#much quicker now so rush to my mates and rush back reassure her as im leaving hers that i am bringin her keys back its just after 11 at this

[nerdie-faerie]

This has got to be the worst move out yet

[hvlfwygod]

SALTWATER, FRESHWATER

summary: a bad omen goes unseen, a plan is in motion, a journey is made, someone comes home tw: drowning mention, electrocution, blood, murder, it's a little gross

PART I

He missed surfing. Really surfing. Major had never been fantastic at it (he wiped out more often than he cared to admit) but he loved the battering saltwater air, the roaring waves. The flip in his stomach when he knew the momentum was taking him, those suspended seconds between him and the water, was probably his favorite. Even if it meant he was toppling over, he’d just break the surface and go for it again.

He almost didn’t break the surface, once. When he was ten, he’d lost his balance and the ocean took that as an invitation to eagerly enter his lungs. The crash twisted him over himself and over himself and over himself, the water rushed in his ears. His senses flattened out into white-clad nothing as he tumbled against the sand. He’d opened his eyes again several minutes later, on the shore with a crowd around him, a broken board and a throbbing leg and an inconsolable mother clutching his face. 

“I thought I’d lost you,” she’d kept saying. “You weren’t breathing and I thought you were gone.” A week later he was back out there.

To his left, a bird circled in the sky. Wings flared open as it wound around and around and around. Major squinted, as if he could get a better look from his place on the ground. Vulture, he decided. Probably eyeing some prey out in the forest.

This beach was nice, but the waves couldn’t compare. They didn’t have the same bite of danger, and there were hardly enough to scratch the itch that had been forming for the past few weeks. Body surfing wasn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe he should ask Sefa if he could stir up some bombs and outshine him here on Long Island Sound. 

His towel hung around his neck and his shirt stuck to his still-wet torso. The afternoon was dipping into a glittering orange evening, and— fuck, he had dinner plans. He’d completely forgotten. Major checked the time on his phone and, prompted by the number he saw there, picked up his pace back to his cabin.

Hindsight was something else. Major wasn’t sure why he thought back to that day; he hardly liked to recall the sound of his mom weeping over his battered form. That day had been lost inside his memory for years, unlocked for some strange reason at the sight of his hands in the swirl of seawater. The sphinx and all that came after had been tucked away, too. He didn’t like to think about difficult things, but just be happy that they were over, that he was here. But hindsight gave him a lot, including the knowledge that the roof hadn’t been a one time thing.

He wasn’t going to think about that now.

Major was already crafting his apology to Ime while he jogged, racing against the last hour or so of sunshine. Slowing him down was the sight of a young woman, hovering near the cabins, visibly distressed. She seemed to be lost, or confused, moving around and around and around, looking for something in an almost aimless circle. And then, she saw him, and her focus snapped back into place.

“Hey!” she called. Major could see her eyes lighting up from several feet away. “Help me, please!”

“Wh... What’s wrong?” he asked as she approached. Once she met him on the path, she grasped his hand like a vice. Major glanced around quickly for any signs of danger, then settled his gaze back onto the woman.

“Can you help me? Please help me,” she begged, tugging his hand, already retracing her steps and pulling him along with her. “My brother is hurt, we were hiking and he fell and I need help carrying him back, please.”

Major blinked, his mind shifting gears as he processed this. “Hang on,” he said despite not slowing down. “We should get a doctor or something if he’s that—”

“There’s no time!” she snapped, sounding almost annoyed with him. “It’s almost dark.” It looked to him like she was about to start crying. “I don’t want to leave him out there in the dark.”

How could he turn her down? Major swallowed. “Okay.”

He let her drag him into the forest. The temperature started to drop the deeper they wove through the trees, the further the sun started to sink. Major felt the chill along his arms, but his hand must have been warm, because he woman didn’t let go. That, or she was just scared and needed something to hold onto. He quickened his pace so he was walking alongside her. “Were you two far?”

Her face was stony, unreadable, and she dropped her hold on him. “Yes.”

Major frowned, not sure what to make of this. She seemed to be shaking, her voice waved with an emotion he couldn’t place but the look on her face was... determined? 

“He’s gonna be okay,” he reassured her. “I’m guessing it’s his leg if he can’t get back?”

She was staring straight ahead, squinting into the sunset. “Yeah.”

“Alright. I can carry him, no sweat. Don’t worry.”

“Let’s just hurry,” was all she mumbled in return, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. Her strides became longer, quicker, pushing her slightly ahead of him again. Major just nodded mutely (though she wasn’t looking at him) and continued, this time staying a few steps behind.

A small part of him always knew, he was pretty sure. He didn’t have the words for it, the acceptance for it, but he knew. Bruises sank down to nothing in a matter of hours. Breaks, sprains, scraped knees, they were all the same. It went a step beyond the gifts of being a demigod. Knowing now in concrete terms, if this were him, stuck in a forest of expanding shadows, would he even be scared?

Major thought again about his mom, her arms tangled around his shoulders. He thought about the way his heart seemed to scramble back into beating while the ocean spilled out of him as he coughed and coughed and coughed. He thought about waking up on that roof, the rush of water pouring from his ears, how it felt like he was ten, all over again. Such different ways to die, but his throat had burned all the same.

Major thought, too late, about texting Ime.

Dammit. He really needed to get his head on straight. He pulled out his phone with a sigh. At least he had a better excuse for being late.

I’m soooooo sorry, I’m helping someone out. will be late :(

His service was spotty this far into the woods, so his text took almost a full minute to send. And it took while for him to get Ime’s reply: major bummer, but only a minor offense (:

Despite the stiff, serious air between him and this stranger, Major smiled. 

They walked, for a long time. Major checked— it’d been nearly twenty minutes of walking. How far had they gone, and why had it seemed like she’d slowed down? Major realized he was looking back at her now, just slightly, to make sure he was going in the right direction.

She refused to look at him, but he noticed a nervous twitch in her hands every time he turned his eyes onto her.

Finally, finally, she pulled ahead. “It’s right up here.” Major followed eagerly. The sun still had a half hour of brilliance left, but under such a thick canopy of leaves it hardly mattered. He wanted to get out of here before the darkness made it impossible.

But when they turned into the clearing, there was nothing. A stream curled past them and forked in two, populated with tiny fish, a squirrel bolted up a tree, but otherwise, it was just them and the darkening sky.

“Shit,” he breathed out. “Shit, mate, you think he moved on his own?”

“Must have,” she replied, her voice stiff. She walked ahead and stepped over the stream, her shoulders squaring, as if something bad was on the other side. Major trailed behind, yanking his phone back out and turning on the flashlight. Deep red light illuminated the bark, and his additional light did not bring much else.

A terrible quiet seemed to come over them. Major knew he was reading too much into it, but it sounded as though even the water had stopped gurgling as loudly.

The woman pulled a cassette player out of her jacket, taking a deep, slow breath. Major thought that was supremely odd, but he didn’t pause to ask about it. “I’m gonna search downstream a bit. Want to meet back in ten?”

“There’s no... You don’t have to,” she said as she turned to face him, walking to the edge of the water, holding the player out like she was giving it to him. Major frowned, staring at it, then at her hand, pressing play—

A shock erupted at his abdomen and spread across his torso, down his arms and his legs. Major was too stunned to do anything more than grunt before his jaw locked and his muscles went rigid, his heart crashing out of rhythm. It hurt in an awful, indescribable way, and it burned, and when he crumpled to the dirt it felt as though he was going to vibrate out of his own body. Major felt the impulse to scream and thrash, nerves sparking through his brain and limbs, but it was like he forgot how, like everything stopped working all at once.

His last coherent thought was that it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. He wanted to shout to the woman that it didn’t matter, please stop, he couldn’t die. But as the shockwave screamed through to his bone, the world seemed to melt away. All he saw was a monster’s jaw snapping open, all he felt was a wave swallowing him, all he heard was a rush of water in his ears.

PART II

Up to this point, Linnaea had been very surgical in her approach to murder. What were the exact biological functions she would need to cease in order to turn off the brain, and how quickly could she get there? The procedure was purely biological, almost mechanical in nature, and had nothing to do with the character of the person inhabiting the body. 

In fact, she had been very careful to avoid thinking of him as being a person at all. In all her notes, Linnaea had referred to it as the “body” or the “vessel” or other things of that nature. 

How can I cause minimal damage to the body? How can I ensure that the vessel is completely shut down?

Linnaea gripped her fingers tightly around the cassette player in her hand. She could feel the vibrations of the weapon pulsing in her palm. It was a special commission, unlike any other weapon here in New Athens—a concealed stun gun with a barbed tips capable of delivering 1,000 milliamps of electricity. Linnaea had hoped for higher. A more powerful current would mean a more definitive result. She wasn’t trying to torture the body after all, she only needed to create a vacancy. But any higher, Fionn explained, and they’d have to switch to a much bigger weapon. Linnaea couldn’t afford to lose the advantage of surprise. Keep it small, she instructed, and I’ll hope for the best.

Linnaea released her finger from the trigger and held her breath. For a moment, she only heard the babble of the streams that forked around her. 

She waited.

Then, a murmur. 

Linnaea hissed. The moaning started to evolve into a pleading whine, a half-hearted please… Pl… 

Linnaea tuned it out. There’s no good in listening, she reminded herself. Just lead the cattle to the slaughter.

Linnaea pushed the button again. In her head, she started counting down slowly from thirty. She focused only on the numbers and not the gurgling sounds erupting from his throat.

Twenty-five, twenty-four...

Somewhere miles beneath her feet, her brother was drowning in a river. So soon, he would taste sweet reprieve.

Nineteen, eighteen...

A sharp crack rang out from the ground in front of her. It sounded like something bent way out of place. That would need to be fixed later. Fuck.

Twelve, eleven...

Linnaea had made every effort to learn as little about this person as she could. She made no note of the people he sat next to when he ate. She kept her headphones on when she eavesdropped on his conversations so she wouldn’t have to hear him laugh. She kept a hazy account of what buildings he entered and exited for the last few weeks, only holding onto a general idea of the roads he took and when. Linnaea was so good at disposing of anything that wasn’t absolutely critical that she had gotten overconfident in the days leading up to this moment and let her guard down.

Five, four...

Linnaea bumped into him on the way to the forest. He didn’t even look her way, just kept on walking after a nonchalant apology. The moment was brief, but lasted long enough for Linnaea to get an earful of his friend call out, “Hey, Major, look at this...”

Two, one.

Linnaea held her breath. That had to be enough.

She waited.

And waited.

A gurgling whimper.

Linnaea let out her breath as a tear fell onto her cheek. How was he still alive? How could anybody hold on this long?

Before Fionn had started making the weapon, he had asked Linnaea about her fighting style. “Medium range,” she explained. “I’m good with throwing daggers and I’m fine with a sword. But I don’t like it when they get too close. I’m not so great with close combat.”

“Don’t worry. I have an idea,” Fionn responded with a grin.

A few days later, when Linnaea came to pick up the weapon, he pointed at the big red record button. For close combat, he explained. When you want it to end.

Linnaea stepped forward, the crunch of dead leaves underfoot echoing the sound of Major’s bone breaking just a moment ago. Linnaea shivered. She knelt to the ground in front of him, trying her best to avoid his gaze and tune out his weak sobs. She pressed the big red button and two prongs shot out of the bottom of the cassette player. 

Linnaea wanted it to end.

With both hands clutched around the little metal box, she plunged the prongs into Major’s chest. 1,000 milliamps straight to his heart.

Linnaea didn’t bother counting down. She just knelt there with her finger pressed down on the button and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

PART III

The smell of burnt flesh greeted Jordan before Linnaea did, and he pressed the sleeve of his sweatshirt into his mouth to keep from gagging. His eyes watered as they found Linnaea, and he made sure to breathe through his mouth as he looked down at the body on the ground. Another wave of nausea rolled through him as his mind connected the sight, the smell, and the sound of Linnaea crying, and his hands shook as the blood rushing through his veins felt like an electric current. Run, his body coaxed him, get away while you can. He tilted his head back, looking up at the trees as he took a few grounding breaths, whispering a few “fuck”s with each exhale.

He continued to breathe out of his mouth, focusing on the sound of the river rather than the fact that he was now probably an accomplice to whatever had taken place before he arrived. He dropped his basket and ran his hands through his hair, almost dizzy as he tried to muscle memory his way through the ritual.

This was different from chalking things out on his floor, and different still from carving sigils into the ground for a bird. There was no sparrow to place in the center of the circle, but a body to teleport into it. He didn’t look at his face, not wanting to know.

He told Crinitus to find north as he had before, told him to dig, poured out water, lit incense. As the circle was cast, he wondered if the smell was gone, but didn’t chance a breath. It was close to dark now, and he looked at Linnaea once more, wondering if he was as pallid as she was. If he didn’t do this, he told himself, there would be a dead body with no spirit in it at all. This man would have died for nothing. Out loud, he said, “I need your blood. Just a drop. From your finger or something. I can use the shit I have, but yours is…” He trailed off since she was already agreeing.

From the basket he had brought with him, he pulled out a jar where he’d drained a steak before his roommate was going to eat it, and as he held it out to Linnaea, he felt very stupid for not considering that this entire event was probably going to make him nauseous. He looked away as she contributed to the concoction of blood, honey, other herbs and oils, then poured the entire thing out at the dead man’s feet. He crouched, then dropped to his knees before the body as he bowed his head and prayed to Hekate Chthonia, Hegemonen, Empylios, and Pammetor, opening the gate to a world beyond their own.

Jordan didn’t seem to notice that the lines he’d etched into the ground around the body were glowing a dark purple, or the fact that black drool dripped from his dog’s mouth. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice anything happening around him at all as he leaned forward, pressing his hands into the mix of blood and earth.

It felt as though he was sinking into the earth, some invisible weight pulling at his knees, and then he was standing, his dog’s leash in his hand. Linnaea was no longer beside him, but the image of the dead man flickered at his feet for a moment. He hadn’t learned his name, hadn’t even looked at him; he wouldn’t be able to find him. Besides, there was someone else he was looking for.

Lucien. He called out, pulling open the ground as though there was a cellar door there. Lucien. He was walking down stairs, the way illuminated by a purple glow coming from Crinitus, and soundtracked by the bell that he had attached to the dog’s collar. Lucien. Things were beginning to stir now. He realized that his hands were coated in the blood mixture when drops of it slid from his fingers and turned to wisps that evaporated into the air. Lucien. Spirits reached for him as he called out, but Crinitus kept them from making contact, snapping at them with jagged black teeth and glowing eyes. Lucien, Lucien, Lucien.

Jordan wished that he knew what Lucien looked like past the description Linnaea had given him. This shortcut to the underworld was much longer than he remembered it being. The bird had been right there, ready for him to pluck up and guide back to its body. He was afraid of being down here for too long. He knew he wasn’t actually in the underworld, or at least, not physically, but some part of him had to be, and that part was growing cold, exhaling breaths that he could see, being reached out to by spirits that weren’t the one he had been asked to retrieve. Lucien, where are you?

He called out once more, and was pulled forward violently by Crinitus, who was barreling towards water that Jordan knew he should go in. His dog knew who they were looking for, and when he reached the bank of the river, he realized that it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what Lucien looked like, because the massacred eidolon was barely recognizable at all. His stomach finally gave in, and he doubled over as he retched, dirt pouring from his mouth instead of bile. He was down here for far too long, but he wasn’t going to give up now.

“Lucien!” He screamed over the river, and the spirit seemed somewhat responsive to this. Jordan dropped to his knees, ripping away at the weeds coating his arms. He tugged at him, trying to pull him from with water without letting the lapping waves splash him. “Lucien, we have to go,” he said urgently, kicking at the spirits that were tugging at his jeans, his dog too busy tugging at the man’s shirt to ward them off. Some laughed at his attempts, taunting him, telling him that he was too far gone, he ignored them. Others pulled at his hair and clothes, still jeering, or asking them if they could tag along. When they touched him, it was like ice on skin, and he flinched, desperate as he pleaded with Lucien, daring to move further into the mud. “Linnaea is waiting for you.” 

Finally, this seemed to mobilize Lucien, and he was out of the water, staggering to his feet, and Jordan retched again as his legs, bloated and black, bowed under his weight. Lucien took a step forward, and Jordan took his hand to guide him, convincing himself that it was not skin sliding off under his touch, that this was all metaphysical, that none of this was real, that the body was in the ground, but he was doubled over again, spitting up more dirt. He pulled him away despite this, almost frenzied as he followed the sound of the bell, now distant, relying on the pull of his dog’s leash as his eyes began to cloud over. And then Jordan was on his hands and knees, in the woods, Linnaea at his side, a cadaver in front of him. He was shaking, unsure if the spell had worked at all, but all he could do was hope as he dropped to the earth, cold, caked in mud and sweat and blood, out of power, unconscious.

PART IV

Lucien didn’t know what he was waiting for. He was in a pool of bloody river water, his legs submerged, his arms overgrown with damp weeds, his ruined stomach a home for worms and rot. Ghosts from upstream passed him by, curious, crawling onto the banks beside him and watching as he sank into the mud. How much time had passed since he saw her last, since he moved last? Being dead made it so hard to tell.

Lucien didn’t know what he was looking for. Perhaps she had already come. (He was too dead to remember her name, but he grasped onto the memory of her voice saying I’ll make this right.) Maybe he missed it. The current slowly ate him, but still he waited, hoping he wasn’t too far gone to make it back.

Lucien!

Something alive said his name. Lucien’s eyes— hazy, half-opened, coated in a layer of film— flickered around in his soft skull. Weeds fell away in clumps.

A pull on his arms, sliding him forward and out of the water. Cold hands gripped at his face, his cave of a torso, wrapped themselves around his legs. Lucien, we have to go. Linnaea is waiting for you.

A flash of heat went across his back, like the name injected the smallest scrap of life into him, and he fumbled into standing. A hand that felt more solid than the rest pulled away at his skin, and his legs were too ruined to walk, but he moved anyway. A spray of dirt came out of his guide’s mouth, and then they were going, away from the river. In a few short seconds they had gone farther than he ever managed alone, back when he was still a fresh spirit and not decomposing.

The path illuminated in front of him, as if it had been there all along, just out of reach. Before Lucien’s eyes was a tunnel of roots, a staircase, an unfamiliar forest. Ghosts were at his heels, his shoulders, pulling him backward, but as he got closer he shed more pieces of the river. It formed a little stream in his wake, like the water had forked off into a new current, about to flood out into the land of the living.

Then, he saw her, and it was like seeing the moon peek over the crest of a hill— his sister was right there, his sister— and Lucien ran, suddenly desperate, suddenly remembering why he had waited for so long. With every step, he felt a little more alive. His stomach knit itself back together, his bones took on a weight. Ghosts still clung to him as he passed the threshold, only halfway evaporating—and then, all at once, a painful, awful crash into flesh. Lucien felt himself thrashing inside a body that was not his, scrambling for an anchor, grappling off a desperate, shoving force that was trying to push him out.

Nerves turned on like little starbursts across his skin. A name that was not his came to him, and this body hurt. A burn flared over this chest, a broken shoulder blade, the heart groaning inside a trembling ribcage. The jaw clicked as Lucien forced it open.

He was here, but it was wrong. There were fractured spirits inside this body with him, carried in on Lucien’s back and stuffed inside the bones. Pieces of hands, eyes, heads, kneecaps, teeth, an assortment of parts all shuffling in here with him. 

And another singular, whole spirit, the one who never fully died, fighting to take back control. A life that was not his flashed before his eyes, like dying in reverse.

Lucien?

He opened his eyes— these were his eyes now— and saw her. Major’s voice creaked out of him. “Linn… aea.” It sounded wrong, and the spirit inside him wept.

Linnaea.

A horrible pressure built inside his skull, and for a split second, all he could hear was a distant plea. Get out, get out, I’m not dead. 

Lucien tried to sit, but being alive was too much all at once. He couldn’t move, not yet. His body shuddered, and when he turned his head and coughed, worms spilled from his lips. A creek babbled by, to his left. Linnaea, he repeated, the thought coming out like a sob— he wasn’t sure who it was that was crying.

Lucien.

But it hardly mattered. None of the flaws of this vessel mattered, not when he could hear his sister’s voice, ringing in his mind, saying his name back.