#Blood On A Tree Corpse ( art )

[viridescentelf]

In your debt

Young druid Halsin x Reader

Ever since I saw the young Halsin art above by @ozumii-fucking-wizard, I have been obsessively staring at his gorgeous damn face (thank you so much for this version of him, I am hopelessly in looooooove)!

Enjoy young Halsin healing you~

Warning: Blood, Violence, Swearing

-----

You ventured through the forest, wanting to escape the loud bustle of the city. Carrying your heavy instrument on your back, you strode through the man-made trail into the thicket, to your usual spot you decided was your permanent hideaway.

You knew the forest was home to a druidic group, who adopted young lost children. You never encountered any druids on your many trips here, but you knew they were aware of you: sometimes you found some foraged fruit and vegetables at your spot, packaged neatly with strings or in small sacks. Someone left you these gifts. You assumed they liked your music, since you often came into the woods to practice some new songs you were crafting. You weren’t sure if the children were this fond of you or if it was some druid who kept leaving trinkets. It didn’t matter really, you were grateful nonetheless.

Today, you hadn’t found anything left for you. This wasn’t too unusual; you never ventured here expecting to receive anything. You let the strand of your instrument slide down your arm, placing it next to your seat by the large oak. It was clear this spot wasn’t really used by others, the print of you sitting in the dirt only really matched yours. It always seemed undisturbed, like you left it, with the occasional gifted sack placed there.

You gazed at the lake, where fireflies danced happily over the dawn lit water. It was another pleasant morning and you took a deep breath, enjoying the lovely fresh air you rarely got to inhale. Baldur’s Gate was lively and exciting, but you were always drawn back to this place.

You started plucking the strands of your lute, absentmindedly, taking in the sunrise as the rays warmed your face. You felt the trees sway with your music, as if they were welcoming you back. The forest seemed more alive here and had a distinct personality. Childlike glee vibrated through the branches. The tranquility of this area made you sink back into the tree, leaning against its strong body.

Something boomed in the distance. You sat up with a jolt. Normally, the only sounds you heard here were twigs breaking or the wind whizzing through the glade. You looked around, trying to locate the source of the noise.

Another blast. This time, there was shouting that followed. Some sounded panicked, some aggressive.

You got to your feet, frantically, staring into the distance where you thought the brutal noises were ebbing from. There were screams now. And they sounded young.

Without really thinking, you started sprinting towards the cries. Clutching your lute in one hand at your side to keep it from knocking your hip, you darted through the brush. There were children screaming and wailing, getting louder and louder the faster you ran towards them. A loud, ugly voice was yelling at them.

There were other more distant shock waves bellowing: an ambush? Were the druids under attack?

You heard the angry voice thunder in front of you, as you slid behind a birch tree.

“Move it, you little shits! Or I’ll cut yer hands off!”, a goblin with a bloody handprint across his face snarled at a group of mixed children, who were huddled together, sniveling and trembling uncontrollably. He pointed a curved, dirty blade at their backs, as they sheepishly shuffled along.

“Can’t we just kill them and drag their corpses? They’re so fucking slow…” Another smaller goblin groaned, walking in front of the hostages.

“No, the drows say they need new slaves. We need ‘em alive,” he pushed a small tiefling in front of him, who let out a terrified shriek, “Faster! Before the stinkin’ druids catch up.”

They passed the birch tree, which was rooted opposite a cliffside. The rapids below reverberated up, making it hard to hear clearly.

Goblins were attacking the druids, the far sounds of crashing and clanging meant a fierce battle was commencing.

“They won’t be able to hold them back much longer, Izick,” the short goblin at the front was standing close to your hiding spot. You peered through the branches and saw the poor souls quivering wildly. Their faces were cut and stained with blood. You deduced whoever was watching over them had been murdered in front of them.

You weren’t a fighter. But you couldn’t let them take the children.

The small goblin turned to face the group; his back facing the tree. You grasped your lute hard, making the skin around it paler. You took a deep breath, preparing yourself for guaranteed pain.

This was an expensive instrument, too.

You pounced out of the woods into the clearing and slammed the lute onto the head of the unassuming goblin. It broke over his fat head, but the velocity had done its job. He fell to the side with a loud thud, letting out a last, gurgled groan. You kept hitting him with the remaining pieces of your improvised weapon, making sure he was dead. The blood pooled around him.

Izick was already running towards you, having pummeled through the victims without care, who all fell to the ground and held their heads to the dirt, whimpering and horrified.

You dodged the first swing of his blade, but knew instantly this wasn’t a fight you could win. You had nothing to fight with, except your fists, and you dared not get close to him as she flourished his disgusting weapon.

The goblin roared as he jumped towards you. You collided and felt a scorching pain in your stomach. He had gotten you, deep in your belly. You screamed. You both fell to the ground near the edge of the cliff. The goblin tried to pull the blade back out while he sat on top of you, but it was stuck. Izick cursed at you, although no insult really reached your ears. Your entire body centered around the searing wound in your abdomen.

The children were petrified. You saw the tears roll down their faces as they watched the pathetic scuffle. If you failed, they would suffer endlessly. You couldn’t allow him to kill you, before you saved them.

He lifted his fists to pummel you. His face was etched with determination, he would beat you to death if he had to.

Your arm moved instinctively. You grabbed his collar, before his fists met your face, and leaned your entire body weight to the side, where the roaring river called to you. It was the only way.

You felt the wind whistle past your ears as you fell with the goblin in your grasp to the depths. You both crashed into the icy water and you felt him drift away, as the muffling water slowed everything. Your body was being pulled to the side, the current dragging you uncaringly down the river. It pulled you violently from one side to the other, not tiring of its new toy, pushing you up and down like a ball. Weightless, you floated and let it take control, unable to do anything else.

Your thoughts silenced. The cold of your surroundings embraced you and you had no strength to resist. The pulsating pain from the blade kept you awake, barely.

After a while, you felt yourself bob up, your head bracing the surface. The sudden blaring of the river crashed into your ears as you gasped for air. Your eyes blurred. The water seemed to settle into a lazy tempo. You didn’t know how, but you kept your head above water. You saw red puddles waft after you.

The current carried you to a small bank, discarding you there as it continued on. You lay on the muddy earth, motionless, staring at the piercing blue sky that seemed to beckon you towards it. The blade still stuck out of you, you saw it move up and down as you breathed shakily. You couldn’t keep your eyes open much longer.

Your heavy lids fell, darkening everything. The pain slowly left, too.

You were dying. And you were accepting it.

Before the complete darkness, you felt tiny hands pressing on your aching belly. That spot felt warm and kind, as the last of your wits evaded you.

Quiet. Emptiness. Nothing.

Halsin’s lips clasped yours, as he breathed into your mouth, holding your nose. The moss on your puncture was absorbing the excess blood. The vile blade lay discarded to the side, already carefully pulled from you.

You convulsed and coughed out, life filling your face first and then gradually seeping into your weak limbs.

You blinked hard and opened your weary eyes.

Halsin met your gaze and placed a hand on your cheek, as his other etched glyphs into the air.

“You’re going to be alright…”, he said softly, as a green mist appeared suddenly from his hand, which he lowered down to your injury.

“Breathe…”, he commanded gently. You obeyed and took a shaky breath. Your body felt heavy. Even breathing was difficult.

You felt his hand pressing on your abdomen. Whatever he was doing, the agony was quieting because of it slowly. You watched him as he attended to your mortal wound.

He was beautiful. A few braided pieces of his long, honey hair fell effortlessly next to his face. The jade eyes were focused, but there was an air of kindness about them. You squinted at the embroidery on his attire. This was one of the druids.  He looked young, but the elf ears suggested he might be older than he appeared.

You attempted to speak, but could only let out feeble coughs.

“Don’t speak. This will take a bit to close up”, he looked down at you and smiled kindly. You blinked as a response, taking another deep breath as you felt the pain flee your body.

There was a brief silence, the only sound was the hypnotic whirring of his enchantments.

“You did something truly courageous back there. The children told me. They recognized you, the singer in the woods…they often spoke about you at bedtime”, he chuckled briefly, “Didn’t expect I’d meet you under these circumstances.”

You watched him, as he seemed to reminisce fondly. So, it was the children who left you gifts at your spot?

His other hand swished and another cloud of green wafted out of it. He placed that hand next to the other on your stomach.

“I am in your debt. You saved the little ones, when they were not your burden. Truly, you’re a real hero.”  

You didn’t know how to respond. You were also more than confused as to how he found you so quickly. You felt like you had been drifting in that river forever. And the druids lived deep within the forest.

Who in the Hells was this elf anyway?

“You are exceedingly lucky. Thaniel found you and tended to you before I made it here.”

You raised an eyebrow, coughing again.

“Oh, haha. Thaniel is the forest spirit here. He seems quite fond of you.”

A forest spirit? Your exhausted brain couldn’t process that thought. You couldn’t really contest the idea either.

The druid lifted his hands briefly, checking how far along the healing process was. Deciding it needed more time, he repositioned his palms. You observed him for a while in silence as he concentrated on the regeneration of your tissue. He was huge. You felt like a child next to him.

“Wh-who are you…” you croaked out faintly.

He turned to you, his eyes softening with a calm smile.

“I’m Halsin,” he put one hand on your shoulder to keep you down, as you tried to sit up at the response. It didn’t take much strength to keep you there. He smiled more widely, then turned his attention back to his task.

Halsin. You had heard that name before. Whispered by folk in the area, he was famous for his incredible healing abilities and knack for getting captured. You only knew one druid by name and that was him. A druidic protégé, yes. A fierce warrior, yes. But a bit different. People in town talked about the impulsiveness of the young druid, which caused the other, older druids to scratch their heads in frustration at his unpredictability. And that‘s who was healing you right now?!

Gods, you never imagined he’d be this dreamy.

You were probably dreaming. No, you were dead. Definitely.

No being was this beautiful.

[dulcet-aurora]

permanent . damian wayne x reader. ⸼ ࣪ ✿ ❛ when you press me to your heart, i'm in a world apart. ❜

❪ in which. ❫ what better an idea to immortalize your best friend in time.

⸼ ࣪ ✿ 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔. pining, pining, pining. did i mention pining? slightly ooc damian but like whatever i just want a yearning man. ⸼ ࣪ ✿ 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕. 1.3k. ⸼ ࣪ ✿ 𝒕𝒂𝒈𝒔. @di-lucss, @ephemerensis, @dollishmehrayan, @aangelinakii, @minorlyatfault. ⸼ ࣪ ✿ 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆'𝒔 𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒓. inspired by thinking of you by sister sledge! the writing is an actual excerpt from my diary about a man because if he won't yearn i obviously have to. ignore how shitty this is because it was 10pm and i miss the girl i used to be. enjoy!

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝒊f i were any other version of myself in this timestream i would say that i am exhausted of being in love. my thoughts are blurred by a fog where each particle of water is one tiny thing creating this sole, large, mystical being that cloud my senses and drive me half to insanity.

but i am a changed man and unlike the child formed of snapped bones and spilled blood that was deemed as useless as water, i have found myself thriving on the galleons of blood pumped daily by my palpitating heart for this girl. she is magic incarnate and i am under her spell. i cannot explain it and it is terrifying and awfully thrilling all at once because this is the first time i have not been able to draw a conclusion or a reasonable answer based on fact nor logic to my feelings. my feelings themselves have always been buried— crushed by burdens and grandfather's teachings that emotion was weakness, but for some reason she has latched them by a hook and drawn them up and claimed them as her own.

in my own way i fear her. she is the very opposite of every lesson i've been taught, the moral behind every beating i took. she took my heart of stone and cracked it in two and found the humanity within me, glowing like the contents of a geode and it shines just for her. i do not know how she managed it. i do not know how i let her manage to do it. i have never been vulnerable and never did i think i would ever be vulnerable and yet i stand here pouring out my feelings in ink like the blood i spilled as a child.

yes, it on paper but i would rather stain the carcass of a tree than the blank canvas which is her and risk leaving the mark of my impurity on something as pristine as her. i cannot bear damaging her because i felt too much.

— d.t.w.

damian sat on the floor at the foot of the piano bench, the tip of his pen hovering limply over the paper. his feelings stared back at him like a mutilated corpse, ugly and disgusting and something he couldn't believe he'd done in a moment of clouded judgement. the sound of the piano echoes through the empty ballroom of wayne manor. the space was empty and rarely used more than twice a month for when bruce held a gala. you sat at the beautiful grand piano, your fingers delicate on the keys as the instrument sang a solemn melody.

you pressed aimless keys as the moment of serenity faded and the melody fizzled out. "do you ever get frustrated with a piece of your art?" you sighed, leaning forward on the bench to peer at the sheet music of your newest piece that you'd scribbled out on a few sheets of loose-leaf paper. the penmanship was horrendous, chicken scratch only a musician could read in between wrinkles and creases from being folded time and time over to fit in your pocket.

damian snapped his journal shut. "exasperation in the creation of beauty is inevitable," he said. "you as a musician should already know this."

"you always make it look so effortless, though," you groaned, supporting your weight with your hands as you leaned back on the bench.

"do i?" he arched a dark eyebrow, his viridian eyes glinting with something between curiosity and amusement.

"yes," you sighed. "you can paint, you can sculpt, you can write the perfect essay. art comes naturally to you."

damian pondered this for a moment. "i come from a long line of individuals who took pride in the destruction in beautiful things," he said. "i suppose i did not want to be like them, when there are so many specks of the heavens in the world around us. i chose to trap them in time then to make them memories."

"you would be a lovely playwright," you declared after a beat. you cleared your throat, "i bethink thou art something of a twenty-first century shakespeare." you reached over the side of the piano bench and gripped the cover of his journal.

damian's heart stopped. he yanked the journal from your grasp so hard you pitched forward and had to steady yourself by gripping the piano. "methinks you jest." he snapped.

"methinks thou hadst a stick up thy ass."

"methinks thou shouldst shut thy trap." damian tilted his head back to look up at you.

you put a hand over your mouth and laughed, and damian's heart jackhammered against his ribs. that laugh, that feeling reminded him why he chose to paint your smile that he saw every time he closed his eyes, why he sculpted your jaw that he dreamed to hold with the tenderness he was never shown, and why he made you a permanent fixture in time with his words.

"play me that piece again," he said, his voice soft, almost reverent.

"you've heard it a thousand times," you complained, wringing your hands. "along with my tears and sobs and fussing."

"i enjoy it," damian said simply, rising from the floor and sitting beside you on the bench. your knees pressed against each other. damian wishes it was your lips.

"well, you have to," you pouted, "you're my best friend."

"i am not obligated to 'liking' anything, i enjoy what is enjoyable and your piece fits the criteria of pleasurable things," he said. "so play it again."

you groaned and before damian could even exhale to protest again you poised your hands over the piano and began to play.

magic flowed from your hands, infusing the keys with some sort of golden ichor with every press of your fingers. it was a piece in f minor, but transitioning to a sweeter major with a signal of a small breath from your lips. it was incomplete, damian could see the question marks replacing notes on the staff on the last page of music but, oh, was it beautiful. if your hands hadn't both been on the keys he would've laced your fingers together.

eventually the melody tapered off again and you sighed in defeat, slumping your elbows against the keys with an exasperated huff. "yeah, that's that," you sighed.

"it is a lovely composition," damian said earnestly.

you smiled faintly. "i had a great inspiration."

he tilted his head. "did you?"

you sighed, your gaze almost dreamy. "the best."

your words stuck with damian all day, even till the dead of night where he lay awake and his brain did its usual run through of the thought of you. he lay in his bed and you were tucked against his side, passed out after hours of trying to figure out the right notes. your sheet music lay on your stomach and your pen was clasped loosely between your fingers. damian sighed.

"foolish girl," he mumbled, brushing hair from your face. you sighed in your sleep and damian softened. he took the sheet music off your abdomen and plucked your pen from your limp hand. he turned around as gently as he could to set your sheet music on his nightside table. as he laid it down on the top he caught a glance of the title and his breath hitched.

damian's theme. a musical memoir to the boy i adore. written in a handwriting that was messy and barely legible and that could only be yours.

he stiffened. "i had a great inspiration. the best." you had said. his heart slammed against his ribs once more and he was sure his bones were painted red from how often that happened. he looked over at you, his sleepy musician, his modern day clara schumann, the reason he chose to create instead of destroy.

damian made art because it was permanent, and it was precious. he'd never felt precious or had anything remotely permanent in his life other than the ghosts from his past that followed him. but now he realized that he truly was treasured. and it wasn't so bad.

© dulcet-aurora 2025.

[beanwaterontherocks]

80's Slasher Style

Fandom: Killer Chat! Pairing: Ronin Beaufort x gn!reader Summary: You already expected a summer camp counselor job to come with its fair share of problems. Those you were way too underpaid to deal with. But a murderer? Really? Warnings: Murder and implied violence, Summer Camp AU Word count: 3616

Normally having the thought “I’m not getting paid enough for this” while working at a summer camp came to you when you had to break up a fight or deal with a clogged toilet. Your biggest gripes with the job were mosquito bites and unruly kids. But that was your first thought when you saw your coworker Ronin dragging a real life corpse into the woods. 

You had tried to rationalize it at first, maybe you were tired and seeing things. Maybe it was one of the dolls from your CPR training day. But no, you saw the way blood dripped from the body’s head, staining the ground as Ronin moved into the trees. 

Breakfast in the dining hall was filled with its usual laughter and the occasional piece of food thrown. You stared into your watery coffee, mind racing with the memories of last night. When you first met Ronin you hadn’t noticed anything off.

Sure, his whole devil spiel was interesting to say the least but he was good with the kids. You never imagined the hands that were making beaded bracelets just yesterday would be capable of murder. As much as it pained you to say now, you had even found him a little cute. An echo of your name sounded in your ear and you turned to see Misaki, who had sat down next to you while you were lost in your thoughts. 

“Are you okay? You seem a little out of it”, they said, popping an apple slice into their mouth. You tried your best to give a reassuring smile that likely had the opposite effect. 

“It’s nothing I’m just…worried about the hike and camping today”, you lied, eyes darting around looking for burgundy hair. Ronin wasn’t there, was he still out in the woods getting rid of the evidence? Who had he even killed, who was missing? 

“I’m sure it’ll be fun, I’ve got tons of creepy ghost stories ready”, Misaki said proudly. 

“Please don’t, they’re not going to sleep if they’re scared”, Angel laughed as she passed your table. It was still a trip to have a famous model working as a camp counselor, you still hadn’t asked her about why she was here. 

“Do not eat the ladybug, I am sure it would not appreciate it”, a voice spoke and you looked over to see V gently taking the spotted insect from a kid. You found your heartbeat steadying as you realized you could depend on one of your other coworkers. You had to tell one of them about what you saw, before Ronin realized that you had seen him. 

The camp director approached you, his knuckles white as he gripped his clipboard. 

“We’re a counselor short for the hiking trip, I’m putting Ronin on your team”, he said and you almost crushed the paper cup in your hand. Your pulse spiked again as you swallowed your nervousness. 

“Wasn’t Mike going to come with us?” You asked tentatively. He shook his head and leaned in close to you.

“Mike quit last night, he just texted me that he was going home and then left! Can you believe it?” He scoffed and you felt your heart sink, knowing where he really was, likely buried just a few hundred feet away. 

“I really can’t…” you mused as he walked away. Now you had to camp out in the forest at night with a killer, you really didn’t get paid enough for this. You finished your breakfast and headed back to the activities cabins, there was half an hour before morning activities started. You wondered if you should take a page out of Mike’s fake book and quit on the spot. Sure, you needed the money but 12 dollars an hour wasn’t worth dying for, not even in this economy. 

You wandered past the bonfire and towards the arts cabin. The only sounds were the distant screams of excited kids and the chirping of birds. That was until you heard him behind you, his voice sending a shiver down your spine. You were almost expecting a knife to your throat but Ronin stood there with his hands in his pockets. 

“Mornin’, I can’t wait for the hike later, just me, you and the wilderness”, he laughed, his usual toothy grin had an underlying sinister tone. 

He had seen you too. 

“You’re forgetting 3 other counselors and 20 kids”, you said, picking at one of your braided friendship bracelets. He wouldn’t do anything in broad daylight, hopefully. 

“Yeah them too, I hear Misaki’s got some ghost stories, I bet you love a good scare”, he said, leaning forward to be at eye level with you. You gritted your teeth, maybe you should just call the police and get the fuck out of there.

You weren’t really sure why you didn’t, whether it was cowardice or feeling that it’d somehow be futile. Ronin’s expression was completely calm and casual, either he truly didn’t know or he was extremely confident, annoyingly cocky even. In what you weren’t sure of yet, that you wouldn’t tell anyone? That he could easily get rid of you?

Your entire body was on alert the longer you spent alone with him but, to your surprise, he turned on his heel and began to walk away. Ronin shot you one last smile over his shoulder and the adrenaline coursing through your veins was accompanied by something warmer. You absolutely did not have time to question your still lingering attraction to a guy you knew was a murderer. Not when you had to be at the arts cabin for pottery lessons.  

You donned a pair of plastic gloves and opened a pack of sandwich bread, there was a lot of food to prepare for the hike and you had decided to help the camp cook. The door to the kitchen swung open as you began spreading jelly onto the bread.

V walked into the kitchen, spotting you and giving a nod as a greeting. He was quiet most of the time, but perked up with fun facts every time there was talk about wildlife. Apparently he was quite wealthy so you wondered why he would spend his time working for peanuts at a random summer camp. But he seemed to enjoy being outside and people could have hobbies. 

Out of the corner of your eye you saw V carrying a large hunk of wrapped raw meat out from the fridge. You did remember the cook saying that dinner for the hike would be stew with pork sirloin. V picked up a large, shining meat cleaver and got to work chopping up the meat.

The way he held the blade drew your attention. There was so much conviction behind his grip on the wooden handle. He seemingly wasn’t phased by the heaviness of the knife or the sharpness, his cuts were clean, precise and…perfect. The meat quickly and efficiently turned from a slab into a bunch of uniform squares, not a piece wasted. 

You recalled how V avoided any bacon, sausage or eggs at the breakfast tables and how he always had his own, different dish at dinner. 

 “You’re really good at that, I thought you didn’t eat meat”, you said as you packed up another sandwich. V glanced at you as he put the cubed meat onto a metal tray.

“I don’t eat it, though I suppose I’m skilled at butchering without waste”, he said, his brows furrowing slightly at the word ‘butcher’. You couldn’t get the image out of your mind, steady hands that had seemed so gentle skillfully cutting into flesh. It was just pork and he probably cooked a lot for other people, you reassured yourself. Your mind was just paranoid after finding out about Ronin, you were seeing danger everywhere. 

You showed the boy how to braid the bright colorful string once again and leaned back in your chair. Ronin had been absent from your line of sight since that morning. Maybe he was starting to get worried that you were going to tell someone. Or maybe he was just playing with you, like a looming cat with a squeaky mouse toy. You couldn’t let him sink his claws in, no matter what happened.

Angel sat in the chair opposite yours, making sparkly beads into stunning bracelets. The pieces she had already made adorned her wrists and neck, jazzing up the plain t-shirt with the camp’s bear logo. You found your gaze traveling to one of her wrists, the bracelet was made up of the dainty crystal beads you had bought for the camp before the season started.

Though one bead was different, it was sort of…lumpy and a slight off-white. Your eyes narrowed, what had looked like a matte freshwater pearl before now looked wrong and almost familiar. You didn’t know why, but you ran the tip of your tongue over one of your canine teeth. Something jolted up your spine as Angel looked away from her work to catch you staring. 

“Is something wrong?” She asked, tilting her head and you quickly shook yours. 

“I’m okay, just didn’t get a lot of sleep, I was zoning out”, you said, rubbing the back of your neck. You were being so paranoid, you needed to tell someone about Ronin soon to get this weight off your chest. Angel propped a hand under her chin and smiled at you, making you feel less tense. 

“If you want to catch up on some sleep you can go to bed early tonight, I’ll watch your group for you”, she offered and you sighed, there was no reason to worry about someone as sweet as Angel was. 

Your sneakers crunched against the dry ground, it was a hot day so you would need plenty of water for the hike. Maybe you could still quit, it’d be a dick move but a lot better than potentially being murdered 80s-slasher-style. As you walked towards the counselor’s cabins you spotted a group of campers playing soccer on an empty expanse of grass. You spotted a tall, burgundy-haired figure playing with them.

Ronin laughed as a kid passed him the ball, he ran between two others trying to block him and kicked the ball into the rusty old goal. His teammates cheered and Ronin bent down to give one of them a high-five. It would have been sweet, maybe it would have even endeared you to him. But you couldn’t ignore the memory flashing in your mind and the rotten taste in your mouth that accompanied it. Black eyes locked with yours, glimmering like embers with an infuriating mischief. 

How could he find any of this funny? Ronin ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face and you could see the glistening sweat on his skin. You scoffed and turned your head away, ignoring the way your face heated up. You had to get it together now, this was serious. 

Even though the light poured through the trees, casting beams of sunshine onto the buttercup-littered forest floor, the woods looked anything but inviting to you. You felt the pocket on the side of your cargo shorts. The knife you had brought was no sharp hunting knife, it was barely longer than your ring finger and made for whittling. But as much as you (told yourself that) hated Ronin, you didn’t want to stab him so the blade was really just insurance.

Almost as if he had read your mind, the man in question walked up to stand next to you. Him, Angel, V, Misaki, you and the older kids were gathered at the treeline. It was time for the hike and time for you to toughen up. Your breath hitched when you felt Ronin’s shoulder brush against yours, yup, that was definitely just anxiety. 

Your group of 4 trailed behind you as you walked through the woods, the map to the camping ground folded out in front of you. In reality, the trail was carefully marked so getting lost would take a lot of stupidity. But you needed something to do with your hands instead of making sure that you still had your knife. 

“Now if we do encounter a bear you shouldn’t panic, how we proceed will depend on if it has cubs with it or not”, V spoke as he walked with his group ahead of you, resting a hand on the clearly nervous kid’s shoulder. “But usually, they do not approach larger groups, you have nothing to fear��. His words made you glance over at Ronin, who was strolling with his hands resting behind his head.

 For now, while the sun was still up and everyone was awake, you had nothing to fear. 

The sky had faded into a warm deep yellow as the sun made its way down the horizon. The group has decided to take a short break before you’d arrive at the camping grounds. As you sipped from your water bottle, you felt a light tap on your shoulder and turned around to see Misaki standing there. 

“It’s golden hour, prime photo-time, how about we take some pictures to remember this?” They suggested, pulling their phone out of their pocket. You agreed and offered to be the photographer, taking a few steps back on the trail to get everyone in frame. As you snapped a few photos, Misaki’s phone buzzed with a notification. Your eyes couldn’t help but skim over the message that popped up from a texting app you didn’t recognize. 

“Nicely done with the chainsaw, I wired some extra money to your account, hope to work with you again soon”.  

You chuckled to yourself at where your brain initially went. Misaki did mention having a full-time job outside of camp season. You supposed they…cut up trees for a living. Just lumber, nothing but boring woodwork. You gave them back their phone and did your best to smile as you noticed the sky getting darker, soon you’d have to face the harrowing, screechy music. 

After dinner was finished, you all sat on logs around the campfire, roasting marshmallows in the warm summer night. You watched as the sugary surface burned, cracking into coal-like fragments.

Soon it would be bedtime and everyone would bundle up in their tents, sleeping soundly to the lullaby of grasshoppers. You stared into the flicking fire, catching a glimpse of Ronin seated on the other side. He looked down with a girl at the DS she had smuggled to the hike. He looked so harmless with his colorful bracelets, camp t-shirt and amused grin.

A voice inside of you was, somehow, sure that he was. At least to everyone here but you. The genuine content look in those obsidian eyes crackled away as they traveled to rest on you. The amusement was still there, but there was a challenge to his gaze, an urge to play this game with you. 

The minutes ticked away on your watch as a symphony of closing tent zippers rang throughout the grounds. The last withering embers from the fire fought against the breeze as you dug into the dirt with the tip of your shoe. Ronin returned from checking that everyone was going to sleep and sat down next to you on the log. 

“Thanks for keeping it light with the ghost stories” Angel said, smiling as Misaki shuffled the deck of cards they’d brought out. You weren’t in the mood for rummy, or any kind of game, you were utterly sick of playing. As you stood up, you announced that you were going for a walk, your gaze flickering down at Ronin. He shot you his signature devious smile and gave a cute little wave and you hid your scowl by turning the other direction. 

You made your way through the trees, a small grassy cliff coming into view. Your hand slid into your pocket and pulled out your measly knife. After waiting, you began to wonder if he was even going to grace you with his presence. A rustle in the bushes made your heart begin to pound in your ears and you saw heavy black boots emerge from the foliage. 

“What are you gonna do with that, darlin’? Carve our initials into a tree trunk?” Ronin laughed, his toothy grin wide on his face. “Be careful, summer romance is the perfect slasher bait”, he walked towards you. Despite almost every cell in your body screaming at you to run, you stood your ground until he had your back pressed up against the rough bark of a tree. 

With his arms caging you in, he could probably hear the erratic thumping of your aorta. Maybe it was the sweetest of melodies to him. “So, what are you going to do, you still haven’t answered me~ that’s a little rude”, he purred, eyes shimmering with delight as your brows furrowed.

What were you going to do now? Your grip on the hilt of the knife tightened, he was close but you were armed. His wine-colored locks almost tickled your cheeks as he loomed over you, his breath was warm against your lips. There was enough room to move your arms, drive the blade into him. 

Something stopped you…you didn’t want to stoop to his level. No, who were you even kidding? It wasn’t something cheesily noble like that. Your heartbeat was full of excitement, not the rush of terror or dread of anxiety. You had liked this game, had you always been sick in this way? Or did he see it deep within you and decided to violently claw it out. You weren’t sure how this would end, if there would even be a winner but you were going to give him your best. 

“I know what you did”, you said, staring into his irises, teetering on the edge of falling into the void.

“What did I do this summer?” Ronin asked mockingly and you kind of wanted to punch him if he made another horror movie reference. Maybe you weren’t completely rotten yet. 

You simply rolled your eyes and reached your other hand out to grab the collar of his shirt, pulling him in. 

“You killed Mike, why’d you do it?” You asked, curiosity starting to gnaw at you, he seemed so well-acquainted with murder. Before Ronin could speak up, he was cut off by loud steps as three figures tore through the greenery. 

“Ronin…” Angel said under her breath as her, V and Misaki stared at the scene before them. The flowing, heated exhilaration of the moment froze over as you looked back at them. Angel’s sky-blue eyes were wide and you felt a pang in your heart. Those two had seemed close, her world must have begun to crumble at learning what Ronin had done. 

A deep, exhausted sigh sounded from beside her as V shook his head in…annoyance. 

“We had an agreement, what if one of the children found his corpse?” V scoffed as your gaze flicked back to Angel, who had crossed her arms. 

“I did kind of expect this, it’s you after all”, she said, a light smile tugging at the corners of her lips. 

“You hid it, right? The kind of stuff you do can scar a kid for life”, Misaki said, their tone concerned. What did they mean by the kind of stuff he did? Ronin removed his palms from the tree and held up his hands in mock surrender.

“Aw come on, have some mercy, I had to completely go against my M.O!” He locked eyes with you “Burying a body is a lot less fun than twistin’ it into a pentagram”. 

You realized you didn't get the luxury of dealing with a regular killer but the Devil’s Butcher. “Plus, you should have heard the way he talked to his girlfriend on the phone, he had it comin’”, Ronin explained. 

One by one, your other coworkers revealed themselves to be killers as well, making you the weird one here. The fear that was present at first had melted away, leaving only pure bewilderment. There was still something that hadn’t been resolved though and that weirdly didn’t make you as nervous as it should have. 

“So what happens now?” you glanced behind you, catching a glimpse of the rocky patch under the edge of the cliff “It’s not a huge drop but with the right angle…”. Past you would probably throw you over the cliff themselves at your insane words. 

“That won’t be necessary”, V spoke and Ronin chuckled, his voice laced with a sick enjoyment.

“Speak for yourself, keep talkin’”, he drawled, making you roll your eyes.

Maybe you were trustworthy or maybe it was sheer dumb luck, but you lived to see the bright sunrise the next morning. You knew they’d all be keeping a close eye on you to make sure you held up your end of the deal.

You’d make pretty friendship bracelets, go on scenic nature hikes, calm down screaming kids and sing corny campfire songs with your coworkers. Who were, for now, willing to dispose of you if you decided to rat them out. 

As you packed up your sleeping bag you noticed that your knife was missing. Your eyes scanned over the camping ground before landing on one of the nearby trees. There it sat with the pointy tip stabbed into the wood. You walked up and saw the letters etched deep into the bark. There was no cliché arrowed heart surrounding the sharply written ‘R’ and your own first initial. Instead, Ronin had craved little triangle devil horns and a swirling tail around the letters. 

This was going to be an interesting summer job.

[theglidingbat]

Another one of My Ghostbat headcanons that I'm adopting now is that Bruce probably let out the most blood curdling scream of anguish because his heart was broken once again-

Like I know majority of us are in agreement of the fact that Bruce's heartbreak was NOT only because of his parents's death- it's also been mentioned SO MANY TIMES how minhkhoa broke his heart

Also not to mention- I'm pretty sure Bruce being the paranoid fuck he is genuinely thought that Minhkhoa was going to die- also the mentions of love and heartbreak that keep on appearing after the first fight.... I'm ill.

Just the fact that Minhkhoa Khan is one of the few people that had managed to crawl their way into Bruce's heart and yet break it as terribly as the day his PARENTS FUCKING DIED.

He saw Minhkhoa at gunpoint and literally lost all composure to the point he started crying and SHOT SOMEONE. FOR MINHKHOA. Even if it was just to disarm it's pretty obvious that the whole thing was so terrifying and horrible for him as is. Only for Minhkhoa to turn around and kill Luka infront of him and well...we all know what happens next :))

Also Khoa isn't really fooling anybody here his heart is just not in it- bro is trying to smile through the pain trying to look smug and to prove that he truly doesn't care about anything but his mission and art also trying to convince Bruce that he ISN'T a monster and that he's still Bruce's friend.

Anyways after all that I'd be surprised if Bruce didn't scream and sob his heart out near that tree- without the energy to get up. Or just gagging and suppressing the urge to puke when he sees his old master's corpse nearby. Also officially having another reason to just hate guns.

Also one point I agree with Bruce on (obviously no matter how much I hated the hypocritical asshole that is Luka Jungo like the dude still killed a lot of people and then is trying to preach not killing and act like a saint by TRYING TO KILL MINHKHOA-) is that Minhkhoa did NOT have to shoot him- I'm positive Bruce didn't believe Luka's bullshit anyways as well about Khoa being a monster, defending Minhkhoa and repeating the fact that he may be rough around the edges but still he cared and he wasn't all bad. And if minhkhoa didn't kill him I'm pretty sure Bruce would've just left with Minhkhoa and they would've fucked off to train with someone else.

But also this is the moment that Minhkhoa realised Bruce doesn't exactly have the same motive and that his is more sentimental which pissed him off so here we are now....

TLDR: Your honor they are Gay and so definitely canon just look at these fruit loops (also Minhkhoa broke Bruce's heart pretty bad and vice versa)

[organsoutsidelovinglydescribed]

Body Horror Week Prompts Are Live!

Welcome to Trigun Body Horror Week 2024!

We’ve set up a week of fantastic flavors of bodily horrors for you, and here is our official post sharing the prompts for you to cook with.

Body Horror Week is going to run from Feb 11th, 2024 until Feb 17th, 2024

For each set of prompts, we have an organ, two different songs, and a quote to inspire you into making the best horrors you’ve got.

The official hashtag for the week is #trigunbodyhorrorweek, and we’ll do our best to reblog your submissions the day of and whatever we may have missed during the week, we’ll reblog after. Feel free to tag us as well!

An AO3 collection is forthcoming.

There’s a copy of the prompts list below the cut, as well as links to the A-Sides and B-Sides for the music.

The art for the graphic was done by the wonderful @hashtagcaneven

Link for the music A-Sides and the B-Sides as playlists. Spotify playlist here.

Feb 11th: Eyes | Mama – My Chemical Romance | Mask of My Own Face – Lemon Demon | I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because I was a thing before I was a person, and if I’m not careful, I could be a thing again. - Network Effect, Martha Wells (Murderbot Diaries)

Feb 12th: Skin | This Body – The Dear Hunter | Hurt – Johnny Cash | Skin against skin, blood and bone / You’re all by yourself, but you’re not alone / You wanted in, and now you’re here / Driven by hate, consumed by fear – “Bodies”, Drowning Pool

Feb 13th: Lungs | Sin Eater – Penelope Scott | Between Two Lungs – Florence + the Machine | I remember seeing myself splayed across the floor of the kennel, a chimera split along a hundred seams, taking communion with a handful of dogs. - The Things, Peter Watts

Feb 14th: Heart | Love Me Dead – Ludo | Your Body, My Temple – Will Wood | The heart wants what it wants. What it wants is blood. - Welcome to Night Vale Twitter

Feb 15th: Limbs | Blood – My Chemical Romance | Body – Mother Mother | Pluck that crimson orb rusted package from the branches mother’s arms our tree you’ve chopped away at for too long with your mouth-bright ax pretty-teethed boy. - “A Brother Named Gethsemane”, Natalie Diaz

Feb 16th: Intestines | Void – Melanie Martinez | Blood on My Name – The Brothers Bright | It is a corpse rotting slowly from within while maggots writhe in its belly. - Warhammer 40k

Feb 17th: Alien | Roots – In This Moment | sprorgnsm – superorganism | To be trapped, unmoving, within the body that has betrayed her so often, feeling every sensation as it grows and warps and sprouts, never knowing what new mutation it will visit on her next. - The Magnus Archives, Episode 171, "The Gardener"

[thoughtsafterdark]

The Sun's Lover

Sometimes I gaze at myself in the mirror and my mind bends and buckles against warring thoughts and I wonder if I was meant for more.

Sometimes I feel a breeze in the back of my mind

Sparks of errant electricity

A brief glimpse into something other, something hidden

Something on the tip of my tongue and the edge of my olfactory bulb

Colours I can smell, feelings I can hear, thoughts that have no shape or form. Older than my life, than language, than war. Certainties that tease and caress and seduce but leave me dry and gasping like incubi in my sleep.

That leave my tongue sloppy and lazy like tar black molasses squelching between teeth

Thoughts that taste of longer tongues and darker mouths and sharper teeth on a planet circling twin red dwarves, of methane marshes and hexagonal prism eyes that sparkle like blood red rubies

Words slurring together and thoughts hazy as they come back down to a body that feels paper thin and husky like maple seeds in the wind

I think of the wrath that dances just beneath my skin

The bile that churns and rushes to my face, eyes like daggers, lips fixed in a snarl at the slightest insult

I think of my pride, that squirming bag of worms that lights fires in my blood and how it wars with my desperate craving to belong

I watch them from the safety of my window like a xenoanthropologist. How they love and laugh and touch eachother. How they slide against one another like well oiled gears in a way I have never been able to. I think of the eldritch way in which I care, with a gaping maw and drooling lips, with twirling rings of eyes and 6 pairs of wings, with claws that burrow deeper and squeeze tighter the harder they try to leave me.

And I think to myself, girlhood is not so much different to godhood. A self-satisfres ied sadistic existence hiding a crushing singularity of loneliness, topped with pettiness and boredom.

I wish you would come to me in my waking hours and take me away from this place

Steal and hide me away in palaces of sand and moonstone

I can put up a good fight. I’ll run and scream and beg you to stop, make sure to drag out the thrill of the chase. Isn’t that what pretty nymphs are for?

I see my bitterness reflected in the ozone blue of your eyes, the hardness and cruelty shot through with marble strands of gold

Your skin is a thrumming pool of pure power, an atomic bomb bound in sinew and nucleic acids, ready to turn me to a pillar of salt

Your fingers coax the most bittersweet of melodies, leaping and thrumming from string to string like acrobats. They say the best musicians make the instruments sing, but I’ve seen you make lyres moan and weep

I remember the old stories, of girls turned to laurel trees, of wounded pride and donkeys ears. I remember the blood of the Myrmidon spilled outside the walks of Illium. I know you are a wrathful, self-righteous whore, with greedy fingers that leave bruises  in the dips of hips and a silver tongue to match. Your fathers essence is strong in you, stronger even than it is in him. Nuclear fusion and supernovae to his ion and electron arcs. What is a thunderbolt in the face of the sun’s core?

That is how I know you would understand, I know you would thumb at that gaping festering wound inside my heart and bring me corpses instead of flowers. A plague in just the right place, so they can die slowly, in agony. Nuclear wastelands instead of jewellery. And then afterwards you’d smile that chesire cat smile at me, all satisfaction and faux-inoccence, and we’d wear our best skins and most beautiful masks and dance amongst the stars next to the hunter ripped to ribbons by hounds at your sisters command compose ballads, and study the healing arts and crafts but not so well the grey eyed bitch curses me with eight legs and congratulate ourselves on our own brilliance. Spin lies out of ambrosia and nectar and pretend we are good and just, exactly what the mortals deserve

 Fuck me with your fingers with a fierceness you wouldn’t dare use on your precious lyres, piston into me the way the women in my grandmothers village gut fish (rhythmically, ruthlessly, with the sun beating down on leathery skin and the weight of 6 mouths to feed and the memory of your husbands knuckles shattering teeth), reach up into me and wring the neck of my womb like a newly ripe peach, yank it out of me until it lies pulsing and glittering and full of seed, uterine arteries spewing blood. I want to feel you burrowing upwards until I am impaled on your divinity, until you push upwards into my heart and lungs and your hands are peaking up out of my throat. Turn me inside out and wash me clean until my mortality burns away like a chrysalis and I am reborn in your image.

My ascension is a spectacle that leaves many breathless and many more blinded. “I am the goddess of lost potential” I whisper into the crook of your neck “of promises unkept and grudges nursed. Of doorways and bridges and the space between atoms. Of longing and regret and moments lost.” And then you’d smile that ridiculous smile of yours, like you’d seen me like this always, glowing and thrumming with possibility – and this confirmation is somewhat amusing.

“Pithanotita” you’ll declare against the shell of my neck and the rightness of it reverberates deep deep down, beyond the skeletons of cells that no longer exist and multi corded DNA strands, as if you have struck my very resonant frequency and my de Broglie wavelength sings with the joy of being seen. Not a name but a constant, a universal truth. Phoebus I’ll counter, and I won’t bother using a mouth, though the smirk will be implied. Possibility and Poetry need no lips to speak to one another, we are two sides of the same coin. You’ll laugh out loud then, delighted at my audacity. Only your mother calls you by her mothers name. And I can pretend just for a moment that we might last. The first of our kind to have eternity.  That we won’t end up tearing each other to pieces. The sun and his unlikely lover, regret.

[paradoxlemonade]

Nature of Curiousity

Fandom: Hermitcraft

Characters: Joe & Cleo

words: 1024

Warnings: very mild body horror (Cleo is embroidering on Joe, but he's made of fabric and does not feel pain)

Ao3: Here!

Summary: Joe Hills the puppet wants to make friends with humans. The humans do not want to be made friends with. Cleo puts him back together afterwards. [Abecedarian Prose Poem]

@mcyt-valentines gift for @therizino-ao3! Hope you enjoy :]

...

A sunrise the color of a bitter lemon tea beckons in the fresh morning scent of grass and dreams, soft around the edges and losing their remaining sharpness as sleep turns to wakefulness. Beneath an old willow tree, a corpse as fresh as the day it died rests in the dewy grass and embroiders artful designs into her best friend’s shoulder.

Cleo huffs at him, “You know, it would’ve been nice if you had waited until at least breakfast to go galavanting around and get yourself shot by a humanfolk.”

Dauntlessly undeterred as per usual, Joe merely smiles serenely and says, “But I must watch them, as the rain must fall and snow must melt; it is in my nature, sewn into my skin.”

Even-spaced threads holding his innards on the right side of the felt are the only thing decorating his skin, by Cleo’s own observation.

“Fine as that may be, your ‘nature’ does not make you invincible to arrows.” Generally speaking, being made of cloth made Joe invincible to very little, save for perhaps pain and common sense. He would grow tired of his game eventually, and then he would stop attempting to consort with the humanfolk (at least, Cleo hoped he would tire of it).

“If I am endlessly repairable no matter my condition, is that not a form of invincibility?”

 “Joe, you can only be repaired if I have the pieces to put you back together; if the humanfolk decide it would be more fun to capture you instead of running you off, you would be in more pieces than magic thread could possibly hold together.”

“Killjoys—that being people who deny my innermost whimsy, that being you—” he gestured at her with the arm not being worked on, “should not judge how one chooses to express themself, especially when they are themselves of humanfolk blood.”

Less ever said about one Joe Hills’ innermost whimsy, the more sane one would be, as neither consistency nor thoughts of sound minds are facets of his being.

Minutes flow around them like a gentle brook as Cleo continues her stitchwork and pointedly does not give his comments the dignity of a direct response, at least until she thinks of one worth saying.

“No humanfolk,” she began slowly, “Would consider me possible by their understanding of the world, let alone ‘of their blood’; I have not been theirs for a very long time.” One day was all it took to lose everything that she’d built over the course of her entire life, as one day was all it took for the sickness that ravaged her village like a pack of wolves descending on a flock of sheep to bury her in an early grave that she didn’t stay put in.

“Perhaps that much is fair and you have no love left for them, but I have never been theirs; the humanfolk ways are unlike our own, and I find myself pulled in again and again despite all attempts to the contrary.”

Quickly fleeting curiosity would be too much to ask, she supposed, as temporary passion was also as antithetical to Joe’s nature as he claimed sedation to be.

 “Really, you can’t be all too mad at me for this, because if you were as upset as you pretend to be, you wouldn’t have offered to sew me back up, and you certainly wouldn’t have added these nice yellow flowers without me needing to ask.”

She glances down to her hands as if seeing them for the first time that morning, the hands that gently wove the thread in and out of his fabric skin with a practiced ease and the comfort of a close friend. This conversation—despite its distances—has still grown much too close to an uncomfortable shard of glass nestled deep into her chest, digging and poking into the soft tissue beneath her heart that she could not excise no matter how strong her will. 

“Unfortunately, we still live in a world where I need to sew you back up for reasons other than your own foolishness, and it’s not like I could simply let someone I’ve worked on walk around looking like I did the job carelessly.” 

Vexed enough by her candid response, Joe allows the conversation to wander along to more familiar territory by changing the topic with all the subtlety he could muster—that is, not a whole lot.

 “What type of flowers are these meant to be, anyway?” Joe asks, stretching to see Cleo’s handiwork.

“Xyris flowers, of some kind; they’re all over around here and you seem to like them well enough that I didn’t think you would mind if I put some on your arm.”

Yellow petals of soft thread cascade from the top of his shoulder down midway to his elbow, just shy of of meeting up with the dusky green vines—those were almost ready to come out, but the new stitches would have to stay for a few weeks so the fabric could knit itself back together. Zero weeks have gone in recent memory that did not end with one of Cleo’s friends needing stitches (usually Joe, and usually for silly and-or humanfolk reasons), but she never stopped pulling out her needle and thread before they could even apologize for bothering her.

And as Joe thanks her for the help and the flowers, she leads him back to her house for an early breakfast to cap off an odd morning, all the while dreaming of a world where the humanfolk and the otherfolk didn’t have to live on opposite sides of the veil, and Joe could make strangers into friends.

 Better worlds and broken hearts are playing cards of the same set, but a card for resilience is also shuffled into that same deck. Crisp toast and peppery fried eggs aren’t quite miracle workers, but they’re enough to bring Cleo back up to normal when combined with good company. Dreams weren’t going to come true on their own, but maybe Joe was onto something with his adventures.

 Everything considered, it took him an hour longer than last time to get run off.

[hannahwatcheshorror]

Season One Recap

SEASON TWO RECAP 

e1 - Friends, Romans, Countrymen - It is a harsh winter for the lost girls in the cabin, Shauna keeps talking to the frozen corpse of Jackie while Taissa's sleepwalking gets worse and hurts Van. The Adult Survivors are still struggling to cover up the murder of Adam (see s1e9) who is on the news and now has citizen sleuths looking into his death (oh no!). Adult Shauna realizes that Adam had an art studio and it might behoove her to look inside. Adult Taissa is confronted with the results of her sleepwalking (killing the family dog) and her wife gives her an ultimatum: her job or her son.  Adult Shauna and Jeff find a lot of paintings of Shauna so it is good they went to Adam’s studio. Natalie and Travis continue to map the area while looking for Javi but he has been missing since Doomcoming (s1e9) so prospects for him being okay are very dim. Tiassa and Van exchange I love you's which is very powerful but Taissa is going through a terrible bout of her sleepwalking. Adult Taissa is also struggling with her sleepwalking and she discovers her dead dog shrine and vows to be better. Adult Shauna finally burns her journals and Adams ID but not well enough that her daughter doesn't find the ID! Shauna eats Jackie's ear. (Wack)

e2- Edible Complex - Shauna is haunted by her dead friend Jackie which is freaking everyone out but Shauna is wondering if it isn't time to eat the dead... Taissa's sleepwalking almost leads her off a cliff but thankfully Van is there to save her. Travis is still obsessed with finding his brother, Javi, so Natalie pretends to find his bloody clothes to indicate the boy is dead. Our helpful policeman Kevyn is here to tell Adult Shauna that they have some questions for her about Adam but she dodges them pretty well. Elijah Wood enters as a new mysterious guest who is taxing Adult Misty badly. Adult Lottie tells Nat the story of how Travis actually died, it was an accident, he was only hanging himself to talk to the spirit of the woods or whatever but then the machine wouldn't let him back down (oh no!). Adult Lottie was there when it happened but couldn't do anything, she even saw Laura Lee (see s1e8) but she was dead and horrible and when Lottie turned around Travis was dead. The girls finally decide it is best to let Jackie rest by ceremonial fire and back in the 2020's Adult Shauna's daughter spills the beans to a random guy at a bar who turns out to be a cop who figures out what Shauna did to Adam! Oh no! Adult Taissa gets in a car wreck with her estranged wife. Back at the cabin things at the fire aren't going too hot (literally) when a big blanket of snow falls on Jackie from the tree, this creates the perfect conditions for cooking and the girls all wake up to a meal. Coach is the only one who does not cannibalize Jackie's corpse in this starvation feast and he now seems much more afraid of the girls.

e3- Digestif - The girls must face the horror of their actions in the daylight and are now wondering what to do with the remains of the remains (put ‘em back in the plane, out of sight-out of mind). Adult Taissa is okay after the accident but her wife is not, while Shauna and Jeff process big feelings about why Shauna cheated (ugh) in the first place and then they get their car stolen. Elijah Wood, Walter, with the help of Adult Misty, questions Randy about Nat's disappearance. Nat takes Jackie's bones to the plane and almost gets stomped on by a moose while the girls plan a baby shower for Shauna. Adult Jeff tells policeman Kevyn off but Kevyn just doubles down on the cheating wife theory while Shauna gets the car back by threatening a little gun violence. Coach has dreams of what could have been and the girls collect “His” blessings in the form of birds that killed themselves on the cabin. Adult Lottie has a vision of death to come, blood honey to be more precise.

e4- Old Wounds - Taissa keeps sleepwalking to trees with the mysterious symbol carved in them and Van wants desperately to talk to Lottie about it but Taissa won't let her for some strange reason. Adult Taissa wakes up having driven somewhere in her sleep, which is very disorienting! The cabin gang get into a disagreement about who/what is at fault for the lack of food so Nat decides that her and Lottie will duke it out. Adult Misty and Elijah Wood (Walter) continue their search for Natalie and are hot on the trail of Lottie's cult. Adult Shauna comes clean to her daughter about (almost) everything after Shauna discovers she couldn't keep hiding her secrets much longer (Jeff was NOT pleased about this). Adult Natalie helps a new friend with her angry mother and rescues her fish. Nat, with the help of everyone from the cabin, tries to get the frozen moose from the lake but it slips from their grasp while Lottie tries not to freeze to death. Somehow, Taissa's sleepwalking had been leading her to find Javi! Travis is very happy but confused because of what Nat did in s2e2 with the bloody pants. Our episode ends with Adult Tai meeting up with Van!

e5- Two Truths and a Lie - Some of the girls in the cabin are beginning to follow Lottie and what she has to say which is freaking the stragglers out. Adult Shauna's daughter goes on a date with an undercover cop but she snoops and finds out he’s a cop so throws him off the scent of the truth. Adult Taissa and Van talk about Taissa's sleepwalking problem. Misty gets her best friend killed out in the cold because she shares her deep dark secret from F Sharp (s1e2) about the plane's emergency transmitter, so, off the cliff with her friend, I guess (but Misty will lie about how the friend disappears). Adult Shauna tries to throw the cops off her scent but they are too clever for the lies laid out in front of them. Adult Misty breaks things off with Elijah Wood (Walter) because he knows too much about her (and Adam (gasp!)) and then attempts to join Lottie's cult to save Nat. Adult Van is presented with sleepwalking Taissa who is another beast entirely. Back at the cabin it appears that Shauna is going into labor during a snowstorm, oh my! Also, there was a darkness in the forest coming for them (or from them) and it is back in the present times with them now, oh no!

e6- Qui - Shauna is in labor! And there are problems with the labor! Oh no! The placenta came out first when usually it comes out second! Oh no! But she has the baby okay! Hooray! Adult Shauna and her daughter are brought in for police questioning and Shauna lets loose that she was sleeping with Adam. After some trouble getting the baby to latch, Shauna finally gets him to drink her milk. Adult Taissa and Van arrive at Lottie's cult around the same time Shauna barrels in. Shauna wakes up to the baby being gone and maybe the whole cabin eating it? OH NO! Turns out the baby being alive at all was just in Shauna's dreams since she passed out giving birth, her baby did not survive birth. Very sad but also explains quickly why Adult Shauna doesn't have a 20 something year old son in the present... Yikes either way. The episode ends with her clutching her dead child and asking if we can hear it crying.

e7- Burial - Everyone in the cabin is very sad after the loss of the child, Shauna is taking it especially hard (obviously). Coach is having severe hallucinations about his ex, Paul, while Shauna puts her baby to rest outside under some rocks. At Adult Lottie's cult the gang is picking out different treatments to begin their “healing”. Misty overhears that some of the girls think she killed her friend, Crystal (because she did) so Misty starts a search party for Crystal and some other girls express interest in eating Crystal if she is found dead which concerns Misty. Adult Taissa, not enjoying her therapy, confides in Lottie about the sleepwalking. Adult Shauna, also not enjoying her therapy, confides in Lottie about her daughter. Misty tries to find Crystal's body but cannot and instead intercepts Coach trying to kill himself and she stops him. Adult Van admits to Taissa that she has cancer and only has months to live (sad!). Adult Lottie is seeing a lot that isn't there and it is really freaking her out. The Adult Gang gets together and discusses what they learned in their therapies with some tequila from Van's car (and surprisingly Nat is upset) they all dance in the snow. Back at the cabin Lottie lets Shauna let all her anger out on Lottie's face and Shauna beats the hell out of her. A call from Jeff confirms a body has been discovered and the cops think it is Adam, oh no! "Does a hunt that has no violence feed anyone?"

e8- It Chooses - The hunger is starting to drive the girls in the cabin mad while in the present all six (6) survivors now know the original four (4) helped Adam disappear. The cops go into Adult Jeff and Shauna's home and turn the place over because they found Adam's body (but they won't find anything at the house, right?). The cops grill Adult Jeff about the murder but he stands strong even in the face of all the awful pictures. The six (6) survivors air all their recent secrets with one another while Callie (Shauna's daughter) and Jeff share a beer together and Jeff tells her that Shauna had a baby in the woods who died. Speaking of babes in the woods, the girls in the cabin have a lottery to see who has to DIE TO BE MEAT and Nat draws the black card so they start to HUNT HER. Coach is out finding Javi's hideaway while this is happening, by the way. Javi finally begins to speak again and says he will take Nat somewhere safe but on the way he falls through the ice. Everyone just lets him drown because the "wilderness chose" which is rough, and then they collect his corpse to eat.

e9- Storytelling - We see Travis' reaction to Javi's death (very sad) and Shauna having to bleed Javi's body (yuck!). Coach learns that Nat let Javi die in her place and is heartbroken, he leaves. Callie and Adult Jeff go to find Shauna at Lottie's cult but the cops are there too! Adult Jeff does a false confession to Kevyn but Elijiah Wood (Walter) is back and he is poisoning the hot cocoa (see The Bad Seed). Lottie questions if the woods really do want what is best for them once Javi has been butchered and cooked but Misty doesn't care about Lottie's feelings. In the present the Adult Survivors gear up for another hunt to appease the woods or whatever strange force drives them and Shauna draws the black card. Everyone but Adult Shauna don wilderness masks and grab knives and begin to turn on Shauna (much like Shirley Jackson's The Lottery). Callie shoots at Lottie for hunting her mother which stops the hunt. Lottie proclaims she is no longer the leader, that the wilderness has chosen Natalie since it didn't let them kill her. Adult Nat's friend (s2e4)  comes in with a long gun and threatens them all because she doesn't know what is going on so Misty charges her with a syringe of poison, Nat jumps in the way and takes the full dose. "[Death] It's not evil, just hungry (like us)." Adult Natalie totally dies which is a bummer because I really liked her. The cabin catches fire and it was sort of implied that maybe Coach set the fire but who knows we'll have to watch the next season!

-----------------------HANNAH WATCHES HORROR--------------------

[the-fiction-witch]

Carriage

Media - The Artful Dodger Character - Jack Dawkins Couple - Jack X Reader Reader - Eliza Rating - 17 (Flirty Af) Word Count - 1283

Winner Of Coming Soon Poll!

Jack trudged through the dusty, dry mud, walking slowly down the winding forest path. He was left with nothing but his boots and cotton underwear, with Fagin’s moth-eaten coat draped over him. He was coated in blood and various chunks of internal organs, not wanting to think too hard about it. His body stank of sweat and blood. His arms arched from hours of digging, his legs exhausted from walking the mile from the graveyard, and he still had several more miles to go.

He had spent all day operating and dealing with the daily functions of the hospital.

He’d been interrogated by Captain Gains about the missing payload, Which was not actually his doing.

He was dragged out to the graveyard to dig up a body in the early hours of the morning almost on his own,

He’d had the exploded body rain down on him! Held at gunpoint! His clothes were taken!

And the stupid money they did all this for was taken too!

It had been a very long day without any sleep, and his patience was Extremely thin.

Fgain was following behind him, chatting away but Jack was not listening,

“Dodge… I did warn ya about diggin’ up the dead.” Fagin complained, “Still… not sure who could have predicted an exploding corpse.”

“...You know,” Jack sighed as he walked, “I rather enjoyed my life before you showed up,”

“Ohh that’s nice,” Fagin complained, “To the Man who raised you!”

“You’re a blight, Fagin,”

“Thing’s will turn!” He reassured, “It’ll take us some time to reach the lofty heights we had, back when we were the toast of London!”

“We weren’t even the toast of Clerkenwell Green!” Jack complained,

Suddenly, the familiar sound began to build behind them, the clattering of horseshoes and wooden wheels. The undoubtedly sound of a carriage rather rapidly approaching.

Jack’s blood ran cold, and he quickly darted off the road and into the brush of the bushes to hide, hoping whomever it was could just ride past without noticing him.

Fagin followed him, hiding behind the tree line.

The carriage and its horses hurried into view but slowly came to a stop only two or three trees down from where they hid.

The door of the carriage opened, and a familiar figure climbed down. Miss Eliza Harper climbed down the little steps onto the dirt, adjusting her light yellow dress as she looked around.

Jack did his best to hide, praying not to be spotted. ‘No… no, no. Why Eliza, why did it have to be Eliza,’

“Ain’t that your pretty skirt?” Fagin asked,

“Shut. Up.” Jack snapped, “Let’s just hope she didn’t see-”

“Doctor Dawkins, Is that you?” She called out,

“I think she saw us.” Fagin laughed,

“Yes, I figured that out Fagin, given the fact she is yelling my name!” he snapped back, He sighed and slowly got to his feet, this was definitely not the way he wanted her to see him like this for the first time but… too late now. “Eliza,” He forced a smile,

Eliza’s eyes met Jack and she softly smiled, but as she noticed him, her eyes flicked down meeting his bare chest and cotton underwear her face turning red and eyes widening before she quickly put a hand over her eyes, “Doctor Dawkins!” she gasped,

“Yeah… I uhhh I am really sorry Eliza, it has been… a very long night.”

“Doing what?” She asked, slightly peeking out the side of her hand before pretending she wasn’t when he looked at her,

“I… uhh… It is very complicated to explain.” He sighed, “And frankly I am not sure you’d believe me if I told you,”

“I might…” she said peeking around her hand again,

“Eliza!” Jack scolded her a little when he saw her bluntly looking but still playfully if anything; he was kinda flattered she wanted to look,

“I’m sorry!” she whined, “Oh please! If you found me half-naked in the woods, you wouldn’t look?”

Well, she had him there, “Not the point!”

“Liar, you wouldn’t even pretend to block your eyes,” she said peeking again,

“I would!” He defended, “Just… drop them if you turned around.” he muttered,

“Jack!” She laughed,

“You want me to lie?! I would at least pretend not to look when you were looking right at me!”

“As adorable and humorous as this all is! Miss fancy skirt could we perhaps get a lift back to town?” Fagain spoke up,

“If you don’t mind Eliza, that would be really helpful.”

“Of course,” She nodded,

Jack happily headed out of the tree line; he glared playfully at Eliza as she fully gave up with her hand. He went to climb up but she blocked his way and coughed, “What?”

“Could say thank you…”

He playfully rolled his eyes, “Thank you, Eliza,” He smiled, kissing her cheek.

She happily giggled and hopped up into the carriage,

“You two are weird…” Fagin sighed as he tried to climb in,

“No.” Jack stopped him, “After all the trouble you’ve caused me, you can walk.” He told him before he climbed into the carriage and shut the door.

Fagin did start yelling of course but Eliza knocked for her driver and the carriage began to hurry along the road.

“Thanks, Eliza.” Jack sighed,

“You’re welcome,” she giggled fully not hiding that she was looking,

“Stublety is not your skill is it?”

“Nope.”

“Not even going to try?”

“No.” she giggled, “Would you?”

“Point taken,” he sighed,

“So… How did this happen?”

“It’s been a long night, let’s just keep it at that.” he sighed,

“Where are your clothes?”

“No idea.” He sighed,

“We can send someone out to look for them later.” she cooed, “For now we’ll just worry about getting you back to town… and into a bath.”

“Yeah. Bath would be a very good idea.” he agreed,

“What exactly is-”

“You. Don’t. Wanna. Know. Eliza.”

“Is this the sort of chaos I am to expect going forward?” She laughed,

“This is… an unusually high frequency of my chaos.” he sighed, “Does that put you off wanting to be around me?”

“No,” she smiled, “Just means you're full of surprises.”

“You’re too sweet,” He cooed,

“Here.” she said as she pulled a bottle from her bag, “It’s just water, but it’ll be enough to clean your face off at least,”

“Ohh! You angel Eliza!” He gasped taking the bottle using the sleeve of Fagin’s coat to take the water and wash off his hands and face, “Ohh that feels so much better.”

“Umm, there’s my handsome doctor.” She cooed,

“I’ll be far more handsome once I get back to the hospital and take a bath.”

“We’re not going to the hospital.”

“Uhh… then where are we going?”

“Well, as I’m heading home. I might as well let you come use my bathtub. While we send someone out to look for your clothes.”

He raised an eyebrow at her a little, “I might as well.” he smirked, “I take it… your father isn’t home?”

“Mhm,” she nodded,

“Humm… alright,” he smirked, “And will you be joining me in this grandiose Bath?”

“I’m not dirty.” She shrugged,

He bit his bottom lip a little and slipped off Fagin’s coat tossing it across the carriage,

“Jack!” She squealed as it landed on her head messing up her hair and putting dirt all over her,

“Now you are, Eliza.”

“Fine.” She huffed, “But I want as far from that as possible.” she said as she tossed the coat onto the seat beside her, and jumped across the carriage to sit beside Jack.

“Is it that bad? Or do you just wanna cosy up with me?” He smirked,

“Both.” She giggled nuzzling into his neck,

“Umm, come here.” He growled, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tight to his body and showering her in kisses. 

[evolutionsvoid]

All that is this world exists because of the death of gods. Great celestial corpses that have converged here and formed the land, sea and sky. Over countless millennia, these carcasses have fallen upon this world and built it into the thriving place that it is today. Even though it is the very ground we trod upon, their deaths have brought so much more. Fertile soil fit for growing vast ecosystems of trees, fungi and invertebrate. Potent fluids and humors that flow in endless rivers and bottomless oceans. And perhaps the greatest gift of all is the life that has come to call this world home. It is well known that man was born from Ichor, the blood of the gods, but many other creatures were brought here from these celestial corpses. Some emerged from the fluids, others generated from the rich bountiful flesh. But for the likes of the wormfolk, it was said that they already knew life before coming to this world, as they lived within the guts of the great gods.

It is said that the wormfolk were parasites of the gods, but that role was lost in ages past. According to their tales, the Hostia Prima was the god in which they inhabited, their kind born and living within the Intestinal Cradle. When death struck their divine host, it was devastating to their lives and culture. The corpse fell upon this world, and their original civilization collapsed. Yet, some of the wormfolk survived and were able to slither free of their perished god. Emerging into the light for the first time, they were witness to a bountiful land of plenty, where a new life for their kind could be made. And so, like man, the wormfolk took to this world and soon called it home.

Though much of their ancient knowledge and past was lost in time due to the destruction of the Intestinal Cradle and their kind abandoning much to survive in this new land, the wormfolk are not haunted by this. What happened long ago does not matter, and the world that their ancient ancestors knew is forever gone. Best to focus upon the lives of the present, and find purpose in what they have. Compared to the great works of man with his sprawling cities and grand inventions, the wormfolk are simple folk. Hunters, gatherers and farmers, living in crude villages. There are no impressive automatons built by their hands, or towering works of art erected in their name. They choose a simple life and seem content with it.

The wormfolk have boneless bodies, their flesh soft yet flexible and elastic. They possess a primary pair of tendril arms with which they do most their work. Running down their chest is another six stumpy limbs which are mainly used for grasping or holding onto objects. Their long serpentine bodies terminate in a thorny barb, which is used to anchor themselves when needed or as a weapon if threatened. Their heads possess three eyes, many sensory organs and a impressive mass of teeth. This thorny nest may look perfect for ripping into prey and carving through flesh, yet there is no mouth behind it all. The wormfolk have no mouths, rather their bodies absorb nutrients whenever it comes in contact with food. These teeth are primarily used for sifting and churning through rich muck, or pulverizing thicker globs into easier absorbed fluids. The flesh they are anchored in is more absorbent than other patches of their body, which is why they often "eat" by utilizing this part of their face. The ability for these teeth to move and vibrate to better churn its food is how the worfolk communicate with each other and man. They have learned how to quiver these teeth in such a way that when combined with air exhaust from various opening, they can speak in human tongues.

Though they eat through their skin, wormfolk do not often go about naked, as this very same flesh is also vulnerable. No tough hide to protect them, or potent spines to ward off attackers. So they may clad themselves in crude "clothes" that may be harvested from prey, or built with their own secretions. Wormfolk can excrete a glue-like substance that hardens over time. This was originally used in their host to build nests or anchor themselves in place, but now this fluid is used in the construction of homes, armor and even pottery. Wormfolk mix this liquid with clumps of waste to make a sculpting material, shaping it in the way they want before letting it dry. Once fully hardened, it becomes dense and tough, perfect for making armor or sturdy shells. While they may erect huts or sleep in burrows, wormfolk can also construct coiled shells from this material. This serves as a sort of mobile home that they can drag with them, much like a snail with its shell. Here they can store items while also using it for defense and rest. One just has to retreat inside to be safe, as the tough shell protects them. To make it even better, some wormfolk construct plug-like hats that can seal the entrance whenever they hide, making it harder for foes to breach.

Their method of feeding makes things simple at times, as they only need nutritious muck to bathe in. Places like fecal swamps have this stuff in great abundance, and thus many wormfolk villages are found there. With such a setup, the village merely needs to construct a central pool to collect the richest waste in which they rest in. However, wormfolk still may partake in solid food, be it through gathering, hunting or farming. Their setup makes tougher, crunchier foods hard to consume, so they lean more towards the squishy, fleshy and juicy. With these goods, they use their teeth to pulverize it so that they may soak it up more easily. It is said that wormfolk "eat" solid foods like this because they enjoy new flavors, while some claim this method became more popular when they came in contact with man. And when invited to their table, the wormfolk felt it polite to find a different way to feed to better engage with these fine fellows.

Interactions between worm and man are often pleasant, as either side has no ill will towards the other. The fecal swamps tend to be territories far from the Church's shining cities, and thus such foul regions are often ignored. Poorer communities tend to crop up around fecal swamps, as folk make a living by harvesting waste for fuel or hunting the creatures within. Thus, it is these people who interact most with the wormfolk, and they have built a good bond. Wormfolk tend to be kind and warm towards those they meet. Though they have little to offer, they are content with exchanging polite words or fulfilling favors.

Sadly, the kindly wormfolk are not exempt from the great war that ravages these lands. Though they have no ties to any church or front, they suffer at the madness that has gripped many. With the land falling into chaos, and horrid forces now running rampant, the wormfolk have been seen in a new light. The Arimakki that swarm the land and boil the flesh are parasites as well, and terrified souls have started to connect the two parties. It does not help that the wormfolk fit the description of the White Worm, and thus are believed to be tied to the Vile Red Tree. In their madness, soldiers and cleansers have started to believe that the wormfolk are aligned with the Arimakki, and thus they are met with burning yellowflame. After a few of their villages have been scorched, the wormfolk have packed up and fled deeper into the fecal swamps. They retreat now to more rank and sludgy regions where man struggles to travel. Here in the foul pits they hide, hoping that the flames of war burn out before they reach this rotting haven.

-----------------------------------------

"Wormfolk"

Things just ain't right til you got sentient worms!

[suddencosmology]

A lorepost constructed while fighting Shadow of the Erdtree's Final Boss

I have thoughts. This started when I was born, but these particular thoughts began during my first playthrough of Elden Ring as a set of notes to keep track of events. With Shadow of the Erdtree (and me smashing my head against a brick wall), this section on the Shattering War expanded.

Repeatedly dying to the wrath of heaven gives you time to think, and now that I own the gate of calcified bodies, I must share them.

Fact

Quote

Conjecture

(Sword Monument, Altus)

The First Defense of Leyndell

A sovereign alliance rots from within

Traces yet remain of bloody conspiracy

(Direct translation) The battle of the First Defense of Leyndell

A sovereign alliance, from within collapses,

becoming a defeated army

A blood plot, these are the traces

Sword Monument refers to both Blood and Rot, suggesting involvement of Malenia and Mogh.  Who is in the alliance?  Translation suggests the attackers.

There's nothing I've found to shed more light on this idea, and so I have no extrapolation.

(Sword Monument, Altus)

The Second Defense of Leyndell

The Fell Omen stacks high the corpses of heroes

Yet the Erdtree remains unshaken

(Direct translation) The battle of Leyndell's Second Defense

The shunned ogre,

piles the champions' corpses 

The Golden Tree is unshaken

Margit the Fell appears on the battlefield.

Omen can be found in open Altus.  Given the location of the Shunning Grounds, they most likely originated there.  But did they escape, or did they follow Margit?  One group is found at a campsite not far from the Leyndell war camp.  More, alongside Misbegotten, are found at the Minor Erdtree within the outer wall, engaged in prayer.  A third group wanders the hill of abandoned treasure carriages, but near that is the Perfumer's Ruins, where lives an Omenkiller.  One must be present due to the other, but who?

Promotional art shows Radahn attacked by the Fell Omen.  Opening cutscene shows army w/ Trolls attacking Leyndell.  Beyond pulling carts,Trolls are found primarily in Limgrave, but one guards the gate of Redmane Castle, and another overlooks Sellia's gate, both in Caelid.  

Unlikely to be Carian: Carian Trolls wear helmets and tabards.

Alliance between Godrick and Radahn?

(Sword Monument, Liurnia)

This marks Malenia's southward march

The Blade of Miquella and her Cleanrot Knights

Grant her wings never to be clipped

(Direct Translation) Malenia's southward march monument

Miquella's Blade, the Noble Rot knights

The wings that are never hindered

Why did the march start here?  Leyndell and the Haligtree are both north.  Or does it mean that here her march turned south?  Were she chasing Radahn out of Altus, her first stop would've been the land of his birth.  Once certain he had not retreated there and/or recieved no aid, her path would have gone South.

(Sword Monument, Limgrave)

Godrick the Golden, humiliated

Having tasted defeat by the Blade of Miquella

Now on his knees, begging for mercy

(Direct Translation) Golden Godrick, a humiliating battle

To Miquella's Blade, a total defeat

Grovelling, begging for forgiveness

Either Malenia defeated Godrick here, or if he and Radahn sieged Leyndell, then perhaps he groveled rather than face Malenia again.

(Sword Monument, Caelid)

The Battle of Aeonia

Radahn and Malenia locked in stalemate

Then, the scarlet rot blooms

(Direct translation) Aeonia Battle

Radahn, Malenia come to a draw

The Scarlet Rot flower blooms to full glory

Here occurs the fated battle that ended the Shattering.  Malenia blooms in a bid to destroy Radahn, and whispers in his ear the following:

(Young Lion's Helm)

"Miquella awaits thee, O promised consort."

In the aftermath, Miquella heals Redmane Freya of the Scarlet Rot.

(Cleanrot Knight Finlay Spirit Ashes)

Finlay was one of the few survivors of the Battle of Aeonia, who in an unimaginable act of heroism carried the slumbering demigod Malenia all the way back to the Haligtree. She managed the feat alone, fending off all manner of foes along the way.

Malenia is "slumbering" after Aeonia.  With the presence of Miquella in Caelid, it suggests Miquella was responsible for halting the bloom of the Rot Goddess, Saint Trina sending Malenia into a deep, long slumber.  Perhaps an eternal one, until Millicent and her sisters arrive, each carrying a part of Malenia cast aside in Aeonia.  

And as each of them blooms, the Goddess begins to stir, and the Tarnished is but the unlucky fool forced to slay her.

Above is but connecting dots, but there are still questions unanswered.

Morgott calls all the demigods traitors.  Did he know of Ranni's part in the Night of Black Knives?  Or was her and Caria's inaction during the Shattering treachery enough?

If we follow the Radahn-Godrick alliance, those two are on the list for certain.

Rykard's rebellion was open and clear-cut.

Why the twins, though?  Betrayal, or like Ranni, was their disappearance/retreat to the Haligtree after Aeonia the cause?

For Radahn, why did he and Malenia clash? 

His lore paints him as glory-hunter, raised on tales of his father and Lord Godfrey proving their might in the field of battle.  A naive prince born in an era of peace, hungering for a war to prove his mettle.

He clearly sought to be Elden Lord, but perhaps not with Miquella as his God.  Or perhaps the war was a sort of elaborate courting ritual, demanding he face the full strength of Miquella's ideals and followers.  Or crueler, the promise was meant to be an impossible request, one to goad Malenia into combat and prove to all the Red Lion deserved the title of Strongest.

Whatever the case, it seems Malenia warred as a way to force him into compliance, and when he would not yield, she Bloomed.  

This either suggests she knew of the Secret Rite scroll we find in the DLC, and that perhaps the entire war was an extension of Miquella's plan, or perhaps just a final barb, given to a man worthy of no honor or glory.

The Unalloyed's presence in Caelid would be his compassion, or his moral calculus (such that could convince him puppeting both Radahn and Mogh would be for the Greater Good), could not allow the Scarlet Rot to spread.

The other option is that, again, Radahn broke his promise to Miquella, Malenia's march was in pursuit of vengeance, Miquella arrived too late to stop them from destroying each other, and his ascension was in turn a reaction to losing his promised consort and his sister.  In this charitable perspective, his original plan was the Haligtree, watered with his blood and fully absent of gods, shelter to all.  A throne of unalloyed gold, sadly abandoned when his hopefuly ideals clashed with cold reality.

Either way, we come to Mohg.  Why Mogh?  Again we turn to the moral calculus.  Miquella needed a guardian while he slept, and without his loyal Blade, turned to the next most dangerous demigod.  And also, the more expendable.

Of the others: 

Messmer was already in the Land of Shadow.

Rykard was a heretic and possibly a snake-god at the time.

Morgott had assumed regency of Leyndell.

Ranni was either dead, missing, running Caria, and/or definitely couldn't be trusted with the plan.

Godwyn was a cancerous corpse fused to the Erdtree.

Miquella needed a body for his Lord.  The closer in relation, the better.  And it needed to be someone who wouldn't be missed.

Mohg's Dynasty was small, heretical, slightly obsessed with blood, deeply tied to an Outer God, and possibly already involved in the whole murder and kidnapping thing.

An easy choice.

Either way, little suggests Mohg somehow knew a way to reach the Land of Shadow.  The closest connection is the Formless Mother's foothold with the Bloodfiends.

More likely, Miquella had the power and knowledge to reach it himself, and his ascension was delayed until both Mohg and Radahn were properly dead.

A lord's soul delivered, and a body to host it.

And so the enchanted followers and a lone Tarnished followed him into that hidden realm.

Of the two interpretations, I ask both myself and the reader, this: which is the more tragic?

That the good-natured promises of salvation are built on lies, deceit, and manipulation.

Or that the dreams of someone good and kind and loving have corroded into cruelty.

[steviewashere]

I have an idea for a hefty project that will have to wait until January or so, but please hear me out on it.

A choose your own adventure style fic/art/animation thing, but from Robin's perspective with the help of narration in a third person style; i.e....You are kneeled on the ground, you hear a rustling coming from the dark corner, you...that sort of thing. (Y'know, like a D&D game may be narrated).

It would focus on Robin's perspective surrounding Steve showcasing odd, inhuman behaviors. Such as her picking up on the fact that Steve chitters and growls while he's talking, but he brushes it off as his voice getting too loud or trying to clear his throat. She notices that he wears a bandana all the time, but he tries to argue that he's concerned about the Upside Down particles; though that would confuse her, considering her and Nancy both inhaled those particles, same as Dustin. So on and so forth. Until she's met with a very animalistic version of Steve—one that betrays himself, that pushes her around, frightens her, and locks her away from him.

She tells the others, but they don't believe her. Leading her to have to collect her own evidence. So she stalks Steve around. Which leads her to the forest behind his house. She's hidden by a tree trunk, but in the clearing, she spots what looks like Steve bent over something—but this Steve is lankier, sweatier, gnarlier; unhinged jaw, longer limbs, glinting sharp teeth—and what looks like a very alive, blood coated, hissing, feral Eddie Munson; matted hair, fangs, demogorgon style flaps on his jaw. (Some other cool things happen in this encounter, but I don't want to give too much away just in case I do go through with this).

Eventually, Steve would approach her about it. Tell her not to tell anybody else. Tell her that he can't help it, that he doesn't want to be this thing either, that he doesn't have control like he used to. And, as Robin, you can choose whether or not to tell him the truth. You'd be prompted with a decision: Tell Steve What You've Told the Others OR Tell Steve That His Secret is Safe With You.

Whatever your decision is, this will affect the story much, much later.

I will say, again I don't want to give too much away, that this will be a major character death thing. Steve would die trying to protect Robin from monsters like him. And in that, Robin would need to dispose of his corpse so that those monsters can't consume his actual body, too. She'd have to set him on fire—because, y'know, the demo-creatures don't like the warmth.

And in that moment, the narration would essentially be something like: "You stand over your best friend's body. The acrid smell of burning flesh flaring through your nostrils. Flames, yellow and orange and bright, grow higher and higher. For a brief moment, you are reminded of sunlight—which you haven't seen, not since Spring Break. You look at the red sky above you and try to picture it, the sun. It's a light. A yellow light. It reminds you of pasts, what held in the future. Of the yellow fluorescent light of bathroom stalls, sitting on an unwashed floor, vomit crusted mouths and urine stained shorts—there was laughter peeling from the walls, as you sat across from a guy you barely knew, but wholly trusted with a secret you've never told anybody. He showed you the stars. And, now, you are reminded of the sun—a star—Steve Harrington is the sun. And if the sun is a star, then Steve Harrington is the stars, which you haven't seen since Spring Break. You look away from the sky, to the enormous flames. His clothes make lumps in the glow. Distantly, you swear you hear laughter. Will you tell Steve Harrington a secret?"

And then you'd be prompted with 'yes' or 'no'. The first secret, depending on whether or not you lied to Steve earlier would be something like: "I told the others about you." or, alternatively, "I shouldn't have told them, that was your secret, not theirs. I'm sorry."

Y'know, and then there'd be like two more narrations like the one above and some more prompts about secrets.

And after a while, you (as Robin) would watch the flames die out, the color splashing your face until it's nothing. Words would echo around you, Steve's last words, urgent and pressing and more desperate than the way Eddie had said them, "Make him pay."

You would make do on that promise, bring a plan forth to somebody who would understand, Nancy Wheeler. You'd tell her what happened to Steve, why you have to go through with this plan (I am using vague language here because I don't know what the plan would be). And maybe Nancy would tell you that you're being irrational, that this is no way to go about it.

And, as Robin, you'd turn to her and say something along the lines of:

"He killed my best friend. He took your best friend, Nancy. Whatever his next move is, it's going to be wilder. He's going to take more, don't you get that? If we let him idle any longer, Hawkins is toast. We're toast. I'm not going to let him take anything else, I'm not going to let him hurt anybody else. Either you're with me, Nancy, or I blow this fucker's head off on my own. Which will it be?"

And, I'm imagining that Robin and Nancy would grow close—romantically close, platonically close, you can decide—but this newfound confidence, however ugly and sneering it is in Robin, persuades Nancy. They'll go through with Robin's plan.

If only Robin didn't deter from her own plan. If she wasn't so set on revenge more than plain vengeance. If she didn't mow down anything standing in her way, even if it's seemingly innocent people.

Nancy would have to get through to Robin, then. Her own monologue.

"I've been here, Robin. I know what this is like. You think the whole world is against you, that they don't believe you. And it feels like that. I know it feels like that. But if you turn away all of the people who want to help, if you keep on like this, you're going to be all alone in the end. You'll turn. Change. You won't win this way, Robin. None of us will. If you want to be a hero, then you're going to do it in an honest way. None of this bullshit that you're trying to pull."

Hehe, anyway, that's really as far as I've got. Y'know, other than the fact that I know I want Eleven to be the one that delivers the final blow/attack to Vecna, not Robin. But something about Robin being presented with awful, real horrors—her fear of Steve changing, getting sick being true, realized and fleshed...I think that would change part of her. And something about a torn Robin, brutalized by the loss of somebody close to her that she trusted, that she loved—all of that is just so delicious to me. With a bonus of Ronance, platonically or romantically—these two parallels that are now connected at the root by major loss—is something so beautiful to me. I've also got so many poetically charged narrations in my head. (Also, it's sorta small and I didn't touch on it much here, but there's Steddie. They're just sorta changed and non-human and very oddball.)

But listen, this is something that's not fully planned out. Something that would take a lot of work and simply unimportant focus. And, y'know, it's in this narrative that people don't usually like reading—which I get, but would hinder how this would be received.

I just have so many cool ideas for it. Would anybody, anybody at all, be interested in this?

[southern-gothic-comic]

Page 72

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(Author notes)

Panel 1/2/3: Time passes, while she hangs silently from the tree. Her skin gradually loses its color and her blood and bruises decay to purplish-black.

Imogen: (VO) Because of your magic?

Laudna: (VO) I thought so, at first. Though not for the same reasons as those hooligans back in Gelvaan. They told me I was to serve a greater purpose for Whitestone, and I thought . . .

But in the end, my magic wasn't even of interest to them. It was only my face they needed.

Well, and the rest of me. I was just a doll to her, to be dressed up and played with. She put me in clothes that weren't mine, braided my hair, snipped my ears with scissors to look like someone else's, and put me on display, up there in the tree.

Panel 4: Eight figures -- seven humans of various ages and a bear -- hang in silhouette from the branches of the tree, shadowed by the red light of the moon.

Laudna: (VO) It wasn't just me. It was quite a gruesome diorama up there -- especially after a few days, as you'd expect. That “greater purpose” we'd been promised was only to serve as a mute warning to strangers. I don't even know who it was.

Panel 5: Her eyes fly open, inky black, as a swirl of sickly green energy surrounds her.

Laudna: (VO) But unlike the others, I came back . . . a little different.

Panel 6: The swirl of energy revives the corpses of the others dangling beside her, but they are monstrous puppets, their mouths gaping open and their eyes staring lifelessly. She struggles to free herself from the noose. The bare, black branches stand out starkly against the red of the sky as Ruidus flares above.

Laudna: (VO) I knew I was alive, at least in some way, because my first experience was that I couldn't breathe.

[raihann1]

STOP

When I tell u the corpse bride and CP fic was so unexpected but so needed. Basically

I LOVED IT OML😭 IT'S ACTUALLY A REALLY CREATIVE CONCEPT AND A FUN READD AHH

Anyway, if you could make a part two I would be forever grateful. But don't push urself, I don't mind waiting<3 AND UR ART IS ADORABLE--

Okay, I'll leave you be now. Have a great day/night 🤧

🦋The other man⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖Eyeless Jack x Reader 2.

NOTES: AW THANKS!! Im going to continue this series untill its basically the whole thing, who should Victoria be? 😭

OLD!Notes: Gosh I love Corpse bride.. how about eyeless jack as a corpse husband though? 😼

Unaccurate E/J

This was made to fit F!readers sorry :( 𓈒ㅤׂ 𝜗𝜚✶🦋☆🦋★🦋☆🦋★🦋✶ㅤׂ 𝜗𝜚

You ran, ran for your damn life. What even was that thing?! No way in hell would you get catched by that! You ended up bumping headfirst into a large tree, whimpering in pain you saw the figure slowly making its way towards you. Your vision was blurry but you knew it was him. It had to be. You tried running agian only for you to embarassingly hit your head once agian on the same tree. You shook your head and dashed out of there. Slipping on ice and dashing through the forest as the figure seemed to try and reach out for you. The sharp branches you dashed through seemed to grab you and hold you in place as you gasped as one clung onto the collar of your shirt.

"Oh god!" You whispered as you trudged through them making it towards the bridge.

Crows seemed to appear out of nowhere and soon everything seemed peaceful once agian. Your breathing was heavy as you conciously looked around. Sighing in relief once you saw no trace of the man. You walked slowly backing away when suddenly.

BAM

Staring right back at you was the man, or demon or whatever this monster was! You gasped in shock. Backing away eyes widened as he slowly stepped closer to you reaching out for you.

"You may kiss the bride." The mans raspy demonic voice said as you could just sense he had a shit eating grin behind the mask. ---------------------------- Ｔｗｏ Your vision was blurry as you noticed two figures. One was the man, and another.. a skeleton.

A skeleton?!

"A new arrival?" The skeleton said intrigured.

"She must have fainted, are you alright?" He said tilting his head and reaching to place one hand behind your head.

"W-what happened.." you said seeming dazed.

"Looks like we got a breather!" The skeleton said its face inching closer to yours.

You gasped in shock.

"Does he have a dead brother?" A lady said shoving the skeleton out of the way.

"She's still soft!" A child like skeleton said joyfully.

You backed away, slowly moving upwards and taking in your surroundings.

"A toast!" A short skeleton with a cutlass shoved into its body said raising his glass. Another skeleton removed the weapon as the weird drink dispensed into his cup.

"To the newly weds!" He continued as the cutlass was once agajn plunged into him.

"Newly weds?!" You said astonished.

"In the woods! You said all those vows.. so.. perfectly!" He said gently grabbing your hand where a gold rusted ring was.

"I-i did?!" You said staring at your ring finger.

"I did!" You said realizing, you fell hitting your head over and over agian.

"Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP!!"

"Coming through! Coming through! My name is Paul," a talking head said.

You gasped agian.

"I will be creating your wedding Feast!"

Suddenly a boy with blonde hair, black eyes and blood seeping from them appeared. He seemed to be some kind of glitch, a virus? His voice sounded of a child.

"Wedding feast?! Fuck yes!!" He sajd giggling as his whole body seemed to glitch.

"Your "husband" smiled and nervously laughed."

"Viruses.. hah.." he said.

"Oh!" You said almost falling AGIAN..

"Keep away! You grabbed the cutlass from the tiny skeletons body, struggling to retrieve it."

"I- i've got a.. dwarf and am not afraid to use it!" You said shaking.

The room gasped.

"I want some questions...NOW."

"Answers." The skeleton corrected you.

"I think you mean answers.."

"T-thank you yes..answers, I need answers."

Your "husband" seemed shocked.

"W-whats going on here! Where am I!" You said fumbling.

A pool ball fell from a pool table awkwardly.

"Who are you?!"

"Well.. thats kind of a long story."

"What a story it is, a tragic tale of romance, passion and a murder most foul." A skeleton in a top hat said.

"This is gonna be good!" The small skeleton said as you looked confused.

---------------------------------------

Notes: you should listen to Remains of the day so it makes it more realistic :). Here are the changed lyrics!

Hey!Give me a listen, you corpses of cheerLeast less of you who still got an earI'll tell you a story, make your skeleton cryOf our own judiciously lovely corpse spouseDie, die we all pass awayBut don't wear a frown 'cuz it's really okayYou might try and hide, and you might try and prayBut we all end up the remains of the dayDie die die, yeah yeah, die die dieWell! A man is a gem known for miles aroundA mysterious stranger came into town she was angel like good lookin' but down on her cashAnd our poor little baby he fell hard and fastWhen his mother said no, he just couldn't copeSo our lovers came up with a plan to elopeDie, die we all pass awayBut don't wear a frown 'cuz it's really okayYou might try and hide, and you might try and prayBut we all end up the remains of the dayDie die die yeah yeahDie die die yeah yeahDie die die yeah yeahDie die die yeah yeahYeah, so they conjured up a plan to meet late at nightThey told not a soul kept the whole thing tightNow her fathers suit it fit like a gloveYou don't need much when you're really in loveExcept for a few things or so I'm toldLike the family jewels and a satchel of goldThen next to the graveyard by the old oak treeOn a dark foggy night at a quarter to threeHe was ready to go, but where was She?She waited(And then) There in the shadows, was it a Girl?(And then) His little heart beat so loud!(And then) And then baby, everything went blackNow when he opened her eyes, he was dead as dustHis jewels were missin' and his heart was bustSo he made a vow lyin' under that treeThat he'd wait for his true love to come set him freeAlways waitin' for someone to ask for his handThen outta the blue comes this lovely young girlWho vows forever, to be by his sideAnd that's the story of our own, corpse husbandDie, die we all pass awayBut don't wear a frown 'cuz it's really okayYou might try and hide, and you might try and prayBut we all end up the remains of the dayYeah

𓈒ㅤׂ 𝜗𝜚✶🩸☆🩸★🩸☆🩸★🩸✶ㅤׂ 𝜗𝜚

Part 3 anyone?

[thebunnyslibrary]

In The Woods Somewhere

summary. You go into the woods to take some photos...but find him instead

characters. Vampire!Bucky x Reader

word count. 4.8k

warnings. Dub!Con, Manipulation, Kidnapping, Stockholm-ish, mentions of violence/blood.

BunBun's Spoop-tober Collection Masterlist / Main Masterlist

Finally, your big break. You were finally getting the chance to publish a collection of your photos of haunted locations around New England with a real publishing company. Your final location was an abandoned church in the woods; thought to have been used by an early group of colonizers until it and the nearby settlement had been abandoned. No one knew for sure what had happened. Perhaps the colonizers had moved on? Maybe they were wiped out by plague? There was even a dark story of a minister who had started murdering villagers that were “unclean;” allegedly filling the church pews with corpses with slashed and bloody necks. Doing research on places before you took photos was one of your favorite parts; gathering information for the captions and essays you wrote to go with the photos.

After your parents had died while you were in college, it had left you feeling empty and directionless for some time. Then, after finally finishing your degree, you decided to use the money your parents had left you to buy a van and photograph the world.

You’d been working as a traveling photographer for a while now, doing gigs like weddings and events. You’d also managed to self-publish a few books and tried to sell your photos and art where you could. It wasn’t much but it kept you in gas money and beef jerky. You’d been all over North America and a few parts of South America. You were hoping to go international for a follow up book if this one was a success.

You pulled up to the walking trail that led into the forest. You had about an hour’s hike into the woods; knowing getting the shots at sunset would create perfect photos. You shrugged on your backpack with your supplies and with your camera case hand, headed off. The trees were washed in the golden hue of fall, starting to shed their leaves in preparation for their long winter sleep. A slight chill hung in the air but after 3 months of heat and humidity you were ready to be cold for a little bit.

Sometimes you listened to music when you hiked but today you’d decided to relish in the sounds of the forest.. Bird calls echoing off the trees, the rustling of the trail as you walked, squirrels and other small critters gathering their own winter supplies. A flock of geese calling out as they flew in v formation overhead and you quickly snapped a picture. Traveling and photography had given you an entirely deeper appreciation for nature and it’s beauty. An hour later, you stepped into the clearing where the church was set.

It was a small chapel, probably only fit to hold 10 or 15 people.  Most of the eastern wall had crumbled while the others were still partially there. Only one or two (maybe one and a half) benches were left; but you weren’t too sure about actually sitting on them. Still completely intact though, was the Archway that must’ve bene the entrance. Above it, was a bell; likely used to let the nearby colonizers know that church was starting. But on the bell was an inscription that could no longer be read. The language appeared to be Latin, but the words had been lost to time. You were raising your camera to take a picture, when a soft voice startled you

“Hi.” You turned suddenly and you were staring into crystal blue eyes. You jumped back but kept your eyes fixated on his. A man, maybe a little older than you had been standing right behind you.

“Oh! Uh…hi!” you said, blinking and taking more of him in now. Dressed in a black jacket over a fitting gray tee-shirt, dark jeans clinging to his legs, and silver rings adorned most of his fingers on his right hand. His left hand was hidden by a leather glove. His hair was pulled back in a man bun and a single ruby on a black chain hung from his left ear.

                “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I was just coming up the trail and I called out to you.” His voice was soft, with a hint of an eastern European accent, making a slight shiver go through you.

                “Sorry, I suppose I didn’t hear you.”

                “No worries, I’m James. But my friends call me Bucky” He reached out his hand for yours, taking it and telling him your own name. “I’m surprised to see someone else this far out in the woods.

“I’m here to take pictures.” You explained. “It’s a beautiful structure…what’s left of it anyways.”

“How interesting.” He said. “Are you a professional?”

“Well, sort of. I’m actually just finishing my first collection to be published. ‘New England’s Haunts and Its Future.’ I’m including the church with a piece on New England puritanism and its effects on today’s bigotries.”

He smirked. “I like it. I’ll have to make sure I order a copy of your book.” You both laughed. “You know the old England had some haunts too. All of Europe, in fact. Plenty of old spooky castles. You should definitely see them.”

“If my book goes well maybe.”

“Have you ever had your work in a gallery?” he asked.

                “Unfortunately, no. I’ve had my art displayed in some cafes here and there, but not much else.”

                “Pity, you seem passionate about your work, it must be nice.”

                “I’d call it nice, maybe good.” You beamed. “I’d actually like to get a few shots in, if you don’t mind. I can talk a little while I work though.” There was something about him. He unnerved you, if only slightly. But you also didn’t want him to leave. You wanted him to stay with you.

The two of you walked through the archway to stand on the overgrown stone floor, flowers and dandelions peeking through the cracks. As you walked up what used to be aisle and could almost make out where the other pews had been. Maybe it was the sunset, maybe It was your imagination, but along the floor, the stones seemed eerily stained red.

                Again, Bucky’s closeness startled you, but this time, you seemed frozen to the floor.

“You know, darling. There’s one thing I’d love. Could you take a picture of me under the archway? It would make for a great dating profile picture.” He winked at you. And you felt your face warm up.

“Sure, why not.” You focused your camera on him and his eyes seemed to flash red at you. You gasped before snapping the button, but only cursed and brushed it off as red eye-syndrome. You took one more picture and this time, it seemed normal. You pulled it away and waited as the picture loaded. Your book would hopefully lead to some newer equipment. Bucky stood behind you suddenly, but again you were frozen to place; only this time with his chest firmly against his back.

As the picture loaded on the screen, your stomach dropped. The picture was empty. the archway was still in there. But Bucky wasn’t.

You turned around and his smile was downright predatory. Revealing two pearly white fangs. But his eyes, they were bright crimson red.

                “That’s…. those can’t be real…your eyes, your teeth…” you said, feeling your heart drop into your stomach

                “Oh, my darling. They are ALL too real…little girls like you should know better than to go out after sunset.” You should be running, fighting back, anything. But you can’t. You’re staring into his deep red eyes and you can’t move. “No, printsessa. I can’t have you running away. Not when you smell so delightful.” His arms wrapped slowly around your waist, pulling you closer to you. “Not to mention how beautiful you are. You are exactly what I’ve been searching for.” He whispered in your ear. Before you could blink, you felt a sharp pain in your neck and the world went dark.

You awoke in a soft bed, softer than anything you’d felt before. A bed, but you’d been… Oh fuck… You shot upright quickly as you remembered what happened. What greeted you was a dimly lit room. A wall of immense windows letting the moonlight stream in while a fire roared in the fireplace. Low lamp light gave let you see to see immense bookshelves lining the rest of walls. You started to panic. That freak had knocked you out, now you were in some cabin somewhere. You were still wearing the same clothes, but you had no clue where you were.

                “My my, finally awake. I suppose I did drink a bit more than necessary. But I just couldn’t help myself. You were just absolutely delicious.” You looked and saw Bucky. He’d been sitting by the fire until he stood up and moved towards the bed. You could see he was wearing black t-shirt and sweatpants, but what you hadn’t seen before…was his metal arm. His hand had been covered by the glove, but now you could see the moonlight glinting off it. You caught yourself staring and remembered what had happened last time you’d stared at him.

                “What did you do to me you sicko?” You lowered your eyes to the floor, trying to move out of the bed without tripping. You heard him chuckle.

“What’s wrong baby doll, you don’t wanna to look at me? “

“No! I just wanna go home. Please.” You tried to be strong but you were trembling as you tried to keep your eyes low enough. You desperately searched for anything sharp or heavy, settling on the lamp and reaching to pick it up, but before you could, you found yourself pinned face down on the bed, your arms trapped behind you. You struggled against him, but he hardly moved. His voice in your ear.

                “Poor little bunny. You know what really happened. Or do you need a reminder?” You felt something scrape against your neck. Fangs.             

                “That’s…. you’re not…”

                “Oh, but I am doll. And I don’t think I’ve found anything I’ve ever wanted more in my centuries of living.” He pressed a soft kiss to your cheek. “Your trembling is so adorable baby girl. It makes me want to ravage you until you cry for me.” His hand wandered down to your jeans and your breathing turned shallow. There was an ache deep between your thighs that wanted to call out for him, but you were still scared of what he’d done.

“No, I won’t have my beloved scared of my touch.” He said, gently pressing a kiss to your neck before moving to help you stand up. Your legs were much wobblier and you found yourself leaning against him. You stared at his chest and quietly spoke. “Bucky, please. Where are we?”

“We’re at my cabin. I’d like to show you around; as this is to be your home too. If you promise to behave.” Deep down, you still felt petrified. But an inner voice said that if he had already wanted you dead, you would be. Besides, you hadn’t noticed before, but something about his smell was so enticing to you. Cinnamon and smoke, with a slight…metallic underlay.

                “If…If I go with you willingly…will YOU keep it that way?” you asked, trying to sound firm. You could hear the amusement in his voice.

                “I see my little bunny can stand her ground. No, I will not control you that way like before.” He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. Taking a deep breath, you lifted your head to look at him.  His hair was still pulled back into a loose bun, moonlight casting shadows on his sharp cheekbones led down into full lips. And those eyes. You would never forget the deep red color before he drank from you. Now instead they were crystal pools. As unending as the sky. Like you could stare forever. But you blinked away, acknowledging he had kept his promise. You moved away from him and instead toward the windows.

                “If you are…a vampire…why the windows? I thought you were supposed to avoid natural light.” He chuckled. And walked a normal pace now to stand next to you as you both stared out into the forest.

                “Any creature can be exposed to too much sun. We just have much a lower tolerance limit. I have heavy black out curtains for the day…but I cannot find it in myself to give up this view.” He pointed up towards the stars. You didn’t think you’d ever seen so many. But a rumble of thunder off in the distance caught your attention you saw flashes of lightning. A storm was moving in soon, and you could feel your resolve to escape crumble slightly. Where could you go in a storm?

                “How exactly…did you become…?” you asked, hesitantly, not wanting to upset him and trying to focus on anything other than his closeness. You’d always thought trying to…humanize…your enemy so to speak was supposed to help keep you safe. He smiled.

“A vampire…Well, I would imagine you know how.” He chuckled and you found yourself chucking as well. “Where Romania is now, I was a simple farmer. Goats mostly. Then one night, a creature attacked our village.” He paused. “Killed my sister. I tried to fight back, and something about that… He changed me instead of killing me. Figured it was some cruel punishment, killing everyone I knew and loved and leaving me alone.” You felt your heart tug. As if sensing your sadness, he turned and shook his head.

“Don’t worry too much about it, I got my revenge. Afterwards I stayed low, kept to myself for a few centuries. Until the world erupted into war. I refused to keep to myself. That’s how I lost my arm. When the Germans found out what I was; they tried to use my powers to make more. They took my arm to see if they could clone me. Then they gave me this one and tried to turn us into a weapon of war. Only their plans backfired. They couldn’t control them. They eventually all killed each other…at least the ones I didn’t kill first.” He was quiet for a moment and you almost started to panic. But he let out a sigh.

“After the war, I settled here. Made my home, invested some wise money, now I have a little peace.” He turned to you. You felt your heart ache for him. “But I have waited so long for something so enticing as you.” He started to move closer, but you still were nervous, taking a step back.

                “Wait uhm... I thought you wanted to show me around.” You reminded him, trying to distract him. He smiled and let out a deep sigh.

                “I suppose I did. Well, you’ve seen the bedroom and its extensive library. But there’s an even bigger one downstairs. Come.” He took your hand with his metal one and led you towards the door. You felt less scared following him now; you still could feel yourself wanting to resist and struggle. But he was holding your hand too tightly.

                As the two of you toured through the large Tudor cabin (mansion, it seemed), you took note of the art on the walls. Beautiful photographs of places around the world; paintings you wanted to stare at for hours; Bucky having to pull you away from a particularly intriguing work from the Harlem Renaissance.  The two of you talked. Bucky had been to many of the places you hoped to go. And some of the ones you’d already been to. It was nice to find someone like yourself, a wanderer.

                “I suppose after my parents died; I just felt a little lost.” You told him “I didn’t have a big family, no siblings, so I just decided to be free. It’d at least be nice to have a home base someday though.” You mused.

                “I can understand. I’ve actually lived on this land for some years, even before what happened to me. It’s actually owned by an Indigenous tribe. I bought it outright around the 1800s when the government tried to push them out, then gave it back to them. I only asked they let me build a small cabin on the outer edges.” Your jaw dropped. “But…do they know…?” You asked, still having trouble believing it for yourself.  He paused and smiled.

                “In my lengthy time, you meet many people who believe many different things. I’ve learned to appreciate many human cultures, and to always show respect where it is deserved. And not to tolerate those who would degrade it.” He said, then kept leading you on, with you following a little bit closer. You two walked into a room you definitely didn’t expect to find. A Kitchen.

                “It was easier to build than to ever explain why there wasn’t one. Plus, I have a supplier who steals blood from some hoity toity government hospital and I need somewhere to keep it cold. You’d be surprised at the amount of blood they keep on reserve for those rich old bastards.” He rolled his eyes and you managed a genuine laugh. “I don’t know I would.” He smiled at you before continuing out of the room, with you following almost eagerly behind. The tour led down one last hallway to a set of double doors.

                “Now my favorite room. My private study.” He opened the doors. A library that could’ve easily fit 10 of your vans with celling high bookshelves stretched before your eyes. A cozy looking couch sat across from either one of the 2 fire places on opposite walls, and a huge bay window revealed the storm had truly arrived. Gone was the moon, here were flashes of lightening and roars of thunder. In front of the windows sat a big mahogany desk. You strode over to the desk, to see out the window and there on his desk was a stack of all of your books. As you looked back towards him you could see on the walls, one of your photographs.

                It was one you’d camped out and waited all night for in the woods. But you’d caught them, a pack of wolves running through the woods under a moonlit sky.

                “I saw it in a little café in Boston and had to have it. I’ve been following you for quite some time. Literally.” He chuckled. “I became enraptured with you. Your pictures moved me. How you always seemed to capture both the joyful and the macabre sides of humanity. That’s why I had to get your book published. So, I bought the publishing company to make it happen” You turned to him in disbelief.

                “Bucky, you…you didn’t…you couldn’t have…”

                “Oh, but yes I did, doll. It’s what you’ve wanted, what you’ve desired.” His voice dropped. He licked his lips and moved closer to you. “And now, my little bunny rabbit. It’s time to take what I have desired for so long.” He grabbed your hand and tugged you back towards the desk, using his strength to lift you up and pin you down on your back, minding your head.

 His confession, his obsession, even with his charming personality, you felt fear flaring up inside you anyways.  “Wait please…” you pleaded, pressing your hand against his chest.

                “No more waiting printsessa. It’s time. I need to satisfy my thirst. And my lust. And I cannot resist the sound of your pulse screaming out for me.” He paused, pressing his hips more against yours. You wanted to resist, wanted to push harder against him, but you couldn’t bring yourself to. Instead, you wanted to bring him closer.

                “No…you gave your word…” you begged, desperately.

                “I did. And I’ve kept that word. I did nothing to control you. I just failed to mention that my natural state is to lure you in. Until you’re caught like a fly in my web and you don’t even realize it.” He purred, trailing kisses down your cheek. “You’re in my home, surrounded by me, breathing me in until slowly and slowly your defenses have lowered, until you don’t even have the strength to push me away.”

                 He was right. You had wanted to resist him but you’d felt it crumbling more and more. Like the walls of that stone church. You were gripping his shirt not to push him away, but wanting to pull him close. Handsome, intelligent, alluring. Your thighs clenched with want.

                “When I first drank your blood, there was a taste of fear that was indescribable. But now I know, lust will make it even sweeter.” He grabbed your hips and lifted you onto the desk. “So beautiful, but so…fragile.” His fleshed hand wrapped around your throat; you could feel the bitemarks as his thumb ran over them. “You know all I’d have to do is squeeze, right? And I’d crush this fragile beautiful throat. You’re so delicate.” His voice was low. You were still afraid, but that fear was streaked with desire. You wanted to give yourself to him, no matter what the cost.

                “Please…Bucky…” you whimpered, not even sure what you were asking for.

                “Please what, baby? Tell me. Tell me you want me to ravage you like the beast that I am. I can smell your pussy; you must be absolutely dripping by now.” You were drowning. And he was oxygen.

                “Yes.” You barely breathed the word out before his lips were on yours. He slowly pushed you to lay down on the desk. You could hear rumbling in your ears. You couldn’t tell if it was the storm, or your heartbeat. But judging by how Bucky was staring down at you, you assumed the latter.

“You’re so excited aren’t you, doll? You want me to fuck you, make you my slut. And I will, you are never leaving me.” He pulling away, making you whine in desperation, but his only response was to growl as he ripped your jeans down, your shoes falling away and leaving only your panties covering your pussy. He knelt between them, putting your legs over his shoulder, and inhaled deeply.

                “Fuck.” He groaned. “You are soaking wet. How long have you been hiding this, huh? Since I first drank your blood, or from when I told you that I am absolutely obsessed with you? What a shameless slut.” His words, that voice, you would listen to him forever if he wanted, anything to get him to touch you. His fingers moved slowly, stroking you over your panties.

                “I’ve dreamed about eating this pussy for so long, and now I’m going to savor every moment.” You tried to buck your hips as he nipped at your thigh, but his silver arm held you firm. In the bright light of the fire, you could see how each of the platelets moved as he gripped you tighter. You looked back down at him between your legs and knew he’d seen you staring.   

                “Someday I’ll show you everything it can do baby. But for now...” He pulled your panties aside and started with soft licks to your clit while two fingers gently worked inside you. His touch was so gentile compared to the monster you’d feared him as. Your soft moan turned into a shriek as the edge of his fang nipped you.

                “I told you, love. Desire will make the blood so much sweeter. I know you want me. Want to be my little snack for all eternity.” His fingers sped up, rubbing that special spot inside you that make you cry out with reckless abandon.

                “Bucky…Bucky…don’t stop…oooh…” you moaned. Your hands clasping for structure and finding none. His tongue resumed its ministrations on your clit, never even giving his words a chance to wash over you as your knees began to shake. You could feel the erratic patterns his tongue was laving on your clit, driving your climax further to its breaking point.

                “Cum for me, darling. Give yourself to me.” His words were your undoing as you screamed his name. Cumming harder than you could have ever imagined possible. And true to his word, his tongue lapped up every drop it could, sucking his fingers clean. You lay against the cool desk, your body burning with desire and you locked eyes with him, not caring to look away. He smiled, showing off his fangs. “Oh, baby girl, between your blood and your pussy, I’ll never go hungry again.”

                Standing up and leaning over to kiss you, you found yourself tugging at his shirt, trying to get his skin on yours again.

                “Bucky please…need you…” you begged.

                “How can I deny such a sweet bunny like you?” He rid himself of his shirt and sweatpants as you followed suit, dropping your panties to the floor. Your eyes widened at the size of his cock. You’d had your fun with toys but he was something else.  You could see pre-cum dribbling down the side and you wanted to close your legs, but Bucky stood between them

                “Don’t look so afraid, doll. I know a good slut like you can take my cock in that pretty pussy.” He rubbed the head of his cock against your slit and you tried to push your hips up. He pinched your thigh, making you squeak. With his spare hand, he gathered your hands in his strong metal one, pinning them above you to the surface of the desk. His cock teased your entrance and you both moaned.

                “You’re mine now, understand. Heart, body, mind.” He kissed from your temple to your ear. “I own you down to your very soul. Forever.” You nodded. He was a vampire. He was obsessed with you. He’d likely hunted you down for weeks. But none of that mattered now. You needed him.

                “Yes, Bucky. I’m yours. You’re mine.” Bucky smiled and pushed his cock into you, slowly; letting you feel the stretch of him filling you up.

                “Yes, darling. I’m yours. Yours to keep satisfied. Yours to use you as a little fuck toy when I need it.” His pace became rougher, fucking you; squeezing your wrists tighter until you yelped. Then he slowed his hips, letting you now revel in the pleasure you felt. He started rubbing at your still sensitive clit, making you clench around him.  He growled deeply and you gasped as his eyes flashed crimson.

                “Oh, baby doll, don’t play with fire if you don’t want to end up burnt.” He said, his voice lower and huskier. You knew he was getting closer to his own release when his pace picked up again. Not as punishing as before, but you felt his lust, his carnality in every thrust. And it only drove you crazier.

                “When you cum, I’m going to drink from you again and you will be bound to me, my mate, my slut, little morsel.

                “Yes…Bucky yes…please…” closer and closer you edged until he let out a low growl.

                “If you don’t cum right now, I have no problem chaining you in my basement and edging you until the next full moon. Now. Cum.” The idea alone sent you over the edge, screaming out as he bit down fiercely on your neck, drinking from you again. He kept fucking you through his own orgasm, but did not drink as much as he did last time. Only just enough to make you light headed. When he finished, you two lay there a few moments, you breathing heavily as Bucky seemed to still above you. As you floated back down, your body seemed to go even more limp.

                “Such a good girl.” Bucky released your wrists, but you didn’t have the strength to move your arms. Instead, he cupped your chin in his hand and kissed you with your blood streaked across his lips. He kissed passionately and deeply, until your toes curled and you knew he meant what he said. 

                Not bothering to remove himself, Bucky helped you wrapped your arms around him and he carried you over to one of the enormous couches by the fire. Grabbing a blanket off the back and swaddling you both. “You’ll have to sleep for a little while now. But when you wake up, you’ll live forever.” His words seeped into your brain, but there was nothing you could do now. You heard him speak again.

“You wanna know the real story behind those people?” Bucky asked and you made a noise of half-committal. “Well, those colonizers weren’t hard to pick off.” In that moment, you were reminded that though he seemed to have a soft spot for you, there were also very, very dark spots. You shuddered, but it was quickly washed away by the feeling of his metal arm, holding you tighter.

“Don’t worry darling,” he purred. “Think of all the beautiful photos you can take in the moonlight.

[frozenjokes]

The Art Of Being Kidnapped [2/2]

prev

Jimmy was afraid of him. Jimmy was afraid of Grian and Grian knew why Jimmy was afraid and that he was most definitely justified in that wariness- Hell, that was a bad couple months for Grian, time that he could only reflect on in splotchy memories, but he never had really reflected, had he? He never wanted to reflect, to really close his eyes and look back and come to terms with the fact that Jim was just a normal guy.

Grian was not a stranger to delusions. More often than he cared to admit did he find himself paralyzed between a victim and a god complex, writhing in the constricting walls of his own mind, too small, too tight, unfit for him, he who deserved better, more, he who deserved to crush the world under his fingertips, rip the wings off angels with nothing more than talons and teeth for the way he’d been created, the way he’d been wronged. Angels. He hated angels. In the literal or metaphorical sense, it didn’t matter, Grian had only known himself to be cast out, falling, falling until his wings caught flame, then smashing into the pavement, something broken and mangled and evil rising up from his corpse.

Grian could see it, see the horror of his disfigured undeath where no one else could. He could see the bones in his arms twist and reform, break apart and grow like malignant tumors, new limbs, wires, trying and failing to recreate the holy being he’d been before. His ribs were exposed to the air and he had way too many of them, he knew this to be true. They were compensating, compensating for the gaping hole in his stomach, growing and splintering like tree branches to keep what organs he had left inside, though the rest; his intestines and things, they did not leave him, only dragged behind as he walked, attached but just barely, agonizing, but never able to fully split. The fall had destroyed his lungs, but his nerves would not simply let him suffocate, they instead grew, stitching themselves through the lining and forcing a seal so that Grian might breathe, but not without struggle, the labor of every inhale splitting holes in the seams, simultaneously painful and never enough.

There were angels everywhere, everywhere, and they could see it too. They could see exactly what they’d done to him, the consequences of their sacrifice staring right back at them, black eyes, dark and beady. They didn’t know what to do with him. Most avoided him, paid him no mind, or simply pretended he wasn’t there, glancing only from the corner of their eyes at the animal that lumbered down the city streets, blood and pus trailing in its wake. Some angels were cruel, mocking and teasing as they talked amongst themselves, staring with all their Eyes so that Grian knew exactly who they were speaking of. But the worst. The worst.

Some angels were kind. When they looked at Grian, saw what they had done, they were moved by guilt into a pity and compassion they never would have extended if Grian had just died like he was supposed to. They wouldn’t have given his exile a second thought. But here they were, in front of him, forced to reckon with the monster they’d created.

Jimmy was an angel. An angel who saw Grian, all of Grian, but pretended he could not. An angel that tried to hide, to gain his trust and fix him, to mend the ways in which Grian had been so wronged as if his hands hadn’t been the ones that bound Grian’s wings, laughing as he screamed and struggled and sobbed until he fell.

Grian recognized those eyes. He saw them in his sleep. He would not give them the satisfaction of forgiveness.

But angels, Grian’s angels at least, they weren’t real. Logically, he knew this to be true, though some nights as he laid in bed he could still see his exposed and splintered rib cage, he could still feel his intestines splayed out on either side of his stomach. (He could still sense their eyes, though they could not see him under the covers where he often took shelter.)

Angels weren’t real. Jimmy was just a guy. And Grian was just a dog. A beast that snarled at its own shadow, snapped at the dark, and bit every hand that dared get too close. Something reactive. Something quick to distrust, and even quicker to fear.

Grian couldn’t quote a single thing he’d said to Jimmy. He could hardly remember a concrete thing he’d done that semester, not the places he visited or the classes he took. Maybe part of the reason was time. He was eighteen then. Nearly fifteen years ago. And nearly fifteen years later, here he was, trailing behind his college roommate whose feathers were not raised due to the cold, but due to fear. Wariness. Distrust. Jimmy was still afraid of him, from a time Grian barely remembered.

A time when Grian was a monster, and there were no angels. Just people, people who saw glimpses of his true form out of the corner of their eye, who felt compassion, who extended their hands only to be mauled and maimed by a dog who didn’t know when or how to let go.

Grian couldn’t fix it. Even if Grian had the grace to approach something so sensitive, he would never be able to fix it. So instead, he’d do all he knew how. He’d rescue an innocent civilian from this hellscape of a maze, he’d kick the ass of the person behind the dungeon so utterly that they’d wish their parents had never known love, then he’d pay for a very nice taxi and/or hotel if the civilian lived far from home, and never see him again.

He’d show Jimmy a kindness. He’d show Jimmy he’d changed. A monster still, always a monster, but one who didn’t want to bite anymore. Who wanted to love more freely than it scorned.

Jimmy navigated the tunnels confidently, stepping certainly on hazardous ground and keeping his head in encounters with ravagers, spotting them long before Grian even heard them and quietly guiding the both of them in a different direction. The only times Grian saw Jimmy’s wings so much as twitch was when Scar yelled or screamed, words distorted as they echoed across the endless tunnels. But even then, Jimmy looked more confused than anything, mumbling words Grian couldn’t quite catch, but along the lines of ‘he’s still in the game?’

“HotGuy’s pretty resourceful,” Grian tried, not knowing if he wanted to talk or to desperately avoid it, “Loud, but he’ll scream like that regardless if you’ve touched him or not. Bit of a big baby, but-“ Grian cut himself off when Jimmy turned, eyes narrowed, “like- not- He’s just a tad dramatic, probably likes the sound of his voice echoing all over the place. Not- not in a bad way! In a literal- I mean it literally, I literally think he’d find the echoes entertaining. Right? I think he’s fine.”

Jimmy watched him for a long moment before turning away, dismissive. “I’ll take your word for it.” But maybe Jimmy realized how much damage the short silence afterward was doing to Grian’s psyche, because he added, “Though given we’ve only seen one ravager in the past fifteen minutes and no HotGuy, I don’t think he’s screaming ‘just for fun.’ Who knows where he’s gone. Having a bit of trouble telling which direction his voice is coming from.”

Grian got the sense he had said the wrong thing. Hm. Maybe he should just stop talking. But it was odd, wasn’t it. Scar could hardly walk on the ice, much less run for his life from angry ravagers who had zero problems navigating at all. How was he still in the game? Grian wondered if he’d found a way to climb the walls, but those were all ice and slick rock as well, not to mention the ceilings probably weren’t high enough to get him out of reach from a ravager. Plus, Scar was moving, he had to be. They would have found him otherwise.

Jimmy must have come to a similar conclusion, or at least had an idea, because after walking past the same hallway fifty times and passing it up due to the grunts and groans of ravagers down the way, Jimmy took a sharp turn directly down it, silent to Grian’s own terror.

But Jimmy wasn’t careless, walking slow and deliberately. Grian watched intently from behind, carefully copying the way Jimmy balanced on his toes, claws dug more firmly into the ice in the case he needed to turn quickly on a heel. He was confident, practical. If he really had spent all this time in the dungeon, Grian would do well to copy his stance.

Jimmy turned around at some point down the hall, looking Grian up and down in a way that made his feathers rise underneath his wing cover, embarrassment coloring the skin under his mask. So maybe Grian had copied Jimmy’s poise as well, but that wasn’t his fault, Jimmy just looked like he knew what he was doing! Mercifully, Jimmy continued on when Grian aggressively avoided eye contact.

As they continued down the way, Scar’s voice grew louder, though, not nearly as distressed as it sounded from far away. Honestly, he sounded more annoyed than anything.

“Stupid compass! Hey! Give that back! Ooh you oaf!” Hints of affection colored his voice until a larger impact shook the walls of the tunnel, Scar yelping in earnest. “Off! Off! Goodness, alright. I’m gonna need a minute. No one’s allowed to grab me, alright? No! Grabbing! It’s rude.” There was a moment of silence before a proper “NOOOOOOOO!” ripped itself out of Scar’s throat, but Grian heard the laugh behind it, unable to stop his own silent laugh from lifting his shoulders.

“Of course,” he mumbled, Jimmy turning to ask a question before Scar cut him off with another bout of yelling.

“MY COMPASS MY COMPASS MY COMPASS- YOU!”

“I-“ Jimmy stuttered for a moment, caught in the web of his own confusion, “I don’t.. understand.”

“I think someone’s made a couple new friends.”

“That- that is not possible.”

Grian snorted, losing the caution altogether and skipping ahead, excitement and curiosity taking its hold.

Jimmy clearly disagreed, yelping a short “-CuteGuy-“ as he stumbled to keep up, but Grian ignored him handily, eager to see what all the fuss was about.

Scar, outfitted in a newly cracked visor and bumbling around covered in blood, was not a new sight for Grian, far from it really, especially since most of his cuts were clearly shallow, scrapes from fumbling across the ice while the blood smeared over his face was leaking from his nose as was typical for a Scar injury. What was alarming was the three ravagers around the corner, surrounding Scar as he leapt to catch his compass as it slid across the ice. The ravagers seemed interested in his compass as well, bumping into each other and Scar as they nipped to retrieve it, only to stop once Scar’s fingers wrapped around it. But Scar didn’t seem intent on keeping his compass, sliding it across the ice once more, the four of them continuing to chase it. This time, a ravager stepped on Scar’s upper back by accident, causing him to wheeze and collapse where he laid on top of the compass, silent until the three ravagers began to sniff his unmoving body. One scooped him up by the leg, compass and all, and Scar screeched, struggling with a renewed vigor until he was dropped, falling immediately back on his ass, catching his breath, then continuing to slide his compass across the floor. Grian hardly noticed when Jimmy caught up, but when Grian finally looked up to see the other avian, his head was poked out behind the corner in the exact way Grian’s was, mouth gaping. Clearly they were thinking the exact same thing!

“HotGuy!” Grian stepped out from behind the corner, and Jimmy squeaked a small ‘Grian!’ and while it was no surprise that Jimmy knew exactly who he was, the other still slapped his hand across his mouth, and Grian continued with a roll of his eyes. “What in the world are you doing playing fetch with ravagers? What is wrong with you!”

“CuteGuy!” Scar sounded delighted, then less so when a ravager snatched up his compass before he could, getting to his knees and to Grian’s horror, attempting to pry the beast’s mouth back open. “Hey! Hey! That’s mine, you’d better drop it, mister! Drop it!” The ravager did not drop it, but was looking a little more distressed at its predicament. The other ravagers still seemed to want the compass as well, the three of them grunting as they nudged each other, all trying to get it at once. Scar let loose a triumphant yell when the item slipped from the lips of the original, unperturbed that his compass was now covered in slime.

“I found my artifact!” Scar continued as if that hadn’t happened, giving an eager ravager a soft punch in the nose when it started to nudge too close, “Ya big brute. But I found it! The spot I mean! The compass is twisting all sorts of places. I just don’t know where I’m supposed to put it. But I’m getting there! You just watch, any minute now..”

Grian could only gape as Scar slid his compass forward once more, pouncing before the waiting ravager could snatch it up. “What are you doing?”

Scar, impossibly undisturbed by his current predicament, looked up. “Isn’t it obvious? Come on, CuteGuy,” Scar smirked, and for a moment Grian was convinced this entire dungeon was a set up just to fuck with him specifically.

“It is not obvious!” Grian almost laughed, and Scar being Scar, caught the slightest whiff of encouragement and ran head first into the game.

“Weeelllll, if you need to be told, I’m looking for my artifact spot! It’s got to be here somewhere, I’m just covering more ground!” and then, under his breath, “You silly goose.”

Grian snorted, “I am NOT a silly goose.”

“You so are.”

“I am NOT, and you are going about this like an imbecile! Why the fuck are you sliding it across the floor!? Isn’t there an indent to put your compass in? Like the entrance had? How do you even know it’s on the floor? What’s with the ravagers?” Jimmy said something behind him, but Grian didn’t hear it over Scar’s bellowing voice.

“Excuse you, I never said I was taking suggestions from silly gooses! Gosh, CuteGuy, you’re being such a goose right now.”

“Okay, sure, fine, now give me that compass so I can get this done,” Grian stalked forward, but stopped in his tracks when all three ravagers growled, jumping back a step directly into Jimmy’s chest, the other avian’s presence pulling a startled yelp from his throat. When had Jimmy gotten so close?

Scar didn’t seem to notice, not looking up as he pawed at the ground with his compass, “No wonder no one wants to kiss you, goodness, with a tongue like that? Have you seen pictures, CuteGuy? That’s some scary stuff!”

“What- what? What are you talking about.”

“Geese. They’ve got teeth tongues.”

“They- wait, seriously?

“Yeah! All along the sides! It’s spooky stuff!

“That’s sick. I want that.”

Scar rolled his eyes. “Of course you would. Silly goose.”

“I’M NOT SILLY.” Grian paused, letting his ruffled feathers rest, “However, I am willing to compromise on the goose thing.”

“HotGuy doesn’t do compromises, Goose,” Scar winked, “Silly goose.”

“Your merch is ugly.”

“WHOA!” Scar threw up his hands, “Hey now, those aren’t nice words.”

“Your merch is ugly. All of it. All of it is so distinctly bad sometimes I just have to look at it for long periods of time because it’s so damn ugly and I think who is designing this stuff? Is it HotGuy? Does HotGuy think he has good merch? And I think no, no that can’t be possible, his merch sucks, but you wear it all the time! I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen you not wearing your merch. Which is a weird thing to do by the way. Not weird every once and a while, but extremely weird to do on the daily. It makes you look conceited. Which.”

“Wow. Say what you want about me, CuteGuy, but I will not stand for the slander of my merch! My merch is awesome.”

“I doubt it’s comfortable. It’s too cheap to be comfortable.”

“Okay there mister, my merch is VERY comfortable actually!”

“How would you know? You have nothing to compare it to! You don’t wear normal clothes!”

“Maybe I don’t have normal clothes.”

“You- You do, you literally do. You go out to bars and shit in normal clothes all the time. Well. Maybe normal is a stretch, but you make it work.”

“Those are Micah’s clothes.”

Grian inhaled deeply, wondering if this was something he wanted to get into right now. Definitively, no. “You’re rich. You are literally rich. You can buy yourself fucking clothes. Why don’t you do that. Why is Micah the only one allowed to have clothes. Why are you like this.”

“Are those questions you want answers to or..”

“No. I just want to hurt you. Your merch is ugly.”

Scar perked up. “Oh! Well in that case!” Scar crossed his arms, making a little harumph noise that was so perfectly him, Grian couldn’t help but snort, “No it isn’t! Your attitude is ugly.”

“Your face is ugly.” Grian turned up his nose, counting on his fingers as he went, utterly failing to hide his smile, “And you smell. And you’re loud and obnoxious and-“

Grian startled as he felt Jimmy’s claws on his shoulder, pinching the skin beneath his uniform, “Will you just leave him alone!?”

Grian didn’t know what to do, mouth falling open to speak, but no words came out. Clearly Scar didn’t know either, at a similar loss, the tunnel filled so suddenly with the most unbearably uncomfortable silence. Jimmy seemed affected as well, stumbling back and nearly slipping on the ice.

“We’re just playing around,” Scar tried, but this didn’t seem to break any of the tension; in fact, Jimmy only looked more distressed. Scar, never satisfied, fumbled over his words to correct, “I basically called him a slur.” Grian almost snorted, but the heaviness of the air crushed all the joy from his lungs.

“That- That just isn’t true but-“ Jimmy’s voice was more than strangled, face far redder than could be passed off by the cold, “If you don’t care, then..”

“I don’t.” Scar was painfully confused, looking an awful lot at Grian for answers he couldn’t possibly provide, “He doesn’t mean it. Not about my face at least. And given our line of work, he definitely smells and is just as obnoxious as I am, if not more. I bet if you asked Cub, he’d tell you just as much.”

“Cub would not- Absolutely not. You’re not allowed to ask him that.” Grian pointed aggressively at Scar, who only laughed.

“You know what he’d say.”

“I don’t know. I do know, actually, and I don’t need to hear it because I already know.”

Scar turned to Jimmy with a smirk, “You think he doesn’t like to be called ‘silly.’ When Cub tells him he’s just as obnoxious as me, and also that he smells, he won’t get out of bed for a week.”

“That’s not true!” Grian squawked, but still, Jimmy did not look any less mortified. Silence blanketed the tunnel once more. Grian still wasn’t sure what he’d done. What he could do to fix this.

The quiet was abruptly shattered when a hatch on the ceiling was slammed open, the impact sending shards of ice in every direction, “NEVER have I EVER witnessed a shitstorm of a run as MISERABLE as this. What is WRONG with you!” Tango, or at least, a ball of flame vaguely shaped like Tango poked his head(? hard to tell. it was all fire) out of the hole, an accusatory finger pointed Scar’s way. “YOU.”

Scar waved, “Hello!”

“I HATE YOU.”

“We can work on that!”

“GET OUT OF MY DUNGEON.”

“Oh, but I haven’t found my artifact yet! I was working on it before you interrupted- Tango, isn’t it? Mind giving me an insider hint?”

“It’s NOT ON THE FLOOR. Even if it was, sliding your damn compass won’t do anything. The spot is RIGHT IN THE WALL, RIGHT BEHIND YOU, but you should not BE HERE.” Tango whirled on the ravagers, all of which were staring at him blankly, “Do you have anything to say for yourselves?” One of them sat on its haunches, eying Tango expectantly. “NONE OF YOU ARE GETTING TREATS.”

Scar, meanwhile, was unbothered, examining the wall behind him with great interest, “Oh hey! There's a little circle, oh, I get it!” He stuck his compass into the indent, the wall clicking the item into place before the panel flipped around, presenting Scar with his artifact. Scar made a delighted squeal, taking the gold necklace and pendant into his hand with great reverence. “Is this it?”

“That’s it,” Jimmy mumbled.

“Oh!” Scar turned around, not noticing or caring as Tango continued to reprimand his ravagers. From his knees, Scar slowly got to his feet, shuffling with great care toward where Jimmy stood stiff. “You should have this. I have a feeling you’ll probably be the one getting us out of here, so it makes sense you should be the one to carry it. Well..” Scar glanced back at Tango, throwing both Grian and Jimmy a wink.

“Uh.. thanks..” Jimmy stepped back, far more keen to stare at the artifact than at Scar or Grian, but Grian was more focused on Scar, who was inching back toward the still very on fire Tango.

There were many reasons Grian didn’t expect Scar to just jump, but he was proven very wrong when Scar not only succeeded in pushing off the ground without slipping, but had a high enough vertical to grab onto the hatch- the ceiling wasn’t that tall, but certainly higher than any normal person could jump. Huh. Jimmy yelped, but his scream was nothing in comparison to Tango’s, pitched and frantic and yelling NONONONONO, only stopping for long enough to catch his breath and blow a plume of flame into the face of a grinning Scar.

“Oh, did no one tell you? My skin’s flame retardant! And you haven’t been very nice, have you?” Scar laughed maniacally as Tango screamed, kicking his legs the rest of the way into the hatch where Tango disappeared, Grian hearing the both of them banging down whatever tunnels ran through the dungeon. Back in his Work Brain, Grian had half a mind to follow them and really teach Tango a lesson, but just as he took a step forward, eyes on the ceiling, he heard a low growl, and Jimmy’s voice, barely a whisper.

“Grian.”

Grian looked down. All three ravagers had closed in below the hatch, staring directly at him as they pawed the ground. Ah. Maybe they hadn’t decided to be friends after all.

The ravager at the lead charged, and Grian failed to suppress his scream as Jimmy snatched his hand, yanking him in the other direction. The ravagers were hot on their tail, perhaps hoping to make up for their shortcomings with Scar by mauling the other two participants extra enthusiastically, but terror and the ability to quickly take sharp turns made Grian and Jimmy faster, finally losing them after what felt like ages of full-tilt sprinting. Grian had to sit to catch his breath, and even Jimmy looked winded.

“I’m sorry,” the words fell from Grian’s lips in his weakened state, too tired to hold it in and too soft to want to in the first place. Something about terror, huh. Anyone’d turn soft. That, and it was growing clearer to Grian that he couldn’t have any difficult conversations unless there was some sort of threat to his or the other party’s life; maybe he should bring that up in therapy.

“What? It’s nothing,” Jimmy said, cautious, but his guard was also down, “We got away. Should get moving again soon though, we had to run a bit far from the entrance.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Grian huffed, but only for a lack of air.

“Uh-“

“Give me a second. Give-“ Grian groaned, head dropping between his knees. Fuck. It wasn’t like he was out of shape, just not used to running. His legs. Augh. He was going to die. “I’m sorry.”

Jimmy pursed his lips, “Alright.”

“I am. On. A lot of drugs.”

Jimmy was starting to look like he was scouting an escape route, or perhaps considering finding a ravager to hug. “..Yes?”

Grian closed his eyes, willing himself to stop being so winded so he could get to the point. “I don’t think you’re evil anymore. I think you’re probably normal. Normal guy. I don’t really know how to explain to you what was happening in my- in my head, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t seeing the world right. It was all fucked up. My body. My brain. And I don’t remember it all, I don’t remember much, but I was scared, and you really scared me, and I thought I could make you go away, but you were just a guy, a real guy who just wanted to be nice and-“

“Grian.”

“I’m not done-“

“I don’t want to hear it.” Jimmy turned to walk away, and Grian’s breathlessness now had nothing to do with his aching legs. He nearly slipped as he scrambled to his feet, but Jimmy was not waiting.

“I just wanted you to know. Everything I did, everything I said, it was wrong, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t well. I haven’t ever been well, but I’m trying. I’m working on it now.”

“Right.”

“You don’t believe me?” The idea distressed Grian to his very core, almost dizzying enough to knock him off his feet.

“I believe you,” Jimmy said flatly, and Grian wasn’t so sure he meant it.

“I’m sorry.”

“I bet you are.”

“I- I am! It’s not- it’s not sarcasm or a trick or anything, I promise. I promise.”

“That’s great, Grian. I’m happy for you. Happy you’re medicated and guilty or whatever. But whatever you have to say, I don’t care. I don’t care! You could be christened a goddamn patron saint and wouldn’t give a single fuck. I won’t do it. I refuse to feel bad for you. I refuse to make you feel better about yourself by accepting whatever flimsy apology you want to throw my way. You’re sorry? That’s great. I hope you are. I hope you feel really bad about yourself, and maybe you’ll experience a modicum of the bullshit you put me through for years after you left your mark.”

Jimmy met his eyes evenly, cold. Grian felt helpless as he stared back. Jimmy kept walking.

“I..” Part of Grian wanted to be angry. A lot of Grian wanted to be angry actually, but he couldn’t, not only because it wasn’t right, but because deeply, carnally, all of him understood. “I can’t change what I did.” Desperately, Grian wished he could remember what exactly it was that he had done. That at least he could know, that the What wouldn’t have to be such a blurry, messy unknown.

“No, you can’t.”

“I can’t.”

They did not run into any ravagers the entirety of the walk back. Maybe that was the worst thing about the walk, since right now, Grian would have loved nothing more than to throw himself into one. It would have been easier. Though, these were the types of thoughts he was supposed to be looking out for, wasn’t he. Dismissing. Maybe Scar would get a drink with him. Probably not. Maybe Mumbo. Would Cub worry if he didn’t stop home, first? Grian didn’t want to. He’d text at least.

He wondered if Jimmy got something out of this at the very least. If there was a small triumph to be had, a feeling of having won. By the looks of Jimmy’s drooping wings, Grian guessed he felt just about as shit as Grian did. Joy.

Neither of them got any satisfaction from reaching the exit, depositing the artifact, and watching the door churn open, congratulating them on a job well done. Wordlessly, Jimmy climbed the stairs that pointed to the dungeon exit. Grian followed. Minutes felt like years before they reached the top.

Grian never offered that ride home, that hotel. Jimmy didn’t say goodbye. Why Jimmy walked back in the direction of the dungeon entrance, Grian didn’t know, but he didn’t care to think too much about it when Jimmy sat on the steps outside. He was already flying away.