#Dark Age Knives & Daggers | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

perlelune · 8 months ago

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Glory And Gore | Feyd-Rautha

The trip to Giedi Prime you take with your mother should have been a mere diplomatic gesture. Instead, you find yourself prey to the inevitability of fate as it sinks its claws into your flesh.

Warnings: NON-CON, Deception, Parental Neglect, Cannibalism, Mutilation, Bene Gesserit Reader, Knives, Murder, Forced Marriage, Primal Kink

This is a dark story. Heed warnings before reading under the cut.

“I don’t want to.”

“You must.”

“Mother-”

“Use it!”

The authority dripping from your mother’s voice has you shrinking in your chair. You lift your gaze. A shudder slithers through your frame. Your fingers squeeze around the armrests, gripping so tightly you can feel the iciness seeping into your veins.

You study your mother’s face.

An unsettling realization crashes over you.

You no longer are looking into your mother’s eyes…but at the Bene Gesserit. You steel your features and iron your resolve.

You swallow a deep, calming breath.

“Give me the blade,” you repeat, for perhaps the hundredth time that morning. The exact count has evaporated amidst your heated nerves long ago. Your mother is unyielding today, pushing you further than she ever has before. While her purpose eludes you, the urgency etched in her manner from the moment she tore you from bed that day doesn’t. Today, your mother will not settle for surrender. She demands results.

Results for all the years she spent drilling the Bene Gesserit ways into you.

There is no hint of being swayed in your mother, her handle on the dagger unwavering. No twitching. No slackening of her grip. Your spirits dim.

“Again,” she barks.

Pearls of sweat gather on your brow as you strain your mind once more. The humming courses through your blood, the echo of power swelling in your mind. Fiery tendrils trickle through the veil of hesitation and nervousness.

You grasp at the threads, the fleeting wisps of control, pulling on them with all your might. Still, they slip through your fingers like sand. Frustration flares inside you with every attempt.

You persevere, enduring through the agony bleeding inside your mind. Through the liquid fire sweeping through your veins.

You meet your mother’s harsh stare.

“Give…me…the blade…” you articulate, injecting every bit of hazy conviction glowing inside you.

For a while, you and your mother hold each other’s gaze. A battle of wills. An ephemeral, pathetic one that ends as it always does…with your mother snickering at your failure.

She shoots up from the chair, exasperation evident in the drawn-out sigh she unleashes.

“No willpower. Just fear,” she says, pacing across the room.

“Apologies, mother,” you mutter, lowering your head in shame.

The Voice. The damned Voice. In eighteen years, you have never mastered it.

She approaches you, kneeling in front of your chair.

“Child, you must never fear, because fear…”

“...Is death,” you finish. The Bene Gesserit words are woven into the very fabric of your mind, for you have uttered them so many times since childhood.

She places her forehead against yours, cupping your cheeks.

The combination of your two voices echoes in the room.

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me…”

As you recite the familiar prayer, a wave of serenity swaddles you in its calming tide.

Your eyes flutter open.

Your mother’s fingers wrap around yours.

“Reverend Mother will see you tomorrow.”

“So soon?”

“You are of age. It is time.”

“Time for what?”

A shadow flits across her eyes.

“For the Gom Jabbar.”

“Gom…Jabbar.” A crease appears on your forehead. “What is it?”

A tense smile spreads on her face, her grip on your hand growing tighter.

“You will learn soon enough,” she says.

Rest eludes you that night, your mother’s words weighing too heavy on your mind for it to float away in peaceful slumber. Tormented by nightmares, you toss and turn between your sheets.

A beast chasing you, its claws sharp and long…Like knives. Darkness creeping on your every step. Fire shooting through your veins.

The world in flames, while you burn alongside it.

You awake drenched in your own sweat.

Hugging your knees, you lean against the headboard. You stare ahead. Moonlight drizzles through your carved window, casting shapes of silvery light against your walls. The same granite walls you have known since childhood. Usually so familiar, comforting. Today the sight of them reminds you how utterly alone you are.

Your thoughts churn, the storm of doubt and gloom within you grazing its peak.

Per custom, you are a disappointment to both your mother and the Sisterhood. The Voice. The Weirding Way. No matter which skill your mother and the myriad of Bene Gesserit teachers you had over the years attempted to drill into you…you failed to master every single one.

It’s not for lack of trying on your part. You wish you knew why. Why your voice always cracks. Why your hand always falters. Your mother has never given hope to lure a steel-mindedness out of you that was simply…never there. No part of you wishes to bend others to your whim or cause harm. You don’t crave control or power. Only serenity and peace.

The next day springs forth in a haste, the blinding light of the sun arriving too quickly for your comfort. There is a deliberate languid nature to your motions as you get dressed, fussing with your hair and dress. A pointless attempt at delaying the inevitable.

Gom Jabbar. You mulled the words over and over in your non-sleep. Mighty oppressor or mighty enemy. The translations from Chaksobar to Galach are plentiful. While you don’t know what awaits you on the other side of the door, from your mother’s pinched expression the day before…unpleasantness is guaranteed.

You trudge inside the dark room, a chill shooting through your spine at the sight of the still figure of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam sitting in the middle. Her pale, weathered features, wrinkled and creased like ancient parchment, stand out amidst the unsettling gloominess ahead. Even behind the black veil, the older woman radiates an aura of ancient, mystic power, her presence both fascinating and intimidating.

No word unfurls from her tongue at first, her keen, bird-like eyes assessing you. Despite the urge to cower, you hold your chin high and stiffen your spine.

“Your Reverence,” you greet, bowing so low your nose almost grazes the tiled floor.

“Come closer, child.”

Your feet move on their own before you even register the command. Shock pulses though you as you approach the Reverend Mother. The Voice…She used the Voice on you. No Bene Gesserit ever did that before. None would even dare. Not on a Count’s daughter.

You land in front of her, stunned and shivering.

She collects a viridian metal fox from beneath her robes, its eerie light glowing ominously in the darkness. Your heart stutters as you note the chasm inside the box, a lightless void reflecting nothing but complete blackness.

“Put your right hand in the box,” she orders.

Her tone is bereft of the thrall of the Voice now. Willing compliance... you realize this is what she wishes from you. You stare at the pitch blackness inside of the box, the sight alone stirring your unease. Hesitation limns your fingertips.

“I…”

The Reverend Mother’s firm voice booms across the air like thunder.

“Is this the respect you show to your elders?” she roars.

You flinch. Shameful heat lurks its way inside your cheeks. Mother would be embarrassed if she saw you now, denying the Reverend Mother herself, the Emperor’s Truthsayer.

You inhale a wide breath and place a tremulous hand inside the metal box. As the darkness engulfs your appendage, a cold wave creeps over it. The prick of a needle on your fingers follows closely. Sensations vanish from your hand, only an odd numbness remaining.

The old woman’s gaze sharpens. Her wrinkled hand shoots upward with a quickness that leaves you speechless, halting right beside your neck.

A glimpse of metal beckons you from the corner of your vision. Temptation to turn your head simmers within you but an instinct set deeply into your bones screeches at you not to move.

You yield to to the second hunch.

“I hold at your neck the Gom Jabbar,” she informs. “The high-handed enemy.”

“Poisoned needle?” you absently wonder.

You catch the shadow of a smile through the black veil.

“Your mother did say you were a clever one.” She tilts her head slightly, reminding you of a vulture circling its prey, gauging the right moment to swoop down and sink its claws. “A soft heart with a sharp mind.” Dread coils around your heart. “The test is simple, girl. Your hand must remain in the box. Keep it in the box, you live. Withdraw it, you die.”

“What’s in the box?”

“Pain.”

Tingles begin to spread.

Your breath snags, needles starting to dig across the back of your hand. But unlike before, the sensation lingers this time. Growing and growing. Uncomfortable at first, then unbearable. Then, it turns blatantly hellish. Fire licks your flesh, the flames causing your entire body to break out in sweat and your breaths to come out labored and uneven.

Pain such as this cannot be of this world, you begin to think.

The kind that grows more vile and intense every second. You writhe, tears rushing to your eyes. Your free hand clutches your stomach, twisting the flesh in desperate need of an anchor amidst the unnatural agony. The room fogs around you, your quick, panicked breaths and the wild drumming of your heart filling your ears.

The longing for death comes and goes, the impulse to withdraw your hand teetering over a precipice. At least, death would bring release from the unfathomable pain.

Blessed freedom. You nearly surrender to that wayward instinct. Nearly.

In the end however, the acute, overwhelming awareness of the lethal needle less than an inch from your neck keeps your hand inside the box.

“An animal in pain would chew its own leg to escape a trap,” The Reverend mother says calmly, unfazed by your tears and sobs. “But a human would bide its time, suffer through the agony until he might remove the threat to his kind. This is a test of humanity. This is what us Bene Gesserit do. Set humans apart from animals.”

An eternity in the pits of hells seems to drag along before she gives you permission to withdraw your hand, her hand dropping from your neck.

“Enough,” she says.

You tear your hand out of the box with a trembling exhale, astonished when your gaze tumbles upon smooth, unharmed skin. You turn it upside down, flabbergasted. It looks the same. Yet the furnace within the box made the burning feel so real, so vividly, terrifyingly real, that you were convinced the flesh and bones were devoured by the flames. You expected a lump of bleeding, smoking flesh. In disbelief, you fold your fingers several times. You wince. Phantom pain still sits in your hand, your nerves alight with embers of ache.

Suppressing a fresh surge of tears, you lift your eyes to the Truthsayer.

“Your tolerance for pain is sufficient,” she states. “Congratulations, child. You are human enough to serve our purposes.” She hums in thought, a sliver of satisfaction seeping through her solemn inflection. “You may not be a complete waste of genetic material after all.”

“You almost failed the test, I hear.”

You shift in the bench opposite your mother, her imperious tone ripping the wound of your glaring incompetence open once more.

Your attention wanders above the closing gate of the starship. You commit the luxurious plains of your planet to memory. Your chest twinges with preemptive melancholy. From what you heard, Giedi Prime is a dry, depleted rock where trees are replaced by rows of factories and metal skyscrapers which only blot out the dusky skies even more. A nightmare from the sounds of it. Though your mother insisted you join her on the trip, arguing your presence is key to the success of the treaty.

So you swallowed your reluctance and agreed to come.

“I thought I would lose my hand,” you mumble, your fingers clenching. The awe over the flawless state of your limb hasn’t left you.

“Her Reverence would never maim a prospect,” your mother argues.

You nod, gaze colliding with hers.

“Just kill them if they fail to prove their humanity?”

You still recall the sharp, poison-dipped tip pointed at your neck. The oppressive weight of impending death nipping at your flesh.

The line between surrender and success had been thin. Too thin.

Your mother’s stern brow furrows.

“Pain is always a possibility…One you must embrace.”

“Why? Isn’t the Gom Jabbar a singular occurrence?”

Instead of answering you, your mother lifts a black, oblong chest from beside her. You noticed it before but forgot to inquire about its purpose.

The metal and dark accents of the object mimics the Harkonnen style. Your fingers sweep over the symbols engraved on the box.

“What is it?” you ask.

“Open it.”

You do as instructed. The inside of the chest reveals a set of knives, a long obsidian one and a short silvery one. The blades glimmer as you lift them, their sharp edges catching the artificial light of the cockpit.

“They were forged from the finest steel on Alderan,” your mother says. You give a puzzled stare. Your mother elaborates, “You must gift them to the na-Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen upon arrival. For his coming of age.”

Right. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen’s birthday celebration. You were told there would be a grand spectacle in the arena, that he was a great warrior, revered and admired by his people…perhaps even more than his uncle the Baron Vladimir. Day after day before the trip, your mother has impressed upon you the importance of attendance, of embracing the Harkonnen customs as if born into them. Every single one, however uncanny, crude or brutal.

So, much as the concept of spilling blood for entertainment repulses you…you shelf your disgust for now. Personal feelings must capitulate to diplomacy.

Your critical eye sweeps over the knives. These must have cost a fortune. Sinister beauty and artful skill fused in ominous synergy inside a finely made instrument of death.

“It’s fine craftsmanship,” you say. Your fingertip drags across the curved edge. A crease appears on your forehead. “But the edges…they could be sharper.” Your eyes light up. “I could finish before we land.”

You sift through one the heaps of precious stones and minerals lining the walls of the cockpit.

Victory floods your being as you find what you sought. A flat whetstone that shall serve your purpose well. You find a spot on the floor and begin your task. The knives shine brighter with every swift glide of your hand.

The frown on your face deepens.

“I hope the Baron’s nephew is pleased with our gift.”

You know next to nothing of him. Though you surmise if your families are to start trading with each other, getting along would be wiser.

Your mother smiles at you though it fails to reach her eyes.

“I have no doubt he will be very pleased with all the gifts you bring him, daughter.”

The frosty, pollution-heavy winds of the lifeless planet whip your face as you set foot outside the car. Your eyes roam over the large building housing the Harkonnen arena. The imposing structure casts an intimidating shadow against the nebulous, gray sky above it. Dormant volcanoes peek through the horizon in the distance, the only remnants of natural landscapes.

Hopelessness surges through you.

Despite having landed less than an hour ago, a fierce longing for Alderan’s endless green fields and snowy mountain peaks roars inside you. Every cell in your body screams to go back inside the ship and return home.

But you can’t. Such a display of rudeness would be a disaster for diplomatic relations. So you plaster on a smile and ignore the potent stench wafting around you.

You exert meticulous sovereignty over your expression when the Baron floats toward you and your mother. Nothing could have prepared you for this. The sight of the bald, massive man hovering towards you and your mother in his suspensor chair.

The floating figure of the baron stops in front of you and your mother. A circle of servants, clad in black clothing, follows behind him. You note their bowed heads, the way their eyes never rise high enough to look directly at you or your mother. A brand marks their necks, one you recognize as the sigil of House Harkonnen. You’re reminded how ubiquitous the slave trade is on Giedi Prime. Your mother mentioned it but the harsh reality of it didn’t strike you until now.

“Welcome to Giedi Prime,” Baron Vladimir greets. His gristly tone surprises you, eliciting a chill across your spine you swiftly suppress.

“My Lord,” your mother says, sinking into a graceful bow.

You mimic her. The baron leers at you.

“She is even more exquisite in person.”

You recoil, the glint in his calculating stare stirring your unease.

Your mother’s gaze sweeps across her surroundings.

“The na-Baron isn’t in attendance?”

“My dear nephew is preparing himself in the gladiator pit. There are rituals we Harkonnen observe upon one’s coming of age.” Your mother nods.

The baron smirks, his focus swinging to you. “Perhaps you could pay him a visit, little one?”

You clutch the small chest in your hands.

“I…”

“Go on,” your mother urges, shoving you forward.

You gasp, almost tripping in your shock. The baron’s commanding voice rises.

“Slave!”

One the cowering servants leaps from the circle.

“Yes, sire?” the boy mumbles.

“Escort the girl to my nephew at once.”

The servant approaches you. His gaze briefly lifts before finding the floor again. A pang of empathy twists in your chest as you note the fear etched in the servant’s eye. You find yourself wondering what these eyes have witnessed, what horrors lurk on the wretched rock.

“Follow me, my Lady,” he says.

As you’re led away from the welcoming party, you toss a glance at your mother above your shoulder. The message written in her eyes and stern expression is clear as lake water.

Do not cast a veil of shame upon our house. Remember your duty.

Sucking a deep breath, you turn away.

You and your retinue of two guards and an attending maid are taken to the bowels of the arena. A horrid stench clings to the walls as you trudge through the dim walls. It grows more potent the closer you get to the pit. Your chest heaves. The urge to empty the meager contents of your stomach in the sand tickles your dry throat. You quell your disdain with a shake of your head.

You are here to present your house in a positive light, help Father’s treaty with House Harkonnen be a success.

As you enter the room, you get your first look at Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Warmth finds your cheeks. He’s almost bare, his rippling, pale muscles on full display. Two servant girls paint broad, black strokes over his carved back. The dark color stands out against his alabaster skin. Not a stray hair covers him and you suppose he’s as smooth-skinned and hairless as the rest of his kind.

When his dark gaze settles on you, you take tremulous steps forward.

You open the chest and present the knives to him.

“This is a gift for you, Lord na-Baron Feyd-Rautha,” you say, your voice cracking at the end.

Silence hangs for what seems eons, Feyd-Rautha cocking his head as he gauges you. It takes every ounce of bravery inside you not to flinch. His presence alone has every hair on your body stand at attention.

There’s a cold intensity in his glare, a tautness on his slender features.

You feel as prey being assessed. The urge to run itches your flesh. Your mother’s quiet warning echoes in your head. Remember your duty. You dig your feet into the ground, willing your roaring pulse to steady.

You hear him speak for the first time. His voice is hoarse and deep. Like the scratching of a stone over a sharp object.

“Would you like some fresh meat, my darlings? Lungs, a liver, perhaps?” he offers, smirking at three women sitting in a corner of the room. Their inky, whiteless orbs and ravenous grins send a chill through your spine.

His eyes fall on the knives inside the chest. His hand sweeps over the blades, an odd gesture almost reminiscent of a lover’s caress. He places the silver knife against his tongue, as if to taste the sharpness of the weapon. You shudder as you watch him, a foreboding feeling spreading across your flesh.

For a brief span of time, the well of your buried childhood memories tugs you to its depths. You recall a day when you were little. Your father took you hunting in the forests of Alderan. You chased a butterfly and got lost. You fell across a field. When you rose, you were nose to nose with a fierce predator. It stared at you a while, so still as its slanted, yellow gaze pinned you to your spot that you thought you were safe. You didn’t notice the calculated way it was prowling towards you, its maw opening slowly in anticipation of its next meal. The gift of tender, unsuspecting flesh. It’s not until your father speared the creature with his sword that you realized the jaws of death almost closed in on you. As it sprawled across the field, it unleashed an ear-piercing dying howl.

You were struck with shock that day.

A similar shock rocks you to your core when Feyd-Rautha slices the throat of one of the servant girls at his side and stabs the other repetitively. Time freezes as the lifeless bodies of the slave girls hit the sand with a loud thud.

Speckles of dark blood stain the bottom of your light tunic.

Your wide gaze lands on the other slave girl, tucked in a corner of the room. You watch her shrink in fear, the quaking in her hands so intense she nearly drops the tray she’s holding.

Horror fills you. She isn’t wondering if she’ll be next…but when.

Feyd-Rautha’s attention swings back to you. Dread coils around your heart.

“Hm, these are shockingly adequate,” he purrs appreciatively, grabbing the other knife from the chest.

It’s hard focusing on his words. Behind him, the three bald-headed women are swooping down on the poor servant girls’ corpses like vultures ripping a carcass to shreds. One of them pulls out a knife and slices the girl open from neck to gut. They bury their hands inside the girl’s body and grab fistfuls of her soft insides that they greedily shove into their mouths. Pieces of guts and dripping flesh jut from their pale lips, trickling down their chins and necks.

One of the women catches you staring and flashes you a blood-drenched, black grin.

You shudder. The maid at your side chokes on a sob, her hand flying across her mouth. Even your guards are appalled by the display, one of them averting his eyes.

A whispery croak slips through your lips.

“I s-sharpened them myself this morning,” you say, your fingers tightening around the chest.

A crooked smile unfurls on the na-Baron’s lips.

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises, pet.”

His smile expands. “How rude of me,” he says, tossing a casual glance at the ghoulish spectacle behind him. The women are still gleefully feasting on the slain slave girls. “Would you like a bite as well?” His mirthful gaze flicks over your heaving chest. “Fresh heart, perhaps?”

You swallow past the lump in your throat, forcing a placid smile onto your face.

“I-I’m quite alright, my Lord. I already ate.” The chomping noises of the cannibalistic women rises, one of them tearing into the slave girl’s side with her sharp nails.

Sickness spreads through your being. You avert your gaze.

“I shall leave you to get ready for your entrance, my Lord,” you stammer as you give a quick bow.

“I look forward to our next meeting, my Lady,” Feyd-Rautha says, the amusement never leaving his face as you scurry out of the room.

A tremor still lingers in your hands as you join your mother in the golden box above the triangular arena. The moment you sit at her side, she questions you.

“So, what did you think of him?”

“Who?” you reply, feigning ignorance.

She sighs. “Feyd-Rautha.”

You press your lips. The crowd chants his name as he steps into the arena, clutching the blades you gifted him at his sides. He walks slowly, with purpose. Yet there’s a hint of tedium in his haughty gait. As if today was no different than any other day for him, and the taking of more lives were nothing more than a mere footnote in his long list of tasks for the evening.

Sadist. Psychopath. Deranged.

These are some of the few choice words that surge inside your mind in response to your mother’s inquiry.

You utter none of them.

“Why does it matter? Our stay on Giedi Prime will be short, will it not?”

You peer through the binoculars your mother hands you. There’s a gut-wrenching brutality to the na-Baron’s practiced motions.

You watch him cut down two Atreides gladiator-slaves with ease. It’s clear something has been done to the men, their wobbly, confused steps through the arena a painful scene to witness.

Your chest seizes every time his blade tears into the poor mens’ flesh. He snarls after a series of successful strikes, seeming more beast than human when he bares a row of black teeth.

A shiver ripples through your spine.

“You must keep an open mind,” your mother heeds.

The last gladiator-slave is different. You note it right away. There’s a lethal precision in his movements that was amiss in the other Atreides soldiers. Panic swarms the golden box. Baron Vladimir’s advisor begs him to cancel the fight.

“This one isn’t drugged,” he says, fear lacing his tone.

“This will spoil my nephew’s birthday,” the baron rumbles, dismissing the man with a withering glare. He remains disturbingly calm. “Show me who you are, dear nephew.”

You take a deep breath. The rest of the fight veers to an unusual route. Feyd-Rautha removes his body shield, welcoming the challenge the Atreides soldier offers with open arms.

A psychotic smile decorates his lips as he fights for his life. For the first time since the fight began, he comes alive in the arena.

The vicious trading of blow after blow has bile rising to your throat. Unable to stomach it any longer, you bolt to your feet and mumble a rushed apology to the Baron.

“I shall retire to my chambers,” you say.

As you exit the golden box, the excited clamor of the crowd as they scream Feyd-Rautha’s name follows your hasty steps.

You sneak a glance through the high, blue doors. The sight inside the vast hall has your blood curdling. Debauchery the likes of which you have never witnessed unfolds before your eyes. A peculiar blend of orgy and slaughter occurs in the hall. You’re failing to comprehend what you’re seeing, relief coursing through you that you refused the Baron’s invitation.

Once more, you are stunned by the vast cultural differences between your people and the Harkonnens. Sickened, you step away from the doors. Twisted curiosity led you there, and blatant disgust will take you straight back to your room.

The dusky, barren walls of the Harkonnen keep are a stark contrast to the colorful tapestries that can be found all over Castle Alderan.

Homesickness tugs at your heart strings. This alien world is hostile, wretched. You long for the familiarity of your bed and the warm, soothing winds of your planet.

As you roam the hallways, a prickling across your nape has you whirl.

Your sight fills with Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.

Your chest clenches. Your head whips around, a fresh urgency livening your steps.

“Should you not be celebrating your grand victory, my Lord?”

“Frivolous pleasures do little to sate me,” he says, easily keeping up with you. His gravelly baritone ripples across your spine. “This isn’t for me…It’s for them. And my uncle knows it.” His arm brushes yours. You bristle. Amusement bleeds in his tone. “Where are you running off to, pet?”

Pet. You tense at the belittling moniker, the one he forcefully bestowed upon you.

“To my chambers. The evening has exhausted me.”

“You left early.”

You cast a puzzled frown upon him.

“In the arena," he specifies.

Your fingers curl into fists. The unfairness of what you witnessed still staggers you. The Atreides soldiers weren’t given a chance. Pigs led to their inevitable slaughter. And Feyd-Rautha plucked joy from their misery, seeing every slave as a tool to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for blood.

“I have no stomach for violence, my Lord.”

A humming sound pours from his throat.

“Perhaps it was careless then.”

Confusion flutters through you.

“Careless?”

A wicked smile tilts his lips skyward.

“Of my uncle to hand me such a delicate flower…one whose petals are bruised so easily.”

You let out a hollow laugh, dread gripping your insides. Loathing the way his dark gaze slides over your frame, you set your eyes forward.

“You say such strange things, my lord.”

“Do I?” He adds casually, “After all, you were promised to me.”

Your heart falters, missing a beat. He must be drunk, you ponder, in a feeble attempt to placate yourself with reassurance.

“Perhaps you ought to sleep the evening off, my lord. I believe victory may have gotten to your head, warped your perception.”

His sinister chuckle bounces against the walls.

“A pet with a sharp tongue. How fortuitous.”

It’s the only warning you receive before he snatches your wrist and slams you into a nearby wall.

You gasp. He pins your wrists beside your head, trapping you between him and the wall. You squeal, eyes bulging at the abrupt impact. You can already feel bruises form beneath his steely grip.

You fight to get free but he doesn’t budge. Sadistic enjoyment contorts his features as he admires your fruitless struggle.

He leans close to you. Your pulse soars.

“What are you doing?”

His lids sag as he drinks you in.

“Well…sampling my other gift, of course,” he whispers, lust oozing in his voice.

His mouth crashes over yours. You go dizzy. The kiss is bruising, staggeringly possessive. A brutal, sloppy clash of lips, teeth and tongue. You give his lip a harsh bite but it only draws a cheerful laugh from Feyd-Rautha. The acrid tang of metal coats your tongue. He moans against your lips and starts exploring your curves.

As his hands pluck at your soft flesh, fear surges through you.

“Let me go,” you scream, trying to use the Voice. There’s a flicker in his eyes and you feel hope…but it swiftly vanishes. One of his hands fastens around your throat while the other charts a dangerous path under your tunic. His fingers crudely poke and prod the apex of your thighs.

Your panic swells.

“Unhand me this instant!” you shout, a trickle of power rushing in your words.

Feyd-Rautha shakes his head, your thrall only seeming to last a few seconds. Mirth shimmers in his inky orbs as he studies you.

“Are you trying to use Bene Gesserit tricks on me?” The hand around your throat tightens. You claw at his arms, your vision flickering as he taunts, “Why don’t you try again, little witch?” He sinks two fingers through your dry entrance. Tears swim in your eyes at the aching, sudden stretch. His cruel voice flows against your temple. “Perhaps I ought to slice your tongue and shove it down your throat for our wedding.”

The hammering of your heart grows deafening. You swallow your tears and look into his eyes. You gather a thin breath to speak.

“Back away…” you croak weakly, desperation flailing inside your chest.

He gives a slow blink. To your surprise, the hand around your throat slackens. His eyes narrow as he leans away from you, a dazed expression on his face. You don’t take time to bask in fleeting relief, racing to your mother’s room as soon as his hands aren’t on you anymore.

Once you reach your mother’s chambers, you fling yourself into her arms.

Her arms wrap around your shuddering frame. She caresses your hair, gently whispering, “Daughter, the hour is so late…Is something the matter?”

You release a shaky breath, sinking further into her embrace.

“May we return to the ship? Go back home?”

“Why?”

You cast a tearful gaze towards her.

“Haven’t we done our duty, mother? Is it not enough?”

A long weary breath flows from her lips. Her hands curl around yours. She takes a deep breath before speaking again.

Her face becomes stern, impenetrable.

“Apologies, sweet child. We cannot.”

You search her harsh gaze. A heavy silence settles between the two of you. You retreat, horror clogging your airways as unsaid words hang in the air.

“Mother…What have you done?” you mumble, a fresh wave of tears breaking past your lashes.

“You are to marry Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in three days’ time,”she bluntly announces. Your jaw drops as you take another step back. “All the arrangements have already been made.”

Your voice trembles.

“And Father agreed?”

“It was his idea, approved by the Reverend Mother herself.”

The deepest pits of hell welcome your plummeting heart. You sink to the floor, the weight of your kin’s treachery growing too heavy to bear.

“And you did not speak against it?” you mutter, disbelief confining your breath.

Your mother falls to her knees, joining you on the floor.

She cradles your face. “It is your destiny. We are Bene Gesserit. We exist only to serve.”

“He is a monster.”

“I’m afraid it’s irrelevant.”

A sharp breath spills from your throat. Your head snaps up.

“Is this all I am to the Sisterhood?” You unleash a dry laugh. “A broodmare to be sold and used to further their plans? To you and father…”

Her mouth wobbles. “Our way is not to question, but to answer when duty calls.”

You bring a quivering hand to your throat. You can still feel his harsh fingers crushing your windpipe.

“Do you see what he has done to me?”

“Mother, please…”

A flash of regret appears on her face. It barely lasts a second before a mask of indifference drapes over her features again.

“You should rest,” she says, cupping your cheek. “You will need your strength for the days ahead.”

You take in your mother’s blank expression. The blatant lack of emotion despite her knowing what Feyd-Rautha did to you. You swallow a shivering sob. It might have hurt less if she struck you across the face. Or drove a dagger through your chest.

The room chills around you as you reach a sinister conclusion.

You are completely alone.

Packing your scarce belongings takes little time. You didn’t bring a lot with you on Giedi Prime. The trip was supposed to be short after all. A mere courtesy visit to honor your father and the Baron’s alliance. How naive you were.

In the end, you are just a pawn for the Bene Gesserit and your father to move around. You always knew marriage would come eventually. It is what you have been prepared for your whole life. But you harbored the faint hope that your future husband would be kind, or at least a decent man.

As you recall every instance of Feyd-Rautha’s cruelty, horror clutches your insides.

There isn’t a sliver of kindness in him. You venture he may even draw sick pleasure from others’ misery. The smile that touched his lips when you struggled against him still chills your veins.

It stuns you that someone like him, who seems more animal than man, even passed the Reverend Mother’s test, that he somehow withstood the pain, and maybe even embraced it.

Logic dictates that he must have however. Otherwise the Reverend Mother wouldn’t ratify the crossing of your two bloodlines.

The mere thought fills you with dread. He is dangerous. A monster who thinks, who plans, who schemes, who gathers joy from pain.

You come to a decision. You will not be Feyd-Rautha’s bride.

You must find your way back home. The sisterhood can find another sacrifice to fulfill their prophecy. It will not be you.

You wait for the keep to be quiet, not a sound lingering in the cold, blue hallways. You conceal a few belongings beneath your cloak. Another set of clothes, a compass, some jewelry and other valuables you’re hoping to trade for safe passage on a starship. Doubts wander inside you.

Where will you go? What will you do? Will you survive the weather conditions and atmosphere of a completely different planet? You still remember your brief visit on Salusa Secundus for the Princess Irulan’s coronation day. How you couldn’t move without fire rushing to your lungs. How every single step felt like you were taking a hundred. You could die.

Still, the prospect scares you far less than what awaits you in the Keep.

Uncertainty lies in your future. But you do know one thing. You must run as far away as you can from Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.

Getting past the guards is easy enough.

You use what you remember of your Bene Gesserit training to sneak outside the fortress.

Harko city welcomes you in all its dull, somber rotting glory. You cross past discarded piles of rubbish and large oily puddles as you race through dark alleyways. Everywhere your gaze rests, it’s assaulted by sheer decay and putrefaction. Unlike the clean, cold, pristine interior of the Keep, the city is crumbling.

The putrid stench rising from the streets almost causes you to turn back. In the end, you refrain, steadfast as you rush through the busy streets. Every second is precious. You could get caught, dragged back to the Keep.

The back of your neck prickles. Your pulse escalates. The presence of three men hovers at the edge of your sight. Pretending you didn’t notice them, you subtly hasten your strides.

They catch on quick, too quick.

One of them pounces on you. You keel over and collapse on the harsh, dirt-covered ground. You try to crawl away, fright engulfing your senses.

Another of the men grabs your ankle and yanks you towards them.

Leering smiles float above you in the dim light of the alley.

“Hm, we could fetch a good price for that one,” the last man says. “Such a pretty little thing with pretty, pretty hair…”

The man who caught you barks a derisive snicker.

“An outworlder. How exotic.”

The second one bends closer to sniff the air around you. Your throat constricts as you turn your head.

“Not just any outworlder,” he says, his head tilted in curiosity. “This one smells like royalty.”

Elated chuckles burst in the darkness.

“That royal bitch will make us rich.”

The man who smelled you licks his lips.

“But shouldn’t we sample the goods first?” Fear shoots through you. “Never had me a highborn gal before.”

��Me neither.”

“This is a once in a lifetime-”

The man chokes mid-sentence. Your mouth drops as a blade is driven through his neck from behind, practically beheading him. Blood rains over you. Wet spots drip onto your face and dress as each of the men is gutted by a swift, ruthless opponent. You watch one pull a knife. He doesn’t get to use it, unleashing a blood-curdling scream when his hand is sliced at the wrist. The fingers of his severed hand twitch as it hits the floor. He sinks to his knees, wailing while cradling his bleeding stump against his chest. He meets his end with a brutal smash of his head into the stone wall. Gray matter spills from his skull as his eyes roll back and he falls in a dark puddle lifelessly.

The last one tries to run but is dealt with in the same merciless fashion.

Your wide, horrified gaze sweeps over the massacre. The speckles of blood on your face are still warm with the heat of the dead men’s bodies.

A shaky breath spills from your throat.

Your head rises. You come face to face with Feyd-Rautha’s expressionless stare. He picks up your trembling frame from the ground and tosses you over his shoulder. He strolls over the men’s corpses as if they weren’t even there, huffing a deep sigh of annoyance.

“You should be glad I found you in time, pet,” he says.

He throws you inside a car. The door slams and you huddle in a corner. Feyd smirks at your shrinking form.

“Truly? Nothing to say after all that fuss?”

Tremulous words trickle through your lips.

“Just let me go home.”

He slants his head, the corners of his lips lifting slowly. “No.”

“You could say that you didn’t like the look of me,” you insist. “That I repulsed you.”

Feyd-Rautha snorts.

His hand shoots out, moving too fast for you to comprehend. He leans over you, fingers squeezing your throat. “Pet…you were mine before you even set foot on Giedi Prime.” His dark gaze drags over you. You get a glimpse of black teeth as he grins. “The only place you’re going tonight is my bed.”

Once the car reaches the Harkonnen keep, you’re roughly pulled from your seat. Your chest tightens as you note the severed heads of your guards and maid lined in a neat row near the gates. Their lifeless eyes are wide open, staring at nothing.

You stumble back, hands flying to your mouth.

Satisfaction twinkles in Feyd-Rautha’s dusky orbs.

“I had to kill these incompetent fools, of course. They let my precious bride slip away.”

You gawk at him in shock. Guilt presses inside you. If you hadn’t tried and failed to escape, those poor people might still be alive. Tears swell beneath your lashes.

The na-Baron exhales, gripping your arm and tugging you along when you refuse to move. He smiles. “Do not worry, pet. We will find you new servants. Better ones.”

You end up in a large room inside the Keep. A tub filled with water sits in the middle. Feyd-Rautha’s concubines flash black-teethed smiles at you as you crash into a heap on the floor.

“Get her ready for me,” he says.

“Yes, master,” the three women reply in concert.

Your eyes swing upward in alertness.

“Ready for what?”

His inflection is chillingly matter-of-fact.

“Well, our wedding ceremony, of course.” You unleash a whimper as his fingers twine in your hair, twisting your neck backwards. His feral gaze seems to peel the layers of your blood-soaked tunic. “Why wait a few days when I can have you as my birthday gift tonight?”

His hand coils around your jaw, forcing your head to pivot. Your gaze falls on a slave girl standing fearfully in a corner of the room. You’re struck with recognition. She was in the arena before his fight, tending to him along with two other girls. Two girls who are now dead. Courtesy of Feyd-Rautha. She glances at you before her eyes tumble to the smooth black tiles again.

“Do you see her?” he whispers, his chest brushing against your back.

Feyd-Rautha beckons the girl with two fingers. She staggers forward.

“Speak, slave,” he orders.

The girl opens her mouth. However, instead of uttering words, only distorted whimpers come out. Horror twists your insides as you realize something crucial is missing inside her mouth.

“W-What happened to her?” you ask, dreading to hear what you already suspect.

His dark chuckle resonates in your ear.

“She can’t talk anymore. Do you know why?” His lips graze your cheek, his raspy tone lowering. “Because I took her tongue.”

Your stomach sinks.

When you attempt to turn away, his grip on you becomes harsher. He forces you to keep your eyes on the girl.

“I want you to take a good look at her.” His hand spreads over your chest, right above your hammering heart. “Try any of your Bene Gesserit tricks on me again…and I will feed your tongue, and perhaps even other parts of you to my darlings here.” He snorts. “After all, I only need one part of you intact to make me an heir.”

“Do you understand, my love?” he inquires, his husky bass dripping mockery upon the last two words.

You swallow a large gulp of air. “I-I understand.”

He storms out of the room and you sink to the floor. His concubines dive upon you. They nudge you to the tub and remove the clothes off your quivering frame.

The blood, grease and dirt is scrubbed off your flesh. Scented oils are massaged into your skin and hair. A dress is wrapped around your body.

You numbly let it all happen, defeat sinking its hooks deep inside your soul.

The farce of a wedding ceremony flies by in a blur.

Baron Vladimir and your mother are both in attendance, the two wearing satisfaction on their faces, albeit in different manners. While the Baron is smug, your mother is attentive. Not a single emotion betrays her face and you feel thoroughly abandoned.

Before the ceremony, she mumbles in your ear that the Reverend Mother requested a girl-child. You know the process, have been taught how it’s done. But it’s a cruel reminder…that you are nothing more than a tool in the larger schemes of the Bene Gesserit.

And that perhaps, your entire life you have simply been your mother’s mission. Maybe she even feels relief to be delivered from her duty.

The thought overwhelms you with sadness.

You stand before Feyd-Rautha in a flowing white dress while he dons black from head to toe.

He astonishes you by uttering his vows with the utmost seriousness, swearing to protect and cherish you until death forces the two of you apart. Death...In that moment, you find yourself silently wishing for its swift, imminent arrival.

When the Harkonnen priest whirls to you, the words stick to your throat, refusing to unfurl from your tongue.

“Does the bride consent to the match?” the officiant repeats.

Shell-shocked, you shiver in your spot. Feyd-Rautha’s mouth quirks upward.

“Oh, she consents. She is simply too overwhelmed with happiness to speak,” he replies on your behalf, openly taunting you.

You grimace as he slices the inside of your palm with a dagger and brings it to its lips. Your blood coats his mouth and his tongue flicks out. He hums at the taste, a smile blooming on his face. He does the same to himself, digging even deeper in his alabaster flesh. You flinch as he presses his bloody palm against the bottom of your face.

The Harkonnen wedding ritual concludes with him planting a rough kiss on your lips. He shoves his tongue inside your mouth, pulling you against him.

When the ceremony ends, he hoists you in his arms and takes you to his bed.

As promised, he lays his claim on your body right away.

Your wedding dress is ripped open with a few precise slashes of his knife. Your insides coil, the fear of him driving the weapon through your soft flesh keeping you docile underneath him. You don’t say a word, your tongue shackled by his earlier threat. He takes a moment to drink you in, relishing the rapid rise and fall of your chest as he drags the tip of his blade across your skin. He savors your fear like the sweetest offering, growing harder against your thigh as you tremble beneath him.

His black-toothed grin freezes the blood in your veins.

“My pretty little pet…all mine to play with, finally,” he rasps.

There’s no gentleness in the way he explores your body, scratching and nipping at your flesh as if to make sure no one dares doubt whom you belong to when you leave his chambers. Every plea for him to slow down is met with renewed ferocity. He tastes and fondles every inch of your quivering flesh. Your nipples pebble under his palms. Your core ignites below his tongue. Pleasure and pain mingle in sinful, twisted harmony.

Your back folds and your eyes roll back as a myriad of confounding sensations assaults your senses.

As he buries himself inside you to the hilt, he frees a satisfied grunt.

Pain clamors through you when he starts to move. Your walls catch fire at the aching, brutal stretch.

Holding your wrists above your head, he pours every ounce of lust and aggression inside you. You feel it in every stab inside your core.

His pale, muscular form pins you to the bed as he thrusts deeper inside you, reaching a tender spot that has you releasing an ear-splitting scream. You squirm over the soaked sheets as he takes you again and again, the mix of blood and arousal coating his length easing his blunt intrusion. Your helpless wails mingle with his feral moans.

Raspy words in the coarse Harkonnen tongue are heatedly whispered into your ear. You don’t understand any of them and it makes your terror grow.

You feel as if you will break, shatter at the seams beneath his rough, careless touch.

The agony seems to stretch into eternity.

Feyd-Rautha’s lips skate across your bruised cheek.

“Do not fret, pet. I shall aim not to break you just yet,” he teases, sinister promises lurking in his lewd inflection. “Not when our fun has just begun.”

A single wayward tear traces a slow path down your cheek.

He greedily licks it, purring at the taste of your misery.

You feel him strain against you as he nears his peak, his thrusts getting slower and deeper. He comes with a deep roar.

The na-Baron spills his seed inside you. Your eyes shut. Power flows inside your womb as you conjure the right outcome.

A girl they desired. A girl they shall have. As you writhe beneath Feyd-Rautha, forced to bear his rough, bruising touch, you wish your daughter fierce and strong.

Strong enough to pluck the stars from the heavens. Strong enough to unweave the tangled threads of time.

Strong enough to twist the arm of fate itself if she wills it.

#feyd rautha #feyd rautha x reader #feyd-rautha #dune fanfiction #feyd rautha harkonnen #dune part 2 #dune #feyd rautha harkonnen x reader #dark fic

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neoplatinum · 8 months ago

Text

i choose you - part 3 | minatozaki sana

summary: a darkness in sana's past comes back into light

pairing: heiress!sana x reader

themes: blood, murder, gore, knives, arranged marriage au, fluff, angst, tension, lots of elitism, conglomerate power-hungry side characters, implied sex, misamo!

wc: 5.9k

(series masterlist)

you stare at her as she stares at you back. the eyes of a woman who's held her domain for decades, bursting in power through the new age of technology. her eyes are still as sharp as ever, despite her age. it's how she's kept her power for so long.

long brushes of the tea cup lid against the cup, nursing a cup of sencha.

"tell me, how devoted are you to the mintaozaki clan." she continues to swirl the tea in the porcelain cup. her eyes never leaving yours.

you stare at her, but also to take a glance at the elders of the minatozaki clan all staring at you. strong eyes and the crest pinned to their delicate fabrics.

momo and mina are sat on the second row of chairs lining the edges of the room. various council advisors and distant family members sat in the back corners as well.

"i would lay my life on the line for the minatozakis." she stops her swirling. the gentle drop of the lid back onto the cup as she sets it down next to her.

with the flick of her wrist, a man shuffles towards, head bowed as he hands her a folder. the sound of papers being flipped through while you keep your eyes trained on the floor.

all around are eyes peering in, a dare. they stare, daring you to make any sign of weakness, you keep your eyes unwavering as you wait. it's so quiet that an outsider would expect no one in this room. you can even hear the faint sound of wind outside.

"let me rephrase. would you survive for the minatozaki clan." she places the paper down. eyes instantly back on you.

"until my last dying breath. i would utter it for the minatozaki name." you say, staring at her with intensity of a thousand flames. you think of sana, of haruto and hanako. the person you have become since being part of the family.

the matriach leans back into her chair. and you stare, for any sign of emotion. the way her eyes remain neutral and unchanging, hands comfortably laying on her lap. her feet tucked together and that large pendant on her neck.

"understood." another flick of the wrist. a different man walks forward, head bowed just like the last.

his head low as he presents a tanto with both hands. the six inch double edged blade. a long dagger, sheathed in dark brown wooden scabbard.

lined with the proud name of the minatozaki clan in hiragana, etched into the layered metal. she holds it within her palms, unsheathing it and holding it out.

"do you know of the etching tradition?" she says as she feels for the blade, the tip piercing enough of her skin to let out a drip of blood. she wraps it into a cloth as she goes back to staring at you.

"no, i do not." you've never even heard of the tradition to begin with. eyeing sana from the corner of your eye but she keeps her eyes focused on her mother.

"present." and then the cacophony of hands folding up their arm sleeves, and the turning of their forearm towards the matriarch, you can barely see it, but it's there. the scarred skin in the symbol of the minatozaki crest, just in the center of everyone's right forearm.

a glance to your right, and you notice it on sana's forearm, it's always been there. even in the curiosity you never asked, always wondering how she had a perfect scarring of her family name. the way it stretches across her arm, like a branding.

like an imprint of being in a cult, you look back at the matriarch.

upon her forearm, the same name is etched deeply, a long stretch of scars lining around it, never touching the name directly. the room all around you, are filled with minatozakis, each and everyone one of them.

"the minatozaki name will be etched into your skin. do not show weakness." the matriarch calls you forth, you rise to your feet, making quick steps to her. kneeling before her as you present your arm, to which she gently rubs over.

the tanto digs into your arm, and you grind your teeth willing the pain away as the tip of the blade drags along the skin. clean and sharp lines that are moving like brush strokes on a painting.

you grip onto your pants for a distraction to shift the pain. the burning and sweating sensation making you tremble a little. you will it away when you feel the blade lift up suddenly.

"breathe." you can hear sana's voice behind you, calming the pain brewing all over your body.

letting out a held breath that's been burning your lungs. a reminder that this pain is temporary, the breathing chills the burning sensation in your head.

the final mark is laid upon your skin, and you can feel yourself feeling faint, holding onto the floor to keep your body upright. you feel the blade lift off your skin, the sound of the blade being cleaned, while you stare at the pool of blood on the marbled floor, dripping and seeping underneath your shoe.

"rise." she speaks. you stand up, letting the blood continue to run down your arm.

the ringing in your ears gets louder and louder. she speaks of tradition, the value of the name across your arm. all eyes continue to stare you down, eyes like steel.

"this blade, has etched every minatozaki in this room, and those that have been laid to rest. this blade, will continue to etch into the minatozaki clan for future generations." you stare at the blade now in your hand, only seconds ago tearing your skin apart and being branded as the family's new pawn.

"to a new generation." she says as she hands it over, the drippings of your blood still across the double beveled edge. you stare at the blade, the weight of it, the memories of each person etched. it's heavier than you expected.

generations of minatozaki's all carved into submission. you begin to feel it, stirring low in your subconscious, you need more.

every night in the dark study, you stare at the name. forever in your skin, and upon your body. a sign that you are now a minatozaki, even years spent becoming a figurehead didn't sear the idea until now.

the scarring has scabbed over and begun to heal, into that perfect shape of the name.

sana's been telling you stories about her late father, the patriarch of the minatozaki clan before he was assassinated by the abe clan. the abe's who wanted his land, his ability to rule over japan.

stories of his strict rulings, his inability to feel remorse, his lack of fear. his dictatorship under his ship, even more fierce than his father.

the golden age of the minatozaki clan.

you often visit the matriarch, learning family secrets that wouldn't be uttered under broad daylight. understanding the inner workings of a regime that's lasted centuries.

more so, you've been trained by the matriarch to take over the next generation for the minatozaki's. receiving training in the philanthropy for public image, but also training on how to take out an enemy without letting a single drop of blood fall.

you can see how the minatozaki's have gotten so far, extremely cautious and calculating, much like other conglomerate group families. as much as you didn't want to be pulled in, here you are. fighting both momo and mina in hand-to-hand combat.

a swift kick of the leg, and you topple over. the pain of the right hook that momo landed earlier still leaving a stinging in your cheek. you turn over, breathing in and out.

"you're still too slow." momo comments, sitting down with mina doing the same.

you continue to stare at the bright light overhead, the feeling of your heart beating thumping in your ears, the sweat dripping down your body.

"i know."

mina gets up, grabbing water bottles and passing one to you. you sit up, drinking it as the two woman stare at you.

"why do you do this?" momo starts, a curious question that's been plaguing her mind lately.

the minatozaki's never asked you to be trained to be the next head of family, but you took it upon yourself to do so. grueling physical training, while learning the arts of the past generations.

mina continues to sip at her water, eyes watching you.

"duty. for sana, for haruto, for hanako." you explain, as much as you didn't want to become a pawn for their family, you care so deeply for the family that you now have, one that you would tear apart the world for.

mina nods, but momo rolls her eyes, "how noble." and with another sip, she gets up again. you begin sparring once more.

rolling your shoulders when you walk into your office, grabbing some soothing oil to rub onto the bruise on your ribs and the smaller bruises along your shoulders.

you stare at the tanto that now lays in a secret compartment under your desk. the etching tradition still leaves you in a heavy daze these days, how much you have changed all for sana's family.

when the devil herself walks in.

"you need to fire that assistant of yours." sana walks in, handbag hanging off her arm. glasses perched on her nose bridge, the exhaustion rolling off her words. she seems aggravated.

"why?" you cock your head to the side.

"she just told me you have a meeting in five, which i mean sure thank you for the information but i seriously don't care." you laugh out, as she crosses her arm. sitting comfortably in the armchair in front of you.

it seems today is one of those days.

"she's just doing her job." you explain. you liked shoko, she did her job well, often reworking your schedule when you needed her to. and she rarely complained about it, you even gave her a raise recently.

"yeah and i'm doing mine." sana gets up, leaving her bag on the floor and crosses over to you, dropping herself onto your lap.

she takes the glasses off your face. letting it slide across the table. you're about to get up to pick it up, when sana pushes more of her weight onto you. keeping you in your seat.

"last time you just waltzed into one of my 1 on 1 client meetings and sat on my lap the whole time." you point at her, showcasing the same exact behavior.

"yeah, like i said, i'm doing my job." sana says, taking off her sunglasses.

"sana...." you say dejectedly.

"i didn't hear you complaining when you bent me over this table and ate me out the rest of the afternoon." and with that she smashes her lips against yours.

you completely forget what you were complaining about earlier.

"what's your favorite color?" sana's voice is quietly coming through the microphone, she called you multiple times, and texting you urgently nearly ten times.

you silenced it, only to get a note from your assistant to pick up her calls.

"hmm, green." you say, watching as the shareholders stare you down, waiting for your approval.

without another second, the sound of the call ending comes through, you glance at your phone screen, seeing the call disappear, and a little confused.

"sorry, please continue." you point at the junior executive, he's been trying to get through this presentation without peeing his pants, and really you would like to get through it enough for him to finally calm down.

fifteen minutes later you get multiple pings on your phone.

"so like i said, we expect the project with akira industries to go well-" the junior executive's voice completely drowns out into white noise when you see what's displayed on your screen.

sana baby: attachment: 3 images

sana baby: you like?

your phone screen is filled with green, all three photos illuminating your face in a green hue.

green lingerie set, green bows tied around her hair, and your dress shirt draped over one. good god, she looks like a vixen.

photos of her laying across the bed, aimed at the mirror, long legs that stretch across the comforter. gorgeous lithe body framed by that light green corset. pouty lips in a selfie, aimed down at her cleavage.

you nearly curse out loud, instead letting a cough come through at the last second to cover it up.

another message comes through. you lift your phone back up to your face.

sana baby: you come home in thirty and you can take it off with your hands, any later and you do it with your teeth.

you're trying to pick out your work outfit for tomorrow, eyes glancing at all the dress shirts that you had hung up in the walk-in closet. you can hear sana faintly humming through the other side of the closet.

"sana..." you pick out one shirt, noticing the pink-ish red color across the collar.

"yes darling?" she says in a light-hearted tone, you see her walk over with her eyes a little playful. her eyes landing on the dress shirt that you have in your hand.

you hold it up to her face.

"why are my dress shirts littered with lipstick marks?" she takes the dress shirt out of your hand, eyeing it with happiness.

"they need to know who you belong to." she says and hands it back to you.

you shake your head at it. putting it back onto the rack.

only to notice another shirt, and another shirt, and another shirt.

"i mean, literally every single shirt is covered in them." you point at the whole rack, now noticing the pink/red littered across the collars. all of them have it. you turn to look at her, eyes wide as she just smiles at her handiwork.

she gives you a peck and just leaves. turning her head to look at you over the shoulder and give one last remark.

"you better not wash them off or you're sleeping on the couch."

"the abe clan cordially invites you to the 2027 annual ball." you stare at the invitation in your hand, red cardstock, beautiful crest in the dead center.

with sana's quiet humming, you barely register that you've arrived at the abe clan's main estate. dark and light reds adorning the walls, intricate wooden carvings of dragons. the dark red crest and lapels on each security guard.

the sedan rolls forwards, until you're stopped by two guards. handing the invitation card to the chauffeur, and letting the guards scan the car.

you watch sana, her eyes floating around, admiring the long trees that line around the garden's pond.

and then the car continues to roll forwards, and all around you are different black marked cars. each with their own crest, women and men donning different formal wear. kimonos, tuxedos, hanboks, qipaos, ao dais, all around.

the door opens, and you step out, rounding the corner to take sana's arms into yours.

"one rule with the abe's, do not ever drink first in front of an abe." she whispers quietly as you both enter down a deep tunnel, much like the minatozaki house.

large stone slabs lined underneath, but you can see it above, the lining of birds across a wired line. much like a telephone line. their dark beady eyes staring down, with jet black feathers that make their body look like voids.

they all move their heads in turn with the walking guests. "trained birds, trained to kill." she comments and continues to pull you forward.

then you enter a big hall, filled with different dignitaries, generals, top executives, council members, even a few celebrity faces.

sana smiles at the sight of the turning heads, everyone's excited to see another conglomerate family at these events. "just smile and nod." she whispers again through a smile.

you do the same, watching the eyes all peer back at you. they don't have the stillness of the minatozakis, there's bloodlust, there's evil, there's an ominous undertone behind those spheres. a predator lying dormant in each and everyone one of them.

with the sound of the doors opening, you hear the awws of the guests, all piling into the abe main hall. much like the grandeur of the minatozaki clan, it's lined with artifacts of war.

great katanas and bows hung along the walls. dark and deep red colored accents, a giant abe crest upon the center. there's beautiful music playing in the background as you scan the room. sana tugs you along.

"how much do you know about the abe's?" sana stares at you as she hands you a small knife. you tuck it into the breast pocket.

"a little." you offer, brushing her hair out of her face, and she gleams at that, giving a little kiss before returning back to her stoic face.

"kaito and kenji, two sons of the abe clan. kaito's set to become the head of the family. there's rumors that kenji might kill him for the seat." she explains, adjusting the knife in her thigh holster.

you nod, her mother has educated you on all the conglomerate groups, especially the abe and watanabe clan. both have been vying for the possible absorption of the minatozaki clan.

you adjust the knife holster for her, as you check your surroundings, just as you expected. nearly the same power in their private military, donning red fabric. you both take off to the other side of the room, eyes darting from face to face trying to remember significant figures, but who are you kidding, they're all people in power.

browsing through plates of delicacies, waiters and waitresses circling with plates of drinks. each more colorful than the last, it seems the abe have distinct taste.

you're leaning to your left when you're suddenly pulled into a conversation, the woman making large and loud gestures at you. most of which you nod and let the words flow through your ears. you never thought you would see her again.

sana's staring, taking turns staring at her and staring at you. her hold on your arm tighter than ever, feeling the blood thump in your arm. she continues to drone on until finally she gets swept into another conversation with someone else.

sana unhooks her arm from you.

"who is that?" sana stares at you, arms folded and that tick in her jaw. you can't help but keep eyeing the long black dress that she has on, with a deep thigh slit along the left side.

you try your best to keep the impure thoughts to yourself, instead offering a kiss to sana's forehead when you stand in front of her.

"hmm, old friend from law school."

sana had been eyeing the woman even as she moved across the room. even more upset when she slid up next to you. talking your head off about something that must have been boring because she could recognize the attention leaving your body.

but she can't help but notice how forward the woman was, unnecessarily putting her hands on you. unnecessarily laughing at whatever you are saying, just a bit too hard. unnecessarily pushing her cleavage up against you.

"our year?" sana says, brushing off a piece of lint from your jacket, also brushing off the feeling of the woman off your jacket.

you stare at her manicured fingers. long slender fingers that wear your ring proudly. you smile at the sight of the large diamond.

"no, a year younger." you say softly, bringing her hand up to kiss it. she flips your hand over to kiss it back. "why do you ask?"

"didn't know you liked younger women..." she comments, back to nitpicking what the woman is wearing tonight.

how dare she try and lay her hands on you? sana's thinking of calling momo and mina to do some 'intervention'.

"i don't, like younger women i mean." you watch sana as she stares down the woman. the way she holds onto the neck of the champagne flute, the way she has that tick in her jaw, the way she can't keep moving her eyes up and down in disdain.

"good." she comments back, it's more so to herself, so you roll your eyes at that.

"i only like you sana." you say the golden words that make her heart melt. she stares at you for a bit.

"mhm keep sweet talking me like that and i’ll let you fuck me in the bathroom." she drapes her arm over your neck pulling you into a hot kiss, tossing a wink to the woman from earlier.

you pull away, her chasing after you, but with all the prying eyes you'd rather enjoy sana in a more private place.

you begin to pull her towards anywhere that isn't open space for people to watch, when you bump into someone on accident.

"oh hello." the man turns around, a tall man toying with a knife in hand. his eyes dancing with amusement. "apologies, hope there's no hard feelings."

"none here." you offer, trying to side-step around him when he places his small knife at your neck. you look down at it, engraving in the base with red ink.

"kenji abe." you whisper to yourself, but he claps in delight, nodding quickly and sheathing his dagger away.

"that is me!" he exclaims, offering his hand. you shake it, his grip awfully loose, too loose.

"nice to meet you mr. abe." you explain, still trying to drag sana away. he stops you with a hand, a little smirk on his face. taking a glance at you and sana.

“nice to meet the minatozaki’s new lapdog.” he smiles, and then takes a look at sana, “hello sana, it’s been a while hasn’t it. kaito misses you.” the curling devilish smile as he hands both of you a drink. and taking one for himself.

“cheers! to a lovely abe ball.” he says as he holds the glass in the air, you take a quick look at sana out of your eye as you both clink his glass, letting it linger away from your lip.

watching the way he smirks, and then drinks his champagne. he smiles at you both before disappearing into the crowd.

“never liked him.” sana shudders as she says it, you just smile at her. letting her lay on your shoulder. “him and kaito. they’re dangerous. and he called you a lapdog, what an excuse of a man.”

you just nod, absorbing the information you’ve just been told. it’s not easy transitioning into this lifestyle, with structures and family systems in place, you feel like you really are out of your depth here.

a question still remains, what did he mean by kaito misses sana? you’re distracted by even more dramatic flairs of the abe ball. fire lighting up around, spotting several of your father’s old business partners, nodding to them.

"have i told you how gorgeous you look tonight?" sana starts, giving you a light kiss under your jaw.

"hmm, no, not tonight." you smirk, leaning into her, garnering another kiss. you smile when she rolls her eyes, kissing her jaw lightly too.

"well you do, and i think you would look even more gorgeous under me." she whispers into your ear, you lean back. it seems tonight’s been getting under her skin, constantly trying to get you away from the ball.

you shake your head ready to tell her no when you hear a mic being tapped.

“hello, welcome to the 247th annual abe ball!” a tall well tailored man is speaking into the mic, upon a lifted podium. his voice loud and commanding as he looks below at all the guests.

all around you are people clapping at him, so you begin to clap, interested in whoever this man might be.

“my name is kaito abe, thank you all for joining us tonight.” he booms into the mic, the sound booming off the walls, everyone clapping at his pauses.

“tonight, we have something special, a very special event.” he says, lifting his hand out to the other side of the podium. white flashing lights suddenly illuminating three bodies.

the sound of gasps and quiet whispers making you curious. you keep your hand on the knife, sana’s picked up on the same thing, her hand pulling the thigh knife.

“i welcome you, the death of the watanabe’s.” and there you can see it, white fluorescent lights shining across three figures. their eyes begging for help while they’re forced to face the bloodlust of kaito abe.

“sana, get behind me.” you push her behind you, her eyes staring at the watanabe’s.

they look roughed up, blood already pouring from their heads and clothes. the patriarch, his wife and the only heir.

“you see, a little weasel from their clan, a vermin even.” kaito begins throwing the tanto he has in his hand, one much like the minatozaki tanto you have in your desk.

he continues to flip it through the air with ease. “tried getting into our clan, how silly right?”

he leans forward, nearly off the edge of the podium as he laughs maniacally. you can see shuffling begin to happen, people are panicking, trying to leave the ball.

only to be pushed back into the center by the abe guards, all of them wielding weapons.

“oh no, you can’t leave darling, the show’s barely begun!” he continues to round the podium, letting out a laugh when the woman starts crying, his tanto hanging loosely in his hand as he points at the woman.

“see, when there's a rat in your home, what do you do?” he continues to pace the podium. “answer me!”

he shouts from above, more people are shuffling nervously and then you hear a distant, “you exterminate them!”

“BINGO! you. exterminate. them.” he laughs a bit, walking briskly towards them, pulling at the hair of the patriarch.

you curse out loud, his swollen eyes and chunks of his hair missing.

“but you can’t just exterminate one rat. no. no. they will just continue to repopulate. exterminate. at. the. source.” and then he jabs the tanto right into the man’s neck.

blood gushing onto his suit like a geyser. he lets out a laugh as the man sputters up blood before falling forward.

then he moves towards his wife, stabbing into her neck as her cries turn into screams. dragging out a laugh from him, meanwhile their son is crying silently, arms defeated as he watches his two parents’ now dead body.

“and remember. no survivors left behind.” he says with finality, as he shoves the tanto deep into the son’s neck, the tanto left inside.

sana’s covered her eyes into your back. you can feel her shaking a bit, you cover her ears as you pull her close, letting her keep her head against your chest.

“sana?” she just continues to shake in your arms, fear enveloping her entire body. memories of her younger self around the abe clan. you’ve never seen her so scared. she clings onto you like a lifeline.

“thank you, thank you! i hope you enjoyed the show!” he takes a deep bow, one in which he keeps his head forward with that smirk on his face. joy from killing, joy from being able to make others submit to him.

and then he walks over, using his foot as leverage as he pulls out the knife, wiping it clean off, and disappearing behind a door in the wall. the sound of shouts and chaos echoing through the hall.

the car ride is silent, sana’s gone quiet, simple nods when you ask her if she’s alright. eyes squeezed tightly and one hand curling around the other. you don’t even know where to begin talking about the events of tonight.

the abe’s are ruthless killers, you remember that even from when sana told you. it just takes a live performance of it to see how they are devoid of remorse.

kaito abe, kaito abe, kaito abe.

you barely knew the watanabe’s, only speaking to their son once, he was quiet. he didn’t seem the type to want to lead their clan, but now he lays dead, at the hands of kaito.

you play with your knife in your hand, thinking about how easily it shoved down the watanabe’s, killing them so quickly. the same blade that’s supposed to show honor and birth of a new member of the clan, used for killing those that harm the family.

the car rolls into the manor, and you take a deep breath, looking at sana. eyes still unfocused and staring at her own hands. you open the door and round the back to open the door to her side.

“darling? we’re home.” you offer your hand, she doesn’t even move. so you tap her shoulder lightly, she jumps at the touch, moving back from it.

“oh, sorry.” she takes your hand, and you pull her out, leading her towards the door. you immediately squatting at the sight of haruto and hanako walking outside.

picking up haruto in your arms, while sana picks up hanako, a warm smile back on her face. holding hanako tightly to her chest. haruto messes with your hair, pointing around and talking about his day. you kiss his forehead and walk inside.

there’s still a weird tension lingering around her, she refuses to look you in the eyes. instead preoccupying herself with putting hanako to bed. so you do the same putting haruto into bed. tucking him in and giving him a kiss while sana waits outside. you kiss hanako on the forehead as well before slipping out.

giving yourself a deep breath when you close the door, you see sana next to you, her eyes back to their unfocused state. there’s something she isn’t telling you, and normally you aren’t one to pry. but after the events of tonight, you need to know.

“sana, are you alright?” you hold her head in your hands, eyes peering into hers, for any sign really. she just nods, taking a deep breath, dragging you down the hallway.

“i have something to tell you.” she begins as she sits at her vanity. starting to take off her earrings, you unclasp the necklace that she has on, placing it into a velvet box before tucking it away.

she stares at herself in the mirror, memories of her past self resurfacing.

“kaito abe and i, we used to date. set to marry actually.” you sit next to hit, listening intently as she continues to take out hairpins and set them across her table. “it was what was destined for us, until his father killed my uncle. momo and mina’s father.”

you nod, you didn’t know much about momo and mina but there was an emptiness in their eyes, you always assumed it was because they were trained soldiers.

“seeing them up there on the platform, it felt like i was watching momo and mina being killed at his hands. then i thought, what if he killed you, what if he killed haruto and hanako. i’m so scared.” she bursts into tears, hands shaking to hold yours.

“he won’t be able to, i won’t let him.” you say confidently, kissing her gently.

“so, the minatozakis were here tonight.” kenji stares at kaito, both of them throwing knives at a corkboard, you and sana’s photos pinned to the board.

“yes, sana and her plaything.” kenji turns to a guard, handing him ten new knives. kaito just laughs, doubling over and wiping the tears out of his eyes.

“her plaything? how delightful.” kaito stares at the photo of you, and then down at the photo of haruto and hanako by your side. “and her spawns.”

“yes, two it seems.” kenji nods as he continues to throw straight into the forehead of your photos. the two continue to throw knives in the silence, slicing through the air, as they land on the different photos across the board.

“kenji, let’s topple the minatozakis?” kaito stares at sana’s photo as he aims for her heart, landing dead in the center.

“with pleasure.” his final knife aimed straight at your heart.

a/n: message me if you want a part 4 :^P

#sana #twice #twice sana #sana twice #sana minatozaki #minatozaki sana #sana x reader #sana x you #kpop imagines #twice x reader #twice x you #neoplatinum

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thedinanshiral · 5 months ago

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In preparation for The Veilguard i'll be exploring some of the companions we already have information on from other Dragon Age media. I'l start with Lucanis Dellamorte, who already had an impressive introduction in the story The Wigmaker's job from Tevinter Nights, and an implicit silent role in the short story The Wake.

Lucanis Dellamorte, Master Assassin of the Antivan Crows. Grandson of Caterina Dellamorte, First Talon of the Antivan Crows, and chosen by her to succeed her.

His cousin Illario Dellamorte whom he often works with might resent him a little for being the favourite but Illario is Lucanis' favourite to succeed as First Talon, as he's got the "silver tongue" required for the politics of it Lucanis does not.

Both of them are described as lean with dark hair and umber eyes; Lucanis is described as "the kind of man you couldn't look away from- until he looked at you".

Despite the abuse from his grandmother during training that caused him to hate her, now in his adult years he understands her motivation was preparing him for this life, and while on the job still recites to himself the same nursery rhyme she did when they were children. It goes:

One for silence Two for surprise Three for good measure Four's excercise Five for a slaughter Six for the thrill Seven means more sovereigns Eight marks the final kill

Seems it's a rhyme reminding how many extra kills are necessary/acceptable in a mission that didn't call for them? But while Illario also remembers it they don't make any other comments on it.

Focused, centered on duty, Lucanis never misses the mark. He carries multiple knives, daggers and blades he takes care of personally and carefully. Mostly seems to take contracts on Venatori and Tevinter mages to the point he's grown acostumed to their magic and can sense them pulling at/tunning into the Fade. Yes, he can sense where the Veil is thin. The way in which he senses a mage using magic is as an itch behind his eyes, or as an annoying headache. The worse the headache the more magic is being used. He can track Venatori mages by headache alone.

He's not just a killing machine, he also knows his enemy's ways, in this case knowing such a corrupt mage would have to have an artifact in use to keep demons at bay. When he found and destroyed said artifact demons crossed the Veil and destroyed the wigmaker's party. This event is what earns him the nickname "the Demon".

As good as he normally is in this contract he let his personal feelings and morals interfere and rather than fulfilling the contract he prioritized the slaves escaping and the victims getting justice in the form of vengeance, considering what the wigmaker Ambrose had done didn't make him deserving of an easy death. A Magister named Zara Renata ends the story deciding, since the Crow is now a Demon, that since demons can't be killed but controled, and Lucanis showed his weakness -having a heart - , she'll find a way to manipulate him to her benefit.

In the short story The Wake Crows Viago and Teia drag a drunken Illario back to his room after someone's funeral and by Illario's comments seems the deceased was Lucanis. Illario says they were brothers more than cousins, and now in his absence he has no one to follow. He mentions as a child one time Lucanis read a book about wyverns and became obssessed with wyverns, took him hunting and both returned to their grandmother made an absolute muddy mess. It's curious how as affected as Illario is the other two Crows seem very much not, so an alternative intepretation could be the one who passed is Caterina, their grandmother, and now Lucanis is First Talon so Illario is lamenting their relationship won't be the same, at the same time he's lamenting he wasn't the chosen one, when he bitterly says "It should have been me".

Some colorful notes sprinkled here and there: when asked by Illario what he'd do if someone sees his face and talks, Lucanis says he'd just grow a beard. Seems he did:

In The Wigmaker's job when Illario complains about not having being told the specifics of the contract it's revealed Lucanis did inform him via a dossier he wrote himself. This coupled with his childhood wyvern obssession and the rest of his personality presented in Tevinter Nights tells me he's very possibly ND on some level.

During The Veilguard reveals we learn from devs that Lucanis likes coffee and is a good cook. His writer Mary Kirby confirmed on Twitter his VA is good and Lucanis will have an accent like previous Antivan characters did (Zevran, Josephine), said he is "the sole dumpster fire of the crew" and that she wrote him "specifically to be a bisexual disaster of a human" (source). In Tevinter Nights Lucanis recalls he once found himself walking into an orgy during a contract at a party and i quote, italics included "Getting out of that had been interesting", implying he may have joined in some capacity in order to get out of it.

In his companion tarot card we see his colors are black and purple, the backdrop is a stylized design of crows and behind and around Lucanis there's a purple design that looks like a wing made of eyes.

The pauldrons on his outfit also have a design of many eyes.

The back of his outfit has a bird -crow?- design as well, with a bigger single red eye

And it's not known yet how but during combat that part of his outfit projects a pair of purple wings.

This is likely how that ability looks in combat menu

Because of the purple and the eyes motif plus learning he's known as "the Demon" has made some very excited at the possibility he turns out to be possessed by a Pride demon. But as it turns out, knowing how this Demon nickname came to be, and that he's a Crow, spies and assassins who have "eyes everywhere", plus this wings combat ability i think it's safe enough to say no, he's not possessed, he's not another Anders, if there's a Pride demon walking around looking like a man that's more likely to be Solas than this Antivan handsome man.

Another detail is the other crow motif on his clothes, i think these are rather cute

Because of The Wake some propose Lucanis died and a demon rose him back from the dead or that he's possessed by a Pride demon because purple and eyes and all that, but as i proposed back in 2020 chances are Lucanis faked his death to escape his fate as successor to a position he had zero interest in, a role that was being pushed and forced on him with absolutely no consideration to his feelings or thoughts on the matter, or he is now First Talon, reluctanctly. Considering he thinks simply growing a beard is disguise enough and now in The Veilguard we see him with a beard tells me he is in fact hiding his identity to some, either because people think he's dead or because he doesn't want to be identified as the current First Talon.

#lucanis dellamorte #dragon age the veilguard #my future husband #there goes my sunday #veilguard #dav

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seastarblue · 13 days ago

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Character Intro: Noha de Escarra

“…hm.”

Basics:

Pronouns: they/them

Species: Halfing (High Elf + Human)

Age: 25

MBTI: idk

Voice Claim: Zuko from ATLA (might change)

Physical:

5’6” (≈ 168cm)

Build: Lean muscle, on the thinner side

Skin: Light brown, many, many freckles

Hair: Medium brown, Messy. Shoulder length.

Eyes: Medium brown, slightly longer pupils that dilate and contract (due to elven blood)

Special Features: pointed and elongated ears, a scar running down from their left eyebrow down to their neck, always looks… wispy?

Personality:

Noha is incredibly closed off to everyone, even those they’re close to. They have a very short temper, though it’s hidden beneath an indifferent exterior. They do have a love of dark humor, however.

Speaking Style: Noha does not like talking, preferring to simply nod and gesture. When they do speak, however, they keep it short. Their temper does show occasionally through their speech. Sometimes they use copious amounts of sarcasm just to get on people’s (li hua’s) nerves.

Likes: knives, frogs, dancing, sunsets, their (ever growing) knife collection, being right, soft blankets, hanging out with kids (they think they’re neat)

Dislikes: pity parties (for them), being wrong, bright lights, dark rooms, loud sounds (very sensitive to the previous three due to trauma and elven blood), being unprepared, being told what to do

Main Goal: “…Not going to jail. And not being ‘returned’ to Escarra.”

Backstory (under the cut):

Noha Ramirez was born in Escarra, to a criminal mastermind known as Matteo Ramirez. Noha lived relatively happy with their mother, Isabella Ramirez, for the first 13 years of their life. And that was what they would have had, if Matteo hadn't needed a new assassin.

Isabella was killed, and Noha was thrust into a life of glinting daggers, glassy eyes, and rivers of blood.

The few months after their mother's death murder were hazy. Noha kept fading in and out of consciousness, and when they finally came to they were... changed. The wizards said it was for the best, Matteo said it would make Noha's jobs easier, but Noha felt wrong.

They felt much worse when Matteo sent them to eliminate their first mark, an unsuspecting 34-year-old man by the name of Horatio Gonzales.

Many, many more would come after him.

Noha would remember them all.

"You're a weapon."

"..."

"Say it."

"...I'm a weapon."

They weren’t gonna just sit down and listen anymore. The time for blind obedience had passed. They needed to escape.

Noha had no idea why this petty thief was adamant on going with them. They enjoyed his company, though.

Noha de Escarra, a former assassin, is now travelling and taking odd jobs to stay afloat. They know they need to stay on the lookout for any of Matteo's goons, though.

#character intro #writeblr #sea’s story 1 #osea: Noha #Ik their bg story is a lil vague Buttttt that’ll be remedied with Harper’s story ✨

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rita-repulsa-ke · 24 days ago

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The Present

One more Agatha/Rio fanfic, post-finale, angst and tragic romance.

Rio goes to visit Agatha, and brings her a present.

Rio watches Agatha sleep, all of her dignity lost, mouth open, limbs askew. She takes a few steps forward and waits. The year is 1803 and by now, she knows the steps to this dance. Somewhere in this peaceful room, there is a trap.

Agatha Harkness cannot kill Death. But she can wound her, bind her temporarily, inconvenience and humiliate her. She can certainly hurt her feelings and she delights in doing so.

And Rio, when hurt, retaliates. She uses magic, knives, but most of all taunting, callous words. She derives a sense of twisted satisfaction from watching her beloved crumple and beg for something they both know she cannot give.

Sometimes, later, she regrets. Today, she carries a present, folded in her green and black cloak, either a peace offering or a dagger to the heart.

She takes another step, sits on the bed, then stretches to lie next to Agatha, inches away from a few locks of dark hair. She wants to caress them, put them in her mouth, as she once would have done.

Before she can do either, the trap springs. Runes on each wall glow purple, and fine wires of magic snap around her, haul her up by the neck, wrists and ankles, suspended in midair.

“You trapped the bed?” she asks, incredulous, as Agatha jerks awake, sits up rubbing her eyes, wearing only a nightshirt, her hair a tangled mess.

She still takes Rio’s breath away.

“You are so utterly predictable,” Agatha says, smug even though her voice is laced with sleep. She motions to the walls, to the carved runes. “The six bindings runes are done in the Solomonic tradition, but I added an extra layer with the—"

She stops abruptly. Explaining the cleverness of her magic to Rio is an old habit, from better times. “The point being, it should hold for a couple of years, if I’ve done it right, and the doors and windows to this room are bespelled so that once I leave, everyone will forget its here.”

“Clever,” Rio praises and Agatha’s jaw tightens, though the praise is nothing but truthful. She has always been impressed by the sheer skill of Agatha's craft. “But I’ve brought you a gift.”

“Keep it,” Agatha says, packing her things from where they are scattered about the room, fishing out clothes from where they've somehow ended up under the bed. “I think we’re past the courting stage.”

“You’re going to want it. Trust me.” She sees the other woman pause. She can still provoke Agatha’s curiosity, always her strongest emotion.

But Agatha won't ruin her own work. “It can wait a couple of yea—“

Rio tires of this game. She reaches for power, not magic, but the simple truth of what she is. Wisps of black and green smoke escape her, pour from her mouth to settle on Agatha’s runes.

“You can't do that!" Agatha protests, watching with clenched teeth as the magic dies and Rio glides elegantly to the floor.

“You can’t bind Death, Ags.”

Agatha’s face contorts with fury, the realization of how many times Rio has chosen to let her think she had won, to indulge her pride, when she could have freed herself so easily. “I hate you,” she snarls.

Rio pulls out the portrait and offers it to her.

It’s a good one, a little boy with crooked teeth and long hair, as perfect a rendering as she could manage.

Agatha takes it and sinks to sit on the bed, trembling, stares at it, traces the image with a finger and whispers his name.

Rio shrugs, doesn't quite look at the other woman, allowing her a private moment of grief. “So you don’t forget what he looked like.”

After some immeasurable length of time, the longest either of them have gone without violence toward each other in decades, Agatha puts the painting carefully, almost worshipfully, on the table and stands, opens her arms to Rio.

Death steps into the embrace at once, clings tight and is aware that she is shaking as Agatha’s fingers smooth her hair. For one blissful moment, her world is whole.

“Pathetic,” Agatha says and the word is spoken so flatly that it delays the blow, takes Rio a second to even comprehend what was said. “Pitiful, desperate, like a dog with its tail between its legs, rolling over to show your belly for me, as though I will ever, ever care about you ag—"

“Incendem,” Rio says, the word spoken quiet and empty.

Agatha reacts too slowly, lunges as the portrait goes up in flames. She burns her hands, fumbles and drops it, uses a nearby shirt to stamp out the flames.

What is left is a ruined mess of canvas, blackened beyond recognition.

Death laughs and laughs and laughs. “Please,” Agatha whispers, sinking to her knees, clutching the painting as though she could protect it, as though she could protect anything. “Please, please, please.”

Rio crouches next to her, too close, absorbing the heat from her body as a mortal might sit near a fire for comfort. “Pathetic,” she murmurs, almost affectionate. “Pitiful. You can't help yourself, can you? It’s all right, Ags. Cruelty suits you.”

“Give it back,” Agatha whispers, her voice cracking like a skull. “Rio, please, give it back, give it back, give him back to me…”

Rio gathers her beloved in her arms, unprotesting for once, lets her sob like a broken-hearted child and feels a gentle contentment with the situation, murmuring sweet nothings in a handful of dead languages in her ear.

"Rio," Agatha whispers against her neck, and the way her breath brushes over Rio's skin is a reminder of so many better times.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Let me drop my barriers for you. Read my thoughts."

Rio hesitates, it must be a trap, but this time it is her curiosity that gets the better of her. Even when there was genuine affection between them, Agatha always guarded her thoughts so closely. She reaches tentatively for the mind she always wished to understand above all others.

Hatred, raw and pure, impales her, a spear shoved through her guts and out the other side, a sucking, fatal wound. She recoils from the agony, a sob building in her throat.

"No," she gasps. "You love me. You love me, you do, you love me, you're hurt, you're angry, I understand, but you do love me, Agatha!”

Agatha's turn to laugh now, her cackling, witchy laugh that Rio has always loved, a hint of insanity wound through it. "See for yourself. Look as deeply as you want, my heart." She presses her lips to Rio's cheek, untwines herself and comes to her feet to look down at Death, sitting on the floor, staring up at her with blank, empty eyes.

Rio looks. She does not wish to, it is an act of self-harm to stare into the abyss of Agatha's relentless hatred, but she lets it cut her, wound and scar her over and over, relentless in her search for any morsel of affection.

There is nothing. Agatha's hatred is an endless fall, a vast, dark pit of torment.

Rio wrenches her mind free and doubles over, a terrible shriek ripped from her, the sound of her heart being torn from her ribcage, her chest flayed open, entrails flopping out.

"There is only one thing I want from you now," Agatha says. "And it is never, ever to see your face again."

Rio winks out of existence.

Agatha sits and stares at the blackened portrait, then carefully releases the spell on her mind that withholds her true feelings, a complicated rush of true hatred, the aching memory of a world-devouring love, a desperate desire not to be abandoned, and the sudden yearning to be back in Rio's arms.

Feel free to comment/reblog if you like this sort of thing. If you want to read something written pre-finale and therefore less angsty, try the talk. The part where Rio says she’ll never leave hits different now.

#agatha all along #agatha x rio #no one is nice to each other today #angst #agathario

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me-amora · 2 months ago

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Eris burnout headcanon - Short story

I have this headcanon that teenager/young Eris went through the same type of psychological-induced burnout that Aelin did in Heir of Fire.

(Tw: This will include sensitive topics such as physical punishment and kinda disturbing scenes.)

🍂🍁🍂🍁

Beron is physically punishing Eris and being harsh with him in such a way that he never had before.

Anger and survival instincts start to erupt within him, a pressuring wave of flame ready to blast everything around. But Eris knows he can't. He has to contain it, keep all that fire within. There is no world in which Eris could possibly live after freeing his fire against his father. His heart started pounding, beating too strong, too fast, too unruly. Eris stopped feeling the pain outside, all of his energy was directed at caging his fire. There was nothing that his father's daggers or whips could do compared to the agony of his thrusting power. So with each frantic heartbeat Eris could feel himself detaching from reality; his vision getting hazy, his hearing almost gone. He could feel himself burning, so hot that any sweat immediately evaporated.

Beron knew. If there was one person in Prythian to recognize a burnout it was the Lord of Fire. But Beron didn't understand how immersed in a sea of fire his son was until Eris began screaming in agony. He was burning from inside out, like all of his blood had been replaced by fire. Incinerating himself. His power was fighting an internal battle of destruction and healing, and his fire was stronger, way stronger.

Beron authoritatively shouted his name, trying to bring his conscience to the surface but there were only guttural screams, and when he tried touching him his hands immediately got burned. Beron rarely allowed himself to feel scared, but he did in that moment, if only for a second. He wasn't scared of Eris' fire, he was scared that his own fire would devour him to death. Beron let those thoughts go away, if his heir couldn't master his own fire then he better be dead. Beron called for guards and a frenzy of healers and curious eyes spread through the castle. No matter how much healers attempted at healing, it was no use because he never stopped burning. In a last desperate attempt, knowing they would get badly burned, loyal guards still offered to carry the prince to the freezing lake in the palace's garden. So they did. In a cold autumn night, burning prince Eris was thrown into a freezing lake.

Eris had barely been aware of his surroundings. He had seen guards, healers, people running, shouting, felt himself being grabbed and touched... And suddenly coldness involving him, piercing like knives. The shock made his heart miss a beat, and all beats that followed came shyer. He got a grip of his consciousness. The water was getting warmer and warmer, so he warmed it more, but this time by purpose to let all that heat out. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of eyes were upon him as he evaporated the entire lake, leaving only a huge crater left. He wasn't burning anymore, that he knew. But his entire body ached so badly that he couldn't move, even breathing seemed to hurt.

Beron stared at the scene, burning with anger within as well. It was public humiliation. More to him than Eris, he thought. Everyone could see how emotionally weak and lacking in control his heir was. But in that moment Beron also confirmed how powerful of a son he had, even at a young age, and he didn't know what to feel about that.

When his vision cleared Eris saw so many eyes upon him all around. He couldn't remember feeling so exposed and so vulnerable, curled up in the center of the crater while everyone watched him like one watches a wild beast. Someone began running towards him. Even in the dark he could recognize his mother's graceful movements and flowing dresses. She met his eyes with so much love and fear. Embraced him so gently. She was shaking more than him and started crying as she kissed his forehead and told him he would be fine.

The following days were a blur. He spent most of the time sedated, allowing his body to heal. When he was on his feet again he could sense his father's anger just by looking at him. It was followed by intimidating cold talks about how he would disown him or straight up get him killed if his own son didn't learn to master his own fire. Father was so angry, he knew it, yet somehow Beron was more contained than Eris ever expected him to be. That was when he knew his father had somehow been shaken up by the incident too.

Eris started being intensely trained by Beron. And by trained it is understood to repeat over and over again the "incident" that first triggered the burnout, between many other twisted lessons. Eris had become so traumatized that he became totally apathetic. His father could hurt him, he could shout, he could humiliate him, curse him, he could attack Eris with fire...he barely reacted to anything. He became so afraid of his fire that it shrank into a small ember inside him. Beron gave up. He was so ashamed that he didn't even look towards Eris for weeks, perhaps months, he pretended he didn't exist. Acknowledgement only returned when Eris finally revealed his fire all over again to protect himself from a wild beast while hunting.

In the loneliness and confort of his room Eris stared at the swirling flames of his fireplace. He wasn't afraid of his fire he realized. He loved his fire. He was scared of his father. So Eris looked into the fire and cried.

🍂🍁🍂🍁

Sorry if this wasn't the best. I rarely ever write anything so I severely lack practice. I simply daydream things lmao. I swear it's so much more epic inside my mind. And the iconic - English isn't my first language.

#eris #eris acotar #eris vanserra #beron #beron vanserra #lady of autumn #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #short fiction #shortfic #short story #autumn court #vanserras #pro eris vanserra

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iamnotyourgodsherald · 2 months ago

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A Great Night, A Dragon Age: The Veilguard Fanfic: Chapter 1.

Alright, so this might become broken up into chapters, because I don’t know about you, but I am fiending for the romance of Lucanis and Rook. Especially my boy! (he was made in the BG3 CC because Bioware wont release the CC early, so! I made him as close as I could to how Demitrix would look like in this story! Feel free to check him out at the bottom of the story!) I hope you all enjoy this rendition of their steamy adventure~ Please feel free to tell me what you think about this chapter!

Warning: 18+ ONLY! 🔞

These Chapters Contain: Heavy Flirting, Sexual and Romantic Tension, Soft Moments, Breaking into A Library, Combat, Magic, Heavy Making Out, Neck Biting, Hair Grabbing, Shy Moments and Tense Moments.

“This is stupid.”

“It’ll be fine. Quit messing with your tie! You’ll mess up my hard work!” I laughed.

“I look like… My cousin.” Lucanis said with a sigh.

I looked back into the mirror, staring at us and admired the handsome men standing before it with a very satisfied grin.

I started fixing up part of my long curly hair, tucking in some loose black strands. I then placed a gold bow towards the ends of my hair, making it into a loose ponytail. I watched the light catch the bluish tints of my black hair and make it pop and brighten. Lucanis’s hair almost seemed to glow with a slight purpleish tint in the candle light, the spark dancing on the tips that were slicked back against the side of his head.

I went out to Treviso the day before and got us nice looking outfits to wear on our night out from a tailor who owed me a favor. I was very specific with my wants, and Creators, did he deliver. Both outfits were lightweight but durable, and beautiful to look at.

I had a white shirt with gold detailings on the ruffles that ran down my chest and at the end of my arms. The shirt opened, exposing a bit of my chest and upper stomach. My gold face tattoos were almost glittering in the light reflected in the mirror.

Lucanis has a plain black shirt with purple details around the collar and the edges of the sleeves. He had it buttoned up all the way and tucked it inside of his pants, looking dashing and poised. A small purple tie hung down from his collar, swaying a bit with his movement. His dark eyes danced around the mirror. They never seemed to take a break from searching, never not moving.

Both of us were wearing black leather pants, with a thin black belt around our waist. Lucanis insisted on them so we could stow our weapons during the evening. Understandable compromise. He, however, lined his entire belt with small knives. And two daggers at his side.

I just had some poison vials and two daggers hanging off of my side. I did argue that that many knives were unnecessary but Lucanis said you could never have too many.

I chose to let it be and just let him do what made him more comfortable. After all, I wanted him to have a good time tonight. I just wished he didn’t look like a walking armory while we were out.

He does deserve a break after two months of working. I figured I should be the one to ask him on this night out, since we had been working closely with each other. We would have had more company but Taash kept calling it a date and refused to come and Davrin just gave me a small smirk when I asked him to come along followed by him saying: “Have fun with Lucanis.”

I shook their words and sly expressions from my head and just continued my smile towards Lucanis. After all, this was not a date. It's a simple night out.

“Your cousin has good taste in fashion then!”

“I am glad he is not here to hear you say that.”

Lucanis scoffed and continued to mess with the tie. I just sighed and turned him towards me.

“Let me fix it.” I huffed, my hands twitching as I smelled his cologne on him. “I thought you would be used to ties. You are always so nicely dressed.”

Lucanis jolted a bit as I touched him, his dark eyes watching me extremely close, but slowly put his hands down as I fixed his tie.

“Is this night out really necessary? We have work to do.” Lucanis yawned, blinking his dark eyes slowly. “Besides, I need coffee…”

“We deserve a break. Come on, I know you aren’t sociable, buuuttt it might be nice! To get out and enjoy Treviso! We haven’t been home in so long, we should enjoy it while we’re here! Get into trouble! Get some drinks! Tear it up!”

“Treviso has been torn up enough.” Lucanis said bluntly, before gently grabbing my shoulders. “If you think this is wise, then let's go, but I will keep up my guard. You should as well.”

“Well…” I began, looking into his dark eyes and I almost felt myself melting. “Try to have fun, even on guard. For me, okay?”

I saw Lucanis’s eyes soften as I asked, before Spite flew out of Lucanis’s back and spun towards me.

“Ha! Have fun?! Not this guy. Doesn’t know fun if it STABBED HIM IN THE BACK.”

Lucanis groaned in annoyance and was about to say something but I cut him off, laughing. I then pointed at Spite, walking up to him.

“You. Take a break tonight, alright? Trust me. You’ll get some action. Plenty of action! You won't be bored. Just let Lucanis have some quiet time. Okay?”

Spite growled a bit, looking back at Lucanis before looking back at me.

“You promise? That I won't be bored? Don’t lie to me, Little Crow.” He growled back at me.

“I swear.” I said, smiling back.

He looked back at Lucanis and scoffed before disappearing. Lucanis held his head for a moment before groaning.

“You handle him well. I thought, maybe, he’d prove… too much for you. He proves almost too much for me sometimes.”

“Oh gods no. Nothing is too much for me. Trust me, I can handle the ghast. This one job had me…Well, let's just say I am used to dealing with difficult people.” I said confidently.

Lucanis cracked a small smile. “Good to know.”

I felt my face get slightly hot, and I faced the mirror once more.

“Well look at us! Two handsome men who are about to have a nice night for themselves. Can't wait to see where the night takes us!”

Lucanis just looked in the mirror and sighed defeatedly, walking out of the room.

I laughed and followed right behind him, eager to see my home again.

——————————————

This is a bad idea.

No it isn’t, Solas.

The elven gods wreak havoc and you are just-

Getting yelled at by you. I am trying to have fun. More fun than I have had in a while with a guy I like being around. Taking a moment away to enjoy the views and enjoy my life while I still have it.

You won't have a life long if you continue to ignore them.

And I won't have a life at all if I bust my ass all the time, working. I need a break. Just relax for a bit, okay?

“Solas talking to you?” Lucanis spoke up.

I didn’t realize that as we were walking down the streets of Treviso that Lucanis got really close to my ear, whispering into it.

I jolted and blushed from his closeness, tucking some stray hair behind my ear. The tips of my ears feeling hot.

“Y-yes.” I coughed and straightened up, putting on my confident swagger. “A heated discussion, but it’s alright. I'd rather focus on the real world right now. You, especially, are something I’d rather focus on.~”

Lucanis seemed to look away, his face tilting down before facing forward, his thumbs tucked into his belt.

“I cannot be that interesting to you.” he said quietly.

“I’ll have to disagree with you, my friend. You are so handsome and mysterious, I just want to delve into your cavern of secrets.” I purred.

Lucanis only huffed and looked off to the side, walking alongside me. Some people walked by us and smiled. Some I winked at and even blew a kiss to. Some returned them as they walked on past. Others stopped to talk and flirt with us as we traveled into the busy shopping area in Treviso. However, One person stopped us in particular and motioned for us to come into a nearby alleyway and handed me a note. They were wearing dark garb and staying in the shadows, away from any light. The Antivan Crow symbol on the front of the note in fresh black ink.

“Contract.” They said delicately.

“Right now?” I huffed, annoyed.

“They will be in town for a few nights. Do not waste time, Demitrix.” They said, baring teeth. “You are still a Crow.”

Lucanis spoke up. “We will take it.”

The figure then nodded and left quickly. Leaving us to return to the light of the sidewalks lanterns.

“Look, I said no work. This is our rest night. We need a break.”

“I never said I’d do it right now.” Lucanis corrected, his eyes narrowing down at me. “I agreed to your ‘rest night’ and I am not properly dressed for a job. Let’s get this night over with and then I can work on it.”

I looked away, steeling myself against the sting of his words. I then let out a smile and looked at him.

“Whatever you want, Lucanis.”

Although he obviously didn’t see any negative expressions, something about my mannerisms and voice let slip that I was upset, because his eyes seemed to have softened. His body was not as tense as before. I saw his hand twitch but then balled up into a fist and looked forward walking.

“Come. Show me this bar we’re supposed to be going to.”

Shit. How could he tell? I must be slipping. Can't let him see that I was upset. Gotta show him I am unaffected. Focus, Demitrix.

I kept up my charm, pointing out the different places as we walked past.

“Well there's lots of fun little dives around here that could offer a ton of entertainment! This place over here-“

I stopped and turned, Lucanis gone from my side. A quick little search though was enough to see where he was.

Outside of a small library, Lucanis was peeking inside at a small figurine of what looked like a dragon sitting on a rock. I walked over softly to see that the label said “Wyvern”.

“You like Dragons?” I asked gently.

“I love wyverns.” He said with a smile.

He then frowned looking at the statue.

“You’re frowning.”

“Because that's a dragon figurine.”

“So?”

“It’s not a wyvern. They don’t even look similar.”

Lucanis’s hands itched for a moment. He looked like he really didn’t like that label, almost painful for him to see it. I really wanted to make him happy tonight, and I tended to go against my better judgment anyway. I started running into the alleyway right next to the building, a concerned Lucanis following after me.

“Demitrix?!” He yelled following after me. “What are you doing? The bars are-“

“We should fix that label.” I said with a smirk looking for a backdoor. “People are going to think that's a wyvern.”

“Some will, but it is clearly a Dragon. Wyverns don’t look like that though. They have little webbed flaps that stick out from their joints that help them glide. They can't fully fly, though.”

“You really like wyverns.”

“I don’t like wyverns.” He turned to me with the most deadpan expression. “I LOVE wyverns.”

I did find a side door near the end of the building but it was locked.

“Damn. I didn’t bring my lockpicks.”

I looked up the building, and started to scale up the wall, grabbing onto jutted out parts of stone and rock. Lucanis started following after me, cursing under his breath.

“Demitrix! Meirda…” he sighed as I started climbing over the side onto the roof. “Is all this necessary?”

“Sí.” I shot back.

He then paused a moment before chuckling.

“Fine. Let's make it quick.”

We managed to climb up to the roof where we searched for a way in. Lucanis ended up finding an unlocked ceiling hatch and opened it up quietly.

“Quickly. Let's go.”

“How are we getting back out?”

“You’ll see. Go in.”

“I do love mysterious types. So exciting.” I purred.

I jumped down, staying still for a moment to let my eyes adjust to my surroundings. The light from the hatch shone down on me and cast a bit of light around the spot.

Definitely just a standard library after hours. The whole place smelled of old parchment and aged leather. No candles lit and no people around too. I listened for any noises that didn’t come from outside just to see if we were truly alone and once I determined that nobody was here, I signaled Lucanis to come down and he landed right next to me with feline grace.

“This is fun.” I whispered.

Lucanis then shushed me and started walking towards the front, crawling on his hands and knees to keep out of sight from the window.

I climbed up on a nearby bookcase and crouched on the top of it, watching Lucanis from afar. Even as he moved, he was as silent as a mouse. It was very impressive to watch him, especially from the back of him. Though, I need to determine if we could get back out easier with the hatch. I turned to look at the hatch and the height of the bookcases and hopped to the closest one nimbly, staying quiet. When I got back over to it, it looked a bit tall for us to leap back up to it and climb out. Just in case if we need a plan B, I decided to try and look for some lock picks to try and open the back door out of here. Sometimes, people DO have them just to make sure they can get into doors they accidentally lock themselves out of and with some luck, I was hoping I could find some.

I crawled back down and started up towards what I perceived as a counter and started sifting through as I got behind it, feeling for lock picks in the small cupboards.

As I searched, I suddenly felt a body press up against me from behind, pinning me to the cupboards and covering my mouth. I looked up to see Lucanis hunkering down with me, shushing me silently.

I blushed hard and my pants suddenly felt tighter, dirty thoughts filling my head.

“I hear something. Something down below.” He whispered in my ear.

I pulled my mouth away from his hand.

“Lucanis, You can't… just grab my mouth and… press up-“

He silenced me again with his hand, this time holding me tighter against his chest.

“Stop. Talking.”

I shuddered, feeling his hips against mine.

Yes sir~

A light suddenly appeared in the back of the library around the corner where we were hunkered down. A couple of figures walked past the counter with lanterns, wearing the cloaks and outfits of Venatori thugs.

I felt Lucanis’s grip on my mouth tightened, his eyes starting to flicker with purple light. His arm shook with anger. I shook my head to get him to notice me, to stop him from summoning spite, which seemed to work.

He slowly let go of me, and nodded towards them.

“They die.” He whispered softly.

“They die.” I nodded.

We both drew our daggers, sneaking out from behind the counter. Lucanis went to the left side of the library where I went to the right side, watching and following the Venatori nutcases like a wolf stalking its prey. Lucanis positioned himself on the opposite side of me as they searched, watching the two lackeys shine the lantern around, while we were easily avoiding the light.

“I know I heard something.” One of them said.

It was a maskless Venatori, their eyes darting around in fear.

“Why would anyone suspect us here? Or even break into a library? Look, there's obviously no one here, let’s just leave.”

Lucanis slipped some of the small knives into his hand, putting them between his fingers, ready to throw.

I started to move towards them but Lucanis saw me moving closer and put up a hand to get me to wait.

As they walked away from us, that's when he signaled for us to strike.

Lucanis quickly threw his blade into the back of the left one’s neck while I ran up and stuck one of my blades into the right one's back, twisting and covering his exposed mouth with my other hand. While Lucanis’s guy went down easily, the right one whirled around with the lantern, screaming into my hand and swung me around.

“Lucanis! Little help!” I yelled.

Lucanis ran over, ready to throw another knife but the guy reached back and threw me into Lucanis, both of us toppling onto the floor landing on top of each other.

The Venatori however, screamed, before falling over and dropping the lantern.

“Next time, sink your blade deeper!” Lucanis yelled.

“Thanks for the tip, Master Crow!” I yelled back.

We quickly got up, running to the shadows once more as two more came up and into the library, one obviously a mage and another a rogue. The rogue stepped in front of the mage, brandishing daggers, looking around. His eyes, darting around.

“Stay behind me, Sylvia. They are still here.” The rogue spoke quickly.

“They won't be hidden for long.“ Sylvia said.

She then waved her staff as it glowed with greenish yellow light and all the candles and torches in the library flickered on with Veilfire.

Fuck.

The rogue saw me first and ran towards me, trying to dual strike me from the front but I brought up both my blades and parried. The hilts of our daggers catching and holding us there.

“You worthless little elf… I’ll cut off your ears and make you scream for death!” He snarled.

“Oh you Venatori really know how to talk dirty~” I purred back.

I shoved myself forward, to knock him off balance, knocking us both into the ground, and barely dodging a shot of lightning going past my head.

“Kill the damn elf!” Sylvia screamed.

I knew Lucanis could handle the mage, all I was worried about was killing this rogue. As we wrestled around on the ground. I ended up using one of my dirty tactics to place a well aimed knee to his crotch, which caused him to yell in agony and loosen his grip on me.

I took the moment to then quickly grab his throat while he remained on top of me, roll on top of him, and then bring my blade across his neck. Quickly, I got off of him before any blood began to spray on me.

Sylvia, however, had Lucanis pinned. She was aiming at Lucanis who was dodging behind the book cases as she fired lightning at him, getting closer and closer to hitting him.

Not thinking, I ran over and picked her up from behind, lifting her into the air to give Lucanis time to run in and finish her off.

I, however, forgot for a moment that she was a mage.

She grabbed my arms as I hoisted her into the air and shocked me good. A thousand pinpricks ran through my arms and into my chest, causing my whole body to feel like it was on fire from how strong the shock was, my body becoming numb and then paralyzed.

My head felt dizzy from the damage, making the room spin around me. I fell to the floor with a thud, dropping Sylvia as well and passing out.

When I came to, Lucanis was shaking me awake. His face splattered with blood.

“Demitrix?!” He gasped.

“Yeah…” I wheezed, my joints stiff for a moment. “I just needed a nap… Still alive…”

He laughed, sighing a breath of relief.

“Maker, you are an idiot.” He sighed, moving hair out of my face. “I thought you were dead!”

“What? Missed me already?” I flirted, winking up at him. “I could never leave you behind.”

His eyes got big, a bright flush spread across his face and then a softer smile appeared.

That's when he leaned down and kissed me deeply, his lips pressed hard against mine.

My whole body went stiff again. I could feel my face flush and my lips twitch. In my weakened state, I just easily melted back into his kiss. Not a care in my mind.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, and pulled him onto me, our shared kiss becoming more passionate and more crazed as my tongue wrapped around his.

He then reached up, grabbing at my scalp and gripping my roots, and pulled my head back. My neck became exposed to him and he quickly bit into it. Moaning longingly into my flesh.

“L-Lucanis…!” I cried out as I clawed into his back. “Maker, you’re going crazy… I love it!”

I arched my back as he bit harder, my heart racing in my chest.

This is really happening. It’s really happening. Lucanis is about to fuck me.

Before we got too wild, we heard knocking at the front door.

“This is the Antivan Guard! Open up this door! Or we will break it open!”

Lucanis quickly got off of me, pulling me up off the floor, motioning to the hatch. I nodded and climbed up the bookcase after him and watched him leap up the hatch and climb onto the roof. Just as I leaped and caught the edge of the hatch, the door started being kicked open.

I quickly scampered up onto the roof, and closed the latch quietly, before Lucanis and I took off, darting across the rooftops of Treviso and away from the sight of the guard.

We finally slowed down on a roof overlooking a market square. Both of us panting and then slowly started laughing.

“You… Moron! All that for a mislabeled dragon statue?” Lucanis struggled to get out.

A wild smile spread across his face.

“It looked like it really bothered you!” I chuckled, taking a deep breath. “I wanted to fix the problem.”

“You are sweet…” He said sheepishly.

“I know~ oh Lucanis… you have blood on you.”

I started to use my hand to wipe the blood from his face, but he grabbed my hand and gently held it there for a moment, almost like… he was enjoying it.

I blushed but didn’t move. I didn’t want him to let go of me, but I felt fear crawl up my spine from this new feeling… like butterflies in my stomach and I gently moved my hand.

“Lucanis…?”

He almost snapped back to reality so quickly, standing up, looking as poised as before. It was almost… disheartening? I almost felt disappointed? I pushed them down for the moment and looked up at him with a smile.

“Whats up, handsome?~”

Lucanis’s face blushed brightly but quickly looked away, clearing his throat.

“Well. Now that we’re out of that little bind.” He said, looking down at me. “Let’s…continue with our night.”

(Stay tuned for Chapter 2!)

#fanfic #dragon age #video games #dragon age the veilguard #bioware #writing #rook x lucanis #my rook #writing smut about my rook and lucanis is just mwah #might be a chapter series #definately romancing lucanis #lucanis dellamorte #dragon age lucanis #lucanis x rook #dragon age 4

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mysticstarlightduck · 2 months ago

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Character Profile Tag!

It's been a while since I've done one of these, and I really like this tag, so I'm gonna make a few lol.

Let's go with Adahm Ryker from Scrapyard Boys for this one!!! <3

Full Name: Adahm Tiberius Ryker

Kind of Being: Human (Mutant Variant)

Age: Presumably 19 years old, has no birth certificate and has a snake-like biology so the details of how he ages are unclear but he is around that age physically.

Sex: Male

Appearance: Adahm is very tall and lanky, with warm white skin that is slightly sun tanned but without any freckles. His eyes are a piercing light yelloish green, almost neon, hue which look distinctively like the eyes of a snake. He has very long light brown hair that he usually keeps loose, brushed to one side, or tied in a messy ponytail. Adahm's smile usually appears normal if not for the fact that his teeth are generally sharper than that of a 'regular human' and that he has two, pointy snake fangs - like a reptilian vampire. A fun detail is that he can stretch and detach his jaw like a snake would and it makes for a devastating biting force. Adahm usually wears black clothes, with a dark - kevlar reinforced - jacket, black or dark grey button up shirts, dark denim pants and black leather combat boots, as well as fingerless grey gloves.

Occupation: Serial Killer (of corrupt people), Vigilante, Rebel

Family Members:

Taylen Ryker: adoptive younger brother, ward

Charles Zarin: childhood best friend (deceased)

Unnamed Parents

Pets: No pets

Best friends: Jax Strobber (they/them), Sasha Valentine (she/her), Gwyn Whitewood (she/her)

Describe his/her room: Adahm's room is spacious and meticulously organized/clean. It's on the smaller side, so as not to take up too much space in their safehouse, but comfortable. His bedsheets are dark grey with some black details, and his bed is usually pristinely made, and there's a light blue sleep mask usually tossed onto it. The room often has a light citrusy smell due to air freshners he buys, and there's a small study desk/work desk by the reinforced glass window where he does most of the planning for his missions. There's a holographic picture of him and Taylen on the edge of that same desk. In his wardrobe, he keeps his clothes - which are usually all in dark tones of black, grey and blue - and his vast collection of guns (ranging from pistols to precision rifles and one small machine gun) and knives (his preferred weapon, usually sharp daggers, common knifes and a few thin swords, as well as a pocket swiftblade);

Way of speaking: Faint (fictional) english accent. He is usually soft spoken, to the point he can sound like a hissing snake when he is speaking specially sharply, but almost always has a dangerous lilt to is voice that commands a certain amount of fear and respect from those around him. His way of speaking changes drastically when he's talking to Taylen - whenever he is addressing his brother, Adahm sounds genuinely kinder, more excited and gentle than he ever would have sounded while speaking to anyone else.

Physical characteristics (posture, gestures, attitude):

Towards strangers: Cold, snake-like, moving swiftly from spot to spot almost imperceptively, confident, scarily so. He usually has a wild/feral attitude to him, despite his calculated behaviors and emotionless persona, having a wild animal's unpredictability and deadliness to him. He has a sharp, imposing smile that usually sends chills down people's spines, and his eyes can be disturbingly cold and unemotional, though they do show a strong glint of enjoyment whenever he is inebriated by the thrill of a kill.

Towards Taylen: When around his little brother Adahm becomes an almost completely different person, being genuinely warmer/gentler, patience, easily excited about different topics and doting. The shift in his usually murderous outer personality he shows the world to his kind, protective older brother personality that is reserved for Taylen alone, can be jarring for those who don't know him well, but Adahm himself doesn't seem to realize that.

Items in his/her back pocket/ purse: Extra poison vials, combat daggers, ammo, climbing gear and spy gear, commlinks, his phone, an extra jacket or coat (he's ectothermic due to his snake biology and sensitive to temperature changes, especially cold weather) and snacks, preferrably dry ones.

Favorite sports: Swordfighting, Boxing, Climbing/Parkour, Swimming

Powers: Snake Biology, Venom/Poison Manipulation & Generation, Shadow Movement, Enhanced Senses/Speed

Relationships (how he/she is with other people):

When he knows the person: quiet, funny, attentive, kind, protective, easily excited, happy, and genuine

When he does not know the person: cunning, manipulative, sociopathic (he does suffer from sociopathy but it becomes much more clear when he's dealing with strangers, especially enemies), murderous, dangerous, sadistic, cold and unpredictable.

Fears: Losing a loved one again or being unable to protect them (especially Taylen), actually being a 'freak' or unworthy of love, being forced to comply by arbitrary rules, being weak, being touched without consent

Faults: Emotionally detached from strangers, murderous, ruthless, vindictive, blunt/unkind, vicious/bloodthirsty, tendency to tunnel vision, bad at reading people and especially stunted at emotional cues (of people he doesn't know)

Good Points: Kind, genuinely cares about those around him, has a good sense of humour, protective, loyal to a fault, deadly smart, loves his brother more than anything and is a good guardian even though he doesn't know how to parent, rebellious and free spirited

What he/she wants more than anything else: Justice, Revenge, being able to keep Taylen safe, and being worthy of respect/genuine love with no strings attached.

Tagging (gently): @sleepy-night-child, @kaylinalexanderbooks, @smol-feralgremlin, @oh-no-another-idea, @littleladymab,

@winterandwords, @eccaiia, @sarahlizziewrites, @illarian-rambling

@agirlandherquill, @anoelleart, @ray-writes-n-shit

@the-golden-comet, @writernopal, @anyablackwood, @unstablewifiaccess, @forthesanityofstorytellers

@i-can-even-burn-salad, @cakeinthevoid

@lassiesandiego, @thepeculiarbird, @clairelsonao3, @memento-morri-writes, @starlit-hopes-and-dreams

@differentnighttale

@wyked-ao3 and OPEN TAG

Taglist for Scrapyard Boys below the cut 🧪

Scrapyard Boys Taglist (-/+): @ray-writes-n-shit, @sarandipitywrites, @lassiesandiego, @smol-feralgremlin, @kaylinalexanderbooks,

@diabolical-blue @oh-no-another-idea

@cakeinthevoid, @clairelsonao3,

@thepeculiarbird

@the-golden-comet, @urnumber1star, @ominous-feychild, @anyablackwood, @amaiguri, @lyutenw @finickyfelix

@thecomfywriter, @the-letterbox-archives, @differentnighttale @wyked-ao3

Let me know if you'd like to be added!

#wip scrapyard boys #oc: adahm ryker #writeblr #writing #writers on tumblr #my wips #character writing #my characters #my writing #writers #writerblr #superhero story #cyberpunk stories #cyperpunk dystopia #scifi

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saltsicklover · 1 year ago

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Part Seven

This one is on the shorter side, but there is so much angst and imagery stuffed into this baby. Once again, hurt my heart to write and I hope you enjoy it!

Title: Once an Asshole, Always an Asshole

Pairing: Robert "Bob" Floyd x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 2700+

Rating: R

Warnings: Swearing, illusions to nausea/being sick, mentions of blood and loose teeth, pocket knife/blade, so much angst. Mentions of the Bradshaw's. Dumbass Bob Floyd.

Second Chance Romance!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bob Floyd, or anything related to Top Gun Maverick within this piece. Not Proof Read or BETA'd. All mistakes are my own.

I do not consent for my work to be edited, reposted, or translated.

You are responsible for your own media consumption. This is a work of fiction that may contain mature themes. If you are sensitive to those subjects, please do not read.

---

Sunny disappears into the crowd, leaving the Daggers standing there, open mouthed and confused, too stunned to do anything but stand there. Natasha takes that moment to bend down to pick up the object that was thrown at Bob's chest; one of those gift shop pocket knives, the name "Robert" engraved on the side. The paint is chipped, the letters once a beautiful turquoise now flaking and faded.

The swell in Bob's chest leaves him feeling flaky and faded too, chipped around the edges from the confrontation. Palms are sticky with sweat, his fingers sticking together. He doesn't meet anyone's eyes- she walked out the door with his gaze still stuck to her shoulder blades.

Natasha is angry now, all the hurt that was directed at Bob has seared pain into her skin. Phoenix holds it out to Bob but he doesn't notice, his eyes unfocused, the colors of the crowd swirling around his vision.

Bob is drawn back to the Daggers with a swift push to his shoulder. He's met with Natasha's burning eyes melting their way into his own. She slams the blade onto the table, her palm doing little to muffle the sound. Bob jumps, gooseflesh breaking out over his skin. The sick feeling swarming in his stomach doesn't let up, and neither do the eyes of his teammates.

"What is this, Bob?" Her tone is sharp, so sharp he can almost feel the way is slices across his skin. Maybe bleeding would have been easier to digest. When he finally flicks his eyes over the object, his peripheral catches Natasha's hand tensing and releasing. The turquoise is older now, worn with age and use, but he would recognize it anywhere. His luck knife. He hasn't seen that knife in ten years. He lost it on Prom night, he lost it after his fight with her. All of his luck must have gone with it.

"Oh my god, I haven't seen that in..." Bob's words trail off, the puzzle pieces finally falling into place. His eyes go wide at the realization, heart beating erratically.

Sunny had seemed familiar to him the moment her hair dropped from the delicate twists she had it pulled back in. From the way it dropped in front of her eyes, the little hints of color peaking out from behind them. He swore he recognized the gentle slope of her jaw, the undisturbed flesh from the tip of her chin all the way up to the lobe of her ear.

Her jewelry glittered in the light, yet his eyes were transfixed to her skin- the familiarity of it. The flesh of a long lost love that he couldn't quite place.

Frankly, he should have recognized her the moment her brows lowered in frustration, after all, he spent the later portion of his teen years looking at that same expression. Suddenly he wishes she was still standing in front of him, giving him that awful look; at least then she would still be standing there with him.

He had only seen her in a dress once, but it was shrouded by the darkness of the sky, then. He remembers it perfectly, the delicate beading and the cool feeling of the fabric. He remembers the tennis shoes she wore and how the sight of them made his heart flutter, laughter falling from his lips. It was the most authentic he had ever seen her.

Bob knows that he could pick Duchenne out of a crowd, blindfolded and unannounced. He could figure her out by touch alone- from the way her breathing would catch as he let his fingers trace over the plane of her torso, feeling her bottom rib with a gentle brush of his knuckles.

That's not to say he wouldn't recognize the way he smelt, the vanilla perfume layered over a musky cologne. Or the way her lips tasted like cherry flavored Chapstick, (something she only wore because it reminded her of how his tobacco smelt, not that he was privy to that information), or how her lips were still chapped beneath the viscus, sticky layer of product.

He would have recognized her touch, the feeling of her knuckles pressed firmly to his own chest. From the way her rings dug into his skin, wrinkling his clothes, and the way his heart tried to beat out of his chest to get even closer to her- if his heart could've touched her hands he would have let her hold it.

After all, Bob walked into love with her with his eyes open; it wasn't until he was already in love that he closed his eyes and let the self preserving hate take him over. His heart was Dr. Jekyll, his brain Mr. Hyde, a story told a thousand times before, yet it's still unclear to himself as to which one happened to be evil. That's how it goes right? The inability to see the evil in oneself only to have it be their downfall, their demise?

Bob would cut the evil out of himself with that old pocket knife, use up the rest of the luck left beneath the still-there chips of paint , and it wouldn't be enough. He would still be back to the same old story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this time with more blood and just as much heartache.

So, Bob lies to himself- he lies that he didn't recognize her because she had changed so much, but in reality, he was the one who had changed. It didn't matter that he did it for her; he still lost sight of what it was all for. He lost sight of her. But, he thinks, if he could have just touched her with his eyes closed, he would have known it was her. His heart would have known with it's relative location to her hands. His heart calls to them like the moon calls to the waves; he only wishes it was strong enough to pull them closer.

Bob thinks he might be sick, the feeling of pulling G's nothing compared to the punch to the gut the last few minutes had been. The center of his chest aches, source unclear.

"You better tell me what the hell is going on right this second Floyd, or I am going to kick your ass so hard you won't be able to sit in the jet next week," Phoenix's voice pulls him from his spiral. She slams her fist onto the table beside her. Bob flinches, eyes squeezing shut, tight. He has heard her angry before, scared before, pissed off before, but nothing compared to the way she was striking the fear of God into him now.

"Duchenne," Bob begins, not quite trusting his voice, "That's her, that's Duchenne... Oh my God,"

Bob feels unsteady, the ground is swaying beneath him. His body flushes hot then cold then back again, sweat slick and hot to the touch. His stomach twists, threatening to take his heart in with it. He manages to lean against the table, a hand on the sticky wooden top.

Natasha is steadily putting the pieces together, one by one. It was slow work, like winding red string from clue to clue, not being able to see the whole thing from this close. It's all inky fingerprints and unfocused photographs. Her fingertips might as well have been dyed red from all the the theories she has created in her head, only to unwind them herself to construct another. Her brain aches with the pain of papercuts.

Rooster is still in the dark, the expression on his face giving light to that fact. His emotion is hidden behind the thickness of his mustache and eyebrows, the facial hair hiding the confused displeasure written into his features. He had been too busy keeping Jake from jumping into the middle of the whole thing to pay enough attention to the details, the entire situation like trying to solve a puzzle without the picture on the box, a couple of the crutial pieces lost.

Hangman on the other hand? He is just far enough away to see the whole picture clearly. The whole mother fucking thing, the outline of the string from clue to clue; from the way Sunny reacted, her knuckles white, voice pained, all the way to the way Bob sways on his feet, green around the gills, eyes bleary with unshed tears. He sees it all perfectly, and it makes him see red.

"What the fuck did you do to her?" Seresin speaks up this time, his voice levels above that of Natasha's. Bob flounders, going a shade greener. Hangman is not surprised at Bob's lack of explanation, the man has always been quiet and unassuming, but he doesn't have the patience for this, for waiting.

Bob manages to stammer out a couple of useless sounds, none of which come even close to an answer that Hangman would deem acceptable. Bob's brain is playing catch up, the whole evening on rewind. Hell, everything Phoenix ever told him plays through his head on fast forward, the stories jumbling together in his brain, lacking detail.

Bob was so sure he was going to like Sunny, that she would be his absolute definition of perfect. And fuck, she was, she is, she has always been. And he fucked it up so many years ago and now it looks like there is no chance of any sort of redemption, not with the way Sunny looked at him.

Again, he thinks, maybe the blood would be easier. At least wounds on the outside can be tended with gentle touches and medical care. It's the beyond pained expression Sunny wore and the venom in her words that are forever circulating through Bob's bloodstream that can't be treated. There is no cure for heartbreak, not like this.

"Bob, you will not get a second warning, I will not be asking you again," Hangman begins to move towards Bob, moving step by step, inch by inch, each micromovement a warning to the WSO, speak now or forever wish he had, likely with a mouth full of blood and loose teeth. Bob shudders.

He might be sick. He swallows bile and mucus that have begun to mingle in the back of his throat. The mixture doesn't go down easy, a lump stuck in his throat.

"We went to school together," Bob speaks up finally, the words coming out scratchy, maybe a little detatched, "And I- I was horrible to her. The whole time- I-"

"Robert Floyd, you better be fucking joking. Duchenne?!" Natasha yells, the lightbulb moment finally hitting her. She angles her body towards Bob, now boxing him, right along Hangman's side. "My best friend, Sunny, is your Duchenne? The girl you tormented for years, the girl who you told wasn't worth it, breaking her fucking heart right before graduation?! That Duchenne?"

"Yes," The word fell from Bob's lips so sheepishly he barely hears himself utter it. He lets his vision swim with the colors of the Hard Deck patrons again. He wants to shrink away, fade from existence.

He has never seen his squad so mad, the anger dripping off of them, puddling around his feet. If he's not careful, he might just drown in it, face down on dry land.

That began the yelling. Somewhere between the lack of eye contact that the barely heard words, Natasha's heart broke all over again for her best friend, just like it had the night Bob confessed everything to her in the safety of his truck cab.

Hangman has surpassed pissed. To have seen a woman upset at the hands of a man, was one thing that ignited rage within the man, but when it was Bob who had caused such pain, and when the woman just so happened to be Sunny, Hangman could have torched a whole town.

They were both ripping into Bob, and he just stood there and took everything they gave him. He deserved every piece of it.

Nothing would change his mind from the fact that he fucked up. He could still hear the sound of her strangled cry, the same one that has been playing on repeat since he walked away from her all of those years ago. That would've been bad enough, the strangled cry a broken record in his psyche, but the look of her tear filled eyes is now burned into the forefront of his mind.

He fucked up, worse this time than he has ever before. Far worse.

Rooster used the commotion to slip out of the bar and after Sunny. He found her down in the sand, leaning against a life guard tower. She was sobbing, harsh cries wracking through her body as she shook. He didn't know if it was from anger or if her body was just trying to release all of the tension. It didn't matter either way.

"Hey, Sunshine," Bradley begins, his voice soft "Do you wa-" Before Bradley can finish his sentence, Sunny has thrown herself into his arms, grasping onto the only bit of loose fabric she can find at the small of his back. She tries to speak, the words coming out jagged and hoarse. They aren't anything Bradley can make out. He doesn't bother to try, he knows that listening to her comes later. What she needs, right there in that moment is something to ground her back to reality. She needs to keep from slipping further and further into the atmosphere, her brain running haywire in the clouds.

Bradley brings his arms up around her shoulders, one hand coming up to the back of her head. He cradles her head against his chest, his fingers moving gently over her scalp. He repeats the same movements he learned from his mother, the comforting touches he would receive after nightmares and when he had episodes of grief over his father.

He missed his mother in that moment, as he hums out a melody just loud enough to be heard over her ragged breathes. His brain flashes with images of his father, few and far between and a little blurry. The song was his first. Then it was his mother's. Now it's his to share.

Slowly he sways her back and fourth, the motion small but deliberate. She lets out a deep breath, one that she didn't realize she was holding. The fingertips against her skull seems to bring her crying to a lull, her body no longer shaking. Her hands tremble a bit, still tangled in the top of his uniform. He can feel that it's no longer tucked in the way it should be, and the tears on the front side have turned the once crisp tan fabric into a dark, patchy mess.

"Let's take a seat, Sunshine, so you can catch your breathe, then, if you want to, you can tell me all about what just happened, okay?" Bradley's voice is so quiet as he whispers into the hair at the top of her head. All Sunny can do is shake her head yes before she untangles herself from around Rooster, attempting to dry her tears with the backs of her hands. He takes her by the elbow, guiding her down to the sand below.

Bradley leans his body back against the guard tower, legs spread out in front of him with her body sat between them. He pulls her back into his chest, hands running from her shoulders down to her elbows and back up again, yet another thing he learned from his mother. He had sat just this way with her more times than he'd care to admit. She would say that it helped to regulate breathing, but in reality, it was to help keep her from bursting into tears right along with him.

He keeps his head back against the tower, eyes looking out at the lapping waves. Sunny looks out at them too, slowly finding the courage to tell Bradley everything. He hums the tune again, the silence filled by the lapping of the waves. Sunny can still hear her heart beating in her ears, blood rushing. Somehow, she knows, that this is exactly how seeing Bobby again should sound- crashing, rushing, and a gentle lullaby. It's everything they have ever been, and maybe everything they will continue to be, even if Bradley has to sub in the tune right now, in this moment, under the amber glow of the full moon.

Sunny's hands still shake, pins and needles vibrating from within, like they are being called a million miles away from her; or maybe sixty or so yards away, up the staircase and through the crowd of the Hard Deck, right to where Bob Floyd's heart sits beating erratically in his chest.

#bob floyd x reader #bob floyd x you #bob floyd fic #bob floyd angst #once an asshole #best friend natasha trace #brother bradley bradshaw #robert floyd x you #robert floyd x reader #robert bob floyd #top gun maverick fanfiction

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kultofathena · 1 year ago

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Continental Broad Seax: Designed by Markland Merchants to be a historically accurate broad seax for the serious Viking reenactor – it has a blade of tempered EN45 high carbon steel which is tempered to a 56-58 HRc hardness.

Danelaw Seax: This robust bladed seax is the so-called broken-back style seax. These seaxes have a sharp angled transition between the back section of the blade and the point. This shape makes the spine appear to be broken like a beast with a broken back which is where this evocative blade style gets its name.

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blackjackkent · 17 hours ago

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So @zenjestrr informed me AGES ago, that you can get a semi-secret Durge cutscene if you have someone cast Heal on them. It's a sixth-level spell, and he also pointed out that druids get it at level 11, and that it would be potentially apropos to have Jaheira cast it on Rakha. And lo and behold... we just hit level 11!

-----

As they emerge into the sunlight outside the Counting House, Jaheira shakes herself a little from the silent, brooding reverie into which she had fallen. "You are hurt, cub," she says gravely.

And indeed, the left side of Rakha's robes are soaked with blood, muted by the black of the fabric; one of the cultists' knives ripped a gash just above her hip which has been bleeding freely during all the conversations in the vault. Jaheira isn't entirely sure Rakha had even noticed the injury, so preoccupied is she with the next step, with finding Minsc, finding Lae'zel, and destroying the bastards that have them both.

Jaheira, under the circumstances, can respect that singlemindedness - but the bloodloss is starting to tell, paling Rakha's olive-green skin and dulling her gaze. "Stand still," she says crisply, reaching out a hand to halt Rakha in her tracks. With the other, she conjures a ball of blue-white light, the strongest dose of healing magic she knows.

"Te curo!"

As the magic touches Rakha's ripped flesh, her head snaps back as if she's been struck. Her whole body goes rigid as a statue and then begins to twitch violently, hunching into itself.

Wyll's eyes open wide with alarm. He's seen her look this way before - on the balcony of Moonrise Towers, in the Underdark with a mouthful of noblestalk. Some memory has come back to her.

"Rakha--" he says urgently, gripping her arm. "Rakha? Rakha?!"

She doesn't respond.

-----

Narrator: With a start, the spell knits your mind together - just about long enough for you to recall a single image.

Narrator: A little Urge, not even an adolescent, stands with a tiny dagger atop a bloody heap.

Narrator: Two-bedroom cottage. Relative squalor. Poor part of the city. Indiscriminate whole-family kill.

Narrator: Baby's first murder spree.

(A/N: Oh shit. D: Well, this is horrible. Although I do like that the narrator's phrasing here echoes Rakha's usual speech patterns - and her extrapolation, her putting together of fact and fact and fact into a picture. A terrible picture, in this case.)

Rakha's breath catches hard in her throat. She can hear Wyll's voice at a very great distance, all but utterly masked by the brutal immediacy of the vision. The beast is all at once awake in her head and roaring, roaring at this memory of blood and viscera spilled by her own hand.

The fallen bodies are human. A man, a woman, and two children, all rendered unrecognizable under the gore that spatters their mutilated corpses. And over them stands Rakha, triumphant, hungry, the knife in her hand dripping, staring over her victims with the ice-blue eyes she once bore.

A chill runs down her spine. She knew these people. Their death is the sweeter for the betrayal that sat in their faces as they died.

Shudder. Might that family have taken you in?

Narrator: Words creep from the darkness.

Sceleritas's voice, sliding through her mind like oil on water. "Young master..." he whispers to her, to the blood-addled child she once was, "precious fledgling, follow ever your heart. In time... your true family will find you..."

-----

The vision fades. Rakha finds herself curled against the railing of the counting house bridge with Wyll crouched next to her, her hand clasped in both of his. Jaheira is on her other side, looking her over with an air of wary concern, and Minthara stands a little further back, her sword out but not lifted.

Alarm shoots like a bolt of bright lightning through her fuzzy thoughts and she stirs unsteadily. "Who--" she rasps. "Did I-- kill someone--?"

Wyll shakes his head. "No," he says. Then, "There's no one around," he adds, which is probably meant to be reassuring, but only tells Rakha that he knows perfectly well she might have tried, had anyone been within reach. He pulls her hand to his lips, presses a kiss against her knuckles, his eyes searching her expression, trying to read it. "What was it this time?" he asks gently. "What did you see?"

Rakha squints uncertainly, drawing that one brief image to the front of her mind, cradling it carefully as if afraid it might collapse to ashes and vanish again at any moment. "I... was a child," she whispers haltingly.

It's an astonishing enough image all by itself. She has wondered on more than one occasion if she was ever a child, or if she was simply birthed out of that nautiloid pod or in the dark recesses of Moonrise Towers, fully grown and hungry for blood. But no... it seems she was a child indeed, a scrawny little thing in fact, with a mop of dangling dark hair, unwashed and uncut. An urchin taken in by a friendly family in the Lower City, unaware of the sting of the scorpion they were adopting.

"A child. With a family," she goes on, each word unsteady and cautious. "Humans. They adopted me. Gave me food and clothing."

"Oh." Wyll looks slightly surprised. "Well. That's not so bad a memory then." He relaxes a little, a smile creeping back onto his face. "Did they seem like good people?"

"I don't know," Rakha says flatly. "They were dead."

Before he can respond, she pushes herself to her feet and walks away abruptly. "If we are going to catch up with Minsc, we had better keep moving."

#bjk plays bg3 durge #rakha the dark urge #DURGE STUFF DURGE STUFF DURGE STUFF #VERY UPSETTING DURGE STUFF :(#oh boy

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sauron-kraut · 5 months ago

Note

For the headcanon meme - Mairon:

☾ - sleep (yes ;))

■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

☯ - likes/dislikes headcanon

Thank you bestie 🖤🖤🖤

sleep: My headcanon ist that Mairon, like all Ainur, does not need to sleep. He can benefit from sleeping though, for example after going through a particularly exhausting ordeal (yes, embodied Ainur can feel a certain level of exhaustion in my hc). He also might just like sleeping from time to time because it can feel good and, most importantly, he uses sleep as a form of escape, for example on Númenor, where he is fairly unhappy, to say the least, and after he lost Melkor. Also, Mairon is, generally speaking, a very pretty sleeper.

Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon: Oh boooooy. Mairon likes luxury, especially First and Second Age Mairon. He will decorate his quarters and it will be an interesting combination of refined, elegant looking details and decorations and (to the human eye) rather of-putting, primal stuff like pelts, preserved creature and organ specimens, taxidermy etc., knives, weaponry, you name it.

Mairon prefers to sleep in large, comfortable beds with many (colourful, especially red/golden) pillows and blankets and wolf pelts. He's not squeamish about uncomfortable sleeping situations though, when he's outside, setting camp for battle etc. (he's still efficient and pragmatic).

Mairon likes heavy, dark wooden furniture. You will find his living quarters always illuminated by torchlight or many candles.

Third Age Mairon, in my hc, has lost some of these preferences or the will to design his quarters accordingly; his taste or what he believes is his taste now might have also shifted. I'm talking more stone, darker furniture, more angles, less fabric and tapestries and carpets, more bare stone floors. More dark iron work. More Art Deco. Third Age Mairon is not too fond of coddling himself anymore and his ✨ aesthetics ✨ have changed.

quirks/hobbies headcanon: Mairon literally likes to hunt elves and sometimes humans for sport when he's bored. In Tol-in-Gaurhoth he gets bored quite a bit without the same level/quality of permanent responsibilities he had in Angband, so he will take a crossbow or a dagger and his bare hands and teeth and ask Thuringwethil to accompany him on little fun hunting trips together.

likes/dislikes headcanon: Short and simple: While Mairon hates bodies of water (especially the sea) as a fire spirit and a creature who lives with Melkor, he will enjoy boiling-hot baths.

#ask game #asks #mairon #sauron #silm headcanons

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pandalorian36 · 2 years ago

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Eric Coulter x Reader

Reader has been in love with Eric for ages little do they know he feels the same way and everything comes to light after a heated training session.

Gender neutral reader Warnings: Allusions to smut at the end. Mentions knives and guns.

Word count: 988

"Eric. I frown knocking on the door again "Eric?" the lock clicks and Eric appears his bulky form filling the gap "What?" I blink several times willing my brain to catch up with itself, Eric in nothing but loose grey sweats causing my brain to short circet. "Y/N?" I clear my throat "Erm, yea. Sorry. Max asked me to give you these." I hand him several folders "Right see you later, I'm going to go train."

"Y/N." I turn "Yea?"

"I'll head down with you. Just give me a sec." I smile tightly my pulse quickening slightly "Sounds great." He reappears with a t-shirt and dark trousers the two of us walking down to the training room. I start wrapping my hands while walking over to the punch bags running through basic exercises trying to ignore the six foot wall of muscle behind me.

Finishing with the punch bag I move to the targets picking up a handful of knives making the mistake of glancing over at Eric who is using the pull up bar arm muscles rippling. Turning away I pause a moment to clear my head before positioning my feet going to throw my first one yelping when a hand presses against my spine, swivelling around pressing the blade to the persons throat another to their stomach. "Good reflexs." I relax pulling away "Is that your idea of funny?" he chuckles holding up his hands "Sorry, all I was going to say was straighten your spine." I glare "I was about to until you interupted."

He grins picking up his own knifes "How about a little compotition?" I raise an eyebrow feeling confident, he's skilled with a gun but I know I am better with knives "Alright, what are the stakes?" he grins flipping his knife around "If I win I get to kiss you somewhere of my choosing," he pauses while I feel my cheeks heating "If you win you can have a whole weekend off."

"Really?" he nods and I grin "Alright then. Five throws, highest score wins."

I throw my first knife hitting just above the cross at the centre. He throws his hitting the edge of the inner circle. Smirking slightly I throw my next two hitting left and right of cross in a tight group. Eric hits the centre ring of too the left with his second and third. Fourth and fifth both hitting dead centre. I throw my fourth hitting the centre mark dead on and flick my wrist back ready to throw my fifth when Eric brushes up against my back causing me to release the dagger to early hitting the outer circle. "Looks like I win."

I scowl turning to face him "You distracted me." he chuckles leaning down "I win." I take a step back breath hitching "I errr." He grins tilting my chin up with a finger "You alright darlin?" I nod breathing heavily "Yep. Fine. Fine." He leans closer backing me up into a wall one hand resting above my head "You think I don't notice the stares? How your eyes always linger. Don't worry I do it too."

His lips press against mine his hands wrapping under my thighs lifting me up against the wall. I loop them around his waist arms wrapping around his neck as his tounge pushes past my lips. A soft moan escapes my throat making him pull away grinning pupils blown wide "Been wanting to do that for a while." I smile breathing heavily "Feel free to do it again." he chuckles kissing me again one hand cupping the back of my head deepening the kiss.

"Perhaps we should make this a regular training exercise." I grin feeling light headed as I drop my feet back to the floor "I like the sound of that." he grins kissing me again leaving me breathless and weak kneed "Same time tomorrow." he leaves and I stare after him in shock before recovering enough to go after him slamming my fist against his door "Eric!"

He opens the door smirking "Can I help sweetheart?" I scowl pushing him in the chest "You can't just kiss me like that then walk away. That's... That's.." he smirks backing me into his door "That's what?" I clear my throat frowning "Its ummm." he leans down grinning "What do you want to say love?" I scowl crossing my arms "I don't think its fair the power you hold over me. I've been in love with you for the past year then you finally kiss me and you just leave."

I feel my eyes widen shit I shouldn't have said that. Eric takes a step back "What?" I shake my head "Nothing. No it doesn't matter. I'm just going to go." Large hands wrap around my wrists preventing me from leaving lips crashing into my own. I relax into his grip as his hands slip around my waist "Don't go." I nod "Okay." he frowns grip tightening "I'm not good with words. Or feelings." I smile as he leans down again for a much softer kiss fingers brushing against my cheek "Your smart, strong, stunning. Ever since you knocked me to the ground in initiation I've wanted to tell you." I smile softly hands resting on his chest "You don't have to say anything if you don't want..."

"I love you."

I think my heart skips a beat as I move my hands around his neck "So what do we do now?" he grins "Now I've got you, I'm never letting you go." he steps back sitting on the sofa and pulling me into his lap something bright shining in his eyes I've never seen before. "What?" he shrugs grinning "Just looking forward to our next training session." I chuckle leaning so our lips are almost touching "We could have our own private training session right now." smirking his grip tightens "I like the sound of that."

#divergent #divergent movies #x reader #eric coulter #dauntless #dauntless!reader #divergent fanfiction #reader insert #eric coulter x reader #divergent x reader #jai courtney #eric coulter oneshots #eric coulter imagines

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nyarlathotep-thecrawlingchaos · 1 year ago

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Below you will find the character profile for my One Piece OC (one of them, anyway. I have at least five, but I'll be working the most closely with this one for now).

So, here we go. Only been working on this shit for like...three days. Okay, technically over ten years since I used to write her ages ago when I was on fanfiction.net, but I've redone a lot of things.

I'm already in the process of working on a novel-length Mihawk x AFAB!OC fanfic, so here's the overly extensive character sheet for my OC because I always put way too much effort into character development.

The character history practically devolves into a mini fanfic itself around the middle by total accident, but whatever.

The fanfic(s) will toe the line between Live Action and Manga canon. We'll just call it AU and leave it at that.

Karimi Lionne

Associated fanfics: Hearing Problems (coming soon to an Unknowable Horror near you) and Any Way The Wind Blows (eventually, bear with me)

Age: 24

Occupation: Pirate; Mercenary

Abilities:

Kiku Kiku no Mi: A Paramecia type devil fruit that grants the user the ability to hear...well, everything, all the time. Within a certain range she, can hear the thoughts of people around her. The range varies with her focus; standard, it's anyone within a range of about fifty feet in any direction. She can close that circle down to either listen to one person's thoughts, or expand it to search a city or town for a particular person. Activated (which she hasn't yet), it allows the user the ability to plant thoughts in others' heads, and potentially control their thoughts.

She considers the ability more of a curse than a blessing since she has never managed to hone it quite well enough to shut it off entirely, and can often be found sitting at a dock or on a beach with her feet in the salt water, just to get some peace and quiet in her own head.

Blades: Karimi carries a pair of daggers with ornately carved ivory handles, the head of a lioness carved into the top of each hilt, in sheaths at either side of her belt. They belonged to her grandmother, who raised her from age four to age fourteen, and also taught her most of what she knows in combat. She also keeps a handful of throwing knives in a holster belted to her right calf, a couple inches below her knee.

Her fighting style relies primarily on agility, evasion, and accuracy rather than raw strength due to her relatively small stature of 5'2".

Haki: Not a master by any means at all. Learned from Red-Haired Shanks during her brief stint working with his crew, used largely to assist in suppressing her devil fruit abilities and making them more manageable. Not really proficient enough to use it for any other application.

Music: Karimi was taught to play guitar, fiddle, and piano by her grandmother, but she hasn't touched an instrument since her grandmother died, so she doesn't know how much of the ability she has retained. Karimi also learned several sea shanties from her, and often hums or quietly sings them to herself while out to sea.

Appearance:

Faceclaim: Jane Fonda c. 1960s, facial structure, skin and hair edited via Faceapp

Long, dark green hair, in wild curls that she can't do much of anything with except tie back in a bun or stuff under a hat. Sharp emerald green eyes. Fair-skinned with a handful of freckles.

The Resting Bitch Face is strong with this one.

Slender, petite, 5'2" tall.

Tends toward wearing long-sleeved shirts/dresses to cover the scars on her arms. Almost always wears her grandmother's hat, an old and tattered brown leather tricorne with a patch on the front left brim and a few more in the back.

Personality:

Confident, toeing the line of outright arrogance at times. Humor that ranges from dryly sarcastic to quite silly, depending on who she's around. Guarded. Brooding. Cynical. Empathetic. Gentle. Uses sarcasm as a coping mechanism. Not easily offended. Prominent issues with self-harm and PTSD.

Backstory (prior to beginning of fic)

Karimi has next to no knowledge of her origins. She knows her mother died shortly after giving birth to her, that she was born on her father's ship, and that she got her hands on a devil fruit the crew had found and ate it when she was three or four years old, not knowing what it was. Shortly thereafter she was taken to live with her grandmother on a remote island village called Conch Cove, somewhere on the Grand Line.

Her grandmother, Helena Lionne, had been a pirate captain shortly before Gol D. Roger came around and into his earlyyears of piracy, but Karimi didn't know much about her history. Helena was a powerful haki user, and was able to use the power to dampen Karimi's devil fruit abilities, largely for the sake of the girl's own comfort and sanity. Helena trained her to fight in order to defend herself in the event that she ever left the island, as well as survivalist training. She wasn't shy about telling Karimi that the world could be a dangerous place, particularly for a woman on her own, amd wanted to ensure that her granddaughter had everything she needed to safely make her way in the world.

Karimi found out more about her grandmother a week after her fourteenth birthday.

She discovered that her grandmother had been captain of the Siren Pirates. She discovered her grandmother possessed the abilities of the Mizu Mizu no Mi (logia type, water). She discovered that her bounty was in the billions...and still very much active.

The Marine Admiral who showed up to the island, Admiral Jackson "Volcano" Vesper, brought a large crew with him, with no intention of taking Helena alive. His moniker stemmed not only from his explosive temper, but also from his own devil fruit abilities—the predecessor to Fire Fist Ace, he possessed the power of the Mera Mera no Mi (logia type, fire). He also possessed an intense desire for revenge on the woman that had killed his father.

He didn't bother revealing how he managed to track her down—he simply went in guns blazing. The battle between him and Helena, between his crew and what remained of hers, waged for nearly two entire days, leaving several Marines and villagers dead and the town in total ruin. Karimi stayed hidden the entire time as her grandmother had asked her to, but with Helena's haki focused on defending herself and her allies, Karimi could hear everything with her devil fruit abilities.

She could hear the moment when Admiral Vesper's first mate got the drop on her grandmother, pinned her to the ground with the butt of his rifle, which he had coated in a layer of sea stone, instantly sapping her strength and her devil fruit powers.

Karimi could hear Vesper's thoughts, his intentions to humiliate her, kill her, and return to Marineford with her head.

And Karimi emerged from hiding and managed to toss a throwing a knife into the back of his leg.

She was captured almost immediately. Her physical resemblance to her grandmother in the woman's younger years was noted immediately by Vesper, and he knew in that instant that he had won.

And Karimi knew it too, with the man's bowie knife to her throat.

He agreed to let Karimi go in exchange for Helena's life, and Helena gave in without a second thought when she saw the bowie knife start to cut into her granddaughters neck.

He took the remainder of Helena's old crew as prisoners—the only four other villagers on the island left alive, but not before slitting Helena's throat and sawing her head from her neck with his bowie knife, while Karimi was held captive and forced to watch.

Then he and his men left her there on the remote island, in a ruined village with nothing but the corpses of friends and neighbors and the woman who raised her to keep her company.

She doesn't remember much of the following two weeks. She knows she was able to make a spear out of a throwing knife and a shovel handle to catch fish for food in the shallows around the island. That she had a fresh source of water in the form of a pond. She knows she was nearly through building a raft out of the rubble that was left of the town when another marine ship arrived at the island, captained this time by Vice Admiral Garp the Fist. She was understandably beyond wary of Marines, and she fought tooth and nail, kicking and screaming, when they took her back to their ship.

They took her throwing knives and her grandmother's daggers, and she was forced to stay in the brig because she made very clear that she would gladly gut any marine who came near her. She was still treated with kindness and provided full meals given her situation, and as she bided her time and got her strength back she formed a plan of escape.

She was able to use her devil fruit powers effectively in her escape—by listening around and finding the easiest target. This came in the form of a fifteen year old cadet who would check on her and talk to her during his downtime. He thought she was pretty and couldn't believe she had managed to keep herself alive for two and a half weeks after what she had been through, admired her sheer strength of will. It was incredibly easy to sweet-talk him into getting her weapons back to her, playing on his sympathies by telling him that they were all she had left of her grandmother.

She hid them once she had them, and did a little more sweet-talking...until he agreed to steal the keys and get her out of the cell. Once she was out, she wasted no time in knocking him out, stealing his uniform, stuffing her hair under the hat, and discreetly stealing enough rations to last herself a week and slipping away on a dinghy.

She had no idea where she was or how she was going to get anywhere, but she wasn't exactly of sound mind after the trauma she had endured. Her only thoughts at the time were that she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the Marines as possible.

She was picked up by a merchant vessel after a few days, and they took pity on her story and allowed her to remain on board the ship, assisting in cooking and cleaning in exchange for room and board and safe passage to their next stop. They were bound for Loguetown in the East Blue, and that suited her just fine.

Loguetown was a large city right outside the only passage onto the Grand Line, and it gave her plenty of options for work. She worked odd jobs that provided her with room and board, saving up money over the course of the following two years.

She was working in a tavern and staying at the attached inn when the Red-Hair pirates made port in Loguetown, and she knew she had her ticket back onto the seas, with only one goal in mind—to find her father, and tell him what had become of her grandmother.

Her memories of him were too vague for her to give any decent description, but she wasn't telling anyone her reasons anyway. She waited for her shift to end before approaching Shanks himself and asking, confidently, to join his crew.

That got a tremendous laugh out of the crew at large, but only a little bit of a chuckle from Shanks himself.

"And why would a little slip of a thing like yourself want sail around with a bunch of old men?"

"That's not really important." She sat down at the neighboring table at this. "But what I can provide your crew is."

"And what might that be, love?"

"I've trained with daggers and throwing knives since I was four years old. I also possess the abilities of the Kiku Kiku no Mi."

Yasopp, sitting between Shanks and his first mate Benn Beckman with bis feet propped up on the table, snorted at that, grinning. "So what, it improved your hearing?"

Karimi leveled her eyes with his. "Immensely," she daid. She gave a small smile...and began narrating his thoughts out loud. "'The hell is this girl's deal? Does she have any idea who she's even talking to right now? She can't even be much older than my—Wait. What the hell? What the hell is she—'" His feet slipped off the table, his mouth falling open as he registered what was happening. "'Holy shit, is she in my head? Is—'"

"Okay, you made your point, cut it out!" he half-shouted, staring at her in alarm.

No one was laughing anymore—and she knew she had their full attention now.

"That," Shanks said lightly, the amusement gone from his eyes and replaced with caution—but also intrigue, "is a very dangerous ability for someone as young as yourself to possess."

"I've had it since I was four. I've learned to manage it."

That was, of course, only half true—she could deal with it, yes, but she couldn't fully control it.

After a long, silent moment, in which members of his crew exchanged glances and Shanks quietly studied her, he leaned back in his chair, nodding to himself.

"Let's give you a real test," he said, leaning his arm over the back of his chair. "See how well you can put your abilities to use." Karimi lifted her eyebrows, waiting. "I want you to sneak into the Marine base here in Loguetown. Find where they keep the treasure and money they've confiscated from pirates and thieves they've arrested...and walk out with as much as you can carry." He lifted his bottle of rum from the table. "Undetected."

"Have you lost your goddamned mind?" Shanks glanced across the table at Benn when he spoke up.

"That's been gone for years, but go on."

Benn gave a growl of annoyance at his captain. "She's a kid. You're talking about sending a kid into a damned Marine base to steal from them. That's a suicide mission."

"The girl wants a chance to prove herself," he said simply, shrugging a shoulder. He looked back at her. "That's my offer, love. We're setting out no later than noon tomorrow. You bring your haul to the ship, you can come with us."

Karimi nodded, and stood from her chair. "Then I will see you all no later than noon tomorrow."

A few hours later, when the tavern closed for the night and the crew returned to the ship, they were met with the sight of Karimi, wearing a Marine uniform and sitting on a sizable burlap sack right in the middle of the deck. She stood from it and kicked it over, spilling gold bricks, jewels, and piles of Berry notes and coins across the deck.

Sneaking into the base had honestly been a piece of cake—she found a half-drunk Marine a couple years older than her at another tavern, did a little sweet-talking and got him back to her inn room. Suggested some rather kinky activities that would involve him stripping down and being tied to the bed and he jumped on it. Once he was securely tied, she gathered her few belongings, put on his uniform, put a do-not-disturb sign on the door, and slipped out the window.

It had taken longer to find and get into the rooms where they kept any seized contraband, but it had been as simple as keeping her head down and listening. Hiding and ducking down empty halls when she heard anyone drawing too close. The entire ordeal had taken just under three hours.

After a long stretch of silence, it was Benn Beckman that voiced what everyone was thinking.

"Holy shit."

Shanks grinned over at him. "Suicide mission, aye?"

She was officially welcomed aboard the ship at this, as promised, but there was some deal of commotion when she told them her name.

Particularly her surname.

She learned very quickly that both Shanks and his first mate were familiar with her father—and that Benn utterly despised him. To the point that he, however briefly, threatened to throw Karimi off the ship himself against his captain's will if necessary. The brief altercation ended in Benn storming off to the gun deck on his own, leaving Karimi wondering if she had made the right choice of crew.

Shanks was far more personable.

He told her about her father—Lyon D. Rollo.

He described her father as having been like "the annoying little brother he never wanted." Told her about their time spent as deckhands aboard the Oro Jackson. About his devil fruit abilities that had caused absolutely nothing but trouble for years because they were incredibly difficult to master without massive repercussions: the Kaze Kaze no Mi (logia type: wind).

Told her how they met Benn not long after Roger's execution after setting out on their own—Benn and his younger sister, Sedna, who he had looked after on his own since he was around sixteen and she was six, when their parents had been killed by raiding pirates.

Who Karimi's father had apparently fallen inmediately head over heels for. Said he refused to leave town without her, and did exactly as he set out to. Benn had refused to leave her side, and came with them despite his hatred of pirates at the time.

It was a year later that Shanks and her father had gone their separate ways. It had always been the plan, as they were both too stubborn to accept being anything but captains. Once they gathered enough of their own crew members and got their own ships, they parted as friends. Benn stayed with Shanks, and Sedna remained with Lyon.

It wasn't long after that they recieved word that Sedna had been killed during a firefight with the Marines.

"He never mentioned a child," said Shanks, shaking his head and looking at Karimi like he was looking at a ghost as he leaned forward against the railing around the bow. "I imagine he couldn't have been much older than seventeen." He shook his head a little, still in disbelief. "I don't think I need devil fruit abilities to know what you're doing here."

Karimi nodded shortly. "Do you know where—?"

"No, unfortunately."

No one knew where Lyon was—it had been five years since Shanks actually last saw him, and he and his entire crew seemed to have just vanished into thin air around a year ago, despite still holding active bounties.

Karimi didn't tell him anything else, not why she was looking for him—only that she was, and that she had no intention of remaining with the Red Hair crew for the long term. Just long enough to get a bit of money together and purchase her own ship, something small like a sloop that she could handle by herself.

She ended up sailing with the Red Hair Pirates for around two years, give or take few months. Shanks became something of a mentor to her over that period of time, taking time to train her in Busoshoku Haki, the same type of Haki that her grandmother had used to repress Karimi's Devil Fruit abilities, so Karimi could use it herself when she wished to. It wasn't fool-proof, but it at least helped lessen the mental load.

Once on her own, Karimi ultimately began working as a mercenary; taking on jobs with various pirate crews that required stealth or a subtle touch, avoiding Marines as much as possible, and attempting to gather any information she could about her father, but to no avail on the latter front—it really seemed like he and his crew had just vanished into thin air. His bounty was still active, along with those of his first mate and officers, but no one had heard hide nor hair of them in literaly years.

Nothing much changed for her until Karimi took a job from the Buggy Pirates a few years later, at twenty-four years old. Buggy was searching for a map of the Grand Line, and he needed someone to steal it for him, since he and his crew more or less stood out like sore thumbs and couldn't very discreetly sneak into the naval base in Shells Town where it was being kept. She was reluctant to accept—she usually avoided jobs that had anything at all to do with the Marines, but Buggy made an offer she couldn't refuse.

He claimed to have information about her father that he would gladly trade for the map.

She kept her ship anchored next to Buggy's overnight to set to preparing, planning to make way for Shells Town first thing the following morning...but news came down the grapevine that night that the map had been stolen during a break-in by another pirate crew into the Marine base.

In his rage that his plans were foiled after spending months gathering information, Buggy laid the blame on the hired hand—that she had left immediately, she could have beaten the other crew to the base and gotten the map first. He ultimately sunk her sloop, nearly with her on it before she managed to gather her most valuable items and get herself onto Buggy's ship, where he informed her she would be working for him until her debt at failing to get him the map was paid off—now she was going to have to steal it from the pirates that had taken it.

Karimi had little choice but to agree—being a devil fruit user, it would be far too risky for her to steal a dinghy and take her chances with thr open oceans.

They found the crew on a schooner and took them prisoner easily enough, given that there were only three of them. Karimi recognized one of them from a description Shanks had mentioned during her time with the Red Hair Pirates of the boy he had lost his arm to a sea monster saving (a story that she had honestly thought had to be an exaggeration), who claimed to be their captain and insisted he was going to be king of the pirates...while the other two claimed they weren't even a crew.

Whatever the case, Karimi knew they were her ticket out of servitude to the Buggy Pirates, and mutinied against them the second that the odds shifted in favor of Luffy, Zoro, and Nami.

Luffy was more than happy to welcome her aboard their tiny ship, especially on learning that she knew Shanks. She didn't tell them of her devil fruit abilities, still keeping them suppressed with Haki, a mistake she would regret in the next island they made port at due largely to their schooner springing a leak. They lucked out on landing in a town with a shipyard, but none of them really had a Berry to spare between them to actually purchase a new ship—the vast majority of the money that Karimi had saved herself had sunk to the bottom of the ocean with her own ship amd most of her worldly possessions.

On meeting and quickly befriending Usopp at the shipyard and learning the owner of the place was his "best friend," they had something of a plan, if a bit of a ridiculous one—Luffy was convinced that if he just talked to Kaya and explained their situation, she would just give him a ship and they could be off and on their way.

Both Karimi and Zoro recognized the butler Klahador, but couldn't quite put their finger on why. This was Karimi's mistake—she didn't think enough of it to release her haki and just listen in on his thoughts. It wasn't until everything later fell apart in Kaya's mansion that she did release her haki and quickly learn he was Captain Kuro, a cutthroat captain who had been believed dead for years, that he had been poisoning Kaya for years, and that he planned to murder Kaya and take over the estate himself that night.

She also learned while her abilities were active that Nami had every intention of stealing the Grand Line map and taking it to the pirate crew she was serving against her will. By this point Karimi had developed a soft spot for all three members of the Strawhat Crew (even if two of them still claimed not to be a crew), but she decided not to confront Nami about it—yet.

Kaya was more than happy to gift them a ship after they helped defeat Kuro and freed her from his suppression. She offered Karimi one as well, but she declined, stating that she would prefer to purchase one herself once she had the means to do so—but that she would happily return to Syrup Village and purchase one from Kaya's family's shipyard. In truth, she was honestly enjoying her time with the ragtag little crew, and wanted to stick around with them just a bit longer to see how far Luffy's ambitions could take them.

Usopp joined them at this point as the crew's sharpshooter. They were intercepted not far from Syrup Village by a Marine ship, and Karimi recognized Vice Admiral Garp almost immediately—as did Luffy, to her and the others' astonishment on finding our that Garp was his grandfather. Luffy was able to use his devil fruit abilities to deflect a cannonball thrown at their ship by Garp, and damage Garp's ship enough for them to slip away into a dense fog and lose their pursuers.

They happened by pure luck upon the restaurant ship Baratie, where our story begins in earnest, following Luffy's idiocy at trying to pass off a very expensive bill with an I.O.U. and getting stuck washing dishes in the kitchen to pay it off.

Relationships

Helena Lionne (OC): Grandmother, deceased. A powerful pirate captain in her heyday, Helena disappeared from the seas without a word one day and no one really knew where she had gone. Helena raised Karimi from age four to fourteen, when she was tragically murdered by a revenge-crazed marine admiral whose father Helena had killed years earlier when she was still pirating. Karimi looked up to her immensely and loved her to death, and thinking about her still hurts.

Lyon D. Rollo (OC): A active pirate captain on the grand line, though no one has heard hide nor hair of him or his crew (the Hurricane Pirates) in years. She's been trying to find him for the past ten years, to tell him what happened to her grandmother/his mother, since Karimi was the only witness left alive and no one else would be able to tell him exactly what happened. It doesn't help that she last saw him at four years old, and remembers next to nothing about him. He's actually the one who gave her the hat—he took it when he left home at thirteen to become a pirate himself, and left it with her when he took her to her grandmother. (A/N, if and when I ever get to working on Any Way The Wind Blows, it will be about his history.)

Red-Haired Shanks: Working with the Red-Hair pirates for two years led to her becoming fairly close with Shanks. He had known her father over two decades and became quite protective of her as a direct result, with her looking at him almost as a father figure as well as a mentor.

Benn Beckman: The first mate of Red-Haired Shanks, Karimi learned from Shanks that her mother had been Benn's younger sister, Sedna, and that Benn absolutely despised her father and blamed him for his younger sibling's untimely death. As a result, Benn spent a while both wary and untrusting of Karimi and treating her with indifference that bordered on hostility; but he eventually let it go, accepting that she was capable (and, in his own words, "a hell of a lot smarter than Lyon D. Dipshit"),

The Marines: Karimi positively despises Marines, with the sole exception of Garp since has come to recognize that she wouldn't be alive if not for him, though good luck getting her to admit it.

Luffy: For her short spell traveling with Luffy and his "crew," she bonded with Luffy pretty quickly, coming to see him like a goofy little brother. He absolutely reveled in hearing stories about her time on the ocean, especially any that involved her time on Shanks's crew. She's quick to scold him for his naivety and questionable decisions, but it's mostly out of care; his ambition is definitely infectious, and she wants to see him achieve everything he's set out to do.

Nami: As the only other girl on the Going Merry, Karimi did her best to get close to Nami, especially on learning about her tragic situation with the Arlong Pirates via her devil fruit abilities, but Nami makes herself intentionally distant.

Zoro: She butted heads a fair bit with Zoro, largely due to both of them being exceedingly sarcastic, but she doesn't hate him by any means. Quite the contrary, she admires his abilities as a fighter and passes time sparring with him on the deck. They're about evenly matched in fighting ability, as his style relies largely on strength and her own on evasion and agility.

Usopp: Usopp is always quick to pipe in with his own epic stories of his supposed adventures when Karimi mentions any of her own past ventures. Not unlike Luffy, she looks at him almost like a younger sibling, though honestly he annoys her a little more than Luffy.

#one piece oc #opla oc #one piece #one piece netflix #one piece live action #one piece fan fiction #opla fanfiction #origianl character #one piece original character

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