#htbm au

[find-thy-voice]

what was supposed to be a sketch turned into a messy full piece

[djarinsbeskar]

HERE, THERE BE MONSTERS: THE MINOTAUR PART 2

A/N: Imagine not updating a fic for nearly two years... hah-- couldn't be me (sweats). But my Minotaur is one of my most darling boys and I just couldn't leave him sitting in my drafts. Special thanks to the #1 Minotaur fan probably ever @astroboots for giving this a look over and for being the biggest hype woman for out hornyed hero. Artwork by machiavellicro on deviantart!

Pairing: Minotaur!Din Djarin x Nymph!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ NO Minors)

Word Count: 2k

Warnings: gross misuse of mythology, mentions of unsolicited attention/dub-con, discrimination and prejudice, suggestive themes. Reminder that this is a MONSTER FUCKING fic, so be warned for future chapters.

NOTICE: I learned the new lay of the land, so there's no more taglist. Instead you can turn on notifications for @djarinsbeskar-writes to stay up to date.

Prev Next

Day 1

The stars were veiled.

Something hovered just out of sight that impeded your view of them. They remained dim despite the darkness and shied their faces away from shining down on such a netherworld.

You’d never felt so alone.

Taken immediately from Hera’s court, the guards who had once addressed you as familiars, friends and lovers over the years escorted you to your prison with rough hands and cold hearts. In that moment, they became strangers to you, and you had to wonder if you ever knew any of them at all.

A sprawling void of space greeted you when you arrived. A no man’s land forsaken by the gods as unconquerable, and those that lived trapped within its ever-growing perimeter at the mercy of the beast that prowled with eerie bellows and heavy footfalls.

Half man, half beast. With the horns of a bull and the strength to match, you feared you wouldn’t survive the night as you were pushed unceremoniously through the outer hedge.

You squeaked – frightened – and stumbled through the dense brambles that should have prevented your entry, but instead dragged you in deeper with thorny, greedy branches snagging on soft skin and the wafer-thin linen of your dress.

You fell to your knees on the other side, hands sinking immediately into a morass of mossy, damp earth. Hair falling around you in a tangle, you blew at the strands futilely before giving up and used your hands to push them back instead.

Scrambling to your feet, the dainty sandals you normally wore were useless against this unrelenting land. You’d never had to worry about footwear before… you hardly even needed it dancing under the moonlight or swimming among the stars.

The breathless, euphoric laughter of that time felt eons ago as your lungs constricted with fear.

Just breathe, you coached yourself, in and out… in and out.

It wasn’t working.

Not when your eyes finally moved past the initial, blinding panic to take in your surroundings. What you could see of them, anyway. A coffin of shrubbery greeted you on all sides, so tall they practically eclipsed the sky, the air cloying with a simmering malice you were reluctant to inhale as it tightened around your windpipe with the flex of a brutal grip.

And still, your wracked breathing was too loud in the oppressive silence.

Disturbed carrion birds flying overhead made you jump, squeezing your eyes closed reflexively. A fell wind followed the birds, blowing through the maze ruthlessly. It howled and whipped up the detritus as you folded in on yourself for protection, screaming in your ears with the anguish of those who found themselves trapped here.

However, unlike their torment, the wind eventually passed, and you cracked an eye open warily.

The labyrinth had changed.

Already? You thought with a hitched sob, swallowing it soon after lest you burst into tears and never stop.

There hadn’t been a path behind you where you first fell through the hedging. But by the looks of the narrow stretch of dirt that eventually became clouded by fog, you were deeper into the labyrinth than you first anticipated.

The thought had your stomach sinking.

There went your plan to keep to the perimeter in the vain hope of possibly escaping. You had no choice but to follow the path, deeper into the maze and towards the maw of the beast that inhabited it.

The wind returned intermittently, sometimes changing the labyrinth, sometimes not. Sometimes, it revealed hidden holes between hedgerows that led to another pathway that – while thrilling initially – proved just as complex and endless as the path you escaped from.

Hours of walking and nothing changed.

You were completely lost.

Tears spilled freely down your face now as you tried to stifle the sobs that escaped on every hiccupped inhale when your doom finally dawned on you. No one was coming to save you. Your feet hurt, your dress was filthy, and you were freezing.

You just wanted to go home.

But there was no one to hear your sorrow or respond to your pain. No one to care for you or comfort you or tell you that everything would be okay. You were alone after an eternity of living amongst others.

How little you knew of your own self.

Your vision blurry, you swiped the back of your hand across your eyes to glance at the next intersection of more dreary hedges. Quelling your sniffles, you listened. Trying to pick out any sound that wasn’t the breeze or your misery. A din of chatter or a chime of music, a—

Wait.

You held your breath. Was that—?

There!

A faint gurgle of running water filled your heart with song. There was a river nearby! Or a stream at the very least. You wanted to squeal at just the sound of something other than the wind and rustling branches you’d been subjected to for the last few hours.

And a river meant you could finally bathe.

It was hardly the most useful thing you could’ve done. You should have been looking for shelter, for warmth, for company and safety in numbers, but just the thought of getting clean… it was something familiar and you couldn’t let it go. It was something you would do whether at home among the stars, in the residencies of various deities or indeed, even here, in hell.

Yes, you smiled as bravely as you could, a bath would make everything better.

But you still had to find said river and that proved more than difficult. It was nigh on impossible after several more hours of walking.

Your grand plan of keeping left as much as possible proved fruitless as you came upon two dead ends that forced you to double back until you were confused again. It seemed like the promise of getting clean was growing less and less likely, your feet aching, and spirit defeated.

What a cruel… cruel place…

It was during your pursuit of water, however, that you happened upon the first settlement unfortunate enough to have been swallowed by the maze.

Doors latched shut and chimney’s smoking, you mistook the warm glow behind shuttered windows for warm inhabitants. But this was the labyrinth. No one cared for a sobbing woman banging at their doors for help, whether she was innocent or not.

You carried the condemnation of a goddess and for that you were shunned by even those forsaken by Olympus.

“Please, help me…” you hiccupped, voice raw when your forehead met the cold wood of the last door you tried to no avail, self-pity turning your fear to fury for a white-hot second. “It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t me… he—”

Your voice broke as it rose, agony bringing you to your knees on the doorstep of indifference.

“Why won’t anyone listen!” You roared at the door, your face a mess of tears and a supernova of hurt illuminating your irises.

“Damnable woman!”

Everything that followed happened in a blur. The door flew open far enough for the man on the other side to shove you off his doorstep where you fell back on your bottom heavily.

“You’ll bring him here with all your wailing.” A frosty, uncompromising glare met you where the human looked down his nose at you. “Take your wickedness away. We might all be prisoners here, but do not think for a second that makes us the same. We were born into this hell, you were sentenced to it, filth.”

“But I—” You scrambled back to your knees only to be met with a bucket of dirty water that chilled you to the bone.

“There, consider it a gift.” He scoffed. “He won’t be able to smell you under all that for a while. Be grateful for this much and leave our village in peace!”

You sat frozen, in shock and unable to speak or move or do anything as the door was slammed in your face once more. Humans had… never treated you this way before and even though you knew their cruelty could rival the gods, it shook you to your core to be on the receiving end of both.

A rank smell made you gag, breaking your stony cage enough for you to get back up on shaky legs and leave.

Suddenly, scattered cottages became bear traps in your eyes, and you fled from them lest you get punished by their fiery teeth once again.

The maze was safer and, perhaps it was coincidence, but when you came across a lazily meandering river breaking the perpetual rows of hedging minutes later, you chose to believe the land had rewarded you for thinking as such. Turning your face up to the kraken-cruel clouds above, tears tracked through the stains on your face gratefully.

How odd… where before gifts of splendour hardly made you bat an eye; you’d never felt more thankful to an environment that was technically your foe for merely leading you to a river.

When you looked back down to take in your surroundings, you were shocked to see trees line the far side of the river in place of towering hedges. A forest lay within the maze, a fact you’d never heard about in rumours before. But then, an endless forest could be as disorienting as the labyrinth itself… so you didn’t count yourself lucky just yet.

But first… you stripped.

Down to the nude, your nipples pebbled at the cool air as you kicked off your ruined shoes to step into the gentle course of the water. Cold! You shivered. Accustomed to more tepid warm waters, the cold was startling on your soft body.

Baths here were less about enjoyment and more about brevity, you supposed.

You gave yourself a hurried wash, scrubbing yourself free of the dirt and grime and who knew what else had been in that water you’d been drenched in. Cupping the water over your hair, the back of your neck prickled from something other than the cold, but when you looked back, only ominous shadows greeted your paranoid gaze.

Right, you swallowed around the bulbous lump of fear in your throat, best not to linger. Something told you staying in one place for too long would spell disaster.

That in mind and with a wrinkle of your nose, you pulled back on your soiled dress with the promise to wash it during the daytime. A soaking dress during the night would only make things more miserable for you, after all.

And that was how you made your way into the forest, for nothing else if but a change of scenery and hopefully, a safe enough place to rest your weary, heartbroken bones.

It wasn’t half an hour later, though, that the same patch of grass where your dress had lain while you bathed was disturbed anew. A scent, tempered by filth that irritated his nostrils, cut through the bloodlust that guided him every night and caught his attention. That, and a trail of light powder clinging to the grass like morning dew.

It led him to the water’s edge, a great horned shadow that hushed even the rivers gentle gurgle when his eyes fell upon it.

The powder clung to him when he touched it, iridescent specks catching in the reflection of his dark eyes before he brought it to his muzzle and sniffed. His pupils dilated, starlight catching like kindling in the back of his mind, his body responding.

An exhaled plume of condensation sent the dust into the air where it scattered like the spray of blood from his last victim’s jugular.

Stardust…

He crouched low to find the scent again, picking it up over the water where his long tongue moved distractedly over his muzzle to catch what remained of the powder there. Suddenly, lust of a different kind rose to battle with his insatiable desire to spill blood, and the trajectory of his hunt changed.

A star had fallen into his domain, and he was going to find it.

[phantasmiafxndom]

You should talk about your ocs here more often :3. I feel like a lot of people who like your KnY content would like HTBM, so... Which Here There Be Monsters characters do you think would fit the best as a demon in a Kimetsu au?

Thank you!!! >w< I really should try to talk about them more, and I very much appreciate the prompting to do so~ For the sake of keeping this post from getting too carried away, I'll only be taking non-human characters into account; feel free to ask about the Mages separately, if you'd like.

(For context/Oc info, check @phantasmagoriaoriginals)

. . .

Skorpion — Her personality, to begin with, consists of picking fights with as many people as possible and eating things she shouldn't. She'd do great as a demon... though her reckless, persistent harassment of every Hashira she can find might not lead to a very long lifespan as one. Not that she'd care too much about dying...

Suu — Tbh, he wouldn't be all that different as a demon. Same merman-like appearance, same zero braincells, same life strategy of hiding out in the deepest river he can stake his claim on and devouring anyone unfortunate enough to go in the water... He'd be happier as a demon (downsides included) than a human, by far.

Jericoh — Douma vibes, but more "scam artist/crime boss" than "cult leader". Takes way too much pleasure in tormenting poor, helpless, stupid humans who can't fight back. Probably collects Nichirin swords as trophies/to fulfill his sparkly-valuable-objects fetish. Either evades detection for centuries, or gets his ass in trouble REAL quick.

Mithri — Smug snake bastard is now a picky-eater demon who's actively offended when humans aren't honored to be devoured by them. Vain to an extent that makes Gyokko look modest, they'd likely end up picking constant fights with Slayers out of sheer spite. They'd have poison-based abilities, with dreadfully versatile tactics.

Cinnabar — They'd be one of those demons that looks far too much like a person/child (and takes advantage of that). Definitely sets mass wildfires/burns down entire towns just to munch on the charred corpses afterward. Doesn't have much interest in direct combat, but finds it hilarious to watch hopeful, determined Slayers burn alive after not landing a single hit on them. Uncontrollable in a dangerous way; Muzan would probably get sick of them very quickly.

Kegare + Kiyomi — These two have to stay together regardless of the Au (do not separate, as the joke goes), so I can picture a sort of Daki and Gyuutarou-ish situation for them. Kiyomi would likely be the stronger one of the two in this setting (mostly due to how many humans they'd eat), but Kegare is the one going out of his way to cause as many problems as possible (especially for the Slayer corps).

[minty-mumbles]

Hi Mint! Just read through your Here There Be Monsters series (I love Wind so much!!! Adorable baby with a ghost problem), and was wondering if you had anything to share about Sky! All I know about him thus far is that he's a demon, has assignments, and scares ghosts!

I've seen your comments on all the htbm fics, and I really appreciate them 💕💕

Sure, I can give you some info on Sky!

Full Name: Sky Crim of Skyloft

Species: Demon

Physical/Mental Age: Early Twenties

Actual Age: 2-3 thousand years old

Gender/Pronouns: Demi-Boy (He/Him) 

Sexuality: Queer 

Physical Appearance Notes: He looks pretty much like he does in LU canon. He’s a very sweet looking guy. Nothing physically menacing about him at all until you see him in action, and then you’re like… oh, this teddy bear is deadly

Family/Friends: 

Sun: sun is the heir to Skyloft, this AU’s version of the afterlife. (Hylians do not know that it exists, but Creatures do.) Sky and Sun are so sappy about each other. They aren't officially together, because as she’s the heir, courting her would be a big deal. Sky wouldn't have a problem getting Sun’s parents’ approval, but Sky wants to prove himself first before he presents his offer to court Sun.

Groose: Fellow Reaper and room mate. They work together sometimes, and are friends. Groose knows Sun though Sky. (Personally, that is. He already knew her as the Heir to the throne.)

Crimson/Aeopn: Aepon is the name of Sky’s weapon. Demons have deep bonds with the weapons they use. They’re said to become partially sentient after a while of being used by a demon. He affectionately calls it Crimson, because the hilt of the blade is red and as a play on his last name. The blade is silver, and one edge of the blade is golden. (Not actual gold and silver because those metals are too weak for weapons, it’s just colored that way)

Schooling: He had a basic education, but decided to enter the royal guard instead of pursuing higher education. If he did go to college, it would probably be for a fine arts degree in either sculpture or music

Job: Sky works for the royal family (Indirectly.) He joined the royal guard at quite a young age, but advanced through the ranks quickly, and was chosen for a special program. He works as a reaper. His job is to travel to the Realm of the Living and retrieve Hylian souls that haven't crossed through the doors of death and that are causing problems. (Basically, his job is to hunt down stray ghosts. That’s why they instinctively fear him. Most of the time, when he isn;t on the clock, he just ignores them.)

Residency: He lives in the barracks when he’s in Skyloft. When he’s on duty, he shares an apartment in Castle Town with Groose, a fellow reaper, which is paid for by his job. He usually stays there, although he does come visit Time’s house pretty often if he’s looking for a quieter place to rest after a mission.

Other:

He’s a big fan of music! Both listening to it and playing. He likes to compose his own songs sometimes, and has made an embarrassing amount of love ballads about Sun

He duets with Time sometimes, him on his harp, Time on whatever instrument he’s feeling that day

He hasn’t met Wind’s Granny yet, but he would get along well with her. She approves of him already from what Wind has told her about him. She likes that Wind has a demon around that can help if ghosts start to become a problem.

He spends about 70% of his time in the mortal realm. He doesn’t have a lot of friends in the barracks back in Skyloft, so he really only visits for Sun.

[respectable-username]

New fic alert!

Here There Be Monsters Chapter 1

Fandom: Hermitcraft, general MCYT crossover

Genre: Urban Fantasy AU

Rating: Mature (for injury/violence)

Characters (first chapter): Grian & Mumbo

Summary:

Grian is a completely normal human, living in a completely normal, human world. Or at least, that's what he thought before the creature attacked him. Now the well-dressed man in front of him is telling him that supernatural beings are real, and that he is one of them. Either there's a whole 'nother side to the world that Grian was completely unaware of, or he's just really, really concussed.

---

Ok ok I've been working on this AU fic for a while now and I'm so pumped to finally be able to share the first chapter! More characters will be introduced as the fic goes along, though primarily it'll be the Hermits.

I just love this AU so much and have loved world building it up and thinking how the different characters would be in this world and arg I'd love to blab more if anyone wants to hear it!

I just really hope you find the first chapter intriguing enough to follow along with the rest 😄

[mischiefiswritten]

10 Questions Tag!

Shout out to @awrenthatwrites for keeping me so well-supplied with tag games! I’ve loved having them waiting for me when I get back to my blog.

1. How did you come up with your WIP’s title?

The Calm Before actually went without a title for quite some time, including the entirety of its first iteration (which is quite different from the current version). That was pretty unusual for me because I’m one of those writers that needs things to be named, even just with stand-ins, before I can proceed with it. 

And honestly... I can not claim any kind of cleverness when it comes to TCB’s title. With the prevalence of the Stormbringer in the story’s plot, the phrase “the calm before the storm” just popped very quickly into my mind. I chopped off the end of the phrase et voila! A working title. I don’t know if it’s going to stay, but I’ve loved it for what it is.

The story for Here There Be Monsters is much the same. But that one’s staying.

2. Do you title your chapters? If so, what’s your favorite?

Typically I have not, but recently I’ve felt like I wanted to. I don’t think it’s right for TCB, but it does fit nicely into HTBM.

Since HTBM is episodic in structure, I get to title each “episode” as well as its chapters. Potentially, I could even get to title “seasons” or story arcs, if the project continues long enough. This project is still really new, so it’s only got one episode title at the moment:

“A Lost Little Wisp”

3. What’s a recent line you really like?

I have to admit I actually really like the whole opening scene to HTBM. Here’s a tiny bit that I’m proud of... 

This takes place during Gael’s desperate and foolish maneuver to escape her pursuers. Essentially a high speed ship chase.

           It was not until the ship was tipping nose first into the maelstrom that Gael realized the man in the public house had been lying. The Maw seized the ship like a demonic spirit, threatening to rip the wheel from her hands, or simply her arms from her body. Now it was the dark thing hiding at the bottom of the sea that chanted, “Give it up, give it up.” It wasn’t just hungry; it was possessive. Everything and everyone on its surface belonged to it. There was nothing it would not take for its own in the end.

           Something primeval was calling from the murk and the foam. Its voice, sonorous and terrible, slid through Gael’s very blood. It slithered along the planks beneath her feet, caressing everything in its way with oily, formless tentacles.

4. Are there any writing-related quotes you really like?

There are so many good ones! But I feel like no one is more quotable than Tolkien and Lewis. These quotes aren’t so much about the craft, but they do speak to me about the art, passion, and joy of storytelling.

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” (CS Lewis)

“It simply isn’t an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons.” (JRR Tolkien)

5. Do you have an idea for a cover design for your story?

I don’t! I find this sort of thing so difficult, whether its book covers or faceclaims or castings.

6. What sort of AU can you imagine your story being?

Do you mean, if there could be one AU that would fit best with my characters what would it be? Or what kind of AU trope is my novel? <-- This was Talya’s question, and I have to repeat it! I’m also going to answer the same way.

If I were picking an AU to see my story written as, I think a The Greatest Showman AU would be a fun one for  the Here There Be Monsters cast! That iconic scene when Philip and Anne see each other for the first time would be perfect for the primary protagonists.

And if my novel was going to be an AU trope, it’d probably be a Friends-type setup where they all live in the same building and are overly involved in each other’s lives.

7. Which OC would be the most angry with you as the writer?

Are any of them likely to be very happy with me?

8. If you had to tell the story from a different POV, which character would you choose?

This is tough because I gravitate toward 3rd person limited omniscient POV. In TCB I have four proper POV characters (Rys, Hale, Aldrich, and Neja), which I feel like adequately cover all the angles I want covered for that story. If I could add one, however, I think Vidri’s perspective would be a fun one! 

In HTBM I don’t use POV characters, but rather choose whose thoughts/knowledge gets shared at any given time. If I were to pick a POV character for the story (beyond the obvious) I would probably go for the Collector. It seems right up his alley to be relating this story!

9. What would be your OC’s taste in music if they lived in our world?

Wow, this is unexpectedly difficult to answer! I’ve got nothing for the characters, but I do have a theme song chosen for HTBM! “Deep Water” by American Authors

10. What’s one personal goal you want to achieve by the end of the story?

My goal for TCB is to complete the project in a way I can feel proud of. In a way this is related to my goal for HTBM (and its very existence) because I’ve never completed a novel. I don’t know that HTBM will ever properly end or what that will look like, but my hope in starting it is that it will teach me to write without fear. One of my biggest hurtles as a writer has been that I’m so often paralyzed by perfectionism, pulled in a hundred directions because I don’t want to make a misstep. HTBM is designed for me to simply write without the fear or expectations that go with a project like TCB that I’ve become so invested in over the years. It’s an exercise in letting go.

Thanks again for the tag! I’m going to tag @pen-of-roses, @coffeescribles, @writing-for-the-stars-and-moon, @inscrutable-shadow, and @thewrittenpost if you want to!

[find-thy-voice]

wowie... its new art after 500 years of forgetting this blog exists

anyways take one of my favourite bastard characters [xey/xem] from my TBC au

[find-thy-voice]

various commissions from this year

[find-thy-voice]

getting into the Voices from my AU, we've got SPEAK-AS-ONE

[find-thy-voice]

up next on AU voices, THE-MEASURE-CUTS

[find-thy-voice]

more HTBM Voices, LAUGH-LAST

[find-thy-voice]

really gotta use my art blog more SO introducing my The Blackout Club kiddo, and a little peek into what kind of headcanons exist in my head uwu

[find-thy-voice]

back again with a ref sheet

bitch-ass HUNT-THE-STRONG Empowered for an AU/RP server of mine uwu

[minty-mumbles]

Quick question if you don’t mind, Wild in your htbm AU died by an explosion alongside Flora and Purah, so, whats up with the champions? Or are they not part of the AU?

Purah’s lab was on a college campus where she worked. Wild and Flora, her interns, weren’t in college yet, but had earned themselves an internship there.

The Champions were students/faculty at the college, and friends with Wild and Flora. It was just bad luck they got caught in the explosion too. They are fully dead, no poltergeist shenanigans for them.

[minty-mumbles]

begging for scraps of htbm,

Lore for you! Lore dumps on Warriors and Vampires

Sorry it took me so long to answer, I was distracted by finishing/posting Honor in the Braids. I promise I wasn't ignoring you! I do have one more wip for this AU, and then I gonna need to come up with more ideas to write. I do have two unrelated short fics to finish before I get to that one, but they should be short (hopefully) so it should be out before the end of the month.