#divineluce

[walker-journal]

Hell Can’t Have Us (Adam, Nell, Luce, Bea- POTW)

Characters: Penelope Vural (Spellcaster-Olivia), Lucinda Vural (Spellcaster-Cal), Beatrice Vural (Spellcaster - Finn), Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir) 

Summary: After finding Nell, Adam, Luce, and Bea try to bring her home. But the even best plans aren’t ready for the Tree. 

Content Warnings: Gun Use, Allusion to Sibling Death, Allusion to Parental Death

They’d managed to find a way out of the poisoned world. It was the bare minimum Nell and Adam could have asked for, not dying via something they couldn’t even see let alone begin to fight against as their bodies had begun to deteriorate. They’d broken free of the realm, but not without its consequences. Nell’s own darkened veins had begun to spider across her skin before they’d found a way out, and her breaths were still shallow and labored, no doubt some form of lasting damage having been dealt to her lungs. Still— at least they’d found a world who’s predators were easier to avoid, even if the attacks had still been numerous. But she’d been right about the hope Adam’s presence provided, had managed to gain back the beginnings of her magic and heal over some of their more dastardly injuries with it. It was still low, but it was there, and that was far better off than she’d been before. Against all odds the smallest shred of optimism had begun to spring in Nell. She didn’t know how she’d thank Adam for all he’d done, for saving her life, but at least she knew she’d have a better chance of even getting the opportunity now that they were together.

They were walking across a seemingly endless, windless, and strangely soundless plain nestled against the side of a raging and amethyst-colored ocean when she felt it, a familiar tug in her gut. For a moment she’d thought it was her reaction to seeing a flipper the size of a skyscraper jut out from the crystalline waves of the water, but it called to her once more, and she knew she’d been right to recognize it. “Adam-” she breathed in apprehension as she reached a hand out to grip his arm, almost daring to call it excitement. “Adam- they’re doing it. They’re using the sigil- I can feel it.” Her sisters were calling her home, their magic as familiar as their voices would be. As if to confirm her words, Nell's childhood and fireproofed necklace began to shudder against Adam’s chest in its place next to the adder stone, the dolorphage bone he’d brought matching its frequency. In answer a rip began to jut out above the endless abyss of this world, a tear in the universe beginning to form no more than a centimeter wide. “Just a little longer. Just a little longer, alright?” She could practically feel Earth’s sweet air already against her skin.

Bea’s hand was cool in hers, but Luce’s magic was warm enough for the two of them. For the three of them, hopefully. This was the fourth large ritual she’d performed in the last year, but no amount of practice and preparation could ever make her feel truly secure in her understanding of how they worked. She had followed Bea’s instructions, uttered the words necessary to guide Adam home, carefully poured her magic into the ritual. Her flames obeyed her, and she thanked the stars and moon for that. If anything happened, if her magic flickered and dimmed and it cost them Nell? She didn’t know how she could live with that. Sweat was rolling down the side of her face as she kept an iron grip on her magic, controlling the flow of power. She couldn’t overload the spell, she couldn’t flood it with power. More power wouldn’t make this easier, wouldn’t make the magic work better-- she needed control, precision.

As she continued to fuel the ritual, Luce gasped as she felt something shift in the magic. A familiar presence. Nell. She could feel her sister’s magic rippling through the ritual, through the portal that was meant to guide her and Adam home. She could feel her. She could feel them both. “That’s them, that’s got to be them.” She said, breathless from the effort.

Bea, admittedly, tended to do ritual magic alone. Most of her necromantic work was best done with only her own magic supplying it, but that didn’t mean she was unfamiliar with group work. Her magic wove with Luce’s easily, their sisterhood, their bloodbond making this work easier than it would be for others. And while this was easier for them than it was for other’s, it was by no means a walk in the park. Tension held Bea’s jaw tight as she focused on how much of her magic she poured into this, she had seen what happened to her sisters and Winston when they hadn’t been careful enough. Her own gasp mirrored Luce’s as she felt the first thread of Nell’s magic join them. Each Vural had a different texture to their magic, each a distinct flavor and color. Bea knew her sisters’ magics, even at its weakest.  “He’s with her then,” After all their preparation, Adam had made it to her. They would get her back.

The eldest Vural dared to look up for a moment, staring at the car that was parked just at the edge of her vision. Nisa sat within there, waiting for her daughter to come tumbling through a portal, waiting to help them again. Bea wished they didn’t need her here. She would have to learn the art of healing to keep them safe. They might have come to an agreement of sorts here but Bea hated having to go back to her in need.

Adam reached up to clasp a hand over Nell’s. Trekking through dimension after dimension would have killed him already if not for coming in prepared with talismans from the Vurals, the best equipment his own family could provide, and cheating with mutant physiology. But wounds, toxins, and exhaustion were making him feel dangerously featherlight as nerves died and fuzzy blurs seemed to crawl across his eyes. Desperation and hope had kept him going past where his body should’ve given out, but borrowed time was running out.

He’d promised Luce he would get Nell to Earth. Adam tried to focus on that instead of the chill slithering through his veins.  

Adam tried to swallow but there was no moisture beyond the sickly taste of his own throat bleeding. “Yeah, just a little bit longer,” he affirmed in a soft rap.

They were close. They were so close, as they stood there waiting for the rift to widen, to just give them a large enough gap to slide through. Nell waited none too patiently, a disbelieving laugh of relief finding it’s way past her lips while she shot Adam a weak and shaky smile. They were gonna make it. Against all the odds in the universe- in the multiple universes they’d trekked through they were going to escape, to be free of this literally hellish existence.

The tear grew longer, stretched far enough that Nell was certain her lithe arm could fit through it. Faster. Faster, it needed to go faster so that they could return to Earth, and Nell could tote herself and Adam straight to her mother’s front door, both of them in desperate need of healing. Leading Adam by the hand she stepped closer to the portal, heart in her throat as a familiar picture came into view on the other side of it. Bea. Luce. Her sisters.

“Adam- I can see them!” The wave of Nell’s relief bubbled into a near desperate cry, the hitch in her breath having nothing to do with her straining lungs this time around. “We did it,” she breathed, and her eyes would have glazed over if her body’d had any water to spare. “You did it,” she turned back towards her hunter, the man who’d earned the title of hero a million times over only to prove once more that she’d been right to fight alongside him since the beginning. He’d deserved to be saved just as he’d saved countless others, to realize in his own time that his life was his to have, not something to be thrown under the knife for humankind or anything else unless he and he alone was making the choice.

But it wouldn’t have been a hellscape if all hell didn’t break loose, and just was Nell was taking her first step through the portal towards the rest of her home with Adam’s hand in her’s, towards her sisters, a crack brok over the plain, the dusty ground splitting into two halves where the portal had touched down. “That’s alright- that’s okay-” Nell began, refusing to let something so little steal this moment from them. “We’ll just-” Her words were eaten by the inhuman screams of something crawling it’s way out of the fissure at their feet, and suddenly the slaugh she’d thought herself free of was appearing over her shoulder.

Luce could practically feel each exhausted, weary step that Nell was taking towards them. But, as she grew closer, she could feel the energy of her little sister’s magic growing stronger and stronger. She was coming home. They were bringing her home. Adam had found her, he was bringing her back. Luce spared a glance through the rift they had created and her blood ran cold. Nell was… dragging Adam. Leading him. Not the other way around. Was something wrong? Had something happened? Maybe it was that brief lapse in focus, maybe it was just the world roiling back against the unnatural state of being connected another dimension. Whatever it was, screams ripped through the air and something dark and cursed slithered from the portal.

“Don’t you fucking touch her!” Luce shouted. She wanted to let loose the flames and let them burn the portal clean. To purge it of the horrors that lay within. But she couldn’t. She had to hold steady. She had to keep her head and heart clear, to let the magic work. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to lash out at the things that tried to keep her sister from her. But, if she did… the portal could collapse. She couldn’t put them in danger. She couldn’t risk Nell, she couldn’t risk Bea. She couldn’t risk it. “Adam, Nell, get out of there!”

Adam drew the gore-caked remains of once state-of-the-art tactical knives that’d been eroded into rusty shadows of their former selves by the atmosphere and acids of distant worlds. The Hunter slashed out at the Slaugh that’d winked into existence beside Nell, the realization settling in like lead that the only reason why they could see the cadaverous spirits of rotting sinews was the swift approach of death.

They were so close. The vertiginous flicker of hope was almost as painful as the ache of his fading body.

The ground yawned open with a sound like an oil tanker being beached on a reef. The inside of the earth wasn’t soil. Adam looked down into a widening chasm of flesh, complete with oozing subcutaneous layers, cysts of pus, and meaty strands that slithered from one side of the opening of the other. Things stirred into the fissure and began long climbs up its sides, pouring out from hollows in the organic depths like maggots dislodged from a corpse.

At the bottom of the bleeding crevice Adam mistook a pale outcropping with precisely set holes for an enormous skull until he squinted to see a keyhole of bone.

The coral key grew uncomfortably hot against his skin.

Terror crept up Bea’s arms, burrowing her chest before she even had a chance to breathe in. She did not have to reach out with her magic to know what was with Nell and Adam was involved with death. She felt it, as goosebumps broke across her skin, and felt its connection to death. For a moment, she was sure she could control it, if she hadn’t been tethered to the portal. Her eyes darted back to the car and pride threatened to suffocate her, it’s greedy fingers going to drag down the words she needed to say. Bea swallowed and took a deep breath. “Nisa!” They would need her. They needed her. No matter where they were, what they were doing, it seemed that they would always need their mother.

“Mom!” She cried, hoping that the car door would open, praying that her voice carried enough. Death was creeping upon Nell again, Nisa wouldn’t let it take hold, Bea knew this. She wouldn’t let her daughters be taken again.

Nisa could feel the waves of magic coming from her daughters before she heard her eldest’s voice, and despite herself she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride. Her daughters were powerful, a force to be reckoned just as most Vural and Akçam women had been in their primes. There was no doubt about that as they ripped the world apart to save their baby sister. The proud feeling in her chest was accompanied by a spark of happiness to see her daughters working together, restoring themselves to three just as they were always meant to be, but the two positive emotions were stolen from her as she heard Bea’s voice ring out. Something was wrong.

Her car door was ripping open in the blink of an eye, and she strode towards the spell-site, the spitting picture of Beatrice Vural approaching the magic give or take the thirty years that had formed an older and more mature picture of her oldest daughter. Wordlessly, she joined her magic with Lucinda’s and Beatrice’s, sliding in as effortlessly as a puzzle piece slotting into its proper place. “I’m here, sweetie.” She could see Penelope through the portal, could also make out the picture of the man who’d gone into hell for her daughter. Adam Walker. It must be. She’d only ever spoken to him online, but he had the build of a hunter, and the look of one as well despite his ravaged state. The two of them were nearly spent, and with the eye of an experienced healer she didn’t need a slaugh to tell her as much. Their lives were flickering like candles in the wind, leaving her to wonder whether this next gust of air would be the one to blow them out. “Get out, and we’ll deal with whatever comes with you!” she commanded, as if her determination alone could pull them from certain death. She couldn’t heal them until they were here. She’d let Beatrice die while she’d been away, had missed the shattering of her daughter’s life and she wouldn’t be witness to another. She wouldn’t let the Walker boy slip through her hands, either. Not when she hadn’t even gotten to invite him for dinner as of yet.

“Come on! Come we gotta- we gotta go through!” Nell urged desperately while the slaugh hissed away from Adam’s knife, regrouping now that its surprise attack had been foiled. “We can kill it over there! I’ll close the portal and-” And they’d be safe. They’d be sound on the other side, and finally free of this place, finally free to simply exist with each other rather than be forced to fight for their lives. They were so close.

An enormous and spider-like leg clawed its way from the break in the ground, stabbing out in an attempt to impale the couple. It’s aim was true, forcing Nell to separate herself from Adam so that she might make a faulty dodge of the attack. Her bad leg gave out with the move, sending her sprawling to the ground as she scrambled to recover. It wasn’t the practiced and careful movements of the Ring fighter or bounty hunter, but the death throes of a girl desperate to live. Her movements had brought her closer to the portal, with almost a clear shot out...but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave after all the times Adam had refused to leave her. Wouldn’t have wanted to when he was as close to being her everything as she’d let a person get. “Please-” And so began the first of her begging. She couldn’t recall a time she’d ever pleaded, having never done it before when it came to her own life, not even as Montgomery had lowered his blade for the kill, but she was more than willing to beg for Adam’s.

Adam carved his way through the giant spider leg but more hungry things scrambled up over the ridge, forcing the Hunter to retreat a few spaces back as he tried to fend off the growing river of chimeric predators separating him from Nell.

A searing heat against his chest made Adam reach beneath the tattered rags of what’d once been his shirt and pulled out a key made of veiny red coral. It was shining so intensely that Adam couldn’t look at it directly. As soon as Adam’s skin had brushed the living coral, the Hunter simply knew that it was responding to the keyhole down there. It wasn't an idea he came up with, but rather an exterior certainty that seemingly dropped into his brain from the key itself.

Adam’s bloodshot brown eyes looked down into the abyss crawling with roiling hordes of demons and then back up to the portal.

Adam had promised to bring Nell back home.

Just a moment longer and this waking nightmare could finally be over. The physical therapy he’d need to recover from slogging through these Hells might take years, but Adam’d retire his blades longer than that if it meant he could just live and love with Nell.

But Adam had also sworn to protect White Crest, to keep Earth safe from the Hellmouths and the hungry things of the void. There was no way they could get this deep into the Hells a second time. Could Adam really pass this by and just let the rifts tear White Crest’s apart?

Adam glanced to the sky where storms of coruscating energy raged with nameless colors that didn’t exist on Earth. Prismatic lightning continuously arched down from the eternal storm. Each blast of primal magic warped the landscape into new bizarre terraforms, raising up mountain ranges of crystal in an instant, blinking gelatinous oceans into being, sowing tropical forests of neon webbing, and even more otherworldly forms of terrain as the entire dimension boiled in a constant state of primordial flux.

Soul deep exhaustion throbbed rawly in Adam’s bones as he longed to scream Fuck You to this final tug of duty, a last command to charge into the valley of death for the sake of people who’d never even know his name.

There was a dark thought that slithered into the back of Adam’s head unbidden. Maybe all the people who’d talked down to him as a delusional zealot and monster might have to finally get their myopic asses off the soapbox when the ravenous hordes of the abyss showed up in their backyard?

Adam snorted at the clumsy attempt at telepathic influence. He spun around and sank both knives deep into a dragonfly-winged nautilus covered in multi-tongued mouths that’d apparently thought Adam was in low enough place to just let his homeworld get invaded out of petulance. “Yeah fuck off nice try,” the Hunter spat before tearing both blades outward in a waterfall of gory purple ichor.

Everyone back home deserved to be safe from this, even if they never knew they’d ever been in danger. That’s what made a true Hunter different, they didn’t make the hard choices so they could get praised in the headlines. A Hunter's reward was newspapers blissfully complaining about trivial things and “just another day” with no idea of how close everything had come to ruin.

Everything in Adam wanted to reject the call to be a Hunter one last time, but how could he live in peace with Nell after denying that safety to everyone else?

“Nell,” Adam said as he lifted up the incandescent key on its string like a lantern, its ruby light answered by a similar glow from the bottom of the swarming demon pit. “I ...have to help close the Rifts in town,” he said slowly, eyes beseeching her understanding as he asked for yet another unfair demand.

“I’m sorry.”

Adam had warned Nell that this day would come. Had made sure the witch had known it well the moment she’d chastised him for being reckless and shoving his arm down the maw of a lamia. So she’d known there was no avoiding it. But even an end that was inevitable was one that could seldom be prepared for. Just because she’d known that his duty might one day claim his life, it didn’t mean facing that day was any easier. This was what she’d agreed to all those months ago. Maybe she’d told herself that they had time to put it off, time to figure out how to prevent this before Adam had to make the choice to forfeit his own life for the ones in White Crest or more. A part of her had always been well aware that it was a silly thought. Adam didn’t solely save people because it was his duty, he did it because it was the right thing to do, because he didn’t know how to turn his back on the people that needed him. She knew it— had known it from the day he’d helped free the tortured souls in the Ring despite half of them being what he’d considered to be monsters. He wouldn’t have been the man she’d grown to love if he’d done anything else as he readied the key.

Nell looked from the glow of the key to the matching light in the depths of the fissure, and things began to click into place. Today was the day. They were out of time. Her bottom lip quivered despite her desire to stay strong, to not make this any harder for Adam than it needed to be, unable to fully muster her iron-clad determination when the hellscape had nearly stripped her of it. “It’s okay, Adam,” she barely managed to say, wondering if he could even hear the words over the whipping winds of the portal and gnashing of the hell-creature’s teeth. “But I’m going with you. I’m not- I can’t let you do it alone.” She knew what it was to lose someone, had learned it intimately when Bea had died, and if there was any single thing she could do to prevent another death she wouldn’t hesitate to take the chance. “Just let me- I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”

So she fought her way back to the side of the drop off, one last surge of adrenaline barely managing to get her to the edge of the crevasse as she hacked through prying tentacles and claws. It looked hungry. That was all she could think as she reached for the fragile magic she’d managed to recharge. Taking his hand in hers she couldn’t help but remember the last time they’d done magic together, sitting under the full moon and wondering what their future would hold after they’d been bitten by the wolf with gold eyes. She used the very tip of her knife to spill what little was left of their precious blood, letting their life run together for another time as she poured pure love and her desperate desire to still have Adam into her spell— letting herself feel the feeble energy of his life- the life that’d been the brighter part of her last year and a half before letting it go.

A glowing thread appeared between their chests, no wider than a hair but refusing to give way as she gave it a hearty tug. “That’ll hold you.” She would hold him as he dived into the depths. There was no more time. The creatures were still tripping over one another in an attempt to have whatever part of delicious human flesh they could manage to get a hold of. Again she found herself saying the words like a prayer, not knowing how to say an actual goodbye. “I love you, Adam.” She was speaking them for only a second time, and even her first declaration of them hadn’t been given in joy so much as desperation, though both utterings of the three words were just as sincere as if they’d been said to him while he was walking through the door after a successful hunt with Nell greeting him back into a home they shared, a dream Nell hadn’t even let herself hope for all that often, but hoped for nonetheless.

She wouldn’t ask him to come back. Not this time.

“No matter what happens,” Adam promised as she wove the binding magic. “I will always love you Nell.” He drew Nell close, drinking the last comfort of her human touch before the predators bearing down forced them to part or get impaled.

Two rusted knives and two pistols with very little ammo left. Adam grimaced at the irony of having first entered the Hells loaded with enough equipment to fight a guerilla war, only to be caught poorly prepared in the final stretch that could’ve used overwhelming firepower the most. World by world, Adam’s state of the art rifles, armor, explosives, and alloyed blades had been eroded and been spent in the toxic alien environments. Until now he was looking down into a chasm full of writhing masses of hungry with armaments he wouldn't even trust on graveyard patrol.

Well, thems the breaks.

Adam looked back at Nell one last time, bruised and bloody face breaking to a sunshine grin as if they were simply flirting across the college commons, just letting her fill his vision and thoughts for every second that Hell allowed.

Time ran out. Adam reloaded his pistols, gripped the lucent key and sprinted towards the great chasm’s edge, launching himself down into the hell pit.

Adam plummeted down into the horde of maws and tendrils like a thunderbolt of bullets and blades, the key’s scarlet brilliance evoking a red comet hurling into a dark sea.

That bright red star seemed to cut a swath through the hungry ocean of oily aberrant things, growing steadily smaller as Adam descended ever deeper into the canyon whose fleshy walls quavered with rasping breaths and bled black ichor. Soon that spotlight of red had become just a distant pinpoint as Adam carved and shot his way too far down into the abyssal murk for sight to follow.

But the tide of otherworldly predators just kept crawling and squirming out of the canyon like a corpse disgorging worms from its rotting meat. The masses slithering over each other in a ravenous frenzy toward the siren call of a mortal soul. The pinprick of ruby light at the canyon’s nadir began to flicker as living tidal waves of eldritch things broke against the perimeter of Adam’s circle of death.

Inch by deadly inch that that red radiance was eclipsed by roiling shadows as the sheer weight of bodies bore down.

The depths darkened as that light snuffed out. There was only the sound of the walls breathing and prismatic cracking overhead.

Minutes dragged until there was a mechanical whisper that was soft, but yet drowned out of the storm with the sound of a key turning in a lock.

The ground shuddered and groaned in tectonic agony as if some colossal machinery had been set in motion. A choir of unearthly shrieks wailed from the pit as a wellspring of vermilion light erupted from the depths. The nameless colors of the storm paled and were downed out in a red dawn that bloomed like a wildfire across the sky.

Nell’s own smile had no choice but to answer Adam’s, doing her best to pretend like he wasn’t diving to his nearly assured death, like they were simply parting for an evening or so, and that she’d see that smile again when he rose from the depths of this final mission. Because after years of fighting for their lives, of fighting to be together, they at least deserved a split moment of pretending like they’d win those fights. That all of this had been for something, and they’d be granted the peace they needed. She held him until the world forced them apart, hell and its compatriots caring little for something as inconsequential and mundanely human as borrowed time. He leapt into the abyss, and a part of Nell went with him, already knowing she’d never get the piece of her that Adam held back. It was hers to give, and his to keep.

Nell saw the flash of red grow so bright that she could barely stand to look at it any longer, but she forced her burning eyes to watch Adam as far as her gaze would go, too afraid to look away, to accept what a part of her already knew was coming. Then it disappeared altogether. There was no seeing him anymore unless she too launched herself into the darkness below, and he was going where she couldn’t follow.

The red broke over the horizon, and the hellbeasts scattered. Nell didn’t see the slaugh anymore. Her lips began to whisper the second half of her spell of their own accord, reeling the line that connected her to Adam in like a fishing wire, wondering if the bait on the end of it had been taken or if…

He came back over the edge with a revolting thump, his body sliding across the dirt like a ragdoll while Nell’s breaths threatened to overtake her, coming fast and shallow. She’d done her best to be brave, done all she could to take this in stride, and she couldn’t lose it now. They still needed to get back to Earth. Adam had to make good one his promise to bring Nell back, too.

In a move that was sickeningly familiar she used her limited magic to bring a blanket into existence before rolling Adam onto it, knowing there was no hope of carrying him. Nell didn’t have enough magic to carry him back. She hadn’t been able to carry Bea, either. But she remembered the way Nic had switched Bea’s tarp for a blanket, something warm and soft and as a last gift. Adam deserved a blanket, too. More than that he’d deserved to live.

The journey to the portal was made of nothing but sheer determination, Nell’s grunts and gasps of pain the soundtrack to their homecoming, Adam’s labored and barely there breathing providing the downbeat. She stumbled through the tear in the world, her back turned on her family as she dragged him along. Familiar arms reached around her, and for a quick moment she thought about pushing them off, some strange part of her thinking that Adam’s last embrace would be erased by this new one, as if it would wash away her last pieces of him.

Nisa’s voice broke through the silence, and with it chaos began anew. “I’ve got you, baby,” the matriarch grunted as she tugged her daughter from the hells, and Nell tugged Adam, and Adam made it all possible by saving Nell in the first place, by saving them all. She laid them alongside one another, her hands already bursting with magic as she hovered over the pair of them, knowing there was only so much she could do.

Nell’s begging began anew, too. She’d tried to convince herself that she was ready for Adam to go, that she was in control of this choice as he was. But no human could ever be truly ready for death. “Please- please mom-” her broken and childlike cries made her shoulders shake. “Please save him, mommy- please.”

Nisa’s hands began work on her daughter, selfishly beginning on Nell’s more fatal injuries as she ignored her daughter’s pleas. “I can’t honey- I can’t- I’m sorry.” Her own voice broke, wondering if this was how Bea had looked when she’d been dying. She wouldn’t let another daughter die. Nell was certain it was one of the only times she’d heard her mother apologize, and she refused to accept it. “No!” she yelled, shifting to place her own hands on Adam’s body that was more blood than flesh. “I’ll do it- I’ll fix it.” She poured her magic into him, knowing too late that she couldn’t do this, couldn’t face the loss of another. The witch pushed past the point of her meager magic reservoir, pouring what little was left of her own life into the hunter.

“Penelope!” Nisa jerked her daughter out of the magic, already knowing how this would pan out if she was allowed to have her way. “You can’t, darling. You can’t save him. He’s gone, honey- there’s not enough life in you or me to save him.” She’d seen it countless times before as a healer, the one’s whose lives were already lost despite the breath they still held.

Nell’s hands came up to cradle her hunter’s face, pressing her forehead to his as she reminded herself that she’d been strong for Adam, that she wanted to make this as painless as possible, let his last moments be the peace he wouldn’t get. “I love him,” she told her mom, told the universe as if she were hoping it might hear her words and take pity. “I love him- I love you.” The world closed in on just her and Adam as the portal faded from existence, as all the portals in town did. “You saved me. You closed the portals- you did it. You can rest. You can rest now, alright?”

The spark of transferred life opened Adam’s eyes. His gaze was unfocused as dark spots and flares of light swam in his vision. They drifted over the Vural family and the familiar signs of Earth. Amongst them were other faces. Whether the dearly departed were merely hallucinations evocative as neural currents ceased or spirits who’d become visible as he teetered at the veil’s edge, Adam was well beyond the point worrying about. His bloodstained lips broke into a smile for Bea, Luce, Winn, James, Celeste, and Nisa.

Everyone was here, Nell assured him. Safe. Finally. 

He tried to thank Bea and Luce for everything they'd done, for treating him like family with their love and power, knowing how much those bonds meant to them. But only a soft sigh could leave his lips and a nod was all Adam could manage to the women who made this final mercy possible.

A tawny-haired man with a killer’s scarred muscularity but gentle brown eyes stepped unseen from among those gathered. He seemed suffused with the pure radiance of the hallowed dead, a single dog-tag hanging from his neck. Uri Walker took a knee beside Nell and his son.

Adam clung to Nell with what feeble strength remained in his shredded body, but pain was giving way to numbness. The agony of anything he’d suffered in the abyss yielded to a sepulchral peace that was worse than the suffering. Adam felt featherlight and his fingers lost the strength to grasp Nell’s hand. All Adam wanted was to stay here with Nell just a little while longer, but the undertow of quietus seemed to be ripping him away from her.

At last Adam looked up into father’s face and mouthed a question to empty air.  

Uri’s answering grin was like a sunset, a moment of radiance that beckoned toward darkness. He nodded. “You did good kid,” he affirmed gently, “mission’s over, everybody’s home.”

Adam nodded to no one and looked back into Nell’s eyes. He drew close with that last flicker of strength in him to whisper in her ear.

They were private words Adam wished he had a lifetime to show Nell day by day, but a moment was all they had.

The departed Hunter placed a firm hand on Adam’s bloody shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Time to go, son.”  

Adam grasped his father’s hand and let himself get pulled up to his feet and into Uri’s embrace.

Adam Walker’s eyes closed.

While Bea was connected to death, she had never seen it up close like this. Experiencing her own had not been as intense in the moment. It had finished in a moment, a glint of metal before she was gone. This was longer, if only by a few moments. Adam had done so much for her and her family in the last year. He had helped her defeat the Fext, yes, but his actions past that were far more impactful. It didn’t take a genius to look at her sister and know she had experienced love. That this man before her would do whatever he could to grant Nell happiness. He had done whatever he did for her sister. Adam Walker in so many ways was an honorable man, but here in this moment, he was the best man she had ever met. He had become something of a younger sibling to her. She looked forward to his messages, as random and strange as they could be. There would be no more messages.

Grief she had found, with herself, was as if someone sold the house they had always lived in and moved away. You could pass by that house everyday, but it would never be the same. You could have memorized every corner and hidden spot in that house, but that did not mean you could access them any longer. All you had were memories of who lived there and a wish that they were back. How would Nell survive that? She had too many people who lost their lives in front of her.

“Mom, Luce, take Nell.” Her voice cracked. “I’ll take care of Adam.” She would make sure he went home. Just like Nell had with her.

The portals had closed, Adam and Nell had returned to the world-- if life was a fairytale, it would have ended there. The monsters having been defeated and portals having been shut, would have thrown in the towel. Her sister would not be clinging to the lifeless body of the young man who had given everything to this undeserving town. Luce would not be watching the light fade from his eyes and his bloodied, weary limbs go limp into that final slumber. If life was a storybook, Adam and Nell would cheat death. They would defy the odds. They would get a cliche happily ever after.

But life in White Crest was no fairytale. And there was no cheating death this time.

Luce sank to her knees next to her sister, joining Nisa at Nell’s side. What could she possibly say? What could she possibly do? If she could have turned back time, if she could have strengthened the enchantments, if she could have created more wards-- If. If. If. But the reality of the world lay in front of her. And there was nothing any of them could do about it. Adam was gone. Adam was dead. The stupid, jock-y frat boy who had done nothing but serve the town, who had done nothing but save the undeserving people of this fucking town, was dead. She put a hand gently on Nell’s shoulder, hoping to provide some… tiny amount of comfort. A reminder that she wasn’t alone. “Nellie, we need to get you healed up. Bea, she’ll take care of him. She’ll be here with him.” She said quietly, her voice as even as she could make it. “I’m sorry, Nell. I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke and she shook her head.

The glowing thread of magic still connecting Nell to the man she loved faded from sight, and with it went Adam. She felt his life wink from existence as their blood magic died, felt whatever soul or spirit that had been inhabiting his body go with it, and she was left with only a body. Adam was gone, and it meant that she didn’t have to hold herself together anymore, she didn’t have to pretend like death was peaceful and beautiful and that the living weren’t left to pick up their broken pieces. “No,” she managed to croak in response to her sisters, the word beginning to turn into a sob. She wouldn’t leave him, couldn’t leave him even when he was no longer here. “It should be me- I want to-” Let her take care of him, let taking care of his loved ones be the last gift she gave to Adam, the last action of love she could make.

“I have to- I’m going to help.” With another ricochet of pain making its way through her chest she realized there was nothing left to fix, nothing to distract her from her new reality. After losing Bea, after getting her back...it had taken Nell more than a year to learn that some things couldn’t be fixed. Some things would always be cracked and broken and surprise you with anger or tears when you least expected it. This would be one of those things. And though the holes the departed left couldn’t be filled, they could at least be managed, and their darkness didn’t diminish the thousand shining lights of the happier memories. “I don’t want to leave him- I can’t.”

Nell wasn’t sure the words were actually discernible through the wetness on her cheeks, the blackness that was also beginning to close in on her own vision. Her mother laid a hand over her eyes, shushing her with quiet words that she couldn’t make out as the blanket of Nisa’s magic wrapped around her, putting her into a sleep that was long overdue. The last thing she saw before the darkness enveloped her was the smile Adam had shot her before he’d dived to his death, blurring into the one he’d given her as they joked and memed outside her greenhouse about semi-satanic rituals, readying to finish the amulet that would be the keystone of their first mission together— the blueprint to everything that would come after.

And so the hero and prodigal son had returned her home, and then gone on to his own.

[yikesimonfire]

[PM] Hey, chickenwing. You didn't spontaneously combust in the middle of Scorch Street last night did you? Or your parents?

[pm] Do what where now? Not that I’m aware of... Unless I’ve suddenly begun sleepwalking. As far as I know, everyone’s been pretty anti-spontaneous combustion recently. Or ever. Why do you ask?

[evanescentform]

Fright Mite | Luce & Shiloh

@divineluce

Once the sky started to darken, Shiloh knew she should head home. She was already pushing it to be out so close to the evening. She had her fill of daylight and coming out on the town at night was something she wasn’t quite ready for yet. As she turned into a small lot with cars between businesses, she headed straight for her car, hardly wanting to pay any attention to anything else out of fear her mind might start wandering. Her car was in sight though and all she had to do was get there and things would be fine on the drive home. She was so focused on her car that she didn’t notice she was going to walk into a crack. Having had her experience, she hesitated.

Taking a step back, she thought she was alone until she heard footsteps coming up and it seemed she wasn’t going to notice the crack too. “Oh, wait, hold on.” She called out to the woman, hoping it gave her enough time to stop before she stepped on the crack or whatever else was waiting for them. “There’s a crack ahead.” She gestured. Speaking it aloud made her realize how ridiculous she sounded. The girl would probably think she was crazy for being worried over a crack. Shiloh hadn’t noticed it when she had parked earlier in the day, but she supposed most cracks were easy to overlook. She probably would have too if it weren’t for her previous run in. “I think we should try and go around.”

[athenaquinn]

@divineluce replied to your post “[PM] How's that tattoo healing up? It was a pretty small one, so the...”

[PM] I'm glad to hear that, nice. No worries, it wasn't anything too complex.

[pm] Regardless, you still did a stellar job. It may not be complex, but the detail’s still stellar. Which I realize could be taken as a bad pun but it’s not. How have you been?

[laylacooke]

Don’t Be Suspicious || Luce & Layla

timing: Late July, Midnight parties: @divineluce & @laylacooke summary: Luce & Layla have an unexpected meeting in the woods in the middle of the night. 

The one benefit that had come out of the fidget spinner ordeal had been the ability to throw out claws and teeth when a fight came. Partially transforming hurt, but it had become easier when it came to needing protection. However, it was the fine art of fully transforming at will, that Layla was focused on. It had been something that had scared her greatly for multiple reasons. The immense pain of shifting, being one, but the fear of killing somebody again, being the biggest. It’s why her need to find a good place in her head and her heart where she could have full control over the shifting was important, and it’s why she had ventured out to White Crest National Park to try and work on her werewolf skills on her own. However, having been in the same spot trying to focus had led to nothing but frustration, which eventually led to Layla letting out a frustrated growl that echoed through the trees.

“Get back here, you piece of shit--” Luce growled as she ran through the woods, her lungs burning as she chased the creature down, her sword haphazardly rattling in its sheath as she pursued the monster. It wasn’t anything particularly hard to handle, just your run of the mill ghoul-- but still. She’d been running in the forest a few nights ago when she’d realized that she was being watched, being followed. Which is why she was back here now, turning the tables. She’d been through so much bullshit; she didn’t need to add a ghoul stalking her back to her cabin to the list. As she ran through the trees, a growl rang out through the woods, startling her. “What the fuck?” She said, as she slid to a stop, staring through the darkness around her. “Someone out there?” Luce asked. Or was it something?

Falling to her knees in pain, the young werewolf still couldn’t figure out the way to fully shift voluntarily. What was she doing wrong? Every full moon it came naturally leaving her broken and sick, until the animal took over giving her new life, but right now, all she could feel was newly formed fangs and claws which left her mouth aching and her hands sore, “Why won’t you change?!” The frustration running through her blood left her clawing and gripping handfuls of dirt before flinging it into the distance. But a voice stopped her from doing anything else. Animal instinct forcing her to sniff the air, Layla’s yellow eyes darted around looking for the culprit. The scent of a human and the sound of their heartbeat gave the young werewolf what she needed to go hunting, but she still had control and knew she had come out here for a reason, “I don’t want any trouble, okay?” Her eyes scanned the forest as she climbed back to her feet, “I just came out here to hike.” Yes, it was partly a lie, but maybe it would be enough to get the person to leave.

As Luce made her way through the trees, she saw a fallen form in the middle of the woods, clawing at the dirt. Stopping in her tracks, her hand instinctively went to the hilt of her sword. Not that she thought she’d have to use it, but… after that shit with the demon voice changing Santa in the woods and her run in Shocky Mc-Fuck-You, she was wary of things that lurked around the woods. Even though the national park was one of the safer places in White Crest, it never hurt to be careful. But, when a voice came from the crouched figure, she relaxed, hand resting on her hip instead. “You hurt or something?” She asked, wondering why this girl was out here in the middle of the night. Luce was looking for trouble, but not this kind. She was in the business of fucking up some of the ghouls and monstrous creatures that roamed the woods, not rescuing injured hikers. But, if she had to, she would. “You fall and twist your ankle?” She asked, clicking the small flashlight secured around her arm, the beam cutting through the darkness. 

Layla kept her head turned and her fists clenched. The last thing she had wanted was to scare this woman, or worse, get into a fight with her. If anything, the redhead just wanted to be left alone. Find her peace and go back home. Ari and Ulf had probably been wondering where she was at, and Indy needed to be fed, “No, I was just out. Wanted to see the stars. I hear it’s pretty in this area at night.” Her face was aching from the fangs and blood seemed to drip down where they had forced their way out of her skull and gums. It was her heartbeat that was keeping them out, along with her claws. The fear of what this random person might do to her. However, before she could turn her head quickly enough out of the path of the light, she felt it hit her eyes and reflect off of her yellowed hues revealing that she wasn’t exactly human.

“Uh huh.” Luce said, nonplussed by the words. Out. To see the stars. It sounded a lot like the excuses she had made when Roland had caught her out in the woods. Well, she wasn’t a cop and she wasn’t going to go bothering some random girl in the woods if she wanted to be out here alone. With a shrug, she was about to move on with her night, make some comment about staying out of her hair when she saw the flash of yellow in the girl's eyes, a familiar shade she’d once seen glint in Ulfric’s. A werewolf. Huh. Well, how about that. “Just wanted to see the stars huh?” She said before tilting her gaze up. “The moon’s really bright tonight. Pretty.” She said with an offhand comment as she leaned back to look skywards, the sword on her hip glinting in the moonlight. 

It was too late, and there was no use in turning her head. The woman had clearly seen what Layla was. It was apparent in her voice and the comments that were coming out of her mouth. The glint from the sword caught Layla’s eye, and she slowly started to back away, “Please. I’m not out here to hurt anybody. I didn’t think anyone would be out here this late, and I knew it would be a good time to...try and figure some things out.” She didn’t want to outright say what she was. It was clear this woman already knew. Her heart was beating a little harder in her chest at the fear of what might happen, and she had started to pant.

As the girl began to back away slowly, it didn’t take a genius to realize what had her spooked. Ah, shit. Luce let out a sigh and held her hands up. “I’m not a hunter, don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you. I was just out here,” She paused, not sure how to answer. She’d literally just said she wasn’t a hunter. And she wasn’t. She was just out here… trying to make the woods a little safer, deal with some pesky ghouls that had a knack for making a mess of things. “On a hike. And in a place like this? It never hurts to have protection.” She said with a shrug. “Are you sure you don’t need any help? You don’t exactly look like you’re in good shape there.” She said, glancing at the way the girl’s hands were inhuman and gnarled. 

The woman had a point. The woods of White Crest weren’t exactly the safest and knowing that reasoning made her feel a little less stressed. However, Layla still wasn’t fond of being around someone with a huge sword, “I guess that’s a good point. No pun intended...” She looked down at her hands, “Um, they should heal up on their own when my stupid claws go back in.” She hated not being able to have full control over herself. It made her unsure and leery when she was forced into certain situations. Layla’s intent was never to hurt anyone. As a werewolf, she couldn’t control that hunger. She had tried, but as a human, she was determined to keep those around her as safe as possible, even if that spelled bad news or pain for herself, “So hiking in the middle of the night huh?” She was starting to become a little more comfortable knowing that the woman’s vibe wasn’t really as hostile as she once presumed it to be.

Watching as the girl looked down at her hands, Luce cracked a crooked grin at the joke. “Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you. Just gonna have to trust me on that one.” She said. There was a certain irony in the fact that she was meeting another red-headed werewolf-- seemed like Ulfric wasn’t the only ginger wolf running around in these hills. But she wasn’t about to out him to some random werewolf in the woods. “Well, as long as they heal up fine, sounds good to me.” She said with a shrug. At the further question, Luce raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I said, right? Insomnia’s a bitch.” She said. She wasn’t even going to attempt to explain what she was doing out here. Besides, she had a feeling getting rid of the local ghoul problem wouldn’t do much to reassure the girl that she wasn’t a hunter. “Besides, you’re out here too, kid.”

“Yeah, I got that. Look, these things...I can’t make them go back in.” She held up her hands flashing her claws. “That’s why I’m out here. Trying to learn how to control what I was forced to become...” Her words kind of trailed off. Layla hated being a werewolf. She had learned to forget what she most of the time, but when it would come creeping back in, the regret held heavy in her heart. Shaking off that same feeling that seemed to be coming in stronger than before, she looked Luce in the eyes, “Yeah, insomnia is an absolute bitch.” Letting out a soft sigh, she decided a truce was in order in case they were to run into each other again in the future, “Name’s Layla. Consider this my way of trying to draw some kind of truce that if we see each other out here again, we either go our separate ways or are friendly to one another. Thoughts?”

At the girl’s words, Luce’s eyebrows raised even higher. What she was forced to become? What, was she some kind of bite victim? Luce didn’t know much about werewolves outside of what Ulfric had told her over drinks from time to time, but she’d only ever known born wolves. Then again, she had no idea what Ariana was, but she wasn’t exactly going to ask the girl. She had a feeling that talking about the girl’s background might… bring up some bad memories. The thought of Celeste, of their brief date in the woods not all that far from here, came back to the forefront and Luce shifted uncomfortably. “A truce? You make it sound like I’m out here trying to start shit. I already said I wasn’t gonna hurt you. Twice, in fact. So, chill.” She said before shaking her head. “If you try and go off on me, you won’t like it. But whatever, kid. Next time I see a red wolf running around, I’ll look the other way.” Luce snorted. 

Geeze, she reminds me of somebody, but I just can’t… “Uh, excuse you, I didn’t come out here sportin’ a huge ass sword. Who carries a sword anyways? This isn't King’s Landing.” Fucking bounty hunter. That’s who she reminds me of. “And I guess we’re not doing the name thing, huh?” Layla’s claws and teeth were beginning to go back in. Feeling threatened went out the window. “And if I see someone carrying a big ridiculous sword on their hip like Jaime Lannister, I’ll look the other way. So, I guess we’re on some sort of mutual ground. And don’t worry, I wouldn’t expect you to shake on it.” 

At the girl’s comment, Luce let out a short sigh before shaking her head. She honestly didn’t want to start shit with a wolf, she really didn’t. Ulf had warned her that wolves could be dangerous, and here was a young girl who’d been turned and was sitting there with her claws and teeth out. Not exactly someone she wanted to fuck with. “Luce. And yeah, I’m not about to shake on it.” She made a scratching gesture with her hands before pointing at the girl’s hands. “Sure. Mutual ground works for me.” With a sigh she jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Well, if you’ve got this whole… tooth and claw situation on lock, I’m gonna go.” She said before backing away from the girl, returning into the darkness of the forest. The ghoul problem would have to wait for another night-- when there weren’t teen wolves in the woods.

[big-bad-ulf]

divineluce replied to your post: [P Shit went... sorta sideways. I'll be back to...

[PM] …we were. Doing something for Bea– we… we brought her back. I wasn’t fighting. I overdid it with magic, that’s all.

[pm] You brought back her body? From where? Using magic? Why would you-- Back as in back?

[humanmoodring-retired]

divineluce replied to your post “DTF?”

Well, damn.

Oh, come on, now. Like you’d have to ask anonymously.

[3starsquinn]

[PM] [Deleted: Thanks for ] [Deleted: I'm sorry I] Thanks for the books again. I've been cross referencing with some shit we had at home and I think I've got a lead on the flowers-- a place with lots of magical creatures, that's gotta be Lyssa's Peak, right? Unless I'm way off base.

[pm] Yeah of course! Happy to loan them out if they can do some good. Plus I guess I technically don’t own them but that’s not the point. Seriously?? That’s awesome! And makes sense- I’ve heard a lot about Lyssa’s peak. Lots of hunters used to go there for bigger hunts. 

You should definitely be careful if you go there... especially without your powe- we aren’t supposed to talk about that. Do you need any back up? I’ve heard it can be pretty dangerous.

[inspirationdivine]

divineluce replied to your post: [PM] You owe me. Right?

[PM] Yeah. As previously discussed. I’m cashing it in.

[pm] I see. Hypothetically, what would you want me to do?

@divineluce​

[danetobelieve]

@divineluce replied to your post: [P We've got her.

[P Nope, no problems. Just… real fucked up. That guys house was a fucking tribute to all the things, all the people he’d killed.

[pm] Yeah he sounds like a real fucked up guy. Maybe we should use him as a sacrifice for something. Trophies for everything he’s killed. That’s gross. 

[beatrice-blaze]

[PM] In the interest of honesty and no more secrets and shit: Lydia's missing from town and I'm part of the reason why. [Deleted: which is super fucking chill because Remmy cares about he] My magic's gone to shit and I don't know what to do with it. And this girl [deleted: I'd been fucking] I'd been seeing got fucking high jacked from her body by some ghost bitch. So that's what's new with me 👍

[pm] 

1. Oh no Lydia, so tragic, wow I am so upset. Is she dead?

2. Alright we’re going to have to run some tests, what exactly has been going on with it?

3. So her body is being possessed? How is that being handled? Do you need help? How do you feel? Do you think I could necromancy her soul back into her body?

4. Love the honesty! I’m thinking of performing again, but that’s mainly what’s happening with me. And I’m going to try therapy or whatever

[walker-journal]

At Hell’s Gates (Bea, Adam, Luce- POTW)

Participants: Beatrice Vural (Spellcaster- Fiona), Lucinda Vural (Spellcaster-Cal), Adam Walker (Hunter- Tapir)

Summary: Adam brings Nell’s skin talisman to the Vural house to plan a rescue operation into a Hell Dimension with Luce and Bea as time runs out. 

Content Warning: Allusion to sibling death in the Bea resurrection plot

In a way Adam appreciated the breakneck speed of preparations, the staggering level of planning needed to even attempt this almost impossible task. Every second fussing over environment resist gear, talking to Naomi about atmospheric poisons, and running over possible dimensional scenarios with mom was one where he wasn’t thinking about Nell being tortured in hell. Eventually he just had to drug himself to sleep, as he’d be no use on the mission already exhausted. 

Adam caught a glimpse of his reflection in one of the windows of the Vural home. He looked like someone about to venture into a radiative wasteland or wade through mustard gas, heavy boots, sealed armor, and a gas mask hanging from his belt. In truth, even with all this equipment he was pathetically underprepared for what was coming. 

But as always, Adam put on a face of stony resolution. He’d mastered the unphased action hero act a long time ago, even if his reflection had a numb thousand-yard stare that didn’t quite fit. 

“So what’s the magic plan?” 

The bracelet around Luce’s wrist had pinged the second Adam had crossed the boundary line, the magic a reminder of the sister she had lost. Nell had been the one who’d insisted upon the bracelets, something simple and small that they could always keep on them. She’d been so different back then. Younger. Unburdened by the weight that this town placed on its inhabitants. Luce let out a sigh and made her way to the front door, letting Adam inside. He looked like he was going to be rolling up into Chernobyl and, for all any of them knew, he would be. They didn’t know what was on the other side of those portals. And as much as Luce wanted to rush into the first rift she saw, she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t leave Bea here, alone, to worry and to curse her name. 

Cupping a glass of water in her hands, Luce looked over at her older sister, uncertain. “I don’t know. I’m not the one with the master plan, not this time.” Not ever really. She was just here to get things done, to bring Nell home. She might have lines now, boundaries she wouldn’t cross. But she needed to bring her sister home. “Bea, you find anything in the books on how we can get her back?”

In her early twenties Bea had been worried about her breakups and losing touch with her friends, how different that was from her sisters’ lives. How different that was from Adam’s life. He was walking into war for her baby sister and the eldest Vural could not help but see the flash of the blade cutting down when she looked at him. How many people would risk their lives for Nell? Would Adam be added to the list that had lost theirs for her? Nell, of course, was worth it, but Bea couldn’t help wishing that Adam and Nell could simply lead a life that was similar to Bea’s at their age. 

Her shadows swirled at her feet, agitated by the whirling emotions suffocating their mother, they clung to her ankles as she moved to grab a tome she had taken from Nell’s things. “We’ll be using her magic for this. Or at least we will be using an adjusted version of her magic,” Her voice flowed confidently through the space, coating every surface with honeyed hope that she did not feel. Is this how Luce and Nell felt when they lost her? Luce, now, had witnessed both of her sisters gone, taken unfairly from this world. In an impulsive move, Bea found her little sister’s hand, squeezing as she thought of the terror that must be drowning the middle Vural. “Adam, we will get her back.” Bea would destroy this world for her sister, if it meant she was safe. She would tear the fabric that kept this plane stable. She wondered if the universe knew, if it was prepared to go to war for Penelope Vural. Bea was ready. 

Adam had always been cautioned against hope. It was a purely therapeutic emotion, meant to comfort the dread of uncertainty. Esther Walker had instructed her children that facts should be assessed only for what they were rather than what we want them to be. We are not gods. This is not Hollywood. The cold universe wouldn’t fudge the numbers just because some monkeys on a random rock in the Milky Way had feelings in their skull. 

But Adam knew that not everyone grew up with their mom bluntly stating that they’d eventually lose everyone they care about in the long war. While Adam knew this grimness was Esther’s way of loving him authentically, it’d probably be cruel to give Nell’s sisters the same treatment right now. 

“Hey if we got a plan anything’s possible” he assured Beatrice with a confident lie of smile. Trying not to look at the darkness bubbling at the deathless woman’s feed, Adam turned his attention to Luce briefly. “Hey uh, resident fire scientist. Any way I could get something that might give me a chance if like...there is like an inferno or something? Just a few seconds to get the fuck out?” 

Adam shifted his weight, leather and alloyed kevlar creaking with the moment. “How do we get access Nell’s magic then?”

Bea’s hand slipped into her own and, for the first time, Luce realized just how changed her sister was. The familiar warmth, the heat that had always matched her own-- a source of both frustration and comfort that had followed their whole lives… It was gone now. Bea’s fire was gone. She didn’t have it anymore. She never would. But she was still here, still standing, still trying. And Luce was going to try too. She’d reclaimed her fire, she’d manage to fan the spark back into a blaze, and now that she had the power back? The least she could do was help Adam. To keep him safe. Fuck. She nodded slowly, mulling over how she’d manage something like that. Their mother, she’d made charms to protect Nell from their fire as children, back before they had total control. “I think we have something that we could use-- a necklace Nellie used to wear when she was little. Kept her safe from us, before we could control our fire.” She said, dreading the idea of going into Nell’s room to look for the charm. She didn’t want to step foot in there. Just because she could expect the same anguish that had overtaken her when she’d went into Bea’s room last year-- that didn’t make it any easier. This town, this fucking town. She’d thought that the nightmare had ended, that Bea was safe, that Nell was safe. But nothing changed here.

Looking at the book in Bea’s hand, Luce swallowed. “That’s one of Nells. I don’t know how to do what she does, Bea. Neither one of us do. Summoning, blood magic-- I… What are you planning?”

The charm. Bea had forgotten about the charm that used to keep Nellie safe from them. A physical reminder that she was different from her sister. Bea didn’t blame her for not keeping it on her as an adult. “Do you know where that is?” Nell could have thrown it out years ago, but the youngest Vural tended to know when to hold onto things that could be useful. Bea hoped that she had classified this as something useful enough to hold onto, even with it’s baggage. “I don’t know how to either, but Leah is going to help me research too,” She squeezed her sister’s hand. “We have some luck on our side, we’re already somewhat connected. Her magic is, obviously, connected to ours, but by bringing me back we’re even further intertwined. Your magic combined brought me back, so we can use that as a way to channel her too.” It wouldn’t be that simple though, there were more steps that she wasn’t quite too sure on yet. “We need something else, something to track her too, but I’m not completely sure how to do that yet, if you have any suggestions.”

Adam nodded and mouthed thanks to Luce as Beatrice spoke. He hated to part the sisters with something that reminded them of Nell but when you are about to try a longshot, anything that could ease the odds even slightly was needed. Beatrice's question brought a stab of pain as Adam stirred from where he’d sat, reached into a pocket, and withdrew a battered compass. 

“Nell gave this to me, it was uh a present,” Adam’s stomach clenched at the cruel irony of being given a six months dating present by a sad fire cat. It’d been the morning after he’d taken Nell out to ask their relationship to end for safety’s sake, only for that to be the mistake that caused the disaster he’d hoped to avoid. 

“It points uh,” the answer was that it pointed towards home, though Nell had cautioned that it was more metaphorical than literal. “It can take me to her,” he stammered, trying to keep his voice steady. 

Shifting uncomfortably, Luce swallowed. “It’s in her room. I can…” I don’t want to go in there, not alone. But you could never understand, Bea. You weren’t left behind the way we were. “Get it. Yeah, I’ll grab it.” She said before pushing back from the kitchen table, her hand slipping from Bea’s. She lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching as Adam pulled out a worn looking compass. As Adam explained what it was, Luce couldn’t help but wonder how Nell had gotten her hands on something like that. And just how lucky they were that she had. Luce nodded. “Good. That should… definitely help.” She was dragging her feet, she knew that. Just bite the bullet. With a slightly forced smile, Luce patted the door frame. “I’ll get the necklace.”

The walk up the stairs and down the hall to Nells was a short one, but every step filled Luce with that same anxiety she’d felt every time she had walked past Bea’s door last summer. It was a dread, a fear. That no matter what they did, it wouldn’t be enough. And that all that would be left of her sister would be tucked away in a room. That everything inside would stop being a part of Bea, of Nell, and start being a memorial. A memory. She didn’t want to step foot inside that room. But she had to. If they wanted to find Nell, this was their best shot. Luce pushed open the door and forced herself not to pay attention to the potted plants on their shelves, their leaves wilting a little from lack of care. She didn’t allow herself to dwell on the desk with books still open, the bed unmade with rumpled sheets, as though Nell had just left for the day. These were all reminders of her sister that she couldn’t handle. Instead, Luce began to look for the necklace. 

It wasn’t until this past year that Bea truly understood love. In a sense, she had looked at love the same way her mother did, based on what the other person could do for her. Bea had collected people for their skills, pocketed the ones who were the most useful and claimed she understood love through them. It wasn’t until she had been lost that she got just how powerful love was and even then, though she had seen so much work put into her resurrection, she hadn’t witnessed it all. She hadn’t seen the planning or the original mourning, she had not been involved in the panic and grief. She was unable to escape it here, where love twisted into melancholy suffocating them as aptly as summer heat did in the afternoon. 

Bea reached out to Adam, “Can I hold it? I’ll give it back to you after.” She couldn’t take the physical piece of Nell he had left, but looking at it would help her form a plan. They were all relying on her to make a plan that would bring Nell back. With Luce gone searching, she looked at him for a long moment, considering him. “Adam, I know how much a person would do for Nell.” I know sacrifice and I feel like I’m looking at one. “Please do your best to come back to us too.” Some of that honey sweet hope had dissipated now that Luce was gone, Adam didn’t need that, not in the way Luce did. “Is there anyone who can go with you as back up?” Please, don’t do this alone. 

Adam pressed the compass in Beatrice’s hand. It took Adam a bit to answer Beatrice's request. His wide distant eyes and the lost way they drifted around the Vural’s home, looking anywhere but Bea’s face, revealed the lie behind the firm set of his jaw.

It’d been a long time since Adam had felt his age. Uncertainty and finding yourself were unnecessary when you’d grown up already knowing you’d be a soldier and what war you’d be fighting in. His civilian peers had gone through heartbreaks, angst, anger, cycles of rebellion, maturation, acceptance, and reinvention. But Adam had already grown up at sixteen, when he signed away his life to fight and die in service to humanity. He’d learned how to make bombs, lethal holds, blades, marksmanship, and how to keep his head in a warzone when everyone else had been fretting about what school clique to fall in. 

But now Adam suddenly felt like a child in this tactical armor. It was as if he’d finally woken up from a dream to realize the weight was too heavy for him, but it was already way too late to learn all that stuff the other kids took for granted. Adam marveled at how narrow his own knowledge of the world was. 

Honestly? He knew way more about how to kill monsters than how to be human. 

With bittersweetness, Adam realized that made him exactly what Nell hadn't needed, and only now that she was trapped in Hell was he an ideal partner. 

“I promised Luce I’d come with her back to Earth,” was the only assurance Adam could offer Beatrice. He shook his head at the matter of back up. “I’ve got family and Hunter friends who volunteered but I can’t ask them to take this risk. Besides we need all hands on deck to deal with all the shit coming out of the Portals.”

There were times people should be selfish and this felt like a time, but Bea knew that Adam wouldn’t agree. She could spend all night trying to convince him otherwise and it wouldn't work. He was more stubborn than Nellie sometimes, which was saying something. They were the only people that could get through to each other sometimes. It reminded her a bit of how she and Felix could be with each other. 

“Is it going to be that bad?” She had no idea what these portals could mean for everyone else after all this. Honestly, she didn’t really care what happened as long as the people she loved were going to be okay. “You aren’t asking them if they offered, Adam.”

“In situations like these the portals often get worse, opening wider till they let bigger and bigger things through, stuff that our weapons won't work on,” Adam claimed, suggesting perhaps that the already deadly things coming through the dimensional breaches right now were just small fry compared to what really waited in the beyond. 

“Eventually we get what’s sometimes called a Hellmouth,” the Hunter said, numbly staring at a wall as the present mixed with another time where doomsday had loomed near. “Unless its stopped reality itself could be permanently fucked around here...well...fucked even harder I mean, in a way that can’t be covered up from the outside world any more. They’ll probably notice the tentacle godzillas after a bit.”  

Everyone had called Dad a hero. Had he felt like this, just another expendable piece of kindling thrown on the fire to keep ‘normal’ going for just a little while longer? 

“Hey uh,” Adam prevaricated with a shrug knowing Beatrice was correct. “I’ve ask people for supplies and stuff. They’ve been very generous, but actually going in is something I don’t think I have the right to ask.” Of someone that wasn’t raised to die that way, was rest that was left unsaid. 

It was always the end of the world, it seemed. No matter what everyone did to fix it, something else would come and take the mantle. Bea couldn’t help but feel as though sometimes these things were inevitable. It didn’t stop her from understanding the need to fight, if anything she got that this made people fight harder, because at least they had done something then. Still to fight for a world that didn’t know you were doing it must be exhausting. “So, it needs to close or else we’re all going to die via horrible ways.” The countdown they had already started to tick faster. “I guess it's good that we have people who are going to help then.”

Her throat tightened with unsaid words of caution and unnecessary attempts to dissuade him. Bea knew the look in his eyes, knew that no matter what she did or said, he wouldn’t turn from this course of action. She was sure she would have seen the same look in her own if someone had dared to stop her before she found Nell. “I suppose giving you supplies is enough.” It wasn’t. 

Bea went back to Nell’s book, hoping that skimming again would reveal something else. And it did. She looked between the compass in her hand and the word bone. “Adam, do you know if Nell’s been keeping anything she’s killed? Like the bones of a monster?” The words came out quickly, excited by the potential that laid between them now. 

Adam nodded. “On our first mission together, there was an Alchemist dude who was using a Dolophage to harvest intense emotions and memories from trauma patients,” the Hunter explained, swallowing down the bittersweet feeling of that recollection. It was hard to imagine that’d hadn’t even been a year ago. “Nell forged the Reversal Talisman so the Dologphage’s powers reflected back on it when it tried to tentacle my brain,” Adam explained, poking his ears to illustrate that he’d volunteered to get fed on by the demon as bait. “After we killed it she kept its bones.” 

Digging around in Nell’s room wasn’t easy. Luce had known it wasn’t going to be easy. Not when there was so much uncertainty and that sense of doubt loomed over her every move. The moment she’d heard that Nell was gone, the second she’d heard from Adam, a pit had formed in her stomach. Or maybe it reopened-- maybe it wasn’t a pit so much as it was a gaping wound, created by Bea’s death, that she’d barely been able to tend to. She hadn’t stopped to process the loss, the grief, the anger. The anger. She’d only managed to get a hold of that until it was too late. And just as she was finally coming to grips with the events of the past year, White Crest found a fucking way to open up the wounds. Shutting the dresser drawer she’d been pawing through, Luce settled down on the edge of Nell’s unmade bed. 

Luce clenched her jaw as she tried to sort through her thoughts, trying to figure out where Nell might keep the necklace. But all she could think of was how much it would hurt if she had to do this for real. If she had to pack up boxes of Nell’s things. She hadn’t had to do it with Bea, they’d known how to bring her back, known exactly what they needed to do, even if they weren’t sure if it would work. But Nell was lost. Gone. And Luce had no fucking clue how she could help. Swallowing, Luce wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before her gaze fell on a simple box on Nell’s bookshelf. Luce moved towards it, apprehensive. Her fingers lifted the lid and inside were little trinkets-- magical in nature. Some of them familiar to her, others she didn’t know where Nell had even found them. But there it was. The necklace Nisa had enchanted all those years. Luce took the necklace from the box and closed the box before hurrying out the door. She didn’t want to stay in that room, didn’t want to see that place again. Not until Nell was back. Not until they were all safe.

“Hey. Found it.” Luce said as she held up the little silver charm necklace. “We might need to re-up the magic, but it should help. And hey. Might help with the tracking situation. She wore this all the time.”

Plans were beginning to race rapidly through Bea’s mind, wheels spinning so quickly that she was almost scared they’d burn out. “With that bone we could connect with her,” She mused, before grinning at Luce. “And with the necklace we’ll also be able to tell how close Adam is to her. He’ll be able to use the compass, hopefully, in the dimension to find her quickly.” With eyes brighter than they had been since Nell was gone, Bea looked between the two younger adults,“We have a plan now, a really good one, with three ways to track her. We’re going to get her back.” And the moment she got back, she was going to get the lecture of her fucking life. 

Adam nodded. “Hey...thanks both of you, like I know you’d do this for Nell anyway, but I still appreciate you folks having my back on this.” 

Luce leaned against the doorway, taking in the scene. Bea, determined, her old fire lit inside her with this new mission to get her sister back. Adam, weary in a way that no one should be at his age, but filled with the same resolve. And then there was her. She fell somewhere between the two of them-- somewhere between grim determination and optimism. They were going to bring Nell home, come hell or high water. Which, in this town? Either could happen. “Sounds like we’ve got a game plan then.” Luce said with a nod. “Of course, Adam. And… thanks for leading the charge here. We’re gonna bring her home.”

[kadavernagh]

divineluce replied to your post: What is your idea of a really fun time?

You must be a fucking riot at parties.

As a rule, I don’t do parties. Probably for the best, considering so many of them end up being mime-themed in this town.

[chasseurdeloup-retired]

[Delivered anonymously to Kaden’s apartment. There is no return address or receipt attached to the delivery, just a little note card that says “From an Admirer. 5/5 ;)”]

[themidnightfarmer]

@divineluce replied to your post: [P Thanks again for your help, Jared. That [d:...

[P Yeah. Good for her, I guess. Here’s hoping she doesn’t bother anyone else any time soon. Can’t really speak for Morgan, but I’m feeling [d: less dead] better, I guess. Just got a memory of another person’s memory now, which is weird. Real mind fuck-y.

[pm] I’ve got my eye on her don’t worry. 

Better is always good! The I guess is not so cnfident sounding. A memory that I missed? I can re-catch Dory and see what I can do since she seemed so calm about extraction. 

Must be a tough one, human memories are bad enough without all that stuff mixed in.

[a-bugz-life]

divineluce replied to your post: <p>What's the weirdest thing you've ever done for...

Well, you certainly have mine now.

Game, set, match. 

And you have mine.