#crag bone

[milramemo]

My friend said they were the ones who rewinded the canon

[tread-the-bear]

"My eyes are up here."

[bowieandqueen11]

Sanji With A Clingy Reader Would Include...

Request: OH BABY telling about one piece is like unlocking a whole second heart of mine i have fully for that anime and manga and live action. and so, if you ever decided of course, you writing something similar to something you did on marvel once and sanji with reader that has no personal space and is touchy would be amazing. but also... kissing zoro is great to, if you ever decided? anyway! HOPE YOU LOVE IT (one piece i mean), and if not ignore me UwU

Ooh yess babes this is so SWEET!! :3 I LOVED IT omg hello to my latest obsession not me ordering the first collection of the manga

This was really sweet and fun to do, but I did stay up all night writing it so all comments are much appreciated!

Warning: slightly spicy, some mentions of fighting!

(I do not own One Piece or its characters, all rights go to creators. Gif credit goes to @fanpageknight.)

☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°

Look at this man. Seriously, look at this man with his little bottom lip bite and eyes like the sun shines heavily out of them and tell me he would be anything less than absolutely madly, heart wrenchingly, soul crushingly enthralled with a clingy reader??? That's right you can't take the l on this one.

It all started that day when the three of you ended up shipwrecked on that sad sack excuse of a rock. When you and Sanji huddled on one side of the forsaken isle to stay away from the terrifying Pirate Zeff. His hands had shaken as he drew them up to his chest, but he mustered the nerves to string open the sack Zeff had thrown at his feet. Once he had counted out the cans, he offered all the food to you.

He wanted you to stay alive far more than himself. Ever since you had landed on his ship he had been smitten, and his weary heart would beat its last under this smothering sun as long as you would live on for the both of them.

To keep him calm: to stop his gasping, tortured heaves as he tried his best not to writhe in panic at the thought of never stepping back on safe land again, you would spent most of those 85 days sitting over the cragged edges. Sanji couldn't tear his eyes away from peering down at the gushing shards of stone below that seemed to rip up in tides and tear for his swinging feet; to try and distract him from sniffling any longer, your hand would tentatively creep over the rock until it landed flatly, and unceremoniously on top of his own. His fingers flexed beneath your own, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he folded them upwards, giving your hand a shaking squeeze: a dutiful promise, a flitting confession of love, that you just happened not to feel in your ruminations of the circumstances.

In fact, he asked you that night, in an uncharacteristically quiet and bashful voice, if you would keep his nightmares away by holding him like his mother used to. You felt terrible: you were so stunned that for a moment you stood with the last piece of mouldy bread you had in your hand in shocked silence. Poor Sanji thought you were about to reject him outright: throw what little he had left of his heart - that he had so carefully lifted out and placed in his hands to offer to you, only to have it thrown back to his feet in the usual ridicule he got for his love. His bottom lip began to tremble, until you nearly knocked him onto his bottom with how fast you dropped everything and flew over to lock him in a tight hug, not minding the fact that your shoulder was growing wetter and wetter despite the brewing rain each time Sanji buried his snivelling head against it.

So you would let him rest safely in the bracket of your arms: his left cheek resting in the warm stretch between your collar bone and your neck, his right hand draped leisurely around your waist as you told him stories of pirates and treasure: of the Deep Blue and tropical fish that shone like bursts of fragmented starlight every time their fins graced the water. Although he would groan any time you removed your hand from where you were stroking the wet strands of his hair back from his forehead, it was quickly replaced with wonderment as you would point up at a cluster of stars and whisper excitedly: 'look, there's some now!'

He had never been afraid of nights ever since that moment, not when the stars were still out and he could trace with the butt of his cigarettes the fish you had drawn specially for him in the skies. It was like a secret message: a lover's reminder that he was never alone. That you were always with him. That your beauty - your light, it shone everywhere, no matter where he was.

It was the first time he had kissed you, two forgotten children lost underneath the dripping crevice of your little hideaway. As your belly began to rise and fall underneath his elbow, and he believed you had exhausted yourself out after trying to make him feel better, he dared to dart up from your shoulder and press his lips firmly against your cheek. It had been quick, almost gliding past time like a dolphin leaping up out of the water, but it had meant so much to him that he curled up into a ball in your side and flushed a bright cerise, having to shove his fist into his mouth to stop his manic giggling from waking you up.

But you weren't asleep, and as Sanji settled back into your neck with a smile bright enough to rival the shine of buttercup petals, you swore as he began to drift off in the first peaceful dream he had had in years that one day you would return the favour, but in full.

The two of you were thick as thieves growing up, to the point where Zeff became so distracted by your antics that he often tried to separate the two of you by making you work the floor and Sanji either in the kitchens, or off fishing at the docks. Ten seconds later though, he'd be kicking through the kitchen doors again to find you leaning on the kitchen counter next to an eager faced Sanji, whose to busy to register Zeff's shouting. Instead he places the spoon to your lips, having spent half of lunch service prep cooking you a brand new recipe he had spent the whole night creating out of a medley of your favourite foods. He subconsciously licks his bottom lip, the tension in the room felt by the other chefs who try to carry on washing pans and cutting vegetables enough to put everyone on edge as Sanji refused to look anywhere but your lips. Holding his hand under your chin, his dipped eyes were broken by a sudden grin as a loud 'mmhhh' left your mouth and you chewed in sweet bliss.

Still ignoring Zeff's increasingly erratic rant, as Sanji goes to start cleaning up his pan you slide down to stand behind him, wrapping your arms tightly around your back and jutting your chin into his shoulder blade like a baby koala. You can tell he's laughing silently by the way his shoulders shake against you, but all he does is pull up your hand from his belly button to press sweet, dainty kisses up and down the lengths of your fingers, before dropping it down to press your palm flatly against his heart.

'I think that might be your greatest dish yet, buttercup!'

'From you, that means everything my precious heart.'

'Why do you call me that?', you murmur, refusing to lift your lips from his shirt.

'Well my sweet love, why do you call me buttercup? I mean, I always know I smell of butter and the likes-'.

He's distracted by your snort against the side of his neck, but the two of you are too love-strikingly embarrassed to say anything again. Even if neither of you could see the warm peach rushing up both your cheeks, Zeff could. He could also hear the padding thuds of Sanji's heart as he gripped his fingers that almost imperceptibly bit tighter around your hand, and he found himself sighing at how oblivious you two idiots were.

Sanji is definitely just as clingy as you, if not more so. You've definitely met your match in this man. I mean, any time you're out on the floor, handing out bread to tables and scanning the room to check if there were any patrons you may have to throw out by the scuff of their collars later, his eyes are trained on yours. He leans against the banisters, not even trying to remotely hide how obviously he's tracing your path with a dumbstruck, lit up smile. If you're in the kitchens, desperately trying to bite your tongue and not tear Zeff a new one as he chops his hands together and rushes you to plate up? He's sliding up to your side in an instant, throwing scathing looks at the man while trying to help you spoon thyme onto your bass, nuzzling the side of his head into yours encouragingly. If you have any free time at all? Sanji is fast on your heels, darting after you like someone's firing shots at his dress shoes, as if you have his heart tied to a string on your wrist as he seeks out whatever nook you're going to relax in. It doesn't matter if you're at the bar, watching the docks, or trying to hide from Zeff in one of the cupboards in the pantry: Sanji is squatting down and grunting as he shoves himself in right next to you. He sits criss cross, only satisfied when at least one of his knees is resting heavily over yours, and he has full access to watch what you're reading over the side of your neck.

He only fully settles, though, if you touch him in some way. He genuinely will begin mewling once your hand reaches over to brush your knuckles over his jawline, or your hand finds itself guided to bunch itself up in his hair. One time, he guided your hand into his lap, and you began to absentmindedly stroke your pointer finger along the seam of his inner thigh. Thank goodness you had your head buried in a book one of the pirate crews had come to swap some dried meats with you for, because it took every muscle in Sanji's body twitching: every finger clenching and unclenching into his knee until he drew blood not to knock you flat right there and then and kiss you like there was no tomorrow.

He gets a MASSIVE nosebleed - so gushing, in fact, that he tries to reassure you he's fine as you hold him by the elbows and lead his tilted back head and pinched nose down to Zeff for some help.

It becomes a very major recurring issue every time he looks at you. He makes sure to carry a handkerchief in his breast pocket from then on.

God, if he didn't love you more than anything in all the seas. If you weren't the only one that he let see past his charming nature: if you weren't the only person left in his life that truly could recognise the young boy left in his eyes, in his gait, in his smile, in his dreams. That little kid on that great big ship, the one who had found you stowed away behind one of the barrels of rum, and instead of calling for the crew had taken your trembling hand and led you into the kitchens, introducing you as his newest sous chef. That same kid, who stood beside you and held your hand so gently, so heartbreakingly gently under his as he guided you through lessons of chopping onions and sautéing garlic, breaking out into long strings of rushed, praising French every time you got it right. The same one, who would frown as if he were the one who had been hurt any time you burnt your hands or sliced your fingers. Who would unravel the knot at the back of his apron, and tug it over his head to carefully place it over yours.

'This always brings me luck', he would say as his fingers daintily tucked the strings underneath your shirt collar. 'But I don't need it anymore, because you've brought me all the luck and happiness a man could ever dream of, my cherie.'

The same kid who would tip toe out of his bed to sneak down to your hammock, crawling in and burying himself underneath your blankets where you slept in the brig, telling you fantastical stories about his mother until you fell sound asleep. He would watch you from where he lay on his side, hands folded by your head, as if you had hung every star in the wide skies. He would brush his fingers over the edge of your cheek and curl up beside you, wishing that every minute of every day of the rest of his life could be spent with you.

Yeah, smitten wasn't enough to cover it. Only destiny could be raw enough to draw the two of you to each other, Sanji always thought.

As teenagers, you would end every shift outside, sitting on the wonky boards of one of the jutted docks. Just sitting side by side, as you always wanted to be, pretending you weren't playing a game of chicken as the two of you teased and pressed and glanced your fingers over each other's, leaning back and looking up at the stars. Sanji always appreciated the better chance it gave him: shrouded in naught by wisps of moonlight and the rare flashing neon of ship string lights, to take you in as much as he could. You didn't mind the fact that he spent the whole time staring over at you. In fact, if you hadn't been so lovestruck, you might have found the courage to tear your head away from the horizon to meet the look of gut-wrenching devotion that always seemed to pour out of his eyes and beam only on you. It always felt like warm sunlight, sitting next to him, and so you finally dared a chance at grabbing his fingers and intertwining them between your own, pretending it was because of the sea chill spraying a fine mist over your legs.

Again, the squeeze he gave your hand was almost, almost imperceptible, but you felt it this time. And you could feel the look of enduring devotion he pierced into your skin, a warm tingle washing like a spring tide through your tired body.

He always knew. He always knew that if he had stayed on that rock, he would have been content to. Happy, even. Because he would have been with you.

'I love you', he said without words. He gave your hand another squeeze. 'I'm going to love you forever. No matter how many lifetimes. No matter who I am. I'm always going to find you, and I'm always going to love you.'

His voice nearly made you jump, surprising you at how it started with his usual buttery smoothness, before cracking with a thick gulp as his words trailed of. 'Never leave without me.'

'I promise, as long as you don't leave without me.'

He shakes his head. 'You never leave me. Not even for a moment.'

Sometimes, when the two of you are older, he still comes stealing into your room at night, wiping his nose with the back of his hand as his lips wobble into a frightened frown. Turns out, as he draws the covers back and comes reaching in for you, he had another nightmare that pirates had come to steal you away from him again. With an aching sigh for how stricken he looked, how desolate, you let him claw at your shirt and bury his head into the side of your neck until the rest of the world melted away.

He kissed you again, that night. When the feel of his legs strewn familiarly between your own began to burn against his skin, and the weight of hand perched over his thrumming heart became too heavy to bear in secret. With nothing but the light streaming like shards of pearly stars through the porthole to betray a moment so special, so longed for, Sanji let his eyelashes flutter close as he slowly... slowly pressed his lips against your cheek again.

This time, his eyes widened in shock as the feeling of your hand gripping at his jaw and turning his face straight on to your own. Before he can even open his mouth in confusion, the sweet pressure of your lips pressed against his top one. For a moment, Sanji doesn't move an inch: doesn't even breath, not even processing that the thing he’s spent every moment of his waking and sleeping life wishing for ever since he found you on that boat was actually happening, right here right now. He tries really hard to stop his whole body from shaking, as his silky lashes finally falter shut against the top of your cheeks and he tries to focus his whole attention on the way your plush lip seems to press so perfectly against his own.

When he finally pulls away, he lets out a loud 'OW' as he pinches his arm.

'What did you do that for!?'

'I had to double check this wasn't a dream, my sweets!'

And then he's on you again, like a ravished man gasping for air. God, he wasn't sure if soulmates were real, but when your top lip pulled down against his, and he could feel the thud of your heart synch against his own beneath the tips of his fingers, if he didn't know that he was yours.

He stays in your room a lot more often after that, using it as an excuse for you to help him button up his shirt during sleepy mornings, smiling at the feel of your fingers as they knocked against the muscles of his chest. It was also his favourite part of the day - the good morning kiss the two of you shared before you raced down to be at your shifts before Zeff decided to knock your heads together.

One time you forgot to give him one, too distracted by one of the sous chefs busting into your room with a bloodied nose and a chipped front tooth, whistling through the gap as he begged you to come down to the main foyer and help him break out a fist fight that had started between two gangs of rival pirates. The pout on Sanji's face that day was enough to make even the most bounty-heavy pirate's knees tremble. Every other chef steered way clear of his station, watching the arch of his back and the jaw in his muscle jump as he busied himself by frying his steak of tuna, so gutted at the loss of just one kiss. Not angry, no: just grief stricken, because this man seriously just adores you that much.

When you finally get your lunch break, the first thing you do is throw your napkin down on the kitchen ground and grab Sanji by his suit collar, enjoying the surprise tilt of his head as he drops his spoon onto his serving tray and allows you to lead his feet backwards to the fire exit. As soon as he's outside, you slam him gently against the wooden beams of the Baratie restaurant, and kissed him silly to make up for it. His look of trusting confusion suddenly melt into jumping heart eyes when your knee slides up between his thighs to try and pin him in place. His breathing comes out in harsh, shallow gasps between ferocious kisses, and you have to press him back against the wall every time he comes arching forward to follow your head for even more kisses. No, this was about you making him feel good. And by goodness, as your tongue pressed against the seam of his lips and tentatively ran over his front teeth, if he wasn't two seconds away from falling to his knees right there and then.

When you let him go, he slides down the wall like putty until he's sitting with legs stretched out and both his suit and hair a ruffled mess. He's literally never been more deliriously happy in his whole life.

Your favourite time of the day is when the restaurant closes, and the two of you finally have the kitchens to yourselves. Once you've tossed your aprons back onto the rack with a tired sigh, the only thing that can cheer you up is the sound of Sanji kicking his chair back with the toe of his shoe, and the sight of him beckoning you over to him with that tilted head and pearly beam of his. Mmh, how safe you feel, how loved as you collapse down to sit on his knees, and he tucks you in between the brackets of his arms in a vice so tight it could match any Marine knot.

You take one of his hands off the pen he was holding, turning his palm round to face you so you could fiddle with the rings he was wearing. You draw one up, curling his finger before your eyes, before slotting one off and sliding it onto your own ring finger. It was the one his father had given him: one he so loathed to wear, and yet felt guilt bore down too heavily on his conscious to ever take it off. You turned the one on top of it, one you know Zeff had given him after his first day working at the Baratie, and you smiled at the memory.

'You know', you start, still fiddling with his hand, feeling him shift his thighs as you pressed a gentle kiss on the pointer finger you were currently grasping onto. 'I may just have to keep this one.'

'Oh yeah?', he says dreamily, and you could feel his grin growing as he hid his burning face in the nape of your neck. 'Don't worry sweetheart. One day, once I find the perfect one, I'll give you a ring of your own.'

The two of you sneak out and share cigarettes out the back door a lot, where Sanji steps forward and kisses you like a man possessed every time you pinch the stub from out of his mouth and draw it along your bottom lip teasingly. When you try to get him to go back in, he just wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you up, spinning you around to stop you from leaving him alone. Laughing, you try to shove him off, swatting at the hands that form a tight clasp over your belly button, until his large fingers finally slide down to hold your waist. You glance behind you, smirking at the way his eyes are tightly shut in euphoria as ducks down, chest nearly enveloping in his desperation to reach your face again. His kisses become sloppier: smoke stained as they leave wet trails up your jaw, before he finally gives in and tries to make you laugh one last time by nibbling at the lobe of your ear.

Whenever he has a fight with Zeff, you have to hold him afterwards. The feel of your fingers curling the hair at the nape of his neck, or rubbing soothing circles into the sore muscles of his shoulders stops the furious darts of air from flaring his nostrils almost immediately.

Man has blaring heart eyes 100% whenever he's in a fight with rowdy customers, and you get to kick the flashy knife out of the last one's hand before the pirate could launch straight for Sanji's neck. He tilts his head at you with those amazed eyes, a gentle smile growing almost shyly on his face like a secret wink, before he throws his now empty plate at the pirate trying to sneak up behind your back. The crash echoes out through the booth area, a cry so furious: so full of rage that anyone would try and dare hurt you, that it makes all the remaining pirate crews crawl out towards the door on their hands and knees.

Stitching each other up afterwards is a motherfcking mess though, that Zeff straight up just abandons all hope of being able to use his kitchen. With a defeated rub of his pounding temples, he lets the door slam shut on his heel because he just can't deal with the two of you. He'd much rather pick up a brush and start sweeping bits of crushed and splattered asparagus off the floors than have to watch you to battle it out in a stiff competition of who could be more sickeningly, maddingly in love with the other. Between you standing between Sanji's entrapping thighs, closing you in tighter so you could have full access to kiss his bobbing Adam's apple as you use a rag to swipe bits of dry sauce off his neck, and him throwing his head back and whimpering, Zeff was going to go insane. Even worse, as soon as you're finished, Sanji's reaching between your fingers to lick split consomme off your nose.

The two of you are literally insufferable, and if every one apart from Zeff doesn't find it the cutest thing I-

When Luffy comes and wrangles Sanji into joining his crew, the chef's first thought is to be distraught. He seeks you out straight away, nearly breaking some poor fisherman's pole as he tries to hurdle over it and grip onto your shoulders, making you drop the barrel of dried meats you were carrying from Luffy onto the planks and watching Luffy nearly dangle off the edge of his ship to stop it from rolling into the ocean.

'Y/n- I- I can't go!'

'You're hardly scared!'

'I'm not scared of going, I'm terrified of going without you!'

You let him pour his heart out for a moment, before stopping his rambling, near sobbing mess of a sentence by bopping the tip of his nose. You giggle, swiping some hair from his forehead. 'Sanji, Luffy asked me to come first. I promised I wouldn't go without you, and I meant it.'

You manage to unlatch his twitching hand from your left shoulder, and give it an almost imperceptible squeeze. The tears that threatened to fall from his eyes finally cascade down, although he's so relieved that he's smiling through the blurriness. You swipe them away with your free thumb, finally, after all these years, feeling the squeeze of your hand that Sanji gives you back, before he envelops you in a breath taking hug.

'Awww, you guys are so sweet!', Luffy calls out from where he's hanging by his sandal off the railing of his ship. 'But could someone give me a hand before my hat falls into the waves? That would not be very cool.'

The first thing the two of you do once you're on The Going Merry is to find your bunk. Sanji isn't very subtle when he kicks your door shut with his heel, and comes scampering towards you like an upended sand crab, pinching for you until he's hefted you up over his shoulder and has unceremoniously landed you in your shared hammock. He's quick to jump in, straddling you as the hammock sways back and forth with the commotion.

He nearly starts crying again when he sees a flash of silver poke out from underneath your neckline; he grazes his hand over the chain, recognising it as his father's ring you had taken months ago. The one he had hated so much. The one you had tried to save him from. A small piece of him. A weight you tried to bear for him. A reminder of how much he was loved.

A confused Zoro, not realising there are new crew members on board, follows the sound of Sanji's voice crooning out how much he adores you, and how he loves you more than every star in the sky, down past the window on your bedroom door. Let's just say, he's not very impressed when he catches sight of the hammock swinging wildly from side to side, and an array of clothes thrown out and discarded in a mess around it.

[zorosdimples]

UNDER HIS THUMB ꒰ uraume x reader x sukuna ꒱

minors and blank/ageless blogs do not interact—i will block you. cw: suggestive content. nonconsensual nudity. dubious touching. brief descriptions of cannibalism and violence. suicide mention. reader is referred to as “bride” and “wife.” reader has breasts. wc: 1053. notes: uraume ily—please ditch shitkuna for me <3 (based on this idea)

A fire blazes in the yawning hearth, bathing your bedchamber in a warm titian. The shadows of flames leap and dance across the cragged stone walls—a solar flare—a cosmic spectacle. Logs and branches resembling human bones sputter and spark, crackling in your ears. You shift in your seat. 

The diaphanous veil remains pinned to your crown as Uraume’s fingers move deftly through your locks, the sweeping gossamer that brushes your ankles now pooling on the floor. They unravel the intricate updo they crafted for the ceremony, your hair a glowing halo in the firelight, head bowed in gentle subservience. The pins that bite at your scalp are crusted in blood; the sharp pain has long-since softened into a dull throb.

“I hate him,” you announce. 

(It’s how you cope with your precarious situation: burying your fears beneath carefully woven layers of disdain.) 

Barren aside from a bed, a wardrobe, and an armchair, your threadbare accommodations are as cozy as a dungeon. No torch, tapestry, or looking glass adorns the walls. Your companion’s expression is hidden as they continue their work atop your head.

Uraume chastises you after a few beats, affectation frigid as ice. “You shouldn’t speak of your husband in such a manner.” 

You snort. This one-sided union will only further scar the ugly face of matrimony; looking upon your captor with respect or affection is as likely as you kissing the cheek of your slain mother a final time. “My ‘husband’ for all of ten minutes.”

“And still your husband, nonetheless.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” you snap. 

Uraume pushes you to your feet and fluffs the veil with a hum. They circle you, appraising your body—the flimsy, silken robe that ripples across your curves hides nothing from their piercing stare—then, for what must be the fifth time, they adjust the knot that holds the garment together. When their eyes meet yours, you find yourself falling for the ruse, plucking fresh buds from a field of fuchsia.

How you wish their gaze held more than cool indifference.

Ever perceptive, they reach out to gingerly tuck a wayward strand behind your ear; if you close your eyes and still your heaving chest, you can pretend that it’s an intimate gesture—the touch of a lover. “Rarely do we have a say in our own fates,” Uraume muses. 

Fidgeting with your fingers, you quell the urge to embrace your attendant. (It’s a disgraceful thought for a newlywed. But you can’t spool in the words that unfurl from your lips, the edges raw, frayed with longing.)

“I would have taken my life if it hadn’t been for you, Uraume. I can’t stand him.” 

“Master Sukuna would never allow you to harm yourself.” 

“Tch—that vile brute cares little for my well being.” Hatred flares within your chest, your once-blooming heart now withered with rot. Tears of anguish blur your vision and make each syllable tremble. “If he didn’t want to harm me, he wouldn’t have murdered and feasted on my family.” 

A smile tucks itself in the corners of Uraume’s lips like a secret, though you miss it—misty-eyed and waist-deep in a deluge of painful memories. “You seem to forget that I prepared their flesh at my lord’s behest.” 

“I can’t fault you for being trapped under his thumb; you’re kinder than you give yourself credit for, anyhow.” 

They chuckle darkly. “And what leads you to believe that?” 

It doesn’t occur to you until this moment that you’ve edged closer to Uraume. If you leaned forward, you would smell the frost on their porcelain skin, taste the mint on their breath. Despite yourself, you reach out, cupping their cheek. 

“You’ve been my devoted caretaker since I arrived, patient and helpful at every turn. Your presence is the only constant here—my sole comfort.”

“Oh? Is my blushing bride ready to consummate our unholy union?” A rumbling voice cracks the tense air open like a bone, marrow seeping out, juices staining the tender earth. 

Your neck snaps to the doorway. Your monster of a husband nearly blots out the frame with his inhuman physique, clothed in nothing but a simple pair of black trousers, both sets of arms crossed. Disgust pinches your brow and purses your lips; you sneer. 

“With you? Never.”

Amused by your vehemence, the King of Curses approaches you, both mouths curled into wolfish grins. Uraume bows as Sukuna invades your space, two clawed hands wrapping around your waist, the other two cradling your skull. He demands your attention, irises a wine-dark sea of skeletons and ichor. A cursed siren urges you to plunge into its depths. End your suffering.

“Uraume—has my wife been inappropriate with you in my absence?” 

Without hesitation, they answer: “Yes, my lord.” 

Several sets of eyes—one belonging to Uraume, the others to Sukuna—gorge on your discomfort. You bristle under their scrutiny, and fruitlessly attempt to rip yourself from your husband’s grasp, nails scratching angry lines across his tattooed forearms. 

He clicks his tongue. “My naughty little bride.”  

Bile burns your throat at the mock-endearment, bitterness coating your tongue. For as resolved as you’ve been, you shake with rage, the hulking beast before you stoking the embers of your wrath. He smiles something sharp and wicked before releasing you. You stumble backwards, limp as a ragdoll. 

“Uraume,” Sukuna commands. 

There’s an unspoken agreement between master and servant. When Uraume steps forward and swiftly unties your robes, you shriek, the fabric slipping open to expose your nude form. They proceed to rip the garment from your body; it falls to the floor in wispy shreds. 

Attempting to preserve your dignity, you scramble to wrap an arm around your chest and press a palm between your legs. “This hardly seems proper,” you pant. 

Sukuna snickers as he sits at the foot of your bed, spreading his legs. “How else is a ‘vile brute’ supposed to learn the intricacies of his little wife’s body if not through careful examination?” 

As much as you want to spew poison at him, you gasp when Uraume’s chilly lips graze the arch of your neck, their delicate hands slipping up to caress the swell of your breasts. Unable to stifle the moan that warbles past your lips, you make the sinister decision to revel in this pleasure—no matter how short-lived, underhanded, or wrong it may be.

[starfallforest]

SINGULARITY » 1.9k words tags: NSFW, reader is gender neutral, xavier bottoms a/n: I do not kid you when I say we're jumping right in it babes with that nsfw tag! things might get a little weird. I even did research for this lil guy. a super thank you to my friends (especially @ourlittleuluru and @leaderincrows) for being supportive of my first fic in awhile 💙 ao3: 🔗​link summary: When Xavier orgasms, your combined Evol disrupts the cosmos.

When Xavier cums, it’s a flash in the night—a lighthouse beacon in the storm of you. When he cums, his entire body alights, and with his skin translucent under your wavering gaze, you can count every vein beneath his surface. He shudders violently against you, wet and wanting, as the bones of his fingers bite into your arms like the jaws of a snare.

He didn’t warn you it would be like this. He didn’t warn you he would be like this.

Moments ago, he watched you through heavy lids as you pumped your hips to him. The back of his hand was pressed to his mouth—a self-soothing habit he never quite shook. You listened to his muffled panting, studied the way his knuckles tapped against his lips with each stir of your body. His eyes were black and starless, his mind a void you couldn’t reach. But you were trying. Gods, were you trying.

You bent over him, ran your fingers over the crag of muscle tensed along his neck. 

“Relax, Xavier,” you exhaled over him, as if you could breathe life into the command. Then you paused. 

“Do… you want to stop?”

“N-no—”

It comes out as a quiver, an apology ripe on his tongue. It’d been there all night: a forbidden fruit dangling over the both of you. A sorry, never uttered, in every lingering touch. Overripe. Rotting. 

He seemed to notice your hesitation then, barking out a laugh that was dark and desperate. 

“Trying—” he ground out, voice strained. “This is—” 

The rest of the words were lost when your fingertips reached the line of his jaw.

It happened all at once: the hitch of his breath, the grip of his fingers at your wrist. For just a moment he gaped at you—marveling—eyes glinting wide in the low light. A sigh left the back of his throat as he flicked his gaze downward, turning his head towards the warmth of your hand in a single exhale of uninhibited indulgence. That’s when you saw it.

Your other hand had settled lightly over the confluence of your bodies, fingers pressing into the smooth bumps of flesh there, and like a switch you caught his eyes illuminating with a white, white light. It was gone the next instant with a clench of his eyelids, swallowed down with the veracity of a cornered animal to its prey.

He was holding himself back, you realized. He was afraid.

It made sense when you thought about it. Time was never kind to Xavier. Rather, it acted as a harbinger that took everything he ever loved and, in the cruelest ways, spared himself. How could he trust that this moment wouldn’t also bring him ruin? As if in response to your thoughts, the hand around your wrist squeezed.

You reached out once more with your free hand to drag your fingers through his hair as the realization settled like iron in the knell of your heart. This time, you wouldn’t let him go anywhere without you.

“It’s okay,” you told him, and your throat constricted at the unfamiliar promise. You bent to kiss the corner of each of his eyes, then pressed your forehead to his. For a beat you held him there inside you, breathing the scent of sweat in the space between. His grip on you relaxed.

“Alright,” he finally said, filling the quiet in earnest, filling his lungs with air. “I trust you.” 

When he looked at you, his eyes were brighter than you’d ever seen.

It was reassurance to yourself as well: It’s okay. The two words were a metronome as you dragged your body over his, quicker now. 

He moved his hands to your arms to better anchor himself to your rhythm. You pressed deeper into him, tracing your fingers along the bones of his ribcage and the skin of his neck.  

The air around you pulsed once, twice—a warning. You felt a wind pick up, warm and without origin as it ripped through your hair. Xavier’s movements quickened under you erratically. Long lashes fluttered as his eyes rolled wildly behind closed lids. You could see the light spill out from beneath them, like daybreak through your curtains. Little light particles lit up beneath you like stars.

He was close. 

With furrowed brows, he parted his lips as if he wanted to say something more, but before another word tumbled from his throat you pressed your palm against the hard ridge of his chest. His eyes shot open in an awful mix of fear and wonder and you felt all the breath leave his body at once.

“It’s okay, Xavier,” you said again, a little more firmly this time. Then you pulled your Evol from the deepest parts of you and pushed it into your fingertips.

—

Type la supernovae. Before a star erupts, it pulls the matter from the atmosphere of a nearby companion star until the pressure becomes too much and it explodes. You think he told you this once, some sleepless night on your porch stargazing together. You think you get it now, as Xavier comes apart beneath you. 

And once Xavier unravels, he’s a supernova. All at once, you feel his heat inside of you. All at once, the light of his body envelops you. 

It’s you who was his ruin, after all. It was always you. 

—

There’s nothing but white, at first, and a terrible, discordant roaring of the blood in your ears. Then the pressure in the air shifts, pitching up into an inaudible whine.

The light Xavier emits bends around you before warping out and into a thin line that stretches and settles over the both of you. Time stops. Darkness surrounds your peripheral of white.

Xavier is still beneath you, but something is wrong. His body floats, limbs splayed frozen as if suspended in liquid. Tiny solar flares slough off his skin in waves, rivulets of gold light thread the tips of his fingers and spin reflections in his unmoving eyes. Although unfocused, they remain fixed to your face as if looking through you.

“Xavier?”

At your call, his eyes snap into focus. He reaches a hand out and caresses your cheek, but at his touch, his form convulses. The edges in your vision shift wildly, kaleidoscopically. It’s mystifying, the way he flickers in and out of existence. Each time you blink, he looks different: a new hairstyle, a change of clothes. Yet his face remains the same, unchanging for eons. For reasons unknown to you, you recognize every version of him.

You take the hand at your cheek and wrap your fingers in his, clutching tightly as if he might slip away. You move your hips slightly and realize your bodies are still connected, somehow, as if you were back at home in your bed. 

“I’ve got you,” You’re not sure if he can hear you, but you’re compelled to say it nonetheless. “Don’t go… don’t go off without me again.”

In response, he leans up and kisses you, long and lingering, and the light about him swells—it blinds you, washing over the shadows where flesh meets flesh until they’ve all dissipated and the lines that separate your body from his become indistinguishable. 

You taste his ecstasy in the back of your throat. You feel the blue of his eyes burned onto your skin, your hair. The shape of your name vibrates beneath your tongue like electricity and you know, somehow, that it’s how it feels when he calls to you.

Then your body becomes heavier, unfathomable. When you look down all you see is white, white, white. There’s a coil in your belly, a tightness that drives into the core of you like an anchor. When it releases, you feel a rush of pleasure and shutter the air from your lungs. But you feel alone.

“Xavier?” you snap to attention with a start, crying out to him in the shrill of the silence. 

“I’m here,” comes his response, calm and familiar.

“Where? I don’t see you.”

An echo: “...here. I’m here.” 

Upon his response, you notice your lips are moving. Your entire face flushes hot when you realize this, the back of your hand pressing up against your mouth out of habit. Your breath wavers over the callused skin of your knuckles and your chest heaves with a weight that isn’t yours.

“I’m sorry,” your mouth forms around the words that aren’t yours—are yours. The apology takes shape in front of you. It’s an ugly little shadow amongst the white of the light in your peripheral and it reeks like rotting fruit. 

He’s sorry for not telling you this might happen. He’s sorry for going off without you. He’s sorry for taking from you, even now. Even now, he’s sorry, sorry, sorry.

Stop. 

His wall of his regret crashes against the sharpness of your will and you strike it down. In a rush of determination, you pluck the sentiment out of the air and crush it in your jaws. Lightning arcs off your teeth with a crack. You roll the regret on your tongue, tasting its bittersweet release. After a thousand deaths, after a thousand years alone, it doesn’t matter anymore. You love him—you’ve always loved him—and you will love him until he accepts that he is worthy of it.

Suddenly the relief of forgiveness seizes your body and contorts it. Your stomach drops from under you in a ripple of anticipation. An icy lightheadedness tingles all the way down your spine and as it leaves you, you can feel the sheets of the bed materialize beneath you.

Xavier is propped on his elbows over you, caging you with his forearms. Your bodies are pressed together under a layer of sweat and stardust. Xavier’s neck flashes with a beeping and a warning light. You curl your fingers into the bedsheets now fully formed beneath your palms.

“What just happened?”

Xavier blushes to the tips of his ears. “I don’t know,” he quickly admits. He silences the device at his collarbone and pulls back from you, embarrassed.

 “That’s… never happened to me before. Any of this.”

Still reeling, you sit up and tug Xavier back to you, clumsily throwing your arms over his neck. You don’t even realize your breath coming in shallow, frightened gasps. Xavier’s eyes soften and he takes your face into his large hands. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. Before you answer, he’s already pulling you in, nudging his nose along your cheek soothingly.

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. You can feel the heat still radiating from him.

“What about you?”

He hums in thought. You feel his eyelashes flutter along your cheek.

“Something feels… different.”

He sighs into your shoulder, his warm breath summoning goosebumps along your skin. He ghosts his lips over your neck, kissing the soft tissue behind your ear.

There’re so many words unsaid between you, but as usual, Xavier relishes in the silence that hangs heavy in the empty air.

“Thank you,” is all he says. You place your hand over his at your cheek, running the other along the hair at the nape of his neck. You kiss him once, twice. When you pull away to look at him, you realize the ends of his hair are glowing golden, backlit by his own luminescence. You chuckle at the sincerity that literally emanates from him. Xavier is unreadable—and yet, somehow, he’s as evident as words on a page.

He catches on quickly to your musing. “I can’t help it,” he relents, “I feel…” He pauses deliberately and leans in to peck the corner of your mouth. 

“I feel… lighter.” His eyes wane to crescents while he gauges your reaction, pressing his mouth to you a few more times for good measure.

”My elusive star-boy,” you mumble back against his lips, smiling, “I’ll follow you to the ends of the universe.”

He laughs.

Thank you for reading! 🌝

[wreckingtickles]

Onsen Nonsense

Inosuke sneaks into a supernatural onsen and meets a woman who claims that she can remove his weakness.

An SFW, lee Inosuke fic for the amazing @lovelymessybubbly, who helped me pick out his spots! This story wouldn't exist without her art, as I've never read/watched Demon Slayer but her peices for it are just so good. Sorry it took me so long, I ran out of steam towards the end again.

Words: 7,559

WARNING: semi-intense and possibly slightly spicy tickle torture under the cut.

"An onsen?"

"So it seems."

"In the middle of a rocky desert," remarked Zenitsu, spying from behind a jutting crag, his hands trembling as he clutched his weapon.

Where moments before there had been nothing but an endless expanse of gray rock, a wooden structure shrouded in low mist now stood.

“Can we go around it?” pleaded Zenitsu.

“I suppose we have no reason to fight. Wait, it’s…”

“...vanishing?”

The mist around the onsen grew thicker, fully obscuring the structure from view, then fainter and fainter, until the bone-dry rocks where it had just stood came into view again.

“This is too freaky,” complained Zenitsu. “Let’s leave.”

“Wait.” Tanjiro grabbed his sleeve. “Where’s Inosuke?”

—

Inosuke had snuck in through the open front door, the soft thuds of his sandals absorbed by the tatami. The mist behind him was absolute, having engulfed the entirety of his vision except the corridor wrapping around the onsen. A sourceless light lit it, leaving no shadows to hide in.

A human form, kneeling on the ground. A woman.

“Greetings, warrior,” she proffered. “My name is--"

Inosuke dashed forward, swords in hand, cleaving an X into the woman, his motion carrying him forward.

“I don’t care. Die, demon.” 

“There’s no violence here. No pain,” explained the woman. Inosuke turned around, raising his guard: the woman, even her kimono, were completely undamaged. She was regarding him with a polite smile, her eyes two crinkled fissures.

“I am no demon, but a mere scout, wandering endlessly to procure clients for this onsen. The warrior need not fear me.”

“Fear?! Ah!” laughed Inosuke. “You’re freaky, but I’m too strong to be afraid of you!”

The woman cracked a smile. “I offer respite to the weary traveler. The onsen will deposit the warrior back where it appeared once it is time. In the meanwhile, I will cater to the warrior’s desires. The waters of this onsen wash away all that is unwanted. Pain. Ailment. Weakness.”

“Are you calling me weak?!” flared Inosuke, lifting his swords again.

The woman’s polite smile didn’t waver. “I am claiming that I can make the warrior even mightier.”

—

Inosuke stomped after the woman as she glided with practiced grace down a corridor. He’d gorged himself until he was practically bursting and changed into the onsen’s gray-lavender robe.

“So where’s this magic water?!” he repeated for the twelfth time.

“If the warrior would follow me,” she reiterated calmly. Inosuke hadn’t noticed it when she had greeted him, but now that she was standing, she was a full two heads taller than him.

She stopped in front of one of the countless sliding doors in the maze-like onsen and opened it.

A thick wooden pole jutted out from the floor at the center of the room, reaching at about the woman’s height rather than touching the ceiling. Five levigated logs were tied together to form a sport of bench, one end of which was attached to the pole itself. A cushion had been placed on the bench next to the pole. The walls were entirely made out of sliding doors.

She motioned for him to stake a seat on the cushion, and he complied. She then knelt down next to him and produced a long crane feather from one of her sleeves. She then lowered her other hand. “If the warrior would kindly lend me his foot sinistral.”

“Uh?”

“His left foot.”

Inosuke eyed her for a brief second. What was she scheming? He couldn’t begin to guess what a feather might be for. Her smile did not reach her eyes, her professional politeness an impenetrable mask. But he didn’t want to give her the impression that he was afraid of her, so he complied.

She placed her palm under his heel, lifting his square, broad foot, knitted with muscle like every part of him and still red and raw from the day’s travel, so it was level with her chest. Then, she rested the plumed tip of the feather on the heel.

“GYAAAAH?!”

Inosuke flew out of his seat, leaping several paces away from the unfazed woman and landing in a combat pose. “What the hell was that?!”

“I know not of what the warrior speaks,” explained the woman, tilting her head slightly. “This is an ordinary feather.” and to prove her point, she ran it along the length of her palm, then showed it to him.

“I felt… You did something!!” he insisted.

The woman’s smile grew imperceptibly. “The warrior has an extraordinary sense of touch,” she remarked, laying the feather on her lap. “Unfortunately, his formidable senses also allow weakness to fester inside his body. Notice how sensitive he is to the most superficial of touches. He hardened his body to withstand injury and pain, but has left it vulnerable to gentler torments.”

“Vulnerable?!” he shrieked in outrage.

“Vulnerable,” echoed the woman. “Why else would the warrior be unable to withstand what I can?”

That was all it took to get him to furiously stomp towards the bench.

“I can withstand anything!! That’s just a stupid feather!!”

“Tis a mere feather indeed,” she conceded. “And a warrior has no reason to dread its ilk. Its purpose is to make him aware of the chinks in his armor.”

“I’ll show you a chink!” he protested, the wood groaning under his weight as he dropped on it, thrusting his foot forward so hard he nearly kicked her in the chest. “Come on! Get it over with!” he yelled.

She gently cradled the heel again. “If that’s the warrior’s desire…”

The feather drew closer to his sole again, and Inosuke crossed his arms, scrunching his face so hard his jaw was vibrating with effort.

The feather touched down on the mound of his heel.

“PPPPPPPPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTT!!”

Inosuke sprayed spit like a bathing elephant as he tried and failed to hold the gales of laughter that wanted nothing more than to blast out of his lungs. It… something so much!! What was happening to his body?!

Starting from the bottom, the feather circled around the callused heel, then cut across the mound and headed higher. The woman noticed how his struggling intensified as the feather began its descent up the arch, skillfully dodging the protection of his hardened skin…

“GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

Tendons and muscle put up a useless resistance as the tiny barbs nestled in every minuscule wrinkle on the more sensitive arch, a journey that to Inosuke felt endless as the feather slowly rose to meet the mound of the ball, crawling up the cleft in the middle of it where the muscle parted, dodging the callus and unearthing a treasure trove of nerves in that valley.

“NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

It had only been a few seconds, and Inosuke was a rich shade of purple.

Next, the feather circled the ball before swiping horizontally across the base of Inosuke’s toes.

The sudden acceleration caused a startled cry to escape his inflated cheeks. “AAH!” But somehow, he managed to keep his foot in her grasp.

“I would urge the warrior to keep very still for this next part,” requested the woman was she positioned the feather between Inosuke’s big and second toe.

She swiped.

“NNNNNGH!!!”

She repeated the motion between the next set of toes. And the next, and the next. 

“GHA!”

“UGH!”

“HAA!!”

Inosuke felt genuine gratitude when the feather began to brush the top of his foot, but it was a relative relief. He was still struggling incredibly hard to keep still when every nerve was screaming at him to get away from that cursed feather, which then proceeded to trace the outline of his foot. “NNH! GH! NEH! UAH!”

But his plight was far from over, because the feather swiped at his ankle, then crawled up his calf, and the closer it got to his knee, the higher the pitch of his stifled hysteria. “NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNIIIIIII!!!”

Mercifully, the feather left the underside of his knee alone… only to unleash a much worse sensation as it began to travel up his inner thigh.

“KSHNTSHSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!” It was unbearable, and Inosuke’s hand shot to intercept the woman’s wrist before the feather went too far up his robe.

“Stop right there, woman!” he thundered. She offered no resistance.

“I will spare the warrior his modesty,” she assured amicably, lifting the feather upright as a show of sincerity. Inosuke glared at her for a few more moments before relaxing his grip.

“I must, however, test the other leg.”

“You must wha-NAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA STAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAPPP!!” screamed Inosuke as the feather began its descent down the other leg.

By the time the barbs left his heel, Inosuke’s chest was flushed and heaving with the double effort to endure the agonizing sensation without pulling away, having shuffled off the upper part of the robe in a desperate attempt to escape the heat welling up inside him.

The woman didn’t seem to mind his heavy breathing as she slid closer to him, pushing her fingers against his left wrist. “Now for the warrior’s torso.”

Although he wished nothing more than to make a run for it, Inosuke followed her gentle pressure and lifted his left arm.

“The warrior’s musculature is a thing of beauty”, stated the woman as muscles and tendons harmonized to allow that simple motion. But before Inosuke could think anything of the compliment, he felt the feather dance down his bicep, starting at the elbow, and he forced his mouth shut again.

The feather located the groove at the intersection of Inosuke's bicep and his tricep, arching slightly under the pressure of the fingers that pushed it inexorably closer to his armpit.

"GGGGGGGNNNNNNNN..." 

Ok, that wasn't too bad, it didn't make him want to set his skin on fire, he could do it.

The tip reached the outer ridge of his underarm.

No, he couldn't.

"PPPPPPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!"

He didn't need to look at the feather to know that it was starting a clockwork revolution around his hollow, its plumes nearing his scapula, then turning inward, approaching the protruding pectoral muscle, teasing its very edge, closing the circle ...

There were actual tears at the corners of Inosuke's eyes.

Then the feather cut vertically across the hollow.

"ACK!" he exclaimed, pulling at his arm to protect the area, and for a fraction of a second, he was met with the invincible resistance of the woman's grasp, but it came undone before he was able to think much of it.

"Enough! How is this helping me get stronger?"

The woman regarded him dispassionately. " The warrior shouldn't despise the instrument that reveals his weakness, but embrace it to bolster himself."

"I'm not weak!" Inosuke protested, spittle spraying the woman's face, but she maintained her posture, an invitation to resume their weird investigation.

"I'm not," whined Inosuke before letting her hold his forearm again and expose his underarm. 

"The warrior need not stifle his natural impulses," said the woman as she dragged the feather across the inner part of his hollow again.

But Inosuke wouldn't allow himself to laugh.

The feather began to trail along the lower curve of his pec, burning its way to his sternum, then up, to the base of his neck" his Adam's apple, the base of his jaw, the back of his neck, his shoulder, his clavicle...

Inosuke was trying so hard not to move he forgot to breathe, his cheeks puffy and his face beet red.

"The warrior is enduring magnificently," praised the woman, the feather skating diagonally across his chest.

Touching the top of his ribcage.

"PPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!"

Too much. It was too much. Somehow, Inosuke managed to force himself to withstand the maddening kisses of the feather as it counted each and every rib on its way down to his sides.

"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!!!"

It was unbearable, and he could have sworn that she was going slower, she had to, it was just so bad, how many ribs could he possibly have?!

Like closing a dam in a raging river, Inosuke was finally able to shut his mouth when the feather reached his side, though he was still vibrating in place; but this would prove to be a pyrrhic victory, because all too soon the feather skirted the edge of the robe along his waist before starting its final ascent between the ridges of Inosuke’s six-pack, circling each of them, dusting around and inside his bellybutton, lovingly caressing the sculpted muscle over and over…

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! HHAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!”

The dam broke, having already been eroded by all of the feather’s previous touches, culminating in yet another unbearably sensitive spot it was just having a field time exploring. Inosuke wanted to suck in his stomach, but the deep laughter he was forced to produce made it impossible, so the ticklish muscle kept pushing into the barbs themselves. He despised the sensation, but curling into a ball like he so wanted would have meant admitting defeat, and he couldn’t allow it!

A new torrent of laughter spilled out of him when the feather traveled up his other flank and over his ribs, repeating the horrible ups and downs from his left side. 

When the feather finally left his right elbow, he felt as if he’d been exercising all day.

“Unf… unf…” 

A rivulet of sweat ran down his spine, his skin glistening with perspiration. Was it over? Was he stronger now?

The hated feather disappeared up the woman’s sleeve. “The warrior will have to labor intensely to rid himself of all his weakness,” she estimated with her usual polite smile. “I propose we concentrate our efforts on the four most critical areas, four being the number of death that weakness pulls us towards.”

Inosuke was extremely wary of the woman’s polite tone, as if she hadn’t just subjected him to some unknown form of torture; that said, she was right. She had proven that there was weakness in him, and he had no idea how to stamp it out on his own.

“Ok,” he growled. “But no feathers!”

The woman smiled complacently. “Though it would be a marvelous tool to achieve our goals, the warrior’s skin is too moist now for it to be employed efficaciously.” 

She rose to her feet, towering above him once more. She pointed to the sliding door at the back of the room. “The warrior may bathe whilst I collect the tools.” 

—

The warm water melted all of Inosuke’s tension, including his concerns about this weird onsen and the woman manning it - the only person he’d seen in that massive structure. Well, magic was magic, no use trying to explain it. He relished the sensation of his powerful muscles unwinding, his skin coming alive in the warmth. He felt… clean?

When he heard the woman call him from the adjoining room, he got out of the bath, dried himself off, and tied the robe around his waist, though he didn’t wear the upper part, letting it hang behind him.

The bench and pole looked much more ominous now, as ropes had been coiled around each of the logs of the bench and around the top of the pole. At the opposite end of the bench there was also something resembling a vertical board with two large holes, as well as a basin in which floated two scrub brushes.

“What are you scheming, woman?”

She was kneeling next to the bench, motioning for him to take a seat.

“The warrior is mighty indeed. Although no harm can come to either of us in this place, I would prefer he not strike me while I administer his treatment.”

Inosuke was unconvinced.

“The warrior might be better able to endure if he needn’t restrain himself. He should not let fear stand in the way of strength.”

“I’m not afraid!!” yelled Inosuke mechanically, stomping over to the bench. As he did, the woman pulled a latch on the thick board, causing it to part halfway, splitting the two holes in half. She motioned for him to place his ankles in each opening, after which she shut the stocks and locked them. She then proceeded to tie the ropes secured to the bench around his knees, then lifted his arms up, tying his wrists together to the pole behind his back, so Inosuke’s vision of most of his body was partially occluded by his own biceps.

Inosuke pulled with all his strength. The restraints creaked, but neither the ropes nor the stocks showed any signs of giving.

“How long will this take?” he asked, beginning to regret that arrangement.

“As long as necessary,” replied the woman. “Or till the warrior resigns himself to his limits.”

He didn’t like the way she said that one bit. It felt like she was trying to manipulate him from behind her polite mask. But he was no longer in a position to do anything about it, beside calling quits. But he wouldn’t do that.

“I shall proceed soon,” informed the woman as she reached for a bowl into which she had mixed salt and oil. Then, she rubbed the mixture onto her hands and proceeded to massage it into his skin, starting at his shoulders and working her way down his body.

“Is this too much for the warrior to handle?”

On the contrary, it felt… weird, but quite pleasant. He still felt that odd, sharp sensation when her palms, textured by the salt and lubricated by the oil, massaged certain spots, such as his armpits, certain parts of his chest, and he actually hid his mouth behind his bicep when she began to work his ribcage, then moved down to his flanks and belly, the salt coagulating in the deep grooves of his abdominal muscles.

She then repeated the process on his legs, rubbing his thick thighs one at a time, and he couldn’t help the little shudders when her fingertips trailed along the inner portion. Fortunately, his shins would prove to be less sensitive.

“This area will require a lot of preparation before we can begin to cleanse it of weakness,” she announced as she began to massage the salt and oil into his broad soles. Inosuke wouldn’t have expected it, but he found himself enjoying the attention, though that weird sensation that shot up his leg whenever her touches softened prevented him from relaxing completely.

“The ensuing step may be slightly unorthodox, but a skin as tough as the warrior’s demands it,” she expounded while lifting the two dripping brushes out of the basin. A hint of concern showed from between Inosuke’s arms when he saw her move them closer to his torso. 

It finally clicked. “Wait!”

But there was nothing he could do to prevent hundreds, thousands of soft bristles from being pressed into his skin as the woman proceeded to obliterate Inosuke’s underarms with furious circular scrubs.

“WAHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHIHIHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! HAAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Up and down, left and right, the two brushes removed every spec of salt on the muscular outer ridges, the sensitive hollow, then the curves of his chest, effortlessly and torturously gliding along the thin film of oil.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA!!! THIHIHS SUUUUHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHACKSSSS!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!”

The vigorous scrubbing gave a vibrato quality to his laughter, as if the sound was attempting to empty his lungs to settle there. 

Inosuke became rapidly and keenly aware that the bristles of each brush were arranged in three separate rows, each capable on its own to cause untold mayhem on his skin as it exfoliated it in the most excruciating way.

The woman’s motions became broader to encompass his entire chest, causing Inosuke to shimmy comically as he laughed his frustration at the ceiling, higher pitched staccatos intruding when she ventured too close to his ribs.

“HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!!! Haahahahahahaha…”

Inosuke’s laughter tapered off for the briefest moment while the woman dipped the brushes into the basin. 

He didn’t get to savor the brief moment of respite before she started scrubbing his midsection.

“Ha… What the HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHELL!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA HAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAA!!! NOHOHOHHAHAHAHAT THEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!”

Inosuke pulled at the ropes, hard, forgetting for a moment that he was supposedly undergoing some form of training, the sensation simply too much for him to bear.

The bristles bending a little bit more when they encountered the ridge of a rib, then snapping forward after cresting it, descending into the groove like the tiniest fleet defying a tall wave, only to do it all again at the next rib, and then backwards, over, and over, and over again.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHA!!!!! SSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAAHHATTT!!! HAAHAAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHHA!!!”

The woman was indefatigable, her practiced motions seeding a completely new sensation deep inside Inosuke that wasn’t pain, but that he couldn’t help trying to escape anyway.

“I do believe I have located the warrior’s greatest weakness,” she said with a too satisfied smirk that Inosuke wasn’t able to register, his restraints preventing him not only from shielding his ribcage as he so ardently desired, but even from doing more than catching glimpses of the despicable torment that his sense of touch went into overdrive to faithfully transmit, searing his nerves and leaving him helpless in the face of unbidden hysteria.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA!!!! EHEHEHEHEHNOOOOOOUHGH!!!! EHEHEHEHEHENAAAAAAAHAHAHAAHHAAHHA WIHIHITH THEHEHEHE RIIIIHIHIHIHIBBBSSS!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

The relief he felt when the brushes began to go lower and target his sides and stomach was minimal, the two spots proving to be marginally less sensitive, much to Inosuke’s chagrin. The brushes followed the curve of his snatched waist like a lover’s hands… well, the hands of a lover who was very aggressive in their desire to send him ballistic and its execution.

“OOOOHOHOHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!! OHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! HAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

The bristles exfoliating his toned abs awakened something primal in Inosuke, like a wild animal trying and failing to shield its soft belly from a predator, but the ropes wrapped around his knees and the pole behind his back severely limited his range of motion.

And to top it all off, she wasn’t done with his bottom ribs either.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! CUHUHUHUT IHIHIHIHTTT OOOOHOHOHOHOHFF!!! IHIHIHIHITS CLEHEHEHEHEHEHEHAAAAAAANN!! IHIHIM CLEEEEEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAAAAAAAAANNN!!!”

To an ordinary person, the woman's ministrations may have been painful; but since Inosuke's skin was as tough as the hide of the hogs he was named after, the outcome was a harmless response that his enhanced sense of touch turned into excruciating ticklishness.

"The warrior is enduring wonderfully," she claimed, as if he were handling the process better than most instead of having a complete meltdown barely three minutes in.

The woman devoted copious attention to his midsection, rewarding the training that led to Inosuke's chiseled physique with a torment he was unequipped to deal with. He'd never felt anything like that sensation before.

Splash. The brushes were dipped into the water again.

"Now for the lower half," she announced with a serpentine crinkle in her smile.

"NO!" yelled Inosuke, his fury spoiled by the dopey grin still on his face. "This isn't making me stronger! You're... You're..." He had to pause, as he had no idea what the woman was actually doing or what she might want. "You're just making fun of me! So let me go or I'll free myself and kick your ass!!"

It would have been hard for anyone to take his threat seriously when he was flushed pink, he had to scream between his biceps, and his panting like a bellows was due to a few minutes of tickling.

She waited a few moments before stating, "The onsen will return the warrior to his world soon enough. If he wishes to withdraw from the treatment, that is indeed his prerogative."

"Stop talking all flowery and cut me loose!"

She lowered her voice as he raised his, forcing him to quiet down. "However. I believe I have demonstrated the warrior is burdened with a weakness to which he was previously not privy. I also believe I have not done any harm to him, nor warranted suspicion of nefarious designs. Therefore, it may behoove the warrior to entertain the notion that my vow to rid him of his weakness as well as the necessity of the treatment are, likewise, truthful."

Inosuke understood a word in three, but he got the general gist: he was proving to have a glaring weakness he knew nothing about, and that woman might be the only person capable of  ridding him of it. He could go back to his companions empty-handed and defeated, or he could tough it out and maybe get something out of it. He could always murder the woman later.

"Make it quick," he growled.

She nodded and lifted the brushes again. The warm drops dripping on his right thigh warned him of what was about to happen.

"Oo crAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAPPPP!! OHOHOHOH THIHIHIHIS SUHUHUCKS SOHOHO MUUUUUUUUUUUHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHACCCHHHH!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

There was also a brush scrubbing the upper portion and the outer side of the thick muscle, but the one harassing the inner right thigh was the only thing that Inosuke could focus on, even though he would have loved to be able to take his mind off it.

That spot felt like it should never be touched, though he’d felt that way about his pits and toes too, and his midsection… but this was different. Though Inosuke had been fighting against his bonds since the brushes first made contact, the tendons under the offended skin writhed like enraged snakes, his leg spasming involuntarily, like it was trying to ditch his body to escape.

In a way, it was somewhat more bearable than what she’d done to his midsection; in another, it seemed to push his “this should not be happening” button even more furiously.

“GEEEHEHET OHOHOHOOOOFF!!! GETOFFGETOFFGEHETOHOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFF!!! OHOHOHOHOHOHOFFF!!!” he demanded, the line between an order and a plea beginning to blur.

And the woman did comply, eventually.

Only to repeat the exact same process on his left leg.

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! THIHIHIS IHIHIHSS NOHOOOT WHAHAHAHAT I MEHEHEHEHEHHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-- LEHEHHET ME TAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAAHA!!!”

In spite of his considerable physical prowess, the ropes held him firmly in place, making sure he wouldn’t be able to avoid even a sliver of torture.

“BWAAAAAAWAWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHA!!! YOUHU WIHIHIHIHTCH!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!”

Having withstood it once already, Inosuke had some sort of sense of when all of the salt would be scrubbed off. Any moment now…

When she was satisfied, the woman began to scrub the inner part of both of Inosuke's thighs, an act that would have been immediately apparent to him as gratuitous and malicious if he hadn't been too busy laughing his head off.

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOHOHOHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!!! GHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! IHIHIHITS GOOOOOOHONE IHIHIT’S AAAAAHAHAHAHLLL GOHOHOHOHOHONE!!! HAHAHAHAAHHAHAHA!!!”

“I have to be thorough, the warrior must understand…” murmured the woman by way of explanation, which got drowned out by his mirth.

The first sensation that hit him when the brushes ceased their merciless attrition was a sense of rejuvenating coolness, and only a few moments later did he realize that he was no longer being tickled, the sensation on his inner thighs still feeling much too vivid.

“Uuuugh…” he panted. He’d insisted she kept going. Why had he insisted she kept going?

“The preparations are nearly complete,” declared the woman, taking three steps before kneeling down once again on the opposite side of the stocks. There was only one spot on his body that was still covered in salt.

"The warrior may state his preference."

He was really starting to hate the sound of her voice.

"I may treat his feet one at a time, which would be easier to withstand but would prolong the treatment," she began.

Inosuke cut her off. "Both," he grunted begrudgingly. He just wanted it over with as fast as possible.

"As the warrior wishes."

He wouldn’t laugh this time. He could take it. Yeah, he could take it.

She started scrubbing.

“NNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”

Oh, hell. It wasn’t the worst. Sure, the bristles ravaging his soles, scrubbing the salt into his skin, adjusting to the imperfections and wrinkles so as not to leave a single spec untouched, did fill him with the urge to get the f out or, lacking that, to produce more of the sound he’d come to despise, which would at least drown out the scrubbing noise he couldn’t help but perceive as a taunt.

“TCH!! KKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGH!”

At first, the occasional giggle only spilled out when the brushes reached his toes or the rare patch of uncalloused skin, resulting in a motley and unpredictable pattern of stimulation. It wasn’t easy, as each brush was constantly hitting multiple such spots at once, and he’d signed up for having two going at the same time, and he was starting to regret it.

“GGGGGGGGGGGGGNNNNNNNNNNNN!!! Eh! NNNNNNNNnnnnoooo! TCH! HeHE! NNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGHH!!!”

But as the woman kept on scrubbing, it became harder and harder to take. It wasn’t just his self-restraint eroding - the sensation was getting worse. With each pass, the salt and oil stripped more dead skin and callus from his soles, smoothing them, making them more tender, vulnerable, sensitive.

“PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTT!!!! NNNnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Y-You caHAn’t!! I… I…!”

The scrubbing went on undeterred by his pitiful prohibition, uncovering soft, pink skin that hadn’t been buried by years of feral existence. Civilization was being brought to his soles, and oh, how it tickled.

“NnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOHOHOHO!!! DAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHMN IHIHIHIHIHITTT!!! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHA!!!”

The woman hadn’t changed her approach in the slightest, repeating the same movements over and over, fully aware that her persistence would finally break the floodgates open.

“GHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHPPP!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!”

As if she’d been waiting precisely for that moment, the woman introduced some variety in her approach, alternating between scrubbing both feet and directing both brushes to assault them one at a time, one ravaging the toes and ball, the other the arch and heel, lavishing attention even on the sides.

That seemed to be even worse.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! YEHEHEHER DOIHIHING IHIHIT OOOOHON PUHURPOOOOOHOHOSE!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

“It cannot be too much for the warrior to bear, can it?” asked the woman, her tone flat but the inherent mockery plain to hear, though Inosuke was primarily experiencing it through touch.

Heel, arch, toes, ball, sides… the bristles were everywhere, scrubbing away his defenses.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! SSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHA!!! HAHAHAHAhahahahaha… HAHAHAHA hahahaha hahahahahahaha… hahaha…”

He hadn’t heard the freeing “plop” of the brushes as they were dropped into the basin, but the rush of cool air on his abused soles let him known that they were no longer in use. Perhaps he should have been wary of her, but after what he’d just endured, he was even grateful for the pressure of her palms, a gentle but firm massage tha rubbed the phantom sensations from his feet, her hands warm and rough sliding easily on the--

Rough? Not her hands, she was rubbing something coarse and grainy on his soles.

“I fear one more pass is required to extirpate the dread callus, lest it be shield and shelter to your weakness.”

She reached for the brushes again.

“No, shit, that’s enough!! That’s enooooooooouuuuahahahaahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!!! NOOOOOHOHOT AGAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAAAAIIHIHIHIHIHNNNNN HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

By the time she was done, Inosuke’s core had undergone a full workout, and his soles were unblemished as the day he was born, and just about as sensitive, every possible obstruction between the most pristine layer of skin and whatever cruel tool the woman planned to use, removed.

“For this last part, I will need the warrior’s cooperation.”

“NO!” shrieked Inosuke, huffing steam out of his nose. “I’ve had enough of whatever this is. You’re full of crap, and if you don’t let me go right now I’ll cut your head off!”

“Can’t the warrior withstand for five more minutes?”

“Shut your… Five minutes?”

The woman nodded.

 “In five minutes, you will be returned to your world. One ought not choose the ailment because the medicine is too bitter, but if the warrior has reached his limit…”

“Don’t put words into my mouth!” he barked, desperately trying to cling to a semblance of dignity.

The woman seemed unperturbed as she instructed, “Very well.Then we should make haste, lest this opportunity be squandered. I shall untie the warrior, and he shall turn around, kneeling on the bench, his feet hanging off the edge of the bench. I shall move the cushion accordingly. Then, his ankles shall be locked into the stocks and his wrists secured to the pole again.”

Inosuke tried to picture what she was describing. So he’d be kneeling with his ass up, and he’d have an even harder time keeping an eye on her?

His every instinct was telling him to refuse, that something smelled fishy, and besides, he’d be forced into such a humiliating position… but wouldn’t it be even more humiliating to chicken out now? Through all her fancy talk, that seemed to be what the woman was implying. She called him weak, but she didn’t act like she was stronger.

“Fine,” he grunted. For five minutes, he could handle anything.

She untied his hands first, and he immediately knocked her hands aside to worry at the knots binding his legs, but she loosened all of them before he could even undo one. Only when she unlocked the stocks did he proceed to rub the circulation back onto his wrists, as the woman massaged his legs to that same end.

Now that he was free, he really didn’t want to be tied up again.

“Five minutes,” she reminded him with a smile. He groaned but obeyed, kneeling with his shins flat against the cushion, which she’d pushed closer to the other end of the bench, and putting his feet through the stocks again. She then tied the ropes around his calves and secured his forearms to the pole. His chest was almost parallel to the bench, his back only slightly arched upward, and he was off-balance, the pole keeping him upright and the leg restraints preventing him from falling - or throwing himself - sideways.

He felt a lot more vulnerable and a whole lot more embarrassed than he’d anticipated.

“Hasn’t it been five minutes already?”

“Five minutes after we begin,” clarified the woman from somewhere behind his butt..

“So get on with it.”

“I shall. One last thing.”

He heard the sound of a string instrument being plucked, and an invisible pressure stretched his soles taut, pulling his toes towards the bench until there wasn’t a single wrinkle left on his feet. Only unblemished, defenseless, superhumanly sensitive skin at the mercy of a woman who had none.

“What did you do?”

She didn’t reply. As she approached him, he caught a glimpse of her left hand. She was wearing a fingerpick on the tip of each of her digits, and he wouldn’t have been more worried if she’d bared a set of monstrous claws.

“I shall start low and build to your greatest weakness,” the woman informed him from the bottom of the bench. He tried to see what she was up to from between his legs, but the robe and the stocks were in the way. He could almost feel her fingers hovering over his soles.

“What are you waiting fohohohohohOHOHOHOHOHORRRR!!! HOHOHOHOHO NOOOHOHOHOHOHO!!! IT’S SOOOHOHOH BAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHADDD!!!”

There was no buildup or warmup, but eight claws running from his heels to the very base of his toes, then back up again, taking note of how his laughter rose in pitch and the muscles twitched under the skin when certain spots were hit.

“The warrior appears to be struggling more than I anticipated,” declared the woman as she changed her method, scratching multiple times at each spot before continuing first down, then up his soles.

“Y-Youhuhu thihihink that hihHIHIHS!! Thahahahahat thihis wihihihilll--! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! L-LEHEHEHEHET MEEEEHEHEEHEH FIIHIHIHIHIHNIHIHHIHIHIHSSSSHHH!!!”

Inosuke felt naked. It wasn’t the state of relative undress, as he was arguably more clothed than usual. But from the way his feet were reacting, shocking him with jolts of ticklish electricity, he felt as if he had been stripped of a layer of protective pelt, leaving him to the hunter’s claws.

The woman’s methodical approach made it apparent to Inosuke and, almost simultaneously, to the woman herself, that the bottom of his arches close to the heel and the base of his toes were the most responsive areas, so she focused most of her attention there, making sure not to ignore the ball and arch as she alternated between those two spots.

His toes paralyzed by the invisible strings, the woman appeared to be particularly fond of scratching at the uppermost reaches of the ball, proceeding as if she was searching for something. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be the button that made Inosuke ballistic, as she seemed to be finding nothing but.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAAHA!!!! THIHIHS IHIS HOHORRIIIIBLEHEHEHEHEH!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Some part of Inosuke was probably aware of the passage of time, and he should have rejoiced that she was spending so much of it on his feet and not somewhere else. However, baffled by the intensity of the sensation, he could feel no relief. The woman plucked at the strings of his nerves and his lungs responded explosively. But no matter how beautiful, every piece has to end.

“Ah… This… thihis had to be… five minutes…” demanded Inosuke, even as he somehow felt his trials weren’t over.

“Correct. Five minutes precisely,” concurred the woman.

His ears perked up, and he hoped. “So we’re done?”

“Not quite,” said the woman with a smile.

“You said five minutes!!”

“Five minutes per area.”

“That’s not what you said before!! Let me go right now!!”

“I don’t doubt the warrior can withstand,” she claimed as the fingerpicks descended on the back of Inosuke’s thighs.

“SHIHIT, YOUHU SUHUHUHUHUCK!!! HAHAHAHAHAHhahahahahahahahaahhaahahaha!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaha!!! HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHA!!! Hahahahahahahaha!!!”

He tried to leap forward and out of her reach, but the ropes around his calves and the stocks prevented his legs from moving, and the way his arms were tied to the pole made it impossible for him to block access to that sensitive area by sitting on the back of his legs.

It wasn’t the worst tickling Inosuke had been subjected to that day, but it was the most embarrassing, and his position wasn’t helping. Nor did the woman, as she allowed her fingers to wander inward towards an even more sensitive area of his thighs.

“HahahahahAH NAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!! AAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! IHIHIHI HHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHTE THIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHISSSS!!!! D-DOHOHON’T! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!”

Those fingerpicks really did not belong on his thighs, and he wanted them off. But there was little he could do beside interspersing his laughter with tittering demands and pleas.

The pressure of the picks rippled out as if a much wider area was being touched, but it also dove deeper, awakening the tendons and muscles, sending jolts up and down Inosuke’s legs that resulted in a unique form of tickling that filled him with flighty energy he simply couldn’t let out.

But he found out he could get even worse when she began pinching. In his words, he yelped; in her words, he shrieked.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHEHEHK!!! SHHAHAHAAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHHATTT!!! DOHOHOHOHOOOOOOOOHON’TTTTT!!!! FIIIIIIIHIHIHIHVE MIHIHIHIHNUUUUUTEEEESSSS!!! IHIHIHIT’S BEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHN FIIHIHIHIHIHIVE MIHHIHIHIHIHINUUUUUUTESSSS!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAAHHA!!!”

“It has not,” remarked the woman, using one hand to squeeze the hard muscle and the other to run her fingers on the sensitive skin. “Is this too much for the warrior? He hasn’t faced the worst of it yet. Would he rather I returned to his feet?”

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA STOHHOHOHOHP PIHIHIHIHINCHIHHIHIING!!! SHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAH!! YES! YEEHEHEHEHEHEHHSSSS!!!”

“This is confirmation that much weakness dwells in this area, but how could I go back, when the warrior was begging me so fervently to leave them alone?”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! SHAHAHAHAHAHAHAT UHHHUHUHUHUHUHUPPP!!”

“But as the warrior insists, I’ll be sure to treat his soles again once we are done.”

“DOOOOHAHAHAHAHAHAHN’T YOUHU DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHREEEE!!!”

She went on clawing and pinching like she was playing a musical instrument, one whose strings were flesh and tendon and whose music was hysteria, for what felt much closer to 20 more minutes.

But he was given no reprieve as before he even realized the picks had left his thighs when they began to gently skitter along his flanks, his kneeling position making it incredibly easy for her to torment that spot.

“OOOOHOHOHOH!!! STOOOOOHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAP IHIHIHIHAHAHAHAHAHAHTTT!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!”

It was unacceptable. She was barely touching him, the picks making the lightest contact that his skin would register, so the intensity of the sensation was absolutely disproportionate. Like the feather from before, it triggered his enhanced sense of touch, straining it to the utmost as it tried to figure out what the hell was crawling up and down his body.

Inosuke was basically doing a strung-up worm in a futile attempt to escape the tickling. It was humiliating, but saving face was no consolation when her fingers converged on stomach.

“HAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! BREEEEEEEEEEEAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!! IHIH NEHEHEHED A BREEEAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAKKKK!!”

“There are no breaks allowed.”

A fresh batch of tears rolled down his nose and fell on the plank, his toned stomach proving no match for the soft assault. Every frenzied inhale pushed his belly into the fingerpicks, momentarily transforming the torment from one into a deeper, more burning sensation.

Turning the body that bore witness to Inosuke’s relentless training into a source of defeat was no small achievement on the woman’s part, yet there he was wishing that the gentle pressure would chip away his abdominal muscle if it would make it tickle any less. At the same time, he lamented the weakness of his sides, not shielded by muscle, a cognitive dissonance he lacked the ability to unpack there and then.

And when the fingertips finally reached his bottom ribs, he knew it was all over.

“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH!!!”

She started pressing a bit harder, going slightly faster too, the picks making short work of his ribcage. Not being able to see her hands despite them being so close to his face made it even worse. He pulled at the ropes around his arms with all his strength, trying to break them, the pole, heck, even his own arms would do, anything to escape those horrendous claws.

“TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOHOHOHO MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHAHAHAHAHAAHAHCCCH!!! IHIHT’S TOOHOHOHO MUUUUUUUHUHUHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAH!!!! NOOOOHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAAHAHA!!!!”

He was done. He was so done. He’d withstood the unbearable long enough, he wasn’t going to put up with it any longer.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH CAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHNT IHIHIHIHIHAHHAAHAH CAHAHAHAHAHAHN’T HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHH CAHAHAHAHAHAHAHN’T!!!”

“I am certain the warrior doesn’t intend to admit defeat when he’s so cl--"

“STAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHPPP!!! YOUHU MUHUHHUST STAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHPPP!!! GIHHIHIIHIIHHIVVEEEEE!!! IHIH GIIIHIHIHIHIVEHEHEHEH!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA STAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHPPP!!”

Her fingers somehow got even faster as she gravely asked, “Does the warrior wish to surrender?”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAH!!! YEEEEEEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHHEAAAAASSSSSS!!! JUHUHUHHAHAHHAHAST STAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAPPP!!!”

But the claws didn’t leave his ribs.

“IIHAHAHAHAHAAH SAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAID EHEHEHEHENOAHAHAHAHAGH!!! I SURRAAHA-- NAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAAHAHA!!!!”

“What a shame,” she uttered, her voice dripping with disappointment as she finally stopped tickling him, but Inosuke was too busy panting to listen to her, content with letting the ropework hold him up.

For a moment, he thought he was going unconscious, but it wasn’t him: the sourceless light that lit up the entire onsen dimmed to the level of a small brazier, radiating from the center of the room outward so that Inosuke could see his own shadow and the woman’s on the wall from around the pole.

Inosuke didn’t like that. “We’re done here. Lehet me up.”

The woman’s shadow T-posed. "I'm afraid it's no longer your choice, little warrior."

Something pulled back her large sleeves all the way to her shoulders… Elbows. Two extra sets in each sleeve. Six arms.

The woman stood up to her full height, the hem of her dress lifting to reveal not human feet, but an extra set of hands. She lifted herself up in the air by pulling on invisible threads, the motions of her shadow calling to mind a spider crawling on a web toward its next victim, until she was hanging directly above him.

“You’re not human!! You tricked me!!” yelled Inosuke, redoubling his efforts to break free.

“Look who finally got smart,” mocked the woman, her voice much viler than before. “I’m not done with you, little warrior. Not by a long shot.”

He heard several clicks, and a droning like the sound of angry bees, which would have frightened him far less than the eight rotating brushes that descended on his body all at once.

His ribs. His sides, abs, thighs, and feet. All of them, ravaged by hundreds if not thousands of soft bristles spinning like it was their mission to murder him.

Inosuke opened his mouth to laugh, scream, shriek, but no sound came out.

“Oh? Is this too much for you? It tickles even more after a good scrub, doesn’t it? So much more. Remember that you were having trouble with a feather? A single feather? What about now? With your super touch, you must be feeling each and every bristle. How unbearable it must be for you.”

“......................................................................................AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAGAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

Foreign and unbearable, the sensation consumed him from the outside in. The brushes were large enough to cover his feet heels to toes as well as most of his abs, leaving hsi sides, thighs, and ribs no chance to escape them at all.

“GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! YOOOOOUUUUUU’RE KIIIIIIIIHIIHHIIHHIHIHIHLLLLIIIIIIIING MEEEEEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAH…………………………………………………………….HAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAHAH!!!”

He wheezed, coughed, struggled, would have pleaded. The woman whispered through his mop of blue hair. “Like I care. Shut up and laugh, dumbass.”

“.................................................EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHKKKKK!!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

“So much weakness in these parts, we gotta do something about it,” taunted the woman, the spinning brushes continuing to ravage Inosuke’s unblemished skin.

The last words Inosuke could make sense of before his mind melt into the lattice of ticklish overload were, “You’re going to be here for a long while, little warrior.”

—

When Tanjiro and Zenitsu found Inosuke, he was passed out on the rocky ground, wearing his usual clothes, his swords resting parallel to him. A huge, dopey grin lingered on his tear-streaked face.

“Is he ok?” worried Zenitsu.

“He’s fine. He’s just unconscious… what’s with that grin?”

“Nothing,” replied Zenitsu, looking first at the rictus etched on Inosuke’s face, then smirking at Tanjiro. “I’ve just had an idea for when he wakes up.”

[astralnymphh]

unrelated but please write more fluff 😭😭 i loooove your way of writing sm 🩷

okay, let me just think of something random I can make into a poem to lighten my blog a little. think i'll do artist!ellie. first drabble thats mostly just poetry woop woop? (you'll see this kind of stuff in any fluff/angst/fantasy au i write) cw: internal organs mentioned, kinda angsty? idk sorry i get DEEP. thats it.

There's an artist in the bungalow.

She's got a mane of fire and a heart of clay. She is everything but skin and bone— for she has borne houses of stars and planets alike. The cosmos is her, and she is the cosmos. In her kindled hand is a means to create, whether she a weeping willow or gone livid in the pursuit for her head. Anguish be her tale of past days over this bungalow, because when all hope was sunken without acquainting grace, you rose upon it on two feet in ache.

You've a body similar— wrists that rebuke gold and sprout isles of lichens interchanging of your fine sylphine hairs. Borne was you, arteries dropped like glue and fled this earth like wax into hot gas, rising and rising somewhere new— instead, branches lie dying with you, inside you, a part of you, giving life to the marrow that is pulsing you. Wood is rot, bark is flaying, you are falling, that is okay. For the cosmos are desolate and resplendent with corpses by the shedload too. She is you, and you are her.

That's why she reached out for you, gave a hand made for crafting— and crafted you her partner.

One day, she took you through her quaint, oaken bungalow. A finger she lifted, pointing out everything mundane and.. commonplace. She pointed at her casement brown—trim windows, calling them the 'eyes of our house', watching the eons age this house away. She then pointed to her hallways, and likened them the 'throats of our house', swallowing every being and spitting them out a whole new person. She would give a last point, towards her bedroom and deem it the, 'heart of our house', for it pumps with life and watches bodies lie there— aging, waning, ever becoming moribund with their lovers held dear, pulse to pulse.

And you question sweetly, "Why are you telling me this, Ellie?"

Why?

Why elucidate the likeness of a visual so natural and so unquestioned in the form of organs? You question, but you do not look. Ellie replies, smooth of her tongue, "Wouldn't be fun if I just said it was my house." completely skipping the main trigger for question— 'our, our.. ours' and no longer just, 'her, her.. hers'.

It is your house. It is her house. It is a bungalow.

No odds about it, be it a jerry—built swamp house, a boxy mansion cruelly boasting over a crag, or a cottage swarmed in pixies preordained to rot in the woods it relies life on; it is a being. It eats personage, lets them linger, and absorbs them at the end of their existence— just like the earth will when it dies. Houses are like us.

Roofs see the same night airglow we gaze at, splayed amongst the grass, you lay with her.

"There's the little dipper, and.. that's the big dipper." croaked Ellie, aiming that same pointer towards the realm above, the dotted fabric we call 'the sky'.

"How can you even tell so easily— is there something wrong with my eyes?" quipped you, pressing the flank of your fist into your cinched eyes, clearing them.

"D'ya need me to point them out again?" She rolls upon her side, rending grass stuck onto her back, "Cause I can point you all the constellations visible right—"

Silenced. You push up on elbows and toss a hand to cradle, bringing her face into yours for a word—gobbling kiss, letting the dying hum vibrate down your chest. Ellie talks too much.

"Nhhmm.."

Satisfied. Spit smacking apart, it draws a line from pink plump to your plump of lip, and severs when you depart enough.

Her lower lip rolls inward, sucking sweetly of the spit you laid upon her mouth, coughing, "Ahem— that.. so you don't want me to show?" Dumbass. "No."

"Ooh—kay," drawled Els', the shuffling of leather and lawn surfing through your senses just a moment as she adjusts, planting that charmed chin on your shoulder— smushed like a rotten apple, "No show." and smiled, bless her smile.

So you lay, let the lay of petrichor waft into your head, and sleep away. Sleep away the life, sleeping away with yours— and hers.

just a teensy bit rushed but hope this is suitable

[lordsovorn]

Raptors

Cruel beasts. Demons, some call them. Scourge.

Lore under the cut:

The simplicity of these things only highlights the contradictions. There is nothing inherently unnatural about them. Nothing supernatural even more so. Understandable why a prouder person might feel indignant that these mere beasts, just a bunch of pack-hunting "bug dogs", are one of the main reasons for the final collapse of human civilization. And yet, it is the fearful who survive, not the proud ones.

The Raptors are the only things in the Under, other than humans, distinctly adapted to light and open spaces. Their keen eyesight is nearly unmatched in an environment with almost no lines of sight, and they are remarkably fast runners for a world of crags and tunnels. At the same time, their strong claws and limbs make them capable climbers, while the tail provides balance in a variety of positions. Bones provide strength, segments of chitinous armor they regularly shed provides renewable protection. Smart and coordinated, deadly and durable. Excellent predators. Entirely unsuited to the environment of the Under.

Just like humans.

It is in this way that Raptors proved to be such a persistent menace. Occupying much the same unstable niche in the world of darkness, they are both a competitor for food and a predator, forced into a rather narrow diet. Nothing about an individual Raptor is extraordinary - perhaps knowledgable Elders might have compared them to wolfs. Dangerous, worthy of fear, but killable. But there is no end to this tangled forest, and no prey except for stranded men. They are hungry and desperate, and fearful too, and so they retreat and come back in bigger numbers, with more complicated strategies. Raptors have ravaged the lines of communications and patrol, starved out of the outposts, raided the Farms to the point they are now completely unmanned. Nothing intimidating about one of them. Nothing unnatural about a pack. But as an endless onslaught of pack after pack of resorceful and adaptive hunters, they are a demonic unstoppable scourge, whose source humans were never able to track down.

They fill the caves with their screeching, grinding vocalizations, and follow the echoes and the sounds of panicked feet. Raptors are careful and vicious in their natural pragmatism, prefering to ambush and wound prey, overwhelm it with a coordinated pack attack, and turn its fear against itself. Like their namesake implies, they need not kill to start eating - grasping an injured creature with their massive talons, Raptors cut through flesh with their sharp mandibles and peel chunks of meat right off the bone.

[ankoku-teion]

A barren clifftop, the stone scraped bare of moss by the howling winds, and roilubg waters far below. This is an edge place, a boundary place where land meets sea and sky. Where the forest gives way to the crag.

Boundaries can become bridges, if you know what you're doing.

I carve my symbols into the face of this jagged tooth of rock. The pentagram, natures ward, that guards from harm. A red candle at each point, to give it warmth and light.

Next The Seraph's Circle, 23 sacred names in angelic script, to summon and to bind in place.

Then comes the Mage's Circle, 15 words in Old Enoch's glyphs, the potency that piers the rest.

To north, east, south, and west, the four black candles that burn with a blue light, these give shape to the shapeless, form to the formless, mind to the mindless.

Last comes the ring of salt, to purify and seal the whole construction.

I take my place before the point of the star, within the salt seal, but without the magic's ward. And I speak the words of summoning.

"bones of the earth, breath of the wind. Blood of the sea, and soul of the fire. Gaia's child, I summon you. By blood and bone and breath I give you form, spirit of the word. Hear your name and come. @maryland-officially."

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

The Birdcage

Jurassic Park: It's Ironic, by Meig of A-Dinosaur-A-Day

What follows is a retelling of the Jurassic Park story, mainly based on the 1993 film, with portions of the original novel used to supplement the story. The main point of divergence occurs when the park is unable to find workable nonavian dinosaur genetic material for cloning, since - as in the real world - dna degrades much too rapidly. Instead, the park consists only of extinct dinosaurs that can be brought back - birds from the last 2.5 million years. What happens after that is, as Ian Malcolm would say, an emerging pattern.

Infinite thanks to beta readers @plokool, @killdeercheer, and @otussketching! And extra thanks to @i-draws-dinosaurs for the killer logo! Happy 30th anniversary of the JP Film!

Link to the masterpost of chapters

Chapter One: Magallanes Basin, Chile

It was frigid at the dig site, with sharp winds battering everything they could, knocking over rocks and tools and even people. Some folks were shouting over the wind, while others were hurrying to protect precious material. The chaos was almost too much to deal with, but Donald Gennaro had work to do, and needed to consult with the dig site leader, Juanito.

Dig site leader was, honestly, not descriptive enough. Juanito Rostagno was one of the most respected paleontologists of South America, and he oversaw all the dig sites run by International Genetics Technology Incorporated, otherwise known as InGen. And it was precisely because of his competence and knowledge that Gennaro had made the trip so far south.

Magallanes Basin was as far south in Patagonia as you could get, near Tierra del Fuego. The freezing winds and icy temperatures prevented it from being inhabited in most locations, with only a few population centers popping up here or there. The dig site was near the sea, among the rocky crags and crevices, far away from the more famous Patagonian steppe. Snow was common, which made the dig perilous – at any point, the material could be lost forever. As it was, a miracle must have prevented the material around them from being swept out to sea.

“Hola Juanito!” Donald greeted, finally finding the scientist among the others, reaching out to shake his hand as he tripped over a few rocks.

“Hola! Bienvenido!” Juanito shouted, gesturing for Donald to follow him across the rocky terrain. He was dressed in khakis and a thick flannel shirt, not bothering to wear a hat for fear of the wind blowing it away. Donald had lost his own hat about fifteen minutes ago. But among the researchers and workers dressed more similarly to Juanito, Donald felt quite out of place in his business suit.

“So Hammond is back at the island?” Donald asked, trying desperately not to trip over another rock. In the distance, a group of penguins walked by the workers, to their delight as they attempted to talk and interact with them. Donald had been brushing up on his knowledge of local wildlife, and was pretty sure they were Magellanic Penguins, a small variety similar to the African or Humboldt. They were really very cute. Sometimes he could really understand the appeal of Hammond’s vision.

“No, he had to go back to California early. He sends his apologies,” Juanito explained, grimacing slightly as the pair made it to one of the sturdy tents tucked away against the side of the mountain. It was significantly warmer here, both protected from the wind and supporting a small space heater.

Donald bristled but kept his voice even as he responded, “We are facing a twenty-million-dollar lawsuit by the family of that worker! And you’re telling me Hammond can’t even bother to see me?”

“He wants to be with his daughter, she’s getting a divorce,” Juanito said, picking up a bone fragment and examining it.

“I understand that, but we’ve been advised to deal with the situation now. The underwriters feel that the accident has raised some very serious safety questions about the park. This makes the investors very very anxious. I had to promise to conduct a very thorough, on-site inspection.”

Juanito looked up from the bone, frowning at Donald.

“Hammond hates inspections, they slow everything down.”

Donald fought the urge to laugh as he responded, “Well I need to or they’ll pull the funding. That’ll slow him down even more.”

“Juanito! Juanito!”

Both men looked up to the tent mouth to see a young graduate student waving them outside. Donald grit his teeth and followed them, bracing himself for the wind as they ambled down the hill towards a more secluded spot. The rocks were tucked against the mountain, with a pit a few feet deep so hidden Donald almost fell into it.

“Qué tenemos aquí?” Juanito asked the student, as they both began talking in rapid Spanish. Donald had learned Spanish, of course – hard to consult with a company that did most of its business in Latin America if he hadn’t – but he still could not follow the native speakers as their words flowed seamlessly like rivers between them. He could pick out the occasional world – something about a skull, dirt, and a new specimen.

“A ver muéstrame, muéstrame,” Juanito finally said slowly enough for Donald to pick it out, following them down into the pit carefully. Donald tripped into it, as he had almost predicted, steadying himself against the side of the rocks.

“Watch your footing!” Juanito warned as they came into the main center of the pit.

“If two experts,” Donald continued, determined to move past the fact that he couldn’t walk down here, apparently, “Sign off on the island, the insurance guys will back off. I’ve already got Ian Malcolm, but they think he’s too trendy – they want Alan Grant.”

Alan Grant and his research team had been early consultants on the project, though they never really knew what they were consulting about. Now they were just on Hammond’s digsite payroll – always looking for that one in a million chance that, maybe, his original dream could still happen.

“Grant?” Juanito snorted, “You’ll never get him out of Montana.” He picked up a skull fragment and looked at it excitedly, calling for the students around him to come over to examine it with him.

“Why not?” Donald asked, irritated.

“Because Grant’s like me,” Juanito explained, smirking, “He’s a digger.”

“Well what about Spinoza, down in New Zealand? She was hired for consultancy when the project changed direction.”

‘Changed Direction’ was the official wording for the major speedbump that had nearly thrown the entire enterprise out the window. Even mentioning it made a small frown appear on Juanito’s face. Donald didn’t like even mentioning it, given how much of the original investment had been lost chasing impossible dreams. They had kept as much of that original idea as they could, of course – even continuing to consult with Grant, Sattler, and others, when their work was no longer particularly relevant – but there was no getting around it. Hammond’s big dream had to be downsized. The laws of nature were against him.

“Spinoza?” Juanito continued, “Maybe. I do know she returned to the States recently for a conference, so she may actually be available. But she’ll insist on Grant and Sattler coming, too.”

“Why?” Donald asked, eyebrows raising towards his receding hairline. He had not even understood why they kept them on the payroll.

“Because she’s Grant’s former student, and none of them know that Grant and Sattler are no longer our chief experts,” Juanito snorted, “This is the price of all our secrecy, is it not?”

Donald sighed, “I suppose. So, what, in the middle of this lawsuit and the investors getting nervous, I’m supposed to fly down a whole spread of experts, regardless of their actual relevance, to check out this park?”

“Sattler is still relevant,” Juanito pointed out, “And beyond that, Grant is one of the strongest researchers in behavior we have. He will still be helpful. If you can get him to leave.”

“Any idea how I can do that?” Donald laughed.

Juanito helped his students start to prepare the specimens before them for transportation. He turned to look at Donald, frowning.

“Well...” Juanito paused, taking a deep breath and looking Donald straight in the eye, “Funding for us diggers. Nearly impossible. As always.”

Donald sighed.

It always came back to money.

“Since he couldn’t be bothered to join this meeting, I’ll have John sell it. His boisterous enthusiasm and cavalier attitude towards money will make it more enticing, anyway,” Donald said.

“Certainly is a better salesman than you,” Juanito laughed. Donald couldn’t help laughing with him.

“Unfortunately I cannot come with,” Juanito continued, frowning apologetically at Donald, “After all, look what we have here.” He gestured to the new material, which looked just like more bone scraps to Donald. But he wasn’t an expert.

“Think that’ll be a new species we can add?” Donald asked.

Juanito shrugged, walking back up out of the pit and helping Donald with him, “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”

Donald wasn’t confident enough that the project would move forward to answer.

[outofgloom]

[This story is the last in my previously-posted anthology of Bionicle short fiction, to which it lends its name]

AIKURU

We arrived at the site before sunrise. It was in a place north of the ridge called Sakerra in the language of our Skrall guides. The discovery had been made only five days ago, and as we made our way down from the wind-worn crags, there were no apparent signs of raiding. 

A structure was there in the valley, just as the flyover had reported. It was of the same gray, stonelike material from which all Their architecture is made—so old now that it no longer gleams in the light, but somehow still smooth to the touch.

As soon as we reached the lower steppes, our rangers set about the task of making provision for departure. Four days were allotted to us, and then the existence of the site would be announced to the Quadrate at large. After that, the System Adherents would claim their rights, and the site would be swallowed up in pilgrimage.

The structure was immediately familiar to me as we approached: a broad circle, rounded at the edges, raised from the ground by perhaps two spans to form a low column or stage. Half of the structure was covered beneath a berm of sediment, probably deposited by one flash-flood and then partly washed away by another. We immediately began the process of excavation, except for Neisa, who took up a position on the west side of the structure with her tools for assessing angles and spans, ready to note the position at which the red dawnlight would fall. It was a typical measurement, given the theory that such shrines were oriented in a significant way.

First with shovels and then with small brushes of fine wire, we cleared away the dust and caked mud until the entire circumference was revealed. As I had suspected, the entryway was already opened, and it too was filled with earth. Most of the first day was spent this way: in turns, we sifted through each layer, revealing step by narrow step the spiraling staircase that characterized shrines of this type. They were an original icon: the prototype for the modern chapels of the System Adherents. 

I was halfway down the second bend of the staircase, carefully cleaning dirt from the lip of the next step, when Osphos summoned me from above. I emerged with my bucket and saw that he was crouched over the shrine’s far edge. I stepped across the rolls of harak-cloth that had been laid down for the protection of the exterior and made my way over. 

“Lytus!” he said, seeing me approach. “Look here.” He pointed at the stone surface before him. 

We had already noted the usual markings on top of the shrine: the eighteen-fold division of the broad circle, the components of which descended into a staircase when the shrine was opened. That was nothing new, but here there was something else. Small symbols were carved around the outer edge of the circle; very worn, but still visible.

“They showed up once we cleared off enough sediment,” Osphos said.

“Are they makoki-symbols?”

“Herem’s Eye, that’s the word I was thinking of! Makoki-symbols, yes,” Osphos said. “Ever seen them on a structure like this?”

“No, never. Are we sure they’re original?” I crouched, put an eye close to the surface. “There’s graffiti sometimes, bone-hunter codes, the Matan inscriptions on the eastern sites... These are new to me.”

“Any guess as to what they might signify?”

“Well...” I sat back on my heels, rubbed my eyes. “Makokori are early period, and we don’t find them past Second or Third Myriad—not in the tablets or kini-ruins. Prior to that, they’re inscribed on doorways, and some of the Machines. There are theories that they signify keystones, or some kind of locking mechanism.”

“Fortunate that this shrine is already unlocked for us, then.”

“Yeah... I suppose these symbols might help date the shrine. If they’re original, this might be one of the earliest sites we’ve found. We should do an analysis of the sediment back at Naqua.”

“Already collected some samples. I’ll take a rubbing as well,” Osphos said. “How’s progress on the interior?”

I brushed off my hands. “We’re close. Another turn and we should be at the bottom. I could use more help.”

Osphos snapped his fingers to the other workers who were combing the field-grid for artifacts.

“Double-time on the stairs for the next few hours,” he called. “I want to see the bottom before Solis is down. Let’s move it!”

*  *  *

We did not reach the bottom. Normally, shrines of this kind exhibit two or three turns of stairs and then level out in a circular chamber. Not this one. Solis had set an hour ago, and still we were digging, our work illuminated only by pale quartz-lanterns. Stair after stair we exhumed, always expecting the next to be the last. But after six turns, descending fully twelve thori—or about six of Their bio—into the earth, still there was no end.

Osphos finally gave the command to stop, frustrating though it was, and we began to pack up the tools. I was at the bottom of the excavation at that point. The air was thick, and my back hurt from crouching for so long. I began to gather the various shovels and brushes that had accumulated around me, handing them up to Neisa on the stair above me. 

“Can you handle the rest?” Neisa nodded to the remaining implements.

“Right behind you.” I stood and stretched my limbs in the cramped space, then reached for my tool-bundle and bucket.

Something caught my eye—a glint in the quartzlight, a fragment of something sticking out of the mass of earth before me. I rubbed my tired eyes, blinked away the settling dust. It was still there. 

Wordlessly, I snatched up a brush and began to sweep away more dirt. It was metallic—a shaped metal object. There was a corner and a round sweep and...

“Lytus?” Osphos’s voice filtered down from above. He was annoyed. “Pack it in. We’ll get back to it first thing in the—”

“I’ve found something!” I called back. “It’s an object. I’m not sure...”

Eyeholes. A facelike shape. My heart thudded.

“It’s a mask,” I said excitedly. “One of Theirs.”

“What?!” Neisa had come back down the staircase. Light from her lantern spilled into the space. “What condition?”

“Intact, I think.”

She knelt down beside me with a brush of her own. Together we worked to carefully expose the surface of the mask. The sediment here was dry and loose, spilling away in small showers of particulate. All at once, the object came free, along with a mass of unpacked earth. Out of instinct, I put out a hand to catch it.

“Watch it,” Neisa said. “Careful not to—”

I was standing on the stairs, alone. Light was coming from somewhere—not quartzlight, from somewhere below me. Coming up out of the stone itself. I was descending... or had I been ascending? My mind was kuru, and... What? Dark. Foggy. My mind was foggy. What was happening? Where was—

Suddenly the ground lurched, and there was a roaring noise above. I staggered against the smooth poha... no, stone. Against the stone, and the avo flickered below me. The light flickered, rather. Then another tremor knocked me sideways, and stars broke out in my aku as my head struck the poha hard. The avo went out, and the roaring was all around, and it was kuru, ai kuru, ai kuru ai—

“...touch it,” Neisa finished. The metal of the mask was cold against my fingers. The stairs spun, and I felt sick for a moment. Then it was over. I quickly transferred the mask to a strip of harak-cloth, handling it gingerly.

“What was... What did you say?” I shook my head. “Don’t touch it?”

“Yeah... uh, you alright? You look pale.”

I grinned. “I’m fine. Could use some fresh air though. You feeling superstitious or something?”

She scoffed. “I don’t know why I said that. It was silly.”

“You know they say these masks trap the souls of their wearers...”

“Uh-huh. Sure.” Neisa bent down to examine the artifact. “Amazing. I’ve only seen them behind glass, or in the sterile rooms at Naqua.”

“Yeah, this is... It’s a find,” I said. The mask felt heavy and solid in my hands.

There was a murmur on the stairs, and I could hear Osphos’s grumbling voice descending toward us. He turned the corner.

“What now?” he said. “Tell me you’ve found something to make this worthwhile.”

“Think so,” I said, holding up the mask.

“What’s that?”

“Are you blind?” Neisa laughed. “It’s a Kanochus Mat—”

“No,” Osphos said, pointing past us. “That.”

There was a cavity in the wall of earth before us. It must have opened up when we removed the mask. 

“The bottom!” Neisa said excitedly. She moved forward, shining her light through the gap. 

She stopped. It wasn’t the bottom. I could already see. My heart was still thudding. It was dark. It was roaring in my ears. There was a smell, strangely metallic... and another shape sticking out of the dirt. Not a mask.

Fingers. A hand. An arm.

A face. Flat, blank eyes. A circular, wedge-like mouth. Open.

One of Them.

*  *  *

We stood around the examination table with its harak-draped contents—Osphos, Neisa, and myself. It was afternoon, and Solis was already falling toward the horizon, casting red shadows through the fabric of the tent.

Osphos broke the silence: “I don’t need to impress upon either of you how significant a find this is. Maybe the most significant I’ve overseen.”

“That’s for sure,” Neisa said. “The protobiologists back at the Institute would lose it if they knew...”

“They would, and hopefully they still will.” 

We had worked to remove the body from the shrine over the course of the day—Osphos, Neisa, and myself, in shifts. It had been difficult work, but uneventful. Bit by bit we’d brushed away the packed earth and ancient sediment, revealing more and more of the remains. Now extricated from its tomb, the body lay on the large table before us, still wrapped, ready to be examined.

Before today, I’d only ever seen bits and pieces, partial casts of exoskeletons, mock-ups of skull-like faces... But this was different. It was completely intact, as far as we could tell: head, torso, limbs. A monumental find. The first complete specimen of what we called Matorus Matans. 

“Before we start, there’s the matter of our timetable,” Osphos continued. “We obviously weren’t expecting a development like this, and that means priorities have changed.” He looked at me: “We might not get back to the shrine. I’m sorry, Lytus.”

My heart sank. “You’re sure? The shrine is pretty significant on its own, and we still haven’t reached the base layer.”

“It’s not going anywhere. The Adherents can have their Node if they want, and we’ll work something out via the Institute later if necessary. These... remains... have to be our focus now. I want them cataloged and prepared for transport offsite.”

“Offsite?” Neisa raised her eyebrows. “That’s pretty drastic.”

“There’s good reason,” Osphos said. “The Adherents have some odd notions when it comes to remains of this kind.”

“I mean, they’ll want them interred I suppose, but...”

“Maybe. It’s complicated—”

The tent-flap opened, and someone else entered carrying a bundle of implements. It was one of the junior researchers—Cyrcia.

“Yes?” Osphos said flatly.

“I told her that she could observe,” I said, beckoning her in. “Neisa and I thought we could use an extra set of hands.”

“You’ve done catalog before?” Osphos asked.

“Yes, I have,” Cyrcia replied. Her eyes passed over the table and its contents, then back up. “It’s a real honor, I’ve gotta say—”

“I’m sure it is. Grab a tablet, and get ready to make notes.” Osphos turned to the table, cracked his knuckles. 

“The light’s a bit better now. Neisa, will you do the honors?”

Neisa began to carefully pull back the cloth that covered the body while I unrolled a bundle of fine tools. The limbs and lower torso were still encrusted with sediment. I’d start with that while Neisa took her measurements. We each began to call out observations in turn for Cyrcia to transcribe. We moved quickly, notating and tagging the legs and the squared-off feet, then the lower torso with its segments, then the upper torso.

“One and a half thori across the chest,” Neisa called out, “and we’ll say ten sub-thori for the arms...”

“Primary exoskeleton is of common morphology,” Osphos said. “Similar format to those recovered from the Galian Sea. Connective tissues are mostly decayed...” 

“Some surface corrosion around the joining plates,” I added. “Centerline and upper shoulders. Only 1-2 ditori of penetration. Make note for dating purposes, mark upper-left buckle for cross-sectioning...”

“Twelve sub-thori across the lower mid-section. Five sub-thori for each of the radial pistons...”

“Tissue residue along the clavicle struts. Mark for lab-sampling. Limbs and neck will need to be secured for transport...”

Finally, we reached the head. I tugged the cloth upward and pulled it off. Cyrcia gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

“First time?” Neisa said, smiling.

“Yes, but... shouldn’t it be... shouldn’t it stay covered?”

“It’s a corpse,” Osphos said. “Just a body, like yours or mine. Several ten-myriads older, but nothing to be afraid of, despite all the superstitions.”

“Right... sorry.”

“Can you handle it?”

“I can.”

“Good. Let’s keep going then. And remember—no souvenirs. We’re not bone hunters here.”

Neisa rolled her eyes. The practice of fashioning talismans from Their relics and remains had fortunately been curbed in recent centuries, though you could still find them in the odd back-alley market. 

We finished primary cataloging, and Osphos stepped to one of the crates, removing a bundle he had stored there. He moved back to the table and unwrapped it. Smooth metal glinted in the tent. Two eyeholes stared up at the tent-roof. Cyrcia’s eyes goggled at the ancient mask.

“Shall we do a match-up?” Neisa asked, nodding to the exposed face. “This would have been the specimen’s personal Kanochus. It must have been separated during whatever flood or mudslide buried the shrine.”

There was a noise in my ears. Roaring noise, and a memory of a dark place... I shook it off as Osphos moved to the head of the table after double-checking the mask’s interior. He lowered the mask gingerly over the face, lining up the mouth-apertures. There was a faint click. Neisa leaned over to see how it fit over the side-vents—

Dark eyes glowed, and a light winked on in the center of the chest. Pistons hissed. Joints creaked. The body sat up suddenly in a shower of dust, limbs convulsing, fingers clenching and unclenching. I stumbled backward in shock, tripping over the low crates that lined the tent-wall. The masked face swiveled mechanically in my direction, and there was a noise. Not a noise—a voice. The rounded wedge-mouth was grinding out syllables at me. Alien sounds. Alien words. I put up my hands to ward it off, and—

Everyone was standing still. The eyes were dark. The body had not moved. I was sitting on a crate, my ears ringing. Neisa was looking down at me with a concerned expression. 

“You okay, Lytus?”

“I... I got dizzy,” I lied.

“How much sleep did you get last night?” Osphos asked. He had removed the mask and was wrapping it up again. 

“A few hours at least. I’m fine, really.” I stood up, looking at the motionless body warily, trying to compose myself. No one else had seen what I had seen. It hadn’t really happened. Neisa was still looking at me. 

“Are you sure? You look a little unsettled. First in the shrine, and then this. Maybe you should see a medic.”

Before I could reply, the tent-flap opened and another worker poked his head in. He was out of breath.

“Sorry, to bother you, boss, but there’s, uh... Someone’s here to talk to you.”

“Someone?” Osphos frowned.

“There was an airship, not two minutes ago. It landed beyond the ridge, and someone’s approaching from the trail.”

“Herem’s Eye,” Osphos swore.

*  *  *

The rangers escorted the strangers—there were two of them, actually—down to the edge of the camp. 

One was tall—clearly an Athori—and as he approached, it was plain that he was fully armored; head to toe, like the Glatorian of old. The other was much shorter, bent over, leaning on a staff. It was a Skrall—an ancient one, by the head-crest. 

Both of them wore metal masks. Only their eyes were visible.

The tall one planted himself just ahead, his squared-off, armored feet crunching in the gravel. The Skrall settled himself on a low metal stool beside him.

Osphos stepped forward.

“Welcome,” he said politely. “I am Osphos, the overseer of this excavation. And you are?”

“My designation is Tasius,” the tall one said. His voice rang harsh behind the mask. “I am a Toa of the Adherency, of the Ackarian line. This...” he gestured to the Skrall, “...is Tura Shozu, elder of the Adherent Node at New Tellu. We have been sent to make claim upon this site.”

“You’ve lost no time, it seems,” Osphos said dryly. “I wasn’t aware the Quadrate had opened the site at this time.”

“The site and its contents must be turned over at once. We—” Tasius stopped suddenly. The Skrall had raised a wizened hand.

“You are aware,” the elder said in a thin voice, “that the Adherency is granted right of access to all sites attributed to the System of Mata, are you not?”

“Well aware, yes. That is what we aim to determine: the provenance of the site, and the proper methods of its excavation and preservation, according to our charter.”

“Preservation or contamination?” The Skrall’s glance flicked to the tents behind us. “Our intelligence has indicated that this site is of particular significance to the Adherency.”

“You can follow the proper channels to make your claims, like everyone else.”

The Skrall continued undeterred:

“We have been made aware of certain... remains... left at this site. What is their nature, and how have they been contained?”

I could see the muscles in Osphos’s jaw flexing.

“Our excavation is less than two days old. May I ask the source of your ‘intelligence’?”

“The System is knowledge. Through Unity, knowledge is shared.”

“Fascinating,” Osphos said. “Well, regardless of your sources, I can’t give you access to the site at this time. By charter, the Quadrate has—”

“Animal remains, yes? Within the structure. I was led to believe that it was a beast.”

“I’m not at liberty to make that assessment.”

“May I see the remains?”

“All materials found at this site will be made publicly available.”

“I demand to see the remains.”

“No.”

The Skrall smiled. “Thank you for your candor. We have a truth-saying, amongst the Nodes: ‘The people of the world are of one nature or the other: Look into their hearts, and you will see that they are either Builders or Destroyers.”

“With respect, I believe it may be more complicated than that.”

“Then I have looked into your heart.”

“Uh…thank you. Is that all, Tura? We have a lot of work still to do.”

“I shall take word of our conversation to the Node Hierarchy and return later.”

“Fine by me.”

The Skrall put out a crooked hand and closed it into a fist in the manner of the Adherents. He inclined his head, waiting. After a moment, Osphos stepped forward and pressed his own fist against the elder’s. Then it was over. The Athori helped the Skrall to stand, and the two of them departed back up the slope, accompanied by the rangers. Osphos stood and watched, tapping his foot. He spoke quietly, keeping his face fixed in a smile.

“So much for offsite transport,” he growled after a few minutes. “They’ll have eyes on the camp now. By Angon, if we’d been just a bit quicker...” He swore again. Then, satisfied that the rangers had escorted the Toa far enough, he turned back to the camp. 

“Nothing for it now. Let’s clean up and get things packed away. Oh, and Lytus—”

“Yeah?”

“Get some sleep—for real this time. I can’t have you falling over again during sensitive work.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

*  *  *

I didn’t sleep well that night after all. Instead, I dreamed. 

Long, complicated dreams. Dreams that didn’t make any sense. I was in the stairwell of the shrine again. I was on a bright, open plain. I was speaking words and sentences that meant nothing to me. I was running from a dark, crashing wave that rolled over me and pressed on my face, on my mouth. 

I was walking on the open plain again, and two suns were shining down on me. My face was still covered though, somehow. I reached up to claw at whatever was there. It came away in my hands. 

It was my face, staring up at me. 

I was lying in my cot, and the tent was dark. The desert night was cold outside. I shivered and turned over. There was a noise at the tent-flap, something scraping in the dirt. The dull ring of metal on poha... on stone. 

The flaps shook. It was trying to get in. It was grinding, grinding words and syllables at me, words that meant nothing. It was roaring, roaring noise and darkness, darker than the night. It was kuru, ai kuru, roaring over the camp, crashing through the walls of my tent in a wave and sweeping me down into dark, into kuru, ai kuru, ai kuru ai—

“Lytus?” Neisa’s voice brought me fully awake. It was morning. My bleary eyes focused, and I could see her silhouette through the side of the tent. “Lytus, you awake?”

“I’m up, sorry. What’s going on?”

“The emissary from the Adherents is back. Osphos is speaking with them.”

“Oh. What should we do?”

“Osphos said to stay put. Probably wouldn’t look good to have everyone out at the shrine right now.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yeah I’m heading over to one of the storage tents to help with tagging. Want to help?”

“Sure, I’ll follow you over in a bit.”

After a few minutes, I stepped outside into the pale red sunlight. I could see Osphos and a couple of the rangers on the far side of the circle of tents. The Athori and the Skrall were there as well. Their voices echoed faintly in the morning air, and I found myself walking closer. I stepped behind one of the taller tents nearby.

“...does not accord with our canons,” the Skrall was saying. 

“I confess, Shozu—can I call you Shozu?”

“The correct title is ‘Tura’,” another voice said brusquely—the armored Athori.

“Sorry... Tura,” Osphos continued. “I’m not as familiar with the canons of Adherency as I should be, but I can assure you—”

“It is of utmost importance that we examine the site. The Kanohi in particular must be handed over.”

They knew about the mask somehow. Had they been spying on the camp?

“As I’ve said, that is something to take up with the Quadrate.”

“It is already in process, but the matter is urgent.”

“I must adhere to my charter and await further orders. Until then, we’ll continue our work.”

“We must be allowed to supervise. My companion here is trained in the handling of such objects. They must be treated with utmost care.”

“Yes, and—”

“And these remains—they must be verified. Some hapless bone hunter or a beast, I’m sure.”

“As I’ve told you, it is clearly a specimen of Matorus Matans, good Tura. There’s no mistaking it.”

“And as I have said, this is not in accord with our canons. Such things only lead to greater kuru.”

“Pardon?”

“Greater obscurity—my apologies. The Children of Mata are not some extinct automaton race. We ourselves are the heirs to the Great System Hierarchy. You must understand—”

“Your beliefs are your own.”

“...The Kanohi are precious. They connect us to the spirit of Mata, and to the spirits of those from the Before Time...” 

My mind was racing, an avalanche of thoughts, fragments of dreams. A roaring noise, and dark, and kuru... What was happening to me? The Kanohi are precious... They connect us to the spirit of Mata...

What if...?

“Only then can we hope to repair the Shattering,” the elder was saying.

“With respect,” Osphos replied, “the Shattering is ancient history. It was repaired, at least five myriads ago.”

“A common myth, but it is a great untruth.”

I could tell Osphos was short on patience by now: “I can literally point it out to you in the strata. You see that ridge there? The Sakerran Ridge? It’s the tail end of a subduction zone where the Botan and Baran plates met—”

The Skrall laughed dryly: “A fantastical narrative, I admit, that a planet could be broken in pieces. But the reality is much more abstract. We ourselves live within the Shattering, my friend: the decay of the Great System Hierarchy of the Great Beings, which they called Mata Nui...” 

“I do not—”

“We the Matoran,” the Skrall continued, ignoring him, “the Children of Mata, work now to rebuild and restore the Great System, in accordance with our canon. To connect all things together, till the scattered elements are made whole. Only then will the Great Beings return and truly heal this world.”

A long moment passed. The air was thick with tension.

“Ahem... I do not believe this conversation is productive,” Osphos said at last. “I’m not granting you access to the site at this time—no matter what your canons say. You’ll just have to wait for your request to be approved by the Quadrate, and that’s that, by Angon.”

Something happened. There was a scuffling noise, and the clank of armor.

“Hold it! That’s enough, you—”

I peeked over the top of the tent. The Athori—the one who had called himself a ‘Toa’—was standing between Osphos and the Skrall now, fists clenched. For a moment, I thought... I thought the air around him was shimmering with heat, like high noon on the desert. Then it was gone. There were rangers standing all around, and I noticed that they had weapons at the ready. One of them swung a bolas lazily.

“Control your guard, Shozu,” Osphos spat. “My reports go directly to the Quadrate. They’ll hear of this.”

“Take not the names of the Great Beings in vain!” the Skrall said indignantly, pointing a crooked finger from his stool. “The canon shall not be denied, nor shall it be mocked.”

“I’ve said all I have to say, by Angon.” He emphasized the expletive. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Tura, I’m on a timetable—”

“Such things lead only to kuru and ukuru worse! We must strive for clarity...!”

I had heard enough. Quietly I crept away between the tents, back toward the other side of the camp. The Skrall’s words spun in my mind as I walked. Kuru and ukuru worse. Something was wrong—ever since I had touched that mask... was that when it started? What did the Skrall know? I wanted to tell someone, but who would believe it? I was tired, that was all. It had been a long few days, full of strangeness and excitement. That must be it. I hoped so...

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. We didn’t get much work done—mostly tagging and storing various artifacts found around the site. I was itching to get back to the shrine, but Osphos was wary. He had sent couriers south to apprise our Quadrate contacts of the situation, but they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Until then, we were stuck.

In the evening, Osphos sought me out. He had a bundle under one arm.

“Here, Lytus. I’d like you to keep this in your tent.”

It was the mask. My mouth was suddenly very dry.

“Is that, uh, necessary?”

“Maybe not, but I’m taking no chances. The Adherents aren’t getting any more patient. Neisa’s keeping some other artifacts, and I think I’ll sleep in the examination tent tonight, just in case.”

“You mean... with the body?”

“Don’t make it sound creepier than it is.”

“Sorry.”

He offered the mask. I took it. My fingers felt numb.

“Tell you what, we’ll take another pass at excavating the shrine in the morning, try to get to the bottom.” 

“That’s great! I’ll have my gear ready.”

“Only one day left to go, so what have we got to lose, right?”

The mask felt heavier than I remembered.

*  *  *

I had the dream again that night, or something like it. A stairwell, a bright plain with two suns. A dark roaring... Then... Then something else. A dim enclosure. Fabric walls. A tent? I was lying on my back, and my limbs were bound tight. My face was covered, but not with heavy suffocating darkness like before. It was lightweight, like cloth. I struggled, I yelled. My words were meaningless again. 

The tent-flap shook, like last time. I could hear it, the scraping, the grinding. It was trying to get in, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything. The entrance parted, and there was darkness outside. Darkness on the ground, and in the darkness... now there was a crawling thing. Crawling, dragging itself through the dust, right up to the place where I lay. I could feel it. See it, even though my face was covered. Its flat eyes glowed, and its mouth was open. Grasping hands rose up toward me and searched, reached, searched—

I was standing in front of myself, seeing myself. I was stretched out beneath the covering, on the table. I was walking under stars, and my hands were full of something. I looked down and saw that I was holding my face. It looked up at me, up at the stars. I tried to put it back on, but it wasn’t my face anymore. It was glowing eyes and grasping hands, and a mouth grinding syllables and words. It was a shape under fabric, stretched out on a table in the dark, and I stood before it, holding its face... my face. 

I clawed at the covering, trying to pull it off, but the noise was approaching again. The roaring, rolling noise, and my face... its face... my face was grinding alien sounds and alien words, and it was so dark in the stairwell, in the cold, heavy earth. So dark under the cloying wrap of fabric, so kuru it was, and ukuru worse, ai kuru, ai ukuru—

I awakened in a cold sweat and rolled over. My hands slid in sand, and a stinging thornbush brought me fully awake. I wasn’t in my cot. Wasn’t in my tent. How...? It was still nighttime, but there were lights in the encampment, and the sound of people running. I could hear voices. What was happening? I stumbled up, brushing dust from my face, and realized that I was in the space next to my own tent. I went to the entrance and looked inside. No one there. Then I looked out toward the center of the camp, trying to get my bearings.

A figure came out of the darkness, and I flinched as it grabbed my arm. It was Osphos. He was out of breath.

“Where is it, Lytus?” he hissed. “The body—it’s gone!”

“What, from the examination tent?”

“Yes that body, by Angon. Did you do something? I didn’t even hear...”

“N-no, of course not!”

“What about Neisa? Have you seen her?”

“I haven’t.”

“Have you seen anyone?!”

“No, I just woke up!”

“Adherents...” He ground his teeth. “Ah, the Quadrate will hear of this...”

“Wait—Are you sure?”

“Who else? It’s gone from the tent, but nothing else has been taken. I came right here once I realized. Where’s the mask? Has anyone been in your tent?” He pushed past me, through the entrance.

A crawling thing, a thing with glowing eyes, reaching out... but that wasn’t my tent, was it?

“N-no, no one,” I stammered. 

“Where did you put it? I have to be sure.”

I moved to the back of the tent and opened my personal crate. The hinges creaked. “It’s right here, see?”

The mask was gone, wrapping and all. Osphos saw.

“Acta!” he cursed, and then let fly a string of imprecations, invoking the dream-eater and the death-mind, among others. “What, were you drugged or something?!”

“I don’t know... Osphos, I—” I tried to get it out. “I had a dream, or I thought it was a dream. I keep seeing things...”

“Spare me.” He stormed out of the tent, and I followed, feeling absolutely bewildered. There was too much happening, too fast. 

“Go find Neisa,” Osphos ordered. “I’m heading back to the examination tent. Can you handle that?”

“Yes, boss.”

I snatched up a quartz-lantern and made my way across the encampment toward Neisa’s tent. Hers was the last tent on the outer ring of the camp. My lantern cast a pale glow over the ground as I went, and I could see that there were lights in the hills now, figures moving up and down the steppe. The rangers were likely combing the perimeter. I stopped for a moment to watch, then realized that I had stupidly lost track of which tent was which. Was Neisa on the east or the west side?

I backtracked. The tents all looked the same in the quartzlight. I took a different turn... and now found myself standing on the path that led out to the open part of the valley. Out toward the shrine.

There were footprints in the dirt. Very fresh. Hard-edged, square toe. Where had I seen that before? I looked up the path, raising the lantern. There was something else. I stepped forward to investigate. It was a heap of cloth, harak-cloth, in small strips. Further up the path, there was another bundle cast to the side.

I kept walking, quickening my pace. More bits of cloth here and there. More footprints. Soon, the edge of the shrine loomed ahead. I moved toward it, stepping gingerly through the rope-grids that were stretched over the ground. I made a circuit of the shrine, then I climbed up on top. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I shed quartzlight all around, then I stooped to look into the stairwell. The dust on the stairs had recently been disturbed—

“Get down from there,” a voice said, and I whirled to see the towering figure of the Athori Tasius standing on the trail.

“You—” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I have every right,” the Athori said, stepping forward. “Remove yourself from the sacred Amaja!”

I put up my hands appeasingly and complied, climbing back down to the ground and taking a few steps toward him.

“I saw footprints on the trail up here,” I said. “Were they yours?”

“On the trail? No. I came from the hills. I have been charged to keep watch over the Amaja, to make sure no one further contaminates the site.” 

“Did you see anyone come here ahead of me?”

“No.”

“There’s been a theft in the camp,” I said. “Do you have anything to do with that?” I immediately regretted asking so directly.

“Theft?” The Athori’s eyes widened. “Theft of what?” He took another step toward me.

“Uh...”

“Tell me!”

“The mask! The... the Kanohi, you call it. Someone took it tonight.”

“What else?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

The Athori said a word that was foreign to me. Probably a curse. He looked back toward the camp. His hands were clenched.

“Listen,” I said, “it looks like someone has entered the shrine. It wasn’t you, was it?”

“I am forbidden, without the Tura,” he said.

“Well, I’ll need to check inside.” I took a step back toward the shrine. “It will only take a second. If you’ll just wait here—”

A heavy, armored grip fell on my shoulder and I was forcefully turned back around. The Athori was fast, and very strong.

“The Amaja will not be touched again,” his voice said, deadly serious. I could feel hot breath through the mouth-piece of his mask. “You and your people have brought rahi upon this place, but no more. Now, I—”

He stopped suddenly, and I felt his fingers seize. He was looking past me, up at the shrine. I turned slowly.

Glowing eyes. An ancient mask. A small figure stood upon the top of the shrine, unmoving. I could see it. The Athori could see it. It was no hallucination this time. Not a dream.

“M-manas!” the Athori croaked. “Get back!”

He shoved me to the side before I could say a word.

And then he burst into flame.

Real flame, like the elementals of old who had been devoured by the Great Beings’ wrath. I didn’t even have time to register shock or surprise before the heat washed over me. Instinctively I threw up my arms to protect myself.

“Stop!” I shouted, scrambling away. “You’ll damage the site! Stop it!”

The fire whirled up and resolved into a glowing nimbus around the Athori’s hands and head. He drew a strange tool from a slot in his armor, and aimed it at the figure atop the shrine.

“No!”

Something flew out of the dark—a whirling rope-like thing—and wrapped itself around Tasius’s burning face and neck. The ends of the bolas whirled for a split second before they snapped tight, and the loud clack of the weights meeting their target made my teeth hurt. The fire went out suddenly, and the scene plunged into darkness. I heard the tramp of feet on the path, and voices shouting. Quartzlight bobbed in the distance. 

I was already up and over the top of the shrine before I knew what I was doing. The figure was gone. The opening of the stairwell yawned before me—cool dark after the furnace heat—and I was scrambling down the stairs, two at a time.

“Wait!” I shouted, but my voice was blunted on the stone. “Come back!” 

Turn after turn I went. I wasn’t thinking straight. It was pitch-black. I should have grabbed my lantern, but I had dropped it. I realized my hands were burned. They stung when I touched the wall, feeling my way along. I stumbled, picked myself up, and then felt earth against my fingers. The wall of earth where we had stopped excavating. No one was here... Had I been mistaken? Had the figure not gone back into the shrine? Maybe it had run off... 

There was light, I realized. It wasn’t pitch-black here. My eyes adjusted, and I saw with a shock that the earth wall wasn’t a wall anymore. It had been dug through, shoveled back and shored up into the walls of a narrow tunnel. When had the others done this? Why hadn’t they notified me? There were handprints in the dust, I noticed. Squared-off palm, five fingers.

Heedless, I push on, squeezing through the tunnel, wriggling on my chest. For a moment I thought I was stuck, and panic surged, but then I was through, and there was no more earth. No more dirt or sediment. The stairs on the other side were clear, pristine. We had been so close, after all. 

The light was stronger here, filtering up from somewhere below me. Coming up out of the stone itself. I had been here before, hadn’t I? No, not possible. I had just come through the tunnel... and I was descending... or had I been ascending? My mind was... my mind was kuru, and... foggy... What was I doing here again? I was waiting for something, wasn’t I? Waiting for a roaring sound... a darkness to come and cover me. I had been here many times, in my dreams.

No, that had been before, long ago. This time it was different. I was descending, and the light was getting stronger. Another bend of the stairs, and then the stairs ended.

It was a round, level, circular room—just like the many others I had seen before. The first thing I noticed was the Pedestal. In shrines of this kind, there was usually a square pedestal at one end, surmounted by a face-like image. In later types, the image was the skull of an animal, usually a Spikit or an Ironwolf.

On this one, there was a mask. It was the mask. It was glowing, and the light was coming out of every surface. My heart was thudding. 

I was not alone. The body lay in a heap on the ground before the pedestal. I could see scorch marks on its back and upper arms. I came closer and saw that it was moving slightly. Slow breaths. The eyes glowed faintly.

I touched it, gently, almost reverently. It was strange how my mind resisted the idea that this was no longer... remains... It was living, somehow. After all these eons, it was alive. The dim eyes shifted, fixed on me. The mouth moved, and the wedge-like shapes ground out their halting syllables and words, but I still could not understand. 

How had it gotten the mask?

A crawling thing, with glowing eyes, searching, reaching. 

A shape under fabric, stretched out on a table in the dark. 

What was happening to me?

I was walking under stars. I was crawling, dragging through the dust. I was standing in front of myself, looking down at myself. I was holding my face in my hands. I was touching an ancient mask in a small, cramped space, and sparks were leaping into me. Its metal was cold against my fingers. The Kanohi are precious, I remembered. They connect us to the spirit of Mata...

It was dark all around. It was roaring. It was kuru, ai kuru, ai kuru ai—

A metal hand touched me weakly and brought me back to reality. The finger pointed up at the glowing mask atop the pedestal, and I understood. It needed the mask—its personal Kanochus.The mask had activated the shrine, but the circuit was incomplete. It needed the mask back, in order to accomplish whatever purpose it intended. Whatever purpose it had been kept from all those eons ago.

There was a noise on the stairs. Voices murmuring. The thud of metal on stone. How much time had passed? I had lost track. They would be looking for me. Hopefully the rangers had done their work.

“I’m here!” I shouted up. The voices continued. The hand gripped my arm again. The mouth ground out more words.

“I know,” I said. 

I stood and pulled the mask off the pedestal. It sparked in my hands, and I felt a charge go through me... or maybe that feeling had already been there, ever since I touched the mask, days ago. Something had been clinging to me. I felt it now. Something intangible, something in my thoughts and my dreams. I had joked about trapped souls to Neisa, but now I wasn’t so sure...

The light increased. I bent toward the body... not just a body—toward the Matoran... and—

A wave of heat rushed down the stairwell, and a burning smell filled the chamber. I froze, and fear surged in my chest as I turned my head to look.

It was the old Skrall. He was standing on the stairs, leaning on his staff. His eyes were sharp behind his mask, and somewhere in the back of my mind it clicked, that although the masks of the Adherents were clearly forged like the one I now held, they were subtly different, like a picture whose original reference had been lost. A copy of a copy of a copy...

“Hold a moment,” the Skrall said urgently. “You stand on sacred ground. Disturb not the machines of the Great Beings.”

“I don’t know what that means.” I stood up and turned around slowly. The Skrall’s eyes widened as he saw what I was holding... and what was slumped behind me.

“That Kanohi...” he hissed, descending another step. “It is meant for the Children of Mata alone. You must give it to me—it is not for you to touch!”

“I’ve already touched it. It has... shown me things. Things I don’t understand.”

The Skrall’s breath hissed in his mask.

“Give it to me, and all shall be restored to unity.”

“It’s not yours. It belongs to... to this one.” I pointed at the Matoran. The dim eyes looked at the wizened elder, but the Skrall averted his gaze.

“This is not in accord with our canons,” he intoned. 

“I don’t—”

“Such things only lead to greater kuru.”

I was on a stairway. I was on a great open plain, beneath two suns. My face was covered, but it was not my face. Not anymore. It belonged to someone else.

“You’re wrong.” I held the mask close.

“The canon shall not be denied, nor shall it be mocked. Give me the mask.”

The Skrall was not alone now. Another figure moved into the stairwell behind him. A cracked and broken mask, a bruised and bloodied face. More heat poured into the chamber as the Athori Tasius descended, eyes still glowing with fire.

I shrank back to the pedestal, and the lights of the shrine brightened further. The Matoran moved pitifully. We were trapped. The pedestal was humming. Waiting. 

Waiting.

The Athori was moving, hindered by the small opening. His armored hand reached out at me, white-hot.

But I had already placed the mask on the Matoran’s face, and the charge that I had felt in my body went out of me... back into the mask, into the Matoran.

And the shrine was blazing white with light, and the pedestal was retracting into the wall. And the Skrall was staggering back onto the stairs, eyes raving. And the Athori was still moving forward, overbalanced, tipping forward into suddenly empty space.

The walls were pulled back and then were gone as the bottom of the shrine became a circular platform and dropped down, down into pitch-black. The stairwell shrank into the distance above us, and I saw the Athori hang for a moment, glowing with heat. Then he fell, whirling like a fiery meteor, right past the edge of the descending platform and away into the greater dark. 

Gone.

A few moments passed, maybe longer. I sank down on the platform, exhausted and spent. The Matoran was sitting next to me. It reached out and gripped my shoulder with its metal hand. Its eyes were glowing bright again, and the light in its chest blinked steadily, despite the corrosion and scorch-marks that covered the rest of its body. It looked at me, and its mouth shifted into a different configuration. 

I think it was smiling. 

Cold air rushed past us as we fell onward, onward into unknown. I don’t know how long we spent in that smooth descent. I looked up and saw nothing above, and nothing on either side. I wondered if I would ever see the surface again, if I would ever have a chance to tell someone. I wondered what was happened or had happened in the camp. I wondered if anyone else but the two Adherents knew what had happened to me, to the mask, to the Matoran...

Except for the light of the platform beneath us, it was dark all around. Featureless, unbroken dark. 

“Kuru,” I said aloud, unbidden, remembering the word.

“Ha te ai kuru,” my companion replied, nodding.

I shivered and rubbed my arms. 

“Ukuru,” I said.

“Ru,” it replied, standing up. “Ru te aikuru. Akuya.”

The Matoran went to the edge of the platform—too close for my comfort—and pointed out into the surrounding dark. 

“Akuya,” it said, and gestured at my... my eyes. My aku. Look. It beckoned me and pointed again. And hesitating, shivering, I rose and went to where it stood, and looked out. And I saw:

Rising up over us, ascending as we descended into the depths of Spherus Magna... Deeper than any excavation could reach, deeper than the catacombs of lost Atero, or the mass tombs of the Glatori hosts, farther and deeper than the silo-vaults of the Great Beings, or the maze-labyrinths of Old Skralla, or the vast mutated seabeds of Old Spherus... Far beyond the reach of Quadrates or Adherencies, of charters or canons...

Past the unknown dark, the aikuru...

There were stars, and two suns rising.

[mirkwdmstrss]

in his image

summary: adar attempts to escape from under the weight of mairon’s thumb, but is thwarted by the very one he tries to escape. after enduring punishment at his hands, he realizes the only way out is to plot his undoing

genre: angst

pairing: adar x sauron (as mairon)

word count: 1.8k

tags: blood and torture, mild sexual content, emotional manipulation

Frostbite scorched his flesh, the icy kiss of a howling wind rendering the tips of his fingers, nose, and ears aching and numb. And every time the air whipped across his face, he couldn’t help but feel as though he were back atop that mountain; chained to it with nothing but the scream of the wind to keep him company. Flakes of snow caught in his hair and lashes as he curled the ragged excuse for a cloak tighter around his shoulders.

He stumbled and fell to his knees in the ankle deep snow; hardly feeling the sting of the pain for the bone deep chill burrowing its way through his flesh. He cursed the stiffness of his limbs as he dragged himself upright and then cursed himself for fleeing as if he’d truly be able to outrun the shadow of His reach. In his heart he knew he would fail, but that didn’t mean he didn’t try. This was further than he’d gotten when he’d last attempted to unbind himself from this hellish place. How had he ended up like this? How had he fallen so far from the grace and power that had once been promised to him and the others?

He lived in shadow still, though the embrace of this darkness hadn’t always felt so bleak. He could picture the flames flickering in His eyes even now, warming him through to his core with just one look. He closed his eyes and visualized Him curling calloused hands, the hands of a smith, over his shoulders and the heat that would spread from his palms. He opened his eyes and the illusion shattered. There were no hands to hold him, no hearth to warm him; nothing but barren rock and ice laid ahead. Even the path beneath his feet remained hidden; a stark reminder that there would likely be no way out.

He trudged on for what felt like days, though it might have only been hours. The sun did not show its face here. There was no golden light to look upon except that which reflected off His face in his mind’s eye. Through Him only, could he know warmth. Every step sent a ripple of agony through what little he could still feel of his body. Just as he felt he would collapse to the ground and be forever claimed by the might of the blizzard raging on around him, the hushed whisper of voices pricked along the length of his pointed and blistered ears.

He squinted through the storm and two figures appeared, clad in pristine silver armor. Adar raised a hand to shield his eyes from the snow and sure enough, there, nestled between the crags of the open rock face, were two elves with hair the color of freshly milled wheat huddled together by the light of a fire. It baffled him how they might’ve sparked a flame in this storm, but the thick walls of stone surrounding them may have been just enough to keep the storm at bay.

Adar attempted to call out to them, but his voice was hoarse from lack of use and was lost to the wind. They kept their heads bowed low and did not seem to see him as he drew near. His steps were stilted, each one stiffer than the last as he trudged on. They were so close now. He reached out a hand; a sign and a plea saying, ‘Please see that I am here. See that I am of your blood, of your kin. Save me from this place.’ Exhaustion took him and he collapsed onto his knees, his hair falling around his face in a curtain of dark brown. Despite the pain it caused him, he dug his fingers into the frozen earth and found the strength within himself to crawl on his hands and knees.

Just as he was about to feel a flicker of the fire's warmth upon his wind-whipped cheeks, it snuffed out. A pained gasp escaped his lips as the elves too, vanished.

Snow crunched beneath the weight of polished boots. Adar’s heart slowed to a dull thump against his rib cage as his eyes trailed up the length of the figure looking over him; those looking back at him burning like two red hot coals. He immediately dropped his gaze out of habit.

“This is the thanks I get?” He hissed as He crouched down and wrenched His hand into Adar’s hair, fisting it into His palm and forcing him to look at Him. “What can they,” he spat, and with a flick of his fingers, conjured the image of elven warriors into being. “Offer you that I can’t?” Mairon’s lip curled back in disgust as He pushed Adar’s face into the snow. He bent down, His ginger hair brushing the curve of Adar’s cheek as He did so, and spoke in his ear in a low voice. “They would never accept you as you are. They would laugh in your face and cast you out.”

Adar squeezed his eyes shut and tears leaked from their inner corners into the frozen earth as the truth of Mairon’s words cut through his heart like a thousand knives.

He winced then, having expected the sting of pain rather than the gentle caress of the back Mairon’s gloved hand against his cheek. “Only I can keep you warm,” he murmured. “Only I can keep you safe.”

“Forgive me.” The words eked past Adar’s scarred lips in a harsh whisper, his throat cracking as he spoke.

Mairon took firm hold of his chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted his face up to look at him. Adar felt naked beneath the weight of his stare as shame slithered down his spine. “Forgiveness,” Mairon said pointedly, “is earned.”

Adar lowered his eyes. “I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit.”

“Yes,” Mairon answered resolutely, and Adar didn’t miss the flicker of glee that danced in his irises. “You will.”

••••

Adar tried hard not to cry out as salve soaked bandages were laid across the tattered remains of the flesh at his back, the pungent aroma of herbs mixing with the irony tang of his blood. It turned his stomach and he feared as though he might retch, but that would only earn him further torment at His hands.

He fisted his hands into the silk of Mairon’s crimson sheets, his knuckles split from when they’d thawed before the hearth in His chambers. Rope burns marred the backs of his hands and wrists from where he’d wrapped his fingers around it to brace himself against each slash of Mairon’s golden belt buckle, the sharpened points of which had torn into his flesh like a hot knife through the butter. He glanced at the two pillars in the center of Mairon’s grand chambers and the ropes that hung off of either. Long ago, he’d have been restrained to endure his punishment. Now, he accepted them willingly, surrendering his pain for His pleasure.

Adar had lost count of the strikes made against him, but when the belt had fallen from Mairon’s hand and clattered to the floor, He’d caught him as he crumpled to a heap at His feet with sweat pouring from his brow and his black blood pooling upon the stones. “There, there, my love,” He’d said as He’d stretched an arm around his waist to support his weight and help him to lie face down on the bed they shared together.

After a while, He helped him to sit up, the bandages now plastered to his skin. Adar groaned low in his throat as He began to wind a roll of bandages around his middle and over his shoulders, compressing his injuries. Mairon tsked and shook His head. “How I hate to see you in such discomfort,” he murmured as he secured a knot in the wrappings and smoothed Adar’s dark hair away from his face.

Adar hated how he couldn’t help but lean into the warmth of His palm. He turned into His touch and kissed the hand that had only just been raised against him.

Mairon smiled tightly and turned away from him, a silent order to untie the apron; the same one he wore in His forge, except now it was spattered with Adar’s blood instead of cinders and ash. Adar fought against the pain in his back as he lifted his hands and made quick work of the knot. The apron fell away from His slender waist and He sighed as if a heavy weight had been removed from His shoulders. Adar watched as He draped the apron over the drawing table and turned to gaze upon his body with the same look He reserved for the twisted metal creations He crafted in His forge, as if Adar, too, was something to be shaped and molded by His hand. Yet somehow, and no matter how Adar tried, He never seemed satisfied by what He saw in front of Him.

Mairon shrugged into a robe of emerald green, His ginger hair fanning about his shoulders. Adar’s eyes followed His every step as He drew nearer, flames sparkling in the reflection of the rings adorning his long fingers. He stopped in front of Adar and curled His fingers around the back of his neck. He gently tugged Adar’s hair, drawing his eyes up the front of his torso to meet His.

“Good as new,” He murmured as he stroked the knot tied in the bandages at his shoulder and bent to press His lips to Adar’s.

Adar’s mouth instantly parted for Him, and he moaned into Mairon’s mouth as He slipped His tongue between his lips. Adar’s legs spread naturally for Him and Mairon took a seat upon his muscular thigh where Adar could feel the length of His arousal pressing against his groin causing his own cock to twitch in response.

Mairon’s grip tightened in his hair and Adar hissed as Mairon bit his lip and tugged forcefully on his hair.

“Don’t ever try to leave me again,” He whispered, eyes hard and boring into his. Adar merely inclined his head, but gave no answer. Mairon tugged at his hair again and Adar clenched his jaw. When he drew his gaze back up to meet His, he was surprised to find His eyes wet with tears. “Don’t,” He breathed, the word closer to a plea than a command.

And though Adar dreamt of leaving this place, still, he slipped a hand around the curve of Mairon’s slender waist and up the length of his spine, caressing him softly as he pulled Him closer to him despite the pain it caused as his injuries stretched and split anew beneath his bandages; a reminder that as much pain as Mairon wrenched from his body, that He wrought pleasure too. He might have warped this body, but He worshiped it all the same. The line between pain and pleasure was lost to him now, but in rare moments of clarity, he knew in his blackened heart, that if he didn’t put an end to Him, that Mairon would be his undoing.

[cipheramnesia]

tell me how people are wrong about griddle and harrow! i need to know your thots!

I'm waiting to finish all three current books but I haven't managed to stumble across any fandom material, aside from one extremely excellent piece of fan art, that feels correct so far. Which is perhaps on me, because I don't really go far ranging looking for fan works. But everything I manage to find feels refracted through trope lenses into digestible bites with all the crunchy delicious spice sanded off.

Harrowhark becomes like this manic pixie taxidermy girl instead of a person with severe complicated PTSD covered in blood and trying to bury her life and future under crags of necromancy to find a way to resurrect the self that died when she was too young to have to understand. Gideon is some butch himbo instead of completely adrift and clinging to her own sarcastic front against a world that refuses to either accept or reject her, demanding her body and soul without ever acknowledging her existence as an individual because it can't, because none of them can or everyone's horrific trauma and complex mental illnesses explode into so much dust and bone, y'know?

I dunno if it's just being in relationships with people who have personal histories that would peel the wallpaper off the yellow room, but it feels like there's a vast gulf between "enemies to lovers disaster gays" and people with centuries old rust-covered locks for hearts that have grown unto each other, black flaking metal chains twined up in their chests. If they can't open the locks they're bound in chains forever, but if they try they might just crumble and break.

And it's not that I need everything to be a nightmare of death and pain but that Gideon and Harrow of the books are entertaining personalities out front, while the totally fucked up people lurking behind are the machine that makes those sweet sweet personalities tick. Not to say people need trauma to be interesting, but Gideon and Harrow don't feel right if they aren't broken, and that feels missing everywhere I look.

The fandom versions I see are very neat and tidy, but these blorbos should not be rotating in your mind without leaving a big old mess.

[pursuitseternal]

“Take My Milk for Gall:” an upcoming WIP from PursuitsEternal 🔥 UA Astarion x Fem!OC

UA Spawn Astarion x Delilah | Explicit | TBD

Summary: “I’ve taken a turn as a hero and adventurer” Astarion may not have found the slavers he’s contracted to hunt this time, but he has found one fiercely determined and mysterious female. Her tenacity is only outmatched by her secrets. But she might be just what he needs, for this quest and for more reasons than that alone.

CW: Tired, jaded hero Spawn, no Tav assumed, fem!OC is new mother, stretch marks, blood, and breast milk included, tragic past hopeful future, found family, future adoptive Dadstarion…

Tease below the cut…

Against her obviously better judgment, she tried to strike up a conversation a few times, but a terse response and a glare was enough to quiet her meager attempts. Perhaps it was the reflection of his own past, his own scars and abuse and self-loathing that made him avoid looking at her much. It wasn’t until he could hear actual tears in her voice that he stopped to listen to her pleas.

“I hear water ahead, a river. Once it’s dawn, could we stop please, I need to bathe and rest…” She looked exhausted, tired, and now pathetic.

But it did pique his conscience enough to reply. “We do need to make camp before sunrise, same as our quarry, and I do think we’ve gained on them.” He nodded to an outcrop of rocks in the hills, “I’ll make camp in this cover. Head east. The river isn’t far.” He could almost feel her relief in her bones as he directed her to find the rest she had been whining for.

Decades of repetition, some with companions, some all alone, his body made camp without a single thought about it: fire made, bedroll laid out, weapons cleaned and sharpened, tent pitched in the darkest parts of the rocky crag to keep the sun off his flesh. Supper would be dry fare for her, just some things he had scrounged from the village stores that weren’t tainted with soot. As for him, he sniffed the air looking for something warm and soon-to-be-prey, when another scent caught his nose.

Fresh blood. Female blood. The kind that came monthly, the kind he hadn’t been so exposed to since his days on the road to fight the Absolute. Yet, there was something off. “Delilah?” he called, heading towards the riverbank. He pushed through massive ferns, that scent growing stronger, now edged with something sweeter, something he had never scented before. Hurrying, his arms brushed back the thick leaves, calling her name one more time.

Her body stood in the waters, the tops of her thighs still above the surface. Dark brown and red stains covered the insides of her legs, a sight he knew. Old blood and fresh dripped down. The curves of her hips, the crest of her belly was covered in stretch lines, her skin slightly loose but no less supple. Voluptuous even. Slowly she rounded to face him, her figure in the moonlight bright against the rippling water. Her breasts, two full mounds glistening with droplets of water, achingly full, nipples hard and ripened pink. It made his mouth water against his better judgment. Her hands worked at her breast, and there was that other sweeter, strange scent.

A cup in one fist, thick streams of milk spurted into it. His eyes went wide, the shock of seeing something foreign, intimate, and… confusing. Her dark eyes sparked, almost like two nebulous voids as she locked into his gaze, but even that mysterious darkness couldn’t mask her determination.

It was a clear picture, a young mother, recent from labour and absent a babe. A long inhale is what he took as he drew towards the river’s edge. “Where’s your child?” he asked, bile and gall rising in his throat to think of the possibilities.

“She’s safe with a friend, another whore who got too ripe for business,” came the casual reply, her hand tossed the full cup of milk into the water around her naked body. Then her hands began to work the other breast. The sound of expressing milk rang against the side of the little metal cup. “I know my lass is fed and safe, but little good it does me on the road. Gotta keep myself relieved or I fear I’ll burst,” she smiled, but grin and laugh both rippled with the dark reality of their circumstances.

Astarion turned his back, apologizing. “I’m sorry… I…”

“Well, now, my hero knows why I am so desperate for my brother, and why I despair so at my… misfortune. I was to bring my babe once I had settled a bit with my brother. But with Cainan enslaved, I have no one. I have nothing.” She tossed the cup of milk into the running water again. “I don’t even have a babe to give this milk to feed,” she couldn’t hide the sigh in her throat. “What a waste.”

That tone, that despite and spite… It was too familiar, too haunting. “We won’t let it be a waste. We won’t let those slavers win,” his voice growled, an edge of ice that hadn’t lined it since Cazador’s death by his hand. “You’ll get your freedom for you and your child,” he added. And whether or not he meant it to be a vow, something settled with determination in his heart.

[synth-ai]

Whispers of Adventure 6

For countless generations, these jagged spires have stood sentinel, guarding the ancient mysteries concealed within their shadowy depths. Many have sought to unravel those enigmas, only to vanish forever amidst the labyrinthine paths carved into the very bones of the earth.

Our hero takes another step forward, her boots sinking slightly into the damp soil beneath her feet. Her eyes taking on a distant look as memories surface, among them was he whom she holds closest to her heart. Her hand instinctively goes to her throat, fingers brushing against a silver chain hidden beneath layers of fabric. Slowly, almost reverently, she withdraws a small silver locket from beneath her tunic. Cradling it tenderly in her palm, she gazes down at the intricate engravings adorning its surface – a testament to a love lost to the cruel whims of fate. Tears well up in her eyes, threatening to spill over onto her cheeks. It is said that somewhere amidst the twisted crags lies an enchantment of great power - one capable of restoring balance to realms rent asunder by dark sorcery. She pauses, swallowing hard as emotion threatens to overwhelm her. If there exists even the faintest hope of reuniting with her beloved, she must press onward. As she stands there, at the precipice of uncertainty, she is filled with trepidation... yet also a sense of profound purpose. With a last lingering glance back towards the safety of the familiar, she bids farewell to her faithfull stead. Leaving it to the safety of the grassy valleys between the peaks, as she ventured up the more dangers paths.

The obsidian spires looming overhead cast eerie shadows, hinting at the ancient power slumbering deep beneath their jagged surfaces. Suddenly, a flicker of movement catches her eye - delicate, iridescent forms dancing among the gnarled roots of a grove nestled against the mountain's flank. Intrigued, she draws nearer, marveling at the sight of tiny winged creatures no larger than her thumb. Their gossamer wings shimmer with an inner light, reflecting every hue imaginable under the sun. As she watches, entranced by their ethereal beauty, one breaks off from its companions and alights upon a nearby rock, cocking its head to regard her curiously. With a playful trill, the diminutive creature gestures towards a narrow path winding between the twisted tree trunks, partially obscured by a curtain of vines and moss. Its intent seems clear: it wishes me to follow.

The sprite flits onwards, leading her down the shadowy path lined with twisted trees. Dappled sunlight filters through the dense canopy above, casting mesmerizing patterns on the forest floor. Her gaze drifts upwards, taking in the wondrous sights around her as the path winds deeper into the heart of the mystical woodlands. A dense Fey forest, hidden by magics amongst the glassy black mountain peaks. She notices the atmosphere shifting subtly, growing thicker with an almost tangible aura of magic. The very air hums with energy, sending tingling prickles across her exposed skin. Suddenly, the path opens onto a clearing bathed in an otherworldly glow. At the center stands an ancient tree, its trunk wider than ten men standing shoulder-to-shoulder, its branches reaching up to caress the sky.

As the last rays of daylight fade, the sprites guide her to a small, crystal-clear pool at the base of the great tree. Beneath the water's surface, something gleams - a faint, pulsing light drawing her irresistibly closer. She kneels beside the pool, peering intently into its depths. And there, nestled among the smooth stones lining the pool bottom, rests a small, intricately carved wooden box. Its lid bears an intricate symbol etched in silver, seeming to pulse rhythmically in time with the strange light emanating from within. She reaches down, trailing her fingertips along the cool waters before carefully lifting the box from its resting place. As she cradles it in her hands, the lid creaks open slightly.

[assortedvillainvault]

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

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

*Clutches chest* ROOOSSEEE-

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

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

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

You have no fucking clue why you're here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond that, is a castle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You stumble into what must have been the Great Hall.

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

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

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

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

Your feet carry you forward.

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

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

The corpse lurches.

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

His second hand closes on your neck and you freeze.

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

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

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

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

"Rwy'n eich cofio, fy annwyl."

"I remember you, my dear."