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dutifullynuttywitch · 9 months ago

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What if Gaius had his moment of payback?

Bloodbound

Gaius Augustine, Rheya Apostolous

688 words

Rating: T (cw: death)

To: @gaiuskamilah

Happy birthday Jam! I’m so glad I met you through this crazy little fandom! Hope you are having a wonderful b-day!!! I’m incapable of drawing or editing, so I thought I’d gift you a little drabble of our favorite former big bad… what if MC lets him have his moment of retribution?

Gaius steps onto the brightly lit stage, his eyes fixed on the figure before him.

He chuckles bitterly to himself. After centuries of mind control, what was one more moment of pretending?

He roughly throws Kamilah, Andrian and Lily at her feet.

“My goddess, I have found your wayward children, as you wished.”

“Well done, my knight. Keep them to the side while I complete my ritual.”

The first vampire hardly spares him a glance, too engrossed in draining the life energy from the mesmerized, adoring crowd.

Gaius takes advantage of her distraction, inching ever closer to her.

Rheya.

His maker.

The one who had controlled his mind for most of his immortal life.

Soon to be nothing but flecks of dust under his boots.

He surreptitiously reaches for the dagger, but she catches the movement. Suddenly, every muscle in his body freezes. He can’t move a finger.

Rheya’s lips curl into a cruel smile.

“Gaius, my dear,” she purrs, her voice dripping with condescension, “you look troubled, standing like a statue with your new friends. Tell me, were you so terribly unhappy by my side?”

Gaius’s jaw clenches, his anger simmering just beneath the surface.

“You took everything from me, Rheya. My freedom, my will, my very soul. I will never forgive you for that.”

Rheya’s laughter echoes beyond the lit stage, cold and mocking.

“Forgive me? Oh, Gaius, you were always so naive. You were nothing before I found you. I gave you power, immortality. You should be grateful. On your hands and knees, revering me with everlasting gratitude.”

“Grateful?” Gaius snaps, his eyes blazing with fury, “You turned me into a monster, a puppet for your twisted games. But no more. Tonight, it all ends.”

“You cannot defy me. I am your maker.”

“You may have created me, but you do not own me. Not anymore.”

“What a tender little speech. You were always one for grandstanding, my sweet Gaius.”

Rheya approaches her former soldier and wayward child. She trails a perfectly manicured finger along his cheek, a mocking glint in her eyes.

Suddenly, Rheya stalls. Her eyes grow wide as she struggles to move.

“Not so fun being frozen in place, is it Rheya?”

Magdalene steps out from the shadows, brow creased in concentration. Droplets of sweat fall from the extreme effort required to immobilize a literal goddess.

“Any time now, Gaius.”

She grinds out, not taking her eyes from the now furious Rheya.

He realizes Magdalene was able to undo Rheya’s mind control.

Gaius smirks at the young vampire, admiring her fearlessness, her strength.

He catches movement. Adrian, Kamilah and Lily prepare to attack, should he fail in his task.

That would not happen.

With a swift motion, he draws a black dagger from his coat. It glints under the spotlight, black blood dripping from its sharp point. Its energy spreads rapidly throughout the theater, significantly weakening all the immortals present.

For the first time, Rheya is fearful.

“That… that cannot be…”

“The blood of your beloved. Sweet retribution, do you not think?”

In a blur of movement, Gaius lunges at Rheya, the dagger plunging into her heart.

The goddess gasps, her eyes filled with shock and pain.

“Gaius… you…”

“It’s over, Rheya,” Gaius whispers, his voice filled with a mix of sorrow and relief. “You will never control me again.”

He stands there, gazing as the lifeless body of his maker turns to dust.

Centuries of mind control, violating the very essence of who he was, avenged at last.

A slow smile spreads across his sharp features.

Whether he lived or died now, it didn’t matter.

It was over.

#bloodbound #gaius augustine #rheya apostolous #playchoices #choices fanfics #blood bound #choices stories you play

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deadcellmate · 1 year ago

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Reunification

Or, the brief life of Iola Apostolous Summary: A young woman considers the visions of the Goddess of Blood she's been plagued with. Wordcount: 1,983 Rating: Mature Content notes: Canon-typical violence Read it on AO3

They must have taken her because she was in danger.

There were moments of her mother that Iola remembered. The warmth of an embrace. The smell of crushed sage and ceremonial incense, mixed in with something metallic and raw. Learning how to swim in the ocean. Laying outside, her head resting against her mother’s chest, looking up at the stars. Fingers brushing through her hair. A scolding because she’d run outside to play on her own.

She remembered her father too. A man who could make her laugh, often joining in a lower, booming timbre. A man who would pick her up and swing her in circles until he got tired. A man who would sneak her dates, all don’t tell your mother. A man who would carry her whenever she was tired. A man who loved her unconditionally.

And then, a fire. Screaming agony from burning bodies, the smell of smoky flesh, the pounding boots against the ground, getting carried onto a boat. When she was out on the water, begging the people who claimed they were taking her to safety to bring her back to her mother, she heard a piercing scream, haunted and broken.

There were other bits and pieces, things that didn’t always make sense. She remembered a large stone room with a throne, stained with something rust colored. She remembered a spacious courtyard, grand parties full of laughter. The Sons of Ares had rescued her after The Goddess of Blood murdered her mother and father, and the memories of who they were, where they fit into Mydiea began to fade.

Iola always knew there was something different about her. People were wary around her. But she wasn’t sure what made her different until the dreams started.

She was fifteen years old, ten years after her rescue. There were dreams of a striking, willowy woman with dark hair, tawny skin, and full lips, eyes glowing iridescent red. Sometimes, she swam in the ocean, traversing down to the bottom, just as Iola liked to do. She’d sit at the bottom of the sea and scream, the sound muffled by the water. Other times, it was snippets of conversation, between a tall, muscular man with long, dark umber hair and an infectious smile and an increasingly sullen, lanky man with dark curls and dark hair. A soldier and a prince. The woman’s soldier and prince.

They felt familiar somehow. She could swear she’d seen their faces before—the soldier carrying her on his back when she was three years old, the prince trying to mask his obvious discomfort with her.

It was impossible. She was trying to fill in the blanks of her past, trying to understand who she was before she was brought to a village on the Greek coast, adopted by a fisherman and his wife, taught to pray for the downfall of The Goddess of Blood.

But then the dreams began to change. There were visions of violence, of the woman tearing out soldiers’ hearts—Sons of Ares soldiers. Visions of an underground cavern full of women in white. She’d bite into their necks, draining their blood until they died.

The Goddess of Blood. Iola wanted to tell somebody about her visions, but she knew she couldn’t. She didn’t know what it meant. Did the Goddess of Blood have a psychic connection with her? Could she control her? Worst of all, what would happen if Iola told anyone about the things she saw? They’d see her as a liability, tie rocks to her feet and drown her in the ocean. Her lungs would give out eventually. She’d rot at the bottom of the ocean until the end of time, if the creatures that lurked beneath didn’t get to her first.

The most terrifying dream of all wasn’t of carnage and bloodshed. It came to her a year after they started; a dream that began pleasantly. She was playing in the ocean, a child again. Not even a child. A baby. Her father, dark haired and smiling, lifted her up, arms outstretched.

She understood this was a memory. Not hers. She’d seen things through the eyes of the prince or the soldier or the Goddess of Blood in her dreams, things she understood to be memories. This felt like that, like she was simultaneously looking down and viewing the scene, detached from above, and like she was seeing this through her father’s eyes.

And then, she was reaching for somebody, a figure out in the distance, swimming towards them. As the figure got closer, she recognized her: the Goddess of Blood. She was smiling, at ease and happy.

She reached for Iola, scooping her in her arms.

“Did she cry at all?” The Goddess of Blood asked.

“No. She was perfectly happy here.” Her father said. “She’s just like you. She loves the ocean.”

And as The Goddess of Blood took her in her arms, cradling her close to her neck, Iola smelled that familiar scent: crushed sage and incense, something slightly metallic. Blood, she realized.

Her mother was The Goddess of Blood.

They must have taken her because she was in danger, Iola eventually concluded. The Goddess of Blood must have killed her father. She must have killed the other villagers too, feasted on their blood. The Sons of Ares had been lying in wait, and they intervened. The story added up. She’d tried poking holes in it, wondering if she’d been kidnapped or rescued.

The Goddess of Blood may have birthed her, but she wasn’t her mother. Something had to have happened to her, something that twisted her and made her into the monster the Sons of Ares and everybody within a two hundred mile radius of Mydiea fear her, not even dare to utter her given name. Iola was pretty sure was one of the only civilians who knew her true name, who had heard it hundreds of times: Rheya.

There were dreams and memories that altered this perspective; moments of peace, of the sort of domesticity Iola hoped she would have whenever she had children, but they were always starkly juxtaposed against visions of abject horror: a human sacrifice where The Goddess of Blood would rip out a heart, she would bathe in blood, she would terrorize innocent civilians and children. She would urge her soldier to do her bidding, telling him that he would have nothing and nobody if anything happened to her.

Eventually, Iola learned to live with these dreams, viewing them as nightmares. She tried to live a normal life, silently vowing to herself that she would never tell anybody about her connection to The Goddess of Blood, not even Ajax, the soldier she’d found herself falling in love with.

He was the son of a merchant, descended from East Africans who’d ended up in Greece several generations back. She didn’t hesitate to say yes when he asked her to marry him. They were lucky; Iola would be well looked-after with Ajax, and she loved him. She could see herself spending the rest of her life with him. Her parents didn’t have to worry about arranging a marriage.

They had Miranda nine months after their wedding. Iola thought she knew what love was when she met Ajax; she was wrong. She loved Miranda beyond reason.

She feared for her too. She hoped Miranda wouldn’t inherent the same propensity for nightmares that Iola had. She was going to have to tell Miranda the truth at some point, explain what she was to her, where she came from. But until then, she’d enjoy the fact that during the day, when she wasn’t asleep, all was well.

Until it wasn’t.

The Sons of Ares had anticipated this attack, had known that eventually, The Goddess of Blood was going to find them. It was why they’d opted to set up their base of operations in a remote fishing village, far away from Mydiea. The key to their success was the way they were able to keep a low profile.

They’d had a plan in place in case they had ever happened: every few months, they’d bring the civilians out of their homes, line them up in the village square, and remind them what they needed to do: run. First and foremost, run. Head to the docks. Get on the boats. Get as far away as possible.

And then, they’d run through it, make everybody go through the motions of what they needed to do if she ever came.

But there were things they failed to take into account: first, her soldier and her prince were quick on their feet and bloodthirsty. Second, there was a difference between running because you were told to and running because you would get your spinal chord ripped out of your body and your heart devoured if you didn’t.

It was chaos. The village streets were strewn with corpses and red with blood when Iola and Ajax came out of their home. Iola told Miranda to close her eyes and keep her head down. She had her face buried in Ajax’s neck. She was only five years old, only a little bit older than Iola when the Sons of Ares had taken her. She didn’t need to see these things.

“No matter what happens, you keep running.” Iola said to Ajax.

“But—”

“Promise me. Miranda is your priority. Not me.”

“I…I promise.”

They began to run, heading towards the fishing docks. They wouldn’t try to get onto the larger boat that had been built for this very situation. They’d take Ajax’s fishing boat. Ajax could navigate the waters, take them to safety. They weren’t going to leave Miranda’s fate in somebody else’s hands.

They made it to the docks. Ajax jumped into the boat, Miranda still in his arms.

Just as Iola was about to get into the boat, she felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back.

“Go!” Iola yelled.

“But—”

“Now!”

She smelled crushed sage and incense, masked under layer upon layer of blood. She knew who grabbed her before they spun her around.

There she was, face to face with The Goddess of Blood. Her face was twisted into a mask of cruelty, her white, flowing dress stained with blood, clumps of flesh and gore clinging to her hair.

Iola froze. She wanted to ask her why she was doing this. She wanted to ask her what happened to her, why she’d killed her uncle and all of those villagers. She wanted to beg her to stop. But her voice was stuck in her throat. She didn’t want to be afraid. She shouldn’t have been afraid of her own mother.

The Goddess of Blood seemed frozen too. She reached out, stroking her thumb along Iola’s jawline, her eyes boring deep into her.

“Pathetic human.” She murmured.

Iola found her voice. “Wait—”

Things would have played out differently if her mother had found Iola earlier in the night. She would have fed on her, and she would have recognized her own blood, realized how it tasted just like her brother’s. She would have stopped then. She would have ordered her soldier and her prince to retreat. She would have held Iola in her arms. She would have spent eternity atoning for what she’d spent the last twenty years doing.

But it was late in the evening. Her mother had gorged herself on innocent blood, and she’d had enough. She was just killing now, trying to make the humans that occupied this small village feel the pain that she’d had to live with.

It was over before it even began. Her mother swiftly broke her neck, nearly tearing Iola’s head clean off. Iola barely knew what was happening before it was over. She didn’t hear Miranda scream, the sound traveling across the water because at that point, Ajax was a hundred feet from the dock.

It was a quick death. A mother’s final act of unintentional kindness.

#bloodbound #playchoices #choices stories you play #pb bloodbound #rheya apostolous

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