#and then i have to walk all the way back up the giant ass hill at 10 pm

[cinnamnt]

[mediumgayitalian]

The slam of his car door is loud enough to make him jump, echoing across the dipping valleys and proud hills. He curses to himself, standing frozen, one, two, three, four, but no one comes running. A light dusting of snow falls in a perfect circle around an invisible border, and Lee shivers as he jogs over to it, worn sneakers squelching over the wet, half-thawed grass.

As soon as he steps onto the bottom of Half-Blood Hill, he feels the difference, the balmy breath of warm summer under the clear December sky. The power of Thalia’s tree sends its usual shiver down his back, and he touches it, briefly, as he speeds past, sending his usual prayer of thanks. He pauses at the crest of the hill, using the bright gibbous moon to survey the camp, marking his path.

“Two, four….twelve,” he mutters to himself, craning his neck to map every one of the patrol harpies. He crouches for a while, watching them, tracking their patrol: paired, hexagonal, staggered circuits around the cabins. Four minute window of opportunity.

He can do four minutes.

As the two harpies walking the Apollo-Artemis circuit begin to cross the common, Lee bolts. He keeps low and close to the shadows, sprinting fast and on the balls of his feet to stay quiet, and ducks behind whatever shadow is closest whenever something looks his way. By the time the harpies turn back towards Cabin Seven, he’s already on the rickety porch, tossing his backpack inside the window Michael left open for him and throwing himself in after it.

He lands palms-first, tucking into a roll to absorb the momentum. He freezes, panting, by the leg of what is usually Amir’s bed, straining to hear past the crickets and cicadas.

One, two, three, four.

Nothing.

He’s good.

“Took your damn sweet time, didn’t you.”

“Hello to you too,” Lee grumbles, pushing himself upright. From across the cabin, lounging on his bed like a goddamn French monarch, is his dick of a brother, grinning like the little shit he is. “Haven’t seen you in weeks, most people say hello, et cetera, et cetera.”

Michael shrugs. “You’re late. I watched you on the hill; you coulda made that run twenty minutes ago.”

“Nobody asked you.”

“I’m always asking me.”

“Get over her, boogerbrain.”

“Real mature,” Michael mocks, but ambles over anyway. He retches like a twelve year old when Lee hugs him, but twists his hands in the back of Lee’s shirt when he lets go too fast. Lee hides his smile in his over-gelled hair.

“You might miss me less if you actually write me letters, you know.”

“I didn’t miss you,” he responds automatically. “And I wouldn’t have to write you letters if you stayed home, already.”

Lee sighs. “…I have school, Michael.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure your dumbass bio teachers have loads to teach the guy who can do open heart surgery with his eyes closed.”

“Yeah, yeah. If anyone could do with a good, old-fashioned, public school humbling, it would be you, hothead. You ready to go?”

Michael pulls away with a roll of his eyes. “Only since yesterday. Been waiting for your sorry ass.”

“My sorry — your sorry ass doesn’t have a car!”

Michael snickers, jogging back to his bunk and grabbing the black duffel bag resting under it. Lee makes quick work of packing his own bag, stuffing in a couple squares of ambrosia and and giant roll of bandages, just in case, before creeping over to the only bed left with someone still in it.

“Hey, kiddo.” He folds over the sheet pulled all the way over messy blonde curls, immediately plaguing the cabin with loud snoring. He rests his palm over a sleep-creased cheek, mapping his thumb over the freckles dotting pudgy cheekbones, and brushes back the hair plastered to his baby brother’s forehead. “Will, sweetheart, get up.”

It takes him a couple minutes of gentle prodding — when Will is out he is out — to wake up, squinting blearily in the dim fairy lights strewn across his bunk. He blinks, one, two, three, four, then gasps.

“Lee!”

“Oof,” Lee grunts, shifting his weight as he is abruptly accosted with an armful of child. He smiles, curling around Will’s flailing, chattering form, tightening his hold on his waist and resting his forehead on his shoulder. “Hi, buddy.”

“—missed you so much! Is this why your letter was late? Are you staying? Is this why Diana left yesterday? Is she here now? Is Cass coming? Is everybody coming? Can I —”

“C’mon, Motormouth,” Michael interrupts, cuffing Will’s ear as he walks by. “Go get your sneakers on. We’re going for a drive.”

“‘Kay,” Will days happily, dashing off to find the light-up Star Wars shoes he refuses to throw out, even though there are literal holes in the soles.

“You got his bag?”

“Yep,” Michael affirms, holding up a straining backpack. “Toothbrush. Hairbrush that he won’t use. Three comic books. Change of clothes. And two more changes of clothes for when he inevitably destroys the first one,” he adds when Lee opens his mouth. He shoots him an exasperated look. “Me and Diana have been chasing after the little brat for four months, dude. I got him.”

“Alright, alright,” Lee grumbles. “Heaven forbid I double-check.” He turns over to the door, where Will is tying his shoelaces, tongue peeking out of his mouth. “You ready, Will?”

He tugs on the two loops. The entire knot unravels. Quick as a flash, he stuffs the laces inside his shoes, scrambling to his feet.

“Yes,” he lies. He scratches at his throat.

Lee and Michel sigh in unison.

Luckily, the reaction is hardly more than itchy eyes and a cough. Lee herds him towards the door, sliding the backpack over his shoulders and holding out his arm and —

“Hold on a sec.”

“Why?” Will whispers.

“Shh,” Lee says.

Window cracked open, Michael exhales. The release of his bow hardly makes more than a soft hiss.

The angle is odd, limited space as there is, but Michael never misses — the clunky arrow whistles through the open window, sailing past the sloped roofs of the west wing cabins, and thunks somewhere behind the first layer of trees in the forest. Immediately, it lets loose a burst of sound identical to a dropped bottle and a group of teenagers cursing. In seconds, the curfew harpies are screeching, descending upon the source of the noise with the fury of a thousand sun chariots.

“Go go go go go,” Michael orders, wrenching open the door.

Will, immediately, takes off, gleeful at the opportunity to run away with permission (usually, he’s running from one of them, screeching at him to get back here). (Or Chiron, although Chiron has a much easier time catching up, what with the six limbs and all). (…Is Chiron an insect? Technically?)

“How long do we have?” Lee whispers, once Michael has caught up.

He shrugs. “Seven minutes, give or take? More than enough time.”

Lee worries his bottom lip. “More than…” He glances at the forest. Vaguely, in the low firelight, he can see the odd wing, hear the odd screech. Nothing looks very close. He glances at the rapidly approaching Athena cabin, just a few yards out of their way. Hm.

“Detour!” he decides. “Will, c’mon!”

Ignoring Michael’s hissed complaints, he veers towards to neatly maintained cabin. He slips in the space between Cabins Six and Four, holding tight to Will’s hand. He counts the windows as he passes — one, two, three, four — and stumbles to a stop, crouching down in the dirt.

“Oh, are you — for the love of Zeus.”

Lee ignores his eye-rolling, scanning the ground for pebbles. He selects a handful of them, careful not to choose anything too big, and jogs a few steps back.

“What’re you doing?” Will asks, too loud, but at least he tries to whisper.

Instead of answering, Lee launches the first pebble at the window.

It pings off harmlessly.

Waiting a breath for the harpies to come running, he continues, firing off pebble after pebble with increasing strength. Finally, after pebble #7, a face appears behind the clear glass, bleary eyes widening when they take in the sight in front of them. Quickly, the latches are undone, and the window is yanked open.

“Lee?!”

Lee grins. “Hey, Carter.”

“What’re you — you’re — it’s December! What’s going —”

“I need a favour,” Lee whispers. “Can you — cover for us?”

For the first time, Carter looks away, brows raising as he notices Micheal, who taps his (watchless) wrist obnoxiously, and Will, who waves brightly. Carter waves back, small smile tugging at his lips.

“Cover for you?”

“Just, like, infirmary stuff. I don’t think anything will happen, and if it does we’re an IM away, but —”

“Lee,” Carter says exasperatedly, “cover you guys for what?”

“Oh.” Lee clears his throat. “I, um. I need to do something for my family.”

Smiling, Carter rests his elbows on the windowsill, chin in his hands. “Mysterious.”

“We’ll be back by tomorrow evening,” Lee assures.

“And then you’ll stay for a bit?”

Lee’s mouth goes dry. “You want me to stay?”

Carter ducks his head, fingers tracing a mindless path on the windowsill. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you for a while.”

A thousand gods of prophecy could not predict the sound that comes out of Lee’s throat.

Something between a whimper and an awkward laugh, his voice cracks four seperate times. Carter giggles. Lee prays, genuinely, that a crater opens up beneath him and drops him right at Lord Hades’ feet.

“Everything okay, Lee?”

“Peachy,” he croaks.

Carter giggles again. Lee flushes. Michael gags exaggeratedly behind him, pausing mid-heave to whisper something to Will, and then there’s a giggle, and then two people fake-retching. Carter peeks through his dark eyelashes, pleased expression softening his heart-shaped face, and Lee counts twelve of his own capillaries straight-up explode.

“Well,” he says, too loudly. “I’m — well.”

“I think you have harpies to run from,” Carter suggests gently.

“Indeed.” Lee clears his throat, nodding. “As you have so astutely observed, we do —”

Michael, recognising the strained tone to his voice, groans. “Fucksake, Lee —”

“— and so I bid you adieu —”

“Dude, oh my gods, snap out of it —”

Lee can’t. He barely has control over his own mouth.

“— and vow to see you again in the eve.”

Feeling his soul exit his body, settle in front of him, and then crumple up and die, Lee fucking bows. There is the very distinctive sound of a hand slapping over a mouth, muffling an eruption of giggles, and then the hand of mercy, also known as Michael Yew, clamping on the back of his lava-hot neck.

“Please excuse him,” he says grandly. “He was dropped on his head as a child. He’s normal, usually.”

“Except when you wear your glasses,” Will pipes up. Lee makes a mental note to find Clarisse’s spear and shove it through his own eye. “He gets real weird when you wear your glasses. Once he walked into a wall and broke his nose.”

“…Did he.”

“Yep. And last time he —”

“God, this hurts me to say,” whispers Michael, “but I have to put a stop to this conversation. We’re on a time limit. C’mon, Will. Bye, Carter. Sorry for — well, you know. Apollonian dramatics, not always easy to control.”

He turns, dragging Lee, still hunched over, out of the Cabin Six shadow.

Lee does not un-hunch until they are well over the crest of Half-Blood Hill, harpy screeches beginning to echo behind them.

“I have never been more embarrassed to be related to you in my life,” Michael informs him, the second he’s upright. “Like, genuinely, I’m considering disowning you. That was atrocious, Fletcher. You need to get ahold of yourself. Where is your game? Your dignity?”

“I think he lost it when he was born,” Will says thoughtfully. “Or maybe when Carter smiled at him the first time.”

“I hate both of you,” Lee croaks.

Neither of them seem too incredibly bothered, snickering to each other as they duck into the car.

Willing his flush to go down, Lee herds them into his car. He takes a moment in the cool air to chill the hell out, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, then slips behind the wheel. He checks that Will is belted in properly, slips the car into neutral, and coasts down the road, waiting until Thalia’s tree slips out of sight before turning it on and hitting the gas.

“Where’re we goin’?

“You,” Michael says, flipping down the vanity mirror to glare sternly at Will, “are going to dreamland. It’s three in the morning. Time for bratty children to sleep.”

“What? No! I’m not tired!”

“Fine, fine,” Lee says, exchanging a grin with Michael. “Stay awake, then. As long as you like.”

Will narrows his eyes. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“No trick?”

Lee crosses his fingers. “‘Course not.”

“Fine,” he relents. He settles into the booster seat Lee dragged out of the trunk for him (which he hates), arms crossed over his chest, and stares out the window.

Counting off on his fingers — one, two, three, four — Lee and Michael begin to hum.

At first, nothing happens. Will taps absentmindedly on his knees, humming along to the parts he knows, but soon his fingers slow. Lee and Michael keep it low and quiet, cycling through quiet folk songs Michael’s dad taught him, matching with the rumbling of the car, the slight breeze of Lee’s cracked open window. Michael kicks softly at the base of his seat, one, two, three, four; and matches the rhythm of the radio static, the click of the blinkers on every turn.

Will’s out in twenty minutes.

———

The drive is long.

Michael curls up sometime around four, fogging up the windows with every snore. Lee keeps the radio on a low hum, letting the background noise keep him focused as he navigates. The Atlantic Ocean is ink-black in the early morning, and the waves crash loud enough that he can hear them over the sounds of the engine, and for a while they’re still far enough from the city that the air smells fresh. Even when it starts to sour, and the noise gets a lot more urban, it’s early enough and he’s east enough that the traffic is minimal. Never non-existent — he actually cannot imagine what a traffic-less New York would look like; he doubts he’ll ever live to see it — but enough that he keeps at a steady 35.

The drive through Jersey is uneventful. Farmland and suburbs, nothing he hasn’t seen every day of his life, nothing he didn’t see the last time he made the drive. He entertains himself by counting every brown car he sees, randomly wagering the number by the time he gets there. He’s relieved when he finally crosses the memorial bridge, driving down the exit ramp and pulling into the first big parking lot he sees. Michael wakes up as he puts the car in gear, killing the engine.

“We here?” he asks, popping the joints along his spine.

Lee yawns. “Pretty much, yeah. Pulled off the highway.”

“‘Kay.” He glances in the backseat, where Will is starting to stir. “You nap. I’m gonna find a place for him to change and brush his teeth, maybe get breakfast for all of us.”

“Sounds good”

He crawls in the backseat as Michael guides Will out of it, accepting the blanket tossed his way. He slides his hoodie over his face, lies back, and conks out in minutes.

———

“Yo, Lee. Get up. I got food.”

“Timizzit?” he asks, shaking the grogginess from his limbs.

“Eleven. You slept for four hours. We gotta be at the theatre in an hour.”

“When’s she on?”

“Fuck if I know, man. Diana said noon, I’m gonna be there at noon. You wanna piss off Diana?”

“No.” He rubs the heel of his palm into his eyes, reaching blindly in the direction of Michael’s voice. “Food, please.”

A bag of grease is deposited into his waiting hand. He is pleased to find three cheeseburgers within it, and immediately tears into them with a fervour that can only be described as ‘ravenous’, or perhaps ‘revolting’. Esurient, perhaps, if one was feeling poetic.

Finally awake enough to function, Lee looks critically at the scene in front of him. Michael is dressed in the same button-up and slacks he wears to his dad’s performances, on the years he’s in the U.S., and Will is in jeans without grass stains, real shoes, hair mostly brushed. Michael has even managed to find a shirt that’s not half-unraveled from Will picking at the seams.

“Nice,” he says, nodding in approval.

Michael picks at his nails, visibly preening. “Oh, it was no big deal.”

“Yeah, yeah. Dweeb.”

He polishes off his last burger, then ducks inside the nearest store to find somewhere to get changed. Diana told them it didn’t matter, really, what they wore, but Lee knows better. He knows what this means for Cass, and while yeah, sure, it wouldn’t really matter if he showed up in sweatpants, he wants to show her that he put in the effort. That even if her mother couldn’t, or wouldn’t, they will. All of them. He wants her to see them and know that they did this for her. He wants her to see them and know that they tried, that they care.

Hair perfectly placed and clothes as unwrinkled as he can get them, he hurries back to the car. The theatre isn’t far, and they have a little under an hour, but he doesn’t want to push it. Finding parking will be hard enough.

“Are we on a quest?” Will asks, five minutes out on the road.

“Eight year olds don’t go on quests.”

“Diomedes was ten when he fought the Trojan war.”

“Are you Diomedes?”

“No.”

“Are you ten?”

“No.”

“Then no quests for you.”

“Aw.”

“Your quest can be being quiet for twenty minutes,” Michael grumbles, making a face when Will sticks his tongue out at him.

———

part two

[inkedinfusions]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐞𝐲 | eren jaeger chapter 10

⊱𖣂⊰ | In which you fall into a fictional world with the key to Pandora's box.

⊱𖣂⊰ | masterlist

⊰– prev   next–⊱

𝟏𝟎 | 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫

chapter word count: 3.1 k

content warnings: graphic panic attack, very light mentions of body horror, hurt/comfort, blanket warnings

a/n: Double digits!!! Shout out to my beta for picking out the name of the chapter. Hope you like this one! I had a blast writing out the descriptions even though the dialogue was sometimes a pain in the ass lol. Oh well.

Thanks for reading!

𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 cut the glitter dome that is up above, flowing in tandem with heavenly winds. Small wisps of their bodies drift away from the main path, scattering amongst the stars, becoming the translucent curtains that divide the heavens. 

You float amongst the vastness, mindlessly being carried away by their hold. They whisper around you, unfolding their voices like petals of moon flowering blooms. They are liquid electricity, powering their own existence, as well as holding up your own. What feels like a second, or perhaps a millennium passes, and suddenly the stars and currents are once again high above, leaving you on the surface. 

The air feels silky, as does the ground. You walk – but do you? You walk, walk, walk, and yet arrive nowhere. Everywhere looks the same; still, you're confident you haven't moved. Goosebumps riddle your soul, and you feel compelled to fall over, as threads of your consciousness are rhythmically pulled away from your sentience. 

And it's hot. Is it hot? You were sure you couldn't perceive your own body, let alone the temperature. But it is very much. Hot, that is. Blazing, melting your skin, charring your hair, burning your heart. It spreads, catching ablaze just like dry, cut grass. 

Your heart goes fast, fast, faster. It beats against your chest, that is to say it rumbles far past your ribs, hammering and hammering and hammering until you’re sure it is about to spill out your thorax. The starry dome begins to blur as you are forcibly ripped from your dream world, and your eyes snap open.

You gasp as you sit up, hands clutching the blanket you were sure was choking you. Beads of sweat slowly trickling down your forehead, down your back. There isn't enough air and your chest feels constricted and you're burning and there isn't enough air. 

You have to get out. Out your sheets, out the tent, maybe out the camp. There isn't air inside, but surely there is air outside, right? It doesn't matter what misconceptions the others could jump to, seeing you outside alone at night, right now you're choking on nothing and you have to get out, out, out. 

You trip over your discarded blanket as you clumsily stand up, absentmindedly grabbing a jacket before booking it out the tent. If you stayed, however, you would notice how Mikasa stirs awake, confused by the ruckus you're causing. 

But by the time she wakes up enough to question you, you are already halfway towards a small clearing on the edge of it all. The canteen, the tents, the lights, the crates, they all close in on you, robbing you of your breath. They loom over your path, no less giant than the hills that surround you. 

Still, you push on, no less agitated than when you first woke up, walking and walking and pushing towards the other side of a knoll, hidden away from prying eyes. Not once does it occur to you how miraculous it is that you encountered no Scout on your way here. 

You let yourself fall, your back sliding against the coarse rock as you curl in onto yourself. The cold air had done something to halt your racing thoughts of burning and choking and rumbling and terror, but you were still deep within the clutches of your own panicked mind.

Thoughts slip through your hands like slippery ice, only leaving behind the remnants of your musings, and they unwittingly become the reflection of your insecurities. All that you’ve tried to contain since you first realized the magnitude of the forces at play comes crashing down. The other shoe has dropped, and it's in the tremors it causes in the ground that you find yourself tripping over. 

You're in Paradis, and away from Yelena’s prying eyes, and on your way to making allies, so why are you so afraid? What are you so afraid of? You want to scream, to tear your hair off, to claw your arms red. You have to get out, out, out, but there is nothing to get out of but your own skin. 

You shudder, threading your hands through your hair, lowering your gaze towards your boot covered feet. When did you put them on? You don't remember and that kicks off another wave of dread. 

You can't remember putting on your boots, you can't feel your face, you can't remember your last name. Your clothes are itchy and coarse, like sand on an abandoned beach, visited only by the remnants of forgotten spirits. Clothes, face, name. Clothes, face, name. Clothes, face–

“Y/n?”

Eren. Eren is here. He's calling your name, you notice. You want to answer something, anything to reassure him that you're fine, that it is just a fluke, and to please not tell Levi of your nocturne escapade. But all that comes out of your mouth is a choked sob, which is quickly covered by your hands. 

A hand that is not your own makes its way into your field of vision. It stays there, palm up and unmoving, before you let out a shuddering breath and make a move to grab it, reaching for it with both your searing hands. You expect him to flinch away from the scorching heat, but there is no discernible reaction that you can perceive. 

The first thing you notice in Eren’s hand is its coolness, clashing against the raging fire that burns under your nails. His other palm drops above your own, encasing both in a brisk hold. He holds still for a moment, and when you don't pull away he squeezes, giving you a point to center yourself around. 

His left thumb rubs comforting circles on the back of your hand, pressing callused fingerprints onto it. They are rough like fine sand, gently rubbing away the coarseness of your touch. You focus on that feeling, slowly concentrating on the way his hands differ from yours. 

Expectedly, his are rougher, with more calluses than yours. Yours, on the other hand, are almost silky smooth when compared to his, and you're so perplexed by this you don't notice how your breathing begins to calm down. 

He lets you turn his palms around, chuckling at your puzzled expression. You don’t find it funny, rather you find it intriguing. His life has been marked by hardship and physical labor from the beginning and yours hasn’t, so why wouldn't you find the blemishes of toil interesting, especially when compared to yours of everyday life? Still, you would’ve thought that his nature as a shifter meant that no blemishes would mark his skin. 

You both stay still for a while, only accompanied by the distant waves that crash against the escarpments that give way to the beach down below. The clamor against your ears calms down in favor of the echo of the sea, of the hands that hold your own. 

After a while, you speak. “How’d you know–”

“–Where to find you?” Eren interrupts. “I told you I would, didn’t I?”

You choose to appear disbelieving, because the only other option is to be flustered. You raise your eyebrow at him, and it is in your silence that he amends his statement. 

“Mikasa saw you sneak out. She woke me up when you didn’t return,” he says.

“I woke her up? Jeez, what a great second impression,” you say.

Eren shrugs. “I don't think she blames you. She was pretty worried for someone she only met today.”

You chuckle, wiping away the dampness in your cheeks you’ve just now noticed existed. “You don’t have to lie to make me feel better. I don’t mind that your friends don’t trust me. To be honest, I don't really get why you do.”

Eren is silent for three crashing waves, mulling over his words. For someone with a reputation of speaking impulsively, he seems to think a lot about what he should say. You won’t believe him if he says something along the lines of oh, no don't worry, everyone trusts you now, but if he tells you that yeah, no one really wants to rely on you, then it would be nothing but a dick move on his part. 

“I never fooled myself into thinking that everyone was going to trust you just because I told them my future memories made it easy for me to do so,” he says. “But I do think that eventually they will learn that you are someone who can be relied on.”

“...Thanks Eren,” you say, fighting against the tears that seem to form in your eyes without your permission. 

“Do you want to… talk about it?” he says, cringing at his hesitation. 

Your laughter is a little wet, and you pull one of your hands away from his to once again wipe the tears that fall over when your body shakes. 

“No, but thank you,” you say, giggling harder when his shoulders relax at the prospect of not listening to the cause of your panic. “Got a little too tense there, huh.”

Eren’s ears redden slightly, as do his cheeks, embarrassed. “I’m not good at this comforting stuff. Armin’s the one that usually does this.”   

“I figured,” you say, glancing at him with a small smile. 

Crickets sing with the sea’s waves, forming a chorus along with the gentle sway of grass around you. All of nature’s orchestra is lit by moonlight, and you can see the way it bounces off the distant water, swimming with the silver ripples that form on its surface. The sea comes and goes, and comes and goes, ruled by the magnetism of the lunar pull. 

You sigh, reclining so your back sits flush with the coarse rocks of the small alcove you’ve taken refuge in. Eren follows suit, and you both gaze at the landscape before you, intertwined hands resting between the two of you. 

“What's the plan then?” you ask, easing into the silence of your voices. 

“Plan?” Eren turns to look at you questioningly and you mirror his movements, falling deep into his aquamarine eyes. 

“Yeah,” you say. “Like, what are we going to do with the whole… future thing.”

“You sure you’re up for that?” he asks. 

“We won’t get another chance for a long time, I think,” you say, straightening your posture. “What do you know?”

Eren cracks a small grin, but you don't miss the way his eyes flash with anguish at your question. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“I could go first, if you’d like,” you say. 

Eren’s eyes move from you to the horizon, and he sighs. His fingers twitch in yours as he contemplates the memories he has received from his future self, more likely than not arranging them in a coherent way. You feel dread at the way his pupils waver, preparing yourself for the worst.

“Maybe you could start with what you’ve told others,” you say. “So I know where to thread.”

A beat passes. 

“There's… my dad,” he starts, “at the Reiss church, or rather below it. He kills everyone but the father.”

You nod slowly, remembering how freaked out he looked on the posterior days of entering the basement of his old house in Shiganshina. Back then everyone, including him, simply thought that Grisha lashed out at the family, eager to take control of the Founding Titan in Freida’s possession.

“And then there's you,” he continues.

Unlike the previous revelation, you have no point of reference for a memory in which you appear, given you were the audience rather than the ones being watched. It's weird, to hear your future experiences from his perspective. 

“You're mostly hunched over what I think are blueprints or maps. I can never hear what we talk about, but there is always a feeling of camaraderie. I don’t think I would’ve sent those memories if you were someone I couldn’t trust.”

That leaves you a bit speechless, but also a tad reassured. You still seem to fight for what you think is right in the future, if the planning Eren says you’re a part of is anything to go off of. Maybe all your plans pay off and you succeed. 

“And the Scouts know about this,” you say, looking for confirmation.

“And the main government branches,” he says sheepishly. “I had to tell them though, because I didn’t know if I would be there when you arrived, and they’re not exactly on the best terms with strangers now.” 

“That's reasonable,” you say. “Although it did throw me for a loop when you greeted me by my name back at the beach.” 

“Sorry about that.”

“No, it's fine,” you say absentmindedly. “Yelena called me Ymir the first time we met.”

Eren chuckles. “What? Do you have some sort of connection to her then?”

You scoff. Things would definitely be infinitely easier if you did. To your dismay though, you arguably were the least connected to her than anyone else on the island, barring the non-Eldian Volunteers. 

“Apart from knowing she exists? Not really,” you say. “Your own connection comes from the Founding and Attack titans, yeah?” You continue when Eren nods. “Like I told Sasha earlier, I’m not a shifter. I just… kinda read? Yeah, I read about this.”

“And Zeke?”

“Well…” you exhale. “He knows. Not everything, per se, but he knows I know potentially more than what I’ve told him. Which was basically his plan for the island.”

“You told him?” he says, disbelieving. “What for?”

“I needed to get to the island somehow,” you retort, oddly defensive against your own plans. Was it the best thing you ever came up with? Hell no, but there also wasn’t much you could do in your situation. “Which brings me to the next point. At some point in the future, you’re going to access the Paths with Zeke.”

His eyes snap to you, alert. “A titan of royal blood.”

“Yeah,” you confirm. “You knew, right?”

“I had a hunch.”

“I know,” you say. “Anyway, I have a favor to ask of you when that happens. I’m not… from here originally, and I think Ymir is my only shot at getting home.” 

Eren glances at you, eyebrows raised in inquiry. “Where are you from, then?”

“Nowhere you would know,” you say, cracking a small grin. “But it's not somewhere I can simply return to.”

“Does Zeke know about this?” he asks. 

“To an extent,” you say. “But I wouldn’t put it past him to list it lower than his own goals. And the titan of royal blood? Have you told anyone about that?”

“No one else knows,” he says. 

You nod. “Good. Don’t mention it until Hange does at the hearing.”

“You know about that too?” Eren says, surprised. “We are due tomorrow at the walls to discuss the whole Anti-Marleyan Volunteers thing with Historia and the other branches. I think you’ll be coming with us, since the Captain isn't very keen on leaving you here.”

That is awfully nice of him. Or absolutely terrible, it all depends from what point of view you were analyzing the situation. For you it is nice, because it means less time near Yelena and more with the main cast, who you need to get to trust you. On the other hand, it could also be a symbol of the general distrust towards you, and the need to keep you under their watch. 

“Okay,” you say. “I can work with that. Will I be called to speak or something?”

“No clue.”

You sigh, bringing your unoccupied hand up to massage the bridge of your nose. Honestly, you prefer your mind games and eccentric conversations with Zeke to this. At least he had some semblance of care towards you. The government wouldn’t extend the same grace, so you needed to get all your cards right, or risk saying something you shouldn't. 

“Okay,” you say, counting with your fingers. “So, your father and the Reiss family, myself, the royal blood and Founding Titan. Is that everything?" 

“All I’ve told them. But for what I haven’t…”

You wait for him to speak. Your clothes rustle when, after a minute, you turn to look forward, thinking that maybe your constant gaze is putting unnecessary pressure on him.

“There are… explosions,” he says after a while, wetting his lips to continue with his tale. “My dad at the Reiss church, but this time I'm also there. Someone lying dead on the floor. And… hundreds of thousands of titans marching away from the island.”

Your stomach drops. A hollowness makes its way to your guts, sharp and cold. All your blood rushes to your feet, except that it doesn’t because suddenly all your extremities are freezing. You both stay still– even statues would be more animated, more alive. 

His eyes follow yours when you look at him, and you can see the same dread that was lurking under his eyes come alight, certainly mirroring your own. You know and he knows, so you’re both plunged into a monstrous storm when faced with the possibility (inevitability) of the future. 

The confirmation of the unavoidable in your eyes just adds to the burdens already placed on his shoulders, and even if you’re here now to alleviate the weight. 

“We'll figure it out,” you murmur.

“You know as well as I do that we can’t change something that is meant to happen,” he says.

“It's not predetermined,” you argue. “There’s gotta be some other way, and we’ll find it. Together.” 

Eren stays silent at your reassurances. You falter, scrounging for any piece of information in his future memories that could lead to hope, but it is all eerily similar to that which he saw originally. 

The explosions could very well be the conflict that rose in light of the Jaegerists, and his vision of himself at the Reiss church at least confirms that he will make it to the paths, but the lack of mention of you or Ymir has you a little worried. Sasha originally dies while laying on the floor of an airship, and the Colossal Titans marching from the island can only mean one thing: The Rumbling. 

So yeah, all in all it's looking pretty bad for the both of you. 

“At least we have time, right?” Eren speaks, breaking his silence. “Time to figure out what to do.”

“We do,” you say. “Enough to find a way that doesn’t result in the scorning of the island, nor the island's revenge on the world.”

Enough to secure a way home, and on the way, ensuring that Eren’s doesn’t go up in flames. Yet there is not much to do at this very moment, so for the meantime you both return to tranquil stillness, and it is only dawn that reminds you to go back to your tent. 

a/n: Super quick fun fact, Y/n tracing the lines of Eren's hands is supposed to be a callback to  earlier chapters, where she starts fiddling with stuff when she gets nervous, more specifically in chapter 2, dissection – “There's a small crack in your mug that you trace over and over again, the repetition helping ground your attention instead of spiraling.”

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[constesplanetarium]

꧁•⊹٭𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙷𝚊𝚞𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝙷𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝙲𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘.٭⊹•꧂

☼⚠︎ Male! Yandere Ghosts/Spirit Harem x GN! AFAB! Reader (Part 1)

UPDATE!

Darkness rating ) 6/10: “Getting a little shocking now.”

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

CONTENT WARNINGS!!!

General Yandere shenanigans (possessiveness, jealousy, aggression towards other guys, etc.), also light mentions of sex.

There’s also light possession, so I want to add Dub-con (dubious consent) into the list.

Word count: Around 6k. Sorry that it’s so long lolz, don’t worry, the next part will be shorter :)

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

The giant doors to the dark, cold mansion slowly and loudly creak open, the moonlight from outside pouring into the empty entrance hall. Not a soul in sight, as always. A couple shivers spread throughout your body, and with a huff, you point your flashlight all around the room, seeing every single cobweb, and the giant chandelier hanging above your head. Two statues line the beginning on the railing of the stairs in the center of the hall, both of them looking like two sorts of creatures. You can’t really tell what it is. Odd.

Ah, should you wear a mask? This house is old after all, so much dirt and debris could be inhaled here.

You find yourself mindlessly wandering the hall, thinking about every rumor that has been passed around in your town.

The haunted mansion on the hill. That’s what some people called it. Most had other creative names such as “that hellhole” or “that creepy ass house”, one time you even heard that this place was “The devil’s funhouse”. Every rumor you had heard involved people disappearing, or even dying in this mansion.

How creative. What’s next, is the boogeyman going to come after you?

You point your flashlight to the stars leading up to the second floor, and you marvel at how the wood doesn’t seem like it’s rotting at all. It looks so pristine, like it was just cleaned. Do people come here often after all? A couple stomps on the first step beneath you also don’t break or seem like it’s rotting either.

Maybe there is something odd about this house. It’s hundreds of years old, and it looks so nice, yet no one’s been in here for centuries. And even after that, this place looks decently clean, besides the couple cobwebs. The townsfolk were planning on demolishing it a bit ago, but had stopped after some “disturbances on the property” had occurred, and this place was blocked to the public. In fact, the way you had to climb that big ass gate just to get here was appalling. If nothing else, you’re leaving with something from here. Maybe as a souvenir, maybe to sell, it doesn’t matter.

With a small shuffle of your shoulders, you swing your backpack down onto the grou-

Your whole body jumps, causing you to yelp as you turn to the source of the sound behind you. What was that? That loud bang? You see the door that you had just opened shut without warning, the hall enveloped in mostly darkness again, the only light being from your flashlight, and the moonlight that’s creeping through the windows. You scramble your stuff back onto your back, pulling the dusty handle.

It’s stuck. It’s stuck. It’s stuck.

You feel a flash of anger and pound your fist on the door. Whoever the fuck this is from town, it’s not funny! What the fuck?! Ugh, it’s probably one of the guys that told you to go here, maybe it was fucking Jacob or something. Your grumble curses to yourself quietly and slip off your backpack off again, rummaging through it just to pull out a pocket knife. At least you have a form of defense. You heave your backpack on your back and wave your flashlight in several directions, attempting to scare off whatever's there. If something even is there.

The wood under you creaks after every couple steps you climb on the stairs, and you decide to take a left on the branching part of the stairs. You anxiously take a glance behind you after getting to the top, and expectedly, you see nothing. With a small sigh, you walk through the rest of the hall, and decide to stop at a door on the right. The clean doorknob surprises you, and yet again, it’s a bit more proof that someone might live here.

Hah. Ghosts my ass. Are you kidding me? Maybe you’ll file a police report after all of this. You turn the knob and creak open the door, ever so slightly. Pointing the flashlight into the room, you’re suddenly met with a very comfortable-looking room. You can see yourself in the giant body mirror, and the bed looks... Uhm.

Is that a lump? Is it moving?

Your eyes go wide, and you stare in horror as whatever is under the blankets suddenly rises up and pulls the covers off themselves. You don’t even wait around to see who it is, as you shut the door and bound back down the stairs, stopping at the main doors as you desperately pull on the handles.

It doesn’t budge, of course.

Ah fuck, why even bother?! You turn and make a quick right, down another hall. But right after you make the turn, you catch a dark, tall figure staring down at you. Unmoving. Just staring.

Fuck no.

The hard, tile floor under you echoes loudly after each step as you bound down the hall, your steps finally silencing as you run on the carpet into what seems to be a sort of study. You would admire how big and spacious this is for a study, and you can see just how many books are on the shelves, but you don’t have time for that. You slide yourself under a small table, and shut off your flashlight.

Now you just wait.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to wait long, as whoever was there steps into the study, and seems to take a glance around. Their heavy breathing seems to echo around as their steps get closer and closer to your hiding spot. You hold your breath and almost decide to start praying to whatever god exists right then and there, but your muscles relax as the figure starts to walk away, with a small hum of an old tune you don’t know.

You wait about a minute to make sure they don’t come back, and you shuffle out your hiding spot, fidgeting with the pocket knife in your hands with a small, shaky exhale. Holy shit, you gotta get out of this house.

But how? Through a window? No, the noise of the shattering would draw the person over, and there’s the risk of broken glass shards in your skin. There could be a courtyard in the back, where you could leave that way. But wouldn’t there be a fence surrounding it? Or maybe some hedges? Hmm.

Your phone doesn’t have any service here either, it was like that as soon as you stepped onto the grounds of the mansion, damn it.

Might as well give the courtyard idea a shot. With a couple taps on your hand, you switch your flashlight back on and take in your surroundings. Okay, to the courtyard would be through the main hall, and… Fuck. How would you get there? You grumble annoyingly and peer into the hallway, making sure the figure is completely gone, before making your way back into the main hall.

Just as eerie as it was before, ugh. You stand there for a moment, swiveling your flashlight around until you find that hallway. Taking a couple of steps over-

A loud bang makes you instinctively turn your head, and you’re met with a creature beyond comprehension. So ugly, so grotesque, so…

You scream and try to turn to run away, but you’re forcefully knocked off your feet. You look up fearfully at the creature. But, it’s gone.

A man has taken its place instead.

A man dressed in some fancy, old suit laughs over you, clutching his stomach as he laughs so hard, his heart might just come out. His glasses are a bit crooked on his face, and you can see a couple rings on his left hand. His dark, dirty blonde hair is messy and certain strands are falling over onto his face. But the most interesting thing is that he’s semi-transparent. You can see right through him, just like a glass, or a fish tank. “Ahem, I… I apologize.” He clears his throat and bends down, gazing at you in wonder. “A human? Ah, now what’s a human doing here in the mansion walls? Are you lost, moonshine?”

Oh. Oh my.

Wow, what a nice voice he has. You find yourself nervously fidgeting with your clothes and flashlight as you stare up at him with no words.

“Ah, are you scared?” He frowns and bends down, offering his hand out to you. “Please don’t be scared, moonshine. I just like to joke around quite often.”

That was joking around? That… Thing?

But the way he’s looking down at you… He probably doesn’t mean any harm, right? And he isn’t trying to kill you now, so…

You take his hand instinctively, but it just phases through. Oh right, ghost. You look up at him and frown as he has a stupid smile on his face, giggling. “My apologies.” You get back up on your feet and brush yourself off, that fall did kind of hurt. You wouldn’t be surprised if you wake up with a couple bruises.

“Now, back to my last question, what’re you doing here, hmm?” He tilts his head from side to side and looks at you, humming as he does so. “I won’t chastise you for anything, I’m just curious.”

You stammer out some excuse. It’s best not to tell him you went out here on some ghost story rumor.

But you never expected to find an actual ghost here.

“Ah, a little visitor?” The man cheers and swirls around you, jokingly thrusting his arm through your chest. “Now, what do you plan to do while you’re here, hmm? Perhaps a house tour?” He giggles and flexes his hand through you as a shiver spreads itself through your body, and you move out of his way quickly. “Ah, it’s been so, so long! How many years has it been, hmm? Ah,” He snaps his fingers together. “Alexander must know the answer. I must ask him later, huh…” It’s already difficult to keep up with this… Whatever he is. “I know it’s been more than 200, hmmmmm…” He drones out his question as he floats all around you, dragging his hands and fingers across your body. It’s a bit uncomfortable. “Well, no matter, ahem.” With a snap in your face, you flinch and look up at him in front of you. “Welcome!”

Eugh. He already gives you the heebie-jeebies. Your eyes keep on glancing towards the hallway leading to the courtyard. It’s right there… “I understand that this place isn’t too… Pristine. But I can turn on the lights for you if you’d like?” He flicks over to a candle, and it suddenly lights. With a small point to the chandelier, the dark hall is suddenly lit up with a soft, amber glow. “We don’t have… Electrical lights here in the main parts of the building, such as the hallways, per say, but we have some lamps here and there. Mostly in our rooms. We also have a oven and fridge that work quite fine.” He chuckles and you can’t help but tune out some of his words. He talks so much, the hell… “We stole both the fridge and oven. Isn’t that funny? Ah, Dalton almost broke the oven that one time, I remember he…” You subconsciously tune out his voice in favor of the hallway, it’s right there.

Freedom. Right there, huh?

“Now, what’re you looking at, hmm?” Cold hands suddenly grasp your head and force you to turn back to him, and he leans in close. How the fuck can a ghost grab you? “I would prefer you to only look at me, now. Aren’t I the star of the show at this moment, darling?” He cooes quietly in your ear and you let out a shaky exhale. Man, he can sweet talk, but in this scenario, it’s a bit more frightening than enthralling. “I’m not your everyday, ordinary ghost that you hear in those little children's tales. I do hope you understand that.” Yeah, he isn’t as nice as you thought, I guess. Luckily, he lets go pretty quick and looks in the direction of your gaze. “Ah, down there? Would you like to explore more?” It looks like your input isn't even needed, as he grabs your hand and interlocks your fingers with his. He’s just cold. Cold all over. He tugs you lightly and leads you down the hallway, and you slip your flashlight into a little water bottle section of your backpack.

“This hallway can lead to the kitchen, a bathroom, the first floor of the library, the courtyard…” He hums as he shows you around. Every couple of steps, the candles in the hallway seem to light on their own, lighting up a path for the both of you to take. You even get a good glimpse of the paintings on the walls, some of them just being flowers and fruit, and some of them being people. You even see your little tour guide on the wall, smiling at you eagerly. The other people are the other inhabitants of the mansion, you presume.

… Now why do you feel like there's more than one pair of eyes on you?

“I never told you my name, did I?” He tugs you over as you both make a small right, stopping at two large doors, decorated with gold engravings. “It’s Oliver, or you can give me a cute little nickname.” He pulls the right door open with his other hand, and chuckles to himself. “How about Olive? Maybe Ollie? Or maybe it can be something like darling, dearest, maybe sweetheart?” He tugs you inside the open door, and lets go of your hand to shut the door behind you two. “I would prefer the latter three, just so you know.” Not even 5 seconds passes by, but he’s grabbed onto your hand again and is tugging you into the dark room. “Ah, I forgot, welcome to the library.” As soon as he says that, the big chandelier above lights to reveal probably the biggest library you’ve ever seen. You didn’t even know it was possible to have this many books in one place. There’s a small pathway with a long rug, leading to a sort of gothic, spiraling staircase.

“Hmm, he should be here, he’s been reading more recently…” He mutters and leads both of you up the staircase. “Ah, you probably don’t know who I’m talking about. I’m looking for our ‘leader’, I guess you could call him that. He just keeps Alex and Dalton in order most of the time, since they’re always fighting.” With a small chuckle, you both are suddenly at the top of the staircase, and you’re met with an elegant little study in the middle of the room, showcasing a couple of sofas with a small wooden table in the middle.

Oliver leads you to the study, taking a small glance around and he scoffs. “He isn’t here, huh…” He doesn’t seem too bothered by it, as he takes a seat on the sofa and pats the spot next to him. “Come here, sit! You’re probably exhausted from running around this whole time.” You set your backpack down on the floor with a thud, leaning back and finally getting a chance to relax. “We’ll just stay here for a while longer.” Oliver slips off his glasses, and suddenly pulls a small piece of cloth out of thin air, wiping them down as he hums the same tune you don’t recognize. Well, it does sound a bit familiar, but what is he humming, anyway?

“Clair de Lune, I’m sure you’ve heard of it?” Indeed you have. So that's what it was. “Austin happened to be playing it on the piano when I was passing by, and it’s gotten stuck in my head.” He sticks his glasses back on and leans back on the cushion, looking over at you. “Do you like classical music? I’m fond of it, personally.”

You just shrug your shoulders and give him an awkward smile. You don’t have any strong feelings about it, really.

He laughs quietly at your response, and shuffles closer to you. “Are you scared?” He scratches at your thigh jokingly and grins. “Does the mansion frighten you? Oooh….” He shakes his hand around jokingly, making you break out into a small smile. What an idiot.

Oliver looks relieved that you’re smiling. “Don’t let the whole creepiness of the mansion bother you, darling. It’s not so bad. I mean, hey, I’m pretty nice, huh?” Well, he IS the only one you’ve met so far…

You find yourself conflicted. You really want to leave as quick as you can but…

How are the other inhabitants of the house? How do they act? Are they as nice as Oliver, or more sadistic and condescending?

“I can’t say the others are too nice.” Well that answers your question right there. Though, it’s always important to have an unbiased party, like yourself. He sighs and pushes himself up against you. You didn't even know he had scooted that close until you felt his cold thigh against yours. Is he even cold through clothes? “Alexander's more annoying, Dalton is rude, and Edmund… Well, I guess he can just get carried away with hospitality. He won’t even give you room to breathe. I’m a bit better in that department.” He chuckles it off and looks down at you. “It would be best to just stick with me, alright?”

Well, it’s not like you can really rely on anyone else except him right now. You nod, but take quick notice the way his smile twitches at it’s corners. “If you see one of the others, just go and hide for a while. I’ll come find you.”

You tilt your head and voice your concerns about his suggestion. I mean, if he’s so nice, what’s stopping the others from helping you as well?

“It’s just… They might get a little ‘overprotective’ with you. We haven’t had a visitor for so long, you know?” He fidgets with the rings on his left hand as he speaks. “Usually people only get to the gates outside the grounds before they’re driven away by the other spirits living here, but I’m not sure how you got a pass in…” He grins and caresses your head, playing with your hair as he whispers into your ear, “Did you sell your soul now? Ah, but there’s a heart there still beating.” He places his hand over your heart, and all of a sudden you can feel and hear your heart pounding right in your head. You wince at the feeling, what the hell? “You’re shaking. Are you scared, darling?” Oliver cups your cheek, placing a kiss on the corner of your eye as you blink away a tear forming. It’s so uncomfortable.

You try to push him away from his chest, but your hand phases through as he laughs at you. “Ghost, remember? Well, maybe not a ghost, but similar.” His hand rubs your thigh, and you try to laugh alongside him. “I can touch you, but you can’t touch me. Funny, right? It works the other way around, too.” Your body feels weird, but it’s not bad.

Why did his kiss feel so good? Warmth spreads throughout your body as you look up at him, suddenly desperate for that comforting feeling again. You reach up for his neck, using your hand to push him closer to you. His body feels warm now. What did he do? What the hell was that? His arm sets itself around your waist as he pushes you closer to him, and he grins. “Why’re you so frightened? It’s just me.” His sweet talk sounds so nice now. Oliver. Oliver. Oliver. Oliver.

… What were you thinking about again? Wasn’t it Oliver? It was, wasn’t it? Your heartbeat is still pounding in your head, but do you even care? You don’t, don’t you? Does Oliver care either? His heavy breathing fills your head, almost distracting you from your jumbled thoughts, and you can barely hear what he’s saying. It’s becoming muffled. Something about you being pretty?

“All mine, right?” You tilt your head into his hand, snuggling into his palm as you stare at him in confusion. He sets a small kiss on your forehead and laughs. He’s so handsome. “It’s nothing, never mind.” He leans down and whispers against your lips quickly, “It’s nothing at all.” and then he presses his lips against yours. Ah, they’re so warm. You clutch at his hair as you both deepen the kiss, and you start to hear him moan softly on your mouth.

“Thank the lord I got to you first, you’re all mine.” His breathing is shaky and frantic as you both go back in to kiss each other. You can feel his hands snake down to your hips, then under your pants as he starts to fidget with your panties. No way, it already feels this fucking good, imagine him rubbing your-

All of a sudden, the candles start to flicker in and out, distracting you from the kiss. Oliver looks just as surprised, and then he clicks his tongue and backs away, that warm feeling vanishing from you in almost an instant.

What the hell just happened again? You both were talking about the other people in the house, and then…

That’s it? You could swear there's a small gap in your memory or something…

Eh. Whatever.

Oliver sighs and gets up, brushing himself off. “Dalton's probably throwing a tantrum, or maybe it’s a couple of the servant spirits fighting. The candle’s don’t usually flicker like that unless something else is overpowering the magic.” He scoffs, and looks down at you lovingly. “Stay here in the library, okay? I’ll be back in a bit. Stay on the second level.” He pats your head, and in the blink of an eye, he vanishes through the floor, leaving you alone.

Finally getting out of here sounds like a good idea, fantastic even. You snatch up your bag by the straps and are about to turn, but you feel someone else watching you. Is it the same eyes as before?

… No. It’s someone different. Who could it be? Is it out of malice? You swivel yourself around to get a better look around the place, but you don’t see anyone. Maybe they’re hiding? You frown and take the pocket knife out of your pocket, starting to walk in between bookshelves to find that mysterious person.

The books seem to be dust-free as you drag your fingers across them. Some of the books happen to catch your eye, since they’re in a completely different language altogether, and you know damn well it’s not english. Or any human language for that matter. Maybe you can snatch one up and take it once you leave? It could sell for some good cash. Slipping the book out of it’s place, you analyze both the cover and it’s back, realizing slowly that there's no publisher or author at all. Huh.

You look up from the book to keep looking around, but your eyes meet with someone hiding behind a shelf, peering at you curiously. Well damn, that was fast. You’re already running into Oliver’s roomies. Now, who is this?

Hmm. That doesn’t look like a “Dalton”, maybe Edmund?

… Ah, no, he didn’t like that one. So he must be Alexander.

“You’re the visitor, aren’t you?” The man shuffles uncomfortably behind the bookshelf, and it doesn't take you long to notice his odd attire compared to Olivers. It looks like he’s wearing a sort of black shirt with some ribbons and frills, with a couple buttons unbuttoned at the top, exposing his chest. At the same time, you also take notice of the stuffed animal he’s holding, and raise a brow. It’s a big, fat chibi-like rabbit, with huge floppy ears, with several different colors of patching, ranging from a dark purple to a light green. His black hair covers his right eye a bit, and is sticking out in certain places.

You nod slowly, and he steps out the bookshe- Wow, he is pretty damn tall and muscular. He towers over you, but bends down a little to get a better look at you, and vice versa. His eyes are a light blue, mixed with a sort of light purple, and his lips part a bit in wonder. “A new visitor, it’s been so long…” He whispers and his face breaks into a big smile. “Do you hear that, Pochi? A new visitor. Say hi.” He brings the stuffed rabbit up to your face, and you giggle at his little gesture. Pochi’s so cute, with its little tongue sticking out. “Oh, Pochi, be nice.” He grumbles and pounds the stuffed animal on the head.

Oh. Did it just move? You shudder at the thought of a rabid stuffed animal chasing you around, but return his smile once you see that it’s returned.

“Uhm, so, what’re you still doing here? In the library, I mean.” He asks, tilting his head to the side as he looks at you. “You’ve been here for, uhm…” He reaches up and fidgets with some locks of his air, still holding Pochi in his left arm. “Did you happen to be here with Oliver?” You nod, and watch his mouth shift into a frown. “He didn’t make any sort of advances on you, did he?”

Uh.

Should you lie?

Alex sees your hesitation, and takes that as a yes. His brows furrow and he clicks his tongue in annoyance. “Ugh, he’s so pushy. If you my want advice, stay away from him. And stay away from Dalton too.” As soon as Dalton's name leaves his mouth, he scowls and hugs Pochi tighter to his chest. If Pochi really is alive, I don’t think Pochi would feel very comfortable right now. “Dalton would just toy with you, and then possibly pull your hair out while he’s at it. He’s no good.” So this is why Alex and Dalton fight often, there's clear dislike here.

If he doesn’t like Oliver or Dalton, how is Edmund?

“Oh, Edmund? Uhm,” The candle’s amber lights flicker again, and he sighs. “He’s okay, I guess. He’s too… Flattering with guests, but he's better than the other two.”

You purse your lips, and he suddenly looks away, bashful. “Uhm.” So does everyone just hate everyone else here? How has this mansion been standing for so long? You sigh and start to walk past him, feeling the chill of his body as you pass by. “Wait, where are you going?” He murmurs and starts to float beside you, still clutching onto Pochi.

You don’t even know yourself, but anywhere but here.

“Oliver told you to stay here, didn’t he? Is that why you’re leaving? You don’t want to see him?” It’s the partial truth, but that's enough. You nod and start to make a break toward the stairs, but he grabs your arm. He’s really cold too. “Wait, ah…” Alex tugs you closer to him, pressing you against both Pochi and himself. Yeesh. It's so chilly. "Come to the sewing room. It, uh, happens to be close to mine, and no one goes there except for me. You won’t find Edmund, but you can relax and just pass the time there until he’s available. He’s probably with Oliver solving the magic issue.”

Ugh, who the hell can you trust in this house? But it’s not like you’re going to get far running away from him, maybe he’ll send Pochi after you if it’s really alive. You agree, and watch a small smile form on his features. “Good, that's good. Come with me.” With a light tug of your arm, he leads you out of the library, peering into the hallway to make sure no one else is passing by. “It’s not a long walk, we’ll be fine.”

“What do I think is going on?” Alex fidgets with Pochi’s arm as he speaks. “It’s probably a couple of the servant spirits. Oh, you don’t even know what they are.” He laughs a little and points to the left, signaling you to keep walking in that direction. The candles keep flickering as you two pass by. “They’re a sort of lesser being than us, but they still have their own thoughts and feelings. One of them isn’t enough to overpower the magic here, but if a large group of them start fighting, it does make things flicker here and there.” he says. “They’ve been having arguments too, recently. Would you like to hear the reason why?” He has your attention. Now, what’s the reason?

“A group of them were cleaning Edmund’s study, and some of them had spilled ink on some of his manuscriptures. They’re all really devoted to their work, you see. Any mistake that they make is punishable to the highest degr-” He suddenly stops in his tracks, and puts a finger to his lips. “Do you hear that?” He smiles, and suddenly there's a loud bang that echoes throughout the hall, along with some yelling and mystical laughter. The laughter doesn’t sound like Oliver. “Those are the spirits laughing. I guess this fight wasn’t too serious.”

He stops in front of two double doors, but instead of the gold engravings that the library had, the wood is black with a large engraving of some creature you can’t comprehend. He holds his hand out to the knob, a small click signaling to him that the doors open, and he twists the handle. “This is, er, my personal work room. Though, I don’t have anything out at the moment…” He pushes the door open, and a large chandelier lights, showcasing the ballroom-like room to you. There’s a large row of mannequins on the left side of the room, and papers scattered all over. A nice patchwork sofa stands on the right side of the room, alongside a side chair covered in the same patchwork. “Oh no…” He whispers and lets go of your arm, rushing over to clean up every paper. You flinch as the door loudly shuts behind you by itself, but you don’t hear the lock click. A good mental note.

“I’m sorry, I forgot I, uh, hadn’t cleaned up from last night.” Just a single look at papers lets you know that he was designing outfits for Pochi to wear. The sketches look similar to how his current outfit looks, with the same black frills snd everything. Ah, did he want him and Pochi to match?

How cute.

“Sorry, it’s just something I’ve been working on to pass the time. One can only play piano and bake for so long.” Alex throws the papers onto a random desk, and he awkwardly smiles. “Come, sit.” He sets Pochi aside on the chair, and takes a seat on the sofa, patting the spot next to him. God, it’s like Pochi is staring into your soul. “Pochi never likes wearing clothes. He always tears it off, so I’m trying to design something comfortable for him.” He fidgets with the frills on his sleeves as you take a seat, and takes a glance at Pochi, before returning his gaze back to you.

So Pochi is alive? Good to know.

Ah, wait a minute, does he design human clothes? Or just for stuffed animals? Well, he does have mannequins, but they’re all naked. Maybe he was planning to design something?

“Oh, well, yes I do, but I haven’t had a model recently.” He frowns. “I used to design clothes for Edmund, but only twice.” He stops and gazes at you, opening his mouth to say something, but he closes it, disregarding the thought. But he still doesn’t break his gaze.

Was he going to ask you to be his model?

“Uhm, no, it’s nothing. It’s just that you would make a good model…” His voice loses its touch as he goes on, and he starts to blabber out endlessly. You can’t even get a word in. “You’re very pretty. I like your hair, your eyes, your skin. I could dress you up forever in outfits and you would look just as beautiful as the last, uhm,” Oh god, what the hell? His eyes pierce into you, and you can’t help but notice the little fidgeting habit he has once he starts to ramble. “You have very nice teeth and lips, I love to see you when you smile.” You look away from him, not sure whether or not to feel flustered or scared. He might mean well by it, but does he have to word it like that? You jump once you feel his cold fingers graze your collarbone, and you glance back at him to find him much, much closer than you would’ve preferred.

But to be completely honest with yourself, you don’t mind. You didn’t really mind Oliver either. They’re both, admittedly, really, really handsome.

Ugh, get your head out of the gutter.

His lips part as he climbs on top of you, breathing hard. You stumble back on the couch, feeling your pocket knife fall out of your pocket, as you gaze up at him. “I love your beating heart, right here.” Wait, wait. Your hearts pounding all in your head. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

Why does this feel so familiar? Has this happened before?

“You would make a good doll for me.” He whispers lovingly in your ear, sugaring his words just enough to make you melt. It’s hard to hold back. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” It sounds so nice. You could get drunk off of this feeling.

His lips brush against yours as he pants, kissing you gently as you lock your legs around him. “Oh, sweetheart…” He groans, your whole body feeling like it’s on fire as he nibbles desperately at your bottom lip. Your hand reaches up to the nape of his neck, and his to your hip. You can feel his warm tongue against yours, and you roll your eyes up in pleasure.

Why were you ever thinking about leaving? Of course you could be his model. It’s not like you have anything outside this mansion anyway waiting for you. Alex's here for you. That’s all you really need after all.

… Something in your head is telling you to stop, but should you? Ah. Wait.

You break the kiss with him, panting heavily as he looks down at you in confusion. “What? What’s wrong sweetheart?” He asks, his confusion turning into concern. You shake your head and get up, brushing yourself off. Oh jeez. What was that fuzzy feeling in your head just now?

Was he kissing you? You reach a hand up to your lips and feel your cheeks get hot. You glare down at him on the couch and scowl. Are you kidding me?

Alex looks away with a small chuckle, and you can feel your anger bubbling. “Partial possession,” He starts, “If you really didn’t want to kiss me, your mind would’ve taken control over your body and broken the connection.”

What?

He looks up at you with an odd grin, and he exclaims out in joy. “S-So you see? You truly want me, don’t you?!” His hands are trembling in excitement as he talks to you, laughing insanely at his own delusion. “You do, right, visitor?!”

Is it a delusion? Even if his words are true, he… Ugh!

“Ah, wait!” He yells as you quickly bound out the room, but taking a swift glance back, you notice that he’s not making an effort to stop you. The last glimpse you get of Alex is him peering out from the sewing room, the same way he was gazing at you behind the bookshelf.

You don’t even know where you’re running now. But it’s not like you care anyway. Fuck your backpack, fuck everything in there. It’s time to leave.

You run down a side pair of stairs leading down to the main hall, but you end up in a completely random hallway that you haven’t seen before. All of these corridors are starting to look the same, it’s getting confusing.

You peer into the empty hallway, and have to bite your lip to stop yourself from screaming.

It’s the same exact figure that was looking for you before.

ミ★ 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘴. ★彡

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

happy spooky month everyone! gonna be writing about some ghost (spirit? poltergeist? idk) boys these next few weeks :) 4 to be exact!

planning this to be a 7 part series, 2 for the intro (this one), then 4 (one for each boy), and then 1 for the finale :)

this first part you get to meet two boys, and then the next part you get to meet the other two!!

you’ll get to learn more about each boy with each part, and maybe yall will get to smash idk

i promise the next part will be shorter <;)

i dont even like how this one turned out but boohoo i gotta post, maybe ill rewrite it or smth

part 2 is here!

[fantasyandshit]

The light and the dark

Type: series

Pairing: Azriel x reader

Part:6/?

Other parts

Summary: Azriel goes through his first lesson teaching Yn to fly. (This is short sorry I’ve had a lot of family drama going on)

It has been nearly a month since the accident in Hybern and Azriel and I are trudging through the forest, him carrying a bag whilst I am not, still getting used to the feeling of wings. Our shadows and light play together around us. The shadowsinger hadn’t told me our purpose for coming all the way out here but I’m excited- and also a bit nervous to see what it is. Mor nervous now after seeing Feyre, Cassian, and Rhysand’s faces when they were told he was going to start teaching me how to fly today. ;)

We continue to hike through the dense forest until we reach a sort of rock hill- it towers high into the trees and above the ground and before I can even turn back to question the man behind me- I’m shoved off the cliff. Yes you heard me right- This male, whom is in charge of protecting the night court and its citizens (me!) shoved me off the cliff.

I flail as I grapple to the floor, confused and terrified. Some light seems to enjoy the open air, flowing gracefully around me whilst others…well they wrap around me as tight as possible.

I can see the ground nearing..closer…closer closer. ………HOLY SHIT I GIANT ASS BIRD JUST SAVED ME! Oh wait…..no…it’s just Azriel.

As we get to the point we were on the cliff once again I waist no time clambering out of the shadowsinger arms to turn around- “You arrogant, insolent, asshole! You fucking fuck head absolute intolerable shit!” I shove my hands into the males chest but it does little to move or hurt him.

“You done yet? Because I’d like to continue my lesson.”

Pure shock spreads across my face, “your lesson? You threw me off a cliff! A cliff Azriel! A fucking cliff! Are you insa-“ my rant is cut off by the feeling of arms picking me up and then air rushing under me

He

Threw

Me

Off

The

Cliff

Again

Gods I am starting to despise these wings.

Finally, after more “lessons” and a deeper explanation I am finally able to kind of fly. I am able to glide really- but it’s improvement and that’s what matters.

“So how was it?” Rhysand smirks as we walk into the house of wind for dinner.

“Ask him yourself- his lessons are fucking horrid.” I sigh as I rub my cheek where a bruise forms.

“She actually did better than anyone I’ve taught so far.” Azriel sits down at the table, serving himself some mashed potatoes.

“Hold up- you do this often? Throwing your friends off cliffs?”

“Yes, yes he does.”

“What the hell kind of twisted creature are you?” My light flutters around me, one caressing my cheek and another is caught slithering to Azriel- little traitor.

We all laugh and conversation continues throughout the dinner. I’m so lucky to have met these wonderful people.

@wallacewillow0773638

@pinksmellslikelove

@sassybluebird

@gorlillaglue25

@khaleesihavilliard

@thehighlordishere

@minnieoo

@isa1b2h3

@acourtof-wingspan

[assortedvillainvault]

ok if acceptable I'm dropping one more before closing time

"I remember you" with a reader being the reincarnation of someone the Horned King once loved

*Clutches chest* ROOOSSEEE-

This hurts me. In like, the best way. Here we go, modern reincarnation because I low-key would like to get lost in the Welsh Mountains forever (I have deadlines).

Also please forgive the Google translated Welsh at the end I did not have the time to look up proper medieval Welsh and asking someone real to translate would have been good to think of before I started operating on 5% brain. If anyone following me is a native Welsh speaker pls DM me or leave a comment and I'll correct Google's attempt.

The Horned King x Reincarnated!Reader : 'I Remember You'

You have no fucking clue why you're here.

'Here' being the Ass-End of Nowhere, Wales. No phone reception, no services, no people and no tourists. Except, uh, yourself. Obviously.

You got up, drove out, picked a random direction between two hills and. Started walking. You don't even know why.

You just know that there's something further into the mountains that your soul is ITCHING to get to. You've always felt it, but recently ignoring it has started to feel like being pulled through barbed wire.

The ground is rough and uneven, tussocks and hidden rocks threaten to turn your ankles every other step. The trees that twist their way along the crevices of the high moorland are all but draped in moss and thorns. The mountains arching up behind them are unwelcoming, cold and cragged.

It's...eerily quiet. No birds, no people...even the sheep seemed to stop at some hidden border a few miles back. Just the low moan of the wind accompanies you.

As you walk, you find yourself stealing glances at the sky. You tell yourself it's for birds - Kites and eagles maybe - but you have to keep a strange disappointment down that it's nothing larger. What are you expecting for fucks sake? Dragons??

You're so busy scanning the skies that you topple arse over tea kettle down the next scree slope like a graceful spaghetti mannequin with a screaming feature.

You manage to scrabble and hiss to a stop, skin on your arms and legs scraped raw. And upon looking up suck in a breath that has nothing to do with your sliced up hands.

It's as though a giant scooped the earth away and set it on fire for good measure. Bare reddish black rock contends with a bitter snarl of dead grasses and lonely tree corpses. Beyond lies a dessicated crevass that looks like a lake drained away overnight.

Beyond that, is a castle.

You blink and tear the vision that seared across your eyes - of a fully fleshed gothic fortress - away. What lies before you is a ruin. The bones of the structure, at best.

The barbed wire in your soul is all but yanking you toward the ancient structure. You don't notice that the path you tread towards it is one you can find without looking, despite the terrain.

The bridge, rotted and rusted as it is, is mostly secure. You keep your weight to the bolted metal crisscrossing the wood as you make your way across, slow and steady and feeling as though phantom archers have their sights on you from atop the wall.

As you pass under the archway to the courtyard, you shiver violently. The feeling of passing under so familiar that it almost clawed it's way out from your skin.

The very air seems to hold it's breath as you make your way deeper into the crumbling structure. Water drips from the stonework, the doors all long since rotted from their hinges. Tools lie forgotten on the cobbles. If it wasn't so creepy it would be an archaeologists dream.

Why does no-one around seem to know this is here? Why is this place so undisturbed?

You stumble into what must have been the Great Hall.

Cold sunlight shafts through holes in the ceiling, the corners in absolute darkness. Skeletons lie in piles across the floor, roughly around where large tables should have been, weapons scattered akimbo as though they didn't even get a chance to use them before they fell.

Your eyes are dragged to the dias. There's a body on the throne.

It's slouched, slumped, as if whoever this was had thrown themselves back on the seat and collapsed in exhaustion. The mothbitten red robe and fur stole is strung with spiderwebs connecting them him to the throne, but this isn't what yanks on the barbed wire in your soul.

The pair of great, regal thorn like horns protuding from the figures hood are angled towards you.

Your feet carry you forward.

The figures face is obscured but you know it, the fingers curled loosely still with flesh, after all this time, no weapons around the dias but no evidence of wounds on the body as if he would need them, as if they could ever lay a finger on their King-

Your hand trembles, reaching out to touch the nearest horn irrestisably, not even daring to breathe.

The corpse lurches.

An arctic vice closes on your wrist, bones grinding as he yanks you to your knees on the stone. His fist is impossible to pry loose even as you scrabble at it, nails ripping at leathery hide- heart pounding-

His second hand closes on your neck and you freeze.

Twin red lights blaze from under the hood. Pupils in a black socket that focus hazily on your face, blinking as if rising from a dream that still has its hooks in him. The hand on your neck squeezes and you gasp, eyes bulging, wrist forgotten as you plead with your hands against the unstoppable force around your neck.

Brows twitch as he watches you struggle. Marginally, the fingers loosen and you suck in air, sounding like a broken bellows compared to the cathedral-esque empty quality of the air passing through his chest.

Gently, reverently, knarled fingers parse hair from your forehead. You didn't even realise he'd released your wrist. Your throat remains in his grip.

You meet his gaze as the last of the fog clears from his sockets. His voice, rusted and broken from disuse, still rumbles from his throat like a shuddering landslide.

"Rwy'n eich cofio, fy annwyl."

"I remember you, my dear."

[echo-goes-mmm]

Moonflower #4

Masterpost

Previous

Next

Warnings: dehumanization, threats

Iris was exhausted. She wasn’t used to long hours; she’d seen what overwork did to her father, and he’d died young. Iris had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t rule like that. 

Unfortunately, there was still work to be done. There was always work to be done.

Kit walked a half-step behind her, quiet and solemn. He was sworn to her, and to her alone, and the relief of it was staggering. Even if it were just for five years, there was finally someone in the castle who she could trust. 

He was bound by magic; it was impossible for him to betray her. It seemed a bit… pushy, but results were results. 

She could feel guilty about it later.

Iris waved off the questioning looks from the castle guard as they walked down the halls. 

Sir Brennan was at his post in front of her door, and thankfully he said nothing when Kit followed her in.

She groaned as she sat on the couch. Iris kicked off her shoes and put her feet up on a footstool.

“You can sit,” she said, taking off her earrings. Kit sat on the floor instead of the couch or armchair, kneeling across from her on the rug. 

Iris began to take the pins out of her hair, tossing them onto the bedside table. They clattered, but the time for grace and care was over. This was her room, and she could relax in here. She wasn’t going to change that for Kit. 

“So,” she said, taking the brush out of the side table drawer. “Here’s the thing.” She shook her head, loosening her hair before dragging the brush through the dark locks.

“I haven’t been queen for very long. Still settling in, really.”

Kit watched the brush move with rapt attention.

“I can’t keep track of everything if I want to both stay sane and run a country. That’s where you come in.”

“I’m not very good at politics,” said Kit. “I didn’t even go to revels often, much less talk to the gentry.” 

Iris reached a tangle in her hair, and she worked to get it out.

“I can handle the politics, Kit, I just want to know if my cousin is being an ass to a maid. Or if an advisor calls me a bitch and I just didn’t hear him mutter.” 

“Oh.”

The tangle gave way, and she moved on to the other side of her hair.

“Luckily for us, tomorrow is Saturday, so we can get you ready for court. I’ve scheduled a tailor, and I’m sure Christine will insist on speaking to you.”

___________________

Kit was tired. There was just so much to process. 

He lay in the giant bed, staring up at the ceiling. He let the colors of the room become fuzzy and swirl.

He didn’t want to think about all those eyes on him tomorrow. All those men with steel swords and armor that burned.

Iris didn’t want much from him, yet. But what she did want meant he’d be seen. Following the queen around all day like a dog was the opposite of laying low.

Just five years. Five years was nothing, five years was-

He gave up his name in six months. Training couldn’t have been more than eight.

He rolled over, too exhausted to even get under the covers.

Five years was a long time.

___________________

He woke up just before dawn, something he never really appreciated before. There was a balcony connected to his bedroom, and he stepped out to sit and watch the sunrise.

The golden light shimmered over the mountains.

Mountains. There were no mountains in sight in his homeland. Even the hills were gentle.

Moonflower bit his lip, and tried not to cry. Crying never helped him before, why bother now?

He went back inside once the sun was over the peaks. He drew a warm bath.

His last bath was ��supervised” which really meant they tied him to a hook in the ceiling beam and tossed soapy cold water at him. But he didn’t dare linger in the warm water, or take much comfort in it.

Instead he washed quickly, and dried himself with a fluffy towel he found nearby.

Ideally he could use magic to get his only clothes clean again, but that part of himself was still slumbering from illness.

Kit tried anyway, but fuzziness crept back into his vision, and his legs shook.

Magic could wait. He felt stronger already anyway, and it would return soon. Hopefully.

He tried not to notice how out of place the plain gray shirt and pants were compared to even the servant’s clothes he’d seen.

Everything about him was out of place. Mortals were… rounder. Less sharp, with their softer faces, blunter teeth, and small curved ears.

He pulled the shirt over his head and tried to forget about it. 

Kit slipped out of his room, and nearly came face to chest with Sir Brennan. The knight grabbed Kit by the shoulders and gently steadied him.

“Watch out,” he said. Kit whimpered, backing away.

Sir Brennan was a large man, and seemingly Mistress’s personal guard. He didn’t want to be on the wrong end of his sword.

“You’re up early,” said Brennan. “Why?” He didn’t remove his hands from Kit’s shoulders.

“I-” was dawn early? “I was just-”

“Listen,” said Brennan, his voice going low, “I don’t care. I don’t particularly care about you. My job is to protect Queen Iris.” Sir Brennan squeezed his shoulders. “So if you even think about playing one of your kind’s nasty little tricks I will skewer you with my sword. Do we understand each other?”

Kit nodded. “I wouldn’t-” Brennan squeezed again, and his steel was so close to Kit's skin- “Yes! Yes, I understand- please-”

Sir Brennan let go of him, and stood up. “I’m glad we had this little talk.” 

Kit paused, shaking. He glanced at Brennan, but he didn’t do anything more. Just stared at him with narrowed eyes.

Kit pushed down the dread in his stomach and knocked at Iris’s door.

“Come in,” she called. Sir Brennan didn’t stop him from turning the knob or from entering.

Iris was in a loose fitting pair of pants and a matching shirt, which struck him as odd. 

“Oh!” she said, turning to see him. “I thought you might be Brennan!”

“Sorry.”

“No it’s… fine. But, um, Kit, I’m in my pajamas.” She seemed a little flush. He tilted his head.

“I don’t understand.” She sighed. 

“Just give me a minute, okay?”

“Okay.”

Iris went into her bedroom and closed the door. She came back out a few minutes later in a different outfit, a sleek emerald dress. That definitely seemed more ‘her’. 

Kit had made himself something similar once. It took a lot of effort to make the dyes, and even more work to trade with the driders for silk.

His dress was probably long gone by now.

“You’re up early,” she said.

“Everyone keeps saying that,” he muttered.

“Right… Well-”

There was a knock at the door. “Your majesty? I have your breakfast.”

She sighed. “Come in, Katie.”

The door opened, and Katie backed in with a cart. “I tried knocking on the fae’s door to get it some food but-” she turned. “Oh! It’s in here! Hello!” she waved. She then pulled a tray off the second shelf of the cart. 

“I have your breakfast, too!” She offered him the tray.

He took the tray from her. “Thank you, miss.” 

Katie gaped at him. “I didn’t know you could talk! Can you do magic? I was wondering if-” 

“Kaite, would you excuse us?” 

“Oh! Of course, your grace.” Katie bowed, and left.

“I apologize about her. She’s just excitable, that’s all.”

Kit shrugged. 

“There’s a table by the window,” she said, inclining her head. “We can eat there.”

Kit ate slowly, savoring the bacon and eggs. If Mistress ever decided to starve him, he could remember how good it tasted and pretend. It made him feel better, even if it made him a bit hungrier.

Mistress had a light breakfast, some toast with jam and a cup of something that smelled bitter until she poured in cream and lots of sugar. He wasn’t sure what it was- some sort of tea?- but she seemed pleased drinking it. 

She sighed, sipping at her mug. “Any idea what time it is? I don’t have my watch.”

“Eight thirty-two am.” He responded automatically.

Iris gave him a strange look, and got up. He heard her searching for something in her room. Was she going to beat him already?

But instead she walked back in with a watch in hand. She held it up, but he couldn’t read what it said. “How did you do that?”

“I- it’s just something I can do.”

“Huh.” Iris strapped on her watch. “Well, I’m going to fix my hair. The tailor will be here at ten. Go ahead and put the dishes back on the cart, and put it in the hall. Someone will collect it later.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

taglist: @paintedpigeon1

[bahllinsqrews]

The Day for Our Love!

++++++++++++++++++

Jaehyun 's birthday was around the corner, your husband and you had a pretty big fight beforehand that almost cost your entire 5 year marriage. Though there's no time for sulking when the party was just in a few hours.

++++++++++++++++++

Requested Birthday smut for Jaehyun by 😼 anon.

Play fighting into love making

Curvy reader

7+ inch mini Jaehyun

Sex during party

++++++++++++++++++

The afternoon was gloomy and not even nice enough to show the sun. You and your husband just came from long and grueling days in your respective jobs and all you wanted to do was relax. Both of you were so tired that on the way home, somehow a topic came up that made an argument break out in the car. This anger sparking in both of you traveled with the two of you into your happy home and you both went to separate beds.

Jaehyun had taken some time and thought that he was in the wrong for bringing that harsh energy into your lives. He looked at his wedding band and reimagined the pictures of you and him at the altar, cutting the cake, and even dancing together, being the only two in white that day. It rekindled his love for you, the pink fire burning so bright that it made him get up and walk over to the master bedroom you two were supposed to share. He had a towel around his waist, not even bothering to get dressed.

He knocked on the door only to hear you crying, his heart felt a tug at the sound of your tears, knowing that he caused that. He tried the handle and opened the door to see you under the covers. His hand slowly drifted over the hill of your hips, up to your shoulder. His body weight on the bed made you move the cover to look at him. You tried to pull the cover back up only to struggle against your husband. He straddled your legs and you tried to push him off, making you both laugh as it started your little play fighting like normal. "C'mon my love, smile more for me! I know you want to~" he said, making you give a big smile. You managed to get your arms free and pulled him down a few inches from his lips.

But before you could share the kiss that sealed it all, someone knocked on the door, forcing you both to dress in the designer birthday attire, pink with red hearts on both a suit and a dress. You opened the door to your friend Johnny, he was here early to help but mostly to stay for the party. Jaehyun kept finding reasons to walk past you, sliding a hand up the pink floral stockings, landing a smack or two on your ass when leaning over the counter, and when the party started, everyone drinking, eating and dancing in the living room, you and Jae were locked in the master bedroom,sharing heated kisses and handsy touches.

Half heard apologies and bite marks all over, he stripped you of your dress while you got him into his unbuttoned pink slacks. His hardened length was practically stabbing from his boxers, looking at your beautiful frame, the garter you wore to hold your stockings up was still in place. His hands slid over your thighs, up your hips and to that slim waist, being able to engulf it with his giant hands. He gave you more kisses before standing and having you take off his pants.

He had you kneel on the bed, letting him see everything on you, your skin shining in the gentle light of the room. His hand immediately went to the garter, holding it for a little while the other slid up and down your back, making you shiver lightly. He slid down his boxers to let them hit the floor, then grabbed a pillow to put it near your face. Your legs were spread enough to let him kneel behind you and line up, you feeling eager to give him his gift, you pressed yourself back on him, making him gently hiss in pleasure. You rubbed your wet pussy against him for attention before he had enough. His tip pressed on first, then the first half, then the second, him bottoming out made your stomach bulge a little. Your moans made it apparent that you two haven't done it in a while, your walls tightened up but he didn't mind. More fun for him.

His thrusts were long but fruitful, hitting all the right spots to make you wet enough to move in smoother. His hand felt good, rubbing at your side while his cock pumped and pistoned into you from behind. You loved how he knew all of your favorite positions, the spots to hit and you loved that he knew exactly what to do with that monstrous cock of his. He pulled out randomly, flipping you into your back and stuffing you full again in missionary, his hand linked fingers with yours, the other gripping at the sheets beside your head.

"You're the best birthday present I could ask for, one that I can keep forever, one that never gets old, one that keeps a spark of hope and love. Keep staying with me, my sweet love~" he said, holding back his moans a little to talk. His thrusts went faster, him leaning down to get a few kisses on your neck and face. Your eyes were having trouble keeping from the back of your head with the way you were being played with. The hand on the sheets moves itself to pinch and play with your clit, the other still holding your hand. You both were so close, wanting to cum together, he sped up again, this time moving his hands to sit above your head.

The claps of your ecstasy and love could be faintly heard through the door to your room but the music was a bit too loud to hear it. His face slightly shifted, his brows knitting together as his thrusts became a little mixed and messy. He kept up just enough then pulled out, fucking himself between your thighs and rubbing your clit to make you both cum, his white milk ropes covering your breasts and some getting on your face, mostly on your stomach. He let your legs open and fall on both sides, admiring the love of his life below him. You were tired and a mess but it was fine. He grabbed one of the heart towels in the drawer by the bed and cleaned you up, then pulled you to his chest to give you a deep and loving kiss. His words were faint but enough for you to hear. "I'm sorry for earlier, honeybun~" you only smiled as you gently bumped his nose with your own. "It's okay, my dear, let's go and enjoy your party~" you reply, you both getting dressed and leaving the room.

Something you both didn't notice was that someone was in your bathroom and heard it all, recorded it for later~

[chronotsr]

Pre-G1 Modules, part 4B - The Judge's Guild Roundup Completed

Oh. Oh we're still doing this? It won't end? Gods. At least we made it to 1978. Anyway, happy eclipse to every. Reminder: the people who run Judge's Guild now are full-on nazis, do not buy their books. Go hug your loved ones instead.

The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor (1978)

Maybe I was too hard on the Prince Valiant-ass artstyle. It looks very proud for a bandit fortress, don't you think? The full color version that comes out later is even nicer -- it's the one you find on google images first. Anyway. Fort Badboybaskaur was founded by ''The Emperor of Glorious Doomfire''. It truly was the era of so-bad-its-good naming! The fort was built so that if raiding happened, the many small villages could congregate there for safety. Only, it turns out there was a red dragon underneath. And then that got resealed. And then an evil demigod took over. And then bandits took that over.

I read this section like five times and for the life of me I cannot find a prophesy here. They just kind of say it because it sounds cool. The prose in this hand out is, really really rough, it's a lot of proper nouns and moral history tropes -- empire becoming successful and spawning evil religion yada yada yada. The proper noun addiction is strong with this one, we get quite a few undefined proper nouns here. He's another classic: "Zanaaphic the All-King of the Spirit Universe". I have so many questions! None of which will be answered. "Angall of the Perpetual Void" Wow! Those are some neat nouns! The net effect, however, is there was a really skilled evil wizard who got confronted by a god, beat him, and by defeating him became a four-armed dragon-skinned bat-winged magical null. He does up to 16 pips of damage with his silly flails!

So the cover image is lying a little bit about the fortress. In both of the presented maps, there is no cool rampart that you have to slowly siege, there are mountains both in front and behind the fortress, and there are way more than three turrets. I am actually a little fond of this keep layout-wise, it's less cramped than the Keep on the Borderlands is. Naturally, it sits at the foot of Mount Deception.

It's a nice little fortress, no? I would recommend getting a modern copy of the map if it wasn't for the ownership sucking ass in an extreme way. Plus, having dungeons under your keep on the borderlands seems like a great idea, actually. Or, shit, having a rival keep on a rival borderlands sounds kinda rad. Anyway, the room by room is pretty rote. The exterior rooms are mostly just services you'd give to anyone walking in, but the real juicy stuff is all kept inside the mountain walls. We've got your usual suspects. Guard captain, bossman, bossman's terrible wife (and the wife is legally required to be evil because male writers), pawnbroker, human trafficker, tavernsssssss, gemcutter, blacksmith, et c. Some of the names are okay, "Hole in the Hill Inn" run by ogres was really funny to me, I would change them to hill giants to complete the joke.

The dungeon has an interesting conceit where there are some generic "alternate rooms" in the back of the book that come with a blank room number that you can swap if you dislike the default room contents. I'm really in favor of this mindset. I have thought for a while that it'd be kind of nice for adventure books to be shipped in some sort of editable capacity? Like if I wanna do open heart surgery on a floor of a dungeon, but I like the other 4 floors, it'd be nice to keep it in the original format instead of having the adventure book and then some loose-leaf with the changes penciled in. Tragically, the alt rooms are overwhelmingly just monsters in a room, with the outlier being a wererats with a little kidnapping scheme.

Underneath the fortress there are five levels, one is actually above ground level and in the cliff face behind the keep, and the third level leads to the surface via caves. Neat! I'm kind of imagining Gerudo Fortress here on a lot of levels. Here's a quick skim of the best contents:

There appears to be a little rat treasure hoard where the rats have to pay their dues to their little rat kings? What's going on here is kind of unclear to me, but I can't help but imagine one of the guards trained the rats to hide money in the walls for him and the ten rats with silver formation are a kind of animal-passcode.

A chest trapped with some sort of reverse truth serum -- it removes your ability to speak, see, or hear for a week if you open it without permission. Naturally, the chest is decorated with the three wise monkeys 🙈🙉🙊 (and a mysterious fourth monkey the text implies nothing about, maybe it's Sezaru? Curse of erectile dysfunction!)

The alarm system seems to be gong-based

Oh, I don't like this beholder at all. Ewwww! But also, why is this drawing here? There's no beholders in here? Is this some kind of silly trap for snooping players? In fact, most of the monster illustrations are…kind of just random monsters.

The treasury is booby-trapped to hell and back. We have a standard guillotine trap disarmed with a tile puzzle on the wall, a hell-hound guard dog, and the most prominent magical item is a necklace of strangulation. Rough break! Just go ahead and put all of the treasure on pressure plates with flame jets at that point.

A reverse gravity pit-trap -- you pull a book, you fall through a hole in the ceiling and then it traps you in the ceiling. It's just a pit trap at the end of the day, but way vivid!

A chair made of a dragon's arms and horn that will animate and attack you if you try to pry gems off it or attack anyone

Two wizards are having a battle over who gets to own a trained lizard that can sing and carry heavy loads. I understand guys. That lizard is worth it.

Under a sarcophagus is written "If you can read this, you're too close", as well as some explosive runes

The treasure hoard of a lost king, if you attempt to steal it, will turn into a treasure construct shaped like the king. Awesome!

"A similar cabinet on the north wall is labeled "For Future Imperialists". In the top drawer is a Gem of Brightness, the second is a pair of Bracers of Defenselessness, and in the bottom drawer is a pouch of Dust of Sneezing and Choking." I would fully lean in, make it a Cursed Gem of Brightness that you can't turn off, and put the Bracers in the top drawer if the goal is to prank an evil character into hurting themselves.

A reverse-vampire giant lizardfolk that consumes the unlife from undead. So, Tomb of the Lizard King got beat to the vampire-lizardfolk punch, I guess?

Large swaths of this dungeon genuinely feel randomly generated. The worst parts are about half of floor 2, 3, and about half of floors 4 and 5. It just feels like padding to me. And in true Judge's Guild fashion, there are treasure stores in the temple that are "instantly max your character" amounts of loot. Now I get that shares are a thing and you gotta pay your hirelings, but still, 1.5M gold represents like, even if you're a party of 10 you're still looking at instantly maxing a thief, shooting a fighter to level 8, and shooting a wizard to level 9. And there's no way you were at 0xp when you smuggled that statue out, that's going to be an instant max for just about anyone. The big reveal that I…guess you could conceivably puzzle out? Is that the dragons were nearby because they were minions of a dragon-king entombed under this fortress before it was built. A cool idea, that desperately needs more foreshadowing. The love clearly went into making those tombs cool, so if I was going to rip anything off from this module that'd probably be my second port of call.

Gen Con IX Dungeons (1978)

What a name, right? How come Tsojconth got a name and these dungeons didn't? Blatant favoritism. Well actually one of the two dungeons may as well be called the Halls of Grsk. And, wow, everything about the design notes are ominous. "Simplicity would be the prime requisite". So….does that mean this adventure is boring on purpose, Bob?

The adventure is split into two bits, the player-side info and the gm-side info, which…okay. Sure. The titular dungeon is set in the "Celtic mythos", whatever the fuck that means (Bob, the Celtic cultures covered almost all of Europe and parts of Asia. That phrase is meaningless!). TL;DR the old king's wizard went evil and killed the king, left no one to rule, and then went nuts and much later summoned a bunch of demons to protect his loot now that he's old and dying. The local wizard, Framschamsnaggle (seriously?) bullies you into raiding his tomb to get a staff back. There's a dragon in there and you were handed a teleportation amulet that will zip you out as soon as you get your hands on the staff.

Oh. Oh that's not good. That's a very not good dungeon layout. That's a very bad dungeon layout. And the contents are, as bad. I wonder if it was considered bad at the con itself? I couldn't find a single remarkable thing in this whole dungeon. It is neither weird, nor funny, nor clever, nor interesting. It's 30 random dungeon rooms in a row, with a rare trap that is practically randomized also.

The sole joy I can find in this module is this illustration, which looks like a shitpost.

The second round of the tournament (1st round eliminates) is set in a completely different place, which is more properly called the Halls of Grsk. Almost all of this area is also just, save or suck traps and monsters. There is one trap that's kind of classic and okay -- picking up the giant ruby locks all exits, many red herrings, room starts heating up like an oven. The solution is to smash the ruby, which instantly kills the heating element. It's not amazing (how are you supposed to guess it's a ruby? It behaves like a pressure plate trap but the ruby itself is contact-activated) but it's the least bad thing in here. The portal-that-eats-you prank in particular grinds my gears, the game communicates every possible thing to say it kills you, and by blind faith you go through and is the best solution. Picking up the fake secret item instantly kills you, because fuck you. The fakeout trap's sole hint is "why are there two normal doors on the north wall?" which, it's a points-based dungeon, they're going to assume it's for extra points. Also, the whole dungeon is a massive straight line in disguise. It's a wreck.

Actually, the whole scenario feels like a worse "Tomb of the Lizard King" in a lot of ways, down to the silly rhyme on the last page that gives you a critical clue about how to kill the undead baddie. In a sense it's also like Tomb of Horrors in that way, I guess, but the vibes are a lot more like Tomb of the Lizard King.

Damn it Bob, you made it boring on purpose.

Citadel of Fire (1978)

This is truly one of the dungeon covers of all time.

Is… is that The Golem? I hope Rabbi Loew is available. Or, maybe it's good that he's not in the module, because obviously this construct's creator is going to be evil in this module.

This is the least least imaginative of the Judge's Guild modules in this series. It is, simply a wizard's tower. If you have ever in your life read a wizard's tower module, you've read this one. The JG staples of constant slavery mentions continues with slave girls being in every single damn room of the towers. There's, not really much plot to go on either. There are wizards, the hill is good for magic, they are aligned with the goblins, go chop 'em up.

Sigh. Here's the memorable bits.

Nearly out the gate, we get one of those paragraphs that you would hope would be so obviously bad to the writers that they would second guess the decision. Why the actual hell did you stat out some 200 nearly identical goblins manually?

What is that and when do I get a bestiary entry for them? That's not a joke, the module never mentions what this is and now I want this Weresalazzle in my adventures.

The vague allusion to "Shabast", which are apparently a species of people who are intelligent clouds? But only sometimes.

A variety of pens for animals the wizards are working on, which include an Irish deer, a jackalwere, a baby lammasu, a giant slug named Skippy, some orcs, man-eating apes, an elephant, and a hydra

For…some reason there's a tavern on the 2nd floor of a dungeon. In the lightest defense of the module, at least the 2F has a surface access and no pre-programmed encounters between here and the tavern (random monsters thoooo). The owner sleeps with a new person every night, highly critical detail.

?????????????????????

OK so many rooms later there's a pyrohydra with a toothache. Mystery solved, that's why there's a magical dentist!

I hesitate to complain, but after multiple dungeons with 100k+ gold rewards, this dungeon's treasury having roughly 11,000 gold in it feels like an anticlimax. The fact that it's protected by that pyrohydra and electrified locks adds insult to injury.

This is a joke, right? That's your final floor? Anyway, this is just The Demon Floor. There is more treasure here than upstairs, which is a little strange given that the demon serves the wizard and not the other way around.

So on the whole, deeply shit. In conclusion, Early Judge's Guild leaves a lot to be desired. Next time we will -- wait, am I free? There's no more pre-G1 modules? I get to finally do TSR shit and leave this mire?

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS (edit: I was half-right -- there was one more pre-G1 module, but it was TSR!)

[tarnishedinquirer]

Weeping Peninsula Minor Erdtree

I had one last thing to do here before returning to Limgrave. It was time to visit the Minor Erdtree. This wasn't the first such tree I'd visited—there's one in Mistwood Forest too. But this one was clearly different.

As I began my approach, I was accosted by men with trees growing out of their backs. They were warped little things, saplings with the curve and gnarl of an ancient wood. Like the miniature trees they make in the Land of Reeds, only slightly bigger. Some of these men buried themselves in the dirt until I approached.

I picked up some of their armor and the voice told me that they'd made an ancient pact with the tree to serve as guardians after death. Looked more like walking fertilizer to me.

Cresting the hill, I was greeted with a field of countless giant clay jars, broken and shattered, and a strange figure standing among them. At first, I mistook it for a giant gnarled stump, but it was clearly alive and armed with a giant pole mace.

I'd figured out that against big enemies, Aurelia the spirit jelly works a lot better than the wolves. They can keep an enemy off balance, but this one had the profile of a woman in a voluminous hoop dress, or maybe just someone with an enormous ass. Either way, it was stable and wolves were not gonna be able to trip it up.

I also went through the trouble to craft a whole bunch of fire bombs. I figured a dry tree root wouldn't like that very much. And it very much didn't.

The voice called it an "Erdtree Avatar" and I had to wonder why this one had so many guardians but the one in the Mistwood didn't. That one wasn't out in the open, nor was it surrounded by these jars. I'll have to find another minor Erdtree to compare if I wanted answers.

I was right, it did drop crystal tears, but the only things the voice had to say about them was functional. All in all, it was a rather anticlimactic end to my time here.

I have more questions than answers. But it's time to return to my main quest.

PS: I got a tip that I'd missed something nearby. A couple things, actually. I found a singing bat lady, but my only question about that was "Huh?" I also found a field that was constantly on fire, a nesting ground for Smouldering Butterflies. But I think what they were referring to was a crevasse to the east of the Minor Erdtree, just over Morne Tunnel. Down there I found a multitude of bats, a bunch of Fulgurbloom drawing lightning, and a gold Teardrop Scarab carrying an incantation of Lightning Strike

One of the incantations of the capital's ancient dragon cult. Ancestors of the modern dragons, the ancient dragons had scales of Gravel Stone and wielded lightning as their weapon. It is said that they once attacked Leyndell, the Royal Capital.

"It is said?" I think we can affirm the veracity of that considering the giant corpse covering half of the capital. But it's interesting that the capital would allow a cult of their greatest enemy.

Ending this excursion on a slightly higher note now.

Why do some Erdtrees have Avatars and some not?

Why is the field filled with broken pots?

Why did the capital allow the dragon cult?

[blindrapture]

TUESDAY JUNE 14TH, 2011 (There were Strangers at the Birth of the Earth)

(just read the version on the Website. please.)

2:34 PM head ow hurts up door nobody

3:10 PM limp ass blood stomach ow

3:46 PM hurt place! Place food please raw yes

3:50 PM veg eat eat

8:13 PM i feel better. just ow i’ll get over it soon enough though. Otherwise… no. finally got some food. hadn’t eaten in days. mouth hurts cut up but i don’t care hungry. i miss donnie. god i really do. if Donnie was here she’d hug me and kiss me and make me feel better.. She’d make sure I wasn’t feeling like shit and i’d appreciate it so much. Because she’s not wooden. WELL.. I mean.. there’s still something off about Mistress. Like.. she’s not completely cold, there’s a bit of warmth in there like she’s a little alive. I’m beginning to wonder what the hell the Harlequin really is. I’m also wondering what Donnie’s doing right now. I hope she’s still alive. ..of course she is, Jordan. Don’t be silly. Please. How about a mystery I can sorta at least try to solve, the mystery of the receipt? It said B-4000k, didn’t it? For some sorta oven?

8:40 PM Holy shit, I’ve found something. There’s definitely an oven here called the B-4000k. It’s huge, absolutely gigantic. You could probably fit a cow on that thing. I’m not kidding. What’s the “B” stand for? “Bake?” “Bovine?” “Burninate?” ….”Brazilian.” So Bones came all this way to buy us a giant cooker from Brazil? That’s a little weird.

8:43 PM I’ve been looking at it for a while, haven’t I? It’s kinda creepy. Almost.. ominous. Foreshadboding. I’m gonna go home and pop some prog on. I’ll see if I have any clean clothes at all.

9:38 PM Fuck yes, Mastodon’s Blood Mountain. Let’s look for some clothes.

9:50 PM Hey, my Rock Band T-shirt. I love this thing. Found some nice trousers, too. Black. I’m sick of white. No idea where my black suit and trilby are, though. Fuck it, going back to my prog.

10:47 PM ..wait.

10:48 PM All of a sudden, tons of zombies standing outside the house. Like they did many weeks ago. Where have these zombies been? Unless Mistress has been keeping them away and now she’s done with me. ..they’re not copying me. o_o

10:49 PM They mostly just stand there, surrounding the house, but a lot of them are occasionally.. moving their arms. Like they’re getting used to them. Some of them are “testing” the legs, too.

10:53 PM ..they really do not look like conventional zombies. They look a lot like normal humans, but just.. almost comatose? It’s creepy.

11:00 PM They all said “Your move.” And.. now they’re leaving. Huh.

11:57 PM Can I be honest with you, journal? I’m scared of what Mistress’ll do to me tonight.

(Attached: “Now feels like the perfect time for a change in subject, so here’s the tale of when I witnessed the Earth’s birth. The only preface necessary is that I was then so young and guided by an omega-symbol-faced figure calling himself the Devil, sibling to the Colour of Blood.

I could feel space folding in half before me. The Devil flickered into existence beside me, saying nothing. We walked through planes of hydrogen on grounds unseen. Clouds of green dust littered the air. As we walked forward, our path strolled upwards as some invisible hill. Lightning cracked above, forking down and causing a pink rip in the cloud ahead. I fell over as my footing rumbled, but the Devil continued as if I wasn’t there.

In the distance, I could see seven stars appear in the sky. Then seven more. Then more still until this realm had an astral audience. The Devil had almost left my field of vision, so I hopped to my feet and ran to catch up.

A series of grand chords roared to life around us, triggered by the lightning. Steam rose, and the green clouds descended until they marked our footing.

More lightning shocked the ethereal field, somehow solidifying the clouds with a fierce thud that transitioned into the world’s primordial symphony. Magma shot out from under us, creating a tunnel of fire and harmony of heat itself.

I caught up to the Devil, and together we reached the end of this tunnel to see the clouds ahead whirlpooling far below us. Stars flew out from the sky and funneled down the whirlpool. The Devil stood still and held out an arm to stop me. We watched every star fall into the vortex.

Lightning hit the aperture, and all movement stopped in the universe’s fear reaction.

Five figures rose together from the center of the whirlpool, heads looking up to the heavens, one arm outstretched above. To call these figures humanoid would be neither true nor false; their shapes did not resemble us but their movements and the way they carried themselves suggested some common evolutionary quirk. All five towered over our heads, clashes of shadow and color and light and greyscale spread throughout our fields of vision.

Describing the five figures challenges me, especially now after the fact, but one looked a mountain gripping a monolith sword, one looked a long ferocious beast with a thousand eyes, one looked a staircase rising into infinity, one looked a pair of black and white fireballs soaring around, and one looked a river of some roaring unknown black ooze. They did not see us, only scanned the galactic neighborhood with some semblance of elegance before setting out to look around further. Grand chords played on, now met by juxtaposing melodies from the fireballs and the river.

The mountain spoke, uttering noises that shook space itself. The tunnel of lava behind us fell into the abyss, and the steam had now formed a thick cloud above even the tallest figure. It was going to rain. That is, before three red stars appeared on the horizon, coming closer and closer faster than the falling rain. The universe paused once more, bracing for impact.

Niggling giggles and mind-terrors flew, one-by-one, into the playing field. Each one stopped on a dime just short of the five titanic figures. These new beings, I could not see but could rather deduce what they didn’t look like. Whatever they were, they were strangers. One stranger uttered something resembling a chuckle and then proceeded to fly into the river, splashing a fountain of black ooze into the air. The Devil stood back a bit, and so I did too.

The ooze covered every titan, and the mountain roared in pain. Cracks appeared, and each figure split into five smaller beings. Everything fled. Everyone vanished. And the strangers were nowhere to be found. In the empty void of prehistoric quiet, it finally began to rain.

I shrugged. The Devil looked at me with annoyance and asked, ---Did none of that worry you?

--Well, forgive me for not reacting exactly the way you intended. Mind telling me what it is I was seeing, let alone what I’m supposed to be worried about?

---You really don’t know?

He paused and looked at the ‘ground,’ hands on his hips, then muttered: ---Right, of course you don’t; I keep forgetting you’re not Tiresias.

I ignored that remark.

He looked at the vortex before us and raised his arms.

---Behold, the origin of your planet! What you just saw were.. what the fuck did people call them, Trimurti? I know the Coyote was in there somewhere. Or was it? You guys have a lot of mythology. He waved his hands in dismissal before continuing: Whatever, the Coyote was one of those guys you saw. Ptah was out there too. I don’t know all their names, okay?

--‘Ptah.’ So they were us? The big titan guys were us?

---‘Titan,’ yeah, that was another word for it. They’re the guys who became us. Or I mean, that was some of them. Long story. Point is, this is when we first settled here.

I looked around at the starless night and the mass-less atmosphere. --You guys sure got here early.

---We like to attend the midnight release.

--And what about those other things?

---I think– he paused to look in the direction they’d come from– ---that one's beyond even us.

We stood there a while, the Devil lost in thought and I trying to take in the scenery. Eventually he started walking back the way we came, and I tagged along, not exactly desiring to stay in the land before time.

--So there’s no way to choose where the Doors take us? You didn’t choose to take me here?

---No. Our destination is entirely random.

Before we left through our entry Door, I heard more chords so I turned and watched the rain increase in ferocity. Far away, hovering above the centre of the vortex, I thought I saw a blue figure watching in all directions with curiosity. No emotion. Just endless curiosity.”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

[oreo-creampie]

Hello! You've been tagged! You don't have to do anything if you don't want to, but if you'd like, ist 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Learn to know your mutuals and followers! also, heylo

Thank you! 💕 this was so much fun and so cuuute

1. My hubby! His warm comforting hugs, his goofy smiles, his soft long dark hair, the way he kisses my forehead and holds me before we fall asleep. When he makes food for me, how he helps me clean up the house paying attention to how I want things done and doing it as such. His big dick-

1. I had to do another one cause my furbabies I adore all of them so much. Along with the one at my work which is too feral to catch and put into my home so I’ll do my best to make them a home there.

2. Sun rise or sun set, the moon, the trees swaying in the wind, owls hooting, crickets chirping, birds chirping, the smell of burning fire wood, the smell before a storm, the feel of rocks, earth and grass beneath my feet. The sparkle of a lake when the sun or moon hits it. The glittering stars in the sky, the soft fluffy clouds, low hanging fog, thick dark gray clouds. Soft rain, heavy rain, gentle snow that swirls before landing. Blowing in fuzzy wishing flowers, finding mushrooms and ant hills.

3. Cozy warm blankets out of a dryer, a giant pillow that is half my size that firm offering good neck support but let’s my head sink in. Feeling my cats tiny paws as they walk across the bed finding a place to lay around my hubby and I.

4. Chocolate, caramel, coffee, fruit smooths, yummy warm fried shrimp, sushi especially if it has crab and or shrimp. Garlic bed with thick cheesy on it. Curry that as my nose running as I try and chase the spiciness with a mango lassi. Thick fat steak burgers with some salty ass fries. A fruit salad, or the house salad they give right before my sushi.

5. Sharing something with a friend/my hubby, making a positive memory to look back on.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

I typed in “highest protein foods ever” and — aside from whey protein and other things like fresh haddock and pollock which are extremely expensive — it turns out tuna has the highest protein content per calorie, followed somewhat closely by chicken breast. It looks like oats and brown rice have a decent amount of protein as well so I’ll have to get some in bulk.

So I went to Aldi (I’m from America and we have Aldi Sud, which is different than Aldi Nord; Aldi Nord is on the boycott list) and purchased six cans of albacore tuna, one can of chicken breast, two cans of French-style green beans, two cans of potatoes, and one can of carrots. I also purchased two dozen eggs (in cardboard; not styrofoam, of course) and a giant container of vinegar for use as a multipurpose cleaner and laundry detergent which will probably last me at least half a year.

$18.85 hell yeah AND I didn’t break the eggs on the way home despite getting irritated with the stupid “press to cross” button because it DOESN’T FUCKING WORK and basically rushing in front of a car because I wasn’t about to wait for it to turn when it didn’t turn last time after two full cycles. I knew I could make it if I swerved left a little and I did. I didn’t get hit. I’m not dead. This is not my ghost speaking. It didn’t faze me at all; I know the driver is probably shaken though. Sorry, man.

Once I get the brown rice I can make tuna and vegetable stir fry with an egg scrambled in. I’m sure my neighbors will appreciate the smell SJDBJDJDNDNDJDJNDNSNSN that’s what they get for making the heat vents smell like weed. Tuna attack. Suck it. I’ll need to ride my bike for 45 minutes straight over “gentle hills” (gentle my ASS) soon so I’ll cook that meal the night prior and have it for breakfast. I have a small can of orange soda I saved from the staff break room when we had treats, which I will take with me in case I need sugar on the road.

Other things I’m noticing from riding a bike around all the time:

The webbing between my thumbs and forefingers feels raw from rubbing on the handlebars all the time

Riding into a strong gust of wind IS THE LITERAL DEVIL

”Push to cross” buttons don’t work half the time. They do the BEEP beep but they don’t change the picture to the little white walking man. Yay for pedestrian safety! /s

I am not as in shape as I thought

Ride as hard as you can on dips then stop pedaling when going back up to conserve energy and not kill yourself

[aarcanegrimm]

15. The Dragon Valkyrie

Masterlist

The newly recruited Black Bulls have their first mission... and it's not the one Ella had been expecting- and it most certainly went all kinds of wrong.

Warnings: Swearing, unedited, injuries- bruising, scratching, cuts, burns and dislocation

“Alright listen up shitheads.” Yami said as Ella, Asta, Yuno and Luck stood before him- the cheery berserker grinning the creepiest smile yet. “Julius has a mission for you lot but you’ll be teaming up with two Crimson Lions and two Golden Dawn.”

Ella blinked- okay this had to be the dungeon mission instead of the one at Sosshi. With a pause she rubbed at her wrists (it felt weird not having the weights on today) before looking up at Yami.

“Will we be meeting them before or at a location?” Ella questioned.

“At location. It’s a dungeon on the border of Clover and Diamond.” She nods- Asta and Yuno doing the same. “He just wants you to check it out- feel out any bandits and take them out if you can. Do not overdo it. If there is too many you bring your asses back here immediately. Understood?”

“Yes Captain Yami.” The group chime, Luck giggling as he did.

Finral moved from the dining room to where they were stood, opening a portal.

“I can’t send you all the way there because I haven’t travelled to the location before so this is the closest you’ll be.”

She remembers that it wasn’t a long walk, took maybe twenty minutes tops.

“I’m so excited.” Asta grinned, “What about you Ella?”

“Very.” She smiled back. “Yuno?... We all know Luck is excited.”

“Yes I ammmmmm.” Luck yelped as he practically dove through the portal.

“I can’t wait.” Yuno said quietly, also stepping through the portal- Asta hot on his tail.

“Be careful Ella.” Yami said, hand on her shoulder. She just grinned up at him and threw one of Vanessa and Charmy’s lollies in her mouth.

“Always.”

“Take this communicator with you.” Yami said. “Lyra will kill me if you die.”

“I won’t die.” She snorted, hip checking the Captain as she took the device from his hand before following through the portal, Alder slithering in behind her.

“You are such a dad.” She heard Finral say behind her- Yami’s swearing muted by the closing portal.

“I can see it from here- looks like the other squads are walking over as well.” Asta said- charging into the foliage with Luck.

“He has too much energy for me.” Yuno sighed as he and Ella began jogging down the hill and through the foliage to catch up with the two balls of energy- Alder following along.

Ella has never wanted to scoop anyone into a hug more than right now with Mimosa stood before her. Still as sweet and bubbly as ever- no she was not going to tear up right now.

“What is that?” One of the Crimson Lion knights asked, eyes wide as they pointed to the large water dragon.

“Oh this is my water spirit Alder. He’s friendly but quite protective.” Ella replied, scratching at the dragons nose as he waved his head as if to say hello. “I’m Ella by the way.”

“I’m Asta! This is my brother Yuno.” The anti-magic boy grinned, Yuno bowing as he did (it was still weird seeing him so… demure).

“And I’m Luck.” The blond giggled- his eyes only focused on the dungeon ahead.

“Hello.” Mimosa greeted, voice as soft as ever. “My name is Mimosa Vermillion, one of the newest recruits in the Golden Dawn, it’s lovely to meet you all.”

“And I am Klaus Lunettes.” Klaus didn’t even look the Black Bull’s way as he spoke.

“Name’s Nikolas.” The one from before greeted as they pulled their brown hair back into a ponytail. “This here is Dorien- he is mute so I will translate for him if none of you can sign.”

Dorien waved, a giant grin on his face as he signed something to Nikolas- who just laughed.

“He is wondering if he could pet Alder.”

“Oh of course you can.”

The boy strode forward, hand out as though letting a cat sniff his hand. Alder, however, thought he was too slow as slithered forwards, pressing his nose to the boy’s chest. Dorien laughed silently as he pet him.

“We should prepare to enter the dungeon. Make a plan-” Klaus began though Luck had already begun his stalk inside, the rest of the group now inching behind him. “-that will keep us safe… ugh commoners.”

“Watch it.” Ella snapped without thinking- Alder whipping his head towards the grey-haired man. She hadn’t meant too and sure it was hypocritical of her to say as she was still technically a princess albeit a missing one. “Right now this is a team- act like it.”

And maybe, just maybe she’s been spending too much time with Yami and Lyra as she glared at the taller mage and he almost- almost- shrank back on himself before scrunching up his nose and turning on his heel.

“A plan is a good idea.” Nikolas said, their tone much calmer than Ella’s had been. “But I think so long as we don’t split up we can make one as we go inside.”

“Luck come back here!” Asta called out making the lightning mage turn to look.

“What?” He asked. “I wanna see inside already. I can feel how strong the mana is from here”

“Just wait for us and then you can.” Yuno sighed. “What magic does everyone have? If one of us has any way to make a map or something that would be great.”

Ella shot a look at Mimosa a glance- one the royal caught and so she pretended to move her gaze around the group.

“Oh I can.” Mimosa said softly, still watching Ella before smiling at Asta and Yuno. “I have plant magic though I haven’t perfected the spell to where I will immediately have a lay out but I will be able to make a map as we go.”

“I have wind magic.” Yuno replied cooly.

“Fire- like most of us Crimson Lions… my flames can change colour though.” Nikolas laughed before translating Dorien’s sign. “Dorien has mist magic- be careful though he can make it thick enough to make breathing hard.”

“Steel magic.” Klaus says as he presses his glasses higher on his nose.

“Lightning!” Luck exclaimed, bounding forwards once more.

“I have water magic if you can’t tell.” Ella snorted, pointing to the leviathan slithering beside her.

“Woah everyone’s magic is so cool.” Asta beamed. “I have no magic-”

“Anti-magic.” Ella and Yuno said in unison.

“Okay yeah anti-magic. I can… what was the word Yami used? Negate spells and also bounce them back?”

“That sounds so cool though.” Nikolas beamed back at Asta. “I’m with Asta all our magic is awesome.”

The small group just chuckled and finally braved the dungeon entrance.

~~*~~*~~*~~

Ella felt upside down, inside out and right side everything as they stalked through the dungeon. Stairs were sideways, upside down and flowing with mana in every direction and traps were most definitely everywhere.

Luck was already off, following what he said was a strange feeling mana, leaving the rest of the group to wander through carefully with Ella doing her best to spy traps.

Remember what Yami said, mana when natural flows like a wave just as ki does from a person. So she side stepped and spun around strange looking stone on the floor- the group following suit as they reached a hallway… a hallway that felt stagnant and wrong- so she turned them away.

“Let’s not go that way.” She stated, turning towards the next hallway with a pointed glance towards the still muttering Klaus. Commoner this, noble that- shut the fuck up man.

Following the new hallway she found the mana flowing like water, it felt like a waterfall cascading over her. Gods she doesn’t remember there being so much mana in this dungeon- she sighs, another point to add to the list of changes she supposes. Pausing Ella spared a glance at Asta- something felt wrong again as they stepped into a large and very open room where they somehow managed to find Luck bouncing around happily- a mountain of treasures pressed against the back wall. She drew Gloaming slowly, Asta doing the same with Demon Slayer.

“What are you doing?” Nikolas asked quietly, hands glowing a soft amber as they let flames flow into their hands.

“Something is wrong in here.” She answered. “The mana doesn’t feel right and those traps to the far left are manmade.”

Natural mana made traps felt like a wave but manmade ones… felt like cold stone.

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong.

“Oh.” Mimosa nearly whimpered as the group began to spread thin, avoiding the strange markings Klaus had pointed out on the floor. “My guidepost is picking up movement to the righ-”

Ella whirled around just as Mimosa yelped.

“Well, well what do we have here?” A slimy, sickening voice questioned. He had one hand around Mimosa’s throat and another unnervingly high on her abdomen and still climbing. “Some little knights playing the big leagues. Split ‘em.”

Next thing Ella knew she was across the room- Alder far from her and the others equally as spread around- even Luck seemed to be in an all-new location high above them. She was smart enough and quick enough to grasp the communicator Yami had given her- to sound the alert on the small device as she tried to calm her racing heart. She said nothing, just let the thing wail some annoying siren as she turned back to the chaos.

Ella’s eyes were only focused on her cousin, on Mimosa as the slimy piece of shit’s hands began to wander more. Pezzottaite eyes snapped towards a familiar looking sword amongst the Yul beside her- Demon Dweller.

She lunged for it just as a new figure appeared behind her, barely missing her Black Bulls cloak as his hand enveloped in stone. That, she concluded, would have fucking hurt had she stood still.

The man was towering and had no problems lurching forwards again as she rolled grasped Demon Dweller and with all her might swung it and Gloaming at the man.

Thank Gods for Elvish steel as the man’s hand flew clean off- still in stone form. It was comical really the way his eyes widened, the way he stumbled backwards and just… stared at it. She needed to run, to get away before the shock of what she did settled. Ella pushed forwards again, once more thanking the Gods as she reached Yuno, Asta and Dorien.

“Asta!” She called, swinging the worn looking blade his way. “Catch!”

She hadn’t spared a glance as she darted across the room again, dodging ice spikes as they sprung from the ground.

Hah… maybe she should spar with Luck if being this fast after wearing weights for years felt so good.

“Keep the girls as unharmed as possible.” A new voice called from atop the treasure- a man covered in diamond. “They’ll sell a pretty price. Good thing that Wizard King of yours sent us some prizes for such a quest. Pity the man’s too stupid to see a trap when it’s set.”

Ella flung backwards as a wall of wind pushed her away from Mimosa- who was fighting and kicking her way out of the slimy man’s hold. It pushed her back, rolling her into another pile of treasure, a sharp sting above her brow barely registered as Pezzottaite eyes scanned the area, watching while the boys fought a smaller group of the… bandits? Rogues? Who knew what these assholes were. She sucked in a breath as she rose- the same way she has seen Yami do as she falls into position with Gloaming ready to strike. She could see Alder from here now, with Klaus and Nikolas rushing across the room to the others- could see Luck having the time of his life fighting dozens of men above.

“Argh!” Ella’s focus was back on Mimosa and it was like everything slowed down. She wasn’t Ella in the seconds the came, she was Noelle Silva coming to protect her cousin from the slimy asshole who was now gripping her right arm tight, flames licking at her skin. She hardly felt the pain in her shoulder as she flung her arm back- Noelle who had runaway to become stronger. Noelle who wanted nothing more than a loving and caring family. Noelle who’s grimoire began to glow as she raced forwards, who’s newest spell was one she had been impatiently waiting for the second her grimoire came to life.

Sea Dragon’s Roar.

Then everything went black.

~~*~~*~~*~~

Yami had been drinking with Jack when the communicator he’d had clipped to his belt began to wail. Had it been any other day he probably would have answered it like a regular person instead of rushing out the door- Jack hot on his heels without question as he called for Finral.

“Yes Yami?” Finral barely had a moment to breathe before he was pulled back by his shirt.

“Get us to that dungeon. NOW!” The former noble was quick to summon his magic- looking through to see the same location he had dropped the others off before looking back at Yami. “Finral contact the Wizard King tell something happened- that Jack and I are dealing with it and then you come back and you wait by the dungeon entrance.”

“Yes Yami sir.”

“Keke, what’s happening Yami?” The Green Mantis Captain asked, though not really questioning why they were rushing off.

“The kids are in trouble at the dungeon. Ella hasn’t spoken just let it ring out- means it’s bad. Shit.” Yami and Jack were off through the portal, racing down the hill towards the dungeon’s door. (He hadn’t even taken into account that Jack never actually met the brat but definitely knew all about her- he’s not a dad!)

“Well then let us do as Captain’s do best Keke.” Jack laughed. “Save our brat’s asses.”

They could hear fighting, screaming and the tell-tale roar of Alder as the two Captain’s raced passed traps and hallways- Yami following the strong ki that belonged to his kids.

Yami Sukehiro almost froze in place, almost stumbled as they found the room with the kids. Alder was amidst snapping at a number of rogues away from two Crimson Lion’s- one with blonde hair silently screaming in pain as he grabbed his bent (most likely broken) leg. Asta and Yuno were faring better- slashing and striking at injured and water-soaked rogues who just kept getting up. Four eyes from the Golden Dawn had managed to capture a number of them in his magic while… where was Ella and the other Golden Dawn knight?

“What is that?” Jack asked, pointing towards the large water leviathan racing towards them- squawking as it did. Why was Alder coming their way. The two Captain’s continued forwards- eye darting around the room and just as Jack was readying to slash at Alder Yami halted him.

“Alder is Ella’s water spirit- do not slash him…” Jack only grunted and looked to the right of them where a loud crashing sound echoed before jerking his head upwards towards a man made of diamond.

“Captain Yami!” Asta called as a wave of magic made its way through the room, nearly knocking him back- he pointed the same way Jack had been looking. “Ella and Mimosa are over that way!”

“Some creepy perv has Mimosa.” The brunette Crimson Lion supplied now sending their own surge of magic towards the rogues. “Ella seemed pretty pissed about it.”

The ground began to shake, water welling up on the ground beneath them before rushing away again, the two Captain’s nodded as though they could read each other’s mind.

“You take diamond ass I’ll get the girls.” Yami stated, dashing off towards the crashing sound- the boys nearly finished dealing with the rogues around them. Alder slithered forwards head dipping down, nearly knocking the Black Bull’s Captain over as he landed on the beast’s back- it was too quick for him to think before Alder shot off again… towards a much larger version of him blasting away a weirdly oily looking man.

In any case Yami wasn’t even thinking now (and hadn’t been since he got the alert)- far too focused on the tsunami of raw mana coming from Ella as her sword arm hung limply at her side, Gloaming clattering on the ground while the large water beast took another strike at the man before dissolving into nothing but a small wave on the ground.

Alder moved faster, hurling Yami forwards with a flick of his body until he landed with a thud before the soaking wet- and thankfully unconscious man. His eyes darted towards the Golden Dawn girl, Mimosa the Crimson Lion kid had said, her left arm was burnt and her other was wrapped around her waist- her face was green as she stared down at the incapacitated man before snapping her attention towards Ella… who didn’t look like she was in the room… who’s hair was looking a little grey instead of brown in the dim light.

A crashing behind them told Yami enough- Jack had taken care of the mess behind them along with the other knights.

“Ella?” Mimosa stumbled forwards- unburnt hand grasping the non-limp arm. Yami strode forward too.

“Brat?” Yami knelt before them both, a million thoughts all at once rushing through his mind as the girl stared at the spot where the water dragon had been- even when Alder pressed his snout to her back she remained unmoving, paling slowly- like colour was being leached from her. Yami frowned as he spied a cut across her forehead (she could have hit her head for all he knew), eyed the unnatural slope of her right shoulder- shock… for some reason she was in shock either from the pain or anger or even the new spell she managed to conjure… her hair was turning silver again- that dye she had stopped using not even a fortnight ago no longer hid her roots though the rest of her hair was still a pale (and washed out) brown. Granted once she had started using the snack Vanessa and Charmy had made for Ella it took place in hiding the colour she seemed to hate.

Silvery white…

Silver…

Silv….

Oh.

No.

He shook his head, grabbing Ella’s face in his hands and turning her towards him.

“Snap out of it.” He commanded. “You’re a Black Bull, you’re a pain in my ass but you’re strong Ella so. snap. out. of. it.”

She blinked, finally, after what seemed like minutes she sucked in a breath.

“What happened?” She looked far too surprised for his liking. “I remember a wall of air hitting me and then running towards Mimosa… a new spell… when did you get here?”

Shit. She had blacked out. Why though… what made that happen? Yami didn’t really need to be asking these questions right now, he needed to get these kids out of the dungeon- to take them to Owen.

“You used the communicator to alert me- Jack and I got here as quick as we could. Not like you really needed us, you all took care of the rogues without us and from the sounds of his kekeing I’d say he took out diamond ass.”

“Is everyone alri-” She hissed as she tried to spin towards the others, her good hand flying to her sword arm that was limp at her side. “My sword arm- shit.”

He nearly laughed at the pout on her face and the soft curse before his eyes darted to her hair again- he leant forward and whispered (because he’s certain she doesn’t want anyone else to see the hair she hates).

“Got any more of those dye snacks you’re looking a little… pale.” Her eyes widened as she released her arm- wincing in pain as she did- hand darting to the small pouch on her side to grab what looked like one of those red and white mints. Tossing it into her mouth he watched in silent approval as the small thing worked its magic- her hair now that familiar golden brown again.

“Ella?” Mimosa tried again, eyes wide with worry- Ella’s were too and yet different. It was the kind of look you gave to someone you cared about deeply (he should know- it’s the same look he always gave his little sister), he filed that thought away for later. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine- are you?” She sounded frantic, she sounded normal- good… they could do with normal right now. “Can I touch you?”

He’s certain it wasn’t only his head that snapped back towards the two girls at that question.

“Keke… what did that creep do?” Yami refrained from elbowing the tall man now leaning over them. “I’ll slice him.”

“No-nothing!” Mimosa exclaimed, face flamed a bright red.

“Tell that to the burnt arm.” The brunette Crimson Lion said. “Klaus is using his magic to restrain all the rogues… bandits? Whatever they are- and Captain Jack took out the diamond guy.”

Mimosa stared at the ground, unburnt hand clasped in Ella’s uninjured hand- her burnt arm however was glowing a soft green.

“He grabbed me and tried to… touch me I guess. He didn’t though I fought him off even used my plant magic to restrain him before he grabbed my arm and did this- then Ella used a spell that did that to him.” She nodded towards the unconscious buffoon.

Yami sighed and stood, surveying the room and restrained assholes that he and Jack didn’t really need to help the kids deal with. Sighing again he looked between the kids and Jack who was staring at the slimy man- yeah the tall bastard could have him.

“We need to get you out of here- Julius can send people to scavenge through this shit, you all need a healer and neither Jack or I brought supplies. Let’s get out and go to Finral who should be at the entrance and get you all to Owen.”

~~*~~*~~*~~

It was disturbing having no memory of a small moment in time- especially for a person who remembers a different life, a different time. She genuinely only remembers feeling so angry, so vengeful as she rushed to help Mimosa, who truthfully could have handled herself even with an injured arm.

Arm.

She managed to fucking dislocate her arm and exhaust herself using Sea Dragon’s Roar, that had never happened in her last life.

Ella had barely registered reaching Finral before they were teleported right into Owen’s office where a bit was shoved in her mouth and her right shoulder reset- and maybe it was the shock, pain she had yet to register finally coming through but FUCK that hurt. Her forehead cut had just been given some salve and told it would heal in a day or two- but OW her arm.

Mimosa had her arm bandaged with Owen praising her healing (as he should she almost huffed in pride). Asta and Yuno only had a few bruises and scratches easily mended by bandages and some salve, Klaus (who she was still pissed with for his prattling about commoners even though he seemed to think she hadn’t heard it) was practically untouched aside a bruise or two and Nikolas had a newly healed (by Owen) scar, that had been a deep slice, down his back. Dorien was probably in the worst shape, a broken leg in two places from one of the rouges slamming iron straight into it- but otherwise also bruises and scratches.

A knock had heads turn towards the door- Marx sticking his head through to let them know that Julius would like to see them all. Yami grunted- Jack having left long ago- and scanned each and every one of them.

“Alright… let’s do this shit.” Ella could only smile weakly at her Captain.

Shit… she hadn’t told him that the rouges had said it was a trap yet.

[writingspacetrash]

Go Back

2,629 words

Although this wasn’t technically a dump, an unpleasant smell permeated the scrapyard. A thin mist smelling of metal, grime and oil hung in the air, her shoes already sooty as if she’d walked through ashes. The sun was barely visible through Eglys’ thick clouds. The entire moon was covered in the city of the same name – the Vars 3 system had agreed to place its capital here about two-hundred years ago – and with very few parks and gardens, the entire place was polluted by smog and and particulate matter from the thousands of vehicles moving through its streets. Everyone had to wear a gas mask outside because of the air pollution. Unfortunately, Zoe’s didn’t block out the smell of the scrapyard. 

She let her gaze trail over the shining grey landscape, reaching to a dark line on the horizon she could identify as apartment buildings. 

"What are we looking for again?" she called. About ten metres ahead of her, Martyn rose out of a trash hill. His long, brown coat was just as dirty as Zoe's shoes, the little free skin of his face oily from the grime. He was wearing goggles which made him look like a giant insect, and a self-built gas mask which didn’t even look that bad, Zoe had to confess. His short, dark hair was standing up in all directions, thickened by the polluted air. 

“Are you serious?” he called back. Zoe shrugged.

“Sorry?” Martyn’s shoulders sagged a little.

“A type three Krekil Key. About five centimetres long, sort of bent like this.” He scrunched his finger. Zoe nodded and looked around her, twenty centimetres deep in scrap. “Yeah, absolutely, we’ll find that, no doubt,” she muttered to herself. She picked up a metal rod, too long at the second glance. 

“What exactly can you do with a Krekil Key?” she asked as she threw the rod back into the mess.

“Shove it up your ass?” came the muffled answer from out of the trash hill. 

“Haha, very funny.” A few noisy crashes followed as Martyn waded away hastily from the now collapsing trash hill.

“It’s used in various ships as a connector, and Harral has run out so the scrapyard’s gotta give.” Zoe nodded. That was as much as she understood of engineering.

“We need to finish repairing that ship tomorrow, the customer has already checked in twice last week.” 

“Nosy customer.” Martyn straightened up again and nodded enthusiastically.

“Oh my God we have so many of them. They come in looking at the open ships all squinting and then they click their tongue and are like ‘Yeah um my Staryacht 2000 crashed yesterday but we’re throwing this huge party tomorrow so I want it done by tonight. 100 credits’ or ‘I only asked for my gravity stabiliser to be fixed, why did you also change the seatbelts’ when there’s literally safety laws to prevent injury and death with certain stabilisers and we have to build in those seatbelts, sorry Jayla.” Martyn threw his hands in the air, frustrated. “I swear to God there’s so many fucking complaints about seatbelts, I mean do these people have nothing better to do?!” Zoe clasped a hand over her mouth and nodded, trying to hold in  a laugh, but Martyn noticed. He sighed. He looked like a giant insect. Zoe snorted.

“I am telling you about the hardships of my working-class life in the most overpopulated city in Vars 3 and you’re laughing.” Zoe sniffed.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I can see that.” Zoe took a deep breath and Martyn shook his head, returning to his search. “Anything new with you, then?” he asked.

“Oh, heh,” she said as her hand wandered absent-mindedly to her new belt. “Nothing much. Joined a boy band.” Martyn turned his head to her, expression unreadable behind his goggles.

“A what?”

“A boy band. You know, a band but only boys?” Martyn opened his mouth, then closed it again and went back to searching the scrapyard. 

“Makes total sense.”

“Yeah, I thought it was a dumb idea at first too, but I’ve played a few shows with them, and really, they’re quite cool. I think we’re gonna go a long way.” She grinned.

“I see you on the Interstellar Stage in Yechtera already,” he said sarcastically. “With your overwhelming musical talents.” Zoe gasped in mock offence. “I am an active and valued member of the Cosmos Boys, okay?” Martyn snorted at the name. “Cosmos Boys!” he wheezed. Zoe shook her head. “You just can’t appreciate the arts.”

“I think it’s something about the Cosmos Boys in particular.”

Zoe stayed silent in the face of this blatant disrespect of her art and began looking for the Krekil Key again. She took a few steps and squatted down, digging through the metal pieces with her gloved fingers. A glassy clinking caught her attention. She dug into the trash to find the object that had made the strange noise, and picked up something not too dissimilar to her own wristwatch/communicator. Its dial window was cracked, the black dial within showed three subdials, not illuminated. The leathery strap was half ripped off. She pressed the crown gently. The subdials flashed to life, each showing three rows of zeros. 

“Hey, uh, Martyn?” she called, not lifting her gaze off the curious watch. “I think I found something. Not the Key.” She heard crashing and cracking as Martyn approached. He yanked the watch out of her hand. She wanted to protest, but Martyn had lifted his goggles and was looking at the watch with such bewilderment, the protest died in her throat.

“What the fuck is that, Zoe?” he said.

“Not that I know.”

“Is that… no.” He held the device even closer to his face. By now he shouldn’t even be able to see it. He shook his head.

“No. Absolutely not. I’m taking this to Harral, we’re destroying it. Or giving it to the authorities, I don’t know.” He was starting to scare Zoe.

“What do you think it is?” Martyn’s eyes darted to her and back to the device again.

“Time travel.” 

Zoe’s eyes widened as her anxiety turned into excitement. A grin was spreading across her face.

“No way.”

“Yes way.” She reached for it but Martyn stuffed it in his pocket. “Nope. No one is touching this until it’s safe or destroyed.” Zoe’s mouth gaped.

“Oh, come on! You can’t be serious!”

“I’m pretty sure the law is.” Zoe sighed loudly.

“Yeah, the law. Do you know how far the law reaches? Not past this size D moon.” Martyn frowned.

“No, the law forbidding time travel was issued galaxy-wide.” Zoe rolled her eyes. She hadn’t known that. Not that it mattered much.

“It’s time travel!”

“Exactly! Do you know how much damage even the slightest change to time can do?”

“No one knows that.”

“That’s the problem! I read this book about spacetime and paradoxes and-” Zoe pursed her lips while Martyn was going on a rant about the dangers of time travel. An idea struck her and she pointed over Martyn’s shoulder.

“Police!” she shouted. Martyn’s head jerked around and she reached in his pocket, fishing out the device. Martyn turned back to her with a dark expression.

“I can’t believe I fell for that.”

“Hehe,” said Zoe and enclosed the device in her fist. Martyn looked at her fist and all his life’s choices seemed to flash before his eyes. 

“I’m not even going to try to take that from you.” Zoe grinned at him and opened her hand to look at the device. She tried turning the crown and, et voilà, the first row of zeros counted up.

“I am assuming that’s for the year,” she said.

“You’re going to get us both killed,” Martyn muttered. Zoe turned the crown until it matched the current year. Then she pressed it at a venture and the second row of zeros flashed. 

“Date.”

“The universe is going to implode.” Zoe set the last subdial to their current time, which proved difficult at first because she had to remember the Yechtaran system using only three digits to describe time down to the second.

“Don’t worry, I’ll only jump ten seconds into the future,” she said. Martyn looked at her more annoyed than worried. She knew that meant he was really worried.

“It’s in a scrapyard. Why would a fully functioning time travel device end up in a scrapyard?” Zoe shrugged.

“Why would an active and valued member of the Cosmos Boys end up in a scrapyard?” Martyn closed his eyes. “I hate you.” Zoe grinned.

“Seeya in ten seconds!” She pressed the crown again and zapped out of existence.

~

Non-existence felt like nothing, really. It was the only thing it could’ve felt like, when Zoe thought about it later. It felt like eternity and no time at all. It felt like something fell out of her pocket. No, not something. Everything.

When she existed again, the sun was setting and her palms were burning with pain. She cursed and let the device fall on the ground, closing her hands to fists. 

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck,” she hissed as the burning slowly began to fade. She opened them carefully and found that the skin was entirely intact, looking even cleaner and healthier than before. There was a slight glow to them. She pulled a face and stuffed them in her pockets.

The scrapyard didn’t look much different. After all, this had to be the exact same place – there had been no setting for space coordinates. But a metre from her, a brown lump lay in the scrap that hadn’t been there yesterday. She prodded it with her foot. A muffled yelp emerged from one of its ends. The lump unfurled and turned out to be an ashen-faced Martyn. His reddened eyes widened as if he’d seen an angel.

“Holy shit, Zoe,” he gasped. “I thought I’d never see you again.” Zoe’s instinct to laugh faded from her gut when she saw how deeply disturbed Martyn looked. 

“Sorry,” she said, and meant it. “How long has it been?” 

“Only a day.” Zoe raised her eyebrows.

“A day? You freaked out over a day?” 

“You could’ve been lost somewhere in the vortex, I don’t know!? Give me a break!” Zoe gave him a hand instead and helped him up. His knees seemed to be slightly unwilling.

“Jesus, have you slept here?” Martyn shrugged.

“I didn’t know when you’d return and I thought, if you did, maybe you’d be injured or something or wouldn’t find back or I don’t know…” he trailed off. Zoe was taken aback at how shaken he was. She wanted to say something, more than sorry, but he started fishing through his pockets. His eyebrows knitted together. 

“I found something. Immediately after you left. Maybe it’s a side-effect of time travel.” He held out a jewel Zoe only knew all too well. She had looked at it a couple of times since she’d found it and had grown quite immune to all that Death isn’t real, Time is an illusion stuff. Martyn however had screwed his eyes shut and was holding the jewel as far away from him as he could.

“Oh, no, that’s just something I found.” Martyn squinted at her.

“Where the hell did you find that?” 

“On that planet in Kryx, you know, where I crashed?” Martyn’s mouth fell open.

“You took something from the planet that doesn’t exist and you didn’t tell me?” Zoe shrugged.

“I don’t have to tell you everything, you know.” 

“Zoe, sometimes I think you’re choosing to be oblivious. Not to certain things, just in general.” Zoe nodded slowly. She couldn’t really argue with that.

Martyn was studying the jewel with interest and horror.

“I’ve got to scan that with my instruments. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” Zoe looked through the rubble for the time travel device. The case was broken, the glass of the subdials shattered. 

“I don’t think that’s gonna work anymore,” she said, a certain sadness resonating in her voice. Martyn threw it a glance.

“God, I’m relieved.” Zoe paid him no attention. 

“I feel like we shouldn’t just leave it here, though.” Martyn gave her a deadly look.

“Okay,” she said meekly and threw it back on the ground. Martyn shoved a heap of trash over it with his foot.

~

“Well, that’s interesting.” Martyn’s dry remark was almost drowned out by the high-pitched beeping, buzzing and whirring emanating from all of his scanning and reading machines at once. The jewel lay on an elevated glass plate, silver arms and red lasers flitting across its surface. It was driving all of Martyn’s investigative equipment insane. 

“Is it detecting anything at all?” asked Zoe. Martyn pointed to his ear and shook his head. Zoe repeated the question, shouting. Martyn shook his head again.

“It’s detecting everything,” he shouted back. Zoe scanned the monitors practically tiling the workshop’s basement. Every single reading was off the charts.

“What do you mean, everything?” Martyn shrugged, as puzzled as Zoe.

“Just, everything. Every single element, every particle, every energy ever. Even some things I don’t recognise.” He turned back to the jewel, adjusting the metal arms, but the readings didn’t change. Zoe tried to remember how exactly she had found the jewel. A shiver went down her spine when she remembered that creature in Kryx. Weirdly, she didn’t have a clue what it had looked like. Only that it could run really, really fast. She let the events that followed play through her mind, and frowned.

“Martyn?” she called. He nodded absent-mindedly. “Where did you get the Tonner from?” His shoulders sagged a little and he stopped typing on one of his computers. He didn’t turn to face her.

“Uh, I bought it. At an auction.” He failed to sound nonchalant.

“Ah, yes. An auction. Very interesting auction, to sell something exclusively produced in the monasteries of Rwdh.” Martyn now turned around, fidgeting with his coat. He was no longer wearing goggles or a gas mask, and there was serious regret on his face.

“Look, I went there because they’ve always got the coolest stuff down at Pucher’s, I’ve got some parts for my mask there, and there was this cute guy and he really wanted that ship but he didn’t have any money so I was like ‘I can get it till you can pay me back’ and he was really happy but at the end of the auction he was gone and I didn’t know what to do with the thing because I didn’t entirely know how it worked, only that it was a ‘Tonner’ and could ‘survive anything’, at least that’s what he told me, so I gave it to you, and I’m really sorry-” His rant was cut short when Zoe couldn’t suppress a grin anymore. Martyn’s expression turned sour immediately.

“You got a ship you didn’t know for a guy you didn’t know who disappeared and then thought ‘Yeah, let’s give this to my friend!’” Zoe snorted. “Amazing. You homosexual disaster.” Martyn crossed his arms. 

“I’m sorry that I thought if anyone could survive an unknown ship it was you.” Zoe put a hand over her heart.

“Aw. I’m touched. I also really want to know who that guy was.” Martyn sighed.

“Me too.” One of the monitors screeched and blacked out. Martyn cursed and went to check for the problem, though Zoe guessed it was just overwhelmed with the information from the jewel. It was kind of weird that it had fallen out of her pocket. It had been closed when she’d made the time jump.

“We need to find that planet,” she said into the room.

“And how do you want to do that?” asked Martyn. She shrugged.

“Go back?”

[buckysmith]

Advent special 2

Christmas” headcanons

Ghost:

- do not play snowball fight with him

- I repeat do anything but that

- this asshole has a aim, he would hit you even if you are behind a wall

- he sees it as his personal mission to hit you with every single of his snowballs

- after this snowball masker, and after you're more than wet and cold, he carries you back into your home

- he apologizes while he does  that like a billion of times

- he thinks your mad when your just cold, almost freezing

- you have to tell him that your okay

- he wants to take a hot shower with you, to get you both warm again

- kissing your forehead and praising you how good you played while his arms are wrapped around you

- that makes your checks hot cause of embarrassment

- you only hit him once, well not really you managed to punch the snowball right into his face

- but that isn't the reason for your embarrassment

- you not only punched that snowball right into his face, no, you managed to somehow tackle your boyfriend (you slipped) and because of that, both of you rolled down the fucking hill

- after that he teases you with that, even make fun of it

- it's not that you tackled  your elite military husband or something like that... no, no, it's just that your clumsy

Soap:

- he loves to play in the snow, it reminds him of his kids and teenage years

- he also loves to make snowman, he makes at least one every single year, calling it Mister snowy

- mister snowy is a big part of his live, at least somehow

- you and him would make the biiigest mister snowy he's ever build, every single year again

- you even got him a scarf and a hat!

- watch your husband being exited like a child

- well- that child changes it's mood the moment he looks at you

- his smile would change into a grin, leaving an uneasy feeling

- you should run, you know that

- but he's way faster than you so expect yourself to be burried underneath him, face first into the snow

- you both would playfully fight, but he's careful not to hurt you in any way

- after that you both could fit as mister snowy the snowman too

- well- if we go with the red nose  you both could be rudolph the red nosed reindeer as well

- and after you both are done with the snow and the with the sun long gone you both get back into your house

- a day like that would end in a hot bath with him being behind you, kissing your back and neck, murmuring sweet nothings while you listen to some Christmas songs

Alejandro:

- he's absolutely not used to the cold so he wouldn't like to go outside for long

- even though he has like five pants on, ten sweaters with the biggest jacket you could find in the store, he's still freezing

- he would loudly complain about the cold in Spanish

- watch him get angry at you when you threw a snowball in his face

- I swear babe, you should better run and get your ass somewhere safe

- he's after you like a hell hound

- well- not for long cause he walks like an penguin

- he falls face first into the snow

- if you dare and laugh at him, he will make you pay later

- get your poor husband up and home

- after that he has a cold

- he legit hates you for a few hours, acting all grumpy, just like a angy cat that wants cuddles

- take a HOT bath with him, scrub his back, kiss his whole body and praise him and he might be in love with you again (he always loves you)

König:

- he LOVES snow

- like fr this giant teddy loves snow and everything that has to deal with it

- he takes your family to his in Austria, the farmhouse his family lives in is big enough to take more than just two families so...

- expect to do a lot of sports with him

- skiing is one of it- or snowboarding- but no matter if you never did that before he teaches you.

- he holds both of your hands while teaching you how to handle ski

- a lot of praises

- he wouldn't leave the mountains of his own, you would basically have to drag him away

- after that he makes you a hot chocolate

- he gives it to when you both are in a hot bath that smells like Christmas spices, with you being between his legs and some Christmas movie in the background

- he doesn't even notice it but he's really tired

- take your big boy to bed after your mugs are empty, the water is cold and the movie is over

Graves:

- He loves skiing

- he doesn't give a fuck about the cold

- he takes you to Europe to go skiing (Austria/Switzerland or Germany )

-even thou it's not his first time there he  thinks the only difference is that they speak funny German

- he LOVES skiwater

- have an eye on your husband or some angry Austrian (cough König cough) is going to hunt him down

- he loves the vibe  to sit with you in some of those old houses (restaurants) , watching all the Christmas lights around you with people having fun, drinking beer and just enjoying their time

- but if you don't like something like that he would take you to a midnight date

- He would sit with you next to a bone fire, with many blankets around him and you to hold you both warm and to grill some marshmallows, mumbling some seeet nothings into your ear

- after that he takes you with him into a hot tub

- your hot tub  is outside of your hotel room and he loves how you cuddle to him while it's snowing, placing soft kisses on your forehead, rubbing circles into your arm while he holds you close

- if you want to go inside he leaves the tub first, just to grab a blanket to cover you the moment you leave the tub

- after you both are in bed, he immediately falls asleep, snoring like a dad...

Price:

- he has a little house in the woods, next to a lake and far away from other people

- he loves to go there with you

- you can do whatever you both want

- you want a snowmobile race? His into it

- you want to go ice-skating on the frozen lake? Watch him take out his ice-skates

- you want to just lay on the couch, cuddling with him while watching a movie? Hes the first one that has snacks and hot chocolate for you

- he loves to go into the hot tub he built outside of that little house

- just to be with you there, to have you on his lap, just enjoying the moment of peace means a lot to the old men

- he has always a cigar in his mouth so if you want to kiss him while you're in the hot tub, take his cigar between your fingers, take a drag and kiss him immediately

- watch this man melt into a love sick puppy

- but he takes his cigar back, scolding you for being a bad little one by giving you the biggest hickey you've ever got

-  enjoying his cigar after that, just to snap the last bit of his cigar away when there's barley anything to hold on to

- after that his whole attention is for you

- he's a bit goofy so, expect him randomly go out of the tub, just to dive  himself into the snow

- after you both are back in the house he wants to cuddle with you, with nothing more than a blanket covering you both

- he loves to watch you sleep when there's nothing covering you, it reminds him that your his, and that he's yours... that he found the one for forever

Valeria:

- forget it

- she doesn't leave Mexico, not for her cartel, not for snow, not for you

- well- forget that, she would leave the moment you look at her with your puppy eyes

- she act likes she hates everything about your trip

- well and mostly she does

- she hates the cold, she hates that she gets wet thank to the snow- she hates everything about the cold

- the only thing that makes her smile is that she sees you smile

- your smilie brighter than any star could ever be

- for you she forgets about her hate against snow and the could

- you want to play in the snow? Well, she's not gonna play you alone

- you want to make a snowman? She's into that idea (she gives the snowman a gun)

- you take that gun back, scolding her and asking where she got that thing

- she just shrugs with her shoulders, telling you that she's a cartel boss

- she wants to take a hot bath after playing in the snow

- give her kisses all over her body, praise her that she was so strong for you and maybe she will not drown you

- she hates the taste of hot chocolate

- she doesn't hate it when your lips taste like hot chocolate tho....