#emerges from the unnatural dark to cast spells and stare at you

[rennybu]

yaaayy we found him yayyaayay (wip <3!!!) (it’s tzipporah! it’s @jawsandbones guy!)

[shiorihyuga]

Tides of Fate

When the Scouts of Paradis meet a mysterious pod of powerful sirens, their world is turned upside down. Mating with these beautiful yet dangerous creatures gives them enhanced abilities, but the bonds are deeper—and far more complex—than anyone expected. Eren, Levi, and the rest of the top brass find themselves falling for their siren mates in ways that challenge their loyalties, while Mikasa struggles with jealousy and resentment. The lines between duty, desire, and power blur as tensions rise both inside and outside the walls.

Chapter Three: Luna’s Lure

The air around the beach seemed to hold a strange, almost surreal stillness as everyone watched the siren, her eyes locked onto Eren’s. The sea behind her rippled gently, the only movement in a world that had fallen silent. It was as if time itself had paused, waiting to see what would happen next.

Then, without a word or warning, the siren began to change.

Her transition from sea creature to human was seamless, fluid, and mesmerizing. The shimmering scales that had lined her body began to fade, replaced by smooth, dark skin that gleamed in the early morning light. Her long, coiled white hair floated around her, shifting from damp curls to a soft cascade down her back. Where there had been a gleaming tail, two legs now stood, slender yet strong, each step she took forward on the wet sand as graceful as the flow of water itself.

The water lapped at her ankles as she walked out of the sea, the faint glow in her blue eyes still lingering as she approached Eren. She moved with a grace and purpose that left the scouts watching in silent awe. Her transformation was so effortless, so natural, that it was as if she had always belonged on land, though there was an ethereal quality to her that no one could deny.

Mikasa’s heart pounded in her chest as she watched the siren emerge from the water, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. Everything about the siren’s movement was unnatural, unnerving—yet undeniably beautiful. There was no doubt that she was unlike anything they had ever seen before.

The scouts stood frozen in place. Jean and Connie exchanged wide-eyed glances, while Sasha’s hand hovered uncertainly near her weapon. Even Levi’s usual detached expression faltered as he watched the siren step out of the water as if she belonged there. But no one dared move, no one spoke. It was as though she had cast some sort of spell over the entire beach, her presence commanding absolute attention.

Finally, the siren came to a stop directly in front of Eren, her tall, athletic frame standing only a few feet from him. Up close, her beauty was even more striking. Her dark skin glowed with a soft, almost iridescent sheen under the rising sun. Her wide, bright blue eyes were piercing, framed by her white lashes. Her full lips, slightly parted, remained still, though her gaze held an intensity that seemed to convey more than words ever could.

For a long moment, the two of them simply stood there, staring at one another. Eren remained still, his expression unreadable, though there was something in his eyes—something that flickered just beneath the surface, some connection he couldn’t quite place but felt all the same.

And then, she spoke.

“My name is Luna.”

Her voice was like the sound of the ocean itself—soft, melodic, and undeniably powerful. It carried a strange weight to it, as if every syllable resonated deep within the core of those who heard it. There was an accent, thick and foreign, unlike anything the scouts had heard before, adding to the mystique of her presence. It was almost musical, the cadence of her words rising and falling with a rhythm that seemed to mimic the waves.

“I have watched you,” she continued, her gaze never wavering from Eren’s. “For weeks.”

Her words were calm, but there was an unmistakable certainty in her voice. She spoke as if she already knew the answer to the questions that hadn’t yet been asked, as if her actions were inevitable.

Mikasa felt her stomach twist as Luna’s words sank in. This was real—this creature, this siren, had been watching Eren for weeks, silently, waiting for the right moment to reveal herself. And now she was standing right in front of him, speaking to him like they were the only two people on the beach.

Eren didn’t flinch. His eyes remained locked on Luna’s, his expression calm but serious. “Why?” he asked, his voice low, steady.

Luna’s lips curved slightly into the faintest hint of a smile, though it was not one of amusement. “Because you are different,” she said. “You are strong. More than you know.”

Mikasa stepped forward, unable to stay silent any longer. “What do you want with him?” she demanded, her voice sharp, cutting through the tension like a blade. “Why him?”

Luna’s gaze flicked to Mikasa briefly, but there was no animosity in her eyes. She regarded Mikasa with a calm, almost knowing look, but it was clear that Mikasa was not her focus. She turned her attention back to Eren almost immediately.

“It is not something I want,” Luna said, her voice soft but firm. “It is something that is.”

Her words were simple, but they held an air of finality, as though there was no question or doubt in her mind. It was clear that Luna believed whatever bond she had with Eren was already set in motion, something inevitable, like the pull of the tide.

Eren’s expression darkened slightly. “What do you mean by that?”

Luna tilted her head slightly, her bright blue eyes shimmering as they studied him. “I chose you, Eren Jaeger. I have watched your strength. Your resolve. You are… unlike the others.”

The scouts shifted uncomfortably at Luna’s words. The strangeness of her presence, the way she spoke with such certainty, was unsettling. Jean took a step forward, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Hold on. So you’ve just… been watching him this whole time? Why?”

Luna didn’t answer Jean’s question directly. Instead, she looked back at Eren, her eyes softening slightly. “The sea is vast. But in all its vastness, I saw you. You are like the ocean—deep, powerful, unstoppable. You and I… are not so different.”

Her words hung in the air, thick with meaning. Eren stood still, his eyes narrowing slightly as he processed what she was saying. For a moment, something unspoken passed between them—a strange, invisible understanding that only they seemed to share.

Mikasa, unable to contain her frustration any longer, took another step forward, her voice strained with anger. “Eren, don’t listen to her! She’s just trying to manipulate you! You don’t know anything about her or what she wants!”

Luna’s gaze shifted to Mikasa again, this time lingering for a moment longer. There was no malice in her expression, only a quiet understanding. But her eyes, deep and otherworldly, held an unspoken challenge.

Eren’s eyes flicked to Mikasa for a brief second, but he said nothing. His focus returned to Luna, as though drawn to her by some unseen force, something deeper than logic or reason. He was calm, composed, but the intensity in his gaze had deepened.

Luna stepped forward again, closing the distance between them. She stood just inches from him now, her presence commanding yet gentle. Her voice was softer this time, almost a whisper. “You know what I am. And you know why I’m here.”

Eren’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t move. The silence between them was thick, charged with something ancient and powerful. The sea continued to lap at the shore, the waves rising and falling in rhythm with the tension in the air.

And though she didn’t say it, the scouts could all feel it: this was only the beginning.

Mikasa felt the walls closing in on her as she watched Luna stand so close to Eren, their eyes locked in that silent, intense gaze. The way Luna looked at him, the quiet certainty in her words, the confidence with which she claimed to have chosen him—it was too much. She had seen Eren fight countless enemies, survive impossible odds, but this was something different. Something she couldn’t fight, something she couldn’t protect him from.

Mikasa's breath quickened, and before she could stop herself, the words spilled out. "Eren, this is insane! You don't know her! She’s dangerous! She’s not… she’s not human!"

Eren remained still, his gaze flicking to Mikasa but only for a second. His focus quickly returned to Luna, his expression unreadable. The connection between him and the siren was unspoken, but it was there, palpable, something that Mikasa could feel in the air around them. It was as if her voice didn’t even reach him, like she wasn’t part of this world they stood in.

Mikasa’s frustration boiled over. "How can you even think about trusting her? You’ve never seen her before! You don’t know what she wants, what her plans are. She says she’s been watching you, but what does that even mean? Is she going to control you? Use you? You can’t seriously be thinking of letting her—" Mikasa’s voice cracked as her anger surged, her emotions too overwhelming to contain.

She clenched her fists at her sides, her knuckles white with tension. "You don’t need her! You have us—me! You’re already strong enough. You don’t need whatever she’s offering."

The words felt raw, jagged, as they left her throat. She couldn’t understand why this hurt so much, why seeing Luna so close to Eren, claiming him in ways Mikasa couldn’t, left her feeling as if something vital was slipping through her fingers. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from speaking.

Luna, who had remained calm throughout Mikasa’s rant, finally shifted her gaze to her. Her deep blue eyes, sharp and observant, locked onto Mikasa with a quiet intensity. There was no malice there, no anger. But there was something in the way she looked at her, something piercing, as if she saw right through her frustration to the heart of the matter.

"Are you his lover?" Luna asked, her voice soft, melodic, and without judgment.

The question hit Mikasa like a physical blow, her heart skipping a beat. She stood frozen, the words hanging in the air like a challenge. Luna’s tone wasn’t confrontational—it was simple, direct. But the weight of the question, the way it cut to the core of everything Mikasa had been feeling for years, was undeniable.

"I…" Mikasa’s voice faltered, her throat tightening as she searched for a response, but the truth was heavy, undeniable. She wasn’t Eren’s lover. She never had been.

The silence that followed felt deafening, and Mikasa’s heart sank as she struggled to find something—anything—that would change the way this was playing out. But there was nothing. She wasn’t Eren’s lover. She never had the chance to be, and now, standing here, watching Luna so close to him, she felt the distance between her and Eren more than ever.

"No," Mikasa finally said, her voice quieter now, the anger fading into something more vulnerable. "I’m not."

Luna’s gaze softened, and for a moment, she seemed almost sympathetic. But then, just as quickly, she turned her attention back to Eren, as if Mikasa’s answer had settled something, confirmed what she already knew. There was no hostility in Luna’s actions, no aggression. She had asked the question with genuine curiosity, and now that she had her answer, she moved forward with her intentions, without hesitation.

"Then there is nothing to stop this," Luna said, her voice calm, assured.

Mikasa’s breath caught in her throat as those words cut through her. The simple truth of it was like a knife to the heart. Luna wasn’t going to back down. There was no fight to be had, no way for Mikasa to stop this from happening. Eren wasn’t hers, and that fact—something she had always avoided confronting—was now glaringly clear. Luna, this siren, knew it. And so did Eren.

The scouts shifted uneasily behind Mikasa. Bertholdt exchanged a worried glance with Reiner, who simply frowned, unsure of what to say. Sasha’s eyes darted between Eren, Mikasa, and Luna, as if waiting for someone to make the first move. Even Levi, usually so composed, watched with an intensity that betrayed his concern for how this might unfold.

Eren, for his part, stood still, his eyes never leaving Luna’s. The weight of the moment was clear to everyone, but Eren’s expression remained as cold and focused as ever. Whatever emotions he might have felt were buried deep beneath that impenetrable exterior. He hadn’t pushed Luna away. He hadn’t backed down. He was listening to her, considering her, in a way that Mikasa couldn’t understand.

Mikasa’s chest tightened as she forced herself to speak again. "Eren, you don’t have to do this. You don’t need her."

Luna turned her head slightly, her eyes flicking to Mikasa with a quiet patience. "He is not mine yet," Luna said softly, her words almost gentle. "But he will be. I do not take what belongs to another. But he is not spoken for. His strength, his heart—they are unclaimed."

Mikasa felt her stomach drop. The finality in Luna’s words was undeniable, and no matter how much she wanted to argue, to fight, there was nothing she could say to change the truth of it.

Eren wasn’t hers. He had never been hers.

Luna took another step closer to Eren, her eyes never wavering from his. "You are free to choose," she said, her voice low, intimate. "But you know what I offer. Strength, power—freedom."

Eren’s eyes darkened, his jaw tightening slightly as he stood before her. The tension between them was palpable, but it wasn’t the same kind of tension that Mikasa had always felt with Eren. This was something deeper, more dangerous.

Mikasa’s hands trembled at her sides. "Eren… don’t."

But Eren didn’t answer. He simply stood there, watching Luna, as if weighing something in his mind that no one else could see.

And in that moment, Mikasa felt the world shift beneath her feet.

She had always been at Eren’s side, always protected him, always believed that they shared something unbreakable. But now, standing here, watching Luna claim him in ways she never could, Mikasa felt that connection fraying, slipping through her fingers. There was nothing she could do. Nothing she could say.

And Luna knew it.

The sea behind them continued to lap at the shore, its rhythmic pull mirroring the unspoken tension between them. The scouts stood silent, watching, waiting, as the moment stretched on, heavy and uncertain.

Mikasa felt her heart shatter, the truth of her place in Eren’s life laid bare before her. The same Eren who, just three days ago, had told Mikasa he hated her.

The words had felt like knives—sharp, cold, and merciless—when they had come from his mouth. She had stood there, unable to comprehend what he had said at first, unable to believe that the boy she had followed, protected, and cared for her entire life could say something so cruel. 

"I’ve always hated you," he had said, his voice devoid of emotion, his eyes hard and unforgiving.

The words had echoed in her mind over and over since that moment, replaying endlessly in the silence of her thoughts. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. The connection they had shared, the unspoken bond that had kept them together all these years—how could it have been a lie? How could he have felt nothing but hate for her?

And now, just three days after those words had shattered her world, here he was, standing in front of this creature, this siren, contemplating… what? Bonding? Giving himself over to someone, something, he had only just met? A woman who wasn’t even human?

Mikasa’s hands trembled as her eyes darted between Eren and Luna. The siren’s presence was overwhelming. Her dark, shimmering skin, her piercing blue eyes, her ethereal beauty—everything about her screamed of something otherworldly, something that didn’t belong in the world of men. And yet, Eren was standing there, considering her offer, while Mikasa was left to watch, helpless, once again.

It didn’t make sense.

Nothing made sense anymore.

Mikasa’s heart pounded in her chest, her mind racing as she struggled to understand what was happening. Just days ago, Eren had looked at her with disgust, had rejected everything she had ever felt for him, everything she had tried to do for him. He had made it clear that she was nothing to him. And now, he was standing here, contemplating "bonding" with someone who had only just appeared from the sea?

"You can’t be serious," Mikasa whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of the waves.

But Eren didn’t turn to look at her. He didn’t acknowledge her words, just as he hadn’t acknowledged her feelings in what felt like forever. He stood there, staring into Luna’s eyes, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist. Mikasa could feel the distance between them growing wider with every passing second, and there was nothing she could do to bridge it.

Her hands clenched into fists, the nails digging painfully into her palms, but she didn’t care. The pain was nothing compared to the agony of watching Eren drift further and further away from her, not just physically, but emotionally, mentally—in every way.

"Three days ago," Mikasa said, her voice louder now, filled with an anger and hurt she couldn’t contain. "Three days ago, you told me you hated me. And now, you’re standing here, in front of this—this fish woman—seriously thinking about giving yourself to her?"

Eren’s jaw tightened slightly, but still, he said nothing. His eyes remained locked on Luna, who stood there, calm and composed, watching the scene unfold with quiet, almost indifferent curiosity.

Mikasa took a step forward, her voice rising with desperation. "How can you even think about this, Eren? How can you even—after everything we’ve been through—how can you stand there and just… ignore me?"

Her voice cracked on the last word, the weight of her emotions too much to hold back. She had spent years by his side, fighting for him, protecting him, believing in him. She had followed him through hell and back, and now, here he was, acting as if she didn’t even exist.

Luna’s eyes flicked to Mikasa again, her expression unreadable, though there was a flicker of something—understanding? Curiosity?—in her gaze. She remained silent, her presence still commanding but not aggressive, as if she was simply allowing the moment to unfold, waiting for Eren to decide.

Eren finally turned his head, slowly, to face Mikasa. His expression was cold, distant, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes—something deeper, buried beneath the hardened exterior.

"I told you," Eren said quietly, his voice calm but unyielding. "I don’t need you."

The words hit Mikasa like a physical blow. Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment, she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even think. It was as if the ground beneath her feet had crumbled, leaving her suspended in a void of pain and disbelief.

"You’ve always followed me," Eren continued, his tone devoid of emotion. "You’ve always done what I needed, without question. But that’s not what I want anymore."

Mikasa’s chest tightened, her heart hammering against her ribs as she struggled to understand. "Eren, I—"

But he cut her off, his voice firm and unyielding. "I’m going to do what I need to do, Mikasa. Whether you’re with me or not."

Luna watched silently, her eyes shifting between them as Eren spoke. She didn’t intervene, didn’t react. It was as if she was simply a witness to whatever was happening between Eren and Mikasa, waiting for the moment to pass.

Mikasa felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Not here. Not now. Not in front of Luna. "You’re just going to throw everything away? For her?" she asked, her voice breaking slightly.

Eren didn’t answer immediately. He turned back to Luna, his expression unreadable, as if contemplating something deeper, something beyond what Mikasa could understand.

"It’s not about her," Eren finally said, his voice low, almost a whisper. "It’s about me."

The silence that followed was unbearable. Mikasa’s heart felt like it had been shattered into a million pieces, each one cutting deeper than the last. She had always known Eren was changing, had felt him slipping further and further away from her since they had returned from Marley, but this… this was something else. This was final. This was the moment she had been dreading, the moment when she realized there was nothing left between them. 

And now, he was standing on the edge of something she couldn’t follow him into. Not this time.

Mikasa took a shaky step back, her vision blurred with unshed tears. "I thought…" she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I thought we had something. That you…"

Eren remained silent, his gaze still fixed on Luna, who stood waiting, patient and calm.

And in that moment, Mikasa understood. Eren had already made his choice.

The sea lapped gently at the shore, the rhythmic pull of the waves mirroring the silent pull between Eren and Luna. And no matter how much Mikasa wanted to, she couldn’t fight it. She couldn’t stop him.

The boy she had known was gone.

And there was nothing she could do to bring him back.

~

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[genedara]

Everything in its right place

You know, there are two kinds of evil. There's the evil that exists as an external force that threatens the well-being of the tribe. Survival depends on understanding and awareness and fear of physical threat to our daily lives. The other kind of evil lives inside of us. Like a sickness or an infection. It's more dangerous because we may not know we're infected.

(( The following contains subject material that may be triggering to some. Themes included are graphic violence. ))

(( Recommended listening: https://youtu.be/NUnXxh5U25Y?si=HjUHAb4bVH-8hSlT ))

It was morning in Elwynn Forest and Genedara was just rolling out of bed. She let loose a mighty yawn and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Somewhere up in the rafters of her tower came the caw of a raven. A large, black bird swooped down and landed on the elf’s shoulder, looking at her with beady black eyes.

“Good morning, Myth,” Genedara said, reaching up and affectionately scratching behind the raven’s ear.

In response the bird let out a squawk and flapped his wings playfully before settling back down. Genedara stood up and walked over to her large dresser, filled to the brim with high end outfits and accessories. She pushed aside outfit after outfit, each one carefully laid out on a metal clothes hanger. After a moment of digging the elf eventually removed a set of robes and light armor. With her outfit for the day picked out, she walked over to space reserved for her small bathroom.

Given the fact that Genedara lived in a tower, space was limited. Her bed was situated in the center of the room, set right in front of the curved wall. To the left of her bed was her dresser and to the right was her bathtub, sink and full body mirror. The elf stepped in front of the mirror and started to undress. Myth hopped around on her shoulder, staying put but not getting in the way. The bird let out a caw upon seeing its reflection, looking at it with a single black eye.

“I need to borrow your eyes, Myth.”

A spell was cast and the elf’s eyes flared to life, glowing a bright baby blue. She looked at herself through the eyes of her familiar, taking a moment to adjust to the change. Her eyes came into focus and a gasp rang out, Genedara’s eyes wide as he looked at herself in the mirror. Her pale flesh was covered in dried, crusty blood.

“What in the..?” came her shocked realization that something was very wrong.

With a wave of her hand, Genedara dismissed Myth and speed walked over to her bath. She reached out and twisted the two nobs that controlled the flow of water. Not bothering to check to see if the temperature was tolerable, the elf slipped into the water and started to scrub the blood off with her bare hands. Just as she was about to clean her hair, the elf’s body went limp. She slid down deeper into the water, eventually coming to a halt when her bath water was up to her chin. Milky white eyes stared straight ahead, a blank and lifeless look settling onto her features.

———

When Genedara came to she found herself standing in a vast, open space. A heavy fog hung over the area, making it impossible to see more than a few feet. Figures moved around just on the edge of what was visible, talking in hushed voices. Their words overlapped each other, making it sound as if there was a couple hundred people all speaking at once. It was maddening as her mind struggled to pull words out of the gibberish.

“Good morning, Genedara.”

The new voice cut through the mess, a strong, dominating tone that commanded obedience. From the fog emerged a mirror copy of Genedara, right down to the freckles on her butt. The two elves stared at each other, one with milky white eyes, the other with shiny silver discs set in an impossibly dark void. The light reflected off those unnatural eyes, flashing like a cat’s eyes in the dark.

“Who are you?” one elf asked the other.

“A god,” the silver eyed elf said, puffing out her chest. “An angel to some, demon to others.”

“I serve no god,” Genedara said, taking a single step back. “I want nothing to do with you. Release me so I can continue about my day.”

“SILENCE!” the other elf shouted, her words ringing out like an explosion.

Genedara’s mouth snapped shut, both hands flying up to probe her face. She tried to talk but was unable to. Her lips had fused together, forever dooming her to living the life of a mute. Her fingernails dug into the new flesh, trying hard to cut her way through. Blood dribbled down her chin and down onto her breasts. Her hands tore away chunks of meat, discarding it as if it were trash.

“Look at you,” the other elf said as it approached its opposite. “Desperate to talk yet unable to. What words would you cry out? “Oh gods help me! Someone save me from this monster!” What a joke. So strong yet so weak. What would your husband think of you now?”

Genedara’s facial expression quickly shifted from scared out of her mind to a righteous fury. Her hands dropped down to her sides and she sucked in a lung full of crisp air. The runes tattooed all over her body flared to life, giving off a brilliant blue glow. The very air itself started to vibrate as more power was drawn into the naked elf. She let loose a muffled roar of anger, thrusting her hands forward, one palm overlapping the other.

A shockwave burst forth from the palm of her hand, forcing the other Genedara backward by at least twenty feet. The fog surrounding both elves thinned out and they were both able to see a sea of bodies standing just at the edge of the fog. The silver eyed elf chuckled and dropped the form of its host, revealing its true form to her.

A dense cloud of black smoke stood before Genedara, its form in a constant state of motion, folding in on itself and expanding at the same time. When the elf stared down the cloud she could feel it gazing back at her, boring deep into her mind. One moment the cloud was there, the next five year old Leana stood in front of her mother.

“Only a monster hides behind the visage of a child,” Genedara spat out, refusing to fall for this creature’s tricks. “You can’t fool me anymore. I know you’ve been using my body to do horrible things. How many people have to killed using my body?”

“Untold millions have died at my hand,” the child said, speaking with two voices overlapping each other. A deep, commanding male voice and the high pitched tone of a little girl, no older than six.

“That isn’t what I asked you. How many people have you killed using my body?”

“Do you really want to know that answer? What purpose does it serve to know how much blood has been spilled with by your hand? What, do you think you have a chance of beating me? You, a lowly mortal stripped of her family history. You’re nothing to me, an ant ready to be squashed under my boot.”

“He speaks truth,” a woman’s voice called out from the dense fog. “He only speaks the truth. You would be wise to listen to His words. Through Him we find peace, forever locked in His loving embrace. Come, child. Join us. Only then will you know true power.”

Joining her master, a woman stood next to the small child, grinning at Genedara with sickly yellow teeth. The woman looked to be in her fifties her forehead a mess of worry lines and freckles. Her silver hair was cut short, barely making it to her shoulders. A pair of silver eyes looked down at the elf, the cocky woman overjoyed to be standing next to her master.

“Who are you, his slave?” Genedara asked the other woman, ignoring the demon in the shape of her youngest child.

“Slave? Hah!” The woman chuckled and shook her head. “What a simple little mind. You see us and assume I am his slave, unable to act of my own accord. You couldn’t be anymore wrong, little one.

“I am his preacher, His most loyal and devout follower. It was through me that His love and light is spread across the world. But that was then and this is now. Now we live in you, elf girl. We are the lord and you the slave. Failure to act will result in swift punishment. And trust me, you do not want to be on His bad side.”

“I will never be a slave,” Genedara spat out, her runes flaring to life once more. “I am done playing your little games. I am Genedara, first born daughter to Jen’nis Silverfury, grand master of the Arcane arts. My family has taught the power of magic to others for thousands of years. The collective knowledge of my entire bloodline lies within me and we will NEVER submit to you and your “god.””

Genedara reached up at the colorless sky and grabbed a fistful of air and balled her hand into a white-knuckled fist. She roared with fury and brought the heavens down on the being and its preacher. Large, flaming boulders began to rain down on the field of fog. With each impact an explosion would ring out, the rocks slamming into the ground and leaving behind smoking craters. Before the dust cleared the elf was already working on her next spell. Another roar slipped past her usually stony disposition as a jet of blue flame shot out of the palms of her hands. She took several steps forward with the strength and determination needed to put an end to her nightmare.

Once the smoke cleared Genedara let out a sign of relief when she saw the dismembered bits and pieces of the human woman scattered about the battlefield. A rope of intestine and half a heart sat at the elf’s feet, slick with fresh blood. An eyeball stared at the elf from a distance of ten feet, its twin nowhere to be seen. Just as Genedara began to relax the pieces of the human woman started to wriggle in place with wet, slapping noises. Birds and pieces of internal organs started crawling toward each other and eventually linking up and slowly rebuilding the preacher.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Genedara said to herself, swearing for the first time in years.

“What?” the pile of organs asked. “Did you think that your magic could kill us? I am apart of our god! He and I are one, and soon, so will you.”

———

Genedara woke with a scream, trashing around in her bathtub. The water had gone cold and night had descended on the Eastern Kingdoms. She sat there, breathing heavy and struggling to gain her bearings. The familiar scent of home and the sounds of her familiars signified that she was back in her tower.

The elf dragged herself out of the bathtub, summoning a robe to swoop over and wrap itself around her petite frame. She shivered into the fabric, teeth chattering loudly. How long had she been lying in the tub? Was that just a dream or was it real? She had a dozen questions and answers to none of them. Whatever had just transpired would sit in the elf’s mind for some time. Was she really possessed by this thing and its preacher? What does someone even do about a situation like this?

“Fuck,” Genedara muttered with a shake of her head, cursing for the second time today. “As if my life wasn’t difficult enough, now I have a lunatic and a monster living rent free in my head. That’s just dandy.”

As she dried herself off, Genedara started to warm up, finally shaking off the cold bath. She pulled on a nightgown that stopped just above her groin and light pink in color. It had been a style her husband had picked out for her. He made it know that he loved when she wore it, giving her husband an opportunity to gaze at his wife’s near naked form. The warmth of the memory hung in her chest, a hand resting over her heart. Without another word the elf climbed into bed, pulled herself under the covers and settled in for the night despite not being truly tired.

Just as Genedara fell asleep her eyes snapped back open. A pair of silver discs hung in her eyes, reflecting off the moonlight visible through the roof window. She threw aside the covers and crawled out of bed, letting out a groan as she stretched out. An outfit was picked at random a quickly put on before the elven woman made her way downstairs.

It was time to get back to work, for He had grandiose plans. And so Genedara went, carrying out into the night. Death followed in her wake and the terrified screams of innocents filled the air.

[candycityy]

waltz

Synopsis: He'd chase her to hell itself, and beyond, if he had to. Greek mythology/PJO-inspired reincarnation AU.

[Click here to read on AO3 instead.]

The first time, Levi dies quietly, in his sleep.

He does not go out in fire and fury; it is a peaceful death, one he goes into with grey in his temples and sickness in his blood, unbecoming of humanity's strongest soldier. But Levi has never been a hero. Never wanted to.

He wakes to the gentle, rocking motion of a sailboat. It's dark, cavernous, but there is no ceiling as far as he can see, only steep walls of grey rock that stretch into the sky, lined with candle sconces that curve upwards and throw eerie blue light onto the dew-slicked surfaces.

He moves to sit up. His head spins, his consciousness threadbare and fragmented. When he glances over the edge of the boat, he sees a strange reflection in the black water.

It's him, but...different. Paler, younger, gaunter. The ghostly light casts shadows that pool in the hollows of his cheekbones and underneath his eyes, making him look almost skeletal.

Appropriate, he supposes, considering he's dead.

The figure that sits silently at the other end of the boat smiles, a flash of white, pointed teeth in a silhouetted face. "Levi Ackerman," it pronounces. Its voice is soft but grating, like its vocal cords are made of rusted iron instead of soft flesh. "I finally meet you. It's an honour."

"More than I can say for you." His voice is unnaturally loud, bouncing off the rock and echoing into the silence. "Am I supposed to know who the fuck you are?"

"I am Charon." It inclines its head, and Levi catches a flash of its eyes; they're the same strange blue-grey as the flames that light the cave. "You don't know me, but I know you. Oh, if I could count all the times I've heard that name on the lips of the newly-dead...as if you were a demon, or a god."

When Levi doesn't respond, Charon continues, its conversational tone clashing with the rasp of its voice. "But now that I see you here, as dead as any of your soldiers, I see you are no more than simply human."

The boat bumps roughly against the shore. In the distance, a city emerges, like magic, from the darkness. It glows with a warm light, delicate towers of glass rising up into the sky, which is already lightening into a soft, clear blue. As Levi watches, the grey rock of the shore metamorphoses into an endless, rolling green field, blades of grass shifting and swaying in a nonexistent breeze.  

"Your fare?" Charon extends a bloodless, expectant hand. Levi stares back uncertainly.

"What?"

"There is always a price to pay, to cross over into death." Charon's withered lips curve into a smirk. "Blood, or wealth, or sorrow...and in your case, that." It nods at his clenched fist.

He uncurls his fingers, revealing a tattered soldier's patch, torn from their uniform, embroidered with the emblem of blue and white wings he thought he'd never see again. It sits among a sea of red, crescent-shaped imprints, carved into pale flesh.

Before Levi can react, the ferryman reaches over and plucks it from his open palm. In its skeletal grasp, the patch shrinks and changes, turning into a single heavy, gold coin.

Charon stands up, its spine curving into a low, mocking bow.

"Welcome to Elysium, Levi Ackerman. I wish you a pleasant death."

==

Levi doesn't remember much about his death.

He'd died in bed, he thinks—he remembers the sharp, acrid scent of medicine and disinfectant, the way the illness crept into his bloodstream, making his bones brittle and his lungs constrict. But already, his time on earth is becoming a distant memory, colours and textures and emotions once cast in sharp detail softening into a sighing, distant grey.

Such is the spell of Elysium, he hazily guesses. The pain of life has no place in paradise, and his life has been so little apart from pain. Some memories remain, though, either unable or unwilling to be pried from his mind—a strange, lilting lullaby in a language he doesn't recognise. The crisp aroma of fresh tea leaves. Hair the colour of a sunset, a shifting mass of reds and golds. A name.

He struggles to remember, and fails.

The ground is soft, unresisting, under the crunch of his boots, and Levi isn't sure if it's been minutes or years when he finally steps onto dry sand. When he looks up, he's engulfed by the radiance of the golden city—Elysium.

"Welcome, hero." The woman that appears before him smiles. She is undeniably beautiful, and yet not quite right; there is something unnatural, inhuman, to the curve of her mouth and the brightness in her cerulean gaze. Her white dress drapes her every curve and flows to the ground, gossamer-like and almost liquid. A closer look reveals that it is constructed entirely of tiny white flower petals, stitched together with a silky, translucent thread—spiderwebs, he realises with an inward shudder.

"I am Persephone, queen of the Underworld, goddess of spring." She lifts a hand, and a sighing, heady breeze envelopes her, making her hair and dress ripple. "Levi Ackerman—I must admit, I expected you much sooner."

"Sorry to disappoint," he says flatly. "Although, you can't really blame me for trying my damned best to avoid, you know. Dying."

"Well, no matter." She lifts an elegant shoulder, in a guise of a shrug. "You're here now. I'm delighted to welcome you into my realm."

She spreads her arms in a dramatic gesture, and the otherworldly light coming off her intensifies to an almost blinding degree. He winces wordlessly. "Could you turn that goddess thing off?"

"Hmm." Persephone casts him a thoughtful look, and then smiles, catlike. "Maybe you'd prefer this, instead, then?"

As he watches, her statuesque form shrinks until the top of her head reaches just below his eye-level. Her elaborate crown of braids, as pale gold as a wheatfield, softens and falls to her collarbone, and darkens into a honeyed copper. Her features blur and bubble over, revealing amber eyes and a too-familiar smile.

The elusive name—he forgot, how could he forget?—is torn from his throat, a ragged whisper. "Petra."

The word is a hook, tugging to the surface a lifetime of memories, and all at once, he remembers.

The first time he'd seen her, she'd been participating in a titan drill. She'd swept through the air like quicksilver, tumbling past her comrades in a graceful choreography of movement, silvered blades like deadly extensions of her slender arms. But far more arresting was the look in her eyes: her amber irises set ablaze from within, bright with ferocity and triumph.

She'd been the first person in the Survey Corps who'd ever been kind to him; who'd looked him straight in the eye and spoke honestly, defiantly. Levi doesn't know exactly when, but she'd cut a hole into his chest with that warm, reticent smile. And for the first time since he was nine years old, he'd allowed himself to be weak.

An initially uneasy truce had grown into a comfortable companionship, and after months of push-and-pull, polite banter turned into shared moments in the corridors, and evening tea sessions turned into late nights spent in his office, fingers intertwined underneath the table.

And he remembers, with startling clarity, the day he'd been walking in a Sina marketplace and found that silver ring, set with a stone the exact colour of her eyes. He remembers how it'd seemed to burn a hole in his pocket after he bought it, day after day, week after week. Impatient. Demanding.  

It'd burned all the more when he'd found her that day, sprawled against the tree, her neck thrown back at a grotesque angle, empty eyes trained at the sky.

"So you do prefer this." The goddess who is not Petra smiles, cold and otherworldly, and the expression looks desperately wrong on her face. "How terribly unsurprising. Humans are all the same, in every age and time...I suppose even being humanity's strongest wouldn't change a thing."

"Is she here?" is all he manages to say. Persephone waves a slender white hand, carelessly.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," she drawls. "But we are not here to talk about your long-lost love, Levi Ackerman. We are here to talk about you, and that all the wildest desires that your fragile little soul can muster." Her lip curls. "You are in Elysium. What is your heart's desire, hero? What do you ask of paradise?"

"Isn't that your job, to figure that out?" he shoots back. She sighs.

"Well, yes, I suppose. I'd hoped you would be different, but you seem just as human as the rest." She pronounces the word in a manner similar to the ferryman, with a kind of amused scorn. "For most humans, it's either love and power—only two things satiate them."

Her ageless green eyes seem to pierce him like knives. "Which do you want, Levi Ackerman? What drives you?"

Kenny once said, everybody needs to be a slave to something. A god, a drug, something to be drunk on, to keep the air circulating through their lungs and to force them to wake up day after hellish day.

Levi doesn't agree. He'd lived years and years without anything, after all; a shell of a man driven by pure survival instinct, by the sheer virtue of a heart that refused to stop beating, all the way until it did.

But Petra had been different. She'd believed in the old stories, the ones in the countryside hymns she used to sing. Of a purpose, a meaning, something greater. Sometimes she'd close her eyes, her lips moving in a soundless prayer, and he'd close his eyes as well and wish with all his heart to believe, too.

He looks straight at the goddess. "Nothing," he replies, truthfully.

Persephone laughs, a too-perfect, bell-like sound, that is so utterly unlike Petra's that it sounds nearly obscene coming from her lips. "Oh, you are just delightful, hero. You're telling the truth, aren't you? That's adorable. And yet—this girl," she gestures down at herself, "I saw her at the top of your mind. Your biggest regret, isn't she, Levi Ackerman?"

He grits his teeth. "So what if she is?"

"She is not here, hero." Persephone smiles, her pale irises alight with an icy glee, and for a second, a wave of cold dread crashes over him—could she have ended up anywhere else? No, she was a soldier, brave to the end. She couldn't have.

"Not anymore. You're too late." An exhale of relief—she had made it here, after all. "Petra has chosen a different path, to be reborn again, and to try for the Isles of the Blessed."

"The what now?"

"It is a paradise above all," she explains airily. "To reach it, you must live and die thrice, and each time reach such heights of heroism or courage that so suffice to earn you entry into Elysium."

Levi exhales, a low hiss escaping his teeth. Of course she would have—she was always so restless, so fierce, a caged bird striving constantly for the sky. She could never stay in one place, never settle down into comfort and domesticity. Elysium would never have been enough for the girl with fire in her eyes and an unquenchable thirst for more.

"What will you do?" She surveys him with her cool, immortal gaze. It rankles him.

"I'm going, too." He straightens, fixes her with a a cold glare. Persephone cants her head to the side, her expression shifting to something akin to amusement.

"Then, will you give up Elysium to follow this girl?" She waves a hand, and the city's glow reaches almost blinding heights, forcing him to turn his gaze away.

"How much does she mean to you, hero? In this city wait so many who you know and love, who have yearned to see you. Your men, who gave up their lives for you. Your friends, who rode with you to their deaths. Your mother, your own flesh and blood.

"Petra Ral has the spirit of a warrior," she adds, almost conversationally. "Do you, Levi Ackerman? You, with your heart that has ever only wanted peace and comfort?” Her lips twist, mocking. “Or is your heroism a mere product of your circumstances? Do not expect to be blessed with Ackerman blood again, this time. And if you fail—you will never see any of your loved ones again."

Some paradise.

"Do I have to make this decision now? Don't suppose I could stop to sightsee first?" His words are gelid but his tone is raw—not that he'd fool the goddess either way, he supposes.

"Of course not. That wouldn't be any fun," she goes, with that chilling bell-like laugh that makes his hair stand on end. He hesitates.

He thinks of Isabel, that trusting, childlike gleam in her eyes. Furlan, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe with that knowing smirk ghosting over his lips. His mother, singing him lullabies in the dark of the brothel. Erwin, who he'd told, in no uncertain terms, to give up his dreams and die.

And Levi knows it isn't there—he'd slid it onto the finger of her corpse, all those years ago, and it'd be little more than tarnished metal against bleached white bone by now—but he feels the phantom heat of the ring in his pocket, scorching hot. No regrets.

He's never had a single regret, except for her.

Levi lifts his head, and meets the goddess's gaze, unfaltering. Decisive. "I'm going."

"If you wish. But know this, hero." Her voice seems to thunder through the city. "If you succeed, upon your third death you may enter the Isles and live a life of eternal bliss.

"But, if you fail to reach Elysium even a single time." Persephone's eyes gleam with a predatory eagerness, "you are doomed to spend eternity in whatever realm you are sentenced to. The light of paradise will be barred to you...forever."

Talk about dramatic.

"Get on with it, then," he almost spits. It figures, it really does, that even in death, he wouldn't get a second of fucking peace.

Persephone casts him a quelling look. He ignores it. With a roll of her eyes, she waves a hand, and immediately, the glow of the city begins to crumble away, even the sand beneath his feet, and he feels himself fall. An incredible wind rises, and he finds himself being shoved backwards, the fields and the cavern roaring in his ears.

"As a final gift to you, hero..." The goddess's teeth flash tauntingly in the fading light, like pearls set against ebony. "I grant you memory."

The last thing he sees is the glint of cruel delight in her eyes.

[valiantly-onward]

The Serpentine War Ch. 12

Chapter 12: The Way Of The Ninja

The camp was buzzing by morning with news of Garmadon’s arrival. For his part, Wu remained holed up with his brother inside the tent, deep in discussion.

“You should see everyone,” Wu told him. “They are a fine Alliance. I’ll have them assembled.”

Garmadon made no protest. Wu quickly sent Haru to gather the Masters, and came back to the tent. He stood in the entryway for a moment, smiling. Overnight, a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He wasn’t doing this alone anymore.

“In honor of your arrival -” Wu began.

Garmadon looked up drily. “Wu -”

“I will give you -”

“Stop.”

“- my firstborn son.”

“Come on.”

Wu thought for a moment. “Or tea. I’ll just get you tea.”

He crossed the floor to his small firepit. He shifted the logs to coax the fire back into being, then hung his teapot on the rack. After it simmered for a while, Wu offered a cup to his brother. “I’m glad you’re here. I couldn’t do this without you. Believe me, I’ve been trying.”

Garmadon accepted the tea and stood. “I know, brother. That’s why I’m here.” He patted Wu’s shoulder and walked out, sipping his drink.

Wu stuck his tongue in his cheek and shook his head as he rose to follow.

Outside, the Alliance had congregated. Pride flared in Wu’s chest at the sight of them. Ray stood off to the left - when had he gotten so tall? - with Maya leaning against his shoulder. Those two had become closer than either realized; only an outsider could see it. They suffered severe familiarity and understanding. Give them a few hundreds years together and they’d be unstoppable.

Garmadon folded his arms, his teacup still in one hand. “So,” he began loudly. “What do we know about the Serpentine?”

The Masters stared at him.

Wu stepped forward. “Alliance, this is my brother, Garmadon. He will be joining us. You answer to him the same as you answer to me.”

Garmadon nodded his thanks to Wu, and asked again, “What do we know about the Serpentine?”

“Ugly!” Acronix shouted.

Laughter rippled through the small gathering.

“That,” Garmadon conceded. “What else? What do we know about them from battle?”

There was pensieve silence. Finally, Maya said, “We’ve never won a battle with Anacondrai. Every other tribe, yes. Not them.”

Garmadon nodded in agreement. “So, naturally, we must find the Anacondrai weakness if we ever hope to defeat the Serpentine.”

The Masters shifted uncomfortably. “But they have no weaknesses,” Vivian called forward.

“I said we must find one,” Garmadon replied. He paused; a look appeared in his eyes that Wu recognized all too well. He continued, “Which is why I’m sneaking into their camp tonight to spy on them.”

Uproar ensued. Wu simply watched as the Masters clamored and argued. It was insane! No one could sneak up on an Anacondrai. The risk spelled certain death, or capture in the very least.

Finally, Haru emerged from the contention with an actual question. “Will you go alone?”

“I could, but I prefer not to.” Garmadon’s eyes flicked back to Wu, for confirmation. Wu carefully nodded his agreement. He hadn’t considered sending spies so close to the Serpentine, but if anyone could pull it off, it was Garmadon.

“Well, then,” Garmadon declared. “I’ll need your stealthiest Masters. The Master of Shadow, perhaps? And you can still turn invisible, can’t you, Master of Light?”

True to his name, Sam Pale looked pale. Nevertheless, he stepped out from between Ray and Dojin. “I saw how you snuck around last night. You got me, uh...what should we call you?”

“Master Garmadon will do.” Garmadon raised his chin. “And the Master of Shadow?”

Lei raised a hand. “You’re crazy, Master Garmadon, but I dig it. I’m coming”

Garmadon nodded. “Good. We’ll convene here at sunset.”

He dropped back beside Wu, which Wu understood as turning over the floor. He stamped his staff. “Very well, everyone. Back to your usual duties, and the sentry schedule. Ray, Maya, I need you to go down to retrieve Lorin from the village. I - we - will give new orders once we know more about the situation. Dismissed.”

The Masters slowly dispersed, Ray and Maya jogging off in the direction of the village. Wu turned to his brother, who watched the Alliance go with deep contemplation.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Wu asked.

“Yes,” Garmadon replied, with no room for question in his voice.

“Then I trust you.”

Something flickered in Garmadon’s gaze, fleeting. But it was gone nearly as soon as it arrived. “Thank you, Wu.”

Wu grinned, and deftly swept Garmadon’s tea cup into his own hand. “But three of you, sneaking in after dark? I still don’t like it.”

“Relax, brother,” Garmadon said, already stepping backward into the tent. “I am, after all, a ninja.”

~~~

This mission served multiple purposes.

For one, Garmadon didn’t really need to spy on the Serpentine. He knew their basic strategy in this area, since he’d helped design it. That advantage wouldn’t last long; Chen would surely inform the Anacondrai that Garmadon had switched sides. Still, he didn’t want Wu to know how he’d obtained his prior information. So this mission would cover that.

The other purposes? Exactly what he’d said: learn the Anacondrai weakness. And, as a bonus, begin assessing the Alliance, starting with the Masters of Shadow and Light.

The hills were black as pitch at night. Garmadon was careful to avoid the areas he knew the snakes were, but he couldn’t be sure. And neither Lei nor Sam Pale were as stealthy as their powers had led him to believe.

After Lei tripped over another rock, swearing under her breath, Garmadon pulled to a stop.

“What is it?” Sam Pale asked, creeping up at Garmadon’s shoulder.

It was the Serpentine camp. Garmadon fell into a crouch, and the Masters followed in suit. Here, the hills sloped down into the edge of desert lands. A line of Serpentine guards stretched along the base of a small valley. Garmadon figured there would be more invisible Anacondrai sentries further out. The brightness of the camp torches and firepits seemed a little gaudy and stupid to him, but he soon recognized the problem they presented.

Sam Pale squinted as he tilted his head. “How are we supposed to get close? It’s bright as noon down there. And those guards?”

Garmadon sighed. The Master of Light presented a good point; the light would make it difficult to approach in shadows. But he lacked vision. “And so this becomes a lesson. Come here, both of you.”

They scooted closer. He crouched over their backs, pointing from between them. “You see that big tent down there? It’s casting shadows in every direction from those torches. The shadows aren’t very dark, but they exist. Lei, I want you to stay within those shadows as much as possible. How long can you stay incorporeal?”

“A few minutes,” Lei replied. “Maybe fifteen before I have to come out.”

“Test that limit. You will enter the shadows behind that tent and move from tent to tent. I want you to survey the Anacondrai troops as much as possible. Details, Lei. Meet behind the big tent when you’re done. Go.”

The Master of Shadow nodded. Just like that, her form turned misty and vanished. The shadows around them grew unnaturally long for a moment, in response to her presence; Garmadon knew she was gone when they returned to normal.

Garmadon patted Sam Pale’s shoulder. “You will be opposite Lei. You must stay in the light to turn invisible, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then stay in the light. Your orders are the same as Lei’s. Stay out there for as long as you can, and rendezvous behind the big tent.”

Sam Pale sat up on his haunches, shaking out his long hair. “What are you gonna do - uh, sir?”

“You’ll find me behind that command tent.” Garmadon gestured with his chin. “Go.”

So he did. The Master of Light crept slowly down the hill, the firelight gradually growing, and finally faded into the colorless air.

Garmadon crouched still for a moment in the warm night, whispering a near-silent prayer to his father. Then he slid down the other side of the rock face and let his instincts take over.

How could he have forgotten this? The thrill of this ancient art passed from the First Spinjitzu Master to Garmadon and from Garmadon to hundreds throughout the young history of the world. His own years of ninja training seemed so, so long ago, yet he still remembered every form with perfection.

Thankfully, he didn’t run into any invisible Anacondrai. But he soon realized that there would be no getting to the command tent without passing through that sentry line. So Garmadon chose a Serpentine duo far enough from their brethren that their disappearances might pass unseen.

He rolled soundlessly behind a boulder, then stepped out from behind it.

The Hypnobrai soldiers saw him.

Rather than slowing at their alarm, Garmadon picked up speed. He leapt up when he reached them, grasping one in a headlock and swinging around its shoulders. One strike to the soft spot behind its frill, and the Hypnobrai collapsed. Before it even hit the ground, Garmadon was already springboarding off its shoulders, falling kick-first toward the second soldier. This Hypnobrai swiped with his blade; Garmadon reoriented to avoid the well-placed strike. He hit the ground with a somersault, sprang up, and caught the Hypnobrai’s sword by the hilt as it slid past him. The Serpentine’s slit-eyes dilated, seemingly in slow-motion, as Garmadon yanked the sword to throw the creature off-balance. As it fell past him, he slammed its soft spot.

Two Serpentine down.

As Garmadon considered the fallen, he lamented the absence of an Anacondrai weak point. The Hypnobrai’s ability to induce the minds of others came with a flaw. But the Anacondrai power of invisibility had no downside. There was no way to neuter their abilities because most of those abilities were simply skill. Perhaps that was why the Anacondrai valued honor so much - at least, as much as snakes could. Unlike the other tribes, an Anacondrai couldn’t cheat their way to victory.

Garmadon stepped over the immobile Hypnobrai - it would be a long time before they awoke - and ducked down behind the tent. There were voices inside, marred by hisses and strained tones. Garmadon dared to lift the corner of the flap, just to see what he was dealing with.

Once, he and Wu had been familiar with all the Serpentine generals. Now, it was a scramble to remember even names. There were three Garmadon could see - a Venomari, a Fangpyre, and an Anacondrai.

The Fangpyre Kandoras was the oldest of the generals, two-headed like his father before him, and like his son after him; Fangpyre chiefdoms usually passed through blood, not combat. Kandoras was wise, and, to the Alliance’s benefit, he was reluctant to fight. He’d caused Chen a lot of trouble during the last few weeks.

Then there was Acidicus, the brilliant Venomari general, and Thraask, one of Arcturus’ right-hands, the bloodthirstiest Anacondrai Garmadon had ever met. Chen must’ve moved a lot of pieces around to get him to command this force.

“...enough, Traask,” Kandoras was saying. “These fools think we’re attacking them because of that giant snake roaming the countryside. We have to leave this place before the humans decide we’re too close.”

“It is not our fault if the humans are fools, as you say,” General Traask replied. Unlike Arcturus, he was diminutive for an Anacondrai, but a violent shade of purple graced his scales, glistening in the torchlight. “I assure you, General Arcturus knows what he’s doing.”

Giant snake, Garmadon thought. There was only one person he knew who kept such a creature. Apparently, sorcery wasn’t Clouse’s only means of wreaking havoc.

“We do not doubt the great general has a plan,” Kandoras’ second head continued, silkier than the first. “But are we simply to cast this treaty away?”

Traask clicked his talons together as he turned to the Venomari. “Tell me, General Acidicus, what does the human say?”

Acidicus’ intelligent eyes gleamed. “The human himself admits his people will turn on us.”

“So you see,” Traask declared, his snaky head twisting back toward Kandoras. “We are simply preparing for the inevitable. This treaty is nearly at an end.”

Someone harrumphed in the corner. Garmadon couldn’t see who it was from his vantage, but Traask spun toward the sound, flicking his tail in annoyance. “General Slithraa?”

The name was unfamiliar to Garmadon, which probably meant it was a new general who had recently won a throne through combat.

“Forgive me, my commander,” said a voice in reply. “but you tell us what we already know. My question is simply when we strike and how?”

Kandoras wound his way forward. His first head spoke again. “We object strongly. We cannot attack until the humans attack us. Traask, you of all serpents must understand honor. Your general made an agreement. We did not bring our tribe into this war so we could become cowards.”

Slithraa, still out of sight, chuckled raspily. “If you ask me, you didn’t need this war to become such.”

Kandoras was atop the Hypnobrai in an instant. His two snouts wrinkled fiercely. “Do not speak to me, neonate. Do not forget that your people were the last to join our union.”

Slithraa slid forward, so Garmadon could see him for the first time. The Hypnobrai was big for his age, a wide fan around his head, scales extensively patterned with yellow swirls. In one hand, he bore the golden staff of his people. Each of the Serpentine in the room, with the exception of Traask, also carried one. The antivenom contained in each could dispel the effects of the individual tribes’ abilities - the only such substance that existed in the world. Unfortunately, the Anacondrai staff was in Ouroboros.

“Traask,” Slithraa said, without looking away from Kandoras. “If you do not remove this disgusting pacifist from my sight, I will take my leave, with my army.”

“Now, let us be reasonable.” Traask slithered between them. “We are all Serpentine here. We are all brethren. Kandoras, if you so wish, you may recall your forces back to another camp. But -” He leered at the Fangpyre. “If we are attacked by the humans, I will hold you personally responsible if we fail to repel them. Understood?”

Garmadon figured the old Fangpyre’s pride would keep him from saying no, but whether he was proven right, he never found out. At that moment, Lei emerged from the shadows.

Only Garmadon’s nightmares and years of training kept him from jumping back in alarm and blowing their cover. “Lei -”

“Yeah, sorry,” she whispered, dismissive. Then she seemed to think better of it, and added, “Master Garmadon.”

He shoved a finger to his lips to quiet her. While Lei raised her eyebrows at the unconscious Hypnobrai guards, Garmadon leaned back to the tent flap. It seemed Slithraa and Kandoras had left, for their voices were nowhere to be heard.

“How would you like me to prepare?” Acidicus asked.

“Double the nightly patrol. Send word to General Skalidor and his Constrictai to prepare. Only one can remain.”

“Only one can remain.” There was a shuffling rasp, which meant one of them had slid out the tent door. Garmadon backed away.

“What was that about?” Lei hissed.

Garmadon was beginning to form an answer when shouts exploded from the parallel line of tents. Traask growled angrily from the other side of the tent wall. The hurried sound of scales on rock and dust accompanied a troop of snakes flashing past on the road.

Sam Pale materialized at the dividing line between light and shadows. His long hair looked slightly charred on one side.

“Sam Pale, what did you do?” Garmadon demanded.

Sam Pale flicked a finger at him. “A bit of a funny story, really. They think I’m a peasant though, so what do you say we run before they find out different, eh?”

~~~

Sam Pale and Lei weren’t stealthy, but they were fast.

Garmadon hung back, watching their trail, scuffing it as best he could. He could hear Serpentine hissing in the rocks and calling to each other, but none appeared in the shadows. Even as the Masters slowed, Garmadon snapped at them to keep going. They weren’t out of danger yet.

Garmadon called on some of his power too. He couldn’t do what Lei could, but the darkness did deepen as he raced past. At his command, rocks split in the distance, causing the Serpentine to move in the direction of the sound. Soon, the lights of their Alliance camp appeared over the hills.

Finally, Garmadon allowed the Masters to rest. Sam Pale tromped over to a rock and sprawled himself over the motley, dust-ridden grass. Lei brushed off the front of her purple robes. “Well.” She blew a loose strand of hair from her eyes. “That was a waste.”

“No, Master of Shadow,” Garmadon corrected, combing back his hair with a hand. “We learned something.”

“Which is?”

Garmadon smiled. “The Serpentine are at odds. Not even their generals can agree. Which means…” He looked up at the camp, firelight in his eyes. “They’re vulnerable.”

@greenygreenland

[theheartsmistakes]

The Last Night Part IV

(Author’s Notes: Does anyone even read this part? I’m going to pretend like you all do... Hello everyone! Here is the next installment of my Jordelia fan-fiction based on the characters created by the amazing Cassandra Clare in her trilogy Chain of Gold. This is really turning into what the cool kids call a “slow burn”. I never intended it to have such an extensive plot, but this quarantine is really bring forth my imagination. Anyway, if you enjoyed this please give it a like, reblog, comment, or feel free to just pop in and say hi. As always, thank you for reading! Happy and safe quarantine to you all. P.S. I have added an original character “Martin” for the selfish reason that I didn’t want to kill Cyril. Please forgive the inconsistency.)

Here is Part I

Here is Part II

Here is Part III

Part IV

“Maybe he should lie down?”

“I don’t need to lie down, mother,” said James, not unkindly, but with a bit of annoyance. “He’s removing a bracelet, not my arm.”

“If you don’t remain still,” said Magnus, his dark eyebrows glistened with flecks of glitter when he arched them, “it might well be.”

Magnus stood in front of James in the center of the Institute library with James’s hand suspended between them while the warlock focused his attention on the seemingly inconsequential silver band that adorned James’s wrist. If one were looking from afar without any context at all it might appear comical. Flecks of blue light danced from Magnus’s fingertips causing the silver to rattle against James’s skin. He wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or if the bracelet had begun to glow. No. It was most certainly glowing and hot. It rattled and spun until it became so hot that James ripped his arm away on instinct. 

Magnus looked up, resigned and slightly paled. “It’s a much more powerful spell than I initially realized.” 

“How do you mean?” Will asked from where he sat on the desk under the arched stain glass window cut and stained to look like the angel Raziel rising up to the heavens. Rain hit the glass as thunder crackled against the Institute’s walls rattling the crystal chandelier above them. “Will it come off?”

“It’s the strangest thing.” Magnus picked up James’s wrist again. “An absolute work of genius, actually. It’s as if it’s alive and it’s fighting against my magic.”

“Well I’ve had quite enough.” Lucie stood up from the floor where she had been petting Church in long, absentminded strokes. The cat gave a placid meow when she’d stopped. She smoothed out her dress and walked towards the door. “There seems to be only one thing left to do.”

“What’s that?” Matthew asked from where he stood in front of the door, blocking her way. He seemed more steady than his usual self. His hand wasn’t twitching where it held the door frame; his eyes remained focused and clear. They had all wondered what brought on his sudden sobriety. It seemed after one conversation with her father and he’d dropped the sauce like one of his waist coats that he deemed “out of style”. Will had that effect on people. It was best not to question it.

“I’m going to collect Grace Blackthorn and drag her here so that she can ask James to remove the bracelet her-bloody-self.” Lucie came to a stop in front of Matthew. It may have been the shadows cast across his face, but Matthew almost appeared afraid.

“No, Lucie, we aren’t sure what Grace is capable of,” said Tessa. “You said only moments ago that she confessed the truth about the bracelet, but you failed to think to bring her here to remove it?”

Lucie’s mouth opened in defense, but closed as if she forgot what she intended to say. She turned back to Matthew with a quizzical grimace. “Why didn’t we bring Grace back with us?”

“She—“ Matthew raised a pale eyebrow. “I must say I don’t recall.”

Lucie turned her back against the wall and crossed her arms over chest. Heat radiated to her face despite the chill that surrounded the room. Anxiety prickled underneath her skin like the desire to run as far and as fast as she could. 

It’d been a whole day since she last spoke to Cordelia. They’d stood in the foray of her Aunt Cecily’s home after having walked in on her brother ravishing Grace Blackthorn against a wall. It was not an image that would soon evaporate from her memories. A blind rage filled her so suddenly that she feared she might have blacked out for a moment. When she came to, the walls behind James and Grace started to ripple and crease as translucent figures emerged from the atrocious paisley wallpaper. Their fleshless hands reached for the disentangled couple when Cordelia wrapped her hand around Lucie’s wrist and the door closed between them. 

No one had seen anything. Not even her brother whose eyes were fastened on Cordelia. No one knew the dark depths to which her power could reach— not even herself. 

“I know you’re upset, darling,” said Tessa, from beside her daughter now, “but have faith that Magnus can remove the bracelet and we will figure this all out.”

“We don’t have time for faith and waiting.” Lucie dropped her arms back to her sides. “Cordelia is on her way to Idris and after what James did, she’s likely to rune her room with wards not even the Angel himself can get through.” 

James grimaced. Good, she thought. He deserves to be in pain.

“That doesn’t sound like Cordelia to me,” said Tessa and pressed a hand to Lucie’s cheek. “You’re warm darling, are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine.” Lucie insisted. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment I think I’ll pop into the kitchen for a glass of water while I have faith and wait.”

Tessa looked resigned. “Maybe someone should go with you.”

“It’s only down the hall,” said Lucie, skirting past her mother towards the now empty doorway. Matthew stood beside James, an arm around his shoulder, as the two of them studied the bracelet. Matthew said something in James’s ear that brought a small smile to her brother’s face. Whatever they had fought about only days ago, it seemed not to matter now. Or if it did, other things took precedence at the moment. 

Tears stung her eyes as she turned from the scene and exited the room.

The framed pictures on the hallway walls rattled with the thunder. Lucie stopped to readjust one that had tilted slightly of her sitting in a deep purple velvet arm chair studying a book. She secretly hated the likeness— not because it didn’t capture her respectfully— but because of the memory of it. She had to sit for nearly four hours listening to the artist drone on about his holiday in the Americas while her brother clashed swords with Matthew in the training room next door. 

“Chin up, dear.” Bridget would say from time to time. “You’ll look like a potato.”

Lucie left the photo off center and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. To her relief, it was empty. Bridget was probably in her room reading or minding the Institute’s many chores. The kitchen always smelt like rosemary, freshly baked loaves, and exotic spices. It was heavenly and had an instant calming effect on Lucie. Memories of being a child and helping Bridget beat dough with her tiny fists until she was covered in flour from her mess of mousy brown curls to her apron came to mind. What she wouldn’t give to have a mound of dough to beat now.

Lucie walked around the center island, covered in a thin layer of flour, to the cupboard that housed the glassware and pulled a cup from the shelf. The pitcher of cold water sat beside the sink; she filled her cup to the brim and took a sip when a slight chill brushed against the exposed skin on the back of her neck. 

“Not now, Jessamine.” Lucie stared down into her reflection in the cup. The soft wispy hair around her face stood out in delicate curls she’d inherited from her father. A leaf sat tucked behind her ear. The coal she’d lined her eyes with had run making her eyes appear wide and fatigued. 

“Should I return later then?”

The cup fell from her hands and shattered at her feet, but she hardly seemed to notice. She spun around and faced the voice. “Jesse.”

A smile curved at the corner of his mouth. His straight black hair fell against his pale skin and swept across his green eyes that studied her from across the room.

“Where have you been?” The shattered glass crushed under her shoes as she moved forward to meet him. An uncontrollable desire to grab him around the shoulders and collapse into him made it difficult for her to breath evenly. She knew she couldn’t; that it wasn’t possible anymore, but reality rarely dissolved desire. 

“Tracking my fugitive mother,” said Jesse, his lips curled over his teeth. “I thought how hard could it possibly be to find a woman who still chooses to wear an enormous Victorian bird hat? Well, it turns out that it’s extremely difficult. If you needed me why didn’t you summon me sooner?”

Lucie averted her eyes to the ink stain marks on her fingers. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

After commanding him against his will to take her to James, she’d made a promise not only to him, but to herself to never command him to do anything again. That included summoning him to her even when she longed to just hear his voice. 

“It’s alright, Lucie.” Jesse stepped towards her but stopped. “Why did you summon me now?”

She looked up aghast. “I didn’t.”

“I heard you,” said Jesse, his expression softened. “It was faint but I heard you.”

Lucie shook her head. “Jesse, I promise you that I did not, or if I had, I hadn’t meant to.”

Jesse opened his mouth to reply when he looked to the kitchen doors. “Someone’s coming.” 

Lucie waited for the doors to swing open to reveal her mother, or father, or Matthew coming to retrieve her after being gone for too long. The air in front of the door rippled, like heat rising on pavement, until the form of a man materialized out of the haze. He was dressed in a rain soaked driver’s uniform, but his back was bent out of shape and his right leg curved out at an unnatural angle.

“Martin?” Lucie balked, recognizing the man that has driven her carriage since she was a child.

Lucie and Jesse both moved towards the ghost from either side of the room. The water that dripped from his coat splashed onto the floor and instantly dissolved into mist. 

“What’s happened to you?” Lucie demanded.

Martin looked between them as if he wasn’t all together sure how he’d come to be standing in front of them. “I was told by others that you would be able to see me; that you would be able to help.” He looked down at his hands. “I feel so strange. Everything and nothing at the same time.”

“Martin?” Tears sprang to her eyes as she realized that he was dead; a ghost standing in her kitchen as he had all of her life. Always casually slipping in to steal a fresh biscuit behind Bridget’s back with only crumbs and Lucie’s giggles left to give him away. He would listen to her stories on long drives and praise her for her prose. He’d laugh in all the right places and made her promise to sign a copy of her first published work, so he could keep it on his mantle. “What happened to you?”

“I was taking Mr. and Miss Carstairs to the London Portal when we were attacked.”

“Cordelia.” Lucie rushed forward. “Where is Cordelia?”

“I don’t know—“ Martin’s body began to flicker and wain, “I don’t have much time. I’m not supposed to be here, you see, but I fear something terrible may have happened. Something truly, truly terrible.”

Lucie burst through the library doors, the hem of her dress wet from her cup of water and her face noticeably pale.

The previous occupants of the room where joined by three more: Christopher stood beside Magnus surveying the bracelet and Thomas towered next to Matthew. Anna Lightwood was holding Church like a baby beside the fireplace. They all looked to her as she entered.

“It’s Cordelia.” Lucie shouted, her hand gripped the wall to keep her stable. “She’s been attacked.”

The room fell silent except for the small yet noticeable ting of metal hitting stone. Lucie’s eyes, along with everyone else’s, looked down at James’s feet where the bracelet now rested half on the toe of his boot and half on the floor. 

[bigfan-fanfic]

Please...

“The bastards!” Blackwall growls. “They left behind their wounded.”

Tash sighs. He doesn’t much like Crestwood. The rain feels wrong, gross, polluted by the strangeness of the rift in the lake. Not like the raw natural power of the rain on the Storm Coast. But he draws himself back from the distractions in his own mind to realize there is a voice on the wind.

“Please... please... get it out of me...”

Tash moves closer to the voice, gasping when he sees its source. A young man, clad in a Templar squire’s uniform, crying in pain as a spike of red lyrium emerges from his shoulder. His brown eyes are bruised and dark from pain and lack of sleep, his veins shadowed from the lyrium flowing through him. His hair is damp with sweat, his body shuddering with each breath, strange red tendrils of energy seeping from the crystal protruding from his body.

“It hurts... stop, please... stop hurting me...” he groans, voice doubled by a distorted echo. Vylandin moves forward to pull Tash away from the boy, Blackwall drawing his sword and stepping in between them.

Tash growls. “Get off me! I need to help him!”

“The red lyrium could kill you.” Dorian murmurs, staring uneasily. “You shouldn’t get close.”

Vylandin yelps as Tash zaps him with a tiny spark of blue lightning, pushing past  the giant man to kneel by the young man’s side. “Dorian. Get lyrium potions.”

Dorian is stunned momentarily: Tash despises lyrium in all forms and has refused until then to even handle a lyrium potion. But at another barking order from the boy, he quickly produces them, handing one to Tash.

“Take one yourself, and be prepared to heal.” Tash says firmly, before downing his bottle in one go, his eyes shining with the strange milky blue film the potion gave. His voice is doubled with a soft echo of magic, the same way the young Red Templar’s was. “Hurry.”

Dorian nods and takes his own potion while Tash focuses. The air becomes thick with tension and a strange singed smell from the electricity charging the air around the young Inquisitor as he held his hand over the spike of red lyrium.

The young man screams as golden light erupts from Tash’s hand over the spike or lyrium. Tash’s magic, always feeling like a summer breeze, somehow warm and yet refreshing, intensifies, feeling like a burning wind from the Western Approach. The light becomes blinding, and Tash and the boy are both screaming wordlessly - until all at once, it ceases.

Dorian immediately casts the healing spell, opening his eyes to see a gaping, bleeding hole where the lyrium used to be, the crystal destroyed by Tash’s cleansing spell. Tash has fallen back against Vylandin’s legs, but seems otherwise fine, and once the spell begins to work. the boy’s eyes flutter open. They are bloodshot, and ringed with an unnatural red around the irises, but he looks much better, even taking the wound into consideration.

“No more... please...”

Tash sits forward on his knees and gently brushes the hair away from the young man’s damp forehead. “The lyrium is gone for now. We need to keep making sure it doesn’t grow back, but you can be free.”

“I never meant to hurt anyone... please, believe me..”

“I do. What’s your name?”

“Niall... name’s Niall. Niall Hart of South Reach.”

“My name’s Tash. We’re going to get you some help, Niall.”

“Thank... you...”

Tash gently kept stroking Niall’s hair until he had drifted to sleep. “Help me make a stretcher. We’re taking him back to Skyhold.”

“Skyhold? But, Tash, he’s a Red Templar!” Blackwall snapped.

“He’s a boy.” Dorian protested.

“A boy who could have information on the Red Templars. And besides. He needs our help, and we’re going to give it. Now move!”

[chrysalispen]

xxvii. up half-known roads

AO3 link is HERE Content warning: field medicine. That means needles and bodily fluids for those not inclined to read such things. Chapter is, as always, below the cut.

==

The interior of the cabin was surprisingly much larger than Ewain’s abode. There was something of it that spoke of years of hard work and improvements made over time. It wasn’t opulent, but she hadn’t expected as much. Familiar fragrances greeted Aurelia’s senses as she slipped across the threshold, lavender and chamomile and - to her surprise - the citrus sharpness of verbena. Rhaya seemed to have noticed her looking, for a humorless smile flickered across the woman’s face.

“We cannot rely on others to help us very often, so we are very self-sufficient out here,” she said, “as Vahne has told you, no doubt.”

“She did make mention once or twice,” Aurelia chuckled. She caught the worried frown on the girl’s face, tilted up to watch the two women like a little blossom searching for the sunlight, and patted her shoulder. “Vahne, if you would, I think I will need my bags back, please.”

Wordlessly the Miqitten nodded and shrugged the straps loose, passing them back in one small fist. Aurelia took them with a small smile and a word of thanks, trying to maintain some semblance of calm, even though the almost ominous quiet of the cabin had not escaped her notice. By all appearances, the only occupants of the house appeared to be Vahne and her aunt- but her tearful outburst back in Willowsbend had indicated in no uncertain terms that there must be at least one other person here.

She cast a quizzical glance at Rhaya, whose scowl had not lessened even slightly since their uneasy truce, and at length, the Keeper huntress shut her eyes and sighed.

“This way,” she said gruffly. “I’ve made a temporary lie-in space down in the root cellar.”

Aurelia would have missed the crude wooden trapdoor if she hadn’t been seeking it. It was partially obscured by the hard-packed dirt of the floor, worn smooth by years of passing feet, adorned only with a large and clearly old iron ring which was itself half-covered in grime. Rhaya knelt with a soft grunt and lifted the ring. The panels began to rise, dust shuddering out of the cracks and grooves in the wood, then fell backward to the floor with a dull thud. A ladder was propped against a set of beams that ran just under the floor, descending into near darkness- save for one weak, flickering light.

“You can come down with me, conjurer, it’s all right. I replaced the ladder just last summer.” Swinging nimble feet onto the steps, she began to descend. “The worst of the forest fires missed this place, gods only know how, but I thank them. Vahne, take the lantern, there’s a girl.”

Before she could speak it was upon her again, the weakness and nausea, combined with the foul chemical taste of ceruleum and bile and the stink of stale water. An inhuman shriek of rage and triumph. The blazing heat of unnatural fire-

A man-made crimson moon cracking to splintered pieces of metal like an egg. She felt her gorge rise.

Oh seven swiving hells, not this again…!

“Conjurer?” Rhaya’s voice, the sound of it a distant echo, as if she were shouting down a well. “Are you coming down or not?”

Aurelia’s hands trembled violently. She squeezed her eyes shut, drew one deep breath, then two, trying to dispel her panic and her frustration.

That was done, she told herself. Carteneau was done. All of it was done, and over with, and for the gods’ sake what was wrong with her? There was no need to be so afraid, it was just a bloody root cellar. Perfectly sound, and people from Eorzea to Garlemald had been building them for ages. It wasn’t going to collapse and it wasn’t going to trap her, she’d be safe as houses down there, she-

When her eyes opened again she saw that Vahne was staring at her in frank concern.

“Are you all right? Have you overtaxed yourself? I must have pushed you too much. You can have the rest of my waterskin if you-”

“No,” she rasped. A wet sigh shuddered from slack lips. “No, I’m- ….I’ll be fine. Just a bit tired, I think.”

If her smile looked as false as it felt there was no way it was fooling anyone, but neither of them chose to question it, and fighting the cold levin prickles of panic crawling up her arms, Aurelia forced herself to descend the ladder. Whatever it was that had Vahne so upset, she knew it must be down here. She had to go.

“Vahne,” she said quietly, “I’m going to need you to pass down my big black bag to me. All right? You’ll need to be careful, it’s very heavy.”

All solemnity and worry now, the girl nodded and watched as Aurelia divested herself of her largest burden and began to descend the ladder. For all that her fear-weakened grip had been tremulous in places, she managed to make it down without slipping and was able to shoulder her bag again when Vahne passed it down.

The lantern was next. Rhaya took it, then gestured with a tilt of her chin. “Over here. We keep pallets down here for sleeping in case there’s an emergency. Spent a near fortnight down here after the moon fell.”

The smell hit her first. It was one she’d encountered plenty of times before: the warm fecal stink of festering flesh, nigh-overpowering in such a close space. Aurelia coughed, lifting her forearm to press over her nose immediately and fighting to hold in the contents of her already unsettled stomach. Rhaya did the same but kept the lantern aloft in one trembling fist.

A Hyuran man lay upon the sleeping pallet, his bronzed skin greasy with a layer of sweat, cheeks rosy with color. Hectic warmth roiled in waves from his prone body as she drew near, much like the ceruleum-powered space heater in her old bedroom back in Garlemald, fighting against blizzards to keep the room comfortable. She saw filthy bandages and streaks of angry red and sweat-soaked linens.

Aurelia winced.

“How long has he been like this?”

“Two days. I sent Vahne out to gather herbs for a poultice. She came back with what you had given her but-”

“What I gave her wouldn’t have been enough to stop the spread of this infection.” Aurelia reached forward and pressed her hand gently against his brow, not that it was strictly necessary. She could already tell the poor man was running a fever and a high one at that. “I’ll need more light so I can have a look at the wound. Do you have more lanterns? I have fire shards if you can spare them.”

Rhaya tilted her chin at her, the suspicious furrow returning to her brow.

“What is it?”

“Thought Vahne said you were a healer. Can’t you just…”

“It won’t do him any good for me to use a curative spell if the sickness is still raging in his body. It would be a waste of aether.” And she hadn’t yet learned the spell that would let her simply excise the infection by magical means, though she didn’t say so aloud. Rhaya was skeptical enough of her presence as it was. “Lanterns, please. I need light. And a washbasin and fresh cloths.”

“But he-”

Rhaya stilled at the deep, cracked groan that issued forth from the man’s parted lips, whistling through them like the wind around the eaves of a house. Eyelashes fluttered, lids opened, and Aurelia found herself staring into irises the color of fresh pine needles, their sclera made glassy with pain and ill health.

“Imanie,” he whispered.

Aurelia shook her head. “Not quite, friend.”

“Where is Imanie,” he attempted to push himself up onto his elbows but collapsed against the befouled bedding with a strangled gasp. “I can’t-”

“Lay still. Vahne, darling, can you fetch a clean bowl?”

Rhaya chewed on her lip for a moment, her dark gaze traveling between Aurelia and the sick man for long moments before she set the torch in her hand upon a nearby crate.

“I’ll be back with another lantern,” she said. “And cloths and a bowl. Is there aught else?”

“If you have any spare pallets, that too will be needful. ‘Tis likely this one will need to be burnt. It’s beyond salvaging, I’m afraid- and I’ll need your help to change the bedding.” She shook her head. “All of this would be better done in the cabin, but he’s too weak to be moved up the ladder. We’ll make do as needs must. And Rhaya?”

“Yes?”

Aurelia grimaced. “Leave the door open for a while.”

She fought to control her own breathing. The air in the cellar was heavy and earthy and uncomfortably warm, and the reek of sickness combined with the crushing horror of her own memory made her want to retch. Only the knowledge that she’d put her patient at even further risk gave her the ability to power through her fear- although as the cooler air from above wafted into the room and began to dilute the smell and the close mustiness of the cellar, she began to feel a little better.

The man on the pallet barely seemed to notice her inner turmoil; he stared sightlessly at the wooden beams overhead, moaning that same name over and over like a mantra on the far edge of his own mortality. Rocking back on her heels, Aurelia reached for her gathering satchel, dug out a spare piece of hemp she sometimes used to protect herself from inhaling pollen from certain toxic plants, and tied it over her nose and mouth.

“Miss Aurelia,” Vahne’s voice echoed from her back. The Miqitten had stuck her head through the trapdoor opening and waved a wooden bowl in one small hand. “Will this work?”

It wasn’t near large enough in point of fact, but beggars could hardly be choosers. “I’ll make it work.”

“Aunt Rhaya’s looking for the spare lantern but wanted me to give you these too.” A shuffling noise, then a handful of neatly pressed hempen washcloths were dangled overhead. Aurelia quickly moved to intercept them before they fell from Vahne’s hands to the dirt floor. “Do you need me to come and help you?”

“I’m managing just fine for now, but what I need from you is to help your aunt find some extra light.”

“All right! I think I know where it is. And the extra wicks if you need that too.”

“Excellent. Thank you, dear.”

Months after her near brush with death and after her own awakening, it was still something of a marvel to be able to work with aether. To be able to draw water forth from a crystal with a thought, then to heat it with another- these were small things the “savage” Eorzeans took for granted, things which were beyond the ken of most of her people, and had for many years been beyond her own.

But try as she might she could not shake the association with the voice that had called to her in the depths of mud and fire and pain, trapped beneath tonzes of metal slowly sinking into the earth. Not quite.

A chill raced down her limbs.

(hear. feel. think)

With a bone-wracking shudder, Aurelia shoved the memory firmly into the back of her mind for further consideration. Ruminating on the source of her newfound powers wouldn’t help her, and it certainly would not help the man whose life now lay in her hands.

So thinking she reached in one satchel for the small bar of soap she kept on hand and set it alongside the bowl, then turned her attention back to the man on the pallet. Rhaya had removed whatever shirt he might have worn to examine and dress the wound as best she could, and she hadn’t done a bad job of it; Aurelia’s own healing experience made her think the woman must have had at least a basic education in field medicine if not botany. Which would make sense, if she had sent her niece into the forest to replenish her supplies.

Taking extra care not to touch the reddened skin she peeled the dressing away and grimaced at what she saw. The wound looked as though it had been partially sealed at one point, possibly through cauterization, but it had ulcerated and was slowly leaking into the bandages and the linens beneath him. Aurelia could more easily see the streaks of angry red down his arm now. She could help him, but-

“Miss Aurelia?” She looked over one shoulder to see Vahne halfway down the ladder with her prize in tow. “I found the torch. Do you want me to light it?”

“Please. And if you would, bring it over here and set it up on that crate.”

The Miqitten’s little button nose wrinkled in distaste as she ventured closer.

“...What in the hells is that stink?”

“Your friend,” Aurelia said wryly. “That is what it smells like when a wound goes bad.”

“Bad? Is… he’s not going to-”

“I’ll know more about his prognosis in a little while, I think.”

“What’s a ‘prognosis’?” Vahne asked, her little brow knitted with a frown that was for once curious rather than worried. She set a trimmed wick into the lantern and struck a match, and a third light flickered to life. “Is that bad?”

“Prognosis means how well I should wager he’ll recover from his injuries. Vahne, did your aunt seal his wound, by any chance?”

“What? Oh, yes. He was bleeding everywhere when Aunt Rhaya and I found him. All over his strange jacket and everything. She was worried he might bleed to death and that was the only way to get it to stop.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I… should she not have done that?”

“I think you and your aunt did just fine under the circumstances,” she replied, and that was true enough. “You might want to go back upstairs with her, though.”

“What? Why?”

“This is going to be very messy.”

“Messy how?”

Another glance at Vahne’s face showed a keen interest in what her new conjurer friend was doing, rather than disgust at the blood and the offal smell. Aurelia bit back a laugh. She should have known the girl’s curiosity might overcome her distaste- she’d harbored the same kind of interest in these sorts of things herself at this age.

“I have to reopen his wound and examine it. If your aunt has cauterized it and kept it clean-”

“She has! We both have!”

“-and it went bad anyway, then there may be something stuck in his body that’s causing the problem. If that’s so, I’ll need to pull it out. Once that’s done, I’ll have to drain out all the pus, and it’s going to smell very bad in here.”

Vahne’s nose crinkled. “It already smells bad in here.”

“Well, it’s about to be much worse,” Aurelia retorted briskly, reaching for the large black bag at her side. “If you have a weak stomach at all, I’d advise that you go back upstairs.”

That small jaw went tight with determination. “You’re going to need an assistant, right? Aunt Rhaya always has me help her when she takes care of things.”

“Vahne, I don’t-”

“I’m not afraid of blood or a few bad smells,” she declared, folding her arms across her thin chest. “I’ll stay and help you.”

Aurelia’s brows lifted nearly to the folds of the kerchief on her head.

“If you stay,” she said, “I’m putting you through your paces and I will show no mercy. There’s no room in an operating theater for those who won’t work. Do you understand?” Without hesitation, the girl nodded firmly.

“All right. First order of business -- wash your hands.” She passed her the soap bar and the bowl of water. “I saw an empty bucket in that far corner. Dump the water in there when you’re done and give me back the bowl.”

While Vahne busied herself with the bowl Aurelia opened the field kit bag and reached into the outer pocket for the small set of chirurgical tools. It wasn’t enough to run a proper operating theater but it had what she required for now. She removed a scalpel, a needle and thread, tweezers, and a set of shears and set them on the crate.

“Where do I put the bowl?”

“Right down there for now.”

Vahne’s eyes flared at the sight of the metal implements. “What are those?”

“As I said -- I have to reopen the wound first.” The penlight was in the back compartment, strapped in just above the reagent and tincture bottles. “If I give this little lantern to you and tell you where to point it, will you do that for me?”

“Yes, Miss Aurelia. How do I…?”

“There’s a little button on the side. Just press it and the light will shine.”

“What- wow! ” Her young assistant tilted the device this way and that, handling it as reverently as if it were some ancient and fantastic artifact. “How does this work? Is there a crystal inside?”

Aurelia had already refilled the bowl to wash her own hands. “Magitek.”

“Magitek?” Vahne’s smile faded. She set the penlight down, frowning at it suspiciously. “...You mean like the sort of thing the Empire uses?”

“The same.”

“Why do you have magitek?”

“It’s just a light. Machina are not always used for ill. Here, dump this out.” She passed Vahne the bowl and drew out several pieces of woven hemp and a long roll of field dressing from the bag next, setting it alongside her tools, then a set of opaque gloves. “So you’ve seen airships, right? Those use magitek.”

“Imperial ships.”

“Well, yes, but also regular transports for flight.” Aurelia shook her head. “Never mind. I need the bowl back.”

Vahne set it back down on the lip of the crate and watched in silence as another handful of crystals was used to refill it, then reheat, worrying at her lower lip with her elongated canine teeth. Distracted by thoughts of what she would need to do, Aurelia paid little heed to it, setting each of the tools in the water and leaving them to heat before reaching into her bag a final time - then recalled that she had an audience.

She paused. “Vahne?”

“Hm?”

“Can you be a dear and go take that bucket outside and empty it?”

Those soft grey eyes narrowed. “You aren’t trying to make me leave, are you?”

“No, but we can’t have buckets of dirty water sitting about. Once you’ve emptied and washed it, you can bring it back.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Vahne heaved a sigh, the sort of exasperation that only young adolescents could voice in Aurelia’s personal experience, but she hauled herself to her feet and picked up the bucket, dragging it to the ladder as if it were tonzes heavier than it truly was. She could hear the girl’s grousing long after her erratically flickering tail was no longer visible over her shoulder.

There was another deep and rasping groan as the man stirred once more.

“Imanie,” he whispered hoarsely. “I have to warn them-”

She set down the syringe she’d drawn as soon as Vahne had quit the cellar and gently pressed her patient’s sternum until he lay prone once more.

“Save your strength, friend,” she said, lifting his hand and dabbing at his sweaty skin with a corner of hemp soaked in a solution of distilled spirits- not the most elegant solution to lacking an astringent cleanser, she would allow, but for the nonce it would be sterile enough for her purposes. “I need you to lay still.”

His head flopped slowly from side to side. Aurelia picked up the syringe and slipped the needlepoint into the contents of the one vial of sedative she’d drawn from her collection: a sickly greenish-tinted liquid that Vahne would definitely have found suspicious. Aurelia flicked her fingernail against the side, and depressed the plunger just enough to dislodge any air pockets. She would have to work quickly. A magitek penlight could be explained, but not a medicine that no Eorzean chirurgeon would have in their possession.

When she drew close to her patient once more his eyes opened and settled, unseeing, upon her face. They were a deep, dark brown, but even without her penlight, she could see they were dilated. His breath came in hot, uneven spurts, and his expression was twisted with terror.

“Rose,” he moaned. “Imanie.”

She slid the needle home and into the map of his veins and depressed the plunger.

“You can tell me all about her later,” the Garlean murmured, gently patting the top of his hand where she’d administered the sedative. “Sleep.”

=

Vahne returned only minutes after she’d cleaned the syringe and tucked it away, and had started to cut away the old bandages. To the girl’s credit she did not flinch at the man’s cracked moans when Aurelia slowly and carefully wiped the site clean, nor at his strangled cry when the chirurgeon cut into flesh with her scalpel and blood had poured over his chest to soak into the pallet linens, nor the stomach-turning smell of pus. Draining a wound was necessary and disgusting work, and a task not easily done by those with a weak constitution. But despite a series of gagging coughs, the girl stayed.

Aurelia was more impressed than she let on. There was magical healing and there was mundane field medicine, and few had the stomach for the latter. Vahne, she thought with some amusement, might not make a half-bad chirurgeon one day were she so inclined.

“You can turn off the light,” Aurelia said at length. “Well done.”

Vahne exhaled and there was the soft click of the button before the penlight went dark. Aurelia let her gaze roam over the girl’s face, eyes glassy with fatigue but as intensely focused as they had been when she started her work.

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“All of this.” She set the light on the crate and tucked a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “Healing is hard work.”

“It is. But I enjoy helping people, and the world will always have need of healers.” Aurelia reached for the field dressing. “Why don’t you go ask your aunt for a stray pallet? This one will need to be burned. We can’t let him sleep in dirty bedding else the sickness will return to his hurts.”

“But-”

“I’m only going to use a bit of magic to help him along before I bandage his shoulder. You really aren’t missing anything.”

Once the girl had retreated back up the ladder steps, Aurelia drew in a deep breath and reached for the man’s shoulder. She still remembered what had happened the last time she had tried to heal someone badly hurt, but… she knew better now, what to do, and the anxiety was little more than a passing twinge as she drew from the land’s aether, channeled it through her own, and watched a soft and watery lambent glow suffuse his skin. He stirred briefly, then settled, and did not move again as she rolled the bandage over his arm and secured it. Despite her words, Aurelia wasn’t overly concerned; the man was young and looked quite healthy.

With a thoughtful frown, she turned to the small object she’d drawn from deep within his shoulder, quite close to the bone. It was a gunblade bullet, and while there was nothing about the projectile that by itself would have distinguished it from any other to her mind-

There was one more piece of cloth left next to the bowl. She used it to pick up the bullet, folded the corners of the fabric to make a pouch it couldn’t escape and tucked the object in her small satchel.

She’d have questions for him, once he awakened.

~*~

The night passed uneventfully. Rhaya had let her have a small cot that she had kept beneath Vahne’s bed, and although there was little in the way of spare bedding now it was comfortable enough. Aurelia slept through cockcrow for the first time in months and found herself sitting up and blinking as sunlight streamed through the front windows. She’d fallen asleep still in her kerchief and dalmatica, and felt rumpled and grimy.

Rhaya was waiting for her with a bowl of frumenty and grilled salted salmon and a mug of-- coffee, Aurelia thought with surprise, real coffee. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had aught but weak tea and water to drink.

“Thought you might want to break your fast before you see to your patient’s needs,” the huntress said. Her ears swiveled back, her tail flicked, and then she added: “I wanted to thank you too. And apologize for my behavior.”

“It’s quite-”

“We’re not… it isn’t that we aren’t hospitable, you know.” She was very pointedly not looking Aurelia in the eyes, turning back to the stovetop. “Gridanians don’t much see the difference between us and bandits, though. So when Vahne brought you back… well, I’ll not draw this out. Thank you for your assistance. I did what I could but it wasn’t enough.”

“You can hardly be faulted for trying to help him.” Aurelia cleared her throat, deciding to change the topic and save the other woman her blushes. “I’ll take him breakfast, but I think he should just have frumenty and some fresh water for now.”

“I’ll take it to him,” Vahne volunteered around a mouthful of salmon. “Want t’see what Miss Aurelia did to patch-”

“You’ll sit there and eat your breakfast first,” Rhaya countered. “Both of you will- unless you’d like to wash first, conjurer?”

She shook her head. “I’ll see to myself after I’ve checked on him.”

The man was awake when she descended the stairs, though it was clear he hadn’t been awake very long. His eyes drooped with fatigue but were no longer glassy, and Aurelia could see by the greasy patina of sweat that covered his skin that his fever had snapped.

“You are very lucky,” she said. “Your friends saw you were ill and the child decided to fetch help from the nearest village.”

“Who are you?” he croaked. “I thought the Keepers of the Moon didn’t like Gridanians.”

“They don’t. Sit up and I’ll feed you.”

He grimaced at the jostling of his wounded shoulder but did as she bid him, letting her tuck several pillows behind his shoulders and back. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. But I’m here because I have questions for you.” She tucked a spoonful of oats and honey in his mouth before he could answer. “Perhaps you might explain how you came by your injury.”

“Did my hosts not tell you? I was attacked in the woods-”

“I dug a gunblade bullet out of your shoulder. ‘Attacked’ is putting it lightly. You were accosted by an imperial patrol- and I do mark your accent.” He stared at her with wide, fearful eyes. “Are you part of the Ala Mhigan Resistance?”

“It wasn’t-”

Aurelia sighed. “Or did you perhaps desert your posting?”

He went very, very still, turning away from her spoon and staring at the patterns the lantern light made against the cellar beams. She paused, then set the bowl upon the crate.

“What is your name?”

“Sewell,” he said. “I swear to you upon my life, I mean them no harm.”

“Who is Imanie?” He froze, his expression suddenly not unlike that of a trapped animal. “And Rose? You were talking about them last night.”

“I can’t-”

“You can’t what?”

He swallowed, visibly, the apple in his throat bobbing up and down. “....I can’t tell you. It’s safer for all of you if you know as little as possible.”

“Will you at least tell me when or where you were shot?”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She set the bowl down and went to stand. He caught her wrist.

“Rhaya,” he said. “Would you- would you tell her I asked after her?”

“Since I’m about to ask her to come downstairs, you can tell her yourself,” Aurelia said tartly, and made for the ladder before he could respond.

[luma-aylin]

Boss Battle: Luma Aylin

Instance Name: The Garden of Liminality

Boss Title: Voidmage Luma

Boss Music: Once Upon A December

Questline: A Sweet Surprise, Curiouser and Curiouser, Mirror Mirror...

Questline Synopsis: A normal day took an unexpected turn when you bumped into a tiny miqo’te in the streets of Gridania, the frosting of her cupcake smeared across your shirt. She introduces herself as Luma, and to make up for her clumsiness she treats you at her favorite cafe, introduces you to her mentor, lets you borrow a book.. Eventually you’re escorted by Luma and her mentor through the Shroud to their home, the Adreus Manor. 

You’re whisked around the manor by the energetic girl, she’s far too happy to show you around and insists you stay the night, they haven’t had any visitors in such a long time. How could you say no to such big, glossy, pleading eyes? The looming presence of her intimidating mentor makes the decision easier. You join them in the lounge after a long evening of activities, but Luma’s final request is to show you her special mirror. She demonstrates how it works before eagerly handing it over to you, watching over your shoulder while her mentor observes with a smarmy smirk. Nothing seems to happen as you stare into the mirror, so you glance back to ask Luma but she’s already asleep. You call out to her but you’re hushed by her mentor. 

When you turn back to the mirror your reflection is accompanied by a demon behind you, the skull of a goat-like creature curling above you. There’s nothing there when you turn to look, but you can feel a cold, large claw grip your shoulder, then another around your arm. Any scream or shout for help is unheard, your voice is caught in your throat as your field of view is consumed by bright red eyes. 

The sound of familiar giggling wakes you. As you come to you recognize Luma’s voice somewhere nearby, then a strange deeper voice that resounds through your body in an unpleasant flood. You’re propped up against a tree in a lush forest, wildflowers crawl across your legs and hang unnaturally from the trees above. You’re ensnared within a verdant willow, and as your vision returns to normal you find the flowers tickling your cheeks are staring at you curiously. Their pistils are eyes of all colors, peering at this mysterious stranger within their woods. You shoot up in alarm and push your way through the thick hanging leaves, emerging from the flowery woods you rush through a trellis of a garden only to find Luma and her company: the same dark demon you saw in the mirror. 

(ooc: I put the fight under the cut, it just makes the post super long because I don’t know how to write short things.. genuinely it’s really long and I don’t know how to write a fight! Nobody tagged me I just did this for fun, saw it from @glorified-thieves​ who asked me to tag them if I ever finished this! If you want to do this tag me!)

The Fight

“Wha-? You’re not allowed in here! Get out!” 

Phase 1: Heartstorm

Voidmage Luma’s encounter is similar to fighting Edda Blackbosom, she possesses powerful black magic and melee ability. Luma begins with a barrier cast around her that the party will have to break periodically throughout the fight, much like Stoneskin. Luma will attack with melee swipes, party wide magic damage, target one member to combust and force them to move out of the party, and use a homing ice strike on one party member until approximately 60% of Luma’s health. 

Tank Buster Voice Line: “Why won’t you just leave me alone!?” 

Tank Buster Action: Luma will launch the tank into the air dealing physical damage, then charge a strike of magical damage as an icicle will pierce them back down. Her first attack applies a magic vulnerability debuff, forcing the a tank swap before the cast of her icicle finishes.

Ward: Luma will cast a barrier around herself that must be broken.

Glimmer: An ice storm will sweep through the arena dealing magic damage. (aoe magic damage)

Guillotine: Luma swipes the tank into the air dealing physical damage and applying a magical vulnerability. The tank will fall to the floor. (tank buster physical)

Sheer Force: An icicle will pierce the tank holding aggro with magical damage. (tank buster magic)

Despair: A crosshair buff will appear next to a player’s name in the partylist to signify they are marked for an AoE attack. This player must move out of the party or risk the AoE fire damage hitting the party as well. (single target with aoe damage)

Ice Wave: A single player will be marked with an icicle above their head to signify they will be followed by a homing attack. Icicles will shoot up from the ground, dealing damage to anyone in their path, the targeted player must run away until it stops. (homing wave)

Phase Transition: Sentenced

“Get away from me! My innocence will not be ruined any further!”

This phase transition is marked by the battleground changing. A stone platform will emerge from the garden and bring the party into the air as darkness envelops the entire screen. Luma will engulf herself in a barrier and rise into the air as her scythe disperses into the surrounding darkness that has eyes staring from every inch of the inky backdrop. From the shadows will appear Fhorniuhr, wielding his scythe, becoming the target for this phase. 

Fhorniuhr: “What sort of monster takes advantage of such kindness..? Your transgression cannot go unpunished.”

Fhorniuhr attacks much the same as Luma, using his scythe for melee with an accompaniment of  black magic. The large voidsent will attack with cleaving half the arena, deal a tank buster, restricting the arena by placing void pitches on the floor (will explode should you touch them), deal AoE magic damage, and restrain a healer at a time. Periodically, the eyes peering out from the dark will cast a room wide paralysis, so be sure to look away. At 50% of Luma’s gauge Fhorniuhr will cast void call, a new mob of 6 voidsent will appear. Fhorniuhr will stop physical and auto attacks, but begin to cast Nether Song repeatedly until all voidsent are dead or he consumes them. The voidsent will be slowed as they try to get to Fhorniuhr, ready to sacrifice themselves at his command and should they reach him Fhorniuhr will gain a buff that increases his magic damage. Once the additional voidsent are slain or eaten, Fhorniuhr will place a bleed on the arena, the floor will be covered in darkness that tries to restrain the party, a DoT buff will appear beside everyone’s name. Fhorniuhr’s onslaught will continue until Luma’s gauge reaches 100%.

Banished Soul & Void Touched: Depending on where Fhorniuhr is facing, the entire arena on his left or right side respectively will be struck with his scythe, should a player be hit it will place a vulnerability stack as well as dealing damage. There is no orange zone warning. (Banished Soul is left, Void Touched is right)

Spell Breaker: Fhorniuhr will strike the tank with his scythe, dealing physical damage. 

Void Pitch: A purple arrow will appear briefly above a player’s head, after 4 seconds Fhorniuhr will drop a void pitch on them that will stay on the floor for 30 seconds. If it is touched it will explode. (magic damage)

Nether Song: A wave of void energy will wash over the arena. (magic aoe damage)

Restrain: Fhorniuhr will grasp a healer in his claw and hold them up in the air, his wrist will become targetable and be given a health bar that must be taken down to release the healer. 

Phase 2: Innocence Lost

“How foolish I was to think we were friends.. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt despite their warnings, and what do I get for it? Betrayal.” 

The darkness will disperse and the arena will flood with stars, the party now trapped on a stone platform surrounded by the moonless night sky. Luma’s barrier will disappear and she will retake her place on the arena floor, scythe in hand. Luma will gain the abilities from Fhorniuhr’s phase and hit harder than her initial phase. The arena cleaves will become faster and she will cast party wide damage always after a tank buster. Eyes will appear frequently to cast paralysis, if a party member is stunned then Luma will gain a stack that increases her attack. 

Luma will cast Ice Wave right after Despair, forcing the party member targeted with Despair to circle the arena at a safe enough distance from whoever is targeted with Ice Wave. Both players must move around the arena while the party stays center. During this phase if the player with Despair is hit by Ice Wave it will deal AoE damage and give a vulnerability stack to the party. 

There will be no void pitches during this phase, but shadows of Fhorniuhr will flicker across the arena floor to 4 corners. Luma will cast Null, at the end of the cast 4 party members must be standing in the shadows as they will be grappled by the demon and pulled into another area. 

The 4 players stolen by Fhorniuhr will appear on a platform to fight Fhorniuhr again. He will use his left and right cleaves, Spell Breaker, and Nether Song until he is killed and the players are returned to the rest of the party, hopefully alive. If a player is killed by Fhorniuhr, Luma will gain a buff. 

Phase 3: Void Call 

“Can you feel it? The call of the void? Allow me to make the decision easier.”

Once Luma’s health reaches 0 she will erect a barrier around herself as she casts Suppression. The arena floor will become a void portal and the party will slowly begin to sink into the darkness. Luma’s barrier will be stronger than usual and need to be broken before she becomes targetable. The party must defeat her before the cast finishes or it will cause a wipe. 

“How could you..? Haven’t you taken enough from me? And to think I trusted you..” 

Duty Completion Drop: Fhoniuhr’s Bone Piece (Exchange for voidal weapons) 

Coffer Drop: Orchestrion Scroll or a Jar of Eyes furniture item

Once the battle is over you experience a terrible headache, you wince and stumble to a familiar looking mirror on the ground as you find yourself back in the garden. The sound of Luma sobbing quietly echoes throughout the area, a sense of guilt washes over you before you fall to the ground unconscious. When you wake you’re in the familiar woods of the Shroud and it seems dawn is crawling across the forest now. You are far from Adreus Manor and without some belongings, but nonetheless whole and unscathed.. However Luma’s soft cries ring throughout your ears for the rest of the day.

[blondsblack]

      introspective  on  miss  narcissa  irma  black . 

birthday:   born on the night of the 20th of may, morning of the 21st... narcissa lies on the border between taurus & gemini. a deeply devoted and dutiful daughter, narcissa is undoubtedly the most responsible and reliable of all her family. she represents stability as well as practicality when faced with the ever-heavy prospect of being her family’s ‘last hope’ and ‘saving grace’. she stands steadfast in her decision making and patient as ever as she awaits the payoff, or rather endgame, of all the years of hard work she’s put in to raising the black family up once again, from the tatters her dear sisters & cousin, sirius had left it in. beyond those taurus traits of her, lies the gemini... sociable, adaptable, quick-witted and charming. she’s disarming, captivating and two personalities in one. at the drop of the hat, you may well glimpse the narcissa spotted at grand parties, surrounded by glitz & glamour, talking up a storm with members of high society whilst on the other hand, the reality of it all will begin to set in - the weight of the world that lies on her slender shoulders. the responsibility passed onto her by her parents no less, tasked with restoring order... narcissa is thoughtful, earnest, restless even below the surface. so desperate is she for the ultimate seal of approval, the deepest of desires and to be content in it. truly content.

wand:   since graduating from hogwarts, it’s not often that narcissa holds her wand in her hand anymore. champagne flutes, and expensive gifts given by ministry members and associates of the sacred twenty-eight, the so-called ‘wizarding elite’ perhaps but never her wand. it stays on her person, still as treasured as the first day she received it in ollivander’s, of course but she feels her spell-casting days are beyond her, or so her mother says. taking the dainty thing between her dexterous fingers, it’s just as ornate, and pretty as her life has become as of late. made of ebony wood with a core of unicorn hair, it stands at 10 and 1/4 inches (to fit her smaller stature) with supple flexibility. its decor, silver to compliment the sleek black of the wood with small, fine jewels dotted in a neat pattern around the handle where she comes to grip it.  

amortentia:   she’d quite like to think that when she holds the little, crystal vial to her nose, the scent will be of one, lucius malfoy. hoping perhaps, that a token of her devotion... and appreciation for him in such a way would serve in swaying her in his favour. she doubts however, that he’d be so fickle. not the lucius she knows anyway. to her disappointment, the blonde believes she can only just feel him creeping into the notorious love potion anyway... the most potent scent being her own. as it has been for many years now. notes of her perfume... fresh and vibrant orange, jasmine accompanied by rose. patchouli and vetiver further reflecting the floral nature of her signature scent. then comes accents of champagne, pink to be specific, tinged with a cloud of cigarette smoke and the distinct smell of packaged goods, new clothes and the like. all unwrapped before her, mirroring the morning of christmas day. the most recent change however, being the unmistakeable but glorious flowery scent of a hidden meadow she’d happened upon deep in the grounds of malfoy manor as a young girl. the potent woody smell reminding her of crisp, autumn mornings there, dew hanging from each singular petal - sparkling in the sun’s early rays.

boggart:   brideswater manor is all that emerges when the youngest of the black sisters is confronted with a boggart. a familiar sight for narcissa, her home is stood in all its glory but closer inspection reveals that the hallowed halls are noticeably quiet, dark and derelict... the house sits entirely abandoned before her. the walls lay crumbling, in a state of complete and utter disrepair. her home... their home is a decaying ruin. It invokes the feelings of abandonment, loneliness and isolation that plague her every thought... surrounded as she is, or rather, once was. narcissa is somebody that feeds off of others, her childhood... chock-full of memories of the three sisters ruling the manor like queens and being treated as such by all that passed through there, she in particular doted on by her parents, waited on hand & foot whilst her present sees her surrounded by attendees at glamorous soirees, grand dinners hosted by the elite, she is as surrounded as ever and yet the very image of her home, their home left abandoned, as she might abandoned strikes fear into her heart. 

patronus:   although narcissa’s struggled in the past with conjuring a patronus... having failed on several occasions to stir up a memory deemed happy enough to cast it, she has glimpsed it once or twice. a brilliant swell of silvery light is followed by the formation of a snow leopard before her very eyes. as serene and elegant as she, the snow leopard represents a quiet kind of cunning within narcissa... the skill to blend in and an intrinsic ability to buckle down and survive even the harshest of environments. with their fur of large black rosettes on a sea of white-grey, the carnivorous, big cats are masters of camouflage. they blend in perfectly with their surroundings, their natural habitat - just as narcissa does when faced with the wizarding elite, and the rules and regulations of the high society she was born into and later returned to following her graduation from hogwarts. undoubtedly a formidable, little witch in her own right, having a larger, or rather, predatory patronus is a reflection on narcissa’s disposition as well. a suggestion that she is better matched with a bigger protector as she is less equipped to defend herself physically. as when you go to cast a patronus charm - that’s your sole intention... for it to defend you, a spirit guardian who will come for your defence. and narcissa can’t help but smirk at thought, as what better to defend you than a carnivorous, big cat such as the snow leopard?

mirror of erised:   the reflection is as intriguing as it is haunting when narcissa approaches. for stood staring back at her with big, round eyes of grey, that shift unnaturally every so often to a blue-green, is a young boy. small in stature with bright blonde hair... a silver quality to it in fact. the youngest of the black sisters is taken aback for he is her very mirror image. not a detail had been missed. thoughts and theories as to who he is pass through her mind, forming gradually as the cogs begin to turn. a slight hitch in her throat as she moves to get closer to him. footsteps tender and gentle, as if trying as very best she could not to scare him away, despite him being no more than a reflection in a mirror. narcissa had always had a soft spot for children. but who’s child was he? rationale argued that perhaps he was her’s... her own, little boy, the heir she would provide to whomever she married. the silver hair suggests who that might be and the thought alone causes her heart to swell. upon further examination however, she can’t shake the feeling that the boy is her. no son of her own but instead the son her parents, or rather, her father had so dearly wished that she had been. the son who would make the noble house of black proud, the one child they could take pride in and how she longed for it to be her. how dearly she wanted that for herself and had been working for it just as long. he was a reflection of all that she wanted to be.  

[eltanin-malfoy]

Get A Grip II

pairing : draco/fem-y/n 

word count : 6.9k (longest thing i’ve ever written)

warning(s) : mentions of torture/trauma/ptsd/anxiety/depression/death/war/sicking up, major major angst, violence, fluff

requested : yes! (a few more times as well but didn’t bother answering them soz)

a/n : so this has turned out to be quite touchy and terribly sad :/ thankfully i kind of aimed for it to be that way. I’ve always felt like the darker side of the war and the tragedies associated with it weren’t ever explored enough. this is also sort of inspired by this angsty dramione au fic i’ve been reading. highly recommended! hopefully it isn’t too much? any feedback is much appreciated! requests are still open but will be posted in later months. (also madam pomfrey is an unsung hero in the series i love her sm) thanks again to my lovely beta @unpeustupide

Part I

Y/N had never been popular at Hogwarts. Well.. she wasn’t exactly unpopular either, she supposed most of the people in her year knew what her name was, but didn’t care enough about her for her to be lunch-table gossip.. She wasn’t exactly the kind of person to constantly draw attention to herself like some of the others in her year liked to do. It was usually one of three ways, either by just being plain rude to people they didn’t like much (which that Malfoy boy seemed to really enjoy), being extremely attractive or generally quite likeable (something she liked to think of Roger Davies) or just doing heroic things no one in their year should have been able to do at all (classic Potter). 

She had a close knit circle of friends but didn’t stray much out of it. She kept up with all the latest gossip, tried to answer questions in class and tried to be pleasant with everyone (unless they were being the opposite). What she’d never been too fond of doing was stepping out of line. Breaking rules wasn’t something she enjoyed at all. Things she assumed must have made rebellious students feel some kind of high would just put her on edge and made her fear for her life. Being out of her common room after curfew was already past the limits for her, so when she heard whispers about Potter’s alternative DADA classes in her fifth year, she’d stayed out of all of that, knowing it would inevitably lead to trouble. I mean, come on, it was Potter and his rag-tag friends. That’s what they did. That wasn’t something she wanted to get her nose into, especially since Umbridge had been in charge. And when ‘Dumbledore’s Army’ was caught later in the year, she knew she’d been right. Even if she very well knew how bad of a teacher Umbridge was and how members of the group had ended up fighting against a bunch of Death Eaters at the end of the year (which of course, was also seriously life threatening), she knew she didn’t want to risk her picture perfect record over anything. 

That was.. until their seventh year. The year with the Carrows and Snape as headmaster and the rise of You Know Who growing more and more imminent. That was when she finally began to realise why Potter and his mates always acted as heroic as they did. That was when that stupid, overwhelming sense of guilt began to make its way into her very being.

The Carrows practically reigning over the school drove the mood of the castle effectively down the drain. There was a constant sense of dread, it seemed. Even the pleasant evenings she’d spent with housemates in her common room suddenly began to feel distressing. Obeying the rules was now of paramount importance, with any such disobedience meaning actual physical torture. 

Her DADA class especially had become treacherous. It seemed rather ironic to call it the Defence against the Dark Arts. They were forced to turn into what they were meant to defend against. It wasn’t a class she’d always found easy or anything like that, but, dear Merlin, she really did not anticipate practicing the Cruciatus curse on students, at all. She was absolutely mortified the first time.. She felt like retching the moment she’d spotted the innocents (just because the Carrows thought they were guilty of some rulebreaking did not mean they deserved an Unforgivable!) standing by the wall, most of them trembling and gripping it to hold themselves up. 

She’d wanted to step out of the class that instant, but she realised an even worse fate would await her if she decided against it. Carrow hadn’t wasted even a second when Neville Longbottom declined the offer and quickly used his wand to cut into his cheek. She felt so immensely jealous as she saw they’d permitted stupid, awful, Malfoy out of the activity, him having muttered something about having enough experience with it to judge the others somehow accepted as a valid excuse by the monster that was Amycus Carrow. (Although she supposed his being a Death Eater also helped with that.)

Her wand had trembled as Carrow walked over to her and glared at her, then begun to yell at her to begin her casting the spell.

Ugh. His spit was sprinkled over her cheek. His teeth bared, yellow and grimy. She wiped it away with her wand and quickly turned her gaze away.

 She had looked at the nervous ginger Hufflepuff girl in front of her with as much of an apologetic expression as she could muster, blurting out the incantation. She’d failed, of course, she knew such dark magic required true intent, something she really, really didn’t have in this situation. At all. 

She had looked over at Malfoy with a look of immense hatred, almost wishing she could curse him instead. It had been him who’d brought this all upon them. If all the rumors were true, it was him who’d managed to get all the Death Eaters into the castle in the first place. It was him who’d been given the responsibility of killing Dumbledore, which of course, he hadn’t managed to do, (dear Merlin, that scoundrel can't do a single thing right!) but it was as good as if he had, right? But what she was surprised to see was his lanky figure trailing around behind the group, hands jittering as he nervously tugged at his lower lip with his teeth. He brought his hands into his now limp, blonde hair as he heard the first few cries of despair. His eyes then darted over and looked back at the students and Y/N quickly looked to the front again, confused by what she’d seen.

She went back to her dormitory and cried her eyes out, the screams of the students ripping through her the whole time. The sound was like a bell, it rang and rang, a death toll, a constant reminder of what a coward she was, a bell to swing her away from sleep's shy arms. She skipped dinner and even whatever little she’d even managed to eat earlier in the day was forced out of her system, but even that burning feeling in her throat couldn’t match the agony that embodied the guilt that had seemed to find a place to live inside of her. 

This is all because of you! You didn’t even try to do anything! You’re such a coward! If you’d even tried the slightest bit to help everyone who’d been working against them, maybe all of those children wouldn’t have had to suffer like they had to today. You’re a terrible person! So extremely selfish! 

She’d walked to the girls’ restroom by her dormitory and just stared into the mirror. Her eyes were rimmed red and her cheeks were unnaturally splotchy with color. This is your punishment, you know? Feeling like this? It’ll never go away. Ever. She didn’t even know where this train of thought had emerged from, but she couldn’t help but feel that she deserved all of it. 

In an effort to drive away that sense of worthlessness, Y/N decided to take some kind of action. The first thing she decided to do was apologise as much as she possibly could to the Hufflepuff girl. The next morning, before breakfast, she’d waited outside the Great Hall to see if the girl was arriving, but to her astonishment, the girl was nowhere to be seen. 

Could she have been staying in her dormitory for the day? Perhaps to somehow drown out all the trauma she’d experienced the previous day..  Or maybe she couldn’t get a wink of sleep all night like Y/N and was struggling to sleep now! She’d never be able to get to her then! That was if.. she even permitted her to. She supposed she would understand if that was the case as well, she definitely wouldn’t even want to associate with someone who’d been attempting to use an Unforgivable on her.. But what was suspicious was that most of the students who’d been part of those experimented on in that very sad class weren’t among the students gathered up for breakfast. They were all nowhere to be seen.

She couldn’t find the courage to ask her housemates if they had any idea where they could be. They all seemed equally taken aback by the events and an unnatural hush had spread around the area. She decided to skip breakfast, with her stomach still performing somersaults in her abdomen, and walked around the castle in hopes of figuring out where they’d all vanished to. She didn’t remember any students having stayed back in her own common room..

The first place (and thankfully, the last place she had to look in) she decided to go to proved to be exactly where everyone had ended up, the Hospital Wing. Most of the students there were lying on their beds, staring up at the ceiling vacantly and flinching as they heard her footsteps, while the rest were fast asleep in their beds, still in their uniforms. The students who were awake looked over at her, some even growing startled. She attempted to soothe them with a slight smile and it seemed to work, all of them returning to their same vacant looks.

Y/N shuffled over to the Hufflepuff from earlier, fiddling with the sides of her robes. The girl was fast asleep, her red curls strewn messily over her pillow. She seemed so peaceful like this.. It was as if yesterday had never happened.

“She’s taken a potion for dreamless sleep, are you a friend of hers?” She almost jumped up at the sudden words sprung at her and looked behind her. Madam Pomfrey had stepped out of her office and was glancing at Y/N curiously. 

“Um.. sort of..” Y/N set her hands on her sides.

“Alright.. you’re free to stay here until it’s time for your next class. The students don’t seem to mind having you around much.” Madam Pomfrey adjusted her own robes and walked over to the other students, muttering something under her breath about punishments being out of hand..

Before she knew it, Y/N was stepping over to the woman to speak with her. At first, she wanted to ask her if she could allow her to use some of that potion herself, if perhaps she could be granted access to it for the rest of the year, but she found herself stumbling with her words. “M-madam.. I was wondering…” 

“Yes?” The older woman turned around, her headdress swishing slightly. 

“Well.. um..” You can’t possibly expect her to give any to someone who’s performed an Unforgivable on a younger student! 

“Come on now, we don’t have all day.”

“I was wondering if I could help you. As in.. with the other students. I don’t want anything in return.. I just want to help them.” The words just came rushing out of her mouth and she could do nothing to stop them, and before she knew it, Pomfrey’d accepted her offer and basically made her consent to volunteering all her spare time in the Hospital Wing.

Y/N grew to love it, though. Helping ailing students certainly eased the burden she’d constantly felt on her shoulders. While she did absolutely detest seeing young ones in pain when they should have been playing around on the grounds without a care in the world, it was rewarding to her to be able to ease their struggles even the slightest bit. 

As the months progressed, she found herself growing more and more curious into the world of Healing. She began picking up books in the library on the subject and going through them. Her newfound passion seemed to ease some of the guilt she’d been feeling, and so she delved even further.  

In November, she discovered a book very much related to the field which most interested her which was seemingly untouched, Remedies For Wizarding War Maladies. It was an interesting read, to say the least. Some of the illustrations and images were hard to get through, but the instructions and articles along with them were extremely informative. It was also this book that introduced her to a more unfamiliar concept : shell shock.

While some of the new physical torture at Hogwarts (the Carrows were actually stooping down to hurt some students with their own bare hands) had certainly acquainted Y/N with all sorts of injuries, mental illness was something even Madam Pomfrey didn’t seem to really know much about. Shell shock was apparently first discovered by the Muggles during their own first World War. Soldiers would return traumatized and in some cases, senile, after being exposed to the terrifying reality of war. The Muggles had gone on to call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in recent times and had learnt that it wasn’t just war the illness could spring from, it was any sort of trauma.

Is this what I have? Is this what we all have? Is there even any real way to cure it? Or will we all just have to learn to live with that constant sense of hurt? Her heart seemed to drop lower down her chest as the thought of all the younger students experiencing such things popped into her head. All those children.. they aren’t even guilty of anything. Can being a muggle-born or a sympathizer be considered a crime? These people are absolutely inhuman. 

Suddenly, she felt the urge to just take up all the first years in the castle and just wrap them up in a thick blanket. Perhaps just pretend to be their mother hen and keep them safe from any sort of harm. And so, these thoughts were what triggered her to break the rules for the first time in her life. She started to hide students the Carrows had called for detention or even further punishment. At first, she’d only been able to sneak girls away into her own dormitory or the restrooms. She’d keep them there until nightfall, then find a way to help them back to their own beds or conjure up mattresses for them to just sleep in hers. It was always very risky and so the only ones who even knew about it were the others who lived in the same room as her. They’d all sworn to keep it secret, but even then she sometimes just worked on these plans alone. 

When she returned after her winter break, she began to feel extremely guilty for not protecting the boys as well. They were just as vulnerable and didn’t deserve anything they got from the Carrows either. Y/N began walking around the corridors at night, searching for a place to keep them. She had a lot of options to pick from, but all of them seemed easy to infiltrate. It was terribly frustrating. She’d realised a few members of ‘Dumbledore’s Army’ had more or less disappeared from the castle. Neville Longbottom.. Seamus Finnigan.. and countless others whose names she couldn’t recall. 

She was walking along the seventh floor corridor one night, clad in a dressing robe and her pyjamas, when she saw someone she hadn’t seen in a long while coming out of a set of double doors she didn’t recognise : Longbottom. Very quickly, she made her way to him and questioned him, assuring him she wouldn’t rat him out.

The Room Of Requirement.. Of course that’s a thing. Everything makes sense now. 

She begged him to let her allow other students who needed to hide from the Carrows into the room with him and was this close to actually kneeling in front of him when he finally agreed. Within weeks, it became routine for her to stop by the room with a couple of students before heading down to the Hospital Wing.

It soon became clear to the Carrows that there was an overwhelming amount of students on their ‘hit list’ that had gone missing over time. They’d begun to drop in uninvited into various common rooms and dormitories, not even caring for the students’ privacy anymore. It was during one of these unplanned drop ins that Y/N was finally caught red-handed. 

She was walking through the corridors with a bunch of first year Gryffindors on a Hogsmeade weekend when the castle was supposed to be more or less empty. She’d been careless, really. She was sporting casual, colourful Muggle clothes, something the Carrows had seemed to absolutely despise, although they didn’t act much on it. In hindsight, it was also some sort of rebellion against them. Then, all of a sudden, Alecto had appeared out of nowhere and had nonverbally bound Y/N with ropes, making her fall to the ground while the first years began to panic and ran away helter skelter. Y/N began to squirm herself, her heart beginning to race in her chest as she stared into space. She began to hyperventilate and tears soon welled up in her eyes, and all Carrow did was laugh maniacally as she always did. 

While Y/N might never even have come up among the Death Eaters before, this had effectively pulled her name onto the list of their most hated students. If she’d been in Dumbledore’s Army, Merlin knew she’d have been killed, but fortunately, or unfortunately rather, Alecto had Crucio-ed her personally till she could barely even feel her extremities anymore. The sudden experience had made her realise why many considered suffering the Cruciatus Curse even worse than death. 

It really was worse than anything she’d ever experienced before. Heartbreak, cramps, broken bones, they were all nothing compared to that almost sizzling sensation that rang out throughout her body when the spell was inflicted on her. It was as if a billion, burning needles had poked through her skin and were splitting her apart, inch by inch. She wondered if that was how it felt when she’d been forced to cast it on those students. She then wished Alecto had just killed her and got it over with. The guilt which had made its way into her mind only continued to increase.

After they’d questioned her and she’d continually refused to offer in any sort of information on where Dumbledore’s Army was hiding, Y/N was practically a husk of the person she was before. She’d blacked out countless times after being tortured and there seemed to constantly be a metallic taste in the back of her throat. When they’d decided they’d had enough with her, they’d sent her off to Madam Pomfrey and that’s where she had woken up, tucked away in one of the beds she was used to tending to students in, with Madam Pomfrey standing beside it, holding a handkerchief to her face and shaking slightly.

“Oh, Miss Y/L/N, you’re awake.” She attempted to hide it behind her and sniffled slightly, but it was no use. Y/N opened her mouth to speak but could barely manage out a croak, so instead, she just gave her a weak smile and nodded, her neck still hurting the slightest bit as she did. 

The days passed quickly after that. Sudden noises would still make her wince a bit and Dreamless Sleep Potion was the only way her nights weren’t interrupted by memories of that horrible, horrible occurrence. The Carrows had decided that she was to be expelled from the school after that, but instead of sending her back to her family, they (and apparently Snape agreed with them) felt she should be sent to Malfoy Manor. She barely had the energy to stand up for more than a few minutes and thus could barely even defend herself in front of them. She was forced to consent to this decision and went along with it, apparating there by herself after Madam Pomfrey deemed her healthy enough to, just to have her wand seized off her by one of the many Death Eaters there.

Life there was quite terrifying, even more than it was at the castle. The only thing that made it the slightest bit better was that she wasn’t forced to torture anyone, or have to witness it with her own eyes. She hated the cellar in the basement with every bit of her soul, but it was still some sort of refuge from what lay above. There were other students there too, but they were all younger than she was. There were families there too, couples who weren’t much older than she was, and people who looked to be even older than her own grandparents. It seemed to her that she was the most invulnerable among them. Even though she still felt like a small child who desired to cry forever in her heart, she pushed these thoughts away and tried to brace herself to stay strong for everyone else.

She found herself consoling crying prisoners, teaching them how to save the meagre gruel they got for later and hoping, wishing that everyone stuck in the cellar with her wasn’t destined for a premature death. While it wasn’t often that one of the prisoners was pulled out of the cellar to be tortured, she found herself growing anxious at the thought of something like that happening at all. Everyone there with her were in similar states as herself, faces pale or unnaturally pink, figures much thinner than they were originally and still in the dishevelled clothing they had on before. 

One day, instead of the usual house elf coming down with their gruel, she realised that it was.. Draco Malfoy. She’d lost track of the days since she’d come here, but realised that it must be Easter break. He was bizarrely gentle and no one seemed repulsed at the sight of him, and so she grew curious. 

The prisoners who’d been there a few months longer than she had told her stories of what he’d done in winter break, how he’d set a whole family free and helped so many others who were suffering out of the area and into another place. They seemed to trust him, and somehow, she felt she was growing towards it too.

I should hate him! She thought. He was always cruel! Always so unkind and ungrateful to anyone who wasn’t ready to suck up to him. His friends also seemed afraid of him. He’s the reason Dumbledore was murdered! He’s the reason the castle was taken over by the Death Eaters. I should hate him and never forgive him ever.

But for some reason, she realised something. He was still just a boy. He was still just seventeen (or perhaps eighteen, but that didn’t make a difference). She’d heard about everything with his father.. was that why he was the way he was? Why was he suddenly so kind with all of them? Was it all just an elaborate ruse to win their trust and then betray all of them in the end? Was he even leading all of these people out of the Manor? Or was he leading the poor idiots to their deaths? 

Whatever it was, she knew she’d never be able to get an answer if she kept on placing so much disbelief in the boy’s deeds. It wasn’t soon before he’d begun helping the other prisoners out during his stay. He’d seemed to have noticed her, but of course, smiling politely or engaging in small talk were really out of the question. He’d seemed to have wanted to help her out as well, but she declined any such offers, pointing him towards others who were clearly suffering more than she was. 

Merlin knew she craved some Dreamless Sleep potion, then perhaps she wouldn’t have those dreams anymore. She had forced herself not to think about it much but it still ate away at her. What must have happened to her family? Had the Carrows sent out something to capture them too? The dreams she had of them were all alarmingly short. In some of them they’d be screaming for her to help them, in some they’d smile and wave, but then just disappear. Regardless, if there was anything she wanted more than for all of the other prisoners to escape, it was to see her loved ones again. There was no saying what the Death Eaters might have done to them.

It had been a week or so since Draco had first begun helping people out of the Manor in front of her. Some kind of memory or dream had sparked the third year Gryffindor to cry, Emile, if she remembered correctly. She was attempting to help him feel better, rubbing his back as he lay down on the floor, his chest shuddering as he continued to sob. 

She was almost stunned when Malfoy arrived and politely waved her off. She just sat back and watched the display in front of her. Who would have thought Draco Malfoy, the boy who seemed to be popular for getting on everyone’s nerves (and maybe, just maybe for not looking.. unattractive), would be up to something like this in the height of the Second Wizarding War, that too with his family on the Dark side of all things?

She’d leaned onto a wall as her eyes followed Malfoy leading Emile out of the cellar. And then, hoping he’d lead him to a safe place, she took a deep breath and relaxed. She sat in her place quietly, smiling over at any child who waved over at her when suddenly, she heard shouting from upstairs. 

Everyone in the cellar fell silent and looked at each other, confused yet curious as to what the commotion was about. Y/N felt a sudden lurch of anxiety inside of her. Had they been caught? Had they brought new prisoners? Were they going to take someone else upstairs? She looked around at the others in the room, shifting to hug her knees. 

Before she could understand what was going on, she heard someone yelling as they walked down the steps outside. Everyone looked over at the door curiously and were astonished at who came in. It was Draco Malfoy. The heir of the very wealthy family whose manor they were all forced to reside in was bundled up on the floor, clearly injured.

She was this close to getting up to check on him when he sat up himself, muttered something and then stared back at the rest of them. He managed out a few more words and then shrunk back, covering his face as she assumed he began to cry, slight sniffles audible.

When she thought others had stopped paying attention, she went over to talk to him. She felt so very pitiful for him as he spoke, and suddenly, she offered him a hug and he actually accepted it. He held her very tightly and shivered, almost exactly like a scared child would. She could feel him continue to cry and nodded gently as he confessed to her his fears. 

She was almost certain that he’d never said any of this to anyone before. He truly was just a child in front of her in that moment, and she held onto him as such. She found herself pressing a gentle peck to his head, she almost froze, thinking it was too much but Draco only seemed to relax further, and so she just held him the way he had arranged the two of them, her hand still ruffling his hair gently. 

He soon fell asleep in her arms and with her head resting atop his, she felt like she was really cradling a sleeping child. Well, a child that was much larger and heavier than she was, but much more vulnerable in that moment. As he fell silent and leaned sideways onto the wall, she began to think to herself, hands still gently stroking the fabric of his dark shirt. 

Would he be able to make it out of this alive? With him laying against her the way he was and how hopeless he’d acted.. It was perfectly clear what his stance on the issue was. He wasn’t wrong.. He Who Must Not Be Named wasn’t known for being merciful. So, really, the question was, when and how? But Y/N wasn’t one to consider someone who’d presented themselves so vulnerably to her as good as dead. If only she had her wand.. 

She could have cast a nice Disillusionment Charm on him. Or, perhaps even tried Human Transfiguration and changed his features into those of a stranger. Or, she wished that she could just use some Muggle tactics like a tarp to hide him if anyone came looking. But obviously, there was nothing she could do but hope for the best. 

Soon enough, he was slumped against the wall, his hands loosely gripping at the hem of her sweater and his mouth open as he took slow, deep breaths. She slowly shifted back and laid his head against the wall. His face was unusually soft, that scowl that normally decorated it was nowhere to be seen. It made Y/N more curious as to whom he really was. Perhaps his usual selfish, arrogant persona was just pretense. Just a mask for how innocent he was inside. 

She reached over to brush a stray strand of hair behind his ear, fingers brushing by the side of his face. Draco stirred slightly and flinched at her touch, which made her draw her hand back. Soon, she detached herself from him and sat beside him, nibbling nervously at her lower lip. 

She got up and tried to get her mind off of it again. Some children were gathered together, talking about something and giggling to themselves. She really did look up to their ability to make the best out of every situation. If only she could have been ten again. Then perhaps people would have enough sympathy not to hurt her, and then she wouldn’t have been in Hogwarts at all, so all those memories wouldn’t have burned into her mind. But now, really, all that she could do was hope for the best.

She felt her stomach growling and sat down on the floor, hugging her knees again in an attempt to somehow hide it and cause that feeling to shrink away. She felt warmer curled up like that as well, even a bit childlike. She smiled to herself for a second and shut her eyes, but sat up straight again as those bloody visions returned. 

She took deep breaths to soothe herself, trying her best not to attract the attention of anyone near her. She bit down on her lip harshly and looked over at how peaceful Draco looked asleep, his nostrils flaring slightly. He even resembled a sleeping child. She felt her lips curling upwards and she was reminded of her own loved ones. Oh, how she missed them.. This would be her first Easter without them. This drove her to a train of thought she really wasn’t fond of. 

Is this the first of many? Where even are they? Are they even alive? Are they happy? Do they know where I am? Do they know I’m alive? 

She felt goosebumps beginning to rise at the back of her neck as she grew more and more anxious.

Will I even be alive to see them ever again? Are they hurt all because of me? Will I make it out of here alive? Or will I even be able to speak to them? How much longer does Draco have? Will I be able to protect him? 

I won’t! Of course I won’t! I’m so goddamn useless. All I’ve done is let everyone down. Those Gryffindors.. I don’t even know if they’re alright today. I just left them astray. How could I have been so careless? They were all just children. Defenseless against the Carrows. Of course they must be hurt. All because of me! You probably lead the Carrows straight to the Army’s hideout. They’re probably all getting tortured because of you now. 

Images of Neville and his friends being whipped and Crucio-ed suddenly sprung up in her mind and she began to shudder visibly. Similar images of her own family popped up in her head and she retched, suddenly shifting off to the corner and kneeling, that similar burning in her throat as she got rid of whatever gruel she’d scarfed down earlier in the day.

Would it ever stop hurting? Would such innocent sights always continue to spark such painful reactions? There was no way for her to know. None at all. She gripped her stomach and shifted away from the wall, disgusted by the sight of her own sick. Others noticed her and came to comfort her, but alas! There was someone coming down the stairs again. Someone wearing heels.

She heard that same wicked laughter everyone in the cellar had learned to fear. She knew what was happening. It was time for Draco to.. NO! She wasn’t going to let that happen!

She walked over to him and slumped down next to him, setting her arms around his neck again. He woke up quickly and shook in her grasp, but relaxed again. “..Y/N?”  He muttered as he hugged her again, setting his head on top of hers again. “What happened? Are you alright?” 

She hadn’t even realised when the tears had made their way out of her eyes and had begun to drip onto his shirt. “I’m fine.. Just.. just shh..” She drew her head back and looked at him again, studying his face carefully. He looked alarmed, not afraid as he should have been, but suddenly his expression grew more and more nervous. He’d heard the footsteps.

“Is that..?” He didn’t complete his statement and drew her closer to him, his hands rising up to grip her shoulders. She could feel his arms shielding her in that position, trying to hide her almost. She couldn’t help but shift onto his lap, still sniffling as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. Maybe if they sat that way Bellatrix wouldn’t see where Draco was and leave. And then maybe that would be it. She couldn’t let somebody else get hurt. Not again.

The cellar door slammed open but Y/N kept her eyes shut tight, holding him as close to her as she could. He began crying himself and was literally clinging to her for life. She looked up at his face and his eyes met hers, blinking slowly as a single tear dripped down his cheek. The heels clicked over nearer to them and she swore she heard her grunt. Draco suddenly gulped and whispered to her. “L-let go of me.”

“Are you- No, I can’t.”

“Please.. She-she won’t hesitate to hurt you..” 

“No,no.. It doesn’t matter. I have to-”

“Y/N, please. You don’t deserve to get hurt all because of me.”

Y/N gave in and slipped off of him, her side towards the wall as she continued to face him. Bellatrix saw him and cackled again, walking over to grab him by the ear. She glanced over at Y/N and her eyes narrowed. “You’re turning into a blood traitor right before our very eyes, aren’t you, Draco?” He didn’t say a word but let out a groan of pain, his pale face turning red.

She wanted so badly to stop what was going on, to just grab onto Draco’s hand and pull him back. If she’d had the courage to do so, she would have stopped Bellatrix with her bare hands and would have nipped the problem in the bud right there. But she sat there, just frozen, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

As Bellatrix pulled him out of the cellar and shut the door behind her, Y/N felt as if everything was moving in slow motion around her. She could feel her heart begin to pound in her chest and she slid onto the floor, everything around her growing hazy as her breaths quickened. 

She’d let another person down again! Just like all those other times. She really couldn’t do a single thing right. All she’d done thus far was lead to others getting hurt. 

She felt her throat tighten and she spluttered out, eyes darting around frantically. She gripped the cold edge of the wall and forced herself to sit up and count to ten. I can’t give in to those feelings. Not like this. 

She felt someone’s hand on her shoulder and shuddered at first, but then relaxed as she realised who it was. “Luna..” The blonde just nodded and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll sit with you Y/N…  that was very hard to watch from afar as well, you know.” She didn’t respond to this and just stared down at her lap, her breaths slowing back down to normal. 

It wasn’t long before another bunch of footsteps rang out outside the door and two familiar faces popped in. She recognised them almost instantly. It was almost to be expected.. their unexpected heroics. Weasley and.. what looked like Potter were standing by the door, curiously staring at all the prisoners. Luna sprung up almost immediately and went over to them, but she wasn’t as cheery as she always used to be, and the two looked at her as if she was some queer exhibit at a museum. 

Weasley walked over to the door and stared out the small window at the top as a girl’s bloodcurdling scream rung out from above. Who is that…? It can’t be.. Granger?! Y/N felt panicked again but forced herself to stay calm, something very, very odd was about to happen and she couldn’t risk losing her marbles in a situation like this.

Weasley shouted out something to the two of them and Potter nodded before reaching into his pocket for what looked like a piece of glass. He turned it over in his palm before his eyes widened behind his glasses, and he muttered something to it. Seems like the war is driving him mad as well..

Y/N sat there for a bit, then shifted over to the other prisoners, trying her best to answer any doubts they had about what was going on. This was quite difficult with her own lack of knowledge, but she managed to satiate them by telling them that they were a part of the right side of things. 

A loud ‘pop’ sound grabbed everyone’s attention, and an oddly dressed house elf had appeared in the middle of the room. “Dobby!” Potter called out and hobbled over to speak to him. Soon, Potter looked over at the crowd and began to speak.

“Everyone…Dobby will get you out of here and to a safe house. Please keep calm and quiet, and we’ll get you all out soon enough.” Everyone grew excited at once, especially the children, at even the prospect of escaping.

Y/N should have been jumping out of her skin with glee, hugging one of the other students, but something continued to eat away at her insides.

“Th-thank you so much… for all of this. Really. Some people here have been trapped for months.” She said to them once the others seemed to have scampered off to get their things. “I’ve realised only recently how terrifying all of this is.. We’ll never be able to pay you back for this. Life here has been hell.”

Potter muttered something dismissively but Y/N barely even registered any sounds coming from his mouth, her brain still caught up in a weird frenzy. “Please-please.. Try and save Draco.” She swallowed and surveyed their faces as she said this, remembering their school yard rivalry with him. Both of their faces grew alarmed at first, with Weasley’s expression turning into a bit of a snarl while Potter just stared at her like she was crazy.

“I know you never got along with him.. And that he was mean and everything. Believe me, I remember all of that. But.. here.. There were apparently way more people here before winter break. Draco helped all of them escape. Seriously.” She stared down at her feet, now afraid to meet their gazes. “Draco was helping a third year escape even today and he got caught during by some of the Death Eaters.. I’m sure they’ll kill him or torture him to death if he’s left here.”

She looked up at them again and the both of them were clearly uncomfortable. Weasley glanced over to the side and flinching as the same girl’s screams rang out again. He walked over to the door while Potter looked back at her timidly. “Y/L/N.. we’ll.. try our best. You should go along with that group..” He pointed over at a bunch of students huddled together, whispering something.

She nodded and smiled weakly at him. “Thank you. For everything.” She walked over to the group and joined them, offering them all a smile and whispering words of encouragement. She knew she could hide her anxiety for now and looked over at the house-elf as it appeared. It waddled over to them and they quickly bunched up around it. Its ball-like eyes looked around at them and its mouth curled into a smile. “Hang on tight.”

It snapped its fingers and Y/N felt that same strange tugging sensation under her navel, feeling herself getting pulled forward and almost falling into space when suddenly, her body met solid ground. She sat up straight and looked around herself. They’d all been transported to a beach, a nice expansive beach. There was a cottage a short walk away where she could see a few people waving over at them and some prisoners were already walking towards it. She decided not to get up as yet, running her fingers through the soft sand and thinking to herself.

You will see him again. He hasn’t died because of you. Get a grip on yourself.

[friendshipcampaign]

Session Recap 11/4/18: Battle, Skedaddle, Repeat

As the party prepared to head back to the portal, hoping the avoid the notice of anything too dangerous on the return journey, Ditto poked a hand (her own, this time) from Voski’s backpack in order to cast Invisibility on Kriv, hoping that it would help him be a bit stealthier as the sound of his armor might be masked by the other clanking and clanging in the area. Kriv then pulled out a rope ladder to help everyone get down the center island.

To get back to the main part of the simulation, Amaranth tried leaping across the pit full of bones and failed the jump, falling in their midst. She warned everyone else to get across quickly, as she noted some of the bones moving. Kriv jumped across, then dropped the ladder down a second time in order to retrieve the tiefling. She had to kick at emerging skeleton hands trying to stop her from grabbing ahold of it. Voski told a nearby spider-like construction made of bones to “Fuck off” with her Vicious Mockery and it exploded, prompting Amaranth to comment she would have shouted the same, but the bard beat her to it.

Erwyn just barely made the jump across the pit, but Voski failed miserably, landing prone in the midst of the waking bones. Ditto crawled out of her backpack, but couldn’t push away the constructions, and one latched onto her. Erwyn fired two arrows into the pit to try to deter some of the bones going after his friends and managed to strike one of the spiders as Voski pulled out her sword, stared the constructions and reanimated hands down, and waded into their midst, asking, “It’s gonna be like this, huh?”

Taking pause at the unusual behavior from Voski, Amaranth urged her to go and get out of the pit. Voski shouted back that she was a little busy cleaning up and continued to go after the bones. Erwyn shouted that they needed to get going, but when it seemed to have little effect due to whatever was compelling Voski to attack with such vigor, he switched tactics and mentioned that there were much bigger things to fight up above. At that, Voski sheathed her sword and practically dragged Amaranth up the ladder. Once the pair were up, she announced they should get moving and pulled the sword out once more.

With everyone noting, at this point, that something was very off with Voski, Kriv tried casting Command on her, saying, “Relax,” which caused him to lose his Invisibility. Voski did a little, but only barely, and then placed a hand on Kriv’s shoulder and told him to never tell her to relax again. Once the group was over to the next side of the cube, she started swinging her blade at some of the scrambling kobolds there. Ditto decided to try casting a Charm Person on her to see if she could get her to slow down, but the spell fizzled and failed to take hold. The group then heard a loud rumbling above them as whatever creature had been on this face before moved around on top of the canyon. Kriv and Erwyn quickly plastered themselves to the canyon wall, but Voski brushed a nearby kobold aside and turned to face the sound.

Quickly, Amaranth decided to try casting Darkness around the creature as Ditto once again gave a shot at Charming Voski. The charm failed once more, but Amaranth’s spell worked -- at least until a young green dragon emerged from the Darkness and targeted Voski, both biting her shoulder and attacking her with its claws. Amaranth charged it and managed to sink a dagger into the dragon’s hide before disengaging and trying to shove Voski away, telling her to get out. Voski was undeterred, and cast Shatter, centered on the dragon’s mouth. Noting that Voski was seriously injured at this point, Erwyn cast a tiny Healing Spirit in the form of a lizard centered near her before firing off his own attacks at the dragon, both of which missed. Kriv then scrambled on top of it and brought his hammer down on its head twice, adding a Divine Smite to one of the attacks.

The dragon flipped backwards, trying to shake Kriv off, but he hung on successfully -- which meant that as it centered a breath attack at the rest of the party, he was out of the way of the poisonous gas. The others weren’t so lucky, and Erwyn dropped unconscious, falling to his knees and slumping over as the cloud rolled over the group. Hoping to distract the creature, Ditto cast Major Image to conjure an illusion of a young gold dragon, hoping that their combatant would decide to engage with it instead of the party. She made the illusion roar to sell the effect.

One of the nearby kobolds attacked Voski and she, too, fell unconscious, though she tried to fall on it on her way down. Amaranth shouted at Kriv that he needed to get to Erwyn and Voski and heal them as she tried to drag Erwyn out of the dragon’s path. Channeling healing energy through the scale given to him by Bahamut, Kriv healed them both to consciousness from a distance, before throwing his Blindsense scarf over the dragon’s eyes and screaming at it. Unfortunately, the scarf made the dragon realize that Ditto’s spell was an illusion. It then went after Kriv instead, but missed its attacks due to the difficulty of hitting someone on its own back.

The dragon did another loop, this time successfully dislodging Kriv. As he fell to the ground, Ditto saw her chance, and with no one immediately in the green dragon’s vicinity anymore, she cast a Fireball on it. Some of the kobolds went after Voski but missed her, and as she fended them off Amaranth shouted at her that they needed to snap out of it. “Stop fucking around or we’re all gonna die here!” she yelled, before starting to dash towards the exit to the canyon.

Suddenly taking on a beautiful glamour, Voski lifted herself from the ground and leaned on her sword before pointing at the dragon and uttering, “Yield.” Her Command spell took hold, and the dragon bowed its head at her. With the immediate battle ended, she cast a powerful Cure Wounds on herself to heal more of her injuries. Ditto shouted at her, asking if she was ready to go now, and was pointedly ignored. Erwyn pulled himself from the ground as well and ran after Amaranth. Kriv did the same. Voski picked up the mask of one of the kobolds she’d killed to bring with her, but also followed the others, seemingly content with her victory.

As the group headed over the edge and onto the next face of the cube, Ditto made her dragon illusion follow them at a distance, hoping it might distract other combatants. (She also clarified to the rest of the group that it wasn’t real, and that she had conjured it, causing a certain amount of relief amongst the party, who hadn’t all been sure.) Everyone made a final push to the portal, dashing past the giant spiders surrounding it and leaping through.

This next jaunt took the party to a much calmer simulation, and they found themselves in a beautiful glade where they could smell thyme, roses, and lavender growing, with a still pool in the center. The colors around them seemed more vibrant than normal. A creature with a humanoid body and a lion’s head sat beside the pool, plucking a harp. Ditto turned to Voski and asked how she was feeling now that they were out of the Acheron simulation.

“Still angry, but relaxed, but angry about it,” Voski replied. But she confirmed she no longer felt like fighting anything.

Kriv showed Erwyn the symbol from the key and the elf announced that they were in a simulation of Elysium. Hearing this, the man by the pool finished his song and introduced himself, exceedingly languidly, as Jax, a lionel, and Voski asked him what task they were going to have to complete here. In his same ultra-relaxed manner, her explained that they would each have to give some kind of a creative performance that had never been seen before in order to contribute to the beauty of the plane.

Discreetly, as the party settled in to rest for a little and contemplate their individual performance ideas, Kriv asked if he could get something to make him as chill as Jax. He was disappointed to hear the lionel say the reason for his calm demeanor was just the influence of the planar simulation itself.

Kriv used his healer’s kit to patch Erwyn and Amaranth up, as they were still in fairly rough shape from the last simulation. In turn, Amaranth pulled out her magic soap from her bag and offered it to Voski--who, thanks to her unnaturally-acquired battle-lust in the Acheron simulation, was spattered all over with blood. As the bard set about cleaning herself and her things up, she shrieked on seeing all of Ditto’s blood, courtesy of the reanimated goblin hand’s attacks, in her bag and on her things.

After regaining her composure, Voski played a Song of Rest as the party took the chance to recuperate. Once she was done playing, she approached the lionel and asked whether their performances had to be wholly original compositions, or whether a unique interpretation of an existing work could count. He said it could, so long as it was an interesting spin and embraced creativity. She reported back to the group and they discussed their assorted options for performing. Ditto pointed out that they all had unique stories to tell, so that was something.

“Yes, but for a story to be a performance you have to be able to tell it in an interesting way,” Erwyn said, nervously. He seemed to be very anxious about this trial.

“Well, I think you’re interesting!” Ditto said. He didn’t seem too comforted.

Voski got up to do her performance first, a song of her own composition on the lute (though drawing form some traditional tunes) which she called “The Ballad of the Wild Rose.” It recounted the tale of an arrogant man who didn’t like the wild roses sprouting up in his kingdom and tried building the tallest wall to keep them out, until they ultimately overwhelmed it and broke though, causing the structure to topple on top of him and kill him. She concluded with some lyrical moral symbolism on the masonry of the soul, and the lionel applauded politely.

Ditto bounded over next, raring to go, and told the story of how her friends had saved her from a beholder in her head, supplementing it with illustrative minor illusions and referencing a gnomish myth in which the deity Garl Glittergold had been challenged to surprise a beholder but had to cheat to win -- and pointing out, in her conclusion, that Amaranth had succeeded at doing legitimately what the god had not, though she may have exaggerated some of the party’s heroics. Jax also gladly accepted this offering.

Amaranth asked if either of the boys wanted to go up next and they declined, so she took the initiative to go next, performing an interpretive sword dance with her cutlasses. When she was done, Erwyn told Kriv he might need more time to prepare, so Kriv handed Jax a pamphlet with a Common translation of one of the prayers Tsova had given them about asking for the power to protect. He performed a little rhythmic pattern, traditional to his home region, as he spoke, supplementing it with little clicking noises.

(After completing their respective performances, Amaranth and Ditto both stayed near the performance space and enthusiastically clapped for every act that followed. Voski lounged and ate fruit.)

At that point it was just down to Erwyn, but suddenly he was nowhere in sight. After a moment of looking, Amaranth finally found him tucked away in some of the bushes, trying to talk to a bird. She headed over to him and crouched next to him, startling the elf, and asked what was up. He admitted he’d been trying to ask the bird for help with an idea he’d had, but all the ones he’d asked had refused. Visibly upset, he admitted he didn’t know what to do, saying he didn’t really have many skills, and the only thing he felt he was okay at was archery, which he hadn’t been able to come up with many ways to make interesting. She told him that she thought the group might be able to brainstorm something for him if they tried.

Walking back to the group with Amaranth, Erwyn admitted to everyone that he didn’t have any ideas, or at least not ones that he wouldn’t feel too anxious doing.

“What makes you feel calm when you’re anxious?” Ditto asked him.

“Nothing, I just sort of live like this!” Erwyn said.

Kriv offered to go up with Erwyn when he performed if it would help him feel less scared about it, and he agreed to give it a try. Together, they got up in front of Jax, holding hands, and Erwyn slipped on his reading glasses and recited an Elvish nature poem he’d written himself in one of his little notebooks. Amaranth and Ditto wildly applauded when he finished as Kriv bumped his shoulder and smiled at him, and Jax presented Erwyn with the next key, which he identified as bearing the symbol for Ysgard.

As the group moved to leave and head back through the portal with this new key, both Voski and Amaranth objected, saying they should stay in the Elysium simulation a little longer as it was so calm and peaceful and had strangely grown on them. When they couldn’t be swayed, Erwyn ultimately called a show of hands, saying they should vote. Amaranth called it bullshit, and Kriv looked over at her slightly shocked, noting that she’d never spoken to Erwyn like that before. She announced Kriv would have to drag her out of there. So he did.

“You’re being a big baby,” he said, pulling her across the grass. “A little hatchling.”

“They don’t work that way, Kriv,” Voski called out.

Ditto asked Voski if she would come along a little easier than that. Voski stood up, sighing, and said that resisting seemed like more trouble than it was worth, but she still disagreed with them.

The portal took them to a place with a ring drawn in the dirt, where two giant women were wrestling. Amaranth perked up at this as the languid effects of Elysium wore off. One of the giants tossed the other, who’d grown distracted at the party’s arrival, outside of the ring. The victor walked over to the group and Kriv asked her what they needed to do on this plane.

“Well, you have to fight me, of course,” she said.

Amaranth, immediately, taken by the large, athletic women, yelled, “I’LL DO IT! I’LL DO IT!”

More concerned with logistics than the tiefling was, Voski asked about the conditions of the fight, casting Message to make herself heard across the height difference. She was told that each party member would get two chances in the ring and could tag each other out by crossing into it. Weapons and magic would both be allowed, but magic from outside the ring wouldn’t be effective, as it was enchanted.

Everyone agreed that Amaranth, who was the only one enthusiastic about the prospect, could go first, as she was very excited.

Amaranth jumped into the ring and saluted her competitor. She managed to hit the giant twice with her daggers. The giant laughed, commenting that Amaranth was a “sharp little thorn,” before grinning and smashing into her with her giant morningstar, though the tiefling managed to mitigate a little of the damage with a quick dodge. The ring featured several rock obstacles, not as tall as a giant but still large enough for someone Amaranth’s size to use for some cover. The giant tried to make a second hit, but she proved even defter at dodging that one and avoided the hit entirely. Kriv cheered for her on the sidelines as Amaranth made several more hits, but the giant returned blows, and after two more hits with the morningstar Amaranth fell unconscious.

Erwyn dashed for the ring, tagging her out, and Kriv was able to patch Amaranth up with his healer’s kit enough to bring her back to consciousness. As she came to, Amaranth announced, “That was fucking awesome!” and Voski healed her some more with a Cure Wounds. In the ring, however, Erwyn proved less successful, missing both his first shots with his bow. The giant threw a boulder at him that made contact, and suddenly he was barely even on his feet. Despite this, he managed to make his next two shots before being smashed into the ground by her morningstar and falling unconscious himself. Kriv immediately dashed into the ring and took the second hit the giant was reeling up for, as Ditto administered a healing potion to Erwyn and brought him back around to consciousness. He still looked pretty awful, however, and she ended up offering him another one as Voski burned another Cure Wounds to heal him further.

Kriv made a couple hits on the giant before she smashed into him once with her morningstar, but despite the magnitude of the hit he managed to stay standing and bludgeon her twice more himself with his hammer before she took him out with another hit. Amaranth quickly asked if Ditto or Voski was willing to go into the ring, but neither of them responded, so she dashed into the ring herself. She dove in front of a hit aimed at Kriv while he was down, and ended up getting smashed into unconsciousness herself for a second time.

Seeing this, Ditto reluctantly flew into the ring herself and shot the giant with a Fire Bolt. On the sidelines, Erwyn administered one of his own healing potions to Kriv as Voski used a Cure Wounds to bring Amaranth back around. The giant aimed back at her with a boulder and it missed, so Ditto continued to snipe her with another Fire Bolt, trying to fly around in an erratic pattern that would offer her some protection.

Once he was conscious, Kriv took one of his own potions, and Erwyn offered him another to heal him further, which meant that when the giant’s next hit took Ditto out he was ready to jump back into the ring himself. He hit the giant twice with his hammer and she smashed him back, but again, despite the immense attack, he at least managed to stay on his feet.

Seeing that Kriv was in fairly awful shape at this point, Erwyn turned to Voski and asked her if she intended to go into the ring. She remained hesitant. Kriv managed to make a few more hits before being hit by another of the giant’s attacks and going down. When Erwyn noted that Voski seemed frozen and wasn’t likely to tag the other dragonborn out, he ran into the ring himself, tossing Amaranth his last healing potion and telling her to use it on Kriv. He was only able to hit the giant with a single arrow before she retaliated and he was hit by one of her own attacks. He fired two arrows back at her that both successfully hit.

“I don’t suppose we’ve worn you down?” he asked.

The giant laughed, seeming amused, as she hefted her weapon again.

Erwyn managed to hit her with one more of his arrows before she took him out, at which point Voski finally stepped into the ring herself in order to replace him. Kriv used his healer’s kit to patch Erwyn up back to consciousness as Voski threw a Vicious Mockery at the giant, pointing out that she’d only won the wrestling contest she and her opponent had been engaged in when the party had showed up because the other giant got distracted. She then attempted to duck behind the rock, but the giant still managed to make two solid hits on her with the morningstar, and Voski was knocked out very quickly.

Kriv patched Voski up with his healer’s kit and Erwyn supplemented with a Cure Wounds as Ditto flew into the ring for her second round. Deciding it was now or never, she brought in the biggest spell she had and hit the giant with a Fireball.

The giant fell unconscious, and Ditto was able to retrieve the key.

[wizardsnwookies]

POTA 111518 - Below

“Looks like you were right.” Miv blinked at the empty coffin with disinterest, turning away to the other stone sarcophagus within the room. “How much you want to bet the rest are occupied?”

“I don’t gamble, but I believe we should take great care in investigating the others.” Banshae was deadly serious, seemingly unaware of the casual turn of phrase.

“I’m sorry?” Dion turned suddenly.

“It’s a rather unfortunate necessity. This appears to be the most likely source of the Ghouls we encountered on our way here. The laboratory upstairs, now this tomb.”

“No, of course you’re right.” The priest glanced at the great stone vessels with a twinge of reluctance. To desecrate a place of rest, even with justification, was not at all something he relished. His duty was to bring peace to the dead, not disrupt it. Banshae could see the distress in his features and placed a solid hand upon his shoulder.

“If their rest has been disturbed-”

“Yes, I know. Proceed.”

She offered only a single curt nod. Flea needed no prompting and was already standing at the head of the next stone coffin, this one far more mundane than that of Samular Paradoon. Unlike his however, this sarcophagus was indeed occupied.

Sliding away to the floor, the stone lid first revealed a pair of milky white eyes open to all the world. No life lived within them, but something else lurked beneath. An unlife, like a slumbering bear within its cave, filled the room with foreboding. Flea readied himself, gripping his axe firmly, waiting for an attack that would not come. Instead it simply sat there, staring through Flea, past him, towards some unseen oblivion.

“Strange, never known an undead to miss out on a meal.” He waved a meaty paw over its eyes, trying to break its trance. Either his flesh was not as appetizing as he thought it to be, or something else was going on here.

“It may still be under the command of its master. These poor creatures are little more than slaves. Please Flea, grant it mercy and release it from bondage.”

“You’re the boss.” A single swing was enough to cave in its brittle skull, exploding into dust and fragments of bone. He casually jumped off the dais and moved to the next coffin, giving Dion room for his rituals.

It continued in such a manner for what felt like ages. One by one tombs were opened, each one either empty or containing a motionless undead awake to the world around it but powerless to act. One by one Flea sent them back to whatever awaited them on the other side, one by one Dion guided them on their way, bringing them to one final coffin.

Flea stood at the head, axe held aloft at the ready. When Banshae slid the slab aside it’s occupant proved to be far more fresh than the others. His skin was immaculate, intact, almost glowing with life still. Across his chest both arms clasped the hilt of his sword, he was dressed in full regalia, the banner of his station neatly folded and placed upon his lap.

“Hold.” Dion nearly threw himself upon the body, ready to block any blow that might come from an overzealous Flea. He could feel a tingle in the air around the body, a ripple in reality indicating the presence of magic.

“Is that who I think it is?” Elora joined the others, leaning in to catch a better glimpse at the young man inside the stone sarcophagus.

“I believe it may be. Sir Ord Nynn, our missing knight.”

“Is it just me or does he look a bit too...fresh?” That was about as delicately as Miv could think to put it. Ord Nynn had died some time before the Caravan left Mirabar, which had been more than a few weeks ago by now.

“A simple spell, ‘Gentle Repose.’“ Dion gently brushed his fingers against the cold steel of the knights burial armor. It was chilled to the touch, but not nearly as cold as the rest of the room. He had been placed here recently.

“How long does a spell like that typically last?”

“Not this long. Someone had to have recast it since the Caravan ambush.”

“Why?” Banshae leaned back to stare at the ceiling. Curious-er and curious-er. The further they uncovered the more complex the motives seemed to be.

“Why bother taking care of the body? It could not have been the the target of the ambush.” The latter was more a question than a statement. Thinking aloud. A question no one seemed to have the answer to.

---

“I don’t think this is part of the original complex.” Elora lead the group out onto the stone landing. Before them a great chasm opened up into the earth bridged by a perfectly hewn stone bridge. Upon the other side, through the darkness, her sensitive elven eyes glimpsed unnatural shapes. Perfect edges and delicate moldings did not occur with any underwater riverways she knew of and furthermore, no monastery she was familiar with needed this much square-footage. Between that and the subtle shift in craftsmanship of the masonry told her they were emerging into a different world entirely.

“Let’s take it carefully from here. Elora, you lead us and keep your senses sharp. Miv, be ready to extinguish the globe on her word.” None argued with Banshae’s orders, the silence of the massive chamber was pregnant with a strange sense of anxiety. As if something horrible awaited them within even though they had received no resistance up until this point.

Stealthy steps guided them along the expanse of the chasm, the stone beneath their feet covered in disturbed dirt and dust. As with everywhere else so far, this place had been marked by battle. Halfway across they paused over a pair of slain figures, an odd pair that did not seem to match with the rest of bodies they had uncovered. The Teifling had one of the strange serrated swords in her death grip and a collection of trophies tied to each horn. Her companion, a strange creature none were familiar with, was extremely pale with hair as white as a winter snow. Each were covered in wounds, the most grievous being a horrific crushing blow that had caved in their torsos, shattering ribs and exploding the heart.

“So, this is where their assault ended.” Banshae offered the brave warriors a moments pause out of respect. A brief sonnet passed her lips, a sonnet she did not know she even knew. A memory from a previous life, a ritual to honor fallen brothers and sisters.

“The two of them did all this damage?” Flea bobbed his head, impressed.

“If these are our predecessors, there should be one more according to Lady Stormbanner. A Kenku. Perhaps they made it further in?”

“Either way, my guess is this is where we can start expecting company.” Flea readied his axe. Casting his eyes across the bridge he peered into the darkness, and thought he saw the briefest of movements.

“Elora?” Banshae turned to the head of the group, the High elf crouched low, body tense. Listening. Watching.

Her fine tuned ears pricked at a faint rustling. A faint disturbance she could just barely hear over the sounds of the party around her. Whispering. Deep guttural voices in a hushed tone, and the clattering of iron.

“I think we’re blown.”

An arrow shot into the darkness, punctuating her statement. The group scattered, ducked, searching the black void at the other end of the bridge. They knew to stay in such an exposed area would be suicide, so each sprinted forward, unbidden into the unknown.

A great stone plaza met them with finely crafted pillars rising up to the raw ceiling. Flagstones faded in and out of piles of earth and loose pebbles. Several hobgoblins stood at the ready by a modest fire built next a pair of shattered stone doors. The archer was already nocking another arrow, while his companion slammed a fist against a wooden door to the west. But there was something else with them, something far more imposing, menacing.

“What in the hells is that?” Banshae drew her sword and hefted up her shield about two meters from the beast that was just now rising to its feet. A rider clad in stone swung burly legs across its back, this thing that looked like a cross between a bulldog and the predators that swam the depths of the ocean. It’s hide looked to be about as thick as her shield, its pointed snout as sharp as her sword.

“Does it matter? Kill it!” From behind Flea leaped clean over her shoulders landing in the dirt to the creature’s left side. With a single swing his axe blade drove itself between two of the sturdy plates of its back, filling the room with a painful, animalistic bellow.

Light filled the room from Miv’s driftglobe. At this point, he figured, the jig was up and all subterfuge was out the window. Light, would only be an aid to their efforts now. He sent it high into ceiling, illuminating as much of the room as he could before moving in to close the distance between himself and the archer.

Elora and Dion pressed up against one of the pillars for cover, peeking out with precise strikes of arrow and magic. The cries of goblinoid anguish as they died were drowned out from a deep roar from within the broken portal. Although she knew not where or when she recognized it, Banshae had no doubt as to its origins. The horn had been sounded for battle. More would be coming, they needed to end this quickly and steel themselves for the second wave. Lest they meet the fate of those that came before them.

-- Buy Me a Coffee -- Support my work by visiting Ko-Fi dot com/H2H6CCBE

[rhetoricalrogue]

The momentary gobsmacked stare with the squishes 😊😍

I decided to go with the Avvar AU that we’ve both been yelling back and forth to the other for this one.  It’s sort of Vincent’s side of things in the ficlet that @alittlestarling did.

UST Prompts

Between the stench of death that seemed to cling to everything, the damp, humid air that made his hair hang limply in his eyes, and the ever-looming threat of skeletons emerging from the water if he do much as looked at the surface crossly, Vincent Martasen was most assuredly not having a good time. The Fallow Mire was living up to its name: even if one were to cleanse the area of any lingering disease and entreat the dead to depart for the next life, Vincent was doubtful that any crop would take root in the soggy ground. He wondered if it had always been that way, and if so, had the people who had made the area home actually found some way to thrive, or had they remained out of sheer stubbornness?

Vincent’s foot slipped in a break in the path, his boot sinking into the boggy terrain down to his ankle. By the Lady, he silently swore as he pulled his foot out of the peat with a thick sucking noise, his feet were never going to be dry. Not for the first time that day, he cursed the so-called Herald of Andraste for deciding to visit the area.

His people had seen the awful green cast in the sky and had worried that something similar would happen over their lands in the Frostback Basin. Their augur had been communing with the gods for days trying to find guidance, but luckily their thane was of the mind that the gods would want their children to take initiative and investigate for themselves before explaining everything to them. Vincent had volunteered to scout ahead and it hadn’t been long before he heard rumors of this Herald and the stories that she was already mending smaller rifts and helping the people she came across.

Oddly enough, as Vincent neared the edge of the Hinterlands, his route crossing east down through the mountains by way of older hunting trails, he had heard multiple times that the people gathered there were surprised she was helping at all, what with her being a mage. The sentiment confused him until he remembered that the religion his father practiced had views on magic which ran opposite of his own people’s beliefs. While opinions of the Herald grew more positive the closer he came to populated areas, he made the decision to keep the fact that he could wield the power they were so distrustful of a secret, glad that he was armed with his usual handaxes and a short hunting bow instead of the staves so popular with the lowland mages.

Philip Trevelyan had taught both his sons the lessons and languages of the places he had come from before settling down to marry Vincent’s mother Marta, and Vincent was never more grateful for that fact than he was when he spoke to a few people making the crossroads area their temporary home. They’d been wary of his appearance, but had been put slightly at ease after he offered to hunt for them to help shore up their foodstuffs. One deer and several rabbits later, the people had been all too generous with their information and he soon discovered both the main base of this Inquisition’s operations as well as the current whereabouts of their Herald. Not seeing reason to head north in the direction of Haven when the person he was looking for wasn’t there, Vincent set off to the southeast after her.

Which was where he currently found himself, ducking into an abandoned building to try to wring some of the rain from his clothing. The furs that had kept him warm during the trek were now heavy with rain and starting to smell and the clothing he wore clung to him uncomfortably. Vincent searched the area for any signs of enemies before slipping his pack off his shoulders and stripping out of the worst. He barred the door with a flimsy looking table that at best would alert him to anyone trying to enter the home and broke up the two chairs he’d found with his axe before tossing them into the dusty hearth. A flick of his wrist had a small fire going, the light doing wonders to lift his spirits after spending such a long time in the dark. It didn’t take long, especially with some further magical coaxing, to dry out his outer clothing, which he then rolled up and stored into his waterproofed pack.

Vincent took a moment to sit and eat a quick meal while thinking about just where the Herald could possibly be. He’d seen signs of a party come through the area, but the tracks were old, far too old to be from her. He’d also found signs of a struggle, and oddly enough, hints that fellow Avvar were in the area. He didn’t quite recognize the markings on the stones he’d come across, but they were a universal signal that said this is our land, enter at your own risk. Not wanting to deal with unnecessary violence, he’d used the blade of his hunting knife to scrape a hasty sign of his own directly underneath, signifying that a member of Stone-Bear Hold was crossing the territory in peace and that he meant no harm. He hadn’t found many such markings, but he wrote down his message on the ones he had found along the way in hopes that patrols would find them long before they spotted him.

Now dry and fed, Vincent regretfully put out his fire and went back into the rain. Luck was on his side though: he soon found fresh signs of battle and a hastily set up yet abandoned campsite. Breathing a sigh of relief that he could possibly be on the right track and on his way of escaping the cursed swamp, he picked up his pace and followed the tracks leading further down an unexplored path.

Not even an hour later, he came across a sight that made the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. Magic, unlike any he had experienced since the ceremonies between he and the god of patience that had taught and guided him through his childhood, crackled in the air like a living thing. Through the haze of rain, he could make out several people standing before a dimly glowing object that looked to be the source of the feeling of wrongness that had settled unwelcome atop Vincent’s chest. A figure smaller than the others raised their hand and almost instantly, the tension in the air seemed to snap. Vincent grabbed for the axes at his belt as the ground around the group began to erupt with the undead.

“I hate these friggin’ things!” As he drew closer, he could tell that the group consisted of all women, each working to dispatch the opponent in front of them.

“Arrows, Sera! Bitching can come later!” Vincent’s attention was momentarily taken from the skeleton he had just dispatched to the sound of the voice. The Herald - for who else could  be wandering the swamps and opening rifts in the sky - was a petite woman who probably only came up to Vincent’s chest level, if even that. He couldn’t see much of her due to the hood she wore to block out the majority of the rain, but she was currently fending a skeleton off with her staff. Seeing as the woman she called Sera was busy, Vincent threw one of his axes at the monster, catching it square in the forehead. The Herald whipped around to face the new threat, the quick movement pulling her hood back and off her head.

Vincent forgot how to breathe. She had turned in one fluid motion, her staff brought up at a protective angle with one hand and flames licking the palm of her other hand. The light it cast made Vincent realize her hair was a rich red, and her kohl-rimmed eyes were a blue that rivaled the clearest summer sky. His skin prickled again at the surge of magic that emanated from her, but instead of being hit with the wrongness from before, the only true way he could describe the pull of her spell was as if he felt something vaguely familiar wash over him, almost like coming home.

It wasn’t until it was almost too late that he realized she was throwing that ball of flame directly at him. Snapping out of the stupor he had fallen into, he raised his arms to throw a hasty barrier up just in time for the fireball to hit it, dissipating in a harmless shower of sparks at his feet.

“Peace! I’m on your side!”

“How do I know that?”

Vincent gestured towards the skeleton on the ground. “You were slightly busy. Had I meant to kill you, I could have easily done so.”

The Herald narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth to say something, but then her attention shot towards the pulsing green mass in front of them. “If you really are on our side,” she said, fire crackling from her staff as the rift prepared whatever it was going to throw at them, “then stay and fight. We’ll discuss things once it’s safe.”

“Agreed.” Bending to pull his axe off of the felled skeleton’s skull, he closed his eyes for a moment and felt the energy of the rain around him. It wasn’t quite as good as casting in the middle of a thunderstorm, but seeing as the Herald and another of her companions were magic users, it only made sense to use every weapon at his disposal. “Vincent.”

He tried not to be too affected by the small, barely audible gasp she took when he’d infused his axe blades with lightning, but he also couldn’t help but wonder if she had felt the pull of his own magic in the same manner that he had felt hers. “Rosalind.” Her eyes widened as they watched several unnatural monsters with overly long limbs pop up from the ground. “Maker watch over us.”

“Hakkon guide your blade.” The prayer was part reflexive habit and part a genuine plea to his gods. He’d only met Rosalind a moment ago, but he felt his world shift as they fought. He didn’t know what this feeling truly was, if it was purely attraction or if it was the type of instant love the skalds often sang of, but he knew one thing for certain.

No matter where the Herald was to go, he was determined to follow her.

[ayafoxheart]

[The Mark - Blood Moon Rising - Part One]

A vignette reaction to a Fate-14 RP Event hosted by S’imba Tia ( @simba-tia ) for his Blood Moon Rising story line.

RPC Cross-Post

In those, long past, distant days of yore. When we learned our songs of love, and lore Of Misty wood, and ancient timber, Of mighty boughs, untouched by cinder. Where heroes, beyond our ken,  once stood, Within that dark, that black, that Mirk Wood. -Excerpt from Gyr-Abanian Folk Song

Aya shuddered in her sleep.  She was wrapped in a light blanket on a simple berth of an evening airship.  It was the last leg of the long journey home from Gyr Abania for the unlikely adventurer, and it had been anything but restful.  Her adventures into the marshy woods of the Gyr Abanian fringe had left her mid-section wrapped in bandages, and her trusty poncho ripped by claws.  The bandages had stanched the flow of blood, and the torn poncho could be patched.  It was the wounds that gripped her spirit that ran far deeper.

She tossed and turned amidst a nightmare.  She'd been warned of the dangers of the deep forests of her homeland since childhood.  All those who entered, so the stories went, would emerge as someone different.   This could mean passage to a new phase of life, but more often it meant death itself.  Had she ignored these warnings to her own peril?

Never had the forest, long the scene of her idyllic dreams of freedom, seemed so dangerous and unsettling.

Her mind's eye struggled to relieve itself of the visions of the day before: bodies hung from and nailed to trees in ways too unnatural to describe, a chilling pall that seemed to cut to the very bone, the gray-skinned devil festooned and markings and bone who assumed the form of an owl, and perched high in his tree manipulating the bodies of others like so many puppets.  

The warnings swam through her delirious sleep, seeming to come from every direction as she relived every hellish moment of horrible discovery - of the sallow-faced wolves who lunged from the shadows - and the crying wailing voices of the still living victims of the wood's treacherous villainy.  The bodies of the hallow-wolves as they transformed into tribal Miqo'te upon death, bearing the obvious signs of punishment.

"What are you doing?  You should never have gone there...!" the words repeated in voice after voice from her memory.  Loved ones, mentors, and friends.  It was less a question, more an accusation of foolishness.

At last her mother and father, both threatening to burst forth screaming, seemed to cry into each ear.  With a start she shot straight up in her berth, nearly striking her head on the low ceiling.  Hands clapped over her ears to ward away the phantasmal voices.  The silence was immediate, but her hands now burned against the sides of her head.   With a gasp of fright she pulled them away.  She stared wide-eye at her palms, upon the left of which a blood-red crescent had appeared during her brief sleep.

Her feet pressed against the cushions, as if she could squirm away from her own flesh; wide blue eyes transfixed upon the mark in utter terror.  

She could only imagine what terrible fate now marked her...

It was late at night when Aya pushed open the swinging door to the Quicksand's kitchen.  She had just passed through the tavern without a hint of her usual cheer: the wave of several familiar patrons went unreturned.  Her eyes never lifted from the floor, while her red lips held a forced stoic expression.  She announced her arrival within with the loud drop of heavy gear bags onto the floor.  The sound reverberated across the stone floor of the kitchen and its back rooms.  Her shoulders fell.  Her head bowed.  At last escaped from the public eye, she openly sobbed in fear.

Jericho, one of the Quicksand's cooks, dropped his attention from his mid-night preparations and hurried to her.  Despite his characteristic shyness, he grasped the highland woman by the shoulders helping to prop her up under the weight of her obvious distress.

"Aya..." he said in the calmest voice he could muster.  The unmistakable burr of his voice an undeniable reminder of the land she had just returned from.  "Where have you been?  What is the matter?"

"Gyr Abania..." she managed through sobbing breaths.  

"But what's the matter..?"

"I've... terrible things..." she couldn't quite spell it out.

The look in his eyes became ever more concerned by the moment.  "I'll get Madame Momodi, just wait here..." he offered, in an effort to be helpful.

Aya managed a forceful, "No!"  She lifted her left hand, turning it over to expose her marked palm, before beginning to cry again.  All she could think about was the danger she now posed to others, and just what terrible things the skin walkers could have in store for those they marked.

He grasped her hand, trying in vain to wipe the mark away.  

His eyes stared longly at her delicate, feminine hand and the other-worldly mark cast so sorely upon it.  For a long moment no other words passed between them.  Only the sound of suppressed sobbing broke the quiet roar of the cooking fires across the room.

Finally he asked, concern consuming him, "What are you going to do..?"

She looked up at him, eyes and cheeks reddened by the exertion of dismay, and answered his question with a disheartened shrug.  "I don't know..."

[littleshroomclan]

Follow Through

Previous | First

BOI, this is a looooong time coming, and I’m so excited to share this with everyone!! Things are really kicking off now !!

P.S. I used Toci’s future preview in the header, one day she’ll actually look like that LOL

pings:@carnifex-rising @deadlanddisciple @murdoch-fr @clockworktophat-fr @unkorea @kattafr@avalonianrising @jadedragons @majestyrising@webwing-alpha @fusefr​ @corpsejack-fr​ @hellkite-fr​ (Please let me know if you’d like to be pinged!! Sorry if I forgot anyone!!)

Warnings: Implied sexual abuse

“Are you sure about this?” Mortis carefully wrapped linens around his palms, flicking his gaze up to glance at Toci, “When it all kicks off, there won’t be a lot of time to react. Things could go wrong very quickly.”

Toci fixed her solemn stare on Mortis. The two were both veteran warriors, who shared many hardships and battles together. He didn’t often question her judgment or decisions, usually agreeing with her plans without fail. She shook her head, unwavered by his indecision.

“Things are about to heat up anyways, the child was successful. Once Betsalel discovers that the Emperor is dead, both Absinthe and Watcher will be at risk. It must be now.” Mortis nodded, he had agreed with her already, but secretly wanted to test her resolve.

“Do you have the spell memorized?” Toci probed, silently beginning the job of applying different protection and stealth runes to her skin. He grunted in response, patting his pocket.

“Plus extra copies just in case.” Toci finished her work, moving on to craft more runes onto Mortis.

“Good. Let’s go.”

The inside of the makeshift castle was bleak, as always. The setting sun peeked in through windows carved out of the clay walls, casting long shadows down the hallways. The pair snuck through the winding passageways, sticking to the sides. Eventually they reached two rooms, they split off, each going into one.

“Your Majesty, it’s time.” Mortis stepped over to Watcher, who was slumped over onto a clawed up table. Watcher’s pale, blind eyes looked towards Mortis, almost hopeful.

“Absinthe.” It was a question, even through all the pain he had suffered at the king’s hand, he still worried only for his sister.

“Toci is with her now, do you need to gather any of your things?”

Watcher shook his head, “No, there is nothing for me here.” He attempted to stand, nearly falling to his knees before Mortis caught him.

“Your Majesty, are you alright?” He wrapped his arm around the waist of the frail man.

Watcher coughed bitterly, clutching his side “Yes, please excuse me, Betsalel just left.” Mortis looked away, ashamed.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t come sooner.” He held the prince tight to his side, bearing most of his weight.

“Let’s just go.”

Across the hall, Toci had begun preparations for Manto’s spell. She’d mixed the herbs, made a salt circle around Absinthe, and placed crystals for each cardinal direction. She thumbed the mixture, swiping it across Absinthe’s forehead, which pulled a layer of dirt and blood off of her.

The state of the Queen was devastating: blood was caked to her whole body, her hair was matted in knots, she was covered in scratch marks and dark colored runes that oozed a putrid liquid. She was barely clothed, a torn sack that showed off bruised skin taut over bone. It disgusted Toci, that Absinthe had been treated this way, practically left to die unless Betsalel wanted her to bear more children.

Mortis came in with Watcher, and they watched the door while Toci began her incantation. The spell was designed to repel the Shade away from her, the very Shade that was keeping her in unnatural sleep. Light began to glow in Toci’s hands as her chant started to speed up. She pressed her palms against the Queen’s chest, pushing the light into her skin. Absinthe’s body began to glow with a soft light as black sludge melted out of her pores, dripped down her body and dissolved into the salt circle. After a few moments the light dimmed, the black runes that covered her had faded to dull scars, and her breathing returned to normal. Toci gingerly picked Absinthe up, carrying the Queen in her arms bridal style.

“Quickly, it won't be long until he takes notice.”

Toci stood outside the hut they’d taken the wounded royals to. There, Manto and Marrow tended their injuries, and made sure there were no lingering traces of shade. It had been a few hours since the rescue; there was still no word from inside the hutch, and Toci was beginning to grow anxious.

As if on cue, Manto emerged from inside ,fixing her gaze on the horizon.

“They are well, before you ask.” Manto didn’t break her stare, choosing not to meet Toci’s eyes.

“I expected no less, diviner.” The castle was barely visible in the distance, above it were angry grey storm clouds, and crackles of thunder echoed through the territory.

“Their injuries were horrific, to say the least.” Toci nodded, reflecting on what she had seen, “They were even worse than you saw. The physical injuries were cruel, but both of their mental conditions are… fragile, to say the least. They have long healing journeys ahead of them.”

Toci remained silent, nothing she could say would even begin to express the hopelessness of their situation. Even though the Emperor was dead and their monarchy was secure, they still had to finish the rest of their plans to secure the safety of the clan and defeat Betsalel.

“Do you think he knows that it's begun?” The storm clouds over the castle had migrated to the swamp and small drops fell through the husk of the Gildergleam. Manto allowed the drops to splash on her dark, freckled skin. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, enjoying the smell of the fresh rain. Exhaling, she opened her palm to catch more raindrops before scanning the castle once more.

“Without a doubt.”