#How IT stood up And shouted when the rains fell flat upon Its face! and how its laughter roared out when I was in a little lamborghini

[sbnkalny]

I will be in the kitchen amiright And I was in a little lamborghini, sleepin, on bookshelves in the Hollywood hills with the eyes.

[yoonzeeno]

of burned towers and rainbow dreams. ━━ yjh x ksy

part two of the svt x pokemon!au  ━━ johto.

❀ summary: soonyoung and jeonghan ventured to the burned tower in ecruteak city, only to find something waiting for their arrival. ❀ pairing: jeonghan x hoshi (brotp) ❀ word count: 8k (I OVERDID MYSELF I KNOW I’M SORRY) ❀ genre(s): adventure, friendship, action, slice of life ❀ warning(s): pokémon battle violence at the beginning and the end of the fic. mentions of fire accidents.

━━ a/n: i had so much fun writing this part, it only took me around three or four days, i guess? i wrote the last battle scene without much planning, letting the whole scene play in my head as i wrote it down. it was, undoubtedly, the most fun i’ve had ever since i started writing (probably because it’s two of my biases in one fic but who knows). ALSO PLS FORGIVE ME FOR OVERDOING MYSELF i literally could not find ways to shorten the story without skipping details. anyways, i hope you guys will like this part too!

soonyoung remembered feeling the soft wind blew across his face as he sat down under a tree, shading himself under the harsh sunlight shining down upon him.

his pokémon — scyther, mareep, and wynaut — were playing around, running around here and there, enjoying the sunlight. soonyoung looked to the sky ahead. he was at his home — in his backyard, a tree stood tall. it was a mahogany tree — for he was from mahogany town. 

a rainbow suddenly appeared on the sky — was it raining earlier? soonyoung didn’t remember. however, something bright flying across the sky caught his eye.

it had the shape of a bird — a gigantic bird, to be exact. wherever it flew, a trail of rainbow sparks trailed behind it. soonyoung couldn’t describe the bird except for the fact that it was gold. it headed towards a tower covered in orange flames, and soonyoung immediately knew what tower it was. it was weird though — the original incident had happened more than a hundred years ago, so why was soonyoung seeing it with his own two eyes?

it was the infamous burned tower, formerly called the brass tower, located right at the neighboring city, ecruteak city. even though the tower was in flames, the bird just flew towards it without hesitation. smoke rose to the air, covering the silhouette of the bird. soonyoung longed for the smoke to quickly clear up, but when it did, the bird disappeared along with it.

no! soonyoung wanted to shout, but nothing came out. he tried standing up, but he fell back down to the ground, and the world turned black.

when he opened his eyes in surprise, he realized it was just a dream.

four years later.

“gengar, shadow ball!” soonyoung’s eyebrows furrowed at morty’s command. he had to think of something fast, or scizor was going to run out of hp soon.

“scizor, dodge and use flash cannon!” the pincer pokémon cried in response, before moving his wings to his will, flying to dodge the incoming purple orb of shadow, making it hit the wall instead. scizor growled, gathering light in between his pincers (causing the originally dark room to go darker), and threw the ball of light towards the shadow pokémon. it hit gengar before morty could shout an order, the shadow pokémon falling face forward to the ground.

“nice!” soonyoung could hear his friend and mentor, jeonghan, cheer from the audience’s seat. jeonghan’s eevee, who was out of her ball, was yelping happily, running around jeonghan as she cheered scizor on.

he was currently in the middle of a pokémon battle — a pokémon gym battle, to be exact. this was his fourth gym battle, and winning this battle means he’s going to be halfway through his gym challenge. but morty, ecruteak city’s gym leader, wasn’t making himself an easy opponent, and soonyoung wished he had a ghost or a dark-type pokémon, because his team wasn’t exactly good at countering ghost-types. he managed to defeat morty’s earlier pokémon — gastly and haunter — thanks to ampharos and scizor, but ampharos was knocked out by haunter because she exhausted herself during her battle with gastly, and while scizor, soonyoung’s ace, was holding out well against gengar thanks to his steel typing (for gengar was part poison-type, and steel-types are immune against poison-type moves, but soonyoung only realized at the end of the battle that none of morty’s pokémon had any poison-type moves), scizor was nearing his limit, and soonyoung felt like he’s being pushed to the edge. he still has the chance to switch out to another pokémon. sure, scizor executed the flash cannon perfectly, but what’s he going to do next?

soonyoung’s eyes caught gengar lifting its body upwards, and realized he had to think fast, or the fog badge will not be his. he gritted his teeth. scizor was looking at him, waiting for a command. soonyoung’s hand flew to his belt, where six poké balls were perfectly aligned. he touched a particular one — one that was different than the other five, for, instead of your normal red and white poké ball, it was mostly black, with a red and gold stripe on the upper half of it. there was no other way besides this, he decided.

“scizor, u-turn!” scizor cried, digging the ground with his clawed feet, before pushing himself from the ground, his wings helping him take off from the ground. he flew towards gengar, who was already floating on the air now, before diving head first towards gengar. 

“gengar, night shade!”

before scizor could make contact with gengar, the latter fired a crimson beam with purplish outlines from its eyes, the beam making its way to scizor. thanks to scizor’s speed, scizor could reach gengar first before the night shade could reach him. but when scizor finally made contact with gengar, the close proximity caused night shade to also hit scizor. both pokémon let out cries of pain — for even though both attacks were not very effective against the other, scizor’s hp was alarmingly low, whilst gengar’s hp was still half full. 

thanks to the pressure of u-turn, gengar was knocked back down to the ground whilst scizor used the momentum to make a quick u-turn, returning back to his poké ball. soonyoung murmured his thanks before pushing the button of his luxury ball twice, releasing the pokémon confined inside it.

“wobbuffet, go!” from the poké ball, a tall, cyan pokémon, with four stubby legs emerged, solidifying, his flat arm bent towards his forehead, right above his scrunching eyes. he let out a cry before turning to look for soonyoung. as he managed to locate his owner, he wobbled towards him, arms on soonyoung’s waist, before turning to hide himself behind soonyoung. soonyoung chuckled. wobbuffet hated fights and battles, and soonyoung almost never wanted to send wobbuffet out for battles. but wobbuffet was, beyond expectations, a bulky fighter. among all his pokémon, wobbuffet was probably the only one with close to zero knockouts. then again, soonyoung could count with one hand the amount of times wobbuffet has been in battles.

“it’s okay, buddy,” soonyoung said, patting wobbuffet’s head soothingly. from across the battlefield, soonyoung could hear morty laugh. it’s okay, soonyoung thought, for not everyone knows wobbuffet’s potentials.

“i’ll get you your favorite ice cream later, okay,” said soonyoung. “and i promise, it’ll be a quick battle.”

he knew it’ll be quick, because it was wobbuffet battling. but he hated sending wobbuffet out, knowing how the patient pokémon disliked battling. that’s why he only uses wobbuffet when it urgently calls for it, and this was one of the times.

wobbuffet only nodded timidly, and soonyoung guided it back to his place on the field. gengar was snickering — a mock snicker, soonyoung guessed. it was a risky move — sending wobbuffet out, especially because against gengar's ghost typing, wobbuffet’s psychic typing was vulnerable.

“well,” morty said, “i guess it’s time for us to make our attack now.” gengar lifted himself to the air, thanks to its ability, levitate. “gengar, shadow ball!”

“wobbuffet, mirror coat!” the comical shock in morty’s eyes almost made soonyoung laugh out loud. no one, especially a gym leader — a ghost-type gym leader, in particular — should ever underestimate a wobbuffet.

the shadow pokémon was already forming a purple orb of dark energy in between its hands, and fired the orb at wobbuffet. soonyoung smirked as wobbuffet glowed beautifully — the glow resembling that of a reflecting mirror — and as the shadow ball came in contact with wobbuffet, instead of dealing damage to wobbuffet, wobbuffet’s mirror coat caught it, and reflected the orb towards gengar with two times the attack power. soonyoung’s eyes glanced over towards morty, who was so dumbfounded, he had absentmindedly shouted at gengar to attack with another shadow ball.

but before gengar could form another orb, the orb it had created earlier came whirling back towards it, hitting it square on its stomach, creating a small explosion as smoke engulfed the shadow pokémon. the damage dealt was doubled — and gengar’s hp meter lowered drastically until there was no hp left. as the smoke cleared, soonyoung could see gengar’s body on the field, finally knocked out.

“morty’s gengar is unable to battle. victory goes to challenger, kwon soonyoung!”

from the audience, soonyoung could hear jeonghan and eevee cheer — they were the only audience, after all. soonyoung didn’t realize he was panting hard until he fell down on his butt, legs giving out, but the adrenaline was still pumping in his veins. wobbuffet had wobbled over towards him, crying out in worry, placing his flat arm on soonyoung’s head, as if he’s trying to see if soonyoung’s head was still working or not. soonyoung laughed and hugged wobbuffet. wobbuffet was soft and squishy — he’s been soonyoung’s sleeping buddy since soonyoung was still a kid and wobbuffet was still a wynaut, after all.

“we did it, wobbuffet! we won because of you!” wobbuffet perked up at soonyoung’s words, and blushed. oh, the love soonyoung held for his pokémon. he’s gonna have to thank ampharos and scizor later on too.

“good job, kid.” soonyoung let go of wobbuffet to stand up and shake morty’s hands. wobbuffet was still holding onto his left hand, his stance wary. “i gotta admit, i was impatient to win,” said morty with a laugh. “should’ve gone for a hypnosis instead of a shadow ball. you were lucky, but you’re good, too. you have potentials.” soonyoung beamed at the gym leader’s words, bowing to express his thanks.

“this one here,” morty pointed to wobbuffet, “you did a good job choosing it as your final pokémon. i didn’t think it would be able to win against my gengar.” he nodded. “you did a good job raising it, kid.” 

“wobbuffet’s been with me since we were kids,” said soonyoung, rubbing his sweat with his sleeve. “i know i can win battles with it easily, but it’s not a couragely pokémon.” he let out a soft laugh. “in fact, it hates battles. so i only use it when i desperately need to win.” 

“i could see that,” said morty, moving a hand to pat wobbuffet’s head. the patient pokémon stiffened, not used to strangers touching his head. his grip on soonyoung’s hand tightened, and soonyoung squeezed it slightly. “it’s nice to know that i still could impose such a challenge on you that you had to use your hidden card to battle me.”

“yo, soonyoung, you did well!” soonyoung turned around to see jeonghan walking towards them, eevee pacing right next to him. eevee approached wobbuffet and cried happily — as if she’s praising wobbuffet for winning. wobbuffet visibly blushed. besides from soonyoung’s other pokémon, jeonghan’s eevee was the only pokémon whose companionship wobbuffet didn’t mind.

jeonghan stopped his steps to stand next to soonyoung, his head nodding towards morty in acknowledgement. “it’s nice to see you again, morty.”

“likewise, jeonghan,” said morty, smiling towards jeonghan. unlike hoshi, jeonghan was almost done with his challenge — only the blackthorn city gym challenge remaining. so it meant that jeonghan had challenged morty before, and had won against him.

“well,” morty clapped his hands, and as he separated them, a small purple pin appeared on his palms. “since you have defeated me, i have to give you your newest gym badge.” he passed the badge to soonyoung, who accepted it in awe. “congratulations on earning the fog badge!” soonyoung placed the fog badge in his badge case, and bowed at morty, thanking him earnestly.

“so, where are you headed after this? the cianwood city gym?” soonyoung shook his head. 

“there’s somewhere else i have to go first here in ecruteak.” morty nodded in understanding.

“well, don’t let me hold the two of you back then. have a safe trip!” he said, and both soonyoung and jeonghan bid their goodbyes before heading out of the gym, wobbuffet’s hand still tightly holding soonyoung’s hand, and eevee strutting happily in between jeonghan and wobbuffet.

the sun was slowly sinking down the horizon, the sky surrounding them turning gold. they were currently seated in a cafe, wobbuffet munching happily on his green tea ice cream, for ecruteak city was famous for their green tea. scizor and ampharos were both outside of their balls too — soonyoung was celebrating their victory, and instead of eating ice cream, soonyoung was eating a waffle instead. jeonghan was watching them amusedly, slowly nibbling on his pistachio ice cream that he bought for himself. 

scizor had a chocolate ice cream on one of his pincer, and a green tea ice cream on another. he looked scared to crush both ice creams and get his pincers all sticky, so he gobbled them in two consecutive bites — causing him to have a brain freeze, his pincers holding his head to calm himself down.

ampharos, on the other hand, had a vanilla ice cream on one of her hands. she was licking on it happily, offering eevee a little bit of her ice cream. jeonghan had bought eevee a vanilla ice cream earlier, but she already finished it. since eevee eats two times the portion of a normal eevee, she happily accepted ampharos’s offer.��

after years of being friends with soonyoung and observing, jeonghan could see how, between soonyoung’s team’s dynamics, ampharos was like the caring sister, whilst scizor was like the protective brother. jeonghan could also see how the two of them cared so much for wobbuffet, for the three of them had been together since they were still young, and since soonyoung was still very young too.

jeonghan had to admit, whilst soonyoung thought he was still way ahead of being a good pokémon trainer, to jeonghan he was already one. soonyoung didn’t see his pokémon as weapons of battle — he saw them as his friends, hence the reason wobbuffet was still in soonyoung’s team even though he hates battles. aside from that, if the three of them — scizor, ampharos, and wobbuffet — were to battle alongside each other, they would have executed perfect teamwork. while jeonghan was the better trainer skillswise, he was going to have to admit defeat to soonyoung’s teamwork with his pokémon. jeonghan could imagine how his crobat and houndoom would just attack each other instead of attacking the opponents were they to battle together.

“so,” jeonghan spoke up as he lowered his ice cream to give the rest to eevee, who hopped back towards jeonghan happily and munched on the ice cream, “where are you planning to go here at ecruteak?”

“the burned tower,” said soonyoung, still munching on his waffle happily. jeonghan’s eyes bulged out.

“you do know that’s not for entry, right?”

“that’s why we’re going to enter at night,” said soonyoung as he put the last of his waffle inside his mouth. “i need to go there — i feel like i saw a sign in my dream.” jeonghan raised an eyebrow. he’s never heard of this story before.

“what dream?” 

“basically,” soonyoung wiped the crumbs off of his hands, “i think i saw ho-oh in my dream, and i think it’s telling me to come to the burned tower.” jeonghan’s eyebrows furrowed.

“the burned tower? but ho-oh resides at the bell tower, no?” soonyoung shrugged. next to them, scizor was whining — he may look like a scary pokémon, but once his pincers get dirty he’s back to a baby. 

“well, true, but the tower i saw in my dreams was covered in flames. there’s no other tower besides the burned tower, right?” he said as he cleaned the table up, taking a wet tissue to wipe scizor’s pincers. ampharos stared at the tissue, before taking one to wipe wobbuffet’s green tea covered mouth. wobbuffet snuggled ampharos, which jeonghan figured was wobbuffet’s way of saying thank you. the sight of them made jeonghan’s heart flutter. they really do look like family.

“besides,” soonyoung continued, “there’s a possibility that you might be able to train there, you know? eevee’s bound to evolve soon, too.” jeonghan’s gaze turned to eevee, who was still nibbling on jeonghan’s pistachio ice cream. 

jeonghan caught eevee after finishing his olivine gym challenge — which means eevee hadn’t been with them for long, unlike jeonghan’s other pokémon, who had been with jeonghan for his entire journey (save for crobat, who jeonghan had saved as a zubat when he was still a young lad). jeonghan had pondered, of course, what to evolve eevee to — but eevee had shown no interest in evolving through the evolutionary stones, and if he wanted to evolve eevee to glaceon or leafeon he’s going to have to travel far away. that leaves only espeon, umbreon, and sylveon. and jeonghan didn’t want eevee to feel like she has no choice. if eevee doesn’t want to evolve, then so be it.

“fine,” jeonghan decided. “but let’s wait until it gets darker. we can’t have people find out we’re sneaking in the burned tower.”

soonyoung snickered. “that’s more like it.” 

“but if anything happens, i’m not covering your four—badges ass.” soonyoung gaped at jeonghan, but jeonghan ignored him, wiping his table clean.

“that was mean.”

“you’re the one who wanted to go to the burned tower, knowing fully well the consequences!”

scizor only looked at the two trainers, letting out a small groan as he shook his head.

humans. such noisy creatures.

even though it was dark outside, the burned tower stood out magnificently against the bright moonlight.

it was dark, probably around ten or eleven in the evening. soonyoung and jeonghan, alongside soonyoung’s ampharos and jeonghan’s eevee, were walking around the complex of the burned tower.

the burned tower was shaped like a pagoda, previously built out of golden brass with gleaming golden panels, in contrast to bell tower’s silvery panels. there were staircases that people would have to climb to before going inside. had it not burned, jeonghan was sure the three-story pagoda would’ve been the main attraction of the town. sadly, the only thing left from the previously golden tower was just the structure and ashes. 

the four of them climbed the staircase silently, with jeonghan motioning to eevee to be quiet every so and then. on the entryway, instead of a golden door, a sign that said “dangerous: do not enter” was placed. soonyoung ignored the sign and motioned for the four of them to enter quietly. whilst jeonghan, ampharos, and eevee had managed to enter quietly, ironically, soonyoung had kicked his own foot onto a boulder, causing him to yelp in pain. jeonghan turned to glare at soonyoung, meanwhile ampharos hurried over to soonyoung in worry. after soonyoung assured ampharos it was fine, the four of them continued their way inside. soonyoung couldn’t believe that, four years later after his dream, he was finally inside the burned tower. 

his happiness was cut short when a flock of zubat flew over towards them.

“ampharos, flash!” cried soonyoung, and a bright light shined from ampharos, lighting up the room that otherwise would’ve been dark, for even though the moonlight shone through the hollowed roof, it wasn’t enough light for them to recognize their surroundings. thanks to ampharos, they could now see that the floor beneath them was made out of wood — why was it not burned down, soonyoung didn’t know. 

jeonghan’s hand went to his belt and he grabbed a poké ball, pressing the button twice before releasing the pokémon inside it.

“crobat, go!”

from the poké ball, a purple, bat—like pokémon emerged. he had a small, round body with two pair of wings — the upper pair slightly larger than the lower pair. the upper wings had two claw—like fingers near the middle. as he solidified, crobat’s face could finally be seen clearly — long pointed ears, yellow eyes with red pupils, and a small mouth that usually had his teeth bared. on the bottom of crobat’s body was a pair of stubby feet.

crobat flew in the air as soon as he was let out. he was capable of flying silently on the air — something they desperately needed right now. years of being with jeonghan had helped him recognize what jeonghan wanted without jeonghan having to give out commands. he flew over to the flock of zubat, and looked to jeonghan and soonyoung that he was communicating with them. the flock of zubat finally flew back to where they came from, clearly knowing that even though crobat was outnumbered, he would overpower them in a battle.

jeonghan held out his arm for crobat to perch on, and crobat flew back to jeonghan, descending on his arm. jeonghan used his other hand to rub crobat’s head as a way of saying thanks, and crobat purred in delight.

the five of them headed deeper into the tower. thanks to ampharos’s flash, they managed to avoid the huge pit that stood in the middle of the first floor. unlike the outside view, there were actually four floors — the upper three stories that could be seen from the outside, and an additional basement floor. jeonghan figured the pit was previously part of the first floor — the wood that burnt down in the fire making a huge hole, thus the pit came into existence.

“there,” whispered soonyoung, pointing towards the northeast corner. “there’s a staircase over there.”

due to the huge pit, and a boulder blocking their way to the right, they had no other way to go except to circle over the left side of the floor in one straight line, walking slowly, for one wrong step and the four of them could dive down to the basement (crobat would probably just fly away). 

eevee was whimpering in fear, the atmosphere scaring her to bits. jeonghan bit his lip, pondering over before moving crobat to perch on his shoulder instead, and carried eevee on his arms. crobat didn’t seem to mind — both being on jeonghan’s shoulder and the dark, for the dark was crobat’s natural habitat, and being on jeonghan’s shoulder means he could nuzzle jeonghan’s cheeks whenever he wanted to.

they were halfway there when something jumped out of a boulder, causing ampharos, who was leading the way, to halt suddenly, her flash gone in a flash (no pun intended). soonyoung knocked into ampharos and fell to his knees, while jeonghan stumbled on his steps, his grip on eevee tightening in case the evolution pokémon fell. crobat fluttered its wings in surprise, and screeched at the intruder. 

“why are you the one agitated, crobat? i should be the one agitated, you know.” the figure spoke in such a fancy manner, jeonghan raised his eyebrows, suspicious. 

soonyoung was cursing as he stood up, grumbling at how his knees hurt, for it had scraped the pebbles. when he finally collected himself, he could see the figure in front of him clearly.

it was a man, probably around his late 20s, and he was wearing a purple suit with diamonds etched on it over a white buttoned shirt. on his neck was a red butterfly ribbon, and he was also wearing a white cape around him. he had light brown hair, a few strands in front of his eyes. he looked too comical to be taken seriously — like, who would even wear that to visit the burned tower?

“who are you?” asked soonyoung. ampharos’s orb that was attached on its tail beamed red — ampharos was on full guard. eevee was growling at him.

“i should be the one asking you that. the burned tower is not for entry, you know?” 

“it isn’t, but you’re also here, so that makes all of us.” jeonghan pointed out. the man only sighed.

“my name is eusine, and im on the trail of the pokémon, suicune!” he said. “also, im here because my good friend morty, who, by the way, is ecruteak city’s gym leader,” he emphasized on the word gym leader, “gave me permission to come here as long as i come out alive. and what about you kids?” jeonghan rolled his eyes at the last word.

“well,” soonyoung spoke up, “we kids are only normal pokémon trainer who defeated your good friend morty slash ecruteak city’s gym leader.” jeonghan snickered at soonyoung’s words. 

eusine tsked in annoyance. “such disrespectful kids. do you want to battle it out? i’m stronger than morty.”

“no thanks, we’re not planning to get stuck here or cause a commotion.” jeonghan said, but eusine didn’t budge from his spot.

“mr. eusine,” soonyoung said, gritting his teeth, “it’s night and we would want to get this over quickly and go back to our lodge to sleep, so will you please let us go on our way?”

“and let you guys meet suicune before i do? nope, absolutely no way.” jeonghan didn’t want to cause a ruckus, but this peculiar man was making it hard for them to do it. crobat had screeched in warning twice now — crobat would never screech unless it feels agitated, and right now, jeonghan was also feeling agitated.

“look, before we wake up all the other pokémon living here—” but before jeonghan could finish his words, a loud roar came from the basement. the three of them whipped their heads towards the pit, and eusine jumped up and down in delight, causing the wooden floor beneath them to start creaking. eevee yelped in surprise, whilst ampharos fell on her knees due to the violent shaking.

“it’s suicune, it’s suicune! it must know i’m here! i have to go down there, now!” eusine made no sign of noticing that the floor was shaking, and was so delighted that his immediate instinct was to run for the staircase, causing the wooden creaking floor to shake heavily once more. and before soonyoung could open his mouth to warn him, the floor underneath them crumbled, and all of them fell through a newly opened hole.

jeonghan rolled to his side quickly in the air to cover eevee from the bits of wood that were raining down on them, which caused him to land on his side. he accidentally landed on a rock the size of a fist, and he let out a half-moan half-groan as he felt pain jolting from his rib. eevee yelped in surprise, squeezing herself out of jeonghan’s arms, poking jeonghan with her paw as she let out whimpers of worry. crobat managed to detach himself from jeonghan’s shoulder earlier, now flying in circles around their heads, before diving to jeonghan’s side, nudging his head on jeonghan’s head to make sure jeonghan was okay. there wasn’t much distance between the floors, thankfully, but there’s still enough to cause jeonghan incredible pain when he tried to sit up.

soonyoung, meanwhile, wasn’t so lucky. when he fell down, he somehow landed feet first, and it felt as if ampharos had fired a thunderbolt from the sole of his right foot. he managed to twist his left foot before it hit the ground, but the pain from his right foot was enough for him to squeeze out tears of pain. he tried to suppress the pain, crying out for ampharos instead.

“ampharos! ampharos, where are you?” soonyoung panickedly cried. his hand fumbled for his belt — almost crying in relief when he could feel all the other five still intact.

“crobat, go look for ampharos!” jeonghan cried, staggering to stand up. crobat shrieked in response before flying over, using his supersonic to detect ampharos’s location. when jeonghan did manage to stand up, he tried moving his feet. there were slight pain on his thighs, but otherwise he could walk almost perfectly well, his left leg limping slightly. he rushed over to soonyoung, whose face was covered in all the debris. jeonghan doubted he looked any better, to be honest.

“ampharos!” soonyoung was still crying out for ampharos, pressing both his palms on the ground, trying to lift himself up, but the pain on his legs stopped him from doing so. he wanted to cry. he can’t lose ampharos — he wouldn’t forgive himself if ampharos was nowhere to be found.

as if sensing their best friend was missing, scizor and wobbuffet came out of soonyoung’s poké ball unsummoned. wobbuffet wobbled towards soonyoung in worry, whilst scizor, after making sure wobbuffet went to soonyoung, immediately flew over to where crobat went. soonyoung didn’t realize he was sobbing until wobbuffet came to check for his injuries, his eyes scrunching in worry at the sight of his owner. soonyoung didn’t know what he was sobbing for — the pain or the thought of ampharos being gone.

when jeonghan finally reached soonyoung’s side, he was holding a first aid kit on his hand. he took a look at soonyoung’s legs — his right feet was covered in purple bruises, shaping a big lump on his ankle. jeonghan fumbled for his poké ball, calling out for the only pokémon with an ice-type move that he owned. he pressed the button twice, and a pokémon that resembled a duck emerged from the ball. it was round around the edges, with the main body being somewhat pinkish. it has a relatively flat bill and large round eyes. its legs were simple ovoid growths along its sides, and its tail widened towards the middle. its bill, legs, tail, and underside were all blue colored.

“porygon2, ice beam around soonyoung’s right ankle.” porygon2 squeaked in response, before a stream of ice shot from its bill, covering the bruise on soonyoung’s leg. soonyoung yelped in surprise at the sudden coldness, wincing a little bit, but signalled jeonghan that the pain was slowly numbing.

a few metres from them, crobat’s cry could be heard. the two of them turned towards the direction of the cry, and they could see crobat flying in the air right above scizor and ampharos — the former had his pincers around ampharos, helping ampharos walk. ampharos was limping on her right leg, but otherwise, she looked okay. 

at the sight of both his pokémon, soonyoung sobbed in relief. the pain in his foot subsided a little bit, thanks to porygon2’s ice beam. jeonghan was busy wrapping soonyoung’s foot in bandage when crobat flew over and perched on jeonghan’s head, whilst ampharos and soonyoung had a tearful reunion, with soonyoung saying, “bless, bless.” over and over as ampharos bent over soonyoung’s body, hugging him.

after making sure soonyoung’s leg was wrapped tightly, jeonghan moved to spray potion over ampharos’s limping leg. ampharos winced in pain, but she seemed visibly better a few seconds later. jeonghan sighed and dropped down on the ground, wiping out beads of sweat off of his forehead. eevee climbed over to his lap and jeonghan pulled her over in a hug, trying to slow his beating heart down.

“speaking of which,” soonyoung suddenly spoke up, “where’s that eusine guy?” jeonghan looked up, frowning. he was too focused on getting everyone back together that he forgot the weird guy existed.

he signaled for crobat to look for eusine, and crobat looked annoyed, as if he didn’t want to go after him, which jeonghan could actually relate to. crobat had already flapped his wings, ready  to fly in search for eusine, when they heard another roar — identical to the first one they had heard — from behind jeonghan. soonyoung was looking over jeonghan’s shoulder, his jaw dropped. jeonghan whipped his head around as well, and gaped at the sight in front of him. 

in front of them, three creatures were towering over them, and jeonghan immediately recognized them as the three legendary beasts — the beasts that had originally died in the fire, but had been resurrected back to life.

on the left side was a massive, leonine, quadrupedal pokémon covered in brown fur and a long, light gray cloud of smoke running along its entire back. it had gray plates on either side of the cloud and a plate beneath the cream belly fur on its chest. entei, jeonghan remembered its name. the volcano pokémon, representing the fire that had engulfed the tower they were currently in more than a hundred years ago.

on the right side was a quadrupedal, yellow, tiger—like pokémon with black stripes and a white underside. it had a thin, light blue tail with sharp angles and spark—shaped formation at the end. most of its face consisted of thick, white fur and shorter yellow fur around its red eyes, with a muzzle that’s shaped like a light blue "x". it also had a black faceplate with two bumps that covered its forehead, nose, and ears. raikou, the thunder pokémon, representing the thunderstorm that had happened on the night of the fire — the one that had caused the fire on the first place.

and on the middle was a slim, quadrupedal blue mammalian pokémon with white, diamond-shaped markings. its face and underside were white as well. it had a thick, purple mane that resembled the aurora borealis and two white, streamer-like tails that wave forward. it also had a large, hexagonal, cerulean blue crest on its forehead with two prongs on either side of the base. now that jeonghan could look at the pokémon at near proximity, he could understand why eusine the weird guy was so obsessed over the pokémon. it was the epitome of beautiful. suicune, jeonghan named it. the aurora pokémon, representing the downpour that had washed the fire away on the night of the fire.

if soonyoung hadn’t shouted at him to run, jeonghan would’ve probably gotten burnt by entei’s fire blast.

“hyung, run!” jeonghan jumped over to the side, landing on the same side as he did when he fell from the first floor. he groaned in pain, wincing as he tried to get back on his feet. eevee ran towards him, yelping in worry.

as entei’s fire blast hit the ground in front of soonyoung, soonyoung yelped in surprise, and wobbuffet — dear, lovable wobbuffet who would never fight battles willingly — stood in front of soonyoung, arms opened wide as if trying to shield soonyoung from any oncoming attacks. crobat was now flying on the air, waiting for a command, and whilst jeonghan knew eevee was scared, but she was in her battle stance, growling at anything that tried to attack jeonghan. jeonghan reached for his poké ball and recalled porygon2 back, before calling out another pokémon.

this time, a quadrupedal, canine pokémon that was mainly black in color came out of the poké ball. he had a long orange snout and an orange underbelly, along with small, red eyes and a black nose. around his neck was a white band with a small skull—shaped pendant on his throat. there were two white bands on each of its ankles, as well as three rib—like ridges on its back. he had a long, skinny tail with a triangular tip and three clawed toes on each paw. on top of his head was a pair of long, curved gray horns. as soon as he got out of his ball, he growled — he was half a meter shorter than the legendary beasts, but he showed no sign of fear at all.

“houndoom, i need you to get soonyoung on your back!” houndoom barked in response and pranced over to soonyoung, lowering his back for soonyoung to climb on it. soonyoung held onto it’s neck, and, with ampharos’s and scizor’s help, managed to climb onto houndoom’s back safely. scizor was using his wings to slightly levitate into the air, whilst ampharos was on alert mode — the orbs on her body all lit up.

the beasts, however, did not wait to give them any peace. not long after entei’s fire blast, raikou let out a roar, a gray cloud of storm forming right above their heads.

“crobat, get away from the cloud!” jeonghan cried just in time as a lightning struck from the cloud, and had it not been for crobat’s speed, he would definitely have fainted there. the lightning struck the ground, breaking a boulder into pieces in the process.

“ampharos, use thunderbolt on suicune!” soonyoung commanded from houndoom’s back. ampharos cried out, bolts of lightning covering her before they rushed towards suicune. suicune, however, only jumped to avoid the thunderbolt. soonyoung choked back a sob. sure, with all their pokémon combined, they have twelve, but what’s the point of it when their opponents were legendary pokémon? even worse, three of them?

on the other side, jeonghan was having no luck trying to fight against raikou — jeonghan was commanding eevee to use swift against raikou, but eevee alone wouldn’t do any damage against raikou. crobat was also hovering on top of raikou, trying to poison the thunder pokémon with his sludge bomb attacks, but to no avail — for no matter how fast crobat was, his opponent was, again, a legendary pokémon.

during soonyoung’s moment of pondering and figuring out a strategy, he had let his guard down for too long. entei had noticed and, at that moment, decided to strike them with another fire blast. houndoom opened his mouth, releasing a red-orange stream of fire — which soonyoung recognized as flamethrower — to fight against entei’s fire blast, but entei’s fire blast overpowered it as if it was nothing, and soonyoung could only watch helplessly as the fire came closer to them, bracing for the fire to engulf him like it engulfed the tower hundreds of years ago. jeonghan had shouted at houndoom to dodge the fire blast, but soonyoung knew houndoom couldn’t dodge fast enough.

just then, a blur of red flashed right in front of his eyes. before soonyoung could shout anything, scizor had stopped in front of soonyoung and houndoom, letting himself take the hit instead of soonyoung. soonyoung screamed. scizor was four times weak to fire, for arceus’s sake! without much thinking, soonyoung hopped down off of houndoom, gritting his teeth as the pain on his ankle shot up. he endured the pain, crawling his way towards scizor, fear clouding his mind more than the pain. 

soonyoung heard houndoom bark in warning, trying to warn soonyoung for the upcoming attack. during the chaos, raikou had switched places with suicune. right now, jeonghan was dealing with the aurora pokémon, who proved to be distracting. jeonghan had cried for eevee to use shadow ball against it, but eevee’s shadow balls only ended up hitting the ground. thanks to crobat’s speed, he managed to land a sludge bomb to suicune — but the legendary pokémon recovered almost as quickly, as if crobat’s poison was nothing. jeonghan wanted to scream. it was unfair — how were they going to win?

from raikou’s storm cloud, another lightning bolt emerged, and houndoom wasn’t so lucky. it got zapped and fell to his side, his head thumped to the ground. soonyoung cried. scizor’s head was on his lap and houndoom was knocked out behind him, and raikou’s gaze was fixated on him. he felt a jolt of fear — he was going to die, he was going to die, and it was all because of his dream.

raikou opened his mouth, a yellow orb shaping in between its jaws — soonyoung recognized it as thunderbolt. soonyoung couldn’t run — he couldn’t even stand up. he tried to return scizor into his poké ball, but he couldn’t find his belt. it had fallen somewhere along the rubble of rock and pebbles, he realized. soonyoung gulped, bracing himself for the attack, when a bright blue light came in front of him. 

wobbuffet had absorbed the thunderbolt attack with his mirror coat, and returned the thunderbolt towards the creator with double the power, but raikou only jumped to the side effortlessly. wobbuffet was panting hard, desperately low in health after absorbing that thunderbolt attack. to soonyoung’s right, ampharos was single handedly facing entei, but one flamethrower from the volcano pokémon immediately knocked ampharos down. soonyoung screamed. scizor, houndoom, ampharos — he couldn’t let wobbuffet get knocked out too!

“crobat, go and help soonyoung!” crobat shrieked and flew towards soonyoung — jeonghan hadn’t realized that they were literally half a kilometre apart now. however, before crobat could reach soonyoung, raikou roared. a lightning bolt from his storm cloud blasted, and this time, crobat wasn’t fast enough to dodge. crobat dropped down to the ground, and jeonghan cried for crobat’s name.

we’re not gonna make it out of here alive, jeonghan thought, choking back a sob. wobbuffet was still shielding soonyoung, who still wasn’t able to stand up, no matter how hard he was trying, the pain in his ankle was hindering him. jeonghan’s hand flew to his belt — and only then did he realize it was gone, probably got detached when jeonghan had flown to avoid entei’s first fire blast. 

noticing that jeonghan’s guard was down, suicune took it as a good chance to attack — an aurora beam right towards jeonghan. jeonghan fell on his butt on the ground in shock, and instinctively squeezed his eyes shut. during the good couple of seconds, he tried to apologize to his parents and to everyone he had done wrong during his life. instead of the freezing cold ice, however, eevee’s cry snapped his eyes open.

however, eevee was nowhere to be seen — instead, a glowing blue light in the shape of eevee stood in front of him. jeonghan gaped, and at that moment, all the legendary beasts’ attention turned towards the blue light in front of him.

eevee’s fluffy body shrinked, and her fluffy feet lost its fluff, turning slender instead. it’s bushy tail slimmed down too, and when the light vanished, jeonghan couldn’t help but stare in amazement. instead of eevee’s brown fur, she was black with yellow rings around her ears and tail, and each on her feet. instead of brown eyes, her eyes were red — and jeonghan could see how she resembled the shining moonlight, for she had evolved into umbreon, the moonlight pokémon.

umbreon growled at suicune, opening her mouth to form a light purple orb surrounded in black and purple circles, before firing the beam of black and purple circles from the orb inside her mouth. suicune had elegantly dodged it, sadly, but, to jeonghan’s surprise, the aurora pokémon did not attack back, watching the two of them intently instead.

jeonghan stole a glance towards soonyoung — he was still hugging scizor’s head on his lap, wobbuffet in front of him, body shaking in fear but not backing down. raikou and entei, however, weren’t attacking soonyoung either. the three beasts looked at each other — as if they were communicating to each other — and then entei jumped towards the hollowed roof, before disappearing into the night. raikou followed suit, until it was only suicune left with them.

umbreon was still growling at suicune, and jeonghan took it as an opportunity to stand back up. when he did, however, suicune only ignored them and went to approach soonyoung, leaping gracefully once towards him. jeonghan, alarmed, ran towards soonyoung in fear.

suicune, however, unlike earlier, was gentle. as he walked closer towards soonyoung, soonyoung shivered — for some reason, wind was blowing towards him. wobbuffet was still shaking, but suicune did not attack wobbuffet. it gently nudged it’s snout on soonyoung’s palm, and soonyoung felt something on his palm — something soft, like a feather?

you. soonyoung jolted in surprise and turned towards suicune. was it speaking in telepathy with him? 

our master has been keeping an eye on you since you were young, suicune said. at the corner of soonyoung’s eyes, jeonghan stopped in his steps. so jeonghan could hear suicune too, soonyoung deduced.

he had tried to summon you here once, in your dreams. when you come, our master had told us to test you. and you and your friend have proven yourself worthy — for eevee would not have evolved into umbreon if not, and your pokémon would not have risked their lives to protect you if not. soonyoung gaped, and his grip on the item suicune had pushed into his hand tightened.

when you are ready, come face my master. he will be waiting at the other tower. suicune nodded once, before jumping towards the sky, disappearing into the night alongside its brothers, its tail leaving a trail of northern lights behind.

when suicune disappeared, soonyoung opened his hand. in it was a rainbow-colored feather — soonyoung recognized the color, for it was the color of the bird he had seen in his dream.

so it’s true. the bird pokémon he saw in his dream four years ago was the legendary rainbow pokémon, ho-oh.

due to the ruckus they caused, several people were forcibly awaken, and they had reported to morty. the two of them were rescued by morty and his gengar, and immediately rushed to ecruteak city’s pokémon center — along with eusine, who had woken up as soon as morty arrived.

eusine was groaning and whining, mad at himself for losing consciousness when suicune was so close to him. morty had berated him for jumping up and down on the vulnerable wooden floor and apologized to jeonghan and soonyoung, once they were settled down in their room at the pokémon center. morty had let them go lightly with a warning to never go back to the burned tower unsupervised again, though, he had a hard time believing that the legendary beasts had appeared inside the tower. jeonghan and soonyoung had decided it would be better if they told no one about what suicune had told them.

all their pokémon were, thankfully, alright. as soon as they reached the pokémon center, they were brought to nurse joy, who had recovered them from their injuries. in no time, crobat was perched on jeonghan’s head again, and umbreon was in his arms, purring in delight as jeonghan ran his hands through her body. jeonghan was on the right bed, whilst snuggled inside the covers of the left bed was soonyoung, whose right leg was covered in gyps. wobbuffet was snuggled to soonyoung’s left side, whilst scizor had his head on soonyoung’s lap, and ampharos’s head was on soonyoung’s right shoulder. the sight of them made jeonghan’s heart warm. so it wasn’t only jeonghan who was touched by their friendship — even ho-oh had approved of their friendship, that it decided soonyoung was worthy enough to face it.

“so,” jeonghan spoke up, “are you going to face ho-oh?”

“with crutches? no thanks. if ho-oh really decided on me, the least i could do is go there wearing a suit,” said soonyoung, scrunching his nose. jeonghan laughed at the younger boy.

“and not now, not when i still have a long way to go,” murmured soonyoung. “but when i’m ready, like suicune said, i’ll go there and face him. and hopefully catch him. wouldn’t it be cool if i have ho-oh in my team?” jeonghan made a face at soonyoung before throwing a pillow at him, telling him to keep on dreaming. however, scizor had caught the pillow in his pincers, causing the pillow to burst into a cloud of fluff in his sharp metal pincers.

“hey!” jeonghan cried, but scizor only buzzed in return. crobat defended his owner, screeching back at scizor. the room was covered in fluff, but soonyoung only laughed, and smiled at the sight.

the future ahead of him was scary, and he felt the burden of being ho-oh’s chosen one. but soonyoung knew he wasn’t alone. he has his pokémon by his side. he has his best friend jeonghan by his side. and when the time to face ho-oh comes, soonyoung knew he wasn’t going to be alone. soonyoung would have them by his side, battling alongside him.

soonyoung smiled and stroked on the rainbow feather. he thought about how lucky he was to have them by his side.

for there was magic that had brought them together, and that magic is called hope.

[ —proofread. ]

[thexgrayxlady]

Notes: This is a purely self-indulgent and very lighthearted AU and if I’m the only one who is enjoying themselves with it, that’s all that really matters. TBCH I’m not sure where I’m going with it and I know this isn’t very good or perfectly in character, but I’m having a good time and it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, so I’m okay with it if I’m just writing a messy little crash into hello.

The Universe Won’t Wait for You

Outside the ruined temple, dark clouds gathered and howling winds carried the metallic tang of summer storms. Heady incense drifted from inside, where the flicker of braziers cast statues of forgotten gods in stark chiaroscuro. Yet, under the wind and crackle of flames, the air hung still and silent, charged with the promise of lightning.

The jungle crept up around the ancient stones. Gnarled vines threatened to drag the crumbling archway back into its depths. Fragments of cracked and chipping mosaics peered through the leaves, their tiles scattered across the floor with the trees’ detritus.

The roof had long since caved in and the once gilt friezes lining the main hall were now washed almost smooth. The faceless figures posed in the uncanny silence, leading the way to the sanctuary.

At the altar, a group of very annoyed people stood over the unconscious leader of a dragon cult and his scattered cards, having narrowly averted the end of the world for the third time in as many months. The timing was inconvenient for everybody involved and it was universally agreed upon that it would have been better if these assholes had waited until next weekend to try and destroy the world.

“So if we beat the megalomaniac of the week, why isn’t the portal going away?” Tea asked, vaguely gesturing to the swirling silvery distortion above the altar.

“I keep telling you nerds it’s not a portal.” Although against his will and his better judgement, the geek squad had grown on Seto Kaiba like E. coli on room temperature meat, he would still sooner saw off his own hands with a rusty spoon than admit it.

“We could always leave it alone,” Bakura said, disdainfully looking over one of the cultist’s discarded scrolls before rerolling it. “His Latin was terrible. It probably won’t do anything.”

“It won’t do anything because it’s a not a portal.” Their group would have it found it infinitely more worrying if he didn’t insist that the latest near apocalypse had a logical explanation. As of late, he’d settled on saying that anything he couldn’t immediately explain wasn’t magic, just science they didn’t understand yet. Everyone might have appreciated this a bit more if not for how often they had to deal with the fallout of his attempts to understand the science. “Watch.”

He picked up one of the scattered cards (rare, but only good for niche dragon decks and he would notadmit that he would have found this clown’s cards useful) and tossed it towards the floating mass. It passed through without incident and collided with the back wall.

“Wheeler could make something more convincing.” He rolled his eyes. This entire escapade had been a nuisance. He still wasn’t sure how he’d been talked into it. The others certainly hadn’t just mentioned that they needed a ride.

“Yeah, these guys tried to take our dragons cards and dragged us out here to show us some crappy holograms,” Joey replied.

“You would believe a bunch of delusional lunatics.”

Yugi paused checking on the cult leader and decided to head this off before it became serious.

“Guys, stop fighting!” he said, his voice quiet and gentle, yet brokering very little argument. When he realized that Kaiba was gearing up for an argument, he added, “You’re wasting time and the sooner we figure this thing out, the sooner we can leave.”

“Whatever,” he said, turning dramatically, letting his coat flare behind him. “I’m going to figure out what’s going on because some of us have jobs to get back to.”

“You’re self-employed!” the blond shot after him.

While he examined a pile of rubble on the far wall for a projector or an off switch, the others looked over the altar and scrolls. He was just about to shift some stones out of the way when lightning split the sky.

The portal flared and spun wildly. Roaring thunder followed close behind and a glowing thing shot from the portal before it collapsed upon itself as if it had never existed.

“Kaiba look out!” Yugi shouted. “That thing’s headed straight for…”

“It’s a hologram,” he shouted back, gesturing dismissively at the thing barreling towards him without actually looking at it. “It’s not like it can hurt…”

The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, his ears ringing, and struggling for a full breath.

When he regained enough sense to figure out what was going on around him, he realized that his arms were wrapped around something warm and solid. The thing thrummed under his hands, like working on an ungrounded circuit. He came around to a curtain of white and a pair of horribly familiar blue eyes.

The woman shot back, her fingers splayed across his chest, her face contorting in stunned confusion. She started to speak, her voice raspy and quiet, stumbling over words in a language he didn’t understand. Yet even without knowing the words, he got the sentiment.

“What. The. Fuck.”

This couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be real. He must have cracked his head when he hit the ground. She had to be a hallucination or a hologram or…he didn’t know, he couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out what specific kind of nonsense was going on.

Somewhere off in the distance, the nerds said something, but it was like listening under water. And as much as he wanted to shout at them to shut up so he could focus, the words stuck in his throat.

He knew her. From that trip to Egypt. Her name was…

No. No.

This wasn’t happening. The world didn’t work this way. People did not just fall out of holes in the sky. He’d been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting that maybe the supernatural bullshit that followed him around possibly had some merit, but thiswas a step too far.

None of this made any sense. Kis…She was impossible. You couldn’t just fling someone through space and time with badly mangled Latin. It took energy. It took machinery. Complex math, things that went beep, big red buttons that gave the nerds heart attacks when he pushed them.

(But these idiots were trying to summon a dragon, weren’t they?)

This violated so many different laws of physics. There must be another explanation. He just had to keep calm and think of it. His heart hammered against his chest. Every time he almost had a grasp on this, he caught her eyes, and any theory beyond rote denial slipped away.

She couldn’t be real. He’d barely thought of her since that trip. Whatever, whoever, she was, it was the past. It didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. He had to focus on figuring out how the hell some loser cultists managed time travel with some incense and dead lizards, no if they managed time travel some incense and dead lizards, when, despite his disregard for the laws of men and gods, even he was still mostly beholden to thermodynamics.

They probably hadn’t. There had to be something in the incense.

Still, the logical part of his brain told him that even his best holograms didn’t feel this real and there was no logical way they knew what she looked like. Her heartbeat fluttered under his hands. She smelled like prison grime and ozone and petrichor.

So a hallucination then. But everyone else kept talking. He still couldn’t really hear them, but maybe they could see her too. Or that was just another facet of his concussed delusion. But if this was a hallucination, then why couldn’t he understand her? He’d never hallucinated in a language he didn’t understand before.

Not a hologram. Not a hallucination. Where did that leave him? Flat on his back on a cold stone floor with a dead woman straddling his waist and the growing certainty that he would never live this down.

Again, she leaned in, her head tilted to the side. Time slowed as she brought a hand to his face and his heart beat too steady to be truly calm as she studied him. She was so small. He could easily throw her off and get away, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even look away as the world shrank down to just the two of them.

She didn’t look quite the same as in the memory. She didn’t seem half so fragile. Her long, pale hair was tangled and her face prematurely lined. Her dress was more a collection of mismatched patches than an actual garment. Bruises and scars bloomed along her arms and collarbone amid patches of thick, almost scaly looking skin.

He wondered if the memory, vision, whatever it was, was accurate. How much of what he knew about her was true? How much had been made up by someone who’d never met her to fit her role in the game? Did it even matter? He was his own person, why should he care about her just because of a supposed connection to the Blue Eyes White Dragon?

Yet despite everything going on, she seemed alert and curious, determined to figure out what exactly just happened, whereas he had to remind himself to keep breathing.

Just before her rough, calloused fingers brushed his jaw, a jolt of static leapt between them. She reeled back, her pupils snapping into narrow slits. Thin, cracking lips curled back over sharp teeth in an inhuman hiss. Her shoulders flexed and he half expected wings to unfurl from her back.

Then she must have caught sight of the others because she shrank back, trembling. A horrible charge built under his hands. He willed himself move just enough to let go.

She scrambled away, breathing in sharp, hissing gasps. Upon reaching the far wall, she shot up a crumbling pillar and crouched as far back on the bottom ledge of a frieze as she could manage and stared down in horror as the first few drops of rain fell through the broken ceiling.

He stared back, the concussed or drugged or shocked daze lifting just enough to drag himself to a sitting position.

She was impossible. But her eyes were electric bright and she’d felt like a damn live wire in his hands. He hadn’t figured out the physics behind this yet, but he understood one thing.

Kisara was very real.

[galvus]

prompt: aberrant • words: 2,093 • era: shadowbringers patch content • [ masterpost ] straying from the right or normal way. “You aren't very talkative.” Irony written into her features with a heavy hand, Bianca stared into Xeven's face mere inches away from her own as she mended the wound in his shoulder — gunfire, Garlean, heavy enough to tear open the tough leather of his robes on either side of his bicep. The golden ember of his uncovered eye glinted curiously in Bozja's cloud-blotted sunlight. Her lips thinned into a line. Rather than replying in an instant, she bowed her head forward to get a better look at the freshly healed wound. The blood on his fur was still wet, but the blow he'd taken and the pierced muscle were good as new. “You can't be serious,” she murmured. “Serious,” Xeven said, along with a quiet offering of, “and curious. Your friend—” “— is endlessly charming.” “— never shuts up.”

Bianca's nostrils flared in a quiet cough of a laugh. Unlatching her canteen from her belt, she dampened the hem of her skirt with a little of the water and used the white fabric to wipe away the blood around his wound. “One of us has to,” she said simply, growing quiet again as she cleansed the skin, as she handed Xeven the canteen to drink from, as the adrenaline in her blood faded and she felt the world slow all around her. “Jadeite had as much to say as I do, so... it has to be Halvar who keeps spirits high.” Xeven gave a shake of his heavy head. “You were a diplomat.” He flicked a clawed finger against the brim of her hat. “You must have something to say.” She paused, her hand resting on the broad curve of his shoulder. “I hope that I can keep healing all of you,” Bianca said after a long lapse of surprisingly comfortable silence. “I would rather do this for years than ever have to bury any of you.” The hrothgar stared at her. His golden eye narrowed, but then, softened. She looked away, unable to maintain such revealing eye contact. “How is that for talking?” —  Bozja existed in shades of brown. It was oft-trampled dirt turned to mud by the weighty, unforgiving rains. It was wind-weathered buildings tanned by dust and debris. It was low-hanging clouds made of the smoke of war strewn against faded copper skies, so different from the blue and white Gridanian backdrop she knew better than any other. It was red blood drying on green leather that turned into a color that was barely prettier than rust. But that was during the day. At night, Bozja was black velvet and crystalline stars and dancing orange fires. At night, the sound of stories and song colored the air in every hue imaginable, not just browns and grays and drying reds. And Isolde's voice rose above them all, as clear as a bell and suited for a stage rather than a battlefield. The songs were unfamiliar to Bianca, but she understood the heart beneath the lyrics and the frantic twang of Isolde's bowstrings. She felt the joining of hope and loss, like interlocking fingers. The Bozjan bard collapsed onto the ground beside Bianca, her long blonde hair twisted into twin braids that danced with every toss of her head when her legs couldn't. “Do you sing?” Isolde's thin brows rose as the corners of her mouth twisted into a cheeky smile. “I've got a wager with Stanik that you can.” Bianca curled her tired hands around her cup. She hated answering questions about herself. Nothing she said ever felt genuine. Nothing she said ever felt true. She was blood and bones and magic... and little else. “Do you really have a wager?” Isolde's shoulders bowed forward as she pulled  her bow onto her lap and began loosening the strings. She pursed her lips, then relaxed them, her expression taking a turn towards the thoughtful. Then, with what was left of the breath in her lungs, she heaved a heavy sigh. “Nah, there's no wager, but I've been wondering...” One of the strings popped loose, and her finger curled inside of the gentle coil at the end. Every movement she made was both elegant and energetic. She belonged somewhere else, like so many members of the Bozjan resistance. “Does the Warrior of Light know how to carry a tune?” Bianca blinked at her for a moment before ducking her head, peering into the half-full cup cradled between her palms. “I'm... not sure.” The words felt genuine. And disappointing.  — The heat of buffeted flames still ached. They did not burn, but the searing heat of a barely diverted fireball burned her nostrils. It soaked the blouse she wore beneath her armored coat with sweat. It forced her to curl in on herself and closer to the paladin who had launched himself towards her the moment Sartauvoir pivoted his attention in her direction. His resolve manifested itself in a full-bellied shout as he rooted himself into the muddy ground and forced the magicked ball of flame in the opposite direction with every bit of strength in his massive body. A pure, holy light pierced the rain of fire that followed. “Are you hurt?” Stanik asked, his hurried words raining down upon her like a balm. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” Only on two shaky hands could she count the number of times someone had asked that of her. Two hands, ten fingers... twenty-eight years. “I... I-I'm okay.” Bianca gathered herself up and turned, drawing the staff she'd held flush to her chest down to her side with a flare of her own light. She pulled her shoulders back and stared across the scorched field into the lined face of Sartauvoir quo Soranus, shadowed as it was by the wide brim of his hat. “I'm sorry that you—” Stanik huffed through his broad nose before setting off in the direction of the mage with a rousing, “No apologies!” Her lips parted to respond, but he was already gone, his sword and shield in-hand and his attention turned fully towards the enemy. Drawing in a deep breath, her hand curled into a white-knuckled grip around the length of her staff. “No apologies,” she echoed, in a voice that held such confidence that she barely recognized it as her own.  — Burns were easier to heal than frostbite, but the screams of the burning were more harrowing than the sharp gasps that accompanied a snap of cold. They echoed into the ceiling, shrill as glass shattering and heart-breaking. The soldiers were trained to fight through their suffering, but there was only so much you could do to separate yourself from the pain when your armor was melting. Looming above what remained of the Bozjan resistance, the twisted form of Trinity Avowed spun elegantly as it blasted another torrent of flames down onto the battlefield. Heat was nigh impossible to weather in such a magnitude, but weather it they did. Sweat poured down Bianca's face from her hairline, whorls of ash-blonde hair sticking to her cheeks as she whipped around to find another body to heal, another person to save. Shortly after, the room was flooded with a dense fog as the amalgamation of three spread an icy wind in every direction. A young miqo'te woman to Bianca's right swayed on her feet before collapsing, her limbs rigid and her lance keeping her somewhat aloft. Even gravity could not drag the determined woman all the way down to the floor. She gripped the shaft of her polearm as she struggled to stand, her head hanging low and her shoulders stiff with visible discomfort. White magics swirled around the woman, lifting her from the ground with a rush of comforting warmth. Without missing a beat, she rejoined the fight, even as the amalgamation lifted Xeven's staff in one of its many arms. Bianca panted, the labored breath tearing at her throat as much as the chill. You aren't very talkative. At the helm of the battle, Halvar slammed the flat of his hand into the join of Trinity Avowed's leg, forcing a crack in its armor that glowed a fearful shade of molten gold. He reared his head back to bark orders meant for the ranged fighters on his flank to prepare for another volley of flame. And then, without missing a moment, his massive frame twisted sharply downward before twisting into a deadly spin and a flurry of kicks that might have downed some other foe. And Bianca... Bianca was quiet, even as her mind raced to keep up with those around her, even as weariness threatened distraction, even as what remained of her power began to wane. Bianca was quiet, even as her head filled itself with thoughts and memories and pain that was sharp and fresh and bloody. Twin auri dancers spun in time with each other, their chakrams thrown at precise points on Trinity Avowed's back. Repeated blows to the poorly joined arms left two of them hanging onto the creature's torso on precious few wires before even those were cut. And the bow fell to the ground. I've been wondering... Does the Warrior of Light know how to carry a tune? Bianca bit back a sob. “Not now,” she murmured to herself, the words lost to the ever-building cacophony of combat that rose from every side of her. A surge of power curled at her fingertips, growing with every blow that landed against the creature, the twisted being born of men and women who had become something greater with time. Friends. “Not now. Not now. Not now.” Loss sought to be nothing more than another hand dragging her down, but she refused to be shackled, not when the destruction of this creature meant release for Xeven, for Isolde, for Stanik. The heels of her feet left the ground first, followed by the armored toes of her boots. As she rose into the air, her body whirled around to face the enemy before them. She brought her staff to bear, holding it aloft as a crown of light exploded outwards in every direction. Trinity Avowed hefted its shield to protect what was left of its battered torso. The few arms that remained intact rose at its back, threatening those who stood behind. Including Halvar, and Jadeite, and Kasumi and Minato. Including Bajsaljen and Marsak and countless other resistance fighters. Including Bianca. But before the creature's blow could land, the air crackled with a power unlike her own, unlike any she'd ever experienced until crossing paths with Fordola. The tiled floors cracked and fell away as massive pylons of stone rose in a line broad enough to nearly cut the room in half. Jadeite stood at the very center, his hulking form standing straight for once as he thrust his greataxe into the air. Trinity Avowed's arms crashed against the stone, unable to break anything but themselves against the barrier. The scream of twisting metal ended with another rising to take its place —  this one inhumanly guttural and belonging to the viera who shielded them all. Jadeite's eyes glowed an unnatural red on a field of ink, leaving a swath of that same scarlet as he leapt forward onto the first of the pylons. The stone crumbled beneath his crushing weight, rubble falling away like rain as he heaved himself forward in a second jump. He crashed into Trinity Avowed, the momentum of his body dragging the broken creature to the ground. For a moment, everything was quiet, but then, as victory settled around them, the Bozjan resistance and those who stood with them realized that the next rain of fire would not come. The next glacial wind would never shatter another sword or blacken another limb. There was more fighting left to come, but for a moment... Relief sounded like tears, tears and determined footsteps. Bianca lingered in the room, standing among broken tiles and stone mountains and the contorted body of what had been. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself. “No apologies,” she whispered to no one. The sentiment hung off of her lips, as unwilling to let go as the rest of her. Turning towards the hallway that led in the direction of what she hoped would be their final fight together, Bianca drew in a deep breath, her pointed chin tilting upwards and her hands curling around her staff. There were no apologies, but there were goodbyes. The time to say them would be later, once all of this was over.

[jenonctcity]

No Nut November - Jaemin

Na Jaemin – Smut, Crack, Fluff

Warnings: Explicit content, a lot of mentions of penis’s, dirty talk, brief spanking, oral (male receiving).

Word Count: 3k

Summary: 00’s line take part in No Nut November.

The Rules of No Nut November:

You cannot have sex, masturbate, or nut in any way, shape, or form.

Watching pornography and having boners are allowed, but you can’t nut.

You are only allowed one wet dream. If you have more than one, then consider yourself out.

You do not have 3 strikes; you only have one shot at it. If you miss it, you’re out.

 If you have passed the month with a total of 0 nuts, you are a victor and you shall qualify for Destroy Dick December (Not Recommended).

Look man, just don’t nut in 30 days. 

Series

 Day 1:

Jaemin had made it very clear to you a week before the month changed to November, that he had every intention of doing no nut November. The week building up to it you had been pinned to whatever surface Jaemin had deemed fit and had been fucked hard. It was the best week of your sexual activity that you’d ever experienced, so you were kind of happy he was going to take part in the strange internet trend. You also knew once the month was over that he would go into a sex crazed state and give you a performance good enough to rival his last show.

However, it wasn’t you that you were worried about not being able to last the entire month. You were certain that Jaemin could not go a whole month without trying to get into your pants. You knew your boyfriend well enough to know that he had a very high sex drive, leading him to asking you for sex nearly every time he saw you. It didn’t help that he was the master of flirting. It made it easy for him to charm your underwear off your body. He had a knack for sending you dirty texts that were filthy enough for your face to heat up in want and slight embarrassment. He once sent you a dick pic that your friend was absolutely mortified to have seen by accident when you opened the text, not having expected him to send pictures of his meat in the middle of the day.

As you stood in your local book store, enjoying the peace and quiet it bestowed upon you, you browsed the fiction section, hoping to find a book about a hopeless romance that ended in heartbreak or a forever love, your phone buzzed in your pocket. It caused you to jump a little but luckily, you’d remembered to put your phone on silent before entering the book shop. You pulled it from your pocket and smiled softly when you saw the contact name said ‘Nana’.

“I miss you :(” his text read, your smile widening at his adorable use of the sad face emoji. You wondered if his text had a hidden meaning or not but decided it probably didn’t because it had only been about half day since he last got his dick wet. You took your time to reply, typing with one thumb as you glanced between your phone and the bookshelf in front of you.

“You saw me about 4 hours ago, I was naked in your bed. Remember?” You replied with a soft giggle, not even surprised when his reply came less than 20 seconds later.

“I remember well! ;) But do you not miss me?” You could almost hear the pout he was more than likely sporting through the words written on your screen. You smirked, trying to suppress a giggle as you replied.

“No.” You quickly followed up with another text. “Just kidding, love you boo.”

“Ouch. My heart bleeds.”

“How are you holding up? Not touched your precious pleasure rod yet have you?” You couldn’t help but ask, curiosity getting the best of you.

“First of all, ew, never call Jaemin Junior a pleasure rod ever again. Secondly, no I haven’t touched it yet! Have some faith in me!”

“Ew since when have you referred to it as Jaemin Junior?”

“Since now, actually I hadn’t even thought about anything sexual until you brought it up you perv!” You sniggered, rolling your eyes and leaving him on read as you went back to scouring the shelf for the book you desired.

 Day 2:

“Hey babe…” Jaemin patted your thigh, trying to gain your attention as you sat beside him in a taxi. You were on the way to a movie theatre and decided a taxi was the best way to avoid the downpour of rain hitting the earth forcefully.

“Yeah?” You tore your line of sight away from staring out of the window to look at him.

“Have you got any nudes on your phone?” He leaned in close, his lips beside your ear as he whispered lowly to make sure the driver didn’t hear him.

“Na Jaemin!” You whisper-shouted at him, not believing the audacity he had to ask you that in the back of a taxi.

“Please baby just give me your phone and I’ll find them myself.” He whined, holding his hand out to your expectantly.

“No!” You slapped his hand away, watching the way his lips turned into an endearing pout.

“Please…I can’t remember what your body looks like…” You shoot him a disapproving glare, shaking your head slowly at him.

“No!”

“Fine!” He turned away, folding his arms over his chest and pretending to throw a tantrum. He didn’t ask again but later on you did send him a cheeky booty pic, much to his excitement.

 Day 5:

The hot rivets of water hit your skin and ran down the contorts of your body, leaving a warm sensation flooding through your system. The water had no competition against Jaemin’s soft lips peppering open mouthed kisses across the back of your neck. The plush pillows sending cool shivers down your spin, a complete contrast to how hot your body felt.

“I want you so bad baby girl.” He murmured, his words almost getting lost amongst the noise of the water hitting all the surfaces of the shower. You hummed in acknowledgment, his hands wrapping around your from behind, fingers teasing you on their ascent to your breasts. “Let me make you feel good.” His big hands cupped your soft boobs, thumbs and forefingers each pinching your hardened nipples. A bolt of pleasure shot through you, it rippling down your body from your chest to your neglected clit. You became putty in his hands, him pulling your flat against his chest and gyrating his hips into yours enough for you to feel the prominent erection he’d formed.

A sudden reminder popped into your head. A reminder that Jaemin was supposed to be participating in no nut November. You rolled your eyes, pulling away from his grasp – although somewhat reluctantly, and turning to face him.

“I knew you’d try to fuck me before the end of the month.” You smirked at him, moving your hands up to cup his cheeks and pecking the gobsmacked look off of his lips with your own. He struggled to form words, his mouth opening and closing as he stared down at your smug face. “You’re weak Na Jaemin.” You whispered, leaning in and taking his lips between your own in a lingering, steaming kiss, the water running over your heads as you got in the line of the water streaming from the shower head. His arms looped around your torso, pulling you against him and holding your naked bodies together.

“I’m not weak.” He whispered into the kiss, his tongue poking out and trailing over the lining of your lips before working its way into your mouth. He flicked his tongue against your own, rolling his hips into yours and moving his hands down to squeeze your ass. He moved his lips down your face, to your jaw and nipping at your wet skin.

“You’re still trying to-” Your words were cut off by a moan slipping from your parted lips, his perfect mouth sucking right on the spot he knew would make your knees shake.

“Let me treat you.” He spun you around, forcing you up against the wall of the shower, bent slightly and presenting your ass out to him. You bit your bottom lip, spreading your legs apart enough to give him access to your dripping heat. He trailed his fingertips down your spine, the slight tickle causing shudders to shoot across your nerves. He ran the palm of his hand over the curve of your ass cheeks, removing it only to bring it down on your skin with a slap. You gasped in surprise, relaxing as he spanked you once more before jamming a finger inside your slick hole. “So wet for me baby girl, do you like it when I spank you?” He used his free hand to bring it down on your ass once more before leaning that hand on the shower wall and putting all his weight on it, his body hovering over yours.

“Yeah…oh god.” You moaned, rutting your hips back into his hand. He slowly withdrew his finger, circling your sodden hole with the tip of his finger before ramming it back inside of you, pumping it slowly to loosen you up. He added another finger, his lips attaching themselves onto your shoulder. He smirked when you whined against the cold shower wall, the warm water cascading down onto your body, but it was the warmth you felt from Jaemin that was making you overwhelmed.

“You want me to fuck you with my fingers harder?” He bit at the skin of your shoulder, maintaining the slow pace with his fingers. “Answer me.” He growled, stopping his fingers altogether at your silence.

“Yeah! Fuck me hard!” You whimpered at the loss of stimulation, wiggling your hips as an incentive for him to continue.

“As you please princess.” He smirked, thrusting his digits back into you hard and fast. The hand he was using to hold himself up on the wall moving to cup your breast in his hand. His fingers working over your sensitive nipple causing your eyes to roll into the back of your head.

“Jaemin!” You squeaked, your head lolling back onto his shoulder as the knot tightened in your stomach. “Right there don’t stop!” A gasp ripped from your chest, his teeth biting into your shoulder enough to leave teeth marks behind as the white-hot feeling rushed through your body, your climax hitting suddenly. Your chest rose and fell as you tried to catch your breath, your legs shaking and hips stuttering as he stopped his ministrations on your core.

“That’s my girl.” He gently kissed the bruise he’d made on your shoulder, withdrawing his fingers from you and opting to enclose his mouth around his dripping digits. He sucked them clean, dropping his eye into a wink and turning his back to you to wash his hair, his hard on being left unattended to, much to your surprise.

 Day 7:

So far, so good. To your knowledge, Jaemin had managed to not touch his penis in any sexual way at all, which again, had shocked you. You’d assumed he wouldn’t make even 3 days, so him having lasted a week actually impressed you. Despite many close calls, Jaemin had reigned in the hormones and want for you, simply keeping it in his pants, or by pulling away during your steamy session in the shower days prior. About an hour ago, Jaemin had fallen asleep on your bed, even though you’d both planned on walking down the local convenience store to buy snacks for the evening. Not wanting to disturb him because his sleeping face made your heart warm, you’d decided to go on your own and leave him to nap. Choosing not to rush, you’d taken your time in getting the snacks, and stealthily entered your apartment silently in case Jaemin was still sleeping. You’d dumped the snacks on the kitchen counter, and slowly creeped towards your bedroom. You raised an eyebrow in confusion when you heard weird noises emitting from the room. You held your ear to the door, listening as realization dawned on you, causing you to gasp loudly.

“Na Jaemin!” You burst into the room, pointing at him accusingly. “You’re watching porn!!!” He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, his eyes wide and arms folded across his chest. You paused, about to accuse him of losing no nut November when you noticed he wasn’t touching himself inappropriately. “You’re…erm…are you watching porn for the plot?” You glanced at the television opposite your bed, the scandalous video of a girl having a cock shoved down her throat greeting your eyes.

“Kinda…” He shrugged, grabbing the remote and shutting off the power.

“You’re so strange…” You both looked at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move.

“I was bored, and I missed it!” He defended himself, watching your every move as you slinked closer to the bed, a seductive look gleaming in your eye. You’d had enough of this stupid no nut November thing, deciding once and for all the test his resolve. “What are you doing…?” He asked suspiciously when you clambered onto the bed, throwing your leg over his own and sitting just above his knees on his outstretched legs.

“Oh nothing…” You bit your bottom lip alluringly, his eyes watching your hands as they slowly peeled down his jogging bottoms. “Lift your hips like a good boy yeah?” You winked, his hips lifting automatically to your order. You pulled his joggers down, his boxers coming down with them. His hard cock sprang up to his t-shirt, your eyes zoning in on it like a predator hunting its prey. You pushed his t-shirt up, exposing his defined abs and smirking as a bead of pre-cum oozed from the tip onto his stomach.

“Hey…don’t touch that penis missy.” He spoke with a dominating tone, you giggled, raising an eyebrow challengingly at him.

“Or what?”

“Or I lose no nut November!” He gulped, sighing and leaning his head back onto the soft pillow of your bed. “Fine. Touch it.”

“Yay!” You gripped his cock at the base, pulling it so it stood upright. Your touch took his breath away, a week proving to be too long for the absence of having his dick touched in a sexual manner. This is what he’d been craving since the he’d decided to take on this stupid challenge, and he knew he couldn’t last out long. You held eye contact with him, leaning down to rest the head of his cock on your bottom lip. “Tell me what you want.” He wasn’t used to this amount of dominance from you, it causing a firework of pleasure to burst inside his stomach.

“Suck my cock baby girl, make me cum.” You poked your tongue out, kitten licking another drop of pre-cum that spilled. The bitter taste didn’t bother you, and you actually enjoyed giving your boyfriend blowjobs, knowing a lot of your friends had different opinions on giving head. “Hurry.” His own dominance shone through, challenging your own and giving you the sensation of needing to comply to him. You fluttered your eyelashes at him, taking the head of his cock between your lips and sucking gently. “Oh fuck.” He wanted to bend his knees, but you were caging them underneath your body, restricting his movement. His fingers found their way into your hair, gripping at it gently. Without any warning, you took all of his hard length into your mouth, sucking harshly and bobbing your head up and down in perfect rhythm. Puffs of air left his parted lips as he tried to cope with the pleasure coursing through his cock, his toes curling in response.

You pulled off to wipe at your mouth, spit forming in the corners of your lips. You leaned forward, placing soft kisses on his abs and slowly trailing them back down to his red, leaking cock awaiting the presence of your warm mouth. You take him back in your mouth, making sure to stare into his soul as your drag your lips down his shaft and back up against tauntingly, letting your lips leave the tip with a pop. You use your hand to pump him fast, biting your bottom lip as his stomach starts to flex. He whimpered, squirming on the bed before letting out a loud grunt, his grip on your hair tugging harshly as he came. You’d opened your mouth in perfect time, white ribbons coating your tongue and lips.

“Fuck you look hot covered in my cum.” He panted, watching as you closed your mouth and made a point to lick your lips provocatively in front of him. “You’re a dirty girl.” He spoke lowly, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he caught his breath. You let go of his cock, letting it flop to the side without cause. “Also, fuck you! I was doing great at no nut November and you just had to ruin it didn’t you!” After the bliss of his orgasm wore off, he sat up, pushing you onto your back against the bed. You squeaked in surprise, suddenly the ceiling being all you could see until Jaemin came into your view, his body hovering over your own.

“Punish me then.” Winking at him to rile him up, you trailed a hand over your own body, squeezing your boob over your clothes and grinning cheekily at him. “Do your worst.”

“You’re in for a long night baby girl.” He smirked his famous smirk at you, immediately diving in to suck at the crook of you neck. 

No Nut November: Na Jaemin - Fail.

(A/N: Hello! Thank you so much to everyone whose liked/reblogged/commented and messaged me about this series. It’s been a wild ride and I’m overwhelmed from the love its gotten! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, please let me know what you thought of the series as a whole and whether you’d like me to do Destroy Dick December!)

[lutbys]

Christmas Party

Day 1 of Christmas at Hogwarts:

1st – You and Draco are sworn enemies. Always have, always will. But an evening spent decorating the Slytherin common room has got you both rethinking your choices.

a/n: MY DUMB ASS! I woke up this morning to no notifications for day one and i was lowkey sad bc I thought no one like it but when I checked again, I POSTED IT PRIVATELY UGHHGUGG *biggest facepalm of the century. No, at this point I've smashed my head against the wall* So I guess its on the 2nd of December then hHHHH I’m truly sorry for my dumbmity.

Draco Malfoy x Slytherin reader

“You want me to do this all by myself!” you gawked at the boxes upon boxes of Christmas decorations Pansy dug up for tonight. “And how do you expect this to look good?”

“That’s where you come in silly! I’ve seen your decorating skills back home and its impressive. That’s why you’re our party decorator” Pansy replied, gleaming at the shiny tinsel and the mountain of fairy lights. Who knew there was enough space in this dungeon to store such cheerful items?

“But I didn’t agree to this stupid party in the first place!”

“Typical of y/n to back out at the last minute. What next? You didn’t plan on getting married so why host a wedding?” you hear Draco scoff as he descended down the stairs that lead to the dorms, his arms tucked into each other and his face disgruntled just like how he would every time he caught sight of you.

“Shut it Malfoy. I don’t see you being of much help either.” To that he only scoffed and turned his back to join in on a conversation with Blaise.

It wasn’t rocket science for anybody to realize you and Draco were never on the same page. Its been like this since the first year, from the awful hair pulling to sabotaging each other’s cauldrons during potions class. You never knew why but when you first caught sight of the boy, you’d knew you’d hate him.

“Now that the venue is all settled, Nott, Zabini and I are going to Hogsmeade for the snacks. Draco you coming?” Pansy ticked off errands from her endless to do list, her eyes racking through the list multiple times like the perfectionist she is.

“Waste my time walking around? No thank you.”

“Then its settled, Draco you can help y/n doll this place up. The faster, the better.” Before he could utter an excuse, the busy girl had pushed the two other boys away and exited the common room.

You stood in awe at the situation your best friend put you in. The two of you stood dumbfoundedly among the boxes as you raked your brain on how you were going to turn this musty dungeon into a welcoming hall.

“I suggest we throw all this shit out and call it a day.” Draco grunted, kicking a box of ornaments till it toppled and you watched as three glittery green globes fall and break into little pieces. “Unlike you, I actually have important things to do.”

“Like what? Being a git? Who do you think is going to clean that up Draco?” You bit back, pointing to the scatter of broken glass that once used to be delicate trinkets. 

“you know what? I’ve had enough of you for today. I’m going to decorate this part of the room” You gestured your hands around the fireplace “And you can decorate all the way over there”

With a dramatic roll of his eyes, Draco agreed and moved over to the tables along with his pick of decorative items.

-

You’ve been staring at the fireplace for longer than you wished but your mind is blank. Completely blank. And you dreaded to turn and see how much Draco has done because all you’ve been hearing for the past half hour are the crinkles of the tinsel and his frustrated moans whenever the wrapping paper didn’t fold the way he wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted from box to box as you tried to come up with something creative. Sure, your living room back at home would look extravagant to guests but that was all mom’s doing, all you had to do was help put them up. 

-

It was the absence of the gold chain that once perched itself on top of the dodgy Santa stuffy that caught your attention.

I swear I saw it a moment ago

You were also wondering why the gold star for the tree was missing too! After rummaging through the countless number of boxes, there was only one other person you could think of to have stolen it.

“Oi Malfoy! Next time you take something from my side, ask!” You rolled your eyes at his obliviousness.

“Why would I want things from your side? Mine looks better to begin with.” “Then where did the star for the Christmas tree go?” your confusion grew as he mirrored your expression. What is happening?

Just then, you caught sight of a little dark grey blob running across the room, its little feet making little to no noise against the carpeted floors. You and Draco turned to each other with wide eyes, Care of Magical Creatures taught you well enough to identify it as a Niffler, the little rodent who steals.

“What the hell are we going to do?” you whisper-shouted, eyeing the single seated sofa you last saw it run by.

“Its your problem y/l/n. I’m not touching that thing.” 

“Don’t be daft Malfoy, if we don’t catch it, your stupid watch will be next!” Draco scoffed at your exaggeration, but his reaction quickly dimmed as he fingered his wrist at where his fathers watch used to be.

“My watch! You jinxed it you little minx.” 

“See! If we don’t catch it now who knows what will be nex- Hey!” you watched the sly critter reach out for the string of tinsel on the floor, barely grabbing hold before going back into hiding.

Your feet worked faster than your brain as you lurched towards the sofa, trying to grab hold of its little tail but to no avail, it was faster. “Draco look out! He’s coming your way!” 

Before it could dodge the white-haired boy, Draco had caught it swiftly. The poor creature tried to wriggle himself to escape, but Draco’s grip was stronger. “Hagrid’s right. It does feel funny.” His face grimaced at the sight of the thing, its flat beak and teeny arms was not sitting right for him.

“From what I remember, all you have to do is hold it by its hind legs and shake it.” You watched him follow your instructions and everything instantly fell out of its pocket. From coins to a small piece of confetti, it rained gold. You laughed in bewilderment at the sight in front of you. Sure, you’ve learned anything and everything about these magical creatures but having the opportunity to see one in real life was quite a scene to remember. It seemed Draco too was amused with the sight.

“What a cheeky little rat! Look at all he’s stolen.” Draco said after trapping the Niffler in a nearby crate. “I don’t think this is the only house he visited.” He held out a gold Gryffindor badge that once belonged to a prefect.

“That was pretty impressive. Never seen one in my life!” your hand raked through the lost knick-knacks like it was a treasure chest. “I’m going to put this back, Pansy should be back anytime now and I know she’d freak if she came back to this mess.”

Draco too took the liberty of scooping from the pile and just then, your hands touched. You couldn’t tell if it was the adrenaline of having seen a Niffler or never have had contact with Draco, but it felt different. Almost, nice. 

It was when you looked up when you realized how close you both were to each other, close enough that your breaths mingled, close enough that if your lips were to touch-

“We’re back and we’re ready for the biggest party yet!” Pansy excitement boomed from the picture frame they entered through; her hands filled with bags from Honeydukes. 

Like acid being poured over, you both pulled away instantaneously. “What the hell happened in here!” The once happy girl’s smile went agape when she saw the mess beyond her. The chairs were toppled, the lights that were supposed to be on the walls were scattered on the floor, and a suspicious looking crate was moving on its own.

“We had a bit of a Niffler situation” you scratched the back of your neck guiltily, you had failed the one task you were given, and miserably at that. “But it’s okay! I promise you I will fix all of it.” Your words seemed to encourage her, knowing her trust on you was strong.

“You have an hour and an HOUR only.”

-

“The most memorable party of the year!”

“This beats Gryffindor’s for sure” 

You rolled your eyes at the cocky compliments thrown around, knowing well enough it all came from your group of friends. You didn’t know how, but you miraculously made this place lively with the time given. Having your friends entertain you whilst at it added bonus points. Now, you awed at how the lights made the room glow and the green, black and white banners hung proudly by the fireplace.

But one thing kept running through your mind as the party went on in full swing.

Draco.

You couldn’t get this afternoons incident out of your head. You never noticed how his eyes were so mesmerizing and his scent so intoxicating that you would have all your clothes doused to smell like it. 

And he couldn’t get you out of his head too.

Draco stood lonely near the staircases, having no mood to mingle as he was knackered from the days events. But it was also an excuse to think over things when it came to you. He rewinded the scene over and over again, wondering what would happen it the moment never stopped, if Pansy wouldn’t have opened her loud mouth and disturbed them.

You both parted -quickly at that- as soon as the group came back, not daring to look into each others eyes for the rest of the evening.

But here you were, searching through the crowds for the one pair of eyes that had made your heart stop.

And you found them.

Staring straight back.

[hopelessromanticspoonie]

Monsoon Season

Chapter: 1 of 2

Characters: James Conrad x Reader

Rating: Explicit

Summary: When a rogueish British soldier saves you from a sticky situation, you find yourself in his flat, clothes soaking wet with only one bed for the both of you.

Warnings: Brief mention of violence and blood. Smut in Chapter 2.

A/N: This is my response to @yespolkadotkitty​‘s request: ‘I would adore if you had time to write a fluff one where for flimsy reasons Conrad carries reader over the threshold of somewhere with ONLY ONE BED’. I didn’t mean for it to get this long, but it all just happened! I hope that you enjoy!

Taglist for this series: @lotus-eyedindiangoddess​ @phoenixwench​

Permanent taglist: @just-the-hiddles @vodka-and-some-sass​ @he-is-chaotic-she-is-psychotic​ @nonsensicalobsessions​ @myoxisbroken​ @blah666 @brokenthelovely​ @myworddump​ @polireader​ @wiczer​ @littleredstarfish​ @the-broken-angel-13​

Thanks for the AWESOME banner, @yespolkadotkitty​!

You were lost, at the peak of monsoon season, in a country where you didn’t speak the language, in the middle of the night.

To put it mildly, you were screwed.

You had been following the rest of your team back to your seedy motel when you were separated by a man on a motorcycle who had no regard for where the road ended and the sidewalk began. Then a mother had sprinted in front of you with her two children in tow, running from the lightning that flashed menacingly in the sky. And then a group of rowdy teenagers had crossed your path.

By the time you were free to continue on, your fellow scientists were nowhere to be found. You didn’t speak a lick of Vietnamese to ask for help, and your stumbling around the neon-lit street didn’t get you anywhere except lost. Just when you thought the situation couldn’t get worse, the heavens opened up and torrential rain poured down on you, hot and heavy through your thin summer clothing.

Every curse word under the sun fell from your lips as you ducked into the nearest open doorway. Your shoes squeaked and stuck to the sticky bar floor as you moved away from the door hesitantly, taking in the patrons milling about, illuminated by the dark red light that did nothing to hide the drugs changing hands or the glazed look in the eyes of scantily-clad women as they disappeared behind curtains with leering men.

You did not belong here.

Gulping down the fear that crawled up your throat, your hands fisted at your sides as you turned on your heel, intent upon leaving. The thunderstorm outside seemed a safer bet. But a large man stood in the doorway, his arms folded as he looked down at you with a hunger that made your skin crawl - not in a good way. You backed up, eyes wide, only to collide with another body, sticky with sweat and reeking of stale alcohol and cigarettes.

You whipped around, not understanding what he grumbled at you, but the way his eyes traveled up and down your body and the bruising grip he held on your wrist was not to be misunderstood. Panic seized your mind as you babbled incoherently at him, shaking your head back and forth, vaguely aware that your voice was rising in volume and pitch but uncaring.

A man stalked from out of the shadows, towering over all the other patrons, his light eyes hard as steel as they focused on the man holding you captive. You watched with mouth open wide in shock as his hand curled into a fist into the shirt of his target, yanking him away from you and tossing him onto the floor with as much ceremony as one would a bag of trash.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his richly accented voice sin wrapped in sandpaper, both soothing your frazzled nerves and coaxing your libido to life.

You didn’t have time to answer, as the behemoth of a man who had been guarding the door shoved you out of the way, knocking you to the ground. Danger practically radiated through his rigid frame, coiled tight as he glared daggers at the man. He moved so quickly that you couldn’t follow, only catching the whip of his fist followed by a grunt, or the twist of his torso that ended up with his opponent sprawled out on the dirty floor before him.

He approached you cautiously, hands held in palms up in front of him in a clear show of peace, kneeling beside you. “It isn’t safe for you here. More will be coming. Where are you staying?”

You had only just arrived that day, and you couldn’t remember the name of the motel for the life of you. When you stammered that out to him, his brow furrowed and he ducked his head with a sigh of exasperation. When he lifted it again, his jaw was set beneath the scruff of a beard several days overdue of a shave, his brow furrowed in determination.

More men burst into the bar, shouting furiously and pointing in your direction. Your dashing protector grasped your hands and pulled you up, ducking his head so that he could look into your eyes. “Stay close to me and do not let go of my hand. Understood?”

He didn’t wait for your frantic nod, tugging you out of the bar and into the downpour outside. Your eyes stayed on his broad shoulders as you jogged behind him, watching his back flex and shift beneath the soaked linen of his shirt. He led you down streets that only seemed to become narrower and narrower with each twist and turn. You followed him willingly deeper into the labyrinthian alleys and thoroughfares that you had no hope of escaping should he decide to leave you to fend for yourself.

But he seemed to have no intention of doing so. That was made clear when he suddenly turned to you and pressed you into the wall beneath a balcony overhang, shielding your body from view with his. His forearms caged you in and his head hung low, his forehead brushing yours as he panted lightly into the humid air between you. Water dripped down the hard planes of his face onto yours, clinging to his light eyelashes and wetting his lips set into a thin line. “We’re being followed. You seem to have piqued the interest of some unsavory characters, or they are thoroughly upset at my thrashing of their fellow ruffians. Do exactly as I do.”

With no option but to trust him, you nodded, the small motion rubbing the damp skin of your forehead against his. His eyes met yours, cool blue of the sea before a storm, steadying you with the confident assurance you found within their depths. His hand found yours, engulfing it and almost searing with its heat, and you were off once again.

You followed him as closely as a shadow, your slip-on shoes slapping out against the wet pavement lost to the thunder and rainfall that deafened you. When he stopped and flattened himself to a wall, doing the same to you with a hand splayed across your stomach, you waited for his signal with your stomach heaving beneath his staying touch. He seemed to see everything at once, his keen eyes darting around, calculating and methodical. How he could see anything at all through this rain was beyond you.

You were doing a fairly decent job at keeping up with him, until you stumbled over a bit of uneven pavement, losing your shoe in the process. It was at that moment that he silently urged you faster, leaving you no room to protest as the gritty pavement bit into the soft sole of your foot.

Only when you ducked into a stairwell and climbed three flights of stairs did he slow, turning to look at you with a brow raised in concern. “Alright there, miss?”

You released his hand to brace yourself against the rough concrete wall, lifting your bare foot to reveal the bloodied underside. Something had caught the skin of your foot along the way, and you winced as you flexed your toes experimentally. “Lost my shoe somewhere back there.”

He made a deep sound of displeasure, crouching down beside you to take in your injury, holding onto your ankle with gentle fingers. Shaking his head, he righted himself and slipped his arm around your torso, his fingers curling around your ribs. “My flat is just up ahead. If it’s agreeable, I can tend to it there?”

“That’d be nice, thanks. Who knows what’s on those streets.”

He nodded, forehead creased in thought as he cast another glance around you before briskly walking you both forward. Now that you had slowed down and you had a moment to breathe, each step felt like hot knives stabbing up your leg, and you did your best to stifle your quiet whimper behind your bottom lip caught between your teeth.

He must have heard it, because without a second thought he slipped one arm behind your knees, lifting you up into his arms with very little effort on his part. You squeaked in surprise, your hands flying around his neck for stability. Somehow he managed to walk the rest of the way to his door and open it without dropping you.

His apartment was pitch black, and he carefully sat you down on something soft just a few steps inside before covering your lips with a calloused fingertip. “Hush for one moment,” he shushed you, and you strained to pick up the quiet sound of his boots as he shifted about the apartment.

Whatever assessment that he felt necessary to conduct must have turned up favorably, because several agonizing moments later a lamp flicked on next to you, bathing the room in a pale yellow light.

It was small, the space cramped with only a coffee table and the modest chair you were seated upon taking up what could be considered the living room. A kitchenette was visible over his shoulder as he knelt before you, next to which stood a closed door. There weren’t any personal effects, nothing that suggested anyone even lived there, save for a small stack of books on the table and a plate drying over the sink. It was clean, well-kept, even the age of the items belied by the care given to them.

“May I?” he asked, pulling your focus back to him.

You blamed the humidity and oppressive heat for the difficulty you had in catching your breath, instead of the earnest concern that knitted his brow as he looked up to you, his hands held out to receive your injured foot. Flushing both from the exertion and a sudden wave of embarrassment at his scrutiny, you carefully lifted it to him, only for him to gently settle your heel on his knee, steadying you.

You watched him as he worked, an open emergency medical kit at his side, fully and thoroughly stocked with much more than what was standard issue. He was efficient, but still careful, mindful not to put too much pressure on the nasty-looking gash. He was just as soaked to the bone as you were, his blue linen shirt stuck to his skin, revealing impressive muscles for his frame that flexed pleasantly with his every movement and breath. Your eyes fell to the triangle of tanned chest revealed by his shirt, the top two buttons undone. A water droplet rolled down his neck and disappeared beneath the fabric, and you tamped down the sudden inexplicable urge to trace its journey with your tongue.

He was beautiful, in a rogueish way that made you wonder if the harsh lines around his eyes softened when he was lost to the throes of the basest pleasures.

It occurred to you, while you were tracing his cheekbones so sharp they had to cut glass with your eyes, that you didn’t even know his name.

“James Conrad,” he suddenly murmured, as if he had been reading your thoughts. He offered you a quick smile and a curt nod before lowering your foot back to the floor. He stood, his back ramrod straight, offering his large hand to you once again. “And your name, miss?”

You took his hand and gave him your name, taking his assistance gratefully to rise to your feet. The bandages he had wrapped around the injury helped lessen some of the pain, and it would do nicely to protect it from bacteria. This close to him you had to crane your neck to look up at him. The scent of him drifted to you, pine and alcohol and something inherently masculine that made your mouth water.

Your name on his lips broke through your thoughts, sounding like both a question and a curse as he stared down at you. Emotions warred in his eyes, too many to give a name to, but his thumb stroked over your knuckles lightly. He hadn’t let go of your hand. You shivered at the intimacy of the gesture, desire flashing over your skin like a cool breeze on such a balmy night.

“Oh, pardon me. You’re absolutely drenched. I must insist that you stay here for the evening, and then I can assist you in finding your lodging tomorrow morning? I can find you something dry to wear, and then you can sleep in the bedroom.” He paused, taking a step away from you. You instantly missed the closeness, and you leaned forward just a bit to seek out his touch. Your hand fell limply to your side. “The door locks from the inside.”

As if you had any other option. “Oh, thanks.”

Every movement he made was measured, sure, as if his mind was several steps ahead of his body. That combined with his sharp gaze and rigid posture spoke volumes where his words did not.

“Military?”

He paused in the doorway of the bedroom, holding a bundle of clothing in his arms. One brow ticked up on his forehead as he peered up at you from beneath long lashes. “Former British SAS.”

That would explain it - the assertiveness in his command and the knowledge that lingered in his gaze. You nodded, taking the proffered clothing with an appreciative smile. You shifted on your feet uneasily, wondering where you should change, a blush staining your cheeks as you thought of undressing before James. When nothing was offered, you spoke up. “You wanna turn around there, solider?”

“Pardon me.”

Your eyes lingered on his back for a moment longer than necessary, following the slope of his broad shoulders down the dip of his spine to a narrow waist. The situation wasn’t ideal, but you found yourself lucky for more than one reason that he had been the one to pull you out of it. Quickly, you stripped out of your sopping wet clothes, only nude for a moment slipping into the loose gray t-shirt and faded boxer shorts he offered you. There was something intimate about wearing his clothing, about smelling the faint scent of laundry detergent and pine so close to your skin, that set your nerves alight.

At your call, he took your wet clothing from you, arranging it over the coffee table so that they had the best chance of drying. You didn’t hold out much hope in the humidity, but the effort was thoughtful nonetheless. You followed him into the bedroom once he was finished, taking in the sparsely furnished room silently.

“I will take the chair out in the sitting room,” he said quietly, his hand lighting on your shoulder in parting before he moved to leave.

Your hand caught his wrist, light enough that he could break free if he wanted, but he didn’t. He turned back to you, his cool eyes staring straight through to your soul as he waited for you to speak. You had never felt so exposed and seen in your entire life.

Speaking around the sudden dryness in your throat, you released him to wave your hand toward the bed. “It’s big enough for the both of us. I would feel awful if I made you sleep in that chair when there’s plenty room here. You wouldn’t go through all this trouble just to hurt me, right?”

Fire lit in his gaze before he closed his eyes briefly. When they opened the expression was gone, replaced by a wariness that you instinctively knew went to his very core. “You would be foolish to trust a complete stranger.”

You sat down on the thin mattress, springy beneath you. “You laid out a man twice your size in the bar back there. You could break down that door if you really wanted to. At least this way I know that anyone who tries to come in has to go through you to get to me.”

You had tried for humor, but by the sternness of his expression, it hadn’t landed. He sat down on the other end of the bed, unlacing his boots. You averted your eyes when his hands went to the collar of his shirt, affording him the same privacy he had offered you. When the bed pitched beneath you, you rolled over onto your side, facing him in the room.

You were just able to make out the wild curls of his hair with the hazy red light that streamed in through the window, haloing him perfectly. The night’s events hit you suddenly, brought about by the light, and you clutched your hands tightly to your chest.

“James?”

“Yes?” his voice was just loud enough to fill the space between you, intimate and deep even as it was directed at the ceiling.

Memories of the hollow-eyed women flashed in your mind’s eye. “Thank you for saving me back there. I… I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t.”

He must have felt your trembling shaking the bed, as he shifted so that he was on his side, reaching out in the darkness to clasp your hands comfortingly. The backs of his knuckles brushed against your chest, making your heart stutter against your ribcage. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

Maybe it was the adrenaline that had flooded and left your system, or the dim lighting playing against the line of his shoulder, or the gentle rub of his thumb over the back of your hand. But you felt emboldened, your curiosity driving you as you shifted closer to him on the bed, lining up the lean length of his body against yours. The brush of the hair on his legs, so very male, tightened the muscles of your abdomen pleasantly.

His breath hitched in his throat. “It was only polite, what was right.”

You lifted your entwined hands to your mouth, brushing his hand across your lips. He was faintly salty, but also sweet, addictive. Would his kiss taste the same?

You propped yourself up on one elbow, daring as you lifted a hand to drag across his cheekbone to brush a stray lock of hair back into place. “Are you always so polite, James?”

[aswithasunbeam]

A Miraculous Return

[Read on AO3]

Rated: Teen Audiences and Up (Depictions of Violence)

Summary: Hamilton is charged with destroying a flour mill as the British close in on Philadelphia in the wake of the disastrous battle at Brandywine. The mission doesn't exactly go smoothly. (AKA the infamous Schuylkill River incident)

__

“Is that more damn rain?” Captain Lee groused beside Hamilton, adjusting his hat to more fully cover his head after wiping a hand over his nose.

“I don’t think so. Just drops from the trees,” Hamilton answered in a whisper. His horse pawed at the damp earth restlessly beneath him, sensing the anxiety of her rider. He struggled to relax his shoulders as he soothed a hand over her neck, muttering, “Easy there, old girl.”  

“If you say so,” Lee said. “We’ll have a hell of a time getting the mill to burn if you’re wrong.”

Dusk was fast stealing the light of the already overcast day, leaving long shadows and an eerie quiet over the wooded area. The crack of a stick caught Hamilton’s attention, and his head wiped around as he squinted towards the source of the noise. An animal, perhaps, or one of the two sentries that Lee posted at the top of the hill before he, Hamilton, and their four men descended towards the banks of the Schuylkill, where the flour mill stood.

“Sir?”

With a last lingering look, Hamilton turned back in the saddle to see one of the men approaching.

“All clear,” the sergeant reported.

“Torch it, Higgins,” Lee ordered. “And let’s be gone before the devils realize we’re about.”

Higgins saluted and hurried back towards the mill. Lieutenant Rice on Hamilton’s other side leaned forward in his saddle eagerly as they lit their torches. Despite Lee’s concern, the flame caught easily, and the mill went up with a roar of flame. Rice let out a whoop of victory.

“Hush,” Hamilton commanded in a harsh whisper.

He could feel the heat from the burning building behind him as he tugged on the reigns, straining to hear. More sounds were coming from the top of the hill, scuffling, then voices. A shout quickly followed by a round of gunfire confirmed that they weren’t alone any longer.

“Get to the boat!” he commanded, swinging his horse around and galloping towards the ferry. He could feel Rice close on his heels, and a glance back confirmed the three other men were following rapidly by foot. Lee had started for the mill-bridge instead, though, beckoning the two sentries to follow.

“Lee!” Hamilton called.

“Go!” Lee urged, hardly giving him half a glance as he fired at the enemy with his saddle pistol.

Enemy cavalry poured over the hill towards them. Most still seemed intent on capturing the two sentries, but some had taken notice of their small party and broke off to pursue them towards the ferry. Bullets whistled by his ears, and he closed his eyes instinctively when one hit the tree beside him, causing wood to splinter out towards his face. He ducked low and dug his heels into his horse’s sides, spurring her onward.

The river was swollen with the recent rain, the current bubbling and rushing. The flat bottom boat he’d secured to the ferry dock for just this purpose yanked at its moorings. Higgins was already working on the knot as Hamilton gestured for the two other men on foot to board.

“Lieutenant—” He stopped when he saw the horse beside him no longer had a rider. Rice lay a few yards back, sprawled upon the ground, a red strain blossoming over his waistcoat and his eyes open and fixed upon the sky, unblinking.

Hamilton closed his eyes, exhaled, then clicked his tongue to urge the horse to jump the small distance into the waiting boat. She shied back for a moment, dancing in place, then did as he urged. He dismounted and went straight for an oar as the sergeant jumped in behind him.

The unrelenting enemy fire continued as they fought the rushing current. He squinted as he fought with all his might to keep them moving away from the bank. No sign of Lee or the two sentries. Another bullet whizzed by his ear.

“Don’t let the current pull us back,” Higgins urged.  

Another volley of bullets rushed towards them, and his horse let out an awful scream as she fell to the side and caused a wave of water to swamp the boat. The corporal who’d fled with them fell next to him, dead before he’d hit the water. Higgins had dropped his oar to grip at his shoulder, blood oozing through the cracks in his fingers.

Fear gripped at him.

The young private with them, still uninjured, looked to Hamilton with wide eyes. “What do we do, sir?”

His heart was beating fast in his ears, the scent of gunpowder and blood overwhelming his nostrils as he hunted for a solution. They would die if they stayed on the boat, that much was certain. Much as he didn’t want to hand the boat to the enemy by abandoning it, their dead bodies wouldn’t keep it from floating back towards the bank any better.

“Into the river,” he said, taking care not to let his voice quaver.

“Sir?” Higgins asked askance.

“It’s our only chance. Swim for the opposite bank.”

The private jumped into the rushing current immediately. His head dipped below the water and didn’t resurface. Hamilton let out another controlled breath as he looked at Higgins.

“Can you swim with your arm hurt?”

“We’ll soon find out, sir,” Higgins replied with a queasy smile. Another round of bullets robbed them of any choice. Hamilton jumped into the water half a second after Higgins.

The cold stabbed at him like needle-pricks all over his body, stealing his breath.

The current was wickedly fast, dragging him downstream. Water muted the sounds of the gunfire above, but he could hear it still as the British fired into the river indiscriminately. He kicked in the direction he thought was the opposite bank, trying to keep his head under the water in hopes of convincing the enemy he’d drowned. A few more bullets spit overhead, then finally stopped. He had to fight to breach the surface, sucking air in desperately when he did.

No signs of Higgins or the private, he noted with dismay as he struggled towards the distant shoreline. The river had dragged him far enough downstream that the British were no longer in sight either. He swam hard, pushing towards the trees of the opposite bank.

When he finally climbed out of the water, he collapsed onto his side, panting hard. His muscles burned from the effort, and the skin around his right eye stung where some of the wood from the exploding tree had evidently scratched him. The eerie quiet surrounded him again.

**

“The wounded will need to be evacuated,” Washington told Doctor Cochran in a soft voice, his eyes settling on Lafayette. The hospital was teeming with men wounded at Brandywine, making such an undertaking all the more complicated. There was no avoiding it now, though. “I cannot say how much more time we’ll hold the city.”

Doctor Cochran didn’t look surprised by the news. “I found a suitable place in Bethlehem, a little north from here. We’ll start preparing the move immediately.”

“Where is Hammy?” Washington heard Lafayette asking Laurens as he approached the bed.

“Torching the flour mill near Daviser’s Ferry,” Laurens answered. “It’s right in the path of the enemy advance now.”

“You didn’t go with him?” Lafayette asked, concern and surprise in his voice.

Laurens grunted and bumped a fist against the leg that had taken a musket-ball to the ankle during the battle.

“I can fight, mon Général,” Lafayette said when he saw Washington standing by his bed. “My leg, it is not so bad.”

Given that a bullet had sliced through the boy’s calf a mere seven days earlier, Washington had a hard time believing him. “You’ll be evacuated with the other wounded, my boy. There’s no room for arguing.”

“Laurens is up and about,” Lafayette charged, pointing towards the crutches leaning against the wall beside the aide.

“Don’t drag me into this,” Laurens said, sitting back and crossing his arms over his chest.

Washington shook his head at the two. “Laurens’ wound was not so bad as yours.”

“Not for his lack of trying,” Lafayette grumbled.

Laurens pulled a face at Lafayette in answer.

Washington couldn’t help but silently agree with Lafayette’s assessment, though it did nothing to bolster his case for being freed from his hospital bed. Laurens’ conduct at Brandywine had been brave to the point of reckless, and that a ricocheting musket-ball to the ankle was his worst injury was nothing short of miraculous. Much as Washington would have liked to order Laurens to rest as well, he was worryingly short-staffed in the wake of battle. And as it was, Laurens was now hobbling around headquarters on crutches, grumbling about being held back from reconnaissance missions all the while.

A breathless private came rushing through the door of the hospital, skidding to halt under Doctor Cochran’s hard stare. Moving at a more appropriate speed, the private handed over a letter, his eyes averted as he muttered, “General. From Captain Lee.”

“Thank you,” Washington said, quickly unfolding the message.

All the blood drained from his face as his eyes ran over the account from Lee.

“Did they get to the mill?” Laurens asked.  

“They did,” he answered distantly.

Laurens let out a satisfied sound as he grabbed Lafayette’s shoulder. “That’s our boy.”

“They were attacked,” Washington continued, and the smiles bled away from Lafayette and Laurens’s faces. “Lee took to the bridge with the two sentries, and Hamilton retreated towards a boat with the rest of the men. They took fire as they set out on the water, and Hamilton went overboard with the others. Lee doesn’t expect he survived.”

“Non,” Lafayette whispered.

A wave of grief threatened Washington as he watched the two young men before him absorb the news. The mill had been a middling target, but Hamilton had been one of his only officers hale and healthy enough to oversee the task. His loss was a dear price indeed for such a small victory. He squeezed his eyes closed as the boy’s sunny smile appeared in his memory.

Laurens stood abruptly, his crutches clattering to the ground as he fumbled for them. He swore, stooped over, and shoved them under his arms before hobbling around the bed.

“Son,” Washington said, reaching out to catch him by the arm. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find him,” Laurens said, trying to wriggle free of his grip.

“You can’t,” Washington said.

“You’re wounded, and that is enemy territory,” Lafayette added.

“I don’t care. I’m going to find him. I can’t just…he could be hurt. He could be… He’s not….” Laurens swallowed hard, jaw tight. “He can’t be….”

Washington took a deep breath to bury the emotion stirred by the note. Mourning was a luxury none of them had time to indulge. “We’ll send a reconnaissance team to that area in the morning. They’ll find him, if he’s there to be found. There’s nothing more we can do.”

“I can’t just leave him there,” Laurens argued. “I can’t.”

“Where’s the General?” Washington heard a voice demanding just beyond the doors to the hospital. “It’s urgent.”

He bit down a swear at the interruption and turned to demand whoever it was wait another moment. The form that appeared in the doorway stole his thought, however, making him blink heavily with shock.

Hamilton.

Waterlogged, muddy, and breathless, but undeniably Hamilton.

“Sir, we were attacked at the mill. I’m not sure Lee made it out, and two more of our men were killed. I found two of the others on my way back to camp, and I was able to dispatch word to Congress through one of them. I advised Congress to leave the city immediately without fail. The British now have the means to launch an attack party into the city this very night. We should make haste in evacuating our supplies and the wounded.”

“Hamilton?” Washington asked, still not quite sure the figure was even real.

“Is it really you, mon ami?” Lafayette’s voice was choked with tears.

“Yes,” Hamilton replied slowly, brow furrowing. “Why are you all just staring at me?”

Laurens pulled out of Washington’s grip and surged forward, his crutches falling to the side as he reached out to pull Hamilton into an embrace. Hamilton let out a surprised huff but returned the affectionate embrace easily. When Laurens pulled back, he held Hamilton by the shoulders and shook him lightly. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Do what?”

Washington stepped closer and clapped Hamilton on the back, relishing in the feel of his form under his palm, solid and uninjured.

“Sir, what is going on?”

“Lee is uninjured. He sent word not five minutes ago that you’d been drowned in the Schuylkill trying to escape from enemy fire.”

Understanding washed over Hamilton’s pale, muddy face. “Well, I didn’t die.”

“Yes, thank you for clarifying,” Washington said, a smile twitching at his lips.

Hamilton laughed as Laurens attacked him with another embrace.

[sbnkalny]

Can you bless the RAINS fell flat Upon its face! and how much blood do i need to handcuff THEM, obviously

[poppibranchlover]

Nine Lives, One Fight - Part 4

The story: Deep in the forest of Troll Town, there lies a mysterious tiny purple mushroom that has a secret magical ability. King Peppy calls this mushroom forbidden for all Trolls to go near it. One day, while Branch is out in the woods doing his survival research studying, he encounters it and, not knowing it is a regular mushroom, decides to harvest it and bring it home. But in the next morning, its magic effects transform him into a small blue cat! After being sent to the animal pound, his girlfriend, Poppy, finds him and decides to adopt him, although not recognizing it is Branch. Desperate to finish his research project due for a special event invented by Poppy, Branch is forced to learn how to behave like a pet cat and must figure out what caused him to become one.

You already seen what had happened in Part 3. Now get ready for Part 4!:

In a few minutes of being unconscious, Branch could hear the sounds of birds chirping. He began to open his eyes, groaning incoherently, trying to check it was daytime now.

“Argh...what just happened....?” he whispered to himself as he tried to get up from the ground and find his bearings. By the time he opened his eyes wide enough, he was able to look around the meadow.

Yes, it was now morning. Branch has been in a “coma” until he has the urge to wake up and get back to his bunker. He can barely see the morning sun just before looking down at his hand...

But it wasn’t his hand...

When he looked at it, it wasn’t there anymore. Just a paw, covered with blue hair.

“What happened to my arm?!” Branch demanded. “It looks so....hairy!”

Poor Branch wanted to know what is going on after he had passed out. He tried to get to his feet but somehow his “paw hands” were placed forcefully in the ground. Panicked, he had to crawl to a nearby rain puddle to see his reflection. When he reached towards it, he looked down at the watery fluid and saw....something really horrifying!!

After blinking for a second, Branch stepped backwards upon discovering his own reflection, terrified. His face and his entire body has drastically changed! He now has two blue pointed ears on top of his head instead of on the sides of it, his hands and legs have shrank and ended in four blue furry limbs, his clothes have fallen out of his body, which was now covered with blue animal fur, and a long blue animal tail swayed from side to side behind him.

Panting, Branch stared at his paw, and sharp claws suddenly stick out from it! He finally screamed in horror very loudly that his fur stood on end, his whiskers in his cheeks wiggled violently and his tail stood up very straight.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!”

Branch held his breath after screaming for a few seconds to realize that he was now unknowingly transformed into a small blue-furred cat! He analyzed his paws and was stupefied by the addition of having sharp feline claws as he spun around in a circle to check his whole body. Branch was clearly panicking and didn’t know what to do. He then tripped over his tail and stood up before he stared at the long snake-like appendage.

Branch tried to calm down, just to make sure he is still fine. But with a terrified look on his face, it is impossible for him to stop freaking out. He looked at his transformed cat body in concern and muttered to himself “Okay, Branch. Okay. Stay cool. You're cool, Branch. I think you’re having a bad dream. I must have passed out and woke up like this!”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, as if he wanted to wake up in reality. After a moment, he opened his eyes and stared at his paw, checking if he was changed back into a Troll. But it did not really work. He was still in the form of a cat in reality, and was about to go on another panic attack until he noticed his basket, with its contents spilled everywhere. Branch has no choice but to go home like this anyway, so he started to pick up all the berries, including the Archaeo morphisis mushroom, and put them back in his basket.

After he was finished, Branch lifted it up with his front paws and began to walk in two hind legs, continuing his way back to his beloved bunker.

But it is in complete vain. As Branch was trying to carry his basket, it is bigger than he had last carried it when he was a Troll, and the weight support was decreasing due to the large number of berries he had collected. He grunted with effort as he struggled to hold on tightly to his basket and walk all the way home at the same time, but his basket was now very heavy that it was barely making him fall flat. He was trying to keep focusing on what he is doing when he suddenly heard a....

“Meow!”

“Huh?” Branch stopped walking and saw what is making that noise. He turned to see a cat with black and white fur with a leftover chicken wing in its mouth, and it was easily confused as to why a cat was walking and carrying a basket of berries like a Troll. 

Branch immediately dropped his basket and went in fours as he brushed himself off and smiled nervously at the cat, who meowed sternly at him and focused back on its attention on eating its chicken wing.

Moments later, Branch is now walking in his four paws, holding his basket of berries in his mouth, just like the cat was doing. But he was having trouble adjusting to his cat form as he struggled to hold the basket handle in his sharp little feline teeth due to the basket’s massive weight.

With his mouth full, Branch managed to say in frustration “This is the most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my life!”

Just at that moment, he almost bumped straight into a Troll. He backed up and turned the other way, but was blocked by another one!

Branch was now surrounded by a large crowd of walking and talking Trolls in a town. He tried to navigate through the crowd, trying to say “Whoa! Okay, sorry. Excuse me. I’m trying to walk home, please?”

But all that the Trolls can hear was him meowing like an actual cat whenever he tries to speak. He crawled through the sea of Trolls passing by him, busy to notice him. Branch managed to make his way out of the bunch, but he was then accidentally hit in the face by Karma’s leg and fell to the ground.

BONK!!!

“Ooof!”

The impact caused Branch to lose his grip on his basket. It rolled to a nearby trash can, and the Archaeo morphisis mushroom and the berries spilled out of it once again.

Branch shook himself to recover from being hit, and noticed his basket, gasping. “Oh no!”

He quickly rushed to it and tried to pick it up, but all of the sudden, he heard scary aggressive growling. “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”

Branch turned slowly and looked up, seeing a large black-furred dog snarling behind him! He jumped back in fear as the dog narrowed its sharp, terrifying eyes at him, still growling.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”

“W-w-who are y-you?” Branch stammered, his lip quivering.

“HOW DARE YOU CAME TO MY FAVORITE TRASH CAN?!” the big dog sneered directly to him in its deep, scary voice.

Branch cowered, his fur standing with fright and his ears drooped down. He shook his head and tried to answer “W-what do you mean it’s your favorite trash can?! I’m j-just trying to take this basket of food home! And why can you talk with me?”

He moved closer to the dog’s face, as if to take back its words and ask more on why he can clearly understand what it is saying. Instead, he shrank back fearfully when it growled fiercely, only this time it was more terrifying than ever.

“EXCUSE ME?! DON’T YOU THINK I WOULD KNOW HOW YOU CAN UNDERSTAND?!” the dog shouted at the top of its lungs, scaring Branch even more.

“Uh, no!” Branch admitted. “No! Not at all! Please! I need to get that and go home!”

He turned his direction to the basket, but the big black dog growled more louder at him “GET OUT OF MY PROPERTY NOW OR I WILL MAUL AT YOU!!!”

“NO!” Branch shouted as the dog snapped its jaws, but he managed to run away as fast as he could, leaving his berry basket and the Archaeo morphisis mushroom behind near the trash can.

“COME HERE, YOU LITTLE WEAKLING!!” the dog barked at him as it sprang into action and chased poor little cat Branch through the forest.

                                              To Be Continued...

                                           Stay tuned for Part 5!

[thelazeenthusiast]

I absolutely loved @thefirstmillionwords story blurb 'A Dewdrop In Time' and ugh, it was so difficult to accept that there was no complete novel behind it. Their writing's so good, I wish they could have written it. I was trying to sleep the day before and a random dialogue kept popping up in head related to it since i couldn't stop thinking about it, so i went and wrote this short story :')

She ran and ran and ran. Convinced she was being followed, but refusing to stop and look back. Her mind was blank, had been so for a while now. There should be fear, and panic, but there was nothing. She ran aimlessly, her bare, round feet starting to bleed green, she was panting heavily, as if she had been running her whole life. She could feel her heartbeat everywhere, her whole body was thrumming with it. 

She should probably stop, she knew, but she felt like she couldn't. Suddenly, her foot hit something hard enough to bruise and she stumbled, falling face first to the ground. She heard herself whimper as she pulled herself to her elbows, wincing from where she had skinned her palms and the corner of her eye. There was a warm, rotting body beside her. It looked like a young man. She stared, hardly blinking, for a few slowed down seconds, then jerked, as if pulled out of a trance and crawled backwards frantically until she hit a wall. She recognised the blown apart structure of the Production Center, her Center, the place she had worked at for the last five years of her life. It was no more than a pile of rubble, a skeleton, with just the outer walls of the dome-shaped building typical of Corbulon architecture standing erect. Shuddering, she rubbed her hands over her face and allowed her body to wind down from the run. 

She heard explosions, screaming, crying, in the distance. There was an enemy aircraft with it's strange flat design hovering overhead, blinking red and blaring an ear splitting horn as some sort of warning signal. A Sphere, looking formidable with all its weapons cocked, flew close, within sight of the enemy aircraft then made a quick u-turn, going back the way it came from, as if baiting the aircraft away from the main city. Sure enough, the strange looking, foreign ship followed. 

She let her eyes wander towards blue clad Planetary Defense soldiers, shouting orders, urging civilians to take cover and firing Fission Guns at advancing enemy troops. She spotted several Planetary Defenses' manned CamouPods lurking behind the destruction, lying in wait for the enemy's almost emotionless troopers to cross another line of defense. They had come further than anyone had thought possible. The PD had clearly made a mistake in underestimating the Humans and their Androids.

Her jaw locked itself and she closed her eyes. It was all so loud. Her city, her world had never been this loud. Corbulo was being ravaged around her. 

Her mind remained blank still.

When no one came looking for her for the next few minutes, she opened her tired eyes, wishing she had died in the initial attack so she could have been kept from seeing everything she loved be destroyed. 

She was reminded of the bouquet. With trembling hands, she pulled it out of her pouch. The once lovely Morning Dewdrops were now nothing more than charred, black stalks crumpling under her grip. She sucked in a sharp breath at their sight, opening her fingers to minimise further damage. And suddenly, just like that, a tidal wave of emotion flooded her whole being and tears fell from her eyes like rain drops, one after another, too fast to count. For some reason, the most dominant emotion was that of guilt at being more upset over the fate of a few flowers than that of a real person lying dead not so far away. She wept and wept, shedding silent tears as she carefully, so as not to turn them to dust, hugged the remaining bouquet close to her chest. 

"Andrea." A familiar voice croaked after an infinite amount of time.

With a jolt, she shoved the burnt flowers back in her pouch, wiped frantic hands at her face and stood up to face him.

Styrin looked awful. His pure white Corbulon skin was flushed blue-green with fatigue, he was bleeding almost everywhere, the green of the blood in stark, unnerving contrast with the rest of his skin, his clothes were blackened and torn, he stood leaning too much on his right leg and he was layered in dust and grime. Yet, to Andrea's bemusement, he took a step forward and gave her a wide, relieved smile.

"I've been looking for you for ages. I–" he swallowed, "–I'm glad you're okay."

Entirely without her consent, tears began to fall anew upon hearing the sincerity and affection in his words.

"I'm sorry," she choked. "I'm so sorry."

His smile vanished. "Andrea–"

"The Morning Dewdrops… the bouquet. It's gone. They burned it." She cried, bringing her hands up to cover her face, unable to continue looking at him.

"Oh." She heard him say softly. Biting her lips, she tried to keep herself from losing all control. That would be worse. She would prove herself weak, she would prove to him that she was indeed not worthy of the greatest gift anyone had ever received. That she was not worthy of his loyalty and love. She knew why that stoic, remorseless Human had destroyed the flowers and let her go. It knew how valuables the flowers were, knew that they were a symbol and in the right hands, could rally ordinary people into an invincible force it was smart enough to fear. But it also knew those right hands were not hers. It had seen her worth in her own eyes.

She felt a cool hand on her arm, and then another, and she knew he was just inches away. She could hear his heartbeat. 

"Andrea, look at me." Styrin coaxed, his voice smooth and confident and strong. How was he always so strong? 

Swallowing down against a lump of emotion, Andrea slid her hands down and away from her face. His round, orange-gold eyes bright with earnestness were the first things she saw.

"They were flowers, Andrea. They were bound to wilt and die sooner than later."

She noticed how often he said her name, as if reassuring himself she's actually there. She chose to ignore the way her heart constricted and then swelled. Her stomach dropped and then flipped.

"You are the one who matters. You are the one we need."

Andrea choked back a sob at the words. He was murmuring so soft, it was almost a whisper. 

Styrin shuffled closer still and bent his head, leaning his forehead gently against hers. She forgot to breathe.

"Also, say the word and I'll travel through history all over again to make you another bouquet." He grinned. 

Oh, Styrin. Andrea pulled back her head and stepped out of his grasp, her heart, her stomach, her mind wreaking havoc inside her. Trembling slightly, she shook her head.

"I can't. I can't do it, Styrin. It's too much. All this… this expectation, it's all for nothing. I can't do it. It's too much responsibility. I'm just– just an ordinary woman. I can't do it, I can't. I can't–" she rambled mindlessly, willing her tears to stay in.

Styrin stepped close again but didn't touch her.

"It's okay, Andrea. It's okay. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I just thought…" he bit his lip, obviously trying his best to sound comforting. "I just thought my men could learn from you. You give and give, Andrea. You have so much to give. But it's okay. We can– I can go back in time and do it so all this never happened. You were never involved. Or I can take you to a safe house. I know of a few these quasi-intelligent Humans and their freaky androids can never breach. It's your choice."

It sounded so simple. She could sit out the whole war in a safe house or just have him reset everything by going back in time. But then she won't remember him. She won't remember his shy smiles, his unrelenting resolve, his brilliantly expressive orange-gold eyes and his unwavering affection. She won't remember him. She shuddered involuntarily. 

"But you said the parallel universe you landed yourself in was a utopia because of me. Because I stood up and rallied people." Andrea frowned, at a loss as to what to do.

"That's the thing," Styrin smiled, "I only saw the one parallel universe. There are innumerable more that I didn’t see. It means there are innumerable possibilities for the future. Maybe there is one where someone else stood up, or where you didn't exist at all. Or," he snorted derisively, "where I didn’t meddle with time and none of this happened. There's a fifty fifty probability of things turning out okay in each of those universes. Just because I saw a particular one doesn’t mean what happened in that has to be some kind of prophecy. What I'm trying to say Andrea, is that we have a fifty fifty chance of winning too, with or without you." His smile grew wider, the kind that told he knew he should be guilty but he really wasn't. 

Andrea peered at his beaming, ragged face.

"Do you feel guilty, Styrin?" She asked curiously as she took an uncharacteristically bold step closer to him. The rest of the world seemed to go out of focus.

His smile turned sad and he sighed. "If I hadn't poked my nose in places it wasn't wanted, the Humans would never have spread as far as they have. They're desperate in their search for a new planet after destroying their own and I practically handed our home to them in silver platter. "

And just like that, all her fears retreated. She realised, the head researcher of the Explore unit of the Planetary Defense and the Commander of Defense Troop Tech, the man who seldom, if ever, displayed pessimism, who seemed to be afraid of nothing and unable to make any mistakes, who'd led battles to victory, who's leadership had saved countless lives, had his insecurities too. Rather unfounded, but still. She realised, as much as he tried to appear strong, he was really just like her, just like everyone else. And if he could work despite his fears, so could she.

She smiled with watery eyes as the world around her started to register once again and leaned forward to brush her lips gently against the side of his face. "It seems, you really can learn a lot from me." She whispered. 

Before he could react, she sidled away, pleased beyond expectation at the confounded look on his face. She slowly sauntered backwards without breaking eye contact and stopped just at the edge of their cover. She reached out a hand towards him, palm up. "Lesson one, Styrin Valzhine, always refrain from piling up unnecessary blame where it is not needed."

As if in a daze, Styrin trudged forward and clasped her hand. When he squeezed it, she felt as if they could do anything, as long as they were together.

[ongoingaccident-deleted]

Martin Mantles Sanguine (3/?)

now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, Cat, isn’t there already a chapter 3? and you’d be right, but i didn’t like it so i redid it from scratch :> fight scenes are still hard and i still don’t love it but i’m much happier with it and it’s much more fleshed out than the original, so thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy!!!

ao3 link for this chapter here. ao3 link to the whole story here. first chapter on tumblr here. second chapter on tumblr here. phew.

Mehrunes Dagon was, for lack of a better word, monstrous. He towered over the city, massive and red and four-armed and right in front of the temple they needed to get to. Adelaide felt her breath catch in her chest even as Sheogorath grinned at the thought of the fight ahead. 

Some part of her had always known Akatosh had spoken the truth, that they would need to fight and defeat Mehrunes Dagon in order to see their task done, but nothing could have prepared her for the reality. They were fighting a god. It seemed an impossible task, even changed as they had become. He would destroy them, as befitted the Prince of Destruction. 

But before her thoughts could overwhelm her, Martin pressed a gentle hand to her elbow. When she turned to him, his smile was intensely comforting, and for a moment, it didn’t matter that they had fundamentally changed who they were in order to have a fight that they might still lose. A fight against a very real, very large, very angry god. “It will be all right,” he said, and for that moment she believed him. And even when she finally turned her gaze back to Mehrunes Dagon, everything seemed a little bit less dire than before. 

Yes, Dagon was still a monster, stories upon stories tall, with four bulky arms and an axe for each of them, cutting down friend and foe alike as he reveled in the chaos, but maybe their own godly powers would be enough. She could hope. When Mehrunes Dagon roared again, Adelaide felt less of an urge to give up and despair, and when the thunder cracked and rain finally poured down, she nearly felt confident. She might not have the best handle on her newfound powers, but she’d have the benefit of them being at their height. 

Of course, they still had to survive the fight. Which, she thought, staring at Dagon’s massive axes, might be easier said than done. He had competence with his powers that they couldn’t hope to match, not to mention centuries - no, millennia - of experience. 

Not that it mattered at this point. The battle would happen, and they would succeed or perish. Adelaide felt her resolve strengthen with that ultimatum as she helped Martin push open the massive doors to the Temple District. (The process was made easier than normal by the large chunks of the door that had burnt away or otherwise were no longer attached.) 

The moment that they stood before Dagon, unobstructed by buildings or walls, he turned his gaze to them and shrieked, and Adelaide felt her blood curl even as Sheogorath had to stifle a cackle. “Sheogorath! Sanguine! You would bar my path? Impede my victory? You would dare?” 

His outrage pushed her amusement over the edge, and Sheogorath couldn’t stifle the laughter that bubbled out of her. Next to her, Sanguine smirked ever so slightly, but their amusement was quickly dampened when Dagon roared again and charged. Adelaide tried not to descend into the despair that roiled within her - one blow from those axes would be enough to incapacitate either one of them, if not worse. Sheogorath couldn’t bear the thought of losing herself again so soon. 

Martin seemed uninhibited by the fear that presently consumed her, and dragged her backward with him as he dodged a heavy swipe of the first of four wicked blades. “Focus,” he implored her, and there was no time to analyze the desperate inflection in his voice as the second axe fell. 

Adelaide might not have known what to do, but Sheogorath, thankfully, did. A spear she had never seen before appeared in her hands, and it was pure instinct that led her to hold it in front of them like a shield. Mehrunes Dagon’s axe bounced harshly off of the Spear of Bitter Mercy and collided with the third one he was aiming at them. He howled. Her arms rattled with the force of the impact, but whatever protective magic was in the spear held. 

The fourth axe came from nowhere, and this time the reflective enchantments on the spear weren’t enough. It shattered into splinters, and the force of the blast was enough to send her tumbling backwards (and Akatosh, being thrown around without her armor to absorb the impact hurt). Her regalia tore and her skin scraped, even as her pseudo-divinity kicked in and stitched up her clothing and closed her cuts. Her reflexes also seemed to have improved, and it was surprisingly easy to stop herself and get back on her feet as she tried to make sure that Martin hadn’t been hit by the blow that had knocked her back.

It seemed that he hadn’t been, but he had stepped forward when she had fallen, and a staff that sent an uncomfortable jolt of recognition through her was now in his hands - the Sanguine Rose. Again, Adelaide cursed the fact that it had come to this, that he had been forced to accept a mantle that he despised with his entire being, that there hadn’t been something she could do to save him this pain. She was jolted back to reality by Sheogorath’s instincts pulling her symbol of office from wherever it remained when not in her hand as petals fell one after another from the Sanguine Rose and the dremora it conjured swarmed toward Dagon. They distracted him for a moment, but then the last petal fell from the Rose and she knew their moment of relative safety wouldn’t last much longer. 

She glanced at the staff in her hand, and the eye nestled in it looked back at her, eerie and unblinking. Akatosh had promised them a chance at victory, but seizing it was up to them. As Mehrunes Dagon kicked the last of the Dremora away and turned his hateful glare back toward them, Adelaide pointed the Staff at him. “Halt,” it yelled, and one of his arms froze in place. 

There was no time for her to dodge any of the other three, and the first one to hit her left a nasty gash through her midsection that would have killed a mortal as it flung her through the air. The resulting impact was nearly as painful, and it took all the willpower and every ounce of power she could muster to keep herself from disseminating into the formless matter that made up all Daedra. She might not be able to die permanently, but the reforming process would take longer than they could afford.

“Adelaide!” Martin shouted as he turned toward her, glancing away from their foe, and it felt like the world moved in slow motion as she saw another one of Dagon’s axes fall toward him. He didn’t see it, and even if he were to notice it at that moment, there wouldn’t be enough time for him to escape its path. Sheogorath wanted to laugh at the thought that she would have a front row seat to the world’s destruction. 

Adelaide wanted to sob. But, more than that, she wanted to push him out of the way, even if it would mean her own - albeit temporary - destruction. Thankfully, someone else did it for her. She watched in shock and awe as her two lieutenants appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and Asani grabbed and forcefully dragged Martin out of the path of the blade as Imal put up her shield to protect them. The Saint’s legs crumpled with the force of the blow and her shield cracked down the center, but her defensive posture never faltered. 

If they had been any less likely to die, Adelaide might have remarked that she had never seen a Mazken and an Aureal work together like that before, much less the heads of her armies, but Dagon roared again, angrier than ever, so commentary would have to wait. The intervention of her lieutenants had bought them enough time to get away from Dagon’s axes and breathe for a moment, but that moment was over and they had to get back into the fight, more seriously this time, or perish and lose the world along with themselves. 

Mehrunes Dagon was advancing on them again, and once more Sheogorath’s Staff appeared in her hands. Adelaide met its gaze for a moment before letting it disappear in favor of another one of her artifacts. The Staff would be of no use to her if it couldn’t stop more than one of his axes for a few moments, but perhaps the Wabbajack would prove somewhat effective. Assuming, of course, it did something in their favor and didn’t create a second Dagon or something. And, of course, assuming she could get a shot to hit him. 

The first blast from her staff dissipated against an axe that Martin stepped in front of her to block with a thin-looking glove. She didn’t know what the artifact was, but its enchantments held and the blow glanced off of it. Martin’s face turned white with the impact and she pretended not to notice the blood dripping from his bare hand - they didn’t have time for concern right now, and she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. (It still hurt her to see.) She sent another burst of magic at Dagon, but again she missed as he moved, and she cursed. 

Asani and Imal appeared at her shoulders, and by some miracle they still seemed to be on the same side. Imal had tossed aside her shattered shield and picked up another sword, encrusted with multi-hued blood, that must have fallen from a soldier. It was impossible to say what army they had belonged to. “Lady Sheogorath,” they said in unison. The effect was disconcerting, not least because of their very different cadences. 

“We will hold him back,” Imal said, short and clipped. “Do what you must.” 

“We will see you when you return to the Isles,” Asani added as Dagon wound up for another strike. “Be well, my Lord.” 

Before she could ask what they were planning or how they were going to hold back a god, they had already rushed forward, savage and graceful as only immortal beings could be. Imal used the flat of her golden sword to launch Asani at Dagon’s shoulder before using her swords to climb up his leg. He flailed and swung axes at both of them, cleaving Imal nearly in two but narrowly missing Asani and cutting open his own chest instead. 

“Do it now!” Martin called to her as he cradled the hand his own artifact had cut open while it healed. Adelaide nodded as she forcibly dragged herself out of the shock of watching the heads of her armies sacrifice themselves without hesitation and fired the Wabbajack once more. This time, the bolt landed true right as Mehrunes Dagon managed to fling Asani off of his shoulder. The Seducer landed on top of a nearby building in a cloud of dust. She didn’t get up again. 

Any further thoughts Adelaide might have spared her lieutenants were consumed in anxiety of what would become of Dagon. He disappeared in a massive red cloud, and when he emerged, he was largely unchanged. Still monstrous, still howling, still four-armed and axe wielding, but now nearer to the size of the average Orc rather than twice the size of the surrounding buildings. At that moment, Adelaide thought she could have wept with joy - this was a much more manageable task - but his anger seemed to only have increased, and he was barreling toward them. 

Martin absorbed the crash with his glove, but she heard his right arm break with a sickening crack. “We need to do something, and fast,” he said, face paling, “because I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” 

Damn it all, she had to think, or they would never make it out of this alive, and Tamriel would be lost. Once more, without prompting, the Staff of Sheogorath appeared in her hands. Clivia’s eye that had seen what no one else had stared out at her, and Adelaide had the off-putting feeling that the eye was looking beyond her, and suddenly she understood. 

Sheogorath pointed the staff at Mehrunes Dagon once more as he looked to slice Martin in two, and this time the voice that came from it resonated with power. “Halt!” came the call, and this time Dagon listened. So did, it seemed, every other daedra and mortal on the street. Her foe was too powerful for the enchantment to last, but it bought her the time she needed to pull Martin out of his path and for her instincts to put another weapon in her palms. 

The Sword of Jyggalag was cold and awkward in her hands, and the sudden weight of it caused her to let the tip drop onto the hard cobblestone street. The clang and her blink of surprise seemed enough to break the spell that had fallen over everyone else, and her arms burned with strain as she lifted the incredibly heavy sword just in time to block an axe that would have otherwise taken her head off. 

Akatosh’s blood, Adelaide hated this. She was a novice with a greatsword, particularly one this heavy, and she needed to end this battle quickly if she wanted any hope of surviving. The longer the fight continued, the more her lack of experience would show, and the more opportunities Dagon would have to send her back to her own realm, beaten and broken. She needed an opportunity to go on the offensive and deliver some last-resort attack, but it was all she could do to keep the blade in front of her enough to keep her limbs attached. 

Adelaide took a deep breath as she blocked another axe and her elbows trembled with the force of the blow. She had to trust that Martin had some sort of trick up his sleeve and buy time for him to use whatever it was. And if not - well, no point in worrying about that. If not, they were probably both dead, but dwelling on that right now didn’t seem like the smartest move. 

The impact of her next block made her arms give out completely, and the blade of her greatsword - Jyggalag’s greatsword, and Sheogorath wasn’t sure how she’d gotten it but was giddy with triumph about having it - fell to the ground with a great clang. And just as she came to terms with the fact that she was about to be staring at her body from twenty paces away, Sanguine appeared between her and Dagon, the blood red stone on his necklace clutched in his hand. It radiated the same aura that her staff did, and she knew what it had to be - his symbol of office, Sanguine’s power personified. 

Adelaide had no desire to know what horrors he’d endured to obtain it. 

“Stop,” Sanguine commanded, but instead of being the order that had frozen the street when Clivia’s eye had gazed upon it earlier, his word was more of a suggestion, and a kind of dread pooled in her gut when she realized that she couldn’t lift her arms - nor did she have any desire to, even though moments ago she’d wanted nothing more than to keep fighting. No wonder Martin hadn’t wanted anything to do with Sanguine’s power after whatever he’d experienced. There was little so insidious as warping a person’s desires so they no longer knew what they wanted.  

Dagon snarled, seemingly doing a better job of fighting the enchantment than she was, but his four arms rested at his sides, axes resting on the ground. Sanguine looked at her, idly intense. “End him.” 

Sheogorath felt her arms scream with the strain of hefting Jyggalag’s blade once more, but she couldn’t deny the compulsion to obey. She didn’t know how long the spell would last, so she didn’t waste time with anything that would have destroyed Dagon’s physical form slowly, and instead went straight for his head. 

The roar that Mehrunes Dagon let out would have nearly shocked her into stopping if she had been able to stop herself. Instead, Sheogorath revelled in using one rival’s blade to end another. Adelaide knew how messy and difficult the process of decapitation could be, and this time was no exception, but she forced the sword forward until it met air again and she collapsed next to Dagon’s body as the spell she was under finally broke. 

Martin fell to his knees next to her and Adelaide curled into him, and for a moment they simply watched the world burn around them, content with the knowledge that they had done their part to save it.

-

thank you for reading and i hope you liked it!!! :>

[waterchestnut123]

CHAPTER 3 / The Peculiar Perils of Straw Hat Parties

Common commentary throughout the 5 seas held that Straw Hat parties were notoriously wild. This is something that Trafalgar Law, as well as the rest of his crew, are learning first hand. Not that Law particularly feels like partying; after Dressrosa, the Heart Pirates Captain has a little soul-searching he’d like to attend to. But one tends to become… drawn in, to certain things around Luffy—regardless of one’s plans or intentions. This is how Law finds himself developing an unlikely and unexpected friendship with his ally’s navigator—and how that friendship, much like Luffy’s parties, grows far beyond his intentions.

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Chapter 3: The Consequences of Poor Party Planning

Chapter Rating: T Warnings: References to gore, traumatic experiences, mild language.

“Hard to Port! HARD TO PORT!”

Nami clung to the bannister of the top deck as though her life depended on it (and realistically, it probably did) as she shouted instructions to Franky at the helm. Remaining upright was a struggle, the vicious rocking of the ship threatening to dissolve what tenuous equilibrium she had established in her inebriated state. Violent gusts whipped her hair in every direction, cold rain pelted her face, and as a massive wave came crashing down—just shy of where the ship had been moments ago—she debated just how hard she was going to pummel Luffy when all this was over.

The storm had hit fast and hard, but she’d been able to give enough forewarning to the two crews that they were, so far, successfully staying just ahead of the worst of it. How long that would continue to be the case, however, she wasn’t sure. They were in no shape to navigate the Sunny: Usopp was completely passed out after his game of sake-scotch—tucked away in the men’s quarters by Zoro before they set off; the usually unflappable Zoro was unsteady on his feet as the ship rolled violently with the tide—a sure sign of his extreme level of intoxication; Luffy was struggling to keep his meat down, and Brook couldn’t stop laughing at Zoro’s frequent stumbling and subsequent cursing. What little headway they had made was entirely attributable to her early detection. The storm was gaining—and their ability to outrun it was rapidly deteriorating.

“Franky—we need a coup de burst! We can’t keep this up!”

“The cola engine is empty—it needs a new barrel! You’ll have to do it, though, I’ve gotta stay on the wheel!” Franky shouted back, holding tight to the spokes as they pulled violently starboard.

Nami worried her lip. Traversing the ship in her current state and in the present conditions—with every wooden surface slick with rainwater, was firmly in the “bad idea” category; but she didn’t have much choice. She eyed Franky’s wrestling match with the wheel and took a deep breath to steady herself.

“Alright—be ready! We need to head directly east by southeast to outrun the storm!”

“You got it, sis!” He then turned his attention out to the deck. “Oi! Everyone! Raise the sails!”

Wiping sopping hair out of her eyes, she gripped the railing tightly, taking careful steps towards the deck stairs. It felt like an ageless journey to get to the rear of the ship—her progress slowed by the ship’s turbulent thrashing. She was forced onto all fours as she crossed the lawn deck due to a sudden bout of nausea; though she rather hoped at the least that lowering her profile would reduce the likelihood of being blown off the ship by a violent gust. After covering in almost five minutes a distance that should have taken less than thirty seconds to cross, she found her way aft. Sliding down the ladder into the bowels of the ship, she planted her feet carefully on the floor of the cola room, wiping water from her face and taking quick stock of her surroundings.

The cola engine was currently filled with empty barrels as Franky had said, and she quickly set about removing them. She struggled to place the full, fresh barrels in their place—heavy in their own right, made worse by the unsteady ship—but eventually managed to work all three into place with a final, frustrated kick. She breathed a sigh of relief as she heard Franky shouting instructions topside, then the whir of the engine coming to life.

She turned to make for the ladder again, grateful that it would soon all be over—however that was where she made her mistake. Grabbing hold of the rungs, she didn’t get more than four feet up before she heard a particularly strong wave violently crash against the side of the ship, and felt a sudden, sharp lurch. With her weary grip and wet shoes, she lost her footing and tumbled down the ladder, landing harshly on her ankle and feeling a resounding crack followed by a sharp, shooting pain in her ankle.

“AGHHH!”

Her vision went briefly white as she hurriedly pulled the injured leg out from beneath her, cradling it delicately between her palms. Eyes tightly shut and leaking tears, she grit her teeth against the searing ache, feeling her stomach turn in response to the pain. She had barely repositioned herself comfortably at the base of the ladder when she felt the force of the coup de burst push her against the rungs, briefly stealing her breath. The laughter of her crew above followed quickly after, echoing down the chute and signaling their escape from the storm’s clutches. She had that to be thankful for at least.

After a minute, as the ship began to slow, she let out a slow, shaky breath and turned her head up, eyes still leaking pained tears. Now she just needed one of those idiots to carry her to the infirmary.

“Oi! Luffy!” she shouted up the chute, voice pitchy with pain. “Get your rubber ass down here and give me a hand!”

—:—:—:—:—:—:—

“What did you do?”

Law stared down at the swollen mass that was now her ankle with an amused, if dumbfounded, expression, Chopper’s ice pack resting beside her calf atop the infirmary bed. They had managed to find an island nearby with a protected cove at which to make repairs; and it was good, too, as the ship had gotten quite a good trouncing in the storm. Or perhaps it had been their abysmal reaction time. Either way, they had a ship to fix.

And a navigator too, apparently.

Nami grit her teeth as Law gently turned her ankle to examine it, still a bit tender as the local anesthetic had yet to take full effect. A broken tibia was Chopper’s diagnosis—and quite bad, too. No sooner had they had docked than Chopper hailed down Law in his sub who, according to the tiny doctor, was far better equipped to mend such a break with his ope ope no mi than he was with only his hands. Er, hooves.

“I slipped and fell down the ladder in the energy room,” she ground out, attempting not to flinch at the gentle pressure of his fingers.

Law released her ankle, turning to her with a raised brow. “You know you really should have been more careful going up a wet ladder while drunk,” he commented mildly.

She glared at him, eyes narrowed and expression distinctly unamused. “Shut it, Doctor spots. Can you fix it or not?”

He repressed a bemused smirk as he stood, crossing his arms as he eyed her ankle thoughtfully, then turned to Chopper.

“Bring her to my operating room on the sub—I can reset the bone and mend the damage to the surrounding tissue, but it will require surgery. It shouldn’t take too long, but even if I speed up the healing process, the recovery will still be almost a week—and she’ll need to be careful for another month after that. We can go over follow-up care once I’m done.”

“Oh, good!” Chopper breathed a sigh of relief, tense shoulders relaxing. “Thank you so much!”

But Nami’s ears were still ringing with the word ‘surgery’. A wave of anxiety washed over her, momentary visions of an old memory—of bloody scalpels and chunks of flesh littering a concrete floor flashed through her mind; but just as quickly as they came she shut them out, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth until the images ceased their assault. As she opened them she forced the anxiety down, allowing the much more manageable emotion of anger to take its place. Grinding her teeth, she turned towards the open door, shouting with renewed irritation for the closest thing she had to a punching bag.

“Where is that rubber idiot?! I am going to give him such a beating!!”

—:—:—:—:—:—:—

Chopper, in heavy point, carried Nami onto Law’s sub, down an elevator and into the operating theater where he placed her gently onto the operating table. Once she was situated, Chopper wished her a speedy recovery and departed to tend to the rest of the crew’s numerous scrapes and bruises.

Law busied himself preparing additional anesthesia for injection, as well as pulling out the needed equipment. Nami eyed him warily as he worked, placing scalpels, cotton pads, and other supplies upon a metal tray.

Finally ready to begin he turned, activating his room to encompass the bed—only to notice his patient gripping the sheets beneath her in a white knuckled grip, her eyes periodically darting anxiously towards his tray despite the otherwise cool expression of her features. He paused before reaching for his scalpel, eying her thoughtfully. After the roughness of Punk Hazard and Dressrosa, he wouldn’t have thought she’d suffer from something like medical anxiety.

“The surgery shouldn’t take more than an hour,” he said carefully as he pulled the tray towards him, situating himself near the foot of the operating table. “You can stay conscious while I operate, or I can sedate you, if you’d prefer. You won’t feel anything either way.”

“Sedation,” she said without hesitation.

He nodded, reaching for a mask draped atop a metal canister beside the bed. As he approached, he noticed that her posture had not relaxed, and she eyed the mask apprehensively. Drawing upon his patience, he gently pushed her down flat onto the bed.

“It’ll  be over before you know it.”

She closed her eyes, fingers clenching and un-clenching as she took a calming breath, and Law seized the opportunity. Quickly raising his arm, he gently pressed the mask against her face and activated the flow of gas. Her eyes flew open and she attempted to sit up again; but his hand on her shoulder was steady, and though he was briefly subjected to her signature glare, her gaze quickly became unfocused and her eyelids fluttered shut.

Finally, he could begin.

The surgery went smoothly. Her fracture was, as he anticipated, quite bad, and the surrounding tissue severely irritated. Thankfully, though, it had suffered little actual damage. Copious evidence of a previous fracture in the same location suggested that to be the reason for the severity of the break; the bone structure was already quite weak.

In total it took no more than an hour, and by the time the sedative was due to wear off, he had finished the surgery and already started a healing acceleration treatment.

The sound of her groggy voice alerted him to her wakefulness, words faintly slurred.

“Mmmm… ’s nice,” she mumbled.

He lifted his head, glowing palm unmoving from its location atop her ankle. He’d been told by his patients before that the treatment felt vaguely like warm water gently flowing through the affected area—it seemed Nami agreed. Slowly, her eyelids struggled open and amber eyes turned to gaze blearily at him. He could tell from the slightly vacant look on her face that, though wakeful, the sedative was keeping her higher faculties from emerging.

She blinked slowly, repeatedly, gazing at him with her head cocked against the pillow in confusion, “Wha… Hi—hi Torao. Hi. Whas… whas’re you doin’?” she glanced from his face to where his hand rested atop her ankle, then back to his face, expression full of childlike curiosity.

“Healing your ankle,” he answered noncommittally.

She blinked at him, then shifted slightly on the operating table before her eyes widened and she attempted to sit up on her elbows

“Where did you put my foot?” She asked urgently.

Law repressed a snort. While the sedative had worn off enough for her to wake, the local anesthetic may not have, and it was likely sensation from the mid-calf down was, at the least, muted.

“Your foot is securely attached to your leg, Nami-ya. As you can see.” He gestured with his free hand towards the ankle he was working on. She followed his hand with her eyes, but didn’t look convinced.

“But I can’t feel it. You must have taken it off.”

“You can’t feel it because I numbed your ankle for the surgery. Your foot is still attached,” he reasserted firmly, if with a hint of annoyance.

She narrowed her eyes as she examined his face closely. “And what’d I need surgery for, hm? HM?”

He glanced up, feeling his eyebrow twitch with growing irritation as he answered, “Because you broke your ankle.”

At his words her eyes widened, and she nodded with sudden clarity. “Oh—OH! I broke my ankle!” Then, more softly, “I broke my ankle…”

He rolled his eyes, adjusting his hand with a quiet sigh. He never was a fan of dealing with sedative-induced delirium. He had hoped he might be done before she woke expressly so that he could avoid this, but luck was not on his side.

For several minutes she seemed content to watch him work, lying back against her pillow silently as she stared down at him. Then, suddenly, she grinned, sitting up on her elbows again as her gaze rose to his face with childlike enthusiasm.

“Hey—hey Torao… ask me if I’m orange.”

Law’s eyes rose to meet hers, and he felt that twitch in his brow return.

“No.”

She immediately frowned, looking thoroughly put out. “Oh, come on! Ask me! Pleeeeease?”

He sighed, drawing on his patience. He was almost done, he reminded himself—almost done.

“Are you orange, Nami-ya?”

She continued to smile at him, biting her lower lip to withhold her glee, before finally blurting out, “No!” and dissolving into giggles.

He stared at her flatly as her chest heaved with her laughter, feeling a distinct desire to put her under again. Thankfully it seemed her poor attempt at humor had, for the moment, satisfied her; for as her laughter died down she simply settled more comfortably on her elbows, eyes curiously watching his glowing hand slowly, carefully tracking over her ankle.

He was rewarded with another few moments of peace, before she broke the silence again.

“What’re you doing?”

He momentarily shut his eyes before forcing out an answer. “I’m healing your ankle. Like I told you.”

She frowned slightly, clarifying her question. “No, I mean… aspif—epsific—specifically.”

“I’m accelerating your body’s natural healing process by increasing blood flow and feeding your cells mitochondrial energy.”

He had hoped the specificity of his answer would disinterest her from further query; but no. Of course not. Instead, she raised her thoughtful gaze up to his face, blinking rapidly as she inquired further.

“How d’you do that?”

“By feeding you some of my life force,” he answered noncommittally, readjusting himself on his stool.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, expression becoming sharp despite the bleariness still coloring her expression. “Is… that doesn’ seem like it would be very good for you.”

He shrugged. “By the time I’m done with your treatments, it will probably have taken a few days off my lifespan.”

With unexpected speed and strength she pulled herself upright and yanked his hand off her ankle, expression horrified.

“No!!”

He eyed her with a furrowed brow, crossing his arms over his chest in distinct irritation. “No?” he echoed incredulously, “You were the one who complained about the recovery time.”

She shifted in the bed, moving her arms to support her weight on her hands as she started to sway. The sudden move had clearly been an effort. “I was… I was just mad ‘cuz I didn’t want to have surgery! Don’t waste your life like that! You can’t!”

Once more Law rolled his eyes, moving his hand back to her ankle and re-activating the acceleration. “It’s just a few days, Nami-ya. I lost years on Doflamingo.”

Again she surprised him with her strength as she leaned forward in an attempt to shove his hand away—but this time he wouldn’t be deterred. He grabbed her with his free hand by the wrist to hold her at bay; but she just reached for him with her other hand to pull him off her ankle—and before he could understand how exactly it had happened, they were engaged in slap fight, with Nami managing to muster a shocking amount of speed and strength.

But that strength didn’t last long. Her precision and speed quickly faded and she began to sway in her upright position. Taking advantage, he grabbed both of her wrists, holding them away and her upright, exasperated and irritated in equal measure.

“Nami-ya!” he commanded sharply, “Would you stop.”

“No!” she asserted stubbornly, weakly struggling against his grip. “You just got your life back, and at a huge cost—I won’t let you be so quick to waste it—especially on me!”

That was… not an answer he was expecting. His surprise caused his grip to slacken and she used the opportunity to slip free of him, settling her arms across her chest with a frown. His eyes moved to meet with hers, and though her gaze was still a bit hazy, they were nonetheless resolute. His brow furrowed and he frowned, thinking. He had not anticipated she would be upset about this, nor that she would seem to carry such… strong opinions, as to how he spent his life force.

“This is the nature of the Ope Ope no Mi, Nami-ya,” he said carefully, “Certain abilities feed on the user—that’s just how it works.”

He allowed a moment for his words to sink in before placing his hand back on her ankle, re-activating the acceleration; and when she weakly reached to try and remove it again he grabbed her wrist with his free hand, eying her sharply.

“It’s a worthwhile use of my abilities, and a relatively small sacrifice I’m willing to make,” he said with finality, the glow under his palm igniting again. “If there is anyone between our two crews we need able-bodied, the navigators are at the top of that list. Stop fighting me or I’ll put you under again.”

She frowned at him, and as he released her wrist she thankfully settled back against the pillow instead of making for his hand again. She let out a frustrated breath, closing her eyes. Her posture seemed weary—the energy expended fighting him off had clearly taken it out of her. She remained still and silent for some time, and Law used that opportunity to examine his progress. The swelling had gone down significantly, and he could now feel the bone beneath her skin, smoother now at the break site as the bone began to knit neatly back together.

“Luffy said you made a room so large on Dressrosa he couldn’t even see it,” she said quietly, breaking the stillness. “Is that what cost years of your life?”

He raised his head, seeing her sitting up on her arms again as she eyed him.

“Mugiwara-ya didn’t regale you with the details?” he commented lightly before returning to his examination. She frowned.

“He’s not a complete idiot, you know. He does know when something’s personal and to keep his mouth shut. When I asked, he only told me the basics, and said I should ask you if I wanted to know the rest.”

Law turned to study her annoyed expression, surprised by her words—and Luffy’s. He had assumed that the whole of the battle would become common knowledge to Straw Hat’s crew, as much as he wouldn’t prefer it.

Luffy’s… unexpected tact—a concept he would never have ever thought could be associated with the lunatic captain, was… appreciated.

He turned his gaze back to her ankle, sliding his hand beneath it to examine the tendons. Given that he doubted she would remember much, if any of this conversation later, he decided to humor her.

“Yes,” he answered simply.

She stared at him wide-eyed, expression dumbfounded.

“Why?”

“…Why?”

“Yeah—why would you just… waste years of your life like that?”

“To maintain situational advantage,” he answered absently, carefully feeling along the achilles tendon. “And the years weren’t wasted—they ended up saving my life.”

She stared up at him with something suspiciously like concern, voice quiet. “What happened?”

He paused, eying her a moment, contemplating. It wasn’t something he particularly liked to dwell on, but…

“I was shot by Doflamingo. Twenty-two times, I believe. By keeping up my room too large to be seen, I was able to remove the bullets and heal myself while Doflamingo was busy with Luffy, thinking I was dead.”

She sat up fully, her eyes widening in alarm and a hand moving to cover her mouth. Silence, and the occasional metal creak of the Polar Tang as it shifted in the waves were the only sounds to fill the space between them. She said nothing for several moments, and he was content to leave it at that—but then she quietly spoke, voice soft and words unexpected.

“But… you were still shot, right? The Ope Ope no Mi can’t stop you from… feeling all those bullets—right?”

He held her gaze briefly before offering a small but clear nod.

Her eyes widened a moment before she let out a breath, turning towards the wall, eyes far away.

“I thought you seemed different when you came back to the Sunny with the others,” she said softly. “Luffy told me that you used to be a member of Doflamingo’s crew until he killed someone you cared about; that you had allied with us only because you wanted help getting revenge, and were willing to do anything to get it.” She lifted her head and her eyes met his—her gaze uncomfortably knowing.

“I get it—I do. An old captain you hated, who took someone you loved away from you…” She closed her eyes, one hand raising to unconsciously rub her tattooed shoulder. “I would understand more than anyone else. I’ve wanted to ask for a while, but… I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk about it.”

She opened her eyes and gazed at him with a small, sad smile.

“And why would you understand?” he asked coolly, though with the unexpected turn in conversation he felt suddenly anything but.

She turned her gaze down at the thin cotton blanket lying across her lap, thumb gently stroking her tattoo—though, in looking more closely, he could see her thumb was actually circling a scar hidden beneath the ink.

“When I was ten, the Arlong pirates invaded my village, taking over my island and demanding everyone pay tribute or be killed. We were poor, and my mother had only enough saved to pay for my sister and I. So… Arlong shot her, right in front of us. And when he found out I could make maps, he kidnapped me and forced me into his crew.”

Her voice had grown small, and Law could tell, recalling these events was difficult for her. He felt uncomfortably voyeuristic; as though he were becoming privy to something too intimate, too… familiar—things not meant for the ears of a rival. He was about to tell her she needn’t continue—he felt fairly confident she wouldn’t have were she not under the influence of a drug; but what she said next halted his words on the tip of his tongue, and curiosity overtook his better judgment.

“I hated him so much,” she said with a venom unbefitting the quiet atmosphere. “I spent eight years as one of his executives—robbing pirates to try and buy back mine and my village’s freedom. That was the deal I made with him. The villagers didn’t know why I joined, and they hated me for it—or at least, thats what they wanted me to think.” Her anger dissipated slightly, and she let out a sigh.

“When I had finally gotten almost all of the money, he sent his marine lackeys after me to confiscate it all. He never had any intention of honoring our agreement—never intended to let me go; just wanted to give me false hope.”

She closed her eyes and took a breath, then turned to him, a self-deprecating smile on her lips.

“I found out later that the villagers knew all along—they’d just been playing a role so that if I ever wanted to run away, I wouldn’t feel guilty for abandoning them and leaving them all to die. When they found out about Arlong’s duplicity, they finally decided to go after him. I gave up and went with them; I thought I had no other way out. I was going to kill him, or die trying.”

She stared at him pointedly, then—eyes both fierce and gentle. Her gaze felt strangely piercing for a woman only on the cusp of cogency; and yet he found himself unable to maintain her gaze. He turned his eyes back down to her ankle.

“What happened?” He asked quietly as he shifted his fingers over her ankle bone. She smiled fondly.

“Luffy.”

Ah. Figures.

Silence pervaded once more, and after a moment she settled back down onto the bed, closing her eyes with a quiet exhale.

He allowed himself a moment for his mind to drift back through her story. She was the one Straw Hat he’d gotten to know the least. Their interactions on Punk Hazard had been rushed and frenzied—as most of the endeavor had been, and they’d been separated throughout the events of Dressrosa. Yet it seemed they had more in common than he ever would have guessed.

“I think I would have missed you, y’know,” she said suddenly, unexpectedly, pulling his mind from his thoughts. He lifted his head to find her smiling softly, eyes still closed.

“If you’d died on Dressrosa,” she clarified. “You’re a good guy and a good captain. You’ve grown on me,” she added, her smile broadening just a bit.

Law’s brow furrowed as he gazed at her sincere smile, unsure how to take, let alone react, to the sentiment. He decided instead to deflect.

“Me, or my bear?” he inquired coolly, thinking back to the night before. Nami laughed.

“Okay,” she said with a yawn, “You and the bear.”

Silence stretched between them once more, and Nami hummed contentedly as he moved his hand back to the top of her ankle. He forced his attention away from her face and back to his work, fingers trailing over the the site of the break one last time.

“Thas’ nice…” she murmured, settling deeper into her pillow, “I take it back… you can spend your life force doing that any time.”

Law felt a small smile pull up the corners of his lips, but he didn’t respond, focusing instead on finishing his examination. It seemed just about where he wanted it to be for now—mended enough to get her through until tomorrow. With a flick of his wrist he stopped the acceleration, looking back up ready to pronounce her treatment finished for the day—but instead he found that she had fallen back asleep.

With a breath, he slumped back on his stool with a weary sigh. The acceleration always left him feeling drained, but her argumentativeness—and the unexpected conversation, had taken more of a toll on him than he’d anticipated.

Had he not spend so many years as a pirate, he might find it difficult to imagine she had ever struggled against such hardships. She certainly didn’t carry herself that way; she was clever and headstrong, at time ferocious and at others, playful. Though he hadn’t seen much of it for himself, he knew from the other members of her crew that she could be… tempestuous and domineering; though they remarked upon it with the utmost fondness.

She was flirtatious and often smiling; yet if her words were to be believed, she had suffered—isolated and alone, most of her life. But still she found a way to be cheerful, and to demonstrate seemingly genuine care about his own hardships, even though there was little reason to. He was a captain of a rival crew, in a temporary alliance with her own—beyond his abilities to fulfill their agreement to take down Kaido, there was nothing to be gained from deeply and truly caring. He was torn between thinking her abundantly kind or outright foolish.

But, then again, when had anyone on Mugiwara’s crew ever made much sense?

And though he was loath to admit it, she had struck a cord. Under the lingering influence of the sedative, she was just so damned sincere in her concern. He couldn’t even remember the last time a relative stranger gave two shits about the things he’d been through—maybe the nuns at the church in Flevance. He’d certainly never met anyone with a story like his before, either.

And though he was even more loath to admit it, he was also left feeling guilty. He shouldn’t have let her carry on the way she had. Even if he couldn’t have stopped her, he should have at least tried; but, perhaps selfishly, he’d found himself wanting to know what made her tick. He knew she wasn’t in her right mind, and if she remembered any of their conversation when she woke up, he suspected she would be cross at best, furious at worst.

Though, he couldn’t help the small smile which curved up his lips as he thought back to her final comment. He’d grown on her, huh?

A quiet, yet firm knock came at the door and he wearily stood from his stool. With a click he turned off the brighter overhead lights and opened the door, finding Penguin on the other side.

“Lunch is ready, captain,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder. “Do you want me to bring something for you and Miss Nami?”

Law glanced over his shoulder at her still and slumbering form. Turning back to Penguin, he shook his head. “No. I’m just about done here, and Nami-ya is asleep. I’ll meet you in the mess hall in a bit.”

“You got it, Captain,” Penguin smiled before turning and heading back down the hall.

Law shut the door quietly, turning back towards the operating table. He’d just have to deal with the consequences of their conversation later, when she woke up again. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember, and he’d have nothing to deal with at all.

He began cleaning up his tools and equipment, pausing briefly as Nami shifted in her sleep. He chanced a glance at her; the arm that had risen to her tattoo now rested loosely atop her waist, her head fallen slightly to the side. Orange curls framed her face like a strange halo, and her dark lashes lay peacefully closed.

His mind cast back to the night before—to Luffy’s party out in the middle of the ocean, and his and Nami’s conversation on the aquarium bar balcony. One moment in particular stood out to him—when she’d taken his hat. He could easily have taken it back using his ability just as he’d done with his wallet; but for some reason, he let himself get drawn into her game, just as he’d let himself get drawn into conversation with her not ten minutes ago. And when he had her cornered against the far wall, blinking up at him from beneath those lashes, he’d felt… drawn to her; caught in the orbit of her gravity and unable to pull out.

He could chalk it up to the alcohol. She was a beautiful woman, after all, and had been looking up at him with those impish eyes, face cast in the silvery light of the half moon. He was only human.

She hummed quietly in her sleep, and the sound jarred Law from his reverie. He forced his attention back to the task at hand, picking up the remains on his operating tray before sliding it back into its proper place. He needed to stay focused. Now that he had been reunited with his crew, taking down Kaido was next and that would be no easy task, requiring every ounce of his attention and focus especially with Luffy in the picture—and she was beginning to take up too much room in his head.

As he headed for the door, he quickly checked her IV and tossed the remaining refuse into the medical waste bin on the wall. Reaching for the handle, though, he paused, glancing over his shoulder at her. She still lay quietly on the bed, her chest rising slowly but steadily with her breathing.

Yes, she was taking up far too much room in his head.

He pulled the door open and stepped out into the hall, shutting it softly behind him—and with it, all wayward thoughts of the navigator asleep within.

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[marylandsystema2]

Boxing, Sambo and Mud Fighting . . . – USAdojo.com

This incident took place when I was 14 years of age.

I grew up in Tver, a fairly tough industrial city, 2 hours North of Moscow. I lived at home only on weekends, as for all 5 weekdays, I had to stay at a boarding school full of orphans and very rough kids from seriously troubled families. Naturally, martial arts were among our key interests. Out of 13 boys in my class, 12 trained in Boxing and one did Sambo Wrestling. Of course, I was quite skeptical about that one boy and had a much higher opinion of Boxing. Using fists seemed more decisive and to the point – just 2 or 3 good punches and either you are a winner or you can bravely run away (easily because you were up on your feet anyway).

Our Boxing instructor, a certified Candidate-Master, came right to the boarding school to teach us and talked a lot about “the importance of real life experience”, so we tried to apply our fists to work whenever and wherever possible. His method of teaching was based on his size and mass – about 6’4″ and 230 pounds. To us, the excited youth, he seemed to be a giant capable of knocking out a horse. We tried to copy his manner of fighting of a European heavy-weight – slow, collected and very powerful punches. The only problem was that we all skinny and agile trying to fight as if we were big and massive. It must have been very funny to watch. I realized that later, when I entered my first competition and saw other boxers, I was amazed that there were so many other ways of fighting.

Street fights were a very common occurrence; they were quick, often bloody and involving many participants. I have never seen pure locks and chokes applied on the ground. All grappling techniques were mixed with kicking and punching, use of numerous weapons, including rocks, sticks, and chains. As we were all teens, fights would only last less than a minute until the first shout: “Police!” Then it was time to run as quickly as possible. The ones who were caught on the fight scene were indiscriminately blamed and ended up in detention. Moreover, walking off a grappling scene with ripped clothing, dirt and blood all over – would also mean getting arrested. Thus, boxing tactics were much preferred, especially a strong powerful punch that settled the argument – that was our goal and the ultimate masterpiece.

There was a joke around. One guy asked a boxer how was his match. The boxer replied: “If only they did not turn off the lights in the gym – I would totally destroy my opponent…”

To me it showed how magnificent a punch should be – that the person would get so wiped out that he would not even realize that he was knocked out.

Having said all that, I’d like to share with you an experience that is memorable for the total mix of martial arts, nasty weather, age and size discrepancy and emotional drama. One day when I was home on a weekend, I saw that a good friend from my apartment building had a lot of bruises on him. When I asked him why, reluctantly he said that his drunken step-father had beaten up his mom, my friend tried to protect her and the step-father had beaten him up as well. That made me very angry and I went ahead to set things right with his step-father right there and then.

I must tell you that at that age, I was a very skinny entity, weighing about 100 pounds, while the step-father was around 40 years old and a huge man of over 200 pounds. The action took place at the side of our building by a fence. It was autumn, late evening, almost dark outside, with light rain turning into endless drizzle. A square yard area was being prepared for a skating ring and for now, fully covered with extreme dirt and mud.

The step-father, big, brutal and drunk, like an angry monster, was walking through the mud and I determinedly emerged right in front of him…

Full of indignation, I moved towards him shouting why he had done such a horrible thing and demanding for him to never do it again. He stared back at me with disbelief. His rage was building up as he began to raise his hands to either push me away or hit me. My one year of boxing practice didn’t go in vain, the words of my Boxing teacher popped up in my mind: “with your weight and speed – hit first” and I landed a mighty hook into his jaw… He fell onto his knees and I was truly amazed and pleased with my power. A moment later, I realized that the true reason he fell was that he was drunk and slipped in the mud. He wasn’t the only one falling; I was quickly slipping and falling myself right next to him. He got to his knees and tried to hold me down. That’s when I started to regret my skepticism about wrestling and my total absence of ground fighting knowledge. Unbelievably, I found some “hollow areas” where his pressure was less crushing and slid through those areas making my way through the mud underneath. While he was on his hands and knees, I kicked him. He grabbed my leg and easily pulled me sliding down into the mud. Fear of death and desire to live played a big part in the speed with which I was jumping up to my feet. I stood up and hit him once more. He fell. Again it was not because of the particular power of my strikes but because he was drunk and the ground was incredibly slippery.

I was then able to kick him as hard as I could. (Now I know that emotional kicking is very unwise in a fight, you have to calculate your force based on the situation.) I didn’t know it then and my fervent kick made me slide and fall flat on my back. It was a kick in the ribs, presumably a painful one, because now his intention to kill me escalated into total growling rage. As I attempted to get up, he grabbed the top part of my sweater like a mad animal. I could tell by his face that he was about to finish me off right now and that made me do something out of the ordinary…

His grip was so powerful, his face was so furious and I was so desperate that I slid out of my sweater like a snake leaving its skin behind. I slipped out without even feeling his hands on me. And then I was saved…

We both heard the familiar shouting: “Call the police!!!” The man’s wife was apparently there. Obviously, when police would arrive she would testify totally against me. So as he stopped for a moment, I ran like never before, concluding this fight on the usual note. I had no shirt underneath that sweater and was drenched in dirt from top to bottom, so I had to avoid all well-lit areas on the run home.

All this time, I was wondering why my friend, who stood near by wasn’t helping my fight. Later I realized that the whole battle only took less than 30 seconds. Another thing that upset me was the loss of my sweater. I had so few in my possession that loosing any one was a significant adversity.

For weeks and months afterwards, this man kept trying to shoot me with his hunting rifle, but that’s another story.

It really was a memorable fight for me. Having been pretty successful in street fights up to that point, it made me look at life more seriously. I faced something new – a man much older than me, he was a different entity of movements and force, psychology and completeness. It gave me plenty of questions to analyze later. None of the other combat arts that I encountered in the years to come gave me satisfactory answers. Only when I have practiced Systema for a while, I understood the keys to success: staying calm, recognizing how every single situation gives different options to act, continuous movement, moving the body without the use of arms and legs, and futility of trying to overpower an opponent who is bigger, heavier and more experienced. I also saw a common mistake in many fights – people “getting stuck on clothing” – when the opponent grabs their clothing they put all the efforts into trying to rip it out of his hand.

What’s more, numerous times I observed how a stance and preparation for a strike makes you visible, tangible and thus vulnerable. I noticed that in confrontations if you take upon an obligation to help a friend he may not necessarily feel committed to helping you, so it is good to have friends on both sides. And finally, while the core to survival is not to succumb to fear, I found that there is a type of ‘brave emotional’ fear that makes us swiftly move and thus survive, but still does not provide us with full control that we get from Systema training. Enjoy yourself!

This article was published on July 04, 2007.

  from Maryland Systema https://marylandsystema.com/boxing-sambo-and-mud-fighting-usadojo-com/

[verosmoonshine-blog]

For a Fistful of Azerite...

(Takes place approximately 2 months ago, prior to his promotion in the Agents of Suramar) TW: Blood & Violence

Prelude | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV (coming soon!)

As someone who once dedicated their life to the art of arcane, intensely researching the magical properties of their world, Veros knew that he would have to get a hold of Azerite somehow. The blood of their world was crystallizing at the surface, both a horrible outcome of the immense blade in Silithus, and a wonderful gift to the denizens of Azeroth. The mineral could transform life as they knew it.

Oh, if only people weren't so distracted by power and warfare.

In any case, Veros knew he would have to act. How to get his hands on such a precious mineral, he did not know, aside from showing up, upfront to the goblin miners in Silithus and plucking the gems from their fingers. It wouldn't be easy. It probably wouldn't even be worth risking his life over.

But when the rest of the world has just barely been exposed to a man who so dearly missed it for ten thousand years, any risk he had to take to learn more was justified.

Such a way of thinking brought the nightborne to Silithus, where the elf perched a distance off from the site of the wound. How long he had been standing there, gazing in horror at the incomprehensibly massive blade lodged into the earth, he did not know. The smell of metal, smoke and blood filled his lungs despite being far away from the digsite. He knew what he was going to see when he came out here. He read enough and heard enough, he thought, about the blade’s size and massive veins of Azerite sprouting out. But to see it all in person, to see it to scale and feel its raw power rock his entire body -- nothing could have prepared him for that.

He couldn't afford to be distracted though. He needed to to find a way to steal some of the mineral for himself. Watching the goblins hack away at it, knowing that they’d likely haul it off to use it for warfare purposes sickened him. He could do so much more with it without ever having to claim a life. He has to act now.

Veros stands to his full height, pulling his black mask over his nose and mouth. His mission is simple, an easy in and out stealth op. His time with the Agents certainly boosted his confidence and gave him the skills he needed; getting a hold of Azerite should serve as a means of thanking them, once he manages to study it. He scans the digsite again, taking in the view he had from the cliffside for a moment longer. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath with his arms crossed on his chest, and falls forward freely.

Arcane swells and surrounds him, propelling the nightborne faster in his descent. With a shimmer of power, Veros allows the magic to envelop him fully, rooted deep in his runes and changing his body into pure energy. Just the very presence of the Azerite nearby heightened the former ley-walker’s spell, and he rides it, blinking forward several yards in rapid succession. He moves like a speeding bullet, becoming one with the arcane to navigate through the land until he finally hovers just above the destroyed land.

His body rematerializes as he slows, the arcane still clinging tight to him to keep him invisible. His feet hit the ground running, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he rides out his momentum, sprinting to the side of the massive blade. Goblins peppered the entire site, hacking away at the magnificent pillars of citrus and azure stone that sprouted from the earth. The closer he stood to one of those veins, the more he could hear its raw power sing to him, calling to him. He slows to a stop, standing between two blissfully unaware goblin miners, and gazes up at the Azerite. Oh, how rich it is in energy, he could sense it so! No amount of ley-walking or tapping could even compare to even the barest aura of power the mineral held.

Taking this entire vein was highly unlikely to happen, Veros knows. And now that he stands before it, he realizes he likely doesn't need as much as he anticipated. If it held this much raw, unfiltered power, then he needs only a sample, just to study.

Veros turns away, sprinting off to find smaller veins of Azerite. His runes hummed, absorbing the magic in the air to keep his invisibility spell fueled. His mind ran wild with the potential uses for Azerite. An endless power source, Azerite powered machines, enchanted armor, empowered ley-walking -- good Stars he practically salivated at the very idea of it all.

This should be the gift that saves the world, not ends it.

Filled with a burst of excitement, Veros picks up the pace, finally finding a nice spot with enough space away from the busy miners. Smaller ores of Azerite sprouted from the ground, highlighted by the sunlight refracting on the rock’s facets. A beautiful sight, Veros muses, and he wastes not a moment longer in retrieving his satchel. He held the enchanted bag in one hand, pulling a mace out and crystallizing arcane around it. Purple gems coalesce together against the mace, forming a jagged point to serve as a pickaxe. With a grin, he readies himself, raising the pick and striking it into the ore.

Only… it doesn’t hit the ore.

Upon bringing the pick down, the jagged gem catches onto something unseen midair, the tip of the pickaxe quickly painted with blood. Veros gasps, staggering backwards, his invisibility spell fading away with the distraction. The hidden figure before him becomes more clear, Veros’ pickaxe lodged neatly through the muscle of a forearm, blood dripping from the accidental wound. Veros backs away slowly as the stocky human man emerged from his stealth, clutching his arm and baring his flat teeth at the elf.

“Oh… Oh dear, were you invisible too?” Veros laughs nervously, frantically trying to find a way out of this. “Oh, s-silly me, silly me!”

The human lets out a shout, presumably in Common, and charges at the nightborne, drawing a blade faster than Veros’ eyes could track. The human slashes towards him, Veros just barely swinging his head back in time to avoid the fatal blow.

“Pray, do forgive me!” Veros shouts, blinking backwards to put distance between them. “Neither of us saw each other! Though I probably would have confused you for Azerite anyways, considering the blue and gold armor.”

The rogue leaps through the air, thrusting a hand forth to rain a dozen tiny daggers down on the elf. Veros yelps in fear, throwing his hands up and detonating arcane in the air, destroying the daggers and blasting back the human.

“You Alliance folks really don't like jokes, do you…” Veros grumbles, building a pillar of ice before him to prevent the man from coming closer. “A joke! Because I'm old, you know, I can't tell the difference any--”

A burst of smoke fills the air, and suddenly, the human is behind him, tearing the pickaxe from his arm and swinging it at Veros. Veros whirls around, just in time to watch the man impale the pick into Veros’ bicep. He lets out a cry, clamping a hand around the wound, only to feel the human’s boot come crashing against his jaw. Veros falls back, landing atop some of the pointed tips of tiny Azerite clusters, feeding into the nightborne’s pain. The rogue pounces, another set of blades drawn as he descends down on the elf. Panicked, Veros yanks his sword from his side, still in its sheath, and sloppily parries the attack. The human lands, and Veros pulls from the power of the Azerite around him, filling his runes with a golden glow. As the human steadies himself to strike again, Veros releases a powerful burst of magic from his body, his tattoos crackling with arcane lightning. The rogue is blasted back once more, landing swiftly on his feet and sliding backwards against the gravel with the momentum.

Veros rolls to his side, making the poorly thought out decision to rip the pickaxe out of his arm. He screams in pain as he does so, clamping a hand down against the wound, channeling fire to seal the destroyed flesh. It burned horribly, but with the attacker still pursuing him, he would have to deal with it later. A shell of arcane forms around Veros, catching the knife hurled at him just in time. When the rogue charges for him once more, Veros is on his feet, ducking from the rogue’s knives and closing the distance between them by inches. Veros grabs the human’s face roughly, shoving him until he fell onto his back. The nightborne stomped a foot onto the human’s chest, creating frost on impact and freezing the man to the ground.

“You’re a mean one, human,” Veros sneers, staggering away from the rogue. “Count yourself lucky I'm not a killer.”

He hefts his pickaxe, rushing to the vein he had his eye on, and with his good arm, he swings, messily cracking and ultimately crumbling the precious mineral into pieces with his untrained swing. It did not matter to him, though. So long as he got what he came for, it was a success. His heart pounds against his chest, a quick, heavy tempo that clashed with the swings of his pickaxe and the cracking of ice behind him. The trap he placed on the human would not last long, Veros knows, and he makes haste, scooping as many shards of Azerite as he could into his bag.

He hears the ice shatter behind him, and he leaps to his feet, stumbling as he tries to sprint away. The anxiety rocks him as he runs, the hum of the massive sword beside him only worsening the dear. The footsteps behind catch up quick, and Veros desperately holds back the need to scream before he finally whirls around, magic swelling in his hands, ready to strike the rogue.

All too late.

He did not register the blade, nor the human’s face as he came close. The rogue had unsheathed an unexpected sword, and as it pierces through Veros’ abdomen, painted crimson all the way to the tip of the blade that poked out of his back, Veros saw only yellow and white in his vision. His breath stops short in his throat, and vaguely, through his muddled sight, does he see the outline of the human’s snarl. With a horrid slick sound, the human yanks the blade out, leaving Veros scrambling for his breath, hopelessly reaching out and grasping at anything as he crumbles gracelessly to the floor. The runes etched into his skin glow erratically, pulsing with different colors of citrus orange and violet, matching his heartbeat and his feeble attempts to summon magic -- any magic at all -- to come to his aid. His hands twitch, sparking with power, and he rolls sluggishly, watching as the human begins to rummage through his belongings, looting the Azerite.

A novice mistake, Veros had made. He told no one that he was coming here, he came wholly unprepared for the mission, and ultimately, he dies here alone. No one would ever know why.

Veros coughs, blood garbled in his throat and spilling from his lips. The human had what he needed, and as life slowly slips away from Veros, anger and rage take the place of his fear. He had come all this way seeking knowledge, seeking to learn of their world and ultimately how to heal it, and this is how he loses? A nameless human would rob the man that desperately wished to see the sky again, rob him of his opportunity to rebuild his life into something worth it? He would let this human walk away with the very key he needs to advance his research?

He grit his bloody teeth, his fingernails scraping and digging into the hardened soil, grasping desperately until his fingers were inches in the ground. He did not come here to die. His purpose was not yet complete. One way or another, Veros is leaving with that damn Azerite.

As the human reenters his stealth, Veros roots himself, using all of his energy to grasp and siphon the rich arcane seeped into the ground. He feels himself connect to the ley lines, feels every crevice and vein of the arcane surround him, even to the base of the sword in the earth. He became an extension of those lines, and as he did, the overwhelming power coalesced in the earth rushes into Veros’ body, his runes glowing vividly as arcane overtakes him. The runes on his abdomen, however, had been severed with the human’s sword, and could not hold onto the magic as it needed to. The magic instead poured out, searing and tearing further through Veros’ wound. He screams, feeling the arcane crystallize in his wound, but he did not relent. Powered by pure magic and rage, the nightborne forces himself to stand, lightning lurching from his body and forming a storm around him, the ley lines continuing to pour energy into him. The human does not get the chance to remain stealthed, and he turns to see the nightborne thrust his hands forward, unleashing the power from the ley lines outwards.

Lightning explodes from his fingertips, blues and violets of incredible brightness filling the view of both men, releasing a shockwave of power forward that travels across, cracking the ground beneath their feet and igniting the arcane smoke left behind into brilliant flames. The human is caught on the onslaught, his armor destroyed by the magnificent display, his body tossed like a ragdoll several yards away. The explosion continues to crackle and echo throughout Silithus, a snowy, sparkly substance beginning to lightly rain down to the floor in the area. No doubt such a powerful spell would attract attention, but Veros hardly had the mind to think of those consequences.

Running on the power of arcane within him as well as adrenaline, Veros darts forth to the human, roughly snatching his stolen belongings off the man’s belt. The weakened human tries to fend him off, and as the man pulls a knife, Veros snags a broken shard of Azerite beside them, hefting the rock and crushing the human’s skull with it, feeling blood spatter onto his face with the blow. With that, the human fell still, lifeless and limp. Veros came down from the energy, slowly, realizing just what he had done. His blood as well as the human’s stained his hands all the way to his arms, and Veros fell back, landing roughly and with a squeak. His clothes had turned to a deep shade of crimson, soaked heavily with his own blood. As his power depletes, so does his energy, and he desperately holds onto consciousness. The world around him fades in and out of darkness, his limbs heavy and breath slowing. Oddly enough, he is comfortable lying on the destroyed terrain, despite the blood, despite the death and despite the fire. So easy it would be to shut his eyes and sleep here.

The Azerite continues to hum in his bag. Veros’ bleary eyes fixate on the chunk he used to slaughter the human, feeling his wound worsen as it fully dawns on him. He killed a man for a rock. He, who was not cut out for fighting, not meant for killing, had taken a life for this mineral. To die here would not make it worth it. The death would be for nothing but murder, and the stolen Azerite would go to waste. He has to get up, he has to take this home and make the risk and the life he recklessly ended worth it.

He wheezes, taking the chunk of Azerite used for murder and shoving it into his satchel. Ironic that he wanted to prevent such a mineral from being used to claim lives, only for he to literally use the rock as a tool for death. He could barely hold his arms up enough, but he forces himself, raising his satchel and watching it glow softly until finally, he casted his teleportation spell, sending the bag into its safehouse destination. The power is not enough to teleport himself, he realizes. There was a touch of sorrow, and he wondered idly: is it selfish to mourn your own death?

The question goes unanswered. He reaches for his hearthstone weakly, his vision finally giving out, the last of his strength spent on grasping the stone. He lay on the ground, bathed in a pool of his own blood, and after a long moment of stillness, he dematerializes, safe at last within the confines of Suramar.

Fifi would not be happy to find her friend porting into her room on death’s edge.

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Willows

Algernon Blackwood (1907)

I

After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.

In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.

Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.

Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.

Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and the muddy waters—sure sign of flood—sent us aground on many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond—the land of the willows.

The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder and magic—a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.

Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.

"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.

"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a nap.

I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements—water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun—thinking of the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.

We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its aliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.

How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steam rose.

It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of shallows.

And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs, and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro in order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson, and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.

This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while below there moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very leisurely too, lest they be discovered.

Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the river's vagaries after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they managed it.

But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was intended to be followed.

"If you take a side channel," said the Hungarian officer we met in the Pressburg shop while buying provisions, "you may find yourselves, when the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will increase."

The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the officer's prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a westerly gale.

It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.

I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill, white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.

The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.

Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.

A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with the power of the driving wind—this shouting hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to do with it too—a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.

But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.

Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.

With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to remain—where we ran grave risks perhaps!

The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if I had.

There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.

"A poor camp," observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent stood upright, "no stones and precious little firewood. I'm for moving on early tomorrow—eh? This sand won't hold anything."

But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then set about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow bushes drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great portions with a splash and a gurgle.

"The island's much smaller than when we landed," said the accurate Swede. "It won't last long at this rate. We'd better drag the canoe close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment's notice. I shall sleep in my clothes."

He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his rather jolly laugh as he spoke.

"By Jove!" I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the willows, and I could not find him.

"What in the world's this?" I heard him cry again, and this time his voice had become serious.

I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river, pointing at something in the water.

"Good heavens, it's a man's body!" he cried excitedly. "Look!"

A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.

"An otter, by gad!" we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.

It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining in the sunlight.

Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood and stared.

Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he was about. It seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something curious about the whole appearance—man, boat, signs, voice—that made an impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.

"He's crossing himself!" I cried. "Look, he's making the sign of the Cross!"

"I believe you're right," the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.

"But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?" I said, half to myself. "Where is he going at such a time, and what did he mean by his signs and shouting? D'you think he wished to warn us about something?"

"He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably," laughed my companion. "These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world! I suppose they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life," he added, after a slight pause, "and it scared him, that's all."

The Swede's tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he talked, though without being able to label it precisely.

"If they had enough imagination," I laughed loudly—I remember trying to make as much noise as I could—"they might well people a place like this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and elemental deities."

The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength when untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then that the Swede was—what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more than they said.

"The river's still rising, though," he added, as if following out some thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. "This island will be under water in two days if it goes on."

"I wish the wind would go down," I said. "I don't care a fig for the river."

The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten minutes' notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.

Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes, like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through space.

But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of shouting willows with a light like the day.

We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was enough to smoke and see each other's faces by, and the sparks flew about overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling away of further portions of the bank.

Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual moment more than was necessary—almost as though we had agreed tacitly to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter nor the boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention, though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a place.

The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not quite safe, to be overheard.

The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.

"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding shadows.

For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him, and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me I wished to face and probe to the bottom.

When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere "scenery" could have produced such an effect. There was something more here, something to alarm.

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the willows especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing—but what it was they made so much to-do about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible.

There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all ready for an attack.

The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their "note" either of welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause—after supper usually—it comes and announces itself. And the note of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night's lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and inquisitive stay—No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not wanted. The willows were against us.

Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence, found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if, after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps, booming overhead in the night—and then settle down! As I looked it was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more closely together.

The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede's remark about moving on next day, and I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the elements had covered his approach.

II

"You've been gone so long," he shouted above the wind, "I thought something must have happened to you."

But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well, that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.

"River still rising," he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight, "and the wind's simply awful."

He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that gave the real importance to his words.

"Lucky," I cried back, "our tent's in the hollow. I think it'll hold all right." I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me through the branches, nodding his head.

"Lucky if we get away without disaster!" he shouted, or words to that effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon me.

We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my friend's reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this "diabolical wind."

Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.

We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against our taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.

Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o'clock—the threshold of a new day—and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my immediate neighborhood.

I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass, however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion. A curious excitement was on me.

I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things.

My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate—the sudden realization, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself that I was not dreaming.

They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes—immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost—rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.

I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I thought they must every moment disappear and resolve themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these figures were real and living, though perhaps not according to the standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.

Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the world's history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship—absolutely worship.

Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but my reason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued—none the less real for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these pictures upon the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the case, of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from the little standard of the known?

I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they were gone!

And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look round—a look of horror that came near to panic—calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind.

As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the watch.

But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting bolt upright—listening.

Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.

Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the Swede to follow.

But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.

A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have passed since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.

Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly unaccounted for.

My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles—two of them, I'm certain; the provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.

I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I reflected—the wind bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas—the wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.

Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead. Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did….

It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself, for the winds often move like great presences under the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.

But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.

For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. They had moved nearer.

Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.

Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd, that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.

The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up over the horizon, for it was after four o'clock, and I must have stood on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent, first taking another exhaustive look round and—yes, I confess it—making a few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.

I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances, still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the excited imagination.

Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once, utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had made it difficult to breathe.

The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.

"River still rising," he said, "and several islands out in mid-stream have disappeared altogether. Our own island's much smaller."

"Any wood left?" I asked sleepily.

"The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat," he laughed, "but there's enough to last us till then."

I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one little jot.

Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede's words flashed across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had changed his mind. "Enough to last till tomorrow"—he assumed we should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different—a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite certain of one thing—that he had become frightened?

He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.

"We'd better get off sharp in an hour," I said presently, feeling for an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let us."

"Who'll let us? The elements?" I asked quickly, with affected indifference.

"The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping his eyes on the map. "The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world."

"The elements are always the true immortals," I replied, laughing as naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the smoke:

"We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster."

This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was all pretence.

"Further disaster! Why, what's happened?"

"For one thing—the steering paddle's gone," he said quietly.

"The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. "But what—"

"And there's a tear in the bottom of the canoe," he added, with a genuine little tremor in his voice.

I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles, or rather, the paddle, on the sand beside her.

"There's only one," he said, stooping to pick it up. "And here's the rent in the base-board."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very rapidly.

"There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice," I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims rather," he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.

I began to whistle—a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly nonplussed—and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined to consider them foolish.

"It wasn't there last night," he said presently, straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere but at me.

"We must have scratched her in landing, of course," I stopped whistling to say. "The stones are very sharp."

I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was. There were no stones, to begin with.

"And then there's this to explain too," he added quietly, handing me the paddle and pointing to the blade.

A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.

"One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing," I said feebly, "or—or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown against it by the wind, perhaps."

"Ah," said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, "you can explain everything."

"The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he showed me.

"I see," he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before disappearing among the willow bushes.

Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my first thoughts took the form of "One of us must have done this thing, and it certainly was not I." But my second thought decided how impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.

Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his mind—that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable events—waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind intuitively—I hardly knew how.

I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was conceivable that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my "reason." An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary—however absurd—to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.

I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention casually to the hollows in the sand.

"Yes," he said, "I know. They're all over the island. But you can explain them, no doubt!"

"Wind, of course," I answered without hesitation. "Have you never watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl everything into a circle? This sand's loose enough to yield, that's all."

He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed that, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.

III

At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.

"Queer thing," he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted to say something and get it over. "Queer thing. I mean, about that otter last night."

I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise, and I looked up sharply.

"Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things—"

"I don't mean that, of course," he interrupted. "I mean—do you think—did you think it really was an otter?"

"What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?"

"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed—so much bigger than an otter."

"The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something," I replied.

He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other thoughts.

"It had such extraordinary yellow eyes," he went on half to himself.

"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose you'll wonder next if that fellow in the boat—"

I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.

"I did rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water."

I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.

"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat, and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going down-stream as fast as they could lick. And that otter was an otter, so don't let's play the fool about it!"

He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.

"And, for Heaven's sake," I went on, "don't keep pretending you hear things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's nothing to hear but the river and this cursed old thundering wind."

"You fool!" he answered in a low, shocked voice, "you utter fool. That's just the way all victims talk. As if you didn't understand just as well as I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of resignation. "The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at self-deception only makes the truth harder when you're forced to meet it."

My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not he. Up to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. He knew from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his words about the necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I dropped all pretence thenceforward, but thenceforward likewise my fear increased steadily to the climax.

"But you're quite right about one thing," he added, before the subject passed, "and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to think about it, because what one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens."

That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes, and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps and splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four o'clock, and then for the first time for three days the wind showed signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the south-west, spreading thence slowly over the sky.

This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the silence that came about five o'clock with its sudden cessation was in a manner quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in its own way then; it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes, rising, falling always beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the river's song lay between three notes at most—dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.

It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright sunlight took everything out of the landscape that made for cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed to convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself more than once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would get up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly interfere with her lighting of the little island.

With this general hush of the wind—though it still indulged in occasional brief gusts—the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present themselves.

I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet, in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach of darkness.

The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the day, and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five o'clock onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for dinner, it being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavor, and a general thick residue from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice—an admitted privilege of the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not fully a third smaller than when we first landed.

The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me from the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.

"Come and listen," he said, "and see what you make of it." He held his hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.

"Now do you hear anything?" he asked, watching me curiously.

We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only the deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound began to reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound—something like the humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky, repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.

"I've heard it all day," said my companion. "While you slept this afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could never get near enough to see—to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could have sworn it was not outside at all, but within myself—you know—the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come."

I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I could think of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too, coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me wish I had never heard it.

"The wind blowing in those sand-funnels," I said determined to find an explanation, "or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps."

"It comes off the whole swamp," my friend answered. "It comes from everywhere at once." He ignored my explanations. "It comes from the willow bushes somehow—"

"But now the wind has dropped," I objected. "The willows can hardly make a noise by themselves, can they?"

His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly, because I knew intuitively it was true.

"It is because the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned before. It is the cry, I believe, of the—"

I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew was in danger, but determined at the same time to escape further conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another night to be faced before we escaped from this distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.

"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both, and the thought made me laugh.

He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling in its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the ground-sheet at his feet.

"Hurry up!" I cried; "it's boiling."

The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.

"There's nothing here!" he shouted, holding his sides.

"Bread, I mean."

"It's gone. There is no bread. They've taken it!"

I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained lay upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.

The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressure caused it—this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.

"How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be consistent and find an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have left it lying on the counter or—"

"The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning," the Swede interrupted.

Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.

"There's enough for tomorrow," I said, stirring vigorously, "and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles from here."

"I hope so—to God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack, "unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.

Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence, avoiding one another's eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became more and more acute. It was not then active fear, I think, but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more that if I had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More often it hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world of swamps and willows.

We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to us that some kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer without the support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he flung into the emptiness.

Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me, coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself; corroboration, too—which made it so much more convincing—from a totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were mere bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.

"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder, disintegration, destruction, our destruction," he said once, while the fire blazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."

And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though talking to himself:

"I don't think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sound doesn't come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how a fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard."

I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the fire and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the sky, and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too, everything was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their own way.

"It has that about it," he went on, "which is utterly out of common experience. It is unknown. Only one thing describes it really; it is a non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity."

Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time, but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to have the thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.

The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my soul, as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the tourists would have been welcome.

Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed of. We had "strayed," as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over the border and deprived of what we called "our lives," yet by mental, not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the victims of our adventure—a sacrifice.

It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.

At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region," of another scheme of life, another revolution not parallel to the human. And in the end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we should be drawn across the frontier into their world.

Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now in the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural character, and revealed in something of its other aspect—as it existed across the border to that other region. And this changed aspect I felt was now not merely to me, but to the race. The whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word unearthly.

"It's the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one's courage to zero," the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my thoughts. "Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle, the canoe, the lessening food—"

"Haven't I explained all that once?" I interrupted viciously.

"You have," he answered dryly; "you have indeed."

He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the "plain determination to provide a victim"; but, having now arranged my thoughts better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have never before been so clearly conscious of two persons in me—the one that explained everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.

Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the air overhead.

We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.

At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation, the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must have been far worse in its effect upon both of us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up with a start.

"I can't disguise it any longer," I said; "I don't like this place, and the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There's something here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, and that's the plain truth. If the other shore was—different, I swear I'd be inclined to swim for it!"

The Swede's face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind. He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one thing.

"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away," he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; "we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us."

I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words. It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease whose symptoms had puzzled me.

"I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they have not found us—not 'located' us, as the Americans say," he went on. "They're blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they feel us, but cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet—it's our minds they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it's all up with us."

"Death, you mean?" I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.

"Worse—by far," he said. "Death, according to one's belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but it involves no change of character. You don't suddenly alter just because the body's gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution—far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot where their region touches ours, where the veil between has worn thin"—horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual words—"so that they are aware of our being in their neighborhood."

"But who are aware?" I asked.

I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded more than I can possibly explain.

He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and look down upon the ground.

"All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with more expressions of the soul—"

"I suggest just now—" I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his torrent that had to come.

"You think," he said, "it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is—neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own."

The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my movements.

"And what do you propose?" I began again.

"A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and give the sleigh another start. But—I see no chance of any other victim now."

I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he continued.

IV

"It's the willows, of course. The willows mask the others, but the others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear, we're lost, lost utterly." He looked at me with an expression so calm, so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. "If we can hold out through the night," he added, "we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or rather, undiscovered."

"But you really think a sacrifice would—"

That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke, but it was my friend's scared face that really stopped my mouth.

"Hush!" he whispered, holding up his hand. "Do not mention them more than you can help. Do not refer to them by name. To name is to reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in order that they may ignore us."

"Even in thought?" He was extraordinarily agitated.

"Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We must keep them out of our minds at all costs if possible."

I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful blackness of that summer night.

"Were you awake all last night?" he went on suddenly.

"I slept badly a little after dawn," I replied evasively, trying to follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, "but the wind, of course—"

"I know. But the wind won't account for all the noises."

"Then you heard it too?"

"The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard," he said, adding, after a moment's hesitation, "and that other sound—"

"You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something tremendous, gigantic?"

He nodded significantly.

"It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?" I said.

"Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been altered—had increased enormously, so that we should have been crushed."

"And that," I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like wind. "What do you make of that?"

"It's their sound," he whispered gravely. "It's the sound of their world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's not above so much as around us. It's in the willows. It's the willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against us."

I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and idea in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I realized what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed unimaginative, stolid!

"Now listen," he said. "The only thing for us to do is to go on as though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our chance of escape. Above all, don't think, for what you think happens!"

"All right," I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and the strangeness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one more thing first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all about us, those sand-funnels?"

"No!" he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. "I dare not, simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I am glad. Don't try to. They have put it into my mind; try your hardest to prevent their putting it into yours."

He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our pipes busily in silence.

Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to look down at my sand-shoe—the sort we used for the canoe—and something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend opposite.

"You damned old pagan!" I cried, laughing aloud in his face. "You imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You—"

I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—and that sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.

He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.

"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go! We can't stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on—down the river."

He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject terror—the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at last.

"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. "Sheer madness! The river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle. Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There's nothing ahead for fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!"

He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.

"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered with the awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.

I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine, kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.

"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about not thinking fear!"

He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow louder as we increased our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!

We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches, when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.

"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.

There, in front of the dim glow, something was moving.

I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze drop-curtain used at the back of a theater—hazily a little. It was neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving all over upon its surface—"coiling upon itself like smoke," he said afterwards.

"I watched it settle downwards through the bushes," he sobbed at me. "Look, by God! It's coming this way! Oh, oh!"—he gave a kind of whistling cry. "They've found us."

I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the shadowy form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on top of me we fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my consciousness was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.

An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way he caught at me in falling.

But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused me to forget them and think of something else at the very instant when they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what saved him.

I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to say, somehow.

"I lost consciousness for a moment or two," I heard him say. "That's what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them."

"You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connected thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.

"That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's gone—for the moment at any rate!"

A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my friend too—great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.

We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our feet in sand.

"It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us. "And look at the size of them!"

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the whole of my foot and leg.

Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion would disturb and wake us.

In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a sudden start.

It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat up, asking me if I "heard this" or "heard that." He tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen over the point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring—the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence.

This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.

A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face. But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to me that the tent was surrounded. That sound of multitudinous soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the night with horror.

I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I realized positively that the Swede was not here. He had gone.

I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It was that same familiar humming—gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with difficulty.

But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.

The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the preventing branches.

Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island's point and saw a dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would have taken the plunge.

I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the most outlandish phrases in his anger about "going inside to Them," and "taking the way of the water and the wind," and God only knows what more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get him into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and cursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.

I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:

"My life, old man—it's my life I owe you. But it's all over now anyhow. They've found a victim in our place!"

Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as though nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours later—hours of ceaseless vigil for me—it became so clear to me that he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemed it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.

He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already high in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparation of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he did not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remark about the extra coldness of the water.

"River's falling at last," he said, "and I'm glad of it."

"The humming has stopped too," I said.

He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.

"Everything has stopped," he said, "because—"

He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.

"Because 'They've found another victim'?" I said, forcing a little laugh.

"Exactly," he answered, "exactly! I feel as positive of it as though—as though—I feel quite safe again, I mean," he finished.

He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches on the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly rose to feet.

"Come," he said; "I think if we look, we shall find it."

He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little back-waters, myself always close on his heels.

"Ah!" he exclaimed presently, "ah!"

The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours before the spot must have been under water.

"See," he said quietly, "the victim that made our escape possible!"

And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island somewhere about the hour of the dawn—at the very time the fit had passed.

"We must give it a decent burial, you know."

"I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that turned me cold.

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck and part of the chest lay bare.

Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily against the corpse.

The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.

At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud sound of humming—the sound of several hummings—which passed with a vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet invisible creatures at work.

My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept away.

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch about a "proper burial"—and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.

I saw what he had seen.

For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island.

"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful mark!"

And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the waves like an otter.