#fanged burrow worm

[wickedsrest-rp]

NAME: Fanged Burrow Worm

ALSO KNOWN AS: Bear trap worm

RARITY: ★★★☆☆

THREAT LEVEL: ★☆☆☆☆ | Just avoid its mouth and you’ll be totally fine!

HABITAT: The fanged burrow worm can be found in any heavily forested area. It’s allergic to the sun and therefore lives under the dense forest foliage or makes tunnels in the soil to travel through. Plentiful in the Wormwoods.

DESCRIPTION: An adult fanged burrow worm is the length of an adult giraffe's neck and the width of a standard American bear trap. Being allergic to the sun, only its pointy teeth appear above ground. The burrow worm has a mouth “flapper” that allows it to keep its mouth open, but keep unwanted pests from falling in. Fanged burrow worms are not social creatures. They will try to eat others of their kind if they meet them in the wild. Unfortunately for them, due to their slow speed, that process does normally end up with both worms dead as they have equal chance and opportunity to bite each other. Or if one does manage to get another worm in its maw, that worm will then wait to eat its way out. The fanged burrow worm reproduces the same as a hydra jellyfish. At the end of its life, it spawns a polyp that sits in moist dirt until it spawns and grows back into a fanged burrow worm. Not much is known about the process as their polyps are hard to find. 

ABILITIES: The moment a fanged burrow worm feels an acceptable prey step into its mouth, it will slam its mighty jaws closed to trap it. The eating process takes place over a few hours. Like a boa constrictor, the fanged burrow worm must slowly expand itself around its prey. Except here it has gravity on its side. It slowly drops its victim in its maw over the course of a few hours until the victim is fully engulfed. It will then take over 24 hours to fully digest. As long as nothing kills them, they are also theoretically immortal due to their reproductive method.

WEAKNESS: The delicate wormy skin of the fanged burrow worm is highly allergic to the sun. Fortunately, they rarely have exposure to it given their underground lifestyle. They may surface at night on rare occasions. Dislodging a worm from the ground during the day is likely to kill it. The fanged burrow worm lives a simple life and is not known for its intelligence – for the most part it simply sits with its mouth open. They can be killed by just about any weaponry and have never known a friend in their life.

OTHER VARIANTS:

Nobiagari: Thought to be a subspecies of the fanged burrow worm, nobiagari have developed a slightly different hunting tactic. They wait patiently underground, stretched out vertically, with only their eyes peeping up out of the dirt. When they see someone come close, the worm shoots out, using its full verticality to tower above prey of almost any height. When the person or animal inevitably looks up to get a look at the worm’s face, it seizes the opportunity to lunge for the prey’s visible throat with its sharp teeth. About 25% of nobiagari lack teeth and as such they instead wrap around their food and strangle it, like a boa constrictor.

[gothsuguru]

Request: Getou feels bad for secretly liking Gojo’s gf and making excuses to touch her.

the enormity of my desire disgusts me

contents: f!reader, one-sided love, obsession, cursing, touching (not unwanted but the intention is unbeknownst to reader as geto makes it a point to always want physical contact w them), mentions of self-destructive behaviors, guilt, & delusions. w.c: ~ 2.3k

a/n: hi! tysm for requesting :’) this is my first ever request/first time writing so please bear w me & i hope you enjoy! constructive criticism is totally welcome! <3

guilt creeps up suguru’s throat like a slithering serpent.

it crawls around the base of his tongue, writhing farther down, embedding its fangs into the flesh of his throat. a raw, mangled, bloody mess left in its wake.

remorse, witnessing the disarray that guilt’s plight leaves, frantically tries to discern where a home can be made. perhaps it can dance along his ribcage. pirouetting across his bones until it reaches a bloody cavern where it can dwell within a hole burrowed deep inside suguru’s heart.

maybe all of this despair can be washed away… a desire to cleanse his palate & purge his feelings away persists, yet he doesn’t allow himself the reprieve.

instead, he decides to swallow his shame down like a bitter whiskey, relishing in the thorn-like pin prickles. the harsh amber reflecting in his fatigued, glassy eyes.

the ache serves as a reminder.

suguru figures that the sharp gnawing pain that spikes his heart & torments his throat is the very least he deserves.

his therapist did say he had a tendency to wallow in his self-destructive thoughts. delude himself & cyclically make bad choices which turned into bad habits. but what’s another bad decision to him? a pyromaniac to his very core; suguru would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t enjoy playing with fire.

allowing himself a moment of respite, he fishes out a cigarette he stole out of shoko’s purse from the left pocket of his leather jacket. a silver heart-shaped vivienne westwood lighter in the right. he takes it out, rolling it softly in his warm palm, lackadaisically playing with the switch. imagining the cold metal were your cold hands instead, his own seeking to offer up warmth for your comfort. he gazes softly at the flame; flickering on and off. on and off. on and off. a burning fire reflected in his eyes. a burning desire razing his heart.

the whole world in the palm of his hands — the heart you presented to him.

(a gift from you to him — you begged him to quit smoking, it was bad for his health and you wanted him to be there in the future as best man at yours & satoru’s wedding. with a tight-lipped smile & crinkled eyes, he said he would.

always the deceiver.

you lit up, gaze softening while telling him to specifically use this lighter to light up the teakwood candle you bought him for his birthday. his smile turned fond, eyes crinkled softly with genuine mirth & adoration, he said he would. and he did.

always the sentimentalist.)

bringing the cigarette to his lips, he exhales a puff of smoke, allowing his low-lidded gaze to flit across the room. the warm lights illuminating the grungy bar, a favorite of nanami’s & shoko’s.

he reminisces on the days where both of you would talk for hours. from deep conversations about space, morality, your futures & pasts, to asking each other about what food you’d eat for eternity (cold zaru soba noodles for him, any form of potato for you), savory or sweet (both of you chose savory — suguru relishes in the fact that he has a connection with you on this), & if you two would still be best friends if the other one was a worm (both of you answered yes — you’d build a terrarium where wormguru could play & suguru would keep you in his pocket not caring if he’d be dubbed the weirdly hot worm-man.) from the serious to the silly, suguru felt his chest bloom with tender warmth. from the bottom of his heart, he knows that in this world and any others, he could truly be himself with you.

a soft sigh escapes him, a small smile gracing his face thinking about his memories with you. calling the bartender over for another drink after he downs his whiskey, he drawls out, “give me somethin’ sweet.”

he turns back around to the crowd of strangers, unintentionally smiling. he finds a few pretty boys & girls gawking at him, hyping themselves and each other up to go talk to him. he sees a few more pretty boys & girls looking away from his intense gaze, too shy to go up to him, praying instead that he’ll go to them.

the grin that previously took residence on his face falters. he finds himself upset that they’d think his smile was reserved for any one of them. none of them pique his interest per usual, & he hopes that the bags underneath his eyes, his myriad of piercings & tattoos, chipped black nail polish, and overall resting bitch face will stop anyone from coming near him.

(he knows it won’t. people often went after suguru and not satoru. he was always more caring, more in tune with his emotions with an air of magnetic mystique, unlike his brash, loud, & arrogant counterpart.)

suguru intakes a sharp breath, surprising himself with the haughty & bitter thought against his best friend, quickly washing it down with a sweet daiquiri hoping to honey the words in both his throat & mind, while simultaneously praying that it would soothe his heart.

slightly more alert, his gaze wanders around the room again. tired eyes widening slightly, lighting up greatly when he sees you.

there you were in all of your glory.

sitting leisurely, a leg swung upon the other, arm resting over the back of the tattered red vinyl couch, the very same one you both had countless conversations on. how were you so effortlessly cool? you could do anything and suguru would revel in it — drawn to you like a moth to a flame.

and like a moth, he found himself gliding across the bar towards you, his feet moving faster than his brain. his body demanding that it be near you, that it be graced with your presence. with a flick of his ring-clad fingers, his cigarette is crushed underneath his black boots. a piece of strawberry gum is popped inside his mouth along with another reapplication of vanilla lip balm to his lips to make sure that you knew they were soft to the touch.

with his heart beating ridiculously fast, he takes a deep breath before he stands in front of you, your perfume enveloping his senses making him slightly delirious from how delectable you smell. he prays that the blush dusting his cheeks fools you into thinking that he just drank too much; that it’s not because of you peering up at him through your lashes with your pretty eyes that are now affectionately directed towards his own.

“yo! suguru! long time no see!” you wave as you get up to greet him, a massive grin overtaking your face, eyes almost crinkled shut because you’re so excited to see one of your best friends.

without warning, suguru envelops you into a tight hug. his left hand placed against your lower back while his right hand cradles your head against his chest, your cheek pressing against his beating heart. suguru places his chin on the top of your head, craning his face slightly to get a whiff of your shampoo, ghosting a faint kiss on your hair that he knows you don’t feel, relishing in this moment with you. for a few seconds he can pretend… he deserves that much at least, he figures.

he could stay holding you in his arms forever, your body pressed up against his, protecting you from everything & everyone bad in this world, shielding you from predatory eyes around the bar. fucking wolves, the lot of them — suguru contemptuously thinks. it’s a good thing you’re here in his arms, suguru muses, confident in his ability to keep you safe.

as quickly as that thought dashes through his brain, you pull away. not wanting to alarm you with his panic that you’d leave him, a tight grip stays around your waist, forcing you to sit back down. he positions himself right next to you, his thighs touching your own, his right arm draped across your shoulder.

something that you can consider friendly.

something that he can consider more than that.

affectionate, no matter which way you take it.

“it’s been a while.” a fond smile beams across his face, bright amber eyes desperately glazing over your face. you’re so close to him and he’s so attentive to you, he imagines that the boy across the bar must think you both look like a couple. the pleasure suguru derives from that thought is second to none. you do look like you’d be his. he’s certain that he looks like he’d be yours, if his devoted nature is anything to go by.

he takes a a few strands of your hair, twirling them slightly around his fingers. “what are you doing here anyways? i wish i saw you before, we could’ve hung out!” suguru teasingly pouts, lips slightly jutted out, his eyes twinkling with playful mirth.

“tell me about it,” you playfully whine. “thankfully i just got here so we have plenty of time to hang out! don’t worry, i’ll make up for it so you can forgive me.”

“you never have to apologize for anything.” seriousness takes over his tone. suguru doesn’t want you to ever feel bad, even as a joke. not wanting to make you uncomfortable with his tense energy, he eases up his features and winks, “don’t worry your pretty little head about it, i’ll let you off the hook this time.”

you bark out a laugh which makes him elated, glad that he was able to make you smile. “sugu, you’re way too sweet! and ooh — you asked what i was doing here! toru wanted to chill out here for a bit, said if he didn’t get to drink a virgin piña colada right this second he’d faint.” you gaze around the bar, muttering under your breath, “he should be on his way here soon…”

right… satoru.

suguru feels his mouth get dry by the second, a venomous pang of guilt daggers his heart. his eye twitches along with his fingers, wondering if he should take his arm off of you.

if satoru saw this would he just consider it friendly touching? would he think that suguru was trying to make the moves on you? would he scream in his face about how can his best friend stab him in the back this way? the bitter taste of betrayal coats suguru’s tongue like a curse, and before he can do anything about it, a big SMACK! on his shoulder wakes him out of his trance.

“SUGUUUUUUUU! I MISSED YOUUUUUUU!” satoru bursts out onto the scene loudly, holding both your & suguru’s shoulders from behind the couch, bringing you two towards each other in a massive hug. with satoru’s face in the middle, smooshing both of your & suguru’s cheeks against his, suguru can’t help but feel a gnawing sense of shame.

satoru, affectionate as ever, kisses you both on the cheek. snowy hair ruffling with his actions, aquamarine eyes twinkling as bright as starlight, white eyelashes fluttering against the pink blush hued upon his soft cheeks. from here, suguru can see the light dusting of freckles on satoru’s nose, & the lightest sheen of gloss on his pink lips. no doubt from kissing you before he got here.

a twisted part of suguru is thankful for the kiss on the cheek, your glossy residue imprinted on his skin. an indirect kiss, he muses.

“sorry it took so long, i had to park so far away. hope you didn’t miss me too much, angel.” satoru pecks you on the cheek again, cheekily stealing an upside down kiss on the lips from you while he’s at it.

“no worries baby, i had sugu to keep me company.” you smile wide, eyes softening as satoru smoothes down your hair.

suguru forgot.

satoru trusts him with his entire life. with you.

the loud, brash, arrogant, self-centered boy suguru knew as a teen had grown up. cleaning up his act the moment he met you. enamored with your beauty, kindness, & personable nature — satoru fell deeply in love. he was still loud, but only to proclaim his love on the rooftops for you. he was brash at times but never with you. his arrogance was also truly never unfounded, he was just that confident in his own self and in the relationship he could have with you. suguru still thinks satoru can be self-centered at times, but never about you.

satoru puts you forward in every single aspect of his life — devoted. loyal. faithful. unbelievably constant with his love & adoration for you. your perfect other half.

your true soulmate.

you’re his one and only. and he’s yours.

“satoru! it’s been a while.” suguru prays the loud music can cover up the slight crack in his voice. he can feel his throat constricting like a python, he coughs to clear it, wanting to rid himself of the strangling feeling. he does what he does best in that moment: putting on a facade. a tight-lipped smile along with crinkled eyes graces his features, and he hopes that both you & satoru mistake it for pure happiness.

“you good, man?” satoru tilts his head like a puppy, looking at him questioningly. you do the same, concern clouding your beautiful eyes. he’s terrified that you both could see right through him.

“yeah.” suguru whispers quietly.

the ache that torments his throat & spikes his heart serves as a reminder.

he puts his warm hand over your cold ones in a comforting gesture. for who would it bring solace? he doesn’t know. at this point in time, he can’t bring himself to care. “just the summer heat.”

he brushes his thigh against yours once again, fiddling with your fingers softly. he figures he can allow himself this.

glancing into your eyes, his reflection stares back him.

he accepts that living with this ache of shame & this disgusting sense of desire is the very least someone like him deserves.

he figures he should allow it to devour him.

[thegoldenavenger]

You heard of Shen Yuan fingering Liu Qingge's gills for 3k, now introducing Shen Jiu fisting Liu Qingge's gills for 7k. I'm not even sorry. It was not supposed to go there. Unbetad as always.

Cw: sexually explicit, dom/sub overtones, underdiscussed uhhh everything. Bad fantasy medical practices, what can be interpreted as aelf harm I guess. Also bugs and parasites. The whole thing is bugs and parasites. And gill play.

"You insipid little clownfish," Shen Qingqiu hisses between his fangs, "I knew you were acting suspicious."

Liu Qingge shuts his operculum down tight, suppressing his wince. He should have been far enough away from the main reef to avoid this confrontation, shadowed in a protective cup of coral and sunken debris to avoid prying eyes. Importantly, he'd swam this far away from Cang Qiong territory specifically to avoid other mers of his school.

"It's none of your business." He twists to face Shen Qingqiu properly, squaring his body to him. He debates on whether to drop the kelp in his hands or not: Shen Qingqiu has already seen so it's useless anyways, but having his inflamed gills showing under Shen Qingqiu's sharp gaze is not ideal.

"Yes," Shen Qingqiu gives a condescending laugh, "And what shall I tell Yue Qingyuan when he comes back to the reef to find a school full of sick, infected—"

"I'm isolating well enough I wouldn't—" Liu Qingge's fins flare on instinct and he snarls flashing his teeth when Shen Qingqiu is suddenly in his space, his serpentine body eating the distance between them in a burst of power.

"Wouldn't what?" The frilled fins around Shen Qingqiu's face are spread wide and angry, the inky cloud of his hair floats in the ambient current of the waters like a dark halo. Shen Qingqiu's tail is nearly twice as long as Liu Qingge is himself and it's coiled threateningly underneath them both.

His long, sinuous body is built for punishing ambush speeds and power. Being this close and compromised itches at Liu Qingge and he can't help the wary glare he throws across Shen Qingqiu's form. He doesn't move though, even if Shen Qingqiu grew a spine enough to attack him face to face, Liu Qingge can defeat him. Liu Qingge has never lost a fight with Shen Qingqiu, even when the eel does ambush him in the dark waters of the reef's night.

"Would never host a breeding pair of—" here Shen Qingqiu's cold eyes rake over the flushed edges of Liu Qingge's gill covers, "—flathead gill worms?"

"There's not a breeding pair!" Liu Qingge defends himself. For all his pride, he'd rather swim off the edge of the trench and sink into the black depths before opening his school up to such a risky situation. He'd managed to claw the other one out before the pair had burrowed deep enough into his gills that he couldn't get a good enough angle, and he'd delighted in shredding the thing. "I already removed one."

"Then you got the wrong one! This inflamed I should think the thing has already laid it's insidious spawn and you're just an ink sack waiting to burst on all of us."

Liu Qingge hisses again, under Shen Qingqiu's furious face, but he can't help the twist of shame in his gut pinning his fins against the edges of his face. "It's not that—I have been taking care of it!" Shen Qingqiu scoffs in disbelief and Liu Qingge raises his voice. "I have! I've been packing my gills to suffocate it out. That's why they're irritated."

When Shen Qingqiu doesn't reply he forces himself to take a cycle of water through the gills at his neck. Small as they are, it's not very satisfying and the drag of water puts a pressure on them they weren't necessarily built to handle on their own, but the worm had settled in his fourth gill, so this is what he has to work with.

"If it weren't gone by the time Yue Qingyuan returned I would have gone to Mu Qingfang."

Shen Qingqiu lashes his tail at that, angrily churning the water beneath them. He turns with it, swimming a short distance away before coming back in an agitated circle of movement. "How did you even pick them up, they're only in—"

Shen Qingqiu falls silent and Liu Qingge represses the urge to laugh. He bares his teeth in a half smile, half snarl instead. "The western ship wreck?" He says, like he's offering the information Shen Qingqiu might have forgotten. As if Shen Qingqiu had forgotten exactly where he'd assigned Liu Qingge to patrol the moment Yue Qingyuan and his entourage had left Cang Qiong's reef boundary.

If Liu Qingge had been able to go with the traditional three-pod team one of the others might have been able to spot the danger in Liu Qingge's blind spot while he'd been focused on fighting off the juvenile colossal squid. If not that, they'd have been able to grab the offending little worms before they'd gotten all the way under his operculum. Shen Qingqiu had held back no theatrics when he pressed that the school was just so short finned with Yue Qingyuan away.

"I truly have erred," Liu Qingge says, lofty. "Thanking Shen Qingqiu for correcting me, I should have reported to Mu Qingfang immediately. With Shen Qingqiu's permission I will correct that now."

He doesn't actually make a move, though the way Shen Qingqiu's tail twitches as if to block his way makes him grin, fangs glinting. Shen Qingqiu glares and pulls back from his threatening curl; message well enough recieved. If Liu Qingge had gone to Mu Qingfang, Mu Qingfang would have asked what Liu Qingge was doing in the shipwreck alone and Shen Qingqiu's abuse of power would have gotten back to Yue Qingyuan.

Yue Qingyuan wouldn't do anything drastic about it, of course, nothing more than a scolding at least. But Shen Qingqiu's thin face could barely handle that, it seemed.

"What are you using?" Shen Qingqiu asks, breaking the tense quiet between them.

"Salt." The thick kind from the dead basin, the saltwater so dense there you could cup it in your palm, so toxic that fish who swam unthinking through it fell dead before reaching a tail length in. It burns the delicate edges of skin around his claws let alone his gills, but diluted enough he would live through it and the worm wouldn't.

Shen Qingqiu moves in again, sharp, and Liu Qingge does jerk back this time, swirling a burst of bubbles between them with the fast movement of his tail.

"Let me look. Leaving salt burns is just as bad." He glares at Liu Qingge, his dark hair framing his face making the jet chips of his eyes seem bigger. The little shining crown of shells and scales he wears glitters.

"Hah," Liu Qingge scoffs, then pauses under Shen Qingqiu's sustained glare. "As if I'd let you so near!" he says, his arm automatically moving to shield his gills.

"Mm," Shen Qingqiu's eyes go half-lidded, condescending in their relaxation. "Of course, if the War God is afraid of this scholar I will be more than happy to let you rot here by yourself."

The worm takes that moment to wriggle, the hard edges of its segmented body clipping the thin filaments of his gills. He makes a face that must be interesting because Shen Qingqiu loses his perpetual sneer in favor of a calculating focus. Shen Qingqiu sweeps the coil of his dark tail behind Liu Qingge, the movement buffering them closer with the water displacement.

"Let me look." Shen Qingqiu demands again, voice even and cool.

He doesn't look concerned, nothing like the professional consideration Mu Qingfang displays when Liu Qingge swims up to him with another injury, and nothing at all like the gentle empathy Yue Qingyuan sometimes casts his way when he decides debriefing is more important than visiting the healing beds. But he also doesn't have the sneaky, scummy cast to his face that normally rests there.

Shen Qingqiu looks even keeled, composed. The model of a senior who can be turned to when someone more specialized isn't available. Shen Qingqiu has never been someone Liu Qingge particularly trusts, is not even at the bottom of his list of people he would let close to him for help, but Shen Qingqiu is part of Cang Qiong's school.

He lifts his arm away from his gills.

Shen Qingqiu comes closer slowly, the stalking movement not at all helping Liu Qingge's nerves, but he can at least acknowledge that something quicker would be worse. Shen Qingqiu first rests the pad of his fingers against the inflamed edge of Liu Qingge's gill flap, making a face at the grit of the salt sticking to them.  His fingers are cold against Liu Qingge's skin, even more so than the ambient temperature of the ocean.

It could be just Shen Qingqiu's nature, he does run cooler than most of the other reef mers, but Liu Qingge has traded enough wrestling blows with him to catch the difference. Liu Qingge is running hotter than normal, his innate defense against illnesses jacking up his core temperature. He hadn't noticed.

"Messy," Shen Qingqiu chides under his breath as he brushes the clinging granules of salt away from his gills. "Open up, let me see."

Liu Qingge swallows before relaxing his tense muscles, letting his gills open and cycle fresh water. The cloud of denser salt water he'd been holding in seeps out and falls between the two of them.  Shen Qingqiu makes a noise just this side of neutral.

He lets himself drift lower, Liu Qingge guesses to get a better look, sinking in a parallel to the salt water. Liu Qingge tracks his slow descent.

Shen Qingqiu stares, his tail coiled around them both, his hand framing the open gill slit. His hair billows in the water, the loose tie it is bound with doing nothing to keep it contained. The silky black cloud of hair obscures Liu Qingge's view, his eyes catching on the sparkling, vain crown decorating Shen Qingqiu's head, following the delicate waving hair, glancing along the dark patterned coils of Shen Qingqiu's tail.

He feels warmer, noticing these things. Not for the first time, but the first time in a long, long while. Since Yue Qingyuan first brought the eel to Cang Qiong, probably. Before Shen Qingqiu opened his mouth and spit venom enough to distract from his long, shiny hair and his smooth flank.

It'd been so easy, at first, to understand Yue Qingyuan's bias. Shen Qingqiu had hovered at Yue Qingyuan's side, a portrait of striking contrast, a study of shell white and ink black and jade. His fins had been—still are, where they are covered by layers of diaphanous billowing material—tattered but far from weak the angle he'd held them at fanned the frayed edges like a crown themselves.

A threat, an invitation.

Too bad his temperament turned out to be so rotten, then, lashing out at even Yue Qingyuan. Spitting vitriol against any percieved slight and clawing desperately in even the most benign of spars.

Shen Qingqiu taps his finger idly as he observes.

Liu Qingge can't see, but his hand must be covering most of his side; Shen Qingqiu's finger is so close to his third gill which carries the reminder of what letting Shen Qingqiu under his guard can do. 

"You've burned yourself already." Shen Qingqiu finally says. "You'll recover but less so the longer you keep filling yourself with this concentration of salt."

Liu Qingge huffs. "Any less and it won't work."

"It's almost as if salt baths aren't the recommended procedure any more for a reason."

"Do you want me to go to Mu Qingfang or not."

The grip on Liu Qingge's side tightens as Shen Qingqiu looks up and glares at him. There's the lightest of sneers on his face, annoyance at the question. The lift of his lip shows a wicked curved fang. His mouth is only a few handspans away from Liu Qingge's gills.

Likely, Shen Qingqiu won't bite him.

Liu Qingge has been bitten by those teeth before, the long, needle like fangs sharp and piercing. They're meant for gripping onto wriggling prey as he slinks back into hiding, afterall. Nothing at all like Liu Qingge's own set of teeth, knife like, for wounding and tearing.

Shen Qingqiu has even drawn blood from Liu Qingge's gills before, getting his venomous claws under his third gill flap and tearing. He can feel it like a phantom now: the cruel edge of nail slicing through the flesh at his side.

Shen Qingqiu tilts his head at whatever he sees in Liu Qingge's face, furrowing his brow by the smallest of degrees. Liu Qingge blinks.

"Brute." Shen Qingqiu spits, rolling his eyes. He sways away from Liu Qingge, that intimate hand span opening up between them.

Liu Qingge bristles, but without knowing what he'd done this time to set Shen Qingqiu off, refrains from returning the insult.

"Well?" He demands instead. "What has looking got you?" His tail lashes at the water and he crosses his arms. The cool water replacing Shen Qingqiu's body sends a shiver through him that he resolutely ignores. Shen Qingqiu needs to offer a solution or go away and let Liu Qingge take care of it. At this rate, Liu Qingge is going to be quarantined for an entire moon cycle, riding through the parasite shed and his budding fever.

Shen Qingqiu sways in the water, the disconetent mou on his face shading towards disgusted as he observes Liu Qingge. He wants to bristle under the weight of that stare; he knows that Shen Qingqiu is looking at him and dissatisfied with what he sees.

He isn't self conscious, nor particularly vain, but he supposes it's easy to be that way when everyone around finds you handsome enough. All the mer in the reef eyeing the length and shine of his tail don't affect him as much as Shen Qingqiu deliberately scanning him head to fluke and then finding him wanting.

Him!

As if Shen Qingqiu has anything to brag about! His hair is long and smooth, waving like kelp in the loosely bound style he prefers to make himself look larger, but that's because the vain man spends half his day preening and grooming like a flirting lionfish! The long, muscled form of his tail he keeps curled up unless threatened, the dappled patterned fading away into the reef's shadows. He distracts from his scars and torn fins with layers of gauzy material, woven and beaded netting, prized scales from trophy hunts, like he's ashamed of the proof of his survival.

Liu Qingge tilts his chin up, his facial fins spreading arrogantly, and meets Shen Qingqiu's gaze with his own glare.

Shen Qingqiu turns calculating.

"I'll remove it."

Liu Qingge's fins flare up all at once, his tail even curling in warning. "Hah?" The exclamation is more out of disbelief than anything else.

"Are you a guppy now? Do you need me to rephrase for your jellyfish brain?"

"If it's that bad I will just go to Mu Qingfang!" Mu Qingfang has only ever snapped his teeth in warning, never actually bitten Liu Qingge. Looking was one thing, Shen Qingqiu can't actually think Liu Qingge would let him—

"I'm sure Mu Qingfang will love you showing up with salt burns and a parasite days after you should have. Forget the healing beds, he'll seal you up in the sea dragon cave himself. At least I'll have some peace and quiet then."

Liu Qingge should call Shen Qingqiu's bluff.

Liu Qingge should have bent his head and gone to Mu Qingfang first thing, but getting caught unaware by worms of all things... well. He'd thought he could take care of it on his own, the puckering little scratches the squid had left on him more than enough to distract anyone from noticing anything else. Whatever embarrassment he'd felt then is compacted doubly so now,

Being sealed up in the Sea Dragon cave for quarantine and spiritual healing this late into everything meant he'd still be shut away when Yue Qingyuan returned. Shen Qingqiu shouldn't have withheld a proper pod formation from Liu Qingge, but the blame for this would rest squarely on Liu Qingge regardless. First of all, there's little guarantee he'd have even taken a pod in the first place. He likes patrolling alone. Second, it was his decision to hide his affliction and try to take care of it himself.

There's always the possibility the worms had a chance to spawn and he's a been a potential swimming vector for infection for as long as he's been back at the reef.

Shen Qingqiu hums, a patronizing little sound as Liu Qingge wilts under the guilt.

"You aren't going back to the reef until it's gone." Shen Qingqiu declares. "Either let me take it out now or wait for me to send Mu Qingfang here."

Liu Qingge's fins twitches. "Did it spawn?"

Shen Qingqiu draws out the silence before he responds, probably enjoying Liu Qingge's blanching face. He finally clicks his tongue. "I didn't see anything like that. Still, the risk is too high without being sure."

Liu Qingge fights his instinct to curl and instead straightens out the length of his body. "Fine." He grits out, turning his head to glare into the distance.

"Fine, what?"

He hisses and clenches his fist in affront. Like Shen Qingqiu doesn't know!

"Really, Liu Qingge expects me to assume and then get accused later of malicious intent?" Shen Qingqiu pitches his voice higher than normal, like he's explaining a complex problem to one of the fry he teaches. "I won't go near you unless you ask."

It's Liu Qingge's turn to flick his tail and vent his irritation by swimming in tight circle. Shen Qingqiu watches him cooly as he laps around again, and again. It doesn't do anything but make his gills itch more at the exertion.

He finally slows in front of Shen Qingqiu, who raises a thin eyebrow in an expectant arch.

"Fine! Shen Qingqiu! Help me get it out!" He demands in a burst of bubbles.

"Of course," Shen Qingqiu says, magnanimous. He stays still, though, and it's a long, awkward moment before Liu Qingge realises that he's waiting for Liu Qingge.

"You! I already said to help! Come here!" His face feels far too warm for this and he closes his eyes to block Shen Qingqiu's smug face from his vision.

With his eyes closed he feels it more keenly as Shen Qingqiu draws closer, the currents shifting with the bulk of his body. He tries bearing it for as long as he can, but flicks his eyes open when Shen Qingqiu gets within a tail length.

"Move," Shen Qingqiu abandons his wordier inclination when he finally gets close enough to touch. He bats at Liu Qingge's arm so that he lifts it away from his gills before holding his hand out lengthwise against Liu Qingge's side.

"What..." he says before trailing off, because with the dark flash of Shen Qingqiu's eyes Liu Qingge suddenly understands.

Measuring.

Shen Qingqiu's hands are not a significantly different size than Liu Qingge's own. In fact, they're more slender, the joints in them fine and well shaped. But held against him like this they look twice their actual size. When Shen Qingqiu stretches out his fingers, Liu Qingge's muscle flinches where they graze against his skin.

"Hold still," Shen Qingqiu orders, "And hold these wider." Liu Qingge does, struck with the thought of the spur at Shen Qingqiu's wrist catching on the lip of his operculum. He stretches the barrel of his chest, flexing open his gills to their limit, but furrows his brows as he watches the black claws of Shen Qingqiu's hand.

"Your venom," the words fall out of his mouth softer than he intends them to be.

"Mm." Shen Qingqiu looks at his claws.

It's his spurs that are venomous, not his claws or his fangs, but Shen Qingqiu habitually spreads the viscous oil along his nails and lips. It's an irritant at that level more than dangerous, but Liu Qingge isn't keen to have any more of Shen Qingqiu inside him than necessary.

Shen Qingqiu delicately brings his claws to his mouth and laps around the hardened black tips of them. Liu Qingge's own mouth drops open as Shen Qingqiu licks the venom from his nails, wiping them clean with flashes of surprisingly pink tongue. He watches as Shen Qingqiu swallows and studies his hand before he looks back up.

His sneer resettles when he sees Liu Qingge's face. "This? Really?" He asks, condescension dripping through his words.

"What." Liu Qingge bites back. He jerks his head, "Stop—" showing off? Liu Qingge ignores the buzzing heat under his skin, the fever no doubt clouding his brain, "Just get on with it."

"You were the one so concerned," Shen Qingqiu says, but he does slip his hand back to Liu Qingge's side. He sinks down so that he's eye level with Liu Qingge's open gill flaps, studying them with the same intensity as before. His splays one hand underneath Liu Qingge's bottom most gill, the other hand against his side, thumb resting against his third gill.

His hair again wafts around him, veiling Shen Qingqiu's sharp expression from Liu Qingge. He looks up and away, at the dancing lights up at surface.

"Hmm, what's this?" Shen Qingqiu's thumb has found the edge of the scar there, the one that should have healed clean but clotted because of Shen Qingqiu's poison. It is slim enough to be nearly invisible from an appropriate distance. Shen Qingqiu is not at an appropriate distance. Liu Qingge feels him slot the tip of his claw at the edge of the scar, feels him follow it down its path across Liu Qingge's skin to where it slips inside him.

"Shen Qingqiu!" He forces out between his grit teeth. He's holding himself so tense now that his tail is twitching with it. His hands flex where he has them raised, hovering over Shen Qingqiu's head. Shen Qingqiu doesn't even acknowledge him, just hooks his thumb under Liu Qingge's gill flap without preamble, making the same tugging motion he'd done to make the damn scar in the first place.

"Shen—" his words break off into a warning hiss as he jerks backwards. He pushes Shen Qingqiu automatically, one hand knocking at his face and the other at his shoulder to create distance.

"Don't move!" Shen Qingqiu orders, his tail curling ominous behind Liu Qingge's back, boxing him in, and his other hand digging in to hold on. His claws aren't especially gentle with it, five points pricking into Liu Qingge's skin enough to draw a bead of blood each. The thumb hooked under his gill flattens enough to avoid tearing at least, and Liu Qingge steadies himself.

As soon as he stops pushing Shen Qingqiu backs away, contrary as always. His lips are pulled back in a snarl and he fusses at the mess Liu Qingge had made of his hair.

"Brute," he condemns.

"Don't just stick your hand in!" Liu Qingge cries, full of offense.

"And how am I supposed to get that worm out without sticking my hand in?" Shen Qingqiu blows a frustrated stream of bubbles, a shockingly childish move for him.

Liu Qingge forces a cycle of water through his gills to calm down. This time able to draw in water from his neck and pass it down to flush out at his sides. He can feel the foreign parasite sway inside him with the water's movement. It scuttles. Liu Qingge bites his lip.

"I— Try again." He demands. "I won't move this time."

Shen Qingqiu scoffs and tosses his hair. "You're not worth this much trouble. Getting Mu Qingfang involved would be less tiresome."

That doesn’t—Liu Qingge does not feel any way about that. His stomach does not swoop. It's nothing different then Shen Qingqiu's usual shameless critiques, his hypocritical insults. Just because Liu Qingge is feverish and had let Shen Qingqiu get under his guard—

"You already said you'd help!" He works on not curling in on himself, instead shifting uncomfortably as his gills flex. The flathead gill worm—if that's what it was—seems to spread out as his gills relax to a natural position. Without its partner and with the repeated dosing of salt it's been acting more agitated, writhing through his gill structure in increasingly distracting ways.

"I said I wouldn't be accused of something malicious later. I'm not letting Yue Qingyuan or Mu Qingfang accuse me of ambushing you just because you can't stay still and get clawed up!"

"I'll tell them—"

"That I was only helping? You'd get us both checked for brain worms. You'd be better off letting them believe whatever they came up with, like you usually do."

He clenches his jaw as Shen Qingqiu's tail curls over itself, agitated and jumpy. Shen Qingqiu isn't wrong, if Liu Qingge jumped to his defense the entire reef would think he was posessed. In his defense, Shen Qingqiu is usually in the wrong and with Yue Qingyuan unwilling to put any pressure on him, Liu Qingge was one of the only ones who would call him out, for whatever little good that did.

"I won't move." He repeats instead.

"Tch." Shen Qingqiu turns his back.

But he stays, so be doesn't really want to leave Liu Qingge to Mu Qingfang's care. Or at least, he doesn't want to deal with the messy fallout that would cause more than he doesn't want to deal with Liu Qingge. Does he want to be coaxed? Liu Qingge is bad at negotiating.

He swims in a crescent around Shen Qingqiu so they face each other again. He can't think of anything to say except to repeat himself so he does again.

"Yes, you clearly did so well the first time."

"Then what do you want me to do?" He asks. "You'd just startled me. I won't be caught unprepared again."

"I'm not letting your hands anywhere near me." Shen Qingqiu says. Hippocritical, considering that Liu Qingge wasnt the one to scratch anyone, but this means Shen Qingqiu will try again. So Liu Qingge nods.

He raises his hands, but Shen Qingqiu shakes his head sharply. "No, behind your back."

"Fine." He hesitates though, before folding his dorsal fin down and clasping his arms behind him. Without the large fin catching the current he sinks in the water. His small anterior fins flap, useless in trying to tread the waters.

Before he can give up and break position to rebalance himself or sink much further, Shen Qingqiu curls his tail under Liu Qingge, stopping him.

"Better," Shen Qingqiu says, curling around him. Liu Qingge follows his movements as far as he can, before Shen Qingqiu slips behind him.

"Hey—"

"This is a better angle," Shen Qingqiu says, "And I don't trust you to keep your hands to yourself. Stay still."

Liu Qingge subsides as Shen Qingqiu hooks his chin over his shoulder. His tail loops around Liu Qingge, curling tight in a way uniquely suited to his eel body. The thick flex of muscle stabilizes him, but it also makes his heart beat faster, the threat of letting an ambush predator so close, to sneak up behind him, hanging palpable in the water.

Then Shen Qingqiu wraps his arms around Liu Qingge's sides, his fingers encouraging the gill flap to lift open more, holding it out just a bit further than it's supposed to go.

"Ah—" he cuts himself off, unsure of what he was going to say. Stop? Of course not, he needs that worm out even by Shen Qingqiu's hand. Be careful? Shen Qingqiu would either be careful or not, any platitude Liu Qingge gives is less than useless and more likely to turn Shen Qingqiu sharp.

"Quiet," Shen Qingqiu says anyways, "Don't distract me."

Liu Qingge focuses on being still and not the cool fan of water against his skin where Shen Qingqiu's gills work.

There's a pause and then, "Brace yourself, if you must." Before clever fingers slip under his inflamed operculum and slide two, three knuckles inside with a smooth motion. He flinches, reflex, but throttles any further motion. His hands clench into fists behind his back, something Shen Qingqiu can surely feel, plastered to him as he is.

Shen Qingqiu doesn't give Liu Qingge any more mercy than that first brief warning. He stretches his fingers, feeling the structure of the gills settled inside Liu Qingge, curling them to get a feel for the space. They're cold against the heated flush of his skin. He crooks his fingers through the fine filaments of Liu Qingge's gill structure and he itches, the prodding of Shen Qingqiu's fingers leaving a trail of hypersensitive tingling.

He twitches, his gill flaps trying to flinch closed. It's almost ticklish, the way Shen Qingqiu combs his claws through the thin strings of his gills. The hand Shen Qingqiu is using to hold him open pinches at him, and Shen Qingqiu makes a warning noise in his throat.

It vibrates through the water and settles somewhere in Liu Qingge's spine, and he stills.

"Sorry," he breathes and forces himself to pull his shoulders back. It draws him like a bow, arching so that his gills are forced to flare open a bit more. "I'm staying still."

At this, Shen Qingqiu stops his own movements, going eerily quiet and still behind him.

Liu Qingge belatedly remembers he'd been ask to be quiet and frowns. A questioning noise slips out from the back of his throat before he cuts himself off. When Shen Qingqiu still doesn't restart, he casts a  strained look out of the corner of his eye.

He can't see much, just his own chest and Shen Qingqiu's pale arms against him, and the ink black of Shen Qingqiu's hair unfurling around them.

He resists squirming.

Is he still doing something wrong? He can't be, Shen Qingqiu delights in correcting him with the most venomous of words at the smallest provocation. He wouldn't just let Liu Qingge flounder when he could instead verbally flay into him. He bites his lip, just to bleed off the unusual anxious energy and instead let's himself sink into his body the way he does before hunts.

He knows what he needs to do: stay still, be quiet. He's already let Shen Qingqiu this far, questioning it at this point is a little too late for use.

It's the correct choice because Shen Qingqiu starts moving again. He doesn't acknowledge Liu Qingge, which is right of him. He is focusing on something.

Shen Qingqiu pushes his hand deeper into Liu Qingge, until his fingers are fully sheathed in Liu Qingge's gill cavity. The meat of his palm stretches the mouth around it, and he knocks into the gill arches when he moves.  He isn't particularly gentle about it, caring little about Liu Qingge's comfort as he flexes and reaches further.

He spreads his fingers out, pushing the curved back of his claws into the inflamed walls of Liu Qingge's irritated cavity. It burns, both the stretch at Shen Qingqiu's palm and the insistent prod of his fingers. Liu Qingge draws water in, flushing it through his gills trying to cool the heated flesh. Instead the water streams around Shen Qingqiu's fingers, whirling into little eddies, curling back through his gills and tangling his filaments.

"Do that again," Shen Qingqiu says, voice cold. "Keep up a steady flow; it will encourage the worm out."

He does, gulping the water and pushing it through in repeated cycles, each new rush rippling inside of him, dashing off Shen Qingqiu's hand and tearing through the sensitive, fevered and salt burned flesh. His throat clicks with it, the feeling of churning inside him, like a basin being worn deeper with every tide. Shen Qingqiu grunts by his ear, an annoyed noise as he sharply jerks his fingers but catches nothing.

He pulls out in a swift long motion, leaving Liu Qingge feeling hollowed, scooped out in the wake of Shen Qingqiu's hand. He makes an involuntary noise as his gill flap tries to close. Shen Qingqiu keeps it held open, peeling it back even more.

"Ah—Shen—" he starts but Shen Qingqiu cuts him off.

"Brace, Liu Qingge. I need to reach deeper." His voice is still passive, aloof even. Liu Qingge feels almost dizzy, the influx of oxygen from the rapid cycling through his gills making him heady. He can feel, in a distant kind of way, the flathead worm curling inside him.  The lip of his gill feels puffy and tight, still burning from the salt water treatment and where it rubbed tight against Shen Qingqiu's hand.

Deeper? There couldn't be much room left in the space inside him.

Shen Qingqiu plunges his hand back between the splayed lips of Liu Qingge's gill slit catching again at the thickest part of his palm. It feels like he tries to flatten his hand out to narrow it, but his fingers knock hard into the gill arches inside, jostling straight through Liu Qingge, shuddering up his spine and sending a prickling tingle through his scalp.

His breath catches and he clacks his teeth, choking on a noise. He doesn't quite choke up on the full body flinch, jolting Shen Qingqiu against him again. The fat stretch of Shen Qingqiu's palm at his gill, Shen Qingqiu's fingers twitching in surprise at his sudden movement, the uncomfortable sway of the worm deeper inside him, Liu Qingge jerks, caught on the hook of Shen Qingqiu's hand.

His body slips out of his control, wriggling to pull away, the overwhelming glut of sensation inside him shoving him out of his senses. He thinks he's making noise—embarrassing to be be whining so close to Shen Qingqiu—but he's barely cognizant of it as he flicks his tail and tries to spread his fins.

Weight envelops him, almost suffocating, as he writhes and jerks. He'd closed his eyes at some point in his tossing, trying to cut off at least one overwhelmed sense.  Gradually the weight increases and he becomes aware of his heaving gills, struggling to keep up with his breath. He swallows, deliberately slows his breathing, let's his awareness rise back up.

The weight is Shen Qingqiu bearing down on him in all ways: his arms locked tight, his tail coiled in several loops, his chin digging into Liu Qingge's shoulder. His hand is curled into a tight fist, stretching Liu Qingge's gill painfully. But his claws are tucked neatly away from Liu Qingge's delicate viscera.

His heart still pounds but he can hear a rattling growl over it. Beside him. The deep rumble from Shen Qingqiu's chest is mostly vibration in the water, with just enough sibilant hiss to prick at Liu Qingge's skin.

"You'll stay still, will you?"

Something plunges to the pit of Liu Qingge's stomach at Shen Qingqiu's tone. "I—"

"You can't stay quiet, either?" Liu Qinnge snaps his jaw shut hard enough the clack is audible in the water.

Liu Qingge isn't a fresh faced fry, to quail under Shen Qingqiu's disappointment, but it chokes him anyway. Shen Qingqiu's fist tight against his opening and the suffocating press of his tail coiled around him have Liu Qingge desperate. What for he isn't quite sure but it has him biting his tongue.

He leans back in Shen Qingqiu's grip, displaying the long line of his neck by dropping his head against Shen Qingqiu's shoulder. It's to accomodate the backwards arch he needs to flex open his gills just that bit more, lacking the privilege to use his hands to pry himself open more effectively. Failing to stay still or keep quiet, the least he can offer is stretching himself out and open for Shen Qingqiu. To make it easy for him.

He strains as he tenses his operculum, holding it splayed and curled open. He leverages himself against the loop of Shen Qingqiu's tail, even, to push the barrel of his torso up into Shen Qingqiu's hand.

He stays resolutely quiet.

Shen Qingqiu stops growling at least.

He turns his face towards the column of Liu Qingge's throat, nose brushing against his facial fin. It's an awkward position, but Liu Qingge tries shifting it out of Shen Qingqiu's way, holding it pinned back and lifted.

There's absolutely no reason to give Shen Qingqiu this much leave, this close to his neck. The worm won't migrate to the smaller gill cavity there and letting Shen Qingqiu so close is an actively bad idea.

Liu Qingge tilts his head anyways.

If Shen Qingqiu bites it's the least admonishment he'd deserve.

Shen Qingqiu clicks his tongue, hooking his chin back over Liu Qingge's shoulder.  He uncurls the fist he'd made, pressing inexorably forward. Then he rocks his hand back, letting Liu Qingge's gill tug with the motion. He keeps his fingers lax and his wrist stiff as he pushes and pulls his hand like waves lapping at the shoreline. With each withdrawal Liu Qingge feels his gill stretching a little more, and with each press in, Shen Qingqiu's hand advances.

Liu Qingge bows back more, trying to help, trying to ease the pressure of Shen Qingqiu plugging him so full, when finally something gives and Shen Qingqiu's hand slips past the ring of Liu Qingge's gill, burying itself fully inside Liu Qingge's thoracic cage.

Liu Qingge gasps.

Each breath feels shorted now, trying to work past the mass of Shen Qingqiu's hand. He recalls Shen Qingqiu telling him to brace. Deeper? Still? Any deeper and Shen Qingqiu will be reaching into his throat. Any deeper and he will be holding Liu Qingge's rapidly beating heart in his palm.

His hand is so big. And cool: a block of ice inside him, right at his core. His hand is intrusive, making the gill arches bend to accomdate it's heavy presence. His nails are so sharp, Liu Qingge can almost feel them tickling at the individual lamellae lining each filament. Evened bent as far back as he is, his operculum half shutters, tensing against Shen Qingqiu's blessedly slim wrist. It reminds him of the spur there, at the joint.

Sharp and actually dangerous, in the real way Shen Qingqiu's threat displays often lack, the venomous spine at his wrist rubs at Liu Qingge's skin. Shen Qingqiu really can't go any further or he'll tear Liu Qingge on the way out.

"What now?" Shen Qingqiu asks, and Liu Qingge realises he's made a noise so indescribable he is just going to forget that it came out of him.

He doubts Shen Qingqiu actually wants an answer, and even if he does, Liu Qingge is not going to attempt to articulate the thoughts swimming in his head. He doesn't even understand fully himself. It's just the cool threat of Shen Qingqiu, his teeth so close to his neck, the venom so close to his gills, the long coil of his tail wrapped tight around him.

Shen Qingqiu doesn't push for an answer. No longer needing to hold Liu Qingge open, his free hand hooks around Liu Qingge's collar. Some tension eases out of Liu Qingge. Shen Qingqiu can pull him back, now, if he untenses from his bowed posture.

"Cycle again," Shen Qingqiu commands.

Liu Qingge does so, switching from passively letting water through his gills to sucking it down and forcing it through his system. It feels like breathing around a rock. He does it again.

Shen Qingqiu hums lightly as the water buffets against his hand. It is settled in the open cavity of Liu Qingge's gills like it's made a home there. Like Shen Qingqiu has remolded the very shape of Liu Qingge to fit inside of him. Shen Qingqiu doesn't move his hand, not even a twitch, and at once Liu Qingge is grateful and longing.

If Shen Qingqiu had kept rocking his hand in that rhythmic undulation he'd used to get inside, surely Liu Qingge wouldn't have been able to withstand it. Even the water rushing through his gills teeters on the edge of too much. It would surely feels as though Shen Qingqiu were punching through him. But his tail tenses and relaxes in an echo of that same rhythm, held tight as it is by Shen Qingqiu.

It presses his scales against the smoothe hide of Shen Qingqiu's porous skin. It is almost the same motion as breathing, an imitation of the swelling waves. A heartbeat, between them.

"If you come," Shen Qingqiu says, startling Liu Qingge, "Do not come on me."

His voice is as cool and distant as ever, the perpetual shade of disgust veneering it. Liu Qingge lifts his head to glance down, sees Shen Qingqiu buried to his wrist inside him, and groans, closing his eyes. Shen Qingqiu scoffs at him.

His arm slides away from Liu Qingge's neck, slipping down the length of his body, past his chest, past his gills, down below—

Liu Qingge opens his eyes and jerks his head down sharply.  His claspers are embarrassingly engorged, standing out of the hollow channel they usually rest in. Even the v-shaped slit between his pelvic fins has slid open, winking as he trembles.

Shen Qingqiu's free hand slides right over his slit, his palm catching on its lip enough to make Liu Qingge groan, strangled. Shen Qingqiu grabs the elegantly tapered columns of Liu Qingge's claspers and folds them back along Liu Qingge's body into the hollow they belong. The pressure and slide as Shen Qingqiu tries to fit them flat back against his body has Liu Qingge's vision hazing and his mouth dropping open. He manages a weak twist before Shen Qingqiu's teeth snap at his facial fin.

"No," he says, simply, and Liu Qingge stops again.

Shen Qingqiu holds Liu Qingge's claspers back down and slides the coils of his tail up in a sinuous motion. He slips his hand away, but Liu Qingge is held bound tightly by Shen Qingqiu's thickly muscled tail.

Liu Qingge thinks, if he comes like this there is no way he isn't getting it on Shen Qingqiu.

Liu Qingge focuses on staying as still as he can, but he can feel Shen Qingqiu's pulse through the soft skin of his tail against his own throbbing arousal. Shen Qingqiu keeps shifting as well: a soft flutter of his body length fins to keep them steady, the clench of his muscles to keep his tail wrapped securely around Liu Qingge. It's a different kind of pulsing rhythm, one much more familiar to Liu Qingge's body. It makes his teeth ache.

He wants so much.

He flushes a new cycle of water forcefully through his gill system. Shen Qingqiu had not told him to stop.

Then Shen Qingqiu moves so sharply it really does feel like Liu Qingge is being speared straight through. It punches the voice out of him, leaving him warbling a long, wrecked note as Shen Qingqiu thrusts his hand what can't be more than a knuckles length but feels like the entirety of his arm.

He feels a flood of thick liquid inside of him, a sudden burst of molten heat against the sensitive lining of his gills. Shen Qingqiu's hand is fisted again, grasped tightly around something.

"Ah—" Liu Qingge tries clamping his mouth shut, but the noises escape even through his teeth. Shen Qingqiu has certainly speared something on his sharp claws, but the parasite's writhing death throws only twist itself against Liu Qingge's gills, jolting him with each frantic roll.

"Ah— uhn—" each little noise gets dragged out of him as it's rough carapace catches inside of him. He can't even tell if it's tearing at him, he's so tensed and stretched tight. He eyes sting with heat, the second lid shut tight as he convulsed, scaling up the tiny dying movements inside of him.

"Not a flathead," Shen Qingqiu observes as its twitching gentles. "Lucky. I don't think you could hold still for me to pull it from you slow enough that it didn't break."

There's a moment that Liu Qingge is actually there, with a flathead worm wrapped around Shen Qingqiu's fingers, being drawn segment by segment, achingly slow, from between Liu Qingge's gills. Flatheads tangled themselves in the filaments as well, each fingerwidth hard-won with the tearing pain of separating the worm from his viscera. Trembling to keep holding still, to keep from clamping down tight and snapping the worm. Having to do it all again, the fingers, the stretch, the fist, if he failed.

The very visceral feeling of Shen Qingqiu pulling his hand out of Liu Qingge's gill mouth snaps his attention back. He watches as Shen Qingqiu's wrist withdraws, his fist catching again at the lip of his gill. He can't possibly pull out like that, Liu Qingge thinks, not with how much it took to get it in there. But Shen Qingqiu can't let1 go of the worm either—

Shen Qingqiu's fist tugs at the raw edge of Liu Qingge's gill, stuck and pulling. Tighter and tighter it draws at Liu Qingge, until it feels like Shen Qingqiu is trying to remove his entire thoracic cage with the worm. It so much, pressure, pain, over sensitive fleshed being rubbed, that he's about to make a protest when Shen Qingqiu's needle sharp teeth ghost along his neck.

He gasps, hoarse and raw, and his gill opens just enough with the surprise that Shen Qingqiu's fist pops out. A flood of red murky water follows, presumably from the limp segmented worm in Shen Qingqiu's grip.

It looks, in almost every possible way, like Shen Qingqiu gutted him.

"It's just a rainbow feathered worm." Shen Qingqiu says, holding the long thin body in front of them. Not a gill parasite then, no danger at all to the reef just Liu Qingge's gills.

Liu Qingge watches, dazed, as Shen Qingqiu snaps it between his teeth with an audible crunch.

[cult-bull]

Bishops and what they once were - Thoughts

Ive been looking through the cult of the lamb fandom wiki a bit while trying to come up with designs for the Fear AU, and looking at some ofthe speculations there of what the bishops are, I kept thinking about who I think from the basic enemy types around what the bishops could have been before the found the crowns.

Main one who started this rabbit hole was Leshy. A worm through and through, some type of bag worm. Because he mentions burrowing through the ground, the wiki read he could be one of the burrowing enemies like the spit or spike worm. But like, tbh, I think its basically 100% canon/confirmed he used to be a type of chaser worm.

These lil guys

In his boss fight he spawns them everywhere, he has the wood horns, the green bushy exterior, and in his big boss form, he has the same red eyes in the dark middle

Like this is not a theory or anything, i think this is just a fact right?

So, I might as well just look around and see what the other bishops could be.

Heket is also ridiculously easy I think. A big red hopping frog with wood sticking out of her back. She was formerly a type of hopper.

The color fits, the stuff sticking out of the back fits. The sharp fangs fit, the nose fits. This frog is a frog your honor! She also summons them in her fight after all, even as a short mini boss section.

Now Kallamar? Kallamar is where it gets more complicated.

Kallamar is a giant squid in game. He has ears, a pointy head, and many tentacles.

However, none of his areas appearing enemies, nor the main tick/leech/crab like enemies he summons really fit him appearance wise like how leshy and heket basically had something one to one.

We do have these guys, but aside from switching between being described as octopi or jellyfish, they dont really fit like a nail to a coffin like our previous ones.

However, there is 1 non enemy being that fits Kallamar way, way more, interestingly enough.

The literal small squid you can fish up in game.

With how much of a scaredy cat Kallamar is in canon, maybe him being the one bishop not from a more fight capable species might explain some things.

Shamura is marginally easier again. While actively a mix of various spider enemies you can face in Silk cradle, they most similarly fuse traits of blue and red spiders found there.

Blue for the purple coloration stretching out into the body and the fluffiness on the backside, red for Shamura's red hint and the stinger stuck to their backside. Being either pre crown seems highly plausible.

While technically not a bishop, I could speculate about Narinder and if he, Baal, Aym and their mum are truly just "normal cats", but thats more of a post for another time.

I do like though how you can find various beings in game that you can realistically tie back to what the bishops could have once been. At least I like to ramble about it.

[exotic-venom]

The Striped Quill-snouted snake (Xenocalamus bicolor lineatus) is a species of rear-fanged venomous snake. They hunt burrowing skinks and worm lizards. These snakes are found in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Transvaal province, South Africa.

(x)

[evolutionsvoid]

Legends paint dragons in quite the godly light, reveling in their awe-inspiring power, size and cunning. See the many paintings that depict their flame and fury, listen to the many tales that boast of their wicked smarts and glorious wings. There is no doubt they have attained a mythical status to many, but one must remember that these are still flesh and blood creatures. I am not denying their incredible strength and reputation, I am just pointing out that they still follow many rules that we do. They still hunger and thirst, they still seek shelter and build nests. And they also still deal with the same annoyances and problems that come with everyday life. With stories of such dazzling scales and graceful wings, we can't imagine that they must groom like we do to keep up such a look. Indeed, they do all the unflattering stuff other animals do, like cleaning, defecating and even dealing with pests and parasites. Because, yeah, dragons get parasites. No surprise that sort of stuff doesn't make it into the stories.

While the legends coward out of including such important details of a dragon's life, I must once again pick up what people leave out. So lets talk dragon parasites! More specifically, lets talk about the Dragon Leech. Now before you all brace yourselves for a classic Chlora dragon rant, I would like to point out I have no issues with this one. Because it is a Dragon Leech and not a Leech Dragon. The order of these words is important! As one insinuates that it is a leech for dragons, while the other suggests it is a leech that is a dragon. So in the end, the name is totally fine! It is a leech that feeds on dragons! A Dragon Leech! Neat!

But back on track! Now you see, the Dragon Leech is an invertebrate that may or may not be related to actual leeches. We are still trying to puzzle that one out. Regardless, it is a worm-like species that is about the size of your forearm and is covered in spiny hardened plates. With these "scale-like" growths, spikes, distinct head and crawly little legs, some would swear it is some kind of dragon. In fact, some ancient texts incorrectly label this species as the baby form of other real dragon species, probably aided in their conclusion by the fact they lurk around dragons and their nests! Surely they are offspring! Why else would they be around dragons so often? And indeed you may ask: why does this species seek out the dangerous dragons? I mean....look at the name.

Dragon Leeches are parasites, more specifically ectoparasites. They use sensory organs on their long heads to sniff out the scent of a dragon, and then crawl/slither their way to the source. Thankfully, these stubby little legs don't have to work too hard, because Dragon Leech eggs are typically laid near popular dragon spots. Either dropped in the nest or released when their host visits common feeding grounds and watering holes. Once they have their target, they do their best to lay low and remain out of sight while they approached. This is why the species is more active at night, when vision is hampered by darkness and their target is more likely to be sleeping. If they succeed in their stalking, they crawl up onto the hide and look for a nice spot to burrow in. Usually their prime feeding area is places where scales are looser and where the dragon is going to have a hard time reaching to remove them.

Their snouts are flattened and shovel-like, designed to wedge themselves under scales and pry them up so they can worm their way in to soft flesh. Their heads will dig in while their legs clamp on tight to the hide, giving them an incredible grip. In the front of their heads are two sharp spikes that act like fangs, piercing the skin so that their proboscis can slither into the wound. From there the Dragon Leech will drink its fill, slowly consuming the food over the course of days. What happens after depends on the gender of leech. Females will remain latched on, while males will drop off and slither away. This because the females set up shop on the dragon and use the blood to make eggs, while the males are there to simply feed, fertilize any present females and then leave. The ladies hang on because this guarantees that their eggs will be released in places where dragons dwell!

What this feeding does to a dragon is nothing life threatening, much like how a leech on a human isn't dangerous. It is more of an annoyance and it doesn't look good. Having multiple wormy little buggers digging into your fancy scales really ruins the image, and their bites eventually cause some serious itching. One of the biggest issues they cause is the loosening of scales on the body, their burrowing weakening the armor. Given enough time, the body will heal this intrusion and the scale will be pristine once more, but until then it serves as a small weakpoint in their impenetrable armor. Bad for the dragons when getting into a fight, but crucial for all the heroes in those fancy tales! Anytime you read stories about a knight finding a single opening in a dragon's defenses for that swift fatal blow, do know that there is a good chance a Dragon Leech allowed such a thing to happen!

Obviously, dragons don't want these things hanging onto them, but the Dragon Leeches do their best to hold on tight when they are discovered. With their heads buried underneath a scale and their legs clamped on, their grip is hard to dislodge. Their many spikes help anchor them, making pulling them out difficult. Hard plates means cutting won't really work, and their resistance to fire is quite decent! Their love for hard to reach spots make the task more awkward, which only benefits them. For a dragon to truly remove them, they will need outside help. This is where dragon socialization is important! Have a fellow nest mate or friend pull the leech out, as they can get a better grip and exert the gentle, but constant, pressure needed for it to let go. This can be done by another dragon or any other capable race that is willing to land a hand! This is why it pays to make friends! You may notice in those legends that all those dragons with gaps in their armor tended to be isolated and not very social. See how it led to their downfall!

While dragons hate them, humans have a bit of an interest in the Dragon Leech. Dragon blood is a vital ingredient in many spells and potions, and obviously getting it yourself is quite dangerous! This is why some turn to these leeches to gather the blood, and then they drain it from them! That, or you could devour the engorged leech raw and claim you are eating the dragon's essence. Because that is a thing for some reason. Yeah, some fanatics think dragon blood is a way to unlock hidden powers or become said dragon. The problem is that most dragon blood is actually poisonous for many, which is why dragon meat is a rare dish that takes a skilled chef and hours of preparation to make edible (ignoring the fact you are eating a sapient species). But Dragon Leeches apparently digest this blood into a more palatable state where it won't kill you if you eat it. Thus, these fools eat these leeches to "ascend." I don't think I need to get into it to explain why this doesn't work at all. At least not without hefty magic. I mean, yeah, you won't die it seems, but are you aware of the diseases these leeches and stolen blood can carry? Because there can be a few, and they are not pretty when transferred to a human! But maybe puking up your own blood is a "breath weapon," so what do I know?

Chlora Myron

[atsadi-shenanigans]

What Shall We Become 12 - Scavengers

The rogue tests some boundaries.

On AO3.

The next day—if it can even be called that; all wretched darkness—they enter an even larger cavern. Astarion can tell because their voices both echo so far off that he honestly loses them. And because his illustrious leader stops so fast and completely, she doesn’t think to warn him before he plows into her.

“It’s huge,” she says. He can make an innuendo out of that. But doesn’t.

She describes crystals. Mostly white, but a few purple or tinted blue. Many as large as a man, more large enough one could burrow a house out of it. They’re soft enough for it, too; a soft tap with his dagger chips off a piece.

“It looks like there might be a way through?” she says.

And so begins the most irritating, tedious slog he’s ever had the misfortune to experience. The trouble with these crystals is that they don’t grow straight up or down, like most of the earthen works they’ve come across so far. Most of these seem to have set themselves at an angle. And most of those angles purposefully make his traverse worse in every way.

They have to climb. They have to crawl. At one point, they have to take turns worming through a vertical crack, and his leader is so cautious and careful with him (he almost can’t blame her after his abysmal performance earlier) that it nearly makes him sick.

Which he tells her.

She doesn’t respond for so long he thinks she’s done her “water off a duck’s back” parry.

Then, as he’s sprawled belly down, inching over the fractal surface of a crystal that must be wider than Sharess’s Caress, she says, “You don’t like owing people, huh?”

It takes him so completely by surprise that he stops his shuffle. Which, being an unfortunately angled surface, means the crystal dictates the rest of his descent as he immediately starts to slide and lands in something of a clumsy heap on the other side.

For some reason, she doesn’t laugh, the way an ordinary person would.

“Excuse me?” he says. How dare she issue such a ridiculous statement that’s lead him into a ridiculous sprawl. He straightens and pulls down the chest piece of his armor (nothing special, just a leather piece scavenged from a dusty chest in an abandoned monastery) (that he might have blown up) (it wasn’t his fault). Find that enchanted necklace still around his neck, and tucks that back under where it’s less likely to be snagged.

“That’s why you get so snappy,” she says. And gives a tug on the rope they’re once again connected to.

It’s a different coil—he tossed the severed one off into the dark while she last slept. But she insisted they tie themselves together again for safety. It’s a practical decision that has absolutely nothing to do with any strange tightness in his chest.

“Darling, if I wanted to snap at someone, I would,” he says and grins in a way he knows shows off his fangs.

But she only makes that low, drawling, “Uh huh.”

He rather hates that sound. He can see her face in his mind: the flat stare, the barest hitch of an eyebrow. Like she’s…she’s seen behind his mask and is bored with it.

He should give her something to do, if she’s going to react like that.

“Another low one,” she says.

It gives him pause just long enough for him to realize she’s talking about a crystal, and he barely gets her staff up to tap the thing before it hits him square in the face. By then, she’s already grunting and shuffling. He’s going to have to crawl again. Absolutely wretched.

She’s lead him through this horrid slog. She ought to make up for it.

“How was your item last night, darling?” he says.

She pauses. Just a moment. Then resumes her trek. “Don’t know.”

“Only, you were so terribly eager to get it back. I only thought you two might have a passionate reunion.”

He can almost imagine her squinting off into the middle distance like she does when she’s annoyed.

“Astarion, presumably that thing rattled around that ship as we crashed, yeah?”

“If it wasn’t properly secured, then yes, I’d imagine so.”

That will have garnered him ann eye roll.

“So then it fell out, landed god knows where in god knows what, and sat there for god knows how long. Before god knows who picked it up and did god knows what with it.”

Impressive. She’s covered all the five questions but “why.” That part being obvious.

“We can’t make a campfire to boil water,” she says. “Why in the fuck would I ever put something up my cooch without one: knowing where it’s been and two: boiling the sin outta it?”

Gods, she can be so delightful. A bold virgin. No question of her using her toy, only the when and the how.

It breaks a snort free. Such a way with words, his verbose leader.

“Fair point,” he says. And because he can’t leave it at that. “I see your education extends to proper hygiene, then?”

“Maybe better than y’all’s.”

Ooh~. She’s picked up a tone.

“Don’t even got germ theory. My people can literally pop somebody’s ribcage open, sew in a donated heart, and close them up again with decent risk of avoiding a fucking infection. So yeah. I know a bit about sex hygiene, thank you.”

But he’s lost that thread over a shiny, new one. “Donated heart? Donated by what, darling?”

And her people are far more ghoulish than he ever gave them credit for. Hearts, lungs, livers. They’ve turned flesh and blood creatures into a kind of…squishy automaton.

He’s not sure what to feel about that.

Then she spots a glow ahead and puts an end to that conversation.

They emerge into yet another chamber devoid of any of their companions. They have to shuffle through another dreadful crack in the wall to get there. This one isn’t as tight a squeeze, thankfully, and she natters on about what she sees as he makes his turn. It gives him something else to think about, which does more strange things to his innards. Then they’re through and she falls silent.

And it’s then that Astarion catches the faint whiff of blood (not hers). No pulse, no living blood, but something recently alive.

“What’s out there?” he says.

Her bare feet scuff lightly on the stone floor. Then, “What’re the chances there’s some apeshit sculptor running around down here?”

Even with context, that sentence would make no sense.

“You’re going to have to elaborate on that,” he says, and the sounds travels far. They must be in the biggest cavern yet. Echoes all around, with no actual stopping point.

“We’re on a ledge and there’s a buncha statues below us,” she says. “Also some dead people.”

Bodies and statues? He’s not sure what she’s describing, really.

Nothing moves around down there. No hearts beat, no lungs inflate. Not even the gurgle of dying intestines.

“Can we skirt this mess?” he says.

“Yeah. If we hug the right wall.” But she doesn’t move. Her thighs rub together as she shifts.

“And we’re not doing that because…?”

He should push her to the side and grope his way along himself.

“Some,” she starts. Stops. And he realizes she’s hesitating because she’s…embarrassed? He feels his face light up. “Some of them bodies have, y’know. Pants. Trousers. Whatever.”

He clucks his tongue. “Oh dear. Robbing the dead? How very uncouth of you.”

He’s rather sure if she had anything to spare, she’d have thrown it at him. Seeing as how her worldly possessions are a few bottles and a damp shirt—and a marvelous phallus—she declines.

“I can’t go running through a cave like this,” she says. “It’s cold, and fuck knows what else we’ll run into. And they might have rations.”

He nods. Does nothing to hide his grin. “Of course. It’s only practical.”

“It is practical. And fucked up. At least I ain’t hungry enough to have to eat them like that soccer team.”

He can honestly say that he’s almost glad he found her, rather than one of the others. She can’t fix his sight or defend him in a fight. But gods, the things she says. “You have a cannibalism story? And you didn’t think to share?”

She tells him the story of a group of stranded humans eating their own dead. It’s disgusting. And dramatic. He can see why she’d be interested if these are the types of stories she was talking about before.

“Luckily,” she says as they climb down to some apparent maze made out of statues. He wonders if the mad wizard had anything to do with it. Seems like the type of thing a mad wizard would have a hand in. “The pope said they did what they had to, and a lot of people agreed. So they wasn’t condemned or nothing. It used to be a common practice with European sailors. If they got wrecked? The survivors’d draw straws to figure out who they was gonna have to kill to eat.”

“That’s positively lurid,” he says.

They have to climb over a cluster of boulders and she’s so caught up in telling the story, she doesn’t even flinch when she takes his sleeve to guide him.

“I know! And I heard at least one time, one of them boats sank and all the remaining crew was in this one lifeboat with no supplies. So they drew them straws, and agreed they’d kill the loser in the morning. But then they got found the next morning. But the guy that drew the short straw literally lost his damn mind over it and never recovered. Which, hard same.”

He…wonders if his marks realized what was happening once he delivered them. Once that bastard received them and took them to his own chambers. He decides he’d rather not know, actually, and that he ought to change the subject.

“Find anything worthwhile?” he says. They’ve reached flat ground once again, and the stink of torn bowels is rather overwhelming. He tries to focus on the warm scent of her blood instead.

Her footsteps pick through what must be a field of carnage.

“These’re elves,” she says after a long moment.

He blinks. Uselessly. “Come again?”

“These’re all elves. Even the statue ones. They got gear. Must’a been some traveling party down here. And…and this one’s still warm.”

The last part goes all soft and miserable. It combines with what she said and snaps him to attention.

“We should leave,” he says. Anything that can obliterate and, what, petrify a group of elves? Isn’t something either of them are in any condition to deal with.

“On it. Here.”

She thrusts a pack at him, which he has the reflexes to catch. Then a grunt and a dragging noise as she presumably robs another body.

This cavern is too silent for his well being. He never thought he’d miss trees (the parks in the city were a fine place for an illicit rendezvous, but he’s never seen the point in standing about in one). But now, he misses them terribly. They have leaves that flutter about in the wind and fill his senses with some kind of sound.

And it’s that silence which makes the next part so much worse. He’s already straining all his remaining senses in a feeble attempt to compensate. When the heavy, near painful silence is broken by a low rumble and a distant, high shriek. It’s an awful sound. Manages even at what he can tell is a great distance to warp the air and whispers in his bones.

Danger.

Death.

“Darling,” he says.

She doesn’t even say anything as she rips something free and grabs him by the hand so they can flee.

***

They don’t stop sprinting for several minutes. Credit to the gith; his leader wasn’t capable of that a couple of tendays ago. But her heart does start to thunder and her panting grows increasingly ragged, and right as he begins to wonder if he ought to suggest something, she slows. But doesn’t stop.

And that’s when it registers.

Her bare hand in his. He is used to touch. Rather over and done with it all. Wet or sweating and sometimes stinking, sometimes scented with pleasant perfumes, usually just the scent of skin and old sweat.

Her touch, though. Now that he thinks about it, she’s only ever directly touched him like this a handful of times before: to drag him away from that flooded river, and when she was trying to force herself to sleep with him.

She notices right about then, and her hand tugs out of his grasp.

“Sorry,” she says, like it’s something at all to apologize for.

That’s a pattern with her. With all of them. She’ll scratch the dog and cuddle the owlbear cub. Seems rather smitten: face open, hands all over them. But the others? Their erstwhile companions? Now that he’s thinking on it, she never indulges the shoulder slapping or hand shaking. Didn’t dance with anyone the night the tieflings threw their pitiful excuse for a party. Part of that was his fault—he’d have slept with the gith had she agreed, but she was trailing off after the Blade (not that he can blame her). He’d told his illustrious leader about his plan…he’s not sure why. To hurt her, yes. To see what she’d do. To distance himself.

He should have left her in that goblin den. Broken, dying thing she was. Someone else—the Blade, perhaps—would have taken her place in the group and he could have started his seduction plan anew after she so miserably wrecked the first one. And he’d just tasted her cruelty for the first time. She wasn’t entirely wrong, except she’d said he was good at two things—murder and lock picking—but the only real talent he has is sex.

Then she’d gone and done something almost no one ever had.

She apologized.

Of all the mad things he’d seen or heard from her, of all the things she could do, that one had caught him flat-footed. Left him in a haze of bewilderment. So when he found her, dying on the floor, crushed beneath a ceiling rafter and about to be ripped open by that goblin, he just…acted.

And he couldn’t afford that. Acting strangely, deviating from his plan. The stakes are too high. He’s lost, vanished, free. And he will keep it that way.

So he’d hurt her during that party. Sauntered off congratulating himself and then…

Then he found her. Still stinging from the gith’s rejection (he hadn’t even gotten to propose her; she’d seen him coming and as she ducked into the Blade’s tent after the man). He found their most illustrious leader alone in the woods and she…was weeping. Alone.

Astarion doesn’t feel guilt. That weakness was carved out of him over a century ago. But his innards had done something odd when he saw her there. Wretched thing, crying into awful wine. She lost nearly everything a person can lose (though she still has a pulse, the lucky thing).

So he’d stayed. Just, just talked. Or listened, rather, at her drunken ramblings. Until she’d been sick all over the forest floor. The woman decides to get drunk for what he later learned was the first time in her life by downing a bottle and a half of wine in under twenty minutes. On an empty stomach, no less. That bit of foolishness made him feel a little better about his own, recent decisions.

The wizard holds a city-destroying bomb in his chest. The Blade is bound to a devil. Their tiefling is on the run from a different archdevil with an engine in place of her heart and it sets her on fire. The gith has turned against her own god queen (even he has to admit a good for her). And he’s reasonably certain their cleric is devoted to Shar.

But their leader? She’s an alien and she murders cultists and is disgustingly soft-hearted to others, seemingly at random. And she was digging at him earlier, in the crystal chamber.

So he decides to push.

“Sorry for what, darling?” he says.

She takes two more steps, and then she stops. Silence creeps in. He’s hit something.

So he stands there and waits. Lets her flail around, silently. People touch each other casually all the time. Even strangers (even when they’re not pawing at him, they shake hands or shove each other when they’re in their cups). Yet she apologizes for grabbing a single hand of his. And in an emergency.

He’s leaning in, isn't’ he? Curious to see what she’ll say. What excuse she’ll come up with. Their quiet, mysterious leader who, apparently, loves salacious stories of mayhem and death and the worst things her people can do.

“I’m sorry for grabbing you,” she says.

And it’s no explanation at all. He’s digging, damnit. “Is holding hands a crime where you’re from?”

Another delightful pause. Oh, he’s got her on the back foot, hasn’t he?

“It’s kinda impolite to just touch people without asking,” she manages.

He pulls back. Because that’s absurd. People touch him all the time. Whether he wants them to or not.

Ah, but that was a parry from her, wasn’t it? No, he’s not going to let her win this round. Not going to let her turn his jab against him.

“Strangers, perhaps,” he says, feinting. And then the twist. “But we’re hardly strangers. You’re my favorite ally, after all.”

And a strike! She makes a tiny sound deep in her throat. An awkward one. Then she coughs.

“I think I see a little cave or something across the way, here,” she says and concedes the match. “What’d’ya say we set up camp for the day and I sort through all that looted shit?”

A definitive point for him. A small spark to light this wretched misery. And he can be a gracious winner. Not often and not by habit. But he can do it.

So he bows. “Lead the way, darling.”

[shes-some-other-where]

June of Doom Day 2, 10, 13, 24, 29

“It didn’t have to be this way.” | Made to Watch | “Can you hear me?” | Fear | Adrenaline | Blankets | Delirium

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Contains: gore, death, blood, magic side effects (nosebleed, coughing up blood, collapse), blurred lines between reality and unreality, heavy insinuation of noncon/SA, past character death/minor whump

WC: 870

Threads of sorrow and screams

Dreams took him, but the seer couldn’t tell if they were sleeping or waking visions. It mattered little; they hurt the same. They wove the same horrors, threads of sorrow and screams spun into ghastly tapestries.

He watched, cowering, as the room that was his prison became the dreamscape, bringing with it a figure from his darkest nightmares.

His brother.

No, he thought. Not today. Not when their sister was suffering unknown torments, too. Not after the prince had so gloatingly admitted what he’d done, yet left enough mystery to the details that the seer knew his mind and conscience could never, ever rest.

Please, no, the seer pleaded, but of course, it was just a vision, and of course, he had no voice.

The spectral child—frozen in time within a round, rosy body, eight or nine years old—met his gaze. The seer fell backwards in horror, tripping over his chain. It saw. It knew.

Darkness, darkness, sucking him in deeper, devouring him, his soul, his entire being. Rushing, wailing wind. Seething, heaving breaths. Running footsteps. Shrill screams, the harrowing cries of someone in unimaginable agony.

Stop! he wanted to roar. Stop, please!

It never did, never, never, no matter how he yearned for escape.

His silent pleas became a voice, but the voice was not his.

“Please, stop, please! You don’t have to do this!”

His brother at his side. Older now. Seventeen. Cold, dead. A decaying corpse.

Not his voice.

“Please, please, don’t! Don’t! I—”

The seer clapped his hands over his ears. Loud, too loud. He didn’t want this. He’d never wanted this.

It didn’t have to be this way, said his brother, as wordless as he, yet his meaning dug into the seer like fanged worms, burrowing deep.

Light. Blinding. Piercing. A bed with bloodied blankets.

Red. Silk. A thud, a slap, a groan.

You did this to me. His own thoughts, never spoken. Haunting him, surrounding him, drowning him. You did this to me.

It didn’t have to be this way.

His sister sobbed, and his brother’s throat tore open, gushing blood.

You did this to me. His brother, seventeen and broken and bleeding and dead. His sister, weeping and broken and bleeding and—

The seer turned away, sobs still echoing all around him, but the vision endured. He waded through a scarlet puddle, bare soles burnt as if by acid, by poison. He stumbled, hit the floor, coated his hands in blood.

The man he’d seen before, the northerner. Bested, caught: a fly in a spider’s web, struggling valiantly but in vain against his bonds. Sweat soaked his hair and tunic; his wrists streamed crimson from fraying skin; ropes bound him fast. He called for help, but he, too, was silenced.

Drowned out by those ear-splitting screams.

The man’s struggles intensified. Just as he paused for a gasping, laboured breath, the chair’s balance tipped, and he fell.

The seer reached out his dripping fingers as if he might right the chair or loosen the ropes. As if he might do anything.

The man flinched as if scalded—as if he’d somehow felt the brush of ghostly fingers over his bound hands.

The seer was whisked away again, leaving the northerner to his fate.

You did this. You did this. You did this.

His sister’s cries grew silent.

No.

No—

A window, a roar of frustration, a moonlit night. The seer fell to his knees, despairing. Such a power, such a gift, and when it mattered the most, it was useless.

“Idiot! Sneaking off like that! I’ll have his hide when he gets back!”

The seer staggered toward the glass. A man, unmistakably furious, pacing anxiously. Concern written on his features in strokes of candlelight.

Blood stained the floor within, soaking in the ooze of his brother’s slashed throat. Red footprints, a trail of gore smeared over old wooden floorboards. Tainted. Cursed.

It didn’t have to be this way.

A fresh scream in the night, muffled and terrified. The fleshy slap of skin against skin.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

He’d never wanted this. In all his anger, in all his rage, in all his hatred—he’d never wanted any of this. Sobbing, he slammed his fist against the glass. 

It shattered.

The man inside leapt away from the explosion of glass shards, startled and astonished. The seer gaped down at his hand, bleeding now, littered with cuts.

Did I . . . ?

When he peered inside again, both his brother and the man had their gazes fixed on him.

Did they hear . . . ?

Can they see  . . . ?

Baring red-stained teeth, with blood bubbling over bruised, greying lips, his brother smiled.

The seer gasped awake, sprawled on the floor of his room, chain tangled around both legs as if he’d been writhing violently in his sleep. He coughed, panicking, clawing at his throat with bleeding fingers. Droplets of red sprayed from his mouth with each cough. Heavy wetness flowed from his nose again.

How did I . . . ?

Desperation, adrenaline, imagination, or madness? He didn’t know.

Certain his throat was torn apart, certain he was about to die, the seer let his eyes close and his body fall.

Somewhere beyond his prison, a shrill scream strangled into terrified, deathly silence.

June of Doom Masterlist

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@juneofdoom

All my writing is original. Feel welcome to interact/comment/reblog. Pls don’t steal or repost.

[stephensmithuk]

The Sign of Four: The Episode of the Barrel

Victorian literature loves its fainting women. Was this down to overly tight corsets, ill health or someone just deciding to be dramatic for the sake of it? Possibly all of the three.

The woman Mary works for is not called Cecil Forrester. The conventions of this time were that women took their husband's legal identity. They certainly took their nationality, losing their own.

Forty-three is rather a large number of dogs to have. The RSPCA (which was a thing in 1888) would get involved if they knew about this facility today. Back then too.

The "wiper" or viper in this case is almost certainly Vipera berus aka the adder. Males are normally silvery-grey, females copper or brown. However, you can sometimes see black adders. If you want to see baldrics, go watch some Morris dancers.

The adder gives birth to live young (up to twenty at a time) and can live for over ten years. They are the only venomous snake of the three British native species, but for most humans, like Watson, a bite will just cause pain and inflammation. Ireland doesn't have any snake species at all, as the Irish Sea was too wide for them to get across.

The RSPCA would not approve of dropping an adder on someone as it would harm the adder. The police would not approve either.

It is legal to own a pet snake in the UK - indeed there are quite a lot of them - but you need a licence for the venomous ones today. This includes adders and all the viper family.

European badgers are different to the American ones. They are far more social, dig the most complex burrows and can also make a range of noises. They are also nocturnal, and they do bite if provoked. It is today illegal to have a pet badger, disturb their setts or injure them. Unless the government authorises a cull due to bovine TB, a controversial policy. Sadly, they frequently end up as roadkill.

It is legal to keep stoats, although controversial. They can kill animals much larger than themselves, like rabbits or birds. It is legal to kill them as a result.

Slow worms are legless lizards, not snakes despite their appearance. They do not have fangs. You could keep one as a pet, but not buy or sell one.

Sugar is not toxic to dogs but can cause problems in substantial amounts.

The penal colony on the Andaman Islands can really be compared to Devil's Island in French Guiana and should better known in the UK. The British sent many political prisoners, to wit independence activists, there from the 1857 Rebellion onwards. Crossing over the sea threatened devout Hindus with the loss of caste and the possibility of reincarnation, something known as "Kala pani". Arrivals would be put on chain gangs. Conditions would be harsh, with torture, medical experimentation, disease, and cruelty from the guards causing thousands of deaths. You could also be executed for trying to escape. Hunger strikes were common and responded to with force-feeding.

The worst prison at this time was on Viper Island, which contained solitary cells, whipping stands and stocks.

In 1872, a former police officer called Sher Ali Afridi sent there for murder after his death sentence, claiming he was acting on the instructions of Allah, assassinated the Viceroy of India, the 6th Earl of Mayo, who was inspecting the place. He had also wanted to kill the Superintendent but did not manage to do so. He was hanged a month later on Viper Island, where the gallows building still stands.

Viper Island lost its importance following the construction of the Cellular Jail at Port Blair, finished in 1906. That was also a very nasty prison, but it is beyond the scope of this post.

"Mohammedan" was a term used for Muslim in the West at the time, implying erroneously that Muslims worship their Prophet. They certainly hold him in great reverence, but they do not worship him.

Guess people started drinking early in Victorian times; licencing hours would not be introduced until the First World War.

The Oval is an international cricket ground in Kennington, the other famous ground in London along with Lord's. It traditionally hosts the final Test of the English cricket season and after getting gas lighting in 1889, it would get a Tube station nearby originally called Kennington Oval the following year, when the initial stretch of the City & South London Railway opened. Today, just being Oval and on the Northern line, it has cricket-related decorations on some of the tiling.

The land the Oval is on is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the large property portfolio belonging to the Duke of Cornwall, the title given to the eldest son of the British monarch; this currently being Prince William, who is also Prince of Wales, that title trumping it.

Coal-tar creosote has traditionally been used as a preservative to stop wood rotting when outdoors, something necessary in the wet British climate. It was also used in dentistry!

However, it was discovered to cause cancer. While still allowed for general use by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the EU banned its sale to and use by the regular public in 2003. The UK carried over this law after Brexit. Coal-tar creosote products can only be sold to certified professionals for specific uses, like farm fencing and railway sleepers. The public have to buy substitutes like Ronseal, whose famous advertising slogan declares "it does exactly what it says on the tin".

[ashleyfableblack]

"...and the drapes are white, Chryssi. We told the decorators rainbows, I know we did. And we need to- GYAHUGH!!" Chrysalis followed her tiny wife's eyes to the pair of larvae dangling from a bough of mistletoe. "What?"

"What?!" Twilight rubbed her eyes with a groan of pain. "What do you mean, what?" She never understood how Pinkie could go through all those cartoon character wild-takes without hurting her face. "What are our babies doing up there?" "They're helping, beloved" she said matter-of-factly, Twilight looked from her bughorse wife back to the tiny larvae dangling from the rafters. The pair hissed and chittered at each other as they wiggle-wormed their way around the decoration, using the red ribbon as adventurous foals might use a jungle-gym. "Do you think that they could maaaaybe help from a little closer to the nice, safe floor, honeybug?" Chrysalis tilted her head slightly, regarding the tiny larvae awkwardly fumbling and snipping with a small smile. "They'll be fine. They're just enjoying their first pony Hearthswarming with their broodmates." Twilight's eyes were sore. She hadn't gone 'full Twilight' as her friends used to call it since the years before she and Chrysalis had been married. "Honeybug, what if they fall? They've only gone through their first molt! Their chitinous plates are barely formed. From that high up their exoskeletons would only be able to withstand the impact force of a fall if they landed with a pitch of..." Twilight continued on with the complicated mathematics only a astrophysicist or a panicked mother could perform. Chrysalis studied her with a growing grin. She couldn't help but chuckle. To the changeling queen, the air had become as thick with the motherly concern billowing from Twilight as thick as smoke from a tire fire. She leaned down to plant a loving kiss on her wife's horn, bringing the rampant mathematics of parental terror to a stop. "You're irresistible when you're this adorable." With a crackle of green flame from her horn, Chrysalis lifted the two larvae from their precarious perch and placed them delicately into the trails of her mane. "Better?" she smiled. Twilight looked from her wife's reassuring smile to the tiny faces of their babies. Their violet eyes and tiny, prickle-fangs gleamed back to her from Chrysalis's cobweb mane. Though she couldn't hear their thoughts like Chrysalis, their glowing smiles and eager wiggling had a very "Again, Mama!" quality to them. She sighed and leaned into Chrysalis's barrel. "Thank you, honeybug." The lovers kissed. Their infant equine-insect babes chittered gleefully, bathed in the warmth of their mothers' love. In the distance, a snowball went PAFF off a changeling's carapace as two of their soldiers began an impromptu re-enactment of the Battle of Basalt Bay. Another joined in from her hidden burrow. From the castle ramparts two Tunnel Engineering Specialists shape-shifted into catapults and began lobbing iceballs the size of ciderbarrels into the fray. And thus, all Tartarus broke loose. So, this was Hearthswarming in New Equestria.

[chroniclingworlds]

Occulates

Named for their mysterious nature, these creatures spend much of their time underground or underwater. All have much slower metabolisms than other Mollichordates, a trait that was originally assumed to be ancestral, but recent studies have shown that this is a secondarily evolved adaptation to their unusual lifestyles.

Mole-Worms:

Pictured: the common mole-worm, found across Axane.

Living beneath forests and plains, the blind mole-worms spend most of the year in a slow state, lazily burrowing and munching on tubivores and groundsnakes that they bump into. However, for about a month in early spring, they go into a frenzy. Their metabolism ramps up and they must eat constantly, hunting down anything that moves, and will even go after prey much larger than themselves (although this rarely goes well for them). During this period, they will also seek out other mole-worms to mate with. As they prepare to lay eggs, the frenzy subsides, and they return to slow-moving, docile creatures until the next spring.

Tubivores:

Pictured: the little black tubivore, found on the plains of southern Ejoa.

With a highly modified beak that essentially works as a straw, Tubivores have a highly specialized diet of exclusively tubies. After grasping and subduing the tubie with their powerful claws, the Tubivore slurps it up whole. These burrowers are surprisingly common across the planet and whole batches of them are accidentally upturned by farmers (who usually relocate them to a less inconvenient spot).

Fanged Flapjacks:

Pictured: the crater lake Flapjack, found in the lakes of the Interior Crater of Faon.

Much like a giant, aquatic version of the land flounders, fanged flapjacks burrow in soft mud of lake beds and rivers with just their eyes exposed, waiting for something to pass by. Unlike land flounders, their pharyngeal jaws are not lined with a sticky mucus, and instead lined with rows of thorn-like teeth to snag prey. Because their metabolisms are so slow, they can go hours without coming to the surface to breathe, making them very effective ambush predators. Caution must be taken when wading or swimming in freshwater, as a bite from a fanged flapjack can be quite painful.

Snappers:

Pictured: the Mossback Snapper, the largest species, native to the far northeast of Faon.

These hefty creatures only live in the dense forests of northern Faon, usually hidden under a loose layer of soil and leaf litter. Oftentimes they will even have plants growing on their shells, allowing them to blend in even better. They have very poor eyesight and seem to use movement and smell to detect prey. When a suitably sized animal wanders past, they launch forward and grab the unlucky creature in their bone-crushing beaks. They typically swallow the animal whole and then may not eat again for months. They have also been observed scavenging on carrion, which involves them hauling their massive bodies out of the dirt and dragging themselves towards the meal. Usually this only occurs under the cover of darkness, as leaving their shelter makes them vulnerable to other predators.

Snorkel-Back:

Pictured: the cerulean snorkel-back, the most commonly seen species, native to the Noxa Sea.

A strange offshoot of the Occulate lineage, these animals have taken to the sea. With undulating paddles, they slowly roam the oceans feeding on plants and gelatinous Amorpha, coming to the surface only to stick their double snorkel-like nostrils out of the water to take a breath. They are rarely encountered but have been sighted in seas worldwide, from tropics to the frigid northern reaches of the Suas Ocean.

[snoutbleed]

THE EARTH SPITS WHAT SHOULD BE RETURNED

A chapter story for LAID TO WASTE, an occult setting. Mature content ahead.

"Something is in the dirt...unfortunately, it's not my enemies."

My belated contribution for Halloween is this fic for a setting I write when I need a break from my WIP. Sadly, I couldn't finish this in time, but here's the first chapter—the rest will come periodically this month. Thank you for your continued support and patience.

Chapter I ❯ ✫ Chapter II ❯ THE RESPITE Chapter III ❯ THE MESSAGE Chapter IV ❯ Coming Soon Chapter V ❯ Coming Soon

I - THE SPRINT

(847 words)

Maddox excavated the secret he buried with the worms. His hand got caught in a strap and he shoveled a sigil-patterned pack out the trench. When he opened the zipper, a maroon light beamed memories into his eyes: he remembered wading into rivers in his youth and submerging his forearms until he felt the leeches sting. He always welcomed parasites—and protected them too.

For once, he asked himself why but pain wormed through his brain. Maddox cringed at the message from above—it beckoned certainty, so he shook off the ache with an approving nod. After that, he looked over his shoulder, hesitantly thanked his lord, then made haste into the wilderness. Turns out, he always lacked the headspace to backtrack. He threw fate to the trees.

Old pine towered over the hound. The leaves were shrouded in the night, and he couldn’t shake off the uncanny sensation that the woods were after him too. Behind him, rays of light danced in the forest. They were accompanied by shouting, growing louder in their chase.

There was no direction BUT forward. Maddox raced through the brush, pushing away shrubbery and branches with calloused hands. He winced through the stings. And his burning legs, too: his aching body screamed for him to stop running but he wouldn’t listen, for his heart thumped out of fear as well.

Personal choices were always posed as mistakes, such as the “mistake” of running. Such a personal choice he made many moons ago came back and inflicted a searing pain - burning, screeching sensations he could induce a fraction of by gliding his tongue across the scar tissue where four of his fangs once stood. The hound’s mouth was marred with his mistakes, but he lived to feel the residual aches. He couldn’t stop caressing the mottled gums, each stroke adding tension to his grimace. They were reminders of the life he got to continue living. In a way, the pain proved comforting. Memories of pliers and sigils erased any doubt that backtracking was a better option, and what the road offered were choices for him to make, no matter the cost.

The forbidden goods he fled with sealed the deal—his coffin as well. No amount of teeth could make up for biting, and then tearing off the hand that fed him. The only certainty was death, which made the void-like wilderness tempting to run into, but at least he didn’t wear a proverbial collar and leash. Every step his heart wheezed for wind was another breath for himself.

Now, the orders came from his mind: run, keep running.

If he could stand, he could walk, and if he could walk, he could run—that was his philosophy. It was enough to put distance between him and the light show. There was no room to think about the road beyond with the hunters on his tail taking up headspace. Maddox could worry about that after, but he’s no stranger to constructing nearsighted plans.

The burrowing headache lectured that choice was always in his hands. For every order he received to pull the trigger and hurt one of his own, there was a choice not to, even if it meant execution. Maddox knew the right escape route for when it was time to run from his choices. He didn’t know better than to avoid getting into his circumstance many years ago, however.

Divine punishment finally caught up with Maddox in the form of a root, which his foot proceeded to get caught on. He instinctively raised the pack to his chest and held onto it for dear life. He fell, then furled down a hill. The dog shielded the pack with his body and yelped on the way down. “Was it all for nothing?” his mind asked after crashing at the bottom of the ravine.

Maddox stopped moving just this once. Despite that, his heart raced faster than before—outpacing the distant shouts. His nails dug into the bag, blessing it with pleas as he carefully uncurled himself. On the ground, panting and pleading with shaky breath, he unzipped the pack and burrowed into fabrics. A soft light beamed at the end of the tunnel and highlighted the worry on his ghastly features.

At the end, there was a glass tube of orange liquid bearing sigils on its opaque ends. Its soft glow illuminated the first grin Maddox allowed in a lifetime as he gently unearthed the container, then bore witness to a fist-sized leech swimming in the substance. The hound stared fondly at the parasite like it was his baby. He smudged his finger on the glass and that little guy homed in on the opposite side.

The worm opened a mouth with several tiny teeth, proceeding to suck on the glass where flesh kissed. His smile grew but faded when the distant shouts gave orders to search in his direction. After a few more pecks, he let go and reburied the tube in the cushioned pack.

He recuperated, brushed nature off his coat, and continued his mad dash into the shadows. Safety in the unknown.

The leeches move onto their next meal in CHAPTER II...

[thelaithlyworm]

Hello, I have a question regarding the various snakes of the DMBJ franchise.

Just out of curiosity, how would you classify the fangs of the Black Hair Snakes, Motuo Sunbeam Snakes and Cockscomb Snakes as either solenoglyphous, proteroglyphous or opistoglyphous?

CW: biology, biology horror

*does a quick google to learn the terms*

I don't have nearly enough background to make that call, and NPSS doesn't give enough detail for me to make much in the way of guesses other than, Wu Xie thinks that Cockscomb Snakes might be an outcross with cobras, and therefore it's possible that they might have cobra-style teeth, ie proteroglyphous. That Is Very Much A Guess, though.

The other tack is that all of the snakes you mentioned also have the characteristics of parasitic worms -- they burrow inside a body and munch on it, sometimes steer it from the inside -- which given how far apart worms and snakes are on the genetic tree implies they were products of highly technical genetic engineering, and their teeth are whatever the designer wants them to be.

And there are other examples of mixy-matchy biological characteristics. The Albino Candle-Dragon (in the novel) has a cobra hood BUT it likes to constrict its prey, doesn't show any signs of parasitism BUT gets the pheromones and hood and face-shifting of Black-Hair Snakes.

A dedicated biologist might be able to explain how those things happened naturally, but it is far beyond my power.

What a fascinating question to field. Thank you for asking!

[sanguinesocierie]

 @shieldoflight   :   ❛    18   .     a    kiss    during    combat   .   (   BECAUSE   MY   MAN   WILL   PROB   HATE   THIS   🗡️   )   ||    𝒕𝒉𝒆   𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒈   𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒓𝒆   𝒕𝒐   𝒌𝒊𝒔𝒔   . 

his   radiance   burned   &   something   inside   of   her   ticked.   a   white-hot   flush   at   her   cheeks,   a   wild   whirlpool   of   emotions   warred   inside   her   chest.   with   every   swing   of   his   blade,   every   prismatic   gleam   …   the   witch   knew   she   wanted   him.   desired   him   in   the   way   a   spider   would   enrapture   a   fly   in   her   web.   a   wolf   whose   fangs   ached   with   the   crushing   need   to   burrow   themselves   into   the   pliant   throat   of   a   delicate   lamb.   to   maim   &   destroy   &   attempt   to   shatter   diamond   with   an   iron   blow.   a   crazed   smile   grew   wider   on   red   lips,   eyes   alight,   pupils   blown   in   anticipation   as   she   stared   him   down.   

in   a   gust   of   obsidian   &   scarlet,   she   disappeared   quickly   to   avoid   a   dodge,   only   to   materialize   again   right   in   front   of   his   face.   fina   reached   out   to   viciously   clasp   his   face   in   her   palms,   that   same   smile   becoming   razor-sharp.   crushing   her   mouth   to   his   in   a   violent   mesh   of   lips,   teeth   &   her   own   soft   sigh   that   sounded   far   too   pleasured   for   comfort   …   she   then   released   him,   warping   further   away.   ❝   you   are   mine   now   …   i've   marked   you,   little   puppet.   ❞   words   came   out   in   a   hiss,   her   lips   ached   uncomfortably.   they   burned   …   it   felt   wrong   &   she   felt   a   dizzying   wave   of   guilt   at   sullying   her   purity   before   her   beloved   ever   had   the   chance.   but   but   but   —   it   was   not   a   real   kiss   !!   never   was   ..   never   could   be. 

❝   this   is   my   promise   …   to   kill   you,   worm.   remember   it.   remember   me.❞

[paperanddice]

Death worms may not have the sheer terror behind them that purple worms carry, but they are somewhat more common due to their smaller size. They don't need the same amount of food and hunting space as the much larger worms, and so multiple can live in a territory that would be stripped bare by a purple, making encountering one a more common possibility. And while they may be less dangerous, that doesn't mean people want to encounter them still. Wielding acid, lightning, and poison as weapons, they are hard to prepare for or counter. Bolts of lightning and a heavy spray of acid kill those who try to stay out of the worm's reach, and those who it catches succumb to its poison if they're not simply ripped apart by its vicious bites. Even its blood is dangerous, corroding metal that comes in contact with it, dulling blades and pitting hammers.

The decapus looks like a ten-armed octopus, except it has a full face with a fanged mouth on its side, rather than a beak at the center of the tentacles the way an octopus or squid does. They can be found mostly deep underground, but have been encountered in tangled forests on the surface. They are clumsy on the ground, but quite agile to climb and swing from elevated surfaces, and use this underground and from trees to spring vicious ambushes. They are actually quite intelligent, though rarely have interest in negotiating with other creatures. In fact, they seem to prefer devouring humanoids over other prey, gnomes in particular. They use their ability to replicate any sound they've heard before and clever illusions to lure prey in before dropping from above in attack, occasionally coordinating with other decapuses or natural hazards to better distract potential meals. Some decapuses will gain a sort of god complex though, and take violent control of whatever creatures they can force to obey them, using their followers to gather food, and eating them if they don't supply enough.

(I still misread the decapus every time I see it. It's supposed to be pronounced like "octopus" except with deca instead of octo, but I always read it like "decapitate")

Inspired by the Pathfinder 1e Bestiary 2. This post came out a week ago on my Patreon. If you want to get access to all my monster conversions early, as well as access to my premade adventures and other material I’m working on, consider backing me there!

Death Worm  Large 5th level troop [beast]  Initiative: +9 Bite +10 vs. AC - 28 damage. Natural Even Hit: The target also takes 10 ongoing poison damage. Miss: 14 damage. R: Lightning Jolt +10 vs. PD (one nearby enemy) - 20 lightning damage. Natural Even Hit: The death worm makes a second lightning jolt attack against a different enemy as a free action. C: Acid Spray +10 vs. PD (1d4+1 nearby enemies in a group) - 18 acid damage. Limited Use: 1/battle. [Special Trigger] Corrosive Blood +10 vs. PD - the target takes a cumulative -1 penalty to damage with the weapon it used to make the attack until the end of the battle. If this penalty reaches -5, the weapon is destroyed. Limited Use: 1/round, as an interrupt action when an enemy makes a melee weapon attack against the death worm and rolls a natural odd hit. Burrow. Resist Acid and Lightning 16+. AC 20 PD 19 MD 14 HP 166

Decapus  3rd level spoiler [aberration]  Initiative: +6 Swarming Tentacles +8 vs. AC - 6 damage. Natural Even Hit: The decapus can grab the target. Bite +8 vs. AC - 6 damage. Quick Use: 1/turn, as a quick action against an enemy the decapus has grabbed. R: Confusion Illusion +8 vs. MD (all nearby enemies) - The target is distracted (save ends). A distracted enemy takes a -1 penalty to AC and all defenses, and if it rolls a natural 1-5 on an attack roll or saving throw it becomes dazed until the end of its next turn. Wall Climber. AC 18 PD 16 MD 15 HP 44

[frostcorpsclub]

New story as of 8/14/2024

Turning into a bat was something any vampire could do before they even left preschool age.

It was as though there was no difference between each physical form, whether it was her long black hair or the small fuzzy bristles of her bat body going back and forth in the wind. Yet being in Justin’s arms is what Mercy would choose every time. 

He was strong and broad and he never got tired, he would happily carry her around wherever he went for the rest of eternity. He clutched her to his chest like she was precious treasure, the rolling of his bottom snowball speeding them both across the forest floor much faster than she could ever fly. 

Or well…that’s what she told him. 

In this position she could rest her head into the crook between his head and chest and it wouldn’t seem like she was sniffing him. He could just ignore the twitching pink nose tickling under his chin.

There was an unspoken fear between them both about straying too far from home. Being a bat and a cloud of mist meant they could go anywhere in the world with each other yet here they were in the cold damp clearing once more. It was half way between each of their houses and surrounded by trees. 

Each being stark white they stuck out like sore thumbs but no one had come out to bother them just yet. 

Justin's sisters had pulled Mercy aside once or twice and told her how he treated other girls but she didn't particularly care.

It was very normal in vampire culture to have flings your whole immortal life, it was separate from finding the one undead creature of the night you wanted to call your husband or wife.

When they finally arrived he gently laid her down on the grass. A smile formed on Mercy’s heart shaped lips as the wet grass and dirt soaked in to the back of her dress. Something about this incredibly uncomfortable state stimulated the parts of her brain that understood she was a living corpse. Her mind wandered to the feeling of being buried. Enveloped in a pine box, upholstered with the finest cushioning. 

Most importantly, a matching one for her boyfriend buried mere inches away. 

As she laid there with her eyes closed Justin watched. She was such a delicate porcelain doll to him. Justin felt as though any moment he could startle her and she'd scamper off. Perfect and eternal yet bloated and fleeting. 

He leaned down and pressed the thin crevice that housed his fangs to Mercy's lips. 

He had kissed so many girls before but kissing Mercy made him want to collapse on top of her. She was a creature of dreams and restful sleep. The warmth emanating from her presence making him want to burrow under her skin. 

Just as Justin started to get a little frisky, snaking his tongue between her lips, Mercy pushed up on on his chest. With a burst of vampiric strength she lifted Justin off the ground and slammed him onto his back. 

If Justin had eyes they would be wide open, Mercy even shocked herself. 

"You didn't bring me any of the liver and blood sausage your mom made for dinner. You can…what's that thing you say, kick rocks?"

She bit her lip as she said this, barely able to appear capable of being sardonic through the whole sentence. 

Justin sort of just stared at her for a second, as he often did, she was breathtaking. Her face was breathtaking, not because she slammed him full force into the ground, either way it was payback. It was so incredibly amusing the way she continually tried but failed to have an edge. 

Mercy let out a deep content sigh. The wet grass beneath her began to feel warm as she wormed her way in to his arms. The winter sky was a deep royal blue mottled with stars that Mercy often dreamed she could touch. 

If she could fly high enough.

“This is why I love bringing you out here.”

Mercy’s ears wiggled as she turned to look at Justin, who was admiring her as she admired the sky. 

“You see how clear the sky is here? No fog, no light pollution. Just constellations!”

“Light pollution?” she inquired. 

“Well er-” 

Justin cleared his throat, realizing how nerdy he was about to come off. 

“-it’s just some thing Joy told me about you know. She’s always going on about all the way humans fuck shit up. You probably don’t know how it is. I know you don’t get out much. You don’t want to hear about it.” 

“Go on I-“ 

She didn’t have to tell him twice. He could be so rude. 

“They won’t stop making shit they don’t need and they shoot it right up into the sky. It confuses the fuck out of animals too. Most of this shit doesn’t need to be on Mercy.” 

She had to shift around on the grass as his arms swung vigorously with his words, seconds away from thwacking her forehead if he wasn’t careful. She didn’t quite understand why Justin felt so strongly about the subject but he had a way of making her care about it too. Now that she thought about it, all the bright lights made it frustrating to fly out and feed, some places were so bright it was difficult to tell when it was really night. 

“Why don’t they just stay the fuck home where they belong?!” He shot up, making intense eye contact down at her for a moment before feeling a lump grow in his throat. 

“Like I said, it’s stuff Joy talks to me about it.” 

The tension melted from Mercy’s shoulders. 

They never set out to have these conversations. She had lived much longer than he had but she found just as much learning in him. In the grand scheme of things they were both very young and had so much more to learn and discover. 

About each other and themselves. 

Did he truly believe that she would think less of him? 

What a strange concept. He was so smart, and these moments of compassion, of softness, it made her feel special. To be one of the privileged few who saw this side of him. 

The silence was so long he was starting to get worried he was losing her, but just on track she stroked his arm and urged him to lay back down.

“Someone who cares about things like that must have such a soft heart, but a tough one too.” 

“Oh yeah, Joy is a real softie.” He scoffed. 

“Or someone else.” Mercy jabbed. 

Justin did not respond to her. 

"All these centuries I spent watching out of windows, every time something good would come along they would take it with them. So many things I wished I could touch. Do you ever feel that way?" 

Mercy had a level of experience with the environmental woes Justin pretended not to care about, though really it didn’t concern her much. She was happy to listen and would be a place for Justin to share his woes. 

But it was really about them. The humans. 

The nature of the Frost parents as former humans was something the couple didn’t really talk about, Mercy didn’t care. 

The here and now was what mattered. 

She wasn’t one to seek out power. Her ivory tower was only a prison because she could not choose what happened within it. There was no warmth and love. 

Humans with their pitchforks and crosses only drove her, and her people, further into the shadows. 

“Sure mice don’t want to be eaten by cats but there’s a reason the cat has claws and the mice live in the walls! If you’re clever you make do and if you’re not you’re cat food. It’s simple.” 

This statement was one that Justin agreed with but one that caught him off guard. It sounded like something his mother would say. 

He knew Mercy was different but it was comforting to know there were some ways in which she wasn’t. 

“You would know, you’re the nature expert, right?” 

Mercy grinned at him, the moonlight shining behind her head like a halo. 

Justin’s mind wandered for a moment. He imagined Mercy as Rapunzel, gazing out of her ivory tower, long raven hair growing and changing along with her sage gowns as the eras went by, just outside her window. 

He thought back to the things Mercy had told him about her home, the little he had seen himself. 

"I think we all feel that way sometimes. You know my dad’s been all around the world, so has my brother. I’d say I’ve been more places than most of my siblings-“

He said this bit with a frog in throat, hoping Mercy wouldn’t pry into his strumpet past. 

“-but you know, sometimes I imagine what it’s like in the places I can’t go. People notice the wind, they’re always blaming things on it.” 

Mercy grinned at his joke, hiding her mouth behind her hand. Gd, he wanted to kiss her. 

He understood that her feelings on the matter were a bit more concerned with existence. That he was as shallow as the puddles she turned him into.

Yet she gave him the same credence he gave her. 

“But, think about it like this! Your books, your tapestries, even the paintings your parents have of the old country. You don’t hate those, right?” 

"No I don't." 

Mercy even shocked herself with how quickly she answered the question. 

As he went on to speak it felt as though the rest of the world fell away. Her back was no longer wet, the wind against her skin was no longer cold and whistling through the trees. She heard only his voice in deathly silence. He could truly convince her of anything. 

She did miss the old country but her memories of it were mostly ones of fear. Time seemed to fly when the humans found ways to retaliate. Turning into a bat and flying away wouldn’t save a young vampire any more. A level playing field is oppression to the privileged. 

"Then you get what I mean, seeing places that are all perfect and shit. As far as you know. If you want you could weave a place that doesn’t exist, can’t take that from you can they?” 

Justin reached over and gently stroked her arm, he was concerned that him getting all riled up was giving her a bit of an existential crisis. 

“Just for the two of us?”

She asked, as though he could really make it so. If he could he would, in a heart beat. Neither considered anything about the context of the world they lived in, only the happiness of the other. 

Suddenly, Justin went from stroking to vigorously patting and pointing up into the sky. 

“Look, look!” He swept Mercy up in one arm and pulled her close to him. 

“What, what?” She smiled, straining against him. 

His claw started at one star then traced a long wiggly line to the next and the next until it reached the end, Mercy falling totally silent and still, unsure what she was meant to be seeing. 

Justin sucked his teeth. 

“That’s Eridanus! It’s a constellation babe, like I told you.” 

“Are you serious?”

Mercy bit her lip tightly, a sound similar to air being let from the lip of a balloon leaking out. She shrunk into the ground upon seeing Justin’s face, in brief, he looked pissed. 

“I just mean-” 

Her lips bursted open with a chortle as she waved her hands up in the air.

“-I know what a constellation is but that’s just made up! Half of those stars don’t even live in the same neighborhood, it’s ridiculous.” 

Justin only crossed his arms and shrugged. He had never really thought of it that way. This was one of his favorites because it was so big and majestic. But if Mercy thought it was stupid then he supposed that it was. She wouldn’t want to be with someone so childish as to get upset about that kind of thing, yet he struggled to get out of the shallow funk this placed him in. 

“Baby…” 

Mercy said, immediately being filled with guilt. 

“Could you look at me please?”

Justin did as she asked, raising his brows and feigning an aloof expression before rolling back onto his back. 

“Justin, come on. You know that them being all made up isn’t a bad thing right? Didn’t you just say-” 

Her explanation was cut short by a searing pain in her stomach, the familiar feeling of a gown being laced much too tight. She felt like a crushed water bottle, her stomach acid squeezing up and tickling her throat. 

“Mercy? Princess?” 

Justin noticed that she didn’t finish her sentence, something unheard of for her. He turned onto his side and turned her towards him. 

“I’m sorry I just, oh G-d I think I’m going to be sick.” 

Justin instinctually rubbed her stomach. If she was going to get sick then nothing else mattered, except maybe making sure she didn’t throw up on him. 

“How long have you been sick, why didn’t you say anything? Shit, I didn’t even know vampires could get sick.” 

“I’m sorry.” “Don’t apologize.” 

“It’s only been a few days, that’s why I thought it wasn’t worth mentioning. I’m nauseous all the time and when I tell my mother she just pushes me off. I feel like there’s nothing I can do but….wait.”

Justin looked around for a moment before letting out a deep sigh, he knew she was right. He went up to rub her shoulder but accidentally grazed her breast. 

She hissed in response to the sharp ache it caused. 

“Okay okay!” He laid one hand on his side and held the other in front of her face for her to see.

“There’s that too. I’m sore all over.” 

“I know I know, you’ve got the bat flu or some shit. I can’t get it, so here, look at me. I’m gonna slip my hand under your stomach like this. That’s comfortable right?” Mercy nodded with quivering lips. The times Justin took charge and made everything better were chilling. 

“I won’t get too close, you just stay there sweet thing. Now I uh, I’m sorry too. You were trying to say something before.” 

He reached out and cupped the side of her face, his thumb applied gentle pressure as it stroked her batlike ear. Mercy inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering halfway shut. 

The symptoms would come and go in waves. Every time they came it would exhaust her. 

“I was saying that since they’re all, you know, made up. We could-” She let out a yawn that made Justin want to swaddle her up like a baby. 

“-we could come up with our own. Like you said I could do. Like humans do. There was one right next to the one you pointed out that looked like your big fat head.” 

“Bitch!” 

Justin teased, giving her the weakest push physically possible with his free hand. It was almost pitiful. The way her words wheezed out in to the air, hung there, and crumbled. 

The least he could do was give her the satisfaction of a reaction. 

“You know for a vampire, you’re not too great at this romance business, besides I like the ones that are already there. Like Gemini.”

“Oh here we go!” Mercy rolled her eyes.

“What now? I’m sorry, did you want to rename a constellation? Why don’t we name one after your ass, then we won’t have to worry about how far apart the stars are!” 

“I meant you bringing up astrology, again. I’m quite fond of it too but you sound like an old traveler sometimes.” 

Justin couldn’t help but beam at her, Mercy wasn’t really a clever sassy girl who was quick with the comebacks, but she loved doing anything he did. 

“Maybe we should leave you out here til the sun comes up, you’ll feel better.” 

“Only if I could cover up with your um…your pisces bedsheets!”

“Aquarius.”