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mostlycompetentwriter · 4 years ago

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Limitless - Chapter Six

F/M Pairing: Y/N x Johnny (side pairing: Y/N x Jaehyun)

Word Count: 4K

Warnings: mentions of violence, and language

Genre: Hogwarts AU! Fantasy AU!

Summary: “The first years, please note... that the Dark Forest is strictly forbidden to all students” - Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

Taglist: @jae-bread, @lanadreamie, @do-you-like-riddles, @ki-aechan, @the-usernames-i-like-are-taken, @dru-shadow, @completencttrash, @haechans-sunflower, @neocultech-baby, @jaectizen, @yutamist, @lunavbm, @seriousballoon, @lerissa, @kickin–it, @nekojohndo, @n0teanoshade

“Time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead” - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In a complete turn of events, when I entered the Great Hall this time, I surprised everyone in the room when I walked in the direction of the Slytherin table to sit down next to Johnny Seo.

There was a pervasive silence, and it seemed that every eye had turned to observe this unexpected situation. But I wasn’t bothered by their intrusive stares; instead, I reveled in the attention because I wanted as many witnesses as possible to watch me as I extended the figurative olive branch.

“How are you, Jeno?” I asked the dark-haired student sitting across from me.

However, in place of a formal greeting, Jeno’s response was nothing more than the image of his mouth falling open in shock. “What are you playing at, Y/N?” Johnny muttered, pushing aside his empty plate as he glared at me.

“Nothing,” I replied. “I’ve just been thinking about our conversation from my father’s banquet.”

“Ah!” Johnny chuckled. “You’re coming to tell me that I’m wrong.”

“No,” I countered. “I actually took your words to heart, and I’m willing to concede certain points.”

“Oh?” Johnny smirked. “Care to elaborate?”

“You’re right about the hypocrisy,” I informed him. “But I’m not the only one guilty of its implications.”

“Is this your way of turning things around on me?” Johnny asked.

“I just think you should give it some consideration,” I said, and I tried to ignore his incredulous laugh. “But,” I growled, “I want to call a truce between us.”

His laugh broke off immediately, and it was Johnny’s turn to be caught off-guard, appearing just as ridiculous as Jeno when he gaped at me. “Truce?”

“I’m sure you know what it means,” I said, taking a moment to revel in my own self-satisfaction. “Perhaps I was insensible before, but my brother is fond of your cousin, and I think we should try our best to get along.”

But for a moment, I wasn’t certain that Johnny was even going to acknowledge my suggestion. After all, even if I was willing to apologize for my behavior from before, there was no guarantee that he would accept my sincere expression. And I held my breath when he released an exaggerated sigh. “I guess you don’t feel any remorse from our conversation? Doesn’t it bother you that I had to point out those flaws?”

“I’m grateful for your honesty,” I said, measuring my words with astuteness. “Sometimes, it takes the intervention of a friend to help a person understand the consequences of their actions.”

“Friend?” Johnny repeated with a scoff. “Y/N, I’ve tried to be friends since our first day of potions together, but you’ve made that very hard for me.”

“Well, consider this a change of heart,” I said, and I held out my hand to him. “Shall we shake on it?”

Johnny rolled his eyes, but his palm was warm against mine. “I’ll consider this an open invitation.”

“Whatever that means,” I grumbled, and I pulled away from him with a smile. “See? Even I can be surprisingly civil.”

“We’ll see about that,” Johnny said, and I could feel his gaze on me as I left the Great Hall without another word.

The rumors were swift, pervading the Castle and all its students no matter what year they happened to claim. But I wasn’t surprised to discover that people were talking about my wiling compliance to entertain Johnny Seo. And I fully expected for someone to confront me about the conversation, but it was still later on when I was finally approached about my burgeoning relationship with Johnny Seo - a seemingly unusual request for neutrality between us.

“Did something happen between you and Johnny?” Jaehyun asked, and I looked up from my textbook to see that he was looking straight at me with an inquisitive stare, no longer concerned with the lines he was expected to write for his transfiguration assignment.

“Just some stuff that happened over break,” I said, stretching my arms out above my head as I dismissed my homework with an exaggerated sigh.

“What kind of stuff?” Jaehyun pressed, and I took a moment to consider why he was so interested.

“He said some things about my mom,” I admitted. “It bothered me because he was right.”

“Oh,” Jaehyun murmured, and he seemed relieved by the confession. “I guess I wasn’t sure what to expect. Everyone keeps talking about you and Johnny.”

“It was a surprisingly useful conversation,” I said. “He pointed out some things that nobody has ever really asked me to think about before.”

Jaehyun was quiet as he observed me. “Is that okay? You aren’t bothered by what he said?”

“I can handle Johnny,” I told him with a smile, which he returned after glancing at the ring that I wore on my index finger, glittering enticingly below the lights.

“It looks good on you,” he remarked to change the conversation.

“Yeah,” I agreed, holding out my hand to admire the diamonds. “This is beautiful, Jaehyun. You didn’t have to get me anything expensive.”

“I wanted to buy it,” Jaehyun insisted. “You mean a lot to me.”

I averted my gaze at his sincere words, and I could feel my face warming under his close scrutiny. “I feel bad because I didn’t get you a gift.”

“Trust me, Y/N,” he said with a chuckle. “You give me more than you could ever imagine.”

“But I want you to have something concrete!” I insisted, and Jaehyun’s expression slowly morphed into something more serious as he leaned in closer across the table.

“You could always give me an answer.”

“Answer?” I repeated, and there was a strange amount of tension in the air between us as his eyes locked onto mine.

“Y/N, I like you a lot,” Jaehyun confessed. “But before you misinterpret my words, I want you to know that my feelings aren’t exactly platonic.”

I shivered because, of course, I understood what he meant, but I had never been propositioned in such a way before. “Jaehyun-”

“Let’s go out on Friday,” he interrupted as if sensing that I was uncertain. “I want to take you somewhere in Hogsmeade, and you can think about what I’ve said and how you feel.”

I pondered his simple request, wondering if it was possible for me to think about those things. And I had never really thought about those kinds of complicated feelings, even if Jaehyun made me want to start considering them. But he always made things easier for me, and I found myself nodding along as Jaehyun’s relieved smile captured the moment with a gentle exhale.

It wasn’t surprising to have the attention of my classmates directed on me when I walked into the potion’s classroom. Especially when Johnny was already waiting at our usual table, and he wore a self-assured smirk as I sat down next to him. “I got a head start on the assignment,” Johnny said, and he slid his textbook closer to mine where I noticed he had already crafted several notes in the margins.

“Oh? And how did you know what we were making today?” I asked, and I allowed my fingers to follow the words as they filled out the pages.

“I told you,” Johnny said. “I’m one of Professor Zhang’s favorites.”

“I still don’t understand why he chose you,” I remarked, even while I couldn’t help but admit that the favoritism benefited me in this class.

“Well, since we’re friends now or whatever,” Johnny said. “Maybe you’ll start realizing that I’m a lot smarter than you want to give me credit for.”

“I’ll give you credit when it’s due,” I said with a cheeky smile. “This looks more like cheating to me.”

“Cheating?” Johnny scoffed. “I like to consider it as taking advantage of an opportune situation.”

“Uh-huh.” I grinned. “Did you feel the same way when you cheated to beat the Gryffindor team at their tryouts?”

“That wasn’t cheating!” Johnny sighed. “Honestly, Y/N, you’re making a big mistake by thinking so low of me. One of these days, you’re gonna regret dismissing my natural talents because of your own ego.”

“Is that so?” I asked him. “I’ll certainly let you know when I have a change of heart, friend!”

“Ditto,” Johnny muttered, and there was an unmistakable lilt to his interjection that matched the playful smile breaking the corners of his eyes.

“But I do have one question-” I started, but I was unexpectedly interrupted by a flock of fifth-year girls who rushed into the classroom at once, surrounding our table with giggles.

“Is it true, Y/N?” one of them asked. “We heard that Jaehyun asked you out!”

“I don’t think it’s any of your business,” I said, and I was entirely unimpressed with their invasive demands, even if I was concerned with the sudden disappearance of Johnny’s playful demeanor.

“He said so himself,” they continued. “The two of you are going to Hogsmeade together!”

“I guess it’s true then,” I muttered, but I was far more concerned with the sullen look written across Johnny’s countenance.

“Everyone’s talking about it,” the first girl said, but she was graciously dismissed upon the arrival of Professor Zhang who sternly instructed everyone to sit down.

The girls smiled and leaned in together to whisper in low tones, and I waited until they were gone to discreetly check on Johnny whose rigid posture was concerning.

“Johnny,” I whispered, and it was a muted tone that demonstrated some amount of caution, but I didn’t know why I felt the need to approach Johnny with such uncertainty.

“Whatever, Y/N,” Johnny growled, and he pulled our cauldron closer to the edge of the table. “Let’s just get this done.”

His statement was final, and I fell into a long stretch of silence as we worked together without another word.

I had always been impressed by Hogsmeade: the quaint little shops, the rustic vibe, and the feeling of intimate comraderies around every corner of the bustling streets.

It was the perfect way to spend an evening out of the Castle, shuffling through the snow next to Jaehyun as he talked about his Quidditch team’s upcoming match versus Slytherin. “We’re prepared this time,” he assured me, stopping outside of the Three Broomsticks with a smile. “I love coming here.”

“It’s warm,” I noted, and I was surprised by my body’s willing compliance when Jaehyun wrapped an arm around my waist to lead me inside.

“Most of my friends sit at the back,” he explained, guiding me through the other tables and friendly couples. “It’s more private.”

I nodded in agreement, finding simple pleasure in the quiet alcove, waiting for Jaehyun as he briefly left me alone to bring us back two butterbeers. The frothy beverage had delighted my tastebuds when I tried it Jisung for the first time, and it might seem cliché, but I was glad to share the sentiments of my Hogwarts classmates who all seemed to love it.

“I hope you’re comfortable,” Jaehyun said, and he had already consumed most of his drink as he turned to look at me. “Have you thought about what I said before in the library.”

Oh.

I swallowed hard, bringing my own drink down against the table. “It was really sudden,” I tried to explain to him. “We haven’t been friends for long.”

“Ah!” Jaehyun said, snapping his fingers as if he understood. “You’re worried about the timing. Is it moving too fast for you?”

I hesitated because it would all too easy to tell Jaehyun that I wasn’t ready for him, but the problem then became: would I ever be ready for him? “I don’t know,” I told him truthfully, and he nodded.

“Some people take longer to decipher their feelings,” Jaehyun agreed. “How about this? I’m relieved that you know how I feel, but I would never pressure you to reciprocate. Instead, maybe we can try a simple relationship? We’ll basically do the same things from before, but I can give you space to figure out what you want.”

“That sounds too good to be true.” I laughed, and Jaehyun smiled as he leaned in closer.

“It’s just that, I actually know it’s moving really fast, but I’ve been worried about Seo a lot these days,” Jaehyun said.

“Johnny?” I repeated with what surely resembled a quizzical look. “Why?”

“I guess you are bad with feelings,” Jaehyun said. “Y/N, I think it’s obvious to a lot of people that Johnny likes you, and after you talked with him the other day in the Great Hall, I thought he might’ve convinced you to try things out with him.”

“Try things out?” I gasped, and the idea was almost scandalous to me. For months, I treated Johnny as a barely tolerated acquaintance, but the moment I act civil and agree to be more amiable, everyone assumes something far more consequential. “Johnny and I aren’t like that.”

“I hope not,” Jaehyun said. “Not that I would try and stop you if you did have feelings for him, but I want to take my chance before it’s too late. The last thing in the world I want is more regrets, and you’re someone I would definitely regret if I didn’t try to show you how much you meant to me.”

I was struck by his sincerity, and I didn’t even question him when he applied a tight grip to my hand. “Thank you,” I said. “Honestly, it’s been confusing lately, and I know part of the problem is me.”

“You’re not a problem in my eyes,” Jaehyun said, and I squirmed under the weight of the compliment.

“Are you gonna keep doing that?” I asked him.

“What? Singing your praises?” Jaehyun chuckled. “Why? Does it not suit you?”

“Something like that,” I said, studying him from the corner of my eye. “You’ll wait for me to decide?”

“Of course,” Jaehyun said. “I’m a very patient man, Y/N. Take all the time that you need.”

It was, admittedly, relieving to hear him say that to me, even if I was still confused about my feelings. But anything I might’ve said to reassure him at that moment was vanquished from my mind at the unexpected entrance of Haechan and Chenle who were both crying and screaming when they ran to our table. “Woah!” I said, unprepared for Chenle to grab the sleeve of my robe.

“We have to help them!” Chenle said, and it took me a moment to gather my bearings long enough to grab him by his shoulders.

“Help who?”

“Haechan, you need to calm down,” Jaehyun said, and I was surprised by his gentle touch as he hugged Haechan closer. “What happened?”

“It was my fault!” Haechan said. “The older kids told us that we had to do it! They said it was a first-year initiation, but they took us to the Forbidden Forest and there was an attack-”

“And attack!” I screeched, standing up from the table with my adrenaline pumping.

“W-we were attached by a werewolf!” Haechan said, and it was at this point that I realized the entire room was watching us. “It bit Mark, and it tried to hurt Jisung-”

“My Jisung?” I interrupted, and there was a disorienting sensation of fear eclipsing my heart in an icy grip. “Haechan, is Jisung hurt? Where is he? Why is he not with you?”

I was on the verge on a panic attack when I let my instincts takeover, running from the Three Broomsticks with Jaehyun’s voice calling my name. I knew that it was irrational to jump into action without all the information, but I tended to take things to the extreme when it involved the members of my family. And I was marching across the snow-covered streets with one purpose: to protect Jisung and ensure that he was safe.

“Y/N!” Jaehyun growled, and I could barely feel his hand wrap itself around my arm as he pulled me to a stop. “It’s fine, Haechan said that Johnny helped Jisung make it to the infirmary! He wasn’t actually bitten!”

I spun around on my heel at the mention of Jisung. “If he’s fine, then why is he in the Infirmary?”

“Haechan said that he was freaking out and they wanted to make sure that he calmed down,” Jaehyun said, and I noticed Haechan and Chenle sprinting in our direction. “I can tell that you’re about to do something irrational,” Jaehyun said, and he gripped my chin in his hand as he forced me to look into his eyes. “Stay with me, okay? I’ll take everyone to the infirmary and you can see Jisung.”

I managed a nod, clutching to Jaehyun’s sleeve to ground myself as he wrapped a reassuring arm around my waist. “Did you say that Johnny helped him?”

“He saved him,” Haechan said, shuffling next to me as our group traversed back to Hogwarts. “I don’t even know where he came from, but he was there just in time.”

“Not soon enough to help Mark,” Chenle whispered, and his face was awash with fresh tears.

I shivered at the reminder, feeling a pang of regret for not worrying about Mark who was actually hurt in the attack, and everyone knew what happened when you were bitten by a werewolf. “Does he understand?” I asked. “He has to know that everything will change.”

“I don’t think so,” Chenle replied, and that only made everything worse because when Mark was finally told what would happen to him each full moon....

“Taeyong must be devastated,” I whispered, and Jaehyun’s response was to hold me tighter against the force of the cold wind.

The chaos had died down by the time I was sitting next to Jisung at his bedside, allowing my step-brother to cry into my shoulder as he apologized over and over again for leaving the common room so late at night. “I’m so stupid,” he said, and I shook my head as I ran my fingers through his hair.

“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure him, but at the exact same time, Mark started screaming from the bed further down the line and I could feel Jisung crying even harder.

“He’s in a lot of pain,” Jaehyun said, trying to keep his voice quiet, but I’m sure Jisung heard him.

“I can’t believe this happened,” I said. “In the time that we were gone...”

I trailed off because I couldn’t blame Jaehyun for bringing me out of the Castle. It’s not like either of us anticipated for this to happen, and I was just grateful that Jisung hadn’t been hurt, even if my heart broke for Mark.

“The fifth years who put them up to this will be punished and sent home,” Jaehyun said. “But they’re not the only ones.”

I shivered at his warning. “Are they gonna punish Jisung?”

“They were technically caught out of bed after hours,” Jaehyun replied. “I don’t think it’ll be severe, but the kids will probably get detention.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed, slowly rocking Jisung back and forth in a soothing motion.

“You’re telling me,” Jaehyun said, but then he frowned when he noticed someone approaching from over my shoulder. “I guess I owe you for everything you did tonight, Seo.”

I swallowed hard at the mention of Johnny, looking over Jisung to find him watching us with blood still painting the front of his shirt. “Yeah,” I added, finding it difficult to meet his gaze. “You don’t know how grateful I am that you helped Jisung.”

“Johnny was the best,” Jisung sniffled, pulling away from me with tear-stained eyes. “He knew the spell to get rid of the werewolf.”

“I think that’s pretty advanced magic,” I remarked, and Johnny scoffed.

“What? You’re still underestimating me?”

I frowned at his harsh tone. “No, but I’ll do anything to show you how much I appreciate what you’ve done.”

Johnny glanced up at Jaehyun for a brief second before returning his attention to me. “Be careful when you say things like that to me, Y/N,” Johnny said. “I’m liable to hold that against you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “If it wasn’t for you, then Jisung might be hurting even more.”

“I’m glad I saved him,” Johnny said. “I wish I could’ve helped Mark, but it’s a good thing that I was patrolling that area. Prefect duty and all.”

“I’m sorry if you’re angry at me, Johnny,” I said, referencing our earlier confrontation. “I meant it when I told you that I wanted to be friends.”

Johnny’s expression softened, and he studied me with an inquisitive look. “Can it be a favor?”

I startled at the question. “What?”

“I don’t like it when people owe me,” Johnny elaborated. “I didn’t save Jisung for you to feel indebted to me. I saved him because he’s a good kid and none of them deserved what happened tonight. But if you’re in the mood to give me the time of day, I hope you might consider meeting me tomorrow night outside of the Slytherin common room.”

“Oh?” I remarked, wincing at Jaehyun’s harsh exhale. “Yeah, I can meet you.”

“There’s something I want to talk about,” Johnny said. “But it’s better to have this conversation in private, and you can have more time with Jisung until then.”

“Sure,” I agreed, loosening my hold on Jisung when he started whining about my strength.

“I’m still talking to the headmaster about everything,” Johnny said. “He’s not convinced that I’ve told him the truth.”

“I still don’t know the truth,” I said, looking around the rest of the infirmary where dozens of familiar faces flitted in and out of focus.

“I guess we’ll talk tomorrow about what happened,” Johnny said quietly, excusing himself with a bow of his head, and I watched him join the headmaster near the sectioned-off area where Mark was being attended.

“He’s got something up his sleeve,” Jaehyun said, and he sat next to me on the bed to give Jisung’s shoulder a squeeze.

“I’m not worried,” I said, and I decided it was best to change the topic. “How are Chenle and Haechan?”

“Fine,” Jaehyun murmured. “They were sent back to bed, but I doubt they’ll get any sleep tonight.”

“And Mark?”

Jaehyun sighed. “They’ll tell us more in the morning.”

I shook my head because it wasn’t a satisfactory answer, but Jisung was tugging on my sleeve for attention. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

“Of course,” I promised him, but it was less out of obligation and more because I needed his comfort just as much to try and forget this horrible night.

#nct fanfic #nct johnny fanfic #johnny fanfic #johnny seo fanfic #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct fantasy au #nct series #johnny imagines #johnny scenarios #nct hogwarts au #hogwarts au #mostlycompetent #limitless

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thewidowsghost · 3 years ago

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The Unknown Muggleborn - Chapter 12

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

3rd Person POV

The days creep by, and there is no doubt that Fluffy is still alive and well behind the locked door.

It is sweltering hot, especially in the large classroom where they did their written papers. They had been given special, new quills for the exams, which had been bewitched with an Anti-Cheating spell.

They had practical exams as well. Professor Flitwick called them one by one into his class to see if they could make a pineapple tap-dance across a desk. Professor McGonagall watches them turn a mouse into a snuffbox - points were given for how pretty the snuffbox is, but taken away if it still had whiskers. Snape made them all nervous, breathing down their necks while Harry, Ron, and Hermione remember how to make a Forgetfulness potion, and when they finish, watch as (Y/n) practically sweats her whole body weight as she is instructed to make a Fire Protection Potion.

(Y/n) walks out of the Potions classroom an hour after everyone else and trudges up to lunch, her robes sticking to her. When (Y/n) slumps down at the table between Hermione and Harry, the other five look at her.

"How'd it go?" Hermione asks as (Y/n) grabs a peanut butter sandwich.

(Y/n) sighs. "Well, Snape didn't exactly say anything good or bad about it, so," she shrugs. "I could have failed or just achieved the highest grade of any first year ever." (Y/n) pulls a vial of blackish purple liquid out of the pocket of the robes. "I could set myself on fire and then drink it."

"Not a good idea, (Nickname)," Fred says, passing by and sitting across from her. "Everyone might not like you much, but you don't need to solve that problem by setting yourself on fire."

"For once, my brother's right," Ron says.

"If my potion worked, I wouldn't be setting myself on fire," (Y/n) points out, smiling for the first time in weeks, and everyone else seems to cheer up at the smile.

Over the last few weeks, (Y/n) and Harry had been trying to ignore the stabbing pains in their neck and head, respectively, which had been bothering them since (Y/n)'s trip into the forest. Neville thought Harry was having a bad case of exam nerves because Harry couldn't sleep, but the truth was that Harry kept begin woken by his old nightmare, except that is was now worse than ever because he was now seeing a hooded figure dripping blood in it that (Y/n) had described.

Maybe it is because they hadn't seen what (Y/n) had seen in the forest, or because they didn't have scars burning on their necks or foreheads, but Ron and Hermione didn't seem as worried about the Stone as Harry and (Y/n). The idea of Voldemort clearly scared them, but he didn't keep visiting them in dreams, and they were so busy with their studying that they didn't have much time to fret about what Snape or anyone else might be up to.

Their very last exam is History of Magic. One hour of answering questions about batty old wizards who'd invested self-stirring cauldrons and they'd be free, free for a whole wonderful wee until their exam results came out. When the ghost of Professor Binns tells them to put down their quills and roll up their parchment, Harry can't help cheering with the rest.

"That was far easier than I thought it would be," says Hermione as they join the crowds flocking out onto the sunny grounds.

"We didn't need to study the 1637 Werewolf Code of Conduct or Elfric the Eager," (Y/n) adds.

The two always liked to go through their exam papers afterward, but Ron says this made him feel ill, so they wander down to the lake and flop under a tree. The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan are tickling the tentacles of a giant squid, which is basking in the warm shallows.

"No more studying," Ron sighs happily, stretching out on the grass.

"You two could look more cheerful, (Y/n), Harry, we've got a week before we find out how badly we've done, there's no need to worry yet," Hermione adds.

Harry was rubbing his forehead, and (Y/n) had her hand pressed to her neck, rubbing slightly.

"I wish I knew what this means!" Harry bursts out angrily.

"Same, my scar keeps hurting," (Y/n) adds. "It's happened before, but not this often."

"Go to Madam Pomfrey," Hermione suggests.

"We're not ill," retorts Harry. "I think it's a warning . . . it means danger's coming . . ."

Ron wouldn't get worked up, it's too hot, "Harry, (Y/n), relax. Hermione's right, the Stone's safe as long as Dumbledore's around. Anyway, we've never had any proof Snape found out how to get past Fluffy."

"It's not Snape," (Y/n) interjects but Ron just continues.

"He nearly had his leg ripped off once, he's not going to try it again in a hurry. And Neville will play Quidditch for England before Hagrid lets Dumbledore down."

(Y/n) nods, but she can't shake the lurking feeling that there is something she'd forgotten to do, something important. When she tries to explain this, Hermione says, "That's just the exams. I woke up last night and was halfway through my Transfiguration notes before I remembered we'd done that one."

(Y/n) is sure that the unsettling feeling didn't have anything to do with work, though. She watches an owl flutter towards the school across the bright blue sky, a note clamped in it's beak. Hagrid would never betray Dumbledore. Hagrid would never tell anyone how to get past Fluff . . . never . . . but -

(Y/n) suddenly jumps to her feet.

"Where are you going?" asks Ron sleepily.

"I've just thought," (Y/n) says and Hermione studies her sister, who's face had turned white. "We've got to go and see Hagrid, now."

"Why?" pants Hermione, hurrying to keep up.

"Don't you think it's a bit odd," says (Y/n), sprinting up the grassy slope, "that what Hagrid want more than anything else is a dragon, and a stranger turns up who just happens to have an egg in his pocket? How many people wander around with dragon eggs if they're against wizard law? Lucky they found Hagrid, right? Why didn't I see it before?"

"What are you talking about?" asks Ron, but (Y/n), sprinting across the grounds towards the forest, doesn't answer.

Hagrid is sitting in an armchair outside his house, his trousers and sleeves are rolled up, and he is shelling peas into a large bowl. "Hullo," he says, smiling. "Finished yer exams? Got time fer a drink?"

"Yes, please," answers Ron, but (Y/n) cuts him off.

"No, we're in a hurry. Hagrid, I've got to ask you something. You know that night you won Norbert? What did the stranger you were playing cards with look like?"

"Dunno," answers Hagrid casually, "he wouldn' take his cloak off." He sees the six of them looking stunned and raises his eyebrows. "It's not that unusual, yeh get a lot o' funny folk in the Hog's Head —that's one o' the pubs down in the village. Mighta bin a dragon dealer, mightn' he? I never saw his face, he kept his hood up."

(Y/n) sinks down next to the bowl of peas, "What did you talk about, Hagrid? Did you mention Hogwarts at all?"

"Mighta come up," replies Hagrid, frowning as he tries to remember."Yeah . . . he asked what I did, an' I told him I was gamekeeper here. . . . He asked a bit about the sorta creatures I look after . . . so I told him . . . an' I said what I'd always really wanted was a dragon . . . an' then . . . I can'remember too well, 'cause he kept buyin' me drinks. . . . Let's see . . . yeah, then he said he had the dragon egg an' we could play cards fer it if I wanted . . . but he had ter be sure I could handle it, he didn' want it ter go ter any old home. . . . So I told him, after Fluffy, a dragon would be easy. . . ."

"And did he — did he seem interested in Fluffy?" Harry asks, trying to keep his voice calm

"Well — yeah — how many three-headed dogs d' yeh meet, even around Hogwarts? So I told him, Fluffy's a piece o' cake if yeh know how to calm him down, jus' play him a bit o' music an' he'll go straight off ter sleep —" Hagrid suddenly looks horrified. "I shouldn't a told yeh that!" he blurted out. "Forget I said it! Hey —where're yeh goin'?"

Harry, Ron, Hermione and (Y/n) don't speak to each other until they come to a halt in the entrance hall, which seems very cold and gloomy after the warm, summery grounds.

"We've got to go to Dumbledore," says Harry. "Hagrid told that stranger how to get past Fluffy, and it was either Snape or Voldemort under that cloak - it might've been easy, once he got Hagrid drunk. I just hope Dumbledore believes us. Firenze might back us up if Bane doesn't stop him. Where's Dumbledore's office?"

They look around, as if hoping to see a sign pointing them in the right direction. They had never been told where Dumbledore lived, nor did they know anyone who had been sent to see him.

"We'll just have to —" Harry begins, but a voice suddenly rang across the hall.

What are you four doing inside?"

It is Professor McGonagall, carrying a large pile of books.

"We want to see Professor Dumbledore," says Hermione, rather bravely, the others think.

"See Professor Dumbledore?" Professor McGonagall repeat, as though it is a very fishy thing to want to do. "Why?"

Harry swallows - What now?

"It's sort of secret," he says, but he wishes at once he hadn't, because Professor McGonagall's nostrils flare.

"Professor Dumbledore left ten minutes ago," she says coldly. "He received an urgent owl from the Ministry of Magic and flew off for London at once."

"He's gone?" asks Harry frantically. "Now?"

"Professor Dumbledore is a very great wizard, Potter, he has many demands on his time -"

"But this is important."

"Something you have to say is more important than the Ministry of Magic, Potter?"

"Look," says Harry, throwing caution to the winds, "Professor - it's about the Sorcerer's Stone -"

Whatever Professor McGonagall had expected, it wasn't that. The books she is carrying tumble out of her arms, but she doesn't pick them up, so (Y/n) darts over, picks up the books, and silently holds them out to her head of house, but she doesn't take them.

"How do you know -?" McGonagall splutters.

"Professor, I think - I know - that Sn - that someone's going to try and steal the Stone. I've got to talk with Professor Dumbledore," McGonagall eyes him with a mixture of shock and suspicion.

"Professor Dumbledore will be back tomorrow," she says finally. "I don't know how you found out about the Stone, but rest assured, no one can possibly steal it, it's too well protected."

"But Professor -"

"Potter, I know what I'm talking about," she answers shortly. She takes the books from (Y/n). "I suggest you all go back outside and enjoy the sunshine."

But they don't.

"It's tonight," says Harry, once he is sure Professor McGonagall is out of earshot. "Snape's going through the trapdoor tonight. He's found out everything he needs, and now he's got Dumbledore out of the way. He sent that note, I bet the Ministry of Magic will get a real shock when Dumbledore turns up."

"But what can we -"

Hermione gasps softly, and the others wheel around.

Snape is standing there.

"Good afternoon," he says smoothly.

They stare at him.

"You shouldn't be inside on a day like this," he says, with an odd, twisted smile.

"We were -" Harry begins, without any idea what he is going to say.

"You want to be more careful," says Snape. "Hanging around like this, people will think you're up to something. And Gryffindor really can't afford to lose any more points, can it?"

(Y/n) flushes. They turn to go outside, but Snape calls them back.

"Be warned, Potter - any more nighttime wanderings and I personally make sure you are expelled," Snape then turns to (Y/n). "(L/n), come with me," he says and she nods.

Snape strides towards the dungeons and (Y/n) jogs after him.

Once in the Potions Master's office, Snape sits down at his desk, and gestures for (Y/n) to sit down across from him. (Y/n) sits down nervously as Snape opens a folder and slides it in front of her.

The Potions Master nods encouragingly, and then (Y/n) takes a hold of the folder, gazing down at the paper inside.

Name (Last, First): (L/n), (Y/n)

DOB: October 31st, 19879

Year: 1

Exam: Potions 1

Score: 327%

Next Class Recommendation: Potions 4

(Y/n) stares at the score, "How?"

"You automatically get an extra hundred percent added because you took a harder exam," Snape tells the girl.

"What about the other 127%?" (Y/n) asks doing quick math.

"It's for making a Third year level potion," Snape says.

"So next year I'll be taking Forth year Potions?" (Y/n) asks and Snape nods.

Then the Potions Master smiles, slightly unsettling (Y/n). "I've impressed by your performance this year, (Y/n)," Snape says. (Y/n) beams at the compliment from the teacher that never gave compliments. (Y/n) stands up to leave and when she gets to the door, Snape says something, "You look a lot like your parents, you know? You have your mother's eyes," (Y/n) turns around, a sad expression on her face.

"Nobody's ever told me that before," (Y/n) murmurs her eyes flashing silver, walking back to stand in front of her Professor's desk.

What the two didn't know was that Hermione was waiting outside the door, listening - not on purpose, of course - to the conversation.

(Y/n) sits down in the chair across from Snape and the Potions Master continues. "I was friends with your mother when she was at school." (Y/n) sits straighter in her chair, interest flickering in her eyes. "(M/n), she was a Gryffindor," (Y/n) smiles at the thought. "Even though they were from different houses, you could never separate the two. (M/n), she was best friends with Lily Evans, who married James Potter," (Y/n) could sense her Professor tense at Harry's father's name.

Snape, looking at the girl, notices her eyes slowly turning back to their brilliant emerald green.

"Your mother was a great Quidditch player, and excelled at Transfiguration. She was an amazing friends" Snape's voice turns wistful and (Y/n) studies her Professor with gentle eyes.

"Thank you for telling me about her, Professor," (Y/n) says.

"It was no problem," Snape says gently, he and (Y/n) standing up, (Y/n) grabbing the Potions Exam paper, and the two walk out of the classroom and are met by Thora and Hermione standing on either side of the door.

"What are you doing here?" Snape asks sharply.

"I came to wait for my sister," Hermione answers.

(Y/n) flashes her a questioning look before nodding to her Potion's Master.

Hermione walks slightly behind (Y/n) as they walk up to the Gryffindor Common Room.

The portrait of the Fat Lady swings open and the duo walks in, Harry and Ron turning to look at them.

"I'm sorry, Harry!" Hermione wails from behind (Y/n); (Y/n) sits down on the arm of Harry's chair. "Snape came out and asked us what we were doing, so we said we were waiting for (Y/n). We don't know where Snape went."

(Y/n) groans in exasperation, "You really think it's still Snape?"

"Yep," Harry says.

"So, that's it then, isn't it?" (Y/n) says finally, as a stab of pain pulses through the scar on her neck.

The others stare at her. (Y/n) had turned pale and her eyes are glittering.

"I'm going out of here tonight and I'm going to try and get to the Stone first," (Y/n) says, a frown on her face.

"You're mad!" says Ron.

"You can't!" says Hermione. "After what McGonagall and Snape have said? You'll be expelled!"

"So what?" Harry shouts.

"Don't you understand?" (Y/n) asks, her voice softer, her gaze flickering silver. "If whoever gets the Stone, Voldemort's coming back! Haven't you heard what it was like when he was trying to take over?" The others gaze at her, eyes wide. "There won't be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He'll flatten it! Losing points doesn't matter anymore?If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I'll have to find somewhere else to go," catching Hermione's shocked glances, she continues, "I'm not letting anyone else I care about die for me." (Y/n) swallows thickly, "It's only dying a bit later than I would have. I'm going through that trapdoor tonight and nothing you can say is going to stop me!"

"I'm going too," Harry says and (Y/n)'s silver gaze shifts to him. "Voldemort killed my parents too." (Y/n)'s gaze softens.

"You're both right," Hermione says in a small voice.

"We'll use the Invisibility Cloak," says Harry.

"But will it cover all four of us?" asks Ron.

Harry turns to Ron. "All - all four of us?" Harry asks.

"Oh, come off it, you don't think we'd let you go alone?" Ron asks.

"Of course not," says Hermione briskly. "How do you think you'd get to the Stone without us? I'd better go and look through my books, there might be something useful . . ."

"But if we get caught, you two will be expelled, too."

"Not if I can help it," says Hermione grimly. "Flitwick told me and (Y/n) in secret that we got a hundred and twelve percent on his exam. They're not throwing me out after that."

After dinner, (Y/n), Harry, Ron, and Hermione sit apart from the other three in the common room. Nobody bothers them; none of the Gryffindors had anything to say to (Y/n) anymore, after all. This was the first night she hadn't been upset by it. (Y/n) darts upstairs, and pulls out the small trunk where she keeps extra potions. The only one she had was the fire protection, which she pockets into her hoodie, pocketing her wand and she straps small knife in a sheath on her left forearm, making sure her hoodie covered the sheath.

(Y/n) scampers downstairs and over to her three friends, who were standing around the Invisibility Cloak.

"We'd better put the Cloak on here, and make sure it covers all four of us - if Filch spots one of our feet wandering along on it's own -"

"What are you doing?" comes a voice from the corner of the room. Neville appears from behind an armchair, clutching Trevor the toad, who looks as though he'd been making another bid for freedom.

"Nothing, Neville, nothing," answers Harry, hurriedly putting the Cloak behind his back.

Neville stares at their guilty faces.

"You're going out again," Neville realizes, looking into (Y/n)'s green eyes.

"No, no, no," says Hermione. "No, we're not. Why don't you go back to bed, Neville?"

Harry looks at the grandfather clock by the door. We couldn't afford to waste any more time, Harry thinks, Snape might even now be playing Fluffy to sleep.

"You can't go out again," Neville tells (Y/n), "you'll be caught again. Gryffindor will be in even more trouble."

"You don't understand," says Harry, "this is important."

But Neville was clearly steeling himself to do something desperate. "I won't let you do it," he says, hurrying to stand in front of the portrait hole. "I'll - I'll fight you!"

"Neville," Ron explodes, "get away from that hole and don't be an idiot—"

"Don't you call me an idiot!" retorts Neville. "I don't think you should be breaking any more rules! And you were the one who told me to stand up to people!"

"Yes, but not to us," answers Ron in exasperation. "Neville, you don't know what you're doing."

He takes a step forward and Neville drops Trevor the toad, who leaps out of sight."Go on then, try and hit me!" says Neville, raising his fists. "I'm ready!"

Harry turns to Hermione."Do something," he whines desperately.

But it's (Y/n) who reacts, drawing her Alder wood wand out of her pocket, "I'm sorry about this Neville." She raises her wand, "Petrificus Totalus." Neville's arms snap to his sides, and his legs spring together. His whole body rigid, he sways where he stands and then falls flat on his face, stiff as a board.

(Y/n) runs to turn him over. Neville's jaws are jammed together so he can't speak. Only his eyes are moving, looking at them in horror.

"What've you done to him?" Harry whispers.

"It's the full Body-Bind," says (Y/n) miserably. "Oh, Neville, I'm so sorry."

"We had to, Neville, no time to explain," says Harry.

"You'll understand later, Neville," says Ron as they step over him and pull on the Invisibility Cloak.

But leaving Neville lying motionless on the floor doesn't feel like a very good omen.

In their nervous state, every statue's shadow looks like Filch, and every distant breath of wind sounds like Peeves swooping down on them.

At the fit of the first set of stairs, they spot Mrs. Norris skulking near the top.

"Oh, let's kick her, just this once," Ron whispers in Harry's ear, but Harry shook his head. As they climb carefully around her, Mrs. Norris turns her lamplike eyes on them, but didn't do anything.

They don't meet anyone else until they reach teh staircase up to the third floor. Peeves is bobbing halfway up, loosening the carpet so that people would trip.

"Who's there?" Peeves asks suddenly as they climb towards him. He narrows his wicked black eyes, "Know you're there, even if I can't see you. Are you ghoulie or ghostie or wee student beastie?" He rises up in the air and floats there, squinting at them.

Harry has a sudden idea. "Peeves," he says, in a hoarse whisper, "the Bloody Baron has his own reasons for being invisible."

Peeves almost falls out of the air in shock. He catches himself in time and hovers about a foot off the stairs. "So sorry, you bloodiness, Mr. Baron, sir," he says greasily. "My mistake, my mistake - I didn't see you - of course I didn't you're invisible - forgive old Peevsie his little joke, sir."

"I have business here, Peeves," croaks Harry. "Stay away from this place tonight."

"I will, sir, I most certainly will," says Peeves, rising up in the air again. "Hope your business goes well, Baron, I'll not bother you." And he scoots off.

"Brilliant, Harry!" whispers Ron, an impressed look on (Y/n)'s face.

A few seconds later, they are there, outside the third-floor corridor - and the door is already ajar.

"Well, there you are," Harry says quietly, "Snape's already got past Fluffy."

"It's not Snape," (Y/n) hisses, never feeling more correct after her talk with her Potions Master earlier.

But seeing the open door somehow seems to impress upon all four of them what is facing them. Underneath the Cloak, (Y/n) turns to the other three.

"If you want to go back, I won't blame you," she says softly. "You can take the Cloak, I won't need it now."

"Don't be stupid," says Ron.

"We're coming," insists Hermione.

Harry reaches over and pushes the door open the rest of the way.

As the door creaks, low, rumbling growls meet their ears. All three of the dog's noses sniff madly in their direction, even though it can't see them.

"What's that at it's feet?" Hermione asks in a soft whisper.

"Looks like a harp," replies Ron. "Snape must have left it there."

Deciding not to argue anymore about Snape, (Y/n) keeps her mouth shut.

Harry puts Hagrid's flute to his lips and blows. It wasn't really a tune, but from the first note, the beast's eyes begin to droop. Harry hardly draws breath. Slowly, the dog's growls cease - it totters on its paws and falls to its knees, then it slumps on the ground, fast asleep.

"Keep playing," Ron warns Harry as they slip out of the Cloak and creeps towards the trapdoor. They can feel the dog's hot, smelly breath as the approach the giant heads.

"I think we'll be able to pull the door open," says Ron, peering over the dog's back. "Want to go first, Hermione?"

"No, I don't!" Hermione snaps.

"I'll go first," (Y/n) whispers. She steps carefully over the dog's legs. She bends and pulls the ring of the trapdoor; the trapdoor swings up and open.

"What can you see?" Hermione asks anxiously.

"Nothing - just black - there's no way of climbing down, we'll just have to drop," (Y/n) whispers. She swings her legs into the trapdoor. She looks directly at Hermione, meeting her sister's gaze. "If anything happens to me, don't follow. Go straight to the Owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, okay?"

Hermione nods, a flash of fear showing in her brown eyes.

"See you in a minute, I hope . . ." (Y/n) slides the rest of the way into the trapdoor and lets go. Cold, damp air rushes past her as she falls down, down, down and -

FLUMP. With a funny, muffled sort of thump, she lands on something soft. She sits up and feels around, her eyes not used to the gloom. It feels as though she is sitting on some soft of plant.

"It's okay!" she calls up to the light the size of a postage stamp, which was the open trapdoor, "it's a soft landing, you can jump!"

Ron and Harry follow right away. They land, sprawled next to (Y/n).

"What's this stuff?" are Ron's first words.

"Dunno, some sort of plant thing," (Y/n) rasps. "I suppose it's here to break the fall."

"Come on, Hermione!" Harry calls as something snakes it's way up (Y/n)'s neck and (Y/n) tries to pull away, but whatever it was, tightens around her.

The distant music stops; there is a loud bark from the dog, but Hermione had already jumped, landing on (Y/n)'s other side.

"We must be miles under the school," Hermione comments.

"Luck this plant thing's here," Ron says.

"Lucky!" shrieks Hermione. "Look at the three of you!" She leaps up and struggles towards a damp wall. She had to struggle because the moment she had landed, the plant had started to twist, snakelike tendrils around her ankles. As for Harry and Ron, their legs had already been bound tightly in long creepers without their noticing.

(Y/n) however, had the tendrils had wrapped around her neck and Hermione watches in horror as the three fight to pull the plant off themselves, but the more they strain against it, the tighter and faster the plant wounds around them.

"Stop moving!" Hermione orders them. "I know what this is - it's Devil's Snare!"

(Y/n), panicking, begins to strain more, and the Devil's Snare tightens around her chest. (Y/n) thrashes around in the plant's grasp and the Devil's Snare tightens painfully around her, the vial in her pocket pressing into her stomach, ready to shatter.

(Y/n) begins feeling faint from the loss of air, hears Ron bellow, "HAVE YOU GONE MAD? ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?"

A few seconds later, the three feel it loosening its grip as it cringes away from the light and warmth. Wriggling and flailing, it unravels itself from their bodies and they are able to pull free.

(Y/n)'s chest heaves as she regains her breath, Harry holding up her up.

"Lucky you pay attention in Herbology, Hermione," (Y/n) rasps.

"Yeah," adds Ron, "and lucky (Y/n) doesn't lose her head in a crisis - 'there's no wood,' honestly."

"Only my breath," (Y/n) jokes, once her breath completely returns, though the others could see the dark bruise beginning to form on her neck. "Right, this way," says (Y/n), pointing down a stone passageway, which is the only way forward.

All the four can hear, apart from their footsteps is the gentle drip of water trickling down the walls. The passage way slopes downward, and Harry is reminded of Gringotts. With an unpleasant jolt of the heart, he remembers the dragons said to be guarding vaults in the wizards' bank. If they met a dragon, a fully-grown dragon - Norbert had been bad enough . . .

"Can you hear something?" Ron asks in a soft whisper.

(Y/n) listens, hearing a soft rustling and clicking noise seeming to come from ahead.

"Do you think it's a ghost?" Harry wonders.

"I don't think so," (Y/n) answers. "It sounds like wings."

"There's light ahead - I can see something moving," Hermione adds, exchanging a look with (Y/n).

They reach the end of the passageway and sees before them a brilliantly lit chamber, its ceiling arching high them. It is full of small, jewel-bright things, fluttering and tumbling all around the room. On the opposite side of the room is a very heavy wooden door.

"Do you think they'll attack us if we cross the room?" wonders Ron.

"Probably," answers Harry. "They don't look very vicious, but I suppose if they all swooped down at once . . . well, there's no other choice . . . I'll run." He takes a deep breath, covers his face with his arms, and sprints across the room. He expects to feel sharp beaks and claws tearing at him any second, but nothing happens. He reaches the door untouched, and he pulls on the handle, but it's locked.

Hermione and Ron follow but (Y/n) gazes up and around the chamber.

"Guys!" (Y/n) calls, her voice echoing around the room, and the other three turn to look at her. The three catch (Y/n) gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling. "They're not birds! They're keys - winged keys." Her emerald gaze studies the chamber again and she catches sight of three broomsticks. "We've got to catch the key to the door." (Y/n) jogs over to the door and studies the lock.

"But there are hundreds of them!" Ron exclaims.

"We're looking for a big, old fashioned one - probably silver, like the handle," (Y/n) says. "Probably has a crumpled wing," she murmurs. (Y/n), Ron, and Harry grab brooms and soar into the midst of the cloud of keys.

Not for nothing, though, was (Y/n) the youngest Seeker in a century. She had a knack for spotting things other people didn't. After a minute's weaving about through the whirl of rainbow feathers, she notices a large silver key that had a bent wing, as if it had already been caught and stuffed roughly into the keyhole. "That one!" she calls. "That big one - there - no, there - with bright blue wings - the feathers are all crumpled on one side.

Ron goes speeding in the direction that (Y/n) is pointing, crashes into the ceiling, and almost falls of his broom.

"We've got to close in on it!" (Y/n) calls, not taking her eyes off the key with the damaged wing. "Ron, you come at it from above - Harry, stay below and stop it from going down - and I'll try to catch it. Right, NOW!"

Ron dives, Harry rocket's upward, the key dodges them both, and (Y/n) streaks after it; it speeds towards the wall, (Y/n) leans forward and with a nasty, crunching noise, pins it to the stone with one hand. Ron, Harry, and Hermione's cheers echo around the high chamber.

They land quickly, and (Y/n) sprints for the door, the key struggling in her hand. She rams it into the lock and turns - it worked. The moment the lock had clicks open, the key takes flight again, looking very battered now that it had been caught twice.

"Ready?" (Y/n) asks the other three, her hand on the door handle. They nod, and she pulls the door open.

The next chamber is so dark they can't see anything at all, so (Y/n) casts the Lumos charm, but then light floods the room to reveal an astonishing sight, (Y/n) extinguishing her wand light.

They are standing on the edge of a huge chessboard, behind the black chessmen, which were all taller then they area and carved from what looked like black stone. Facing them, across the chamber, are the white pieces. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and (Y/n) shiver slightly - the towering white chessmen had no faces.

"Now what do we do?" Harry whispers.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" says Ron. "We've got to play our way across the room."

Behind the white pieces they can see another door.

"How?" asks Hermione nervously, (Y/n) placing a comforting on her friend's shoulder.

"I think," (Y/n) says, "we're going to have to be chessmen."

Ron walks over to a black knight and puts his hand out to touch the knight's horse. At once, the stone springs to life, the horse pawing the ground and the knight turns his helmeted head to look down at Ron.

"Do we - er - have to join you to get across?" Ron asks. The black knight nods and Ron turns to the other three. "This needs thinking about . . ." Ron mumbles. "I suppose we've got to take the place of four of the black pieces . . ." The three stay quiet, watching Ron think. Finally, he says, "Now, don't be offended or anything, but neither of the three of you are that good at chess -"

"We're not offended," says Harry quickly.

"Just tell us what to do," (Y/n) says gently.

"Well, Harry, you take the place of that bishop, and Hermione, you go there, instead of that castle, (Y/n), you take that knight there."

"What about you?"

"I'm going to be that other knight," answers Ron.

The chessmen seem to have been listening, because at these words both knights, a bishop, and a castle turn their backs on the white pieces and walk off the board, leaving four empty squares that Harry, Ron, (Y/n), and Hermione take.

"White always plays first in chess," says Ron, peering across the board. "Yes . . . look . . ."

A white pawn had moved forward two squares.

Ron starts to direct the black pieces, occasionally asking (Y/n) for advice, but mostly on his own, the pieces moving silently wherever he sent them.

Harry's knees are trembling, What if we lose?

"Harry - move diagonally four squares to the right."

The first real shock comes when their other bishop is taken. (Y/n) lets out a cry as the queen smashes the bishop - who was beside her - to the floor and drags him off the board, where he lies quite still, face down.

"Had to let that happen," explains Ron, looking shaken. "Leaves you to take that bishop, (Y/n), go on."

Every time one of their pieces is lost, the white pieces show no mercy. Soon there is a huddle of limp black players slumped along the wall. Twice, Ron only just noticed that Harry, Hermione, and (Y/n) were in danger. He himself darts around the board, taking almost as many white pieces as they had lost black ones.

"We're nearly there," Ron mutters suddenly. "Let me think - let me think.

The white queen turns her blank face towards Ron.

"Yes . . ." says Ron softly, it's the only way . . . I've got to be taken."

"No!" Harry, (Y/n), and Hermione shout.

"That's chess," snaps Ron. "You've got to make some sacrifices! I'll make my move and she'll take me - that leaves you free to checkmate the king, Harry!"

"But -"

"Do you want to stop Snape or not?"

"Ron -"

"Look, if you don't hurry up, he'll already have the Stone!"

There was no alternative.

"Ready?" Ron calls, his face pale but determined. "Here I go - now, don't hang around once you've won."

He steps forward, and the white queen pounces. She strikes Ron hard across the head with her stone arm, and he crashes to the floor - Hermione and (Y/n) scream but stay on their squares - the white queen drags Ron to one side. He looks as though he's been knocked out.

Shaking, Harry moves three spaces to the left.

The white king takes off his crown and throws it at Harry's feet. They had won. The chessmen part and bow, leaving the door ahead clear. With one last desperate look back at Ron, Harry and (Y/n) and Hermione charge through the door and up the next passageway.

"What if he's - ?"

"He'll be alright," (Y/n) soothes, trying to convince herself, as well as Hermione.

"What do you reckon's next?"

"We've had Sprout's, that was the Devil's Snare," Hermione begins.

"Flitwick must've put charms on the keys and McGonagall transfigured the chessmen to make them alive," (Y/n) continues.

"That leaves Quirrell's and Snape's," Hermione finishes.

They had reached another door.

"All right?" (Y/n) whispers.

"Go on."

(Y/n) pushes it open, her wand drawn.

A disgusting smell fills their nostrils, making the three of them pull their robes over their noses. Eyes watering, they see, flat on the floor in front of them, a troll even larger than the one they tackled, out cold with a blood lump on its head.

"I'm glad we didn't have to fight that one," Harry whispers as they step carefully over one of its massive legs.

"Tell me about it," (Y/n) mutters.

(Y/n) pulls open the next door, the three of them hardly daring to look at what comes next - but there is nothing very frightening in here, just a table with seven differently shaped bottles standing on it in a line.

"Snape's," Harry says. "What do we have to do?"

They step over the threshold and immediately, a fire springs up behind them in the doorway. It wasn't ordinary fire either; it was purple. At the same instant, black flames shoot up in the doorway leading onward. They are trapped.

"Look!" Hermione seizes a roll of paper lying next to the bottles. Harry and (Y/n) look over her shoulder to read it:

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind, Two of us will help you, whichever you would find, One among us seven will let you move ahead, Another will transport the drinker back instead, Two among our number hold only nettle wine, Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line. Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore, To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide You will always find some on nettle wine's left side; Second, different are those who stand at either end, But if you would move onward, neither is your friend; Third, as you see clearly, all are different size, Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides; Fourth, the second left and the second on the right Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.

Hermione lets out a great sigh, and Harry, amazed, sees that she and (Y/n) are smiling, the very last thing he feels like doing.

"Brilliant," says Hermione.

"This isn't magic - it's logic - a puzzle," (Y/n) continues.

"A lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic, they'd be stuck in here forever," Hermione adds.

"But so will we, won't we?" Harry asks nervously.

"Of course not," says Hermione. "Everything we need is here on this paper, and with our Potions expert."

"Seven bottles: three are poison; two are wine; one will get us safely through the black fire, and one will get us back through the purple," (Y/n) says, then pulls the vial of Fire Protection Potion out of her pocket. "And this. Who knows which fire this'll get us through."

"But how do we know which of the seven we can drink?" Harry asks his friends.

"Give us just a minute," Hermione says, exchanging a look with (Y/n).

The two read the paper several times. Then walk up and down the line of bottles, exchanging soft words and pointing to them. At last, Hermione claps her hands.

"Got it," (Y/n) says. "The smallest bottle will get us through the black fire - towards the Stone."

Harry looks at the tiny bottle.

"There's only enough there for one of us," he says. "That's hardly one swallow."

They look at each other, (Y/n) fiddling with the top of the vial in her hand.

"Which one will get you back through the purple flames?" Harry asks and Hermione points to a rounded bottle at the end of the line.

(Y/n) walks over and uncorks her vial, studying it. It does look a lot like the smallest bottle's potion, (Y/n) thinks. She drains the little bottle in one gulp. She shivers, it felt like ice. She puts the empty bottle in her pocket and braces herself. She could see the black flames licking her body, but can't feel them. For a moment, all (Y/n) can see is nothing but dark fire, then, she's on the other side, in the last chamber.

There is already someone there - but it isn't Snape like the others though. It wasn't even Voldemort.

Word Count: 6766 words

#hermione granger x sister reader

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queennicoleinboots · 3 years ago

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And the Earth then Became Hell

The volcano on the Island of La Palma burst out hot, red lava a mile into the sky. A rain of fire shot down on the island and burned the houses. Many people transformed into molten lava creatures who roamed the island. Lava already hit the Mediterranean Sea and started going into the Atlantic Ocean, which caused a white toxic gas to emanate in the air. Tiny glass shards, about the same size as tiny classified ads, were floating in the air. Everyone except the molten lava creatures had to wear space helmets to not breathe in the noxious gases.

The seas were set on fire from volcanoes erupting under the oceans. Geysers were exploding everywhere, which caused merfolk to fly in the air before they swam around and started eating ships carrying cargo. The fish were beginning to mutate into fire-breathing dragons.

Earthquakes were shattering the lands and causing islands to break off into the seas. Tsunamis were crashing on coastlines and drowning buildings and little beach shops. Ariel the Little Mermaid and her sisters were swimming along the Aegean Sea and talking to molten lava realtors about having vacation homes there.

Ursula the Sea Witch from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean sang about unfortunate souls as she, too, washed up on the Lalaria Beach, which is on the Northeast coast of Greece. The cave leading to it was ginormous and lined with blazing molten rock. The water was clear and showed all of the rainbow colored fish inside. Some even put their heads out of the water and sang with her.

Ursula then sat under the arch and started to sing to Ariel about her vacation home, "The only way to get what you want is to get a wellness passport. Can you do that?"

"Sure! Are you able to hook me up with one?" Ariel asked.

Ursula answered in song, "My dear, sweet child. That's what I do. It's what I live for.

To help unfortunate merfolk like yourself.

Poor souls with no one else to turn to."

"Great! It's wonderful to help people get vacation homes when the world is blowing up. It's a great cause to help us get some relief ya know," Ariel said with a smile.

"It is. It's a good cause," Ursula said before she sang again. "I admit that in the past I've been a nasty... They weren't kidding when they called me, well, a bitch.

But you'll find that nowadays

I've mended all my ways

Repented, seen the light, and made a switch

To this

True? Yes.

And I fortunately know a little magic

It's a talent that I always have possessed

And dear lady, please don't laugh

I use it on behalf

Of the miserable, the lonely, and depressed (pathetic).

Poor unfortunate souls

In pain, in need

This one longing to be richer

That one wants to get the girls

And do I help them?

Yes, indeed

Those poor unfortunate souls

So sad, so true

They come flocking to my cauldron

Crying, "Spells, Ursula, please!"

And I help them!

Yes I do

Now it's happened once or twice

Someone couldn't pay the price

And I'm afraid I had to rake 'em 'cross the coals

Yes I've had the odd complaint

But on the whole I've been a saint

To those poor unfortunate souls

Have we got a deal?"

"What will happen to me once I get my wellness pass? Will I become human? Will I have to quarantine for two weeks again?" Ariel asked with concern.

"But you'll have your home, heh heh. Life's full of tough choices, isn't it? Yep yep.

Oh, and there is one more thing.

We haven't discussed the subject of payment," Ursula said.

"But I don't have-" Ariel said quickly.

"I'm not asking much, just a token really, a trifle!

What I want from you is - your voice," Ursula sang.

"But without my voice, how can I-?" Ariel started to ask.

"You'll have your looks, your pretty face.

And don't underestimate the importance of your finances, ha!" Ursula said before she continued to sing. "The men around here don't like a lot of blabber.

They think a girl who gossips is a bore!

Yet on land it's much prefered for ladies not to say a word.

And after all dear, what is idle babble for?

Come on, they're not all that impressed with conversation.

True gentlemen avoid it when they can

But they dote and swoon and fawn

On a lady who's withdrawn

It's she who holds her tongue who get's a man.

Come on you poor unfortunate soul

Go ahead!

Make your choice!

I'm a very busy woman and I haven't got all day

It won't cost much

Just your voice!

You poor unfortunate soul

It's sad but true

If you want to cross the bridge, my sweet

You've got the pay the toll

Take a gulp and take a breath

And go ahead and sign the scroll

Flotsam, Jetsam, now I've got her, boys

The boss is on a roll

This poor unfortunate soul

Beluga sevruga

Come winds of the Caspian Sea

Larengix glaucitis

Et max laryngitis

La voce to me

Now, sing!"

Ariel then sang opera, and her soul was being dragged out of her body. Flotsam and Jetsam were mutated sea horses who were produced wellness passes for more unfortunate souls.

"Keep singing!" Ursula shouted.

Ariel sang and then everything around them began to burn.

Then I, Persephone, the Greek Goddess of agriculture and vegetation and Queen of the Underworld, was summoned.

Out of the ash came a new world.

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creaturesfromelsewhere · 4 years ago

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The Swamp

Truly, one cannot entertain any serious discussion of Florida’s dark side without inevitably circling back around to our finest resident, The Swamp. The Swamp is as much a living, breathing entity as you or I, thus she should always be capitalized out of respect, and as she is an independent entity, she is never our swamp. We tried for decades to own The Swamp, but that didn’t work out so well. You can visit her, you can work with her, you can make a living from her, but she cannot be owned and she cannot be controlled and at all times she demands respect. Those who disrespect The Swamp do so at their peril - every year, folks simply disappear into The Swamp. Occasionally, they are found. Often, they are not. An entire US Army fort is lost somewhere in there. The Swamp likes to keep her secrets, but you can sometimes catch a whisper or two from her if you listen carefully.

But she’s not all bad. There is, to quote Swamp Thing, much beauty in The Swamp and she is perfectly safe if you have a bit of swamp-sense. Just have a bit of care and you can behold colorful carnivorous plants, golden orb spiders, and black vultures which paint a portrait no human artist could ever properly replicate on canvas.

Some safety tips: if you’re hiking, stay on the trail. If you’re boating, stay out of the water. And unless you have a massive amount of experience with her, never go into The Swamp alone.

But the warning you’ll usually hear most often is to be sure you’re out of The Swamp before darkness, because that’s when most folks go missing. Ah, but I know my readers, and my readers absolutely love the night. And a night in The Swamp? Yes, please!

Well then, get ready for a darkly inclined excursion you’ll never forget. Believe it or not, there are numerous air boat excursions offered at night almost as if with goths specifically in mind. Just google ‘Florida swamp tour night’ and you’ll have a score or more to choose from. With the unforgiving Florida sun setting behind the bald cypress and filtered through the Spanish moss, you’ll gingerly board your specialty craft powered by a gigantic propeller and skippered by a guide who I can assure you is thoroughly gifted in swamp-sense.

Once everyone is comfy, off you go. Oh, one word about ‘off’. Mosquitoes will be an issue most times of the year, so even if it’s warm, wear clothes that will cover your arms and legs. The remaining exposed skin should be slathered with mosquito repellent, unless you enjoy being eaten alive by tiny vampires.

An night in The Swamp you profoundly get the sensation of being watched. Hard not to, since the eyes of The Swamp reflect light extremely well. As your guide shines the boat’s spotlight across the inky water, you’ll see dual reflecting orbs as far as the distant horizon. Yes, there are that many gators out there. And they get big, too. 12 to 14 feet and half a ton is common for the larger ones near populated areas. However, if you go way, way out into The Swamp, into those places rarely if ever visited by homo-stupid, you might just come across those swamp giants the old timers tell you about in hushed tones after they’ve had a few too many. “17 footer, maybe 18 - swear to God, it must have been 80 years old!” you might hear them say. Scary thing is, it might not be just the rum talking - it is possible for them to get that big, although extremely rare. Might want to scoot a bit more towards the center of the boat.

As the sun’s last rays fades to memory, you might catch a glimpse of a murder of crows settled down for the night in a tree or a groggy possum who is just waking up. And you’ll hear a cacophony of sounds - frogs croaking, crickets chirping, perhaps a gator bellowing, and if you’re really lucky, the distant scream of a Florida panther. And if you happen to be near a large, communal roost - a delightful cauldron of bats might pass overhead. (Yes, a flock of bats is called a ‘cauldron’ how cool is that?)

You might also hear the soothing call of a great horned owl - don’t worry, your guild likely knows all the favorite haunts of the creatures in his area, the spot light will dance about and then, presto - great horned owl.

Now if you’re insanely lucky, you might catch a glimpse of one of the creepiest denizens of The Swamp, the Shoebill stork. Few creatures have mastered the look of malevolent intelligence as well as this bird. And standing at 5 feet in height, you don’t want to test it to see if it’s true.

If you like, you can make requests of your guide. Ask about ghosts and swamp witches from this particular part of The Swamp. Disappearances and unknown creatures. Most guides are more than happy to give their audience what they want and will often deviate from the usual tour to show off a peculiar location. Perhaps there’s a spot with a famous ghost light or a half collapsed shack where some miscreants were hiding out until they just, disappeared? Maybe the famous swamp ape has been seen thereabouts or a chupacabra has been sucking the blood of local fauna?

Perhaps UFO’s are sometimes seen rising and descending into secret bases nearby? You won’t know if you don’t ask. Your guide will be happy to share much with you, but even the best guide won’t have all the answers. Few folks do. The Swamp likes to keep her secrets.

-CreaturesFromElsewhere 2/7/2021

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dacreshoney · 4 years ago

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vikings series 1 part 1

so this will be the first part of the vikings series list I am creating, I will go into a little summery about the character in which will have a name but I can also include Y/N imagines /alongisdebeside the characters name.

warning: introduction, may be some swearing

(I do not own images/gifs or condone any violent behaviours)

intro more than anything this part

800 A.D

summary: you are the Norse goddess Freya the daughter of the Great Norse god Njord of the wind wand waters and sister to Freyr/Yngvi the god of peace, fertility and rain. Freyja is the goddess of love, warfare, sex, fertility, death, beauty, magic, and witchcraft which has brought you many troubles in your life, you took form as your human self and lived among humans in which your father did not approve. You set your sights on Scandinavia, on a certain family, the Lothbrok family, you had foreseen in a vision with Frigg that this family would need your help in either saving the world or destroying it. You had grew close to Ragnar in his younger days, even his wife Lagertha adored you along with his brother Rollo, though it never took them long to believe you were the goddess freya. You would often come and go from their lives, watching over them. You made it clear you could not stay long, you overdid that already. your place was in Asgard, that was until you saw another fate beside the one where you would protect the lothbrok’s, this one would tie your destiny with one of Ragnar Lothbrok’s children, Ivar the Boneless. You were to be his saviour or you would join him on his bloody reign. Only time and the gods would tell what both of your fates would be.

freya art: below

series 1 part one: an old and dear friend.

you had foreseen another vision, you practiced magic and witchcraft often with Frigg, who was depicted as a Volva/seidr as well as yourself, this time the vision was dark and empty. Something was wrong, you felt desolate. The vision had foretold that Ragnar Lothbrok was dying o the would die by the hands of someone close to him, Frigg had foresaw a vision with his wife Aslaug plotting behind Ragnar's back with the seidr in Kattegat.

“she plots, she wonders if there will ever be a woman ruler of Kattegat” Frigg implied, her hands over your Brisingamen necklace and a golden cauldron, your blood boils at the thought of Aslaug betraying someone you love so dearly, how could she turn her back on him after everything he has done for her you thought to yourself.

“how dare she, she will never rule over Kattegat, over my dead body will I ever let her get her hands on everything Ragnar has achieved” you raised your voice in anger, turning harshly on your heal to look over at the rainbow bridge of Asgard, placing your hands on the railings, grasping so tightly you could easily break them. Frigg walked over to you, placing her hand on your shoulder, her fair touch easing you ever so slightly as she turned you to face her she spoke softly, “ there will be a woman rule one day over Kattegat, but it won't be Aslaug, that you will have to wait and see my dear one”

“ I don’t see your fascination in these viking mutts freya, surely you could just kill them all and all your sorrows would be dealt with, or I could help you slaughter them all” Tyr followed, laughing, he was the god of war and a halfwit at that, he had no emotion or care for anyone other than himself. you edged away from Frigg aiming your sights at Tyr, raising your fist to grab his throat. “one more word from you tyr and I'm shoving the seat golden spear of your up your giant a ss ho...” Frigg interrupted, “now freya, now is not the time, you know where you need to go”

You knew what you had to do, it was time to go back to Kattegat, a place you said to yourself you would never go back to, you told yourself you would watch and protect from afar to abide by your fathers rules and to conceal your feelings deep inside. But there was always something that would draw you back, back to them. you nodded your head to Frigg and a beam of light shown around your whole body as you teleported to Kattegat.

As you overlooked on top of the snowy mountains of Kattegat, taking in that icy fresh air you so missed into your lungs, you set your sights on the great hall of Kattegat in the far distance. Using your sight see what was going off and where everyone was, but Ragnar was not there. Then you spotted Björn, a man now, tying your dearest Floki to a wooden pole. Speeding down to the front of the harbour at 100 miles an hour, you headed to the flock of people surrounding the Floki, throwing rocks at him. You made your way through the crowd, barging your way to the front, picking up a rock fro the floor, your eyes catching Floki and Björn’s who stood their in shock as you spoke jokingly,

“my dear Floki, what have you done now” you teased, playing with the dirty rock in your hand as Björn walked your way, embracing you in a hug, shooing off the crowd of people. “freya, my god, how I've missed you” Bjorn laughed as his arms wrapped themselves around you, then turning round to Floki, “and him, your dear friend has murdered a christian man out of malice” you laughed at Bjorn as you went to unchain Floki and spoke “a christian man I say, surely you could of dealt with this privately Bjorn, what would your mother say” you winked , helping Floki out of his chains as he embraced you also.

“my mother, would be proud of me, for being a man” Bjorn answered back

“there are other ways to prove your a man bjorn and what would you father say, hmm, did he approve of this?” you questioned, walking towards Bjorn, heading towards the great hall.

“no, he does not know, but I do not need my fathers approval freya” Bjorn spouted off in a huff as he followed you.

You continued to laugh at Bjorn, making a joke out of the situation. Heading into the great hall, everyones eyes turned to you, pacing their eyes up and down at your beauty, Aslaug forcing a smile on her face at your presence, beside her 4 boys you had not seen before in person, but visions. Bjorn was about to speak up and announce your name, but you stopped him, one rule in Asgard was to not let your presence know so often, in which you had already broken that rule a long time ago, you preferred to keep it on the download this time. your gorgeous strawberry blonde locks blustering softly in the winter winds at the doors as you entered, those piercing golden eyes scouring the room, until you found those beautiful blue eyes of a man, well a man to you, a cripple to others, you locked his eyes as he crawled beside his mother Aslaug, mesmerised by your beauty. Bjorn, Floki and yourself headed towards where aslaug was sat on her thrown, you tried to keep your anger inside after foreseeing her thoughts. You stood proudly informant of her, your posture proud. At least you both could agree on something, you both were not happy to see each other in the slightest.

“Aslaug.. pleasure to see you again, and with sons, Ragnar must be so proud and.. happy, where is he may I ask” you spoke plainly, still never leaving her gaze, placing yourself on another seat beside Bjorn and Floki. She sneaked at you, knowing you'd know exactly what she was thinking, she tried her best to block you out, it never worked.

“pleasures mine, freya.. and yes, he is proud, legitimate male heirs to the Lothbrok throne.. and as for Ragnar he is out, I'm sorry you missed him” she said sarcastically, digging at Bjorn and yourself. The other sons of Ragnar, questioning who this freya was, eyeing up each other still, looking for answers from their mothers face, Ivar’s sky blue eyes still never leaving your face.

“no matter, I am here to stay for a while, I hope you don’t mind, myself and Ragnar have some things to attend to, I am sure you won't keep him from me for too long” you forced a smile, aiming for a reaction, she was good. Before she could answer, a familiar step headed towards you, you could smell his scent from miles away, that familiar scent you familiarised with home and family.

“hello old friend, been a while” Ragnar spoke happily as you turned to face him, eyes beaming with joy to see him okay and alive, you embraced each other, aslaug jealousy was very much on show for everyone to see.

#vikings imagine #intro #vikings #ragnar #new imagines blog

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wickednerdery · 4 years ago

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Title: The Guest Author: @wickednerdery Fandom: The Night Manager Pairing/character: Jonathan Pine/OC Rating: Teen Summary: “Is there any way that I can help?” Notes: This is something that’s been bouncing in my brain for, like, almost a year (on-and-off)…still not sure I have more than snapshots, but it finally came out onto paper just now lol!

Masterlist - Previous Chapter

He waits until Qi leaves to chat up a local, May’s preoccupied by friends, to ask. “Were you able to help your friend?” Pine keeps it vague, curious, in hopes Kay will open up.

“Yes, I did.”

“How was Canada?”

Kay finally looks over, smiles. “Qi gave me up, did she?”

His smiles, looks to May to ensure she’s still focused on friends. “She mentioned you crossing the border, I assumed she meant Canadian.”

“I guess she did then. but, yes, it was lovely.”

“Kay.” Her brows arch, but she stays silent, so he carries on. “What sort of favors are you doing for your guests? These...friends of yours, what are they into?”

“As I said before, Mr Ashland, that’s not your concern.” She is serious, formal, closing him off with a look. She moves to stand. “And I’d appreciate you not mentioning my guests to others. Even if others should ask you.”

“I’ve no intention of that.”

“Good.” She takes a breath, go to collect what trash is left. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

“Please, I just...” He stands and she stays, standing, waiting. “May I help?”

“I don’t know you well enough for that.”

“And you don’t trust me.”

“Qi says you were nothing but kind and helpful with both her and May, don’t think I’m not grateful. I am.” Kay goes to the trash, he follows. “But this isn’t just about me, my business, or even my family. This is...” She sighs, turns. “Other people trust me to help them, protect them, and I’m not willing to risk that even if I do feel you’re a genuinely good guy.”

“I understand.”

Kay wants to question, because the words are what anyone might say in reply, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because she senses it’s the truth. That he understands beyond caring for guests as a hotelier.

***

"Tell Jonathan about that time our whole family got chased off the beach by the flock of seagulls.” Qi laughs, turns to the man. “The birds, not the terrible haircut.”

Pine gives a small, close-lipped, chuckle. He finds himself grateful Qi’s stuck around as she forever invites him to their midday family meals, allows him to enjoy time with the ladies without feeling as if he’s intruding.

Kay laughs, shakes her head, but proceeds. “I was around ten, Qi you were...five, six maybe? Anyway we snuck a giant sack of sunflower seeds to the beach and this one...” she points to Qi “...decides it’s a good idea to just grab the bottom of the bag and shake.” Her laugh grows as Qi starts to lose it, as May starts to giggle between fries. “It went everywhere, all over our blankets, in all our bags, in our hair and clothes and those birds...they must’ve come from five states over, I swear, there were so many.”

May complains she’s never been told this story before - it’s so funny, why wasn’t she told it earlier?! - as the adults all laugh. Jonathan’s the first to pull himself together, though even he continues to chuckle now and again. “I hope none of you were hurt, nothing damaged.”

“My mother’s designer purse was pooped on,” Qi offers with a laugh.

“And I had to write lines until bedtime once we got back home.” Kay smiles out. “Which, really, wasn’t too bad.” Her mobile goes off in her bag and she excuses herself to answer, walking beyond the pool gate for privacy.

Jonathan stands, clears his and the others’ spots, all the while working to listen in the best he can.

“...Bit last minute...it’s just...she has?...I can...” Kay sighs with more worry than stress. “Ten...Nine-thirty then...of course...bye.” When she returns it’s with a smile, as if nothing’s changed. “You know...” She smiles to May, then her cousin. “It’s been so much fun having you here, Qi, you should stay a bit longer.”

May perks up. “Yeah!”

“Sure.” That Qi doesn’t say more is confirmation enough something is up.

“And...I need an extra hour for lunch, cover for me?”

Qi nods.

“Is there any way that I can help?” Jonathan offers, hoping she might reveal something, anything, about the sudden activity the phone call’s brought about.

“No, thank you though,” Kay dismisses with a smile. She gives a last thank you and goodbye to all before heading back through the hotel, already on the phone once again.

As Pine returns to the table he catches sight of Kay’s magazine still on the table with something stuck within its pages. He snatches it up as Qi promises May, once her mother comes back, she’ll join the girl in the pool. “I’ll be off then,” he turns from them. “I promised a friend I’d call.”

“Oh, sure, leave me here with all these guests. Just be sure to tell Prince Harry that Qi Haung loves him!” Qi teases, sticking out her tongue, and laughing before May calls her attention back.

I genuinely think Pine can’t help himself in this...He likes Kay, but his instinct is to distrust, to do whatever necessary in order to uncover a secret, and that’s still what drives him above anything else. Now that may change, hopefully it will, but right now Jonathan doesn’t just want, he needs, to know what Kay’s up to.

Gifs found on Google, adjusted by me!)

Tagging Who Might Care: @lady-crowned-with-stars @holykryptonitekitten @ultrarebelheart @chibiyanai @beccaliciooouuusss @michellearel1 @sweetfictionalworld @lukeevansandjdmobession @lokilvrr @rizzo87 @alexakeyloveloki @wintertink @moonfaery @annievvv7 @creedslove @wadeyouwitch @cassadius @tarithenurse @kellatron55 @coppercorn-and-cauldron @iwasbusybeingdead @kavery12 @green-valkyrie @dangertoozmanykids101 @toozmanykids @theangelsfightwithdevils @poetic-fiasco

#jonathan pine #the night manager #pine x oc #fanfiction #OC: Kay #OC: May #OC: Qi #my writing #not my gif #the guest

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orthodoxydaily · 4 years ago

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Saints&Reading: Mon., Apr., 26, 2021

Great Monday of Holy Week

April 13/April26

The Priest Martyr Artemon (303)

The PriestMartyr Artemon was born of Christian parents in Syrian Laodiceia in the first half of the III Century. From the time of his youthful years he dedicated himself to the service of the Church. At 16 years of age the saint was made a reader and in this position he laboured during the course of 12 years. For his zealousness in Divine Services, Sainted-bishop Sisinios ordained him to the dignity of deacon. Saint Artemon did also this service with fervour and diligence for 28 years, after which he was ordained to the priesthood. And in this dignity Saint Artemon served the Church of God for 33 years, preaching the Christian faith amongst pagans. When the emperor Diocletian (284-305) began a fierce persecution against christians, Saint Artemon was already old. The emperor issued an edict, that all christians were to offer sacrifice to idols.

Saint Sisinios, knowing about the impending arrival in the Laodiceian district of the military-commander Patricius, went together with the priest Artemon into the pagan-temple of the goddess Artemis. There they smashed and burnt the idols. Afterwards, Saint Sisinios and Saint Artemon gathered the flock into the church and heatedly exhorted the christians to remain firm in the faith and not fear the threats of torturers. Having arrived in Laodiceia, Patricius made a five-day celebration in honour of the pagan gods, and then went off to the temple of Artemis to offer sacrifice. He learnt who it was that had destroyed the temple, and set off with a detachment of soldiers to the church where the christians were praying. Not yet having gotten in front of the church, Patricius suddenly felt a chill, and afterwards heat, such that it left him hardly alive, and they entered into the first house they found along the way. "The Christians have put a curse on me, and this their God tormenteth me", – he said to those about him. The prayers of Patricius to the idols did not relieve his sufferings. He dispatched a messenger to Saint Sisinios and asked for his help, promising by way of thanks to make a gold statue of the bishop. The Saint answered: "Thy gold keep to thyself, but if thou wishest to be healed, believe in Christ". Patricius was afraid of dying and he declared that he believed in Christ. Through the prayer of Saint Sisinios the affliction left him. But even a miracle having been worked did not alter the obdurate soul of the pagan. Although he did not touch Saint Sisinios, he however set off to enforce the imperial edict against other christians in the city of Caesarea. Along the way he encountered an old man, for whom there went in pairs six wild donkeys and two deer. This man was the priest Artemon. To Patricius' query, how he was able to lead after him these wild beasts, Saint Artemon answered, that everything in the world confesses the Name of Christ and with true faith in Christ nothing is impossible. Patricius learned from the pagans that the old man he met along the way – was the same Artemon, who had destroyed the pagan temple of Artemis. He gave orders to seize him and take him to the city of Caesarea. Saint Artemon went along with the soldiers without fear, but he ordered the animals to go to Saint Sisinios. One of the donkeys received the gift of speech from God and told the saint-bishop that he had come from Saint Artemon. The bishop sent him in Caesarea a blessing and prosphora by deacon. In Caesarea Patricius summoned Saint Artemon to trial and began to try to force him to offer sacrifice in the pagan temple of Asclepios. In this pagan temple there lived many poisonous vipers. The pagan priest never opened up the doors, nor previously carried in the sacrifice to the idol. But Saint Artemon, calling on the Name of Jesus Christ, went into the temple and let out from there the plethora of snakes. The pagans turned in flight, but the saint stopped them and by his breath killed the snakes. One of the pagan priests, Bitalios, believed in Christ and asked Saint Artemon to baptise him. Patricius thought that Saint Artemon killed the snakes by means of sorcery, and he again started to interrogate and torture him. At this point in time there arrived in Caesarea the donkey which had spoken with Saint Sisinios. The donkey lay down at the feet of the martyr, and afterwards again having received from God the gift of speech, it denounced Patricius, predicting for him an impending death in a boiling cauldron. Patricius was scared, that the miracles done by Saint Artemon would draw still more people to him, and he gave orders to execute him. The filled an enormous cauldron with boiling tar. Soldiers were needed to throw Saint Artemon therein. But when Patricius rode up on horseback to the kettle, wanting to be sure that the tar was indeed boiling, two Angels in the guise of eagles seized and threw him into the cauldron, but Saint Artemon remained alive. Through the prayer of the saint there issued from the ground a spring of water, in which he baptised the pagan priest Bitalios and many pagans, who had come to believe in Christ. On the following morning Saint Artemon communed the newly-baptised with the Holy Mysteries. The bishop of Caesarea went to visit with Saint Artemon. He cleared off the place where the martyr suffered, and afterwards was built a church there. Many of the baptised were ordained to the deaconate and priesthood, and Bitalios was made bishop of Palestine. The Priestmartyr Artemon, through a calling by the Divine Voice, went preaching the Gospel into Asia, to the settlement of Bulos. Along the way an Angel appeared to him and transported him openly in view of the villagers. He converted many there to faith in Christ. Pagans seized the saint and beheaded him (+ 303).

St. Martin the Confessor, pope of Rome (655)

"Martin became Pope on July 5th, 649, at the time of a furious quarrel between the Orthodox and the Monothelite heretics. Constans the Second, Heraclius' grandson, was on the throne at the time, and Paul was Patriarch of Constantinople. To restore peace in the Church, the Emperor himself wrote a dogmatic decree, the Typos, which leaned heavily towards heresy. Pope Martin summoned a Council of 105 bishops, at which the Emperor's statement was condemned. At the same time, the Pope wrote a letter to Patriarch Paul, begging him to uphold the purity of the Orthodox faith and to counsel the Emperor to reject the theories of the heretics. This letter infuriated both the Patriarch and the Emperor. The Emperor sent one of his generals, Olympius, to take the Pope to Constantinople in bonds. The general did not dare to bind the Pope with his own hands, but instructed one of his soldiers to kill him with the sword in church. But, when the soldier entered the church with his sword concealed, he was instantly blinded. So, by the providence of God, Martin escaped death. At that time, the Saracens fell upon Sicily, and Olympius went off there, where he died. Then, by the intrigues of the heretic Patriarch Paul, the Emperor sent a second general, Theodore, to bind and take the Pope on the charge that he, the Pope, was in collusion with the Saracens and that he did not reverence the most holy Mother of God. [!!] When the general arrived in Rome and read the accusation against the Pope, he replied that it was a libel; that he had no contact of any sort with the Saracens, the opponents of Christianity, 'and whoever does not confess the most holy Mother of God and do her reverence, let him be damned in this age and in that which is to come.' But this did not affect the general's decision. The Pope was bound and taken to Constantinople, where he lay long in prison in great sickness, tortured by both anxiety and hunger,until he was finally sentenced to exile in Cherson, where he lived for two years before his death. He gave his soul into the hands of the Lord, for whom he had suffered so greatly, in 655. The evil Patriarch, Paul, died two years before him and, when the Emperor visited him on his deathbed, he smote his head against the wall, confessing with tears that he had greatly sinned against Pope Martin and asking the Emperor to set Martin free.'

Matthew 21:18-43

18 Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." Immediately the fig tree withered away.20 And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither away so soon?" 21 So Jesus answered and said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' it will be done.22 And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.23 Now when He came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, "By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?"24 But Jesus answered and said to them, "I also will ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things:25 The baptism of John-where was it from? From heaven or from men? And they reasoned among themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' He will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?'26 But if we say, 'From men,' we fear the multitude, for all count John as a prophet.27So they answered Jesus and said, "We do not know." And He said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.28 But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, 'Son, go, work today in my vineyard.'29 He answered and said, 'I will not,' but afterward he regretted it and went.30 Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, 'I go, sir,' but he did not go.31 Which of the two did the will of his father? They said to Him, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you.32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him; and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him.33 Hear another parable: There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country.34 Now when vintage-time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers, that they might receive its fruit.35 And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another.36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them.37 Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'38 But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.'39 So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him.40 Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers? 41 They said to Him, "He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons."42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures: 'The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the LORD's doing, And it is marvelous in our eyes'?43 Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.

Matthew 24:3-35

3 Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" 4 And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows. 9 Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. 10 And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. 11 Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12 And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.15 Therefore when you see the 'abomination of desolation,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house.18 And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes.19 But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! 20 And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath.21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since from the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22 And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened. 23 Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand. 26 Therefore if they say to you, 'Look, He is in the desert!' do not go out; or 'Look, He is in the inner rooms!' do not believe it. 27 For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 28 For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together. 29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. 32 Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.33 So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near-at the doors! 34 Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.

#orthodoxy #orthodoxchristianity #ancientchristianity #originofchristianity #spirituality #holyscripture #gospel #wisdom

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eyeforabargain · 7 months ago

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What if someone prefered your sister over you?

"HA! Puh-LEASE! That never happens."

#they come flocking to my cauldron {answered asks}

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slytherinknowitall · 5 years ago

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Potion Fumes and Cauldron Leaks

Chapter 12: A Friend For The Lonely Beast At Last

(Click here for chapter 11!)

(Click here to start from the beginning!)

Disclaimer: I don’t own the “Harry Potter” book series. The story of “Harry Potter” is the property of J. K. Rowling, it is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.

The following days went by way too fast, and the weekend was over before Severus knew it.

He had spent the two chilly autumn days locked away in his quarters, not leaving the cold confines of the dungeons even once. While he would normally spend his free days hunting for rare potion ingredients and interesting literature or working on improving his already impeccable brewing technique, he had passed the past 48 hours buried beneath countless pillows and thick blankets in his large four-poster bed. The only contact to the outside world had been provided by the school’s ever-diligent house elves, who had both kept the Potions Master’s rooms clean and delivered warm meals three times a day – not that the man had touched much of the food.

On Monday morning, Severus woke up with a throbbing headache. A quick look at his watch told him that breakfast was probably already in full swing, but he didn’t feel like eating. Most of all, however, he didn’t feel like facing a certain brunette before he absolutely had to. So instead, he got up and moved to the bathroom with sagging shoulders.

As he was standing in the shower a few minutes later, letting the icy cold water pour over his lithe body, he tried hard to ignore the intrusive thoughts that had been plaguing him all throughout the past days. They all had something to do with some newly discovered and rather confusing feelings for a little know-it-all, of course.

While he had dismissed his earlier impure thoughts about Granger as the simple result of prolonged abstinence, these confounding emotions were of a whole new calibre. Physical attraction was one thing; he could deal with that. But fancying one of his own students – let alone maybe falling in love with them – was simply too much. It made him feel almost physically ill.

Severus had never been one to handle his own feelings well, and his relative inexperience when it came to the opposite sex – especially in the romantic sense – only added to his confusion and uncertainty. The only woman he had ever been interested in, the only one he had ever loved, was Lily. And he had always thought that she was the love of his life. Even almost two decades after her violent death, her mental image was still looming over his scarred heart. The redhead had been the one thing that had kept him going throughout the war; she had been the only reason he had tried so desperately to keep that stupid Potter boy alive – and the only reason he had continued to live.

But now, he was slowly but surely starting to question all that. Whatever it was that he was beginning to feel towards Granger was so different and so much more intense than anything he had ever experienced before. Somehow, it even felt more powerful than his love for Lily had ever been to begin with. And over the weekend, the wizard had come to the shocking conclusion that the only reason he had ever been that obsessed with his childhood sweetheart was because she had been one of the few people to ever show a genuine interest in him as a person. Whether Severus liked it or not, he had always been someone who craved the attention and acceptance of others. That had been the main reason he had joined the ranks of the Dark Lord in the first place. Lily had been his friend, she had treated him with respect; and teenage-him had mistaken that for love. Looking back, he realised that it had never been her that he’d been craving; it had been her kindness towards him. The fact that his personal archenemy had also quickly started to show an interest in her had only made Snape more determined to make her his, of course.

His feelings towards Granger were of a different nature. She had never been his friend; in fact, Severus was pretty much sure that she hated him just as much as the rest of the student body – even if she never really showed it. So it wasn’t her continued affection he desired. No, he wanted her. He wanted to run his calloused fingers through her voluminous curls, he wanted to listen to her babble on for hours about some random boring topic, he wanted to hold her and sleep next to her like they had done in his office. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t striving to possess a woman but rather to give himself to her – and it was driving him absolutely insane. Even forgetting the fact that she was his pupil and personal apprentice, those feelings still managed to make him feel vulnerable and weak.

The half-blood sighed before stepping out of the shower and drying himself off with a towel. He took his time with the rest of his morning routine, but it didn’t take long before he found himself in the Potions classroom, surrounded by an annoying, hyperactive flock of second-years. And unfortunately, it seemed to only take a blink of an eye before those young students were then soon replaced by the seventh-years – with Hermione Granger being on time for the first time in weeks.

Severus noticed her presence instantly. She looked the same as always – her brown mane was pulled back into a classic Dutch braid, and her spick and span uniform was topped off with her polished Head Girl badge – yet somehow, the sight of her gave him an armada of butterflies in his stomach. She must have noticed his intense gaze, too; as she gave him a quick but radiant smile before hurrying to her usual seat in the front row. He would have lied if he had said that that small gesture didn’t make his dark heart jump a little.

Staggered by his inner turmoil, the professor frowned as he waited for the class to settle down. As soon as the last chitchat faded away, he briskly made his way towards the front of the classroom. Lightly tapping his wand against the black board, a dozen or so rows of brewing instructions appeared.

“Today –“

He let out a small cough, trying to get rid of that sudden lump in his throat.

“Today, you will be brewing Doxycide. Now, as you all surely are aware, this specific potion has the purpose of temporarily stunning Doxies. These fairy-like creatures are common household pests, so this remedy will likely prove useful to each and every one of you at some point. As anyone with even just a handful of braincells would know, these beasts are –“

The Gryffindor’s eyes were following his every move, and he was uncomfortably aware of that. They seemed to burn through his skin right into his soul.

“Um … bad.”

The little slip-up had an instant impact. There was immediate commotion, with loud chatter practically bouncing between the heads of shocked teenagers, and Severus’ eyes grew big as he unsuccessfully tried to mask his own surprise – never in his entire career as a teacher had he ever tripped over his own tongue like this before!

Not having the slightest clue how to handle this most unprecedented situation, he simply muttered a quick “The required ingredients can be found in the supply cupboard. You may get started.” before disappearing into his office, his long black robes whirling up around him as he did so.

*************** *************** ***************

Snape waited an extra ten minutes following the chime of the old Clock Tower before finally emerging from his hiding place, making certain to give the students enough time to finish up their potions, clean their workspaces and leave.

As he re-entered the dark teaching lab, he scrunched up his large nose at the foul smell of Doxycide; while he’d become inured to most unpleasant smells over the years, he for some reason still could barely stand the solution’s disgusting stench. Nonetheless, he marched to his desk and was just about to sit down and organise the countless parchment rolls spread across the table when a soft voice suddenly caressed his ears.

“Professor Snape?”

Startled, he spun around. Standing on the doorstep, there was Granger. Her heavy book bag swinging from her delicate shoulders, she was holding another three or four books in her arms. Over the course of the lesson, some of her locks had become undone and were now framing her freckled face nicely.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir! I didn’t mean to take you by surprise!” Biting her bottom lip, she gave him a quick grin.

“Miss Granger, I …” Severus was at a loss for words. Trying hard to ignore his beating heart, he was frantically searching for something, anything to say. Never before had he struggled for words like this in front of a student.

When he didn’t continue, Granger stepped into the room and said, “Oh, well, I apologise for ambushing you like this, but after what happened last Friday, I really feel like we should talk.”

“Fuck!” Severus thought panicked. “Now she will accuse me of being a bloody pervert! What kind of teacher falls asleep hugging a student, anyways?! You really should have known better, Severus! She has probably already reported you to that duffer of a headmaster and demanded to switch apprenticeships! Hell, the whole school likely already knows about that little slumber party, what were you –“

“Thank you.”

Snape was completely taken aback. “Wh-what?”

Her rosy cheeks became even redder. “I would like to thank you, sir. What you did for me was more than kind. The way you defended and comforted me … I cannot express my appreciation enough.” She flashed him another shy smile. “Oh, and also thank you for sending that house elf up to my rooms with my belongings after I ran off. That was very thoughtful of you.”

Severus could only stare at her, his mouth slightly agape. “So … you are not going to switch to another professor?” he asked meekly, the disbelief in his voice clearly audible.

Granger laughed nervously. “No, of course not,” she answered as she fiddled with the cuticle of her right middle finger. Furling her eyebrows, her gaze then wandered to the floor. “If anything, I’m here to apologise for my behaviour over the past couple of weeks. I just … overreacted, I guess.”

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds, during which the flustered wizard did not allow himself to breathe. Could it really be that she was grateful for his actions? Perhaps she didn’t dislike him after all? While he would never – could never – permit himself to give into his irrational emotions, Severus let himself believe for just a split second that maybe, just maybe, the two of them could become something like friends instead.

Don’t be stupid! She may not hate you, but she still thinks of you as nothing more than an old, crusty codger.

Or did she? Helplessly overwhelmed by his inner conflict, he simply had to know the witch’s true feelings. Meeting her hazel eyes with his, Severus silently and effortlessly delved into Granger’s smart mind. As soon as he entered, he was amazed – he had never encountered such an extraordinary brain before. He didn’t have time to marvel at it, however, as he was in a hurry to search for any thoughts concerning his person before the Muggle-born would notice his presence inside her head.

Once he found them, however, he was stunned – there was not the least bit of hatred or disgust. Instead, Severus was rushing through a vortex of muddled memories.

First, he found himself in his own classroom more than six years ago, watching a slightly younger version of himself hold his typical introductory speech in front of a bunch of bright-faced 11-year-old Slytherins and Gryffindors. Looking around, he soon spotted a familiar bushy-haired, buck-toothed girl. Concentrating on her, he was able to feel the astonishment and admiration radiating from her.

The next memory seemed to be a couple of years younger, located yet again in the dungeon classroom. He saw himself aiding to a hurt Neville Longbottom lying on the ground after what seemed to have been another botched brewing attempt. Standing amongst the crowd of students gathered around the scene, a fourth-year Hermione Granger was looking at the two of them with both worry and fondness in her eyes. To Severus’ surprise, the latter seemed to be directed at both of them equally. He didn’t have a lot of time to process this, however, as the image promptly vanished before his own eyes.

The last distinct memory was only a few months old, taking place in a little suburban town somewhere in Muggle England. A casually dressed Granger was sitting on a small twin bed situated in what he suspected to be her bedroom. He raised an eyebrow at the various shades of green that the room was arranged in before stepping closer to the young woman. She was presently bend over a piece of parchment paper, and upon closer inspection, he realised that it was a letter from Hogwarts – an application for the apprenticeship programme, to be more exact. He watched as she used a small beige-coloured quill to fill in Professor Severus Snape next to the words Desired Tutor. Looking at her bare, makeup-free face, his breath was taken away when he saw her grin broadly, seemingly filled with excitement. Astonished, Severus slipped back into reality.

“Is everything okay, sir?” Granger asked with obvious concern in her voice, blissfully unaware that her privacy had just been invaded.

Snape gulped. “Yes, Miss Granger. Everything is quite all right.”

And when the girl smiled at him this time, he couldn’t help but smirk back at her. Perhaps they could become friends, after all.

(Click here for chapter 13!)

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fireintheforest · 5 years ago

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Behind the Blue: chapter 2

It was around three in the morning when Toivon left the tavern, which was starting to be emptied by the owner and employees. Out the tavern, Chorrol had its own sights. A couple of drunkards sat at the corner singing lewd songs in a warbly, slurred voice. Beyond, a shady man waited under a tree holding a lamp. Guards walked now and then, making their rounds. The buildings around leaned one way or another, some windows lit and most in darkness. The few trees around swayed gently with vague gusts of wind. The cobblestone roads gave out a soft tap, tap, tap sound as Toivon walked. Now and then a person or two would walk on the opposite direction, glancing at the Dunmer, who paid them no attention as he continued his way to the inn he was staying at. And how could he? As he walked (or rather let his feet guide him back to the inn he and Marcello were staying at), his mind guided him elsewhere: he had to be in Evermor in one month, he and two others, the key was in Hawkcroft’s possession, La Zadine was in a chest in the bedroom, so if it’s going to be during a party, the best way of action could be…

By the time opened the door of Marcello’s room, he felt confident in the rough sketches of the plan. Marcello was lying face up on his bed, his legs resting against the wall and examining a pearl collar he held on one hand. Marcello glanced at the door, almost as if he’d been expecting Toivon to cross the threshold soon and extended the collar to him as he asked, “How’s it look?”

Toivon took the necklace and sat on the ground by Marcello’s head, inspecting it. “Nice enough. Where did you get it?”

“Some house, the big one by the bridge? Next to some violets? Yeah. You think I could sell it?”

“There’s a couple places you can, yeah.” He plopped the collar straight on Marcello’s face as Marcello let him by closing his eyes to feel the cool pearls, “Are you busy the next month?”

“I don’t think so. Why, you got any plans? Are you taking me somewhere fancy for our anniversary?”

“The fanciest you’ve ever gotten is street food that fell off the cart. But no. We got a job.” Marcello opened one eye, listening, “There’s a sapphire, La Zadine, all the way in Evermor, that’s owned by Emmanuel Hawkcroft, and someone is paying good money for it.”

“That’s this whole business in a nutshell. Sounds easy enough.”

“Mhm. Hawkcroft is going to have some party in a month time, and during this party we’ll get it. There’s strong suspicion that she’s kept in a chest in his room that can only be opened by a key he keeps with him at all times.”

“Ohhh, there’s the catch.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“The plan so far is you, me and someone else.” Marcello perked up at that, which was…odd. Marcello usually preferred jobs like these to be with fewer people. It was probably nothing, Toivon thought, and pushed that observation aside to focus on the plan, “Third person creates a distraction, you pinch the key from Hawkcroft, let me in, we get La Zadine and then the out of there.”

“That…sounds too simple.”

“I know, it’s a rough sketch. Obviously we’ll finesse the details when we get there and scout the place.”

Marcello pursed his lips for a second, the pearl necklace contrasting strikingly with the dark grey of his skin and the black of his hair, “You think there’ll be a good window of time for me to grab that key? Because, and I gotta be honest with you, I’m not the swiftest taking things that are tied up on people, and those keys might be in a keyring on his belt or something. Doubt he just carries it lose on his pocket. Oh man, what if he has it under his skin?”

Toivon slowly turned to Marcello, “…what?”

“What? A man back home had his like- he cut a bit of skin on his stomach,” Marcello traced a finger horizontally on his gut, “and stuck the key to his house in there. He stitched it up, it created a pocket.” Toivon shuddered, “He said it was so hagravens couldn’t get his corpse when-”

“Okay. Childhood memories aside,- by the daedra, what the fuck was your childhood, even- I doubt Hawkcroft has it under his skin. He probably has it in his belt or around his neck or something.”

“Sure.”

“So, even if you’ve gotten good you need more time. That’s why we can bring one more person along, for distraction, but we have to be careful picking who.” Toivon said as he stretched. Marcello seemed to ponder this, and an idea crossed his mind. But if he wanted this to work, he had to make Toivon think he’d come to the conclusion by himself. And knowing Toivon, who had gotten up and was now pacing, the time was now. He put his legs down and sat upright, letting the pearls fall on his lap, “So of the people we know, I don’t think Eliza is the best for this job. She won’t like going undercover or being at a fancy party, especially a Breton one where she has to wear a skirt. Nahin could make a good distraction but also he stands out too much and not in the good way, plus yanno kinda stubborn. And I love Ysa but she has the social skills of a lizard. We need someone that catches the Breton’s attention without setting them too apart from the crowd. Someone that can both blend in to be discreet and catch the eye enough to command the attention away from you taking the key.” Marcello grinned, “Wow, I’m smart.” He said to himself.

“This is an interesting idea.” Toivon agreed, pacing, “Someone that’ll catch the Breton’s eye. Someone they’ll flock towards.”

“Someone that can be as boring and posh as they are.” Marcello took out three balls in his pocket and started to juggle them. Toivon stopped to observe the juggling. Now he just needed to figure out who to persuade to join the work. It had to be someone discreet and competent, but if the usual people might not be up to task, then…

Marcello’s whistling was what drew Toivon out of his thoughts. Toivon asked, “What are you doing?”

“What? I’m juggling.”

“Marcello, we need to figure out this by now. The sooner we have this mystery person, the sooner we can go to Evermor.”

“What? I’m thinking too! Can’t a mer multitask? If we need someone to catch their eye, and we’re talking about Bretons, it’s got to be someone that’s attractive.”

“Charming.”

“Interesting”

“Quick-witted for the distraction”

“I guess? They’re Bretons, just slap in an Altmer and profit from their daddy issues. Doesn’t even have to do much. Shit, they’d even fit in and think the Breton party is too casual for them.” Boom.

Toivon stopped in his tracks.

“An Altmer?” he asked. Marcello dropped a ball and reached to pick it by the pillow, sighing dramatically, “You’re right, dumb idea. Anyone will do. We don’t even know any Altmer who could do it.” Lies.

“No.” Toivon said, absentmindedly lifting a hand, “No, no no no. An Altmer is good. An Altmer could work. They’d fit in that party. Fundamentally, we need someone that won’t ruin this for us.”

“Where will we find an Altmer that’s going to work with us in this job, though?” Marcello asked, straightening up and studying Toivon’s face closely. He already knew the answer, he just hoped whoever was in Toivon’s mind was the same as he was thinking of. Toivon’s eyes were shining with realization.

“I think we know the one.”

-0-

The Khajiit scrambled out of the house as fast as he could and took off down the road and away from the escalating argument in Altmeris. Which was, however, just getting started. Mere five minutes after the beastfolk had run out of their living room, Saufinril threw his hands up in the air.

“I’m done!” he yelled, walking out.

“Hey come back here, I’m not done with you!”

“Well I am!” Saufinril yelled, going upstairs with Eramon behind.

“Of course you are, you only think about yourself!” Eramon yelled back

“SOMEONE has to,” Saufinril snapped, turning around at his glaring follower, “given that my partner doesn’t give a SHIT about me!”

“Oh look at the cauldron calling the teapot black!”

“THAT’S NOT HOW THE SAYING GOES!”

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT HOW THE SAYING GOES!” Saufinril turned around and kept going upstairs, turning right to the bedroom, “Are you really ignoring me now? How mature, Saufinril! That’s the ONLY thing you do! And then you wonder why people hurt you!” Saufinril turned and slammed the door when he was inside, then locked it. He could hear Eramon pacing outside of the door but at this point, he didn’t care anymore. He really didn’t care. He took his bag and tossed it open on the bed before proceeding to pack. Eramon began to bang on the door.

“Saufinril, open this door!”

“Leave me alone! That’s the least you could do!”

“The least- I do EVERYTHING here! I am the one that is trying to save this relationship!” Saufinril didn’t reply, focused on pressing down his clothes on the bag before moving on to other objects.

“You don’t give a fuck about us!” Eramon yelled from the other side of the door, giving it a final bang with (presumably) his fist, then his voice broke, “It’s like I’m doing all the work here. You shut me down and I can’t talk and I, I don’t know what to do, what do you want me to do, Saufinril? What do you want from me?”

He paused, his hands resting on the bag. He hated how honest Eramon was, he just had a way to say the exact thing for Saufinril to feel…bad. Saufinril took a hand to his face. This was getting old. This…arguing and shouting and then reconciliation sex that resolved nothing because then there’s more arguments and shouting until he finally ended up packing and leaving. This wasn’t the first time he left Eramon, and Eramon wasn’t the first relationship this had happened to. He took a deep breath to loosen the knot on his throat and ease the overwhelming feeling that washed over him. Instead, all that sprouted was anger.

“I told you I was not okay with it!” Saufinril yelled, and the hot tears of anger fell, “I told you! Time and time again, and I come home and you and that-that-cat gets all over me and you’re okay with this but I am not!”

“Can you just open the door??”

“NO!” he felt the knot at his throat tighten, fumbling angrily as he finished packing. So much for giving himself space and picking them better next time, he thought as he wiped his eyes. He finally heard some steps away from the door, so he unlocked it and walked out. Eramon, who was at the end of the hallway, turned with a glint of hope in his eyes…only for his gaze to land on the bag Saufinril had, then it turned to a glare.

“Where’re you going?”

“I’m leaving. I can’t do this anymore.” Saufinril began to go downstairs. Eramon followed.

“What the fuck, you’re leaving me over this-this miscommunication?”

“It’s NOT a miscommunication!” Saufinril turned and jabbed Eramon in the chest, hard, “And you know this! You damn well know this!”

“So you’re just going to leave me over this??” Saufinril didn’t even respond, he just turned around and kept walking, “I should’ve known you’d do this! You did it once before, of course you’d do it again! You didn’t ever give a shit about me.” Eramon followed him, “I can’t believe I believed you when you said you loved me.”

There it was, Eramon jabbing it again on the wound. Saufinril turned to face Eramon again, “I do.” He wasn’t yelling anymore, he didn’t have energy for it, he was barely using his all to not cry and stay resolute on leaving, “Eramon, I love you. I really do. But I can’t keep returning somewhere my opinion doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not true, listen-”

“I can’t.” Saufinril closed his eyes and shook his head, “I don’t want to keep doing this.”

“Saufinril, please just listen.” Eramon had softened his tone too, and had approached Saufinril enough to grab his hand. Since Saufinril didn’t pull away, he went on, ”Please, just-please don’t leave me. Please, not again, this is not fair. This can change, I know you’re not into this, we can just-”

“No, Eramon, you told me the same last time and that’s why I returned, you told me it’d be different this time.”

“I know,” he quickly said, now putting both hands on Saufinril’s shoulders, “and you’re right. I did. I just, I thought this could help. I thought we would enjoy it, it would bring us closer, I-I thought it’d be a surprise you’d like.” Saufinril exhaled, looking away. Eramon pulled him closer, wrapping his arms around him, “See? This was just a disagreement. This, we can put this behind. This won’t happen again, Saufinril. I promise.” He pressed a kiss on Saufinril’s temple. Feeling his partner relax and hug him back, Eramon breathed out in relief, closing his eyes as Saufinril rested his jaw on Eramon’s shoulder. That was close. That was so close.

Saufinril was the one to break the hug and look at Eramon’s green eyes with his own. He placed a hand on Eramon’s face, studying him with his gaze, then said,

“Goodbye, Eramon.”

And he turned around and walked out of the door, heading to his horse. Eramon followed in silence, as Saufinril could tell while getting the horse ready. He wanted to believe him, he wholeheartedly wanted to believe him, he just couldn’t. From past experience both with other partners and with Eramon himself, he didn’t want to hear that things would change, he wanted to see them changed. And he was tired of waiting for a promise Eramon himself had made him last year and that he was still waiting to see fulfilled.

“If you leave,” Eramon said slowly to control the knot in his throat and the snap that wanted to come out, “don’t come back. Try to find someone else that’ll love you like I do, you won’t find it.”

Saufinril wanted to reply with an ‘I know’, but instead he got on the horse and rode out, with Eramon watching him as he did so.

#Behind the Blue #BtB #altmer #dumner #uploading sooner because I just realized the 8th will be #HECTIC #and I won't be able to touch a computer at all #and tomorrow I'll be busy too #so it's best to upload now #trouble in paradise

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theimaginesyouneveraskedfor · 6 years ago

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Love and War

Imagine your husband Thranduil noticing that Bard was unobtrusively checking you out. from @avengers-of-mirkwood

Okay, so I didn’t intend this to be so bittersweet and whatever, but that’s the way my muse wanted it. This is only intended as a brief snapshot but could potentially turn into more. I’ve kinda shot myself in the foot in terms of turning a happy idea into, well, this. Anyhow, enjoy. (?)

Your chainmail made a series of chinks as you climbed down from your mount. The destrier snorted as you turned back to the train of wagons halting to your rear. The scene before you was devastating; a whole people stranded along the shoreline, their homeland and livelihoods lost. Many of them bore the wounds of their attacker; burns singed along their flesh, baring the raw muscle beneath. Those were those who had survived the flame; many would have already perished.

Children flocked around your skirts, tugging at the links that hid your wool gown. You waved to the driver of the first wagon, “The bread,” You ordered. The elf diligently climbed into the back of his vehicle and retrieved several loaves. He handed over the first which you passed to the first three children before you. They looked to be siblings, clinging to each other as they accepted the loaf.

“Go take it back to your parents. We should have a stew cooking soon to accompany it.” You advised. They scampered off and you turned to the next child; her skin was blackened from smoke but no dire wounds marked her. You handed her a loaf, offering the same advice as you wiped away the ash on her cheek with your thumb.

Further down the line, another driver was distributing cups of water and weak ale. Another was boiling a large vat for tea. You hadn’t noticed at first that your husband was not alongside you. You had been so distracted by the carnage that he had whisked away unseen. He often did that and it grew ever more irritating with time

. You sighed as you knelt to speak with the next child, dabbing away the blood on her forehead with your handkerchief. “It’s not very deep,” You assured, “But I’ll have my healer look at you. Is that alright? She’s a friendly elf. Do you feel well, my dear?”

The little girl merely nodded, her lips trembling fearfully. You couldn’t imagine the chaos she had witnessed. Your own memories of dragon fire remained hellish in your mind; the ruin before you brought them to the forefront. You took the girls hand, gathering several other children who were visibly wounded. The healer’s tent was only just being erected; several elves worked to plant the poles in the loose silt of the shore.

Dinela, the steely-haired healer greeted you with sad eyes. She smiled at the children and called for a stool to be brought to her. She sat and welcomed the first child with her calm voice. There wasn’t much to say; only work to be done.

You said farewell to the children, promising them food and treatment. You looked over the dirty beach; a lull of pained moans and morose weeping filled the air. The smell of sand was tarnished with that of blood and soot. A silver figure stood among the displaced masses. Thranduil, your husband and king, spoke solemnly with a dark-haired man. A little girl clung to the human’s shirt tails, two other, taller youths sat on a musty log nearby. They were the same three children you had given the first loaf of bread.

You stepped between those groaning in the sand awaiting tending and those lined up for their bowl of stew, still cooking in the cauldrons. You knelt a few times over the wounded, offering words of strength and comfort. These people were lost but not hopeless.

As you neared your husband, the brown eyes of the man strayed, drawn to the shimmer of your armour in the muffled sunlight. The clouds had yet to break over the grey waters. Thranduil’s deep voice died as he followed the man’s gaze and turned to you. “Darling,” He greeted before looking back to the human, “I was just speaking with Bard. He is the leader of these people now. Bard, this is my queen, Y/N.”

“What happened to The Master?” You wondered, though the answer didn’t need to be said.

“We should be glad for his demise,” Your husband spoke callously, “Bard is a much more suitable ruler. Brought down the beast himself. He is wise. Pragmatic.”

“You mean he won’t oppose in your fight with the dwarves,” You murmured.

Thranduil ignored your reproach, returning his attentions to Bard. You frowned at his shoulder but said no more. You had argued half the night over the Mountain. You hadn’t thought it prudent to incite more violence. The dragon was slayed and more pressing was to settle these people in their new homes. Another battle would only spread further destruction.

You turned to the girl Bard’s side, kneeling as you greeted her. “Hello, what’s your name?”

“T-Tilda,” She stuttered, her cheeks turning rosy. She had mostly hidden behind her sister when they had come for food. You offered your hand kindly, “Would you introduce me to your siblings? I didn’t quite get your names before.”

She shyly took your hand and you let her guide you to the log where the other children sat. “This is Sigrid and Bain,” She announced as you neared. You sat beside the boy, your chain mail brushing noisily against the wood, “This is the elf queen, her name is, um…”

“Y/N,” You filled in for her as she climbed up beside you, “I hear your father slew the dragon.”

“I was there,” Bain spoke up, “I helped guide the arrow…” His voice drifted off. The moment of triumph likely amidst a scene of decay.

“A brave boy.” You smiled at them, “All of you are very brave. I can tell.”

“But...there’s nothing left,” Bain said, “We have no home. None of us.”

“Why, that’s why I’m here,” You sang, “To help you find a new one. A nicer one.”

You knew the words were of little comfort. They had watched their childhood home burn and that was a sacred loss. You glanced around the beach, the smell of broth filling your nostrils. You heard a growl rumble in Tilda’s stomach.

“Why don’t we go fetch some soup? It would go well with the bread.” You stood, offering your hand once more to Tilda, “Come on. All three of you.”

You stared out at the dark mountain. The silk of the tent flapped beside you in the breeze, your arms crossed over your chest. The starless sky reflected your mood. Much of the last days had been spent arguing with your husband. What were jewels to the ruin of a people’s home? Or a people’s return to their once lost land? You didn’t care about the stones, they had never belonged to you. They had been meant for the elfess before you.

It was the principle, Thranduil had insisted, those dwarves have wronged Mirkwood for the last.

You couldn’t stop replaying the endless tet-a-tet in your head. Why could he not let his greed subside for the sake of others? He would reign death upon any who stepped in the way of his avarice. He had left the compassionate part of him back in his palace. That sacred piece of himself he hid before everyone but you. Yet now, even you could not find it.

You were drawn from your vigil by a deep voice. It’s accent assured you it was not your husband’s. You hadn’t heard the human arrives, nor Thranduil welcome him in. You let your arms fall and tightened the belt of your robe. You had finally the chance to remove the weight of your mail and the silk was intoxicatingly smooth against your chafed skin. The cool night breeze filled its tail as you crossed to the fabric wall which separated you from the next room.

As you entered, neither human or elf noticed you. You sat on the chaise opposite them. Bard stood as Thranduil reclined in his impromptu throne. The elven king sipped from a glass of wine, as he often did when mulling over and over the same thought. His silver eyes were alight in the dim of candlelight. You crossed one leg over the other, leaning back on your hands as your robe slipped open to reveal a smooth leg.

You sighed as you listened to Thranduil. He repeated the same speech he had offered you. Your sudden breath of air drew the eyes of the human, his grey irises finding the bare skin of your leg. Elves were much less modest than his kind. You always thought it quite drab how they cloistered themselves in their clothing. You weren’t surprised by the straying of his gaze.

Your husband’s eyes followed as he realized he was no longer the fount of attention. A thick brow raised and his shoulders pushed back. He visibly bristled at the man as he finally looked back to him.

“I apologize for not being so intriguing as my wife,” Thranduil hissed, “Though I daresay that is why I married her.”

“Hmm?” Bard drew his brows together innocently. “I wasn’t--I didn’t realize she was here, is all.”

“She always makes an entrance,” Thranduil slithered, “In her own way.”

“Tell me, Bard,” You interrupted your husband before he could spark your wrath further, “How are your children?”

“Well, I think...as well as they can be. They asked after you as well,” Bard was blatantly keeping his eyes above your head. You looked to Thranduil who was glaring at both of you throughout the exchange.

You stood and turned to your trunk, digging around until you found the small velvet pouch within. You crossed to Bard and took his hand in your, pressing the purse into his calloused palm. “Some sweets. For you and your wonderful children.” You smiled, “I’m sorry to interrupt but I should ask a moment alone with my husband.”

“Of course,” He bowed his head and tucked the pouch under his jacket, “I will tell the children you said hello.”

Bard departed with a brief farewell to Thranduil, both meeting each other with unbending prudence. You let the corner of your mouth twitch with amusement as your husband turned to you. “Have you made yourself feel adequately alluring?”

“I can’t help the human’s lack of discipline. He needs a wife of his own to keep his whims at bay,” You mused.

“Do you propose to leave me then?”

“Don’t be preposterous, Thranduil, or are you so set on pushing me away?” You huffed. He rolled his eyes, scowling at the floor. You tilted your head in exasperation, setting your hands on your hips in a show of displeasure. “I pledged to follow you, husband, through good and bad. We may disagree but I wouldn’t be so impetuous, unless you continue to act so...maybe we did marry too soon.”

“Don’t...say that,” His voice was low and sullen. His eyes flicked up, sparkling in the lowlight.

“You sit here, determined to fight over a piece of her. This has not to do with me so how could I think otherwise?”

“She is my son’s mother. Was…” He stood, nearing you carefully as if you would lash out at him, “It is not for my own heart, but his.”

“I haven’t the will to argue further,” You resigned as he took your hands in his, “I know I cannot deter you from the path you’ve chosen, but the truth shall arise when you retrieve your bounty.”

“They are a queen’s jewels, would you not--?”

“Don’t you even presume to set that necklace around my throat or I should choke from it,” You snapped.

“No, no, never,” His hands went to your shoulders as you refused to look him in the eye, “They shall be reserved for Legolas’ princess, whenever he should find one. I promise.”

“You promise? You promised to love and cherish me, as I did you. But she’ll ever be there between us.”

“She’s not. She’s far behind me. You are all I see, nin mel,” He drew you closer. You let him press you against his chest, his fingers playing with the ends of your hair, “Only you.”

You stayed silent, unconvinced. You felt the tears prickle, sniffing as the sudden spring of grief overcame you.

“Please, don’t cry,” He brushed the hair from around your face, bringing your chin up so that you would look at him, “I love you. Forever and always. All I ask is that you support me in this. You’ve always treated Legolas so well, would you forsake him his legacy?”

“I will not fight the dwarves,” You said quietly, “I see now reason for it. I would go with the women and children and watch over them…”

“I understand, nin mel, you have always had a tender heart,” He touched his forehead to yours, “Do you still love me?”

“Always,” You relented, “I pray this battle is swift...promise me, if given the chance, that you’ll show mercy.”

Thranduil inhaled, his nose brushing against yours, “I promise. On my heart.” He kissed you, gently, sadly. He knew as well as you that this war could determine the fate of his own marriage. It was a kiss of resignation, of farewell. If the battle did not claim his life, it may just claim his love.

#thranduil #bard #fic #one shot #?#the hobbit

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mateodeavalor-blog · 6 years ago

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An Oath By The Blood Of My Hand

Mateo and Naomi set out to stop Arawn and break the Cauldron’s spell. (November 2nd, 2018)

@arawnprydain

@someonespecial-naomi

[trigger warnings; death, murder, gore, blood, violence, and dark shit all around.]

MATEO

Mateo guided himself and Naomi towards Enchantra. Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you looked at it, the zombies had all mainly flocked to the town where everyone was concentrated. The farther they got from the buildings the less zombies they had to worry about, seemingly. The occasional one popped up in the dark of the eternal - apparently - night because oh yeah! That was his fault, too! Having let out some terrifying monster that made the moon turn from its usual eerie soft glow into a grim bloody color. And it was going to look like that for forever unless they did something about it. But they also had to stop the zombies from turning everyone in town into Arawn’s minions, and from Arawn taking the Cauldron anywhere else to spread the disease.

Mateo didn’t know what to feel, honestly. There was too many things crowding around inside him trying to get the spotlight. Usually he could manage his emotions, they ran their course and did what they needed and he could move on when they were done. This was just overwhelming. It was everything all at once and yet he knew that if he let it all in that he wasn’t going to be able to keep moving his legs. He would just have to ignore it all for now, wait until he fixed this whole mess, and then he could let the crushing weight of guilt bury him in his grave that he had dug for himself.

He stopped at the tree lining, listening for footsteps that weren’t his or Naomi’s now that they were standing still. There was only the steady flow of water next to them that the river was just a ways next to them. Mateo turned to look at Naomi before casting his eyes to the ground, ashamed that she was with him and not with Elena. That she had to be here at all, helping clean up his mistakes.

He pointed weakly towards the forest.

“Uh, it should be... just this way,” he said, glancing up at her from under the rim of his glasses. “We’ll have to be careful, though. He probably has himself surrounded by those...those things.”

NAOMI

It should probably worry her that she felt more at peace now than she had in weeks. The dead were walking, the sun had stopped rising, Mateo’s master had shown his true colors, and the world might very well be ending. And Naomi felt totally centered and calm.

Chaos was her normal, now. At least she had a plan and a weapon in her hand, and her best friend back beside her. (Not that she wasn’t still mad at Mateo, because oh boy, was she mad at Mateo. But at least he was around for her to be mad at.) She had her mission, and thus, her purpose.

She’d probably have to examine that later.

For now, Naomi was creeping alongside Mateo as they made their way through the forest. She wasn’t as graceful above land as she was under the sea, but she was still one of Pachamama’s best for a damn reason. Any zombies they had run into had been quickly and efficiently dealt with by a quick knife to the back of the neck, severing the spine so a quick hit knocked it right off the rotted neck.

Naomi stopped by Mateo at the edge of the forest, looking into the darkness and feeling nothing but the familiar rush of adrenaline and the blood pounding in her veins. Hearing Mateo’s voice again after a month of silence still made her heart leap. He was alive. He was alive. She kinda wanted to punch him again. “I’ve faced worse,” Naomi said, not elaborating as she began to make her way through the forest. “So what do we need to do to stop this cauldron thing?” she whispered, keeping close to Mateo.

MATEO

Her confidence was jarring. Even though it shouldn’t have been because this was Naomi Turner he was talking to, who he knew was far more qualified to be doing this than him. But it was his mess to clean. His thumb ran over his palm, bandaged now, but he could still feel where he had willingly given a part of himself up to make all this possible.

Naomi had also always known that Arawn wasn’t what Mateo thought he was. Mateo, all the way up until the very end, had trusted the man, had looked up to him in a way that made him feel a physical pain in his chest. The same man who had taught him how to properly extract a memory on the first try had held a knife to his throat because he hadn’t cared the entire time. It had all been a ploy to get him down there to unleash the dead on the living.

She had warned him, tried to reason with him, and Mateo hadn’t listened. Why hadn’t he listened? He knew the answer to that question, but he hated it too much to fully examine it. Another apology wanted to crawl out of his throat but he didn’t let it because they couldn’t get into that right now. There would be time for that later. He would have a whole lifetime to make up for this whole thing.

“Honestly?” he sighed, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I only ever heard about it from... from him and I didn’t think to-” Mateo grit his teeth. “If we... if we can stop him then that should stop the zombies from doing what he wants, so that should buy us some time until I can... figure out how to stop the Cauldron. Or, if we’re lucky, stopping him will stop everything altogether.”

He paused, then laughed something bitter and humorless, “It’s never that easy, though, is it?”

NAOMI

Naomi looked at Mateo and felt… sad.

She had wanted to be wrong. About Arawn. She had wanted to just be paranoid, to be able to tell Mateo that yeah, he was right, she was wrong, that she was so proud of him for finding a master that could really appreciate the wonderful person Mateo was. Someone who could help him become the amazing sorcerer Naomi knew he could be.

She didn’t like being right. Didn’t like that the world could be so consistently cruel.

She reached over silently, taking his hand in hers and giving it a brief squeeze. “No, it’s not, but if anybody could pull it off, it’s us,” she said to him with a small, confident grin. “I’ll take care of Arawn, you take care of the Cauldron,” Naomi said with a small nod, her expression going dark. Her nails had long gone sharp and deadly, and she knew the skin on her back had turned rough and dark in patches.

“I have words for that man.”

Hopefully, Arawn spoke ‘knife’.

MATEO

He looked up when she touched him, surprised that she would want to to that. That her touch was reassuring and gentle, that of a friend he did not deserve after what he had done. It made his throat tighten and his eyes sting enough to where he closed them to force the tears there from falling. Mateo clutched her hand back, maybe holding on a little too tight.

With a sniffle he smiled, laughing a little as he nodded in agreement. Mateo didn’t want to talk to Arawn. He didn’t want to face him ever again. But he didn’t really have a choice here. It was the only way to put an end to the zombies and get the people who had him and that demon in their heads out from under the spell.

“Deal,” Mateo agreed, and began walking forwards again.

The green fog thickened as they got closer, swirling around their feet until their shoes disappeared beneath the smog. He took them along the river until they were in view of the scene he had escaped from.

Only with some new, undead, additions.

NAOMI

Mateo clutched his hand back, and just like in that nightmare in the arena, she wasn’t afraid. This was going to end, one way or another.

(This wasn’t a dream, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. If you die in Mateo’s arms now, you won’t wake back up.)

They walked together, hand in hand, as the fog got thicker and the smell of rot and death got heavier in the air. Even out of the water with her senses dulled, it got to Naomi’s head; she could smell the blood, making shivers run up and down her spine. Naomi pulled her knife out of its sheath, gripping it tightly as they began to see figures in the distance. They stopped, Naomi gesturing for Mateo to get low.

“Is it worth trying to surprise him or should we just rush him?” she asked. “You could get rid of the zombies with the Tamborita while I go after him.”

MATEO

He ducked down when Naomi motioned for him to, squinting through the brush that they were now eye level with. Her question had him clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, letting out a breath as he tilted his head with his indecisiveness at it. Mateo didn’t know Arawn anymore, did he? He hadn’t ever really known the man at all. How was he to know if he was powerful enough to sense them coming? If he would even have to lift a finger with the dead army he had surrounding him.

“I-I-I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head more violently. Using his magic? Was she crazy? That never went to plan. And the only reason it had been working recently was because of the person they were here to take down.

“I can’t,” Mateo told her, turning his head to face her. “I can’t. I’m not-. I’m not powerful enough. We shouldn’t have split up. I shouldn’t even be here he probably knows I’m here already and-”

NAOMI

He was spiralling.

Naomi reached out, grabbing the back of Mateo’s neck firmly, grounding him with her touch as she pressed her forehead against his temple. “Mateo,” she whispered. “You can do this. He can’t hurt you, I won’t let him.”

“You are better than him,” she continued. “And don’t tell me it’s not true, because it is. You are a better person, you have a better heart, and you are stronger than him. You have me, you have all of our friends, and Arawn has nothing. He had to raise an army of the undead just to have some fucking friends; we love you, magic or not, no matter what. I can’t do this alone, I need your help, Teo. You know the Cauldron better than any of us, you can do this.” She rose up a little from her crouch, kissing his hair.

“I’ll protect you,” Naomi reassured him.

MATEO

Mateo clenched his jaw, biting down hard as she spoke. Slowly, over the course of her words the tension there loosened. His breathing evened out to something more attainable. Her touch was soothing, as was her voice. Familiar and kind and everything he didn’t deserve but needed in that moment. And he knew she was being genuine, he could see it right there in front of him, glowing brightly underneath her other emotions.

When she pressed her lips into his hair he leaned into it, squeezing his eyes shut briefly as he focused on the contact and the encouragement.

She was right, in a way. Mateo couldn’t leave her to clean up this mess alone. He couldn’t just stand by and let this chaos persist. He had done this to the town, he was the reason any of this was possible and he would be responsible for cleaning it up.

“Okay,” he whispered. Then repeated, a little louder, “Okay.”

Mateo gripped his Tamborita tighter. “I’ll distract them.”

He moved to run off, to leave her there but he faltered on his second step. The last time they had done something like this she had come back to him bleeding to death. Mateo knew Naomi was more than capable of handling herself, he knew, but Arawn wasn’t a bunch of scared kids fighting for their lives, either. He turned back, holding her gaze, “Be careful, okay? I’ll be right behind you soon.”

NAOMI

Naomi didn’t have to be a sorcerer to know what Mateo was thinking about when he turned back to her, and she smiled at him confidently as she twirled her knife around her fingers. Naomi Turner from District 5 wasn’t Naomi Turner from Avalor; didn’t have a childhood of being trained to be a Huntress, of fighting for two years in the civil war that had taken over her home, of making her way alone across the ocean not once, but twice. She was malnourished, Naomi wasn’t. She was injured when she had faced off against Rita and Maru, Naomi wasn’t. Naomi had killed malvagos before. The only difference was this time, she was really going to enjoy it. “Mateo, I’m hurt. I’m always careful,” she joked. “You get their attention. I’ll show that malvago why your friends are scarier than his.” With a final wink, Naomi melted into the forest, moving silently as she made her way around to get a better angle.

MATEO

He smiled at her retreating form before turning his gaze back to the undead bodyguards. After a minute, giving Naomi a head start to be completely out of his vicinity, he took a slow breath - in and out, stood to his full height and calmly stepped out from their hiding spot.

“Hey!” he yelled, causing heads to turn in his direction. He walked slowly, waiting for them to attack him. Waiting for them to come forwards in an effort to bite him or tear him to pieces. Finally, one of them moved. And then the next, and like a domino effect they all came stumbling forwards towards him. Mateo moved, too, cutting around the edge of them, so they were making a giant circle around one another so that in the end Mateo was standing where they had been and they were standing off of their posts.

“Vetzi,” he shouted, clapping a hand against his Tamborita. A yellow wave of magic came out, knowing the ones closer to him down. But it wasn’t enough to harm them in anyway, just slow them down.

Mateo backed up, walking backwards until his back hit something. He turned, on the defense, hand raised at the ready.

ARAWN

He had known the boy was on his way. The map of his had told him where he was.

The girl’s dot had ceased to exist now that her soul string had been clipped and the immortals was no longer within the town’s limits for him to follow. Didn’t matter, he only cared to watch the boy’s.

When he saw it moving back towards the forest he had called off the search in the town, let those return to the task of allowing the sheep that lived there to be reborn into creatures with purpose. No longer flocking around one another with dead eyes for now they would have a meaning.

Arawn sat on a throne of bones derived of bodies that had formed into the seat on his command. His grin sharpened when the boy’s voice sounded out from just beyond the way. He looked up in time to see one of his pathetic spells pass through the air.

Then the boy himself appeared. Arawn opened his arms up when he turned to face him.

“The prodigal son returns!” he bellowed, raising from his seat. “So kind of you to return, boy, did you realize resisting me wasn’t worth the waste?”

A dark chuckle bubbled up from deep in his chest, echoing into the night. “Or are you here to beg to be apart of all this just for me to spare your pathetic waste of magic and life?”

MATEO

Hearing that voice again sent a chill down his spin and he shivered as a result of it. He quickly aimed the drum wand at Arawn, following his movements with it so he could strike if Arawn attempted to throw something his way first. His heart picked up speed and he could hear the groans, the stress of bones against flesh as the zombies moved behind him but he didn’t look over his shoulder. He knew Naomi would hold up her end of this plan.

Mateo did look around him, trying to find the Cauldron, eyes darting every which way. The magic radiating off of it was hard to miss though and eventually his eyes found it in the dark. It was sitting just beyond the throne Arawn had stood from. The green mist was flowing out of it steadily.

“This is wrong, Arawn!” he said, because at the end of the day Mateo had cared about this man. He had trusted him, followed him into the depths of the Underworld, had learned necromancy from him, all because he thought the best in people. He knew, somewhere, that there was no hope for a sorcerer like this. A malvago who had gotten so addicted to the dark magic of the world that they couldn’t see the light anymore. But maybe all they needed was someone to pull them out of it.

It was also a selfish attempt at justifying himself, hoping, praying, that maybe there was something decent still left in this man. Something that he had seen that day they had met that told him to accept the offer to become his apprentice. That there had been some form of kindness lodged in there, that it hadn’t all been a ruse.

“You can’t justify hurting people like this!” Mateo said and stepped forwards to close the distance between them. “End this. Now. Please. You can’t... you can’t honestly believe this is how the world should be.”

ARAWN

Laughter followed the boy’s attempts at reasoning with him. It was an airy, mocking laugh that came back as he threw his head back, his arms still out to the side of him.

Suddenly he went silent, head snapping back down to pin Mateo down with a glare.

“What do you think this is?” he spat, seething. “I seek no redemption from you! From this world! From anyone! This place has been nothing but a cesspool! War after war. Genocide. Toxic sludge poured into the Earth as if it was not the source of life itself! People preach, they plead for the Mundus to stop, for peace to reign, and for what?”

He laughed again. “For what reason do we have to keep them around, boy? Any of them? Mundus and Magick alike who have betrayed this world to its very core. I am giving this planet a second chance at life. I am the one who will see our species through.”

With a few long strides he stood before Mateo, not caring to stand out of the way for his silly little wand. Arawn tilted his head, eyes narrowing at the boy as he softened his volume.

“When this world is cleansed of those who have soiled it I will guide us all into a new age. One far better than the one we live in now.” His tone was still cold, sharp enough to cut steel. “Can’t you see that? What I’m doing has to be done, Mateo. And just because everyone else is too pathetic and weak see that makes it my responsibility to see this through. For everyone’s sake.”

MATEO

His heart was pounding in his chest as Arawn stalked closer. He held the Tamborita higher, put his palm closer to the drum. Mateo felt something he didn’t normally feel, something that was hard to pull out of him. It made his chest burn and set his teeth on edge.

Anger rose in up. It took hold of him as he listened to Arawn talk about people like they were nothing. Like they were the reason this world was so terrible. And maybe that was true to an extent; looking at Arawn now he knew there were bad people in this world, but he also knew there were far more good than bad. People just tended to harp on the bad because it was harder to dismiss.

He knew because Isabel talked about her schoolwork and excitement colored her something wonderful, the future forming for her as she spoke on knowledge and goals that made her happy. That when his mother called him in for dinner and pulled him into a hug, brushing his hair away from his face with concern that he was wrong. That when Elena got angry at something on the news, her passion blinding him enough to where he knew he should look away but couldn’t, that there was still hope left to make changes. And he knew he was wrong because if Arawn was right then Naomi wouldn’t have followed him into the dark of the night to fix his mistakes.

Arawn was wrong because, hey, maybe the world wasn’t perfect. People weren’t perfect. They fought and they killed and they did unspeakable things day after day. But there were those that helped their fellow man, who risked their lives to protect strangers or animals that had gotten caught in tragedy. Mateo knew that Arawn was wrong because he had seen it. It’s why he still had the ability to carry on.

“You’re wrong,” Mateo replied sincerely, his voice tight with emotions. “And if you can’t see that, then I can’t help you.”

He moved then, pulling his hand back and landing a punch across Arawn’s jaw. When he pulled back he laughed and then shook out his hand because oooww.

ARAWN

Arawn could see the anger. It was pure, concentrated. He wanted to reach out and take it for himself. What an achievement this was, to see the boy who had been nothing but a bleeding heart harden.

Perhaps Arawn hadn’t failed the boy as much as he had originally thought. Pity it was too late to matter.

He rolled his eyes at the statement directed at him, and when he returned his eyes to the boy it was just in time to see the fist coming down.

Arawn stumbled back from the impact, a hand coming up to console his jaw. He touched his finger to his lips, pulling away to find his own blood staining the pads.

“You rat!” he growled, jerking his head up. Arawn pulled the dagger from his sleeve, flipping it round so he was holding it comfortably. Then he moved forwards, lunging at Mateo with it, not caring where it hit as long as it hit some form of flesh.

MATEO

At Arawn’s outburst he looked up from his hand and his eyes widened at the glint of metal. He stumbled to the side, and dropped his Tamborita in favor of gripping onto Arawn’s arm to keep the dagger from getting near him. The line on his neck had begun to scab over, the line across his palm had a bandage over it now.

For a brief moment Mateo had some weird sense of clarity where he wondered how this came to be his life. How he, some kid from Avalor who got snapped at for taking too long to answer a question, was standing here playing a game of tug-o-war with a literal psychopath who he had once would have defended with his dying breath. It was stupid, none of this should be happening. He and everyone else should have been back home by now, carrying on like always.

But they weren’t. And this was real.

He struggled, trying to twist Arawn’s wrist the wrong way to get him to let go of the dagger.

NAOMI

The tension was thick in the air as the two sorcerers fought for control of the knife, pushing against each other like opposite ends of two magnets, literally fighting over the fate of the world. Master versus apprentice, good versus evil, skinny versus skeletal.

And Naomi interrupted it by taking the zombie head she had just snapped off its body and throwing it as hard as she could at the back of Arawn's head.

“OYE!” she hollered, whistling to get Arawn's attention. Once his attention was away from Mateo for a split second, Naomi pushed off from his creepy skeletal throne where she had been Chillin’ and closed the distance between them in an instant. Her blade sliced through the inside of his elbow of the arm holding the knife, weakening his grip enough for Mateo to wrestle it away while she caught Arawn in a chokehold and kicked one of his knees out from under him.

While Arawn had been monologueing about how awful and hopeless the world was and how pathetic Mateo was - the ass - and Mateo had been hitting his former master with his best right cross - hot damn, Teo, go off - Naomi had been wiping out his little battalion of undead bodyguards. Working her way through them silently, one by one.

It was a good way to work off her fury at all of Arawn's comments directed at Mateo, each one making her blood boil hotter and hotter. She was going to enjoy hurting him.

(Again, something she should examine. Later though, later.)

“You talk a lot of shit for a guy who got his 'Take Over the World’ plot from the rejected script of a C-list horror film,” she told him casually as the tip of her knife pressed under his jaw against his throat, easily breaking the skin for no other reason than to let Arawn know he wasn't the only one with a Big, Pointy Knife.

“Also, next time, maybe workshop your evil monologue with a friend before you pull this shit, to make sure it's at least worth losing all your little bodyguards while you blather on. Because right now-” Naomi hissed in a breath, letting it out as a hum, “it's really not.”

ARAWN

Arawn had been using his entire weight to press the dagger forwards, watching with gritted teeth as it only got closer and closer to the boy’s stomach. Only a few more inches and it would sink into Mateo’s body and the pain alone would make him release his grip so Arawn could complete his task and be rid of the boy forever.

Then another voice sounded out among the forest, loud and obnoxious, followed by something clocking him in the back of the head.

Of course he looked, turning his head to see who would dare to defy him among his army that should be under his complete control. He gawked at the girl who was walking towards them.

His eyes moved around them, commanding silently upon those he had told to remain here to protect the Cauldron. But there was no one else left standing to answer his call. Just the three of them.

“How dare you-” he started as she approached but cut himself off as a yelp of pain came out instead as his skin was cut open. His fingers uncurled from around the dagger’s handle as he tried to pull away, to retreat in order to examine his wounds.

She did not let him, though.

He clawed at her arm, his feet kicking wildly to be able to plant themselves. Arawn hissed, attempted to yell but the pressure on his throat choked it back and spit spewed from his lips in his fury to be heard.

When the knife touched the skin of his neck he stopped, frozen, the only movement coming from his shallow breaths at his body’s want for oxygen betrayed him.

Death had always been his friend. He had seen it as nothing to be scared of, welcomed it willingly into his home and into others. Then he had taken it for granted and defied it, becoming a God among men as he brought back people from the afterlife, as he pulled soul strings into his hands one by one.

Now, as Death loomed over him he only felt fear and panic. The things he had yet to do, his plans for the world, lost to the blade of a knife and two children who thought they knew better.

MATEO

Mateo took Naomi’s distraction for what it was and pulled the dagger from Arawn’s hands as he let go. He stumbled backwards, holding it up to look at before letting it fall to the ground like it had burned him. He didn’t move to pick it up, instead he bent over to pick up his Tamborita and stepped over to where Arawn was squirming in Naomi’s arms.

And, he had to say, it was satisfying to see.

“Thanks,” he told her in between pants. Briefly he glanced down at the head that had rolled to the side, opening his mouth to say something to her about it but thought better of it since now was definitely not the time to address that. Zombies were still running around outside, surely some were on their way here now that their master was in peril.

Instead he turned his attention to Arawn. Mateo pointed behind him, using the Tamborita, at the Cauldron.

“How do we stop it?” he asked. “Tell us, and we won’t hurt you.”

He didn’t look at Naomi for consultation, even though he knew she would want to disagree, he held his gaze on Arawn. The fear that had developed there was something he thought the man incapable of, both before and after learning what he really was, but Mateo could see it staining, like he was bleeding from an open wound.

NAOMI

Naomi leveled A Look at Mateo. Deep down, she knew he was right. Arawn should be taken to court, to be tried for Peach's murder and the whole 'Bringing back the dead' thing. He should suffer in jail.

But after everything he did to her family, the suffering he had caused them? What he'd done to Mateo? It didn't seem like enough.

Nothing would ever seem like enough.

But she sighed, pulling back her knife just a bit so it was no longer piercing the skin; a small trail of blood beginning to roll down his neck and against her arm. “What he means is, the faster you answer, the more I’ll consider letting you live,” she whispered in his ear, tightening her hold around his neck just a hair. She could feel him trying to scratch at her arms and rested her foot against his leg in reply. “Keep struggling, and I get to show you how they teach the girls in Avalor to walk through someone’s kneecap.”

Her knife continued to hover by his neck, a light pressure that reminded him that one wrong move, and his head was off his shoulders.

ARAWN

He kept his mouth firmly shut which resulted in his breathing to be sharp as it struggled to pass through his nose. His eyes struggled to look down far enough to see the knife, try and make an estimate of whether or not he could knock it from her grip.

Arawn glared up at the boy as he returned into his field of vision, eyes narrowing at him as he spoke.

And suddenly clarity found him once more. Hope being spoken before him. He had leverage over them due to what was in his head. He smiled, then began to laugh only to cough violently, the arm around his throat closing around his windpipe.

“Fools,” he sneered, amusement in his voice. Anything he said could be a lie, it could be the truth, it could be nothing at all and they wouldn’t know because they had failed to do their research before coming here.

He stopped moving when the girl spoke, closing his eyes against the sound of her voice in his ears as he forced himself not to shake with fear. Arawn wasn’t scared, his body was panicking, trying to figure out a way to survive while his brain was working into overtime on how to turn this around for himself.

The only thing keeping him from lying was the boy. A sorcerer he had trained himself to be able to see, and with his heightened state the fear he knew was on him now would only give him away. No matter, the truth of the situation would be enough. That was the beauty of this plan, after all, no one could stop him in the end.

A smile appeared on his mouth, blood coating his front teeth to match that under his chin. “Nothing can destroy the Cauldron. You idiot. It was forged by sorcerers from molten iron and raw magic to entrap a soul, and it has been sitting in the Underworld for centuries. An eternity down there, accumulating all that it had been exposed to. There is nothing that can combat it.

His smile sharpened as he let out an airy sound, one that communicated that he knew he had won. “Killing me would not stop it, either. I’m attached at the soul and will remain in control, body or no, I shall remain connected forever.”

He tried to right his weight, the angle at which she was holding him uncomfortable but she gave him nothing. Arawn sighed, glancing at the Cauldron from over the boy’s shoulder.

“There’s only stopping the spell, and that-,” he cut himself off with a chuckle, turning his eyes back to the boy, “would take someone willing to sacrifice themself to the Cauldron, never to return to this world or the next. A Fate worse than Death, as they say.”

MATEO

As Arawn began to talk Mateo began to feel more hopeless.

If not even killing Arawn, which Mateo was reluctant to do despite everything because there was just too much bloodshed in his life for him to want to kill the man, the spell would remain. The zombies would still be linked to him, and soon the world would turn into a terrible dystopian movie that no one wanted to be a part of. He wanted to cry, to fall to his knees in defeat for having been as stupid as to think he could do this.

But then Arawn laughed, a sound that would ring in his ears every night before he went to sleep from here until he was eventually turned into one of those who heard the Cauldron calling to them, and he told Mateo the answer to everything.

Someone would need to jump into the Cauldron of their own volition to put an end to the spell. The catch being they would be lost from every world. There would be no afterlife for them. No meeting with lost loved ones or waiting to greet those that would eventually come to join them. There would be nothing for them. An emptiness, like the black nothing that one saw when they looked into the Cauldron itself.

Mateo lowered his Tamborita and looked down at it in his hands, then he turned and looked over at the Cauldron.

“It has to be me,” he said softly to the drum wand that had once been held by his grandfather, hoping that somewhere he would hear him.

And he knew what he had to do. This was his mess. This was his fault. He didn’t want to sit by and watch his friends turn into mindless servants. He didn’t want the whole world to be in the hands of a man who didn’t know what was really there.

He looked back at Naomi and took one step back, towards the Cauldron.

“It has to be me,” he told her. “It- it has to be me, Naomi.”

NAOMI

Yeah, no, she wasn’t buying it.

Naomi didn’t trust this man nearly as far as she could throw him, and she didn’t believe his whole ‘Someone must sacrifice themself to the Almighty Cauldron’ bullshit either. The man knew he wasn’t going to walk away from this unless it was in handcuffs, and was bullshitting anything to buy himself more time.

That’s what Naomi was thinking when Mateo had whispered those five words that had made her heart stop dead.

Her head snapped up towards him, although even in her shock, her grip on Arawn didn’t loosen. “What- no! Mateo, come on, he’s lying,” she said in Spanish, eyebrows furrowed together. “No one’s sacrificing anyone else to a pot today, not even yourself. This bastard already killed Peach.”

“You’re not the only way we can find out more about the Cauldron, smartass,” Naomi reminded Arawn, putting pressure on his leg with her foot. “I’m sure Goliath has a book on it or something.”

She looked up at Mateo, meeting his eyes and giving him a small smile. “We’ll figure this out, Teo, with or without him. We’ll make this right.”

MATEO

“He’s telling the truth,” Mateo said, turning his eyes to Arawn, knowing Naomi would know what he meant. It was among the fear and the mirth sitting in the man. In someone else it would have set him at ease to see, in this instance he wished he hadn’t spent days memorizing the shape of it in order to impress the master he never had in the first place. “I can...I can make this right, Naomi. It’s my fault, it has to be me.”

He took another step backwards, looking up at Naomi. After this he wouldn’t be able to screw up anymore, he wouldn’t have to hurt anyone else. It would all be over and Mateo de Alva would cease to exist.

“Tell my mom…” he trailed off, smiling as he thought on Rafa and Marlena. “Well tell her the truth, I guess. We both know no one could ever lie to her.”

Mateo took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling in large movements as he released all the tension that was starting to form. He couldn’t think about this decision, there was no time to examine every little detail or wonder about the what ifs. There was nothing left to do but what had to be done. He opened his mouth to ask her to tell Elena that he loved her but changed his mind because, well, he could only hope that she already knew. Even if she hated him now.

“Everything’ll be okay,” he reassured her, smiling brightly because it would be. What was his life compared to that of the whole world? To that of the people he cared about most of all? He would do anything for them, and this would only prove it. “I promise.”

He turned and took off then, running before she could get the chance to chase after him. Mateo had never been the athletic type, and now he never would be, but he crossed the distance to the Cauldron within seconds. He caught himself against it, palms gripping the rim as the green fog rolled over him.

“And I’ll keep it this time!” he yelled over his shoulder to her. And with that he hiked his leg up on the lip of the Cauldron. He gave his Tamborita one last look before letting it go, resting it up against the side of the Cauldron.

In a very Mateo fashion, his foot slipped, dipping into the Cauldron as the handle of the drum wand fell from his hand. He blew out a breath as he looked down, but he didn’t regret it. He was ready and willing. The world deserved better and Mateo was going to give it the chance it needed.

He let go.

NAOMI

It seemed to happen all in slow motion. Naomi was ready to just… talk him down again. Take Arawn in to the police, get back to Goliath’s house, find more info on the Cauldron. They’d wake up tomorrow and maybe it wouldn’t be fixed, but it would be better.

Her eyes went wide as he ran to the Cauldron, yelling over his shoulder with one last look back. No. No no no no.

(Was this how he’d felt, in that nightmare? Racing to catch her before she hit the ground? Time slowing down until there was an eternity between each moment and yet, it was all flying by too fast.)

“MATEO!” she screamed, throwing Arawn aside carelessly as she raced after Mateo, to pull him back. Nonono, she just got him back, no- he couldn’t-

He slipped. Naomi missed his shirt by inches.

Mateo was gone.

She caught herself on the lip, ignoring the chill of the green mist curling around her wrists and legs as she looked frantically into the cauldron. “TEO!” she screamed again, her voice catching in her throat as tears bubbled in her eyes. “No, nononono please, Teo, please,” she begged, searching the surface of the mist for any hint of her friend. Any hope she could reach in and pull him back out. “Mateo!”

(She was in the square, smelling blood in the air as Daya drowned above water. She was in the courtyard, watching Camila take her last breath before a bullet went between her vibrant green eyes. She was alone in the ocean, fighting for her life and feeling each beat of her heart like it was the last.)

Naomi screamed, wordless and echoing into the hidden spots of the forest as the night parted and dawn began to break across the sky.

ARAWN

Before he could react to what the boy was doing he was tossed to the ground. He let out an indignant sound as he made contact, and turned to watch.

Arawn thought the girl would make it, but she didn’t. The fool had gone and done what he thought all the scum of this Earth would never do, give everything for nothing. Not once did he think there would be anyone capable of being his foil, and yet all this time he had been dragging him along at his side.

A fist formed and punched into the ground, grabbing at the grass there. No, no, no. The green fog seemed to pause in its place for the moment, and then began to retract. The Cauldron was pulling back everything it had released and he could feel that pull on his own soul string, hear his army cry out in anguish as their rule on this Earth had been cut short.

And then he saw it, just in front of him was his dagger. He looked back at the girl as she began to scream, then to the dagger.

He reached forwards and grabbed it, then stood. Damn them, he thought as he approached her from behind, damn them all. He would have his revenge on the boy yet. It would be on those he cared for most. Starting with her.

Arawn stood behind her for a moment, just watching. And then he reached out and grabbed her hair, pulling back, ready to slam her forehead into the side of the Cauldron.

NAOMI

Naomi could feel the Cauldron shift the air, feel it start to drag back the corpses that had taken to walking the earth. It tugged at her clothes and at her hair, whipping them around her in the wind.

She didn’t care.

She was still frantically searching the inside of the Cauldron, looking for any piece of Mateo to grab a hold of, to pull back to the surface. She’d dive in after him, pull him to the surface; she was a goddamn mermaid, what else was she good for besides swimming? Tears still rolled across her cheeks as she sobbed, cooling instantly against her cheeks in the wind.

Naomi hadn’t even noticed the sun.

She did notice the hand in her hair. Arawn. Malvago. Murderer.

Something snapped inside her chest, something fragile and sharp like dozens of shards of glass, and her lips pulled back over her sharpened teeth with a howl as she slammed her elbow back as hard as she could at Arawn’s face. As soon as his grip had loosened, she spun around, reaching out with her claws to tear at his face and throat. There was nothing human about her in that moment, her nails tearing through his fragile, pale skin and drawing blood. Not in the spots of darker, tougher skin that popped up along her hairline and around her eyes, or in the animalistic look in her eyes, or her bared, pointed teeth.

She was a shark, afterall. She wanted blood.

“YOU!” she screeched, leaping at his throat with a hiss as she tackled him to the ground. Her nails dug into his throat, hands pressing down against his windpipe.

ARAWN

Suffice to say, he had not seen that coming.

Arawn yelled out in pain, dropping the dagger as his hands went to combat hers. But he was no match, her nails had already dug into his skin. He tried to back away, regretting his decision to not run when she had given him the chance, blinded with his want for revenge.

It would be his downfall it would seem.

The feeling of her nails tearing his skin, the warmth of blood rising up as his body worked to try and heal at a speed that would be of no help to him, was none like he had ever felt since he was always on the other side, listening to his victims cry out for help where none could be found.

No one would come to his aid, even those he had worked his whole life to have stand by his side were vanishing around him.

When he opened his eyes, it was to the sun. The night that had meant to last for the rest of eternity had gone, too. That moth creature had been bested as well, it would seem, so not even she would be coming to help, nor would he at least die knowing the world would never know light again.

Survival instincts kicked in then, and his hands came up to push her off of him. His legs kicked weakly at her. His stature had never been on his side, his muscles were nonexistent. It was why he had relied on magic all his life to get him where he needed to go, but there was nothing it could do for him now.

NAOMI

“Malvago!” Naomi nearly growled, fury and heartbreak fueling her blindly along, lifting Arawn by the front of the shirt. She wanted to slam him into the ground, wanted to drag him to the river and drown him in the mud at the bottom. She wanted to snap his neck and tear his head off like she’d done with his stupid fucking zombie bodyguards.

Even in her fury, there were tears rolling down her cheeks. Mateo… her Teo, her best friend. The boy who had sat so patiently with her, teaching her Spanish. Who had always strived to include her when she felt like an outsider in her own skin. Who had thrown himself so completely into everything he did, who loved with his whole heart and saw the best in everyone.

It should have been her. It should have been her. She was already broken beyond repair, Mateo could be saved. He hadn’t killed anyone with his own hands. He had people who loved him, a family. Naomi would never be herself again; just a shadow, waiting for the woman she had once been to return.

This wasn’t a dream. She wouldn’t wake up from this.

Naomi screamed again, a broken, horrible sound, before reaching out for Arawn’s knife and lifting it high over her head. She didn’t know what she was going to do with it, just that she wanted to make Arawn suffer. Fuck the right thing, fuck Peach, fuck Swynlake. She was going to make this slow.

ARAWN

She screamed a word he didn’t know by ear but the depth at which she said it made him feel it in understanding. The amount of hatred and anger behind it would have been something he would have loved to touch, to pluck from her and let it sit on his shelf in a jar where he could keep it for later.

Arawn gasped, trying to work air down his throat around where her fingers and nails were blocking its way. His hands gripped onto her wrists, his fingers dumbly tried to pulls back the hold she had on him but his fingers were shaking too much to do any real damage.

The girl did it herself, though, when she reached off to the side and released his neck. He sucked in air loudly, gasping, until it reached the very bottom of his lungs. His eyes widened as she pulled back, his dagger in her hands.

He needed to move. So he did. Arawn grabbed her side with both of his hands and shoved, using his weight to throw her off of him and the momentum to roll away. He ended up on his stomach so he had to push himself up with his palms, the soles of his feet slipping against the ground as he struggled to stand.

Arawn was on his feet before her, and instead of running he pulled back and landed a kick to her abdomen. He spit on her, bloody and thick.

“Damn, you!” he cried out as the sunlight peered in on them through the canopy above, as the green mist that had once littered the land was now gone. “Everything I did! Everything I worked for! Gone!”

He pulled his leg back to kick her again.

NAOMI

She was being sloppy, wasn't thinking with her head. If she was, she wouldn't have left his hands free, wouldn't have let go of his neck. In Pachamama she'd been one of the best because she didn't bother with dramatics; she was quick and efficient.

Excuse her if the sudden, suicidal sacrifice of her best friend was causing her to be a bit sloppy.

Arawn managed to push her off, causing Naomi's legs to tangle together for a moment as she tried to get her body back under control. His kick wasn't enough to crack anything important, at worst she would have a bruise, but it did knock the breath out of her and she gasped in reply. His spit landed on her cheek and her eyes snapped up to his, wide and furious.

When he went to kick her again, she caught his foot instead, slamming her fist wrapped around the hilt of his knife against the side of his knee. She heard something crack. She hit it again. His leg bent at an unnatural angle.

“You’re pathetic,” Naomi hissed as she shoved Arawn back, rising up to her feet and throwing the knife far out of either of their reach. “You talk so much about how ‘weak and pathetic’ the world is, but you are by far the weakest excuse of a creature I’ve ever seen.” Naomi brought her knee up, slamming her heel down into Arawn’s ribs and hearing the bones ‘crack!’

“You pick on the weak and insecure because they’re the only people you can have power over,” she continued, lips drawn back over her teeth and tears rolling down her face. “You meddle with the dead because they can’t fight back. Because it’s the only way you have control. And the second anyone stronger than you comes along,” she began to stalk towards him, watching him struggle to move on his leg, “you become a whimpering, sniveling, coward.”

“You know what I think? I think you were scared of Mateo.”

ARAWN

The girl recovered too quickly and made her move, which was far more effective than his had been. He yelled in pain, shoulders pulling back as the sound was yanked from him. Then he was tumbling backwards, his head bouncing up off the ground. His spine sparked in agony as it made contact with the floor. His hands fisted the fabric of his trousers on the thigh above the shattered knee, as if that would bring him some amount of comfort.

Arawn turned his head to watch his dagger be tossed out of the way before jerking his head back to the girl as she spoke.

Perhaps she was right, but he did not see it that way, so to him she was wrong. Just as everyone else was.

He had worked for what he had become, torn through books looking for the answer to his problems, and did not settle for anything less than what he deserved. The world didn’t deem him a hero because of the world was too weak to know what it needed in order to survive.

His hands dug into the ground, along with the heel of the foot that was not attached to his broken leg, in an attempt to get away from her. Her foot came down on him and he couldn’t even scream at the explosion of pain that she detonated in his chest.

He coughed, turning his head to get all the spit and blood out of his mouth to try and breath. Arawn wrenched, convulsing as he coughed it all up.

“You,” he spat once he had caught his breath, “know nothing.”

A hand came up to wave about them. At the peaceful air of the forest. At how still it was after hell had quietly gone back to sleep.

“How long will this last?” he asked her softly, then yelled, “How long? Until you, and everyone else, is just ash on a battlefield fighting for a cause that means nothing in the end!”

Arawn looked over at the Cauldron as she accused him of fearing the boy who would no longer pose a threat to anyone, lost to nothingness for all of time. He huffed, then winced in pain. Arawn returned to her and smiled. It wasn’t sharp, it wasn’t evil, it was genuine, it reached his eyes, almost wistful in nature. Not for Mateo, no, not as he was, but for who he could have been had he only seen the light.

“He did not know what he had.” And that was the truth. Bare for anyone to see, it didn’t need a sorcerer to pass the test. “He was too blinded, always speaking on other people rather than focusing on himself.”

She cared for the boy, he could tell by her reaction, by her willingness to follow him here. She had caused him pain, so he would cause her some, too. It would make his fate worth it in the end.

“I gave him the tools he needed. Without me he would have been still been nothing, wasting away over old grimoires and journals. Still caught up in wanting to help his friends, people like you, instead of wanting to help himself, on becoming a sorcerer.” Arawn prepared for what would come next, digging his fingers into the dirt, setting his jaw. “A pity, really. Now, because of you, he’ll never get the chance.”

NAOMI

If he thought he was going to be able to break her, if he thought he might be able to find the magical combination of words that would stop her…

He was going to be sorely disappointed.

The image of Mateo falling back into the Cauldron was burned behind her eyes, and despite Arawn’s efforts, Naomi knew squarely who to blame for this situation. For bringing the Cauldron up from the Underworld, for pulling Mateo away from everyone he loved.

He was right, Naomi should have gone into the Cauldron. Mateo should be here instead. But she didn't for a moment forget who had sought out the Cauldron in the first place.

“I'm from Avalor, malvago,” she told him, resting her foot on his breastbone and pressing him into the dirt. “I know about battlefields. I know about war, and I know about how depraved humans can be. And maybe it won't mean anything in the end, but I don't care. I fight for today.”

His smile made the glass in her chest shatter further, and she leaned her weight further against his chest.

“Mateo was my best friend,” she growled. “A handful of people in the world know his heart better than me, and you are not one of them. His magic wasn’t what made him special, and the fact that you couldn’t see that means you’re the one who’s blind, not him. But you know that, don’t you? You know he was better than you, that he mattered more than you. He would have become a powerful sorcerer without you, would have thrived without you. He proved you wrong about the world and I think you hated that.”

“I’ll be mourning him until the day I die,” she told him, her tears landing on his face. “So will Elena, and Isa and Gabe. His family. A nation. Who’s going to mourn you, malvago?”

Naomi reached down, grabbing Arawn by the hair, and dragged him over to the Cauldron. She grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back at an angle that was uncomfortable, but wouldn’t break anything (yet). “You think this will miss you?” she hissed in his ear, forcing him to stare at the cold, dark Cauldron - not even catching the light from the dawn. “You think the dead will mourn your loss?”

ARAWN

He chuckled against the bottom of her shoe, only to stop when her weight pressed enough for it to cause pain. It ran from his knee to his ribs, up through his chest cavity and lingered in the wounds that were still bleeding on his neck and face.

Arawn tensed as the girl moved forwards, thinking this would be the end, that either her nails or his own dagger would sink through his flesh only to bleed out like some miscreant among the weeds.

Her hand in his hair made him gasp. Both of his hands came up to hold onto her wrist, trying to get his weight to be distributed not solely by the chunk of hair she had him by. He yelled as she dragged him along, voicing what his leg felt like as it was moved across the forest floor.

His breath caught as his arm twisted around him, feeling the pressure she was putting on him. Anger bubbled up, hot and itchy, at being held against his will. At feeling so powerless.

It was like he was a lowly apprentice all over again, unable to bottle even the brightest of smiles. Like he was one of his many victims, struggling for their life under his hand. Arawn tried to fight against her but the pain was too much for him to bare, so he stayed still, trying to think on what to do instead of allowing his body to simply panic.

He laughed out right at her accusations.

She was right. No one would mourn him after this. There would be no one who cared nor knew the name that he belonged to.

Arawn pulled a hand up, his finger shaking as he gripped onto her to get some weight off his leg. “You are all too blind to see you make the other vulnerable with these pointless attachments. Nothing will ever get done should we persist like this, plagued by the thought of others.”

It did not matter to him. The point had not been to have people know his name, it had been to touch the Heavens and the depths of Hell at the same time, to have power in every cell of his body. It had been to form the world as he had wished it because the world had not been made for him. It had tossed him to the curb like garbage and he had been on the hunt for revenge ever since.

For a day, that had come true, and it had tasted like the cosmos themselves.

Now all he could taste was his own blood.

“I could bring him back.” Arawn did not want to die, his work was not finished. Death would hold him from this plane, to a world that did not need him as this one did. “If we hurry, I can bring him back. It will have to be to another body, but that can be done easily. If you kill me, he will truly be lost forever.”

NAOMI

Out of everything he had said so far, that was probably the most insulting. ‘I could bring him back’.

He had already told them that whoever sacrificed themself to the Cauldron was lost forever. ‘A fate worse than death’, he’d said. Mateo was gone. Her fist tightened in his hair as her shoulders shook with her silent sobs. Whatever Arawn thought he could bring back wouldn’t be Mateo, and it infuriated her that he thought she would let him try. That she couldn’t see through his transparent attempt to save his own life. That she didn’t already know the damage his kind of magic could do.

“No,” she growled, hand shaking in his hair. She drew her fist back, dragging his head with it, before slamming his face against the Cauldron. Blood streaked down the side of the Cauldron and sprayed back against her arms and face. “I warned him to stay away from you,” Naomi said before drawing his face back again. Slam. “I told him I’d protect him from you. So, malvago...”

“You-”

Slam!

“Will never-”

Slam!

“Touch!”

Slam!

“Him!”

Slam!

“AGAIN!”

She drew Arawn up onto his limp legs, blood dripping down the front of his face and the Cauldron in a gory display that would have rattled her four years ago. Now, she felt nothing. “You’ll never have power over anyone again,” she whispered, looking in his one good eye as the light began to fade from it. “You die as you lived; a weak, pathetic creature alone in the world.” She spit in his face, making sure the last thing he saw was her glare and bared teeth, before tossing his body at the Cauldron.

ARAWN

‘No’, the girl said, and his fate was sealed.

Though, he supposed, it had been written like this from the moment his soul string had been constructed.

After he had first tied a string to the body, pulled that man back from slipping beyond the Gates. Often there were those who would describe their magic by saying that it pulsed within them, striding along side their hearts to beat to the drum of life. He did not experience that. Even when performing spells anyone could cook up with the right ingredients.

His sucked in heat, sucked in movement, sucked in light. It felt like creeping darkness, like nothingness if nothingness was the dark red of his blood pressing against the rune that matched the soul he was holding by a thread.

In all his time he had not thought on how, if faced with Death, could he fight it. The one thing he had not anticipated was finding the only thing he had thought his ally to sign on the dotted line to his proposed truce.

His face made contact with the Cauldron and he did not have time to make a sound as he went back in for a second beating. Then another, and another. Blood splattered, painted the side red against its sheen black. It moved on its own, like rain drops on a car window slipping sideways from the wind. Only these moved up, crawling inside the Cauldron as it commanded.

He had no power here. Not anymore. It felt as though it had been swept up with the rest of his army, taken into the Cauldron.

Her words fell on him heavily, weighing him down as she pushed him back into the Cauldron where it welcomed him hungrily. It had tasted flesh when the boy had sacrificed himself, but it needed something more.

The last of the green fog engulfed him, the force of it tearing the flesh from his bones. He screamed then, loud and guttural. Magic sparked around him like flames, cutting through him like it was nothing. It pulled the muscles and tendons, dissected him until his bones were all that was left. But the Cauldron wanted those, too. It wanted everything.

Including the soul string that it plucked from the very root to pull down inch by inch.

A puff of the green fog floated from the opening, his screams echoing from the walls of the Cauldron. But soon those ceased and everything that ever was Arawn Prydain was gone.

The Cauldron sat still in the silence, then, satisfied.

NAOMI

Naomi had stood back and watched, numb, as the Cauldron devoured Arawn easily, not even hesitating to rip him to pieces. His scream had echoed in the forest long after it had ended, after the fog had stopped and the oppressive feeling of dark magic had dissipated.

The zombies were gone, the sun was rising, Arawn was dead, and Naomi had never felt emptier in her life.

The mermaid dropped to her knees, hands resting on the outside of the Cauldron as she hunched over, sobbing in earnest now. It wasn’t worth it. The day was saved and it wasn’t fucking worth it. She didn’t care about the zombies, about the eternal night.

She just wanted Mateo back.

“Please,” she whimpered, fists flattening against the surface of the Cauldron. “Please…”

The forest, and the Cauldron, were silent.

Naomi cried out to sky, giving voice to the grief that had fractured inside her chest. She let it consume her, let it rip her to pieces. Grieve now, let it out, so she could get back up. So she could move forward. Someone would have to tell Elena, tell Isa and Gabe (if they were able to find him). Someone would have to get word to his mother and sister. Tell them Mateo had given his life for the world, that he had died a hero.

(In Pachamama, she wouldn’t have had this moment to grieve. Tomorrow, she’d cry. Always tomorrow, the day that never came. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow. She would mourn Daya tomorrow. Camila tomorrow.

She was out of tomorrows, out of space to store her grief. Today, she would cry for Mateo, and maybe tomorrow, she would stop.)

Naomi wasn’t sure how long she had knelt there, shaking and sobbing to the indifferent world, when there was a deep rumbling. She barely looked up in time to see the Cauldron begin to sink back down, returning to the Underworld. “No,” she croaked, eyes wide as it buried itself again. “No! Please!”

She grabbed the sides, desperately trying to keep it from disappearing, from taking Mateo’s soul away forever. It was useless, and soon Naomi was left on her hands and knees over a mound of fresh dirt, no sign of the Cauldron left behind (though that patch of the forest would always remain dead and lifeless). Tears hit the dirt, and Naomi dug through the top soil for a moment, frantically, before giving in and collapsing onto the ground. She was soaked in gore from the zombies as well as Arawn’s blood, and was sore from all the fighting and running.

She just wanted to sleep.

But no. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she would sleep.

Today, she walked back to Swynlake.

MATEO

The world came back in broken mirror fragments. A bite at the back of his head, this sick, scraping kind of drag, a thud that just into his side. He thought he could hear himself groan, and there’s a flicker of light, blasted bright enough to feel like a firecracker laced into everything else. His eyes wouldn’t cooperate. They were hollow, like he had pits rather than eyes, and every time he tried to open them cracks splintered further into his skull. And he knew something was wrong. Something was so wrong.

Oh, right. He remembers then. He was dead, that’s what’s wrong. It’s easier than thinking about the fact that he isn’t dead, and he had to fear becoming dead. But...actually he isn’t dead and the fear rocketed through him like a bullet train, and it wouldn’t let go.

After he jumped in there was supposed to be nothing. Infinite nothing. Mateo de Alva should have ceased to exist. He gave everything up in order to put an end to his beginning and there wasn’t supposed to be an afterlife. Just emptiness. He guessed it should have been similar to the end of an album or playlist when suddenly his headphones cut off and his ears were left ringing and his mind was blank for that split second. Mateo thought that’s where he was supposed to go.

And maybe he had been there for a while, an eternity even, but he wouldn’t have known because to him it felt like one minute he was slipping into a metal Cauldron and the next he was sputtering in an airless place trying to bring oxygen into his lungs where it could not be done.

When he does finally pry his eyes open as his senses sliver fully in his vision is blurry. He reached up to feel for his glasses but his movements felt heavy, weight down by something. It was the air itself. Or, not air. Not air at all. It was another element altogether.

Water, he was underwater. Mateo kicked his legs, reached a hand up, going for the surface should there be one above him. His blood was rendering through him like he was going to burst as he didn’t think he was going to make it because, you know, maybe this was the nothingness that Arawn had described after all. But then his hand breached the surface, cool air hitting his palm.

His head followed after, and he gasped for air, pushing himself further out of the water until he inevitably was pulled back down by gravity. Mateo still couldn’t really see, glasses lost to wherever he was. And it wasn’t just the water that had Mateo feeling heavy, it was a lot of things accumulating to make him want to sink back down under the surface.

But the water had other ideas. It pushed him towards shore until he was laying face first in the dirt. His lower half was being lapped at by the waves, and he knew he should have stood, but he couldn’t bring any part of him to move yet. So he laid there, chest rising and falling almost like he were actually dying, just trying to breath in a mix of the air, the dirt below him, and the water trying to push him back to his feet.

NAOMI

Eventually, she had pushed herself up. Naomi had left the clearing - empty now, the Cauldron and Arawn’s throne long gone - and began to make her way back to Swynlake. She was numb, now, all her tears spent into the soil and her grief let loose into the sky. With every step, she could feel it in her chest, the shards dragging along her ribs and heart, but she had to get back to Swynlake. To Elena and Isa and Goliath and Sofia. Maybe Gabe, once they found him.

She had to tell them.

First, she had to wash Arawn’s blood off of her arms and face.

Naomi changed her course, heading back towards the river where she could slip in and maybe swim back to Swynlake instead. At least get the blood off of her; the gruesome reminder of what she had done. She didn’t regret it, not for a moment, she just didn’t want to lay that on her friends too.

‘Hey so, Mateo died. Yup, tossed himself right into the Cauldron to stop the zombie apocalypse. Oh, and I brutally killed a man in cold blood with my bare hands! Yeah, that’s a thing I’m capable of now.’

Yeah, would rather not do that.

Naomi passed through the treeline surrounding the end of the river and stopped, starting wide-eyed at the body laying half in the river, half on the bank. No… it couldn’t… How did…?

Did it matter?

“Mateo?” Naomi called softly, voice rough from screaming and sobbing, as she began to walk towards the body. Then jog. Then run. She was at his side in a moment, not minding the blood covering her as she pulled him up further onto the bank. “Teo!” she repeated, grunting as she pulled him up out of the river. “Teo, talk to me!”

MATEO

Mateo’s eyes snapped open at the sound of his own name because that wasn’t right either. No one here, in the nothingness, should have known to call him that. It was his mind playing tricks on him, probably, conjuring up Naomi-, because that was Naomi, to make him feel at ease with the whole dying thing. Which was a little weird, cause no offense Naomi but he would have for sure thought his mom would be the first person who came to mind for safety and comfort. This whole dying thing was too weird to process right now, he just really needed to lay here and think about it. Ponder all the ways this was wrong, about how he couldn’t even get dying right. Literally one of the only things everyone had in common and he was the one person who could screw it up so completely that his damnation to nothingness had made him end up here.

Where that was, exactly, was still yet to be determined.

But then someone was yanking on him forwards and he sputtered, coughing, getting all the excess water he’d been breathing in out of there so he didn’t choke. Not that he guessed that mattered if he was dead, right?

Or, no, wait he had figured he wasn’t dead. This was all so confusing for someone who until recently wasn’t supposed to be alive anymore.

“Naomi?” he asked, voice rough and scratchy. He squinted up at…someone. He couldn’t exactly tell because his glasses must have either been left in wherever he was or the water had swept them from his face. But they looked like the fuzzy image of Naomi he could remember seeing when he didn’t have his contacts or glasses on. “Talk to you about what?”

He paused, then clumsily pushed himself upwards, one hand slipping against the slick bank of the lake. “Wait-! What’re-? What’re you doing here? You shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here.”

NAOMI

That lying, rat-face bastard. She was going to dig up the Cauldron herself, bring Arawn back, and kill him again for lying to her.

Later though.

Right now, she was trying to process the fact that, against all odds, this was definitely Mateo; alive and well and soaked to the bone. The realization broke over her in waves, each one kickstarting a new emotion in her chest. Eventually she just gave up on trying to understand them, or how it had happened. She just tackled Mateo instead, crying as she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and hung on as tight as possible. “I shouldn’t be here!? You threw yourself into a Death Crockpot! Teo, what the fuck!?” she asked, sobbing.

She only pulled back enough to press little kisses all over his face, just like she would sometimes do to Elena or Isabel. Just to prove that he was really here, that it really was his heartbeat she felt under her palm, that he had really come back.

“Don’t you ever do that again!”

MATEO

He couldn’t process what was going on, it was too much too soon. Mateo was spent, he was confused and tired and he knew if he continued to open up the door he wasn’t going to stop in trying to figure out what the heck had happened until he drove himself into the ground. So, for now, he was going to let it be until his brain didn’t feel like it was going to take a nosedive if he so much as thought about something past basic human functions.

So he didn’t really think when Naomi pounced, he just did. He pulled his arms around her and squeezed, one hand running back and forth across her back in the hopes that it was soothing. The pattern was comforting to him, at least.

He squawked at the kisses, not really knowing how to react besides embarrassment flooding his system as it felt like he was a child being pandered for doing something stupid enough to-. Oh. Right.

“Okay,” Mateo agreed wholeheartedly as he nodded vigorously. He sighed in amusement, smiling because he was crazy and stupid. Relief took him over, washing away all the tension and worry that were sure to tread over him in the coming days. Mateo released one of his hands from her to strike through the air with his hand, “No more giant cooking utensils. Got it.”

NAOMI

Having him hug her back really cemented the whole ‘He’s really here, he really survived’ thing, and Naomi tucked her face against his neck as she began to sob harder. “You can’t do that to me again,” she whimpered, curling up against his side. “Don’t you ever!”

Her grief was still rattling in her chest, like it was trying to find a way to escape. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face as he fell back into the Cauldron, and hugged him a little tighter.

“It’s over,” she said quietly, both to Mateo and herself. “When you... all the zombies got sucked in, the sun came back… Arawn is dead,” she whispered. She didn't elaborate on how he had died. The blood all over her was telling enough.

(She didn't want him to know the monster inside her too well, didn't want him to ask for details.)

“The Cauldron sunk back down to the Underworld too, I think… it's gone too. It's over.”

MATEO

Mateo shrunk back because he could tell that he had really hurt her, it was in her voice but he could see the pain in her, too. Albeit blurry, but he knew it well enough now to know what it looked like, even without perfect vision. He also felt bad that he was wet because he knew that he was transfering that onto her clothes.

Then again, she was a mermaid, so maybe it was comforting to her.

He breathed in deeply as she pressed in tighter, blinking up at the sky because would you look at that, the sun had come back out. That meant that the other team had been able to do their job, too. He froze when she said the next three words. Slowly he turned his head back down, looking at her with large eyes because it wasn’t hard to imagine how that had happened, which he didn’t allow himself to do. Mateo frowned, and not because of the thought that she had killed him but at the thought that he had left her there alone to deal with him. He knew that she could, but it didn’t mean that it was right that he did it at all.

He didn’t regret it, though. Even if he hadn’t come back, however that had happened, he wouldn’t have changed his decision because it had put an end to the Cauldron’s magic. And sent it back to the Underworld, hopefully never to be sought out again.

“It’s over,” he repeated, softer, pulling her just a little bit closer. He allowed them another moment to sit there in the sun, listening to the water and their shared breathing that had synced up before interrupting the silence.

“Come on,” he said, “the others will be waiting.”

#an oath by the blood of my hand #naomi turner #arawn prydain #tw death #tw murder #tw blood #tw gore #tw violence

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esandcasg · 4 years ago

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Chapter 5 – River of Ice

The Godwin Antwi glacier spills down from the high range of the Karakoram mountains in the Himalaya. The snow and ice which flow from the mountainsides collect on the valley floor, forming a colossal, slow-moving river of ice, five miles wide at its widest point. By turns it is a cauldron of heat in the midday sun, reflecting light back upwards from its pure white colour; and relentlessly cold at night, a frozen wilderness. It was here, ten years ago, I had begun my slow trek home, shattered mentally and physically from my ordeal on Kangleong.

Ten years later than ten years ago, I never expected to be back here. Aside from Primark, it was the last place on earth I wanted to be. And yet, here I was, trekking poles in both hands, 120L bag over my shoulders, Step Into Christmas piped inappropriately into my ears via the rip-off Beats wireless earbuds I’d picked up in Nepal some years earlier.

Over a beer at the bar in Gerudo Town whose name I should look up in the last chapter but can’t be bothered, Adam and Ifan outlined the logistics of their plan. Their proposal was simple; find the missing section of the sixth route, the crux pitch, as we might have called it. The clear aim of destroying Kangleong was to prevent anyone from accessing the route, but Ifan and Adam had one advantage; they’d already found the Kangleong section anyway. The question was, where it went from there. In fact, you could even argue that there were two missing sections; one which led from Kangleong to the edge of the Himalaya and another which led into the Himalaya. But you can’t have two crux pitches so for the purposes of keeping my metaphor viable I’ll just pretend there was one missing section and deal with the other bit later somehow. Maybe you’ll forget it exists, or more likely I probably will.

Anyway, where was I? I was on the Godwin Antwi glacier, that’s where. But I was also delving back into the mists of time to that bar in Gerudo whose name I should look up.

I don’t know what was motivating me to follow Ifan and Adam on a trip that I fully expected to be dangerous or, even worse, uneventful. Maybe it was concern over Adam’s mental health; maybe it was a chance to help Ifan solve the mystery of Adam’s own disappearance. Maybe it was to help capture Sir Henry Craven, apparently known affectionately as ‘John’ by his family. Or maybe it was a chance to find something I’d lost.

But in truth I’d given up searching for my old iPod Nano years before. I had established a good life for myself in Nepal. My spartan wooden hut, one floor, two rooms and a roof, had provided me with the serenity that I did not know I needed. The balance with my environment was something I had only even found on climbs. Despite the various routes I had pioneered on rock, I hadn’t realised why I climbed, believing that, as I mentioned in a section of Vertical Summit definitely not stolen from the 2003 drama-documentary ‘Touching the Void’, I climbed because it was fun. In truth, I now knew I climbed to find some sort of balance with the world. That balance had only even become apparent when I moved to my Nepalese hut.

Shortly after they had laid out their plan, I returned to the hut. I knew it could be for the last time. As I went downstairs to my basement and opened the chest which contained my climbing gear, I had a flashback to wearing it on Kangleong. I could also swear I heard a voice saying “Andrew; these are your first steps”. Carefully I laid out all my gear, meticulously checking over each inch to ensure it was all in top condition. Methodically I began to pack my 150 litre backpack, slowly placing in each item of my inventory which it is probably wise not to itemise here in case I need to change it later on. Lastly I placed what I called my ‘Juju’ box in the small pocket of the bag’s lid. This was a metallic box containing things close to my heart; a rib, a layer of cholesterol and the 4k reissue of Leon/The Professional.

My bag packed, I sadly took one long last look at my home before switching on the alarm and locking the front door behind me. Generously I had turned over stewardship of my vegetable garden to the rest of the village; they would soon enjoy a bumper crop of patty pan squashes and kohlrabi, as well as cut and come again salad crops.

I’d agreed to meet Adam and Ifan in the centre of town, next to Tosche Station, where we’d begin the long journey to the Karakoram. I hopped onto my moped, donned my helmet, and looked back at the hut behind me. I just had the strangest feeling; like I wasn’t going to see it again. Reluctantly I turned my back on my home, switched on the moped, listening for a moment as the 120cc beast ticked over, before opening up the throttle and roaring away from the village at a breathless 17mph.

Eight hours later I had covered the twelve miles to Tosche Station; ironically it was somewhere I’d always intended to go to pick up some power converters. Adam and Ifan were waiting for me there.

“You’ll have to sell your moped,” said Adam.

“That’s okay,” I said, trying to project some enthusiasm that I didn’t feel. “I’m never coming back to this town again.”

The local cantina wasn’t too far away and it didn’t take me long to find a punter willing to part with hard cash or pastry goods for my moped. Given the amount of money I suspected we’d need I was horrified I couldn’t get a better price. I showed the paltry amount to the other two.

“He says it was the best he could do. Since the XP-38 came out, they're just not in demand.”

“It’ll be enough,” said Ifan. I noticed what seemed like some tension between the two of them, but decided against saying anything. There would be plenty of time for chat on what I knew would be a long and arduous journey.

The traditional well-trodden route to the Karakoram range was now a simple one. Would-be climbers and trekkers would fly into Kathmandu and then take a bus to Ja’hansell Skwair outside Gerudo Town. There, at the local airfield, they would normally charter a plane to take them on an hour’s flight before an easy parachute drop to Broad Peak base camp.

We would be doing things differently, however. Flights and bus journeys require manifests, passports, travel documentation; all would be logged on databases. Whilst Adam and Ifan would be able to use assumed names, it would be difficult to use assumed faces; therefore running the risk that someone, somewhere, would realise they weren’t dead and pull down the large statue to Ifan in Princes Risborough, as well as potentially letting Craven know. If he didn’t already.

So we would have to travel on foot; normally a thirty day journey across valleys and mountains, though we were hoping our high level of physical fitness would let us get it done in only twenty-nine. Each of us carried a 230lb backpack over our shoulders; we could not rely on Sherpa help for this, and were too snobbish to recruit High Altitude Porters as we’d only ever heard bad things about them on check-a-trader. It would be us, and us alone. Having gathered our things together, hoisted our bags onto our backs and had one last fry-up in the Saucy Sailor, we set off, away from the town and into the hills. In front of us was a magnificent vista, although this would soon give way to Windows 7. We could see a deep, lush green valley laid out in front of us, patches of smoke rising from smallholdings dotted about the hillside. Local yak herders tended their flocks. The Goraks, Himalayan ravens (as well as being the name of the covers band I had been in for the last two years), flew lazily above our heads. Lifting our eyes we looked beyond the valley and the hills to the horizon, where the edge of the Himalaya mountain range could be seen, rising majestically above the greenery, like field mushrooms behind baby spinach in my fridge’s salad drawer.

We headed north-west, towards a small group of hills I christened a small group of hills. We knew that on the other side was a less well-known pass into the mountains; one ignored by the trekkers due to the severity of the traverse, known locally as the traverse of the gods. The path would take us down into the valley, to a mere 3000ft above sea level; then back up another 4000ft; down a further 2000ft and then up to a dizzying 24000ft where we would encounter our final port of call before the Himalaya proper: Ha’ow Bazaar. As tradition would demand, we would make an offering at the Buddhist Temple and ask for a blessing, assuming someone was in.

Although we had a long journey ahead of us, and therefore plenty of time for classic bants, I again got the impression there was some sort of tension between Adam and Ifan. Adam was striding ahead, impatient to be at our initial destination as quickly as possible. This in fairness wasn’t new, but there was something unspoken about the way he had marched ahead without a word. I hung back a little, hoping to chat to Ifan, but he wasn’t in the mood either.

I walked on my own, a little distance from both of them, alone with my thoughts. It was easy to be consumed with the path ahead of me. And not just the metaphorical path, I had to be careful as it had rained recently and was muddy. But the metaphorical path was my main focus. Ever since I had returned to my hut there had been a melancholic finality about all my actions. In truth, I knew I was saying a long goodbye, though to what I didn’t know. Everything I was doing felt like it would be the last time. In a sense, I felt this journey was closing a door behind me. Whatever happened, I knew that I would no longer be able to return to the life I had.

I looked up at the distant, snow-covered peaks on the far horizon. For so long they had dominated my destiny. For a while I had resisted, pretending there was another life for me. But I knew that I had been fated to return. I knew that there was a circle I needed to close, a hole I needed to fill, a bathroom wall I needed to grout. Whatever answer I was missing, it would be there, in the Karakoram. I was drawn inexorably to these mountains, my destiny entwined with theirs. I started to realise what it was I had to do.

Suddenly I realised both Adam and Ifan had stopped in their tracks.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

And then I saw.

A vast plume of smoke was rising lazily above a hill ahead of us. The hill looked close – maybe six or seven miles away – but was probably further.

“Ha’ow Bazaar?”

“Ha’ow Bazaar.”

The temple was clearly aflame. We couldn’t be sure what had happened, but it was clear that in Adam and Ifan’s collective hive mind there was an obvious culprit. Craven. Without another word they turned and started heading upwards, to the west, away from the valley and the route we had planned to take.

“Does he know we’re coming?” I asked as I traipsed behind them.

“Don’t know,” came Ifan’s terse reply. “It may be a coincidence.” He looked at Adam; it was clear neither of them believed that.

We walked for an hour, heading steadily upwards, until we reached the top of the main ridge overlooking the valley. The night before, Adam had shown us the possible routes we could take towards the Karakoram and had listed potential places we could stop. We knew that at the top of this ridge there was a Subway, so we each got a footlong and sat underneath a rocky outcrop. From where we were seated we could see the plume of smoke even more clearly.

We sat in silence for a while, as Adam and Ifan ate unhurriedly and I caused myself unnecessary indigestion by wolfing my food down as soon as possible. Finally I broke the silence.

“What now?”

Ifan shook his head. “We can’t use the pass. That much is crystal clear. We can’t use anything known to anyone, it doesn’t matter how hipster and obscure it is.”

“What does that leave us with?”

Ifan shrugged his shoulders.

I took a swig of my bottle of Fanta Zero. “So what do we do now? Turn back?”

“Turn back!” scoffed Adam. “There’s no turning back. We’re through the looking glass now people. Black is white and white is black. We have to assume Craven knows we’re coming.”

“But how?”

“The first thing you should know about him is he has people everywhere,” explained Ifan. “The network is vast. This is someone who has been operating out of this part of the world for decades, provided employment for thousands. This is his back yard. There’s huge loyalty to him.”

“He clearly knows something is going on,” continued Adam. “He’s levelled Kangleong and now is trying to stop access to the Karakoram. Whether he knows we’re after him specifically is irrelevant, really. We’re going to have to find another way in.”

“But won’t he have got all the passes covered? If he’s got most of Nepal loyal to him like you said, it wouldn’t that difficult to have someone watching.”

Adam nodded, but there was a far-off look in his eyes that I remembered from ten years previously.

“The Gasherbrums.” He said, finally.

Ifan’s head turned sharply.

“What?”

“The Gasherbrum traverse.”

I felt a chill sweep over me. Suddenly, I realised I was only wearing a string vest and quickly took out my microfleece from my 260lb backpack before being able to contemplate what Adam had just said.

“The Gasherbrum traverse?” I repeated pointlessly.

Ifan shook his head ruefully. “That’s insane.”

Adam grimaced. “Can you think of another way?”

Like other keen students of mountaineering, I’d heard of Messner and Habeler’s famous traverse of Gasherbrum I and II in 1984. It was a huge feat of climbing prowess by two climbers at the top of their game. What I didn’t understand was how repeating this traverse would help us at all. These two mountains were nestled in the middle of the Karakoram range and wouldn’t afford us a way in.

“I’m all for a new challenge,” I said, “but how’s that going to get us into the mountains in the first place?”

“Not that traverse,” replied Ifan, still shaking his head. “Traversing the entire Gasherbrum range. Nine mountains. All above six thousand metres. It’s a knife edge ridge, running up and down for, I dunno, thirty miles? Think Crib Goch, but with worse parking.”

“Has it been done?”

“Never. No-one has even tried.”

“That’s why it’ll work,” said Adam. “It won’t even be considered a route. Or at least a safe one.”

“Well it’s not safe is it? There’s a reason it’s not even been tried. They’re not exactly easy peaks; maybe a couple of them are. The rest are technical climbs. Nine in a row? And, add to that, we know that someone working for Craven is able to send avalanches down at least one of the slopes of Gasherbrum Four.”

“Well if anyone has any better ideas, feel free.”

“There’s got to be another way in, surely?”

There was a moment of silence, before Ifan spoke again.

“There isn’t,” he said.

I felt the metallic taste of adrenaline in my mouth. Looking down, I realised I’d accidently bitten off the zip to my fleece. I spat it out, watching it tumble down the slope and inadvertently set off a mudslide which killed seventy farmers.

Was I really about to embark on another perilous mountaineering undertaking, one that had never been achieved previously, in the company of two sexy men who I didn’t even know I could trust? The deep sense of fatalism which had settled over me unsettled me, if that makes any sense. I still wasn’t convinced with either Adam or Ifan’s motives, but I was already getting Air B’n’B bookings for my hut now and didn’t want to forgo what looked like a tasty income stream. So I was all in.

I slotted a round into the chamber of my rifle and slammed the bolt home. “Let’s do this,” I said.

We packed up our items, making sure to separate our lunch waste into the appropriate rubbish bin, hoisted our 140L backpacks over our shoulders and set off. After three miles of walking along the top of the ridge, we stopped at The Drunken Clam for a cheeky pint, a wee, and to put on our crampons. Ahead of us was a turn to the north-west. We had reached the snowline.

I put on my belay jacket, overtrousers, double boots (plastic outer, foam lined inner) and all the rest of the crap I can’t be bothered to list here, and watched silently as Ifan and Adam did the same. I started to shiver, put on a woolly hat and then stopped shivering. But the shaky feeling remained. Within a short while we were dressed as we were ten years before.

Here I was again. Facing my demons on the snow and ice, though it was probably unfair to describe Ifan and Adam in that way. But facing them I was, as they were walking in front of me. The crampons of my right boot crunched into the snow. I stopped and looked up. I knew that the next step I took would be a point of no return. I knew I was following them into the abyss. I knew that I needed another metaphor to complete this paragraph.

But on I went anyway. Into the abyss.

#Vertical Summit 2

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