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dalishthunder · 3 years ago

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A DUALSCAR/READER AND A GHB/READER IN ONE??? im not a huge black romance reader but for them? combined? yes. i. would. you should drop that first chapter maybe 👀 no pressure though

Yes sorry, I had to find it, it was on me lappy top

Here is a portion of the first chapter:

“Well, look way down the river, what do you think I see?”

You beat out a rhythm in time with the tune of your cellmate’s voice as you watched the guards exchange words in their guttural language; faces shrouded in the dimly lit corridor, helmets hiding their unearthly golden eyes.

Ghoulish grey skin and black hair, clad head to toe in black armor bearing a crimson insignia on their shoulder. Their orange horns the only thing that mismatched the aesthetic. Candy corn gradient, darkest, almost red, at the base fading to saffron at the tip. If it weren’t for the fact that you had seen their wretched, crocodile smiles as they had cut down those fleeing around you could have found the aesthetic just a touch silly.

“I see a band of angels and they're coming after me”

Your eyes had adjusted fairly well to the perpetual darkness of their ship. In the constant oppressive gloom, days had begun to blur together. The only thing that marked its passage was your ever growing hair and nails and the daily dose of mush they considered... nourishment. It certainly wasn’t palatable enough to be called food.

How long had it been since you’d had a proper meal now? How long had it been since you’d breathed fresh air, or since the sun had kissed your skin? As the drum of your palms rang out from their pounding against the smooth floor below,

“Ain’t no grave can hold my body down,”

You knew it was an eternity.

They’d tried to silence you, prodded you with pokers that zapped and stung. But if there was one thing humans had in spades, it was Community. The ability to relate to and pack bond with almost anything… especially other humans.

There were a dozen cells in this tiny room, each housing two of you; and no doubt dozens of rooms just like this one all along the ship. They couldn’t silence you all.

Your voice blended with your cellmates’ as you sang out with them, voices blending as one.

A curse. A promise.

“There ain’t no grave can hold my body down.”

They had come in the night. Their craft touching down in the city square, raining fire and brimstone from above.

No one had seen it coming.

For all of the movies and stories about aliens conquering the earth, for all of the tin foil hats and UFO fests, it amounted to little more than a game. A thought experiment. Something fun to fantasize about and thrill each other with. Implausibly hilarious. Like cryptozoology or Tommy Wiseau winning an oscar.

Although if you had had to put money on it, you supposed alien invasion was slightly more plausible than the latter.

“Well, look down yonder Gabriel, put your feet on the land and see,”

God, you had had a zombie plan. A nuclear winter plan. A plan for if the central power grid was taken out. So many apocalypse plans… most of which included migrating out to the middle of nowhere, starting a small farm, and building a community up with the knowledge you had gained over the years… finally putting that degree in botany to good use. Living modestly with hard work, but the satisfaction of knowing that humanity would continue. It would survive.

“But Gabriel don't you blow your trumpet 'til you hear it from me,”

You would write down your memoirs in a journal, chronicle your life as little by little you slowly succumbed to madness.

But this situation…. Holed up in a tiny prison on an alien ship?

You didn’t have a plan for this.

“There ain’t no grave can hold my body down.”

Veronica was the name of the woman you were trapped with. Twenty eight, married… had two kids, ages five and three, and an acute fondness for Johnny Cash. She was in the grocery store with you when they had begun their raid, just ahead of you in line. She’d made a late night run for bread and eggs, just put the kids to bed for the night after a long shift.

She had cried on and off the first few days you’d been packed in here. She still cried, but the fire in her heart never stopped burning.

You remember reading once when you were young, in a book about clans of warrior cats, the most profound statement about the love of a mother; It was not soft and gentle, but powerful, fierce, overwhelming in its intensity.

You could see that in Veronica as she sang in resistance, hurling her words like spears against the bars of your prison.

“Ain’t no grave can hold my body down.”

When the starship had finally docked, you were all bound ankle to ankle and shoved out in a line like animals out of the arc. Closely watched by your captors, you all shuffled down the hall, and although you were loathe to follow their orders, the thought of being off that ship and under the open sky was thrilling beyond belief.

The crisp smell of air hit your nostrils like a drug… briny, salty.

You’d never been much of a runner but the sound of waves lapping against the shore beckoned you like the sweet song of a siren. Your muscles ached with longing. The dim lights of the ship gave way to the grey of twilight. On one side a sea, on the other, clusters of home. A troll city if the mingling of bodies with candy corn horns, golden eyes leering at your procession, was anything to go by.

You breathed deep, savoring the mingling aromas of the outside world after having spent god knows how long in that tiny cell.

Behind you Vanessa sniffed, no doubt stifling her tears. You had made a pact together; No matter what came, you would never give them the satisfaction of seeing you cry. They led you to large metal cages covered in a thick, fraying fabric, shoving you in ten people to each one. Their fangs glinted in the starlight as they spoke to one another. What you wouldn’t give to understand what they were saying.

The smaller of the two laughed, eyeing your cage up and giving what looked like a noncommital gesture. Your lips curled into a snarl.

They just laughed harder.

“Easy there, tiger.” Vanessa murmured putting her hand on your shoulder, attempting to pull you back. “It’s not worth it.”

The taller troll stepped closer, placing a large hand on the bars of the cage, grinning down at you. And she spoke. Clipped, thick, heavy words tumbling from her throat.

“Someone’s going to enjoy breaking you.”

She turned to address all of the cages. “Human worms, tomorrow you will behave yourselves…. You will be serving new masters, and if you continue to behave, you may even survive.” Her cruel smile widened. “Rest up.”

The canvas covering was pulled over the cages, obscuring the outside world once more in near complete darkness. You could hear the sounds of people crying all around you, and Vanessa clutched you close. “There’s a difference between being brave and being stupid, tiger, and you’re really toeing the damn line ain’t you.…”

Your jaw clenched involuntarily. “I know.” You wanted to say, but the words tangled in your throat and all that came out was a shaky laugh.

“Look I know you’re scared, but you’re no use to anyone if you’re dead. Got it?”

You nodded, sighing and sitting down. She was right… you couldn’t do anything if you died.

There was a tiny tear in the tarp they had over your enclosure, just large enough that you could look outside, the ocean stretching out to meet the horizon. The smell of salt was almost enough to mask the stench of fear.

#ghb fanfic #dualscar fanfic #ghb/reader #dualscar/reader #dalish mail #thunderous applesauce #feeling thorny

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years ago

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Commission for @alt-hammer, who asked for a story centering around a fantasty-themed AU where the major troll families are nobles, and focusing on Cronus seeing his long time girlfriend Porrim in person, along with her family of fellow gravid vampires!

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The land was scarred by ancient wars long since forgotten, but the land still remembered. Sometimes the memories were bad, with some bright spots.

This was the understanding according to the sages of the Leijon tribes in the dark forests, and the blind seers of Pyrope lands rarely liked to venture out there for fear of what their mystic gaze might reveal, and the great desert was the worst of it all. A terrible scar upon the world, it lay in a region where rain should have fallen, with no mountains for a great distance, and the climate was fairC. There should have been no deserts at all.

But their land was one with a dark and troubled history; war had touched it often, no less than the recent conflicts that had produced the modern noble houses of the troll lands and their human allies, and those wars had left terrible scars. Most of the points of civilization were islands of light in a dark sea, and there monsters in the dark places inbetween. Horrors arose, seemingly from the magical miasma that pooled out from the seas, vast and terrible monsters that required great heroes to slay them, and of course some weird wizard might decided to craft some abominations for the fun of it, completely forget about them, and be inadvertently responsible for a village disappearing when his Exploding Slime Tesseract wandered there.

Cronus Ampora, scion of the wizard-kings and hopeful master of the fleets that connected them to other lands, had a duty to hunt down such dastardly fiends when he wasn’t skipping very close to being one of them. This wasn’t a bad thing, per se, in the Amporan lands. Violet tradition held that a nobleborn prince, or bard like he had become, who didn’t periodically cause some manner of wacky catastrophe was going to be too unimaginative to make a very good successor. Archmage Dualscar, father to Cronus, tried to encourage his children to do more of that.

Periodically scouring the continent to put down rogue monsters and arrest wizards of inappropriate conduct was a task assigned to the Orphaners; so named as they killed evil wizards, orphaning their creations, at which point the Big Dad energy of the Amporas would take over and they’d adopt them all. As a result, the Amporas had a truly massive army of militarized constructs, thousands of caretaker monsters of all kinds of descriptions, and many more strange beings peacefully integrated into their society. Being used to such diversity also made an Orphaner uniquely suited for diplomacy; they dealt with ‘Things Not Like Me’ on a nearly daily basis, and it helped to expand the mind.

Cronus spent a lot of time on land, therefore. He hated it. Violetbloods like him were adapted for the sea, and individuals varied on whether they were land walkers who could live underwater, or sea beings who could stand to walk on dry land for a while. Cronus was the latter. But his duties, interests, and deep fascination with land walkers of all kinds drew him to the world above, even if it was the people there he liked and the world itself was just the worst.

And the desert was the worst of all. The horror of the place clawed at him with the memory of ancient atrocities, leeching vitality out of him like the sun drying his flesh. They moved on the landships favored by the Nitram feudal lords, an assortment of their mounted knights as protection and a little bit of showing off, and even though it was comfortable and he had a big tank of water to recline in, the whole land felt wrong. He was convinced that some ancient magical catastrophe had scarred the land so badly it had burned, searing it with the energies of undeath. The hordes of the walking dead currently reduced to several tons of ash flying in the air now was proof to that.

But now, the character of the sand was changing; it was harder for the knights at their side to articulate why, though they were notably calmer, the tension loosening from their armored forms. They weren’t magic users, and weren’t able to perceive the subtle details in the sand now. Cronus didn’t doubt that they knew that something had changed, though. The threat upon the wind felt less oppressive. The teeming hordes of the undead, hoarded in this deadly place over eons and mummified by the burning sun, shied away like magical constructs warded away. By now, they had passed one of several enormous towers, of dark marbled stone and brighter patterns of magic-infused metals that all glowed like a torch against the sand, visible for many miles, and Cronus saw the wall of magic flowing through it. It was a relay point, and seen from above, perhaps on a Pyrope airship, he might have looked directly down and seen the network of barricade towers, standing guard against the sea of death.

And they were new. There were many wonders in the world, that was true. But most were ancient relics, reactivated and barely operational, their masters struggling to keep them just working consistently. Very few of them were completely new.

There was a reason the Maryam Clan of rainbow drinkers and vampires, despite being the smallest noble family, commanded so much respect. In a single generation, they were tearing the bloody heart of undeath out of their homeland, and restoring it to life again.

The caravan journeyed onwards, as as they did, Cronus noted the move of magical essence around them took on a drastically different character. The hostile desert behind them, shielded away by the mystic barrier, stank of death where it had any nature of all. Mostly it was a hollow emptiness, yawning behind them like someone physically standing behind with obvious ill intentions. But the sands blew with the hints of life beyond them. Birds flew upon the wind, flitting up to the towers to attend their nests. As they journeyed further, they saw small oasis here and there, clusters of animals standing there.

Cronus watched them. They had to be imported. Surely they couldn’t have revived the beasts that had lived here so long ago… could they? The long-legged creatures, antlers growing out into swirling patterns, stared placidly at him and continued to drink, judging him no threat. They did not look like desert dwellers, but like creatures who ran through heavily wooded forests. Just as this land must have once been.

Despite himself, as the caravan journeyed to the very center of the desert, he felt a sudden sense of joy come over him. The desert had not always been a desert. It was healing.

What wonders were the Maryams making? He was never more excited to be able to study there.

Soon enough, the distant sounds of water grew closer, and a city appeared on the horizon, even taller than the towers, hardy shrubbery cut into fanciful shapes surrounding it. “My lord!” said the cheerful voice of a bronzeblood named Chixie, cheerfully. “We are nearly there!”

She rode before him, a troll significantly shorter than average and nearly twice as wide as she was tall, praticularly at the hips and bust; they all wore light clothing for this heat, but hers had to be especially roomy for her voloptuous body. She was in a prime position to be lookout, as it were, and Cronus honestly wasn’t sure if she should be there; she wasn’t an actual knight but an honorary one, a bard inserted into the ranks to get an insider’s view.

Sure enough, they soon acquired an escort. Several human women, unusually curvaceous and beefy, bearing the flowering robes and veiled attire of the Maryam clan, though their dark skin showed no signs of vampirization; they were not inducted into the clan in particular, it seemed. They did bear the signature saw-swords of the Maryams, and these rested in a relaxed way indicating they still could be drawn if need be. “Bard of the Amporas,” one said primly. “Follow me, if you please.”

The caravan did so, and they came to the great city of the Maryams.

They came through the high gates of the city, towering doorways open wide as if to welcome all visitors. Before the shining colored stone of the domed architecture, before the staggering array of fabrics fluttering upon the thousands bartering their wares at a bazaar their path took them through, the thing Cronus was drawn to was the oasis. The city itself, he understood, had been build upon that oasis. He didn’t know if it had already existed, some remnant of bygone days, or created through a work of grand and exhausting magics. Even now, as the city grew, the oasis grew, its surface shining brightly. To his magical senses, it was incandescent, painful to look on directly. Life streamed through it, so much raw vitality that it seemed magic distilled into a liquid form, flowing its life-giving energies into the land around it, gradually wearing away the corrosion of death resonance.

The oasis was almost an inland sea; a vast and improbably deep pool of water, replenished by mysterious means, threaded throughout this whole region and emanating magic with a very specific flavor. There were a lot of resonances it split into, but the big one was… well, fertile.

It seemed to have an effect on the women, Chixie noted bluntly, as they walked through in search of their secondary escort, who had gotten a bit lost.

Those women (not all of them, but enough to be notable) were very large indeed; the average breast size began at ‘larger than your head’, and they stood notably taller than average. Even the humans were reasonably close to the heights of some of the trolls from his home fleet. And, yes, there. He could see rainbow drinkers in the crowd, shining with an eerie light as they moved, an alien grace in their robes. And human vampires as well, sheltering themselves from the harsh desert light, though it was largely unnecessary. One quirk of the oasis’ architecture was buildings were designed to bridge together, creating overhangs, walkways, balconies, launch points and other similar features. The end result was a ground level that was almost permanently shaded most hours of the day, as well as upper levels that suited trolls fond of leaping and climbing.

For a time, they wandered through the great desert city of the oasis. There was much to see, and one after another, the knights peeled away from the group. Their task, as delivered by their own lords, had been to securely bring Cronus to the city of the Maryams. True, when his business was completed here (perhaps months from now, or weeks if you were to be cynical), they were to bring him to his next destination. Perhaps to home, if need be. But for now, their task was done.

They meandered to their next destination, and this eventually took them to the markets. One by one, the knights departed, to secure their own entertainment and housing. Both would be easy to find; temporary homes had been provided for them in the fabulous hotels of the minor clans, and the oasis city was a wonder of art from all over the continent, scrolls and tomes of all matter of disciplines, and its scholars among the most learned. Whether it was art, lore or simple dialogue one craved, the oasis would provide.

Cronus, his violet courtiers, several servants attending to the more bureaucratic concerns, and a few knights who insisted on attending his person continued through the city, to where they were intended to meet up with a representative of the Maryams. They walked over canals, and admired the beautifully carved pueblo bricks set into the bridges. These canals webbed over the entire city, flowing beneath the streets that blossomed over them like forests of mushrooms, so that everywhere you went, the oasis flowed beneath. The architecture, Cronus noted, was specifically designed to make that magic flow.

As they crossed a particularly large bridge, close to the central regions of the great city, he saw that the buildings rose up at certain geomantic angles. He suspected it was to channel the magic most efficiently towards the sky, and project certainly spells into the air and wind. He said as much.

Chixie looked fascinated. “That’s very interesting, lord. What are they doing with it all?”

Cronus shrugged. “Heck if I know, dame. Part of whatever it does that’s making the desert fix itself from whatever our dumbass ancestors did here? Hell, could just be making a ward to block out whatever it is in sunlight that hurts human vampires.”

Chixie blinked. “...Okay, yeah, I can see them wanting to do that. I, uh. I DID see the human-looking vampires carrying those cute little parasols to keep the sun off. Why bother if they can’t get hurt here anyway?”

“We find that it helps to get people into the habit if they opt to leave!” said a peppy voice. It sounded perfect for a den mother, a caretaker of children, and a consort protector. It was the sort of voice you had a mental image for; probably someone quite short, wearing a lot of fluffy fabrics in warm colors, and built like the more generously fluffy plush toys.

They followed it. The voice didn’t entirely fit the mental image at first glance; the speaker was an outrageously gorgeous and stupendously stacked rainbow drinker; a jadeblood troll, who stood easily a couple feet tall than even the largest of their ground. Cronus doubted he was even as high as her broad biceps.

The escorts who had brought them bowed deferentially, and departed, symbolically passing them to her. It felt like a very big deal, indeed.

She approached, and the jade veils of the Maryam clan fluttered around her mouth, the elaborate robes of office about her body. It revealed little of her face; jewelry of high station hanging in chains off her delicately carved horns, both curving gently upwards, one zig-zagging in a brief series of sharp edges. She didn’t so much walk, honestly, as sashay dramatically, as her hips were far too wide to walk normally. It was a distinctive walk, her broad thighs swinging wide beneath a secondary dress worn over her main one, brighter shades of jade against its pale colors to indicate her social status.

Her skin, though at least the nominal black of a grown troll woman, also shimmered with the eerie light of a rainbow drinker. Long hair, with a streak of green, flowed behind to an enormously large backside shifting the flow of her dress. Swirling tattoos traced around what skin was visible, but most significantly, she was also pregnant. Extremely pregnant; her belly was a monstrously huge, distended orb projecting out so much, with so much weight, that it was more oblong. Not exactly a gut; her thick and fit body type wasn’t quite the right shape for the more extreme of big belly builds, and Cronus could see the weight of something humanoid resting there. Pregnant, in the special Maryam definition.

Her dress, as was custom for the Maryams, was cut to show off her belly, all the way to where it joined her body. Massive breasts, larger than her head and suspended over that belly, were supported by brighter bands of soft fabric, and the overall impression was of competent power, seductive appeal, and raw motherly power. It was a strange thing to have coupled with a voice that sounded more at home gently lecturing small children on the fine points of not smacking each other on the head over a toy.

Chixie swallowed nervously, gazing up at the towering jadeblood. She wasn’t the tallest of her kin Cronus had ever seen, but she was taller than most they had seen going around. “Um. Hello, ma’am. We were, ah. I was told to expect someone fitting your description…?”

Bronya clapped her gloved hands. “Ah! You must be the Ampora delegation, then?” Cronus nodded to her. “Bronya Ursama, I am. Of the Maryam Clan. I’ve been sent to bring you to the matriarchs, if you please!”

Cronus nodded, smoothly shifting into the manners Dualscar had sternly taught to them. He bowed low. “It would be my pleasure, Lady Ursama. I am Cronus Ampore, of the Ampora fleets, and I apologize for not finding you sooner.” He smiled, winningly. “We simply could not resist a bit of sightseeing.”

Chixie and the others introduced themselves to the towering vampire, increasingly awkwardly and with their faces heavily blushed at how… sexy she was. Bronya smiled sweetly, greeting them in turn, praising their lords for producing such fine stewards of honor (Chixie nearly stumbling in sheer shyness from that), and the only significant surprise was that Bronya’s belly lurched.

A human-sized figure inside her stomach turned, like a baby shifting in the womb, and a hand briefly moved against the surface of her belly.

Cronus blinked, fascinated; the knights were less calm. Chixie actually clapped her hands to her mouth: “There’s someone in you!”

Bronya nodded, looking nonplussed. “Oh yes. A charming young scholar, I actually tutored her during my residence in the ancestral library. I believe she intends to go on pilgrimage after her stay with me.” The knights stared at her, bafflement written on them. She looked bewildered. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Cronus coughed. “Eh, sorry, but these knights… eh. I don’t think they know about the particularities of the Maryam transformation. The process, I mean.” Inwardly, he cursed; he should have given them a primer on that!

Bronya inclined her head, understandingly. “Ah! Of course! Well, never fear. Come along, I shall explain.”

They moved along, the knights shying a bit away from Bronya now save Chixie, perhaps dreading visions of themselves being pulled into that belly as well. Cronus walked behind her without fear, following the slow wobble of her broad backside, and she took them across the bridge.

They came to a large castle, of sorts; it was clearly not meant for sieges, and was so open to the sky and walls, but for some fortifications, that it had only a hazy notion of ‘outside’ to begin with. It was older by far, and Cronus recognized the same kind of geomantic designs on the walls, and it was a simple thing to gaze up and see the magic in the air, vibrating around the elegant carvings on the walls.

Bronya spoke a password to the guards, who were women built on largely the same look as her though not pregnant with someone, and they passed through without incident.

Inside, it was much cooler; so much so that it had to be a work of magic, or at least very skillful air conditioning construction. Great woven tapestries hung from the walls, detailing both beautiful artworks and stylized portraits, and many doorways lined the halls. Bronya led them down a staircase carved into the floor, going underground, and as she did, she spoke at length.

First, she asked: how did they think new rainbow drinkers, or vampires, came to be? When Chixie awkwardly said that she thought their blood was drunk first, she laughed.

“It’s certainly part of the process,” Bronya said. “But it’s not the important one.”

To become a vampire was a very serious thing; it was a magical ritual of great importance, derived from some quirks of jadeblood physiology, and while it worked on non-jades and humans and some other beings, it had to be very carefully down. It took a vampire mother to make another, her fertile body literally reshape them into a new form, bringing them into the clan and giving them new life.

Vampire literature spoke often of living a new life, of being reborn, of gestation and being remade by one’s sire. Bronya assured them, there was no metaphor there.

Vampires like her literally absorbed another being (in a ritual she implied she certainly was not allowed to discuss with them at length), and contained them in their womb. The strongest could hold many; Bronya was inexperienced, and one was all she could manage for now. And for a time, perhaps years, the fledgling vampire was infused with magical energies unique to the Maryam Clan, slowly changed into another vampire with all its perks, and all the very extensive physical alterations. A vampire wasn’t just an immortal that drank blood, they were an entirely different sort of being.

Bronya paused, and for a moment looked quite tired. Her belly swelled, the figure within visibly shifting, and then stopped. She panted, her glow dimming. “It’s not something you enter into lightly, either,” She said, perhaps glad for this emphasis. “For either of us.”

Cronus nodded solemnly. The knights looked shaken, or thoughtful; with so much effort put into the transformation, no wonder the Maryam Clan was small by the standards of nobility, and so very tight knit. Plenty of them still looked uneasy at effectively being reborn in such an intimate way, and were baffled at the idea of willingly being inside a troll’s womb like that. Cronus, poker-faced, gave no indication of his feelings one way or another.

Soon, they came to a sanctuary deep underground, where once the ancestors of the Maryams had held sacred rituals. Here, it was still a private place, and when Bronya paused, giving the knights an awkward look, Cronus coughed. “I’m thinking I’m the only one technically allowed to go from here. Is that right, Lady Ursama?”

Bronya nodded, regretfully. “I apologize, dear knights. But entering here is a rather important matter. I assure you, Lord Ampora is quite safe in the grip of the matriarchs!”

Chixie winced. “You could put that a little less ominously but.” She nodded. “We understand.” She glanced aside. “Yes?” The knights nodded.

Bronya looked relieved. “Well then! If you will come with me, I shall find something diverting for you all. Lord Ampora?” She pulled on a small statue, and the vast door before them opened enough for him to pass through. “The matriarchs await you.”

Cronus entered, as the knights and Bronya departed. The door closed behind him, and considering that he was entering the lair of the most powerful vampires in the world, it was surprising he felt no particular anxiety. But then, there were few he trusted as much, and none he trusted more, than the namesake leaders of the desert nobility, the Maryam Coven.

-------

The outer chamber was as spooky as deserved for a vampire coven, the carved walls high, and torches held on the mouths of fearsome sculptures. The whole edifice looked… not fearsome exactly, but in that general area. It was certainly impressive, and would put any ancient sacrifice to vampire hungers in the appropriately awed mindset before the big moment and then the sexy, sexy recuperation afterwards.

As he approached the inner chamber, though, he heard some muttered arguing that rather spoiled the mood. “Hurry, hurry! Just, oh, mother, please! Just sit down!” That voice was very familiar to him, admittedly usually through translocational images as they spoke through magical devices. He swallowed, standing up straighter and trying to look cool.

The next voice was very similar, but deepened by age, with a cool and wry amusement at the antics of the first. “Calm yourself, dear. I am absolutely not going to hurry, not with this much weight to move.”

“Mother!” the first almost wailed. “Bronya made the signal, he’s here! I’ve put so much effort into this meeting, please, do not spoil the drama!”

The second chuckled with the distinctive sound of someone who is good natured but still used to a child being unflappable and calm, and was absolutely going to milk this for all it was worth. “Oh? Don’t want to scare him with a preview of yourself in years to come, I suppose? Imagine him coming in here, seeing all this, and immediately fleeing!”

There was a scandalized gasp. “Please don’t, you might jinx it!”

A third voice sighed, a perturbed air to it. She sounded younger than the other two, but with that distinctive Maryam accent, a lilt to the words. “Porrim… please, don’t make this so serious. I was calm when Rose was here…”

“And I’ve no idea why!” The first voice said, with an air of petulance that Cronus, intimately familiar with that voice, found truly surreal. “First in-person impressions are so important! If this goes wrong, or if one of you frightens him, I’ll… I’ll…”

There was a long pause. Cronus leaned in towards the door, fascinated despite himself for the juicy gossip.

“...Yes?” the eldest-sounding voice said, with a hint of mocking encouragement.

“...I’ll give the tailors the most abhorrent designs for your outfits, right when you’re so big it will take weeks for you to get new ones made!” The first said triumphantly.

From the sound of it, this threat wasn’t being taken too seriously. “How cruel of you, dear sister,” the younger said dryly.

Cronus leaned a little too hard on the doorway. First it creaked loud, no doubt causing those inside to turn, and then-

It opened inwards, too fast for him to stand back up. He overbalanced, having leaned on it so much, and as it turned out his first proper introduction to the love of his life and her coven was flopping into their sacred chamber in an undignified heap, his ropes splayed over him.

“Ow,” he said meekly.

Someone rushed towards him, with an outraged cry, perhaps at his loss of dignity. A genteel chuckling, from the same older voice, greeted him, and the first one scoffed indignantly; Cronus looked up into the first speaker, into the eyes of Porrim Maryam.

Quite a lot up, in fact, and fortunately she was standing at an angle that her considerable assets didn’t block his sight.

She looked gigantic as she approached him; a towering motherly titan that would have loomed over even Bronya. She could have carried Chixie about like luggage; no, she could have towed Cronus like that! The impression was reinforced by her powerful build; her shoulders were broad, packed with muscle, her arms wide from years of training with sawblades. Her body had an hourglass curviness, her small waist making her shoulders look even bigger, and her hips even larger. And her hips were massive, making Bronya’s look smaller. In every respect, she was bigger than Bronya, not just taller than her, but wider. Bronya had big hips, yes, but Porrim would have serious difficulty getting through doorways; they were almost three feet around, at least.

And then, there was her belly.

It was so large, Porrim moved with an awkward, limping gait, her body clearly not adjusted to its sheer bulk. The vast, shining orb projected out before her body almost as much as she was tall, its lower slope descending gracefully to the ground, and she wasn’t burdened with just one new vampire in there. Cronus saw several arms moving against each other, the dimple of multiple bodies seated, a bulge of several torsos…

The question blurted out before he could contain it. “How many do you have in there!?”

Porrim blinked, but at this angle it was hard to tell; her breasts were so monstrously huge they got in the way of his sight, almost individually as big as her belly, and even with the supportive bands of her bodice, there was only so much that could be done to keep them pressing down on on her stomach. Cronus could have slept between them, and the thought was badly tempting. She laughed, putting a hand to her veiled mouth, and giggled helplessly. Her whole body shook; her big belly, her massive hips, her powerful thighs. Her great mane of hair, fluttering down past her hips like a luxurious mantle, shook with her laughter.. Even the new vampires in her body trembled with laughs, though he doubted they were even aware of what was going on.

“She has rather more than was wise,” the eldest voice said dryly.

“Probably six,” said the youngest. “Porrim gets attached too easily.”

Porrim went ‘hmph,” with the lazy dignity he expected of her, and helped Cronus up. The impression of towering height didn’t end even when he was stood up; his head was still barely level with her elbows, and given just how much mass she had, he felt stick thin next to her, and when she swooped down to hug him and straighten up his robes, he was lost between her breasts, and in her arms.

“I am so, so sorry about this!” She whispered furiously. “I intended for this to be so much more, ah, inspiring, but no, Mother and Kanaya just had to spoil the mood.”

Cronus made a squeaking noise. Her breasts and belly weren’t so much pressing against him as carrying him up, pinning him, and holding him still with a delicious sort of pressure.

Porrim paused. Much as her sense of drama had been spoiled, she could still appreciate a good moment. She leaned forward, and for a moment, Cronus was in a position to appreciate the coven tattoos winding across her body in the ancient patterns of fertility, motherhood and predation; swoops and curls, winding on the arms, the legs, over her breasts and belly…

Her veil was lifted up as she pulled him close to her face. Her lips brushed against his mouth, and long fangs against his lips.

“Not to be a hypocrite, but please do control yourself, Porrim,” said the eldest voice again, a hint of dry amusement in it.

Porrim dropped Cronus, with a squeak of mingled dismay and frustration. She turned aside, almost knocking Cronus over with a belly he could have fit into (and now he wondered what it was like, whether it was warm or cool, how her belly might feel hospitable or if you would be rewired to adjust to it), and a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

“Now,” said the voice, with an air of command different from her jovial tone earlier. “Let me see this saltdweller you have spoken so fondly of.”

Cronus was brought forward, a glimpse of extremely large chairs around him, perhaps intended to seat women that were very big indeed, and he had an impression of size before him, and a hand fell upon his face. Long claws moved against his gills, though not painfully so, and then moved his face up and down with a delicate but irresistible firm touch.

“Ah. The Ampora profile, for certain. You look very much like your ancestors; do tell me, how is your father doing these days?”

Cronus looked up into a face that was suddenly smiling, and even through the veil he saw the fangs, and the vibrant lipstick, the calm and assured competence so charismatic that she could have conquered the continent diplomatically, and more to the point-

She was nearly twice as big as Porrim, while sitting down.

The Dolorosa. The head matriarch of the Maryam Coven, mother of all living true vampires; one of the few to have successfully fought the mad pirate queen Mindfang to a standstill, to have brokered peace with the Pyropes during the years of fiery vengeance from the mountains. The first of the troll nobility on the plains to open her city gates to the carapacians, it was said, and from her wisdom great riches and discoveries had flown.

It was a little surprising that the stories about her said much about her wisdom, said a great deal about her honor, and said very little about how terrifyingly, attractively BIG she was.

Sitting on a chair that could have been designed for giants was a troll so large Cronus did not even come up to her waist now, and so outrageously curvaceous that just as Porrim’s thickness made Bronya look slender, the Dolorosa made Porrim look malnourished. Hips nearly as wide as she was tall, with a monstrously huge backside rising as high as her waist, the wides merging with her thighs evenly.

Her hair was cut short, and her horns elaborately carved; jewelry of religious significance were strung between them, green cloth shining onto her. Her face was more severe than Porrim’s, though kindly, and her tattooing was even more extreme than Porrim’s, with the curling inks brought to her face, her horns, and extremely intricate patterns on her shoulders and breasts. Cronus didn’t doubt that her entire body was a mosaic of art, though he was unclear on the meaning of the tattoos.

Her shoulders, broad and slabbed with muscle, heaved beneath her robes. She smiled indulgently. “Come, young man. Don’t tell me you left your tongue with Porrim.”

Cronus swallowed. Porrim went ‘hmph!’ again. The Dolorosa was an intimidating figure, not so much amazonian as she was an apex of the concept; her arms alone were bigger than he was, though she wasn’t at all toned. She was built like a strongwoman, really. Her robes were not especially revealing, but they still showed quite a lot of breasts that were… well. So incredibly huge, so wide and so bulky, that they were larger than a good portion of Porrim herself. Perhaps five feet high each, and wider across than that by far, they rested upon an incredibly huge and round belly that flowed over her throne onto a specially arranged dish set before her, over a dozen moving inside her stomach in expectation of vampirism.

That belly towered over Cronus, just as the rest of the imposing woman. The tattoos swirled over it, lovingly outlining its bulk. It looked bigger than a hut, or some boats he’d seen, bigger even that the Dolorosa’s entire body. How did she manage so many!?

Cronus found his voice, even as her smile grew increasingly more mischievous beneath her veil. “My father… he does well. He, erm. He asked, that…” he struggled to recall it, and found it hard to recount the unsual wistfulness that had come over his father then. “He thinks a lot about you.”

For a moment, the Dolorosa’s gaze went distant, thoughtful, wandering into the past. “I should hope so, the dear man…” She smiled fondly. She returned from whatever thoughts were on her mind, focusing on Cronus again. She raised a hand, and he flinched instinctively, but her intent was not hostile; her hand ruffled his hair, rather affectionately. “Please, do say hello, Kanaya!”

“I apologize, mother,” said the third speaker, who had been sitting to the side, on one of the smaller chairs, with an air of watching an amusement. Kanaya Maryam, youngest of the coven, and she looked a lot like a much smaller version of her mother.

Much smaller, in fact. After the overwhelming size of Porrim and her mother, Cronus was a little alarmed to see that Kanaya was much smaller than either. She was larger than him, though. Later, he would see that she was a little taller than Bronya, though not significantly so; as vampire fostering went, he learned, Kanaya was a lot more cautious. Much more than, say, Porrim was, and as a result she was a lot smaller for the moment. The growth that came with power, for the Maryams, was tied to this fostering ritual.

Kanaya’s tattoos were subtle, graceful curls at the edges of her robes. Her carved horns were obscured by fine rings that, Cronus noted smugly, came from the lands overseen by the Lalondes and had the distinctive unsettling artistry; her hair was short like her mothers, but her face rounder than either Porrim or the Dolorosa. She wasn’t quite as broad as her mother either, but was more powerfully built than Porrim, and definitely more heavy set at the waist. Her breasts were unusually large for a troll, bigger than her head, and rested on a belly containing a single vampire, though a fairly fierce one judging from how much her belly was wriggling. She didn’t seem to notice.

Kanaya bowed. “A pleasure to meet you at last.” she smiled faintly. “Porrim has been eager to bring you here, into our fearsome clutches.”

Porrim scoffed. “Kanaya, stop trying to convince people we are up to no good!”

The Dolorosa chuckled. “Oh, Porrim, don’t spoil the joke! After all, it’s not as if we’re going to keep him here and do terrbile things to this poor, handsome man!” She chuckled, and winked in an openly flirtatious way.

“Eep,” Cronus squeaked, blushing bright violet.

“Mother!” Porrim said, scandalized, though she’d said sentiments very much like that to Cronus before.

The Dolorosa chuckled. “Now, now. Sit him down, will you?”

Grumbling to herself, Porrim effortlessly picked him off the ground and returned to her seat, and it was specially designed so that there was enough space for him to sit comfortably on her thigh between herself and the seat, though sandwiched by her belly and one breast. He did not mind.

Porrim put one arm around him, and Cronus did the same, relaxing into her embrace as if he’d spent his life in her company. He relaxed against her, and she into him. “Awww,” Kanaya crooned mockingly.

Porrim raised an eyebrow.

Cronus said, as if to himself, “Ah, that may put me in mind of some interesting stories I heard from a certain Rose Lalonde, during her own time here?”

The Dolorosa laughed. “Oh, do tell!”

Kanaya blinked, and looked impressed. “...Hmph, not a bad move…”

In time, of course, the teasing faded, and later on, they held a proper official ceremony of presentation, as was traditional for the noble families. It cemented ties, and given that they had recently been at war, also put all their cards on the table. Officially that sort of thing wasn’t needed, but the gesture of trust was important.

Cronus felt it was more important to make it official why he was there; to learn. About their unique magic, to spread learning from his own fleets (and presenting them with a vast storehouse of scrolls, rediscovered magical artifacts, and tomes that made some of the scholarly inclined vampires at the ceremony gasp in delight, and talk ensued of entire new wings that would be built for them all), and to foster understanding between their realms.

‘Understanding’, in this case, having significant romantic undertones, as was now traditional in the other noble families, or at least the parts of them their age.

The Dolorosa smirked at that in a way that rather spoiled the whole game for Cronus, but given that he could finally have the days with Porrim he always wanted, he couldn’t complain too much.

#queued #fics #my writing #commissions #/#//#///#twitchy!homestuck #twitchy!hiveswap #twitchy!cronus #twitchy!porrim #twitchy!kanaya #twitchy!dolorosa #twitchy!chixie

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