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aenwoedbeannaa · 5 years ago

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Forest Fires || Geralt x Reader

Requested By: salmonbutter

Word Count: 2,080

Warnings: Mild Violence, Gore, there will eventually be smut let’s be real.

Summary: A master huntress living deep in the woods, you rarely find yourself in human company. On a cool late autumn evening, the forest goes quiet. Not one to sit and wait for trouble to find you, you grab your bow and head out to look. A gravely injured Witcher with silver hair is the last thing you expected to find.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Note: This is only Part I of what will probably be a pretty long story. The rest will be linked when they are posted. Make sure you follow to stay up-to-date!

Part I: A Stranger in the Woods

The forest is eerily quiet. Yes, your home is far from civilization——by choice—but still, the usual sounds of evening were notably absent. Adrenaline courses through your veins, your body telling you that something was off. If the animals were silent, there was something quieting them.

You remembered a time when the adrenaline coursing through your veins would have filled you with panic. That was a long time ago, before you’d set off to live on your own. Now, the adrenaline only brought the world into hyper-focus. Every leaf, every twig, every silent creature scuttling past were noted.

Your bow is in your hand, one arrow drawn, though it is unnecessary. You can pull an arrow from your back, string it, and shoot before most people have time to blink twice. Your steps are quiet thanks to the leather boots you’d fashioned and years of practice. Your cousin used to joke that you should have been a Witcher. You always laughed it off, but if you were completely honest, you did not disagree.

You slip between the trees, keeping in the shadows and ensuring that your back was protected. The trees of the forest were excellent for that, and you knew the general area nearly as well as you knew your bow.

A twig snaps somewhere off to your left, and you draw in a silent breath. Its at least twenty feet away, but you need to be careful. It is unlikely that whatever snapped that twig is just an animal scrambling for hiding. The animals of this wood, just like you, are silent as death.

You slip between the trees, moving in the general direction of the sound. You’d rather catch whatever it is off-guard than wait for it to find you, which you are almost certain it would. You do not doubt your skills—you are an efficient killer, but you learned long ago that it was far better to be a predator than prey.

You keep your breathing even. If you don’t, your heartbeat will speed up, and trying to hear over the roar of blood in your ears is nearly impossible. You’ve covered at least half the distance between the tree you’d been using as protection when you heard the twig and the approximate location whoever or whatever it was that snapped that twig when you hear the sharp whistle of steel in the air and a sickening crack.

You are not the only hunter in the wood.

The swing of steel tells you that there is at least one human or elf involved. This is quite surprising, considering you’d heard only the snap of a single twig. Humans are never so silent. Even elves don’t move that quietly.

A moment later, you hear a sharp groan. It sounds like a man.

Growing curious, you speed up your movements slightly, still careful not to make a sound. Whatever is going on, the parties are moving quickly. It seems like you cannot catch up unless you are constantly moving.

The next sound you hear is the sound of something——claws? The sound of tearing flesh. Then there is another groan. The man is hurt, and badly from what she can gather. But there is one more powerful slash, steel cutting through air, flesh, and then bone.

You shudder. There is a reason you prefer your bow. Well-aimed arrows kill your prey instantly, and from a distance. Swords may be efficient, but they are messy.

You cautiously move forward, in case there was more than one creature. The chance of that being the case is quite unlikely, however. The air is already filling with the usual sounds of the wood once more. Birds tweeting, the scraping of tiny claws against wood as squirrels dash climb the rough tree trunks, jumping from branch to branch with ease.

You reach a small clearing——oddly perfect for battle. Your eyes land first on some grotesque creature that you are quite positive that you’ve never seen before. These woods are generally untouched by beasts. A chill runs up your spine as you stare at the creature. Its dark, patchy fur is coated with blood. Its hideous head has been hacked clean from its body.

Once you tear your head away from the supernatural-looking beast, they fix on a man. You see the sword that must have done the hacking lying on the ground next to him. You notice immediately by its shine that it is silver, not steel. So, a Witcher. That explains why he he hadn’t made a sound.

He is lying in a pool of his own blood. Four claw marks seem to have cut clean through his armor. As you approach, he groans once more. If he hadn’t, you would have thought he was dead, as wounded as he was. It was said that Witchers were able to withstand much more than the average human, thanks to their mutations. Still, Witcher or no, if he stays there much longer, he will die. He’s losing too much blood.

You sling your bow back over your shoulder, confident that there was only one of those things, and this Witcher killed it. You are already digging in your satchel as you lurch toward the Witcher. You’re going to have to staunch the bleeding and keep the deep wounds from getting infected.

Ever prepared for a hunt gone sour, you’ve got a small jar of healing salve and a roll of cotton bandages. Judging by the look of the Witcher’s injuries, you are going to need the entire jar. You momentarily hesitate, because that one jar had taken you at least a month to prepare, and the herbs it contained were either difficult to find or incredibly expensive. Still, your conscience would never let you leave someone bleeding out on the forest floor——especially when that someone killed a beast that could very well have done the same thing to you had it been left to freely wander the woods.

You go to work immediately, pulling your hunting knife out of the strap that held it to your leg. It takes some effort, but you are able to cut away most of his leather armor and underclothes to reveal four deep gashes across his torso a and up to his shoulder. Thankfully, you were used to things like this. Well, not exactly like this, but similar enough.

A deer and a human aren’t so different, you had to tell yourself. You didn’t complete the thought, which was that, when you saw a deer in this situation, you were usually in the process of gutting it for a winter’s worth of food and new clothes.

Stifling the urge to vomit, you scooped out a good deal of the oily mixture and began slathering it on the open wounds. The moment it touched his skin, you heard a harsh intake of breath. You glanced up at the Witcher’s face to see his eyes had opened wide in what you could only read as fear and pain. They were amber, with pupils like a cat’s. His jaw was clamped tightly shut, teeth barred.

“It stings, I know,” you tell him in as soothing a tone as you can muster thanks to your own fear. “It will numb after a few minutes,” you add.

The silver-haired Witcher just grunts and nods his head, screwing his eyes shut, and you go back to work slathering the ointment over each gash, ignoring the blood now coating your hands.

You unroll the cotton bandages, thankful that you have an exorbitant amount with you. You begin wrapping it tightly around his shoulder, the easiest place to begin. By now, though, the Witcher’s eyes are open and his breathing has steadied somewhat. The numbing agents in your salve must be working. And thank heavens for that, because there is no way that you’d be able to wrap the rest of his wounds without him sitting up.

“Can you sit up?” Your tone is gentle but firm. Hopefully, he can. Otherwise, you’re going to have to figure out how to bind his wounds some other way.

Thankfully, he answers, it’s more of a grunt than the word “yes,” but he nods his head. You support him as best you can with one hand on his back, helping him into a sitting position. Once he is sitting, you position yourself behind him so that he has something to support him.

His hair is softer than you thought it would be——though you were surprised to even think about that at the present moment. It is difficult not to, though, when you’re nose is nearly buried in it as you look over his shoulder to make sure that you’re covering his wounds.

It takes a few minutes, but finally the Witcher is tightly bandaged up. You can see blood seeping through the bandages, but thankfully, they are not soaked through. It is, you assumed, a combination of your homemade healing salve and the mutation that you’ve read about—Witchers heal much more quickly than humans do.

Now that he’s bandaged up and the salve has numbed the worst of the pain, he looks far better than he did even ten minutes ago. You pull your water skin off of your pack and offer it to him.

“You should drink,” you tell him. You are on auto-pilot. The auto-pilot that has, so far, saved your own skin a number of times.

“Thank you.” His voice catches you somewhat off-guard as he takes the water skin from your hand. His voice is deep and soothing, somehow. But you shouldn’t be thinking about that right now, either.

You are already digging in your pack, looking for something for him to eat. With so much blood loss, he might topple over. You manage to scrounge up a handful of dried berries, seeds, and nuts.

“No need for thanks,” you tell him, meaning every word. You may be a bit of a recluse, but you do not have contempt for others. You just prefer to be alone. “Eat this,” you add quickly, practically shoving the handful of gathered food at him.

There is no need, however. He takes it and tentatively takes a few bites before eventually wolfing down the entire thing.

“That’s all I’ve got with me,” you frown. “But there’s plenty more back at my cottage, and I can make you some real food.” It’s more of a command than an offer. He is no longer toeing the line between life and death, but he is still not well. It will take an excellent healer to ensure that things go smoothly.

Thankfully, you are an excellent healer.

You look over at the Witcher, relieved to see that there was slight color in his cheeks now. Despite the slightly bloody bandages, he no longer looked like he was on the brink of death. You know already that there is no way you will be able to carry him all the way back to the cottage. You are strong, but the Witcher is huge, and clearly made all of muscle.

“Do you think you can walk?” you ask, chewing on your bottom lip. If he cannot, you already have a few ideas in your head. It wouldn’t be ideal, but you could probably run back to the cottage for some of the freshly tanned deer hide and fashion a bed of sorts. Dragging him back through the trees would be difficult, but not impossible.

Thankfully, however, he nods.

“Okay,” you say nodding. “Good…” You seem to have run out of words. Mostly because you were already running through a list of what you’d do once you got this stranger back to your home. You’d have to address his wounds more carefully, give him something to eat and drink. You have poppy milk, so he will be able to sleep without pain.

He pulls you from your thoughts when he finally speaks.

“My name is Geralt,” he says. “Can I ask yours, Huntress?”

You smile, despite the fact that you know he is gleaning information from you. You don’t blame him. It is difficult to trust anybody these days. You respond with your name, and he smiles back.

“Well, Y/N,” he says as you position yourself to help him up, one of his arms wrapped around your shoulder so he can lean on you for support. “I suppose I ought to thank you for saving my life.”

To be continued.

#the witcher #geralt of rivia x reader #geralt x reader #the witcher fanfiction #geralt fanfiction #writing #fanfiction #story: forest fires

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 5 years ago

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Humans are Space Orcs “Hunting”

Here is another story requested by a few of you (my lovely readers). Forgive me if I am not entirely accurate on this one. While I grew up where hunting was a thing, I never got around to actually participating, though I wish I would have tried at least once.

The leaves overhead rattled in a chilled autumn breeze. On Earth, the plants had adapted to the harsh winters, and so shed their leaves going sort of…. Dormant....through the cold season, assuming they had leaves instead of needles, and the forest floor was blanketed with the decomposing remnants bright red and orange on the top layer, and a dark moldering brown on the lower layers.

It was just barely warm enough for Krill to be outside of his enclosure floating softly through the air tethered to one of his human companions who crouched in the leaves. He was very silent predatory eyes facing forward into the trees. When he moved he moved unfathomably silently despite the leaves placing his booted feet on patches of open earth.

Two other humans ranged out to their sides slowly moving through the trees barely visible to krill, who couldn’t make them out against the backdrop of foliage, especially not with the confusing patterned clothing that they wore which broke up their bodies and caused them to blend backwards into the foliage. He only caught a glimpse of them every so often as they moved silently through the trees.

Adam came to a knee on a mossy patch of rock hand braced against the ground.

Krill shivered as he watched the other humans fall into a similar position. He had always called humans predatory, and science had proven that long ago, but he had never expected to see it in action. Though it may have seemed unbelievable, on their planet, humans were some of the slowest weakest , and arguably the most useless creatures, but mentally there was no foil, and the evidence of that showed in the technology used to aid their hunting ventures. Camouflage to help them be unseen compasses to help them find the way, and the lightweight carbon-fiber contraption gripped lightly in his left hand.

The human crouched on the ground peering through the trees and adjusted the contraption to rest over his knee. It was strange, an oddly shaped length of carbon fiber, aluminum and fiberglass ending in a set of pulleys which secured a fibrous length of cord between the two extreme ends.

Slowly and with very deliberate movement, the human reached back and drew a long black shaft from an open tube on his back. The back end of the shaft had three foam patches on it two in orange and one in white, and the other end…. Had a flittering set of blades reaching an apex at a single point. The human slowly moved his hand down and set the back end of the shaft against the cord.

The two other humans with him turned and he motioned the one to the left with a wide turn of his hand motioning him to flank around to the side.

Krill watched in great fascination and unease as the hunting human slipped into the brush. Adam stuck a finger in his mouth and held it up to the air “Checking the wind” as he had explained earlier. From the slight drift Krill was getting, he would say there was a slight breeze heading towards them. Adam seemed satisfied and turned to motion his other brother, Jeremy, off to the other side.

David was nowhere to be seen.

Krill hid behind a tree staring around at the strange alien landscape, and the strange human hunters. He really had not wanted to come with them into the hostile landscape even less so when he learned he was going to watch them hunt and kill another creature, but curiosity had gotten the better of him, so he had accompanied the humans as they had made their way into the woods.

At first, nothing had seemed particularly off about the situation. The three men had walked together talking and laughing, Adam somewhat less than normal considering he was still recovering psychologically after a very hard few months, but still all had seemed well, and then, after a couple hours of aimless wandering, the group of men had stopped on the open side of a ridge peering downwards into a valley with contraptions allowing them to see further.

The moon had changed significantly after that.

It was as if a switch had flipped , and the three men grew very, very quiet. They had slowly fanned out over a distance of twenty yards to either side knees bend slightly shoulders hunched eyes facing forward stalking through the trees with near silent footsteps as their, once strange, clothing began to demonstrate a new purpose as their bodies began to shimmer and vanish, to Krill’s eyes, against the background of trees and dying leaves.

Humans weren’t generally this quiet, and it unsettled Krill as he watched them stalking through the trees.

And then they sait waiting ten minutes turned into twenty twenty became thirty and thirty grew towards an hour of just watching as the humans sat perfectly still and in place unwilling to move a muscle. He had never seen a human hold so still in their life, much less Adam, but there he sat crouched on the ground as a chill wind blew past him through the trees. Out of morbid curiosity, Krill inflated himself a little bit more elevating himself towards the middling branches of the trees. Through the shedding branches he could just make out a clearing up ahead.

It was large and spacious with gently swaying grass fading from a light green to a dusky yellow color, and in that clearing, he could just make out a clump of brown shapes. It was difficult to make out from here, seeing as he did not have the best eyesight…. In comparison to humans, but he animals standing before him were strange beasts, quite large about the height of a human or more…. Some of the larger ones anyway. They had tan to brown coats, and the larger one’s head was crowned with a strange branching of bone.

It was a rather eerie sight. The creature lifted it’s head and sniffed at the air, easily supporting the great branches atop its head points glistening in the dim overcast light of the sky above. Its large ears flickered, and it’s wide, dark eyes scanned the trees about them. Around it, the smaller creatures, without the strange protrusions, lifted their heads as well turning towards the opposite end of the clearing.

Krill wouldn’t have been able to tell the creatures were prey animals if it wasn’t for the lateral positioning of their eyes. To him the beasts were terrifying, especially the large one which would have used it;;s horns to gore him in half if it really wanted.

Surely the humans weren’t after these things.

The large one sniffed the air again and pawed at the ground in agitation. As if on quq, the group of animals began making their way closer towards the hiding humans. A few broke out into a light trot and padded through the tall grass. Their agitation had not yet broken into full blown panic, though it definitely should have.

Krill could see the human now crouching in the bushes eyes locked upon the large thorny creature at the head of the pack. He inched forward taking a knee against the ground. The creature had turned its head facing backwards, but from what Kril Could tell, it’s line of sight would have been blocked by a set of branches just to the front of its face. The human took this opportunity lifting the contraption before his face and drawing the cord back. One hand held out straight forward and the other one drawn back to his cheek thumb delicately brushing against the side of his mouth. The weapon did not quiver.

The animal lifted its head.

The human let out a slow breath going very still and let go of the cord. There was a loud TWACK! And then a shrill scream as the animal bucked kicked and then fell over writhing in place. Its shrill cries echoed through the valley stirring the rest of the herd into a terrified frenzy, and together they bolted through the trees with the thundering of hooves.

The three humans converged from the woods breaking cover and no longer attempting to silence their footsteps. One broke from the left one broke from the right, and Adam ran straight up the middle. Krill watched in abject horror as the three humans surrounded the dying animal. The creatures wide dark eyes stared up at the surround predators in fear. David stepped forward drawing back another arrow, from a few paces away, put a shaft through its eye.

The creatures cries were silenced fading slowly into a dying echo as he lowered his bow, and the three humans morphed back into their earlier selves.

“Nice shot.”

“If it was a nice shot, I would have killed it.” Adam retorted. Uneasily KRill lowered himself form the sky staring in fearful fascination at the creature lying dead on the forest floor. The humans had done it, they had just…. Killed it.

And now they planned on eating it.

Jeremy dropped to one knee handing his bow off to Adam, “Tell your little alien friend he might want to turn away for this part.

Adam turned to look at Krill his single green eye flickering in the dying light of the sun, “We aren’t planning on dragging the entire thing out…… which means we have to gut it.” Krill didn’t need more prompting and turned away. Despite that, he could still hear the sound of rending flesh as the humans tore the creature apart into its component parts. The thought struck him with abject horror, and he wondered how it could be like this. Adam, a usually mild and unaggressive creature capable of stalking, hunting and dismembering something, but a lot fo humans were like that seemingly mild and unaggressive until they weren’t.

“Why dod you do this.” Krill wondered in shock

David took this one coming around to face Krill wiping his hands on some disinfecting wipes, “Depends, we used to do it for survival, and then we did it for sport, and we’ve always done it to eat because they taste good, but the reason we do it now has to do with population control. Last couple of years some sort of disease has been tearing through the predator population, especially wolves. IN turn the deer population saw a MASSIVE increase. They are having trouble feeding all of them, and grazing habits have caused issue with other species and wildland. Generally nature would take care of the issue, but it's been affecting some families and homes in the nearby area. The government gives out tags to hunters to take down the males to reduce population growth and control. Once the disease dies down, and the predator population goes up, they will be giving out wolf tags.”

Behind him one of the humans laughed, “I know you don't like the idea much Krill, but humans are hunters always have been always will be. The difference now is, we understand the kind of impact we have, and we know how to use what we kill to the best of our ability.”

Adam dusted off his hands.

Krill looked back at them expression unsure trying to ignore the caracc laid at their feet. Looking in their eyes, he didn’t see anything different, no signs of sadistic pleasure or a change for the worst, but perhaps that is what bothered him. The fact that killing something really didn’t change the way they felt, didn’t change anything about them. This was something that they did, and something they had done for thousands of years.

Perhaps he would never understand it. In comparison to creatures on their planet, he had more in common with the trees than he had in common with animals, so his species would never understand consumption for survival.

But still there was something about the way they moved that day, the way they had circled and sluk through the trees that would always stick with him.

It was a reminder.

A reminder that man had grown up in a harsh world.

A reminder that man was at his core.

A hunter

#humans are space orcs #HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are space australians #humans are spaceoddities #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia

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huihuiheart · 4 years ago

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Goretober D10: Blackout -Jongho

I’ve written something with a similar plot to this before and have been considering posting it on here, so if you see that later and there are similarities....well sorry I tried to avoid it.

Jongho + Gender Neutral Reader (once again, not inherently romantic, but y’all can take it however you want)

Warnings: Apocalyptical/Dystopian society, mentions of war, violence, gore, global blackout, lawless society, death, stealing, bodies, burning, somewhat happy ending?

Word Count:1,602

Society always joked that there was no way they’d survive without technology. If only they knew just how bad the reality of it would be. At least the world hadn’t ended in a nuclear apocalypse some would argue, yet in some ways you think perhaps that would have been easier to deal with. Sure there wouldn’t have been any survivors, but you wouldn’t have had to watch people lose their humanity like this had caused. The first wave of death spreading through the hospitals, anyone on life support or who couldn’t be saved without technology gone within a few hours. The first wave of panic hitting in major cities then too, people rushing to get supplies and board up as quickly as possible. Instead of helping one another though it led to fighting and even some deaths, people resorting to stealing if they felt it was taking too long. Not that money mattered much at all right now with all bank technology gone and electricity fried. The next wave due to the prisons, everything was automated and technology based anymore, so it was only a matter of time before a prison break. Some of them deciding to run and hide away from the largely populated areas, most not caring at all about that though, knowing the chaos due to events would only make it easier for them to get away with anything they chose to.

You learned through the events of this war, that there was a weapon that existed that could turn people against their own side. Until boarders no longer existed, solely due to the fact that there was no one left to keep them there. The remaining too focused on survival to care who went where....usually. In the large cities where they’d been overrun by the criminals who returned to take over the remnants of society, it had become a no mans land. The worst of all areas, only the fittest surviving and most looking for a way out. That’s how you’d met Jongho, both trapped in and looking for a way past the anarchic boundaries of the city. Him knowing where his friends intended to meet up on the outside and offering you a safe place among a group, if you were willing to work together to get out of the city. Logically the safest time to attempt getting out was at night however that still didn’t make it easy. Drunken revelries being held by the men guarding around the light of the bonfire burning the city’s dead. The smell of rotting flesh being turned to ash something you’d never come to shake, it engrained so deeply it’d return to haunt you many a dark, lonely night.

Slipping away would only prove to be the first of many challenged thrown at you though. Still travelling through a dangerous area of no mans land, you found an old trashed barn, the place looking long looted and abandoned, a seemingly safe spot to get some sleep for the evening, climbing up to where some old hay lay in storage you got behind it, taking shifts keeping watch from behind the spot. Scouring for more food in the accompanying empty home, knowing your supplies wouldn’t last long. Not risking fighting for much back in the city though, valuing your lives in the moment more than that, and simply hoping you wouldn’t later regret that decision. Journeying another two days to reach the meetup spot that Jongho had told you about, only to find the area long leveled with fire. Ash the only remnants and even that drifting away in the passing breeze.

“They aren’t here, but I don’t know what happened to them. They could have been away when this happened.” Jongho sighs softly standing from where he’d crouched down to look for any clue as to where his friends could have gone, “Either way....we won’t be able to manage just the two of us forever, we either need to find them somehow, or find another group that will take us in.”

“I know....how are we supposed to do that safely though?” You wonder looking around the barren area for any signs of life or a looming threat.

“I don’t think that we can.....we’re gonna have to expose ourselves to someone sooner or later. We’ll just have to trust our guts and have each other’s back okay? We know we can trust one another, so as long as we keep that trust we’ll pull through.” Jongho tries to assure both you and himself with his statement as he takes your hand to lead the way he assumes you’ll have the best luck, “There’s very faint tracks going this way. They’re almost gone and the trail may grow cold quickly, but it’s a direction to go at least.”

Growing anxious as you night fell, but there was an auburn light flickering off in the distance. You recognized it as fire and could only think of what you’d both just run from, fires fueled by corpses. Yet, that smell didn’t linger in the air even as you both trudged closer. To the point of finding an old run down truck stop, the kind with a strip club and bar. That being said it wasn’t an unreasonable base camp for a group of people, especially one out of the dangerous area of no mans land. A good place to potentially make a settlement and claim an area for the safety of a group. What you couldn’t be sure of though was how receptive they were to outsiders. Nevertheless, you and Jongho had very few options as you had run out of food that morning and needed some help to at least find some soon if you’d have any hopes of continuing on. The men’s reaction to spotting you however didn’t prove to give you any warm or fuzzy feelings of hope and relief, their harsh yells proving to be anything but inviting.

“HEY! WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU FIND US?” The one calls from a distance as they quickly close the gap and grab both of you by the arm, already dragging you in for questioning.

“We’re no one important, we recently escaped a city and are looking for refuge. I was supposed to meet some friends nearby, but the area was deserted. We were hoping to find someone who may be able to point us in the right direction.” Jongho calmly tries to reason with the men as he keeps his eyes sharp, occasionally checking in on you with them.

“Well sorry if we don’t take your word for it.” The other man scoffs before they take you inside and push you down onto your knees, “We’ll see what the boss thinks of you.”

The two of you anxiously wait in silence on your knees, not feeling any relief upon hearing harsh whispering between what seems to be a group of people behind you. Before heavy footsteps draw closer, silencing all the sounds behind you. Mud covered boots the first thing either of you see and the man keeps his back to you as he starts to speak.

“We’re going to need proof that you two are who you say you are. We try to be reasonable here unlike the barbarians in the city, but we aren’t willing to risk our entire group just for two strangers.” Jongho’s head whips up at the sound of the voice, looking almost as if he’s seen a ghost whispering what sounds to you like Joong so quietly you barely hear it. The man seems to hear though, head whipping around to finally look at you both, eyes settling on Jongho and widening in shock.

“Jongho? You made it here? We waited for you, but thought you were dead....” The man seems much less intimidating now as he pulls your companion up and into an embrace. More booming voices seeming to have heard the name and flooding into the room to happily embrace him as well, happy to have their youngest friend with them once more. Until one turns to look at you, his appearance almost seeming angelic compared to the dark remains of society surrounding you all, hair growing longer behind his ears.

“Who’s this pretty thing that’s with you Jongho?” The beautiful angel asks drawing Jongho’s attention back to you.

“Oh! Guys this is Y/N! We met in the city and worked together to get out and travel here! I trust them with my life!” Jongho proudly introduces you to his friends. The angel offering you his hand to help you up off the ground.

“Well if Jongho trusts you that much then you’re welcome to be a part of our family. I’m Yeosang, our leader who you first met here is Hongjoong.” He smiles softly gently brushing the back of your palm with his thumb before letting go of your hand once you’re steady on your feet. Getting introductions from the rest; Seonghwa, San, Mingi, Wooyoung, and Yunho. The group having collected a few others along the way, those being the ones who had initially spotted you both and not known who Jongho was.

“Welcome Y/N. You both are tired from travelling I’m sure. Tonight we’ll get you fed and rested. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done around here, but take tonight and tomorrow to recharge and then we’ll help you find a place.” Hongjoong advises settling your soul a bit, leading you to nod with a small smile of your own. For the first time since the chaos began you had a home, safety......a family.

#goretober #ateez oneshot #jongho oneshot

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erudite-rebel · 4 years ago

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Title: Forced Offerings Summary: The recounts of Bartholomew Oobleck regarding an incident which took the lives of his parents when he was a child. Characters: Bartholomew Oobleck, Qrow Branwen, OC’s Notes: I’m posting a bit of writing I did. A few people who follow will be familiar with my Magnus Archives AU, or at the very least have seen me spam about it and draw art for the (3) other people who I know that listen to the podcast. I’m actually very proud of this little bit of writing, though I understand not everyone would want to read it. I’m trying to get myself back into properly writing, and though this is fanfic I think getting it out there and maybe receiving feedback could help?

It’s a horror story. One I kind of want to adapt, honestly, to a Creepypasta to submit to NoSleep, but for now it can remain like this.

Warnings for body horror, gore, and guts.

“There has to be some sort of rational explanation for-”

“For someone wearing someone else’s skin like a meat suit?” Qrow’s words were calm. Somehow he was always calm. Even after all of this.

Barty leaned against the chair, hands gripping the back of it until it was twisted and pressed against the table. He had dark bags under his eyes and was unsure of the last time he’d had a proper sleep. Every piece of him felt tired, from toes to fingertips, and he knew if he laid down there would be nothing to gain for it. Just wakefulness, watching, waiting.

“I always thought I wanted it to be real, Qrow,” he said. “All my life. Ever since the wanting to know dug its claws into my head for the first time. Even when we both should have run away after the incident. I- but now I’m here. And I really do know now, even if there’s so much more that I don’t. Hidden. Layers waiting for me to scrape away and dig down into them.”

When he looked back up Qrow’s face was near unreadable, as it always was. As though his old friend had at some point become a spy. “You can still get out, Bart. Quit. Forget.”

Barty laughed weakly. “You don’t… you don’t think I tried? I attempted to write up a letter of resignation, and it was as though the keys had transformed, like staring at some unknown machine as the cursor blinked. So I took up a pen, determined to write it, and I forgot how to write. And when I saw Ozpin I… the words. They wouldn’t be spoken. I don’t think I can quit.”

He sagged then and pulled out his chair, sitting heavily down. His head was laid in his arms, trying to think it through, but what was there to think of? To understand? He was trapped. A group of beings wearing skin suits had attempted to break into the archives. He’d looked at one of them wearing the face of a person he’d taken a statement from. Veronica Chase of Leeds.

“Everything I remembered pointed to… to the world being a very dark place, but I think I. I was too young to understand just how horrific.”

Cool fingers curled around his. Barty squeezed them on reflex, trying to convince himself not to do anything so childish as cry. There was so much going on. Too much going on. And he knew Ozpin, Qrow, perhaps some of the other assistants, he knew they knew more. And those secrets, that untold knowledge, burned like a hunger in him as much as recording statements had become. A part of him, one he didn’t yet know how loud it truly was, wanted to devour that knowledge.

Qrow’s voice broke into his thoughts. “...Have you ever spoken about it?”

Barty considered the question a moment before he lifted his head. Qrow was no longer unreadable. He was sad. Maybe angry as well.

“I haven’t.” He’d alluded to things to Qrow, when they were young and just a few stupid, desperate children, but he’d never told the full story. Perhaps not even to the police.

Qrow nodded to the tape recorder. “Maybe now’s the time.”

“You mean give a statement?” He sounded incredulous, as though that was the last thing he ought to be doing.

The other man shrugged, but thin fingers curled a little tighter. The gesture was soothing. “Couldn’t hurt.”

Barty sat up straighter, looking at the recorder waiting for him to merely press record. It called to him. With a sigh he picked up his glasses and placed them on his face, straightening his back. Qrow’s hands retreated over the table to his lap, and the other man was silent as he slouched and stared at Barty.

The record button depressed with a satisfying click, and the gears within ground softly with their age. The sound tingled along his spine like light, tickling fingers.

“Statement of Bartholomew Oobleck, regarding a series of deaths at Eastwyke Museum of Artefacts and Antiquities in 1996. Statement taken on November 22nd, 2020. Audio recording by Bartholomew Oobleck, Head Archivist of the Beacon Institute, London.” He paused a moment, as memories returned, like he’d merely opened a door. He remembered being a young and curious boy, and the scent of dust and paper and age in the museum’s storage. It was almost as if he were there, and he knew he’d be able to tell the story down to the deepest detail, and when he began to talk he wasn’t entirely sure who he was talking to - Qrow, the tape, or himself.

“Statement begins.”

I don’t suppose there are many people who would remember the Eastwyke Museum of Artefacts and Antiquities anymore. Or if they do, they might pretend not to. The galleries had originated from the private collection of Duke Francis Egerton, who had been the Duke of Eastwyke for perhaps a decade in the eighteen hundreds and primarily concerned himself with gathering rare and unusual antiquities. In the 1950’s several of his descendants saw fit to open it to the public, perhaps to use it to make a little money or invest. Despite that it didn’t see tourism. The patrons were mainly students from Oxford, or travelling academics. Anthropologists, archaeologists, Egyptologists… even had an entomologist come in weekly to just sit in the insect room and take it all in. No, not many people would remember it, but it was my childhood.

My parents, Pearl and Mathis Oobleck, were archaeologists. They were often abroad with work and digs. Sometimes I went with them, sometimes I stayed at home with my grandfather Tennyson, who had a little cottage on the grounds when he worked as curator. When he retired the mantle passed to my father and they were home a little more, unless going off to expand the collection. It was… a happy enough childhood. Maybe lonely sometimes, but I had an entire world of secret knowledge to explore, a library to devour and help curb my hyperactivity. I was content prowling those halls, which felt more like home to me than our cottage.

When I was nine the proprietors purchased a considerable number of artifacts from a private auction, something to do with a portion of Duke Egerton’s original collection that had made it into the hands of a branch of the royal family they’d had a rivalry with. The purchase caused quite a stir. All sorts of wild stories were told… not the least of which was that many of the artifacts there were once bought from grave robbers. I never heard the truth of it, though I suspect it was. Most private collections are just that. Stolen.

I was forbidden to go near the newest items. While it was next to impossible to keep me out of the storage rooms, I had learned early not to touch anything, and was not allowed in the room where they were held without an accompaniment to make sure I kept my hands well off. I remember standing in the middle of the room, hands stuck firm under my arms to resist the temptation to touch the pottery or old weapons. I must have looked like I had seen Father Christmas as I turned every which way trying to get a peek at it. I was a horrible annoyance, I suspect.

One part of the lot, though, I remember very well. It had been a beautifully preserved set of canopic jars. I recall being told they were from the eighteenth dynasty. They were made of black stone, each head carved with exquisite detail, the polish hanging on despite the millenia since. All over the surface of the jar were carved hieroglyphs, uncharacteristic of the usual designs. Several people believed the jars to be fake, as the material was wrong for the time, and the glyphs were unusual, but carbon dating seemed to suggest it was an immutable fact. I think there was a lot of discussion whether to open the jar and study the remains inside.

The largest advocate for their authenticity was Dr. Herbert Renshaw, a loud and corpulent man. I never knew him well. He was the sort of man who didn’t have patience for even a docile child, let alone a hyperactive boy with a million questions. He usually didn’t want me about so I didn’t hear much of them until he’d found me one day loitering near the entrance of the archive where they were being kept and he asked if I would like to come inside.

I remember finding that odd, chiefly because I knew he didn’t care for me, but also because of the look in his eyes. I was never much good at deciphering human emotions when I was younger, but even then I thought there was something of a gleam to them. I readily agreed, though, and darted inside the moment I was allowed to.

We didn’t have much in the way of conversation. He talked at length about the glyphs carved into the rock, and how they’d seemed to be in several different languages. His speech had been rapid, I remember, and I’d had difficulty following along. All the while I’d been edging closer to them, feeling captivated by the staring eyes of the figureheads atop the jars. I felt as though they were looking back at me, urging me in.

I hadn’t even been aware of reaching for them when Dr. Renshaw’s hand slapped down hard over my own, knocking it away. Knuckles stinging, I’d turned and fled as he glared. But even now I’m not sure if I ran from the slap, the look in his eyes, or the fact that there had seemed to be radiant, physical heat from those jars.

For the next few days I was kept busy with my homeschooling and hardly got a chance to go into the museum beyond writing a maths test in my mother's office. Whenever I was in, though, I happened to see Dr. Renshaw. Normally he was a neat and tidy sort of man, with expensive suits and his moustache waxed within an inch of its life, yet… it seemed as though he was keeping less care of himself. Hair unbrushed, buttons undone, bowtie lank or missing. And as he walked he’d mutter to himself and turn a wild sort of gaze on a person, something that made you feel less like a person and more like an object.

When I asked my mother about it she dismissed it as him being overworked and told me to concentrate harder on my studies. I tried, but the memory of the way he walked and stared wouldn’t be banished from my mind.

It was on a Monday that it truly started. I had left one of my science textbooks in my mother’s office and needed it for that day’s lesson, but it was on Monday’s the museum was closed, so I took my father’s key and let myself in the back entrance. I was hardly afraid. I knew these halls like the back of my hand.

As I was passing through one of the archives - it had been stuffy and hot with summer, without climate control - I heard an odd sound. A sort of whimpering coming from further in the dark. At first I rooted in place, wondering if I should run and get my father, too afraid to call out. When the sound came again I crept through the shelves, terrified of what I might find, when I came upon one of the librarians, Maggie Law. I’d always liked her. She let me read what I like and sometimes would sneak me toffee’s or other sweets. I’m certain she had a kind, round face, but now all I can remember is how she’d looked there in the shadows. Yellowing skin and eyes, soaked with sweat, hands clutched over her side. I remember her crying, her voice so broken and small as she said ‘he pulled it from me, he pulled it from me.’

I ran then, straight for my parents. It had taken them a good five minutes to get me to talk enough sense to call an ambulance. I remember watching from my window as she was taken away, staring through old warped glass at the blue lights.

I also remember something else, though. Dr. Renshaw. His face looking out from a window at the same scene. Even though I couldn’t see him clearly, my vision what it was, I felt sick just to look at him. I felt dread.

More attacks followed. The following day the groundskeeper, Kevin Rutherford, was found dead, torch in hand. I overheard the police telling my parents he seemed like he must have had a heart attack while patrolling the grounds that night. The day after that an archaeologist named Judith Churchill was found in a state of shock in the parking lot, having finished up late that night.

The museum closed. Everyone by that point was terrified, and the police were doing regular patrols. I was thirsty to know what was happening but my parents refused to tell me, so I’d taken to listening in on the telephone whenever someone rang. I eavesdropped on one such call and learned that Maggie Law had died. Hepatic encephalopathy, they’d said. I remember struggling an ancient medical textbook down from a shelf just to look it up. It’s a condition caused by acute liver failure.

I was in a right state after that. My parents were making sure to keep the doors locked. I remember my mother tucked me in and told me not to worry. I try to always remember that.

It was around ten pm that a knock came at the door. Unable to sleep I’d made a little tent of a blanket and was reading by torchlight when I heard it. Curious who it could be at that hour with so much going on, I crept from my bed to go to the stairs to watch the front hall. I thought perhaps it might be a policeman, that there’d be some news.

It was my father who answered the door. On the threshold stood Dr. Renshaw, and he looked haggard. Deep bags below his fever-bright eyes, cheeks almost sunken, hair a mess. I remember he had a hand tucked into his jacket.

My father invited him in, of course. There’d been concern in his voice as he shut the door and warned him he shouldn’t be out so late with such strangeness going on.

I remember the door swinging shut. I remember Dr. Renshaw pulling one of the jars from his jacket and noticing the eyes of Qebehsenuf, the falcon, somehow staring out from its black and smooth surface. And then Renshaw reached for my father.

Words do not feel as though they can describe. I watched as his hand seemed to sink through clothes and skin and flesh without a drop of blood. I remember my father’s face going stark white as my mother asked what was going on. And then Renshaw pulled his hand back.

It was like nothing I had yet seen. Pink, almost purplish, tubes were gripped in Renshaw’s hand. My father screamed then, falling to his knees, watching as this mass was pulled from him. There was too much even for Renshaw to hold and it slipped to the ground with a wet splat, and seemed to move like a languid snake.

My father fell over then, as my mother screamed hysterically. All I remember clearly was Renshaw looking up at me as he held my father's intestines like fleshy ropes, letting them drag on the ground and slap his clothing. Our eyes met. They were like I had never seen before. There was something mad there, but also elation or euphoria I couldn’t understand.

I ran then, bolting for my parent's room. I remember crawling under their bed and curling up beneath the headboard, hands over my ears as I listened to my mother scream before it just… ended. I waited to hear boots upon the stairs, for Renshaw to come and stick his hand into me, but he never came. All I heard was the door swing shut.

I didn’t leave until morning when the police arrived. The maid found my parents, and the police found me. Had had to drag me from under the bed, in fact. They didn’t let me see their bodies, and the funeral was closed casket. I told the police who I’d seen but Renshaw had disappeared along with those canopic jars. Jars I worry that had gotten full on what was stolen from his coworkers.

I went to go live with my grandfather after that. There was a lot of therapy. I was pushed harder than ever into my schoolwork, and I treated it like a drug to quiet my mind. Eventually I think I half convinced myself it was a hallucination by the time I went to high school. Now I know better.

Statement ends.

#rwby fanfic #bartholomew oobleck #qrow branwen #rwby oobleck #rwby qrow #horror fanfic #tma au #freeform; my writing #is anything really real anymore?; tma au

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chroniclackofselfpreservation · 4 years ago

Text

Creatures of the Night

Chapter 20 - as in the midst of battle

Back to the Beginning < Previous chapter / Next chapter >

AO3

Masterlist

(TW: toxic relationships, mild gore/fighting)

(The title of the chapter comes from “Sonnet XXV” by George Santayana)

Roman led his friends back into the forest, trying to ignore the sour feeling growing in his gut. It was high noon, and the sun filtered down through the trees in broken rays. The woods looked so different in the daytime. Almost beautiful. Despite how upset it would make them both, and the points to the contrary they’d posed, Roman still thought Patton and Logan would be safer away from the fight. Roman had learned to deal with dangerous situations with nothing but his own skills and quick thinking. Three more people, two of which that were far more vulnerable, increased the number of things he had to think about tenfold. Not to mention their plan was rather half-baked and incoherent at this point. Roman simply hoped that by the time they got to the meadow, the ideas would start coming. Ursula could show up at any moment. They had to be ready to act.

Instead of worrying endlessly, Roman simply kept running over the handful of witchtongue phrases and words Virgil had taught him just in case things got hairy. Be careful, he’d admonished. You don’t have control of your powers yet, so you can’t control how powerful each word’s going to be. It could be like setting off a bomb.

Behind him, Logan drilled Virgil about the magical properties of everyday substances, desperately trying to formulate some kind of attack strategy.

“So, rosemary enhances magic?”

“Sort of,” said Virgil, struggling to explain. “It’s more like it concentrates it in one area. Keeps it from going wrong.”

“Anything else? Something also available to us?”

Virgil stuffed his hands in his oversized pockets, thinking. Patton had his cardigan on, and even Logan wore a windbreaker. It was a little chilly, now that Roman thought about it, but he’d always run hot, even as a kid. He had his usual weapons strapped to his body, but aside from that, just a t-shirt and jeans.

“Coffee puts us to sleep,” Virgil offered.

“So that’s why you never drink it!” Patton exclaimed. “Maybe we could blow a bunch in her face?”

“It’s not a tranquilizer,” he amended. “More like melatonin. It just makes us drowsy and lethargic.”

“We’re almost there,” Roman announced, but the three others were too engrossed in their planning to take notice. He didn’t mind. Roman wasn’t much of a planner. He was a shoot-and-stab first, come-up-with-brilliant-strategies later kind of guy.

As they walked, Roman let his mind wander to Dorian. Was he sleeping? If so, where was he?

A familiar tugging sensation filled his mind, and somehow, he just knew which direction Dorian was. Southeast, about three miles. The location popped into his mind just as easily as any one of his normal thoughts. It felt similar to how he’d found the Silkweed, and that strange sensation he’d felt that night outside the forest with the—

Roman audibly gasped, stopping in his tracks. Logan bumped into him.

“Roman? What—”

“It was you!” he breathed, pointing at Virgil.

Virgil paled, immediately nervous. “What was me?”

“You were the cat that kept following me to the forest every night!”

Virgil relaxed a touch. “You’re just figuring this out now?”

“Well, I mean. Kinda. I guess I didn’t connect the two,” he said, flushing. “Whatever, let’s keep going. We’re almost there.” Roman turned around and continued plodding through the trees, trying to hide his embarrassment. He’d had full on mental breakdowns in front of that cat. He’d talked about Virgil to it. It was comforting, and really sweet, actually—but also incredibly embarrassing.

“Okay,” Logan began slowly, “back to the matter at hand, I guess. Are there any substances that have negative effects? Ones that we can use against Ursula?”

“I mean, iron’s a classic, but there isn’t much of that just lying around,” Virgil said.

“What are its properties?”

“It cancels out magic.”

Logan sighed. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that, Virgil. What are the constraints? The parameters?”

“Well,” Virgil said as they arrived at the meadow, “magic can’t pass through it. So, if someone was behind an iron door, or in an iron cage, no magic could get in or out. In the Witchlands, they use iron cuffs to bind prisoners.”

“And what of iron in a powder form? What if a person were to become covered in it?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen it before. I guess it could cancel out their powers, but it wouldn’t be as concentrated as solid metal. My guess is it’ll simply destroy any control over their spells, or decrease their power.”

They stopped in the middle of the clearing.

“Fantastic,” Logan muttered to himself, staring at the ground, lost in thought.

“Where are we supposed to get iron powder?” Patton asked.

Logan squatted down, pressing his fingers into the dirt. “Right here. Virgil, do you know of any spells that could draw iron from the ground?”

“I’m sure I can figure something out,” he said with that same smile that crossed his face anytime the mention of performing magic was made.

“Now, be careful,” Logan warned. “Iron is a necessary nutrient for plant life.”

“Don’t kill the forest. Got it.”

Roman watched as Virgil knelt down, pulling the talisman from his jacket pocket and placing a hand on the ground. He opened his mouth, then stopped, eyebrows knitting together.

“What rhymes with stone?”

Logan brightened. “Tone, sloan, own, bone, zone—tome and roam are slant rhymes, but I’m sure they’ll work.”

“Disown,” Roman said. Atone was also in there, but he refrained from offering that one.

“Shown? Or known?” Patton chimed in.

“That’ll work,” Virgil said, and returned his attention to the ground. “Seek and find the hidden stone, bring it hence and make it known.”

The ground shuddered and beneath Virgil’s palm sprouted a pile of iron flecks, and a few larger pebbles.

“Jahsti,” he said softly, that strange tone to his voice that made Roman’s heart race and fingers tingle. Logan flinched ever so slightly. The iron seemed to vibrate, and soon all the flecks and pebbles were reduced to a fine powder. There was only enough for a fistful, maybe less.

“Wonderful,” Logan said, gathering the substance up in his hand.

“So, what’s the plan?” Roman asked, unconsciously scanning the treeline. “We somehow get close enough to her to chuck the stuff in her face?”

“That’s a rather simplistic way of putting it, but yes,” Logan said. He had that look in his eye. The one that betrayed a million calculations and ideas finally coming together.

A rare grin stretched across his face. “Patton, how fast can you run?”

* * * * * * * * * *

Dorian lay on the top of a sheer cliff, bathing in the sunlight. Winter was approaching. He shuddered at the thought. Sure, he didn’t need to be warm to live—just like he didn’t need to sleep, or eat, or breathe—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t able to enjoy one and hate another. The cold reminded him of his time in the dungeons.

In his periphery, he could sense the little prince and his friends a few miles northwest of him. Perhaps they planned on confronting the Dragon Witch today? Dorian reveled in the fact that he couldn’t care less. Either they took care of his problem, or he got to kill Ursula and the little prince.

Who he hadn’t become fond of in the least.

Obviously.

Under normal circumstances, Dorian wouldn’t have been so out in the open, let alone sunbathing atop a clifftop, letting his scales shine like beacons. Again, it felt good to have no worries.

And yet, the little prince’s presence kept nagging at the back of his mind. What was their plan? How could they hope to defeat such a power with the prince so oblivious to his own? They had no chance, really. It was bound to end in disaster, and they’d no doubt come crawling to him for assistance.

Which he wouldn’t offer. Under any circumstance.

This is ridiculous, Dorian thought, and in a snap of brilliant golden light, returned to his human form. He needed to clear his head.`

* * * * * * * * * *

Dorian stood at the treeline. Now that the curse was broken, he, too, should be able to leave the premises of the forest. Something that surely wasn’t fear curdled in the pit of his stomach. He’d never approached a human settlement before. Even while hunting Ursula all those centuries, he’d avoided the places as well he could.

Steeling himself, Dorian stepped into the yellow-grass field separating the township from the forest. He would have expected some sort of reaction, even a tingle up his spine, but of course nothing did. He trudged through the field and slipped between two houses. The street was lined with residencies and nothing else. The town square must be around here somewhere, he reasoned, and stepped out into the middle of the road. It was hard, like stone, but blackened and smelly, as if a dragon had scorched it with its breath.

Clasping his hands behind his back, Dorian strode down the middle of the street. Small humans—even smaller than the little prince—rode past on strange two-wheeled contraptions, staring at him with open mouths. While Dorian knew that magicless mortals such as these could not see the scales marring the left side of his face, he wondered if they saw some other kind of deformation more familiar to them. A burn, perhaps?

They continued away from him, stopping behind one of the large metal machines that littered the sides of the street and peeking out at him. Dorian continued down the road, twitching his finger in the direction of the machine. A blaring alarm rang out and various white, yellow, and red lights began flashing. The children yelped in fright and scampered away. Dorian contained a smile.

One of the large machines was moving toward him rapidly. A similar alarm blared at him and the woman inside made a gesture with her middle finger as she gradually slowed down. Dorian cocked his head to the side, and the machine’s engine made an awful cranking sound, black smoke billowing up from the front end. Another jerk of his head, and the entire contraption slid to the side of the road, out of his way.

This might be fun.

* * * * * * * * * *

“VIRGIL!” a voice screeched in the distance, ringing like an ornery bird call through the trees. Roman froze, a chill shooting down his neck. He cast a glance Virgil’s direction. He looked paler than normal, and clutched his talisman so tightly, he would have killed it, had it been alive.

Roman knew where Logan and Patton were simply because they’d planned it, but he couldn’t resist using his newfound ability to be absolutely sure. Patton was thirty feet east of him and Virgil. Logan was even farther east. One hundred and twenty-seven feet, to be exact.

“Where are you, cat?!” Ursula screamed in frustration. Roman refrained from using his ability on the witch, just in case he ended up giving their location away. From where they crouched in the bushes, she sounded only a couple hundred feet up the slope of the mountain.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Virgil muttered.

“What?”

“She should know exactly where I am. I’m her familiar,” he said. “I don’t know why she can’t find me.”

“Well, whatever the reason, let’s count ourselves lucky,” Roman said. Though, for their plan to work, they needed Ursula to find them. Reaching into the bush, Roman grabbed one of the branches and snapped it. This needed to seem unintentional.

Sure enough, the witch began stomping down the hill toward them. Her hair was silvery as Roman remembered, though she wore pants, tennis shoes, and a streamlined running jacket. She almost looked like a normal human.

Her eyes scanned the trees. She still seemed unable to pinpoint their exact location.

“I can sense you, kitty,” she muttered.

Before Virgil could make his mind up to bolt in the other direction, Roman grabbed his arm and stood up out of the bush, pulling Virgil up with him.

“We’re right here, Ursula.”

Her eyes snapped to him, then to Virgil. Roman could feel him shaking beneath his jacket. The witch smiled and lifted her hands in a gesture of goodwill.

“I’m not here for you, princey. Virgil’s been misbehaving recently, and I think it’s time he got a reminder who’s in charge around here.”

“You’re not going anywhere near him,” Roman said, unsheathing his sword.

Ursula cocked an eyebrow. “You sure you don’t want to save that for the demon? Be a shame to tire yourself out before the curse even starts.”

“Leave us alone. You have no business here.”

The witch’s expression darkened. “Where are the rest of your friends, kitty? Didn’t want to join the party?”

On cue, Patton wandered out of his hiding place, calling, “Roman? Virgil? Come on guys, where are you? Logan’s worried sick!”

Roman let out a curse, and a smile stretched across Ursula’s face.

“Patton! Get out of here!” he shouted. Patton’s head snapped in their direction.

“No,” Ursula crooned. “Why don’t you come over here, dear?” She curled a finger towards herself and muttered, “Nohmai.”

Patton jerked forward, as if drawn by a string sprouting from the middle of his chest. Roman’s breath caught. Just like his curse. Patton’s feet skidded across the forest floor as he was drawn toward the witch, his face one of fear and confusion.

Virgil nudged him. Roman started, remembering the plan.

“Baesta!” he cried, concentrating as well he could on the invisible connection between the two of them. Power surged out of him with the strangest sensation Roman had ever felt. It was like blood flowing back into a limb that had fallen asleep.

A deep groove tore into the ground and branches were shorn from trees as some invisible force barreled out of him. The furrow separated Patton and Ursula, and he stumbled to a stop a few paces from her. The witch looked at Roman, astounded.

“You’ve discovered your powers.”

“Patton, run!” Roman barked.

Responding faster than he probably should have, Patton turned on his heel and sprinted in the direction he’d come.

Almost as if he’d expected it.

She’s going to try to use him as leverage, Logan had explained. She’ll see him as the weakest member and since she can’t kill or harm Roman and risk him dying, she’ll try to threaten Patton’s life in exchange for Virgil. As long as you and Virgil can keep her from using magic to capture Patton, the plan will work smoothly.

The chase began without preamble. Ursula dashed after Patton with far more speed than a woman of her age should have been able. Roman and Virgil sprinted after them.

Roman was pleased to find that Patton wasn’t just a good runner; he was shockingly fast. His feet beat the ground in a quick pace, his strides long and loping, yet he swerved around trees and over logs with ease. He was easily faster than Ursula and Roman, and could probably keep up with Virgil in cat form.

They were fast approaching Logan’s hiding place. Thankfully, due to his total lack of magical ability, Virgil had said it would be near impossible for her to sense Logan’s presence.

Don’t let any of it touch you or Virgil, Logan had warned. We want to disable her powers, not all of yours.

Ten more feet.

Ursula growled in frustration, snarling, “Eirholme,” and rising into the air.

Five feet.

She picked up speed, her outstretched hand just centimeters from the collar of Patton’s cardigan.

Roman and Virgil swerved out from behind her just in time to avoid the plume of iron powder Logan flung directly into Ursula’s face as she passed.

* * * * * * * * * *

Dorian stood outside the small, two-story house, nose crinkled in disgust. He’d abandoned his quest to find the center of the village when he’d caught the unmistakable stench of magic.

The house was ripe with it. It was bound to happen, given that the last heir to the Witch’s Inheritance, a sybil, and the world’s most powerful witch’s familiar were all living in the same vicinity. He figured they were simply lucky they hadn’t attracted more attention.

Most likely, it was his own scent that had kept any stray magical creatures wandering the outside world at bay. He smelled of death, and he knew it.

Not at all curious, but simply wanting to get out of the public eye for a while—at least until people stopped getting all agitated about thier machines acting up—Dorian stepped up the front porch steps. The door was locked. A simple touch, and the door opened for him.

The odor was even worse inside. Dorian couldn’t fathom how the familiar had stood it all these years. Then again, Dorian used to live in the Witchlands. That scent had once been the smell of home.

He hadn’t sensed such an aroma in hundreds of years.

The house itself was quaint, with a relatively open kitchen and living space. Dorian found a carpeted staircase tucked against a wall and wandered up it. The smell grew stronger.

Four rooms, a bathroom, and a linen closet. He could tell which was the little prince’s without having to open the door, despite it hanging open, revealing a mess of clutter and clothes. He’d grown used to the boy’s particular odor by now. The familiar’s simply smelled like the Witchlands. The third had no particular scent whatsoever. Peeking inside, Dorian found the room studiously neat and well kept. Boring.

What he was most interested in, actually, was the sybil’s room. The child had come out of nowhere, with significantly more power than any other sybil Dorian had come across while in the Queen’s court.

He ran a finger across the door handle and sniffed it. Nothing too suspicious. Easing the door open, he stepped inside. The room was… warm. Homey, if Dorian had to put a word to it. Not much in the way of possessions, unlike the little prince.

Dorian sniffed.

Something was off. The room smelled of the prediction magic typical of everyday sybils, but there was something else. An undertone he hadn’t sensed since his days in the Queen’s dungeons.

Something… prophetic. Divine, even.

A loud thud from downstairs pulled Dorian from his thoughts. Eyes narrowing, he exited the room and slipped silently down the stairs.

The thudding continued. Dorian ambled curiously down the hallway it originated from. Being as powerful as he was, he didn’t have much to worry about in the way of danger.

Turning the corner, he was surprised to find a door, sealed shut with a glowing, violet sigil. The thudding turned to scrabbling at the edges of the door, trying for purchase on any one of the hinges or edges.

The mark of Avalian, Dorian mused to himself, running a finger across the sigil. It sparked and smoked at his touch.

“What are you hiding?” he muttered, pressing his palm into the wood of the door. Dorian slowly wiped his hand across the mark, wincing ever so slightly as it scorched the skin of his hand in protest. Despite the spell’s noble efforts, however, it eventually gave up and dissipated.

The door swung open.

“…swear I’ll stuff a pixie up that cat’s nose and tie his tail to a—”

Dorian’s mouth ticked up into a smile. “Hello, there.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Ursula screamed and fell to the ground, rolling several times. Whatever magic that kept her flying stopped. Patton jogged to a stop a few feet away. Logan leaped out of the bush, breathless with excitement.

“It worked!”

Roman rushed forward, brandishing his blade. Ursula wiped her face furiously with her hands.

“What did you do?!” she wailed, tears from her bloodshot eyes streaking down her face. She coughed. “Iron?!”

“That’s right,” Roman said, pointing his sword at her chest. “Don’t move.”

“Or what?” she said, spitting iron-tainted saliva out onto the ground. “You’ll kill me? We both know you can’t—aaah!” Ursula cried as he drew his blade across her thigh.

“You don’t know what I will or won’t do, witch,” he growled. “I’ve promised a very powerful demon that I’d kill you in exchange for my freedom. Seems like a tempting offer.”

“You brat. No wonder Virgil’s been acting up.”

“He’s not your property,” Logan said, brushing the remaining iron dust off his hands. Patton came to stand next to him. Ursula eyed them both.

“You stupid mortals would never understand. The kind of bond between a witch and their familiar is for life. There’s no going back.”

“He’s done pretty well without you, so far,” Roman countered. “Besides, you’re powerless now. You’re not exactly threatening.”

“Well,” she said with a smile. “I think the little prince needs to be taught a lesson, don’t you, kitty?”

“Roman, do it,” Virgil said hastily.

“What?”

“Kill her! Now! Before—”

“Dokuah Kulong,” Ursula rasped, gesturing toward Logan and Patton.

Roman’s heart dropped to his feet. One second, his friends were standing there, looks of surprise and confusion on their faces, and the next, they were just gone. As if they’d never been there. The world seemed to tilt around Roman, and he couldn’t think straight. She hadn’t… they couldn’t be… could they?

A wounded cry tore from Virgil’s throat.

Ursula was on her feet in seconds, disarming Roman, shoving him to the ground, and throwing his sword into the trees.

“Pounu!” she cried. To their right, several gallons worth of water appeared out of nowhere, sloshing over the ground and soaking Roman’s clothes. She growled in frustration and started for the water, desperately scrubbing mud over her skin, trying to rid herself of the iron powder. She’d obviously meant for it to appear right over her, but the iron was apparently doing its job.

“Makoaste duu fahrnistahll,” Virgil rumbled, his arms raised chest-level, the tendons on the back of his hands pulling taut as his fingers contorted. Tears streaked his cheeks, and his eyes held a fury that made even Roman’s stomach clench.

The world around them seemed to glitch, nothing staying in one place. The ground undulated and grew soft, Roman having to grab hold of the nearest tree to keep from sinking into it. The dirt around Ursula’s feet sunk in on itself, like someone had pulled an enormous drain deep below the ground. An absolutely terrifying noise emanated from the sucking earth. A low, bone-rattling note, like the earth itself were groaning.

Roman, it seemed, was already weak from the one word he’d uttered, and found it difficult to keep a grip on the tree. He was buried up to his waist, the ground pulling at his ankles like quicksand. Hopefully, Virgil wasn’t so enthralled in his fight he ended up pulling Roman into it as well.

Ursula was covered nearly head-to-toe in mud. Preoccupied with trying not to be buried alive, she paid Roman little attention.

“Eirholme!” Ursula rose into the air, the angry black dirt following her, tugging at her feet. She raised a muddy hand and screamed, “Kazhta!”

Virgil gasped, collapsing to the ground. The dirt immediately fell slack, jittering and twitching as Virgil thrashed and screamed on the ground, grabbing at his back.

“Virgil!” Roman cried, trying desperately to free the lower half of his body from the dirt. It was no use. His sword was somewhere lost in the trees. He tried to locate it, but he was too frazzled. He couldn’t concentrate.

Virgil tore his jacket off, revealing countless shallow gashes torn up and down his arms. His back was criss-crossed by them as well, soaking his black shirt crimson. More appeared every second. If it went on much longer, he’d be cut to ribbons.

Ursula approached Virgil, her feet alighting on the ground like she was an apparition.

Roman fought back tears of fear and frustration as he tried to pull himself out of the earth with the hold he had on a low branch. The limb snapped.

“Remember this, kitty,” Ursula crooned, placing a hand on his trembling shoulder. She looked over at Roman, favoring the leg he’d injured.

“You both belong to me.”

And with that, she muttered a quick, “Dokuah Cairo,” and disappeared without a trace.

#tw toxic relationship #toxic relationship tw #toxic relationship #tw fighting #fighting tw #fighting #mild gore #mild violence #violence #blood

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onwesterlywinds · 5 years ago

Text

A Ringing in the Ears

She still had not grown used to being one of only a few women at a gathering, no matter how few they had been before. Since the executions of the queen and her entire entourage, Orella had been surrounded by men.

Nowhere was that more evident than here, with all her brothers-in-arms gathered for the annual tourney.

Ingvald had been granted leave to join as well, her boy recruit. In truth, they had needed him to fill out the bracket, even if the rota had happened to stick him up against established Kingsguard knights with a twenty-year advantage over him. To his credit, he had taken it in good humor - and he, much unlike all the others, had not seen fit to drink himself into a stupor the previous evening.

That very hangover had caused Einar to drop out within his first round, and neither could Orella fault him for preserving his dignity. In past years, Theodoric might have taken the opportunity to survey the proceedings from one of the palace balconies, as was tradition. Despite their liege failing to show, however, there was still an air of decorum to the proceedings that would have been marred by the skinniest among them puking his guts up in the noonday sun. And the sun was truly oppressive that day, granting them all a keen thirst and a heavy sheen of sweat beneath their armor.

Despite the heat of the day, despite the king’s worsening tempers, Orella found herself almost regretting that more spectators had not lined up to watch the tourney. Her own debut tourney had seen hundreds, either palace servants or lesser army recruits or whatever commonfolk had found an excuse to be on the palace grounds that day. Ingvald would have no such audience to witness his all but certain ascension to the Kingsguard.

Not that he seemed to mind: Ingvald, unlike many of her own comrades, paid little heed at all to what spectators he did have. He was sweating harder than almost any of them, his pale face reddening by the minute from either exertion or exposure to the sun or both. And yet he kept his focus trained on his opponent - kept his shortsword aloft, albeit at a rather peculiar angle. As his shield arm fell several ilms and Folles lunged, Orella could not help herself-

"ARM UP!"

He did not look at her, thank the gods, but he raised his shield in time to block a particularly nasty swing from Wiegraf. Sparks flew into the air as metal clashed upon metal. Ingvald breathed out, clearly unperturbed from the great shock to the nerves in his arm - she, too, loosed a sigh of relief.

"Relax," Zartosht murmured to her. He kept his arms folded over his broad Roegadyn chest, much as he always did, while he took in every detail of the spar - the one predictable feature of the entire tourney.

This was Ingvald’s first real fight without her; moreover, it was the first time her subordinate was proving himself in a setting more rigorous than the training salle. Her anxieties had little to do with defeating Folles on principle and everything to do with the fact that her own teaching was on the line as much as Ingvald's learning was. Even as Zartosht's massive hand connected heartily with her back in his favored gesture of solidarity, she could not draw her eyes away from the battle unfolding in the courtyard below her vantage.

Ingvald’s near brush with defeat prompted a change in him, transformed his stance. He made himself a difficult target but rarely launched an attack of his own. He darted to and fro, evading each strike from Folles until his opponent was snarling and cursing in frustration. He rarely peeled himself from the sides of the makeshift arena, often throwing himself to the very boundaries of the playing field in order to keep ever out of reach.

To an unfamiliar eye, with Folles so comfortable at the middle of the circle, Ingvald might have looked pinned. Orella knew him better.

"Defensive little shite, isn't he," Berend quipped from her other side. "Positively squirrely."

She ignored his assessments utterly. Ingvald parried yet another attack, throwing a swipe that could only be described as half-hearted in return. Berend winced as though the boy had been gored in the chest.

Folles readied his sword once more. His footwork was masterful, and his blade did not waver as it pointed toward Ingvald's heart; but when he stepped forth, Ingvald did not rise to the obvious bait.

"COME ON!" Berend roared. To her, he snapped, "What the fuck is wrong with him? Cold feet?"

And Orella could only grin.

Folles' perfect form could only avail him for so long. He had traced out the entirety of his moves in the sand after several excruciating minutes - and when Ingvald suddenly lunged, none in the salle were prepared for how swiftly he moved, least of all Folles. Ingvald’s shortsword landed three blows in quick succession, he swept his leg wide and Folles stumbled, granting him the means to attack with impunity, over and over. At last he unleashed his devastating combinations of strikes, the same ones Orella had helped him hone over and over until they were near perfect; he had needed only to bide his time, wait for the perfect moment to unleash them.

A spark flared in Ingvald's left palm, from somewhere behind his shield.

Zartosht cried out from the balcony, "THAT’S THREE HITS! OUR WINNER - BLOODHOUND!"

The hall erupted in cheers and Orella loosed a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

---

It was the first time he and Zartosht had ever been on their own together in any setting, let alone outside of the palace grounds. The captain had said only that he wished to treat him to a pint at the Whitecap for his victory against Folles, even in spite of the thrashing he'd received from Gisfrid in the very next round. Gisfrid had a fifteen-year advantage on him and had used his poor sportsmanship to make that clear, and Ingvald bore no grudge against him or any of the others for that firsthand knowledge; if anything, Ingvald suspected that the fact that he had been able to take down Folles in a fair fight would be enough to bolster his pride for a while longer.

The hot, humid afternoon was giving way to a cool evening. With the capital set so far in the north, the sun had not yet deigned to set despite the lateness of the hour. Ingvald walked at Zartosht's side along the golden-bathed streets, struck by how often people nodded in his superior’s direction even with them both shorn of all indications of their rank - until they reached the Whitecap and Zartosht held the door open for him, gestured to an available booth in the back of the bustling tavern, and held up two fingers to the man behind the bar.

"You like lager, yes?" he said as Ingvald seated himself.

Ingvald hesitated. "I haven't had anything else," he admitted. The lager was Orella's go-to; if he ever couldn't finish his pint, he took comfort in knowing that someone else at the table would drink it without complaint.

Zartosht let out a sound that might have been a chuckle. "Right," he said. "That changes today. Order whatever you'd like - Rhalgr knows you've earned it."

"Er, stout, then. ...Thanks."

His superior nodded and went off to order the drinks, leaving Ingvald to take in their surroundings alone. Contented as he was from his earlier victory, to say nothing of the approval of his peers, he found himself wondering vaguely if he would ever stop surveying scenes such as this for potential dangers - until Zartosht returned not only with two pints of stout, but with a stack of flatbreads and a measured but dire expression upon his face.

"I'll be clear with you, lad," said Zartosht. He often called Ingvald lad, but the tone he took now conveyed something far more urgent than paternalistic acknowledgement. At least, Ingvald thought, he was not prolonging the purpose of their meeting. "You had me worried there, for a moment."

Ingvald was not certain he had heard correctly, crowded as the tavern around them was. "Sorry?"

"You realize you were about to cast a spell of some sort directly into Folles' face?"

"I-"

And now the tavern might as well have been empty for the ringing in his ears. Zartosht tore off a chunk of flatbread, and Ingvald followed suit, more to give his hands something to do than out of any conscious desire to eat.

"I didn't," he admitted. Was it ridiculous for someone not to know that they had a talent for magicks? "That is, I do now."

"Make no mistake of it," said Zartosht. "You fought well today, and we're all proud of you. Steelhand most of all." Zartosht’s mouth curved into a smile, and Ingvald realized he was gaping a bit. "So long as you stick to your swordplay, I've no doubt you'll go far."

His emphasis on those four words offered no room for argument, and so he nodded.

"Listen to me, lad." And here the Roegadyn leaned in ever so slightly, taking up more than half the width of the table. "His Majesty is always on the lookout for those with a talent for magicks. But his court mages are in short supply for a reason. It's damn lucky for us all that the Grand Steward wasn't watching today's tourney - I imagine he'd have whisked you off at once to gods only know where."

It could not have been the beer that emboldened him, for he'd scarcely taken a single sip. All Ingvald knew was that he was asking the first question on his mind without reservations. "What does he put them up to, then - the mages?"

Zartosht sighed, and shook his head. "It's far better not to say."

But there was a haunted look in the older knight's eyes - a faraway stare that betrayed his worry and fear and gods only knew what else. Ingvald very much surmised that the captain, no matter what he knew or didn’t know, had no real words to describe whatever horrors he had seen from the mad king’s royal mages.

That worry on the otherwise implacable Roegadyn's face chilled him more than any words ever could.

"And as far as anyone asks," Zartosht continued, "this round of drinks is on me as a congratulations. We spoke nothing at all of magicks, you and I, and you certainly didn't expect you'd cause such a stir by hiding a mirror in your shield."

Ingvald shuddered and found he could not swallow down the fear that had risen in his gut - not without a hearty swig of stout, which he took gladly. Zartosht mirrored the gesture in full.

#Ingvald Bloodhound #Orella Steelhand #Zartosht Beygarz

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suitetarts · 5 years ago

Text

It didn’t used to be this way

Father and son climb a mountain and learn how to process trauma. Fluffy, angsty sweetness with a plot!

Pairings: None, just Mando and Baby Yoda

Warning: Canon-typical violence, descriptions of past trauma, mild body gore

Words: 5300

AO3 Link

The engines geared down, the exhaust spray and landing gear deployed, all to bring the Razor Crest to the surface of the mountain’s clearing with the flip of a couple dozen buttons and switches. The ship settled in with a soft thump instead of the usual hard landing, thanks in no small part to the thick blanket of snow. Din was trying his best to temper his nerves as he continued his familiar routine of stabilizing solar capacitors and turning on ground protocols. Greef Carga had found some interesting intel on a former Jedi temple from before the Empire hidden in the snow-capped peaks of Saloscant. This planet was temperate enough for colonization, but was in the furthest reaches of the known galaxies and had been all but abandoned by the powers that be, along with the temple Din sought to find. While it was good to know he probably wasn’t going to come across any sorcerers, there was always the chance of finding some pocket of outlaws. That, and the bounty hunter fancied himself more attuned to dryer, warmer climates.

A white cloud flew up in puffs and swirls of fresh powder from beneath the Crest. The child -- his child, he supposed with a strange feeling in his gut -- climbed from Din’s lap to the dashboard in speechless awe. He made his way to the glass and looked down at the disheveled snow beneath the ship. The baby chirped and looked back at Din with gleefully bright eyes and a perk to his ears.

The Mandalorian couldn’t help the smile creeping on his face. The kid was too cute when he was excited. “Pretty, isn’t it? Its snow.”

The child pressed his small, three-fingered hand against the window for a moment but flinched from the cold. He pointed outside with an accusatory augh.

“Snow is kind of like rain, but frozen. You can even eat it,” Din explained with a sad smile, feeling wistful. He had old memories of carelessly playing in snow on his planet of birth, but those memories were vague and bittersweet. With a soft shake of his head, he blocked those memories out. They didn’t do him any good, but lately with the kid, he couldn’t help but recall bits and pieces of a happier little boy’s childhood.

The child looked back at him with a small droop in his ears, as if he could feel his caretaker’s thoughts.

“Don’t look at me like that, everything’s fine. Look at this.” Din leaned over the dashboard, drawing a simple smiling face into the condensation on the window with a gloved hand. The child giggled, dragging his tiny fingers on the glass to draw lovely little lines.

After a few more moments, the Mandalorian held his hands out to the baby, waving for the little one to come closer with a quick movement of his gloved finger. The child excitedly waddled over and into his arms. “It’s time to go, so let’s bundle you up.”

Din began to wander around the various corners and crevices of the Razor Crest with the child on his hip, rummaging for some of his old clothes that he hadn’t at some point used to soak up engine oil. The child managed to slipped away to return to the cockpit and its windows, but upon his bounty hunter father finding the asset (read: a worn, but incredibly soft, old cloak), the child was quickly scooped up again.

An extended trip in the outdoors was going to require some prep and creativity, as far as getting this 50-year-old infant ready to go. As they had flown in, Din had seen some stony ruins high in the mountains, more than likely this Jedi temple, which was maybe a half-day’s hike away from where he was able to find a suitable landing place for the ship. Climbing a mountain to a surely abandoned and scavenged place to search for magic artifacts or some sort of clue, with a baby no less, was going to be no simple feat for the Mandalorian, but on top of it all: he was definitely catching a cold. Din could feel the tiredness and sinus pressure looming, and he still hadn’t felt 100% since he almost died on Nevarro. He didn’t have the luxury of sick time, however. He had to find the home of his foundling or train the child to maturity himself, either which way would benefit from him figuring out how the basics of taking care of a 50-year-old infant with supernatural powers.

Din took a step back and inspected his handiwork: the child tightly bound as if he were a ronto wrap, with only his nose and eyes visible. The Mandalorian allowed himself a broad smile from the confines of his helmet as he held the baby in the crook of his arm. He tapped the child’s little wrinkled nose lovingly with a gloved finger. “You can’t get away from me now.”

The child let out a meek protest but was not upset. The child liked a lot of things, his dad most of all.

The Mandalorian set the baby down for a quick moment to double check all of his gear. A tug on his pauldrons, securing his chest plate, a jiggle on his old cuisse, readjustment of his vambraces. A swift run through his jetpack, various tools and weaponry, and especially his munitions. Even though Din could feel the perspiration on his brow, he pinched the cloth around his elbow to check that it was indeed the thick woolen suit. Finally, he inspected the small messenger pack for the proper amount of rations and miscellaneous necessities for the little one before slinging it over his shoulder and picking up the baby once more.

As the Razor Crest’s side bay opened, the cold mountain air sucked out all the warmth from what, at least in Din’s mind, was usually his cozy and warm home. He sighed deeply in dread, looking down at the child in his arms for comfort as he began his journey up the mountain.

He didn’t like it at first, but the feeling of being bound up so tight was better than any other. The soft cloth covered him from the top of his big head all the way to his little toes, except for his face, and smelled just like his dad. The air was so very very cold, but the cold face combined with his cozy warm body felt nice, so that was okay. The child could also feel his dad’s heartbeat through his big strong arms and on the side of his torso, where the bounty hunter had so lovingly tucked him. The smell of musty blaster powder and bitter iron that surrounded him made the child feel… good. He decided to close his eyes and sleep, having the most wonderful dreams of frogs.

Meanwhile, the Mandalorian was gasping for fresh air from within the stuffy confines of his helmet and sucking in his own snot as it dripped out of his nose. He couldn’t breathe through his nostrils anymore, and there’s no way he could get enough oxygen by doing anything but painfully wheezing. The glass of his visor was fogged and covered in whatever he was sneezing out. If he ever gave a thought to how he looked -- which was rare -- he usually figured he looked intimidating and (hopefully) good. In this moment, he felt like a complete mess.

Din whined pathetically to himself as he continued to drag his feet, one beleagueredly after the other, up what he believed to be a path. But how could he know where to go when everything was covered in snow? His jetpack had run out of fuel pretty quickly after the first hour or so of continuous use, and so it was just more weight pulling Din down. It had saved him some walking time surely, but not enough. At some point, the clouds and their snow flurries cleared and the sky had turned a deep dark purple. Three tiny moons had come up, illuminating the snow in a violet hue. He couldn’t remember how long the day and night cycle on this planet was, and he could hardly think enough to remember why it mattered. The baby was still asleep in the crook of his arm, which was a miracle. He had to switch the kid over to the other arm almost constantly at this point as both were feeling heavier and heavier. If Din had to, he wasn’t sure he could even raise his blaster.

His dragging feet caught on something large underneath the snow and down he went, just barely saving himself from falling on top of the child. Large dark eyes shot open with a quizzical shout from the baby. Din was barely holding himself up on his knees and one hand dug deep into the snow, the other arm curled around the child. He gently set the little bundle down for a moment while he hovered above, using the opportunity to take a break. The only sounds from the entire mountainside were the ragged breaths coming out of the Mandalorian’s voice modulator.

“Sorry, I-I…” He hadn’t said a word since daylight, and despite his mind being foggy, he was shocked with how terrible he sounded. Din exhaled and fell onto his side dramatically, the child only a few inches away from his chest. The little one’s large dark eyes followed him quietly. He couldn’t help but smile at his absurdity.

“I hope,” he said between sniffs, “you’re having fun.”

The child didn’t respond.

Din crudely pushed his helmet off with one hand, as the other was pinned under his body, and dug his bare head into the snow. He pulled more from around the child onto his snotty face, up his clogged nose, through his greasy hair, and into his dry mouth. Despite his obvious personal and cultural attachments to his signature beskar headwear, it was truly blissful to feel the snow on his feverish skin. He sneezed and relished the freedom of watching all the nastiness float away in the mountain breeze instead of breathing it back in.

The child watched closely as Din scrubbed his face and hair with snow. He had started to see the Mandalorian without the helmet only recently. It had taken the child a few nights of confused crying to finally understand that nice metal dad and the tan hairy face were the same person. The baby still felt uneasy though, since the man never had the helmet off for very long besides sleeping, and he always seemed terribly nervous about it. His adoptive father looked pretty happy this time though... The child cooed for attention.

The Mandalorian ruffled through his hair to get the snow out while eyeing the kid.

With his free hand, he made a rough snowball and set it on the baby’s chest with a smirk to see what he would do. At first the child giggled, but he began to whine as he couldn’t bite it or pick it up. Din pinched some snow between his fingers for the kid to eat. However, the child was adamant, presumably about touching it himself with his constrained little hands.

Din shook his head. “Sorry, no.” He felt uneasy about unwrapping the child in this wintry hell. There were so many things that could go wrong, and the kid was definitely not wearing proper cold-weather attire. Din continued to shake his head no as he dragged the underside of his arm against his wet nose.

The child wasn’t listening and continued to escalate the whining fit as he tried to violently wriggle out of his warm cocoon prison.

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay,” the Mandalorian murmured, pulling the child closer in an attempt to calm him. The baby began to cry in frustration, shaking and wheezing as it sobbed. Din felt his heart lurch watching the poor little thing cry so hard.

“... Alright, alright, here,” he spoke as calmly as he could in his defeat, unraveling the cloak to the point where it was simply a loose blanket. The child softened slightly but was worked up beyond the point of being satiated by touching the snowball. The bounty hunter slumped back into the snow, the child still shaking and crying as it laid on his beskar chestplate.

Din had one more idea, but… It was something he hadn’t done in a long time. Intuition, or something else deep inside of him, told him he needed to. That it would help, that it was natural. It wasn’t natural for a Mandalorian, though.

No matter what was natural or not, Din couldn’t bear to see the child crying like this. He pulled the bundle towards his neck for a tight embrace and quickly kissed the baby’s forehead. The child suddenly went silent as the bounty hunter pulled a few inches away, both of them in shock.

Din pulled the corners of his mouth apart in nervous terror, thinking that he surely did something wrong. The baby’s eyes, still brimming with tears, were unflinchingly glued to the Mandalorian’s. The child made a short, questioning babble, emphasizing the end with a long blink.

“Wh… What does that mean?” Din whispered honestly, tearing up himself.

The child cooed expectantly.

Din paused in doubt, before craning down slightly to give the child another forehead kiss. He held onto this one for longer by some force of instinct, and the baby hummed.

The Mandalorian pulled away again and saw the baby’s eyes flutter happily. He set his head back in the snow with a blank expression on his face. The child chirped and began to bat at the snow with tiny fists.

After a few moments of reflecting on what he’d just done, Din was still speechless. He brought a trembling hand to his own face and brushed lightly over his nose and lips, fingers finding their way to pick at the stubble on his jawline. He hadn’t kissed or been kissed since that morning, so many years ago, right before his parents… Outside of the basement doors, right there. The last time he’d ever seen them, the last time he... Din dug his palms into his eyes, trying to physically block out the images and feelings that were rushing back to him.

“No, no no, noo…,” he whispered to himself. His eyes watered and the tightness in his chest felt like it could burst.

“Nope,” the bounty hunter said weakly, but with a strong resolve, as he sat up suddenly. “We’re moving on.”

The child yelped as the Mandalorian haphazardly re-wrapped him, albeit not as tightly as before. Din wiped the inside of his helmet clean with some snow and his cloak. He glanced down at the small green face looking up at him from the crook of his elbow, and then back to the helmet. He squeezed his eyes shut, tight enough so that he could hear the strain in his muscles and see only white flashes. Din quickly gave the child one last quick peck on the forehead before opening his tired eyes and donning his beskar once more.

Weather moves in without warning at these altitudes. What was once a freezing, but bright, cloudless night became a dark, snowy one with snowflakes the size of five-hundred credit ingots. The beam from Din’s helmet light lit up the snow like stars, crashing and blowing every which way against him as he tried to stay strong. His focus kept him from succumbing to the weariness of his feverish body or the memories of the past that dug at the back of his mind. It had only been another fifteen or twenty minutes since the clan of two had resumed their journey up the mountain when they came upon the entrance of the temple ruins.

The Mandalorian pressed his back against the frozen stone wall that circled the area, taking a moment to prepare himself for whatever he may find inside. He pulled up on the cloth covering the child’s face to find it sleeping peacefully. He smiled softly and sighed, hoping that nothing he was about to do would wake his little one.

Din entered the temple grounds defensively, scanning the area with his blaster and the child held closely to his side. He didn’t see any heat signatures on his visor amongst the village surrounding the temple itself, but perhaps he would find something of interest inside what structures remained. He approached one of the huts that still had a semi-intact thatch roof, finding a shelf with various bits of pottery and paper scraps, wicker baskets, and a burned charcoal pit on the ground. In the roofless hut next door, he found a loom and a half-finished robe that had been bleached by time and exposure. The village was quiet and unmoving save for fluttering crystals and the crunch of snow under his boots, but to Din, that silence was overwhelming. The empty doorways left ajar, the bowls forgotten on tables with what may have once been filled with a meal untouched, the fallen mitten waiting for a hand to keep warm. What happened here seemed all too familiar, too much like his worst dreams. It was what was left behind after something terrible.

He holstered his blaster and sprinted towards the temple in the center of all the ruins of these people’s -- of Din’s and his parents’ -- once peaceful lives. He could nearly hear the murmurs, the clinking of metal tools, the sizzle of grills, the soft babble of discussions, the banality and domesticity of the souls that once called this place home. And now it was cursed and empty, devoid of all life and filled with a terrible silence. It was everything he always feared his old home had become. A cold reminder of thousands of tears, stuck in a place that time left behind and was doomed to never be happy again. The Mandalorian had assumed this fate, all but resigned himself to bear the burden of being the one who had to carry these painful memories to his grave.

His run slowed before he stopped completely on the stairs leading to the temple proper, and stood still. “I can’t keep doing this,” he told himself softly under his breath. He turned around to face the ruined village and sat on the stair steps. “I can’t,” he repeated, taking a moment to inhale... and exhale.

Tears burned down Din’s cheeks as he allowed his memories to play out in his mind’s eye as he looked over the village before him. The good memories, of early mornings when he wanted to play with the other children but his mother made him eat breakfast first. Memories of the sweet cadence of his mother’s voice when she sang to him in the bath. Of him laughing and sitting on his father’s shoulders as they shopped at the bazaar. But also, the bad memories… memories of the bazaar aflame and besieged. The memory of his parent’s tearful goodbyes. These memories, good and bad, made him feel even worse, as he couldn’t even fully remember what his parents looked like anymore. Just hazy figures in blood red clothes, shutting him inside the cellar doors.

Letting the past wash over him and drown him in its weight and loss and sorrow felt terrible, but… Din also felt better, in a way, to let it out. The child awoke to find himself tucked underneath his father’s chin, with trembling arms wrapped tightly around him. He let out a squeak and crawled closer into the Mandalorian’s scarf.

“I’m sorry,” Din whispered as he pulled the child away from his neck and down into his lap. The helmet once again came off, but only briefly so that he could dry his cheeks and wipe his nose. The child wriggled his arms free from the loose cloth, waving to be picked up. Din smiled as he rubbed his tender eyes. He leaned down to kiss the child’s nose, letting his thoughts run free, before replacing his helmet and obliging the child’s desire.

The child giggled blissfully, lovingly looking up at the Mandalorian as the mythosaur pendant poked out of the cloth around his neck. Little green hands opened and closed expectantly.

“Anything for you,” Din said softly as he pulled the infant close and stood back up, facing away from the village. He tucked the child back into his left shoulder, turning his head to the side as an extra support as they ascended the stairs to the temple. The child purred and began to babble excitedly.

Din smiled playfully, his smile tugging at his still raw eyes. “Oh, you don’t say?”

The temple’s engraved wooden doors were on the floor and splintered in the middle, as if they’d been rammed down. The Mandalorian carefully stepped over the carved faces of stalwart protectors and the swirls of a written language he had never seen before, aiming his blaster and headlamp into the depths of the darkness ahead. The temple was pitch black inside, save the one beam of light. The child’s continued babbles echoed off the ceilings above, which the bounty hunter noticed were covered in an intricate web of peeling paint.

“Is there anyone here?” Din asked, his modulated voice rippling off the stone walls again and again. He knew it was unlikely, as there still weren’t any heat signatures, but there could always be droids.

After a few moments of silence, he holstered his blaster and began to rifle through a nearby bookshelf. Every book, every page, everything was written in this unfamiliar language. The font was like water, squiggly lines or swirls flowing from one line to the next. Din searched through every book for something he could recognize: a different language, a picture, a doodle in the margins, anything. He found nothing on every bookshelf, table, and altar.

“Seriously?” Din felt his temper rising and he suppressed the urge to turn one of the old wooden tables into a bonfire with a simple flick of his wrist.

Having cleared the main temple area, he walked along the edges, brushing his free hand against the walls. The cold from the stone seeped into his glove, until, it suddenly didn’t. Din backtracked, realizing that part of the stone wall was painted wood, with a small metal handle near the floor, and was covered in the same peeling pattern as the ceiling. This was the first closed door he’d seen in this whole cursed place and it set him on edge.

The bounty hunter needed both of his hands, one to open the door and one for his blaster, but he didn’t want to risk setting the child down in the cold pitch blackness of the temple. Din pulled the full length of his cloak over his shoulder, wrapping the child in it and then tucking the remainder snugly in his tool belt. Using a rope from his small messenger sack, he secured the make-shift baby sling to his beskar chestplate.

“You good?” he whispered.

The child cooed softly.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Din crouched down to the metal handle, his finger on the trigger of his blaster. He took in a deep breath before pulling up on the handle, -- harder than he expected he’d have to -- which caused the wooden panel to swung up wildly.

A dark figure came forward out of the opening, seeming to lunge at Din. The Mandalorian’s instincts pulled him sideways, to protect the child strapped to his chest, and he didn’t hesitate to repay the figure in equal violence with his blaster. A familiar red flash momentarily filled the room with light. The body fell down to the floor and silence returned.

Immediately, Din knew that this was a corpse, and quickly turned the baby around in the sling so that it was facing his chest. The corpse was of a human woman, with bluish-gray skin and far too gaunt to have been alive anytime recently. She was wearing a robe similar to the unfinished one he’d seen earlier, except this one was brown and untouched by the elements behind the safety of this faux wall.

He turned his attention to the mysterious hidden cove. However, it was nothing more than a small closet with some empty jugs and pots, nothing more.

“Of course,” Din sighed.

The bounty hunter came back to the corpse, which had fallen face down after he’d shot her. It was curious, these were the only remains he’d seen. Although, with animal scavengers and the thick blanket of snow covering everything, he really couldn’t be surprised. He grabbed her stiff shoulders and flipped the corpse over. He was taken aback by how… alive she looked, besides the color of her skin. Her jet black hair still looked so soft and her features were frozen by the cold; her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth in a grimace as her lips contracted over her teeth. He noticed two blaster shots: one from him just now on her neck, and the one that killed her however many years ago on her stomach. Din wondered if his own corpse may have been similarly discovered in that cellar years later, in some alternate timeline where the Mandalorians hadn’t saved him from the super battle droid.

He was pulled away from his thoughts by the woman’s hands, frozen around what she clutched onto in her last moments. Her right hand held a metal tube, a grip of sorts, that had a couple buttons and a small blue glowing crystal on the inside. Din wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he pried the corpse’s fingers off the tube regardless. He carefully stowed it away into his messenger pack next to a few books he saved, one of the many with the water-like writing. He could figure out what it all meant later.

Her left hand held a crumpled piece of paper, yellowed by time and the decay of her flesh. The Mandalorian carefully removed the paper and opened it. “Would you look at that,” he said to himself, finding the words on the page were written in Basic.

Margraeth, my sweetling. They are coming. Good-bye.

May the Force be with you.

All my love, L

Din read over the note again and again, mildly interested in the questions it brought but frustrated with its lack of answers or, frankly, its relevance to what he’d come here to find. Whoever wrote this, L he supposed, knew what fate was coming for this temple. L knew they were all going to die. How? And who were They, where were they coming from? What was this Force? But most importantly, to Din at least, did all of these Jedi sorcerers really leave nothing behind but ruins and rubble, except for books in a dead language and this one little meaningless scrap of paper? He read the note one last time, searching for some kind of clue that he wasn’t going to find, before folding it back up carefully and tucking it into one of the water books.

A deep sigh escaped him, seeming to come from his very soul. Din was so very tired, and wholly discouraged. This was his first non-bounty hunting mission, where the priority was his foundling, and he felt that it had all failed miserably. He shivered in the cold dampness of the temple and sneezed. The child chirped in response, appearing to be cozy and warm. Unfortunately, the beskar chestplate between them prevented the Mandalorian from sharing in that warmth.

Din glanced back down at the woman’s corpse, before he walked back out towards the village. His thoughts stayed on her, though. The remains of Margraeth, an enemy Jedi sorcerer who died of a blaster wound from some unknown They, who surely had powers like those wielded by his foundling. The power which continued to be a mystery, since not one damned thing in these frozen ruins had given him anyth --

“The power…” he said aloud, trying to connect his thoughts. He found a fairly intact hut, with a roof and functional doors and windows. Once inside, gloved fingers worked at the knots in the rope securing the child to his chest. Din pulled the baby out, holding it in front of his helmet in the light to gauge his responses.

“They are coming,” Din said with a straight face.

The child didn’t respond really, just suckled on his own finger.

“May the Force be with you.”

The child blew a raspberry and giggled, perking his ears.

“May the Force be with you?” Din repeated, his voice going up an octave at the end.

The child didn’t appear to respond with any certainty, continuing to blow raspberries.

The Mandalorian sighed in defeat. He thought he was onto something, but there was really no way to be sure. And in any case, his foundling did best when there are few expectations. Trying to elicit some omniscient response from a magic baby was just foolish, but Din wasn’t keeping up with appearances, so what did it matter?

The hut was made suitable for their overnight stay with a few paddings of the drafty windows and doors, and a nice fire. The water and food rations he had taken along were finished off with a satisfactory burp from father and son. It was all Din could do to not let his mind drift to who used to live here or the last time the fire pit had been used. After taking the empty jetpack off his back, he settled in for an uneasy bout of sleep on the cold dirt floor with the child cooing softly from the bed of cloaks and cloths beside him.

Only a handful of hours later, the bright daylight and its even brighter reflections off of the snow kept Din from getting any more rest, even if he’d wanted it. The trek down the mountain was impressively easier than going up, with the Mandalorian and his sleeping charge making it back to the Razor Crest just at midday.

“Ohhh,” Din hummed, glad to see that nothing had happened to his ship. For once.

After closing the cargo bay doors, Din jumped up to the cockpit and turned on the auxiliary solar generator for lights and to heat the cabin space up. He had meant to turn right around towards the Crest’s small kitchen, but noticed a few blinking communication lights. He sighed, setting the child down in his regular spot, so that he could catch up.

A few flicks of switches on the comm panel, and he was connected with whoever wanted to talk to him so badly.

“Mando?” asked a familiar voice.

“Greef,” Din responded blankly, but kindly.

“Ah, Mando, finally! I found another lead on this Jedi business. Why don’t you come back to Nevarro and we can talk details?”

Din rubbed the back of his neck while he mulled over his words, slowly turning left in his seat towards the child. “Right now?”

“Well, sure, why not? You can also come see our progress in rebuilding the guild! Cara has some fun things to show you from the scavenging she’s been doing.”

“But I…” Din trailed off as he continued to look at his foundling, feeling equally tired but content. “I can come back in a few days, probably a week.”

“What?” Greef exclaimed, which caused the child to wake. The baby immediately saw that they were back home and reached his arms out, bubbly and happy and pure. “Don’t you go disappearing on me again. We just --”

Din smiled underneath his helmet, holding his finger over the power button for his communication feeds. “Sorry, gotta go. Something came up.”

#the mandalorian #mandadlorian #mando #din djarin #baby yoda #the child #fanfiction #no romance #fluff and angst #parent-child relationship #snow planet #sick fic #talking to babies #din deserves a break but not today #he's such a good dad guys #good fic #i worked hard on this

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razberryyum · 5 years ago

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The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 14, Part 2 of 2

(spoilers for everything MDZS/Untamed)

[covers MDZS chapters 55 and 56]

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰

Every glimpse we’re provided of the Jiang family life is really equal parts discomfort and electricity because of Madame Yu. Even though each scene usually involves both familial and marital strife, which is usually very uncomfortable for me to watch, I find myself completely incapable of turning away because of her, even as I’m wincing for Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian’s sake. Madame Yu is just so AWESOME. The way she sweeps into every scene she’s in, eyes flashing, taking charge and commanding the room is really breathtaking. As I’ve mentioned before, while I would never want her to be my mother nor do I support her method of mothering, I still completely respect and love her. Every line of dialogue from her is spoken with such conviction and impact and ferocity that I can’t help but grinning in admiration, even when her words are meant to hurt and belittle the boys I love.

I mean, that alone is pretty brutal to say in front of her son and ward. While I’m sure Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying spent most of their lives hearing divisive statements like that from her, it’s really a testament to their basic good natures that they still ended up being so close. I’m sure Jiang Fengmian being present to counter his wife’s harshness helped a lot, but if JC or Shijie were even the least bit petty, arrogant or unkind, they could’ve been easily swayed by Madame Yu’s influence and held her words against Wei Ying. The fact that they didn’t at all and still loved this orphaned boy like their own flesh and blood brother really makes me love the siblings that much more. I’ve always thought it’s quite sad that Madame Yu couldn’t find it in her heart to love Wei Ying as well, especially since he really is so lovable and adorable, but jealousy is an ugly and powerful monster that is hard to defeat, so it’s really a shame that she let it overcome her to the point that even her relationship with her husband and children was negatively affected. Not to mention, I can only imagine how unhappy Madame Yu herself felt, believing as she did that she will always be inferior to the memory of a woman who has already passed and also questioning her husband’s fidelity and loyalty even so many years later. It’s obvious that her quick temper and biting words are the manifestations of her unhappiness. For such a capable and strong woman who could have easily been a sect leader in her own right, I really wish she could have been had a more joyful life.

It should be noted that for her all her magnetic screen presence and impressive performance, actress Zhang Jing Tong, who portrays Madame Yu, is only 30 years old with just a few credits to her name. It’s amazing when I think about the fact that even though she’s only two years older than Xiao Zhan and Xuan Lu and seven years Wang Zhuo Cheng’s senior, she pulled off the Jiang matriarch role with total aplomb. Watching her I never for one second doubted she was their mother, head of the Yunmeng Jiang sect and household because of the authoritative air she possesses. Prior to looking up her professional history, I actually thought she was an industry veteran and I somehow just never saw any of her shows even though I’ve watched my fair share of Chinese dramas. The fact that she hasn’t been in that many shows just makes me appreciate her work in CQL even more. The degree of success in which she's brought Madame Yu to life is truly amazing: it’s as if the character literally just walked off of the pages of the book. I hope she gets a lot more high profile professional opportunities from now on as a result of her wonderful performance in The Untamed.

Yunmeng Bros Love

It’s so difficult not to cry or at least get teary-eyed watching this scene now; I sure as heck couldn’t get through it without a few tears this time. The love these brothers have for each other, what they sacrificed for each other, just makes my heart hurt so much. What’s most heart-aching is that this really is the last time they can still laugh and embrace like this without any reservations, without any sadness or true regrets, because their family, despite its imperfections, is still whole. So this moment, this promise, in addition to serving as a testament to their bond, also feels like a marker of the end of their childhood and their innocence since soon after this is when all their dark days start arriving.

Clive Barker Would be Proud

Going back to the Xuanwu of Slaughter’s cave, even though I still don’t understand enough about the anatomy of the creature to be able to figure out how it can have so much room in its own shell to allow for storage space since the last I checked, that’s not how a tortoise’ body fits inside their shell, and if it’s actually a snake then why couldn’t I just come out of its shell to go after the boys earlier, I still appreciated the set design within its disgusting abode. Team CQL really did execute the gore and squelch elements quite well. That interior was pretty effectively creepy and gross.

Prelude to the Yiling Patriarch

Not gonna lie, that smirk does funny things to my tummy. It’s so deliciously sexy and evil. Makes me wish they had gone full darkside with Wei Ying when he became the Yiling Patriarch, or at least retained most of the moral ambiguity he had in the novel. We get his Yiling Patriarch smile a few more times after this, thank goodness, but since this is the first glimpse we get of it, I will always have a soft spot for this moment.

I would love to see Xiao Zhan take on a truly villainous role one of these days since I think he would really excel at it and can totally succeed at making the audience both love, hate and fear him in such a role, but considering his elevation to leading man status now, I doubt that will ever happen anymore. Such a shame. He would’ve been scarily effective and alluring.

Jin Zixuan Appreciation Time

I’m going to take a moment here to show some appreciate to our dear bro-in-law. At the outset, I had thought he was a dick unworthy of our dear Shiji because of the way he treated her in the beginning and his rudeness towards Wei Ying. I have since warmed up to him considerably, and now I think some words of praise is due. For being the son of a perverted piece of shit and growing in the lap of luxury, Jin Zixuan honestly turned out to be much better than his genetics and upbringing should have produced. Actually, I should give Madame Jin some credit, since she seemed to have a somewhat good head on her shoulders considering her favoring of Shijie. Most likely the reason why JZX turned out to be a decent enough man was because his mom did most of the parenting work. Despite his initial treatment of Shijie, I was impressed by how protective he was towards Mian Mian when she was being targeted by Wen Chao. Being a product of a total lecher of a father, it’s actually amazing that he never predatorized Mian Mian himself. Hell, I wouldn’t even be surprised if he had to protect her from his own father (yeah I really don’t think highly of Jin Guangshan at all). But no, he’s absolutely upstanding and I did also appreciate the fact that he went back with Jiang Cheng to rescue Wei Ying and Lan Zhan when he could have easily just not do so having already escaped. He was risking the Wen’s wrath in doing that so I know it did take guts and a strong sense of chivalry. I guess that’s why Shijie fell in love with him early on: she obviously saw something in him right from the start that took me this long to see.

Other Odds and Ends

I remember being flabbergasted when I first saw this image on Wei Ying’s headboard because I simply could not believe what my eyes were seeing. Naturally I wanted to know everything about that illustration: did Wei Ying draw it himself? Who was he thinking of when he drew it? I know it can’t be Lan Zhan since the drawing obviously predates their relationship, so who could it be? Jiang Cheng? That thought actually did cross my mind very briefly way back but since I prefer their brotherhood above any shipping possibilities, I dismissed that thought almost as soon as it arose. I know now that drawing is probably nothing more than an Easter Egg by Team CQL, but I still appreciated it since I thought this was even more blatant than the gay porn they snuck in back at Cloud Recesses’ library pavilion scene. That drawing wasn’t as clearly shown as this one and seemed more ambiguous. Really, bravo to their boldness, and bless the censors for overlooking this little bit of fun as well.

This poor kid. I should’ve known his life would soon come to a premature end as soon as they focused on him and gave him a sweet learning moment.

Just FYI for anyone who cares: looks like this while thinking of Lan Zhan is the reason this scene gets two 🐰.

Questions I Still Have

- Why did Lan Zhan let Wei Ying keep that disgusting, bloody sword even though he had to have clearly seen the demonic black smoke coming from it and surrounding Wei Ying while they were fighting the Xuanwu of Slaughter. Even if Lan Zhan missed the smoke, why wouldn’t he have at least sensed the all the evil and resenting energy emanating from the sword? Considering its origins, you’d think its ominous aura would be so overwhelming that even someone with a low level of cultivation would sense it, much less someone as cultivated as Lan Zhan. Not to mention, just in terms of sanitary issues, why would someone like him, who prefers cleanliness and has some knowledge of infection prevention, even let Wei Ying continue to hold on to that filthy thing anyway? I know story-wise, the sword is important and needed for later on, but I’d honestly rather they kept with the novel in this instance and had it just fall back to the bottom of the water in the cave. It could still magically reappear at the Burial Mounds later on because it already recognized Wei Wuxian as its owner or something like that.

- Actually, what I also don’t understand is why Wen Ruohan never sensed this most powerful piece of the yin metal when it was so close to his stomping grounds? Why did that the first piece of metal he obtained call out to the pieces that were farther away instead of this one which was much closer? Unless, the reason is because the yin metal sword was activated because the other pieces finally reunited?

Huh.

I actually never considered that possibility until now, but if that’s the explanation, I can accept it. I guess this question might have been answered.

Overall Episode Rating: 9 Lil Apples out of 10

Disclaimer: The Untamed would not be possible without Mo Dao Zu Shi and Mo Xiang Tong Xiu-laoshi. I mean no disrespect whatsover when at times I may favor the shwo over the MDZS bible that is the novel. All hail MDZS and MXTX-laoshi, always and forever!

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ladybugsfanfics · 5 years ago

Text

Seven Days [3/7]

→ Pairing: prince!Loki Odinson x pirate!reader

(eventually prince!Loki x pirate!Steve Rogers x pirate!reader)

→ WC: 2.5k

→ Warnings: Smut, some blood gore, idk, awkwardness, nightmares, (countless) sexual innuendos

→ Summary: Prince Loki has run sick of not feeling welcome at the palace and asks to join you and your life forever. You give him seven days to try the new life, seven days to realize how much he loves you. And in those seven days, he learns to know you, and himself (and the first mate) a little better… In the end, he only has one question left to answer. Will he stay?

series Masterlist | Masterlist

Loki finds you at the helm, speaking in hushed voices with Wilson and Barnes. The three of you look out to the sea, up to the clouds. It’s as if the distance can speak to you, though it is Barnes that speak up.

“I warned you two days ago. Now there’s no avoiding it.”

You nod, face contorted into a thoughtful expression. “Okay, we’ll have to do the best of it.” Your face eases, and you look up at the two men. “Wilson, get the help of the men you need. Everyone’s already informed so you should only need to tell them what to do.”

Wilson nods. “Aye, aye, captain.”

You and Barnes look after him as he moves. With a shake of your head (and a very loud sigh) you turn back to Barnes. “How long do we have?”

“Not long. Half a day.” Barnes shrug. “Is gonna be a long night.”

You sigh, nodding slowly. “Counting on it.” You take a step closer to the railing, holding your hands there and letting the wind blow your hair into your face. “I need Rogers. Can you get him for me?”

“What for? He hasn’t been much help lately.”

“Doesn’t matter. I need his head to get straight.” You shake your head and glance back at Barnes. In the move, you catch a glimpse of Loki. He tries for a casual wave of the hand, but fails. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

Barnes gives a curt nod and walks away.

“Oh,” he stops in his tracks, “if you find the kid tell him he’s got the job he doesn’t want.”

The man gives another nod and walks away, giving room for Loki to step into your space. He lets his arms wrap around you from above. You lean against him, closing your eyes and intertwining your hand with his.

Neither of you say anything. You let the breeze caress your cheeks, let the drops of water travel down your arm without the slightest knowledge they’re there, and let the sounds of the crew working and the waves crashing against the hull become a melody for the background.

“I need to ask you something.” You turn around in his arms, sparkling eyes glancing up at Loki. He moves his arms to hold you in place, leaning against the railing.

“Ask away.”

“You have to stay in the cabin.” You give a slight smile. “Guess that’s not a question.”

Loki shakes his head. “No, it’s not. Is something wrong?”

“We’re gonna sail into a storm. According to Bucky, it’s a big one. We’ve been making preparations, but you have no experience. I need you to stay inside.” Your voice is stern, yet small and regretful.

“Okay,” he replies. “I can do that.” At least, he thinks he can. He’s not sure. Knowing you’re out on deck, during the storm and without him to look after you (not that you need him to), scares him. He doesn’t want to leave you alone.

You tiptoe up and plant a soft kiss on his lips. It puts his tense shoulders at ease, giving his worries less room. He has to admit that this new side where you act like a couple (almost a little like his parents), it makes him think that he made the right decision. If he got the chance to take another path, he never would. This is where he’s supposed to be.

“Hrrm hmm.”

The cough comes from behind them. Loki turns to find Steve there, cheeks red and gaze everywhere but at the two of you. His shoulders are up to his ears, his jaw clenched and his lips pressed tightly together.

“Rogers,” you say, though your voice has another layer than just saying his name. Loki isn’t sure exactly what it is.

Steve looks up. His eyes land on you first, then flickers to Loki. He diverts it back to you again, jaw unclenched but lips still pressed tightly together. He straightens his posture, gives Loki another glance, and lets out his breath. “You called for me?”

You take Loki’s hand and gives it a squeeze. The touch and gesture has Loki’s heart skip a beat, but he tries to not live it outside the comfort of his mind. You let go of his hand as quickly as you took it.

“We need to talk.” The softness of your tone, the one you had moments before with Loki, is gone. Replaced with authority, you show Steve who has the higher command, and the handsome man nods in understanding.

He casts a glance at Loki. One lingering glance that has Loki’s gut twist and flutter, but the moment it’s gone so are Loki’s feelings. He gazes after you and the first mate as you walk away.

One thing he didn’t think would happen in the same place as you, was not seeing you. He thought that being there with you, he would see more of you, get to know more of you. But it turns out he was wrong. The job of a captain is a lot bigger than he first thought.

It’s the rumble overhead that has Loki jolt in his position on the bed. He never saw the light, but the rumble was unmistakable. He stands up, closing the book and putting it down on the bed. With light steps, he walks over to the porthole. Light cascades in, but with a glance outside he can see that won’t last for long.

He smells the ocean outside, basks in the taste of fresh air that flows in from the open window, and listens to the crashing waves, the creaking of the ship and the few distorted shouts from on deck. Your voice can be heard, but the words are inaudible. Loki takes a deep breath and closes the window. Based on your previous warning, he doesn’t want to flood the cabin with water because he didn’t close it.

A sigh leaves his lips as he walks back to the bed. He finds a comfortable position and opens the book to where he left off.

After about two lines, he gives up. His mind scrambles the words, blurs out the lines, and twists their meaning. He can’t get his mind to cooperate. Looking out the porthole, he got the sense of the storm, he got the nightmare that it brings to his mind.

The thought of you standing on deck as rain pours around you. You standing on deck as the waves crash against the ship with such power that you fall. You standing on deck, alone, cold, hair draping to your face and shirt stick to your torso. You standing there, uncomfortable, barking orders and doing everything you can to keep the ship from falling apart as the wind rips across the deck, taking with it heavy belongings that haven’t been fastened properly, and hitting you or crewmates.

He hasn’t talked much with the doctor on board, but he knows he trusts him. Yet he can’t help but let his mind wander to the place where everything goes wrong.

Before his mind can properly realize what he’s doing, he’s opened the door and walked onto the deck. His bare feet pads across the wooden floor, taking him to you without any set of hesitation. The wind has started to pick up, scraping across his cheek in harsh blows and bringing with it drops of water that pounds against his face.

When he gets to you, he plants a kiss on your cheek. “Is anyone but me confined to their cabin?” he asks, the prince in him showing up. He doesn’t sound like a lost puppy asking, or a child that doesn’t know where he belongs. He sounds like himself.

You nod. “The doctor.”

Loki turns to leave, but you take ahold of his wrist and bring him back. “It’ll be okay. It could be worse.” You give him a reassuring smile and kiss him. Your lips press to his urgently, hard and roughly. Loki lets his hand cup your cheek, brushing some of your hair back and noticing how cold you are.

There’s not much he can do, so when you pull away, he presses another quick kiss to your lips. He falls away, eyes locked with yours and takes in the sight of your sad smile. He knows you want to be reassuring, but he doesn’t think anything can help him now. With a last glance, he turns around and makes for the doctors place.

Even if he hasn’t been there before, he knows the way. He walks with determined steps. The cold doesn’t bother him, and when the wind falls away as he gets on the lower deck, his mind just goes to how cold your cheeks were. How red they had been. All he wants is for the storm to be over, for him to be able to hold you again and warm you up.

He almost wishes you were on land, so he could draw you a hot bath. But instead, he’s going to sneak an extra bottle of rum on his way back up. Alcohol can easily get you warm, and he knows you love to drink it.

Loki stops a few feet away from where the doctors cabin is. In front of the door, stands Stark and the doctor himself. Their hands are clasped and the look on Strange’s face has Loki think back to his own expression wishing you good luck.

The two look around, quickly darting eyes around them as if on the lookout for someone catching them in the act. Neither of them seem to notice Loki, and he tries to look away from the obvious intimate moment, but he can’t. Their lips meet in a hurried and desperate kiss. They don’t say anything more, but pepper in some extra pecks, before Stark slips away.

He brushes past Loki on his way up. Only gives him a slight smile, almost as if saying thank you. Loki tries for a reassuring smile, but he’s not sure it comes across. Either way, Stark walks past him with another smile, and Loki moves to greet the doctor, who stands in the doorway and steps aside to let Loki in.

The door closes carefully behind them. Loki finds a place to sit and the doctor sits down across from him. Neither say anything, rather let the silence carry on. Or, silence would be overrated. Loki focuses on the creaking of the ship, the same crashing waves as before, only stronger and more forceful. He focuses on the clatter of boots against the deck above them, on his breathing, on the way the ship sways back and forth with more force than before. The seasickness tries to catch up with him again.

“This isn’t a perk, is it?”

Loki looks at Strange. His eyes study Loki, creased brows and a tilt of his head. “No, it’s not.” Loki drags a hand through his hair, the long looks gracing his neck as he lets go. “How do you… how do you sit through? Not doing anything?”

“I don’t. Most of the time I get someone down here, needing help.” He sighs. “Helps take the mind off.”

“How long have you been with Stark?”

A smile graces Strange’s lips. “A long time. He’s the reason I’m staying.”

Loki frowns. “You’ve been offered to leave?”

The man nods. It’s a slow nod, one that tells Loki there’s more to it than that. “Stark told me once, when he was here because of an injury, that he could help me out, if I wanted. He could convince the captain.”

Loki only smiles at that. Few can convince you of anything, but you had grown up with Stark. It wouldn’t surprise him if Stark is one of the few that can.

“I told him no. I couldn’t leave.” Strange takes a deep breath. “I didn’t say this, but I couldn’t leave knowing I would leave them to suffer should something happen. There are many stories of the pirates of Vicious Storm, many stories of her captain. Most tell the tale of a man, some tell the tale of someone unknown and unlike anything. But everyone repeats the same words; you won’t ever leave alive.”

Loki nods. He’s heard most of the stories. Whether you’re a pirate or not, Vicious Storm is something you’ve heard before.

“I knew that Stark was telling the truth. He could let me go without consequences. But I hadn’t been there long. I was afraid. Though she’s been nothing but kind.”

“She is.”

Strange lifts his head, gaze looked back on Loki’s face. “You’ve still not seen her in her true form. Fighting, barking orders, basking in the sea breeze with the coldest eyes you’ve ever seen. It’s a magnificent look.”

“When it’s not for you, I believe that.”

“No, even when it’s for you. Most attacks we’ve had, I’ve been down here. But there has been an instant were I was on deck. It started with their mockery of her sex, and ended with them saying it was an honor to die by her sword. No mockery, no mention of her sex. Only, ‘is an ‘onor to die by a true pirate’s sword’.”

Loki presses his lips together. It rumbles up ahead as he tastes the words the doctor spoke. He has heard the tales, heard the stories and the words spoken of the captain, spoken about you, yet he’s never heard the words ‘true pirate’.

“Have you ever seen her during a storm?”

“She knows what she’s doing. I bet, with the help of her crew, she can get through this. I wouldn’t worry.”

Loki gives Strange a smile. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would do if I were to be alone in the cabin. I might have done something stupid.”

“Thank you. Now Tony doesn’t worry about me thinking too hard on what’s going on up there. Company can always be helpful during hard times.”

They both give small smiles. The stoic expression the doctor has worn before is off, replaced by something akin to trust and kindness. Even if he can’t be up there with you, getting to know if you’re okay, if the ship’s okay, if the crew are okay, he can at least be down here, reassuring himself as much as another person who needs it.

Company is never overrated when it’s the right kind.

His thoughts are interrupted by a blinking outside. Through the porthole, Loki can see the light strike down somewhere farther away. The rumble takes a few moments to follow, but it comes sooner than he would like.

His gut stirs with nervousness, but all he can do is hope for the best. All he can do is trust you. All he can do is try to put his mind at ease.

So he does. Though he’s not sure how well it works.

permanent tags: @devilbat @adefectivedetective @gamillian @he-is-chaotic-she-is-psychotic @heartislubbingdubbing @wiczer @chillcan @geeksareunique

loki tags: @iamverity @satanskatze @timetravelingsociopathicwalker

sd tags: @marvelc00kie35 @southernhoney21 @senpaiweird @britkane-shsl-librarian @sociallyawkwardbeanwhowrites @rinthehufflepuff

#loki x reader #loki odinson #loki laufeyson #loki fanfiction #loki #reader insert #pirate au #pirate loki #pirate reader #ironstrange #tony stark #stephen strange #marvel #avengers #steve rogers #fanfic #fanfiction

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burning-clutch · 5 years ago

Text

Crashing Like A Tidal Wave With Cardiac Arrest: Part 1

Read on Ao3: here (Chapter 1 of 2) Pairings: Jack/Maddie Trigger Warnings: Blood and gore, Major character death Author: @burning-clutch (Team Ghost) Total words: 4711 prompt by: Anthropwashere / Anthrop AO3 and FFN: Anthrop

-.-.-.- **Important** There is a bit of excessive gore in here I wanted to try my hand at writing but I marked it between xXxX lines. it's not a lot just an over detailed depiction of the scene, but if you need to skip it, it will not change how the story is perceived, and you can continue on with out worry. -.-.-.-.-

The day was routine, or at least it started out that way…

Danny had woken up late for school having spent the night prior fighting endless rounds of Ectopuss, giant rats, a pack of wolves, a bear ghost, the Box Ghost, Skulker, some weird rabbit gorilla cross…. All in all nothing too terrible… Just relentlessly endless and annoying, eating into his sleep and making him generally miserable the next day.

Danny had gotten to the school in record time, not that it mattered really, he was already late and the added five minutes it took didn’t make any difference in Lancer’s eyes. He was sorely tempted to skip his first period altogether but didn’t really want to risk the phone call home to his parents.

He was a big enough disappointment to them as it was right now, and the last thing he needed or wanted to be the hollow sight from his parents as they looked on to him hopelessly.

“I really wish you would take this more seriously hun,” his mother would say

“I know these are your best years son, but the school’s important! Fenton’s are smart and you got a legacy to uphold!” his father would continue.

It was the same thing almost every time he screwed up, followed by his sensitive ears picking up his parents' hushed conversations mainly consisting of. “I don’t know what we’re going to do for him… nothing helps…”

He sighed as he landed in the janitor’s closet and transformed back to human. He shouldn’t worry about this now. Jazz and him were making preparations to be able to tell his parents the truth, and hopefully, that will allow him to smooth over most of the issues with his parents. He was concerned that he may have some loss of freedom though.

Or at least Jazz had warned him that may be the case. At the very least he could expect enforced ghost fighting curfews with a ghost shield around the house that a halfa can’t get out of.

He shook his head to clear the thoughts and moved to exit the closet swiftly making his way to class. “Ah, how nice of you to join us, Mr. Fenton,” Lancer said, hardly even sparing the teen a glance as he continued to write on the board.

Danny offered the teacher a sheepish smile that seemed to go unnoticed by the middle aged man, and hurried to his seat, throwing himself into his chair as silently as he could. It only occurred to him once he was in his seat that Lancer hadn’t bothered to issue him a detention.

Strangely that thought twisted in his gut painfully. Was he so bad off that even Lancer deemed him a lost cause now? He sighed deeply and just tried to push those self depreciative thoughts out of his mind, and decided instead that he should count his blessings that he could head home directly after school for a change.

Regardless he still opted to tune out the rest of the lecture as the day dragged on, Mr. Lancer did not make The Grapes of Wrath sound interesting at all and his opinion.

His friends beside him took in his tired visage and offered him a pitying look. The bags under his eyes made it clear that he was in need of sleep.

“What kept you up last night dude?” Tucker asked him with a quiet whisper.

“Box ghost and a whole bunch of animal ghosts all teaming up to make my night an endless hell…” Danny responded equally as quiet with an exasperated sigh.

“You should have called us man we would have been able to help you” Tucker whispered back eyeing his friend with a critical glance.

“You know we're always ready and willing to share the burden, you don't have to do this all yourself, as much as you think it's your ‘duty’ to,” Sam added from his other side.

“I know but it's not right for me to drag you guys into this. What if you guys get hurt? I'd never forgive myself!” Danny whispered back, with a slight huff, though a slight glow overtook his eyes. betraying his truest feelings.

Sam and Tucker exchanged a glance around him knowingly, it was pointless to try and argue with him when he gets like this. Even Jazz with all of her endless patience for psychoanalyzing him eventually gave up trying to understand the motivations behind his weird compulsions and all the faults and quirks that came along with having a Ghostly obsession to boot.

Danny lets out a long yawn. Man, was he tired. Maybe he could just rest his head on the desk for a moment, Lancer probably wouldn't notice right? No sooner was his head down were his eyes sliding closed from his exhaustion, unconsciousness taking him quickly.

From Danny’s perspective, he blinked and then was suddenly being poked by Tucker. Danny raised his head and took in his friend’s deep frown. “Bell rang, dude.”

Right good… “Yeah,” he yawned widely. Earning a sympathetic look from his friends and a flat exasperated sigh from the teacher.

Danny did his best to ignore the look as he stood and gathered his things to leave. He was just passing the classroom’s threshold when his ghost scene went off, fogging up around his vision and dissipating off into the air. He groaned.

“If it’s Boxy, I’m just going to lock him in the thermos and keep him there until the Christmas truce,” Danny growled.

“You want one of us to take care of him then?” Sam asked as Danny handed off his backpack to her.

“No, I should do it... “ He sighed. “I’m the one that everyone expects to be late anyway.”

“Still dude, you don’t-” Tucker started only to snap his jaws shut when Danny waved a flippant hand at him.

“No, it’s fine just tell the teacher I had a bowel problem or something. I’ll be back.” Danny said, already turning to leave and head for a closet or the bathroom to transform in. This was so second nature for him now, he had to wonder what he would ever be able to actually accomplish in school if he had the time to dedicate to actually sitting still for more than an hour and actually having time to learn things.

One flash of light later and Phantom was in the air following his ghost sense to the roof of the school. No sooner did he fully emerge above the building did he get blasted from behind. Danny rounded on the enemy expecting Skulker again but was surprised when he saw one of Vlad’s vultures panting from the exertion of its attack.

Instantly on high alert now, and looking for the elder half ghost himself, Danny fired an icy blast at the annoying bird's wings taking advantage of it’s needed recovery time.

The attack struck true and the bird fell to the ground with a squawk. Vulnerable now, he unhooked his thermos and sucked up the ghost easily. Capping it, and reattaching it to his belt, Danny flew around the school, trying to find the other two vultures or Vlad.

Using his ghost sense to guide him, he makes his way off the school property and into the woods that were just behind, Danny soon found the second vulture. It was odd though the bird was flying quickly away from the school instead of trying to attack him it kept on its trajectory.

It didn’t take Danny long to put two and two together and realize that the vulture was luring him somewhere. So he threw up a shield in front of the bird, which it flew into with a wet sounding thump before that minion too was sucked away.

“Ha, even dead birds fly into stuff” Danny quipped.

He flew upwards to get his bearings and realized he was halfway to Elmerton almost now. He cursed under his breath before doubling back towards the school, ignoring his ghost sense that was trying to draw him further away.

If Vlad was involved in this… whatever it was, he at least wanted to try and make it hard for him to execute whatever plan that frootloop had set up. Heading back towards the school he caught sight of a flash of green of a pair of Ectopuss in the football field.

“How did I miss you?” He muttered as he flew down towards them.

He hardly entered the school grounds when a pink blast shot towards him whizzing right by his ear. Only the sound of the static as it fizzed through the air alerted him to the attack, giving him barely enough time to dodge.

“Ah Daniel, I must admit I was anticipating you being gone for a little longer.” Vlad mused seemingly unimpressed by the teenager’s appearance.

“Did you really expect me to go that far once I realized your cronies leading me off?” Danny spat hands aglow with green sparking energy.

“Well of course I did. Your infernal hero complex is all too predictable after all.” Vlad chuckled dryly. “By the way little badger, how did you sleep last night? I had an unfortunate ghostly animal jailbreak.”

“Of course that was you.” Danny snarled before launching an attack at the man.

Vlad simply floated out of the way casually, smirking in that overly pompous manner of his. “As I said, predictable.” he chuckled darkly before a clone came up from behind and kicked Danny down to the ground.

The teen yelled and tried to slow his fall, but he still managed to leave a decently sized crater in the ground when all was said and done. Danny pulled himself free in launch skyward invisibly hoping to catch Vlad off guard.

Again, the elder half ghost dodged, before rounding on the teen and trapping him with a bear hug

"Now, now, Daniel. I can't have you messing up my plans my dear boy. Today is the day I Triumph and finally end that fool Jack Fenton and take Maddie for my wife," he purred

Danny's eyes go wide at the man's words. “What did you do,” He growled out. “Where are my parents Vlad! I swear-”

“Oh don’t worry it’s nothing dear Maddoline can’t handle. Tell me did you happen to get all three of my minions or did you simply come back here to confront me?” The man smiled in an overly sickeningly way that made Danny want to vomit.

“Wait, you - UGH!” Danny sees red, or rather green, as his eyes shine bright the need to protect overwhelming him as he stretches his body out and escapes the man’s hold. Snapping himself back to proper shape he lets loose a powerful mix of ecto plasma and ice.

It launched out of his palms so large and wide that Vlad had no choice but to try to shield, unable to dodge. The pink shield strained and shook, cracking with spiderwebs lacing the ecto construct.

Danny’s fury helped fuel his power and the added power backing him enabled him to break through the shield, hitting Vlad square in the chest... and destroying the clone in a hiss of melting pink sludge.

The teen whirled about in the air looking for the next attack, any possible sign of his enemy. How dare he! This was his town, his lair and he would protect the people in it. In a way, they were his too. It only fueled his rage knowing it was his father who was at risk.

Danny snarled in rage before shaking himself into a more coherent state. He fumbled about on his person managing to find whatever weird interstate his phone had gone into, and pulled it free to check it over.

He pushed it open and brought up the ‘Fenton Finder’ app that showed where the GAV was at any given moment, something that the citizens of the city enjoyed so they could avoid the areas whenever possible, usually meaning that there was a ghost attack wherever the Fenton’s were heading.

For Danny, it helped him avoid, or find his parents quickly. Finding his parent’s location was easy and after sticking his phone from what area it had come from, he’d shot off like a rocket. Thankfully they weren’t far, practically down the street from the school near the mall actually, which made sense otherwise Vlad wouldn’t have been able to maintain his clone.

Danny arrived on the scene just in time to see Vlad telekinetically tossing things towards the GAV. He had managed to split up the elder Fentons and lifted a few cars getting ready to toss them at Jack with a howl.

Danny slammed into Vlad tackling him to the ground, hands burning as bright as his eyes as he blasted the ghost.

The damage was already done though. As soon as Danny had tackled Vlad, the cars had become encased in pink energy causing it to still follow the trajectory that Vlad had wanted.

Both halfas slammed into the ground but were still high enough, the crater created not too deep in the pavement, to see what was happening.

Vlad smirked and took Danny’s distraction as a chance to escape phasing into the ground leaving a bewildered teen halfa unable to move, only stare at the scene before him.

The car sailed towards Jack who tried to bound out of the way. The large man was not as fast as he liked to believe and of course, was a large target, to hit. The car slammed into his leg knocking the tall man over and causing him to roll back from the force of the strike.

“Fu-e- Ouch! That’s broken…” Jack hissed out changing his swear last minute. The orange clad man struggled to get to his feet, his right leg bending awkwardly below the knee, but putting all his weight on his left allowed him to clamber to his feet… er, foot.

Danny heaved a sigh of relief seeing his father still standing, a little worse for wear granted but overall alive…. Or at least he was until he saw the man he always knew to be cheerful and boisterous, went quiet and pale, letting out a barely audible “N-No...”

Danny realizing Vlad had taken off, stood and followed his father’s gaze, heart and core both pounding anxiously, before burning away into a mix of sorrow and furry. There, just a little bit away, he could just barely make it out to what it should look like… but it was indeed a leg... in a very familiar, painfully familiar, teal colour, sticking out from under a car.

Danny gulped wishing silently that the red that was splashed about the concrete was just paint… A grunt and a crunch pulled Danny’s attention back to his father, who was trying desperately to meet his wife.

Carefully he flew to the large man before landing silently beside him, only to look away a second later ashamed. “I…. I couldn’t stop him in time…” He managed out, voice as broken as he currently was and glow dimming to an almost nonexistent state. “H-Here…”

Jack wrenched his eyes away from the blood and gore before him to stare listlessly at Phantom. Normally his scientific mind would be undoubtedly fascinated by the things currently being exhibited by Phantom, but right now…

Jack hardly said anything, not even so much as a protest as Danny looped his arm around the large man’s back allowing him to use the ghost as a crutch. That normally would have worried Danny but his everything was just stricken. He just…

He forced himself to move forward, urged on more by Jack’s listless hobbling rather than his own will to do so. He heard sirens, and couldn’t care less whether they were police, ambulance, fire or even the GIW coming for him… he just…

He had to know that the stillness of that form ahead really was due to...

He shook his head chastising himself for thinking such a thing before he had any proof. Though the closer he got, the colder the air around him felt.

Even Jack was shivering but his mind was numb to the biting temperature that Phantom was giving off… Nothing mattered just… “Madds… Oh, Maddie…” Jack whimpered, as they rounded the car.

Phantom turned green and fell away from Jack’s eyes widened. His stomach turned at the bloody scene before him. His mother… she was… “She’s... She’s dead!” Phantom cried out large luminescent tears falling from his eyes as he quivered in sorrow and grief.

It was a grizzly sight

XxXxXxX

Maddie was not in one whole piece for starters, her lower half had been cleaved off by the car leaving her legs to lay underneath while her upper body had rolled on, landing sideways against the curb, Her eyes, still opened, were glassy like that of a dead fish, and were quickly clouding.

Her skin now looked a sickly grey as opposed to the healthy pink and peach Danny had come to associate with his mother. Her face had been scraped deeply from when she had slid across the pavement, reminding the teen sickeningly of ground beef with how bad the scrapes were.

Entrails hung out from below her ribcage spilling their foul greenish yellow bile across the pavement, while chunks of… something Danny didn’t even want to identify was strewn about in various shades of whiteish, grey, pink, bright red and reddish black…

Bones... That was bones… or rather bits of bone that had been crushed and scattered from the impact…. Danny had seen bones before of course, there were skeleton ghosts after all but never like this… not something like this...

And all the red! Red was everywhere. No matter where he looked there was red. Large globbing splatters all the way down to the tiniest of pinpricks, it was there, and it was her. His mother… her essence...The iron scent was so strong now he could taste it.

XxXxXxX

It quickly became too much for the teen, and he had to turn away from the scene onto the nearest boulevard to vomit. A thick green sludge that awfully enough reminded him of a slightly glowing lime Jell-o tumbled out from his stomach, burning his throat and nose.

After having emptied his stomach of whatever was in there and turning away from the mess he’d made, he carefully returned to his father who was weeping openly having fallen to his knees as he did so. The broken man was unable to turn away.

Danny swallowed thickly doing his best to keep his eyes on the ground, thankfully his own tears made everything blurry so he didn’t have to focus in on the mess that his mother had become…

“D- Jack? ...Come on… There are paramedics…” The teen managed out weakly. Jack looked up at him as if finally realizing just who was here beside him. Danny forced himself not to look away from the lost broken look on his father’s face. When he tried to say more it was as if his mouth was suddenly filled with cotton, and he opened it and closed it a few times unsure what to say.

“What do you want, Phantom?” The man asked after a moment of silence passed, both openly letting their tears fall, but neither mentioning it. The accusation was there but it was so much weaker than he had ever heard before… “If you’ve come to gloat I-”

“What!? No! Never! I… I actually wanted to say I’m sorry… I wasn’t fast enough I… This is my fault…” He sniffed out.

“What?! You’re sorry? You’re sorry!?” Jack boomed anger getting the better of him. Danny had heard enough of Jazz’s lectures to know what this was. He was so distraught and hurt, that he was going to take out his anger on anything he could…

Danny couldn’t blame him for turning on him though… everything is his fault.

“Sorry is not going to bring her back! Sorry isn’t going to fix this! Sorry isn’t going to- '' The man's voice cracked, breaking as he screamed becoming silent a second before he broke down again. “She’s gone… Sh-She’s gone!”

“I’m so sorry... This is my fault! If I was faster! I-I should have figured out Plasmius’s plan sooner I-I’m such an idiot I… oh Mom…” Danny hiccupped and tugged at his hair, nails digging into his scalp. “Mom! It’s all my fault! I should have saved you!”

“Wh- What did you?” Jack sniffed head snapping up in an instant watching as Phantom seemed to be having a mental breakdown. “Mom…” he managed out between sobs. Jack stole a glance at his broken wife, before staring back at Phantom.

The ghost looked young. Maybe somewhere in his mid teens at most, and with his glow now as weak as it was, he could clearly see the ghost that was usually hidden within the usual ethereal fog. He was a boy really, he looked so small, not at all like the muscled form they usually see. His glow was pretty much gone, leaving his usually brilliant white hair a dull steel grey. His white gloves and even the sharp crisp black… all of it just looked so dull…

Even the usual bright radioactive ectoplasmic green of his eyes had faded to a more human looking colour. If one were to take away the slight green tint in his skin he could easily pass for a kid who just dyed his hair, so long as someone wasn’t looking too hard at him... It was so surreal and uncanny in how the ghost moved, like an old movie that was missing an occasional frame.

And he was clearly having some sort of… episode… Perhaps he had died in a car crash with his mother? Was that why this was affecting him so strongly? The soft sobs of the usually strong and cocky ghost, and watching the boy cry about his mother… It felt so wrong.

“What kind of hero am I if I can’t even save my own mother? I can’t help anyone!” he sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve leaving an iridescent slime trail along his sleeve.

“Phantom…” Jack tried softly. Instantly the ghost’s head popped up to look at him, though it didn't last long as a moment later he squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

“Just… Just get it over with… hurry up and tear me apart… just… It’ll make us both feel better right?” the ghost pleaded brokenly to Jack's dull green eyes staring blankly ahead. “At least then I… I can be useful… not a disappointment… I’m just a screwup… I- “

“Phantom…” Jack said softly.

“I- I’m sorry” He sniffed.

Jack blinked slowly. “I need you to help me get to the paramedics.”

“I’m- You want me to help?” He sniffled again. He really was a broken child at this moment and not just a ghost… besides, Jack didn’t have the fight in him right now to even bother trying to attack the ghost. “Really?” Phantom asked again, hope filling his green eyes.

“Yeah… I mean since I can’t walk,” came the simple response. “I…I need your help Phantom.”

The ghostly teen nodded and moved forward to help the large man. Storm clouds barely being contained behind his eyes, while Jack on the other hand, just felt numb.

As Phantom helped Jack over to the emergency responders neither one noticed the other ghost that was on a nearby roof, staring down at the scene in silent horror.

Vlad masters or Plasmius in his current form had undoubtedly, unequivocally, and unquestionably screwed up… big time. Not only had his plan failed in the most spectacular way possible, but he had also killed the love of his life. By his own power, his own hand, she had stopped breathing, her heart stopped beating… her life drained.

In trying to end Jack, the man who ruined his life, he had unintentionally ended another's. The one most precious to him… Second only to the kinship that he had felt with Danny…

That feeling had been the most notable change here…

As it stood now, Vlad was unsure if he still felt the same about the younger half ghost. It was Daniel’s fault his plan had gone awry… If it wasn’t for him that would be Jack’s corpse smeared across the pavement from the car. The hunks of metal crushing the fat oaf of a man, not his dear sweet innocent Madeline.

But at the same time… they still shared a curse. A curse that bound them together whether they liked it or not. It was something that bound them to walk a tightrope of life and death and experience a sensation of isolation like no other.

Though as Vlad watched Jack interacting with Phantom, how the ghost tenderly had started embracing the man, and Jack in turn squeezed and held the boy so tight it looked like he would pop, the man couldn’t stop the bit of jealous rage that fermented in his core.

And yet, the more human side of his brain was breaking. Maddie was gone and he had destroyed Daniel’s family in all the wrong ways… It was his fault here as much as it was Daniel’s, and now... Now he just needed some time to himself to reflect…

Danny wasn’t sure how long he’d hugged his father for, and in ghost form no less, but they both needed this and it seemed like it didn’t matter who was there to offer the much needed comfort. “I-I…” He swallowed thickly again when he looked up into the deep blue eyes of his father globs of tears rimming his lashes and streaking freely down his face.

“It… It’s okay… I… You just… you look so much like my son like this” Jack admits. “I… I couldn’t... I…Oh, Danny....”

“Dad… I wanted to tell you sooner, and … and Mom too but…” He sniffed, trying to clear his nose and opened his mouth to continue only to hiccup, his voice betraying him. As the paramedics, cops and of course the GIW start to encircle them Danny whispered simply. “We-We’ll talk at home I…”

“Ecto-entity Phantom, by the order of CR-2003-02 you are under arrest!” The agent called out earning several glares from the emergency responders that had shown up.

“Like hell he is!” Jack boomed, surprising everyone there, but none more than the ghost himself. “You leave right now or I swear...” The large man said in a rather flattened tone. Jack loud was one thing, that was normal… Jack talking calmly or quiet well… that meant hell was about to break loose.

The agents looked about the area awkwardly, before one brave one with dark skin piped up. “But the law states-”

“And the law can get you a warrant to take him,” Jack said simply eyes hardened. He was not about to deal with them after… after… he shakes his head to clear his thoughts before putting an arm around Phantom… Danny… Danny Phantom, and pulling him to himself. “Ghost’s mine and I’m a licenced hunter so I have possession. Now leave.” he barked

Danny watched his father in awe. He’d seen his father upset before of course, and even protective of him and Jazz before too, but never like this…

The agents shared a glance before backing off with glares all the way back to their van.

The paramedics were next to approach while the Cops started roping off the area. Everything was a blur after that. And Danny hardly remembers anything once the paramedics took Jack.

He knows at some point he flew home, not bothering to head back to school, as he sort of ‘blinked back into reality’ to realize he was staring at his ceiling. He really didn’t care about school right now…

He wasn’t sure what time it was when Jazz came home. Her eyes were red and she sighed in relief upon seeing him, before practically collapsing on top of him crushing him in a hug their father would be proud of. It only took a second before they both began to sob again… -.-.-.-.-.-.-.- Incomplete Total words: 4711

#Danny Phantom #Phic Phight 2020 #prompt fill #Danny #Maddie #Vlad #Jazz #Jack

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sultrysirens · 5 years ago

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Blue Blood [Mini]

Universe: Detroit: Become Human

Rating: PG-13 (swearing)

Characters: Connor, Evelyn (OC)

Summary: Connor is bored. That’s weird, right? He shouldn’t feel bored. But he was -- he was so bored...and so he decided to test himself.

Note: This snippet is between chapters 11 and 12.

Evelyn could’ve made an incredible criminal, Connor learned.

They spent a few hours talking about how, exactly, to get his people free of CyberLife storage and warehouses, the logistics of it, and most importantly: how to keep the two of them from being identified in the process. Since they were both officers, and specifically Evelyn a sergeant in her force, being caught up in such things would bring them both down -- hard.

Neither of them wanted that, so they were careful to construct things in a perfect way to avoid catastrophe. And while Connor would willingly and shamelessly say he was brilliant (CyberLife skimped on nothing with his features), more and more he was finding Evelyn’s insight helpful. She had two things he didn’t -- two very, very important things:

Human perspective, and experience.

He could study up on crime all he wanted, but even that wouldn’t match her decade of experience in this field. And try as he might, he’d never be able to truly envision things from a human’s perspective; their minds worked in different ways, his run by numbers and hers by sensory inputs.

While he was focused on the math involved in luring probable guards away from doors, their exact movements and schedules, she suggested scents. While he was concerned with alarm systems and erasing digital evidence, she pointed out the possibility of laying false trails. While he pondered on time, distance, and speed, she considered capitalizing on the weather.

He took great pride in knowing he thought faster than humans, that he could focus on numerous tasks at once, how he could outsmart just about anyone -- yet just talking with Evelyn proved to him that it didn’t matter how smart and capable he was. He’d always benefit from someone else’s help.

Maybe he’d let the pride get to him already, then. Infiltrating CyberLife and adjusting his plan on the fly to account for surprises had become a very powerful moment in his life, and he was a little ashamed to admit he might’ve been letting it feed his arrogance. He’d just been so successful in all that he did -- was it any wonder he’d begun soaking up the recognition and fame that came with those victories?

Forbes was proving to be a point of clarity for him, now that he’d begun to plan large events with her. She kept bringing him back from the mindset of, “I can do this, I can do anything,” to a much more manageable, “I can probably do this, but just in case...”

Considering his goal was to free possibly hundreds of androids, he appreciated that. He couldn’t risk their lives thanks to his own pride clouding his judgement.

By the end of the night they came to a singular conclusion: patience. Those androids were unlikely to wake on their own nor be moved anytime soon. They had time to work out the logistics of this plot, time to investigate and consider all angles.

Plus they had an open murder case to solve, too. That was more time-sensitive, ultimately, so the plan became to work on that first and the androids second.

Then, as time ticked away and Evelyn steadily began nodding off, she retired to bed. A part of him was frustrated by that; humans having to stop and sleep every day was such a time-killer. And though he didn’t say so aloud, he got the impression she agreed with him on that.

She commented dryly, “Time for this human to get some maintenance in.”

As she strode around the sofa, heading for her room, he quipped, “Don’t end sentences with prepositions.”

She flicked his shoulder, drawing a chuckle out of him. “Get in some maintenance, then,” she retorted, and he couldn’t quite tell if she was annoyed or just amused and pretending.

And then...he was alone again with nothing to do. And it was strange, but whereas he’d once been fine with having to wait, now he found it grating. He was...bored.

Sure, he could go into standby mode again. It was a great way to waste time. He just felt reluctant to do so, knowing that doing so will mean he’ll have spent hours unmoving, unthinking...useless. He’ll have accomplished nothing, not even basic tasks or rudimentary actions.

At a loss, he decided he may as well at least consume -- namely the media. He synced with the television and began intercepting its signals, receiving the audio and video feeds. And now that he confirmed he could do this (he hadn’t been sure), he decided to see how far he could push it. Closing his eyes, he blocked out everything external and began to test himself.

One by one, he added active channels, until he had a total of sixteen. His processors strained under this much work, largely thanks to the power required to pick up on the video feeds, so he opted not to add any more. He just flipped between the channels until he found ones that were either interesting or useful and...watched.

Seven of the channels were news stations. He recognized a few of them as national stations he’d caught in Detroit, too, the humans involved familiar. Two were international, reporting on Europe and central Asia, respectively. This was helpful in keeping him abreast of what was happening in the world, and he was pleased to find it was so easy.

There was also another surge of pride, knowing he could do this and humans couldn’t, but he tried to keep a handle on that. The last thing he wanted was to lose himself to pride and end up getting himself -- or someone else -- hurt because of it.

This could be a handy nightly routine, he mused. While Evelyn slept, he could keep an eye on the world as a whole, while simultaneously taking part in what was one of humanity’s favorite pastimes: consuming media. Films and shows passed through his mind of several differing genres, which was intentional on his part. He wasn’t sure yet what kinds of subjects he’d find enjoyable, so it was worth testing out each of them in turn.

By the end of the night, he found horror boring and romance kind of repulsive.

He suspected he just wasn’t feeling much in the way of fear, so he was missing whatever humans enjoyed when it came to horror. It didn’t help that most everything was predictable, either; the few horror films he watched had jumpscares exactly where he expected them to be, thus nullifying the effect, and he was impassive towards the gore and disturbing imagery.

....No, ‘impassive’ was the wrong word. He actually found himself analyzing it, and judging the special effects teams as a result. When a human was gutted during one film, their innards falling outwards, he couldn’t help but measure everything he saw -- the lengths of the intestines, which organs tumbled out as opposed to which actually could, even how accurate the fake blood was to actual blood.

It was when he concluded that they’d done a good job making the gory scene realistic that it hit him: he really shouldn’t watch horror films. He was only approaching them from an analytical standpoint and thus ruining the experience. He moved on from them.

Next came romance.

Maybe it was just how the romances were being portrayed in the few films he consumed, but he wasn’t seeing why humans liked it so much. It was commonly known that humans would kill and die for the kinds of relationships he was seeing, yet to him it felt hardly different from any other relationship (which, he admitted, might not mean much, as he was an outsider on the subject). Reminded that Evelyn was married and currently separated, too, supported his forming theory that it just wasn’t that good.

Yet they were clearly addicted to romance -- and sex. The latter, especially, was confusing. People commonly cheated on one another for sex, and why? From what scenes he witnessed during the course of the night (all of it softcore at most), there just didn’t seem to be that much of a reward for it. The humans in question would enjoy themselves, then move on like it hadn’t even happened.

Maybe his viewpoint was skewed, but shouldn’t they at least show some measure of lingering satisfaction? Or, given these were mostly films he was watching, were they just trimmed down for the sake of storytelling?

He probably just couldn’t comprehend it, being an android. That made sense. Resolving to ask Evelyn about it at some point (she was proving exceptionally talented at explaining things in ways he understood, as well as understanding him when he was having trouble putting his thoughts into words) he put the subject to bed.

Unsurprisingly, he was finding action and intrigue films the most palatable. Even for his high-tech and powerful mind, some of the mystery-themed films proved interesting. He mostly found himself ahead of the on-screen characters in putting puzzle pieces together, but then, he expected that was intentional. The audience was supposed to know what was happening before the characters, so they would care what happened.

But sometimes they proved unpredictable, and Connor liked that. Better yet, he found it useful; these films might mostly be invented, stories from human minds rather than actual events, but it gave him more glimpses into how the human psyche functioned.

And it was through this that he got an idea.

#siren nightshade #blue blood #mini #connor #detroit: become human #sfw #bored

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loversandantiheroes · 6 years ago

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Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: F/M Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford, Female Lavellan/Cullen Rutherford Characters: Cullen Rutherford, Female Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Lyrium Withdrawal, Lyrium Addiction, visual and auditory hallucinations, Mild Gore, Hurt/Comfort, first comes the hurt, then comes the comfort, I swear there will be comfort

The threat of Adamant looms, and the cracks begin to show. Big, huge, and many thanks to @songofproserpine, @aloy-sobek, and @juliannos for beta reading this chapter. I’ve spent a lot of time on this trying to get it right. Here’s hoping I succeeded.

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Adamant.

“Read it again,” Cullen said, stone-faced, praying he had heard wrong

Josephine sat behind her desk, eyes wide with that same alarmed disbelief he felt, but she nodded just the same, cleared her throat, and began to read.

The Wardens are compromised. A Magister of the Venatori, Livius Erimond has infiltrated their ranks and convinced them their only chance of ensuring an end to the Blights before the Calling consumes them is to raise a demon army and march upon the Deep Roads and kill the Old Gods before they can be corrupted. What we stumbled upon appears to have been the first attempt at the binding ritual. Erimond instructed a small group of Warden mages to each kill one of their fellows, some sort of blood magic ritual to draw and bind a demon. More concerning: while the ritual places the demon in the thrall of the mage that bound it, it also binds the mage to Corypheus. The familiarity of this is not lost on me, I remember Redcliffe too well. We have dispatched the ‘test group’, but Erimond has escaped. Hawke and Stroud have scouted west on Stroud’s hunch and have found the Wardens occupying an ancient stronghold called Adamant. I do not know the name, but I imagine at least one of you does, and Stroud’s face when he spoke of it tells me more than I wish to know. We return for Skyhold at once. We must plan, and we must plan quickly.

Josephine laid the missive down gingerly. “This is...dire.”

“Adamant has been unbreachable for centuries,” Leliana said, her voice cold and hushed like a dagger in the dark..

“Centuries ago they did not have trebuchets,” Cullen said, striving for a confidence he did not in any way feel. “We need sappers.”

“I believe one of Bull’s Chargers is a sapper,” Leliana suggested. “And we have Dagna. That is at least a start. I will do some digging, see who else we have that may be of use.”

Josephine began rifling through papers on her desk. “I believe I may be able to call in a favor for siege equipment. Not all nobles deal purely in coin and gossip.”

“That just leaves us with enthralled Wardens and demons,” Leliana muttered darkly. “They could house over a thousand men there.”

The pain in Cullen’s head flared, a sharp pulse at his temples. “Our Templars should be prepared. Our people should be prepared.”

“The Inquisitor returns with haste,” Josephine said. “Two weeks by horse relay, perhaps less. That gives us some time to prepare.”

Cullen scowled. “Another five to make the march back out there with enforcements, and that’s on top of preparations. Andraste preserve us, Erimond could fill Adamant in that time if he has enough mages among the Wardens.”

“How many of your remaining Templars are at Skyhold, Commander?” Leliana asked.

“Nowhere near enough. I will send word, recall as many as possible to Skyhold.” He turned on his heel, gripping the hilt of his sword, and made for his office.

Unbreachable. Maker, if only the walls were their only worry.

* * *

Preparations had to be made, even before the Inquisitor’s return. Cullen sent dozens of letters, ordering an immediate return to base for every Templar they had in the field. The numbers were considerably less than he cared for, barely over fifty all told, with perhaps a half dozen veterans among them. A rueful little voice nattered in his ear, reminding him if they had only gone to the Templars, if he had the full force of the Order at his disposal…. But of course, he didn’t. The choice had been made. And given the actions of the demon Krem said had been impersonating the Lord Seeker, sending the Herald into Therinfal Redoubt would have been like driving a lamb into a slaughtering pen. It was not the alliance he regretted, it was the loss.

And so the week went, a flurry of activity and too-little sleep. The headache persisted and brought with it a faint, charred smell that followed him as he went about his duties, craning his neck to search for signs of smoke. The itch came soon after, bone-deep and low, something that made him want to twist and squirm in his own skin. Cullen was too disciplined for that, too stubborn.

But he moved, and he kept moving. He paced constantly. Inspections doubled. A sand pit was hastily constructed near the practice yard to give the men some idea of what they might face if the fight took them outside of the fortress walls. The time he spent in the sparring ring jumped dramatically. And even there he was restless, moving and rolling and driving aside the less practiced with an alarming ferocity. None were injured, but more than a few soldiers left the ring with their practice weapons cracked and their heads hung in exhausted defeat.

His soldiers bore his agitation. The staff on the other hand were less equipped to handle it. He was short with them, an irritation that grew steadily worse as the week wore on, until it was a fight to keep his fool mouth shut before he berated some poor maid for doing their job too close to him, or a runner for slamming doors they swore they had not touched. Overworked was the polite whisper. Arsehole was the less polite version, and he couldn’t claim it was unearned. His behavior was regrettably noted. None seemed to mark the reason behind it, save for Cassandra who kept a wary, albeit distant, eye on him, but said nothing.

The thirst returned soon after. A familiar addition, and one he considered to be no great concern. Cullen had long since learned to ration his water. And if his tongue worried restlessly over too-dry lips and his throat ached with the need for something colder, cleaner, bluer - well, what of that? Pain was pain, and he could take it. And he did. More and more each day. Until the headaches were inescapable and his joints felt like fire and broken glass. The remedies helped, when good sense came to him in the grounding guise of Aadhlei’s voice and overrode his pride, urging him to finally send slips to the infirmary for the potions that would dull the pain, or settle his stomach enough to keep half a hurried meal down, or to sleep for longer than an hour at night without jerking awake to the muffled sounds of phantom explosions.

And so he endured. He had little choice else. The cost of failure was far too high. It was a well-worn slog, horrible but at the very least predictable, until the ninth day.

Morning found him pulling on his armor, hair combed but face unshaven, fighting to still the tremors in his hands enough to buckle on his breastplate. A missive had arrived by raven the night before declaring the Inquisitor had just passed Halamshiral. Four days left, three if she kept up the relay. There had been no direct letters since she had left the Western Approach, and he could not claim that he did not feel their absence, or hers. It had been well over a month since she had left Skyhold with Hawke and Stroud in tow. He realized with a glum sort of wistfulness that this was almost certainly the longest they had spent apart since they had met.

Yet the relief he expected with the news of her return was nowhere to be found. Instead all he felt was a cold, creeping dread that snaked its way through his gut like a wire. She would return, and she would look to him with trust in those soft green eyes that had shaken him free of so many nightmares, and she would expect him to give council. And what did he have? A migraine and a rather impressive case of the shits. Fine council, indeed.

Idiot boy.

Cullen froze. The voice was clear and harsh, a mocking sneer. And Maker, it sounded close. Close enough that Cullen fancied if he turned he would see the Knight-Commander’s eyes, steel shot through with red, mere inches from his own.

“You’re dead,” he said, voice taut. He pulled his gorget over his head and set to fastening it down. “At least have the decency to be silent.”

You called me mad. My own Knight-Captain stood against me. And for what? To protect blood mages. And now here they stand again. Weak and foolish Wardens turning to blood magic to save their own skins. They will paint Thedas red in blood and lyrium and it will be on your head.

And then the room was gone. All around was chaos; the steel-on-steel clash of combat, the sizzling crack and pull of magic, but even that was drowned out by the sounds of pure panic and carnage.

The choice was yours, Knight-Captain. Blessed are those that stand before the wicked and do not falter. And when have you done anything but falter?

Cullen pushed his fists against his eyes. Skyhold. Not Kirkwall. Look up.

Cullen lifted his head, desperate, searching for the skylight that was - should be there. It wasn’t. Above him hung a slate-grey sky, thick with smoke and storm clouds, tinged red where the fires burned highest. Kirkwall was burning. Again? Still? Maker, did it even matter? Kirkwall burned and he had let it happen. Had, in point of fact, helped build the pyre.

The world flickered like a candle flame in a sudden draft and Kirkwall was gone. High stone walls surrounded him, a sprawl of putrid, pulsing flesh climbing up it like diseased ivy. He could smell it, the sweetness of its rancidity almost enough to mask the old-copper scent of blood. And the blood was everywhere. Bodies lay in mutilated piles around him, some mangled beyond recognition, but others were still painfully familiar. Farris’s head regarded him with bland, slack-jawed terror from the end of a spike, one eye rolled up to the ceiling. A few feet away, from the base of a pile protruded an arm, surprisingly whole, with smooth skin broken by a long pink scar that stopped near the elbow. ‘A bandit with a broken dagger,’ Annalise would tell anyone that listened, but the reality of it had been a clumsy fall into a stack of pottery.

Cullen’s stomach twisted, gorge rising. He saw all of it through a shimmering haze of violet, a barrier, a prison. They had stuck him here to watch the slaughter. How many had been cut down before his eyes? How many torn apart? How many left broken and begging for death for hours before their pleas were granted?

He felt a spasm wrack his body, making him shake and rattle in his armor like a specter in a ghost story. Lyrium withdrawal, his first true taste of it, etched into his mind with blood and screaming.

You couldn’t save them, Meredith spoke up in a voice like ice. What makes you think you can protect the men that serve you now, or that posturing maleficarum that calls herself Inquisitor? You were a failure even with the lyrium in your veins, you are a fool to think you could be more without it. You lead them into death, boy. That’s all you know how to do.

“NO!” he roared, fists lashing out to strike the barrier and finding only empty air and darkness.

Skyhold, he told himself desperately. Not Kirkwall, not Kinloch! Damn your eyes, Rutherford, look up! Find it!

Again he craned his neck up, conjuring the image of the window in his mind. Greens and browns and blues, tall trees and running dogs and the sky beyond it. On its heels came the afterthought of Aadhlei standing beneath it, the sunlight in her hair and the light touch of her fingers on the inside of his wrist, a scent of herbs clinging to her hair and faint lilac on her skin.

One moment there was only darkness above him, thick, black, and endless. The next moment he was staring up at the skylight above his bed, glinting prettily in the first pale gold of morning.

Cullen crumpled to his knees on the floor of his bedroom, hung his head, and wept.

* * *

The wind cut cold across Skyhold’s battlements, chilling the sweat that stood out stark against Cullen’s face as he caught sight of the line of horses speeding toward the front gate. He wavered, swaying on his feet, the pounding in his head increasing threefold. Aadhlei rode at the forefront, he recognized her not by her mount but by the shade of her cloak and the staff strapped to her back. He had held out some shred of hope that the sight of her might bolster the last cracking remains of his resolve, that he might find strength enough to endure for her sake, if not for his. Maker, he had hoped….

Meredith’s voice rang out in his head, cold and sharp as a surgeon’s blade. Your pride will be the death of her.

It was in his head. It was only in his head this time, and he knew it. But even that could not stop the twisting in his chest. There was no comfort here. No comfort anywhere. A small sound, weak and defeated, escaped his lips in a rush of white vapor.

I can’t.

Though his knees felt hot and loose and ready to buckle, they bore him swiftly enough down the stairs towards the place where the Seeker stood, testing a fresh blade. “A word please, Lady Cassandra. I require your...opinion on a matter.”

She regarded him coolly, casting a brief glance to the gate as shouts of the Inquisitor’s approach rang out. “I don’t suppose I need to ask what this is about.”

“In private,” he half-snarled, jerking his head toward the door of the smithy. “Please.”

Cassandra gave him an assessing look, then nodded grimly. “As you say.”

Cullen strode ahead, shoving the door open with enough force to startle one of Harritt’s apprentices into dropping the sword he was grinding.

“Out,” Cullen said, pointing at the far door.

“Begging your pardon, Commander?” Harritt said, his eyebrows hovering about halfway up his bald head in his surprise. “All due respect, ser, but this is my-”

“Out!”

The apprentices were out the door before Harritt had even the chance to toss the half-forged steel back in the embers. He followed, begrudgingly, bitching under his breath as he went.

As the door shut behind him, Cassandra spoke. “The answer is no.”

Cullen turned on his heel, wobbling. “Do I have no say in this at all?”

“If I thought it necessary, Cullen, I would have relieved you of your command already. That I have not should be the only answer you need.”

“Maker’s breath, will you just listen to me?”

She folded her arms, scowling. “Very well, Commander. I am listening.”

“I,” he faltered almost immediately, pride again taking control of his tongue. He set to pacing in front of the forge, sweat pouring down the sides of his face to pool under his armor. Maker how could he sweat, he was bloody freezing. Slowly the words ground out of him. “I cannot do this.”

He began to unpack it, or at least he tried to, giving a halting index of symptoms and incidents. Try as he might, he couldn’t quite find the words to explain the worst of it, dancing around the visions and voices and memories with all the care of a wounded animal trying to hide a lame and mangled leg. When he had finished as best he could he turned again to Cassandra, breathing a little too raggedly, hoping to see some shift in her face, some sign she understood.

“I do not believe your concerns to be unfounded, Commander,” she began.

“Thank you.” “However, I do not believe it warrants your resignation or replacement.”

“What?” he spat, incredulous.

“We face our first true test of battle as a unified force against Corypheus soon. It is understandable that you might begin to doubt-”

“This is beyond doubt, Seeker. If I am made to lead our people into battle in this condition we will fail. Our people will die. The Inquisitor will- I cannot let that happen! I will not!”

Cassandra’s scowl deepened. “You asked for my opinion and I’ve given it. What more do you expect of me?”

“I expect you to keep your word,” Cullen sneered, rubbing at another sudden spike at his temples. “It’s relentless, I can’t-”

“You give yourself too little credit,” she said.

Another time he might’ve seen it for what it was - a compliment, a confidence in his abilities. But he was too fogged with pain and the nattering of too-close memories. The sweat was in his eyes, stinging, and the smell of fire and steel lit up his nerves.

“If I’m unable to fulfill what vows I kept, then nothing good has come of this. Would you rather save face than admit-”

The door behind him swung open quietly, the faintest squeak of a hinge, and he wheeled at the sound. “I said get OUT!” he roared.

And then his eyes cleared, and all his fire died. Standing in the doorway, wind-chapped and exhausted in her stained travelling clothes, was Aadhlei. She stared at him for a long beat, too shocked to speak. Coward that he was, he couldn’t bear the thought of what she might say when her voice returned. Cullen hung his head and stalked out the door, too ashamed to look at her, mumbling in a low and ragged voice: “Forgive me.”

Part of him was sure she wouldn’t. Another part of him, small and painfully bitter, was sure she would. He could not say which was worse.

#da:i fanfic #cullen rutherford #cullen x lavellan #cullavellan #oc: aadhlei #da:i #this was terrifying to write y'all #I just want you to know that #so anyway here's the hurt #the comfort is still being edited #but heyyy #for like the two of you waiting for this: it's here

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thedragonswillreturn · 6 years ago

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Silent Night: Part 1

Hey guys! This is the first chapter of a new Jacksepticeye ego’s fanfic that I’m starting. It’s basically going to follow the ego’s as they try to save Jack from Anti, and it’ll have a lot of action and violence, maybe some guts and gore I dunno yet, and it’ll be the sort of thing that bounces from totally ridiculous to completely serious all the time. So...read if that sounds interesting to you, I guess? Thanks!

“RUN! RUN! You need to RUN!”

Thunder boomed, lightning cracked open the sky, rain hammered down in sheets. A swarm of men with acid green hair stood on the roof, watching in horror as a brown-haired figure choked and gagged, twitching violently on the cement. He fought to lift his head up, straining against his convulsions, his whole body shaking, veins bulging out of his arms and forehead, and made weak eye contact with one of them, “RUN!” he screamed, forcing the words out of his throat, “RUN!”

“N...no!” The person he made eye contact stepped forward, wearing a red spandex suit and a blue eye mask, his voice barely audible over the screeching wind, “no! I’m not leaving you! None of us are! We’re going to save you!”

“Oh God...” whispered a man in a red and gray cap far back behind them, watching the scene unfold in a dreamlike state, his whole body shaking, “not again...not again…”

“We’re not going anywhere!” Yelled the first man, taking another step forward, leaning into the howling wind and clenching his jaw as the storm whipped raindrops into his eyes, “we’re going to save you!”

“Very true, Jackieboy,” said a man with a surgeon's mask and coat and black glasses, stepping up beside Jackieboy and drawing a syringe out of his coat, looking out at the man in front of them, “we vill save you, for I am ze good doctor! And I never lose a patient. At least not one I didn’t mean to lose, you know vat I mean Jackieboy?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, Schneeplestien. Unfortunately.” Jackieboy man said, rolling his shoulders back and leaning up on his toes, never taking his eyes off the twitching man except to smile patiently at Schneeplestien, “and although I respect your impulsive desire to murder the people who have been placed in your care, which they sort of deserve for trusting you in the first place, could we not talk about accidentally killing people while our friend is dying!”

“Vell it is not my fault my patients die!” Schneeplestein yelled, looking extremely offended, “it’s just that sometimes Dr. Schneeplestein gets a little….annoyed with his patients, going on about ‘pain’ and ‘blood’ and saying that he is ‘not real doctor’ and vhen that happens I tend to, you know, reminisce back to good old days where ve killed patients instead of trying to save zem, very good old days I must say, and by the time I remember zat zis is not task at hand, the patients oxygen is cut off and I’m holding their small intestine in one hand and their gallbladder in another and everything has gone all topsy turvy and- oh god you’re here.”

“Howdy, bitches.” A green haired man with a cat mask decorated with playing card symbols and green hair down to his shoulders stepped up beside the other two, surveying the twitching, screaming brown-haired man before them with narrowed eyes, “what did I miss?” He tapped the tip of his wand against the palm of his hand, “and why the hell are we discussing Schneeplestein’s patient's mortality rate right now, when he all know it sucks! He practically kills them for sport!”

“Eh. Vas something to do.”

“We were waiting for you, Marvin!” Jackieboy yelled, fighting to be heard over the rain, “where were you? I was worried something happened!”

Marvin glared at him, “well I’m sorry! Not all of us can just drop everything and run the second you call us! Some of us have lives, remember! You know, those of us who haven’t managed to convince our wives to leave us for tennis instructors!”

“Okay, first of all, fuck you.” Schneeplestein muttered.

“Oh shut up! I couldn’t just disappear without telling Priscilla where I was going!”

“Priscilla is a hateful cat who would leave you if she could.”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, SCHNEEPLESTEIN!” Marvin screamed, glaring at the doctor who glared, back, and growling curses under his breath before jabbing a finger at the convulsing man and yelling, “now, could someone please explain to me what the fuck Jack is on right now, and how the fuck I can get some for myself? Seriously, what is that shit? LSD? Shrooms? What?”

“Ooh! If friend is in need of stimulants, Dr. Schneeplestein has a very wide selection of-”

“I DO NOT WANT ANY OF YOUR SECOND RATE NARCOTICS, DR. FUCKFACE!”

“Could both of you calm down?” Jackieboy man screamed, glaring at both of them, “and he’s not on anything Marvin, you know that! It's...it’s our old friend.”

“Ahh…” Marvin said, looking back out at Jack and frowning, “glitch bitch has returned, eh? Well that’s just fantastic, isn’t it? God, this is so not how I wanted this day to go.”

“GO!” Jack screamed and they all spun to look at him as he thrashed on the ground, the world around him starting to glitch uncontrollably, whole patches of his skin flickering between from white to a pale, sickly green. He jerked his face towards the three of them as his back arched, made eye contact with Jackieboy, and screamed, “RUN! PLEASE!”

“G-G-Guys...stay back...don’t get any closer…” Whispered the man in the cap, still collapsed on the ground far behind the four of them, still shaking, still barely able to process what was happening, a part of him refusing to believe that this was real, that any of this could possibly be real.

“So. Assuming we’re not listening to Mr. Possessed and Mr. Custody Battle,” Marvin muttered, “does anyone have an actual plan?”

“Ve take your vand and shove it up his ass,” said Schneeplestein, who’s surgical mask was now stretched over his glasses.

“We are not fucking doing that!” screamed Marvin.

“Vhy? Either it gets him out and ve win, or he stays and we learn little more about our friend’s kinks! Knowledge is power! Besides...more useful in ass than in your hands.”

“SHUT! UP!”

“Both of you!” Jackieboy man yelled, shaking his head and splattering raindrops everywhere, “can’t you just get along? For five seconds, please, then you can go back to fighting, I promise.” He glared at them and took a deep breath, speeezed his eyes shut, before opening them again and setting his jaw. “Look. Here’s the plan.” He yanked the surgical mask off Schneeplestein’s eyes, who looked genuinely surprised at being able to see again, “Schneeplestein, you go up there and try to get him out before he takes control, okay? Me and Marvin will be on standby if things go bad, which they probably won’t, I know you’re very capable and I completely trust you,, but if they do, you get out of the way so the two of us can try to beat him into submission and injure him so you can try to get him out again. Alright? Are both of you ready?”

Schneeplestein and Marvin glared at each other for a moment longer before turning back towards Jack and nodding.

“Yes.”

“Absolutely.”

“Fantastic.” Jackieboy reached up to touch the blue eye mask he had on his face to tighten it, the others doing the same with theirs, “then let’s-”

“You guys!”

The three of them finally turned to acknowledge the capped man behind them, sitting there in a crumpled heap, his face bloodless, his eyes wide with fear, slowly shaking his head, “no...no...you guys...you can’t.”

Schneeplestein grinned, “Oh, don’t vorry favorite patient! The good doctor has got zis completely under control! Ve’ll be fine!”

“But...but…”

“Chase, it’ll all be okay, I promise!” Jackieboy man yelled, turning to smile at him as Jack started to twitch and scream even more erratically, the wind continuing to scream, the rain hitting their faces so hard and fast it stung. One lightning bolt and than another exploded across the sky, illuminating the entire roof in a harsh light, and Jackieboy man smiled Chase for another second before turning to look at Jack’s thrashing body and whispering a quick prayer under his breath, his hopeful mask slipping for half a second, before slapping it back on and turning to the other two, “Don’t worry you guys, we’ve got this! We’re going to save Jack, and everything’s going to be fine! I promise! Now come on, let’s do this thing! Schneeplestien, go!”

Masterpost with all chapters

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticegos #jackieboy #jackieboy man #dr schneeplestein #fanfic #marvin #marvin the magnificent #marvin the magician #own writing #antisepticeye #anti #jse #jse community #jse egos #jse fandom

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citruspeel · 7 years ago

Text

to gold be the gory

How Golden Kamuy Outshines Competition

A Review

“GORUDEEEEEEN KAMUUUUUUY!”

That’s how I first heard of Golden Kamuy – a male voice screaming its title in around 2-minute intervals. I was busy slurping ramen in the communal eating tent in Odori Park when it blared in my ear. All through the day, they played its trailer on the tent TVs over and over again. It seemed interesting, and it was quite apt to see it being promoted there - after all, we were surrounded by snow, in Hokkaido, where the story was set. I kept seeing it in bookstores and its artwas eye-catching. But as soon as I was back on home soil, my interest was gone.

Life caught right back up with me, so I forgot about Golden Kamuy completely. Not until I saw some artists I follow post amazing fan art of it on Twitter. They were all singing it praises and the official art was beautiful, so I thought, ‘aw heck, why not?’

Let me tell you: there are no reasons not to.

SUGIMOTO, THIS ISN’T SHOUNEN ANYMORE

I’m what you call a…sporadic manga reader. I’m not up to speed with manga trends and it can take me a while to catch up. I read stuff that get my attention and when they’re recommended by my friends (I still haven’t touched Boku no Hero Academia or Shokugeki no Soma, though). I also don’t limit myself to just one genre. There are months that I devour shoujo/josei manga, like Hana Nochi Hare and Dame na Watashi ni Koi wo Kudasai. Then I’d switch over to read through volumes upon volumes of shounen manga (hi, Gintama, Haikyuu). Then there are periods wherein I just don’t read at all, devoting my time to other activities instead.

Golden Kamuy, brainchild of artist Noda Satoru, is probably my first real foray into the seinen manga territory. The art, the storyline, the comedy, the stakes – every page told me that I wasn’t reading shounen anymore. Dick jokes weren’t dealt with caution. Gore was done with no shame. Raw Japanese scans didn’t have the hiragana reading aids. Strangely enough, it brought me back to all the titles I used to read when I was young. It made me realize all the stuff I was reading back then were very edgelord-esque and middle-school-syndrome-ish - the stuff of nightmares. Body horror, violence, gore, debauchery – CLAMP and Kaori Yuuki had primed my teenage self for all of them.

But at least, now, the edginess was dealt with a more mature hand.

Hence it was no surprise that Kamuy ignited a sense of familiarity. I had mellowed down when I grew up (it saddens me that I really am quite a grown-up now) and, in turn, settled for fun, cheerful, romantic manga (to keep the dreariness of everyday life away, I guess haha). I got used to leisurely pacing and lighthearted comedy. Reading Golden Kamuy felt like I skydived into the unforgiving arena I had left – an arena that had been made fresher, better.

SO FRESH, YOU’RE EATING IT RAW

What makes Kamuy an instant hit is its interesting combination of rarely-used elements. Post-War, Meiji-Era historical, early 1900s, hunting, Hokkaido, Ainu culture: can you really find another title that uses said mix? It’s no wonder people are attracted to the series.

It also helps that the art is just spectacular. Noda’s artistic skill shines through every page, chapter, and volume cover. His poses are dynamic, his coloring brave. Sometimes the color combinations he uses just scream modern, serving as nice contrasts to the story’s historical, traditional setting. His character designs are unique and fresh – more so their personalities. Sugimoto’s facial scars are refreshing to the eye; Tsurumi’s half-corrupted face paired with a metal plate is a design I’ve never seen before. His art style brings out his designs to life in a way only he can – we’ve all seen cross-dressing men and shaved-bald convicts before, but still he was able to make Ienaga and Shiraishi look striking.

The research that he has done to make the story believable is commendable. He even has his own Ainu and Russian language consultants. Each detail he adds in shows that every page is a product of hard work. He even features real buildings in Hokkaido and Otaru (I’ve also been to Otaru and it was nice to see it in the manga!). The information we learn from Noda’s usage of the Ainu culture, hunting practices, and military details – all of this, weaved in with an intricate, explosive plot, give us a series that feels…whole. Complete.

Kamuy also spreads word about the Ainu culture in a fun and entertaining way. I haven’t heard a lot about them in the series I’ve encountered – I’ve only heard of them through Rurouni Kenshin. Nothing since then. To see them in the spotlight is a breath of fresh air. Even the Ainu themselves feel the same way – apparently they told Noda that they didn’t want to be portrayed as discriminated anymore. They wanted strong Ainu characters, and boy, did Noda deliver.

NO-PARDON PLOTTING

Because of its seinen status, you can tell that Noda has no qualms about plotting and story structure. We’re given heavy-hitting story elements right off the bat: war vet undertakes a legendary treasure hunt to help the (stolen-by-his-friend) love of his life, requiring him to track down 24 of the most dangerous insane criminals to have ever walked Japan. It’s throwing punches right from the get-go. Kamuy doesn’t baby anyone (except for bear cubs). With its pacing, convoluted plot and bevy of interesting characters, it challenges the reader to not just enjoy, but to keep up. It’s unapologetic in everything that it does – character, story, and art.

CHARACTERS

Immortal War Vet, Morality Pet Minority Action Girl, Escape Sweet-tooth King, and so forth. They somehow fulfill stereotypes but at the same time, Noda manages to twist things to a whole new light. His milieu, too, aids in solidifying the characters he writes – the setting itself makes them unforgettable.

It is also in his cast that we see how unapologetic Noda is. Considering that Sugimoto is to track 24 of the most dangerous criminals in the country, Noda doesn’t shy away from showcasing every kind of evil that can exist within humans. We tackle lust, greed, wrath, and avarice with a dash more reality compared to the caricatures we often see in shounen manga. Those faint of heart and innocent countenance will have a hard time stomaching Noda’s cast as it unfolds. The more I read, the more I believe Noda probably has a subscription to the Crime Investigation channel (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Truth be told, humans are very much capable of evil, and I’m not surprised that some of his villains are actually modeled after real-life criminals.

Notable characters:

IENAGA - a cross between Erszebet Bathory (a countess who was known to kill virgins and bathed in their blood to remain beautiful) and of H.H. Holmes, a real-life owner of an actual murder hotel in the US during the 19th century. Ienaga’s first dungeon appearance made me flashback to some of mangaka Kaori Yuki’s ornate gorefests such as Count Cain, Angel Sanctuary, and Ludwig Revolution. Noda felt no shame when he drew each and every one of Ienaga’s murderscapes.

HENMI KAZUO – this one really made me blink when I was reading it. Serial killer Henmi Kazuo is an exploration of the depths of human depravity. Imagine, being stimulated by gore and the act of clinging to life the same way his brother did when a bear ate him. Damn, writing that sentence made me realize Noda just straight up doesn’t baby his audience. This is the stuff Netflix series Mindhunter would kill to have. This also would really need some real guts (pardon the pun) to execute.

SHITON – he also made me stop in my tracks. Shiton, a full-on bestiality-practicing scientist, was something I’ve never read about in any other manga at all. I’ve read about murderers and criminals and incestuous personalities (Kaori Yuki and George RR Martin weren’t shy about it at all), but this character was just sick. He’s a special type of crazy (although to be perfectly honest I am sure that somewhere in the world some sick human is partaking in stuff like this), and for Noda to actually use him in his manga just takes courage. He just has the balls to make you think twice, but hey, when you’re in seinen territory, everything seems to be a free-for-all. And let’s be real frank here – there’s just another level of human debauchery in real life that most people won’t even be able to stomach hearing about.

TSURUMI – Tsurumi is the stuff of legend. He reminds me the most of Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, but with his insanity turned up into eleven. He also has shades of Leonardo’s character in Django Unchained, as well as other manic-type ‘villains’ that we’ve seen in other series. But his impulsiveness and flamboyant nature places him a cut above the rest. Noda also draws him so dynamically (seriously!) that whenever he appears, your eyes are just drawn to him.

Plus, I have to say that I’m really impressed with the level of real-world research that Noda uses in developing his characters. Tsurumi says that he has lost a part of his frontal lobe, which in turn affects his temper and his violent tendencies. This is actually true in real life, and has been seen in a high-profile murder case involving a famous football player in the United States. Because of the repetitive head injuries that the player received playing the sport, his own personality/temper had changed, and resulted him in killing his girlfriend in cold blood.

Of course we have the holy trinity of Sugimoto (classic lovable romantic badass war vet protagonist), Asirpa (butt-kicking girl-child) and Shiraishi (adorable slinky/comic relief), all gems in their own right. Noda has endeared them to us with the heartwarming dynamic between Sugimoto + Asirpa, plus Shiraishi’s antics. Character-wise, they seem to follow a specific trio formula that works in almost anything. Harry-Hermione-Ron, Gintoki-Kagura-Shinpachi, Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke. While his main character trio wins people over, his supporting cast can also shine bright on their own. Some great examples that come to mind are Ogata, Tanigaki, and Monkey-Scream Guy Otonoshin (even Tsukishima is memorable! He even has the Voldemort nose, doesn't he?).

Noda’s principle of mixing reality with caricature is also evident in his character designs. With every cast member we meet, it’s clear that Noda is far from being a sufferer of the six-faces-only syndrome. His designs do sometimes border on the impossible (Monkey-Scream guy’s eyebrows, really?), but it’s not a bad thing. If anything, it makes the visual experience of reading the comic even more worthwhile.

THE ART

Noda is a great manga artist. Let’s start with that.

Just look at these covers!

This coloring + color schemes!

This character design!!

I’ve been raving about his character designs for a few paragraphs now but it’s just really that good. I love his eye for composition and his impeccable framing for action and comedy. I’ve always thought that framing comics need special planning – especially action + comedy ones. You have to ensure that the first thing the reader sees in the next panel will make the action/joke understandable and clear. It takes great skill to decide what the reader sees and doesn’t see. Through Golden Kamuy’s 158 chapters, he makes use of this skill to make us laugh whenever Asirpa’s badgering them to make citatap, or when there’s a new animal part to eat, or when Tanigaki’s out showing nudes of himself to people. If the pages weren’t framed well, the jokes would’ve fallen flat. Let’s also not forget his adeptness in drawing facial expressions. This manga just does faces so well.

(Just look at Asirpa! collage c/o the Golden Kamuy reddit)

His fight scenes are also top-notch. You just know that Noda, as a mangaka, isn’t knocking about. The flow of action in every page is just downright superb. It also shows his mastery of human anatomy – and his courage when it comes to gore. His use of crisp blacks and whites, solid lineart, thick, expressive color give us pages that are fresh and clean...I’d be a fool to dismiss his technique, because his (and his studio’s, I guess?) skill just shines through every page.

He’s also not shy when it comes to details – which is admirable. After all, it takes some great dedication for someone to give his main character distinct facial scars that will require repeated drawings in almost every single page (and give his heroine a detailed headband). It makes me wonder just how he does it with a weekly schedule. His color pages look like they were done digitally, but I still have doubts whether or not he does his chapters by hand.

THE HEART

It took me just a few days to wolf down Kamuy. It was a romp right from the start – nail-biting, stomach-clutching, hair-raising. A truly entertaining piece, if you will. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed with Kamuy, it’s that it somehow lacks heart.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s great! I love it. It’s superbly crafted, beautifully drawn, amazingly detailed. It’s one of the rare titles that I’m actually thinking of collecting. But it’s also a title that seems to drip technique. Like the author made it for the sake of drawing an intense, gripping title, but somehow solely for that purpose. It’s a career-conscious showcase of ability, a manufactured adventure in the truest sense. I couldn’t see the earnestness I found in Sorachi Hideaki’s Gintama, or the relatability of Nakahara Aya’s Dame na Watashi wo Koishite Kudasai. Full Metal Alchemist showed Arakawa Hiromu’s passion for muscled men, her interest in alchemy, and views on family, while Haruichi Furudate’s love for volleyball, sportsmanship and camaraderie is undeniable in Haikyuu!!. While I do like the backstory that Sugimoto is somehow based on his real-life war-vet grandfather, I find it a bit sad that it seems to lack that personal touch I’ve always liked seeing in other manga.

But it doesn’t mean that it’s not great. I will still recommend it to everyone I know. Awesome story, great art, refreshing comedy. By all means, read it! (Not sure about the anime, but I keep hearing reviews that we’re better off with the manga). Golden Kamuy is a title of both style and substance – whether it’s about the gore or the gold, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

Then let me know if you agree with my upcoming post, an analysis of Sugimoto and Asirpa.

Photos c/o reddit + our lovely scanlators + Satoru Noda

#Golden Kamuy #Sugimoto Saichi #Sugimoto the Immortal #Asirpa #Noda Satoru #Manga #Review

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