#and it's either dark is in the 'upside down' and infected mark's mind

[iloveshippingkitty]

Russian Roulette - A WKM Missing Scene Fanfic

Summary: The Colonel and the Detective aren’t the only ones who play Russian Roulette when the drinks start flowing. And someone’s calling it a double or nothing. So what are the stakes?

(as implied by the game it is a heavy fic - warnings in the read more for those who require and I can assure you it’s not like warning - immediate subject underneath - partially cos that’s shoddy tension building and/or world building - - The fic starts at the ‘-’)

Warnings: Death, Violent Death, Blood, Guns, Possession - Murder or Suicide? Or Both?, Russian Roulette, Acting against will?

Do Not Read If You Are Easily Disturbed or Triggered by Any Of These. I wouldn’t blame you so from here on out proceed at own caution.

-

The Colonel looked about the room. It was wonderful, just as it had always been. God, did he need a drink. The waiter – the nervous bumblebee that he was – rushed straight up to offer him a drink. He was very thankful and mumbled his thanks as he grabbed two glasses and drank one immediately and set it back down on the silver plate. He really wasn’t sure why he had come, it wasn’t like everything could be fixed with Markiplier. While the Colonel used his alias to be closer, Markiplier did it to distance, although after everything that had happened maybe the Colonel didn’t blame him for that at least. His eyes caught Damien and he remembered exactly why he had come.

Damien had so been looking forward to it. He had begged the Colonel to accept the invite as soon as Celine had let slip that he had received one. It had completely isolated Damien to be without his two truest friends and had come to a truce regarding him a while before. For who was he to step in the way of the wants of his sister. So both agreed to treat Damien the same but avoid the subject of each other. It had done greatness for Damien and he had become The Mayor. While The Colonel and Markiplier fought the one thing that they agreed upon was that was a role he was designed for. He was a peacekeeper – a kind, honest, respected and respectable man. Many towns wouldn’t have needed that, this town however needed nothing more.

The Mayor shot him a smile. How he liked calling him that. His brother-in-law, The Mayor.

He watched Markiplier give the speech and downed his drink during the end. He didn’t really want to listen to Mark’s inane ramblings when he looked and sounded so ‘la-di-dah’. Fame had got to Mark and it was what had drove Celine from him – if he could only see it. He sneaked around to the kitchen and quickly lifted a bottle of bubbly from there. The chef was quick to notice it but had let it slip for ‘Old Times Sake’. He took sips straight from the bottle. Ah, that was a lot better. Mark encouraged them to get wasted.

At one point the attorney looked at Mark’s drink and back at Mark as the Colonel noted.

“I’ve had more than a few myself, young friend. Dutch courage don’t you know. I will be drinking much more presently once you have all caught up.” He replied with an elegance he always put on at parties. The Colonel rolled his eyes and took a large swig from the bottle in his hand. Mark in response only smiled and raised his glass before grabbing an hors d'oeuvre and eating it. The district attorney gave a smile that seemed genuine and for once The Colonel remembered he was here for amends by himself and for whatever reason Mark had invited him. Tonight was an outreaching hand and The Colonel was determined to grab it. He had been in the army long enough to know a foolish decision and ignoring the man he had grown up on an important night of his life was one such foolish decision. Instead with a genuine half smile and nodded at the attorney and Mark both. Both seem pleased by this.

The room seemed to spin and time seemed to zoom past as he got more drunk and in the blink of an eye they were in a betting room with a poker table. They had been keen players all 3 of them in their youth and was the only practice they had brought with them through time, although they all played separately now. Some things just hadn’t been the same without the trio. He drank away the pain that ebbed into that thought and picked up his cards and prepared for everyone to take their turn.

With almost a full bottle down – when did that happen? He swore he had half… With almost a full bottle down he realised it had been a while he drank at this pace, the house was the weird thing it always was and this detective was exceedingly good at cards. Which was ironic because he didn’t consider him an exceedingly good detective. One more thing, that the district attorney definitely did not have as high a tolerance as them. It seemed sober they may be good at cards but still feeling awkward about the whole situation he had resolved to leave with the dawn and head back to his beautiful wife and throw himself at her mercy for being away for so long. She’d probably laugh, he hoped so, he loved that laugh. He had been distracted so had been surprised when Mark went all in. He held in the urge to give him a stern talking to and resolved to fold and go to the toilets. He didn’t remember going or in fact coming back but knew he had been inside the toilets as he got back. In his short change the district attorney, with help from the butler was currently winning. They looked like they were enjoying themselves and he liked that but the smug look made him want to wipe the floor with them. He would do just that.

Between endless drinks and merging games he had begun to win, lose and was nearly on equal turf again. Such began the keg stand, the beer pong, the drunk card games and importantly Russian Roulette. His favourite game. For a long time after the war he would play with anyone that came along. The detective downed his shot and insisted, the room blurred and for once everything made sense whether he questioned it or not which meant he really must be incredibly drunk. Off it span and a shot fired, blank. He knew it was blank before the trigger came fully back, he just knew. Then he aimed at himself and did the same, it was very quick and he practically giggled as he heard the trigger. Damien threw a card at him and pointedly rolled his eyes, “Oi, you. Take it outside if we’re playing extreme sports.”

Time passed on like a spinning roulette wheel and sometime around 1 am the DA had a shot and hit the floor like a tonne of bricks. Though barely standing himself Damien insisted on helping them to bed then joining one more game and heading to his own room, almost tripping down the hall. The chef took his leave at night to go have drinks with old George and bring him his dinner and the butler took the time while their attention was elsewhere to head off himself to bed before they harassed him more. After almost half an hour the detective insisted on going to find the butler but both Markiplier and The Colonel found him asleep on the stairs on the second floor barely 10 steps away from his own designated room. They both grabbed him and - like they did when they were kids with whoever out the trio fell asleep first – flung him onto the bed. It wasn’t until now that The Colonel noted that for the last while he had actually been getting on with Markiplier. It was almost like old times. However, with how absolutely plastered he was he barely took notice. Markiplier however was as well-bred sophisticated as he was earlier in the night. The Colonel almost mentioned it but if he was going to be honest with himself he didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“What now, Markiplier?” He slurred.

“I have some brandy old George used to have. The one we used to try and nick as kids. Want some, Colonel?”

“That’s what my friends call me. It’s Mr Barnhum to anyone else.” He mumbled but nodded all the same.

They headed downstairs and Mark had a hold of his elbow as The Colonel swayed. He replied, “This night is to even the score, the playing field if you will. We’re about to crack open the one thing we never got away with as kids, I hope you’ll find it in you to let the bridge begin to build with being called Colonel.”

“Fine, Markiplier.” He chuckled dryly, “Markiplier and Colonel now.. How we’ve grown.”

Markiplier’s laugh seemed genuine but something had been off about him for a while now. He’d been too stubborn at first and now he barely had the sobriety to stand solitary. The house blurred around them and he saw the stone wall of the stairs to the cellar as he got down. It had a funny habit of happening that, The Colonel chuckled at it and Markiplier gave him a questioning look to which The Colonel only laughed harder. They sat on the table and began sipping the strong brandy.

After half an hour or half a day, The Colonel wasn’t sure or didn’t care Mark suggested a game. The bottle was surprisingly full for 2 people drinking it but The Colonel didn’t notice and didn’t question.

“What?””

“A game to put all this behind us. It’d be so cool, come on, Colonel. Go on.”

“Fine, you’re playing to my humour, old boy, so I’ll humour you. What game?”

“Russain Roulette. Just like you and the detective played.” Markiplier seemed positively giddy, not taking the bottle this time.

In response, The Colonel laughed. A great hearty laugh then sipped another bit of brandy, “No. Dear boy, no.”

“Why?”

“For one, how are we to trust that the game isn’t rigged?”

“Rigged?”

“Yeah, Markiplier. How are you to trust me and how am I to trust you, not to make sure that the bullets going straight for that barrel?” He laughed again.

“Get this. For mine, you spin, then I spin. So then the person whose turn it is, can be sure they haven’t been cheated and they can be watched by the other player to assure they aren’t cheating… Foolproof.” He smiled, victoriously.

“Bully! The downside there is I won’t do it.” The Colonel rolled his eyes and took a sip again.

“Come on, we used to be brothers in arms Colonel. We grew together, we owe each other something but there’s a lot of anger. This way we get it out.”

He made a point… maybe. Maybe he had drunk too much…

“What are the rules then? How is this to make amends? What are the playing stakes?”

“Rules are spin each and immediate shot. One each and never again. This is the only of George’s brandy I ever bought so it should be fair the game is played only once too. Consider the odds as double or nothing. Double means one of us will be dead and the other a killer and must make amends with the family for everything they couldn’t for each other. Nothing means that everything, I mean everything, must be forgiven. Everything from our past must be erased if the shot is empty.”

There had been a lot behind them. Both sounded like intense things and truth be told The Colonel often felt guilty for falling for his foster-sibling’s spouse and the other things he had done so while he had his own anger from their years just after they had been brothers-in-arms he didn’t have to feel so crap about himself. This was an escape though. In one shot either him and Markiplier would be on level ground again or it wouldn’t be his problem anymore. Markiplier would do the same and the trio could be together. He didn’t think about Markiplier’s shot. Anyone with a higher understanding of the mansion would have known that he didn’t think of it because the house didn’t want him to think of that. After a few more sips each he agreed. The deep, intense want to be forgiven by the boy he grew up with and to find the will to do the same on the flip of a game was too hard to pass up.

Colonel put down his gun on the table and they sat at either end, in their seats, finally.

The gun and the brandy sat in the middle of the table and Markiplier added a penny to the middle line.

“Flip?”

It was Colonel first. He took a good swig as he watched Markiplier place it in and spin it in and locked it in. They swapped the gun and the brandy and Colonel span it and locked it in and placed it straight to his head. Forgiveness or not his problem anymore his mind repeated any more. For once he couldn’t figure it out. He always had a feeling before he shot but now, gun to his temple… he couldn’t be sure. He clicked the safety off his revolver.

If it was the only barrel with a shot in he wouldn’t have a chance to say it later, “Mark.”

He gave a curt nod and pretended not to notice the importance addressing Mark by his name implied as his finger pressed on the trigger. A quiet click responded. Empty. Nothing. Mark however had the reaction he did when The Colonel first played it; ready for a heart attack. He took the barrel out and gave it a spin once again, locked it in and handed it to Mark who kept the bottle one last time to give a long gulp and a sigh before handing it over. Maybe had the Colonel been sober or Damien been there, maybe someone would have realised that that had been the first real drink, real swallow of liquid that night. Then again maybe not. He brought out the barrel and gave it a look a spin and as The Colonel drank, stopped it and locked it in. The Colonel put the drink down as Mark brought the gun up.

For the first time since suggesting it or in the whole night or even in fact… for the first time in a long time – Mark looked hesitant. He took the safety off.

“William.”

His word was barely a breath and there was something there that showed the Mark he was before. The one they were actually friends with, the one Celine had fallen for. Something had been wrong and different with Mark for longer than anyone had noticed. His voice for the first time that night, was his own.

William knew it as he looked at him and his eyes for a moment coloured red and blue. Just a moment but he saw it.  He was sure. As sure as he was that the moment the eyes coloured the old Mark was gone again and as sure as he was that that round was loaded. The new Mark smirked.

It was effectively sobering.

Many things happened in the 2 seconds that lasted an eternity. A voice in William’s brain shouted that Mark was too far gone, whatever had changed him forever now. At the same time he stood and clambered over the table to push the gun out the way. The bottle broke. The colour of red and blue took over Mark momentarily. William pushed the gun… just not far enough. The shot rang in his ears. The smirk plastered permanently on Mark’s face. Blood was everywhere. The body slumped and William tried to scream. It must have been the shock because the scream stuck in his throat as if to strangle him. He hadn’t done this. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. It was either him or reconciliation. Why hadn’t he thought of Mark? Now he had lost his brother-in-arms and the game. One was dead, one a killer. That’s what was said. His hand had been on Mark’s, from the handle to the trigger as he had pushed it back. He killed Mark. What was there to do now?

It felt like a nightmare and The Colonel wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t. What to do now was to clean the body and the gun, put him to bed and hope it was the nightmare it seemed.

As he finished cleaning he heard a voice in his head like Mark’s. Like new Mark’s.

“You nearly made me miss, nitwit.”

The laughter that ruptured from The Colonel was unstable and he turned back to pick him up and take him to bed. He’d barely took a few steps in the dark before he was at Mark’s bed. He placed him down and stood over him a moment before walking. Walking was good. He needed a walk. He wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. Not for a long, long time. William wondered as he walked if you could go an eternity without sleep and just what it would do to you.

[bookwyrminspiration]

Shattered Upside Down

A kotlc wings au

summary:  When the world begins to crawl with unnaturally made monsters, the Keeper crew continue to fight like they always have. But a wrench is thrown in those plans when they themselves become less than human.

Chapter 1: The Descent

Word count: 7k

warnings: mild fantasy violence (nothing more than in canon), swearing

taglist: listed at the end beneath the cut, but let me know if you want to be added or removed

!!! Y’all!! It’s finally here!!! And you might be thinking, Quil they don’t have wings. To which I say: be patient!! this is a multi-chapter fic! this is just the groundwork <3

ao3 link here

or read beneath the cut

It was comical, really, just how quickly their security had crumbled into unbridled, ravaged chaos. They had relied on the extravagance of the Neverseen, always too brash, too bold, too eager for attention. They were self-sabotaging. They revealed their plans a moment too soon, wanting the world around them to see the cunning, the thought, to know which moments were their last.

And they’d played the part so clever, it hadn’t crossed a single mind that they were gracing more than one stage. That even when they weren’t putting on a show, they remained ingenuine.

The Black Swan had thought them comical storybook villains, all talk and poise. And then they’d slip, underestimating you and letting you swoop in last second, tossing wrenches in their gears and bringing them up short. A hero. Classic and overused, but a hero nonetheless.

It had been ludicrous to entertain the notion they could be capable of anything greater, anything deadlier. That they wanted to be stopped again and again. That they wanted to build the Black Swan’s confidence in themselves, wanted to be broken and bruised and battered and defeated again and again and again.

Because then who could consider them a threat?

Who would look for them, frail and scattered as they were?

They had all been lured into a false sense of security, taking the first deep, fulfilling breaths they’d had in years. And each day it came easier. Every passing second without disturbance relaxed their bodies and eased their minds. It had been months and months, long enough they felt safe. Actually safe. The idea was laughable now, but it had been true. The Neverseen were gone, dead and buried.

But villains work best from the grave.

The Ruewens noticed the shift first, although if you asked either of them they wouldn’t be able to tell you quite what it was. The subtle gleam gracing the teeth of each new animal they took in, each creature becoming more violent and vocal, tails thumping just a touch harder against the ground.

It was only a coincidence that seven times in a row the creatures were “uncharacteristically rough and wild for their species.” It only became worrisome when the docile creatures began to growl at anyone’s approach, even the ones that had already been tamed.

Then it all went to shit.

Absolute

fucking

shit.

You wouldn’t have been able to tell from the outside; it was surrounded by one-way glass. Look through and all you’d see were splotches of amorphous green, running streams, sunlight soft and secure. But the view from inside was a completely different story. From inside you could see the creeping mold and blood caked along the sides of streams, the marks in the trees and the torn roots, ash where the sun had burned too bright, rusted mist raining down.

What a nightmare they’d made of paradise.

Except, somehow, the Lost Cities themselves had ended up on the outside of the glass, content to pretend the creatures roaming the hills were only a problem if they were near you, which they weren’t. So what a pack of rabid unidentifiable beasts attacked? They hadn’t been here, so it wasn’t a problem.

Then it became a problem.

The creatures moved closer, working their way through the land, ravaging their way towards the Lost Cities. The elves blinked and they were surrounded. Crystal castles tumbled into sand, stone pavement was ripped from the ground, trees torn and shredded, dripping with infection.

They’d had no choice but to leave it all behind. There’d been backlash of course, despite it being in everyone’s best interest. Those who were so attached to what they had, what had remained a constant in the past millennia of their lives that they were fully willing to risk themselves for it. There was no doubt though, that had they been allowed to remain they would’ve regretted it the moment those creatures came to their door, the ones they’d refused to believe were their problem.

So they’d all moved below ground, deep enough they couldn’t be reached. Every inch of surface available to them was dangerous, so they’d gone beneath it. The dwarves had graciously worked to hollow out living space for them all, creating entire kingdoms beneath the sand. And now they were much more powerful, carried more weight with each step, the responsibility they’d risen to clinging to them and eating them respect no one could deny.

They’d all be dead without them.

Not everyone was in one place, a few spots underground scattered throughout the world and it nearly impossible to travel between them. Light leaping didn’t work underground, and it was an incredible risk to brave the surface for a single leap. Once everyone had been settled, they’d stayed there. And they were still there.

I mean, what else could they do?

It had taken them a bit to work out just where these volatile creatures had come from, the ones now spanning the entirety of the world--although the humans were still unaware. Something about the pollution and overall vibe of the forbidden cities kept the monsters away from them.

A few had suggested moving to the forbidden cities as an alternative to living underground, but the disgust for the places quickly killed that idea.

The Black Swan was adamant that somehow the Neverseen had to be behind this. The organization had been the only enemy they’d ever had--and they were right, in a way. Despite months of silence, of nothing, of security, they must’ve done something.

But how, was the question.

Perhaps it would’ve been better had the question never been answered, if they’d all remained ignorant of what had been hidden right beneath them. Certainly, there would’ve been more resistance had every single elf shoved underground been kept in the dark.

But alas, illumination came tied with a silver ribbon.

One of the smaller creatures, really not much larger than a candle, had slipped into the residences, stirring up a ruckus in its frantic attempts to escape as it realized it was trapped below ground. It had been caught in a corner, hunched over away from the lights. The entirety of its body had been shaded by the large mushroom cap covering its head. It was only on closer inspection they realized the red, dripping mushroom was attached to its head. The rest of its body was disproportionately small and warped, grooves scorn into the skin.

They had been taking it back towards a small air vent--so they could release it onto the surface--when they’d seen the small clasp. It was imperceptibly small, silver in color, piercing the underside of the mushroom cap. It was a tag. An identification tag complete with a pin number.

If that hadn’t been enough proof that the creatures had been intentional, the symbolic eye entwined with a sturdy chain would’ve been enough. Their hearts stopped dead. That eye was unmistakably the Neverseen’s symbol, but that chain…

It was clearly another symbol, the two mixed. But--

Fuck. The creature in their hands had grown panicked and impatient, the space they’d thought was its body leering open to reveal rows upon rows of stubby teeth, all sharp edges and imperfections. They’d nearly dropped the creature in their panic to shove it into the air vent, closing it quickly behind as the sharp, tiny stomps faded as it climbed further and further away.

That creature had been created intentionally and the Neverseen had been a part of it, that much was certain. But there was someone else. Another force out there with enough influence and power to corrupt the entirety of nature’s balance, able to rewrite the story of evolution, and they were represented by a chain.

But who was it?

No matter how shallow her breaths, the overwhelming stench of musk and mold continued to coat her tongue and turn her stomach sour. Sophie exhaled slowly; it would do no good to dwell on what she couldn’t change. The rest of them weren’t faring much better, but the thin cloths over their faces provided a sliver of relief.

Sophie, Fitz, Keefe, Biana, Dex, Tam, Linh, Marella, Maruca, and Wylie. More people than they’d usually risk bringing on a mission, but it was a necessary risk for one of this magnitude.

She assumed the thick scent was coming from the swaths of unidentified plant life gorging it way up the sides of the tunnel, clinging to wet, crumbling rock and glowing faintly blue in the light. At the very least it provided slight illumination of the tunnel ahead, along with the branching pathways they occasionally crossed that likely led to collapsed rooms and dead ends. Mere months ago she would’ve been anxious over the thought that the ground above her would give way and crush them all in moments. Now, however, months living underground had made the ground above her a comfort more than anything. If there was enough soil between her and the surface, the creatures that roamed freely couldn’t get to her.

Although that didn’t exactly apply when they were heading straight into the breeding facility; the heart of the creatures, their origin, where they still poured out in lucrative amounts, a constant supply keeping the surface a hazard.

We’re only about a half-mile away, Dex informed them. He spoke into their shared mental space, kept in place by Sophie and Fitz’s combined efforts, eliminating the need for out-loud conversation. Some of the creatures--especially the ones that liked the dark--had particularly keen hearing, and the closer they got, the riskier any noise would be.

Her head snapped to the side as Biana skidded for a moment on a patch of gravel, sucking in a sharp, silent breath as she caught herself. They all winced, pausing to listen if the sound had caught the attention of anything nearby.

Biana didn’t bother to apologize, they all knew it was inevitable and unavoidable--and it couldn’t be undone.

Remember the plan? It was Fitz’s voice echoing through their heads this time, although it felt like he was trying to whisper despite it being mental. They all nodded in response, and Keefe patted his pocket, bulging with the same explosives they all carried.

Sophie cleared her mind, running through the plan--which she’d done so many times by now the exact words were likely permanently etched into her brain. At the end of this system of tunnels--which Dex was navigating them through--was the breeding facility. This breeding facility was where the creatures on the surface were created, and where they were still coming from. Old and new types alike. Sophie had a basic outline of the facility--it had been difficult enough to find the location, buried deep beneath the earth, getting specifics was impossible--and the areas they were to hit. Everyone had a stash of explosives, black cubes small enough you could wrap your fingers around them. They’d get in, set up the devices, get out, and detonate them once they were a safe distance away.

It was supposedly simple, but everyone had their own speculations about what could possibly go wrong; the most likely was that they would be caught in the act.

The tunnel began to widen, opening into a large cavern; but, as they looked up, they realized it hadn’t always been. Pillars rose around them towards an arching ceiling, carved designs gracing the stone. It appeared this place had once been a grand room, almost reminding her of Victorian castles, but the floor had collapsed into rubble, green vegetation covering nearly every inch.

Linh rotated her hand as she fluttered her fingers, seemingly almost absentmindedly. The leaves rustled faintly, in response to her call. She said nothing for a moment, and Sophie’d almost forgotten about it when Linh spoke up.

I wonder how these plants are able to flourish so far underground, seemingly on their own. A memory from only a few seconds ago flashed through the mindbubble--Keefe’s nickname that had stuck-- and as Sophie watched it she could feel the body memories of Linh tracing the water through the roots of the plants and into the ground, trying to find a source large enough to sustain this vegetation.

Linh shook her head, nodding to herself and to assure the others she remembered their goal, their mission. The reason they were here.

Adrenaline hummed through Sophie’s veins as she began to survey the walls, the bases of which were a good ten feet above her head. She could sense the rest of the group doing the same, but it was Tam’s searching shadows that found the entrance.

It was nearly buried in a corner, obscured by mounds of rock and swaths of green, but it was there.

Sophie briefly sent out a wave of consciousness into the mindbubble, assessing her team and assuring they were all prepared. They seemed to be, although Linh still seemed to be ruminating on the water in the room, fingers rubbing together rhythmically.

Releasing a slow breath, she crawled into the hole, small enough she couldn’t have even sat up comfortably. If Dex’s directions were to be trusted, this hole would lead into an old ductwork system in the back of the facility, and from there they could drop down and continue as planned. The ground was jagged against her palms, but at the very least her hands were slightly protected by her gloves--the same black everyone was wearing now. They must’ve donned them before crawling in behind her-including Linh.

It’s dead ahead, she said, having spotted the reflection of the ductwork up ahead. She couldn’t imagine it led to anywhere particularly important in the facility, as the air it would’ve brought in was absolutely foul. Whatever glistening substance coated her hands and soaked her knees was going to linger.

She came to a stop at the edge where the rock gave way to rusted metal, but a moment was all she allowed herself. Bracing, she slowly lowered her hand and weight onto the ductwork, hoping it would remain silent.

A small thud resounded as the metal bent, but that was it. She gave the clear to the group and continued forward, already wishing this part were over. The duct was significantly smaller than the already cramped tunnel, but at least the tunnel had glowing fungus to light the path. This was pitch black and tiny, requiring them to shimmy on their elbows with only the light of their pendants to guide them. She wasn’t good enough at night vision for it to help, and she wasn’t going to waste energy trying. She needed to save everything she had.

The group continued forward with bated breath as they searched for an opening in the pathway, everyone eager to escape this claustrophobic nightmare. It’ll be over soon, she reminded herself, but when Biana echoed back, Soon, she realized she’d spoken into the mindbubble. Her cheeks flushed for a moment, but it was quickly put out of her mind when she saw a change in the lighting up ahead.

There’s something coming up, she transmitted, hushed. Don’t know what though. There was palpable hope in the air; they were all wishing it was the opening they’d been waiting for, but no one wanted to be let down if it turned out it wasn’t.

Sophie attempted to maintain the quickest pace she could without making sound, but in her urge to get to that possible opening, she nearly kicked the side of the duct. The person behind her--likely Marella, she hadn’t looked--sucked in a breath as everyone froze.

After only a moment's pause, she began forward again, now at a much more reasonable pace as the shift ahead was confirmed to be a vent.

She came to a stop before the slits of the vent, peering down into the room below, sending out a sweep of her consciousness to see if she could hear any thoughts indicating people nearby. Determining it was clear, she slipped the small multipurpose tool from where it’d been stored in her sleeve and began to undo the screws. It made an awful groan when she tugged off the grate, and she gripped it tight in one hand as she gently slid out face first, catching herself and levitating the rest of the way down.

The ground was surprisingly further than she’d been expecting, a good thirty feet from the vent in the ceiling to the dusty ground. Her landing left footprints in the dust, but if everything went according to plan the place would be crumbling long before that would become a problem.

The rest of the group slowly drifted to the ground, emerging from the vent one-by-one in a way that almost made Sophie want to laugh. The fear curdling her blood was enough to keep it in her throat, though.

There didn’t seem to be anything in this room besides storage, discarded crates stacked surprisingly aligned, towers reaching up towards the ceiling. Brushing her fingers over the top of a nearby crate, she saw it had a label.

Curious, she tried to read it. Unfortunately, it was either written in ancient elven or some sort of cipher she didn’t understand. Still, she not only wanted to know what was inside, she needed to. If this was something that could be used to create more monsters, it needed to be destroyed.

As she set about opening the case, the others assumed their positions. Dex was already working on something in the corner, hacking the security system so they could monitor the cameras and place them on loop. Biana was near the door with Fitz, who appeared to be mentally scanning the nearby area for thoughts.

She grunted as she pushed the lid open, bracing it on her shoulder as she peered inside. Her stomach squirmed uncomfortably, and she very quickly closed the crate before anyone else could peek inside. She didn’t want them to see that.

This room has got to go, she whispered into the mindbubble, and while she could feel their curiosity, they didn’t push the issue. Wylie only nodded, removing one of his explosives from his pocket and wedging it between a few crates near the center of the room.

We’re clear to move ahead, Fitz said, and Dex seconded him, holding up his modified imparter. It appeared to connect directly into the camera feeds, where he could switch between different cameras and assess their surroundings.

As we move I’ll be placing the cameras each group is near on a loop, but try not to linger; it’s not a guarantee. Sophie nodded, and Dex passed his imparter near the door, which clicked unlocked.

The door pushed open, presumably by the now-invisible Biana, and they all filed out into the hall. It seemed to hit them all then, that this was truly happening; this was high stakes. At any moment they could be caught, but if they succeeded the entire place would hopefully fall on top of itself, burying these horrors permanently.

The halls were all the same murky, metal grey, as though trying to imitate the stone it had been carved from. Faint gouges could be seen in the walls, and the lights were flickering balefire, every few feet another ball of flame was placed, providing inconsistent illumination.

Sophie went left with Biana, Linh, Dex, and Maruca; Fitz went right with Keefe, Tam, Marella, and Wylie. They’d done their best to disperse abilities across the groups, but it still left each one lacking key assets. But that was unavoidable.

Biana--with Sophie’s help--ensured that their group remained visibly undetected, and she was grateful they had practiced moving in sync back home, otherwise, everyone would’ve tripped over each other. Systematically they made their way through the facility, not actively trying to hide evidence they’d been there but not going out of their way to make it obvious. The intention was that the plan would be executed and the place would be falling long before anyone would notice anything, so speed was their true ally.

Each explosive placed had the lump of anticipation in her throat rising steadily higher. This was truly happening. She kept reminding herself that in just an hour this would be over. However it ended, it would be over.

Footsteps sounded off to the side, and the group froze, pressing themselves into the corner of the room. Similar to all the others, it was stacked high with crates and racks of vials nearly up to hip height, organized this time by color. Sophie had placed her explosive underneath one of the vials, clearly visible to anyone who walked into the room.

Now they could hear voices as well, murmuring sharply as they came closer and closer to the room. Sophie could hear Biana’s pained gasps in the mindbubble, exerting extra energy to keep all five of them expertly hidden. Her fingers were clamped around Sophie’s own, nails digging into Sophie’s skin as she shook with the exertion.

There was a window in this particular room, so even a moment's slip could reveal them to the figures they watched stop in front of the glass. She memorized their faces, and could feel the others doing the same. A man with curling black hair and light brown skin, talking to someone much shorter than him, who looked to be no more than a child in a frilly gown, hair tangled and red. They were clearly having an argument of some sort, the girl stomping her foot dramatically.

Please don’t come in here. She wasn’t sure which of them had said it, but they’d all been thinking it. Biana would’ve if all her energy wasn’t going into keeping them invisible.

Is something wrong? Their anxiety must’ve been enough to send the message throughout the entirety of the mindbubble, not just their group, and Keefe’s concern echoed throughout their heads. When he got no response the others started chiming in, which at least meant they weren’t in any immediate danger if they had the luxury of checking in on them.

The nails dug further into her skin as the man outside the door sighed, swiping a keycard and unlocking the door, shoving it open with his shoulder as he continued to scold the girl.

“Absolutely you may not--” he began to say, one foot through the door frame, yet he still hadn’t looked, eyes on the girl. The voices in her head went silent, the adrenaline flooding her system drowning her alive until it was only that man and the explosive on the table, ever so visible.

He began to turn, eyes moving inside the room, door fully open as he stepped in.

The girl screamed. She screamed in frustration and stomped her feet and darted down the hallway, barely avoiding tripping on her elaborate gown.

The man’s attention whipped after her and he snarled something incoherent, stalking briskly after her, the door thudding shut behind him.

He left behind a thick silence, and it took a full thirty seconds before Biana’s grip on her loosened, a faint panting coming from the empty space near her as Biana swayed slightly, leaning heavily on whoever was next to her.

They lingered only a few more seconds, just barely enough for Biana to regain her composure. It was imperative they move on as quickly as possible; they had no clue when that man would be back, but it was certain he would return before they'd blown the building.

As they left she took a brief moment to hide the explosive, somewhere that wouldn’t be so easily visible for when that man returned. It would buy them time, hopefully.

Work quickly, Sophie transmitted, sending the message echoing towards the others. That had been much too close, and her urgency must’ve been obvious because she could feel the others perking up.

She could see her group’s minds lingering on that little girl, the one who’d thrown a tantrum and saved their lives. They’d known, theoretically, that there were people in this building, not just supplies and serums and whatever else created monsters, but they’d reasoned their way through the guilt. Anyone in the building was actively harming the planet and helping produce those creatures in some way; they were all complicit, so the world would be better if it were rid of them. That was something they could deal with if it saved their families, their friends stuck underground as the world above was ravaged.

That little girl was just that: a little girl. She couldn’t have been older than five; she played no part in these deadly games, yet she’d pay the same price.

Sophie hauled them through the hallways, ducking into a particularly shadowed corner away from the balefire light, the rest of her team slightly dazed. Someone's memory of that feisty girl lingered in the mindbubble, a silent question, hesitance. She could feel the other group somewhere else in the facility stop dead at the sight of her, dread tightening their stomachs as their minds cycled through the possibilities. How many just like her were hidden somewhere within these walls, unaware of the horror and grief surrounding them, coating the floors and washing through the halls; how many?

There’s nothing we can do about that right now, she transmitted to everyone, desperately trying to return them to their senses. They couldn’t do anything with everyone in such a state, clouded minds and stumbling limbs, and her panic alongside her upbringing fraught with human horror gave her enough lucidity to be the leading voice of reason. Perhaps they’d abandon the mission--although that was a last resort. They’d already gone to so much trouble--but they couldn’t do anything just standing about, practically begging to be caught.

Their minds sharpened, and someone gave her arm a reassuring squeeze, telling her they were there and they were okay. She exhaled quietly, glancing around anxiously to double-check they’d remained undetected.

Sophie was almost certain she could feel the heavy, fluttering pulses of her friends reverberating through the air as they continued on, jumping at each faint sound. Their near disaster had sombered the group, and they all appeared infinitely more aware of their surroundings, expecting someone to appear any moment.

They weren’t communicating exactly, but when they’d gotten down to their last two explosives she mindlessly reached out into the mindbubble, searching for Fitz and the others. She could feel rather than hear his response, although he seemed to be just as distracted. The others in her own group placed the last two as she scanned the surrounding space for thoughts; they made their way through the halls, peering through windows into the rooms--which were surprisingly abandoned. Apparently, the storage units were not a priority when it came to security.

Or they were guarded by something much more sinister than mere guards. The gouge marks in the walls seemed to leer at her, more ominous than they’d been a moment before.

It turned her stomach, thinking about just how expansive the facility was. It appeared infinite, spanning several stories above and a few below them, each floor impossibly tall and wide. They’d made their way down about two flights, targeting the structural supports of the building so everything would be crushed in the downfall. She intentionally kept herself from thinking about that little girl.

There’s the rendezvous room, Dex said, and Sophie shook herself internally, pulling the group forward. When they’d first come up with the plan, they’d intended to retrace their steps and exit the way they’d come, but it was deemed too high of a risk to sneak back up through the floors of the facility, and they had instead designated the room ahead as a meeting spot. It, too, had large enough vents to crawl through, which eventually made their way to an opening that should allow enough sunlight down for them to leap away with; although, if that didn’t work, they could always work their way through the vents until they’d completely retraced their steps.

Like electricity jolting through water, Fitz reached out to her, giving her a direct line to him to allow her to track his location more easily. The tether between them led to just around the corner up ahead. They were coming from opposite sides, and if you knew exactly what you were looking for you could see a large shadow creeping unnaturally against the wall, so crisp it was practically imperceptible despite her knowing where to look.

Sophie’s group made it to the door first, and Dex’s hands shook slightly as he crouched down to fiddle with the lock. He swiped his imparter across it, but nothing happened. She watched him work through his own eyes, peering through the mindbubble as he let them in. The tension grew as the others caught up to them, Tam’s shadows spreading over them slightly, enough so that Dex could disconnect from the chain, lighting the strain on Biana.

She could see him gnawing slightly at his lip as he tapped on his imparter in quick succession. Someone began breathing deeply and slowly, and she started to scan their surroundings again. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t let them be caught off guard.

Marella shook out her hands, sparks flickering between her fingers, growing with each passing moment that door refused to open. The veins in Wylie’s hands shone for a brief moment as he clenched his fist, the shimmer fading as he relaxed his fingers, glancing around.

There’s a different lock on this door, Dex mumbled, mental voice sounding faintly panicked, as though he were putting effort into sounding in control.

Yeah, no shit, Keefe grumbled, but there was a tension lacing the words that shouldn’t have been there.

Just give me...a...little longer. I think...I’ve got it.

Each pause was accentuated by a small tap as he lost his train of thought, fiddling with the locks. Cold dreaded settled itself in the center of her stomach, reaching dripping tentacles about and curling them around her insides, squeezing tight as the oxygen levels in the room seemed to dip-- and the problem didn’t appear to be the kind she could fix with a few deep breaths.

There was virtually nothing they could do but wait for him to finish, and it was agony to sit there, eyes frantically pacing the gouged walls hoping no one was approaching. Fitz’s mind reached across the mindbubble towards her, and she let him in, pooling their energy together to send pulsing waves of consciousness out around them, searching the nearby areas.

With each pulse that passed over them, the thoughts of their friends flared for a moment before dimming as it passed, but there was no one else nearby. No other flashes of thought near them that they could identify.

Wait.

There.

Fitz made a muffled sound of distress, and she could see the others’ heads snap up towards the both of them.

Shit, they transmitted. Opening their minds, they showed the others what they’d found--or rather, what was about to find them. A few halls away were thoughts, approaching quickly in their direction.

Holy shit they’re close, Biana breathed. And she was right. Normally, they’d be able to detect someone this close clear and simple, but there was a haze over their thoughts that she’d never seen before. It was as though they’d made their thoughts invisible, and she’d only barely been able to see through the deception.

There was nothing to be done about it, however, except fervently hope Dex could open that goddamn door before that person walked around the corner and saw the conglomeration of shadows and a door opening on its own. Which would happen in approximately...thirty seconds.

C’mon, I’m so close, Dex strained, mental voice shaking.

Footsteps echoed just a few moments away, and she began to bounce in place, squeezing her fingers so tight she was surprised the bones didn’t snap.

GOT IT, he cried, wrenching the door open as the lock unlatched. It was a race as everyone scrambled into the room, the footsteps and their hidden thoughts growing closer and closer each second. She couldn’t even think through the adrenaline, her arms shaking so badly there was nothing but the colors in front of her and her goal.

The door clicked shut behind them, just as the person rounded the corner.

They’d made it. Her breath came out in harsh pants, and none of the sounds around her made much sense, but she just couldn’t take her eyes off that door.

FUCK, Tam yelled, and as a force field flickered into place around them, Sophie finally turned around.

To find a room full of various guards, all of whom were staring back, malice and shock glimmering on their faces. But what was even worse were the caged creatures behind them.

Viscous pale syrup dripped from vats spread throughout the room, pulsing with thick spiderwebs of veins and mucous. Her stomach dropped as she tilted her head back to see them more fully, vaguely humanoid but distorted. Limbs stretched out like sticky candy, skin close to wreaking, appendages ending in blunt bone creeping its way out of the body. Hair floated around them in the thick substances, matted and black and shining.

They seemed dormant, but their appendages twitched in time to their thunderous heartbeat, sending waves throughout their liquid enclosures.

That was all she had the chance to see before the guards closest to them pulled out their melders.

Everything seemed to be moving at twice the speed it was supposed to be, throwing her completely off her rhythm.

Maruca stood in front of them, arms spread wide as she held a force-field around them all, Biana had let go of her, choosing to spend her energy in a fight rather than vanishing them, and it was as they broke contact that she realized just how much of her energy Biana had taken.

She swayed on her feet for a brief moment, casting out her mind and trying to get a sense of how many there were in this room that appeared infinite.

Rows of vats spread farther than she could see, although not all seemed to be occupied. None of them should’ve been. They’d gone out of their way to ensure they’d stay far away from any creatures, no matter the potential benefits. There was nothing that could be done against them.

Maruca grunted as pangs clattered against the force field, trying to find a way through. Sophie’s breathing quickened as she realized she couldn’t feel the presence of anyone in the room. It was although she was entirely alone. She couldn’t feel Fitz next to her, or anyone under the force field, and she couldn’t detect anyone outside of it.

There was an ominous silence, despite the shouts of the people around her. Security personnel were murmuring into communication devices, alerting others of a “disturbance in sector 34, room B12.” But no one in her group said a word. They’d learned not to. They spoke in the mindspace however, hysterical and screaming.

This was not the room they were supposed to be in.

There was nothing they could do as warning lights began to flash around them, strobing effects searing her eyes as alarm bells tolled, shrill and vibrating.

It couldn’t have been more than five seconds since they’d walked through that door.

She steeled herself, drawing on that knot of power she kept stored beneath her ribs, feeling the energy channel from her chest towards her head, building and building until almost painful. But she couldn’t release it. She couldn’t attack through the force field, and Maruca couldn’t drop it because then those melders would hit them head-on and they couldn’t withstand that.

Everyone else was in a similar predicament.

Then it got worse.

She didn’t think it could get worse.

How could it get worse?

The creature in the tank seemed to be reacting to either the lights or the sounds--it didn’t really matter which. What mattered was that it was moving; it was opening its gaping maw and screaming within that tank, air bubbles shooting their way towards the ceiling and lingering, a never-ending stream as its body began to buck and thrash sporadically, sharp limbs colliding with glass.

The cylindrical vat cracked, a spiderweb of broken veins spreading from the point of impact, growing with each collision as it began pounding against the glass.

The muffled sounds it made were absolutely horrible, and she slapped her palms over her ears, grimacing. But what truly stopped her heart was the sound of falling glass, wet and raining down, clattering about and bouncing off the force field.

Because now the creature was loose.

The figures who had been attacking them now swore, looking back and forth between each other before darting out of the room; their weapons still raised despite them being little threat beneath their bubble.

The door latched behind them, and Sophie seemed to come to the horrifying reality at the same time as the others.

They had no way out of this room.

SCATTER! Maruca screamed as she dropped the force field, and everyone complied, darting around the room, trying to get out of the way, hoping hoping hoping that creature wasn’t the exceptionally violent kind, and that it would leave them alone.

All of the creatures they’d encountered so far had been aggressive in some way or another--some simply left you alone unless you got close, others would attack on sight. They’d started a notebook to keep track of all the kinds they knew about, but this one was entirely new.

The only solace that could be found was that it seemed to be the only one that escaped its tank, the others appearing undisturbed.

Watching it from behind a stack of crates, Sophie could see it growing more and more agitated, banging its appendages against what seemed to be its head in distress, a warbled screech piercing the air as it began to flail about.

She ducked at the distinct sound of tables and boxes being crushed as the creature stumbled, tearing at the ground. She began to frantically search the room, looking for something--anything--that could help them at all. There had to be another exit, there had to be something they could do.

Her eyes met Keefe’s across the room, and for the strangest moment, she wasn’t concerned about the creature killing them all, or the guards capturing them and holding them hostage, or their explosives going off when they were still in the building. She was just worried he could feel her panic and it would be too overwhelming for him to concentrate.

Wait.

That was it.

Her mind clicked the pieces together and she sank to the floor, pressing her back against the shelves embedded in the wall behind her, putting her fingers to her temples. The creature was overwhelmed and overstimulated, and it was reacting poorly. She’d never tried to communicate with or inflict on any of the creatures before...but she’d never had a reason to.

She just hoped it would work.

Using that gathered energy, she reached out towards the creature, a mental hand fumbling in the dark. But it appeared she couldn’t...find it. There was just...nothingness...wherever she reached.

Opening her eyes slightly, she squinted up at the creature, which was still stumbling around in response to the overstimulation. The visual helped her narrow in on its mind, and as she reached for it she began to realize... its mind was the silence. She hadn’t been able to detect the mind of the people in the room or her friends because this creature’s mind was so incredibly silent; it broadcasted a blanket over everyone nearby.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING, someone hissed into the mindbubble. But she was so far gone that it barely registered as more than a gentle, far-off whisper.

Desperately trying to control herself, Sophie began bringing forward peaceful, calmer memories; she had to reach further back than she’d expected; life hadn’t been particularly relaxing as of late. Finally, when her head seemed to overflow with calming vibes, she sent them out like a shockwave around her, a ripple in the empty.

Anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention could identify the exact moment the wave hit the creature. Its spine went rigid, snapping straight as its head jerked up, their gazes meeting. Each noise fizzled out in the same instant. No one dared breath in that poignant silence, the space almost empty now, and for the briefest moment, she wished that it weren’t so empty, so quiet.

Her wish was answered.

There was no warning as the creature’s head cocked to the side, staring her down with those empty, glistening black eyes, no warning as it lunged towards her.

Well FUCK, was the only thought in her head as it careened towards her, stumbling as though it’d only learned to walk that day, which it might have.

Its movements were uncoordinated, but that didn’t make them any less violent as the tables around them crashed into each other as it crashed onto all limbs, moving with such speed it could cross the room in less than a blink.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Her friends were screaming, but she couldn’t make a sound. Her eyelids were fluttering shut as that suffocating silence pressed in closer and closer.

The creature was charging straight towards her and she couldn’t think. It lost its balance, coming down hard on top of her, but its limbs were too long to crush her, and instead, it was crashing into the shelves behind her and crushing glass and breaking rock and its own bones and she. Couldn’t. Think.

Crystal shattered behind her as the shelves were wrenched from the walls, the creature desperately trying to right itself, shrieking that inhuman sound. Vials began to rain down behind her, crashing on the hard floor.

The noxious scents of the spilling bottles began to flood the room, visible gases blooming from where the colors mixed, sizzling and bubbling on the floor. The creature bucked its head, scrambling away, limbs bashing the floor as it dashed far, far away into the hollows of the room.

The silence was back, but this time it was accompanied by fumes and watering eyes as everyone pushed to their feet, stumbling and coughing.

We havetoget...Dex began, eyeing the frothing liquids….out ofhere. He was standing so far away. How had he gotten there? She might’ve been nodding her head, agreeing with him, but without the adrenaline, everything was...so slow...and the floor seemed liquid and plush.

She couldn’t see who began coughing, their whole body wracked in a fit as the vapors became so thick she couldn’t see. It occurred to her too late to try holding her breath, her eyelids fluttering as she stumbled a few steps, but she didn’t actually know where she was going.

A thud sounded behind her, and she turned, the room seeming to lag as she did so. Biana. It had been...Biana. She’d made the sound. Her body was crumpled on the ground, unconscious. That should’ve sent a spike of alarm through her, telling her to move. To go. Get out.

But she couldn’t think. And the others quickly followed, a series of thuds echoing throughout the space as one by one, they succumbed to the fumes.

Sophie was still standing, and she briefly made eye contact with Dex--why was he so far--watching him fumble with his imparter. An explosive rumbling sounded in the distance, growing stronger and closer with each moment her eyes remained open. She was upright only long enough to see Dex fall before she felt her muscles give, and she crashed down hard.

Wings AU Taglist:

@loudnerdfest @rainbowtay-11 @cadence-talle @pyrokinetic-loser @ahecktonoffandomsinoneblog @itstiger720 @loverofallthingssmart  @cowboypossume @jolieharkness @wings-of-hell-and-beyond @shellyseashell @blossomjenniie  @imaramennoodle @booknerdddddd @akotlcblog

[illyrian-lover-flower]

My little mischievous partner ~ part 4

To say Elain was not tense, the moment these words left Azriels sinful mouth, would have been a lie. 

Everything in her screamed at her to just sit and wait. Wait for another compliment that would come free, from all the hidden words within the spymaster. 

Sitting there, like a little fawn spotted by the hunter, she did not dare to move a muscle, her breath cought in her lungs as she looked into his eyes. 

His oh so beautiful eyes that most often spoke for him. 

No words necessary.

But somehow she wished he would have spoken out every naughty thought that ran through his mind as he watched her - with burning hazel eyes. 

A desire readable she could have bet, would make her blush up to the tip of her pointed ears. 

A slight blush already high on her cheeks. “What?” was all she whispered as she kept her gaze fixed on her friend, who had somehow ,within this fateful evening, become more than that. 

Azriel only kept silent, as color raised on his tan cheeks too. He was not used to this - that she could tell. 

It was rare for him to give her compliments about her looks. Every word that somehow said something about her apperance seemed like it had to wrestle free from deep within him.

A complimet about her cooking or her gardening a normal thing. He said it almost as often as he breathed. 

But there laid no word, about her garden or her cooking, on his tongue, no the swirl of words that left his mouth, came from deep within him. Every word sounding like a pure sin, as it escaped, his husky voice, like spilling water:  

“I love your eyes as much as I love the night sky, there is always a hopeful shimmer inside them - like the stars itself, when you infect others with your happiness. I love how your voice leaves a taste, as sweet as honey, on my tongue when I listen to you. I love how the feeling of your skin made mine flame up with desire.”

His breath hitched, before those sinful final words left his mouth, “I just love what you do to me and yet here I am, afraid that you might hate what I do to you.” 

His words were only a mere whisper, but it was enough for Elain soar up high.  Only a few words of him triggering a reaction from her. A reaction as fierce as a storm, as she shoot up to her feet- a determind look burning in her oh so soft eyes, as she turned off the silver water-tap. 

The streaming sound of running water, silenced- the moment she turned it down. She felt Azriels surprised look on her. His hazel eyes burning as he watched her every movement - his own going completly stiff, but all she heared from him, was a silent intake of sharp air. 

She felt his hot gaze - wandering upside down her body, as she ripped those grey clothes off of her. 

Pulling the grey harems pants down, with a scowl on her face, while she fumbled to get the, form fitting grey top with the puffy chiffon sleves, off. In the progress she managed to ripp those anoying sleves down. 

The sound of tearing seams, filling the silent air, as she was already bussy fumbling with the last pieces of clothing, that hid the most luscious parts of her delicate body. 

And before she could even manage to turn and have second doubts, she uncovered herself. 

Standing, only for a brief moment, in all her nude glory infront of the Shadowsinger - who seemed surprised at her bold behaviour. But the surprise fleed from his gaze as soon as it came, a burning fire within him, taking a hungered place in his eyes, as molten ember threatened to burn her with just a look. 

Those burning eyes, that used every second of that brief moment, wandering her entire body up and down.    

Taking in, with a lick of his lips, her sun kissed skin on her arms and shoulders, her slightly curved hips, the rosy sight of her peaked nippls on the soft mounds of her breasts. The color of them alone, as lovely as any rose that bloomed in her garden.

It took all of his restain to not jump out of the water and claim these mounds then and there, but she was faster. 

While Azriel was bussy, keeping every muscle of his body strained, to not pounce at her any moment - she jumped into the water. 

The impact of her body on his, took his breath away - along with some of the hot water around them. A spilling fountain as she had him underneith her.

Oh and how his breath hitched as he was eye to eye, with this flower growing godess. A fire burning in her doe eyes as she peered down on him, her delicate arms braced at either side of his face, on the tube. 

It was pure instinct.

His body reacted on its own as he settled her hips between his legs, a deep rumbling growel escaping both of their lunges as their skin met, their burning eyes never leaving the face of the other.

The burning feeling, of each others naked skin on theirs, making them, both, tremble from desire -igniting an stomach churning fire, deep within them.

A heaven and hell all the same - though they could end hell soon. Let the fire die down, or soar to life, as they would unite. It would only be a push - for each of them, but neither dared to move. 

Stiff as two gods crafted statues, did they lie there in the warm water. Both, completly unable to breath as they, looked at each other. Only the bobing of Elains adams apple, pulled the two out of their trance. 

Air suddenly finding its way back into Azriels lunges as he inhaled sharply, his broad chest rising to meet with hers. 

The silence shazzering around them into a million pieces, as Elains soft voice echoed through the dark room. 

With those sinful soft lips of hers on his, did she not only shatter the silence, but also his slfretrain, as she repeated the words he spoke to her only seconds ago. “I love what you do to me.” 

The oh so mighty shadowsinger, was complete molten wax between her delicate hands, as they reached in the water for his own - dragging them up to her chest.

Where her steady heartbeat thumped under that silky mound of hers. The temptation, to lean in and taste this forbidden fruit of hers, strong - but he knew why Elain had taken his caloused hand.

Knew why she showed him the stark contrast of their skins - his red burned flesh against her pale skin. His rough hand laid across a place of her body where no sunshine touched her. He was the first to touch, the rosy, white spot of skin. 

She showed him, with a ragged breath and molten brown eyes - how much she loved him. He felt it - every fiber of his being thumping with the same rhythm as her heartbeat. 

She loved him. And he - he loved her. 

All her sweet laughs in the garden, the clouds of her skirts - that trailed behind her- as she chased through her garden. 

He would never get tired of her sweet, adorable smile when she kneaded the dough of a bread - flour smeared all over her pale face , while her lips curved into a bright smile, both her hands captured in a bowel infront of her.

She would wave at him, often, when she saw him standing in the threshold to the kitchen - forgeting about her in dough covered hands. 

More than once had a dough already met its end like that. Flying around in the kitchen, after she had tried to caputer the heavy, stiky mass from her fingers. 

And he - Azriel would stand there, chukle at her clumsiness and help her afterwards with a new dough. Spending as much time with her as he could offer.

Oh and how he loved these times, loved their silent conversations in the kitchen.

But he loved this more. 

Her lips singing to his, as they pillowed his own reddened ones. Her own a plush rosy pillow as she pulled away from him, for a heavy breathe, before they both dived in again. 

The moment the two needed to catch air - far too long for the taste of the two of them. 

That dive into her, was something he would never forget. A dive into her love. 

And it cought him, soft as any pillow, did he land in her affection and she in his. 

The memory, of her tongue in his mouth, the feeling of her hands in his black,silky hair and her chest pressed agains his own heated one, sending a soaring warmth through him, as she embraced him.

Their playing tongues having a conversation, both could not hold out loud. 

It all felt like eternity. A heavenly long, eternity as nothing, but their lust filled pants and the splashing of water, filled the silent bathroom. The hue of the fullmoon and his shadows - the only beings that watched them.

Watched them in a flaring dance of light and darkness, as they seemed to dance in the knowledge, of a uniting of night and day. 

But they did not unite that night - though it was enough for the two of them.

Enough, that both of them knew they would still have tomorrow night for this. 

Tomorrow night, in which they could exlpore eachothers bodys, once again anew.

Tonight it was about something else. Something so entirly else, both did not know how to voice it. The heat of their speaking skins, smothing they could write a book with, while it was harder to let this bond - this marked thing between- them speak.

So it was silence that first enveloped them, as they calmed down, preparing for the words that were to come, sitting there for maybe ten, maybe twenty, minutes - washing each other, both body and soul. 

It was calm.

The raging inferno having cooled down along with the, barely remaining, water. But they did not care, as they both sat there.

Azriels back was pressed against the cool rim of the porcelain tube - his wings were drapped around his and Elains naked frame, that sat between his legs, and his arms held her. 

Held her so close that it seemed like they wanted to become one, never letting go of her. 

The sight of her, wet hair - a dark brown now- sticking to her back and his chest made his heart swell. He loved her and Azriel showed her just that as he leaned down and pressed kiss after kiss on her wet crest - each time a murmured ‘I love you’ on his soft lips as he moved down and down and down.

Closer to the nap of her neck. 

He did not realize where his trail of kisses went - all he knew was that the inclination, of Elains head, made him crazy. 

Her scent flared at him as she beared her sensetive flesh to him. 

His nosethrils flared at her flowery scent, his brain was turning blank as he swallowed hard. “Elain...” 

But she only nodded. 

She did not mind it was him, even seemed happy with the imagination that it would be him that claimed her. 

That his sharp teeth, would mark her for eternity. 

His breath fogged against her skin as he slowly careased her skin with his canine teeth, but he did not bit. 

Though the sensation of his teeth, once again on her skin, did not make her feel lighter.

No,he only created a storm of emotions, as his caloused hands he slowly lifted her and her amrs up. His sinful sweet mouth, loving each part of her skin with a trail of kisses. A wet lick even, macking its way across her left shoulder blade moved to her left shoulder blade. 

Elain shivered under the delight he caused her. It had her throwing her head back as a growel escaped her thightly closed lips. 

But it was this quiet, sinful whiper -as his teeth sunk into the flesh around her ripcage - just below her golden, sweet heart - he would never forget. 

The taste of her blood on his tongue, sending him into a delerium he could never return from.

Never would he be able to unwrap from the flowery seer again. 

And never was he more glad about it than now.

****

The next morning, however, was not as sweet as their night. 

His wake up call, a trail of kisses up his jaw line - warmed his heart, as well as her sweet lucious naked body wrapped in his, but that definetly did not count for his two idiot brothers - that layed as shivering bundles on the couch, still fast asleep. 

The spymaster heaved a sigh at the sight, searching for comfort in the ceiling as he looked up at it. A silent plea on his lips ‘Mother help us all.’

“What is it?” whispered Elain as she appeared from behind him. Her silent stepps unheared, on the white staircase, his shadows not even bothering to anounce her arrival to him. 

Which made it all the easier for her to sneak up on him - closing her arms from behind, as good as she could, around his bulky frame - while her face was burried between the stems of his wings. 

A smile, as soft as the first rays of sunshine, graced his features as he layed one of his hands on her delicate one, that rested over his thumping heartbeat. 

“It’s nothing much. I just think we scared the crap out of these two.” 

With a mocking gesture, did he point to the two strongest ,shivering, warriors of the Night court. Elain smiled, too, as she stepped around him, and took in the rare sight - of the two mightyest warriors - shivering like the leafes of a tree in a storm. A smugg smile on her lips “What do you think would Helion give us, if we showed him this picture?” 

Azriel needed to stiffle his laughter at this and pulled her into his side tackeling her with kisses as he did so, his words only murmured against the top of her head “I think he would pull down the sun for you and present it to you on a silver plattern.” 

Elain squealed in a silent delight as she wriggled around in his arms, trying her best to capture, this sinful mouth of his, with her own. Her eyes shining as bright as the sun itself as she locked them with his “I think I don’t need Helion to do this for me.”

And it was pure male pride that made his heart swell, knowing well - what her words indicated.

But it was the sharp exceal of air, from her, that made him made his heart beat stop for a second, looking down on her in worry as she slowly rubbed the sore spot  on her left ribcage- where he bit her. His bulky arms having squeezed her accidently abith too thight.

“How is it doing?” 

She only smiled up at him. “It’s fine - nothing to worry about.” Azriel only nodded, but worry still lined his face. 

While Elains seemed to radiate off love. Love and adoration - only directed at him. 

And he could not help himself, could not help that pull towards her, as he claimed her mouth. She sighed in reliefe as he finally fullfilled her wish. 

A love drunken smile, on both of their plush lips, as they danced with each other. 

Only the loud bang of the door prevented them from further trouble. 

The two love drunken souls parted with a hurried step, while the two frightened souls, under the mountain of blankets, sat up in a hurry. 

Fear lining their features as they, both, weaponized themselfs with a pillow. Sleep touseled hair sticking out from each of the two heads. 

Both, Azriel and Elain, had to bite their tongues to stiffle their laughter at the sight. Their shoulders still shaink visibly from laughter, as Mor lurched into the room, a bottle of wine ,still, in Mors manicured hands. 

“Hello everyone.” was all she slured - before she too, moved to the couch. Fell over the sofa lean and landed snoring, on the two boys - neither of them dared to move as Feyre, too, staggered into the room. Strooding past Azriel and Elain too, as she flung herself on Mor. 

Rhys and Cassian were still shivering bundles, now crushed under these two drunken, mighty females, but they soon found sleep again. Probably better than without them. 

The secure safeness of their family around them. 

And Elain and Azriel stood there. Arms crossed over their chests and with raised eyebrows. A sigh escaping both of them, at the same time, as they took in the sight of the four idiots that were their lovely family. 

Piled up on the couch - two of them snoring happily while two were a frightened mess.

But both could not deny the warmth, each of them felt spreading through their chest, as they looked at them. Elains voice only a mere whisper as she spoke: “Will you help me with the lunch? I don’t asume that we will have breakfest today.” 

Azriel could only nod, the thought, that he knew what they could eat for breakfest, stuck in the back of his head. 

Maybe for dessert today evening.  

He already licked his lips in anticipation, on what was to come, as he trailed behind Elain into the kitchen. 

Their usual - in usion working atmosphere, spreading through the air - like the love they felt for each other, in their chests. 

And as they worked, quietly and trapped in their own world -Azriel did not feel like an intruder anymore. 

Did not feel like a dark being, that did not belong into the radiant suroundings of the bright kitchen - that were fully Elains kingdome. 

He felt at peace. 

And that peace only increased, as after hours of work - Elain walked past him, putting a lingering kiss on his shirt, directly on his left shoulder, just above the marking she had set yesterday - making sure that his was healing as well as hers. 

Never did he feel that complete. 

Even his family could not shake at that pillar, that was his love, for the sweet seer next to him - as they both sat down at the long table. 

Their family slowly started to fill into the room, at the smell of roasted bacon - the toast, the beans and the fried eggs also lined on the table. Each of the groaning members sat down to eat their brunch in silence. 

Elain and Azriel, though they had the most eventful night, seemingly the only fully woken beings. 

Cassian and Rhys groaned, as they most likely remebered the pictures of ‘Armen’ and ‘Varian’ from last night - while the cause of Mors and Feyres groans was a headache. 

Each of them tired out from their night.

“What have you two been doing that you look so horrible?” questioned Mor suddenly, Rhys and Cassian. No one seemed to care that it were the seer and the shadowsinger, that chocked on their food.

Rhys only groaned as he rubbed his tired eyes “Feyre darling?” “Yes.” “We are moving to a new bedroom.” 

Feyres heavy tiredness lifted, just for a moment, her attention fully fixed on her mate “And why is that?” 

Azriel almost felt sorry for his brother, as he watched him cringe, but the empahsis layed on almost.

And it seemed like the seer shared his opinion, as they both, watched his brothers explain, with an ebarressing amount of detail, the whole scenario from yesterday. 

Mor was laying flat on the table, as she hammered with her fist against the dark table top over and over again. Tears of laughter streaming down her face as she held her aching stomach. Feyre just sat wide eyed and with a shaink head on her chair, pale as a white bed sheet. 

A bed sheet she probably saw stained and crumbled, behind her inner eye, as she imagined what Amren and Varian had done.

While Cassian and Rhys looked like they wanted to hide under the table and even far below that. 

Neither of their family members noticed the arrival of the old ancient female, that watched with a raised brow, a cackling Morrigian. A Feyre who seemed to be in trance, an Rhys and Cassian who were the smallest they could ever made themselfs - all the while Azriel and Elain sat perfectly stiff as ever, eating the final rests of their brunch in silence.

“What is going on here?” 

Their radiant friend, of a golden female, turned her attention to Amren and noted with a wide smirk on her red lips “And did you have fun with Varian last night?” 

Amren only growled “I would not know, why this is any of your business!” 

Before the tiny female could bubble over with her temper - Feyre interupted the ancient female, with a mere whisper of her voice  “It is our business, if you decide to have your fun in Rhys and my bedroom.” 

The silver eyes, of the ancient female,brimmed for a short moment with surprise before a lazy smirk was displayed on her young face. 

Like a cat, lazy and with swirling steps, did she approach her prey. A wide devilish smirk on her lips as she moved to Azriel and Elain - the attention of the whole Inner Circle laying on her petite shoulders, as she settled behind both of their chairs. 

Her claw like hands, shooting to the front, clapped around a shoulder of each one. A shiver wrecking both of their spines, as she leaned in to whisper something to them - but only Elain. “So that’s where my lipstick vanished to.” 

Color drained from the seers face. Amrens words were still too quiet for anyone, expect her and Azriel to hear, but as she lazyly trudged to her seat - loading her own plate with a bit of roasted bacon, she was sure to make that Elain left the table roasted. 

“If you would have just told me, what you needed it for, I would have lend it to you.” 

The seer only cleared her throat, pretending to have not heared the lazy words of the ancient female - diracting the attention rather to someone else that was not in the room. 

“Where have you left Nesta at?” Feyre paled at the question “Oh no,...” but Mor only waved her delicate hand at her in a calming way “Don’t worry about it. Rita had dragged her into one of her spare rooms after she threatened the bartender with an empty bottle of whisky.” 

Cassian snorted at the behaviour of his mate, before he dug into his brunch again, clearly pleased with what Nesta had done.

While Feyre only heaved a sigh. She already dreaded that she had forgoten her oldest sister somewhere in Velaris. Mothers knows where this could have been - this city was too huge for a lone drunken female. 

“So what were you saying?” were the cursed words, with which Mor brough the attention back to the black haired female. 

She only shrugged, that devilish smirk still displayed on her lips, as she pointed her fork at both Azriel and Elain. 

“I hadn’t known you two had it in you.” 

And with that - brunch was over. Cassian chocked on his food, while Rhys and Feyre just looked at them - mouth wide open in shock and disbelief and Mor was howling again.

Her melodic lough turning loud and screechy with every passing minute she looked into the faces of her family. 

Amren knew ecactly what an uproar she would create. 

And she did not regret it, as she saw how the - oh so cold- Spymaster showed more emotions than he did over centuries of living. 

Though it were still no words that spoke for him.

It was the wing - he drapped over the sweet flower grower, that tried to hide herself in the blackness as well as she could - that spoke millions of words. The swirling shadows of the spymaster wrapping around her thighter with each passing minute - minutes in which his family was slowly able to regein back their composure. 

Mor still wringing for air though - and even though she had struggles with her breathing, she was able to fix her attention on Azriel the moment he stood up. Six pairs of eyes pearing up at his motionless, blushing face. 

Though he did not stand long alone. 

It was the move of a dragon, who protected his princess, as he pulled the seer up. Cradeling her against his chest like a new born baby, as he slowly walked to the wide exit of the room. 

Elains baffled eyes fixed on his tense features as his family watched him walk, with flared wings. 

The calmness that layed in his words, as he peared over his shoulder, a last time, was stark in contrast to the things that were to come. 

“Now that you know, we would like to have our peace.” 

The room fell silent. Even Amren was baffled as she watched him walk away, the sweet giggle of the seer for a long time the only thing heared. 

It was only after, they had long left, that the room fell in uproar again. Amren the only one that prosted, with her bacon loaded fork, to the doorframe - through which the mighty Shadowsinger walked with his fawn.

_______________________________________________________________

So this was part four, of the originaly planed one-shot, what do you think? 

I hope it was to your liking @tomtenadia​, though I know it has already been quiet some time since the conversation in which the idea bloomed. I also had originaly planed to put in the part with the boodgy man, but I had never seen the movie and just the few googled pictures gave me the creeps. I should have mentioned that I am a little scarey cat 😅

I also want to apologize if the smut wasn’t that smooth - it was my first time writing something like that. Though I must say I did enjoy writing the brunch scene - I hope it made you laugh as much as it made me. 

Have a lovely day/night

________________________________________________________________

Taglist( please contact me if you want to be added or removed):

@heirofthrnightcourt004​

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The House that Guilt Built

What is it when something is neither dream nor reality? Sometimes, you dream something so vivid that you cannot distinguish it from reality. Other times, reality is so strange that it makes you wonder if you aren’t dreaming.

Then there’s that space in between.

A space more narrow than most would have you believe. A space encapsulated in a singular place, connecting to our world through several innocuous junctions, with the space in between bleeding through and infecting our world. Or with ours infecting it. Truly, that place was powerful enough to blur any lines.

Such was the nature of the House.

When Kevin stepped inside, everything that made sense decided to cease doing so. His injuries stopped hurting. The alabaster statuette in his hand now fell apart. In disbelief, he watched its shape—resembling a Franciscan monk, kneeling, praying—slip through his fingers. The shape turned to chunks, the chunks to dust, trickling and raining down onto the hard wooden floor in gentle, painfully slow flurries of dust.

There was something oddly familiar about the floor but he could not yet place it. Or his mind kept pushing it back into the recesses of his mind before he could grasp it.

A man sat on a simple stool at the end of the room. In his sixties, bald, with silver stubble on his face, dressed in jeans and a verdant green sweater. Stoic, unmoving. Staring at Kevin from the opposite end of the chamber.

It took him a dozen or a thousand steps to traverse the windowless room, from one door to the next. The man sitting there next to the next door stared at him the whole time, awaiting his arrival with eerie patience.

But that man was no mere man. He was either an agent of the House. Or a demon.

There was nothing in between that.

The door slammed shut behind Kevin, but he did not bother to look. The door he exited from and the door he entered into this Otherworld were not the same, although the statuette had helped bridge the veil between them. A shame about the Artifact, but he had to stop Michael before Michael could unravel reality completely. And to stop Michael, he had to defeat him somehow—just killing him would not do the trick. And to defeat him, Kevin had to find Kim.

Kim screwed up something on her most recent ritual and it had landed her here somehow. Trapped in the House where your world was turned upside down. Where the walls challenged all your beliefs, and the doors opened to the darkest abysses in one’s own soul. And when—if—this House did deign to spit you back out, you would be changed.

Sometimes for the worse. Sometimes broken. A vegetable, trapped in a loop within your own mind. A psyche shattered by the House.

Those dozen steps that it took to cross through this room indeed felt like one thousand instead. The room seemed less like a room, and more like a corridor, stretching infinitely to unsettle any visitors. Or maybe it only did so for Kevin. His footsteps tapped loudly against the wooden floor, echoes that pierced an otherwise deafening silence. Each of them a little knife, plunged into the back of his head, piercing and painful and trying to get him to remember something. Something he refused to remember.

Kevin finally arrived by the man on the stool. That mysterious man never budged. Never blinked. Just stared at Kevin approaching him all the while.

“You will need these,” said the man on the stool in a silky and soft voice. Kevin had expected something gravelly or burly.

The man on the stool did nothing to follow up on that. He sat there, motionlessly. As if waiting for Kevin to act first. Kevin shifted his weight uncomfortably, waiting for the man to do something else. Anything.

“What will I need?” he asked the man on the stool.

He was holding out something to him. When Kevin looked down to inspect it, he realized that it was he who was presenting the something to the man on the stool, rather than the other way around. Thus was the House.

In his hand, Kevin offered a colorless pair of latex gloves, much like the ones a surgeon would wear in a hospital. They felt strange in between his fingers. Smooth, rubbery, silky—like the voice.

“No, I think you should keep them,” said the man on the stool.

Or had Kevin said it to him?

Kevin slipped the gloves on, letting the rubber-banded ends snap into place once the material snugly hugged his fingers and hands. He splayed and wiggled his fingers, getting used to the gloves within the blink of an eye. Still, the man on the stool never blinked. Just peered into Kevin’s soul. What darkness might he see there?

“They are not enough,” said the man. “You will also need a hammer and coins.”

Kevin’s nostrils flared as he focused. He realized he had to concentrate and not fall victim to the maddening void that permeated this place.

“Where can I find a hammer and coins?”

“Ask your grandfather,” said the man. He smiled widely and laughed, displaying a set of rotten teeth. The stench of his breath hit Kevin from several steps away. But the smile never reached his eyes. The laughter rang with a sinister echo.

Kevin’s grandfather was long dead. When he used to play in his band, The Lost Number—before he met Michael, before he learned how to work real magick—Kevin used to steal things and money from the old geezer to fund his drug addiction. All old history, but all things that came back to haunt him, every now and then.

And even after this strange man’s laughter ceased, and his face fell into a stoic, expressionless mask once more, the hairs still stood up straight on the back of Kevin’s neck. He knew what the House could do. Whatever haunted him in the real world could take shape here. It could draw from the writhing bodies of those lost inside of it, and make those inner demons assume a fleshly form.

The memory of those gnarled, spindly fingers—digging into his shoulder or leaving a stinging red mark on his face—flared up. He pushed it right back down, but something fell and landed—something audible—in the distance. A loud thud, like something landed in the house. Something weighty. Maybe dangerous.

Kevin shrugged it off, shrugged on the outside, and replied, “I need one thing, and one thing only.”

The man on the stool continued to stare at him but something about the intensity in his gaze shifted. Made the blood curdle in Kevin’s veins.

“That thing is not here. The curtains are made of the torn fabric of children’s laughter. You cannot have that thing,” said the doorman.

Contrary to the stinging sensation his words left behind in Kevin’s mind, the voice of the man on the stool remained calm and pleasant. He then pointed to the door behind him. As if he was inviting Kevin to enter.

Kevin kept his eyes trained on the doorman and the man on the stool stared back at him. He then turned to grab the doorknob on the red doors. Brass, smooth, cold; even through the thin layer of the latex gloves.

As he stepped into the next chamber, he saw from the corner of his eye that someone else sat on the stool now. A taller figure, not sitting at all. Ominous, leering. Familiar and threatening at the same time. Looming right behind him. Creeping closer. Carrying a stench like sweet rotten fruit. Gnarled, wrinkly fingers. Bright white dentures, peeking out from behind a hungry grin.

Then separated as Kevin slammed the door shut behind himself, shunting that awful presence back into the waiting room.

This second room in the House resembled the entry hall of a large mansion. Four sets of curved stairs, all blanketed in stunningly vibrant red carpets, swept their way up to a balcony overlooking the ground floor. Dozens, no—hundreds—of doors lined the walls of this room on every level. Whispers spilled from the cracks between the frames and the doors proper. Screams, too, carried through them, muffled by distance and layers of brass and wood and bruised skin turned to stone.

Throughout the room, in front of every support beam and every pillar, stood pearly-white statues, all beautiful and artistic like those fashioned by ancient Greek artists, yet as flawless and shiny as if they had been sculpted just a single day ago. Some winged, some horned, some both. Some held weapons, others fruit. One even carried a large trout in its hands.

A constant, reverberating electric buzz hummed in the air. The huge hall thrummed with history and uncertainty blending together.

The hub of the House.

Beyond all these doors, lost souls wandered without hope of egress. Strange things always hiding from sight dwelt here, feeding on human hope, dreams, sadness, anger, madness, and fear. Eyes, unblinking, watched. Whispers promised change—demanded it—and only minds of the strongest resolve could even dare to resist.

While Kevin pondered the nature of this dangerous abode, struggling to ignore the droning hypnotic hum of electricity all around, straining to focus on sensing which door to choose, one of the portals opened on its own.

Light flooded from it, obscuring sight of whatever chamber was beyond it.

And Kim ran from that door. Burst through. Her sneakers slapped against the cold hard marble floors. Full sprint, like her worst nightmare was following her right at her heels. Nothing actually followed, at least nothing that Kevin could see.

Her gaze swept over him but she saw through him, like he was made of thin air. She shot a glance behind herself but continued running like a bat out of hell.

Kevin raised a hand and called out to her. But she did not respond and he did not expect her to. At least not yet.

She ripped open a different door and charged through. That door slammed shut behind her within seconds, without a human hand present to close it. Then the door she had entered the hall by followed suit. Both slams still echoed in Kevin’s ears. He decided against trying either of those doors—too dangerous. Both of them bore strange symbols; one a spiral shape crudely carved into the wood at eye level, the other covered in alien-looking runes that did not belong on Earth, scorched into the wood, always blurring when he tried to focus his sights on them.

This was going to be tough. A sharp pain surged through his jaw and his stomach rumbled.

How long had he been here, anyway? It could have been minutes. Or it could have been years already. It reminded him of the old folk tales of the fairy world. He dismissed that thought, though. He had to because there was no way he would accept losing years in here. Losing himself in here.

As soon as he got a good feeling about another door, he hesitated. He had used that door before—it was just like a door in his grandfather’s house. Pencil marks and numbers on the frame indicated how the old man used to measure the height of Kevin’s mother. Sounds of agony—not even screams—echoed in Kevin’s mind. Groaning. Wet, slapping. Skin on skin.

Gritted teeth. Bleeding gums.

He turned from the door, dispelled those half-shaped memories. The more he allowed them to take shape, the more menacing they would become.

Scratching came from another door. At first, soft, from down low, like a kitten scratching at the wood. Then higher, and more fierce. Like claws of a beast. Or fingernails of a grown man. An old man. A man being strangled to death, struggling to call for help, barely managing to grab the doorknob, never quite reaching it.

Getting what he deserved.

Kevin stroked his own neck and had trouble swallowing.

He had to find Kim quickly. The perils of the House only grew in time. He could feel its hunger swelling at the same rate as the dark memories bubbling up onto the surface of his thoughts.

Almost passing by a door, dismissing it as one hiding danger, he swiveled. Doubled back and studied it. Elaborate carvings adorned its surface, depicting a stylized hammer. Something that would fit right in with some fantasy movie schlock.

But he couldn’t argue with the possibility.

Kevin quickly entered and found himself elsewhere.

Night, some parking garage. Subterranean. Parked cars, concrete pillars. The smell of gasoline, and burnt plastic. Flickering neon lights. Footsteps. Behind him.

Looking over his shoulder, a figure in black approached. Cloaked in a long coat, smiling. Passing through shadows, leaving everything but a wide toothy grin to the imagination, an imagination he dared not let wander freely.

Kevin ran, and the man in black followed.

Familiar—all too familiar—this was the nightmare that he had tried to entomb Michael in. But the man in black—the House taking Michael’s form—now followed him through this infinitely looping nightmare. And the House had taken him right there.

Kevin hammered his fist against the button to an elevator. The man in black indeed looked like Michael. And Michael would want to get back at him, real or not. Already put him through a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from before he tried to repay the favor in kind.

But this wasn’t Michael, though. He had to hold onto that thought and remind himself of it. Kevin could taste it. Taste the evil. See it when he strode on, walking underneath a cone of bright light, illuminating his features and revealing little details that were all just off. The skin on Michael’s face looked too rubbery, too fake. Like it was about to slough off, or wrinkle unnaturally. Or like latex; like latex gloves.

Only fifteen steps away now. Kevin hammered the elevator buttons some more, staring at the House’s agent with growing dread.

DING.

The elevator doors opened and he fled inside without looking where he ran. But as he turned to see where he stumbled into, there was no elevator. Only darkness.

A door slammed shut behind him.

Spinning around only revealed more darkness. No parking garage, no fake version of Michael. Just an empty void.

All but a pile of coins on the floor. A wooden floor, much like the one in his grandfather’s old farm house. The coins resembling the chump change he once stole from him to buy a pack of cigarettes from the gas station. And somewhere in the darkness, barely visible, on the edge of his perception, Kevin saw himself, high on heroin, slumped against a wall, lost in a trip that allowed him to escape from the horrors of reality, curled up in a corner and drooling. He looked like hell. One of the worst phases in his life.

Kevin screamed.

The void answered.

“I’m gonna teach you a lesson you ain’t never gonna forget, boy,” said his grandfather. The drunken haze made his speech slur. The reek of rot and booze hung in the air, wafting through the pitch black void that closed in on Kevin.

Suffocating him.

The gnarled hands gripped him, grabbing him by his neck from behind.

“Gonna teach you t'stop dressin’ like a girl, ya freak,” said his grandfather.

Kevin tried to fight back. Clawed at the hands closing in around his neck and strangling him. But the latex gloves rendered his attempts futile. His fingers slipped inside the gloves somehow, his fingers never found proper purchase.

The figure behind him felt like his grandfather, but also like he was three heads taller than he should have been. Ten times stronger than he ever was—because when he was eighteen, he paid that old bastard back in kind, finding that the old man wasn’t as strong as he used to be from working the fields.

But there was nobody there to save Kevin this time. Not his mother, no friends, and surely not himself.

“You wanna know what it’s really like t'be a girl?” asked grandfather, right into his ear. Foul, warm breath hitting his skin. “I can show you a—”

Hoarse croaking sounds escaped Kevin’s choked throat. He struggled even harder. This was the House. Making the memories even worse than reality ever was for him. Amplifying the terror and the pain, rendering everything inevitable.

The tearing wet sound released the iron vice around his neck. The texture of skin and muscle splitting as the knife went in and the blood came out. And then another stab, right into his grandfather’s chest. And then another. All the sounds behind him, the gnarled fingers releasing his neck as the strength drained from them instantly. Followed by the metal snapping as the knife’s blade got snagged on bone and lodged somewhere and breaking from the sheer force.

And then continuing to stab, using that broken blade, over and over again. The latex gloves came in handy.

The vase came next, bashing his skull in until the ceramics and the nose bone shattered. Then the old metal lamp, bashing and crashing until his grandfather’s face was unrecognizable and the bones and blood turned into a soupy mush.

Kevin ran, tears blurring his vision, putting distance between himself and the sounds of him killing the old monster. The shapes of that decrepit farmhouse melted with the darkness, molted into something else. He charged through a door frame and stopped.

A sunflower. On the ground, not growing from anywhere. Clipped cleanly at the end, not in a vase or anything. No dirt nearby. Just hardwood floor.

He picked it up and, in disbelief, watched it shed its seeds and petals—slipping through his fingers. The sunflower wilted as he watched, naked from things that made it recognizable, its vestiges of life now raining down onto the hard wooden floor in gentle, painfully slow flurries of fluttering petals and tumbling seeds.

A man sat on a simple stool at the end of the room. In his sixties, bald, with silver stubble on his face, dressed in jeans and a verdant green sweater. Stoic, unmoving. Staring at Kevin from the opposite end of the chamber. It took a dozen or a thousand steps for Kevin to traverse the windowless room, from one door to the next. The man stared at him the whole time, awaiting his arrival with eerie patience.

But that man was no mere man. He was either an agent of the House. Or a demon.

There was nothing in between that.

Kim jolted up in bed. Had she not deliberately entered this state of magicked consciousness, she could have confused it with a dream.

The sheets coiled and roiled as they moved in accordance to her own contorting limbs, tangled up in them.

Disoriented, she looked around in the motel room. The smell of Tibetan incense burning on her nightstand grounded her in this reality again.

Kevin’s spell had failed spectacularly, though she knew where to look for him now.

She would have to go that House. That damned House.

—Submitted by Wratts

[heoneyology]

Hearts on the Line: Ch.5

A/N: I was going to post up Hongjoong’s next chapter, but popular demand requested Wooyoung LOL. I promise the next couple of days I’ll focus on our leader! Mentions of drug abuse.

Pairing: Wooyoung x Reader

Genre: action, angst, romance, outlaw!au

Word Count: 2820

Summary: You’ve got a debt to pay, and Wooyoung has an agenda of his own. But for your help with just one last scheme, Wooyoung is willing to allow your debt to drop off—unknown to him, though, you also have your own agenda, and a loyalty to an unspoken Other. With hearts on the line, you each will end up having to make a decision that may risk what you both thought was simply just a game.

The suffocating pressure in the room has lifted. Whatever darkness it had been that had overcome Wooyoung with such a ferocity it had wiped clean coherent thoughts, was now gone. But instead of feeling relieved, you felt drained. Where you sat on the floor, leaning against the side of the bed, you stared up at the ceiling. Despite the pressure being gone, there was an intensity that still lingered in the room, a white noise in the background.

Not long after completely losing himself, and then somehow grounding himself again, Wooyoung had fallen asleep. You’d offered him the bed, but he’d refused and chosen his corner on the floor. If you felt drained, you couldn’t begin to imagine what it was that he was feeling.

Your lip stung, and hadn’t stopped since the events that had unfolded just hours before downstairs in the dining hall.

A constant, stinging reminder of what you’d been put through, and what you’d somehow gotten yourself into. Seonghwa’s warning from the night before taunted you, silently sneering that you shouldn’t have gone about things the way you had.

You knew he was right, too. A part of you regretted digging under Monica’s skin, regretted agreeing to Wooyoung’s plan to drop your debt—and, most of all, regretted the hug from earlier. It hadn’t meant anything, in particular. You’d noticed that he was losing himself to a savage anger inside that you’d never witnessed before, and you’d become desperate to pull him back. You needed answers, ones that he needed to give to you. Your life was literally in his hands at that moment, and you couldn’t go around blindly lending him your trust if you were going to be playing around in a snake pit.

It had stirred emotions in you that you were barely aware of. “You may not be mine, but I’m yours.” For as long as you could remember, since Wooyoung had been so brash about the entire situation from the start, Hongjoong had pushed you into Wooyoung’s care. You’d hated it at first. He had a way of making you seem unworthy, at the start. He’d never said or done anything to specifically say so, nor to hurt you or offend you in any way—but it was the way he interacted with you. Standoffish, with a habit of disregarding you and implying he could desert you when it was convenient for him or his job.

But you still spent most of your waking hours with him in the first few months to year with the gang, until Hongjoong deemed you worthy enough to trust and let you move about freely on your own. You knew the consequences, of course, if you deserted. It was a risk you weren’t willing to take, and so you stuck around, living as freely as you could manage. But as Seonghwa had pointed out, ruining that fake little bubble of blissful ignorance you had manifested towards the men of the gang—they’d never mistreated you. Even Wooyoung, who annoyed you half to death and strung you along, using you whenever it was convenient for him—had never once hurt you, or put you in a position where you’d felt threatened in any way. He’d left you in plenty of uncomfortable situations where you’d questioned why it had to be you, but looking back on it now, he never actually had deserted you.

In fact, he’d come back for you plenty of times, in plenty of those situations. Although, you figured, it was his responsibility. He’d put you in them in the first place.

You didn’t have feelings for him. You couldn’t. You knew better than that. It was just the many years of being together, being at his side, being his partner in crime for just about everything he did. Whether you liked to admit it or not, as frustrating as he may be, he was your companion.

Glancing over at Wooyoung’s sleeping form, you frowned. The motion caused you to flinch at the sudden pain at your lip, lifting a finger to dab at it slightly. A droplet of blood came back on your fingertip. You grimaced.

Just who was Monica? And what kind of history did the two of them have? You were quite certain it wasn’t the type she had intoned. At this point, you felt as though you’d known Wooyoung long enough to figure out some of his patterns. He didn’t risk associating himself with loose-lipped women, that of which you felt Monica was. But her comment that she had made him who he was tripped you up a bit. He hadn’t been with ATEEZ very long, but through interactions, it felt as though he were indebted to Hongjoong—the two of them were quite close, despite Hongjoong having known Seonghwa and the younger Mingi for much longer.

“Admiring me, love?” Wooyoung’s chirpy voice, thick with sleep, breaks through your thoughts.

You realize, then, that you’d accidentally zoned out while staring at him.

“As if.” Immediately, you scoff and glance away, pursing your lips and flinching.

“You’re bleeding again,” Wooyoung notes, and he sounds a bit more awake this time. You hear him shuffle through the saddlebags off to your side, but you refuse to make any eye contact with him or acknowledge him. You’re still a bit upset over everything.

But when you hear footsteps against wood, you turn back and are met with Wooyoung sitting down in front of you, cross-legged, one of the clean rags by the wash basin in one hand, and a flask you recognized he carried whiskey around in held in his other. He sets them both off to the side for a moment.

“C’mere,” he says, placing a hand on either of your shoulders and pulling you forward to sit up from where you leaned against the side of the bed.

“What—” But before you can question further, he’s unscrewing the cap of the flask and pressing the cloth over the mouth, tipping the flask upside down onto the piece of cloth. Realizing what it is he’s doing, you start. “You really don’t have to, I’m fine—”

“Shh.” And with the simple sound, he blatantly ignores you, setting aside the flask and taking hold of your chin with a gentle touch, tilting your head up and to the side a bit. You brace yourself as he lifts the cloth, dabbed with whiskey, to your lip. It stings even more than before, as though it’s on fire, and he find yourself tensing against the pain. Wooyoung keeps the dabbing to your lip gentle, soft, and you feel his thumb ghosting over your jawline in short, soothing strokes.

“I’m sorry, again.” You think this is the most you’ve ever heard Jung Wooyoung apologize, let alone apologize to you. In reply, you just let out a hum from the back of your throat, afraid of speaking and splitting your lip open again.

“For someone who was so pissed at me earlier, you’re awfully quiet now,” Wooyoung muses, glancing down at you. His gray eyes are clouded with an emotion you’ve never seen in him before—uncertainty. “I figured you’d be burning with questions.”

“I’d prefer you not relapse into whatever that episode earlier was,” you admit, rather bluntly, and you can see him frown, before letting out a long sigh.

“Now that I actually know she’s here, I’ll be fine. You caught me off guard with that earlier,” Wooyoung admitted, dropping his hands from your face. There’s an odd sensation where his fingertips had danced along your jawline. It’s enough to distract you from the throbbing coming from your lip, though you take note that the pain isn’t as bad as it was before. “Some… unwelcome memories came back.”

“Who is she?” If he expected you to ask questions, you figured you should ask them before he changed his mind.

Wooyoung sighed then, discarding the rag to the side and leaning back, bracing his hands on the floor behind him and staring up at the ceiling. “Someone I thought I could trust. A traitor. A mentor,” his voice comes out wistful, distant memories clearly coming back to him. He straightens, turning his attention back to you when he adds, “All in that exact order.”

What? The question blurts into your forethought, but before you can ask aloud, Wooyoung continues on.

“Long story as short as I can make it, she was an orphan—or so my family thought. I don’t quite remember the details on how she joined the family, really. This was years after we’d immigrated here and made our mark. My father struck it lucky in California early on, was on a council seat to head an up-and-coming town in California that’d just struck it rich with some gold. My father, while on the council, doubled as a foreman. Her father supposedly had a nasty infection he passed to while out there mining. Her mother died in childbirth—it was just the two of them.”

Despite yourself, you listen intently. Wooyoung has never once spoken of his past to you, let alone mentioned anything that might hint at it.

“She became like a sister to me. My father felt a responsibility to take her in since her own father had died under his care, or that’s what he believed. That being said, we were teens, so it wasn’t like we raised her from childhood. But my parents put a lot into treating her just the same they treated me. Well, like I said, I thought I could trust her—and supposedly her father died. Turns out neither of those were true,” there’s a bittersweet deadpan in Wooyoung’s tone.

“If the town succeeded, it was set to be an urban frontier because of its prime location. Or, so they said. While there were some good men on the council, most were just waiting for the moment to strike it rich with a vein—as soon as that happened, they were set to take the gold and bounce. My father had popular vote to become founder. That made him a target. She tells me she was promised to be reunited with her father if she helped someone—” Wooyoung eyes you then, quirking a brow though it lacks the usual exuberance of his charming personality. “—she had a debt to pay, much like you. She’d been poisoning us from the inside, as soon as we let hehr into our family. Mom was actually, literally poisoned. I saw it with my eyes, some herb slipped in her morning tea. But when I tried to tell my father…”

Wooyoung shakes his head, letting out a sigh. “It was a downward spiral, from there. While she wanted my mother out of the picture, she intended to make me useful and off my father, just as requested. She’d been slipping high grade morphine into whatever she could that we consumed. Small doses, until we were addicted. I was numb to everything, an addict. When I tried to tell my father that she’d killed Mom, he’d lost it. She was giving him higher doses of the drug and had been cutting him off drastically—so he, in comparison, was an angry addict. Went on a rampage, took it out on me. Beat the living crap out of me.”

You flinch, wondering briefly if those were the memories that had attacked him so suddenly back when you had mentioned the name Monica.

“More morphine for the pain, of course, supplied by her. I was too out of it at that point to know what happened, but apparently after his rampage, he went on a rampage through the town. One thing led to another, and he was gunned down. I was drugged up and submissive. She betrayed me, but I was so reliant on the one thing she had…” You watch has Wooyoung wrinkles his nose into something akin to a snarl.

“Disgusting. I was disgusting, and did disgusting things. I followed her around blindly, an orphan myself at that point. Even after killing my family off, her loan shark got whatever the hell it was he wanted out of that town—and out of me, I guess—but never gave her what she wanted. For a while, it was the two of us stuck in a cycle of attempting to pay off her debt. She was good at what she did, even though her loan shark kept stringing her along. I learned how to be just like her. A conman. A grifter. A thief. Whatever title you may, we made out with money and I made out with bounties for the lives. She made me into the perfect criminal. But she taught me how to survive, as much as I loathe myself for it.”

It’s difficult to find your voice in the midst of his long story, but you do, studying him as you ask, “You joined ATEEZ two years before I did, right?”

Wooyoung gives you a small nod. “Had a run in with Hongjoong. We were after the same hit on an armed government transport. Monica was determined it was our last job. One mishap led to another and I left Monica to the law, making out with Hongjoong and the boys. She didn’t know it, but I’d slowly been easing myself off of the drugs, as much as I could sneak away from it. He gave me a choice, and I somehow had enough of a conscience to say yes.”

You frowned at him. “There’s something off, though—if you left her to the law, after all that time and everything it sounds like you’d done…”

Wooyoung quirks a brow at you, and suddenly you see the usual glint in his eye return. “Why is she free, eh? That’s my question exactly.”

“Someone used your parents for you, back then,” you’re thinking aloud, but as you do so you attempt to piece together some missing holes in his story. They’re holes you’re sure aren’t from the substance abuse, either. “Why kill off your family, set to head the town, but leave you an empty shell? And why did Monica never get her pay?”

“These questions, love,” Wooyoung lifts a hand to pat your head fondly, returning to his usual ways  and seemingly proud of your deduction skills. “Are questions you’re going to find out the answers to, for me.” “How, exactly, am I supposed to do that? She knows we’re together, now.”

“But she doesn’t know the extent of our relationship. Do whatever you can to get information out of her, even if it means you have to betray me briefly. To her, I was only ever property,” Wooyoung drops his hand, his expression taking on a more serious note. “She got upset with you because she’s never once seen me as free—I was an item, to be toyed with. Presented to her by whoever she’s working for; that whom of which I think has it out for me. More specifically, I think there was a grudge against my father that just carried over.”

“And now you’re just too good at what you do, yourself, that they have no choice but to hate you,” you tease.

Wooyoung flashes you a grin. “Exactly!”

You roll your eyes, though there’s a part of you that’s relieved that his mood seems to be picking back up. “So you want me to spy on her?”

“She’s settled here for quite a while, from the intel I’ve gathered myself. But she’s got an intricate web of connections in the town—and they all seem to know me, and the guys, in some way or another. Of course I suppose it doesn’t help that we’re wanted,” he gives a nonchalant shrug. “So I think her bossman is in the general vicinity, too.”

Curiously, you tilt your head to the side, studying him for a moment. In that moment, he seems so determined and genuine.

“You want answers,” you suddenly find yourself blurting, “not necessarily revenge…”

A flash of surprise passes over Wooyoung’s face, though he’s quick to suppress it. He gives another shrug. “Whichever comes first.”

You purse your lip at his indifference, surprised to find that your lip doesn’t hurt quite as much any longer. “One last question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why is Hongjoong going to be so upset over this? Why does Seonghwa not approve?”

Wooyoung frowned. “They had to pick up the pieces of the state she’d left me in. They’re also afraid of a relapse, and they know her. Her sheer amount of connections is dangerous in of itself.”

You could only imagine, of course, the state that he had been left in wasn’t pretty. It made sense, now, as to why the job needed to be done fast, but efficiently. If Hongjoong came back to a mess to clean up, he wasn’t going to be pleased in the slightest.

Of course, you weren’t truly aware of how big of a mess this all was going to turn in to.

[ladygloucester]

Scáthach - Chapter 1

Well guys, I think this is probably my most personal work ever. I know it will sound quite outlandish (ha.) and even feel Claire and Jamie out of character. One thing I love about fanfic writing is that I feel so comfortable with these characters that I feel like I can bend them in ways I wouldn’t be able to do with others I created from scratch. So apologies if this is too far from what you like to see.

Watch out for language, triggers and all that stuff.

Prologue

I won’t go all David Copperfield on you. I consider you smart enough to recognize that if I’m here, talking to you, I might as well have been born in order to do so. What a presumptuous prick, that David. Anyway. Even though I’ve gone through basically the same stages of life as any other human being, I can’t say that I consider myself so. Not fully, at least. I’m what we call a Scáthach. Yeah, pretty much as the celtic deity, we’re that very original. Calling myself a warrior woman in the middle of the XXI century will sound… well, probably as presumptuous as our friend David. But it’s the truth. I am a warrior indeed, one that fights shit you wouldn’t even imagine before I told you so.

I won’t bother you with the same boring pest I had to deal with when they first approached me. You’ll thank me for that later. But the thing is, a Scáthach is pretty much what whoever that has ever played a video game, read a fantasy novel or watched a tv show would call a demon hunter. Well, demon falls actually a bit short. There are all kinds of disgusting beings, if you may call them so, in the Dubnos, but for anyone that’s not familiar with the hierarchies and classifications of the The Deep, we can stick with that. Demon.

I can hear you rolling your eyes so hard at me. I understand it. I used to think this was all bullshit. But well, I’ve had enough of my share of experiences  —and whisky— to quiet my skepticism. But I’ll help you swallow this rather thick pill. Have you ever realized your friend, your coworker, even your neighbor is suddenly behaving completely out of character? Have you heard of those people that change their lives in the blink of an eye, turning it upside down and destroying themselves in the process? Have you even felt it? That unforeseen sting of desperation in the bottom of your heart when everything seems to be going perfectly well. That fit of lust that drives you into the arms of another person while your partner is happily waiting for you at home. That outburst of anger that pushes your feet on the gas pedal, terrorizing every other driver in the highway.

I thought so.

Science tries to give it an explanation. A man suddenly murders his entire family while his friends can’t understand how the loveliest of fathers would stab the love of his life to death. Psychiatrists say he had an underlying disorder. One nobody ever noticed. Not a single action in his behavior ever betrayed it. And yet, we all swallow it down, nod and thank God and pray that science will save us all. Put a tag on our diseases and magically cure them.

If only it was possible. I wouldn’t be here.

That is the doing of a demon, clever enough to make us believe that our brains would do that to ourselves, defying millions of years of evolution and self-preserving instincts. They find a way to sneak up on us and infect us. Of course there are people depressed. Angry people. People obsessed with others. Demons are not the cause of every single evil in the world, illogical as it may sound. But those unexpected explosions that ultimately breaks the person that feels them, of those they are responsible. Don’t fool yourself.

So I take care of them. That’s what I do for a living. Well, not out in the open, that’s for sure. In “real life” I volunteer at The Royal London Hospital. It’s most convenient to have access to quick meds and professionals when you work in a field like mine. But not for me, I… well, my body behaves slightly differently. Which is an advantage, you’ll see. Whenever I’m free and I have the time, I drop by the hospital and take a quick look to see if they need a hand. They once tried to put me on a schedule. It took them a couple of days to realize it wasn’t going to work, so since I’m nice and useful, they usually let me do my thing without making much of a fuss.

So far, I’ve told you about (a bit of) my job, my other job and what I am. But I haven’t told you my name yet.

I’m Claire. 

And I’m alone.

Not that I care. I mean, it would be nice to have someone to have a Sunday lunch with, but it won’t keep me awake at night. Not most of the nights, at least. I’ve never been one to have many friends. Mainly because my line of work is an unpredictable one. People use to get tired of you when you cancel dates and plans more often than you make it.

Ok, now wait a second… I’m painting a fairly sociopathic image of myself. I may not win Miss Congeniality this year, but I’m not a bad person. Well, I wouldn’t say that I qualify as a person either, but you get what I mean. I do this to help others that can’t help themselves. So I think that should give me a few points.

Are we clear then? I slay demons, people live to see another day and I go home all by myself. Again, most of the nights.

The day it all changed I was about to leave the hospital after a short shift helping around, wheeling some elderly patients around and trying to crack them up with my stupid jokes. I loved to hear them laugh with their shot voices, always reprimanding me for being too crude. I know it’s a weird hobby, getting a chuckle out of those old crocks, but I guess it’s one of the quirks of being an orphan, unable to joke around with your own folks. Yay me. When my cellphone beeped, I snuck it out of my black jeans and checked it.

Frank. Shit.

“Tell me.”

“Hi Claire, how’s your—”

“Cut the crap. What is it?“ I demanded as I walked into a nearby alley. The sun was already setting and I knew I’d be in need of a dark, secluded place to open the Membrane sooner rather than later. Oh, wait. The Membrane, haven’t told you about that yet, have I? Well, just let me get through with this asshole.

“Ok,” the voice came through the speaker colder and snarky. “There’s a situation. You need to cross and take care of a deamhan that has found an weak spot in the Membrane. There’s a human involve, but don’t care about it. We’re already counting him as a hero.”

A hero. Yeah, they were hypocritical enough to give that name to the humans that died as a result of an unexpected encounter with a deamhan. Sometimes we were late and there was nothing we could do. Other times, fewer, I got orders to leave them be. Very ethical.

“Ok, show me.”

I hung up and closed my eyes. The image began to solidify in the back of my mind, slowly adding detail, color, texture, even smell. Well, stink. Even a foul taste flooded my mouth. I got it. Let me tell you about the Membrane, quick and dirty. In order to cross to the Dubnos, The Deep, if you prefer, you don’t have to pay the boatman to sail through the Styx lagoon. Though it would be pretty cool. No, between our two worlds there is a separation, a physical barrier that only a few of us can cross. The Membrane, that’s it. It works like an osmosis process. There’s part of you that stays back in the world of the living, and another that’s able to pass through. The Dubnos is restricted to the demons. So… yeah, you guessed right. I’m part demon myself. That’s why I can cross the Membrane back and forth, and live in both sides of it. Hope I didn’t freak you out. I don’t have scales or a pointy tale or bug eyes. Well, those I only have them in the Dubnos. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see shit there. But they usually fade after a while once I’ve come back. Don’t look at me that way, I’m sure you’ve ended a few nights out looking far worse.

With the deamhan crystal clear in my mind, I opened the Membrane. I usually can open it anywhere. I just need it to be a dark place, without sunlight directly on it, and without prying eyes around, if only not to scare them to death. So I did it once again. I extended my hand with my fingers firmly aligned, acting like a blade able to cut the viscid film. It slowly pried open, parting like a primeval womb not giving pass to life, but rather absorbing it into its depths. I was already accustomed to the transition, but it always felt like losing a part of you that you were never positive you’d be able to gain back.

The first thing that hits you when you enter the Dubnos is the smell. There’s nothing that can compare to it. Like a mixture of ammonia and really, really rotten eggs. Only stinkier. I could only perceive it in the back of my nose. Once I cross the Membrane, most of my human senses are left behind and… well, demons aren’t particularly squeamish about stenches. Their sense of smell works differently, like a hound’s, but only sensitive to selective traces. I had the odor of that deamhan Frank had sent me still vivid in my nostrils. I sniffed around, trying to pick a scent. The path became distinct in a few seconds, my eyes able to discern it as if it was marked with bread crumbs. An eerie synesthesia, but definitely a useful one.

Even though it works as some sort of shadow of the reality, a muffled copy of the real world,  time and space work a little differently in The Deep. Demons don’t have a natural sense of any of them, since they’re maleable, bendable. The same rules we have don’t apply there. So reaching the coast took me less than getting to the tube from the hospital. I’m a bit faster here as well, so by the time I could feel the power of the waves crashing against the jagged cliffs, I slowed down and crouched. There it was.

A thread, thinner than the thousandth part of a hair, came out of an amorphous blob of flesh, almost transparent, like muddy water. I frowned. If I recalled correctly, the human was already far gone. But the the opposite end of that thread was attached to a man. I could distinguish his form, a nebulous, barely distinctive shape on top of precipice. The deamhan was having a rough time pulling form its end. Usually once they were able to tie it to a person, the effect was instant. Most of the times there wasn’t even a struggle. But this wasn’t one of those. He was fighting. Even with his bare foot sticking out of the rock into the void of an indomitable sea, he was still holding on for dear life.

I could wait. You see, I could let the deamhan do its thing and let that poor bastard fall to his death. But remember when I told you that sometimes I get orders to leave them to their own devices? Well. I’m a shitty minion.

The fight was over before it began. By the time the demon became aware of my presence, I had already inserted my left arm all the way into its body, while I was tangling the thread around my right in order to withdraw it. The beast started to convulse, I clenched my teeth and looked away. It was stronger than I had foreseen. Painfully slowly, it initiated the process of swallowing my arm. I could feel its juices pouring on my skin, burning it. I pulled back but it was too far stuck. The thread broke. It was a shit show. I was there, a human about to kill himself and I, to be eaten and digested.

I closed my eyes. If I wanted it to work, I had to work quickly. With my right arm free, at least I was able to use it. The thread was surrounding it, hurting like acid on an open wound. I placed my palm against the slimy surface of the deamhan while I grabbed its insides with my other hand, and pulled. I pulled so hard I felt the muscles of my back strain and break. The energy started to condensate on the tips of my fingers. I hadn’t had to use it in quite sometime, so it took me longer than I expected. But by the time the bastard realized what was happening, it was a smoking spot on the floor.

I fell backwards, out of breath. Or I’d be if only I breathed there. Took me a second to remember the human. I looked at where he had been a second before, but he wasn’t there. He was already falling.

Fuck.

There was no time to think. I could see his shape plunging through the air, near the hair-raisingly sharp rocks of the cliff. Time slowed down to a tortuously lethargic cadence, enough for me to leap forward as fast as I could —which is, to be honest, faster than your eye could see—, as I opened the Membrane and pushed myself through. It slowed me down, but I had got enough momentum, more than enough to counter gravity. With the agonic rush I completely miscalculated the strength I was going to impact on his body with. I felt his shoulder pop out of the socket and his mouth crash against my (rather thick) head as I catapulted us over the cliff. I managed to protect him from further damage as we landed by, well, basically using my own body as an airbed. Not the best sensation, it crossed my mind, as I became aware of the size of the man. He lay on top of me, a dead weight that almost kept me from breathing properly, a few seconds before I crawled from underneath and turned him over on his back. My arms were still burned. In the Dubnos I was able to heal rather quickly, but once I crossed the Membrane back, my human body would became a burden. I still healed at an abnormal pace, but it was much more painful.

I could feel the ligaments of my jaw tightening with the pain, but I had no more time to waste. I straddled his waist, tore his shirt open and he, opportunistic as hell, decided it was the best time to come back from the dead. Or the unconscious. Whatever. So picture this: luckily, last thing he’ll probably remember is jumping off a cliff. Now he regains consciousness and a woman with black scleras and burnt arms is ripping his clothes off. If I’m the slightest bit less lucky, he’ll remember me, emerging from thin air, looking like I’m flying —and damn, I wish I could but that’s actually something I’m completely unable to do— and tackling him into safety. And ripping his clothes off, no, there’s no way to elude that.

“A Dhia…”

He tried to squirm out of my grasp with the arm he was still able to move, but I pushed him hard against the soft grass.

“Quiet,” I hissed while I gave him my most terrifying look. Which then was, well, actually the only look I had. He froze, trying to puzzle his memories, to instill some kind of reasoning into them, fighting the unlikeliness of it all. I arched an eyebrow, staring at him, waiting till he finally made up his mind provisionally. He had felt my strength. He knew, somewhere deep inside, he was at my mercy. Then, his eyes left mine for a second only to discover the wounded skin of my arms.

“Mary, Michael and Bride, your arms are burnt!”

“I. Said. Quiet.”

The fight behind his eyes began again for a few seconds, but he finally stopped wriggling and I was able to inspect his chest. Remember what I told you about the demons? About how they corrupt human beings? Well. that was precisely what that this human had been subjected to. Good thing I still had my bug eyes. I wouldn’t win a beauty contest, but it made it easier for me to find the corruption inside a body. I already suspected where it was. Despair was usually inserted near the heart. I placed my hand on his left pectoral and focused. This one was deep. I began pulling and his face became shadowed by the pain. It’s not the most pleasant process, but I’ve always found humans to be quite receptive to it. As if they knew, somehow, that the pain they feeling is a curative one. Gradually, a conical shape, with a dirty forest green shade, emerged from the flesh.

I let myself sat on the soft grass and sighed, looking at it. My human side felt the call of it, the words in the back of my mind, the pain that would conquer me if I let it. The waving surface was almost mesmerizing. I fell on my back and indulged in the cool feeling of the pasture and the first drops of rain. I heard him move, sitting up and closing his shirt. I could smell the blood from his broken lip. That could be a problem and staying there would only make it worse.

“Who are you?” He whispered, probably not sure if he had dreamt the whole thing, lost his mind or was having the worst trip in history.

I stood up as the rain began to pour down, appreciative of the coolness it impressed on my burns.

“You’ll be just fine. Don’t ever come back here. If you go south you’ll find a small train station if you want to go to the City. There won’t be enough light to go anywhere else.”

I rubbed my hands against my jeans and shrugged, not knowing what else to say. He wasn’t moving and kept staring at me like he was seeing a ghost. Which wasn’t too far from the truth, so who could blame him.

“Well, I—”

“Wait.” He grabbed my wrist and raised my arm, inspecting my clearly healing wounds.

“Do you really want to freak yourself out any more?”

He looked me with those slanted, incredibly blue eyes, as I realized for the first time, and let go of my wrist.

“What’s that… thing you pulled from my body?”

It was my time to freak out.

“You can see this?” I showed him the green cone and raised my eyebrows in absolute astonishment. He nodded, frowning.

“Why?”

“You aren’t supposed to be able to see a Fang. Nobody can.”

“Well, not nobody,” he pointed with indisputable common sense.

I was gaping like a fish out of water. I’ve seen plenty of terrifying, upsetting, disgusting, crippling stuff. Enough to make me almost immune to surprise. But this caught me perfectly out of balance. My eyes travelled from the Fang to his eyes, and I could tell he was waiting for an explanation. Probably more than one. Then, my gaze felt unavoidably attracted to the cut on his lip. My heart was already racing, and I didn’t know how much I could restrain myself.

“This— Remember what you felt when you jumped off?” A semblance of shame covered his features and nodded. “This is it. It wasn’t you. This made you jump.“

“But…”

“I have to go.“

“Wait!” He grabbed my wrist again but I pulled violently as soon as our skins made contact.

“Just wipe that fucking blood of your face!” I snapped, and it was his time to be caught off guard. I started pacing around, nervously. “I can’t stay. I can’t help you anymore. Go on, live your life and all that shit.“

And I vanished.

[johnandrasjaqobis]

Ok so for the short fic/numbers post: Tex/Rachel and 1! (Bc tbh 15 is practically canon. Also, I was so tempted to ask you for 32, but 1 is def better!)

Listen do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had emotions about them.I also had to watch chunks of Welcome to Gitmo because I had forgotten a lot of Tex’s intro and I also made the mistake of checking Tex’s wiki for his daughter’s name and now I am very reluctant to finish s3.

ANYWAY

It felt like the clock should have stopped the day the world went to shit. The day they got the call that the virus wasn’t stopping, that martial law had been enacted, that prisons were sort of a moot point now. They’d let the detainees go, gave everyone an equal shot at maybe escaping the constant death that was slipping into even their secluded little island. The world had ended, after all.

And the world ending kind of put a stall on the whole ‘soulmate’ thing, didn’t it?

Tex had never paid much mind to it anyway, a lot of people didn’t. There were plenty of happy marriages that hadn’t stopped clocks, and just because his own had split apart, it had also given him Kathleen. He wouldn’t consider that a failure.

So he hadn’t kept a very close eye on the small numbers on his forearm – his uniform generally covered them anyway – and after the end of the world, well, there were plenty of other pressing issues to focus on.

The former prisoners attacking his men, for example. The constant wire-thin balance between holding ground and retreating to areas where they knew people had been infected. Having to watch as, one by one, their numbers dwindled, until his best friend was left in a car that was rigged as a trap for whatever big ass ship rolled into the docks.

Tex hadn’t really been expecting to get off the damn island alive. He’d planned to enact as much justice as he could before he was either shot, infected, or just starved. Not like he was too fond of boats, but hey, a little easier to watch the end of the world from a fully-armed Navy battleship than some crappy island.

He was met with a general friendly wariness from the rest of the crew when Chandler first brought him aboard, but that was to be expected. Tight-knit group, especially after being out so long, and some random Gitmo guard wasn’t about to be drawn into the fold just because he’d lent a couple of bullets. Tex was fine with that, offered friendly smiles anyway, and let himself be ushered to the medical bay with only a little protesting that there were bigger injuries to treat than a scrape on his arm.

They seemed to agree, at least, and he sat for a few minutes with some other crew members with only minor problems, trying to get used to the very slight yet constant bobbing motion underneath him.

“– pull through just fine,” a brisk voice was saying as the door swung open, and Tex looked up from his examination of the metal floor. “Now that we’re actually well-stocked there won’t be any need for rationing the antibiotics, but tell the Captain that he’s back on duty after I clear it, not before.”

The woman that came in spared a sweeping glance over everyone in the room as she pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. After a short pause she let out a light sigh, letting the bag on her shoulder slip down to her hand. “Alright, no one here is in immediate danger of bleeding out, are they?”

Tex let himself watch her work, coming up with various ridiculous theories as to what a British doctor might be doing on some US Navy battleship. One of the crew called her Dr. Scott, and despite a bit of tension from some of them, Green leaned close when she started checking him over, and there was a sincere sort of gratitude in his eyes even if Tex couldn’t actually hear what he said.

When she reached him, Scott did take a moment to look him over quickly before kneeling down and pulling his arm toward her. “The Captain did say we made a new friend.”

“Well, y’know, Doc,” Tex said with a grin, “you kill some terrorists together, it’s a bonding experience.” He had to hold back a hiss when she ran a wet cloth carefully over the cut on his arm and could’ve sworn Scott rolled her eyes. “I’m Tex.”

“Doctor Scott,” she replied, then paused and amended, “Rachel Scott. Hold this up for a moment.”

Tex propped his arm on one knee, watching her rummage through her bag before he looked over at the half-dried blood. It took him a few seconds to realize what was off, other than the blood itself, and something in his breath caught even as Scott pulled it away again, now with an alcohol-soaked cloth in her hand.

The revelation let him ignore the initial sting at first; the numbers weren’t moving. There weren’t any numbers to be moving, the clock had run down, replaced with the small string of zeros.

He hadn’t noticed it getting that close, but it had still been moving yesterday – he’d seen the flicker of motion when he changed into a cleaner shirt even if he hadn’t paid attention to what the numbers were. That meant it had been some time today.

It made sense, in a weird way, but hell, he hadn’t noticed, and there had been a lot of new people in a very short span of time, so which –

The alcohol was a little too prominent then to ignore completely, and Tex winced as some of the dried blood came loose. “It stings,” he said when Scott just raised an eyebrow at him.

“It’s supposed to sting,” she said, “I’m cleaning it.”

“Don’t need it cleaned.”

“Yes, you do.”

He chuckled, eyes drawn almost unconsciously to the spot on her own arm that was just visible above the glove. Unless it was upside-down for some reason, Scott’s wasn’t moving either. That wouldn’t have been too surprising if it weren’t so easy to see it.

From what he knew, the marks faded after they’d accomplished their purpose. Never truly went away, but after long enough they would be pale enough to barely see. Scott’s was as dark and clear as his, and if what Chandler had said was right –

“How long you lot been out here?” Tex asked, making some attempt at sounding casual. If he didn’t manage it, Scott didn’t seem to notice.

“Nearly five months,” she said, turning to pull out a roll of bandages. “Lucky to get here when we did, or you would all be chewing leaves for medication.”

“So been stuck with just this crew the whole time? No newcomers?”

She scoffed lightly. “It’s a little difficult to find new personnel given the condition of the workforce.”

Meaning he was the first.

Well, shit.

Tex left it at that for now, let himself watch her work. She’d notice eventually. She’d put the pieces together just like he had.

Apparently there were things even the end of the world couldn’t stop.

[princesses-and-pioneers]

Santicorn 2019: Tarot Dungeon

The OSR Discord is conducting its second annual Secret Santicorn, a Secret Santa event but with OSR creators and content requests. I’ve received a lovely dungeon, the Temple of Lethe, from SherlockHole at The Mimic’s Nest. In turn, my gift to AuraTwilight of Paimon’s Silver City is a dungeon based on tarot arcana.

To Aura: Sorry I couldn’t do the greaser! I’ll write some magical girl stuff to make up for it. Also sorry it’s so late, I got stuck a bunch of times so this is more a collection of ideas than a cohesive dungeon. Hope you enjoy it, and Happy Holidays!

The Hand of Fate

An ambitious scholar made it their life’s work to understand the secrets of fate, how to predict it, and how to change it. After years of collecting knowledge, they built a wondrous palace in the mountains and invited visitors from far and wide, both seeking new secrets to add to their research and offering their divination services for a fee. The palace is interwoven with their fate-altering magic, said to look different to each visitor. Now the scholar has vanished, but their palace still stands, home to invaluable knowledge and valuable treasure alike.

An idea for the dungeon entrance:

Bridge A pair of stone columns sit 10’ apart at the edge of a canyon, forming a doorway to a sheer drop. Between the columns lies a large bindle containing a statue of a small white dog, with a piece of paper attached reading “Seekers of truth, pay your toll, and let the light be your guide”. When fed money, the dog comes to life and glows like a soft flame (3 hours on 1 gp), shedding light that materializes ethereal things within 10’. The dog is friendly and will follow basic commands.

An ethereal stone bridge spans the canyon between the two columns, ending at an ornate wooden door painted with a white rose. The rest of the palace becomes visible when the door is opened-- a grand, lofty structure of stone columns.

(Buxian Bridge, Huangshan, China.)

A room idea for each major arcana card. Rooms can be rolled for randomly, either on a set map or in a nebulous, shifting space like the Gardens of Ynn.

Room Contents (d22)

Chasm. A bottomless pit bisects the room, too far to jump.

Workshop. A table inlaid with a magic circle. 4 paints sit next to it, each labeled with an element (fire, air, water, earth). Shapes drawn in the circle will transform into objects made from the chosen element.

Veil. A thin veil hangs between a white pillar and a black pillar, completely dividing the room. Both pillars are made of a chalky pigment that rubs off easily; the veil is intangible to anything marked with white pigment, and solid as stone to anything marked with black pigment.

Garden. Beautiful trees, crops, and running water. The garden has a calming, nurturing atmosphere, and here living creatures heal 1 HP per turn.

Throne Room. A grand room with a regal, gilded throne. While sitting on the throne, any command you give to another creature must be followed, but you must make a Wisdom save to stand up, with a -1 penalty for every command you have given.

A locked cabinet containing a golden staff and 56 keys, each assigned to a specific fateworker (4 models, 14 units each). The wielder of the staff sees through the eyes of every fateworker whose key is attached to the staff.

Fruit Tree. 2d6 delicious-looking fruits. Eating one gives you a random unusual sense, and encounters in the dungeon have +1 morale when fighting you specifically.

Palanquin. The size of a wagon, with solid walls and locking doors. The person in the driver’s seat can mentally direct the palanquin to hover 5’ in the air and move as fast as a horse. The driver takes 1d6 damage per turn from the strain.

Statue. A woman holding both hands out in a pacifying gesture. Any creature within 10’ of the statue must Save to do anything aggressive or violent.

Wasteland. A vast room shrouded in magical darkness. Takes 2 turns to cross.

Wheel of Reversal. A raised stone wheel with two pedestals on opposite ends, turned by a crank on the wall. When turned 180 degrees, anything on the two pedestals will have their most opposite properties exchanged. Ex: dagger and torch switch material, fighter and wizard switch classes, identical twins switch personality.

Scales. Each hanging pan is large enough to hold a person comfortably. Weighs contents depending on how moral they are.

Gallows. If you hang from them upside-down (the way that kills you slower) for a turn, you can ask the GM one question about the dungeon or something in it.

Graveyard. Several coffins containing a variety of perfectly preserved humanoid bodies. In the center sits a suit of black plate armor with the word “Rebirth” carved on the skull-shaped helmet. Anyone who puts on the armor drops dead, and their soul reawakens in a random one of the bodies.

Canal. A wide raft floats slowly down the deep channel. High ledges on either side are piled with treasures, but standing close enough to reach them will tip the raft and cause it to start flooding.

Altar. A sacrificial fire burns atop it, magically compelling anyone who sees it to throw themself in. Shadow copies of anyone who has touched the fire appear to drag others in.

Tower. Several stories tall, with a good view of several other rooms in the dungeon. Thunderclouds hover over it, and once per turn a lightning bolt strikes a random spot on the tower (4d6 damage, Save for half).

Reflecting Pool. The room is dark, but the pool reflects the light of 2d6 small stars and one large one. The stars are embedded in the ceiling; small stars are precious gemstones and the large star sheds light like a lantern and boosts nearby magic.

A stone well, with a dim, foreboding light suspended above it. Anyone who focuses on the light for more than a few seconds must Save vs. fear or fall into a deep sleep. Nightmares of sleeping creatures emerge from the well every round.

Sunflowers. A dense field of flowers, taller than a person. The heads face upward, allowing a careful person to walk across them. The flowers radiate uplifting energy, and eating one can heal a minor injury or curse.

Crypts. Rows of coffins in alcoves along the wall; a trumpet rests on a central one. When you blow it, the nearest body rises as an undead under your command. After the first use each day, you must Save or the undead will be hostile towards you.

Dungeon Map. A large spread of purple cloth with the dungeon layout traced by glowing lines. Two wands sit next to it; one draws on the map and the other erases. Any changes to the map manifest in the dungeon.

A dungeon denizen, based on the minor arcana. Fateworkers are the palace staff, meant to perform maintenance and serve visitors while the scholar is busy perfecting their research.

Fateworker 1 HD (5 HP), unarmored, move normal, morale 8, punch 1d4 OR attack varies by model Human-sized clockwork automaton. Wheels for feet, white sash with logo indicating model type. Tinny, synthesized female voice. Wants to assist guests and eliminate disruptions in the dungeon. Logical and calculating, but somewhat gullible.

W-model: red flame logo, carries wand, 1/day spells: firebolt, light, minor illusion P-model: gold coin logo, carries toolkit, can repair broken object or fateworker in 1 turn C-model: blue goblet logo, carries pump and internal tank that holds 1 gallon of liquid S-model: silver sword logo, armor as leather, carries longsword (1d8) and shield

(A cross between Light Hope from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and IG-11 from The Mandalorian. These shows are both very good.)

Bonus: Tarot Encounters

These probably don’t fit with the dungeon rooms above, but I also statted up a few creatures based on the tarot-inspired JoJo stands because that seemed like the kind of thing to do. Disclaimer: I knew nothing about JoJo before starting and know nothing about JoJo now, all information used to make these statblocks comes from the wiki.

Sand Guardian 2 HD (10 HP), unarmored, move 1.5x normal, morale 12, bite 1d8 Sand animated in the form of a quadruped wolf-like creature, with a feathered, beaked mask. Growls like blowing wind. Wants to be left alone and to protect its mask. Wolf intelligence and instincts.

Living sand: Regains 1d6 HP each round as long as there is sand or dirt nearby to patch its wounds. Mask bound: Dissipates into sand if its mask is removed. The mask can be used once per day to form a new sand guardian from a sufficient quantity of earth.

Scarlet Inferno 4 HD (20 HP), unarmored, move normal, morale 12, punch 1d6/punch 1d6 OR fire blast 2d6, 10’ radius, Save for half A muscular humanoid, barely visible like a heat shimmer. Roars like crackling fire. Wants to burn things. Near-human intelligence, but single-minded.

Pure heat: Invisible unless someone spends an action looking for it. Attacking it with things that would put out a fire, like water or smothering foam, turn it visible.

Sludge Shifter 0 HD (2 HP), unarmored, move normal, morale 6, bite 1d4 A fist-sized blob of gray goop with limbs and teeth. Cackles like a high-pitched garbage disposal. Intelligence of a malicious child.

Conglomerate: Can merge with others into harmless gray sludge piles. Mimicry: The pile can return an exact duplicate of any inanimate object submerged in it. The duplicate is actually one or more sludge shifters, waiting for the right moment to transform and bite someone.

Parasite Queen 0 HD (1 HP), unarmored, move none, morale 10, punch 1d2 A brown wart that grows into an ugly brown growth with a face and arms. Screams in an angry gurgle only the host can hear. Wants to find a new host and ruin the current one’s life in the process. Cunning but bastard intelligence.

Symbiosis: Forms where a spore infects a creature’s open wound and grows to full size over a week, reducing the host’s max HP by 1. After another week, buds off into dozens of tiny spores to infect new hosts.

Royal Revolver A sentient magic revolver with +1 to attack and damage. Wants to do impressive tricks and be recognized.

Trick shot: Once per day, its bullets can deflect off of or around objects.

Web Emerald 1 HD (5 HP), unarmored, move normal, morale 8, constrict 1d6, any adjacent targets, OR acid spray 2d6, Save for half A network of interwoven green veins formed into a humanoid mass. Whispers like sizzling acid. Wants to grow and discover new things (by pulling them apart). Predator intelligence, but plant-like.

Unravel: Can unravel itself to about 100’ of rope-like vein, or unravel further into thin strings. No movement speed and can’t spray acid when fully in these forms. Web sense: Can sense anything that touches it, in any form.