#Kyran can also be very stupid | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

keen2meecha · 5 years ago

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a creature of despair

There was a ghost haunting the streets of New Demington and everyone knew it.

Not a literal ghost. That would be much more convenient - and much less stressful. Ghosts could be caught, exorcised, shot with rock salt and sent back to wherever they belonged.

This ghost, though.

This ghost had yet to be seen, although the trail of bodies they left in their wake was unmistakable. Some with premortem wounds, some without - but all of them with their throats slashed from behind, and a length of purple ribbon left behind to cover the wound. It was a very specific calling card, but investigators had yet to determine the significance. And this had been going on for months.

Even Amadeus Black was pricklier than usual lately, and that was quite the feat. He was prickly on the best of days, but it took a lot to push him further.

And yet, despite the tension in the air and the worry on TV, Falks’ freshmen class remained as bright and oblivious as ever.

“We should go shopping!” Briony El-Hashem declared.

At the opposite end of the table, Kyran Cinege snorted as he speared his broccoli. Sure, he’d known since he stepped foot in this place that his classmates were idiots, but it was nice to have tangible proof. He looked up to catch Vera’s eye. She was an ice-cold bitch, but they had a certain understanding. She was a lot more tolerable than the others, for one thing. And she didn’t try to be his ‘friend’ - in fact, she seemed to migrate to his side most days specifically because he had no interest in friends.

She also didn’t talk, which meant she didn’t ask questions.

“What about you, dude?” Ibrahim asked eagerly, leaning closer to Kyran - and then immediately leaning back away at the sharp glare he got. “You in?”

“Of course I’m not fucking in!” Kyran snapped. “You’ve either got a goddamned death wish or your idiots - or, more likely, both.”

“Don’t be like that,” Dimas said, rolling his eyes.

“I’ll be however I fucking please. Unlike you imbeciles, I’m not taking my chances when there’s a damn Villain roaming the streets.”

“We don’t know they’re a Villain!” Larue protested immediately. “They could just be a serial killer!”

“Oh, right, yeah, that’s so much better - congrats, Strawberry! You’ve changed my mind!”

“It’ll be fun,” Rocco interrupted, and Kyran choked back a swear. “C’mon, please? We’ll make it worth your while!”

There was only one person who could possibly make it worth his while. He had red-hair and stupid pretty eyes and was currently pouting up at Kyran, said pretty eyes pleading with him. Don’t fall for it, don’t fall for it, don’t fucking-

“Fine, whatever.” He grunted, tearing his eyes away from Rocco. “If it makes you assholes leave me alone for once.”

“You know we won’t! Hey, Vera, what about you?”

“No,” She said flatly, not even looking up from her book.

“Aw, come on, not you too! Please?”

Unfortunately, Vera didn’t have the same weakness that Kyran had. She gave Rocco a flat look, then returned to her book once more. Rocco wrinkled his nose at her, then returned to the others to help the planning of the apparent shopping trip.

Kyran scowled and flicked her book as he said, “Oy, Princess, if I’ve gotta suffer through this bullshit so do you.”

She gave him a flat look, then stood up, shouldered her backpack, and started to walk away. Kyran reached out and grabbed her wrist before she could get far.

“Let go of me,” She snapped, yanking her wrist out of his grip as whirled on him. He was out of his seat and standing across from her in a second, shoulders squared and hands raised. He had seen what she could do with her Gift. She wasn’t going to get the drop on him.

“Guys,” Elora protested uneasily from the table.

“Shut up, Pinkie,” Kyran told her, not looking away from Vera. “You too, Glasses.”

Zahir snapped his mouth shut.

“I said. I’m not. Going.” Vera gritted out. Despite the tension in her jaw, her hands were loose by her sides.

“And I said you are,” Kyran countered, not letting his guard down that easily. “Because there’s a killer roaming the streets, and we’re pretty much the only ones who can keep these idiots alive if they really insist on leaving campus.”

There was a full tense minute as she stared him down. He was starting to wonder if she would just forgo the Gift and punch him in the nose-

And then she huffed, nodded, and left without another word.

“Was that a yes?” Ibrahim asked into the shocked silence.

***

“We’re going shopping this weekend,” Kyran announced suddenly.

Across from him, the devil herself blinked and adjusted her glasses.

“We were discussing your childhood?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got daddy issues, blah blah blah,” Kyran waved a dismissive hand. “Been there, done that, old news.”

“Alright.” Tuliana gave an infuriating smile. “Who all is we?”

“The whole class.”

“Including you?”

“Obv-fucking-iously.”

“Don’t make me get the swear jar out again, Kyran.”

“Obviously.”

“Why did you agree to go? I was under the impression that you hated everyone.”

“Dunno.” He flopped back in the cushy armchair and glared out the window.

“These sessions won’t do you any good if you stonewall me.”

He huffed and drew a frowny face on the icy window with his finger, then said, “I… thought I saw her. Yesterday. Up on those mountains or whatever.”

“It’s not… unheard of for people to think they’ve seen loved ones that they’ve lost.”

“So I’m not going crazy?”

“No, we’ve been over this.”

“Even though it’s been, like, a year?”

“There’s no timeline for grief. It happens differently for everyone.” When he didn’t say anything else, she jotted something down on her notebook and said, “Is that why you agreed to go? Because you think you’ll see her again?”

“No, that’d be stupid.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

He scowled and shot her a glare. The worst part was that her serene expression didn’t even waver. In the almost two months he’d been attending Falks, he’d managed to get under every adults’ skin except for two: the headmaster and Tuliana Nagi. The former simply because he hadn’t had enough opportunities, the latter because he was sure there were more annoying things in Hell than him.

So far, at least.

“Maybe…” He returned to the window. “Maybe because it’s what she would have done.”

“Gone shopping?”

“Protected them.”

There was a long beat of silence, then she sighed and rubbed at her eye. She did that sometimes. Their sessions were always at the end of the day, and he was pretty sure she had chronic dry-eye. Her eye drops were in her drawer, but she never used them while they were meeting. Probably because it was impolite or some shit.

“Kyran, it’s not your job to save everyone.”

“It will be soon.”

“Yes, after you’ve been trained.” She dropped her hand and leaned forward. He shifted uncomfortably, but couldn’t seem to break eye contact. “Kyran, you couldn’t have saved her.”

“If I hadn’t left her with him-”

“You didn’t leave him.” They had been through this so many times that she felt comfortable interrupting him, which was infuriating. “You got separated while the museum was collapsing.”

“What difference does it make?”

“You know that it makes all the difference.”

He snarled at her, but had nothing to say to that. She was - probably, unfortunately - right. But if he had just had the instinct to dive back, not forward, if they had lingered just a second longer, or sped up just a little-

“That kind of thinking won’t bring her back, Kyran.”

That was the whole problem, wasn’t it?

Nothing was going to bring back the one friend he’d ever had.

***

The mall was way too big, and way too loud. The moment they stepped inside, he regretted agreeing to come along.

It didn’t help that Vera was practically radiating smugness at his discomfort, even as she too winced at the light and the noise and the smell. The rest of their classmates barely seemed to notice the terrible everything of the hellhole posing as a mall. They laughed and shouted and went through store after store after store. Why did a mall even need five separate shoe stores? Wasn’t one enough?

“Capitalism,” Jerilyn whispered gravely to him when he voiced his complaint.

“Fuck that,” He replied, turning away.

“Dude, where are you going?” Ibrahim shouted.

“Anywhere that isn’t here!”

He made it all the way to the boba stand before he realized that he was being followed.

“Fuck off, Princess.”

“You dragged me on this trip,” She replied evenly. “Actions have consequences.”

It was the closest to sarcasm he’d ever heard her get, so he begrudgingly didn’t protest further. The ghost everyone was afraid of preferred secluded areas, after all. They wouldn’t strike in the middle of a brightly lit, crowded as hell building.

“Hi!” The Chinese girl behind the counter chirped at their approach. “What can I get you?”

“What’s good?” Kyran asked, scanning the menu and trying hard not to scowl. His classmates deserved his ire - retail workers didn’t.

“Depends on what you like - the lavender is pretty interesting.”

“Sure, that.”

“Great! And you, ma’am?”

“Er, same thing.”

The girl didn’t notice the hesitance as she put their orders into the computer, but Kyran glanced back as he passed her the money. He’d had his suspicions, of course, but every time she opened her mouth he grew more certain that the weirdo had never had a real childhood.

Maybe they could start a club.

“Here’s your change!” The girl said, dragging him out of his thoughts.

He turned and accepted the coins - and found his gaze drawn to her pin-laden denim jacket. More specifically, the white pin with the thick purple line in the middle.

“Nice pin,” He said, jutting his chin out towards it.

“Huh?” She glanced down, then beamed up at him with excitement. “Thanks!”

“I’ve got a friend who had something similar,” He added, his throat tightening as the words clawed their way out.

“Oh, nice. I can give you the website that I got it from, if you want to buy them a present!”

“Uh, no, thanks. She hasn’t got much use for gifts anymore.”

The girl snorted, and then the man who was also working at the booth called, “Jing, come help me!” and she hurried away.

Kyran heaved a sigh, then turned to see Vera staring at him.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“Nothing.” Unruffled as ever - she was almost as obnoxious as Tuliana. “I thought you didn’t have friends.”

“I don’t,” He snapped, already regretting the moment of weakness. At least Vera wasn’t the gossiping type. “Not anymore. What do you care?”

“I don’t.”

She said that, but she also kept stealing glances at him for the rest of their little shopping trip. By the time they left, just before the mall closed as the sun was setting below the horizon, he was ready to commit arson just for some kind of release.

The city buildings cast long shadows in the fading sunlight, and his classmates at least had the common sense to lower their voices as they walked. They were still in a populated part of the city, but they were fast-approaching that time where it was too late for the day crowd to still be heading home, but too early for the night crowd to start leaving home.

“Oh, hey, come on!” Briony said suddenly, her voice leaping half an octave in her excitement. “It’s a shortcut - it’ll get us to the nearest stop just in time for the next bus!”

“Wait, I’m not sure-” Zahir tried to protest, but she was already taking off down the darkened alleyway.

Kyran swore and took off after her, and the others followed close behind.

Luckily she hadn’t gotten far - barely halfway down the alleyway before she stopped, apparently waiting for them to catch up.

“Do you want to fucking die?” He snapped, grabbing her shoulder and yanking her around to face him. “We need to stick together, or-”

“Well, well, well. Who is it that’s flown into my web this time?”

Or that.

Kyran shoved Briony behind him and pivoted, searching for the source of the crooning voice. It didn’t sound like it belonged to anyone much older or bigger than them, but it had just enough of an edge to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“Oh, could it be?” The voice continued, dancing with delight. “A little herd of Falkers, out and about in the city? All alone, and so late at night - I thought you were supposed to be smart!”

“Who says we’re alone?” Kyran snarled, putting a hand out to keep his classmates from doing anything stupid.

There was the sound of sharp metal scraping against stone undercutting a breathy, unsettlingly girlish giggle, and a figure stepped into what little light was left.

They weren’t what Kyran was expecting. Short, shorter than him, wearing jeans and sneakers and a faded purple hoodie that was missing the sleeves, leaving the person’s brown arms bare. They could almost be mistaken for a normal teenager wandering the streets - albeit a fucking jacked one - if not for the machete in their outstretched hand, resting against the wall of the building. That explained the scraping noise, at least.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Zahir called, earning a hissed shut up from Kyran.

“You don’t?” The person asked, almost sounding disappointed. “But don’t you know? That’s all you Falkers are. Little troubles, that grow up to be big strong Heroic troubles.”

“Back the fuck off now,” Kyran snarled when they took a step forward, raising his free hand in preparation. An explosion in such a tight space wasn’t ideal, but if push came to shove it would be worth it. “And no one will get hurt.”

The person paused and tilted their head. He could see the faintest flash of clever dark eyes studying him. There was something about this person, something hauntingly familiar...

“Why don’t we make a deal?” They crooned, pushing their hood back.

They were wearing a paneled black mask over the entirety of the bottom half of their face, but that still left the top half of their face exposed. Golden brown eyes with heavy bags under them, freckles, their dark brown curls shaved in an undercut. A scar through their thick eyebrow. Kyran narrowed his eyes. It was right there, staring him in the face, why couldn’t he figure it out-

“You give me your jacket, and I’ll let you go.”

“My jacket?” He glanced down at the leather jacket he was wrapped up in, worn to comfortable softness and right on the edge of being too small. “No fucking way.”

“Kyran,” Ibrahim whispered urgently.

“I said no,” He snapped, lifting his hand a little higher and curling his finger into the beginnings of a flick. If they made even the slightest of moves, kaboom. “I’m not giving some whacko my jacket.”

“Oh, but it’s not your jacket, now is it?” They said softly, taking another step forward. They were within arm’s reach. He needed to use his Gift, or throw a punch, or run, or something - but he was paralyzed, mesmerized by those far-too-knowing eyes. “You stole it from your friend, didn’t you? That night in the hospital? You chased her out, blamed her for your own damn issues, and then stole the jacket she left behind?”

“How do you know that?” He whispered.

“Oh, I know all about you, Kruze Cinege.”

She - because the only person who would ever call him that was a ‘she’ - smiled and pulled the mask down around her neck. Her nose was broad and freckled, her chin rounded and soft, her lips stretched in a smile he’d seen a hundred times before - but this one was mangled and bitter and empty, a fucked up facsimile of the original.

She’d gotten a haircut, gathered a few more scars, lost the spark that used to make her shine so bright - but she still managed to be unmistakable.

No wonder they called her a ghost.

“Sofia?”

#gifted #uuuhhhh be careful #tw death #tw murder #oh also #this contains a lot of swearing #mentions of violence #and allusions to things in the actual book that i may not have talked about yet #and dont forget that kruze's real name is kyran #or else youre gonna be s u p e r confused #also its pretty long #over 2.5k #whoops #the alternate title of this is #yes i cant believe i wrote this either #tbh ill probably regret this in the morning #but oh well #its well past midnight here #so yolo i guess

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gryphons-of-aentha · 5 years ago

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The Approximate Plotline of the Gryphonverse (pt. 2)

Because this is what you were getting yourselves into when you followed me.

Right, so, Talon and Iadra join up with Kyran to overthrow Kyran’s asshole father, who happens to rule the country. They end up working well together and form a sizeable group of aquei and one or two additional gryphons who Iadra managed to convince. If not for the fact that it was all being headed by a seventeen year old with absolutely no martial experience at all (not to mention a much greater talent for dividing people than uniting them, which was great for starting the rebellion but not finishing it), it might have worked. Unfortunately, it was being headed by a seventeen year old, and he doesn’t believe in stealth or subtlety because he’s melodramatic enough to want an audience when he confronts and in theory usurps his father. While they do manage to make a heavy dent in the king’s guard/soldiers and cause a lot of problems for him, they’re overpowered without much effort in the end. Talon and Iadra manage to escape the aftermath mostly unscathed, though not all the gryphons do, and Kyran is arrested and very promptly exiled on the spot. The king’s hope was likely that the humiliation of such a complete and public defeat would prevent him from ever showing himself in Andolia again, but as it turns out humiliating Kyran has roughly the effect of throwing water on a grease fire, and he was already plotting revenge before he’d even finished storming out of the room.

Meanwhile, Talon and Iadra are trying to figure out where to go from here because this whole fiasco has made the Andolian impression of gryphons even worse (largely because the king is actively pushing the narrative in that direction to throw the blame off himself, since Kyran managed to make himself into a massive PR disaster). Even Talon is finding himself less welcome in a lot of places than he used to be, and distances himself from the places he is welcome to avoid bringing unwanted attention to them, so he mostly hangs out in the no-man’s-land with other gryphons unless his town has some kind of monster-of-the-week situation he needs to deal with. Iadra does have to rescue his ass more than once when he overestimates the goodwill of a few villages, because he’s entirely too optimistic when it comes to judgement of character, but while she's more wary about which aquei she’ll interact with, she enthusiastically jumps on the reputation-grinding sidequest train (gryphons are very fond of three things: proving how badass they are with dangerous heroics, being complimented about it, and receiving shiny things, so this is really the gig they were made for) and even becomes cautiously friendly with Talon’s hometown.

Barring the occasional snag, they do this pretty successfully for a couple years until who should show up again but Kyran, with an even bigger chip on his shoulder and an even more horribly ill-conceived plan to get back at the king.

Among the many powerful eldritch forces and arcane loci that can be encountered in the wilderness around Andolia is what I vaguely dubbed the Powers of Darkness and then never got around to actually naming properly. Anyway, the Powers of Darkness are a sort of multi-consciousness/hivemind/sentient form of malicious energy that feeds on suffering and conflict, generating from and partially comprising what I equally vaguely refer to as the Eleventh Dimension. Just don’t ask too many questions about this one. Obviously, Kyran looked at this extremely powerful malevolent force that has no agenda other than causing more misery that it can feed on and a resume of imprisoning souls via impulsively-made contracts as long as time itself and thought “yeah I can probably use that and deal with the consequences later” because he has learned nothing in the last two years and is still holding a massive grudge about his previous defeat. He proceeds to summon and make a bargain with this thing, certain that if he inflicts enough collateral damage along the way it will satisfy whatever price the Powers of Darkness would otherwise take from him.

He doesn’t tell Talon or Iadra this, he just states that he’s found a source of power that can potentially raze the capital to the ground, to which both are like “okay, no, committing war crimes over your unresolved daddy issues would be bad, actually.” Iadra has been pretty thoroughly done with him since he almost got them killed last time and is wary of burning the bridges they’ve been carefully rebuilding, but Talon, giant stoic golden retriever that he secretly is, still thinks that Kyran has potential if he could just be steered off the wildly destructive path he keeps going down and probably would be, if not a good king, at least a better king than Shale given a few years to mellow out. Two years ago this was probably true, but now he’s strongly underestimating how much Kyran should not be put in charge of anything. This leads to the first major conflict Talon and Iadra have ever had, which eventually ends in Iadra just throwing her hands up and going back to Talon’s town to brood about it and continue what they’ve been doing, assuming Talon will come to his senses after the plan inevitably goes to shit, having known him long enough to be confident that he’ll survive the consequences just fine.

Those would have been safe assumptions if not for the fact that Kyran was much more dangerous and stupid than either of them were prepared for, and even Kyran wasn’t prepared for the fact that the Powers of Darkness also possess the more subtle tendency to slowly get into peoples’ heads and drive them to extremes they’d never reach on their own (not that this absolves him of wanting to destroy a city but he was very much under their influence by that point). Now granted, his desire to work with Talon was sincere; they’d become very close during the first rebellion attempt because Kyran’s lack of a competent father figure matched up well with Talon’s deeply ingrained Mandalorian Instinct™ and there was a good reason why Talon was so willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here. The problem is that Kyran didn’t think to read the fine print while making deals with actively evil eldritch forces and was confronted with the consequences of his actions much earlier in his plan than expected. Suddenly realizing that he’s much less impervious to said consequences than he flippantly assumed, and pretty thoroughly cornered, he does the last thing available to him that doesn’t involve actually dealing with his own shit and paying the price himself, and turns on Talon to sacrifice him instead. Normally a moderately competent but inexperienced teenager against an adult gryphon whose day job is fighting things would be a laughably unfair fight, but the Powers of Darkness have a vested interest in Talon losing, and to the surprise of both of them he falls very quickly to Kyran, who hacks off one of his wings (unfortunately for Talon, the Powers of Darkness don’t feed on death or amicable defeat) and leaves him to bleed out, then flees into the hills, very much traumatized (albeit not as traumatized as Talon) but confident that he’s off the hook and determined to now proceed with his plan.

Luckily for Talon, this all went down not far from a fairly isolated aquei homestead, and he’s found by the couple who lives there, who heard all the crashing and screaming and are both 200% ready to throw down until they arrive on the scene and find nothing but an unconscious gryphon hybrid in a puddle of blood with one of his wings laying several yards away. Given the current state of interspecies relations, they probably would have killed him had they not recognized him as that guy from that one weird town, but fortunately all the sidequests have paid off. They haul him back to the farm and he eventually makes an impressive physical recovery, though due to the circumstances of losing the wing he’s kind of stuck between forms and can no longer shift to fully humanoid or fully gryphonic, which is an unusual state to get stuck in but still very livable in his case (he mostly just looks a lot more like a winged aquei than an regular half-gryphon). Still, losing an entire limb and all ability to fly is a lot, and he’s down for the count both physically and psychologically for a good chunk of time.

Iadra, when she doesn’t hear from him or Kyran for a while, starts to wonder if maybe something went wrong. Eventually word reaches her that Talon is dead (which even Kyran believes to be true, since the only two people who know otherwise are keeping their mouths shut) and she immediately decides to hunt down Kyran herself and absolutely murder the shit out of him. He’s not easy to track down, as he’s currently laying low and gathering power for what he’s determined will be the final assault on the capital and his father, and she has to increasingly rely on her human form the deeper into Andolia she goes, but Iadra is extremely determined and Kyran is pretty bad at being subtle, and she eventually tracks him straight into the capital. The ensuing fight between an accidental evil warlock who’s also the king’s bastard son and a horse-sized flying apex predator with fairly recognizable plumage almost immediately causes a scene and also a lot of property damage, and the king’s guard arrives quickly to apprehend both of them (or they will, just as soon as everyone stops flailing claws and dangerous forces around). Kyran, who this time lacks both the biased support of the Powers of Darkness and the element of surprise, fares much worse against Iadra than he did against Talon. So, in a last-ditch move of desperation, he calls on much more power than he’s already paid for to try and portal himself out of there.

Which is how he, and by extension Iadra, find out that Aentha has an inherent interdimensional connection to the planet Earth, and specific humans who live on it. And unfortunately, this is getting too fucking long again so I guess there’s going to be a part three.

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