#Spirit Possession

[goldenraeofsun]

Baskerville

Dick vaults the last flight of stairs to the Batcave and sprints down the platform to the infirmary area. “Damian!” 

“Master Dick,” Alfred tsks as Dick skids to a halt outside the curtained area. “Please keep your voice down. Master Damian is resting.”

“I just heard,” Dick pants as he peers around Alfred to see through a gap in the curtains. “Did he say who did it?”

“Not exactly –” Alfred starts before Steph’s voice interrupts, her voice curt, “Jason.”

Dick steps around Alfred, ignoring his put-upon sigh, and slips by Damian’s bedside to stand next to Steph, barefaced, her eyes cold, as she stands next to the small figure hooked up to far too many tubes and covered in far too many bandages.

“Oh, Dames,” Dick murmurs as he reaches over to hold two of Damian’s fingers, the only visible part of him not covered in gauze. He bites his lip as he catalogs the TBI, broken left ulna, five bullet wounds his other limbs, probably fractured if not broken ribs, and split lip.

He turns to Steph. “You were patrolling together?”

Steph nods once, the movement too sharp. Her flinty gaze doesn’t waver from Damian’s face. “The Narrows. Apparently we got too close to Jason’s turf for his liking.”

Dick frowns. The edge of the gauze covering Damain’s hand chafes against his thumb, and he has to consciously stop himself from worrying it. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

“This is exactly like him,” Steph snarls under her breath. “Tim told me about Jason’s attack at the Tower after he came back. A concussion, fractured jaw, broken clavicle, a fucking bootprint of a bruise on his back from where Jason kicked him into a stone statue. Lacerations all over from being thrown around like a ragdoll by a guy with half a foot and eighty pounds on him.”

Dick’s shoulders tense, involuntarily bristling at Steph’s actuation. “He has changed.”

“Clearly, he hasn’t.”

Dick shakes his head. “That was years ago. Talia messed with his head, convinced him that Tim took his place.”

“So Tim got that epic beatdown because Jason didn’t check his sources?” Steph hisses, incensed. Her eyes burn with a rage Dick hasn’t seen in a while - he has to stop himself from taking a step back. “And what could possibly be his reason to mess with Robin this time around? The kid would rather stab himself with his katana than pick up a gun and patrol Crime Alley.”

“I have no idea,” Dick says honestly. “And you’re sure it was Jason? It wasn’t… a copycat? A frame job?”

Steph’s mouth twists. “A copycat wearing Jason’s helmet, in Jason’s territory, that moved exactly like Jason?” She looks up at Dick for the first time since he arrived. “I may be blonde, but I’m not that blonde, Dick.” Jaw clenched, she averts her gaze again and starts to pace.

Dick sighs. Too many conflicting emotions are bombarding beneath his ribcage, too many questions left unanswered.

“If he walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, shoots armor piercing rounds like a duck…” Steph continues as she pivots back towards Dick and Damian, her footsteps unnaturally loud in the Cave. 

“But, he’s been good,” Dick says quietly, half to himself, half to Steph. “Sure, Jason has his issues with us, but he covered for me when I had to deal with the demon cult in San Francisco last week.”

“Because covering for you meant taking down the Yakuza’s growing foothold in Bludhaven,” Steph says impatiently before she takes off again. “He wiped them out in two nights and spent the rest of the time signing you up for every porn magazine still in circulation and stealing your wingdings to melt into bullets.”

Dick’s eyes widen. “How did you know that?”

She stops dead, scoffing, “Please, like Bruce is the only person who has your place bugged.”

“You bugged my –”

“Not me,” Steph cuts him off, making a face like Dick is an idiot. “Tim.”

Dick just sighs. He’ll have to do another sweep of his apartment soon if he has to start looking for Tim’s tech in addition to Bruce’s.

“It was Jason,” Steph mutters as she turns back to Damian, lying so still. “I have no idea why, but he did this. He did this to Robin.”

Dick turns back to Damian’s still form and gives his fingers a light squeeze, his heart impossibly heavy. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, Steph.”

“If you need an extra pair of hands to take him down,” she says as she unclasps her cape and pulls aside the curtain separating them from the rest of the Cave, “you know who to call. I’m going to go hit stuff for a while.”

* * *

Nightwing is talking with Arkham’s chief of security when his com bursts to life. Spoiler’s voice screeches, “Back up, I need back up! Anyone there? Hello?”

Nightwing blinks, all attention focused on Spoiler. He holds up a finger to Ms. Yenn and taps his com. “Where are you?”

“The Bowery!”

Nightwing’s blood goes cold. With Arkham security measures and the destruction of the bridge during the breakout last night, it’ll take him at least fifteen minutes to get back to Gotham’s mainland and yet another twenty to get all the way to the east side. Red Robin might actually get to her faster; but he’s lurking somewhere in the Diamond District at this time of night, twenty minutes to the south of the Bowery.

“What’s the threat?”

A click of another line joining the frequency. 

Spoiler pants, “Jason!”

“Jason?” Red Robin repeats, the faintest whistle of air in the background.

Nightwing would bet the last of his wingding stash that Red Robin’s already on his way to Spoiler’s location. “Hang on, Spoiler, we’re heading to you.”

He turns back to Yenn, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I have to cut this short –”

“I can’t outrun him, guys,” Spoiler pants. She yelps, and dread pools in Nightwing’s stomach. "He's too fast. Like, really fast."

In a rush, Nightwing says, “Here are our recommendations for repairs.” He all but throws the drive at Yenn. “I’ll check back in next week if you need anything from us –”

“Fuck!” 

“Have a good night now!” He barrels through the doors of Arkham and sprints for the docks where he moored his boat. 

“Why the hell are you doing this?” Spoiler demands, breathless but determined.

Red Robin’s voice comes in, “Hold on, I’m ten minutes out.”

But in bat-time, ten minutes might as well be an hour, and by the way Spoiler doesn’t respond, she knows it too. 

Nightwing asks, “And you’re sure it’s Jason?” 

“She’s not stupid,” Red Robin responds instead, his voice tense. “If she says it’s Jason, it’s Jason.”

“Right, right,” Nightwing says over the slap of Gotham Bay’s choppy waters against the side of his boat. “I –”

“Has Robin woken up yet?” Red Robin asks. “To get his story?”

Nightwing's fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “He woke up, but he wasn’t lucid.”

The sounds of three impacts in rapid succession travel down the line. Spoiler grunts in pain, and Nightwing guns the engine.

“ETA, Red Robin?” Nightwing asks.

“Eight minutes,” Red Robin reports, his voice strained. “I ran like five red lights already and nearly killed a guy on a segway, but that’s his fault for driving a goddamn segway.”

Nightwing kills the engine as he approaches the marina. With his pulse thundering in his ears, he rides the tragically slow current to the edge of the dock. He throws out the bow and stern lines and ties them up in knots that would make Bruce ground him for a week for sloppiness, back in his Robin days.

As he’s racing to his parked bike, Spoiler screams.

An ominous series of thumps come through over the comms.

“Steph, hold on!” Red Robin shouts.

Nightwing flies down the street, heading eastward. 

Spoiler moans. “What the fucking hell is wrong with you?” she gasps, coughing wetly.

This whole time, Spoiler’s opponent hasn’t said a word, which raises every single one of Dick’s red flags. If Jason had one kryptonite, it was his big, fat mouth. Like all former Robins, quips and kicks came to him naturally. And Jason might’ve ditched the roundhouses for Sig Sauers, but he can never shut his trap when the opportunity presents itself.

“Five minutes!” Red Robin calls over a flurry of honks and yells from roaring through another red light.

Spoiler doesn’t respond, but the gunshot comes in loud and clear, followed by the heart-stoppingly familiar burst of static. Her comm has been crushed.

“Tell me what’s happening, Red Robin,” Nightwing demands.

“Four minutes,” Tim says breathlessly.

The next four minutes pass in a blur of lights and pedestrians. The static rings in Nightwing’s ears, deafening in the silence over the comm line. He weaves in between the cars, through the smallest of gaps to shave off fractions of seconds.

Red Robin next checks in, and Nightwing almost misses the next turn, shifting his weight just in time, making it just in time.

“She’s here. She’s alive,” Red Robin pants, his relief palpable. “Just barely. Pulse thready. I’m getting her out of here.”

Nightwing exhales a slow breath, trying to calm himself. Disaster mostly averted, but a disaster that should have never happened in the first place.

He needs to get a handle on this, before anyone else gets hurt.

“Any visual on her attacker?”

Red Robin doesn’t answer immediately. Eventually, he says, after an extremely judgemental silence, “No sign of Jason.”

Two minutes after Red Robin whisked Spoiler away, Nightwing pulls up to her last location at the edge of the Bowery, a wide open space of concrete and weeds underneath the overpass. Scuff marks, drops of blood leading to a larger pool, hallmarks of a fight decorate the eastern edge of the lot. The scene makes his stomach churn, but he finds no evidence left by her attacker. After a fruitless search, he heads back to the Cave. 

He stays beside Damian for hours, trying his best to calm him down when he opens his eyes to see Steph on the bed next to him, unconscious and hooked up to all their backup monitors.

They have to sedate him again. 

Once both are stable and resting under Alfred’s careful eye, Dick sneaks out. If Tim caught wind of Dick’s plan, he’d never let him go through with it. But Dick couldn’t take the chance that Tim would spook Jason and Dick would be back at square one. Jason and Tim got along like two feral cats with distinct territories – fine at a distance, but chaos in close quarters.

No, he can’t afford to have Tim as backup. He’ll handle Jason on his own.

* * *

Jason watches himself wash his hands in his cramped safehouse bathroom. Silently, he seethes. Stephanie Brown’s crimson red blood turns the water pink and swirls down the drain. His head raises to the stained mirror above the sink.

“Don’t be so glum,” comes out of his mouth. His eyes stare back at him, dark and fathomless. His face smiles, too wide, baring too many teeth.

A broad, gleeful smile. 

“A little louder, lambchop. I think you may have a collapsed lung.”

The crowbar swings again.

He struggles. The ropes dig into his wrists and ankles. No give at all. He’s completely helpless.

“I left her alive, didn’t I?” comes out of his mouth next, and Jason throws himself against the invisible confines of his own head, trying to wrest back control of his body, swearing a blue streak that would make Alfred wash his mouth out with soap.

His reflection does not move an inch. “Now,” it tuts, “that’s not a very nice thing to say about my mother. Yours was hardly a saint.” It turns to dry Jason’s hands on the threadbare maroon towel hanging opposite the toilet. “Child neglect, drug abuse, not to mention her weak constitution. Is that something people say anymore? ‘Weak constitution’? I can never keep up with the lingo. But your head is filled with such fascinating vocabulary.”

It leaves the bathroom, and Jason loses sight of his reflection. He’s just a pair of eyes, unable to so much as twitch his pinky finger.

“Boring,” it declares as it picks up a first edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles on the end table by Jason’s couch. It lets the book fall to the floor, ignoring Jason’s wordless scream of rage. Left there, it will crack the fucking spine and, well, it was a gift from Bruce.

Jason fucks with everything else in Bruce’s life, but not their first editions. Some things are sacred, even from beyond the grave.

The first year he and Bruce were on semi-decent terms, Jason came back to his safehouse after a quiet patrol on his birthday – and Jason has thoughts about Bruce’s interference with his patrol too – to find a new book nestled among the other beaten up Penguin Classics and shitty sci fi novels he takes on boring stakeouts. There was no slip of paper with a happy birthday note on the inside, but words have never been Bruce’s forte. 

But it was their thing, so it had to be Bruce. 

No movie was too campy to watch with Dick. No cold case was too cold to tackle with Tim. And no martial arts technique was too obscure to teach Damian. 

But with Jason, no first edition was ever too rare to track down and give to his second Robin.

Jason howls as he watches his steel-toed boot kick The Hound of the Baskervilles under the coffee table. A few pages come loose and flutter back to the ground. Not a sound escapes his mouth.

“My bad,” it says in a sing-song voice that makes Jason’s blood boil. “No matter. Conan was a real fraud, let me tell you  –”

It pauses at the sound of a tap-tap-tap on the window.

At the sight of the blue finger stripes, Jason’s stomach sinks. Fuck no, Dick can’t be here. He is playing right into its hands –

But Jason just beats at the invisible bars of his cage as his body marches to stand in front of the window. His face morphs into a feigned expression of confusion as Dick meets his gaze through the glass. Get away, he screams, but, what comes out is, “Dickface, you got a problem using my front door like everyone else?”

“This is faster,” Dick grunts as he neatly disables Jason’s security measures and slides inside, graceful as one of Damian’s cats. “Plus, I’m not here for a social call.”

“So what do I owe the visit, then?” it asks, crossing its arms over its chest and raising an eyebrow.

Dick sighs. “Someone has been attacking… us,” he says slowly, studying Jason’s face carefully for his reaction.

It drops the defensive stance. “Who? Are the kids okay?” it asks.

Jason fumes. It’s not me! he shouts, but the demon gives nothing away. 

“Damian and Stephanie, so far,” Dick says, his lips pursing. “Someone got the drop on them. They who knew what he was doing. They evaded all cameras and left no evidence.”

The guilt, always lurking in the back of Jason’s mind, rolls over him like a freight train. He did that. Those attacks were his fault. 

The gremlin, flat on the ground, his hand twisted the wrong way from his broken arm, three bullet grazes leaking blood, and two bullet holes gushing with it. Five in total.

Blondie, slumped over, a halo of red surrounding her bright hair. Cracked ribs and a twisted ankle. A bullet in her thigh, left shoulder, calf, and, of course, that near miss at her temple. Head wounds always bled like a bitch. Four shots in total.

Clues for Dick to find.

Every time the demon would propose a plan of attack, alone in his apartment with just Jason for company, he would try to think of something else, anything else, but it was like asking someone not to think of a pink elephant. His mind would betray him, his real thoughts would drift to the surface, and the demon would gleefully snatch them from his consciousness and improve its plan with Jason's contribution.

Jason knew the kid, knew what they taught him in the League, and knew what Bruce was teaching him now.

He shudders, but of course none of this shows on his face.

Stephanie was harder, since Jason didn’t have as much of a history with her, and she started her vigilante career self-taught, outside of Bruce’s influence. But, Jason has several years of Bat training and League tutelage on her, not to mention a hundred pounds of muscle, so it got her in the end.

Tim – Jason dreads what the demon has in store for Tim Drake. 

“Have the gremlin or blondie said who did it?” the demon asks, raking a hand through Jason’s hair as if lost in thought.

As Dick struggles to answer, Jason tries to wrest control of anything, his pinky finger, his right knee, his left eyebrow. He lashes out at his confines, silently howling his rage.

“They both say you did it,” Dick says quietly.

It actually reels back a step – You’re overselling it, you bastard – and puts on some stupid, wounded look on his face that Jason would slap off, if he could. But, judging by Dick’s hurt expression, he’s falling for the act, hook, line, and sinker. 

Fuck you, Dick.

If Jason went around randomly attacking Bats, he’d own up to it like a man. He took on Batman himself when he was fresh out of the League, fueled by angst and spite. And when Bruce tracked him down, did Jason play coy and say, Oh, no Bruce you got the wrong dead kid you adopted and then kicked to the curb ? No, Jason did his big reveal, they had an epic fight, and he went on with his plans. Zero subterfuge, no underhanded manipulation – that was Bruce’s game, not Jason’s.

“It wasn’t me,” it answers Dick in a disturbingly convincing voice. No more than a whisper with a hint of warning.

Dick glances around, his gaze catching on one of the stray The Hound of the Baskervilles pages. “Sherlock Holmes?” he asks as he scans the text, his brow furrowing.

“What? I may not have graduated high school, but I know how to read,” it says, its tone pointed.

Dick holds up his page-free hand in a gesture of no-harm. “I didn’t think detective stories were your thing. But I should’ve known,” he says with a light chuckle that makes Jason want to throttle him because how can he be laughing now, at all times, “Brit Lit wins out over everything else, right?”

Jason feels his mouth stretch into an easy smile. “Right,” it says with his voice.

Fuck you twice over, Dick. 

Jason loved detective stories as a kid; all Robins did. They were raised by the World’s Greatest Detective; Sherlock Holmes was practically required reading, and Conan Doyle was definitely more fun than the old GCPD case reports that Bruce set as weekly assignments. Jason could tell the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning before he put on the scaly panties.

“Do you have any tracking data that recorded your location earlier tonight and last Friday?” Dick asks.

If Jason had a jaw he could use, it would have dropped open in surprise. Dick didn’t swallow the demon’s story whole.

But as the demon does something with Jason’s face, Dick rushes to say, “Damian and Steph will want proof.”

Jason would swear at the top of his voice if he could. He should’ve known. 

“They don’t know you like I do,” Dick says – pleads, really.

Christ, the guy’s pathetic.

“Well, you can’t have it,” the demon says, with a fair approximation of Jason’s quick temper. “I already have enough Bats up in my business. I don’t need little birdies on my tail when you play pin the tail on Jason because Robin took one too many blows to the head and started seeing things.”

“But–”

“Get out,” it says over Dick’s objections.

“Jay–” Something on the demon’s face makes Dick cut himself off. He carefully sets the page down on the coffee table. “Fine, I’m going. Just, look out for yourself, okay?” He meets Jason’s eyes. “I know you didn’t do this, Little Wing.” 

I didn’t.

“Get out, before I make you,” the demon says before it all but shoves Dick back out the window and slams it down behind him.

As they both watch Dick swing away, it says, “Now, let the real fun begin.”

* * *

Tim is almost too easy to track down. Despite the clear and present danger, Timmy keeps the same patrol routes he always does, with the added bonus of Big Brother watching in the wings, no doubt trying to catch the real perpetrator in the act.

Obviously, the demon couldn’t have that, so it hires a few brainless goons to blow up a yacht party on Penguin’s second-biggest boat at the same time as it places a fake 911 call about a convenience store robbery. Even if Dick figures out it’s a ploy to separate them, he will still feel compelled to stay and help search and rescue in Gotham Bay.

Jason watches with a churning feeling as Nightwing heads south and Red Robin goes north. The demon actually rubs its hands together like a two-bit spaghetti western villain about to tie a damsel to a set of train tracks.

It hops over the rooftops, supernaturally fast and agile. It keeps Red Robin at a distance, careful not to set off his well-honed sixth sense of being watched. It wouldn’t do to have Tim calling in Dick too early and ruining the big surprise.

The demon catches up with him after fifteen minutes. 

At his absolute fastest, it will take Nightwing half an hour to reach them, which is more than enough time.

“So I’m next on the list, huh?” Tim says, his voice dry as he turns around at the sound of Jason’s boots thumping down on the roof behind him. Quick as lightning, Tim snaps out his collapsible bo staff.

The demon, predictably, doesn’t say a word. It does, however, set off a miniature EMP to fry all of Tim’s fancy gadgets.

Tim raises a hand to his comm. “I want you to know, I was right,” he says. “It is Jason.”

It watches with sick satisfaction as Tim realizes his comm is dead. No help is coming. 

“What the hell did you do that for?” Tim asks as he nonchalantly twirls his staff, but Jason can read his nerves in the tense set of his shoulders – loose, Bruce always told them to stay loose – and the way he keeps his focus on Jason, not once scanning his peripherals.

“You rely on your toys too much, Timmy,” it says, taking a step closer. “So I thought I’d teach you a lesson. You need it, from what I’ve seen. You have none of Nightwing’s fluidity. Half of my brawn. A quarter of the gremlin’s training.” It reaches up and takes off Jason’s helmet, so Tim can see his bare face. “If I had to find a comparison, I’d say you’re most on level with Blondie, and she was, what, Robin for 73 days?”

Internally, Jason winces. He’d never say all that to Tim.

He’d think it, sure.

Because, from his experience, Tim isn’t a fighter on the same caliber as him and Dick and probably Damian once the little hellion goes through puberty. Tim fights smarter, relies more on his gadgets and environment than they do. He’s a relatively easier Robin to beat in close quarters, but he’s almost impossible at a distance. 

In the nonexistent-privacy of his own head, Jason’s admitted dozens of times over the past week that the kid is good and shouldn’t be underestimated. 

Tim takes the criticism with a completely blank expression. “Are you going to babble at me all night or are you actually going to do something? Because I gotta say,” he twirls his staff, daring Jason to attack while his weapon is occupied, “I’m feeling a bit left out you’re not giving me the silent treatment like you did –”

The demon lunges.

Tim dances out of the way in a dodge he definitely learned from Dick, and the fight is on.

Like with Steph and Damian, Jason tries to shut it out, but he can’t close his eyes; he can’t look away. And the demon takes all of his split-second judgments and hurls them at Tim in a merciless barrage.

A vicious punch to his kidney. “C’mon, you’re dropping your elbow, Timbo.”

A high kick to his face. “Oh, you almost blocked that in time!”

A one-two combo that sends Tim staggering back, blood dripping from his split lip, one hand cradling his cracked ribs. “Is that all you got?”

Tim smiles, crimson lacing over his teeth. “I’m just getting started.” He shifts his weight to his back foot, preparing to strike. 

The demon leans to the left for a feint –

Tim leaps backwards off the roof.

Shocked, the demon and Jason hear the poom of Tim’s grapple firing before the demon lets out a yell and follows.

Tim sprints across the increasingly decrepit Burnley townhouses, hurtling over planters full of dead bushes and overflowing piles of garbage. A stray beer bottle nearly trips him up, but he catches himself just in time. He leaps for the next building over and easily clears the ten feet of distance. 

He glances behind him, the whites of his lenses reflecting the orange street lamps. With a low curse, he throws a birdarang over his shoulder and keeps running.

The demon ducks, a feral smile curling its lip.

Tim goes too short on his next jump. His midsection slams into the edge of the roof, and he audibly gasps in pain. His gloved fingers scrabble for purchase on the crumbling concrete, and he levers himself over just as the demon takes off from the next building over. Tim sucks in a deep breath as he takes off again, weaving between rusted lawn chairs and pots full of weeds and brown dirt.

Jason and the demon overtake Tim at the next building. With a snarl, the demon yanks on Tim’s cape, sending him crashing to the ground. 

“Neat trick,” it says as it pulls out Jason’s gun from its holster. “But as fun as our little chase scene was, game’s over now, birdbrain.”

Flat on his back, Tim throws another birdarang, trying to knock the gun out of his hand. It lodges between his knuckles, and Jason internally winces at the sight, but the demon ignores it. Doesn’t even bother removing it before he fires two shots, one at each of Tim’s legs, aiming for the gaps in the armor. A third buries itself in Tim’s arm.

Tim screams as the bullets go in and through. 

“Come on, I didn’t even hit any bones,” it says in an almost bored voice as it stands over Tim, one firm, steel-toed boot on his cape, keeping him pinned like a butterfly to a corkboard. “Walk it off.” It smirks down at Tim as it plucks the birdarang out of his hand and tosses it over his shoulder. “If you can.”

Tim just glares, the corners of his mouth pinched with pain. At least he doesn’t try to get up and embarrass himself.

“Oh, right,” it says drolly, as it crouches by Tim’s side and roughly cuts him out of his outersuit, leaving it to soak up the steadily growing pool of blood around them. Redundancy is Bruce’s middle name, so the demon won’t take any chances with trackers powered by body heat or friction. It slices down the laces of Tim’s boots and pries them off.

Once Tim’s just in his black undersuit and barefoot, it hauls Tim over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and, ignoring Tim’s grunt of agony and increasingly pale face, jumps off the roof. It heads to Jason’s nearest safehouse, now three blocks away since Tim led it on that not-so-merry chase deeper into Burnley.

“Why are you taking me,” Tim groans. “You left Steph and Damian where you put them down.”

“You’re just special, Timberly,” it says as it clears another roof, landing with a heavy thump that makes Tim groan. And because it can’t let that backhanded compliment just hang there, it adds, “Bet that’s the first time anyone’s told you that, huh?”

Tim lets out a series of awful little whimpers as demon’s stomps down each of the fire escape stairs outside his safehouse. Jason catches sight of his reflection around in a third floor window, and his back is absolutely coated with blood from Tim’s bullet-ridden legs. His jacket glistens with it.

Not good.

Clang!

He startles at the sound of metal on metal, and the demon turns his head to watch one of his glocks clatter through the slats to the alley floor. 

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to play with guns?” it asks, ducking its head to get a good look at Tim, hanging upside down.

Tim just smirks and drops Jason’s other gun from where he palmed it. Down into the alley below it goes.

“You’re going to pay for that,” the demon growls. 

Tim says nothing, and Jason pushes down his worry. The snark is always the first to appear and last to disappear once a Robin puts on the cape. He tries to turn his head back to check on Tim, to make sure he’s still alive, but the demon doesn’t let him budge an inch. 

It just hikes Tim higher and opens the window to his safehouse. It drops Tim on the circular area rug in the living room. Tim coughs as he rolls onto his side, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “Sit tight, Timmy. I’ve got to make a call.”

“Good fucking luck,” Tim spits.

Jason would sigh in relief if he could.

The demon stops, turns to squint down at Tim in the dark living room. “What the hell are you talking about?”

But Tim just rolls over again and closes his eyes, his breathing too fast and too shallow.

“Now,” it pulls Jason’s phone out of his pocket, “What should we tell big bro, hm?”

The lights switch on.

The demon whirls in place as Dick pushes off the far wall, his expression furious. “You could tell me what the hell you were thinking, going after my family.”

For a beat, they just stare at each other.

Tim groans into the silence, “Quit the dramatics, Dick.”

Face stricken, Dick darts forward and starts to drag Tim closer.

“Woah, hey, not so fast,” the demon purrs as it reaches for Tim.

But Dick is faster; he yanks Tim out of the demon’s reach. Tim cries out as the carpet gives way to wooden floor. “Sorry, sorry,” Dick murmurs as he crouches down to run his fingers through Tim’s sweaty hair. He isn’t even looking at Jason.

Jason can’t believe it. He can count about a hundred ways Dick is leaving both of them open to attack. This goes beyond stupid.

Evidently the demon agrees with him: “What are you doing?”

Dick ignores the question. Doesn’t even glance up. “Brace yourself,” he says to Tim, “One…” he hefts Tim into his arms way before he gets to three. His mouth tightens as Tim’s eyes fly open and his face contorts in pain.

And then Dick turns his back on the demon.

“Where are you going?” It circles around to block their exit – 

Jason blinks as his forehead rams into an invisible wall. The demon reels back, almost tripping over its own feet. It darts a hand out, grunting as its knuckles meet solid air.

“I’m going to get Tim to Alfred downstairs,” Dick says. He turns his head, so Jason can see the hard glint to his eye, “And then I’m going to get you out of my brother.”

Struck dumb, the demon doesn’t say another word as Dick disappears with Tim out the door.

What the fuck just happened?

Dick… knows?

* * *

Alone in Jason’s safehouse, the demon feels around its invisible cage, muttering to itself. 

Not so fun when it happens to you, is it? Jason thinks savagely

The confines closely follow the border of the area rug, and when the demon peels it back, Jason marvels at the intricate runes carved in the wood underneath that definitely weren’t there the last time he was in this safehouse.

“How did he…” it drifts off, gnashing Jason’s teeth.

“You just couldn’t resist needling Jason, could you?” Dick says, and the demon looks up to find him leaning against the front door frame, arms crossed over his chest, his face impassive. “You did the same thing in San Francisco.” He shuts the door behind him. “It wasn’t enough to mess with the cultists that dredged you up from hell in the first place, you had to make your host’s life miserable too, even though she was just an innocent bystander.”

The demon straightens. “What can I say,” it starts, dropping the act. It stands preternaturally still. “The eternally devoted are just so boring, you know? Complete subservience wears off so soon.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Dick deadpans. He pulls a slim, leather-bound book out of nowhere. “Now, shut up. I have to concentrate. Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus omnis satanica potestas –”

Suck it, Jason crows to the demon. Dickie’s gonna kick your ass back to hell.

“Wait,” the demon shouts over the exorcism, “I can help you!”

“I sincerely doubt that,” Dick says tonelessly without looking up. “Omnis incursio, infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica –”

“Power? Money? Love? You could have it all!”

If Jason had a mouth, he would laugh loudly. As if Dick doesn’t have exactly as much power, money, and love as he wants. He runs multiple superhero teams, and he’s the son of Bruce Wayne. Nightwing is about as beloved as heroes go, save maybe Superman or Wonder Woman.

There’s nothing a demon could offer Dick Grayson that he couldn’t make happen himself. 

Well, maybe –

“Your parents,” the demon announces, and Jason lets out a wordless scream of rage. Of course the fucker picked up on that.

Dick speeds up as wind starts to whip up around them. “Ergo draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te –”

“I could bring them back for you.”

Dick’s brow furrows, and he swallows once before restarting, “ Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare –”

“They’d live long, happy lives,” the demon adds.

Dick pauses. 

Oh, fuck.

Worst of all, Jason can’t blame Dick in the slightest. Objectively, he knows John and Mary Grayson were good people, and he is not. Jason is doing good work, sure, but he wouldn’t call himself a good person. 

Moreover, Dick definitely has thoughts on Jason’s definition of “good work” and exactly how much killing that requires.

His saintly parents for the low, low price of one possessed, morally compromised brother? That’s hardly a choice.

The demon goads, “They’d see all you’ve accomplished, all the lives you’ve saved, all the disasters you’ve averted.”

Jason really does not like that faraway look in Dick’s eye. 

It continues, “They would be so proud, and you’d have your family back.”

Dick’s fingers tighten on pages. He looks up, his eyes flashing. “My family is right here, and I already know my parents are proud of me.” He shakes his head ruefully. “Jason, hold on. Constantine said you’re in for a pretty bumpy ride. Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis –”

The demon yells, and the wind picks up, whipping at his hair, tugging and pulling at his clothes. Pins and needles break out all over his body. And Jason can’t even enjoy having physical sensation back before it turns to white-hot pokers, like fire licking at every inch of his skin.

He can’t even tell who is screaming any more. He has no idea if Dick is still speaking at all. All he knows is the pain.

He falls to his knees, choking and spluttering over bitter, rancid air. Down on all fours, he retches with whole body heaves. The fire spreads down his throat. It burns like acid to the very pit of his stomach. He gags, and tears spring to his eyes as something black and tarry slithers out of his mouth and splats onto the carpet.

“ – audi nos!”

Jason watches, horrified, as the thing bubbles down into nothing. Panting for breath and shivering all over, he scrambles back, off the carpet until his back hits the wall beneath the window.

Silence rings in his ears.

“Jason?” Dick drops into a squat until he’s at Jason’s level even though he’s still all the way across the room by the door. “Are you back with me?”

Jason nods, the movement too quick and too jerky, but Dick just sags back against the door in relief. 

“Thank god,” he mutters as he lets the book drop to the floor. He runs a weary hand down his face.

For a long moment, they just stare at each other. 

Dick speaks first. “I’m so sorry, Jay.”

Jason blinks. “For what?” He’s the one who beat the majority of their family to bloody pieces over the past week. His fists gave Damian a concussion, dislocated Stephanie’s shoulder, and cracked Tim’s ribs. His mind gave away all their weaknesses, starting with Dick: his family.

“For not getting the monster back in San Francisco,” Dick says, staring at Jason’s ceiling. “I just pissed it off enough to follow me back here.”

“Oh,” is all Jason can say.

Dick just shakes his head, his throat working as he swallows. “I’m sorry,” he repeats.

Jason’s skin crawls at the undeserved apology. He scrambles for a new subject instead. “I’m just trying to figure out when you knew it wasn’t me.”

Dick’s gaze flicks to the dark bookshelf in the corner of the room. It’s smaller than the one in his primary safehouse, but still stacked with well worn paperbacks and a few hardback short story anthologies. “It messed with your first edition.”

“One loose page was enough to clue you in?” he raises his eyebrows. “What kind of Sherlock Holmes shit are you on?”

Dick shrugs. “All signs pointed to you, but you were insisting it wasn’t you.” He exhales a loud breath. “It wasn’t adding up. If you had a grudge against any of us, you’d own up to it. Creatively and loudly, if I know you at all. Ergo, it was you but wasn’t you at the same time. Does that make sense?”

Jason snorts. “No.”

“So, less Sherlock Holmes and more brother intuition,” Dick says with a tired smile.

Jason can’t help pressing, “You really didn’t buy its innocence act for a second? The other option, that I was going after the kids, that’s gotta be your worst nightmare.”

“I’m an optimist,” Dick says flatly, “not an idiot. There’s a difference.” He rolls his eyes. “It’s always trust but verify with you.”

Jason shakes his head. “ Doveryay, no proveryay? Really?”

“доверяй, но проверяй” Dick repeats, the slavic syllables rolling off his tongue with a native-sounding fluency that makes Jason’s stomach clench with envy. He’s fluent too, but he will never sound like that. Dick adds, “With your history, can you blame me?”

“I guess not,” Jason says as he curls his fingers into fists.

“But this wasn’t you,” Dick says as he gets to his feet and silently walks towards Jason. “Everyone knows that, now.” He reaches down, offering Jason his hand to help him up.

Jason doesn’t take it. “It was my hands,” he mutters, “my guns.”

“But it wasn’t you,” Dick says, more firmly this time. His hand doesn’t waver. “I know you, Jay. You’ve changed. You wouldn’t attack us out of the blue.”

Jason just grunts.

Dick waggles his fingers in Jason’s face. “Come back to the Cave with me. I’m gonna pass out any minute now, and Alfred needs an assistant to help with Tim, Steph, and Damian. I don’t know what’s in the water over there, but they’re all awful at resting up.”

“Pot, kettle, Dickface.”

“Hey,” Dick holds his other hand up, “I never said anything about me.” He thrusts his offered hand closer and nearly takes out Jason’s eye. “Not getting any younger here.”

Jason scowls up at him, leaning slightly to the left to avoid Dick’s overly enthusiastic invitation. “I bet the last thing the kids want to see is my face.”

“Actually, Tim wants a record of what it’s like to get possessed, so if it ever happens to him, he knows how to beat it,” Dick says with a warm smile. “When he wakes up, he’ll be pestering you nonstop for a complete recount. And I might’ve let slip to Steph that you watch Black Sails since she’s in a pirate phase, of all things.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Dick agrees. “And as for Damian, well, he’ll want to pick over your fight in nauseating detail to know how to beat you next time.”

Jason sighs loudly. “You’re not leaving here without me, are you?”

“Nope,” Dick says cheerfully.

Jason swats Dick’s hand out of the way and gets to his feet. “If you’re wrong, you’re next on my shitlist, got it?”

Dick shudders exaggeratedly as Jason opens the window to leave. “Oh, I’m so scared.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Jason says warningly. “You’re the last Robin left, the way I see it.”

Dick throws him an odd look before he climbs through to the fire escape. “No, I’m not.”

Jason takes the steps down three at a time. “What, did Bruce pick up another black haired twerp while I wasn’t looking?”

“No,” Dick says slowly as he follows. 

“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

“You, Jay. I’m talking about you,” Dick says, deliberately slowly like the demon might’ve taken more than a few braincells when it vacated Jason’s body. “I’m not the last Robin; we are.”

Jason turns away, his face heating. He jumps the rest of the way to the alley floor, scowling as Dick backflips his way down. “C’mon,” he mutters, “Alfred’s never gonna take a break if we’re not there.”

[truffle-draws]

Another one of my Lavellan and Cullen from my fic “Something’s Gotta Give”

I just can’t get enough of them and their chaos 🥲

(Click the photo for better resolution cause Tumblr hates good resolution 👹)

[captainmalewriter]

Legend of the White Fox

Long ago, there was a time in humanity’s history where love had no labels. People were free to love whoever their hearts desired. It was arguably a happier time where love knew no gender. But alas, those peaceful times were short lived. There were a few who opposed free love, and went to violent extremes to restrict human sexuality. It was a massacre that showed the dark side of humanity on full display. The fresh snow in one of the affected regions captured all of the blood shed that night, creating an ugly mixture of reds and whites. Among the victims of the genocide was a man by the name of Iaro. Iaro was love personified for his love for life knew no bounds. Iaro had an animal companion that lived alongside him. It was a white fox by the name of Nivalis. Nivalis had a beautiful coat of fur that resembled the first snows of winter. It is said that in his final moments, as he held his lover for the final time, he issued a command to Nivalis:

Live on, Nivalis! Go forth and protect the innocent lovers from the hateful hands of our oppressors! Show them that we will not die no matter what violent means they may take!!

While Iaro died with the rest of his people, Nivalis fled. It is said that Iaro’s wish granted Nivalis the power to live on as a benevolent spirit to protect the pure hearted in times of need. This is the Legend of the White Fox!!

***

Alec was gasping for breath as he ran through the streets of the big city. The cold night air made controlling his breathing hard. But despite his growing exhaustion, all he could focus on was the sound of police sirens right behind him. The blaring sirens motivated him to run as fast as he physically could. He turned into a narrow alleyway and took a moment to rest.

“Shit man… this wasn’t supposed to happen…” Alec thought to himself as he tried catching his breath. Going from kissing the man of his dreams to running away from the police all within 10 minutes made his head spin.

It was supposed to be the perfect night. Alec had been looking forward to a date with his crush Ivan for weeks now. He thought he would never find a love that would bring him genuine joy, especially after growing up in the streets by himself after getting kicked out for being gay. But for a brief moment, while the two men kissed under a streetlight, Alec almost believed he had found the fairytale romance he had always dreamed of. But then the dream came crashing down when a nearby bigot began shouting slurs and other obscenities at the couple. Words quickly turned into fists as the angry man would not stop harassing them. Fortunately, Alec was able to subdue his attacker with a nearby iron pipe. Unfortunately, the police officer who happened to be passing by only saw Alec hitting a man square in the jaw with a weapon. Although Ivan tried to explain that Alec did it in self defense, the cop took the bigot’s side anyway. Alec knew he was fighting a losing battle and fled from the scene, leaving Ivan behind.

"WE KNOW YOU'RE THERE!"

Alec heard one of the police officers shouting. They caught up to him quicker than he expected. Alec drew in one more quick breath and began running again.

"RESISTING ARREST WILL ONLY MAKE IT WORSE FOR YOU!!"

Alec ignored everything else and focused his mind on running through the labyrinth of alleyways. But while Alec was able to evade the cops for a good while, he was running out of steam. He slowed down to a jog, and then to a brisk walk as his sides started to cramp. He then kneeled over at the end of a moonlit alley, exhausted and in pain. His heartbeat was racing as he heard the officers closing in on him. Alec's eyes began watering up as he lifted his face to the starry night sky and whispered a prayer.

He basked in the light of the full moon, and as he did so, he thought he saw what looked like a white fox sitting on a nearby rooftop. Alec made eye contact with the fox, causing his once dark brown eyes to shine a brilliant hazel. But then he blinked, and the fox seemingly disappeared.

During the split second Alec saw the fox, he felt his panicked mind calm down as a cool wave rolled throughout his body. The cool soothed his agitated body. Alec closed his eyes and took deep breaths to steady himself again.

Meanwhile, while Alec was recovering, three policemen were about to corner him. They were only one short walk away from his location. The police men readied their weapons for a quick arrest, but just before they could turn the corner, a white fox had jumped out and ran past them with lightning speed. The fox had caught them off guard, so much so that they failed to notice the giant cloud of sparkling mist that was following the furry animal. 

The sparkling mist surrounded the police men within seconds. It was thick and obscured the officers’ vision. They tried to air it out by waving their arms but it was no use. The mist only grew larger until it began entering the policemen through their mouths. Loud gasps filled the air as each police man was getting filled to the brim with mist. Their eyes rolled to the back of their heads and their bodies began to compulse and bloat with each inhale of mist they took. The mist had overtaken their bodies once they inhaled it all. The mist made moving their bodies difficult. The best they could do now was shiver violently due to how full their bodies had become. But after nearly a full minute of shivering, each police officer began to moan obscenely loud. The mist was exiting their bodies through their dicks, causing each man to orgasm during the process. Wet spots began to form in their uniforms as each man shot out his load. The mist had drained the men dry of cum by the time it evaporated. The police men then collapsed onto the floor in the fetal position, desperate to warm up their bodies after the cold mist had invaded their bodies.

Alec had fully recovered by the time the mist had subdued the cops. He sat there for a long while, mentally preparing himself to get arrested. But when he noticed that wasn't happening, he peeked his head around the corner and gasped when he saw the three officers on the ground. He could hear their teeth chattering even from far away. Alec had no idea what could have happened to them, but he took his opportunity and ran off.

He made it home scot free that night. Alec’s heart was still racing just thinking about how he somehow got away from the police. He sat in his bed as he processed everything he experienced. Alec then took out his phone and sent an apology text to Ivan for leaving him behind. He hit send, and saw it was nearly 2AM. Seeing the time made the physical exhaustion hit him like a truck. Even though he had numerous questions about what had happened, he was too tired to go looking for answers. He got ready for bed and knocked out asleep.

Though unfortunately for Alec, while falling asleep was easy, staying asleep was a challenge. Alec felt his body temperature rapidly change throughout the night. Swinging between blistering hot and mind-numbingly cold kept Alec awake. As a result, Alec thought he was catching a cold and took some medicine to help alleviate his symptoms. But all the drugs did was contribute to the fever dreams Alec had in the short bursts of sleep he did get.

Alec kept dreaming that he was somewhere in the middle of some snowy landscape somewhere in the mountains. The sky was grey as snow fell steadily to the ground. It was during this snowy dream that Alec kept getting visions of some muscular man flexing right in front of him.

He had a clear, front row view of the man. Alec could hardly believe what he was seeing in his dreams. He watched in admiration as the man continued showing off his toned body. The man was young, muscular, clean-shaven, and handsome. To say he was hot was an understatement! Alec was having the time of his life in his dreams.

But, despite how easy the man was on his eyes, Alec couldn't shake off a nagging feeling he was getting in the back of his head. Something about the dream was undeniably off. He acknowledged how hot the man was, but Alec couldn't help but notice that he had never seen the man before in his life. No matter how hard Alec searched through his memories, he couldn't think of a single person who evenly remotely resembled the man. Yet, despite that, here the man was in his dreams. Somehow, Alec's mind was able to conjure a very detailed vision of this jock in his dreams.

"Who are you...?"

Alec thought to himself. He noticed that the man stopped flexing when he had that thought. It was as if the man had heard him ask that question. The man turned to face him and smirked. He then approached him with a smooth step to his walk.

"Welcome to the Snowscape, Alec. My name is Iaro," the man spoke in a foreign language. Alec could hear subtle undertones of Spanish mixed in Iaro's language. But despite his unfamiliarity with the dialect, Alec could understand the man perfectly as though he were already fluent.

"Don't worry, my brother, you're safe here in the cold. My friend Nivalis heard your cry for help, and because you live with a pure heart, she decided to bring you here to this sanctuary. Where I can grant you strength..."

The snow falling around them began getting heavier. The wind picked up too. Alec had to really focus to catch what Iaro was saying now. But it was no use, Alec could barely hear him.

Iaro paused when he noticed the disconnect. He gave a soft smile. It was a kind smile, one that put Alec at ease when he saw it. Iaro then proceeded to take off his robes. Alec was shocked that he would do that in the middle of a snow storm. He quickly averted his eyes before he saw him in the nude. The snow was getting heavier and heavier. The last thing Alec saw was Iaro's nude form, along with the words:

I will make you in my image, my brother, so long as you're ready...

Alec's vision went to white, and he blacked out.

***

Alec woke up the next morning confused and cold. Blisteringly cold. He never particularly enjoyed the cold. That was why he had all the windows shut tight and several cheap space heaters spread out throughout his apartment during the winter time. But despite his best efforts, he was still freezing. He curled up into a ball underneath several blankets. His teeth were chattering as he tried to warm up. Thankfully he started to feel the warmth after several minutes of being buried underneath his heavy blankets.

As he laid in bed, Alec thought back to the dream he was having. The dream was locked firmly into his memory. He could still vividly remember how realistic the snowfall felt on his skin too. It was as if he had teleported to some snowy mountaintop in his sleep! Even the man- someone who Alec had never met before, felt so lifelike.

"Iaro... Nivalis..." Alec whispered their names to himself. Now that he had a calm state of mind, something about their names felt oddly familiar.

"Iaro... Nivalis... Iaro... Nivalis..."

The more Alec said their names, the more he couldn't deny that he heard that combination of names somewhere before. With curiosity piqued, Alec rose from his bed with a blanket thrown over his shoulders. He walked over to his nightstand and took his phone off its charger. Ivan had responded, and he reassured Alec that everything was alright. The police had taken him in for questioning but it was brief and he got home without any physical injuries. Alec sighed with relief. He sent a quick reply with a heart emoji, then proceeded to open an internet browser tab while throwing himself back into bed.

He typed the two names into the search tab and hit enter. It took him some searching but he eventually found something about them. Apparently, Iaro and Nivalis were part of an old Latino folklore tale about a white fox. Alec read an archived version of the story, and soon felt his dormant memories of his late abuelita spring back to life. She was an incredibly talented storyteller by nature, and Alec loved hearing her stories by the fireside as a kid. Those were the good days...

Alec shook his head and returned to the present moment. He laid back in bed and let out a sigh of amazement. Alec could remember wanting his abuelita's stories to come true as a kid. But as he grew older and more jaded, his childish belief in the extraordinary died out. To think he would actually meet one of the folklore characters seemed like a fantasy come true. It filled Alec with glee just thinking about it.

As Alec took it all in, he remembered Iaro's last words before he woke up. He rolled over in bed, thinking about what Iaro could've meant. Alec had no idea what Iaro had in store for him, but whatever it was, Alec was sure he was ready for it.

In the days that followed, Alec tried his best to revisit the Snowscape he had dreamed about that night. But the Snowscape turned out to be more elusive than Alec thought. Several days passed by with no results. Alec was even becoming mentally fatigued due to oversleeping! But despite his failures, Alec was determined not to give up.

Upon rereading the Legend of the White Fox for the umpteenth time, an idea finally struck him. After reflecting on everything that he had seen and experienced since first spotting a white fox under the moonlight, Alec deduced that snow would be key in returning to the Snowscape. Alec hurried in checking the weather report, but was quickly met with disappointment when he saw that there was zero chance of snow for the foreseeable future. But even without snowfall, it was going to be extremely cold for the next few nights.

With that knowledge in mind, Alec prepared himself for bedtime that night. He turned off all of his space heaters, removed all of his blankets from his bed, opened all the windows, and stripped down naked. As Alec stood by his bed bare ass naked, he wondered if he was really going to risk hypothermia for a mythical figure he barely knew. In that moment of doubt, Iaro's words rang in his head again. With his determination renewed, Alec laid down in bed and braced himself for a very cold night. Within minutes he was shivering like crazy, but he forced himself to go to sleep through sheer willpower. It took him a long time to fall asleep under such harsh conditions, but he eventually did it. He went to sleep, and was immediately greeted by Iaro in his dreams.

"Welcome back, Comrade. I was worried we weren't going to see you again."

Iaro smiled as he approached Alec, who was laying down on the snow, now only dressed in a thin white robe. Alec returned his smile, and tried to get up to properly greet him. But he hadn't realized how heavy his body had become. Every time he tried to get up, he found he couldn't even lift an arm or a leg up from the snow. He struggled and struggled until he felt a soft hand gently caress his cheek.

"Don't worry, my friend, everything will be alright. Take a deep breath and relax your body. Surrender yourself to the snow all around us."

Alec swallowed his breath and did as Iaro had instructed him. Even though he could hardly move his body, Alec couldn't help but feel at ease. He watched as countless snowflakes fell down and landed on his exposed skin. He could feel their cool seep into his skin as they melted on him. Even though it was cold, Alec suddenly didn't mind it. It was as if Snowscape was his long lost second home, and he had just returned.

"Good," Iaro smiled. "Now we can begin. I will grant you power; it will protect you in times of danger. But power like this cannot be granted to just anyone..." Iaro leaned down to Alec's ear and whispered. "Do you swear to live an honest life and be kind to others, regardless of how much power you receive? To continue living with a heart as pure as the first snows of winter?"

A cold chill ran down Alec's spine as Iaro whispered into his ear. He gulped, then nodded his head vigorously.

"Excellent! Though with a heart like yours, this is hardly a surprise."

Iaro then stood back up and took a step away from Alec. As he did so, chunks of snow began to swirl up. They swirled and whirled until they formed three human-like figures. Iaro took a deep breath and exhaled his frosty breath in their direction, causing the snowmen to transform into policemen- the same police that had chased Alec down some time ago. The mere sight of them caused Alec's heartbeat to rise.

"These are the bigoted police men that hunted you down before Nivalis subdued them, yes? Don't worry, these men are only mirages I conjured up with ice and snow. They cannot hurt you here, but they will give to you all of their combined masculine energy. It may hurt a bit, but you'll be a new man by the time it's done. Are you ready?"

Alec nodded. Iaro then waved his hand at the three men, and they proceeded to gather around Alec. Alec watched from the ground as the three men towered over him. A gasp escaped his mouth as he watched the three men strip down from their police uniforms and into the nude. The men then began a circle jerk, with each man stroking their cock until they were fully erect.

Each man had a different dick, but in Alec's eyes, they were all beautiful. One man had a long, clean shaven dick with veins running all around the shaft. Another man had a shorter dick, but what it lacked it in length it more than made up for in girth. That cock was a heavy hitter, and it perfectly matched the bull of a police man it was attached to. The third man had a fairly average dick in terms of size, but it was the other details that turned Alec on. That dick had a heavy set of low hanging balls that dangled as its owner jerked off. It also had a thick bush of curly, black hair with a pink dick head that completed the look. And, as if that wasn't enough, Alec could smell the potent musk of each man's junk as they circle jerked in front of him. Alec took a deep whiff of their dank manhood, and he could feel himself getting warmer inside from how aroused he had become.

After several minutes, the three men picked up the speed of their jerking off. Deep toned grunts and groans filled the air as they did so. Alec noticed one of the men's dicks was starting to twitch, and he was soon followed by the other two men. Alec had no idea how he was supposed to receive whatever power Iaro was talking about, but if it meant he was about to receive a couple of loads, he was more than happy to oblige. Alec was more than ready to get cummed on, only to get caught off guard when that didn't happen.

The three men stood there groaning as they all climaxed at the same time. But instead of shooting out their loads of liquid spunk, they shot out their loads in the form of milky white mist. It was the same kind of glittering mist that had subdued the real police men back then. Their cocks were pulsating and their nut sacks were bouncing ferociously as more and more of the mist came pouring out of their throbbing members. Alec was shocked at the sight, though he was still unable to move. All he could do was watch from where he laid.

All of the mist congealed into one massive cloud of cum. It was the size of a walrus! But that didn't stop the cloud from entering its target. The white mist swirled round and round as it began its descent into Alec's body. The mist forced Alec's mouth to stay wide open while it filled him up, transforming his body as it did so. But even though the cloud was starting to shrink because it was possessing Alec, the three men never stopped stroking their still rock hard cocks. They were determined to keep going until their balls were completely drained.

As for Alec, the changes started with his chest. He could feel his body physically changing to accommodate all the magical mist inside of him. His pectoral muscles were tearing and recovering rapidly until he had a nice set of bulging, beefy pecs to call his own. A cold wave rolled throughout his chest to help ease the transformation pain. The cool made his sensitive nipples tingle, causing Alec to moan loudly. By the time the mist was done, Alec had obscenely huge tits that would put any man or woman to shame.

Alec gagged as the cloud of mist continued to fill up his body. He could taste the three men's tangy cum in his mouth while the mist was pouring itself down his throat. It was slightly overwhelming, but the sweet taste of cum kept Alec begging for more.

Once the mist filled out his chest, it continued moving throughout his body. Next, came Alec's arms. Alec could feel the cold reach his fingertips as the mist slithered down his limbs. His arms steadily grew in size while also staying toned in muscle definition. The veins started bulging out too, adding to the bodybuilder look the mist was giving Alec. Soon enough, Alec had cannons for arms with biceps the size of melons and with broad shoulders to complete the look.

The mist then moved through and down Alec's torso. Alec had to suppress a laugh as he felt the cold move past his midsection. The mist froze any body fat he had in the stomach region. His abs popped out one by one until he had a perfect set of washboard abs. But the body transformation didn't stop there either. The mist went further down Alec's body, shrinking his hip size as it did so. It also gave him an incredibly chiseled V line too. By the time the mist was done, Alec's torso looked like it belonged to a Greek god.

The mist slithered down to the bottom half of his body. By this point, Alec had his eyes closed shut while the mist continued possessing his body. He was moaning like crazy! So much so that he didn't even notice that the mirage of the three men had disappeared and that he had swallowed up their cum cloud in one intensely erotic slurp and swallow. The next phase of the body transformation happened rather quickly because of this. Alec felt waves of cold roll all over his body. The mist was filling him up to his limits. It filled into every crevice Alec had remaining in his body. He grew a bubble butt that was defined with muscle. His beefy thighs could crush watermelons. His engorged cock and balls could impregnate an entire village with just one load of his cum. Even Alec's feet grew in size until he had size 13 feet! All the muscle mass Alec's body had taken on thanks to the mist caused him to burst through the fabric of the white robe, leaving his new muscular body to bask in the glow of the twinkling snow and the sweat of a full body transformation.

Alec laid there in the snow, gasping for breath. He threw his arms to the back of his arms. He was so tired, he didn't even noticed he could finally move.

Iaro grinned at the sight of the newly transformed Alec. He walked up to him, and Alec managed to lift his head to look him in the eye.

"I've used my magic to grant you a powerful transformation. I've given you every ounce of masculinity your attackers possessed to make you in my image, my brother. You now possess my muscular body as well as an affinity for all things cold. But remember, although my magic will protect you, you must never let your pure heart grow dark."

"Huh... What..." Alec said in huffs. His mind was too busy regaining composure to fully comprehend what Iaro told him.

But instead of repeating himself, Iaro simply smiled. He then kneeled down to Alec and placed both hands on his face. Iaro then pulled him in and planted a wet kiss firmly on his lips. The kiss caught Alec off guard, but once he realized what was happening, he kissed Iaro back. It was a moment of pure bliss for Alec to finally be just as muscular as the jock he was kissing. But as Alec savored every moment of their kiss, his vision went to white and he blacked out again.

***

Alec woke up groggy and tired in bed. His whole body was sore and his mind was reeling. He rubbed his heavy eyes and let out a heavy yawn as he rolled over in bed. As he did so, Alec couldn't help but notice he felt a lot heavier than he was used to. He had also forgotten he went to bed fully naked and only remembered when he felt his soft dick flop against his bedsheets. Alec felt a cool breeze blow into his bedroom and pass by his nude body.

"Fuck man, it's so fucking cold..." Alec whispered to himself. But as he heard his own words, he quickly sat up in bed and realized he wasn't actually cold. In fact, the cold breeze had somehow invigorated him.

"What the fuck... HOLY SHIT!!" Alec shouted at the top of his lungs as he looked down at his new incredibly toned body. He looked as if he had been going to the gym his entire life!

"Shit man... I'm so fucking big now...!! God bless Iaro and the cold..."

As Alec ran his hands all over his new torso, really savoring every angle and edge of his new physique, the memories of his latest dream began trickling in.

The more Alec caressed himself, the more vivid his memory of the dream became. He remembered everything; the clear view he had of the three men circle jerking on top of him, the visceral feelings he had while the mist transformed him from the inside out, and the kiss he shared with Iaro that was filled with the most homoerotic love he had ever experienced.

A wet spot made from precum formed on Alec's bedsheets. He had unconsciously started thrusting his hips into the bed while remembering his insanely erotic transformation dream.

"Fuck me man..."

Alec flipped over to his back. His hardened cock was leaking precum like a faucet. He whistled at the sight of his new 8 inch member. He purred with his baritone voice as he grabbed his dick with a firm grip and gave it a few pumps.

"Nrgh... fuckkkk.....!!"

A mix of hot and cold began to flush over Alec. His new body was still getting used to the newfound strength and magic it had been endowed with. It made jerking off even more pleasurable as his body was still extra sensitive after being transformed! But even though Alec had a lot of gratitude for his new physique, he couldn't deny that he had a favorite part of his new body. His pecs.

He cupped one of the heavy slabs of meat on his chest and gave it a few jiggles. He then continued massaging them with his free hand while still keeping a steady pace to his strokes. He took his time feeling the muscles in his pectorals.

They were big. They were heavy. They were bulging. They were firm when flexed. They were jiggly when at rest. They were the perfect man pillows.

But, most importantly, they were all his.

Alec had always loved big pecs, but to be able to possess a pair of daddy donkers of his own was sending him over the edge. He gave the nipples a pinch. That little bit of pain sent a wave of warm pleasure to spread throughout his pecs, causing him to let out guttural moans as he continued loving his new body.

"Oohhh man..! Ohh fuckk!! FUUUUCK!!!"

After several minutes of self-love, Alec could feel himself getting close. He removed his hand from his chest and moved it to his dick. He was using both hands now to stroke his throbbing cock. Alec was gasping for breath as he felt himself getting close to cumming. Alec wanted to make his first nut in his new body the best he's ever had.

He picked up the speed of his strokes while flexing as many muscles in his body as he could. His balls were slapping against his thighs and bed while his pecs were bouncing like mad. Alec's face was flushed red and his body was getting drenched in sweat as he felt himself letting go to the ecstasy-like pleasure building up. He only lasted a couple of minutes more before he couldn't hold on anymore. Cum came flooding out of him like a geyser. His loads reached impressive heights! Alec could only moan in between bated breaths as he watched himself shoot cum all over. Load after load of warm, sticky seed came out. He was drenched in a mixture of cum and sweat by the time he was finally finished. He lifted his arm behind his head and caught a whiff of his sweaty pit. Alec was surprised he had worked up such a sweat just jerking off, but he loved his new manly musk and took it all in.

...After taking some time to calm down, Alec got out of bed and cleaned up. He took an absurdly long shower, though most of that time was spent admiring the goods. Even after processing everything he had experienced, Alec could still hardly believe it was all real! He kept grabbing and flexing his pecs just to make sure he wasn't still dreaming. But surely enough, it was all still very much real!

Alec walked back into his bedroom and sat down. Although he had been blessed with a new body, he had no idea what to do with it.

He sat there for a while. His phone chirped, and Alec reached over to reach it.

"Oh shit."

Alec read the text from Ivan. He had been so caught up with the Legend of the White Fox that he had been neglecting the man of his dreams for several days with little to no explanation. Alec wasted no time in drafting an apology text to Ivan. He promised Ivan that if he came over to his apartment, then he would explain everything in full detail but why he went MIA. After several revisions, Alec hit send and prayed that he could still salvage what he had going with Ivan.

As he waited with his head in his hands, he heard a distinct meow coming from his window. Alec turned his head to the source of the noise. He was surprised to see a white cat sitting at his windowsill. It had the most luxurious coat of white fur Alec had ever seen on any animal!

The cat hopped down from the window and walked towards him. It rubbed itself against Alec's leg, and Alec could hear its loud purring while showering him with feline affection. Alec bent down to pick up the cat, and as he held the beautiful cat in his hands, he couldn't help but focus on the gold collar on its neck. The collar had a single letter inscribed on it. An 'N.'

"Oh my God, it's you! Nivalis!!"

Alec gave the purring Nivalis a hug. He showered Nivalis with affection and thanked her nonstop for blessing him.

Afterward, Nivalis hopped out of Alec's arms and walked back to the window. She jumped on the windowsill, looked back at Alec, and meowed. She also began wagging her tail vigorously. Alec recognized Nivalis was trying to say something and joined her at the window.

Nivalis walked out onto the outer edge of the apartment building while Alec peered out of his window. Alec looked all around, scanning the area until his eyes spotted a disturbing sight. He spotted a lesbian couple cowering in fear as some bigot with an anti-pride sign was creeping up on them. They were cornered with nowhere left to run.

Getting angry at what he saw, Alec took in a deep breath. He inhaled with all of his chest, then exhaled. His breath was frosty. Alec watched in amazement as his frosty breath disappeared into the air. Alec turned back to the ongoing crime scene, and watched as the bigot dropped their sign as they began rubbing their arms. The bigot was curling up into the ball, shivering. The lesbian couple saw their chance and ran like hell before the bigot could warm up.

"Wow... That's so fucking cool, did I do that?" Alec turned his head to where Nivalis was sitting, but the white cat was already gone.

As Alec searched for Nivalis, a doorbell coming from his front door caught Alec's attention.

"Alec? Are you home? It's me, Ivan. If you're ready to talk I'm ready to listen, but if you don't open this door in 3 minutes I'm leaving!!"

Alec took one final look around trying to find Nivalis, but it was no use. He couldn't spot the mythical cat anywhere. Instead, he felt a cool breeze pass by. Alec took in the cold and smiled. He knew Nivalis and Iaro would still be around, watching over him.

He then hurried to his front door. Alec was excited to tell Ivan everything he had experienced, and he had a feeling that Ivan would find his new powers 'pretty cool' (and in more ways than one too).

[m0g4m1l4nd]

/ooc I just keep giggling about the fact that mogami is posting from a tree as a praying mantis arguing with a middle schooler 😭

[thefadecodex]

This whole blog is SO useful thank you so much for this. I have a rather specific question XD say a spirit became flesh and lived an entire life in the material world, would they be more human than spirit then? (Or, whatever race they took) and if they kept this connection to the Fade (so like being a mage by normal people's standards) would they be vulnerable to possession? How do you think that would work?

Salutations, curious soul!

I am very glad you have found this blog useful! What an excellent question—and one that dives into the fascinating intersection of spirits, flesh, and identity. We actually have one clear example in DA lore: Cole.

Cole, originally a Spirit of Compassion, became flesh when he manifested a physical, human form. By the time we meet him in DAI (9:41 Dragon), he has already spent at least a year in the mortal world following the events of Asunder (9:40 Dragon). As Solas notes, Cole appears fully human.

Despite his physical form, Cole maintains a connection to the Fade, which explains his lingering spirit abilities—going unnoticed, making people forget him, and hearing their thoughts. However, these abilities are weaker than they would be if he were still purely a spirit. As Solas explains:

A fully spiritual being might make someone forget them completely.

A spirit-made-flesh like Cole might only make someone momentarily overlook or briefly forget them.

This shows that while spirits in flesh retain their Fade abilities, those powers are significantly diminished.

Binding vs. Possession

An important distinction is that Cole wasn’t afraid of possession—he was afraid of being bound against his will and twisted away from his purpose. For spirits, being corrupted or forced away from their intended purpose is a far greater fear than traditional possession by a demon.

If Cole becomes more human, this fear of being bound seems to fade. Yet, even in his more human state, he retains faint memories of the Fade and weakened spiritual abilities. This suggests that a spirit-made-flesh with a lingering connection to the Fade might have some resistance—if not outright immunity—to possession. 

To our knowledge, there’s no definitive example of a spirit being possessed by another spirit in the same way demons possess mages. Spirits seem to influence, interact with, and even consume one another in the Fade, but this dynamic doesn’t mirror traditional possession.

This complex relationship between spirits, physical forms, and Fade connections leaves much open to interpretation, but Cole offers one of the clearest glimpses into this fascinating intersection of spirit and flesh.

This question is so compelling that it deserves deeper exploration in the upcoming Spirit Complexity module. After all, what if a spirit could possess another spirit? Now that’s a fascinating topic worth diving into!

May your path through the Fade remain well-lit!

—The Fade Codex

[aprocessionofthoughts]

Possession

whumptober4 day 21- spirit possession fandom -dp dc tw- none summary- Tim just wants to solve this case

masterlist ao3 part 7 of MM

Tim frowned at the batcomputer. This was the third time this month where the perpetrator of a theft remembered nothing. While normally, Tim would think they were lying, these were average normal people. They would have no reason to steal this kind of high tech stuff or have the ability to lie about it so effectively afterwards. 

He reviewed the camera footage again. It wasn’t much help, as soon as the perpetrator stepped into view of the camera the footage became grainy and glitchy.

Wait a second. Tim rewound the footage and played it frame by frame. There. For only a moment, the thief looked towards the cameras. There was a red glow emitted from the thief's eyes. Tim frowned. It could just be an effect of the glitchy footage, but… He pulled up the footage from the other two robberies. One of them didn’t ever show the thief’s eyes, but the second one did for just a moment. They also had glowy red eyes.

Tim leaned back in the batchair. It couldn’t be a coincidence that two of the three thefts were committed by thieves whose eyes glowed red. 

Tim reviewed the data they’d collected on the thieves. None of them showed signs of metahuman abilities, and there was no connection between the thieves either. The only thing they knew was that the thefts were each committed by a technician working at the robbed companies. 

Tim tapped his finger against the keyboard. Could it be a third party? Someone controlling the thieves? And if they were, how? Was it technology like the Mad Hatter, or was it some kind of meta ability? And what were they after? It was three separate companies that were affected, each having a top secret project stolen. Tim still needed to finish hacking the companies to see what exactly had been stolen. Was it just a competitor wanting to get ahead? Or did they need all the components to create something else?

So, he needed to figure out what was stolen, why it was stolen, and who was behind the robberies if it wasn’t the ones caught on camera. He tapped on the edge of his keyboard and reached for his coffee.

“Nuh uh.” someone said, grabbing his coffee. Tim turned to glare at Dick. 

“Give it back.”

“No can do, Timbo, you already had coffee today.”

Tim froze. There was no way Dick knew about the coffee machine Tim had hidden in his room.

“No, I didn’t.” he crossed his arms. He wouldn’t give anything away.

Dick leaned on the edge of the desk taking a sip of Tim’s coffee before scowling at the bitterness. “Come on, Tim. I saw you at that little coffee shop you like.”

What? Tim had been in the cave all day.  “Dick, I’ve been here all day. You can check the footage.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “As if you couldn’t alter the footage.”

Tim frowned because that was true.

“Yes. But I didn’t go to Deathpresso. You know Alfred banned me.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. Tim scowled. Finally, Dick rolled his eyes one more time before turning to leave.

“Fine. But I know what I saw. And I saw you buying a death wish coffee. You can’t convince me otherwise.”

Tim scowled after him. He hadn’t gone to the coffee shop today. He’d snuck over there yesterday, but that was beside the point. Tim narrowed his eyes. Dick did seem pretty convinced so either he’d seen someone that looked like Tim, or they had a clone problem. While Tim himself hadn’t been cloned yet, that they knew of, Damian had been cloned several times. And Tim wouldn’t put it past Ra’s to clone him. That man was obsessed.

Ugh. Tim didn’t have time for this. It was probably some random stranger Dick had mistaken for Tim. Besides, if Tim had been cloned by Ra’s the clone wouldn’t waste time going to coffee shops.

Nope.

It was just a random stranger. Tim had other things to worry about right now. He’d look at the coffee shop security camera footage later.

[thomothysdoodles]

oh, Dames..

21: BODY HORROR

Tattoo Gun | Spirit Possession | “Let the bedsheet soak up the tears.” (Apparat feat. Soap & Skin, Goodbye)

[whump-my-dear-watson]

peter + eddie sharing symbiote trauma

WHUMPTOBER 2024 NO. 21 "SPIRIT POSSESSION"

[archivist-crow]

Mottlingen Possession (1836-1843) - German peasant woman possessed by a ghost and more than 1,000 demons.

The case was published in English for the first time by the spiritualist medium W. T. Stead in his book Borderland: A Casebook of True Supernatural Stories (1891-92). The victim was a single woman identified only by her initials, G. D. (Gottliebin Dittus), born around 1816 in Mottlingen, Wurtemberg, Germany. She was a servant who was by all accounts pious, so her friends and neighbors were mystified at the sudden onset of supernatural attack followed by complete demonic possession.

Between 1836 and 1838, G. D. had a serious illness that weakened her overall health and left her with one leg shorter than the other. The same side of her body was affected as well, making it impossible for her continue work as a servant. She went to live with two sisters and a nearly blind brother, who lived on the ground floor of a house in Mottlingen. The illness may have made G. D. vulnerable to spirit invasion.

G. D. immediately felt that a strange presence was in the house. On her very first day there, she was in the midst of saying grace at dinner when she had a seizure and fell unconscious. At night, weird sounds were heard in the house: a swishing, trailing noise and the sound of objects being rolled around on the floor. Even the family who lived on the second floor heard the noises and was alarmed by them.

G. D. saw shadowy figures and moving lights, which were not visible to others. She felt an invisible force seize her hands at night and move them. G. D. underwent a change in personality, becoming unpleasant to others.

By 1841, the nightly visitations and phenomena had become so distressing to G. D. that she sought out a clergyman, Pfarrar (Johann Christoph) Blumhardt (pictured). He was at a loss to explain what was happening to her. That winter, she became ill again, but she was extremely unpleasant to Blumhardt when he paid visits to her.

The disturbances escalated. By April 1842, the entire neighborhood could hear the noises at night. G. D. frequently saw the specter of a woman who had died two years prior in the village, holding a dead child in her arms. The ghost said she wanted rest.

One night, a mysterious light in the house revealed a loose floorboard. A paper with writing was found underneath, but the dirt on it was so heavy that the writing could not be read. Two weeks later, another mysterious light and a noise emerged from behind the stove. Underneath the floor, there were hidden objects: money wrapped up in paper, packets of a strange powder, bird bones, and other items. G. D. and her siblings believed these to be magical objects used for spell casting.

Blumhardt persuaded G. D. to move, and she went to live with another relative. The previous house continued to be haunted until 1844. Meanwhile, the activity also followed G. D. to her new residence. Now, she started having convulsions. Her possessions began.

The dead woman kept appearing to her, and simultaneously G. D. would feel tapped and even struck sharply by invisible blows. G. D. said the woman had confessed to grievous sins on her deathbed and could lind no peace. G. D. would fall unconscious, during which times "unearthly sounds" would fill the house.

Blumhardt described the hirst time he saw her become possessed:

Suddenly, something seemed to enter into her, and her whole body began to move. I said a lew words of prayer, mentioning the name of Jesus. Immediately she rolled her eyes, threw out her hands, and spoke in a voice that was at once recognized as that of a stranger—not only on account of the sound, as of the expression and choice of words. The voice cried, "I cannot endure to hear that name!" All shuddered. I had never heard anything of the kind, and offered a silent prayer for wisdom and discretion.

Blumhardt questioned the spirit, who said she had no rest in death because she had killed two children and buried them in fields. She could not pray and could not endure the name of Jesus. She said she was not alone; "the worst of all beings" was with her. She also said that she had practiced magic, which made her "the devil's bondswoman." She had been cast out of people seven times, and she was not about to be cast out again. Blumhardt told her she could not remain in the body of G. D., but the spirit was defiant. At last, it left after being sternly ordered out by the minister.

Subsequently, G. D. suffered frequent possessions, with an increasing number of demons entering into her. Blumhardt cast out as many as 14 at one time. Onlookers often felt blows, but the minister was never harmed. The demons told him they could not harm him.

The possessions intensified. G. D. felt invisible blows day and night. Sometimes, she was knocked down while walking on the street. One night, she awakened feeling a burning hand seize her neck. The skin blistered, and the wound festered for weeks.

On July 25, 1842, G. D. suffered a particularly bad possession, lying unconscious "like dead" while more than 1,000 demons passed out of her through her mouth. According to Blumhardt, they exited in groups of 12, 14, and 28 at a time. After this, G. D. had some peace for a few weeks, but then the possessions returned, worse than ever. Every Wednesday and Friday night, the demons arrived. Her health declined.

Others in the village urged the minister to use remedies of sympathetic magic, but he refused, believing that magic would only strengthen Satan against him. He believed such folk magic practices, as well as fortune telling and divining the location of lost property, were the type of thing the Devil used to ensnare people.

Instead, Blumhardt relied solely on prayer, even when he was not present with G. D. It always afforded her relief, but when he stopped, the attacks started again.

Once, the demons said there were 1,067 of them, the largest of the attacks. They spoke in French, Italian, and "unknown" tongues as well as G. D's native German. Whenever Blumhardt cast them out, they stayed in the room for a long time, visible to G. D. but no one else. One of the demons, she said, dressed in rich, ancient clothing and always carried a book. This demon seemed to be the leader.

Eventually, Blumhardt succeeded in casting them out and keeping them out of G. D. Some of them said they were delivered from servitude to the Devil by his prayer and were being sent to a place of rest until Judgment Day. Others were in despair, presumably because they had to go back to Hell. Among the first to leave G. D. was the spirit of the dead woman, who asked to haunt the village church. She was later seen there by G. D.

The last demon was expelled on February 8, 1843. G. D. lay unconscious for hours. When she awakened, she said she had been to a foreign country, the description of which seemed to be the West Indies. A terrible earthquake had happened there, she said, and many of her tormenting demons were cast into the crater of a volcano, including the leader with the book. A few days later, a real earthquake struck the West Indies.

Despite the expulsion of the demons, G. D.’s troubles were not over. She repeatedly vomited sand, pieces of glass, nails, shoe buckles, live grasshoppers, a frog, and a snake. Pins, needles, and knitting needles were drawn out of her body. The worst were two large nails, one of them bent, that were removed from her head and caused copious bleeding from her ears, nose, and eyes. Blumhardt removed many of these pins, nails, and needles himself. First, he would feel them under the skin, working their way out; then, they would pierce the skin. He opined that the Devil had the ability to dematerialize real objects and reassemble their atoms inside the body.

G. D. was still visited at night by spirits, who touched her and forced something like bread into her mouth. However, they did not possess her. She attempted suicide. Her final struggle against the demons took place just before Christmas 1843, and her brother and one sister were affected as well. All three recovered. G. D. moved into Blumhardt's house.

Blumhardt believed that G. D. underwent these afflictions because as a child, she had a relative who was a witch, who promised to teach her the arts when she turned 10. The woman died when G. D. was eight, but Blumhardt said the Devil evidently considered her his property because of the witch's intentions.

Text from The Encyclopedia of Demons & Demonology (Checkmark Books - 2009) by Rosemary Guiley

[musicmakesyousmart]

Spirit Possession - Self-titled

Profound Lore

2020

[razzle-zazzle]

Whumptober Day 21: Body Horror

Spirit Possession

2432 Words; Coleverlord, pre-canon

TW for injury, emotional abuse

AO3 ver

Cole drifted.

Dance school had been… Cole still enjoyed dancing, despite the growing distance between him and his father. He did enjoy dancing, he really did—

(“Didn’t you see the way he was staring? He’s totally a creep.” Whispers from other students, having to find his own table at lunch;

“Young man, you need to work harder if you want to keep your scholarship.” The only class he had anything less than an A in was his B in history; the scholarship wasn’t that strict.

“You’re dragging our quartet down.”

“Ugh, why does he have to be here?”

“Professor, I can’t work with my partner. Can I switch?”

“Sorry, all the roles have been filled. Now run along, you’re interrupting rehearsal.”

“Freak.”

“Creep.”

“There’s something wrong with him.”)

It was everything else about school that Cole couldn’t stand. Not that it was anything new; he knew the effect he had on other people, but—

Go west, Vessel.

Yeah. That. So Cole left Marty Oppenheimer’s, threw away the scholarship and left. Nobody had stopped him, either. He considered going home, to the garden he couldn’t stand and the bedroom where the shadows shushed all his worries and the studio he could dance in as much as he wanted when his father wasn’t home—

But the way his father had shipped him out to Marty Oppenheimer’s was clue enough. Cole wasn’t stupid, he knew that the spiders crawling under his skull made other people uneasy. He knew he and his father had grown distant because of that—and because of his mother’s death, which had only upset his father further. Cole hadn’t been stupid enough to believe people would treat him like anything other than a monster since he was nine and sitting in his bedroom, hair still damp from the pond—

So Cole drifted. It said to go west, and Cole was vaguely meandering in that direction, which It hadn’t complained about so the slow pace was probably fine. He passed through some towns on the way, met a few people—

(Always leave by the next sunrise, that was the rule. Linger any longer, and the ants marching under his skin would start to give people fits. Best to keep moving.)

—but he didn’t really settle. Not that he could; It would yell at him to get moving again. So Cole kept moving, kept going even when it got hard—he’d been doing that since he was little, he supposed. He kept going when his mother stopped seeing him as her son, kept going when his friends all drifted away, when his father drifted away. Left Marty Oppenheimer’s at Its urging, and just kept going

and going

and going.

Can’t be a good son, can’t be a dancer. Is there anything I can be?

You are my Vessel, and that is all you will need to be.

Cole snorted, bringing the hammer down to strike the nail. The sun was high in the sky, and the fence before him needed to be fixed. He liked working with his hands; there was something so satisfying about the physical labor. It helped that he was often rewarded with food. So Cole worked, taking off the old pickets and hammering in the new.

The hours passed, and before long Cole was being called away from the completed fence for dinner. He took his meal out to the front step, away from awkward table conversations and away from people he had yet to unnerve. He ate in silence, termites crawling along under his skin and shadows dancing at his feet.

“You can come eat with the rest of us, you know.” Cole turned back to look at the girl at the door—her name was Rose, he was pretty sure, and she was the daughter of the couple that lived here. “My folks don’t bite.” There was hospitality in her voice, invitation in the way she looked at him.

“I’m fine. Sunset’s nice.” Cole deflected. “Thank you for the meal.” He added.

Rose stared at him. The termites under his skin started biting at his bones, shadows creeping towards the door. Rose frowned, grip on the doorframe tightening before she retreated back into the house without a word.

Cole turned back to his meal. All the isopods in his brain all curled up, and his shoulders hunched slightly. He set his plate down where they could find it.

He was gone by the time it was dark.

+=+=+=+=+

Cole drifted.

Mountain towns were interesting. His hometown wasn’t really near any big mountains, though he’d seen them on the occasional school field trip or family outing. His mother had loved the mountains; she and his father used to jokingly argue about moving to her hometown out in the mountains. They couldn’t have those arguments anymore, though, and Cole was no longer around to hear them anyway.

Cole was staring up at a particularly large mountain, now, the peak so high it touched the clouds. His mother used to tell him so many stories about mountains…

“I bet I could climb that.” Cole commented. His mother used to go rock climbing all the time before he was born, and after—though she had never been able to take him with her. The wasps under his skin agreed—and hadn’t It said something about “power over the earth” or something like that, once? It wasn’t like Cole would die if he fucked up and fell—

Vessel.

Cole had learned a lot about living off the land since leaving Marty Oppenheimer’s. So he’d probably be fine.

Vessel, do not climb that mountain.

“Why not?” Cole was already starting up the foothills, jogging along the incline towards a rock face that looked a little more climbable than the others.

There is something among those mountains.

Cole paused. He’d… never felt the spiders pulling back, before. “Are you… scared?” The thought was almost laughable; the shadow in his brain never got scared. The shadow in his brain did the scaring, not the other way around. “I thought you were the Great Calamity that Stalks the Night and Turns All Hearts to Rot.” He added, pulling up one of the more pretentious names It liked to use.

It is not… that.

Somehow, the shadow sounded shifty. Usually it was more direct with Cole.

It is simply something powerful. I fear for your safety, Vessel.

Cole’s eyes narrowed as he grabbed the first handhold he saw. “I thought you said I had nothing to fear.” but you. He hauled himself up onto a small cliff, where there was an incline he could climb more easily. The wasps in his chest buzzed angrily, but Cole pushed past it and kept going. After a moment, the shadows at the corners of his vision thinned, the spider settling back into Its corner. Cole kept climbing, half-forgotten memories of his mother’s stories filtering through his head.

When he was six, she’d taken him to a place full of special rock climbing walls with those colored handholds. He could hardly remember it, now, the memory lost to a haze of cobwebs, like every other memory of the time his mother still loved him. He didn’t try to chase the memory—he wouldn’t put it past the shadow to try and bury it harder. It had never liked Cole’s mother—and she hadn’t liked It, either. Cole had been a casualty of the crossfire.

Cole was pretty high up, now, having scrambled up a more sheer rock face with surprising speed. He actually wasn’t sure how he’d gotten so far without falling—though he could certainly feel the burn in his muscles as he pushed himself higher, higher, higher—

Vessel.

“Oh, what now?” Cole groaned. He got that he was beholden to the shadow, he understood that—but what was so wrong with climbing a mountain? It wasn’t like a dragon was just going to show up out of nowhere—It would have said something if that was the case.

House centipede legs scrabbled against his spine.

If you won’t listen to my words, then—

A spider crawling on his brain, tugging at threads—

Cole’s hand opened of its own accord, palm pushing against the stone to

throw

his body back

away

from the

rock

so that he was free falling, limbs locked up by so many coiling worms. The world spun slowly around him, the mountain rising up at incredible speed as Cole went down, down, down—

The impact knocked the air from his lungs with a sickening crunch. Pain slammed him like a wall of tiny needles, crackling his spine and snapping bones. Cole wheezed, feeling so much like a smear of human paste upon the ground. The world was spinning—was he getting dizzy? It was hard to breathe.

Get up.

Cole whined, as much as his aching chest would allow. He sounded—and felt—like a popped balloon slowly deflating. Not that the shadow cared how Cole felt.

Get up.

“Cuh.” Ohhhhh, Cole’s head hurt. His everything hurt. “Can’t.” How was he supposed to move? He’d just fallen several stories off a mountain!

Get up.

Cole couldn’t move his legs, his shoulders were agony—he couldn’t do it! He knew It knew that, so why—

Get. Up.

I can’t! What was Cole supposed to do? It had thrown him off a mountain! His vision blurred, and didn’t unblur—was he dying? The world was still spinning. His head hurt.

Get up!

Shadows crowded Cole’s vision. Violet light erupted from somewhere in his chest, so many ants marching around under his skin and laying down new threads—

A scream ripped from Cole’s throat as his broken bones started to knit themselves back together, legs and arms realigning in seconds. His chest heaved, seeming to split open for a moment before he could suddenly breathe again. Violet threads raced through his flesh hot enough to burn, knitting it all back together and forcing Cole up until he was standing on knees that threatened to buckle at any second.

Cole felt like he should probably be mad. But he mostly felt shaky and uncertain. Worms dug into his stomach, squirming up his chest at the spider’s direction.

You couldn’t get up on your own.

“Yeah.” Cole grit out. “I noticed.” He stumbled forwards, hands shaking. His bag swung at his side—his bag. Cole nearly tore it open, checking—okay, yeah, he’d need to replace more than half of this. That was what he got for landing on it, he supposed.

I can and will put you back together, Vessel. No matter how broken you get.

“Then why are you scared?” Why would the shadow be so bothered by something in the mountains if it could just put Cole back together?

It is not easy.

That… might have been the first weakness It had ever admitted to.

But the lesson was not so you could act recklessly, Vessel.

Well, then it wasn’t exactly a good lesson, because that the first thing he got from it. The spider in his brain bit down, tiny fangs digging in under his skull.

It was a demonstration. You could not get up on your own.

A frame is nothing without the picture behind it.

You are nothing without me, Vessel.

You would do well to remember that.

+=+=+=+=+

Cole drifted.

He drifted mostly westward, but he was still in the mountains, so he couldn’t go straight west. The shadow had been… not exactly quiet, since throwing him off the mountain, but It hadn’t bothered him as much. It had even brought back that old lullaby It used to comfort Cole when he was little. It wasn’t really an apology, but—

Well, it wasn’t like Cole could be mad at It, anyway. He was getting better at this rock climbing thing—it was honestly pretty fun! It was like a dance, him and the mountain moving in tandem to lift him higher and higher.

…he missed dancing. He missed watching his parents dance late at night.

Cole missed a lot of things he could never have again, really.

Cole was really high up, today—he’d gone straight for the peak of this mountain, and had just breached the clouds. The shadow had grumbled, but otherwise let him go, probably sensing the same weird pull that Cole felt.

With a grunt, Cole pulled himself up and over the edge to rest on the very summit—

There was an old man at the top of the mountain.

And old man… drinking tea. “Hello there.”

The spider skittered as far back as it could go, the shadows disappearing entirely. No ants squirmed under Cole’s skin, no worms in his stomach or wasps in his chest, no isopods crawling along his bones. It was all still there, but—It was clearly trying to hide. Which…

This is what It had been afraid of? This old man?

“Um.” Cole greeted, not entirely sure what to say. “How did you—”

That is a dragon, Vessel. Tread carefully.

The old man—dragon—hummed. “Maybe that is a question for me to ask.” He said. “But first: why do you climb the mountain?”

“Because I wanted to.” Because I’ll come out okay even if I fall. “It’s like a dance,” The words were spilling from Cole’s lips, “Me and the mountain, working together. And I like dancing, but I couldn’t stay at that school and continue to learn when everybody hated me—” He swallowed. “I guess I just wanted an escape. From everyone.” He couldn’t say that he wanted to be alone, because he was never truly alone. But he wasn’t lying about wanting space from other people—what was the point in hanging around them anyway, if the shadow was just going to freak them out?

The dragon-who-looked-like-an-old-man nodded. “It is easy to feel discouraged when we are alienated by our peers.” He agreed. “If you knew that they would like you, would you go back?”

“They wouldn’t.” Cole grumbled. “And I can’t go back.”

“I see.” The old-man-maybe-dragon nodded. “You are someone who keeps moving forwards, then.”

Cole felt just a little bit too seen. “Is that good or bad?” He asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Shadows crept around his feet.

“Yes… and no.” The old dragon answered, which wasn’t an answer at all. “Being able to move forwards is an admirable thing,” he explained, “but sometimes one must look back at where they’ve come from. You cannot appreciate the mountain’s height without looking to the valleys below.”

“O…kay?” Ugh, this wasn’t making any sense, and the spiders under his skull were getting agitated. “Why did you climb the mountain, then?”

The old-man-who-didn’t-look-like-a-dragon smiled into his teacup. “Why, to meet you, Cole.”

[m0g4m1l4nd]

Hi. My name is Keiji Mogami. Welcome to my page. I'm happy to have you. ☺︎︎

I'm a renowned psychic and I'd like to share my gift with the world. If you have any questions or troubles, you can put them in my ask box. I̡͎̟̦͎͔̝͉̮̪̳ͪ̓̀̅̌͐̊͛́̀͆̚͟͞͠'̢̧̗͖̻͇̺̽͊͌̃̀͑̾ͪ̉̊̓̉͋͊_̸̬̃͢͜_̴̼̰͔͎̥̣ͮͣͫ̇̾̐̑̊͒̚͠l̀̉ͩ̈l̛̪̲̖̥̙̜̹̥̂͐̐̅̍͒̑͂̚͘͜_̡̧͔̞͖̲̺̱͇͉̜͔͈̅̅̇̓ͩ̀ͫͫ̃͊͊̕͜ b̨̛͕̘̮̹̲̻̙̘̩̥͚͈̙̲̯̽̿̂ͤ͆̄ͨͪ̿́ͮ̅̈́̇͠͝e̸̹̜̹̩̓ͪͦ̇̅ͫͦ͆̆͡ ẁ̧̧̛͓̯̣͓̺͓̤̟̘̜̯̠̞͓̖̜̰̔̏̂̃̊͒̒̀̾͛̇ͫ̑ͨ̚͘͘͜͠͠͞a̴̵̢̪̯̳̙̪͉̱̦̱͈͔̹̞̦ͪ̇̏ͩ̅͆̿͂ͫ͋͑͑̀ͦͤ͑͒ͧ̑̍̎͒͘i̵̸̡̛̛̮̖̞͍͎̦̮̳̝̤̫̪̟̭̮ͨ́̔̃͊ͭ͛ͭͩ̽͌ͪͦͮ̓̽͊͑͛ͫͣ̇̚͜͢͞͝ṫ̨̻̳͈̤̥̠͖̣̜̙̻́ͪ̉͒̿̉̋̌̊̆̽ͧ̓̅̐͘͘͘͞͞ḭ̶̵̗̺͒ͭͨ̇̉͋ͥͨ̓ͫ́ͧ̎̊̄͐̌̀͟͠͞n̴̼̣̈͋̅̾̿͘̕_g͉̣͍̦͖̱̿̑̅́ͬ̏̇̔̀̒ͣ̚ f̴̻̳̭͇̘̬̀ͨͪ̓̊͘ơ̷̸̡̱͔̥̗̄͐́̑̀̀͂ͫ͑͊͗r̢̢̯̞̋̓̍ͨͅ ȳ͙͓̪̯̩̺̭͚͖̲̗́̊ͫ̍ͮ̍̂̔̇ͮ̽ͥ͢͝ͅo̝͖̝̭͉͔̞͐̈́̑͢͞ͅư̴̢̖̭̪͔̟͕͚̤͔̺͕͙͎̘͇̔ͭ́̄ͬͩ͛̾̉ͯ̈̒ͮͧ̊͂̅͢͝ͅͅ.̴̛̘̦̝̙̪̣͈̿̓̄ͫ̋̐ͥͭ̂ͧͥͬͧͭ̐̓͢

𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗔𝗖𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗧 𝗜𝗦 𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥 𝗠𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗨𝗠 𝗜𝗡𝗩𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗚𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗦𝗨𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗘𝗗 𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗦𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡. 𝗗𝗢 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗦𝗖𝗥𝗢𝗟𝗟 𝗔𝗡𝗬 𝗙𝗨𝗥𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥.

Hi it's Jupiter again from @talking-snot and I'm literally being forced to make this against my will /j YOU KNOW THE DRILL!! NO WEIRDOS ASKS ARE VERY WELCOME I LOVE YOU THANKs

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Ask answers: #psychic predictions

Threads: #psychic energy

Reblogs: #telekinesis

Original posts: #spirit possession

TEEHEE

[blueflyingturtleontheway]

Burning passion

whumptober day 21 Spirit possession

Fandom: Elena of Avalor

Characters: Gabriel Nuñez, El Guapo, Rico Villalobos (mentioned)

Words: 723

After rewatching The Curse of El Guapo a million times you can't convince me that Gabe didn't enjoy being possessed to a certain degree. I could go on a whole monologue about it with time stamps from the episode, but instead have this little internal monologue of a kind that I think he could have had going during the first part of the competition.

A foreign laughter filled his ears but it rumbled in his chest. He felt as if he was watching someone else go through the course - looking over someone's arm - or maybe it was simply his memory, from endless hours of training against the obstacles. But his heart was rushing, his blood was pumping and he knew he was there. He was fighting - he was winning - and he felt alive like he hasn't in centuries. The last tree fell under one strike of his sword. He spared a quick glance to the side and of course the hedge wall was untouched except for the path that he had cut out for himself.

His chest swelled with a familiar, burning feeling. Who could be a match for him?

But suddenly there was Rico and he - did he really dare to mock him?!

He ran after him and launched himself at the training dummy while still a good distance from it. He made it with a twirl in the air - of course he made it. His sword raised and fell on the hay sacks and if it swung a bit close to the second track, so what? His opponents were gutted open before the fool even finished the first set.

He landed perfectly - as always - and the stadium erupted. They were all cheering for him. For some reason it made him feel dizzy, but at the same time he knew perfectly well that he deserved it. He deserved all the praise and they were cheering him oh so delightfully!

He had the time to give his admirers what they asked for. What were a few simple push ups for him in the middle of such an easy race? He was good at this - no, he was the best at this.

He started for the next part of the course before Rico could even dream of catching up to him. He jumped and he flew - those short little barriers were supposed to be a problem for him? He barely even touched the rope for the next jump. He added a somersault - he knew his audience was waiting for more showstopping feats from him - and cut the target with one slash of his mighty sword. A perfect landing, as always - as always accompanied by astounded gasps.

He was so close - he could already feel the smell of victory.

Except why was he stopping - why was Rico on the ground? He groaned in pain. He wouldn't just stop so close to the finishing line. Did he not make the jump? It was a good two meters high, he might've gotten seriously injured. Did he need help?

Who cares what he needed? He needed to win. He was going to win.

Just one last obstacle - what if he was injured - he was faster, he was better - it was dangerous - it was a race - he left him behind - he won.

When he crossed the finishing line a roar erupted in his chest and another answered him from the stands. His sword cut through the wooden poles as if they weren't even there. The flags fell to the ground.

Even they were faster than Rico who finally dragged his way to the end of the race. This sweaty, dirty, huffing creature mumbled something at him from where he was bent almost to the ground. He spared him a pitiful smile. It was of course impossible for such a miserable man to ever win, but the fact that he made it to the next round was impressive - moving, almost.

The post was of course as good as his already. He deserved it - he has worked for it - he won it. Everyone could see it - everyone should see it. Why did he have to wait when he finally knew what he was made for - what he came here for?

But, of course, there were procedures. The competition was called for a reason, he wouldn't dare to disregard it. He shouldn't get so ahead of himself. He had to wait for tomorrow -

To show everyone what he already knew. That there was no one better than him for this post. That there was no one better than him.

[imaginal-ai]

"Channeling the Spirits"

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Time Bandits (1981, Terry Gilliam)

06/05/2024

[hoples]

Day 21 - Spirit possession - She knew she should have spread the salt before searching for the critter.