when he arrived, but he swears that every morning they have redirtied themselves.

Briefly, he remembers chucking snowballs with Seril as young boys, or running through the wilds around the palace, all carpeted in plush white, and there is the urge to stand and take a moment in the snow—but that is quickly quashed.

Too many things to do, too many things he cannot afford to lose. If he catches a chill, then there is little medicine to help him fight his way through, if he ruins a bit of his armor, it will not be until spring that he can request a new shipment.

A flurry of papers on his desk. All unread, but for the letter sitting apart from the rest. Seril’s. Inquiring of his health, of the dungeon’s health, whether it has loosened him up a bit—he has half-written a dozen replies, but nothing he pens down feels right. Can he really say that when he sleeps, the space behind his eyelids feels darker than it used to? Tell him that when he ventures into the deeper cells, the prisoners press against their bars and tell him how his great-great-grandchildren will die?

That two days ago, a man crucified himself, spilled his intestines into the shape of something he does not know, but couldn’t bear to look at for too long. That priests file in with two black-robed children and come out with only one, and yet he never finds a body.

But he cannot sit agonizing over this forever, not when there is so much to do. So, once again, he grabs a quill and a blank sheet of parchment and scrawls something out.

All is well, Seril. Life is more difficult than anticipated, but I believe I can do something here. I miss you and the palace as well.

After a brief hesitation, he puts the quill down. It is short, but it has to do. He has not the time for anything else. Not with a dungeonful of strangeness to manage.

***

Rudimer is stalking through dark corridors with a sword in his hand, hunting. Lately, strange creatures have been coming up from the depths—little chittering things with many teeth and many eyes and many limbs. He doesn’t know where they come from, but he doesn’t care to find out either.

Days ago, a request came through to transfer the mercenary captain deeper. The blonde man who does not seem to have succumbed to the quick insanity that takes most prisoners—despite the violence that Trotur seems to revel in inflicting. He could barely walk when Rudimer ushered him out of his cell, passed him to two other guards to take deep, deep down.

Mostly because he was too scared to go himself.

For good reason too, he’s sure, because only one of those guards returned. When he asked about the fate of the other one, all he received was a vague shrug, one scarred arm pointing towards the ground below.

Everything goes that way eventually. There is a strange gravity inside these dungeons that pulls all things intangibly downwards instead of physically, whether that be sanity, health, or strength of mind.

He has done his best to stay strong, but in his lowest moments—when he finally allows himself to succumb to sleep—he has been hearing the soft sounds of clicking, of pattering, of movement in the dark. Small creatures, many of them, beady little eyes blinking-blinking-blinking.

If he looks at the walls for too long, then he can almost see them again.

He thinks they are birds, maybe.

***

He is walking into the center of a town he cannot imagine existing, surrounded by creatures small as children and thin as winter, watching him with wide saucer eyes. In his hands, watched ardently and eagerly, is a small gray cube, disproportionately heavy for how small it is.

The guards are dying of starvation and suicide alike, but even then, there has not been enough supplies. He has stopped rationing food for the prisoners—but they simply grow thinner and thinner instead of dying.

This deep, he can almost hear the cawing of crows, the flutter of a thousand wings echoing behind every step. It makes him jumpy, but he stills the hand upon his sword—he’s well aware that the only reason he is allowed down here at all is the cube in his hands, and he was lucky enough to have been able to strike a bargain furthermore.

Two sacks of unidentifiable rations. Told to him in broken speech, barely understandable, to be food, weapons, clothes. The food, these creatures grow themselves, but the rest is what they’ve taken from the dead that decorate their village.

Does not matter. He hands the cube to the largest, strongest monster, taking the supplies swiftly in the same breath. It takes his left hand a moment to close—recently, it has been growing numb, stiff and hard to control.

For a split second, he is on high alert, gauging whether they will turn on him after all, but none even spare him a glance anymore. All are surrounding their leader, clamoring eagerly for the cube, thin fingers reaching like a child’s for fruit upon a tree too tall.

Quickly, he leaves, not willing to overstay his welcome. The guards he passes are near-catatonic, staring blankly into empty space. Most have grown larger in this time, despite lack of food, for it’s not the organic blossoming of muscle or fat—but instead the swelling of their limbs, strange tumorous growths sprouting from hard flesh.

The prisoners are worse, purely because they are all too aware, and he must dodge the thin hands that snake through their bars and attempt to gouge out his eyes, try to rip the armor off his body. They speak in tongues as well, and though he can’t understand a single thing, he somehow knows that they refer to Gods and rituals and deities floating in the primordial mire beyond reality.

As he is depositing the scant supplies earned from this foray, he catches sight of a window. Strange. Somehow, despite the presumed abundance of windows, he cannot remember the last time he saw morning light.

For a split second, he considers going outside. Taking a walk—distancing himself from the dungeons, at least for a while.

The notion vanishes just as quickly. Too much left in here to leave. If he walks out, he will never return—he will keep going until his legs give out, or the wolves get him, or somehow, miraculously, he makes it back to some semblance of civilization.

He cannot go. Not until he has finished whatever job he was sent here, originally, to do.

He cannot remember exactly what it is.

He will remember.

But he cannot.

He cannot.

***

He is crouched upon his cot, knees pressed up to his chest, trying to silence the flurry inside his head. There are whispers, and there is birdsong, and there are strong beaks scraping the last of his brain from the crevices of his skull.

When he closes his eyes, it does not help. When he drives his fingers into his skin, bites his tongue so hard that it feels like it might bleed, it does not help. He cannot remember what he has been doing. He cannot remember the last time he ate, drank, stood.

Upon his desk, the glint of an inkwell catches his attention. There is something important there—and then, as he forces himself to rise, he finally sees the paper set neatly to the side. Seril’s. That of weeks ago, perhaps months—they wrote regularly in the beginning, he’s sure, but the spaces between have grown larger and larger.

With dirty hands—when was the last time he washed them?—he grabs the paper, scans it fervently. Nothing important. Seril has found a nice woman, she is with child, all is well, all is fine, he is not stuck here in this cursed dungeon, he cannot fathom a single iota of his experience.

There is a scrap of dirtied paper upon the ground, but it is the only one he can find, so it will have to do. When he grabs at the quill, his hand—so rough, so uncoordinated, it is as if he cannot move his fingers individually anymore, but the entire arm is instead an odd, stiff mass—knocks the inkwell off the desk. Now, limited to one dip of ink, but there are only a few words he needs to say.

seril i require help these dungeons are full of crows plea

The quill runs out of ink before he finishes, but it is all the words he needed to say.

Except, there’s something missing. It takes a long moment of staring at the paper to realize.

It is missing a signature.

Well. He has no ink left to write it, and besides, when he imagines penning it down, he realizes that he does not exactly remember what it looks like. What name he would use.

He finds her lower in the dungeons, drawing out a sigil in what’s probably blood. A dark priest, skin and hair both sickly white, clad in the robes that are customary for her kind. He does not know when she entered, but somehow, he knew where to find her—the only person who could deliver his message. The only person in this entire dungeon who is any modicum of sane.

Besides him, of course.

She looks up at him when he approaches, lip curling in confusion.

“...Captain?” she guesses, putting a hand into her pocket and grasping some hidden weapon inside. He smiles, to try and placate her, but it doesn’t seem to work, so instead he launches into instructions.

She cocks her head, brow lowering. Does she not understand? They are simple words, or at least he thinks they are, but when he attempts to concentrate on what he is saying, all he hears are the guttural rumbles and screeches of something that cannot conceive human speech.

Sharply, he shuts his mouth, and simply shoves the paper into her hand, points towards an approximation of the entrance.

Finally, she gets it. Looks down. “...Seril?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but settles on nodding a moment later. The memory of how to mold his tongue around comprehension seems to have somewhat, somehow, escaped him.

“Deliver this?”

Another nod.

“I know of him,” she says shortly, and then returns to drawing out her ritual, which he takes as a confirmation of the task.

Seril will come, he’s sure of it. He will come, and he will stand inside the dungeon and find patterns in the blood and hear the chirping of crows and neither of them will be alone anymore.

***

He is standing behind a thick stone wall, listening to the footsteps on the other side. How he found himself here is not entirely clear in his mind, nor is the wooden apparatus where a left arm should be, nor is the strange heft of his head.

“...happened,” comes a thread of muffled conversation, “I cannot imagine. Do you think he is dead?”

“He cannot be dead.” This voice is sharp, impassioned. Familiar?

Is it familiar?

“Of course,” comes the other, now softer, placating.

The crows chatter and caw and talk amongst themselves. It is a long moment before they come to a conclusion.

Forward. Bludgeon. Intruders.

Intruders. He raises an arm and slams it against the wall, even as he remembers a single name.

Seril.

It must have been his own, back when names still mattered. Nothing that has use to think of now.

He wonders, briefly, why it is only now that it’s come back to him, and it doesn’t feel exactly right as his former moniker, but then it slips away in the lieu of blood.

***

He is all that, and he is none of that, and he is a man-no-longer that tries to catch memories in his hands like water.

“Rudimer?”

Slowly, hesitantly, he nods.

“What happened?” they breathe, looking at him in what he cannot tell is marvel or pity. For a moment, all that he has newly remembered attempts to push its way out of his heavy beak, but it will not be in any understandable configuration. “Do you… have you been here, all this time?”

Nod.

“Can you leave?”

Now, he hesitates. No, logic dictates, but he has never actually tried. Still, though, he does not think he’s the sort of creature that could survive in the world, not without the dungeon’s lifeblood coursing through his veins.

At his nonanswer, there is another question.

“...Do you want to?”

His beak is dipping down, and at first it is because of the weight of gravity, but then he is lifting up, dropping again.

Nod, one more time.

#fear and hunger #funger #f&h #crow mauler #crow mauler x reader #x reader #x gn reader #back in my funger era #no longer ironic i think

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dastardly-imbecile · 1 year ago

Text

Not the Dungeon pt. 2

Didn't think I'd be making a sequel, but here we are. Part 1

---

For a moment, the tableau is all too familiar—here he is again, looming over their still body, and wondering what he is going to do with the opportunity. Nothing that he once would’ve done with a human, no imaginings of bloodied mauler and snapping beak.

---

What does this human know about him? What does he know?

Word Count: 1525

---

Safe places here are few and far between. Still, he hurries, checking only periodically that the human follows. They limp, and with each stride of his, lag further behind. It pains him to stop—screams against every instinct that’s been ground into him—but he does, nevertheless.

Finally, he has a destination in mind. There is a small room in the third-floor basement, in which a bed and cooking fire sits. Creatures patrol the area, but the creature he guides has killed most already. Impressive, again, he has to admit. It would be easy enough to do, but then again, the dungeon has granted him far more capabilities.

They’ve caught up now. When they look at him, their gaze is still tinged with wariness. He’s the least of anything that wanders these depths, but he supposes that they do not know that. The fact remains that the deep guard’s viscera still coats his mauler and is dried upon the rough skin of his chest. Maybe that’s enough to remind them that he is their savior. Or make them remember that he could do the same to their own soft body.

He wouldn’t, but still.

Perhaps he should offer them some help. It’s not a weapon of the elite guard’s that has hurt them—they wouldn’t have a leg at all, had that been so—but something makes them limp nevertheless. A lesser injury from a lesser creature, but infection can be just as deadly as iron teeth and metal bludgeons.

Hopefully that is not the case. Wounds can be bandaged—though it’s been a long time since he’s done that as well—but the herbs and potions needed for infection are sadly lacking. He cannot remember the last time he got injured. Must’ve been before. In those times that muddle his memories.

“Where are we going?” The human asks. They’ve drawn in close to themself, hand hovering above the sword strapped to their waist, the other clutched to their chestplate. “Who are you?”

He opens his mouth. Feels the weight of a beak, the lack of lips and teeth and tongue. Closes it again and tries to nod towards the upper floors.

“Can you talk?”

Shake of his head.

“But you can understand.”

Nod. It’s almost a relief to hear speech, to be able to understand it. Nothing but the company of his own thoughts, he’d started wondering if he was thinking in any sort of legible language at all. Or more a scramble or letters and images, more meaning than script.

The hand has moved away from the sword. Maybe the knowledge that he’s not simply some base, savage beast has soothed the human. Sentience cannot be trusted either—can be trusted even less—but he’s in no mind to teach them that lesson.

Up, again, nodding his beak towards the ceiling. Strange to think that he’d almost managed to forget its existence. Impossible, now that he has to direct its unwieldy weight.

“My leg,” the human says plainly. “Do you have anything to heal?”

Stupid question. Unless he’s managed to shove it up into his tunic, there are no places where he could’ve hidden such a thing. He shakes his head anyway.

“That’s… a shame.”

Something in the distance rumbles, and a corresponding twinge in his mind sounds. Not urgent yet, but this long standing still, other things have begun to sense their presence. Have sensed it long ago, and are only now trying to nudge their way into his proximity. He’s unsure of how much the creatures here are aware of his nature—do they know that he senses them? Are they aware of his sentience? But none have ever tried to attack him before.

So he supposes that they know he’s one of them. Which makes this situation problematic. No other action, he scoops the human up, and begins to move. They’re disciplined enough not to scream, but he feels the heave of their chest as they yelp in surprise and wince in pain. It’s impossible to adjust their position with only one hand, at least not with a few unwanted piercings, so they remain clutched halfway to his chest.

Skin on skin. So long since that skin has been alive and not the stiffness of corpses, since it’s breathed. Since he’s held it for any other reason than the stealing of a soul.

There’s a staircase that descends from the third floor and onto the one they rush through now. He finds it in quick order, though he’s never used it before. Again, he knows. Everything, everywhere, where the dungeons end and something deeper begins. They’re edging perilously close to it, but not enough to worry.

He was scared of it once, in those muddled places.

Still is, maybe.

***

And then, they are in the safe room. That twitching in his mind has retreated. Whatever it was knows they’re gone. Or maybe knows that he’s there—maybe it’s not so much that they recognize him as one of them, but that they know him as something so other that he’s insurmountable. An authority.

The idea feels familiar as well.

He lowers the human onto the bed as carefully as he is able. They’ve been both limp and quiet. Admirable qualities in an escape, but he knows that they’ve capable of so much more. Has watched them fell monsters with the grace of an acrobat, rummage elbow-deep in their corpses for whatever use they can scrape out. Also admirable in its own way.

“I remember this place,” they say, pushing themself up. “I slept here.”

He knows. Watched them, wondered what they were dreaming of. He cannot articulate that, nor does he particularly want to, so he simply nods.

“Looted it already, though.” They allow themself to fall all the way back onto the bed, a surprisingly vulnerable move—but then again, they are already prone and weak, so vulnerability is relative as far as that goes. “He’s dead…”

By he, they must surely mean the warrior dead in his cell below. No particular remorse bubbles up from his gut, so he wonders why the human seems so distraught. Was he a friend? Family? Commander? Lover?

The last one does make something surge in his chest, but he’s not sure what exactly it is. No further elaboration from the human themself, and after a moment, he realizes it is because they have fallen asleep.

Not dead, he’s sure. He can hear their breaths.

Instead, he simply… watches.

And then, he remembers their leg, and turns to regard it. The image of latches and buckles swims before his eyes, but the minute he lays a hand upon the warm metal, some sort of inherent memory floods back. Taking it off is easier than could be expected.

He used to do this often. Not since he shed the need for armor, but he feels that little of anything from that past life has crossed over.

The leg is not as bad as he could’ve feared. Simple a large gash cutting through the skin and revealing the flesh and bone within. None of the angry, inflamed signs of infection, nor creamy pus. Really, the ideal wound, and he is just reaching a hand out to it—to do what, he’s not sure—when the human awakes with a gasp and immediately rolls away.

The sword is half-way out and by the time that they’ve facing him and doesn’t go back into the scabbard. “What..?”

He points at the leg. The wound.

Suspicion in their eyes. Without the aid of speech, convincing them of anything different is going to be difficult. He tries to mime the wrapping of bandages, then realizes that he has nothing of the sort.

So what would he admit if he did have the liberty of vocalization? That he’d peeled off that leg guard without any further plans than looking at their bare flesh and seeing if that inspired any bloodlust, any indication of why this human was different from all others?

“My wound,” they say flatly, “you were trying to help?”

He nods.

Unexpectedly, they laugh, and slide the sword back down. “Sure. If you wanted to kill me, I’d be dead, right?”

He hesitates, unsure whether that’s a question that a nod would really help. The stillness is answer enough for them, and they relax again, clambering back into their prone position. “Well then. Do what you will. You’re not like the guards, are you?”

Shake of his head. He looks around for suitable fabric—his own garments certainly won’t do, filthy as they are—and spots an abandoned pack against the far wall. Straightening to his full height, he turns to retrieve it-

“You’re the one that went missing. That the knights tried to retrieve. Captain Rudimer?”

He freezes. That name- it strikes some chord deep within, and the blurry patches in his memory begin to clear, and the weight of his beak is suddenly heavier than ever.

#fear and hunger #funger #f&h #crow mauler #crow mauler x reader #x reader #x gn reader #crow babyyyy #this started ironically but idk anymore

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dastardly-imbecile · 1 year ago

Note

Your Crow Mauler piece watered my crops, cleared my skin, cured my depression and- …Thank you.

Thank you!! He does tend to have that effect on people. I'm glad you enjoyed my little ramblings!

#ask #i love that creature

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dastardly-imbecile · 1 year ago

Text

Not the Dungeon

He’s gotten braver. Creeps up to their bed in the night, looming above. So fragile. Would be easy enough to crush any bone in that body, to peel back that skin and see the deformities within. Perhaps the dungeons have decided to go inside-out, and one day, feathers will burst through their skin and they will choke on the beak that pierces through their throat.

---

Feelings? What are these? Not things that a crow should have, but-

---

All is dark down here in this cursed place. It’s been so long since he saw any light but the dim glow of torches, since he smelled anything other than rot and mold. He can hardly remember what it was like up there—up where the sun shone and cool wind tangled through the trees.

You are not the dungeons.

There’s an old mantra. Not exactly sure what it means anymore, but it still cycles through his mind, back-forth, bouncing off the walls of his skull. They don’t define him, though they do surround, though he knows their walls better than he knows his flesh.

Far better, in fact. Given that one of his arms is not even his flesh and that his head is not human anymore. The crows have taken him and lifted his soul into something that he never really wanted in the first place. Somewhere that intertwines his being intrinsically with every stone of the dungeon.

That’s what lets him sense the intrusion.

You are not the dungeon.

Something other than guards. Other than soldiers, even. Knights, pesky knights. He felt them ages back but did not chase. Something stopped him—maybe a buried instinct from those days that he can not quite remember. They must be deep by now, deep or dead, both of those places that he doesn’t dare to go yet.

This person, however. Something about their aura does not scream knight nor warrior. Desperate, maybe, or seeker.

The guards will get them soon enough. If not them, then any number of others that dwell in the depths. Hunchbacked humanoids that crawl through the lower caves, gargantuan wolves with eyes like dominoes, shriveled bodies risen again from the throes of death. He knows all of them intimately. If not willingly.

The labyrinth of corridors used to puzzle him. When he stares at the walls, panic still rises up his throat, even though he could navigate the place blind. It says that there was a time before. When he had a name. Maybe even a purpose. When the prospect of being wandering through the halls was an unimaginable horror instead of a daily occurrence.

He starved here, once. Dreamed here. Felt blankets of crows settling over his head and tearing his skin to shreds.

Still, he pushes the panic down and navigates as he knows that he is able. Light spills in from the entrance to the dungeon—enticing, yet. There’s fear in that brightness, and duty as well. Despite the temptation, he cannot leave just yet. There is still business to attend to.

Past the cells, until he is barely outside of the light’s reach. The ones this close to the entrance lay empty—sometimes the wolves are brave enough to venture in and snatch someone from the broken cages. The only ones left are lost deep within, in cells whose keys have been lost, forgotten, or purposefully tossed away.

Despite their obscurity, despite the time, he still knows every prisoner here—such as the knightly man; the pitiable form; with ragged blonde hair and a home in the deeper places. There is a warrior, a scion of his race, and if he could not thrive here then this new seeker most certainly will not.

Perhaps they are one of the vermin. Parasites. Ones who were not trapped by the darkness, but chose to enter on their own.

It’s another human. Nondescript, carrying nothing but a pack. So easy to dispose of as well. In the back of his mind, he can hear the flapping of crows—hear the sounds of clicking beaks and small, pattering feet. They want it, he wants it, wants the blood that rushes beneath.

You are not the dungeons.

The guards will get the human. Or perhaps the ghouls, or maybe another prisoner altogether. It doesn’t matter—he is not the keeper of Hell.

Or at least, not anymore.

***

The guards do not prevail. He feels where they fall. What a strange little creature that manages to kill monsters such as these—what motivates them so? It cannot just be their search. Not bloodlust either, nor even knowledge. All he can sense is the desire to find.

At times they sleep, as all humans do, and sometimes he watches as they rest.

Wonders if they dream like him. Wonders how the dungeons will take their flesh; and if it will mold it into something greater.

Deeper they go. More vermin enter, but he hardly pays any mind to them. The other creatures defeat these with ease, or else insanity and starvation whisks them away, or else they skuttle into far corners that he has no mind to stalk.

Not right now, in any case.

As their journey progresses, they pass the other beings. Ones that aren’t as mindless and base as the others. He’s wary when they approach the Pocketcat, but he takes no special interest in them. They’re wise enough to run from the yellow mages and wary enough to avoid their disembodied master. All other beings in the dungeon that possess at least a sliver of sentience are far enough that their paths do not cross.

It… relieves him. Perhaps he did think that they would meet an early death in the beginning, but now… but now. Not a topic fit for delving further, even as he follows.

***

One day, they find an enemy that they can not best. He feels it in his bones, as he feels everything—but this is a stranger sensation. Not grief, but almost worry.

It’s on the seventh level. Vaguely, he remembers its significance. That’s where the special prisoner resides—the one whom the priestess had bade to transfer below. He does not wander down in those parts often. The dungeon goes deep enough even to inspire uneasiness in him sometimes.

The deeper guards are more dangerous. Something in the shadows twists them monstrously, contorts their flesh as it’s contorted him, turns skin to leather, warps bone into amalgamations.

A flicker of wings and then he is landing softly upon the seventh floor. Up, around the corner—there are noises, the sound of heavy panting and scrape of metal.

This, something tells him, this is not his nature. He is a being of the dungeons and the human is not—what is he doing? He should finish them off. A moment passes, tight with sensation—calloused hand drawing into a fist, the click of his beak as he considers.

You are not the dungeons.

That old, old mantra.

He steps around the corner.

The guard has its back to him. Its pebbly expanse of flesh is scarred and lumpy, bulging with barely-sheathed muscle. Still attacking—about to lunge. He can telegraph its movement in the twitches of its shoulders and twist of its hips. Real combat has not been a problem for him in years, not with the tools that the dungeon bestowed on him, but there once existed a time in which he needed to strategize.

Perhaps that’s what the human is lacking. Maybe this is what they need.

In one fell swoop, he swings his mauler against the creature’s head, and it falls monstrous to the floor. Gore spatters against the wall and viscera coats the metal of his bat. There’s some on him, but no matter.

Strangely, the human does not run. They look just as he remembers, though he’s only seen their face when in peaceful sleep. Albeit right now, it’s a bit filthier and stained with blood.

They are here for the man in the cell. He knows that much. Along with that knowledge comes that the man is dead. Quite recently—perhaps he could’ve been saved if not for the guard.

The human looks towards the cell, then back at him. Scared, it’s clear enough, and if he were not what he was, he would be too. He knows intimately what rests within every corner of this place, but the fear of the unknown must be even stronger.

He could lead them to safety. If they followed. If they were wise enough to leave the man to his death.

One step backwards. He beckons with his free hand and kicks the limp body of the guard to the side. A long moment passes in which he is sure that they will turn to run into the cage or even back down the hallway-

But, instead, with a wince of pain, they follow.

#fear and hunger #funger #f&h #crow mauler #crow mauler x reader #x reader #x gn reader #crow babyyyy

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dastardly-imbecile · 2 years ago

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And He Came Down Upon Wings of Snow

Part four of 'written for a friend'. 1, 2, 3.

You’re sure that something is watching you. More than sure, actually—it’s not anything so small as a hunch or a feeling. No, it’s a bone-deep fear. This is what the antelope feels when it sees the flickering cheetah in the grass, this is that swooping feeling in your stomach when you trip while holding something valuable. Impending doom coming from above like some hawk on wide wings against a small, shivering rabbit.

And the worst part is: you know that you cannot do a single thing about it. --- In which there is a you, a presence, and an angel.

---

Wordcount: 1823

This has literally nothing to do with the outer Mandela Catalogue universe—only Gabriel.

TW: Vague allusion to suicide? It's one line near the end, and not stated outright.

And the worst part is: you know that you cannot do a single thing about it.

Running won’t help. You’re sitting on the edge of your bed at the moment, and the silence makes the presence ever stronger, but it follows. Followed you on the road, to your friends’ house, to work. You’ve tried to lose it, dove into crowds of people, taken winding roads at breakneck speed. Nothing helps. It’s almost like this creature is perched upon your shoulder, hands clenched on your head, and wherever you go, it’s attached as a parasite. Some twisted version of a guardian angel—always following, never benevolent.

You’ve tried fighting it—swiping the air around your body with knives, searching for invisible foes with their gleaming tips. Used your hands when those didn’t work—perhaps bare flesh would reveal something that cold metal could not.

Nothing.

And, eventually, you tried to speak to it. Threats, pleads, sugary-sweet flattering. This, maybe, has had the most tangible effect. Tangible in that once, after you broke into tears, you felt the cold brush of wind. Not something remarkable but for the fact that you were standing in your windowless bathroom.

Caressing across your cheek, lingering under your chin. Soft.

It did nothing but bring a fresh wave of tears.

***

Lately, it’s been appearing in the corners of your vision. Flickering away as you turn your head, there once and gone again.

It’s been so long that the violation is almost commonplace now. Still the feeling of being stalked, the feeling that something could grab you—grab you, skin you, break your bones into shards—but it’s nearly an empty threat. You’ve taken to narrating your actions aloud to it, treating it like some vaguely-annoying imaginary friend. Now, I’m going to go cook dinner. I don’t suppose you want a serving. Or, Sometimes, I wish you’d just do it. I’m bound to die of high blood pressure at this point.

But this? This is new.

Something white. So white that it may even be glowing, but the glimpses are too spare to tell. There’s the vague impression of something that flows, that swings in the air—fabric. Robes or scarves of dresses, the actual nature of it is a mystery. Every time it flashes, your head still jolts instinctively.

The habit of talking has once again nestled back into a cranny of your mind. Until you can ascertain that this isn’t a sign of immediate death, you’re too wary to be so blasé about it again. The fact that an incorporeal force, harmlessly frightening at most, has graduated to being physical scares you.

And maybe it likes that.

***

More flashes. Slower, too. They’re definitely some sort of dress or robes, you’re sure, stark white. Not glowing—or at least not glowing any more than a freshly fallen sheet of snow does. Any luminescence that it holds can be attributed to the sheen of sunlight being reflected back again.

There’s a larger presence behind those robes too. These are blinding, and if the robes are the snow, then this is the sun. You can make out the vague shape of something large and looming, angular shapes and folds upon folds, layered into stacks of dozens.

It’s come to become a pattern, written out into three events. Every time you feel like you’re safe, like the advancements have finally stopped, it starts again. And the starting kicks out a new tsunami of fear.

You hope that now you’ve come to anticipate it, it won’t be able to sneak up on you again.

It’s a cruel, false hope.

***

Maybe you’re insane. Are you insane? You scheduled a doctor’s appointment two days ago and told them that you were seeing things, feeling things. Desperately, you wished for it to be some rendering of schizophrenia, some odd amalgamation of hormones and chemicals and the folds of your brain.

The doctor was an old, kind man. He smiled at you when you entered and tried to make jokes, make you comfortable. He could probably feel the tautness in your arms, hear the soft heaves of your breath.

You didn’t hear too many of those jokes. No, your eyes were locked on the cut of his long, white coat. Stiff and starched, the hospital’s logo emblazoned over his chest—but it hung low and glowed pale in the fluorescent lights and it brought your heart to a pounding rhythm.

In the end, he patted you on the back and told you to get more sleep, drink more water. Was there anything stressful happening at work; in your home life? You were a healthy young thing, nothing wrong internally, so perhaps try to deal with your external problems first.

External problems. If only.

Not an hour later, you were stepping into the small shop. Curtains hung heavy over the windows, casting the room into darkness. Beads clattered against each other as you pushed the door open, feet sinking into plush carpets.

From the hospital to the psychic. The wonders of the modern world.

The woman who greeted you wasn’t dressed in white, but around her neck hung a cross necklace. An odd choice for someone that churches might denounce—but you were in no place to judge.

You weren’t judging, either. Just staring. The cross—so small, so delicate. Something about it sent shivers of familiarity running through you—you knew crosses, knew crosses more than you’d ever known anything before.

The unfortunate side effect of this was that she believed you were quite ardently drawn in by her cleavage—perhaps why she treated you so coldly throughout the meeting. No crystal balls or tea leaves. No, she simply told you to close your eyes and let your mind float away while she ran gentle fingers over your head, shoulders, back.

You’re stressed, she’d told you, and you had to bite back a no shit Sherlock. The doctor had told you just about as much and you weren’t at this backalley shop for anything that doctors could do.

Something large hangs around you. The weight of something from your past. You need to bare yourself to it. Stop running.

You’re unsure if she actually did anything beyond spout off fortune-cookie lyrics, but perhaps there’s some sort of merit in it.

***

Nighttime. Your dreams from the past few nights have been painted in eyes and smiles—bad smiles, stretched smiles. A mashup of the Cheshire Cat and Jack the Ripper, with a dash of Cthulhu mixed in. Enough to make you descend into smushing pop culture references together.

Most everything else from the dreams escapes you, but you wake in tangled sheets nevertheless. Perhaps it’s best that you don’t know. You turn the thermostat up, but the house is cold. When you lay on the bed and contemplate your latest nightmare, heart still beating jackrabbit quick, it brings gooseflesh rising onto your skin.

Meditation. The best approximation of what the medium told you, but nothing. Truth be told, you’re often too distracted. When your eyes close, impossible colors swirl behind them, and you can almost feel cold breath on your neck.

Tonight, though. On your bed for the lack of a better place to sit. It’s the culmination of a week of sleepless nights, a month of vague hallucinations, six of that everpresent fear. It’s do this or find some other way to end it, and the other way might be a fair bit more brutal.

Deep breaths.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

The temperature is dropping. Down, down, down.

***

How much time has it been?

How long, sitting like this?

Something is watching.

Waiting.

Eyes. Mouth. Teeth.

Robes. Wings. Hair.

Skin. Blood. Bone.

And then, it all comes together.

***

It coalesces from the darkness and from the spare images in your mind—as if it pulls straight from those recollections of robes, those dreams of teeth, drawing them out like a tailor draws thread through cloth.

A man. Tall. Long strands of blonde hair hanging curled around his face. And that face—angular, sharp feathers, cheeks sunken, eyes dark. Wings stretch behind him and they do not care for the bounds of your house. No longer do they glow, for they are dark as shadows.

Not a man.

An angel.

His lips are curled into some sort of smile. Mouth not open. Good. You aren’t quite ready to see his teeth.

“So you come,” he tells you, “you call.”

A quiet voice. Slightly raspy. Not the high soprano of an angelic chorus, but then, he isn’t too angelic himself.

“Why?” Is all you can ask.

“Little lamb,” he tells you, voice deepening. A pale hand reaches from the depths of his robe. His fingers settle under your chin, thumb brushing gently against your cheekbone, and he tilts your head up to look at him. “So scared. I can hear your heart. Feel your blood.”

“Am I?” You breathe.

He nods once. Still smiling. “Be not afraid, for your shepherd has arisen, and he shall guide you to the promised land.”

Everything is darkening. Where is your house? Where is your bed? Memories of the life past flicker through your mind. Your work- oh, you realize, you haven’t been going in lately. Haven’t even left the house since that visit to the psychic’s.

What would she say now? What would that doctor? Your thoughts drift.

They’re brought back by a sharp jerk of your head. He’s leaning closer now, no longer smiling, brows creased.

“Do not stray from your path. I will have none of your puny, mortal past.”

“I’m… sorry,” you manage. “I won’t… I-”

“Do not worry.”

All at once, he is beatific again. His wings have taken on a soft glow, flickering faintly like candlelight. His eyes are black, but the shapes of his face are so beautiful that you cannot care.

He moves the arm that doesn’t hold you still, drawing it out to his side. An invitation to embrace.

“Come, little lamb. Eden awaits.”

You rise stiffly. It’s so, very cold, and he is warm and he is light and if the corners of his smile stretch a bit too wide, then you can avert your eyes. He seems to like the action—the sign of deference.

In a swift movement, you’re bundled into his embrace. He is glowing, but his skin is no warmer than the surroundings. His head tilts to look down at you. White teeth glint down at you—teeth so bright, so long, pearls in the snow.

Eden. Paradise.

Arm still around you, wings curled up behind your backs, he leads you into the dark.

#mandela catalogue #sus gabriel #sus gabriel x reader #alt gabriel x reader #x reader #gn reader #x gn reader #alternate gabriel

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dastardly-imbecile · 2 years ago

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Almost Human

Part 3 of the 'fandoms i know nothing about but wrote for a friend'. 1, 2

“Detective?”

That voice. He’d know it anywhere, of course, soft and slow and infuriating. Why was he here? Why did he have to be bothering Gavin now, of all possible times?

He looks up. His neck protests at the sudden movement—it’s settled well enough into the hunched, cramped position.

Bet the android doesn’t have to deal with this.

Unnatural freaks.

“Detective,” it says again, and he realizes that he still hasn’t responded. Gods only know why it’s bothering him—where’s Hank? Shouldn’t he be keeping this thing on a tight leash?

He almost snorts. Old man’s always been far too soft. It’ll no doubt bite him in the back someday.

Or shoot him, as things seem to go more often in this line of work.

Not his concern at the moment.

“Android,” he finally says back. It’s always aggravated him how the android is taller than him. It feels like some sort of silent inferiority; another example of how they’re trying to make the robots faster, bigger, better. He used to think that there was no chance of that happening.

At the progress they’re going, perhaps the real future is creeping up on him alarmingly fast.

“Do you require assistance?”

And the thing just stands there, straight-backed and suited. Acting like it’s a real human- like it’s clawed its way into this station like he has. How much has he given for his career? Any semblance of having a social life, for one. He’s bit back all the words that bubble up when the idiots above him make their horrible decisions. All those sacrifices, and yet the robot just waltzes in like it owns the place.

Like it’s better than him.

He lurches to his feet. More bones, more joints, protesting at the sudden movement. Whatever. Shorter though he may be, he doesn’t want to sit there looking up at the android, seeing his broad frame looming up above him.

At this height, he’s an image of brown eyes, dark hair. Shaved clean, smiling politely. His face isn’t any better than his chest but at least Gavin’s not looking up anymore.

“Shouldn’t you be on duty, android?” The words come out slanted with annoyance, which is truly the least of his emotions at the moment. “Not wandering the place like a mutt.”

“Hank let me out,” he says. “You looked like you needed help.”

Gavin opens his mouth, prepared to spit some sort of rebuke—what is this thing implying? That he’s some sort of helpless thing? That any problems he has can be solved by him?

He closes it again. No use, really, spending his hard-earned free time on arguing with this thing. “Go… ah, I dunno. Get me a coffee.”

At least this will get rid of him.

….Except it doesn’t. The thing, the android, simply stands there. Looking over Gavin with its gaze. He’d dearly love to say that his eyes are dead and blank, glazed dark like fish-eyes, but no, they’ve somehow managed to program some sort of life and expression behind them. Like there’s more than a sea of blue goop and biomechs behind that synthetic skin.

It weirds him out.

“Well?”

“Are you alright?” The android tilts his head. “Your posture-”

“Is that what I told you to do, huh?”

It’s an almost disproportionate anger that he feels. First it asks him for help, and then it tries to… what? Psychoanalyze him?

“I am not obligated to follow your orders.” The android nods once. Throat bobbing up and down. It’s a small movement; but for whatever reason, it captivates him. Maybe because of how realistic it is—make them blink, make them twitch, hell, give them the ability to disobey orders.

But this? There’s no reason for it to exist besides the fact that they want to make them realistic. A punch in the gut; that’s what it is, another reminder that maybe one day, he’ll be walking down some city street and be unable to tell what’s human and what’s not.

It makes him want to lash out. To hit something, break something, slam a fist on a wall—or into a convenient subject standing right before him. His fingers twitch. Clenching.

The android stares. He—he?—steps away.

“...nevertheless, I will do you a favor.”

With that, he turns on his heel and walks away, leaving Gavin with an anger that he can’t quite deal with. Really, though, as he looks at the android’s retreating back, he can’t help but think that he wouldn’t have. Something about staring into those eyes, dark and liquid-brown. About the twitch of his adam’s apple.

He can’t be letting him become… anything further than a bot. No matter how human he seems; no matter whatever shaved-face they’ve plastered into a facade.

He’s coming back. A small plastic cup, almost dwarfed by his hand. There’s a jump in his eyebrows as he walks closer. Like he hasn’t been expecting Gavin to still be standing there dumbly, hands by his sides, waiting.

Hadn’t that been his original plan? To walk away while the bot was busy?

Wordlessly, he proffers the cup. Gavin takes it, despite himself. The transfer from hand-to-hand is awkward, and the android’s fingers fumble against his for a split second.

Fingers. Warm, soft. Human. It’s another shock out of a thousand. Another way that they’re bending technology into humanity, mixing the two until they’ll be indistinguishable from one another. If it was dark, if he didn’t know, if Gavin grabbed an arm or a hand or laid his palm on a forehead, he wouldn’t be able to tell.

A vague notion of it runs through his mind—dark room, warm skin. Not the android’s; simply a stranger—not that he’s had the time to spend time with many strangers in dark rooms.

He doesn’t thank the android. It doesn’t ask for one either. Simply regards him with those dark, shining eyes, head tilted slightly, like he’s looking through Gavin’s head and out the back. Gavin stares back. Words bubbling in his throat; shouted ones, what’re you looking at or get away.

“Connor!”

Hank’s voice. It breaks him out of his reverie; does the same for the bot. Connor, right. What he calls himself. What Hank calls him too.

Soft.

He turns and ambles away. Leaving Gavin with his small cup and his thoughts and the memory of that gaze, that skin, that throat.

Human. So close. Almost there, a hair’s breadth away.

Connor.

#detroit become human #dbh fanfic #dbh gavin reed #dbh connor #connor x gavin #reed80 #dbh

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dastardly-imbecile · 2 years ago

Text

Warmth

Wrote this for a friend, do not know a single iota of anything Hannibal-related, which is probably abundantly clear.

The chair is made of plush red velvet; so dark that it’s nearly black. Soft under you in the way that you know you could fall asleep if given ten minutes.

Around you, the house is dark and silent. All but for the crackling of the fireplace - such a cliche term, but cozy nonetheless. Too dark to read a physical book, but you don’t particularly feel like pulling out something electronic. It would ruin the illusion that you’ve so carefully crafted in this atmosphere - the idea that you’re in some fantasy world, relaxing in your mountainside chalet, nothing more than the fire and the chair and the dark, dark walls.

“Y/N?”

Well, something had to break the immersion eventually. Not that you’re really mad about that - not when it’s Hannibal. You can practically feel his approach behind you, feel it past the sound of his footsteps and the scent of the tea he’s carrying. It’s the feeling you’ve always had, ever since seeing him for the first time all that time ago - an internal fire; a warmth that starts in your chest and spreads.

Different from the external warmth of the fire. Strange to think about, to attempt to articulate to anyone - but you don’t really need to. All you need is to feel it yourself.

His presence moves around the chair to stand beside you. He’s tall, somewhere in the realm of the upper-fives lower-sixes. Enough to tower over you sitting here. “Are you okay?”

“Perfectly fine.”

He pats the armrest next to you. “May I?”

You nod. There’s the sound of shifting above, and he settled next to you. Perched delicately - an anathema to that looming height, he wields it like a dancer would. Makes you wonder where he learned. It lends to the quiet sound of his footfalls and the languid, easy way he moves. Not a care in the world - a skill you sometimes wish you could learn.

Simply having him is enough for now.

Just now.

He passes the cup and saucer down. Warmth, it’s what you’re surrounded by, the fire and his body and the cup, and it’s spreading inside of you, down past your stomach and up into your head. More as you take a sip - it’s pleasant enough to loosen your muscles.

You shift to lean against him. He accepts it without comment, and your head lays just under his elbow.

“Bad day?” He asks. You’re a veterinarian, and that’s part of what drew him to you in the first place - said he admired anyone who would try and help animals. It’s hard sometimes to put them down or to see the ones that have been mistreated. Not today, though.

“Tired.”

At that, you yawn, and he laughs - softly, but you can still feel it jostle your head. Not an entirely unpleasant sensation when it comes from the person you love.

His arm settles around your shoulders. “We should get you to bed then, shouldn’t we?”

Probably. You can’t quite get your arms to move, however. He divines that - as he always does, somehow - and stands. “Or do you need an incentive first?”

“Maybe.” You take another drink; he moves around behind you.

Strong hands settle on your shoulders. At the moment, there’s a layer of fabric separating skin from skin, but the phantom memory of that sensation still shivers through you. Yes, this is definitely doing wonders for your wakefulness.

They start to knead - moving across your shoulders, gentle at first, but pressing deeper with every second. It sends your muscles tensing for a brief moment before they surrender to the feeling of being worked, molded into nothing but the feeling of release.

“Better?” He asks.

There’s nothing you can do but nod mutely. It’s as much as any words could’ve said.

It has to end, as all things do, but at least you’re comforted by the fact that there will be as many massages as you’d ever want. He helps you up from your chair, hand on your back. The touch of it sends residual tingles rushing through you. He can probably feel them.

He walks with you until you enter your bedroom - lights dimmed to suit the rest of the house, bed made and ready for sleep.

“I’ll turn the fire out,” He murmurs, voice soft and dark as the velvet chair. “Sleep, Darling.”

You do.

#hannibal #hannibal lecter #hannibal x reader #hannibal lecter x reader #x gn reader

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dastardly-imbecile · 2 years ago

Text

Pt 2 of the Dr. Livesey fanfic

refer to prior post for explanation

The sun beat down on your back and the top of your head, almost unbearable. The beach of bodies was far enough behind that if you looked back, the island would curve before you could see them, but you still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.

A feeling not helped in the slightest by the presence of your companion. He swaggered along beside you, seemingly quite unbothered, just quick enough that you had to stumble to keep up.

To your right lay the endless expanse of the sea, glimmering in the sunlight and barren of any type of rescue. You’d kept your eyes on the shoreline for any sign of a crash, but not a single plant of wood littered the sand. To the left, the beach slowly seceded to a forest. You may have been inclined to walk under the treeline for the shade, but something about it made you appreciate the open expanse of the beach more than you would otherwise. Who knew what lay inside of the tangle of trees?

Besides that terror, an all-more-pressing need slowly crept up on you. The stores of food and water that had been on the ship were - much like the ship - nowhere to be found, and under this heat, thirst was already creeping up your throat.

Well, you had to break the silence sometime, didn’t you?

“Do you have water?”

He paused and immediately reached into one of the pockets of his overcoat. A moment later, it came out holding a leather flask. “Ah, I keep it on me at all times. Better than rum, yes it is, no need for that…”

He grinned at you. The flask was warm, and so was the water inside, and it was all you had to only take one sip before handing it back.

“Thank you.” It went back into his coat.

Don’t stare at it longingly. When you’re thirsty again… when it runs out… what then…?

Maybe staring longingly would’ve been conducive after all, but by now, you were simply staring at the expanse of his chest and not anything you could drink.

And so, the day dragged on under the weight of the sun, trudging through piles of sand. Eventually, it began to dip below the horizon, flaring the sky into a quilt of colors.

“I think we’re alone.” Truly, you hadn’t ever really thought you’d find another ship. Maybe it was simply denial, but something about the island made you feel distinctly… isolated.

“Maybe, maybe.” The man beside you looked out over the sea. There was a peculiar smile on his face as he regarded the sunset - a smile very out of place in this situation. Still, you looked towards it as well, suddenly unwilling to let the sun go, despite how much you’d been cursing it only an hour ago. Heat and light were infinitely better than the darkness.

“What should we do now?” The logical course, in your opinion, was to set up a fire. A chill was already creeping into the air and under your clothes. But fire meant wood and wood meant entering the forest, and in this half-light it appeared as a smudge of black and gray.

“Why, we sleep, of course. A very advantageous thing. We will need to be well-rested to make it around the island.”

“...Around? Are we still going?” There had been nothing to find but sand and sea and what there was to find, bodies with no ships, was less appealing than even that.

“What else are we to do?” He let out a long laugh. It definitely didn’t fit the situation you were in. “How foolish.”

You didn’t respond, mostly because you couldn’t think of an adequate one. As a cold breeze rustled past the island, finding its way under your already-light clothes, you couldn’t help but shiver.

Your companion’s brow furrowed in concern. “Ah, yes, the chill is coming. That won’t do. Cold begets illness, you know, so we must keep you warm…”

Whatever he was thinking was rather inscrutable - at least, until he began to shuck off of his overcoat. It was made of some thick, green fabric, clean and finely woven. Perhaps his ship was richer than usual, or it was just his own fortune. In any case, you shied away.

“I can’t. What about you?”

He stepped forwards to thrust it upon you. “I would not be felled by some lowly cold.” Another laugh. It was starting to get vaguely unsettling. “I am in superb health, you know! My body is finely honed.”

With the coat off, his clothes underneath were much like yours - thin linen, vaguely white and unfitting. Yours were too large; his were on the other side of the spectrum. It creased where his arms, his chest, were too large to contain, the faint definition of muscles below. Finely honed indeed - if physical prowess was a contest, he would win. Strength of mind, on the other hand…

You grabbed the overcoat. It was rough, but not overtly uncomfortable, and smelled of herbs, something faintly bitter. Medicine, most likely, given his profession.

Far too large for you, as could be expected. But warm, enough so that it felt almost like you were standing in the embrace of someone else. The shivers subsided quickly enough, and sure as he’d said, he showed no sign of vulnerability to the wind.

“Thank you.”

“Nothing of it.”

Without anything more to do, you gingerly sat down on the beach. For a moment, he stood above you, a monolith stretching high beyond your comprehension- but then, he sat, and was once again reduced to a mortal.

“What’s your name?” You asked, suddenly realizing that, over the course of the entire day, you’d never learned it. Strange.

“You may call me Doctor,” He responded. As close as he sat - perhaps it was simply the lingering qualities of his coat, but you could almost feel the warmth of his body. “Doctor Livesey.”

#treasure island #dr livesey #dr livesey x reader #dr livesey x GN reader #x gn reader

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