#cow demon au

[talesfromawannabejournalist]

Charlie: Hey Dad a package was delivered here saying it was for you

Lucifer: Oh! That must be the new fridge I ordered.

Charlie: That’s sweet of you Dad but the hotel doesn’t need a new fridge. Our current one is more than perfectly running

Lucifer: Oh no sweetie this isn’t for the rest of you this is simply just for Adam so I can put all his food in here without anyone trying to steal his food. 

Charlie: Well that's certainly thoughtful of you Dad.

Lucifer: Well I mean it's a bit for both of us since I need to keep him well fed.

Charlie: Adam is an adult Dad, he can look after himself

Lucifer: Oh Char Char, in another case you’d be right but you have to understand that my dear Bessie NEEDS to be well fed. Because the more he eats the more milk he produces

[talesfromawannabejournalist]

Adam shifted a bit and suddenly he was on top of Lucifer. He spread his legs out a bit and managed to sit right on top of Lucifer’s dick. And started thrusting forward then backwards over and over again. Lucifer was still mainly focused with his meal. Sucking harshly on his Bessie’s large pink nipples trying to get as much milk as he could. Finally when Adam was finished so was Lucifer and they both collapsed beside each other.

Lucifer let out a loud burp

Lucifer: pardon me

Cow demon Adam was munching on some peaches, when he suddenly felt a weight on his back . He lazely looks behind him and it was goat demon Lucifer . Humping at him as he moans against his sweaty neck, because it's hot outside .

His little hands grabbing his tits, pulling and squeezing them as he humps him faster .

Adam just turned back to his food, ignoring the looks he gets from the others . Lucifer then shivers and came onto his back, before he sat down on Adam's lap .

"Peach ?"

"Thank u my love ~"

"Whatever ." Fighting to keep his blush down, as Lucifer teased him while eating the peach .

@talesfromawannabejournalist something like this ? I know it's short but it's all I get out of my brain this moment

[energysynergymatrix]

What a sweet looking guy I sure hope nothing bad happens to him (gets killed by the church and goes to hell for being a subject of idolatry)

[coinesse]

THE SILLIES.

Admin Jesse, Demon Lukas, Cow Binta, and Cat Stella

[jaewritesfic]

Melon!AU Part 2

If it had been anyone but Cass to suggest it, Bruce is certain that both Damian and Tim would have responded with an immediate and vehement, Are you insane?!

But it is Cass. It's Cass, so Damian makes a choked sound and bites out, “Help. The Pit Demon?”

Similarly, Tim chokes out, “I don't know about that one, Black Bat. I mean- it's- it looks-”

“Judging books?” Cass asks through comms, a gentle disapproval in her tone that rivals Alfred’s in effectiveness. Bruce himself feels a little cowed by it.

Diplomacy had not, after all, been on his mind before his daughter spoke up.

He should know better than to make assumptions, especially if she's right and the creature isn't as hostile as it seems.

That's still a very big if.

“Commissioner,” Bruce says lowly, turning his head. Gordon is lingering near the roof access stairway, having come up to brief them but seeming reluctant to even look down on the creature in the alley. “Have there been any casualties? Injuries?”

Jim falters, uncharacteristically rattled. Bruce can't blame him - there's a low level dread and an unsettling feeling just being in the same vicinity as the creature, and that's as a seasoned vigilante. Someone who faces death down regularly.

“Uh. No. No, it uh- it took some swipes at people who got too close, but it didn't connect. We backed off pretty fast and called you as soon as possible.”

Bruce blinks. “Not even any blood drawn?”

Gordon shakes his head. “Damn miracle. The thing is fast and those claws are vicious.”

He hears Cass hum into the comms, and he understands exactly why.

The thing in the alley is built to do damage. He has his doubts it was any kind of miracle that made it ‘miss’ any of the swipes it took.

Trying to scare them off indeed.

“Black Bat. What exactly are you reading off the creature?”

“Looking for exits. Desperate. Overwhelmed.”

Bruce hums. “Being cornered and desperate will make anyone or anything dangerous. We need to proceed carefully here. Even if it doesn't want to hurt anyone, that doesn't mean it won't if it thinks it has no other-”

The shadow that is Cass shifts in his periphery, and he looks up to the opposite roof just in time to bark, “Do not-!” as Cass steps off the roof and flips down into the alley.

Why are his kids so determined to give him a stroke?

Dick vaults up over the edge of the roof to join he and Tim, saying, “I'm here, what's-”

He cuts off and claps his hands over his ears with everyone else when the creature shrieks at Black Bat's unexpected arrival.

“Black Bat,” Bruce grits out, heart in his throat as he peers over the edge with ringing ears. “Retreat back to the rooftops now.”

One tap to the comm. No.

Bruce grits his teeth, fighting not to show his anxiety. It's not like Cass to refuse orders. Hell, he can't remember her ever disobeying an order in the field so blatantly.

The low warning noise the creature is making now is almost as bad as the shriek. Something about it sets off every alarm bell in his brain, like it was never meant to be heard by human ears. Almost a growl, almost a moan, something celestial and unfathomable.

Cass doesn't back up or get any closer. She raises a hand slowly in a little wave and says, “Hello.”

If it were possible to startle a fax machine, it would probably sound like the creature does as it jerks and snaps its mouth shut in surprise, lamplight eyes going huge and round.

Masterpost

[saltymarshmall0w]

Dp x Dc Demon twins AU

He couldn’t help the dreadful apprehension building in his gut as he approached the disaster titled “Fenton Works”. The magazine that started this all was in his lap, twisted and worn.

“Genius Child of Genius Woman Discovers Gorilla Male Actually A Female!” the cover read. 

The shock of seeing his twin brother’s face on the cover of a magazine with two adopted parents had taken Damian straight to his father, interrupting his work to shove the magazine in front of him. 

It took only four days after the debut of the magazine featuring the discovery for the Waynes to converge on Amity Park. 

It had to be a grab for their attention, of course. A magazine featuring the dead demon twin they missed the opportunity to ever meet.

Damian didn’t know what to expect from his long-dead twin. He mostly expected it to be a trick concocted by the league, having already met brainwashed clones of himself and his brother.

He hadn’t seen Danyal since he was eight years old and still naive to the league.

Damian was always the more skilled swordsman, the faster and stronger twin. The perfect soldier and heir. 

But Danyal was the “spare”, always a few seconds slower, strength giving out just a few seconds before Damian’s did. He questioned too many things and that eventually led to his death during a mission for the league. 

Of course, none of that mattered to Damian. As much as he liked being the older, better brother he much preferred having his twin by his side. Nights trading legends of the stars, whispered assurances and shared secrets. 

Just before he could ring the doorbell, the door swung open and his look-alike tumbled out of the house. 

“Yeah, I’ll be back by nine, mom!” Danyal yelled into the house, seemingly unaware of his guests as he tripped over his untied shoelace. He nearly bowled right into Damian, stopping just in time before hitting him. 

“Whoa! Sorry!” Danyal straightened, pushing his messy hair out of his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something else but snapped it closed at the appearance of his twin. 

Confusion, suspicion, and a whole myriad of expressions crossed his face, broadcasting his thoughts, before finally settling on— wonder.

“Dude, this is going to sound crazy, but you look, like, exactly like me.” 

That was how Damian found out his brother was an amnesiac.

And an idiot. 

They discovered Danyal’s identity as the town hero embarrassingly quickly, though his supposed parents didn’t notice when Phantom called them “Mo-Maddie!” 

As a civilian he was cowed by an unintelligent Jock, unknowingly stalked by a crazed conspiracy theorist, and dated one of the many “ghost hunters” that targeted Phantom. 

When Damian pointed all this out, Danny proudly let them know it was a “cover” to ensure no one would figure out his secret identity— the confident Phantom that got by on the bare bones of league instincts that remained and sheer dumb luck wasn’t the same as scaredy-cat Fenton.

His room was about as messy as Drake's, filled with the personality of a teenager untouched by the league. His friends and sister were filled with delusions of their best friend being a superhero with powers, rather than half-dead.

In a way, Damian was jealous Danyal could have such a normal life. He wasn’t weighed down by the death and pain he caused in the past. 

In other ways, Damian was grateful he wasn’t naive enough to think his own parents hunting him was “fine” or their attempts to comit war crimes on an interdimensional species “wasn’t a big deal”.

Perhaps his relapse in judgment could be forgiven. It had been six years since Damian saw his brother, in the chaos of bringing Danyal back to the manor and sending Jasmine off to an elite boarding school at her request, it wasn’t amiss that Damian had forgotten a few key details about his brother. 

Damian was always the more skilled swordsman, the faster and stronger twin. The perfect soldier and heir. 

But Danyal? 

He was an actor. He could lie, and charm and deceive better than any person Damian knew. Danyal played Mother, Grandfather and at times the entire league just to get his way. 

But he never lied to Damian before. 

At least, that was what Damian assumed, until an overcast Gotham day, where Danyal cornered Damian alone in the manor, eyes glowing an icey blue neither Phantom nor Fenton’s eyes ought to do. He wore a modern League of Assassins uniform, a familiar wakizashi blade formed from ice in his hand. 

“Grandfather wants you to quit this rebellion and come home.”

—

Other details to this idea I want but couldn’t work in

-Danny has a secret secret identity that’s a rogue that gets shit done

-Danny is lowkey annoyed Sam and Tucker were there for the whole portal incident, otherwise, he could have kept Phantom a secret. 

-Danny lived with the Fentons to steal their research and report back to Ra’s. 

-Also as a punishment for, like, questioning the league or something. 

-Danny resents Damian for being called the “spare” while Damian was the heir

-Ghost king stuff might be happening, but Danny has kept it on the DL so he could easily usurp Ra’s when he’s old enough

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

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[satanghulu]

the horrors of econs [teaser]

✦ PAIRING: satan x f!reader ✦ SUMMARY: Okay, you didn’t mean to summon a demon nor did you mean to throw a book at him but hey, it’s not like you expected the literal embodiment of Wrath to apparate in your apartment! Now, if only he could go back to where he came from… ✦ WARNING: College AU, crack, mild mentions of violence ✦ WC: 1K

MAIN STORY | FIC MASTERLIST | MASTERLIST

══════════════════

You were going to kill Solomon.

It’s a well-known fact that that guy was shady but really? Was he trying to give you an express pass straight to Death’s doorstep or something? Maybe he had always harboured a secret dislike for you because why on earth did the Economic textbook he lent you summon a--demon?!

“Human. Are you done staring at me?” The man--no, demon? brushes off the dust on the back of his pants. Wait, were those cow prints you see? No, wait. What are those hideous things draped across his neck? And, what was with his disaster of a shirt? For a second, you thought you had teleported to an alternate Jojo Bizarre Adventure universe.

”Your outfit is ugly as hell.” You blurted out, hands delayed in flying up to cover your mouth when you realised the words had escaped from you. The man--no, demon turns with flashing eyes, his tail swishing dangerously behind him. Oh my god, were those spikes embedded in them? Suddenly, you regret ever opening your mouth. This is why people always tell you to keep your mouth shut when you are in a sleep-deprived state. You could feel sweat beading at the side of your temple as you slowly backed away, edging to the bedroom door.

“Are you courting death, little lamb?” He hissed, taking a step closer. You took furtive glances around the room, swallowing hard when you realised the only makeshift weapon you had was the Econs textbook that Solomon had lent you.

The demon’s eyes had narrowed into slits, breathing coming out hot and heavy as if he was poised to attack you at a moment’s notice. Your grip on the textbook tightened as he advanced nearer to you, now a couple of steps away.

“Answer me, human--” The demon mocked you again, arms stretching forward presumably to attack you as you--

You threw the textbook at him.

Thud!

The textbook bounced off his head with a loud thud as he just stared at you in disbelief. At least, you had managed to get a headshot – your only accomplishment in life alongside the stupidest thing you have ever done. And somehow, you had landed yourself in deeper trouble if the shaking with barely contained rage from the thing was any indication.

You silently sent a prayer to the deity above, hoping that whoever was watching you from above would grant you a peaceful death. Although you weren’t one to believe much in religion, this seemed like a good time to start. Maybe next, an angel would drop from the sky too.

“HAHAHAHA!”

The hands you had raised as a shield were being forcefully put down by the entity in front of you.

“HAHAHA, I didn’t know humans could be this interesting.” Oh. The shaking was from laughter, you noted dumbly. You stared blankly at him before taking another step back, trying to covertly loosen his grip around your wrist.

Great, it seemed like the “demon” was a maniac too.

After struggling in his grip for a good minute, you gave up the fight and waited for his laughter to die down. “HAHAHAHA. I never thought the day would come when I would get bested by a human. HAHAHA.” The entity in front of you kept mumbling to himself with a crazed look in his eyes. Honestly, you were getting kinda worried for him too. There’s no way getting smacked by a book is as funny as he made it sound. 

After another minute, his laughter finally subsided and his hold on you had loosened enough for you to wiggle out tentatively. The thing stared at you before his mouth curled into a grin with a glint in his eye.

“So human, tell me why you summoned a demon.”

Well, at least you got your answer to the burning question plaguing you. However, it was not something you wanted to hear at the moment. It wasn’t reassuring, one bit at all.

“I’m really interested to hear what you want. Tell me why a measly human like you summoned one of the seven Denizens of Hell.” Said demon asked, voice growly in a way that gave you butterflies in the stomach; but the butterflies were trying to tear its way out to escape.

It took you a few moments to register his statement. The seven Denizens of Hell? You weren’t familiar with the concept but it seems to indicate that the demon standing before you holds a high rank which could potentially spell more trouble for you.

“Uh.” You started. “I didn’t summon you, I think?” You dragged out your words hesitantly, holding out both hands in front of you defensively. Immediately, his face pinched into a frown as he studied your expression.

“You’re not lying.” He concluded after a second. “Though, something must have happened for me to be summoned.” He sighed, finally moving out of your personal space to scan around your room – which had been trashed from the black void that had opened up to teleport the demon.

As you quietly bemoaned the state of your living quarters, the demon strides towards the textbook lying innocently on the ground. “This is it.” He bent at the waist to lean down and studied the title of the book. “An Introduction to Economics: 1st Edition.” He said stonily.

“How did you know?” It was a curious sight to witness, a demon with actual horns completed with a barbed tail was standing in the middle of the wreckage of your room as if he belonged there. You could hardly believe it but sadly, no matter how many times you rubbed your eyes, the scene remained the same.

“I felt the magic radiating off it.” He answered simply. 

“Where did you get the book from?”

“My friend lent it to me because-- Oh fuck.” You suddenly froze, feeling the blood drain from your face. The demon stared at you inquisitively, prompting you to finish your sentence.

“I have an exam tomorrow.”

══════════════════

a/n ▸ teaser teaser!! im still writing the rest of it but i just really like the introductory part of this so i wanted to make a separate post. im also not sure if this would end up as a series or just a long fic so bear w me huehue

edit #1 - full fic out here now!!

[thegnomelord]

CH 3: Hold Your Demons Close Maybe Then You'll Feel Something

CW:NSFW blood, gore, mutilation, killing, cannon typical violence, child abuse (it's minor but still there), drugging, military inaccuracies, Mage reader, Monster cod AU, poly141, eventual poly141 X reader, reader isn't a good person, a few masc terms used but overall gn.

Ao3; Word count: 19.1k (It's a heckin chonker) Big thanks for @rodolfoparras and @princeguri66 for betaing for me, love you guys!

Masterlist; Chapter 2 <-Chapter 3 (You are here) -> Chapter 4

Aisha remembers the day she thought she would die.

As a gift for the 10th birthday her mother had taken her to the market in the big city. It had been chaotic compared to their little village, so many people donkey carts, and mopeds moving around like crazy ants in a freshly exposed nest. Aisha had gotten lost, swept away by the time of movement, and ended up at the entrance of a shady alley where she'd stumbled on an old beggar woman.

Long as she lives she will never forget the sight of the woman. Strip her of flesh and blood and the memory will still be etched into her bones — of ghostly blue lines forming impregnable chains across sunken sunburned skin. Of dirty rags loosely hanging off skeleton thin shoulders. Of blood crusted bandages wrapped tightly around her shaved head to not scare the children running about, the cloth dipping into the eyeless sockets of her skull. Of her asking passerby for alms with the handless stumps of her arms.

The sight alone had frightened Aisha, but then the beggar had turned her head to Aisha as if she could hear the frantic beating of her heart. A sad saccharine croon left the mage woman's chapped lips as she looked right at her. "Hello, fellow daughter of Magnus."

Her mother found her then, pulling Aisha back while shouting at the woman at the top of her lungs. Aisha's mind had been too full of thoughts to notice her mother drop their shopping in favor of scurrying out of the market with Aisha in hand. She had only snapped back to reality when her mother had thrown Aisha into her father’s rusted little car, barely able to sit up straight before they were driving home to their village as fast as the car’s geriatric engine could go.

Aisha had been locked in the room she shared with her sisters, but the door did little to mute the way her parents argued all day long, accusations of infidelity and cursed bloodlines thrown around like bird feed. Most of it flew over her head, but Aisha had understood one thing: Her parents were afraid.

The strange men came to her house just as the sun had set, drawn out by the dying light like coyotes hunting for a stray lamb. The strong stench of rot heralding their arrival made her sputter to hold back the bile burning her throat. She remembers the sparks of yellow and red and blue and all the other stolen colors of the rainbow swirling in their cold eyes.

They chatted while inspecting her like a cow in the market, their language just as rough and hard as their hands. But they lost interest quickly, unable to find what they wanted to see. They turned to throw lecherous looks at her mother and older sisters before her father had stepped between them and her, protecting his daughter now that he knew Aisha wasn't a freak. He'd tensely asked them to leave after paying for their time, standing in the doorway and only going back inside when the strange men were well and truly out of sight.

Her parents let them in without complaint; Her father held her down, his steely gaze watching the men crowd her. Her mother whispered trembling words into her ear to just be a good girl as the men tore her shirt off. Aisha's questions and pleas and panic fell on deaf ears, her mother pressing a worn hand over her mouth to silence her cries as the men inspected her chest and arms. They pinched and pulled on her skin with hands scarred like gnarled tree bark, the roughness of their palms chafing her soft flesh.

Aisha remembers the days she thought she would die.

Waking up each day to wash under her mother's stalwart gaze so she could ensure Magnus hadn't sown seeds into Aisha's body while she slept. Going each week to the village elders to drink the special brew of Morgana's tears, spending agonizing hours curled up and sobbing on the floor with a stabbing pain in her chest, her heart beating like the wings of a snared bird as the poison made its way through her system. She'd lost count how many times her heart would stutter after every bout of joy or childish argument on the rare moments the children of the village would interact with her — any lick of emotion would force her to run home to check the pads of her fingers in fear that this time magic had cracked through her skin.

She had been so happy on her 15th birthday — the danger had passed. She wasn’t a mage. She could finally live a normal life, meet a boy, get married, have a family.

She’s 16 now. All those years of worry and fear feel like childhood bliss.

Aisha knows she will die.

It happened so suddenly; When her friend had jokingly rubbed a feather duster in her face, Aisha would have never expected a stupid sneeze to force liquid frost through her fingers. Pain had raced through her chest at the speed of lightning, an unknown force pulling her arms up, and the next thing she knew she had frozen over her neighbor's entire crop field. Aisha had barely heard her friend scream over the pounding in her ears, her legs moving on their own long before her brain could understand the pain in her hands or what she had done.

Her mind might still have been reeling, but her body understood she needed to run, needed to hide, before the sun fell and the coyotes came for her.

The house she's found to hide in is one of the many corpses the Russians left behind, stripped bare to rotting wood bones and crumbling bricks, moldy wall paper peeling in long thick strips and rickety boards creaking under the slightest pressure. Gravel crunches beneath heavy tires outside the decrepit house and a rumbling engine cuts through the silence. Aisha scrambles up the stairs to the second floor, hiding in a dingy closet with it's walls closing in around her like the sides of a cramped coffin. Termite made holes in the closet door act as peepholes, letting her see into the bedroom and watch the long shadows created by the car's lights stretch across the floor.

She bites her lip as the slightest twitch of her pinky finger makes pain bloom across her entire hand, though she's barely able to move her fingers with how stiff they are. Her tan skin bellow the wrists is corpse pale and cold, blood crusting the creases of her knuckles. The creaking of floorboards has Aisha hastily pressing her ice cold hands against her lips, the taste of her blood — copper and iron with a hint of something sweet like antifreeze — failing to churn her stomach when even the hint of slowly encroaching rot has her heart clogging her throat so not even a whimper can make it past her lips.

She’s sure her lungs stop working when a man crosses the threshold into the room, and immediately she’s hit with such a strong smell of decay, like death had crawled up her nose and died there. Her throat and chest spasm with the need to cough, tears freely running down her cheeks from how much effort it takes to keep quiet, but past her blurry vision she can see the man slowly walk into the room.

He’s tall and gangly like a newborn foal, bulky clothes widening his frame that’s mostly skin and bones, thinning blond hair badly swept over a sizable bald spot. He wouldn’t be so scary if his eyes didn’t glow an unnatural mixture of toxic green and burning red— the sight alone has goosebumps spreading across his skin, followed by a deep seated discomfort as if leeches are crawling inside her bones.

“Come out little girl,” Even his voice feels wrong, like glass ground on sandpaper, but he speaks with so much sweetness it’s disgusting. “We only want to talk to you, don’t worry you’re not in trouble.” She can tell he’s not from Urzikstan by the rough accent that muddles the Arabic words he speaks.

The floorboards creak softly as she shifts. His head swivels to look around the room and the man quickly walks over to the bed, dropping to his knees to look under it. “Fuck!” His facade falls as he snarls when he sees she’s not there, stumbling to his feet like a drunk. “I mean uh- don’t worry I’m not mad kid,” He chuckles lightly, trying to put on an act of a worried Samaritan, though the attempt falls short when his predatory eyes fall on the closet she’s hiding in.

“Hey, did you find her yet?” Another voice rings from the entrance of the room, this one feminine and with a slight drawl to her words as she speaks in english. It makes Aisha jump, though the squeaking boards beneath her go unnoticed when the new voice continues. “Boss is starting to get antsy and if we don’t find her soon he’ll be sticking your ass with the pigs.”

She can’t see well, but she’s certain the man shows a middle finger to the unseen person. “Fuck off,” He spits out the response like it’s a mouthful of poison, “We both know you’re the dead weight.” He says, taking a few steps around the bed, but luckily for Aisha he stops in the middle of the room. Aisha can hear how deeply he breathes in, before something catches in his throat and he coughs. “I can smell the magic, the wench is still in the house.”

“Bullshit.” The woman scoffs, “You say that every hunt and we end up wasting our time.” A moment passes before the unseen woman chuckles and adds. “You couldn’t smell shit if you shoved your head up your ass!”

The man openly seethes, quick and heavy footsteps carrying him right up to the woman and out of Aisha’s field of view. “You take that back you fucking bitch!” The snarl is more animal than man. Aisha can only assume he punches the woman from the way the floorboards groan loudly in the otherwise silent night, shoes scuffing on the floor, grunts and swears filling the air as the noises of fighting steadily recede to another room.

She’s light headed by the time she manages to pull her hands away from her mouth enough to draw in a breath of stale air, her lungs burning from how long she had gone without breathing. Her heart drums loudly in her skull, her ears pricked to listen to the two strangers exchange angry words in a language she doesn't understand, each passing second of the continuing scuffle making confidence slowly form in her mind.

This is her chance!

. . . to do what?

She doubts she could take them on, she's pretty sure she saw a gun hanging off the man's waist, and she definitely knows she won't be able to outrun them. She's stuck. Cornered.

“Whatever, you just fin-” The sound of footsteps once again nearing the room she's in forces her body to act without her input.

Fishhooks tug on her fingers and force them to splay out flat in the air despite the pain. Her mind scrambles to think of something, anything, before unseen hands pull her mouth open. A shaky breath escapes her lungs and before she knows it words are falling from her lips, so smooth and fluent like her mind is reading a script carved into her bones. “Oh harsh creatures of brutal winter, please, I need your help-” Something cold and sharp stabs behind her chest, more of her skin turning pale as magic slowly crawls down her arms.

It hurts —

Spiderweb cracks of broken glass spread across her knuckles and a fat drop of blood rolls down her chin from how tightly she bites her lip. Her blood beads through the cracks in her skin, the dark crimson turned a light pink by the freshly exposed white light that pulses beneath her skin like a living thing.  Aisha sucks in a sharp breath before continuing, “- I beg you, give me a crumb of your power, a ball of silent snow to hide my life-” The more she speaks, the more the white light cracks through her skin until it cracks through the pads of her fingers and escapes as shoddily formed snowflakes.

They dance through the air like drunken fireflies before finding the right position and floating in the air. More of them spawn from each finger with every word spoken, taking their own place in an unknown pattern.

Slowly the overlapping snowflakes take on the shape of a scratchy circle, trembling lines forming a complex web of shapes inside it. The pain grows with it; it turns her fingers pale and numb as if she had stuck her hands in freezing water, the icy bite of frost spreading up her wrists. Her frozen skin cracks from even the slightest tremor in her hands, white speckles dancing in her crimson blood as it leaks down her palms. Each second taken to breathe and bite back a whimper disrupts the fragile collection of snowflakes, causing parts of the circle to break off and drop to the ground in big watery drops.

Her chest feels like it’s tightly packed with soaked wool, a type of pressure building behind her sternum, her shoulders stiff as her body is getting ready for. . . something good—

The closet door swings open with enough force to break it off its hinges. White light of the circle refracts off the gun aimed at her.

Bang!

A bullet tears through the magic circle and shatters it into pieces, all the pressure that had been building in her body rushing through the crumbling remains of the circle right back at her.

She screams and shakes, fat tears freely running down her cheek like the blood flowing from her palms. There’s not a single word in any language able to describe the pain rushing through her veins, the liquid agony infesting every cell — sharp and blunt and deep and gnawing, like her body is trying to eat itself, like she’s infested with maggots; the bullet that tears through her side feels like a soft mercy.

“Fucking moron!” She barely hears the woman snarl over the rush of blood in her ears. The gun aimed at her is roughly pushed down. “Are you trying to get the boss to take our heads?” The stench of rot only worsens it, disorientating her further and she’s barely able to make her fingers twitch. She’s got no defense from the rough hand that roughly grabs her by the hair and pulls her out of the closet.

“I’d rather not die from a first time mage!” The man yells, grabbing her by the shoulder. Aisha’s legs can’t support her weight no matter how much she tries, but the man is far stronger than she had expected and has no problem holding her up. Her lungs manage a pained sound before her arms are grabbed and painfully wrenched behind her back, handcuffs softly clicking as they’re tightened until the steel digs into her aching wrists.

“Oh so when I’m the one on the end of the damn spells it’s fine then?” The woman’s anger shows in the way her cracked nails dig into Aisha’s scalp and pull her head back like she's trying to take it off entirely. Aisha struggles to breathe, gasping and wriggling to the best of her ability but it’s useless and a second later a thick metal collar is tightened around her neck, rusted needles on the inside of it pricking her skin enough to draw blood.

It burns. The collar rapidly heats up like she's got a string of hot coals around her neck, the heat traveling down her skin to grip her heart in a vice. The collar is so tight she can’t even gasp, fresh adrenaline pouring through her veins as she tries to scramble out of the handcuffs, tries to shake out of their hold, tries to just get away. . . but she’s about as strong as a kitten.

“You’re expendable. The girl could make a better spell than you.” The man holding her shoulder laughs and pulls her away as soon as the woman lets go of her hair, all too happy to drag her like a sack of potatoes behind him. Each step down the stairs has the base of her spine awkwardly hitting the step, accosting her frazzled brain with even more pain.

“We got the girl, boss!” The man says triumphantly, pulling her up so she’s facing another man. Even with the tears blurring her vision, Aisha can tell the ‘boss’ isn’t from Urzikstan; He’s a pudgy little man with a wide flat nose and other features that don’t quite fit his face, but his eyes — they glow the same rainbow hue as the other two, with the same malice.

“Finally.” The boss huffs, not wasting a single second and pulling a knife from his pocket. A rough hand holds Aisha’s head so she can’t squirm away from the knife as it cuts across her cheek. Just that small cut feels like a gaping wound and a small whimper falls from her lips as the boss pulls the knife back, specks of white floating in the dark blood coating the metal. A black tongue slips from his lips to lick up the bloodied edge, the sight making her stomach curl with disgust.

Another hand grabs her cheek, cracked fingers like claws digging into the cut until blood flows over the man's fingers. The man holding her pulls his bloodied fingers into his mouth, humming. A second passes before he curses and spits at his feet. “There’s barely anything there,” He says, the hold he has on her tightening. “Barely worth the bullet.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” The boss waves him off, sharp rainbow eyes looking her up and down. “Couple of grams from ol’ daddy Magnus and we’ll have ourselves a proper sow.” He reaches out to pat the top of her head, condescending — like she's just a dumb animal. “Alright, put it in the truck.” The boss orders and the man holding her complies, starting to drag her to the truck parked in front of the house.

Somehow, behind the the loud beating of her heart, she hears rumbling. Somehow, though her mind is like tangled yarn and she can barely grasp a thought, she feels something — an emotion that doesn't belong to her: Anger

Violent anger. Burning hot in the cold night, so all consuming it leaves the world around her trembling.

"Hold on-" The boss says suddenly, quickly raising his head to sniff the air. "Do you smell that?"

Tires screech against the rocky road, orange flames sparking from thin air as a motorcycle appears out of nowhere. Aisha only manages to get a glimpse of glowing orange eyes before she's blinded by bright light. She closes her eyes, heat washing over her body before she hears the head of the man holding her explode.

Shards of bone and brain matter rain down on her, sticking to her dark curly hair. The body stands for a second, unaware it no longer has a head as the charred stump of the neck steams. The body falls to the ground and takes Aisha with it, falling on top of her.

The elbow digs into her bleeding side, her eyes flying open as she struggles to get out from under the man, managing to push him off. Her gaze flies to the steaming charred stump where the head used to be. Panic rising she breathes in and oh god the smell — it’s an automatic response; Her stomach convulses and she pukes, bile burning her throat, retching and crying as the scent of her bile only makes it worse.

She feels heat rush over her and she doesn’t need to see to know your magic makes the other man and woman’s heads pop like grapes. Their bodies drop to the ground somewhere behind her, but what makes adrenaline rush through her is the soft sound of the motorcycle stand clicking against the ground.

Her head flies up to look, heart beating like a bird in the cage of her ribs; Dirt crunches beneath your boots but to her it sounds like breaking bones, steam rises off your body, the bright glow of your arms and the intense glare of your eyes behind the tinted lenses of your mask. . . it all gives the image of a demon — of something she needs to flee from.

If the people had been coyotes, then this person— no. . . the thing that had found her was a starved lion.

She tries to scramble back but it's useless when the smallest twitch of a muscle has her whimpering, blistering cold gnawing on every inch of her nerves.

You reach her in seconds, leaning down to grab her by the front of her clothes to pick her up like she weighs nothing. Your scent floods her nose, rot and just a small hint of sweetness, like honey poured on the floors of a burning charnel house. She tries to kick you but can barely move her toes, her legs just swaying uselessly beneath her. Your fingers, warm but not burning hot, hook under the steel wrapped around her neck.

Your jaw tenses, trying to remember how to speak. "Hold still." You order.

Your voice is soft. Not the velvet softness of her mothers', more akin to the smoothness of a tar pit right before it pulls a hapless creature into its inky depths. But you don't hurt her.

Metal screeches as the rusted steel bends like clay under your fingers. It only takes a few seconds before the collar clatters to the ground. The sudden release of pressure has Aisha gasping for breath so quickly she starts coughing and almost pukes but luckily her stomach is empty.

She doesn't feel you free her hands, the world spinning a thousand miles a minute before her eyes. She's forced to close her eyes shut in an attempt to fight back the nausea, rainbow spots crackling in the darkness of her vision.

Casually stepping over the corpse of the Devourer you sit her down on the hood of the truck, keeping a hand on her shoulder to make sure she doesn't fall face first to the ground. She shivers under your touch, trembling hands slowly raising to grip your wrist. You don't need magical sight to know an aborted spell is ravaging her insides; her fingertips turning black in front of your eyes and the specks of white dancing in her pupil is enough.

Judging by the way you can barely pick up the scent of mage standard rot on her, you can only assume she's a late bloomer. With a small huff you place your other hand on the middle of her chest, casting a simple circle at your palm.

Aisha gasps, fingers scrambling to try and pull your hand off, too numb with cold to register how the cooling lava making up your skin warms up. But it's like trying to move a mountain. You don't budge an inch. She can feel something inside her move, burning frost shepherded by blistering heat slinking down her fingers back into her heart, increasing speed with every inch it travels. She barely notices the aching in her side subsiding, or the sensation returning to her fingers.

You let go of the girl when you’re satisfied she won’t die from either blood loss or mana shock, leaving her to sit on the hood of the car as she looks dumbly at you.

The bullet loudly clatters on the steel hood. She turns her head and her eyes nearly pop out of her skull at the sight of her blood literally bleaching out of her clothes like it's being drawn back into her body. Letting go of your wrist she lifts her shirt, and there's not even a mark on her tan skin.

She’s no threat to you.

No sooner that you take a step away from her does Beelzebub's cold presence rush out of your heart with enough force to make you stumble back. People say it’s madness for a spell, a tool, to have personality. But the way black candlelight flames spark at your fingers and immediately rush out like a swarm of locusts to devour the three bodies is. . . it's angry. Vengeful As it should be. You can't fool yourself into thinking the way Beelzebub's magical fires eat away the Devourers hands before spreading over the rest of the body, crackling and buzzing like thousands of flies as they devour skin, then muscle, then bone until not even dust remains, is anything but vindictive.

Like erasing mistakes, it brings you a sense of satisfaction.

Your fingers twitch but you stop yourself from reaching up to trace the faint blue magic gluing your throat together. Instead, you focus on converting the mangled chunks of mana Beelzebub deposits in your chest into something you can use. Devours are a pain in the ass, so much different mana all twisted and held together with gum and staples, all of it now bashing against your ribs like wailing ghosts. With a huff you focus, the rock chunks on your arms getting wider and bigger as you store the stolen mana for later use, steam lazily rolling off your shoulders.

Aisha watches you, eyes wide, but. . . not scared. She doesn’t notice when she opens her mouth, her voice far too loud in the silent night. “Are you a jinn?” She asks, and cringes at her words. Of all the things she could have said, she chose that?

You don't know how you manage to open your mouth enough to answer. “No.” Beelzebub, satisfied as a hog in shit, burns on the ground for a few seconds in the shape of the bodies before seeping back into the earth, settling back to slumber in your heart.

You roll your shoulders. The slight bite of pain and the spasm of your muscles reminds you of the glass sticking out of your back. A grunt forces past your lips, more from annoyance than actual pain. A simple thought is enough to activate the magic you had cast on yourself, vestigial sparks flickering across your shoulders and boring a hole into your jacket. The edges glow brightly before they birth flames that eat away the bulletproof vest and the rest of your clothing until a sizable chunk of your back is exposed.

Aisha catches the edge of a small circle scribed atop your spine in the middle of your back, but her eyes are soon drawn to the mess of glass shards sticking out of your skin. There’s not a speck of blood in sight, but somehow that makes the sight more disturbing. Her gasp falls deaf on your ears, your mind more focused in trying to remove them.

Forcing your opposite hand to cool down enough so the heat doesn’t shatter the glass, you reach back as far as you can, trying to feel as best you can with your numb fingers. But your hands are stiff and unfeeling, making you fumble about like a bull in a china shop as you try to get one shard and miss. The only time you manage to grasp the sharp edge, you break it when you attempt to pull it out. A curse slips past your lips and you crush the broken piece between your fingers.

Aisha doesn’t know what possesses her, nothing good probably, but she speaks up. “Can I-” Your head turns to her so fast she startles, mouth snapping shut with an audible clack of her teeth. She can only stare at those burning eyes for a second before her animal brain forces her to look away, focusing on the gas mask portion of your mask because looking at your eyes feels wrong. But she powers through it, forcing herself to speak. “Can I help you?”

That was not what you expected.

“No.” You say, your head swiveling to glance at the road and then back up to the sky, a pulse of formless magic slipping past your fingers on instinct to ensure you’re covering all your bases as far as relative safety goes. You don’t see nor sense any form of life besides the girl, nor any mage magic save for the tracker in your pocket.

You hate to admit it, but the wraith was good. And so was the mage that made the tracker, it took you a good while until you had sensed the small piece of enchanted rock hidden in your pocket. You’re still unsure what you want to do with it, maybe you could somehow game the situation or send the monsters after you on a wild goose chase, so for now you’ve only isolated it with your magic instead of destroying it.

Aisha persists. “Please,” She grits her teeth, resisting the urge to shrink back when your eyes once again settle on her. “I- you helped me, I don’t want to hold debts.” There is a kind of determination in her eyes you know too well, the same kind Frosty had right before you and him—

If anyone asks or puts a gun to your head, you will blame this moment on many things — the fatigue, the side effects of using too much magic, the spiraling descent into lichdom, finally losing what dredges of sense you have in your no good skull;  “Fine.”

You take careful steps towards her until your knees press against the bumper before turning your back to her, forcing her to spread her legs to accompany your body. You keep your body turned in a way that still keeps her in your periphery. Not that it matters. Even if she had a knife hidden on her person nothing short of 30/06 ammo could leave any damage you couldn’t immediately heal off.

Aisha hates the part of her that regrets her decision now that she's presented with the large array of glass sticking out of your skin. She reaches out like she would try to pet a wild dog, cold fingers gripping the sides of one piece, bracing her other hand on your back. She tries to wiggle it out, and though you keep yourself from hissing, your muscles still spasm around the sharp glass. “Sorry, sorry-”

“You’re fine rookie,” You grunt automatically. “Just yank it out.”

She sucks in a sharp breath and prepares herself like she’s the one with half a ton of glass using her as a pin cushion. But she does as you say before she can shy away from it. The glass slides out easily enough, glowing orange blood staining it. Her eyes go wide when the blood suddenly drips off the shard in one continuous stream until she’s holding a perfectly clean piece of glass. The blood lands on your back and slithers up your skin into the wound, repairing muscle and flesh until there’s not even a mark to indicate where the glass had pierced your skin.

“Are you like me?” She asks tentatively, mentally hitting herself for such a stupid question; of course you’re a mage, what is she even thinking? Hoping to escape the embarrassment she pulls another shard out of your back.

“You and I are mages.” You say simply, occasionally glancing to the road and sky before turning your attention back on the girl. It feels… strange. You don't remember the last time you've spoken with someone who didn't want anything from you. Someone who didn't want to use you. Kill you.

“Ye- yeah, I figured.” Aisha bites her lip, squinting her eyes. “Why… why did you save me?” She finally asks the question that had been plaguing her.

“I just did.” You shrug your shoulder, a small breath slipping past your clenched teeth as the motion makes the glass dig deeper into your shoulder.

Aisha’s shoulders fall, a frown tugging on her lips. She doesn’t know what she had expected. “Thank you.”

Her words make your head turn to look at her fully, “Why?”

“Why not?” Another chunk of glass falls to the ground, “You saved me from. . . them. You killed to save me.” She says, nodding her head at the three body shaped scorch marks on the ground. She doesn’t know why talking about the death of them suddenly feels so. . . normal, like she’s walking through a dream and none of this is real. More like a nightmare.

“Killing bad men doesn't make me a good one.” You grunt, choosing not to voice how your motives for killing them had been far more selfish than she could imagine. Vengeance and anger are poor motives, but motives nonetheless.

Aisha clicks her tongue and scowls. “And saving me would make you bad? One good deed has to amount for something, right?”

A pregnant pause rings through the silent night.

“You are strange.” Is the only thing your mind can turn into words.

“So are you!” She shoots back quickly, lowering her head when her words register in her brain. Chewing on her bottom lip she pulls out the last glass shard from your skin, letting it fall from her fingers where it joins the small pile on the ground. She awkwardly pats your shoulder. “Who were they?” She finds her voice again.

“Devourers.” You fail to hide the hate in your tone. Stepping away from her you activate the spell you’ve cast on yourself. The magic burning at the edges of the hole in your clothing flares up, fire washing over your naked skin to reconstruct the fabric you had destroyed. “Humans who want magic, and will bleed you dry to get it.” The jacket feels bigger on you than it should, you don’t even doubt that you’ve lost a few pounds just in the past few hours as you’re forced to tighten your belt to keep your pants from sagging. "Kill them if you can, avoid them if you can't."

“Why did they want me?” Aisha asks, bracing herself on the car’s hood and slowly sliding down until her feet touch the ground. She feels lightheaded and sways on her feet, gripping the hood to keep upright. You glance at her but she just shakes her head — you two are even now, she hopes, she doesn’t want to have to ask for help for something as simple as standing.

“You’re a mage, they want magic.” You shrug, fixing the cuffs on your jacket so not an inch of your mage marked skin shows. “They want your blood, by drinking it they can use what they lack.”

Unwanted thoughts laugh at the back of your mind. Phantom pain blooms across your throat as you swallow, your lungs stuttering to draw breath. Memories you'd rather not revisit nibble at the back of your mind, just begging to gain your attention. Your hand reaches out to hold the tags—

Nothing.

You come up empty.

Your heart finally stops.

You hold your fist against your chest for a few seconds, the need to break something, even your own sternum, crooning soft melodies in your ears. Finally your fingers slowly uncurl so your palm rests flat over your heart. Your body is warm, but a blizzard rages inside your ribcage. You lost them, again. . . and you don’t feel fury, or sadness, or any other way. You don’t feel shit.

A low pathetic sound escapes you. Titanium wires stitch your jaw closed, pulled so taut you'd chip a tooth without your magic. For a split second you think of dispelling the magic around the tracker and letting them come to you. . . but you don’t; at least Taurus’s training remains effective. You’re sure your brain will let you feel anger as soon as you’ll be in a position to survive the consequences of anger birthed stupidity.

Aisha leans to her side just enough to see your front, confusion written on her face as to why you had suddenly gone quiet. Though your eyes still burn with an inferno, they feel empty to her. She remembers her father’s eyes had been the same when he had returned from fighting. “Did you lose someone?” She asks, voice soft.

“Yes.” You grunt, and fuck, it feels insulting to them how lost you sound. You’re one of the best mages on the planet for fuck’s sake, you’re not supposed to feel this way. “Lost a lot of people.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be.” You finally pry your hand off your chest, both hands now hanging by your sides, fingers curled into fists. “You had nothing to do with it.” You wish you could say the same to yourself.

You shake your head; feelings can come after the job is done. You know the general lay of the land enough to know there is a small city not far from where you are, one that isn’t too harsh on mages. It would take her a couple of hours on foot to reach, but it’s better than nothing. You tell as such, starting to walk towards your motorcycle. “Get to the city, don’t linger around here.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Aisha follows after you, struggling to keep up. “What am I supposed to do when I get there?” Her mind swirls with all sorts of questions, where will she go? What of her parents? What if—

“Do what you want.” You shrug and get on the motorcycle, the engine roaring to life. “Join the military or the circus or whatever else, just don’t stay here.” And with that you drive off.

. . .

"Well, would you look at that." A man sighs as he pulls the binoculars down to rest in his lap, a deep frown on his face. It only lasts for a scant few seconds before he smirks, crows feet forming around his eyes. "Our firebug's manners haven't changed one bit." The man chuckles and turns his head to regard his companion, eyes glowing the color of crystal clear quartz.

"Oh, I wonder who taught him that." The woman sitting next to him snarks, the blue chains marring her arms disappearing like a mirage when she dispels the illusion spell. The human skin melts away to coarse sand and weathered whalebone, red bone eating worms squirming and boring holes into the whalebone, small anglerfish lures softly waving through the air as if she's deep beneath the sea.

The man purses his lip, "I've no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm sure, mister 'I dropped a mountain on an oil rig with my second in command still in it'." Water flows between the seams of whalebone, extending past the stumps of her wrists to form hands of seafoam and salt.

She uses her newly remade hands to tug on the man’s ear like he’s a disobedient child.

The man scoffs and bats her hand away. "Hey now, you did say you wanted to go diving." He shrugs, "Oh, and looks like I won our bet." He smirks, catching the golden coin the woman throws him. Charles's face smiles on one side of it, but the man pays it no mind and puts the coin in his pocket; they’re both far too old to care about money and the dead kings on them.

“Yes, but not like that!” She snaps, not even the bandages around her head able to hide the glare she throws at him. But instead of following up on her anger she sighs and looks down at her hands. Glowing blue plankton swim in the crystal clear waters, but it feels like yesterday her hands were dyed a burning orange.

She hates what they had to do. What they continue to do. “Ifrit is still too reckless. Your plan failed.”

“No it didn’t.” He shoots back. “We just overestimated the kid again. It wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t coddled them all so much.”

The man fully expects the slap on the shoulder he receives, cool water splashing on his greying blond hair. He doesn’t comment on it, simply runs his hand over the patch of wet hair. Small green shrubs bloom on the cracked earth texture of his palm, moss crawling up the crystalline outcrops along his elbow bone, little flowers sprouting in his hair and beard.

They sit in silence for a moment before the woman sighs and hangs her head. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” Lifting her head she angles it to look at the man. “I just… I wish we didn’t have to do this.” She confesses. “It breaks my heart to see Ifrit so lost.” As much as her still heart can be broken.

“I know, I know.” He reaches out to gently take her hands into his. Though she can’t see his face, even her magic can only go so far, she knows he’s sporting a gentle smile. “Ifrit will be fine. He has no choice.”

Two jet planes fly overhead, engines screaming, blind to their existence as they rush after their prodigal soldier like bats out of hell.

The woman grimaces, water easily sliding past his fingers as she pulls her hands away. “I know,” She tilts her head towards the abandoned house, and the girl slowly walking away from it. “I suppose I’ll find something to occupy myself with.” The woman gets up, glancing at the man once again. “I hope you know what you’re doing Taurus.”

"I always do Sierra."

. . .

The atmosphere is so thick a vampire could bite into it. They all know first hand how missions can go wrong in a moment’s notice, but none of them had expected it to go this pear shaped; some of the mages they had been given are dead, the rest are all in some kind of coma, and it’s a miracle that Captain Roberts had survived long enough to get medical evac with how burned up she was. Gaz had almost lost his lunch when he’d gone to pick up the mage captain and her arm had fallen off in brittle pieces of blackened bone, fabric and skin melted together all over her torso.

"Are you boys alive?" Is the first question out of Laswell's lips when the contact her. The shoddy connection makes her face grainy and pixelated, but her voice is clear enough, tinged with exhaustion and the light of the screen darkens the bags under her eyes.

“Yeah,” Kyle says, “Besides nearly getting turned into KFC we’re fine.” He moves his wings for emphasis, holding back a grimace at how the residual soot and ash irritates the soft skin beneath his feathers. He’ll be lucky if it’ll wash out after a week, though the grime is only secondary to the stench of death and heat clinging to him.

Soap grunts, not bothering or simply forgetting to pull the frozen piece of rubber from his mouth before speaking. “O-cgh ohnlhy ah fheph burhnrs.” Spit leaks down his swollen lip as he gurgles. It hadn't been noticeable at first, but when the adrenaline wore off the pain in his gums hit him like a truck. The medic had given him the rubber to soothe the burns all over his mouth, and he would have been pissed about how much it looked like a doggy chew toy if the relief it brought wasn’t worth it. Doesn’t mean he’s any less agitated about looking like a teething puppy.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Kyle chides, singed wingtips flicking against the back of Soap’s skull.

Johnny pulls the rubber out of his mouth enough to growl back and simultaneously tries to swallow the saliva. He chokes, hitting his chest a few times and coughing, “Yae try ta talk with a burned mouth! Feel like ah’ve been gargling devil pish.”

“Boys.” Price snaps, voice as cold and hard as his reptilian eyes. “Enough.” There’s a hardness in his gaze neither men have seen in a while or even think of challenging. It’s easy to see that something is bothering the dragon, even if he doesn’t say it, and whatever it is, it’s got Price angry.

Not the usual ‘shouting and arguing’ angry Price gets when he’s given dog shit orders, no. This is the cold and silent anger that precedes the destruction of cities.

Soap looks away, biting down on the frozen rubber. Gaz mumbles an apology.

“John,” Kate begins, sensing the storm in his head. “What did you find out?”

“Ifrit knows Ruin magic.” Price says, bits of steam rising from the corners of his lips as his anger shows. He had gone centuries believing that despicable magic had finally died out and rotted away like every mage that used it. He was wrong. Very wrong.

“Shit.” Laswell rubs the bridge of her nose, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Price’s wing flares out a bit, tail flicking side to side in a subconscious show of agitation. “I felt it.”

“Anyone care to share with the class.” Simon asks, arms crossed over his chest and claws digging into his biceps. The light pricks of pain keep him grounded enough to ensure his arms don’t turn into puffs of dark smoke; he’s had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach ever since the fight, something about you — how you moved, how confidently you used magic — he hadn’t seen it in a while.

And it didn’t bode well. It was better when a mage was scared of their own shadow and put on a cheap mask of confidence. But with you? There wasn’t even a single second of hesitation in anything you did.

Price looks at him, then at the two sergeants, finally looking at Laswell as the two exchange nods. “It’s nothing good.” A sigh leaves him. “Ruin magic is old and dangerous,” Price starts, eyes hard like stone. “The last time it was used a plague swept across Europe.”

“What?” Kyle’s eyebrows furrow. “Do you seriously mean the black death was caused by magic?”

"Yes," Kate says, "But we can have a history lesson later. Ifrit knowing ruin magic changes things, they're now our top priority."

"Ah dhogh geh-" Soap remembers they can't understand him and pulls the rubber out of his mouth. "Ah don't get it, what's so special about ruin magic? Ain't all that magical shite the same?"

"No." Price grunts, "A ruin mage needs the body of another person to learn a spell. They see anything or anyone living as chunks of meat to be used in their spells." His eyes darken, claws digging into his palms.

He shakes his head. “Did you manage to get any information about Ifrit from the tags?” Price asks. He had sent photo copies of each dog tag to Laswell as soon as Johnny had given them to him.

Soap pulls the rubber from his mouth, swallowing the excess spit before reaching out to grab the tags laying on the table. He doesn’t know why, but something about holding them feels sacrilegious to him; like he’s holding the pelt of another werewolf instead of pieces of metal.

“No, Ifrit’s tags aren’t ones made by the military.” Laswell says, and that piques Kyle's interest. He leans over to look at the tags as Johnny inspects them. The metal chain hangs loosely off his fingers, weighed down by more than a dozen tags dangling from it. They vary in damage, some are bent, some have black heat marks on them in the shape of fingertips, and some are so blackened he needs to use his fingers to feel the text. Silicon silencers prevent the tags from making noise when he lays them down in a pile on his palm, a couple of them spilling over to hang at the sides of his hand. The first thing he notices is the stench, nothing specific like the smell mages have, but it’s not pleasant either.

Soap takes a random tag and reads off the fine text —

‘JACHAL

VENENUM, ACIDUM, L9

MAJOR

O NEG

JEWISH’

“Yer telling me.” Soap huffs, taking out his own tags from beneath his shirt to compare the two, just to make sure he’s not insane and the tags don’t make sense.

“What kind of shite even is this?” Johnny’s tags sport his full government name and security name without mentioning his rank. The tags he has in his hand look more like the ones civies would get personalized than anything else. He grimaces and hands the tags over to Gaz, “Are they even real?” He asks.

“Why would someone just carry around a bunch of fake tags?” Gaz asks, inspecting them as well.

“Could be part of a wannabe militia. Wouldn’t be the first time some punks with guns tried to play army.” Ghost shrugs. “Could also be to throw us off.” Ghost suggests, tilting his head enough to see Kyle appraise the small hunks of metal. “Or it’s all for shits n’ giggles.”

Kyle’s sharp eyes spot the tag he had been looking for; the tag is the only one without a silencer, the metal caked in soot and ash that the letters are hard to see and Kyle needs to trace the metal with the pad of his thumb to understand what they say:

‘IFRIT

IGNIS, CINIS, RUINA L10

CAPTAIN–

“Whoa,” Gaz’s eyebrows raise. “Ifrit’s a bloody captain.”

“What’s someone like that doing as a terrorist’s dog?” Soap asks.

“Ifrit’s motives remain unclear, but I did find something.” Kate shuffles some papers off screen, pulling up two thin looking file folders. “Two of the tags you sent me have actual people on them.” She says, taking a paper from each folder. Even through the camera they can see how the once crisp white paper has been yellowed with age. “Lance Corporals Hutch and Lambert, both presumed KIA nearly 11 years ago along with their entire squad. Apparently they were led by Corporal Yerrow to conduct a reconnaissance mission in Iraq to investigate a human smuggling ring, but a shoot-out caused a forest fire and no bodies were ever recovered.”

Johnny sniffs the air, crossing his arms over his chest, tail tip slowly wagging. “Anyone smell bull shite?”

“You’re not the only one.” Kate turns the files so the text side is aimed at the camera. More than half of the documents are redacted to the point it looks like a rorschach test. “I haven’t been able to access the original files, if they even exist, but the agent that oversaw the mission was a predecessor of mine, I’ll see if I can get in contact with him. ” It wouldn’t be the first time the CIA covered something up, but what could have happened back then that even Kate couldn’t get to the files?

“Great, what other shite can we pile on our plates?” Soap growls, ears twitching.

“Don’t jinx it.” Kyle says, gently setting the tags on the table. 

“There’s another thing.” Kate adds, putting the files away.

“Nice going puppy.” Ghost grunts, ignoring the look Soap gives him.

“Whatever it is, it’ll need to wait.” Price says, speaking up finally. “Ifrit’s a ruin mage. We need to put it down before it melts half the country to slag.”

“That’s the problem.” Kate’s voice makes Price’s eyes sharpen, slitted pupils turning into thin black lines. “We’ve managed to identify the gas used in the terror attack. It was Sarin gas, remnants of Barkov. The same ones Makarov stole.”

“Told you they’re a damn magnet fer wankers.” Soap mutters under his breath. Price's eyes shift to him, giving him a hard look and making it very clear it’s not the time for his comments. Soap’s ears twitch and his tail curls around his leg.

“How did Al-Qatala get their hands on the gas? There’s no way Makarov would just hand over his toys.” Ghost asks.

“We don’t know yet. And we might not ever know if you don’t hurry.” Kate stresses. “The top brass figured out Khaled’s location, they think Ifrit’s going after Khaled so they’re sending troops to take them both out in one place as we speak.”

Price catches on quickly. “Kate, you’re not telling me we need Ifrit alive?” Price stresses, body stiff.

“I’m not,” Kate rebuts, just as tense. “This is an order.” Price flashes his teeth at her, but finally looks away, black smog escaping past the corner of his lips.

“If you can’t get to Khaled, Ifrit will be our only chance to get Makarov.” She ads.

“So go capture the human bomb without dying.” Gaz summarizes, claw tips nervously scratching at the fresh pin feathers growing from his forearms. “Sounds easy.”

“Walk in tae park.” Johnny snarks.

"Only the parks on fire." Ghost adds, tone dry as old bone.

Price stays still and silent for a few moments. Thunder rumbles in his chest and his tail tip lashes against the floor as indications of his anger. His claws scrape against his palms with the need to tear into the festered flesh of the ruin mage, to rip out the heart and destroy it so he can make sure that blasted magic is gone for good.

But he relents, only so he can have unrestrained access to you once they get the information they need. “Pack up. On the double.” Price growls. “We’ve got a mage to hunt.”

. . .

Why did you do it?

It had been a split second decision to divert course when you'd sensed the Devourers, and even then, the mana they gave you through Beelzebub was miniscule compared to what you were used to handling. Hell, you probably wasted more mana using the temporary invisibility spell to get close to the Devourers than what you made from them.

With Khaled's betrayal and an unknown military likely after your head, ignoring the Devourers would have been the smart move. Your ‘heroic’ act won’t earn you any brownie points with whatever made the mistake of putting you on the planet — that’s for fucking sure.

But. . . she reminded you of, well, you. The you violent flames had cremated when they first sparked across your fingers. The you you’d left behind when you took your friend’s hand and ran as fast as your legs could carry. The you you’d been forced to stuff beneath the floorboards and ignore as you lied to the recruiter. The you you sometimes wish you hadn’t forsaken for the sake of survival.

. . . eh, what does it matter? Frosty’s as dead as the rest of them and no amount of grief and tears (assuming you could even force yourself to weep) will bring him back. Maybe it’s a good thing you never found his tags, the universe’s way of keeping him from suffering the humiliation you’ve inflicted on the others.

The engine roars beneath you like a caged beast, each little rock and hole in the uneven terrain causing the motorcycle to buck, the back of the seat knocking up into your tailbone. It’s a necessary evil, driving far away from the main road with the lights off helps you evade detection slightly better, and you’ll take anything you can get. Your commander’s words are etched into your bones: “Only let your enemies know you’re coming when your knife is hilt deep in their throat.”.

The sizzle in your bones and little deep pinpricks of pain in your lower back are barely noticeable with how numb you feel. Both in body and in what’s left of your humanity. You’ve gotten good at that — turning off your emotions and doing what needs to be done; you’re sure if you got shot dead that your body would finish the mission before it figured out there was a bullet in your skull.

Sometimes you even wonder what a witch would see if she ever tried to scry into your heart. Would it still be the hellish landscape Taurus showed you all those years ago? Or would it be like Pompei? Or some other landscape of impeccably preserved tragedy?

Your fingers twitch around the handlebars in an attempt to stop yourself from reaching out for something that’s not there anymore. Some vestigial and selfish part of you whimpers and yearns for the brief respite the tags brought. Their absence feels more suffocating than all the times you’ve been hanged; more painful than when your throat had been used as an artistic butcher’s canvas.

Your magical senses pick up the life signs long before your enhanced ears hear the screech of jet engines. You nearly snap your neck with how quickly you look up, able to catch two jet planes flying overhead by the glow of their engines, trying to track both of their flight paths.

You tighten the grip on the handlebars and increase the speed. You don’t stop to see if they saw you, you know they did from the way the planes twirl in the air. . . and from the way they shoot rockets at you.

Letting go of one handle you let mana rush to your fingers, cinders burning away your sleeve and glove. Just as the rockets get close enough for you to hear their screeching you swing your arm up, a burning arch of flames following after your palm. The motion is enough to tell your brain what you want, a thick screen of roaring flames spreading out from the arc in front of you.

The missiles hit the wall of flames instead of you. You swear you nearly go deaf from the loud explosion the missiles make when they connect with your defense magic, everything around you shaking from the sudden force but the spell holds, not even a scratch in sight. The resulting smoke flares around the sides in a suffocating cloud, the thick wall of fire obscuring your vision and forcing you to blindly swerve side to side.

Your magic may protect you, but it can’t stop the rocket from hitting the ground right in front of the wheel. The whistle and screech of the missile is the only warning you get before the ground beneath you explodes and sends you flying. You hit the ground and roll, jagged rocks slamming into your bones, scraps of metal pelting your back. Magic washes over you to heal the bones you break.

It leaves you feeling every bit of pain when the motorcycle falls on top of you, pushing the breath out of your lungs. The sudden force has your jaw slamming onto the ground, your tongue caught between your teeth. Blood floods your mouth. It tastes like battery acid and burns your throat on its way down to your stomach, but it forces adrenaline to rush through your system and let you push the motorcycle off you.

Your spine cracks multiple times in the short seconds it takes for your magic to fix the bones, giving you back the sensation in your limbs so you can roll to your side and avoid another missile. You summon a few smaller flame shields to protect your head and vitals from the blast, but not from the sharp rocks that hit your back like grenade pieces.

Your vision swimming and ears ringing you scramble to your knees. You’re given no choice but to use your own blood. Even with the distraction of another missile hitting your shield, it’s easy for you to focus your mana. It flows from your heart to your fingers but you don’t let it escape like it wants. Forcing it to pool in your palms until the heat burns away your remaining glove and turns the stone of your hands into lava.

It only takes a few seconds for fat drops of brightly melted rock to drip onto the ground, and only then can you feel your blood, both the one in your veins and the rivulets of bright orange freely flowing down your back. Burning hot and brimming with so much mana it’s no problem for you to take hold of the blood you've bled. Bright crimson crawls across your back to draw a magic circle from memory alone.

Quickly hunching your back generates enough force to make your blood bust through your vessels, two arcs of blood tearing through skin and muscle like a knife. The bright glow of your blood lights up the dark, stray droplets hovering in the air like oil in water as more of it flows from your body and branches out until it resembles skeletonized wings. Fire sparks at your skin and follows the blood, forcing it to crystallize in place as ash takes up the space between the bones and cascades down in long shrouds. Obsidian sharp crystal blood digs into your skin with every little move of your new wings as they twitch erratically. Lighting races up your spine, your mind forced to create new nerves and deal with sensations it wasn’t designed for.

You summon a circle beneath your feet, ash bursting up to send you high into the air in a long continuous column like it’s the tower of Babel just as another missile hits the place you had been moments ago. The spark from the rocket ignites the ash, giving you an extra few feet in the air before you start to fall.

The leftover smoke swallows you whole, gravity forcibly tipping you back until you’re falling head first. The wind screeches in your ears and the grounds gets closer and closer with every second, the grim reaper laughing over your shoulder; you remember yelling and screaming, even passing out, many times during this type of training. Now, you are calm.

Your mind finally creates the right nerves to move your limbs. Your wings spread out with the same violence they burst out of your back, sharply pulling on your chest muscles as they swing out and down. The flap of your wings breaks off a bit of the ash covering your crystallized blood, flames burning at the tips of your wings making the ash erupt in an explosion and creating enough force for you to soar high into the air.

Flying is hard regardless of how often you’ve done this, your back muscles cramping as you struggle to use your new wings. Not that it actually is flying in the same sense the harpies or other winged creatures would call it. More like gliding with extra steps. Either way, it serves its purpose in making you airborne and mobile.

You shoot high up into the sky like a bullet, trails of ash following after you and wrapping around you like a shroud. The quick movement of your wings and sharp turns let you avoid a set of missiles shot at you, but even at your fastest speed you’ve got no chance of hitting the quick jets flying around you like flies. So instead you use simple spells and hope your aim hasn’t gotten rusty. The muscles in your core and arms tense, a circle forming flush with your palms. Mana rushes to your arms and you use the brief stability in the air between the flaps of your wings to set off your spell.

A solid beam of concentrated flame shoots out, thin as a pencil but it tears through the clouds and metal plane like butter. You manage to cleave off a wing, the wound left behind in the metal glows brightly, before a simple thought activates the latent magic and the entire jet explodes a second later.

Rockets and bullets fly at your back like plague carrying insects, only to be burned away by your magic. Your neck hurts from how sharply you jerk your head to look behind you, mana flowing to your eyes to enhance your sight until the jet is clearly visible. At least you have comfort in the fact your hand eye coordination is still as sharp as ever, another beam of fire cleaving the jet in two.

And just like that, you’re alone in the sky.

You don’t realize how rapidly your heart is beating until you take a moment to breathe, wings spreading out to let you glide through the sky. You reach into your pocket to pull out the tracker, a small piece of rich green rock. Your magic swirls across the surface of it, cinders worming through the stone; You don’t know how they found you when your magic is still active on the tracker, there are no ‘happy accidents’ in your line of work.

Gritting your teeth you dispel your magic around the tracker and toss it as far as you can in the opposite direction, wings pressing closer to your body to increase the speed of your glide.

With your motorcycle more than likely fucked, you have no choice but to rely on your bloodmade wings longer than you’d like. Using the mana you’d stuck on Khaled as a compass you let yourself fall and gain speed before spreading out your wings. The deep muscles in your back and chest scream for a second with each flap of your wings before your magic silences them, the discomfort of using temporary limbs easy to shove into the back of your mind. Your flying speed is much faster than that of the motorcycle, the ground moving rapidly beneath you.

You’re only mildly surprised to feel Khaled’s presence in his base. It’s an old oil refinery that was abandoned when the Russians restricted the production of oil in the country. Khaled found it and turned it into a bastion, hiding up high in the mountains like he’s some kind of king.

Any old dragon can attest a kingdom of steel and concrete like that won’t survive scorching flame.

Your only problem is that it’s got magic sensing tech, which just means there’s some extremely sensitive electronics that end up sparking like shoddily made light bulbs when more than just the smallest amount of modern magic is used. Sometimes you hate how thorough you are.

Luckily for you, it’s not the first time you’ve had to sneak past such tech.

You land near the base of the mountain, just at the edge where you know the range of those sensors ends. You’d like to say you land gracefully and with barely a sound, but you’re pretty sure a tank would have an easier time than you. The exhaustion and the added weight on your back doesn’t help you in any way to keep balance, making you stumble forward and almost trip on a root. Your arms spread out to grip the trees for support, but you underestimate your strength and the wood splinters under your right hand, making you fall face first.

The few seconds you spend flat on the ground is probably the longest you’ve spent laying down in the past month.

With a sharp breath you get to your feet, carefully leaning your shoulder against a tree. Your makeshift wings press against your back and pull on your muscles, but the thought of ‘what if you’ll need them?’ keeps you from dispelling them. Embers burn away the clothing shielding your front, giving yourself just enough sight of your skin to be able to cast the spells you need.

It’s one thing to push your mana to your hands and out as magic, it’s another to force the burning heat through every little capillary in your skin and pull on it in certain spots until magical circles etch themselves into your skin. It’s not that far off from using blood magic, only it requires a little less mana and focus. You’ve done this so much you could do it with your eyes closed, filling the insides of the circles with little diamonds and magical sigils only your mind can grasp.

The body enhancing spell has an immediate effect. The pain in your back disappears suddenly like it was never there, the vestiges of weakness from mana use getting pushed back to the back of your mind. It even dispels the base painful thrum in your skull you hadn’t realized you had.

With a clearer mind you go about casting more similar spells that carve themselves into your skin; one to temporarily strengthen your body beyond what you already have, another to force your mana generator to increase in productivity, yet a third one to increase the potency of your spells; Buffs that push your body past the edge of what it can take, to the point you barely feel human.

This is the closest man will ever come to godhood. ”Don’t let it get to your little head firebug.”

Your last spell to prepare is different. A dirty trick.

“Valefar.” You huff, speaking another name for a spell that deserves respect. Nothing happens at first, but then you feel it. Like a living thing deep beneath the earth, Valefar hums a soft lullaby to the tune of crackling flames. The dirt beneath you expands and black flames break through the earth, creating a spider web of dark old magic that fills up the empty root system spanning the entire mountain. The flames don’t dare touch you yet. They’re waiting. . . hungry.

Before the problematic thing in your skull can give you grief, you let the waiting beast in and welcome it like a brother. Valefar’s black flames shudder and slowly, carefully, crawl up your legs, scampering along your abdomen and kissing the sharp transition between skin and mage marks. They paint the yellow glow of your mage marks a pitch black, the magma of your arms and your crystalized blood turning black as obsidian. Even the flames tipping the ends of your wings turn black as pitch.

For a second you’re accosted with the sensation of every bit of magic you had pushed into the earth over the months, every drop of mana obediently waiting its time in the rotten root system. But Valefar soothes your mind, dampening the glow of your eyes and shrouding your brain in water cool flames. Valefar lacks the crushing weight or the freezing cold of most ruin spells, simply almost thrilled to be used.

Ruin magic is too old to be tracked by modern means, and you take the first step into the range of the sensors without fear. You knew Khaled would betray you, you’ve almost started growing old in an industry that killed its soldiers young, you knew to listen to your stomach. Khaled had been one of those people you wouldn’t trust as far as you could throw them, though you never expected him to be so brazen about it. It’s no different than the day hellfire rained down on your hea-

You stop yourself mid thought the second you register your anger trying to boil over, the burning heat inside your chest making steam rise off your shoulders. Asmodeus, the one spell you won’t ever use, sparks beneath your skin; angry, vengeful. You stifle it before it can gain an upper hand, sparks of black flame flying past your lips as you breathe out and escaping through the filters of your mask.

Taurus always blamed your hotheadedness on your magic. What is a mage if not the fire Prometheus stole for you? The suffocating hate Vesuvius spewed? The blackened rotten blood giving birth to spells like Beelzebub and Valefar?

Loud gunfire breaks through your thoughts; Khaled would never practice shooting drills in the middle of the night.

You increase your pace, turning your jog into a run. As you near the old refinery something immediately stands out to you – there’s way too many life signatures than there should be. Even without a good line of sight you can sense them, all those beating hearts and flickers of life fluttering together like moths until you find yourself with a massive pain in your skull.

Breathing out a small breath you duck behind the tall trees just at the edge of the compound. To say you’re surprised to find Urzikstan soldiers engaged in combat with Khaled’s men would be an understatement. And the army didn’t hold anything back. There’s a fuck ton of soldiers, most of them hiding behind tanks that block the only exit from the compound and sponge up the machine gun fire Khaled’s men are unloading into them. Bullets rain down on both sides, there’s even fucking helicopters flying in the air — this is a full on assault.

You can still sense Khaled is in the refinery somewhere, you would be able to narrow down on his exact location if there weren’t so many living bodies buzzing around like ants. Your mind whirls with ideas; you could use the distraction and sneak past, or you could just destroy both sides in one quick and clean attack, you doubt anyone would be able to notice you using magic when they’re more focused about the hail of bullets.

A tree branch snaps beneath you, followed by the clicking of a gun and three rounds going off. “Mage in sight! I repeat I got mage in sight!”

Nevermind.

The bullets tear through your vest but just bounce off your magic enhanced skin. You turn on your heel, holding your arm out. “Beelzebub.” Burning cold swells in your heart and crawls through your veins, black flames shooting out from your palm at the soldier. He barely has the chance to scream before the black fire eats away his vocal cords, his gun clattering to the floor. In only a few seconds the only thing left of him is the uniform and the black flames burning in the shape of a man.

Despite how stupid it might be, you let go of the fine control you have over Beelzebub. It doesn’t waste a second, thousands of little wisps of obsidian fire breaking off from the main mass and shooting out at the nearest source of organic matter. Be they tree or human, Beelzebub will devour them all the same.

Fresh mana fills your chest and you’re quick to turn it into something useful. This time it takes significantly less time to spread your wings, summoning ash beneath your feet and launching yourself up into the air.

Tree branches whack you over the head before you make it into the open air. . . and accidentally smash your head into the belly of a helicopter. A dull 'thump' sounds and you're not sure if it's your head that's empty or the helicopter.

Your vision blurs for a second, and you shake your head to get rid of the temporary headache. The helicopter swerves to the side, the tail swinging right at you, the soldiers inside yelling. Tucking your wings close to your body you fall just in time to avoid the tail, twisting your body as you careen through the air until you’ve got a clear line of sight. One magic circle is all it takes to blast a sizable hole through the center of the flying machine, taking out the engine and the blades all at once.

Quickly flapping your wings you dart up through the hole you created, ash flooding the inside of the heli as you pass and erupting in an explosion a second later. The heli plumets down to the ground but you stay in the air, spreading your wings out to soar. This high up you’ve got a clear view of everything — the entire compound, made up of two big buildings connected with a catwalk and oil storage towers; The machine gun men shooting at tanks with no regard for how many bullets they use; Beelzebub’s black flames spreading across the terrain like a forest fire, consuming everything in sight until the only thing left is scorched earth and dust.

First things first, the machine guns. Though not as dangerous to you as the tanks, you’ve had enough of them to sate you for a lifetime, and you’d rather not be on the receiving end again. With sitting ducks for targets it’s laughably easy to cast simple homing spells to kill the gunner and melt the machine guns mounted on the rails.

A bullet hits your chest, tearing through the bullet proof vest. It bounces off your skin but the force nearly knocks you out of the sky. You go with the force, tucking your wings and flipping backwards in the air until you can spread them out to glide down. You notice the snipers, two on the roof of each building, one on the middle one of the tall oil towers just behind the buildings. You go for the straggler first, diving down with the speed of a bullet.

The sniper tries to shoot you again but you barrel roll out of the way. You shoot a ball of flames at the sniper when you're close enough, completely disintegrating him on contact. Turning to your side you soar through the gap between two oil towers, making a sharp left turn around the tower with a quick flap of your wings so you can quickly soar up.

The building to your right is closer and your next target. Gliding down close to the roof you you summon your spell, incinerating the closer of the two snipers. The other one drops his rifle to shoot at you with a pistol, but you just tuck your wings close and barrel roll to evade the bullets.

Your wings suddenly spread out with the force of a tightly coiled spring, the crystalline edge slicing straight through the sniper's neck like a guillotine. You're given no time to focus on the remaining snipers when a massive artillery shell flies at you. With a swing of your arm your flames race out to collide with the shell, an explosion going off right in front of your face. Ash and soot cake on top of your lenses but that's a small price to pay when you can safely dart through the smoke cloud; looks like the tanks have noticed you.

Pulling your wings close to your wings close to your body you divebomb to take out the final two snipers. You crash into one of them, your boots making contact with his chest and the force you’ve generated from your flight means you completely smash through his ribs the second his back hits the roof. The concrete cracks beneath your boot, but that doesn't stop you as you race across it, pulling your arm back to swing a fist at the remaining sniper. The skull cracks the second your fist connects, breaking completely under your knuckles, blood and brains splattering on the lenses of your gasmask.

The roof you're on has a helicopter on it, and you think of destroying it, but the tanks present a bigger problem. Leaping off the edge of the building you launch yourself back into the air, turning your attention to the tanks. There’s four of them, all spread out in a vague arc across the empty field of land between the buildings and the road leading out. Not a problem for you.

Slowing down to a smooth glide you stretch your arms out in front of you. Your flames rush out to hit the artillery shells shot at you, but it also forces the mana Beelzebub keeps stuffing into your chest to move to your palms. Summoning four evenly sized circles in front of you is easy for a mage of your caliber. With mana burning in your palms you squeeze your hands, forcing all that magic to shoot out through the centers of the circles as concentrated beams of flame. As if struck down by some god's smite, The tanks blow up the moment your magic hits them, leaving smoldering half melted skeletons of steel behind.

You land near one of the tanks with enough force to crack the charred ground beneath you, stumbling a few steps forward. You turn your head, using the tattered remains of your jacket near your shoulders to wipe away the lenses. It makes you see the clear destruction Beelzebub has wrought, the once lush forest surrounding the compound turned baren. Yet the spell hungers still, given the chance it would easily devour the entire world, and you can feel it gnaw on the edges of your passive control in it's attempt to stray away from you. Biting the hand that feeds. Arrogant. Just like Lambert.

You're forced to snuff it out, dispelling Beelzebub before it tries to sweep through the country like all ten plagues.

A shuddering breath leaves you for the first time in a while, your lungs stuttering as you breathe in for the first time in a while. Despite how stuffed to the gills with mana your chest is, how you can barely breathe with the pressure against your ribs, you can feel the familiar sting of your bones — the cost of mana use burrowing into your marrow. The missions, the ambush, this, it’s all starting to pile on. It’s the cost, you suppose, no mortal will ever become god, this is simply a consequence for your choices.

Shots ring out above the crackle of flames, bullets bouncing off your body and only making you aware of the soldiers. Thy are too much of a problem to be kept alive, but killing them with magic would be a waste of mana considering you’re slowly reaching the breaking point of how much even your augmented body can handle.

Fortunately, you’ve got a cheap trick up your sleeve. Quickly sensing the exact location of the Urzikstan soldiers you cast another spell, circles forming beneath their feet before chains of living flame ensnare them like rabbits. "Belial." You say, your gaze fixed on the Urzikstan soldiers. 

Belial is softer on your arteries than Beelzebub, but it still passes from your heart and into your fingers like a kidney stone. Big globs of tar black lava drip from your arms, sizzling and steaming when splatter on the ground. But they don’t stay inert for long. You’ve seen the sight a thousand times; Roaches made of pure black lava crawl out of the puddles by the dozens, quickly skittering towards the hapless humans. They crawl up the bound soldiers, fiery mandibles eating away the flesh and boring holes through muscle, squirming into every orifice, infesting every inch of their insides.

The soldiers try to scream but their vocal cords are soon devoured as the roaches eat everything they deem useless. They gorge themselves on the fat, groups of them peeling off the skin in long strips until the bowels and other organs fall out to the ground with a wet 'splat' to be eaten by yet more roaches. The bodies twitch and convulse, falling to the ground when you dispel the chains. Blood and mucus froths at their mouths but the roaches drink up even that like it's the finest wine.

When they're done feasting they crawl into the body that's nothing more but muscle, ligament, and bone. A single hand motion is enough to command the bodies to rise. They do so slowly, limbs twitching and bodies shaking as the magical roaches squirm in the homes they've made between muscle fibers. The bodies stumble to their feet, eyeless slack jawed heads full of roaches staring at you.

Your control over them isn’t as fine as Jackal had over his puppets, but it’s still better than what most militaries see. Your well hidden anger bleeds into your magic, you don’t even need to speak for the charred puppets to stumble past you, seeking out to devour the stragglers you missed.

With that done you turn your attention to the large two story building where you can still sense Khaled’s presence.

. . .

"Ah still think this is bollocks." Soap growls when his head bumps against the roof of the Humvee because Price drove over yet another pot hole in the road. "Go capture tae mage that can turn yeh into a kebab, wonderful idea, no wee problem there."

"Noted sergeant." Price grunts, knuckles almost white as he grips the steering wheel. "Anything else you want to add?" He asks but receives a few grumbles in return. They've heard that one part of the army had come to lay siege on the refinery, and from the preliminary reports Laswell gave them, it didn't end well for the poor bastards.

"Do we even have a game plan sir?" Gaz asks, glancing between Ghost and Soap sitting in the backseat. "One that isn't 'let the mage shoot at us until they tucker out'?"

"Got a better idea?" Ghost asks with a small huff. "Let me n' Price do the heavy lifting." He grunts, "You two stay back and provide support."

Even with irritation nibbling on his nerves, Soap can't help himself. "Oh, you like it hot Lt?"

Gaz gives a surprised snort. Ghost side eyes Soap. "Mhm, scorching."

"We're getting close." Price warns, switching gears as the road starts going up the hill. His sharp senses already pick up the lingering hints of smoke and ash along with the tang of burnt flesh. Beneath all of that is something older: the rancid festering flesh of crumbling empires and wild animalistic grief.

Price grits his teeth. "Remember, we need Ifrit alive."

"Laswell never said we had to keep 'em in one piece." Ghost ads.

"Thank fock for that." Johnny says and bumps his shoulder against Ghost's. "Yae reckon she won't mind if ah take a few fingers off?" He asks, a mean grin pulling his lips back to bare his teeth.

"Play nice and I'll throw you a femur too." Ghost chuckles, ignoring the look Johnny gives him.

"Are we even sure this thing will work?" Gaz asks, looking down at the heavy piece of metal in his hands. It looks like a metal collar, runes and circles etched into the outside surface, tiny needles poking from the inside. Three vials filled with bright purple liquid are slotted into the back of the collar. The thing buzzes softly beneath his claws, like there’s a thunderstorm stuck inside the metal, making his fingers go numb.

"That's why we brought the arm restraints to be sure." Ghost says, absentmindedly tapping a clawed finger against the restraints he's holding. They look like big elbow length mittens made out of metal, similar runes scrawled over every inch.

Kyle purses his lips before his gaze turns to the roll of silver tape Price had haphazardly thrown on top of the dashboard. "What's the tape for? Planning to put a bow on Ifrit?"

"Got to wrap up the gift somehow." Ghost shrugs.

"Oh yeah, an I reckon the mage will just sit nice n pretty and let us play dress up." Soap snarks.

"Focus." Price orders, pulling their attention to the front windshield. The forest surrounding the main road abruptly disappears as if a god had photoshopped a different part of the world in it's place, verdant green replaced by scorched black ground and nothing else. The smell of burning metal and flesh is inescapable now, seeping through the cracks of the windows and making Gaz cough.

"Fucking hell." Gaz mumbles, tears stinging his eyes and forcing him to quickly put on the gas mask hanging off his neck. It doesn't help a single bit with the god awful smell.

"This shite is useless." Soap complains as he secures the gas mask to his own face. Soap had smelled his fair share of foul things in the demolition school, from Sulphur to gas and everything that could be used in making explosives, but the stench he's exposed to now makes everything else smell like daisies. "How the hell did the matchstick do this?" He can't help but ask.

"That's the work of ruin magic." Price says, tone hard and clipped.

They're forced to stop a little bit away from the compound as their path is blocked by the wreckage of a helicopter, the steel melted into the concrete road and the sides of the road too steep to drive around. They pile out of the Humvee, Soap and Gaz clutching their guns close; it's uncommon for them to use human made weapons when they're monsters, but Price isn't taking any chances with his mens safety.

They inch carefully past the remains of the helicopter, burnt cracked dirt crunching beneath their boots. With no trees in the way the compound is easy to see, and it looks just as bad as the surrounding area.

"Steaming Jesus." Johnny mutters as they walk around one of the four tanks, the metal melted and flames still flickering a top it. The land here looks like the hell his ma would describe in an attempt to put some godliness in him; The ground is cracked and charred black, hot under their boots. Ash and steam blanket the ground, making it hard to see where they step. Parts of the buildings have been melted, long strands of slag running down the sides of them. There's no light save the fires burning haphazardly across the ground, but their eyes can see fine in the dark.

"Should we check for survivors?" Kyle asks, finger tightly pressed against the safety switch, his wings spread out just enough to be able to quickly launch himself into the air if the need arises.

"Don't bother." Simon says, dark smoke slowly fizzling off his hands. The air in the compound feels heavy, feels like he's back in that fucking coffin. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, anticipation crackling under his skin like static. "We didn't bring a dust bin. Or Henry the Hoover."

"Fuck Lt," Soap opens his mouth to speak more, but before he can make a sound, they hear a half mangled groan ring out from their side. Immediately raising his gun Soap narrows his eyes, managing to make out a dark outline stumbling towards them. At first Johnny thinks it’s a survivor, but then the steam clears enough to see it’s clearly not. What stumbles towards them is a completely skinned human, muscle and bone charred black, jaw gnashing as if it's already got their throat between its teeth.

Without thinking Johnny unloads a couple of bullets into the body, silenced gunshots echoing in the smoke. The body just soaks up the bullets, continuing to stumble after them. "Shit!" Soap hisses as he steps back, but before he can shoot at it again, Simon's shadows lash out at it.

The whips of darkness knock the corpse to the ground, managing to tear off a desecrated arm off in the process. A disgusting sound gurgles in it's throat as it tries to crawl towards them, the cracked bone of its fingers clawing at the ground. Simon moves his hand up and a spike of darkness erupts from the walking corpse's shadow, destroying the head in an instant. Soap doesn't even have time to breathe before the body starts convulsing, large black pustules rapidly swelling on its back. They explode without warning, black flames spewing out in a few feet around it like a miniature bomb, incinerating the corpse in the process.

A second of silence passes.

"What the fock was that?" Soap stresses, staring at the black flames as they burn on the ground.

"Belial." Price mumbles under his breath, blue eyes narrowing as a small breath of smoke escapes past his lips. "Magic made undead.” Price grunts. “Ruin magic lets the mage control the body like a puppet."

"Great." Soap grunts, trying not to breathe in the scent of burning flesh. "First the bomb shaped mage, now focking zombies? Firecracker's pulling out all the stops." Soap’s tail flicks to his leg and he grips his riffle tighter. "Shit, that smell too." He doesn't know how you keep managing to make things smell worse and worse, but fuck, he's sure the stench will be stuck in his pores for the rest of his life.

"Not a fan of barbeque?" Ghost asks as they step around the burning corpse. Or rather what remains of it.

"Not quite the cook out ah have in mind LT." Johnny grumbles.

"Remind me not to join you two at the next brass dinner." Gaz ads with a humorless chuckle before his harpy eyes spot more movement. "Tangos, one o'clock." He says, and doesn't need to be prompted to fly up into the sky to be their eyes.

"Stick close and aim for the head." Price orders, all of them slowly and quietly making their way into the compound. They encounter more zombies, some of them stumbling around mindlessly, some simply standing. Knowing where to hit they're easy to take out unawares, a couple of bullets through the skull enough to get the corpses on the ground.

Kyle lands behind them when they near a two story building. Another one is opposite it, a catwalk above them connecting the buildings together. A nearby door is torn off its hinges, smoke spilling through it into the surrounding air. It's the only place they can think of where you might be.

"Simon, with me." Price says, "Gaz, Soap, secure the perimeter." Price doesn't need to say it twice. Simon steps close to him, guarding his six as they enter the building. Large holding tanks are built in the center of the building, smoke filling the room up to their knees and the occasional cinder of ash gracefully fluttering through the air. Price automatically checks his right, eyes focusing on the stairs leading to a small room on the second floor, one set of stairs on both sides of the room. Bits of thick ash cascade down the stairs, and both of them can smell the rot.

He makes a small hand motion and Simon understands easily, leaving his side to duck behind the towering oil tanks, crossing the room and reaching the other set of stairs. Quietly they make their way up, making sure not to make a single sound. The door on Price’s side is torn off too, his pointy ear flicking as he hears what he assumes to be your voice, low and muffled, simply asking: "How?"

. . .

Your hand shakes from how hard you try to keep yourself from crushing Khaled's skull. You can already imagine the way bone would softly creak before finally splintering to pieces, the way blood and brains would squelch between your fingers. You grip his head hard enough to bruise instead, his skin bubbling and hair burning from the barely controlled heat of your hand.

Khaled looks exactly how other prideful men look when you come to collect your due — eyes wide, teeth clenched, legs weakly kicking you as you have him dangling in the air. You’d usually feel satisfaction, but the only thing in your heart right now is a suffocating cold.

The cold extends to your free hand, turning the lava into inert stone so not even a single thread of the patch laying in your palm is burned; A black decapitated right hand sits in a crimson backdrop. A crimson eye in the center of it cries bloody tears. ‘Mortem Opetere’ is stitched on top of it, boldly proclaiming what awaits you. Across both sides just three measly words turn your world upside down: ‘Red Right Hand’.

Your jaw feels welded shut as you try to open it, moving your tongue like your mouth's full of barbed wire before you manage to force out one word: "How?"

Khaled grunts instead of answering, coughing as the ash cascading off your wings continues to twirl in the air. Beelzebub’s flames dance at your feet, consuming the magical ash the second it touches the floor so the room feels suffocating, but it doesn’t make him pass out.

You grip him harder, claws of lava burning through the surface of his skin until you’re digging into the muscles covering his bones, his screams fall deaf on your ears. Even like this, barely able to hold yourself back from cracking his skull like an egg, your magic is controlled. You only let enough mana linger in your palm so the heat burns and stabs at his nerves, but not enough to completely destroy them. “How. Did. You. Get. This?” You ask again, each word like a sharp stab to your tongue.

Khaled bites his lip so hard it bleeds, glaring at you with utter disgust in his eyes. “Ask your- mh!- your commander lich-”

You notice the enemy presence a second too late, gunshots blasting in your ears. Having dispelled your body enhancing spells because of how taxing they were, you’re left with no  choice but to blindly throw up a shield of crackling flames to destroy the bullets.

You miss one.

The bullet hits the crystalized bone of your wing and it's all it takes to create a spark. The ash making up your wings erupts, the resulting explosion unable to damage your wing but it does knock you forward. Khaled slips through your fingers as you both are tossed to the ground from the force. Your magic surges through your hand even as you scramble to stand, magic circles forming in the air to shoot uncontrolled flames at the two exits of the room.

Ropes of dark shadows shoot out from the right doorway, forcing you to throw yourself to the side to dodge them. You get to your feet just as the shadows hit the wall at the height of your head, quickly eroding a hole into the steel; The wraith has found you, and likely the rest of the misfits too.

You're careful as you stuff the patch into your pocket, but have no regard for the muscles in your back when you spread your wings out. Fresh ash cascades down the crystalline bones just as you flap your wings to send a gust of ash towards the front of the room. Mana surges to your cold arm and melts the stone into liquid lava which you fling into the cloud of ash, the heat from those drops of lava causing another explosion. Unable to sense where the wraith is, you focus on completely blocking off the exits in your flames, bright circles forming at the doorways and white hot flames shooting up, spilling over the door frame to scorch the ceiling.

You’re too distracted to notice Khaled move "Idiot boy have I taught you nothing?" the crackle of flames and the exploding ash masking his labored footsteps. His hand grabs your shoulder and pulls you back enough to jab a cold needle of a syringe into your neck.

Your wing shoots out automatically, knocking him back with enough force to have him crash into the wall. You yank the syringe out and toss it to the ground. The glass shatters, residual drops of bright purple liquid seeping into the ground.

But it’s too late.

You can feel Morgana’s tears course through your system, burning each cell in your blood vessels like battery acid, leaving your throat feeling numb and head light and heavy at the same time. You sway on your feet before your legs go weak and you fall to your knees with a gasp as if someone had punched you in the gut, your burning fingers tearing gouges into the floor as your muscles tense and relax a million times a second. Beelzebub’s black flames shoot out from between your fingers, freezing cold solidifying around your heart and in your arteries. It's a useless attempt to stave off the serum, to give you a few seconds more to escape, but you're glad for it.

You push on the ground with all the strength you can muster and get back on your feet. The weight of your wings nearly makes you fall on your ass as you’re forced to take a few shaky steps to keep your balance. From the corner of your eye you can see Khaled stumbling away from you, to the third exit to the room which leads to a catwalk connecting this building with another.

Raising your hand you try to summon a spell to take him out, a shaky circle forming at your palm. It breaks into a million pieces when a heavy body slams into you like a train, breaking your concentration and your ribs. You’re forced back until your wings hit the wall, forcing them to spread out as some of the crystal audibly breaks and cracks, accosting your brain with pain signals your mind was never created to handle.

Your hands shoot up, “Fire-” You force out in an attempt to combat the shroud Morgana’s tears weave around your mind. A circle forms, the usually crisp lines wonky and inconsistent. A few measly sputtering sparks flicker in the center of the circle before you’re able to force a bout of unwieldy flames in the face of your opponent.

You can feel how weak your fire is, you doubt you could give a man a second degree burn, let alone scratch the fireproof skin of the dragon that comes charging through your magic. Icy blue eyes dance in the periphery of your vision seconds before the dragon punches you right in the diaphragm.

You hunch over and almost vomit up an organ as all the air is forced out of your lungs. You feel your muscles tear and ribs break, your magic too focused on healing you to numb any of the pain that comes racing to your brain. You don’t know how you’re still standing but you weakly manage to slam your elbow back into the wall, quickly cooling lava scraping the metal and causing a spark.

The ash explodes for a second time, the force of it making your wings crack further yet they still hold. It creates a hole in the wall and forces the dragon to stumble back with a cough. You tip back and fall through the hole, the whole world weighing down on your body before you crash on the hot hard ground. The sudden stop knocks the breath out of you a second time, every muscle in your back screaming at you. Your chest is steadily growing colder as Morgana’s tears bypass Beelzebub, your arms feeling stiffer with every waking second as the serum forces your mana to slumber.

Your vision swims and blurs like the lines of a water drenched painting, voices somewhere close echoing in your ears. The dragon’s cold blue eyes stare down at you for a second before he jumps through the hole. You roll out of the way with great difficulty, avoiding him just in time as the dragon’s fist lands where you had just been and shatters the earth.

Stumbling to your feet you feel your blood leak down your back, pain pulsing in your chest as your mana struggles to heal each broken bone. Your mind is scrambling for the names of the spells you haven't needed to use in a long time, your thoughts further slowed by the fact you need to dodge out of the way of the dragon's fist. “Jump.” You speak. You summon a circle beneath your feet you that launches you into the air, the whirling world almost making you vomit and you barely manage to catch yourself on an oil containment tower.

Somehow through the ringing in your ears you hear the whirring of helicopter blades, turning your head to see a helicopter quickly rise from the roof of a building and start to fly away. You don’t need magic sense to know Khaled is in it. Your hand shakes as you raise it, Morgana’s tears steadily taking more of your mana hostage to the point it's getting hard to cast a single spell. “Fire bullet.” You manage to say, shooting off a shaky ball of concentrated flames.

You miss the rotor you had been aiming for, but by a lucky chance manage to hit the tail. Your fire isn't hot enough to melt the metal fully, but it still enough to make the helicopter swerve wildly. You watch it slowly loose altitude and crash somewhere beyond the tree line.

You’re not given even a second to catch your breath before the tower shakes violently, beginning to list heavily. You catch sight of a werewolf trying to scale it and that forces you to jump off the tower. You land on the one in front of you and don't stop, leaping across the three towers. Jumping off the last one you manage to flap your wings, the pitiful explosion that goes off beneath you gives just enough lift for your slowly liquifying wings to reach the roof of the second building.

You stumble as you land on the roof, the coagulated blood forming your Daedalus wings falling to the ground with a wet 'splat'. It feels like every single inch of your veins and arteries have been turned into pin cushions, the hot lava of your arms, absent of mana, quickly cools until there’s only a thin surface of cracked rock covering your muscles and bones. Your vision swims and you can barely move your arms, trying your best to just stay upright.

Asmodeus is the only thing unaffected, burning at the back of your mind like the last star of an empty universe. It tempts you with the heat of the magic it can give, with the power you could use if you just let it in. What's a few more drops of blood when you're drowning in it?

The harpy comes out of nowhere, slamming into you with enough force to knock you off the building.

You land on your back, barely able to utter a sound from how loudly your bones crack. Your leg is numb. Lingering dredges of your magic crawl across your spine, trying to fix your wounds with the same grace as cavemen with stole tools. You whimper like a child as you try to get up, barely able to dig your fingers into the scorched dirt to get some stability.

Footsteps approach you. A boot sharply kicks your side and forces you to roll on your front. "Playtime's over." A voice rings somewhere in your ears. Your scattered brain focuses on the accent — Manchester you think — instead of the clawed hands that yank your arms behind your back. Instinctively you try to scramble out of the firm hold but it's useless and the only thing you achieve is making the enemy pull on you harder.

Your arm is forced into a sickeningly familiar constraint; The mage cuff seals around your forearm and forces your hand into a fist, the binding spells making the metal feel like your arm is coated in liquid nitrogen. Your other arm follows suit, powerful magnets activating and binding the cuffs. They lock your arms together and painfully force your chest to stick out to the point you can barely move your arm without the risk of dislocating it.

More footsteps ring behind you as you weakly struggle. "Stay fucking still." The man above you growls as he yanks the helmet off your head with enough force you’re surprised he doesn’t take your head off. You gasp as the ash and smoke filled air enters your lungs, so unused to going without your helmet. A collar is quickly snapped around your throat, so tight you can barely breathe, needles on the inside digging into your skin. The binding spell on the collar is just as vicious as the one on the cuffs, forcibly pulling your brain into the bottom of the ocean.

Your vision swims with black spots and you’re barely able to see a man squat in front of you until rough clawed fingers grip your chin hard enough to make you bleed dark purple-red blood over his fingers. The enemy tugs your head up, but you’re unable to make out more than bright blue eyes and a stupid mohawk. "Huh, ah was expecting uglier."

Spite flares in your heart. A glob of spit and red blood shoots from your mouth at his face before you can think. The slap you receive nearly knocks your head off your shoulders and bashes your brain against your skull. His claws rake across your cheek, blood pouring down your skin. "Ahgk! Fockin' disgusting-" But It's worth it to hear the man curse.

"Told you not to take it off." The enemy on top of you growls.

"Charming." A lighter voice, you think it's the harpy, ads. "He's not going to turn into. . . one of them?"

"No." A new voice joins in, hard, angry, rumbling like thunder. You think it's the dragon, but your brain struggles to stay conscious let alone try to think. "Tape."

You shake your head to be difficult just out of spite, but sharp fingers bury into your scalp and pull your head up so the tape can be sealed over your mouth.

The enemy, wraith, your mind reminds, has no problem hoisting up your cold body, manhandling you like a doll.

You’re barely conscious as you’re roughly pushed into somewhere, somewhere without a lot of space. Two unyielding bodies squeeze you in on either side, your chest is barely able to move enough to ensure your lungs get a bit of air. Panic tries to get a foothold in your mind, to make your silent heart race. The walls and ceiling feel like they’re closing in, like you’re getting squished down and at any moment your organs will rupture—

But the drugs smooth out your brain like ocean waves weather down massive cliffs, your body so exhausted you can’t manage even a small twitch of a struggle. You feel the cold muzzle of a gun press against your temple, the cool sensation making you aware of the pounding headache.

"Move," The man on your left says, voice rough like sandpaper and with a distinct accent, "An’ yer dead." His threat sounds like an order, you don’t doubt he’s just itching for you to make a single move he can justify to his brass as aggression and kill you. You know you would do the same.

The vehicle you’re in rumbles to life but you can barely feel it, body and mind too exhausted to even hold your head up. Your stomach twists and turns as if trying to find a way to crawl up through your mouth, your lungs burn from the lack of air.

“Laswell we got-”

“-bout Khaled-”

“-ead, arsonist shot do-”

“-get out, the army reinforcements are co-”

You try to pay attention to what they say, but their words bang uselessly around your hollow skull, shapes and edges blurring together into abstract art. With nothing stopping it, Morgana’s tears leisurely branch through your blood vessels like brambles, making you shiver from how cold you are. You’re stuck in maddening limbo, there’s not enough of the drug in your system to turn you temporarily catatonic — your body is too used to the drug — but at the same time it’s fucking agony.

You've done this before, you know how much small victories count. You don’t know what they want from you, but you swear to yourself not to cry from the pain, both now and when the torture starts. You’re not a fucking child, not that snot nosed private you were when you first felt the sting of Morgana’s tears, you’ve been through worse.

But the problem is, you’re not out of tricks.

Your control over Valefar slips, the exhaustion and drugs slowly wearing down the rope of control you've been maintaining for months. Since the first day you started working for Khaled. You knew he’d betray you, you had that feeling in your gut. The collar beeps as mana suddenly sparks in your chest, thawed by the ancient magic you use. Without warning the needles in the collar jab into your neck as your mana builds, pumping more of the poison into your blood.

But it’s useless, with steam starting to rise off your chest not even you are able to hold it back. A rough chuckle forces its way out of your throat. You always figured you would die by your hand or not at all.

"What’s with the giggling?" The werewolf demands, gun still trained on you. "Something funny?"

You gather your strength and slowly roll your head back, every vertebra in your spine cracking from how much damage your body has received. The trembling wall of the truck gives you the support you lack. Black spots dance in your vision, but you manage to turn your gaze to one side.

On your right is the wraith. A creature of death. Violent Death.

You feel like there’s a joke about the situation somewhere. Figures you’d be sat against the personification of violent death. You’ve been living on borrowed time for too long, the reaper doesn’t like to wait.

Shadows darkening what little you can see of his face through the skull mask, making his eyes look like you’re staring into the void.

Unnerving. 

You’ve been told your eyes are much the same.

The wraith stares at your face, into your eyes. You’re pretty sure this is the first time in ten years that someone has seen the eyes you were born with. The color is so painfully drab and human.

But it don’t last. Out of nowhere mana sparks in your eyes like a violent forest fire set off from the cinder of a forgotten cigarette. Oranges, reds, and yellows swirl around the pitch blackness of your pupil, bright and intense like staring into a black hole.

There’s no grand gesture to show the snapping of your control. Your heart skips a beat as it births Valefar, the soft cool magic nibbling on your veins as a pulse of cool mana rushes through to your fingers. You see the wraith stiffen, only barely able to sense how the world quivers.

The earth shatters.

The truck jerks forward and you almost fly out of the front windshield, kept in place by someone's rough hand gripping and pulling you back in place. The earth shakes violently as months of accumulated mana melts through rock and suddenly erupts from the ground as a beam of pitch black flames. You can feel Valefar laughing beneath the ground, inside your hollow heart. It takes joy in spreading your magic as far as it can, incinerating the arriving helicopters full of soldiers before they can even understand what's happening.

The car swerves to avoid the rocks falling from the sky, the air around you trembling as Valefar makes a crater out of the mountain. They’re lucky that your control finally evaporated when they were far enough to escape the impact zone.

You tilt your head, catching sight of the wraith. He stares at you.

Your eyelids flutter without your consent, all strength leaving you, but you manage to wink at him.

You pass out.

Tag list: @resident-cryptid @diejager @lovingtyrantkitten @lieutnt @lilpothoscuttings @krystiannng @crankyweasel @ashy-kit @fyolaizs @h0n3y-l3m0n05 @aldis-nuts @whoislucas @birdiiiiiiiiiii @thigh-o-saur @dont-look-at-me-im-shy @reaperxxxxzz @patronizingbitch @kaoyamamegami @mauvette268 @inspector-m3 @gaynesspersonified @fluffysteampunkd @fall-myriad

[mochatsin]

MC as a Dating Sim Character Part 2

An AU in which the seven brothers knew you as a dating sim character from a game they love to play so much. Though the game glitched and was shortly deleted after. The demons end up finding out that their beloved character is actually alive… or came to life?

Thank you for all the love you guys gave to the first part of the Reverse!MC AU.

The seven would sit you down and ask you questions, ones specifically catered to you to check if you were the same character they played. It ranged from your basic interests to something that were more personal. To them, they’re just lore that they got by playing through the game. But to you, those were some deep secrets that you never tell anyone unless they were your closest friends. 

It felt weird to sit in a room with several strangers that seemed to know everything about you. It was like you were bare to the world and to everyone, unaware that you were a video game character. In your perspective, those storylines and game events are memories, things that actually happened to you. Now you’re surrounded with demons that assume they know you.

Satan is the first to notice how uncomfortable you look when Levi tries to prove that he knows your lore, reciting it all perfectly and you’re confused on how they knew this personal information. The fourth born is the one that tries to stop his brothers from saying more than they need to, and a few got the hint to keep shut. There’s some things that should come from your mouth, not theirs. 

This is what the demon’s gathered. As far as you know, everything you’ve experienced was real. You don’t know about the game they say you came from, but you know the other roster of datable characters as if they were also real people to you. Some of them were your friends, and it’s beginning to dawn onto them that you’re more than just some character now. You’re your own person with more complex feelings than codes can ever give. No more scripted lines that make your responses predictable. 

The royals say that you should stay over in the House of Lamentation for a while and when you asked what room you’ll be staying in, the brothers started talking all at once on why you should pick their room. 

If you want to admire a collection of model cars and luxury brands, ‘The Great Mammon’ is willing to let you bunk with him but it’s not because he wants you to stay or anything. Levi has a lot of games and shows you both can enjoy (because your character profile already stated what you’ll like) but his bathtub may not give enough comfort as a bed would.

Asmo offers his gigantic bathroom and promises you can sleep with the finest silk linen sheets with some calm inducing aromatherapies. Satan is cursing under his breath when he recalls how his new books took up more bedspace, his pigsty of a room can hardly offer you anything but clutter.

The twins are happy to let you stay with them, Beel would promise you some of the best midnight snacks and Belphie is willing to let you borrow his cow pillow to make sure you sleep well. Lucifer had to intervene with the brothers, shutting down their offers (even when he himself has so much to give) and states that you will be occupying the guest room for the time being. At least it gives you the much needed privacy.

While you try to adjust to your life here in Devildom, Lucifer makes the arrangements for you to stay at the House of Lamentation. It’s best to focus first on getting yourself comfortable in this new world before everyone sorts things out with how you got here. To players, your file was corrupted and glitched in the game. To you, your vision went blurry and you passed out before waking up in Devildom shortly after. 

You still have the same personality that you had as your old game model, so the brothers have a vague idea of how to approach you. Though they needed to constantly remind themselves that you’re not just some character anymore. Before you could even visit their rooms, they cleaned up their ‘mess’ which meant hiding all the merch products and photos of you. Now that you’re real, it’s quite embarrassing and awkward if you found this. Levi had the hardest time hiding an entire shelf of merch. 

The demons, especially those who were so invested in your lore, made sure not to romanticize or make light of your stories. Regardless of how your background was well-written for character development, it was still very much real to you. Levi needed to personally note to himself to be more sensitive about it when he heard you talk about your backstory. It’s different when it’s coming from a game and when it’s coming from you. 

All those voice recordings they have saved needed to be archived or put somewhere more private. Mammon accidentally had it played while you were around and he ran away so fast before you could even react to your own voice. There was a reminder from Lucifer at the end of the day in their group chat to be more mindful about any saved ringtones or voice packs. It’s best to replace them for now. They don’t need it as much anymore now that they can just talk to you, it was much better than any recording.

If you ever said any catchphrase or lines that you normally say in the game, they always get caught off guard and turn to you immediately. At some point, Satan managed to complete your sentence when you spoke the first line and he tried to play it cool but you can see how flustered he was behind the book he was hiding from. It just so happens that he memorized some of your home screen lines and blurted it out. 

Asmo helps you get some better clothes, there’s no way he could just let you wear the same thing everyday or any sort of hand-me-downs. He brings you around Majolish and several shops until you find what sort of outfits would suit you. Watching you come out in different outfits, showing him some of the clothes you both picked out makes Asmo so giddy inside. Maybe one day he can try to get one of your old in-game outfits sewn or something inspired by it, he has the money and talent to make you shine.

Since you came from a game, you belong to neither realms and it was better you stayed in Devildom surrounded by people willing to take care of you and know about your situation. You’re now the new transfer student now in RAD with one of the seven always tailing you behind your back. It’s perfect timing because Diavolo was planning an exchange program and you’re just the last student they needed!

The only problem was that since the game you came from was quite a big hit before, it’s undeniable when some of the students or other demons seem to recognize you. You looked like that beloved character that suddenly went missing, you even sound like it too. This sort of unwanted attention can be uncomfortable when they get too close to your liking.

Beel is always the one looking after you if any demon tries something funny, making sure they all back away from you. There was one point that a demon kept insisting you were that game character and poked your face, resulting in Beel almost hurling them to a wall. 

Belphie is always dozing off next to you in classes, but his murderous glances are always enough to make the rumors quiet down during your first few days. You think that most of the time he’s just sleeping, but others swear that they can feel his piercing gaze hiding behind those bangs. 

The seven are all fascinated by you now that you’re here. Those days were spent where they were wondering what happened to you in the game, now they knew why. For some unknown reason, you just came to life. Their own favorite character is now living with them but they knew seeing you in that light could be harmful. They needed to remember you’re not just some character anymore. You’re you now.

[crazyinlovewithbucky]

"Who would've thought I'd get you?"

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x avenger!witch!Reader

Summary: You and Bucky were both in Wakanda at the same time. He was getting the winter soldier out of his head and trying to find his peace and his old self there and you were getting rid of your demons and fighting your dark self who consumed you after reading the dark hold. You both found peace and familiarity in each other's company and got really close to each other. After healing and leaving Wakanda, you lived in Brooklyn and got closer to each other until your relationship escalated and took a very interesting turn.

Warnings: angst, fluff, infinity war, and endgame events, living in Wakanda, mentions of the blip, mentions of therapy, friends to lovers, smut, oral (f receiving), p in v, making out, use of sergeant and doll, sub to dom to sub reader, dom to sub to dom Bucky, creampie, breeding kink, magic used on Bucky, magic handcuffs, overstimulation, orgasm denial, edging, manipulating(?), very horny Bucky, very very horny reader, sexting, sending nudes, mentions of oral (m receiving), soft!dom Bucky, aftercare.

This smut was inspired by the song Get You by Daniel Caeser (feat. Kali Uchis)

AU/N: Hey guys, I just want to confess that I can't stop thinking about this fan art of Bucky so I decided to write a smut inspired by it. I found the picture on Pinterest so credit to the artist @daxramires on twitter and tumblr. Anyway, hope you enjoy it and I'd like to remind you that English isn't my first language so excuse me if I misspell or mispronounce anything. Enjoy <3.

"I don't know how I could've survived this time without you by my side," Bucky whispered in your ears while you were sitting by the bonfire, surrounded by trees and fields in Wakanda. It was very late in the night, and everyone was asleep, even the goats and cows. It was just you and him, eating roasted corn and talking under the full-of-stars sky of the night. You looked at him and smiled. He was very beautiful with that thick beard of his and his grown, long, and silky hair. And oh, his gazing, shiny blue eyes.

"I don't know how I could've survived without you too, Bucky. You are stronger than you think you are. Always the guy I could lean on and trust blindly." He smiled at your words, took your hands in his, and kissed you deeply. Kissing each other was nothing new to you both, as you got so much closer to each other during this dark time you both are having when you're trying to heal and fight off your demons.

His demons were his past, the winter soldier and all of those years spent locked and frozen, missing out on everything in life. Your demons were actual demons you accidentally summoned while your soul, heart, and mind were being consumed by the dark-hold. That book taught you everything about dark magic, and as a result, you became the most powerful witch of all time, or as you thought you were until you met the Scarlet Witch herself one day and had one of the deadliest fights ever. Lucky for you, she pitied you and wanted to help, so she talked to her team, the very famous Avengers, savers, and protectors of the earth. They decided to help you, and there was no better place to get rid of your demons than the place of peace, happiness, and kind people. Wakanda.

Shauri introduced you to Bucky and told you he was here too to heal, just like you. Your rooms or your huts were next to each other. He was the first one you saw when you woke up and the last one you saw before you went to sleep. You shared everything together. Food, clothes, water, treats, and even the same chores, and when your therapeutic healing sessions got tough on both of you, you always found comfort in each other's arms. That's how you both started kissing and hugging each other, as a way to ground one another and remind yourselves that you have each other.

But kissing each other didn't just occur after bad news or feeling depressed. It occurred after good news and after feeling happy. You didn't know back then in Wakanda what kind of relationship you both had, but it was a beautiful one, and you didn't want to ruin it if you labeled it or asked him if you were just friends or more. You thought to yourself that maybe you were just a part of his healing path, and you were nothing more than a person who helps him get on his feet again, and as soon as he does, he'll leave and start living his life. You wouldn't hate him if he did, and as much as you loved him, you learned how to keep a distance sometimes, just not to get too attached and have high expectations. You kept reminding yourself that you were here to heal and not break your heart more than you should.

After the whole healing journey, you both couldn't make your dreams come true of going to New York and having an apartment there together and for you to start writing again and achieving your dream of becoming a published writer, and he took an interest in photography, especially when you got him a film camera for his birthday and he started taking very beautiful photos of the nature there, of the kids running and helping their fathers in the fields, and of course he took various photos of you, making food, taking care of the goats, lying next to the lake, smiling and trying to push the camera away, washing your hair, and using your magic to lift a very big pile of hay.

Steve came and told you about the fight with Thanos and how you all need to defend Earth, and there might be a chance of no one coming back. You and Bucky were in disbelief; maybe you were more than him and felt anxious. He pulled you away from the team and everyone and took you to your favorite apple tree. He talked and calmed you down, told you everything was going to be okay, and he would never leave your side. And if everything goes downhill, you'll forever remain in his heart, whether he's dead or alive. You both kind of said goodbye to each other, embraced each other, shared a very deep and passionate kiss, cried a little, and said I love you for the first time to each other.

During the fight, you were still protecting each other. You were fighting with each other as a team; he was killing and shooting any alien who got a little bit closer to you, and with your magic, you were dodging their arrows and weapons that got thrown at him. Until the moment in which Thanos killed Vision and you saw Wanda crying and mourning him. You sat by her side, hugged her tightly, and cried with her. Until you felt total silence and everyone started fading away. In a panic, you ran and searched for Bucky. You found Steve, and you were in the middle of asking him if he saw Bucky or not. Bucky came from behind some bushes and said yours and Steve's names. You blinked, and he wasn't there anymore. Just dust flying away. You felt strange. You looked at Steve with burning teary eyes, and his eyes were filled with horror and confusion as he looked at you. You couldn't understand why. He held you and shouted your name as you looked at your hand and found yourself turning into dust and fading away too. You whispered his name in concern, and then everything went black.

After you woke up, you found King T'Challa getting you up on your feet and telling you, Let's go; they're waiting for us to fight. You didn't understand anything. One second later, Steve was shouting your name, and your hands were turning into dust. The other, King T'Challa, was holding you up and guiding you into a gold ring portal to another place. You couldn't find Bucky anywhere until you felt someone hugging you from behind and whispering in your ear, "I'm here doll. Let's get this over with so that we can get that apartment in Brooklyn as we promised." You cried, turned to him, and kissed him deeply.

"I thought I'd lost you," you cried, and you hugged him tightly.

"Never." He hugged you back and whispered in your ear, "I promised you, I'd never leave you." He pulled back again and kissed you. "Now, be a good girl for me and kill those sons of bitches. Make me proud." You giggled at him with teary eyes and nodded.

Of course, after a huge and deadly fight, you won. It took you both more time to heal from that, especially after knowing it's been 5 years since the fight in Wakanda and that Wakanda suffered a big loss, so they cannot take you both in at the moment and they need to rebuild their country again. So you both got back to New York and started seeing therapists. You both were shaken up by what had happened and decided it'd be a big step for you both to live with each other now, so you wanted to take one step at a time.

You were there for each other still, you lived very close to one another and even shared each other's apartment keys. Most of the time you were at each other's places, hanging out, cooking, and watching TV. But there always was a big sexual tension between you both. From him more because he didn't have sex for almost 80 years now and he was dying every time he saw because he just wanted to rip all of your clothes off and fuck you till you both can't breathe anymore. He was very attracted to you in ways, you can't even imagine. There was this one time he came by to your house, opened the door with the extra key you gave him and he saw you in the kitchen wearing an apron while washing the dishes and he almost came in his pants from this sight alone. Later that evening, he fucked his fist at the thought of you being his housewife, wearing that same apron, and he's fucking his cum into your cunt on the countertop.

You both were watching Scarface in your apartment, cuddling on your couch. Bucky was trying his hardest to focus on the movie, not the way your arms were wrapped around him and your left leg was resting on his leg with your head on his shoulder. He was having a fight with himself, as he didn't want his erection to be visible from under his pants so that you wouldn't get disgusted or creeped out by him. Then the line, "The eyes, chico. They never lie." came on.

You mumbled, "I guess this is true." then looked at him deeply.

He smiled and asked, "Why?"

"I believe that eyes can speak all the words and say all the things we bury in our hearts." Your gaze kept going from his eyes to his mouth, and vice versa. You found his pupils dilating until there was only a sin blue round line of his iris. You bit your lips at him, hinting that you need him too, hoping that he shares the same feelings as you, and you were almost certain he does as you noticed the tent forming in his pants and thought that maybe he does need you as much as you need him.

You were right because you found yourself suddenly underneath him as he started devouring your mouth and neck. You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him closer. Your tongues were fighting each other for dominance, and he was kissing you like there was no tomorrow. You'd die if he stopped. He started humping his hardened erection into your clothed cunt, and both of you were moaning at the movement and friction happening. He took off your t-shirt and found you not wearing a bra. "Fuck, doll. Are you trying to kill me?" He groaned before attacking your boobs with bites and kisses. He kept sucking and kissing your nipples, making all sorts of sounds and groans. His hips never stopped humping you.

You were cut out of your trance by a phone ringing. You both panted, and he took the phone out of his back pocket, it was Sam with a 911 next to his name. This was Sam's number for emergencies; if he called from this number, then it was an emergency. "Fuck, it's Sam from his 911 number." He said it out of breath, then pulled away from you and sat back on the couch, trying to calm himself and steady his breath. You sat next to him, covered your exposed chest with your arm, and tried to breathe normally too. He looked at you with a smirk, leaned his head forward toward yours, and kissed you deeply.

He answered the call, and Sam started talking right away. While Bucky was listening to Sam, you decided to tease him a little and sat on his lap, pushed him back to lean on the couch, and started grinding on him while kissing his cheek and neck. He groaned and held your hip with his left arm as he was holding the phone to his ear with the other and kept moving you on his crotch. His eyes widened a bit as Sam heard his groans and asked Bucky what he was doing. "Ahhh, nothing. It's just a headache. Go on." He smirked at you. You giggled and kept grinding yourself slowly on him as he took your right boob in his hand and started massaging it and pinching your nipple. You tried your best to hide and muffle your moans, but some were getting out involuntarily.

"Okay. Got it. See you in 10." He said this before hanging up the phone with Sam, and as soon as he did, he flipped you both over and kissed you hungrily.

"Excuse me? "See you in 10"? Please tell me it's in 10 hours," you whined, wrapping your legs and arms around him, not wanting him to leave.

"Sorry, doll. It's urgent. Some Hydra scientists were caught in Prague, and they need me to make them confess where their headquarters are now. It won't take long, I swear. I'll make sure to get back as soon as possible to finish what we started here." He mumbled against your mouth and kept pecking your lips and kissing you between his words. You found it extremely difficult now to say goodbye to him after what you both just shared and had. But he had to go, and you understood that, so you let him go, and he promised to get back to you as soon as possible and in one piece.

While he was away, you couldn't stop texting each other all the time, and your conversation and texts got more sexual. It started out simple: I need you so bad right now. I imagine you lying naked on my bed. I want to kiss you. Then, step by step, you found yourself taking naked pictures of yourself and sending them to him, and he was finding any excuse to go to the bathroom and fuck his fist while looking at your pictures and texting you how much he wants to bury his cock in your cunt and how badly he wants to taste you. Your texts, video calls, and pictures you sent to each other were what made you able to endure the pain of him being away.

You woke up one day and whined when you realized he was not here yet, and you didn't know when he was coming back. He said it wouldn't take long, but it's been a week, and you were going crazy. You had a meeting with the rest of the team in the Avengers Tower, so you took a shower to cool yourself down, got dressed, and went there. Throughout the whole meeting, you couldn't stop thinking about Bucky and the various positions and places you'd make love and fuck on. You've never wanted anyone like that before. You couldn't stop thinking about his eyes, his lips, his collarbones, his strong muscular arms, his thick thighs, and his hard cock. You've been humping your pillow, imagining it was his cock. You miss him. You miss his touches, his kisses, his hugs, his bites, and his smile. You found yourself distracted and closing your legs tightly, trying to ease some of the pain and need growing between your legs. Unfortunately, the day was very long and tiring. Tony and Fury had the whole team training and researching for the new big mission in Europe, as during those 5 years, Hydra built itself again and was planning to cause World War 3. So it was in your hands to stop them before they even began. Of course, you were highly distracted that day and couldn't focus on training or researching. You had your butt kicked multiple times by Yelena as she was screaming at you to focus. You were finally able to breathe when you left and got into a cab, taking you home.

In the cab, you texted Bucky, "I've had a bad day, and I'd like to suck your dick to feel better." You smiled to yourself at the vulgar text you just sent, but you both were used to this way of talking now. You hid your feelings and need for each other for too long now, so you felt like you had to make up for all this time of repressed feelings.

He replied instantly, "Trust me, sucking my dick would just make it worse," with a winky emoji next to it. You giggled and texted him that you miss him so much and can't wait to see him. The ride from Manhattan to Brooklyn took too long, obviously, so Bucky and his usual teasing nature asked you to tell him what you wanted him to do to you when he got back. You smirked and told him everything you'd been daydreaming about today and how you wanted him to touch you and fuck you on every surface in your apartment. How much did you want to feel his tongue and mouth on your clit. How much you wanted to ride his face. How much you wanted to cockwarm him and feel his cock so deep inside you while he buries his tongue in your throat.

You found yourself closing your legs tighter and rubbing your thighs together. You were desperate for any friction, but more desperate for his touch. You got a notification that he sent you a picture. You opened it quickly and found a live photo of him stroking his cock while the head leaked on his lower stomach. You could hear him grunting in the background. You bit your lip, closed your eyes, and tried to breathe normally. You couldn't wait till you get home and play with your favorite toy after facetiming him and seeing him fuck his fist at the thought of you.

Eventually, you arrived at your apartment building. You paid the cab driver and rushed upstairs to your place. You opened the door quickly and headed inside. You started to rip and take all your clothes off while heading to your bedroom; you were only in your underwear now, and as soon as you opened your bedroom door and entered it, you were faced with a very naked Bucky on the bed that's now full of red rose petals. You gasped at the sight before you.

He smirked. "Welcome home, doll." You couldn't believe your eyes—you had to blink twice to make sure this was real and actually happening. "I missed you so much. Come here." He sat himself up on his elbows and gave you a devilish smirk. You noticed his phone on the pillow next to him. This motherfucker has been texting me and sending me pictures of his dick while he was naked on my bed all this goddamn time, you thought to yourself. I'm going to fucking kill him.

You ran and jumped on the bed, on him. He caught you and held you by the waist and pulled you down to him. He pressed his lips against yours harshly while he was tearing and ripping off your bra and panties. Your bare, soaked cunt was touching his hardened cock. This feeling of him making contact with you down there made you pull away and moan loudly. You craved more of this feeling so you started rubbing yourself on him and grinding down. He held your hips and made you move faster. "Fuck. I miss you so much" He panted and lifted his head up and started sucking and kissing your boobs. He buried his face between them and started leaving kisses and marks in the space between them.

"No, Sergeant." Using your magic, you pulled his hands away and handcuffed him with bright red magical strings to the bedpost. He was very confused. "You didn't tell me that you were coming today or that you're here, in my bed, playing with yourself like some horny teenager while I was having a shitty day full of meetings and training which I could've not attended if you told me you were coming."

"I'm sorry, baby. I wanted to surprise you." He pouted his lips in an attempt to make you forgive him.

"Nope. Not working on me, Barnes." You raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Now, what's going to happen is that you'll watch me fuck myself on your cock and you won't get to come." He gasped and was about to start protesting but you muffled him with makeshift tape on his mouth that you created with your magic. "Tap on the bed twice with your leg if you want me to stop at any time, okay baby?" You said before kissing his cheek and he nodded. You smiled at him and at how he was okay with you being in control.

You lifted your hips up, grabbed his cock, and started rubbing and moving it between your folds, then lined it up with your entrance. You sat down on it slightly, taking it inch by inch. You cried out at the burning sensation you felt from being stretched out like that. Bucky was big. The biggest you've ever had, but you just wanted him badly enough to even think about him not fitting, so you took your time to adjust. You sat down until he was fully buried in you. You can hear his muffled groans and see how his chest is rising up and down. His eyes were locked on where your bodies were connected. You lifted yourself slowly to make him see the base of his cock soaked with your juices, and his muffled groans became louder and his hips started lifting upwards involuntarily. He wanted to keep it buried inside of you and wanted to feel your hot, soaking walls being wrapped around his achy, hard length. He kept fucking and thrusting his hips upwards, fucking into you, and you let him. You started lifting yourself up and down on him and riding him. Until you both found a steady, fast pace and kept going.

Your moans and screams were uncontrollable at this moment, and you could see he was suffering with these restraints you had on him and how he was squirming his hands and arms, trying to get loose and touch you. You removed that makeshift tape from his mouth, and he was a groaning mess. "Fuck, dolly. Let me kiss you, please. I want to taste you." He whined, and his eyes were very hazy, with dilated pupils and nothing but pure lust in them. You leaned in and kissed him passionately. It was like he had been waiting for this moment, and he started to devour your lips and tongue with his like a man starving. All of that while fucking up into you harder and faster than before. You choked on a gasp, and he never stopped any of his movements or his kissing. You knew that he was trying to distract you from your decision to not let him come. You pulled away quickly, pushed his hips down, and sat on him, not moving while he was still buried deep.

"You sneaky motherfucker." You said, out of breath.

He leaned his head back, and his cheeks were burning red while he was breathing hard, almost panting. "Baby, please. I can't take it anymore. It hurts so bad down there." He looked at you with teary eyes.

"Fuck it, are you crying now, Barnes? It's been only 10 minutes, and you're crying? I haven't even come yet." You felt like you took it too far with him, but he didn't tap his leg as you told him, so you decided to take it easier on him a little and removed the handcuffs.

As soon as you removed them, everything turned around, and you found yourself in a millisecond underneath him with your legs spread out and lifted all the way to your shoulders as he split you in half while his cock was still nestled deep down in your hole.

"Remember when I told you I'm such a good actor? I wasn't lying." He smirked at you before pulling his cock all the way out and thrusting so hard inside you again that you were pushed back into the bed from how hard it was. He kept fucking you with very long, deep, hard strokes like that. You forget all about your dominance over him and your promise to not let him come. Little did you know that he would let you decide when he could come because he didn't want to make you break your promise, knowing that if he granted you that, you'd grant him whatever he wanted. And boy, did he want a lot!

From how deep and good he was thrusting and fucking into you, your mind was filled with white noise. Your mouth was in an O shape, and nothing but silent screams and gasps came out. He leaned in and rested his forehead on yours as he was looking down at the way his cock was disappearing inside of you. "Look at that, dolly. Look how good you're taking me! You're meant for me, baby. Meant to take my dick like that. You fit me so well." You gasped and moaned at his words, and as you were very close to coming, he snaked his hand down and started rubbing quick circles on your clit. Everything turned white for you as you found yourself gushing your orgasm around his cock. You were crying out so loudly as he kept fucking you through your orgasm; you swore you almost went blind from the pleasure he was giving you.

He stopped and flipped you over on your stomach, he put a pillow beneath your hips to give more access to your holes. You whined at the loss of stuffiness in your hole, he moved down and mumbled against your cunt, "Need to clean this beauty up, dolly. You made a big mess." He started eating you out like you were his last meal. Sucking your clit between his lips, licking you in long strokes from your clit up to your puckered back hole, spreading your folds with his tongue and lapping on the new juices gushing from your hole. You were squirming already from the overstimulation so he held your hips tightly and pushed you down again, making sure his mouth never left your sweet cunt. He kept moaning and mumbling words you couldn't hear but it was sending a lot of vibrations and that made you come again all over his mouth. You were panting and a moaning mess. He didn't stop until he cleaned your fresh wave of white liquid then he pulled away, ran his thumb between your folds, "Wish you could see how swollen and red this pussy is, dolly. It's my pussy, now." He pushed his thumb inside your hole while his fingers circled and rubbed your clit. You were crying out loud and squirming again from the overstimulation, you can sense your pulse in your clit, and with his finger, he could sense it too. "So sensitive for me, right doll? So sensitive, sweet, and all mine." He pulled his thumb out of your hole and kissed it, leaving kisses and kitten licks all over your cunt till he reached your clit and sucked it roughly. "I think this is my new hobby now." He licked your clit and moved his head from side to side while doing so.

You screamed from the overstimulation he was causing you, "E-Enough Bucky. C-Can't take it anymore." You whimpered and squirmed again.

"It's never enough with you, doll." He kneeled behind you and noticed that wet and sticky spot his cock made from all the precum leaking from him. He slowly pushed his cock inside you again and started to fuck you slowly. You were in another universe by now. Feeling so high and dizzy from all the pleasure and stimulation. He picked up a pace and started thrusting faster and harder, making sure he hit all your sweet spots. He felt how heavy his balls were and just wanted to empty them all out inside you. He was desperate to come at this point.

"Dolly, please, can I come? It really hurts, baby. I need to fill you up, pretty please." leaned down and whimpered in your ears. And you were so glad he still gave you the upper hand and didn't let you break your promise. His thrusts were getting sloppier and messier. "Please, baby, I can't hold it any longer." He grunted and bit your shoulder.

"Come for me, Bucky. Fill me up." You whimpered and could feel yourself on the edge of another orgasm.

"Only if you came with me too." He groaned and started rubbing and slapping your clit roughly to throw you off the edge faster. His stimulation not only threw you off the edge, but you found yourself squirting your orgasm out and clenching your walls on his cock like crazy. He cried out loudly and spurted his orgasm so deeply inside you. You could feel his hot white liquid filling you up to the max, and you thought he would stop and be still inside now, but he was fucking everything back inside. You almost forgot that he was a super soldier, and that's why he had this much stamina.

You both lay still on the bed, catching your breaths. You felt him pulling out slowly and then lying next to you. He turned to face you, ran his fingers through your hair, and played with it softly. "A bath or a shower?" He asked you with a smile. You smiled back and told him you'd like to have a bath. He got up, went to the bathroom, got a wet small towel, and cleaned you both up first. Then he went to the bathroom again and prepared the bath. You went through your closet and prepared fresh and clean clothes for you and Bucky. Even though you were very close friends before, you always kept each other's clothes in both of your houses, just in case. He called out for you from the bathroom, and you went to find him in the tub waiting for you. You smiled, went in, and sat in front of him, leaning yourself on his chest as he hugged you tightly.

In the rest of the evening, you both discussed your relationship and decided that you should start dating for real now. You wondered why you both didn't take that step a long time ago since both of you share the same feelings for each other. Little did you know, that would be the start of an amazing relationship after an amazing friendship. And that would be the man you spent the rest of your life with. He was your soulmate.

fin

[talesfromawannabejournalist]

@helluvahazbins @lilacwriter07

I just had the greatest realization ever inspired by the art of Lucifer having goat characteristics, so I present to you Goat demon Lucifer x Cow demon Adam

I’m just imagining Lucifer bleating while humping either Adams backside or tits, and we know that Adam would have quite the large pair. I also think it be super funny if Adam was just nonchalant about it and would just go back to whatever he was doing before

just a thought

[fickleminder]

be our guest

DWBD AU. When Diavolo comes over to the House of Lamentation for dinner, the demon brothers realize it would be a perfect opportunity for you to expose their horrible treatment of you.

DWBD AU masterlist here.

"Don't you dare," Lucifer pointed directly at you, causing your foot to hover just above the threshold, "take one step further."

You didn't know how he caught you trying to enter the kitchen while his attention was focused on Beel. Maybe he really did have eyes in the back of his head. "I don't mind helping—"

"We got this, so scram!" Mammon yelled from behind the stove. Black smoke was already wafting out from his pot.

You knew Lord Diavolo coming over for dinner would be a big deal, but you didn't think it'd be this big. The prince wanting to eat human world food wasn't too surprising; trying different cuisines was part of cultural exchange after all, and it made sense to host the meal on your home turf, so to speak.

The Avatars didn't take the news well, however. You thought they'd be thrilled to have the opportunity to enjoy your cooking again, but instead of leaving all the work to you as you'd expected, they demanded detailed step-by-step instructions for whatever dishes you were planning to make and told you to stay out of the kitchen. At most, you would be allowed to take on a supervisory role, but with Lucifer refusing to even let you in past the doorway, there was only so much you could do.

"Psst, hey!" You glanced towards the nearby window to see No. 2 waving at you cheerfully. "Can you open the front door? I have reinforcements!"

To your surprise, reinforcements came in the form of seven little D's and the Lord of Time himself.

"Good afternoon. How are the preparations for tonight's meal coming along?" At Barbatos' signal, the little D's scurried into the house carrying baskets of fresh groceries.

"I've been banned from the kitchen, for some reason," you admitted, wincing when you heard Asmo's shrill scream and a loud crash. "…I don't think they're doing too well though."

"That won't do. My Lord sent me ahead specifically to ensure dinner goes smoothly." Barbatos rubbed his chin and hummed. "If the little D's and I were to assist you, would the preparations be completed in time?"

"Sure thing! It won't be the first time I've had to cook for such a large group, but I'll take all the help I can get!"

"Wonderful, I'll be with you in just a moment. Please excuse me."

A blink, and Barbatos was gone.

.

.

.

Things were spiraling out of control.

Mammon and Levi kept fighting over the utensils and recipes. At some point, the steps you had painstakingly written down got drenched and became illegible, forcing them to improvise.

Beel insisted on taste testing everything, taking bite after bite until plates and bowls were scraped clean. Belphie was there to keep his twin in check, but mostly ended up dozing under the counter.

Asmo refused to risk chipping his nails doing menial work and was backseat cooking behind Satan, who started burning more food out of sheer irritation. Several pots and pans had already become dented beyond repair.

Lucifer made a valiant attempt to manage his brothers, but to no avail. Even if he wasn't constantly undermining you when you tried to give instructions from the doorway, he kept trying to take over the individual tasks, insisting he could do them better. This dinner was going to make or break the exchange program and everything had to be absolutely perfect or—

"Gentlemen," was the only warning before a blur shot through the kitchen, knocking everyone off their feet and forcibly throwing them all out. Barbatos stood over the resultant pile of limbs and dusted his gloved hands with a dangerous glint in his eyes. "We'll take over from here."

Lucifer tried to rise to his feet. "But—"

"Do set the table in the meantime. I trust even that should be within your capabilities?"

The butler's tone practically threatened a surprise house inspection if they didn't comply. Effectively cowed at that point, the brothers obeyed.

.

.

.

Lord Diavolo's laughter echoed all the way into the kitchen, and you grinned to yourself as his generous compliments reached your ears.

"Are you sure you don't want to join them? We can handle the rest in here," No. 2 asked.

"Nah, I'm good. I'll probably feel super out of place there anyway." You added another heap of ingredients into the boiling pot. "Did you remember to remove my plate from the table?"

"I did!" No. 5 piped up. "Did I do a good job?"

"Aww, yes you did!"

"Yayyy~!"

"Do not forget that you are our guest too, in this realm." Barbatos spoke up softly, and all the chatter from the little D's immediately fell silent. "From the way you're avoiding dining with the Avatars, it's clear we've been remiss in our hospitality."

Of course Barbatos would see through your act. After all, his own placid smile hid secrets you couldn't even begin to imagine. "Really, it's fine! I'm used to it by now. Besides, someone's gotta keep the food coming, and you guys are technically the guests here so…"

The corners of the butler's lips twitched upwards. "Touché. In that case, I will personally see to it that you are rewarded for your hard work tonight. Why don't you begin by telling me your favorite pastries?"

.

.

.

Despite your exhaustion, you stood at attention when Lord Diavolo shook your hand at the end of the meal, thanking you for serving up such a scrumptious dinner. Your smile was genuine as you waved him goodbye at the front door, and you only allowed it to drop once all the castle's residents have left through a portal.

Behind you, the brothers were sweating bullets as they watched you lower your hand and just stand there, staring into the distance while their minds raced.

Did you say anything to Barbatos while you had him alone? It would have been a golden opportunity for you to air your many grievances to him; half the things the brothers had done to you would have easily seen them thrown into the royal dungeons for being such poor hosts.

You had never dared to approach Lord Diavolo yourself in spite of his friendly demeanor, partially due to Lucifer's many reminders about knowing your place. But he never expected the prince to come to you instead, and so he had rallied his brothers to ensure you wouldn't have to lift a finger tonight, a last ditch effort to persuade you to hold your tongue. So much for that plan.

"We're sorry…" Beel said quietly once all of you had gone back inside. All the satisfaction from eating your cooking had faded away after seeing you emerge from the kitchen completely wiped out. He didn't need his Sin to tell you hadn't eaten anything all night.

"No you're not." The words came out before you could stop yourself. You were more tired than you thought, and your brain-to-mouth filter just wasn't working anymore. "If you were, you'd do better. All of you. But I guess that was too much to ask for."

The atmosphere around the brothers was heavy with shame and guilt. They really screwed up, didn't they? Asmo attempted to steer you towards your room. "Why don't you go and rest while we clean up—"

"The dishes are already done. The little D's took care of that—"

"How about some cup noodles then?" Mammon suggested loudly. "C'mon, ya must be hungry—"

"I'm not feeling like instant food at the moment—"

The doorbell rang all of a sudden, freezing everybody in place. No one dared to move for fear of finding Diavolo on the other side, as unlikely as that was. But there was only one way to find out who was calling on them at this hour.

"Yo," Vorgo greeted you with a lazy salute when you opened the door. "Hope this isn't a bad time. Is the coast clear?"

"You're good. Lord Diavolo already left." Just the sight of your friend was enough to lift your spirits, and you found yourself smiling at them easily. "What's up?"

"Special delivery." The lesser demon held up several containers of food. "Figured you'd be run ragged tonight, so I thought you could use a pick-me-up. I made that casserole you like, plus a few other things—"

"I love you," you blurted out before slapping a hand over your mouth.

Vorgo looked a little taken aback but recovered quickly with a laugh and flushed cheeks. "You're most welcome! Get some rest and I'll see you in class, okay?"

The smell of warm, homemade food was making your empty stomach roar loud enough to rival Beel, but you were past caring at this point. You bid Vorgo farewell and prepared to retreat to your room for some well-earned downtime.

"…Why didn't you say anything to Diavolo, or Barbatos for that matter?" Satan asked just as you were about to ascend the stairs. They hadn't mentioned a word about your treatment before they departed, seemingly none the wiser about how much you had suffered under the brothers' care. "You would have gotten everything you deserved, and yet…"

"I didn't think they'd care, to be honest," you shrugged. They were royalty after all, while you were just some human, and the brothers' behavior could easily be written off as demons being demons. "Even if they did, they probably wouldn't believe me."

Nobody told you Diavolo was a walking lie detector. Even if you had decided to spare them, he would have found out eventually, and then you would come to realize just how much he truly valued your well-being in his kingdom.

Lucifer sighed once you had left. "Belphie, make sure—"

"Deep sleep, no dreams. I got it."

"Levi—"

"I've got manga to catch up on so you won't hear a peep from my room."

Beel offered to make you breakfast the next morning, and Asmo whipped out his D.D.D. to book you an appointment for a manicure. Goodness knows you could use one after putting your hands through the wringer tonight.

Mammon was preparing a list of groceries to stock up in the kitchen while Satan volunteered to cover your lesson notes and homework for the next few days.

"Of course, that goes without question." Lucifer nodded when Satan gave him a pointed look. He would personally ensure that you had the rest of the week off from RAD. After your performance tonight, he doubted Diavolo would object to the idea.

[azuronel]

went a little more realistic this time to practice faces and make references for my Obey Me AU. Anyway did I mention I had an Obey Me AU that I’ve been cooking? (it came free with the inconsistent writing)

Written out Notes under the cut:

Lucifer

Angular features

Eyes look like solar eclipses after his pupils used to glow as an angel (so you can see where he’s looking)

Looks like a corpse because his blood is bluish now, he appears very pale. Not helped by stress + lack of sleep

His fangs poke out (vampire drip)

Mammon

Square, broad features

Give him piercings! Are his fangs natural or implants after getting decked?

Eyes are like lapis lazuli, and gold pyrite freckles in his skin

Mullet. He looks like he’s stuck in the 70s

BD//SM collar because he’s Babygirl. Insists it’s an edgy statement piece

Leviathan

Round features, with some sharp points

Has shark teeth + third eyelids

Hair is actually straight, crinkles up from water

Ruri-Chan and Azuki-Tan earrings

Blue/purplish blood

Eyebags from lack of sleep from gaming

Headphones cause if he doesn’t have something to listen to he panics

Satan

Angular features

Looks a lot like Lucifer

Bleaches his hair

Tufts of hair like cat ears

Gages + earrings + nose ring

Little fangs poking out

Dark Academia Vibes (library girlie)

Asmodeus

Doll-like, round features

Eyes look hypnotic

Heart markings all over body. Start to “drip” in demon form

Doll-like outfits, fashionable so people desire him (Mass Marketing of the Self)

Tongue is much longer

Two sets of fangs (one w/ Aphrodisiac injectors)

Beelzebub

Strong, rectangular features

Sun motif in hair and earrings

Chunk taken out of his ear from a fight

Eyes are ultraviolet colored

The most human-looking of the bros

Tanned but part of his hues are gone after years in the Devildom

Belphegor

Rounded, elongated features

I made him way too pretty for his goblin ass

Eyes look like night sky-ultraviolet too

Vitiligo so he looks like a cow

Moon phase studs

Underside of hair is white, top is dark blue w/ streaks

Septum piercing for cow motif

[zarasu]

I've been awfully distracted from conquer by writing on my abyss demon!sy bingyuan au. Have a snippet! Binghe and Shen Yuan reunite at Huan Hua.

---

His first reaction to seeing Shen Yuan at Huan Hua Palace was rage, thinly veiling fear.

Shen Yuan was the seduction he had fled from, finally catching back up to him. He was the blissful oasis, coming to distract him from his goals. He was the promise of comfort and belonging, hovering at the edge of everything happening to make Binghe lose sight of what was important.

There he was, bowing before the Old Palace Master, this unassuming, soft little man. There was no sign, now, of his dark mana that used to surround him at all times, no playful tendrils curling around Binghe's ankles, no extra mouths, eyes or sharp teeth.

He looked like a normal, harmless young cultivator and Binghe wondered how he had managed to gain control of his nature so quickly, when control seemed to be far away just a year and a half ago.

The only thing that didn't seem to have changed was how quickly Shen Yuan sensed his presence.

Black eyes found him under the cover of long eyelashes and Binghe hated how quickly his body sprung to attention in response, awareness coursing through him like crackling electricity.

He wondered if Shen Yuan knew how he commanded his body, even after all this time.

Sensing his distraction, the Old Palace Master followed Shen Yuan's glance until he saw Binghe standing at the entrance.

"Ah, Binghe," he called, intentionally informal, possessive indulgence in his eyes. He reached out, beckoning, and Binghe came closer until the Old Palace Master could put a heavy hand on his shoulder.

With close interest, Binghe watched as Shen Yuan's hand twitched at his side.

He got his first good look at the scene now. Shen Yuan was in simple cultivator's robes and there was a large, dead beast laid at the palace master's feet. A winged lioness. A rare catch, outside of the abyss, and a deadly one too. Many cultivators would naively go for the males, desiring their golden mane, and disregarding the infinitely more dangerous female lions. That Shen Yuan had not only managed to kill one but came out of the fight seemingly completely unharmed spoke of his power and competence.

And the Old Palace Master knew it.

Slowly, Binghe started to understand what was happening before him. Shen Yuan was trying to get into Huan Hua. He was trying to bait the Old Palace Master into keeping him here and, going by the greedy shine in the old man's eyes, it was working.

"Binghe," Shen Yuan said then, unexpectedly. "It's good to see you well."

He shook off his momentary surprise. Binghe wasn't sure why he had thought they would pretend not to know each other, but obviously Shen Yuan had had other plans.

Before he could reply, the Old Palace Master interjected. "Master Shen knows our Binghe?"

Shen Yuan's face grew a little stiff, but Binghe finally found his voice. "Shen Yuan. I didn't expect to see you here." There was a moment of silence before he added: "I'm glad to see you too."

Where had his eloquency gone? He felt like a bumbling youth, all talk and nothing behind it. He quickly turned to the Old Palace Master. "We met on my travels. Shen Yuan saved me from a situation that would have otherwise ended very badly for me. I owe him my life."

Maybe Shen Yuan hadn't been so sure of his welcome after all, going by the way his stiff expression was replaced by surprised pleasure. "Anyone would have done what I did."

Binghe felt the sudden, desperate urge to laugh.

"Well, any friend of Binghe's is a friend of Huan Hua," the Old Palace Master said. "Of course, Master Shen is welcome to stay for as long as it pleases him." He looked like he had just added two profitable, fat cows to his stables instead of inviting two wolves into his flock of sheep.

Shen Yuan bowed, his eyes flicking away from where the Old Palace Master still had his hand on Binghe's arm. "This one is grateful for the palace master's generosity."

"I will have a servant take care of your gift so that we can display the hide soon. Come, Shen Yuan, I'm sure we can find a room for you." He put his other hand on Shen Yuan's shoulder and pulled both of them to the door, deeper into the palace.

Hidden by the way they were walking ahead of the palace master, Shen Yuan turned his face to Binghe just the slightest bit. As soon as their eyes met, Shen Yuan's mouth curled up into a sly fox's smile.

[starlightshadowsworld]

The Sheep King and his Demon AU

Aka Bsd except Chuuya stays with the Sheep and thus never joins the Port Mafia.

Dazai just waltzes into Sheep territory and none of the Sheep even bat an eye anymore.

Shirase just rolls his eyes like "oh look what the cat dragged in." And Dazai will ask if he spent all day coming up with that.

They don't fight anymore, maliciously at least.

The Sheep will bicker with Dazai till the cows come home but there's a truce that ain't going away anytime soon.

Yuan gets points for most creative insults, Dazai has straight up taken notes.

The scary part tho is when they are all scheming together.

Because somehow, they all become a well tuned machine for chaos and destruction.

Everytime Chuuya says he won't get involved. Everytime, he gets involved.

Because obviously.

He pretends he's the voice of reason but really he's just enabling them all, and they love him for that.

Somehow Mori is unaware of all of this.