#could be spicy somehow.. however the fruits healing powers and taste only work if you’re within a certain range of Xīn Yá. if u try to leave

[puppyeared]

bestieesssss /platonic

(Xīn Yá belongs to me, Sailor belongs to @crow-cap)

[letmewritemylife]

Wizards Don’t Exist

I found myself through the dark…                                                                                       - Citizen Soldier

A/N Yes the title has nothing to do with the fic, but it was cute

TRIGGER WARNINGS Very brief reference to bullet wounds

Lara’s eyes open slowly, her vision adjusting to the dim light, and she struggles to inspect the room. The dark wooden walls around her are much higher than any other she’s ever seen, decorated with colourful masks and climbing plants. Heavy blue curtains cover the big window on the opposite side of the room and the only light is a candle on the bedside table to her left, which spreads an intense scent of moss and lichens. Lara outstretches her arm to touch the bed frame, made of a wood that seems burnt to the touch, almost black and somehow just as warm as the covers on the bed. But again, Lara isn’t sure what they are made of, their material is too soft to even be very expensive wool.

“Now where the hell am I?” she murmurs, her voice still deep and sleepy.

If not for the painful wounds in her chest, she would jump on the spot when she hears a loud voice coming from a corner of the room. A woman dressed in a long indigo dress smiles at her, saying something in a language that Lara can’t even recognize. Noticing her confused face, the woman presses a finger to her own throat, a purple light travelling around her neck. “Sorry, I forgot you didn’t speak Duirlian.”

Lara is about to sit up, gripping the edge of the bedside table for balance, but the other woman screams at her, her green eyes wide open. “Don’t you move. Urill spent an hour stitching you up, if you ruin her work we’re never gonna hear the end of it.” 

Lara narrows her brows, falling back on the soft mattress. “Who? No, wait. Who are you, who is your friend, where am I and why am I here in the first place?”

The woman smiles, trotting closer to the bed like an excited child. “I’m Yngun,” she says, offering her hand for Lara to shake. “my friend Urill and I are Enchantresses and… well, technically so are you-”

“I am what?”

“Hey, slow down with the questions, they’re already piling up,” Yngun silences her, plopping on the bed. “You’re on Duirl, sixty-four galaxies north of your galaxy. Or south, I can never remember how these interstellar coordinates work…” 

“Doesn’t matter, go on,” Lara says, pinching the bridge of her nose as her head starts to hurt.

“Oh yeah, and the Creator brought you here to, well, not to bleed out on a sidewalk.” 

Yngun’s careless tone makes it seem like a normal thing, but Lara’s eyes widen and she has to fight her urge to jump back up. “God brought me here?”

The other woman laughs like she hasn’t done in decades. “Oh no, not God. Just the embodiment of the creating principle in your blood, aka the thing that gave you your powers.” 

Again, the ease with which she says it sends Lara crazy. “Please tell me I’m drunk,” she comments, covering her face with her hands. Gosh, how she misses the times when the strangest thing she had ever heard was that her father’s real name wasn’t “Dad.”

Yngun pouts. “You may be, I’m not sure whether they put alcohol in your anesthesia.” 

“In my what?” Great, human-like aliens know what anesthesia is. What’s next? Aliens reading Marlowe?

“Sweetheart, Urill had to take out three bullets out of your chest, she had to give you something.” 

“AND WHO IS THIS URILL??” 

As if Lara had magically summoned her, a woman walks in the room, dressed in a long, orange dress. Finely embroidered golden flowers embellish her corset, contrasting with her dark skin. She moves a mass of curly, black hair behind her shoulder and throws a confused look at both Lara and Yngun, but she doesn’t have the time to say anything before her friend can talk for her.

“She’s Urill,” Yngun says, pointing at the woman with a wide grin.

“Why is she already awake?” Urill asks, her deadpan voice melting away Yngun’s smile.

She groans loudly, throwing her hands up in the air. “What’s this, an interrogation?”

Lara arches a brow, struggling to hide the pain coming from her chest as she adjusts her position in the bed. “Sorry for waking up in another galaxy and trying to figure out what the f*ck was going on,” she comments sarcastically.

Yngun looks at her offended. “Hey, watch your language, you’re basically underage.”

“What? I’m like… thirty-six.”

“And I’m five hundred and sixty-two, so you’re underage compared to me.”

Lara cocks a brow. “That’s not how age works.”

Urill rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry, you get used to it after a while.”

“Yeah, about that...” Lara says, attempting to sit up before being pushed back on the bed by Yngun. “Do I have to? I mean, can’t I just go back to Earth and go to jail like normal people?”

Yngun tucks her in. “Sweetheart, they’re not gonna bring you to jail, they’re gonna burn you at the stake.”

“Metaphorically,” Urill corrects.

“Would not be the first time,” Lara replies.

“Not happening,” Yngun insists, digging her nails in her fawn skin. “We won’t let them vent their repressed anger on you, right?” she affirms, turning to Urill for a sign of assens.

The other woman nods. “Plus, I’m sure you’d appreciate some more information about this whole situation.”

“That would be very kind of yours,” Lara replies with a smirk.

Urill crosses her arms on her chest, tilting her head slightly to the side as her dark eyes scan Lara for any sign of pain caused by her wounds. “I’ll try to make it as short as I can,” she promises, but despite this her explanation seems infinite, covering even the smallest details of Project 58, Lara’s birth and adoption, her biological family.

As the witch talks, Lara’s head is spinning. The truth about her washes over her like waves, dragging her under an ocean of unsolved questions and doubts. It was all fake. Her parents weren’t her parents, or at least not her biological ones. Lara hates admitting it, but a feeling of rage towards them rises inside her, making her want to scream and break everything. Instead, she takes a deep breath and buries her face in her hands, letting Urill’s words sink in.

At some point, the woman falls silent, a look of pity on her face. Yngun reaches for Lara’s hand, her lips slightly curved downwards as she strains her voice to be soft. “Are you okay?”

Lara laughs bitterly, uncovering her face and her tear-stained cheeks. “Of course I am, it’s not like I’ve just found out my whole life was a lie,” she replies sarcastically. However she lets Yngun hold her hand, finding the tiniest bit of comfort in those warm fingers wrapped around her cold ones.

“I’m sorry,” Urill’s previously detached voice seems now much gentler.

Lara sniffs, holding more tightly onto Yngun’s hand. “Why didn’t they tell me?” she asks, her voice lower than before. “I- I would’ve loved them all the same…”

Yngun shares a look with her friend, before she sets her green eyes back on Lara. “Maybe to them it didn’t matter whether you were adopted or not,” she attempts.

“But it does to me,” Lara argues, a hint of resentment that she’s sure she will regret in the future. “I had the right to know.”

Yngun can do nothing but look away, her eyes slipping on the parquet as her thumb caresses the back of Lara’s hand. Seconds pass, filled only with the unnatural silence that has fallen on the room. After an indefinite amount of time, Lara swallows heavily, fighting the lump in her throat to talk. “What did you say I am?”

Urill takes a tentative step forward, eyes glued to the blue blankets. “An Enchantress.”

She nods. “An Enchantress,” she replies to herself, tasting that new word on her tongue. “Sounds good,” she comments, moving her gaze to the witch standing beside her.

Urill attempts a smirk. “Great fun, you don’t really get bored easily.”

Lara smirks back. An Enchantress. She has no idea what that means but the name is pretty cool. The place seems okay too. For a moment she wonders what someone she knows would think of that new title, but she soon casts that thought away, still too painful for her.

Instead she turns to her two new colleagues. “And what does an Enchantress do?”

Yngun smiles excitedly, clearly happy to talk about her job, if one could call it that way. “Oh lots of things: fighting demons, protecting planets, travelling across the multiverse, just looking cool-”

“There isn’t a limit,” Urill interrupts her. “As some of the most powerful magic users in the multiverse and the closest living beings to the original principle that created the universe, our powers are immense.”

“The only downside is that mister ‘I’m God but not really’ often asks us to do stuff,” Yngun adds with a smirk.

Lara laughs. “Yeah about that, you haven’t told me yet who this guy is.”

“The embodiment of Substance Y.” Urill’s answer is short and direct. Lara already loves her. “However I think it’s time we leave now,” she adds, turning to Yngun. “You are still injured and need rest.”

Lara has to force herself not to laugh at Yngun’s poorly concealed pout, but right before the two witches have left the room a question comes to her mind. “Sorry?” The two women turn back to her, questioning looks on their faces. “Do you have any book about Enchantresses or stuff like that?” Urill smirks, already thinking of the shelves of volumes that she will drop by her bed in the following days.

It’s been not even three days since Lara’s sudden arrival on Duirl, yet she seems to have already accustomed to Yngun’s spicy food. Munching on a blue fruit that she doesn’t know the name of but tastes strangely like apples and that her new friend has covered in some unknown spice, Lara abandons another heavy volume at the foot of her bed, piled on top of the dozen others.

She groans when, upon opening the next one, she finds only those unknown characters that make up Urill’s language. After leaving the book on another pile, that of volumes to translate with magic, she reaches for another one. She’s quite glad to notice how the pain in her chest is dying out more quickly than she expected it too. According to Yngun, it’s because of her healing powers, mixed with Urill’s spells. 

For a moment, she wonders whether she’ll ever be able to heal people too. Urill’s magic is extremely appreciated on nearby planets and everyday desperate people walk into their house - honestly she’s not sure whether it has a name - asking to be healed. Not everyone is helped though. Yngun has to read the future first and decide whether the poor suppliant deserves to be healed by an Enchantress’ magic. 

Lara isn’t sure what are the criteria of her decision, maybe something depending on one’s potential for good or similar. It’s still a mystery to her whether Yngun had to take a decision in her case too.

Her thoughts are interrupted by a knock on the door. “Come in,” she says, expecting to see either one of her new colleagues.

Instead, a man walks in, smiling softly at her, a hand hidden behind his back. “I’m glad to finally meet you properly, Doctor Johnson,” the man greets her, slowly walking up to her bed.

She blinks slowly, trying ever so hard not to focus creepily on his eyes - why the heck are they purple? “Do I know you?” she asks, scanning her memory for any middle aged man who looks like one of those single dads from cheap sitcoms, but seems crazy enough to join a cult. It takes her a moment to put together all the pieces. “No wait, are you the Jesus guy who brought me here?”

“I could say yes,” he replies with an amused smile, sitting at the foot of the bed. “But most people prefer calling me ‘the Creator.’”

His presence is confusing for Lara. Despite his abnormal height and his consequent weight, the bed doesn’t dip in the slightest, staying as if no one had joined Lara on the mattress. Furthermore, his body radiates some sort of warm energy, almost as strong as fire. She tells him that and he smiles softly again, as if he were talking with a child.

“What are you doing here?” she asks after a moment, her fingers lingering on the pile of books to her side as her eyes scan the so-called Creator.

“I figured that you might use some explanations about your powers,” he says, leaning slightly forward. “I doubt the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj spent too much time studying your magic.”

She nods and he begins talking. “Billions and billions of years ago, our universe was born with the intervention of a creating principle that some human scientist would later call ‘Substance Y.’ As the newborn cosmos expanded, Substance Y assumed a form to better keep an eye on its infinite creation.”

“And you’re that form?”

“Precisely. But my role is simply that of a watcher, of a guardian, if you will. Substance Y therefore chose a small number of sorceresses to guard the universe and protect it with their powers. Of course, this was an important responsibility that was rewarded with immense powers capable of completing the wide variety of tasks that these people could come across.”

Lara shakes her head, furrowing her brows. “This doesn’t make any sense, Urill told me about experiments and-”

“Useless, all useless,” he interrupts her. “You already had magic inside you, as well as Substance Y. The diluted mixture they put inside your veins did nothing but temporarily pause your true powers.” The Creator’s tone seems almost angry and Lara wonders if he feels offended because of what Agency X did to her. 

“And how does this whole thing work? I mean… Why am I here? Shouldn’t there be another woman already doing this?”

“The previous Enchantress was killed by a human witch who stole part of her powers just a few years before you were born. Not to scare you, but this kind of event is rather common. The last human Enchantress was also killed, burnt at the stake if I remember correctly.”

Lara nods, suddenly not so happy to have been chosen for such a task. “Well, sorry to tell you, but hiring someone who will likely be dead in forty years at best seems stupid.”

The Creator laughs, forcing himself up from her bed by gripping the footboard. “Did no one tell you? Enchantresses can live for millennia.”

“What?!”

“Dark magic permitting, of course. But I suggest you take a look inside Urill’s library, she will be more than happy to help you.” With that said, he walks up to the door.

“Wait!” she stops him. Once he’s turned, his purple eyes back on her face, she swallows heavily. “What about my biological family?”

The corners of his lips turn slightly upwards, a sad smile forming on his face. “Your parents, Abraham and Sandra should be their names, were snapped away. But your brother, Jonathan Houghton, is safe and sound in Boston. Yngun will help you contact him.” These are his last words before he disappears, going back into whatever dimension he came out of.