#rip bl strike

[aliceisathome]

Our Dining Table continues to rip my heart to shreds - Yukata's story. Gah. I want to cuddle him and feed him all the nice things*. And his brother joins the ranks of BL's horrible family members. And Tane stroking his head. Double gah. Shame about the camera cheat on the kiss though.

I'm not sure about these boys' sexuality - Yukata strikes me as demi while Minoru probably thought he was straight and is now realising he's bi? Whatever. They're unutterably sweet. Not looking forward to the inevitable penultimate Episode of Doom...

*and then tuck him up in bed with Minoru and take Tane and their dad away for a long weekend so they can work things out alone. Kissing properly in particular...

[galactictwilight]

Past's Order & Future's Chaos Part 1

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I did not realize that there was a word cap, so I have to break this into multiple posts. Since I keep getting writers block when trying to make interconnected stories, I'm just going to put the plot point for each day and expand upon it in the other posts.

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I'm not really good with one word prompts so I'm just going to take all the Ectober prompts and try to fuse them together into an interconnected frankenstein fic idea. I might even use the free days to add some more Ideas. Though, there might be a bit of lore from my other DP AU making it's way into this story idea. Unfortunately, I suck at characterization so all of the characters are probably going to be OOC. I'll try my best to do the DP characters justice. Anyways, I hope everyone likes my fic dump.

Summery: As September gives way to October, Danny is visited by Clockwork at the stroke of midnight with some alarming news. The month of October will truly live up to the horror it's known for as a truly hellish amount of drama consume not just Danny's life, but also those of his friends and family. Family secrets, tragedies, and truths are exposed. Will the bonds of family be broken? Will love conquer hate? Or will another great tragedy strike the Fenton, Manson, and Foley families once again.

And to think, we haven't even gone into detail about what Clockwork told Danny yet...

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Past's Order Prompts

Witch - "Her name was Samantha..." Pamela whispered with grief.

Sam stopped her aggravated exit to turn and look at her mother with an expression of confused surprise as a soft involuntary "what?" trailed out of her mouth.

Pamela adjuster her position on the siting room lounge to lean over the opened scrapbook on her lap. The dusty box it had come from lay haphazardly by her leg where Sam had dropped it. Many macabre trinkets and books where held inside along with dark articles of clothing. The scrapbook itself contained a multitude of pictures with two teenage girls in a punk style of clothing.

The shorter one had puffed out blond hair with pink tips, light peach skin, and aquamarine eyes. A gold chain adorned her neck and she wore a 'Theater of Hate' shirt with a black spiked girdle. Only one of her arms had a black almost elbow long glove while the other hand was hidden behind her back. A black form fitting skirt went right above her ankles, where you could see sheer dark pantyhose, and black leather heels adorned her feet.

The taller one, on the other hand, had short black spiky hair, pale skin, Hazel eyes, and a spiked leather collar around her neck. She wore a no-sleeve crop top with a sheer cloth that draped down to cover her slim stomach. She had short-shorts on with ripped fishnet leggings and black boots. The taller girl also had a multitude of chains and spike tastefully adorning her body and completing her punk look.

Pamela lightly brushed one of her fingers on the image of the taller girl as she spoke in a quiet sad voice, never once looking up from the image.

"Her name was Samantha." Pamela repeated before looking her daughter straight in the eyes as she continued.

"And because of me, she died a Witch..."

Betrayal - Sam stared at her mother with a confused and surprised look on her face. Not quite understanding what her mother meant by 'died a Witch' or why she looked so miserable and grief stricken.

"Mom... What are you talking about?" Sam asked in a somewhat slow manner, a bewildered frown now present on her face. Her anger and frustration from earlier had been put aside now that she noticed just how much the items in that box had affected her mother.

Pamela didn't say anything for a moment. She just sat on the lounge and clutched the old scrapbook in her hands. Her eyes had fallen back down to the photo of the two happy punk teens, lingering mostly on the taller black hired one. Finally, she sucked in a shaky breath of air and responded to her daughter's question, but she couldn't bring herself to take her eyes off of the scrapbook.

"Her name was Samantha Moore and she was my best friend." Pamela said softly as her voice cracked at the end from a repressed sob. Her already tight hold on the scrapbook becoming a death grip as her fingers whitened from the presser.

Sam was shocked to see her mother in such a state and hurried to her side as a concerned 'Mom!' tumbled out of her mouth. Her concern only grew once she saw the tears flowing from her mother's eyes and the light almost unseen full body shaking as the tears silently ran down Pamela's face. And yet still, Pamela kept her gaze on the scrapbook, not even acknowledging Sam as she approached to lean down to get a better look at her face and touched her shoulder.

"Mom? Mom! What's wrong? Are you ok? Please, answer me! MOM!" Sam called in a panicked tone which gained a desperate edge at the end when Pamela didn't even twitch. Fearing that her mother was catatonic, Sam straighten up and fumbled for her cellphone. Once she had her cellphone in hand, Sam shakily started to dial her father's number and rambled to her mother in an attempt to keep calm.

"you-your going t-to be o-ok Mom, I-I'm just g-going t-to call D-dad and he-ll-l know wha-"

"No..." Pamela whispered in a hoarse voice, as her right hand released it's grip on the scrapbook to weakly put itself over her daughters left hand, which had been holding the cellphone. Sam jumped at the sudden move, before she quickly clutched the offered hand with her right one and began to speak to her mother.

"Mom! are you ok? What happened? Why don't you want me to call Dad?" Sam asked in a rush, fearful that if she missed this chance her mom might stop responding again.

Pamela sucked in a deep shaky breath and tore her red rimed gaze away from the scrapbook as her left hand shut it closed. she stared at her daughter for a moment, before looking away with a sigh. she then slid the scrapbook off her lap and back into the box it had come from before standing up. Pamela slowly walked to the fireplace with Sam in tow, still clutching her mother's hand.

Sam waited for her mother to collect herself and talk. She was still a little scared for her mom, but the sight of the scrapbook being put away eased her panic and gave her hope that it was over. Sam took note of her mother's flushed face, ruined makeup, and red rimed eyes. There was a slight tremor to the hand Sam was holding, but it seemed to be slowly easing away as time past. Just as Sam was starting to feel a little awkward, Pamela began to speak.

"I'm sorry you had to see me like that, Sammy." Pamela said in a raspy voice, eyes looking listlessly towards the fireplace rather then Sam. "I just wasn't expecting you to bring me that box." Pamela finished with a chuckle that sounded more like a wheezy cough.

"It's ok, mom. I'm the one that needs to say sorry." Sam said, feeling guilty for causing her mom such pain. Sam hesitated for a moment before adding "But, why did you react like that?"

Pamela frowned lightly as she softly spoke "I suppose it's time to tell you about your namesake and my side of the family. And Sammy, please, do not interrupt me. I don't know if I'll have the strength to start again.". Seeing her daughter nod her head in agreement, Pamela took a steadying breath and spoke.

"My family, the Callister's, have a history of dealing with the occult. You see, Sammy, we are descended from a long line of irish witch hunters and exorcists. Traditionally, the craft would be taught from father to son, but my father, Emerich, believed that all his children had a right to learn the family craft. From a young age, I and my four older brothers, were taught about all the things that go bump in the night and how to fight them." Pamela began in a somber tone.

Sam's eyes widened in shock as she listened to her mother talk about her maternal family. Sure, Sam wasn't too surprised by the revelation that there were more supernatural creature out there other than ghosts, but what she wasn't expecting was for her family to be the ones that hunted them. Especially since it was her mother's family. Pamela had never told Sam much about her side of the family, but Sam hadn't ever thought that this would be the reason for her mother's silence.

"Now, I am not going to go into to much details about the supernatural community. Other then that they exist, and have been slowly secluding themselves from interacting with humans since the industrial revolution." Pamela paused as she saw her daughter give her a pleading look.

"I know that you're interested in this, Sammy, but we can talk about that later" Pamela promised, before resuming her tale.

"It happened when I was thirteen years old. I was young, reckless, and going through a punk phase with my best friend. I had known Samantha since I was a young girl and considered her a sister. We would always get into the most ridiculous situations and cause my poor eldest brother, Avery, to have to come and rescue us. We even made these silly little code names for when we wanted to be sneaky. I was licorice and she was petal." Pamela reminisced with tears in her eyes. Her throat constricted for a moment in grief and she had to stop again to regain some composer. She tightened her grip on her daughters hand for support.

"Samantha had known what my family did for a living. I shared everything with her, and my parents treated her like one of their own. I just wished she had listened to our warnings on the occult as well as me and my brothers did. I wished that I had never shown her that stupid BOOK!" Pamela nearly shrieked at the end, her voice filed with self hatred, shame, and pain. Startling Sam with it's intensity and causing her to wince in pain from how tightly her mother was holding her hand.

"Mom?.." Sam weakly asked in concern, wanting to comfort her mother, but unsure if she would even accept it. Sam somewhat understood where her mother was coming from, but the differences was plain to see, Danny came back, while Samantha hadn't.

Pamela sucked in a shaky breath as her eyes clenched shut. She exhaled a moment later and her eyes slowly slid open. Sam flinched at how blank and hollow they looked. It horrified Sam that her usually preppy and cheery mother could make a face like this. That her eyes could look that dead.

"I'm sorry, Sammy, it seems I may have gotten a little ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning." Pamela hollowly uttered, face now an impassive mask.

"At the time, my father had been contracted by the US government to hunt down and slay a particularly nasty coven of witches. They had made a pact with the Slavic forest god Berstuk. In return for the powers bestowed to them by the god, they had to kill anyone that harmed the forest or the creatures that inhabited it, whether they wanted to or not.

The only reason my father had even been able to get this information was because an initiate spell book had been found near an area where a group of game hunters had gone missing. Initiate spell books, Sammy, are how new witches are brought into an already established coven. Those books are already tied to their deity of worship and make the ritual to tie their new recruit very simple to do.

The book was being kept in a safe in our basement and would be burned after the coven was eradicated. My father and older brothers had been gone for two weeks, when I showed Samantha that book. I wasn't suppose to be doing it, but I had wanted to impress her with a real life spell book. Samantha had always been fascinated by the occult. I just wanted to make her happy.

But then, Samantha had wanted to try casting a spell from the book. We had a bit of an argument when I told her no. She didn't speak to me for two whole days, before she apologized and asked if we could have a sleepover at my house. I didn't think much of it, I was just happy that my best friend was talking to me again, so I agreed. The sleepover was uneventful, but I had a lot of fun and Samantha went home the next day.

Four days later, me and my mother got a call from my father. The coven was no more and he would be coming home soon. While my father and brothers where coming home, I was tasked with burning the spell book, but when I went to retrieve it from the safe, it was gone. My mother was horrified when I told her and immediately tried to call my father to ask him what to do.

An hour later, the police was knocking at our door. Two body's had been found near the wood and where identified as Samantha's parents. Samantha was nowhere to be found and they had come to our house to see if she was there. It was then that I knew where the spell book was." Pamela paused as her stoic mask began to crack, silent tears running down her face as full body shivers racked her paling frame.

Sam could only look on in growing horror as a realization slowly began to sink in. She could never understand her mothers pain, because it was nothing like what had happened with Danny. The only thing that she had in common was that both of their best friends had died because of actions done in youthful ignorance. Where Sam had nudged Danny towards his death, Pamela had dissuaded her friend from it. It was Samantha that had used her friendship with her mother to get close and steal the spell book, which ultimately lead her to her death.

'A death that was probably caused by my grandfather or uncles...' Sam thought with a growing dread. Her right hand has gone numb with how hard her mother was squeezing it.

"Oh, Sammy..." Pamela softly breathed out in a rough sad voice, "There is something you must understand about witches. When a witch makes a pact with an entity for power, they are giving more then their worship and service. They are giving their very souls and not all entity's are kind enough to give them back or allow their vassal's freewill. Berstuk allowed Samantha neither of those mercies, and since my family had just decimated his followers, he needed my friend to make a new coven for him." Pamela paused to take in a shaky breath as a numb feeling began to overtake her.

"As soon as Samantha had agreed to the pact, her fate had been seal."

"It was grandfather Emerich and my uncles that stopped her, right?" Sam quietly asked, unable to say 'killed' and hoping to end this conversation for her mother's sake. Only to be confused when her mother shook her head. Her confusion quickly became horror as Pamela spoke is a dead voice.

"I was the only one that could do it. My father and brothers wouldn't be home for another few days. And my mother was not trained to fight the supernatural like the rest of the family. I was the only one that had the ability to stop a novice witch. I couldn't allow that evil monster to control my friend, just the thought filled me with such fury.

So I took the family Scian and tracked Samantha down through the east woods of town. When I found her, her body was still changing to show Berstuk's ownership of her soul. Her hair had become long and shaggy with moss just starting to take root in it. Her eyes were that of a wolfs and she was just starting to grow a tail, fangs, horns, and claws. Even her voice was changing, bouncing back and forth between a bellowing elk or a hissing snake." Pamela paused to turn and look her daughter in the eyes, taking in their horror with her dead ones.

"It made what I had to do easier. I was killing a monster, not my best friend. As more and more of Samantha's human appearance was stripped away in our fight, the less I hesitated. It ended when I was able to get close enough to sink my dagger into her heart." Pamela finally finished in a monotone voice, and no more treas to shed.

Sam stared at her mother with horror and shock. She could not comprehend how Pamela had the strength to do what she did. Just the thought of doing the same to Danny made her want to throw up. Sam realized she knew so little about her mother and her family, but now she was hesitant to ask to know more. She didn't want to-

"Sammy, Please pay attention, I haven't told you about the rest of our family yet." Pamela suddenly said, knocking Sam out of her horrified stupor to look at her mother with a confused disbelief in her eyes.

"What?!?"

Order - The second task: the retrieval of the reality gems and returning them to their proper place within the Infinite Realms.

Box - "Is there any other secrets about our family that you, grandma, and dad haven't told me?" Sam questioned as she gave her mother a searching gaze.

Pamela looked at her daughter with a fragile smile, the sadness from their previous conversions still lingering, but seemed to be slowly draining away as Pamela pondered on the question. She leisurely strode her way back to the lounge and took a seat on the right most side. Pamela patted the open seat next to her with her left hand as a silent invitation, which Sam accepted as she moved to sit with her mother. With her right hand, Pamela delicately lifted a cup of tea, that had long since cooled, off the console table and took a deep sip before answering.

"The only thing that comes to mind is how I actually met your father and why we chose to live in Amity Park." Pamela said, voice still soft, but growing in strength.

"Wait! -So, that gushy story you and dad told me-" Sam began

"Was not the real story, dear." Pamela finished with an abashed smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, before she quickly continued when she noticed her daughters disgruntled expression and opening mouth. "We where going to tell you the truth when you where older-"

"what! When I'm old enough to live on my own!" Sam cut in with a slight harsh edge to her voice. Sam had a frustrated look on her face for a moment, before she took an deep breath and let out a sigh, her eyes closing as she forced herself to calm down. When she opened them to look at her mom and saw the guilty and hesitant look on her face, Sam had to look away as she spoke again to her mother.

"I -Sorry. Just -" a sigh, "Just tell me how you and dad met." Sam finally got out.

Sam hadn't meant to snap at her mom like that, but after all of today's revelations about her family, she is starting to reach her breaking point. It also kind of stung, Sam felt like she never really knew her own mother. When she had first found that dusty old box in the attic and looked at the scrapbook it contained, all Sam had felt was an indigent rage at her mother's hypocrisy. But after learning about Samantha and her maternal family, Sam doesn't know what to feel other than tired and sad for her mom's loss.

"It's ok, Sammy, I know that what we are talking about is a lot to take in." Pamela said, as she sent a sad understanding smile to her daughter. Sam didn't respond much beyond leveling her mother with an expecting gaze and a slight nod of her head. Needing no further prompt, Pamela began her story.

"I met your father when I was nineteen. My father had been called by Ganit Manson, your grandfather, about strange things that had been happening to his family for the past few months. They had tried moving to some of their other estates across the country, but the entity that was causing it was following them from house to house, getting more and more bold as time past. By the time Ganit had called, your father's arm was broken, he had multiple bruises and scratches, as well as having so many nightmares he was suffering from sleep deprivation." Pamela paused for a moment to take another sip of her tea to help settle her nerves.

"It was a dybbuk"

Silence rained between the two Manson's following that sentence. Sam stared at her mother for a moment, before the words truly register and her eyes widened in shock.

"How...?" Sam breath out, wide eyes still looking at her mother as a pit began to form in her stomach.

"Your grandfather had bought a dybbuk box at a privet deceased estate auction he was invited to by a family friend. He thought it was just a wine cabinet, and when he had opened it, there hadn't been anything glaringly obvious to point out it's true purpose. My family hadn't discovered this important fact for another month and a half." Pamela paused to take a deep breath and collect herself. The next part of this tale was always hard to talk about.

"The dybbuk... was targeting your father. It wanted to possess him and make him do... terrible thing, before it killed him. We had grown closer as the investigation had gone on and I hated what that thing was doing to him!" Pamela hissed, as her hands tightened into fists startling Sam out of her stupor from the intensity of her mother's ire.

Hesitantly, Sam put her hand on her mothers clenched left fist and leaned into her shoulder to try and offer her mother some emotional support. Pamela's fist quickly lost it's tension and instead turned to hold Sam's offered hand in a gentile, but firm grip. Sam felt her mother lean towards her as she relaxed. Mother and daughter stayed like that for a few moments, before Pamela straightened up and turned to look at Sam with a loving and appreciative smile.

"Thank you, Sammy." Pamela said in a loving tone, eye's filled with gratitude. Pamela breathed in deeply to steady herself before she continued with her tale.

"Now, where was I...Oh, yes! By the time we had found out it was a dybbuk, your father was already under it's power and needed to have it exorcised. It took three weeks of constant prayers and exorcisms before Jeremy was free of that monster. By the end of the investigation almost everyone closely involved had been injured by the dybbuk, but it was the Manson's that needed to be hospitalized.

Your grandfather had internal bleeding as well as a lot of fractured bones, specifically around his chest. Your grandmother had a bookcase dropped on her from behind, which had caused a spinal injure. But poor Jeremy had to be in a full body cast from the way that thing had twisted and contorted his body. I did my best to visit him as much as I could until he regained consciousness. And, oh!~ did he say the most romantic thing when he woke up.

He had said 'Oh, Pamela! it was only the thought of being with you that gave me the strength to keep fighting.'. And it was in that instant, I knew, he was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with." Pamela finished with a happy sigh, eyes aglow with nostalgia as her cheeks dusted a light pink.

A small smile appear on Sam's face at the sight, happy that her mother was somewhat back to her preppy self after seeing her truly miserable for the last few hours. Sure, Sam is probably going to need a lot of time to absorb everything her mom had told her, but that can be dealt with later. Although, privately, Sam thinks her dad was really cheesy when he said that, Romantic, but cheesy.

Wait, Sam thought, Am I forgetting something?

!

"What was so special about moving to Amity Park?"

Banshee - A very particular ghost tells Danny what his final task is. (Clockwork had been the one to tell Danny what the last three tasks were, how strange...)

Freeze - Danny, Sam, and Tucker goes to the Far Frozen to ask for Frostbite's help in preparing Danny for his coronation.

Purify - In the aftermath of the battle for the thrown, the Fenton's rush to the Far Frozen before it's too late.

Night Terrors - Tucker has been woken up by his mother's screams and rushes to his parents bedrooms.

Shallow Graves - Jack and Maddie are staring at their ghost portal in the aftermath of Danny telling them the truth. They start to question if their ambitions are worth the shallow grave it had left in its wake.

Harvest - The night of the ritual has now arrived. Sam and Pamela are running out of time...

Thirst - Danny learns an unbelievable truth about the cola that went into the creation of Plasmius.

Way of Life - Pamela tells Sam that Amity Park is a place people go to retire from the supernatural world.

Restored - Danny restores Pariah's Keep in preparation for his coronation.

Haunted House - Danny is instructed to find his lair. His lair has something living in it...

Will O' Wisp - Using a tracking spell in the form of a turquoise flame, Tucker follows it through Nicolet National forest WI, praying that he gets to his parents in time.

Grimoire - A witch and her love making the final preparations on a mysterious ritual within her old and mossy spell book.

Hope - Jazz and Danny have a heart to heart about the recent drama that October has brought. This leads Danny to decide to tell his parents the truth with Jazz supporting him.

Eyes - Danny and Clockwork visit the Observants to sign a few legal documents.

One - A lone Observant betrays his oath and feeds information to Plasmius in the hopes that Phantom won't become king.

Fight - Vlad begins his plan to seize the thrown by attacking the Fenton family during the last task.

Coronation - Danny is crowned High King of All Ghosts on the blue moon of All Hallows Eve.

Myosotis - As Sam's maternal family wins the fight for their lives and the spirits of the coven's former members start to fade, Pamela is approached by a familiar face...

Grudge - Vlad finally vents his anger and rage at Jack after his secret is revealed, before throwing him into the Great Depths.

Past - Tucker is forced to unlock the memory's of his past life as Pharaoh Duul'Aman in an effort to use the knowledge of that life to accelerate his magical prowess as the threat of the blue moon draws ever closer.

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Future's Chaos Prompts

Potions - Using his magic and Fenton tech Tucker is able to subdue his parents long enough to administer the moonshift cure to them, hoping and praying he hadn't been to late.

Trust - Danny tells his parents his secret.

Chaos - The battle for the ghostly thrown has begun. But wait! an unexpected challenger approaches the battling half-ghosts?

Staff - Danny's first of four tasks he must complete before becoming High King. He must return the Scarab Scepter to Pharaoh Narmer of Sḫt-Jꜣrw. Sam and Tucker help him while Jazz covers for them.

Wraith - The last task Danny must complete is the destruction of a large group of wraiths that had gathered near the Great Depths. Danny's family helps him with this task. (Tucker is dealing with his parents curse and Sam is visiting relatives and is suppose to be back by Wednesday evening.)

Burn - Vlad's thoughts on the look Maddie sent him just before she made her escape with her catatonic son and devastated daughter.

Infect -Tucker learns how his parents were infected with lycanthropy.

Sleep Paralysis - Sam and Pamela's sleep is interrupted halfway through the night with sleep paralysis. In the morning, both Manson's decide to leave the hotel to spend their last few hours in North Carolina with their family. The two only realize something sinister is afoot when they find the large homestead ransacked and empty.

Deep Tombs - The third task: Danny must retrieve the royal regalia from the Tomb of Fathomless Horrors without any aide from his allies.

Hunger - A familiar face appears in Amity Park.

Drown - All she can hazily remember was how hard it had been to breath. It was like she was underwater, because no matter how much she coughed and inhaled, no air could reach her. And then the torture. just. stopped.

.

.

.

But where was she?

Cause of Death - As Jack flouts down(?) within the Great Depths, with a 'Fenton Jack-O-Lantern' as his only barrier between him and certain death, a being comes to him with a deal he can't refuse.

Abandoned - The prologue of the story where a large portion of Casper High is destroyed by a ghost attack, thus causing the school to be closed down until repairs are finished. To mitigate the loss of education to the students, the parents are given the option to either send their children to the high school in Elmerton or sign them up for the hastily put together online courses provided by Amity Park's board of education.

Danny was able to convince his parents to let him try home schooling to see if it would help him keep his grades up. Sam's parents wouldn't allow their daughter anywhere near Elmerton. It took Tucker a few days to convince his parents to allow him to be home schooled.

Costume Party - Danny enlists Queen Dora's help in setting up the annual Royal Costume Ball. (The counterpart to the Christmas truce. It is only sponsored by the High King, while the truce is done by the people.)

Jack O' Lanterns - Jack reveals his newest ghost hunting invention to his children. (A.K.A. little portable personal ghost shields shaped like pumpkins (with Jacks face or the Fenton logo as the 'carving'.). They fit in your pocket and are surprisingly long lasting. Only downside is that the batteries are difficult to make and charge, so there are still a few kinks he needs to work out.)

Sacred Text - Tucker pours through the books of magic kept in the Archives of Thoth in the hopes that there was a cure for his parents affliction.

Despair - Danny's thoughts about what happened at the Great Depth's and being unable to save them.

Teeth - Tucker noticed that his parents have fangs during what should be a typical Friday night dinner. The normalcy is unknowingly shattered by a terrible revelation once he comments on it in passing.

One Hundred - Sam and her family must fight a coven 100 strong to survive.

Flight - Tucker bursts through his front door calling to his parents in restless excitement that he had found a cure. But he is met with silence and a horrible realization as he finds an envelope addressed to him from his parents.

Coup - Vlad gathers allies to usurp Danny's thrown before he even takes it.

Foxfire - Sam and her mother descend into a mine that is lit by foxfire growing on the old wooden support beams lining the wall. Both are armed to the teeth and hope that they are not to late.

Absolve - Pamela has a sit down with Sam near the end of their reunion with her side of the family to both apologies and show her support to who her daughter wants to be.

Future - In the aftermath of the tragedy at the Great Depths, the remaining Fentons find Shelter in the Far Frozen.

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Ectober Week Prompts

Forest - While exploring the woods around her grandparents town, Sam hears whispers that lead her to an old mine shaft...

Six Feet - Sam meets her maternal family for the first time and is overwhelmed by their introduction.

Soul Shredder - Danny learns the history of the soul shredder while talking to Frostbite about what he will need to address as king.

Trickster(Cursed) Knight, Shade Knight, Mage Knight, Tempest Knight

Scream - The sight of his parent's screaming and writhing forms as their body's twisted and contorted into a more wolf like shape momentarily froze Tucker in abject horror.

Lobotomy - A few days after being told the truth, Jack has a heart to heart with his son.

Shiver - The events that occurred in the lead up to the blue moon of Halloween still makes a shiver run down the trio's collective spines.

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Halloween

Folk Tales - Pamela tells Sam about her maternal family, their profession, and family history.

[zmasters]

A Place Without Honor

Based on these polls

Zokas silently walked the battlefield, their metal greaves sinking into the jewel-speckled mud with every step. Like many warriors of chaos, he was a tall figure, the gods' blessings granting them the strength to rip a normal man in half with no issue. They wore a black robe, dark green flame flickering across their body. A white, horned helmet covered their head, with glowing green eyes. In one hand, he carried a polearm ending in a curved blade, serving both a melee weapon and magical focus. The other hand held a silver shield, emblazoned with the mark of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of change and magic.

They paused, pushing aside a dead grot with their bladed staff. Below a few inches of mud, and other fluids, carved into the stone floor was a symbol. He sensed faint magic emitting from the rune. With a gentle touch, they saw a vision of roads long traveled. This place was once a part of the underways for the Khazalid Empire, a highway to the entrances of greater holds lost to time. This tunnel, now overgrown by moss and fungus, and crawling with beasts and lunatics, was large enough for a gargent to fit without needing to bend their head, and wide enough to fit to hold an entire host of duardin phalanx and artillery.

It was a miracle that it still stands.

“Lady Avescaati.”

“What is it, sorcerer?” A gruff voice growled back. Garbed in a brass plate, and wearing the helmet taken from a slain stormcast, came the leader of this expedition. Avescaati, stalked forward on the back of karkardrak, her reptilian mount.

“There is a secret passage to the left around twenty-seven minutes down this passage.”

“Is that where the prey is?”

“You see this rune. It’s a rune warning travelers not to go there. As well, these tunnels were amongst the first to be abandoned during the Age of Chaos. If it’s warning travelers not to go this way, then it means it’s been here for a long time. I can’t confirm it’s the target, but it’s definitely something powerful.”

“Good work. Everyone, we move!”

Avescaati’s mount scampered off down the tunnel, its claws crushing the dead grot’s skull. The remaining armored warriors followed, leaving the dead from the skirmish against the greenskins behind.

Zokas marched next to the leader of this expedition. They weren’t surprised about being press-ganged into this hunting party. A Tzeentian sorcerer is always a useful, if dangerous, asset, especially one knowledgeable in the lore of metal. But why Lady Avescaati? She bears the mark of Khorne, the Blood God. By all right, she should be killing them right now for being a coward.

“Sorcerer.” She interrupted Zokas’s internal pondering.

“Yes Lady Avescaati?”

“Tell me about yourself.”

The order nearly caused Zokas to trip. “What?”

“You heard me. You’re my sorcerer now, I want to know what I have.”

He was unsure how to answer.

“I can tell you’re confused why I recruited you.”

“You’re a Khorne follower.”

“I’m a varanguard.”

“That doesn’t answer my questi-”

A green blur screamed past the two, landing face first into the dirt around three feet behind them.

“More grots!”

“Defensive positions!”

More screaming projectiles were launched through the air. With a flick of their wrist, Zokas fired a metallic spear from their palm. The spear struck a flying grot, piercing it to the wall. A red spear, dripping with viscera, followed it, striking a second living projectile. The sorcerer tracked where the red spear came from, and saw Avescaati with a bleeding exposed palm. The wound sparked with golden electricity.

“Is that magic?” He silently questioned. “Khornate magic? I can use that.”

Speaking a prayer under her breath, Avescaati launched blood from her wound. Where the sparking droplets landed, a crimson tornado began to form. The hot liquid tore and burnt the skin of the charging squig riders, but it didn’t stop all of them.

The calvary of orange bouncing balls meet the shield wall of black steel, slobbering sharp teeth crossing with magical blades.

“Cyla! Get in here!” Avescaati roared. “Now!”

Where the squigs were attempting to clamor over the chaos warriors, burnt roots and vines began to form. Like pikes, these vines pierced through flesh, creating a twisted tree of squig flesh and blood.

Zokas watched in confused awe as from one of the branches crawled out what resembled an aelf. This aelf had ebony black skin, with dark wood twisting around its body. Brass horns sprout from a dark helmet, with a glaive and shield not too dissimilar to the sorcerer ready. But what drawn Zokas’s attention the most was her blood-red insect wings.

“Hear me sniveling fools!” The creature growled. “I am Cyla, favored daughter of the Father of Darkness, future tyrant of Ghyran, and I will show you your rightful place! Under my heel!”

“What the fuck is that?” Zokas yelled.

“She’s mine!” Avescaati yelled back in a jealous tone, joining the charge.

Zokas was quiet for a few, agonizingly long seconds, needing time to process what was just said.

“WHAT!”

The two warriors ignored the question, breaking through the line of short fanatics. Or one did and the other flew over them. Grot after grot were burnt by burning blood, electrified by lightning, and strangled by roots. A magnificent display of slaughter and violence. Avescaati jabbed her trident through the chest of a shaman, sending her eclectic blood through its tiny frame and splattering its crazed comrades in gore. Her mount slashed its way through flesh and fungi. The winged creature flew above the crowd, her glaive slashing through skulls with little challenge.

Zokas had noticed that their more violent compatriots had drawn the attention of the raving horde. The two doom diver catapults were launching more and more winged suicide bombers in their general direction, kill more grots than Avescaati and Cyla combined. He was tempted to just let this play out, as it was likely that the greentide would eventually swallow up the two. But being the sole survivor of a varanguard lead expedition would look poorly in the Everchosen’s eyes, and he was too curious about Avescaati’s lightning blood to just let her die.

He reached into their satchel, and pulled out a glass bottle filled with a light green liquid. A light toss was enough to cause the bottle to smash onto the head of one of the grots. The black robed figure was set ablaze with green fire almost instantly, the flame quickly spreading to whatever the screaming mess touched.

With a flash of red light, Avescaati vanished from the horde and reappeared right next to her sorcerer, the flying Cyla following her and landing right on her armored shoulder.

“Zokas,” the lord asked, watching the pit of fire slowly growing, “what was that?”

The mass of gibbering maws screaming from the fire was enough to answer her question, but Zokas still responded. “A captured flamer. Exalted flamer to be exact.”

“You managed to capture a Daemon of Tzeentch in a tiny bottle and weaponize it?”

“The concept’s not new.” The new member of the party interrupted. “But I like the style.”

“I’m sorry, but what are you?” Zokas asked.

“I’m Cyla.” He felt the creature’s smug grin under her horned mask.

“But what are you?”

“I’m Cyla.”

“I know, but you look like a sylvaneth, you fight like a sylvaneth, but you’re clearly not a sylvaneth. Avescaati, what the fuck is this thing?”

“I’m Cyla-”

“She’s a companion of mine.” The gruff voice of Avescaati answered from behind her stormcast helmet that Zokas no longer believes was just looted off one of their corpses. “Trust me when I say this, but she’s a very useful asset that you don't have on your bad side.”

He glanced back at the winged… thing. Despite being masked by a dark helmet, Zokas felt her glowing purple eyes glare directly into their soul. Despite carrying a shield with Khorne’s symbol on it, this thing radiated pure magic.

“What are you?” Zokas asked one more time, feeling the urge to bow before this creature echo in their mind

“I’m Cyla.” She hissed one more time.

“Come on.” Avescaati interrupted. “We’re almost there.”

Any hatred Cyla held instant vanished as she happily hopped behind the chaos lord, the remaining warriors quickly falling in line. With a huff, Zokas returned to their position at the front of the convoy. He was the map after all.

The party weaved through the tunnels, the rubble becoming more and more prominent. Signs of battles long forgotten lined the overgrown halls.

“So… Zorkas.” Cyla giggled. “Why did you join this team?”

“I was asked to.”

“No you weren’t~”

“I was threatened with death if I didn't help.”

“That’s Avescaati for ya.” She swooned.

“Are you two, like, fucking or something?”

“Ye-”

“No.” Avescaati barked.

Zorkas and Cyla continued walking in silence for a few seconds, before Cyla asked another question. “Why did Avescaati pick ya?”

“Did your cot buddy not already tell you?”

“I was busy for the past few days. Piloting a sylvaneth corpse is harder than it looks.”

“I grew up in these - wait what? Never mind.” Zokas sighed. “I grew up in these tunnels. I come from a long line of scavengers who looted these abandoned holds for generations, and I’m one of few people that were in the Eightpoints that can read these runes. You see those runes.” He said, pointing at a nearby wall, the flickering green flames on their robe lighting up a wall of carved text. “It warns that something dangerous has appeared in one of the holds, and tells you that whatever was left in the hold isn’t worth facing it.”

“Does it say what it was?”

“No. The duardin weren’t expecting to be driven out of their holds. They may have had some sort of plan to deal with it that was scrapped during the Chaos invasion. Whatever it is, your varanguard pal wants to kill it.”

“She thinks it’s a daemon, one of the first to be summoned into the Realms, back when most people didn’t know what daemons were.”

“So why does she want to kill it?” They asked.

“I’ll answer your question with a question.” Cyla grinned. “What do you know about Avescaati?”

“She’s one of the Everchosen’s varanguard, a Khorn follower, and a-”

“You think she’s a stormcast, don’t ya?”

Zokas glanced back to the lady in charge of this hunting trip. The figure who wore stormcast armor and shot lightning from her fingers. He turned back to Cyla.

“She’s not a stormcast, but she is from Azyr.” Cyla leaned into Zokas, whispering into their ear. “She is the descendant of a stormcast eternal, a Lord-Arcanum.”

“Then why is she here? If anything, she should have a very cushy life in the Realm of Heaven with her wizard ancestor.”

“She wishes she can.” Cyla whispered. “She served amongst the stormcasts mortal auxiliary, fighting alongside her ancestor in expanding Sigmar’s empire. She has seen firsthand the failings of the God-King and his zealots. She thinks that the so-called forces of order are no better than the followers of the Dark Gods. She accepts the blessing of Archaon and bears the mark of Khorne because it offers her true goal. To kill a god.”

“Wanting to kill Sigmar isn’t unique to her. Why tell me this?” Zokas asked. “And what does it have to do with me and this expedition?”

“Because the true goal of the Swords of Chaos matches your goal as well as mine. To ascend above the very Gods themselves. No longer slaves to darkness, but the masters. Though your desire takes a slightly different method than Avescaati’s plan to stab a deity until it dies.”

Zokas clutched their satchel. He has to admit, runic magic is very effective in dampening the strength of daemons and other magical beings. While the thought has crossed their mind in the past, this has not gone farther than bending a lord of change or a daemon prince to their will. But to truly rule over the gods themselves, is that even possible? “And what of you?” He asked. “What do you get out of this?”

“I have a very simple philosophy.” Cyla giggled, her mask covering her wide grin. “Everyone has their place, the master or the slave. You and I are slaves, albeit to different masters. If you can over power your master and rise above them, then you are the master. If you can’t, then you are the slave. Tell me Zokas, are you the master of the slave?”

“What are you?”

“Someone who thought themselves to be a tyrant, but my true tyrant has shown me the truth. The Father of Darkness will happily rule over you too, as long as you kneel. And if you or I prove to be his better, then he will kneel without question.”

“Halt.” Avescaati ordered. “We’re near the prey.”

One of the black iron armored warriors approached the front of the group, handing Cyla a lantern. Using her blood red wings, she flew into the air, the lantern lighting up the statue that stood in front of them.

Towering over the party was a statue of a duardin, its eyes closed and mouth covered. Its hands were held up, with what resembled bones and broken weapons and armor filling each palm. 

Zokas approached the base of the statue, using the faint light from the lantern and their own flames to read the plaque on it. The plaque is marked in multiple languages, though he could only read Khazalid and recognize one other language being Azyrite.

It also appeared to be hastily written, with some of the runes having either faded away or seemed to have been scratched off, but enough remained that he could decipher a message.

“This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing of value is here. What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.”

“Khazalid, Azyrite, Aelven, Goroan, Gargent, even Sylvaneth and Ogor runes.” Cyla pondered as she landed.

Avescaati smiled, red sparks filling the hollow eyes of her masked helmet. “We’re close.”

Cyla returned to her partner’s side. “Avescaati, I think we should set up a base camp.”

“No, we can’t let this beast catch us off guard! Split off into teams, find the prey! Yell if you find it, my mount will hurry to the challenge. Go!”

The warriors scattered across the abandoned hold, search teams being created by complete accident. Zokas found themselves wandering down a hallway with Cyla, the two following an ogor of a man wearing rusty looking armor. His name was Torglik, chosen of Nurgle.

The three walked down the stone hallway, scanning for anything that can be described as a “daemon.”

“Zokas.”

“Cyla.”

“How’d you get those flames?”

“Alchemy accident. How’d you get your soul into a tree?”

“We, uh, died. I’m borrowing it.”

“Do you plan to give it back?”

“When I find somewhere to put the lamentiri I got in me.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a seed, that helps sylvaneth-”

A cough from Torglik interrupted the conversation. While that isn’t unique to a follower of the plague god, there was something else that caused Zokas and Cyla to freeze.

The two more magically inclined felt a sudden sense of dread fill them, all while Torglik continued to walk and cough. Something was telling them not to walk further, and Torglik collapsing to his knees only fueled their fears.

Blood dripped from his helmet with each cough, his hands clawing at his chest in an attempt to clear a pathway for air. He eventually passed, drowning in his own blood.

After recollecting the rest of the expedition, and trying to send two more warriors down the hall, the group was able to figure out where the aura is.

This hallway was completely separate from the rest of the hold, with the rest of the tunnels and halls leading in the opposite direction. This tunnel, which was made with thicker stones than other hallways, was the farthest away from the core of the hold, as if it was the last thing its old inhabitants had tunneled out.

“What’s the plan, Lady Avescaati?” Zokas asked, looking down at the three corpses that laid ahead of them.

“What is this sorcery?” She growled, a pair of hollow eyes staring into the dark hallway.

“It’s most likely death magic of some kind.”

“How do I explain this to them?” Cyla sighed, leaning in the doorway to this hallway. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“The Everchosen sent me to kill this daemon, I will not fail him!”

“Then you run into the murder hole.” Zokas said as he walked back out of the tunnel. “I am not going to hunt something that I can’t see.”

“And the Everchosen never said there was a daemon in here.” Cyla added. “All he said was there was something down here that caused the duardin to abandon this place.”

“This beast has no honor!” Avescaati roared. “Meet me in battle daemon! Face me and face oblivion!”

Raving and raging, she charged down the hallway. Avescaati felt her skin burn as she ran, but her rage forced her to ignore any pain. Blood filled her mouth as her vision faded.

“Blood… Skulls… for… Archa…”

Avescaati collapsed on the floor at the corner of the hallway, the last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was what resembled a melted pillar of stone which glowed slightly in the dark.

Zokas sat outside of the hold, their only companion being the good lady’s scaly karkardrak.

“How ya feeling boss?” Cyla greeted as she joined the sorcerer.

“A little ill, but I’ll make it. How’s the rest of the party?”

Cyla took a seat next to Zokas. “No one has the balls to recover Avescaati’s body, so I can only assume she’s dead.”

“Sorry for your loss.”

She laughed a little before responding. “There’s no need to lie about your grief, you didn’t give a shit about the baby-eternal.”

“Didn’t you give a shit about her?

“I tolerated her. I fucked her because she was one of Archaon’s top dogs who was desperate to be his second.”

Zokas glared at her. “What the fuck are you?”

“I’m a backstabbing daughter of a whore who’s trying to put myself at the top of the tower to fuel my lust for power, and I plan to do that by backpacking on some easily manipulable sod until I can puppet them into a position of power and I can swipe everything from under their nose.”

“Ah.”

The two sat in silence, absentmindedly petting the karkardrak as the sounds of metal clashing in the background.

“What’s happening in there?” Zokas asked, breaking the silence.

“The others are fighting to see who takes command of this warband.”

“Fair enough. Daemon or not, the throne to a massive horde of wealth sits unclaimed.”

“Yeah.”

The two continued to pet the beast.

“Cyla, I saw we destroy the entrance and let these morons rot.”

“I like your thinking. And you know what Zokas, you have Avescaati’s body type.”

“What do you mean?”

“Buff, tall, big tits, the karkardrak likes ya. Just need the armor of a stormcast and no one could tell the difference.”

“I’m not a Khornate. Or can control lightning through my blood.”

“We can work on that. There’s a lot of blood being spilled in there, and I dabble in daemon summoning.” Cyla’s eyes met Zokas’s.

“Let’s summon a bloodthirster.”

“I was going to say bloodletter, but I like someone with massive balls.”

The two hands met in a handshake. Two tricksters without honor, in a place without honor.

“I am so going to betray you later.”

“You stole the words right out of my mouth.”

“And what of the aura of death.”

“Let me explain to you how radiation works. A metal mage like you can probably work with it.”

To be continued…

[bellsofblueficlets]

The Truth Within

He was getting more used to this place. Gyre crouched in something like a runner's stance, one hand braced before him, fingers splayed, head bowed, and good socket shut tightly. Behind him, his tendrils had unfurled, like plumes of smoke, rising into the magic of the place, until it was hard to tell where exactly they ended- a trick of the eyes that could prove deadly to the wrong opponent.

There was no sound, but he heard every last one, his socket was squeezed shut, but in this place that should be empty and lightless, he could see every last detail.

It was impossible to tell just how much time had passed... days, weeks, more... and maybe it didn't matter. The dust bitty- Soot, Gyre had taken to calling him, for the black tear tracks that left soot like smudges on his cheeks- had fortunately been receptive to their magic. Very, very receptive, to the point that there really was no question anymore that what the demon had told him was true.

So now he knew they could keep him alive, indefinitely even. Shame that did nothing for the near constant gnawing hunger, but a win was a win, and he would take it. And the dust bitty? The dust bitty has rewarded his efforts a hundred times over, in the very best way he knew how-

The blade sliced so close to his cheek that the air of its passing felt chills across his corruption, but Gyre was already moving, having spun on his heels, and twisted aside, landing lightly to resume his stance, once more facing his opponent. This time, the followup was immediate, and the nightmare bitty leapt back, and back again as Soot continued his pursuit.

Strike, blow, blow, strike, dodge- As much as he'd gotten better at this though, for nearly every blow he evaded completely, another left a sharp sting somewhere on his body.

At least now the wounds were mostly shallow things, mind. He'd lost count of how many times those blade had gouged deeply, in what would have, in another life, been killing strikes. The dust bitty hadn't held his blows, but Gyre had never intended him to. Pain was a good incentive to do better, and if he was anything by now, it was very, very familiar with pain.

Then again, maybe on some level, that was part of the point. If he was used to pain... then, it could never blindside him like that again... right?

As if on cue the dust stepped back, and Gyre was left without his intended target. This led to overstepping, which led to his foot coming down too hard, and his focus was split for an instant as he recovered his balance.

An instant was all it took. Something moved past him, alarm flaring with him as he tensed, spinning to meet the next attack-

The hilt of a blade slammed into his temple, filling Gyre's head with a ringing that would be deafening under other circumstances. This was followed almost immediately by the flat of Soot's palm striking him in the center of where his ribcage would once have been, with enough force behind the blow to have quite conceivably shattered the bones he thanfully no longer had. With the breath driven from his lungs, Gyre stumbled backward-

Soot darts forward, pressing his advantage, and sweeps the nightmare's legs, striking upwards as he falls, letting Gyre's own momentum drive his blade bite deep, as unable to twist enough, impaled as he is, to keep from at least partly landing on it. This doesn't stop the dust bitty from reclaiming it, the blade all but tearing his chest open in the process, a long, deep cut slicing both across and through a significant portion of his upper body, before the weapon is violently ripped free again, even as it's twin is driven into his back-

'Enough!' The word is almost felt more than heard, as his attcker is knocked free, hard, Gyre's tentacle slamming into him, and ragdolling the dust's entire body some distance away... 'We're done!'

Blood flowed heavily from the deep wounds his dust had inflicted, or... magic, or... something. Corruption at this point, mostly. He definitely had no marrow left to bleed. No dust left to shed.

His head was swimming from the pain, but he didn't lose consciousness, just lying there, the brief burst of strength soent, and all too aware of the weapon still embedded in his body.

Managing to curl a tentacle around it's hilt, slowly, carefully, he attempts to pull it free, but his efforts are rewarded by further agony, and a terrible pain that lances through his body.

With a whimper the tentacle falls slack at his side...

{Still useless.} The demon mutters, summoning an additional tentacle, and starting to reach for the weapon, to pull the thing free itself-

Only to find a bony grip closing around it instead, as the dust reclaimed his weapon, drawing it forth in a smooth, easy motion. The demon hisses, its tentacle sharpening, but Gyre growls under his breath, forcing the thing to retreat into his body again. That was *his* dust, dammit.

Learning that the demon could not only summon additional tentacles from his body, but control them in ways he couldn't, hadn't been a welcome discovery, though it shouldn't have been a surprising one. It was something, in the end, he'd begrudgingly come to terms with, as deeply unsettling as it was- But he would not let it use them on Soot.

Repairing multiple stab wounds was hard though, and harder still when his consciousness was blurring from the pain, and having rejected the demon's 'help' once, he could feel in it's seething that it had no further intention of fixing the problem itself, shared body or not.

Admittedly, Gyre had never practiced healing magic the way he probably should have, which didn't exactly help, but now? Now had the motivation to learn. He had things he needed to do, and it was a means to an end... One he feared he'd need to resort to far, far too often.

The wounds close, slowly, agonizingly. The one on his chest takes considerably longer than the others, naturally, but in far less time than it had previously taken him, the nightmare breathes a deep, shuddering breath, pushing himself to his feet.

Now to deal with his 'minion's' injuries...

The dust's magic was very, very receptive to his, and the dust himself offered no objection, meaning that what damage the nightmare had inflicted- a couple busted ribs, and a cracked ulna from the dual impacts at the end from Gyre's tentacle and Soot's landing- mended fairly easily, not even leaving any visible scar tissue to mark the place.

Gyre also shored up the dust bitty's magic reserves a little, endlessly nervois about them running too low, before reclaiming his hand again. Traces of dust and blood lingered on his fingers...

"Training's over." He repeats bluntly, looking at the dusty, intending to make absolutely sure the other understood this, before doing anything else. Soot signed acknowledgement, meeting that gaze, and Gyre sighed, relaxing a little as he walked a short way away, sitting with his back to the other.

It wasn't long before the dusty joined him. It never was. He sat with his back to Gyre's, and though the nightmare didn't like admitting it to himself, he welcomed the company. The demon hissed silently inside him though, bristling against... something. He didn't know what. He told himself he didn't care.

Soot didn't like the creature, and went to no pains to hide it. The dust bitty could clearly hear the demon, and he didn't pretend otherwise. Yet never responded to it, directing anything he said to Gyre himself.

It soon becomes unmistakable to Gyre that there were a few injuries that he'd missed, and after a brief, dour reflection not to send his dust after anyone he might actually want alive later, he turns to addressing them. He thought he'd caught them all this time...

The demon notes, bemused, {You're the only person I can name who can 'spar' with a trained assassin, not to mention a creature specially crafted to serve the role, with LV like his, and end up surprised every single time by how many places you're bleeding from when it's over.}

"Do you ever have any helpful observations?" He mutters under his breath, nevertheless relaxing still more as the pain from his previously lingering injuries begin to ease.

The question has the effect of rendering the demon silent, if only for all of a few seconds, before offering coldly, {Sure. Helpful observation number one. Maybe don't lock doors behind you when you don't have the key.}

Okay, admittedly he'd walked into that one. He decides to go back to ignoring the demon. Gyre might be getting a bit more used to *his surroundings*? But much of the company definitely left something to be desired...

Once the last of his wounds are addressed, the nightmare bitty starts considering sleep, not sure how long it's been since he has. Sitting back to back with Soot is a very different mood though, than waking to find the other intently watching him sleep. Telling him not to had resulted in him sitting against 'his' nightmare's back instead, and staring off at nothing, a position that Gyre found him still in when he woke again.

Several iterations of 'stop doing that' later, to the point where he genuinely couldn't tell if the other bitty was deliberately missing the point or not, he kind of half gave up, and accepted sleeping as little as possible. He was pretty sure that Soot wasn't sleeping at all, mind...

Sleep was out of the question for at least a little longer though, until he finished his full 'post sparring check,' which meant- "Your turn," He says, well aware that Soot by now knew the routine. "Let's see what I missed."

Soot stands again, obediently, and walks around him, before sitting back down in front of him. Every time... Gyre didn't question it anymore, suspecting by now that routine was important to the dust bitty. He couldn't really blame the other, remembering that collar. A dog who knew his role well being less likely to suffer his master's hand, or something.

Knowing which actions promoted which reactions... Yeah. He could see that being important. He in turn did his best to be consistent, at least in things like this. It was almost a ritual by now-

None of Soot's wounds were as severe as his own had been, unsurprisingly, and luckily, but skin did have a tendency to bruise more easily than bone, and injured muscle tissue wasn't always immediately obvious, and well, organs and such...

Once he's pretty sure he'd tended every last bruise, he sits back, dropping his hands into his lap, and starts to tell the other bitty that he's done, only to pause, certain something in Soot's unchanging expression looks different...

...No. Not his expression. It was hard to sense much else beyond the mismatch of roiling negativity that continuously churned beneath Soot's surface, but something about him felt... waiting? Giving him a studying look, Gyre finally straightens again, and nods. "Go ahead."

It takes Soot a moment to nod back, if so brief that someone else might have missed it. Still he chooses his words, carefully, before beginning. "Why say 'dust?'"

Gyre blinks, caught off guard by this. "You... mean monster dust? Or bitty dust?" How did this guy not know what dust was? He'd seen his LV. He'd almost definitely seen his share of death.

"...You call me dust." Soot answers, simply, those piercing eyes too bright, too alert, too steady somehow, as they watch him. "You, and the thing. Both."

{Thing?} The demon echoes, all but bristling. {Excuse you...}

Ah. He supposed they probably didn't explain much to their creations. Not like they consider people...

"Many bitties belong to types," He taps absently on his knee, thinking the words through. "I'm not sure why, myself- When bitties wild spawn from residual magic buildup, they're usually one of these types, though if anyone knows where that magic comes from, I've never been told. It must have a common source though..."

"I'm a type of bitty called a nightmare bitty," That aqua eyelight burns softly, looking at nothing. "More accurately, I'm a corrupted nightmare bitty. My bitty type has... an unstable sort of magic. I wasn't like this... before." His tentacles shift behind him in slow undulations, before curling around to settle into his lap as well. "No tentacles, no corruption- I was bones, and lavender magic." His fingertips brush briefly against his brow. "I had a circlet. My kind tend to wear them. They're... important."

"Mine was lost that day." He doesn't need to clarify which, he doesn't think, but does anyway. "It must have been knocked away when my mage was killed. That's when I corrupted too, and my magic became this. I... became this." It didn't trouble him the same way it had, in the beginning, but it did remind him of what his life had been, and how much had been lost, "And I can never be that again."

"...your bitty type is called 'dust,'" He explains, clarifying after, "And yes, you're named after that dust, the one that comes with death."

Through all this, he listens, and Gyre feels the twist of emotions that never reveal themself in his expression. Anger, loathing, resignation. "Because this is what we are. Made for death."

A soft sound, unreadable, from Gyre, as he reflects on this. "Is that why I'm a 'nightmare,' then? Because I was made as a thing to fear and despise, leaving people desperate to escape me?"

"...No."

It's not a surprising answer, exactly? But Gyre doesn't expect it from the dust bitty. "No?"

"No." This is signed almost impatiently, but if he expects further elaboration, there's none. Instead Soot gets to his feet, and walks away, with a sense of the discussion being done. Maybe this is why the nightmare bitty is surprised when he continues anyway. "What does it mean, being stripped? What was taken from me?" Nothing he says indicates he cares, there's no tremble to his hands as he signs, and his face, before turning away, was as always impassive. Anyone not an empath might even believe it was true...

"Every bitty type has their own traits," Gyre decides to start with, watching the turmoil twisting within him. The dust bitty hadn't struck out at him since declaring his loyalty, at least not unless ordered to by Gyre himself, but he was careful to stay alert just the same. "Aspects that most others of their type share, like the fact that nearly all nightmares have a dream, at least to start out with, and nearly all dreams have a nightmare."

"We're brothers," Something in his tone changes, marginally. "Whether wild spawned, factory spawned, or naturally born, we start our lives together, our magics each the balance of the other, in a way that pretty much defines our types, despite being different types ourselves- though, some just call both types 'guardian bitties.'"

"...I was an exception." A soft sound, weighty, but hard to read. "Even though my kind aren't supposed to, I came into existence alone. A wild spawned nightmare, without a dream."

"Dust bitties aren't supposed to come into existence either," He continues, and finally here, his sharp eyelight catches a reaction, the merest twitch, before Soot turns his head marginally, to indicate he's listening. "They come into existence with a papyrus that no one else can see or hear, like a ghost that always stays with them. A brother. Family. Or at least nearly dust bitty insists it's true, though usually no one but the dust bitty can see him."

Soot has turned back away by the time he's done, just staring back at the not ground, his hands clenching and unclenching, slowly, deliberately. Gyre can see just barely seen the tightness of his jaw, and his breathing, just a bit more tightly controlled than usual. "The demon said that I had this." He asks, the words carefully, deliberately slow. "A papyrus."

"...Where is he?"

Ah. That... was a question he definitely should've expected. Okay.

{There's nothing left,} The demon answers before he can, something hard to put a finger on behind it's words. {They killed him before you ever took your first breath, and pulled out whatever was still left, never telling you. Then they shoved something dark and painful in you instead, that they could use to break you, and make you obey."

"Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up-shut-up-" Gyre growls under his breath, though when Soot's gaze flicks to him, he stops, hesitates- and taking a deep breath, nods, ever so slightly, admitting it's true.

Oh, what begins to rise slowly inside that dust bitty is like something so distinct and palpable that in his mind's eye, it rears like a serpent, a black gaze cold as death, slowly revealing it's dripping ebony fangs as this slowly sinks in, and just... doesn't stop. Going deeper, and deeper, as this rage bristled and swelled, a knot of rage and pain that burned deeper than even Gyre could hope to see. The sheer degree of raw negativity was overpowering, pain and grief and despair and rage and hate. Above, all else. Hate.

Something like black sap begins to dribble slowly down his cheeks again, where previously they'd been reduced to little more than faded smears. It would be easy to mistake it for tears of some kind, but what he knows of such things, it's Hate, Gyre remembered hearing someone say it was, liquid hate, too much to keep in. Whether it was true, he didn't know.

What Gyre did know was that that building fury was going to need an outlet, and he was the only target here. And he did not feel up for another fight right now.

He's surprised then, when rather than attack, those same hate filled eyes lift to his, startlingly lucid, and utterly furious. "I was made. To be broken." It's, among other things, asking Gyre to confirm this, which he does, if with some reluctance, nodding again. This time, Soot closes his eyes, and turns away again. He just stands there, the maelstrom of negativity burning like some twisted hellfire within him, rising until it fills every last hidden corner of his soul, burning hotter and darker, until it seems like he has no choice to be consumed...

And then a takes in a single, slow, deeper, shuddering breath, clenches his fists exactly once, and turns back to Gyre. "The ones who stripped me. They took your mage, too?"

"Yeah," The nightmare agrees, the reminder still bringing pain, despite already missing him constantly. "They did. My mage. My home-"

"What they didn't take from me directly. Is still gone." The person he'd been, that sweet little passive nightmare, filled with eagerness and curiosity and hope, may as well be dead, and he the creature that had taken his place. Just. With every memory. And every pain.

As for Soot's pain? The twisted knot of hate inside Soot felt like the warmth of a hearthfire to him, but maybe one that burned just a bit too hot, like being so close to it should sear his corruption...

Instead? He just felt...

{Not surprising,} The demon almost seems to smile, {You're a nightmare. The more you surround yourself with the suffering of others, the stronger that part of your magic becomes. Even better, I can feel it making me stronger too.} And judging by the demon's tone? This absolutely delighted it.

A tentacle outright snaps, whip like, in irritation at the creature. " Do you think you could enjoy my sworn's suffering a little less?" He growls, furious that anything in him would take such pleasure in his subject's pain.

{You're a nightmare,} It growls, contempt quickly returning to it's tone, {You can feed on misery, draw it out, magnify it, or inflict it. Or you can lie to yourself, and pretend you don't enjoy it, but it doesn't change what you are. You'll find it far more useful to just embrace it.}

Gyre growls more deeply, but the sound cuts off as he feels a shift of emotions close by. Turning in surprise as he registers it, his expression becomes almost confused, but all thought of comfusion fades when he sees the dust watching him again, and remembers the demon's words. *Feed on it, draw it out, magnify it, or inflict it.*

Wary. He's wary. No, suspicious. It feels like a light bite on the tongue, the sort of unique warmth and sharpness of wine, and if it hadn't been so unexpected, if it wasn't so unwelcome, he might gave enjoyed the sensation, which to his mind only made the whole thing worse, as it seemed to prove the demon's words true.

Aqua eyelight narrow slightly, anger briefly registering there, corruption even peeling back enough to expose sharp fangs- funny, he hadn't had those before. Beyond this, Soot earns only a glare. No growl, no rebuke, no scathing remark, just a look, anger and... probably some other feelings as well, that he wasn't prepared to sort out right now.

Still angry, he looks away, frustrated by his inability to storm off, and put some distance between them. Damn cell...

Back turned, he could still 'watch,' and he did. He was getting better at it, and why wouldn't he? If the dust really thought he was trying to feed his pain, he could very well attack, and Gyre had every right to defend himself.

He saw as well as felt when, after several 'however many longs,' suspicion faded, at least a little, and Soot seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. Not that Gyre cared. How dare he suggest-?

A tentacle thwacks him in the head without warning, and he stumbles, confused and alarmed by where the attack had come from, and raising his other tentacles in ready-

...Other. Tentacles. The nightmare stared in disbelief at the added tentacle that the demon had summoned, again, this time with the apparent intention of smacking him upside the head. It adds cooly, for good measure, {He didn't *suggest* anything, your butt hurt lord of dumbass. So stop moping, and do something. Or did you miss what I said about drawing it out?}

"I didn't. Miss it." He denies, the cut of ice in his words. "You said I can draw out the negativity from a person, feed it to get what I want-"

{Why would you-} Followed by a pause, and a mutter of disbelief from the demon, {Wow. So apparently you know jack shit about your own magic. I'm finding myself so reassured that we're ever getting out of here.}

{...Drawing it out. Means draining it. You fucking moron.}

Oh.

No, wait...

...Could he actually do that?

There was echoing disapproval in the demon's thundering silence as he weighed this new information, before asking at last, {Do you actually know anything at all about being a nightmare bitty?} From it's tone, it was clear that the demon already knew the answer.

Gyre bites back his own answer of 'of course he does,' because, well, if the demon is telling the truth, he obviously doesn't.

But. How much doesn't he know?

{...Have you ever even met another nightmare?}

Had he? He'd been found less than a day after spawning, a brand new life stirred into existence among the overgrown weeds of an empty lot...

From there, he'd been taken to a bitty acclimation center, where he'd been introduced to a few bitty who had trained in helping other bitty adjust to existing, and find their own places. His instructors had been a baby blue and a sansy, and from there he'd slowly been introduced to a few others here and there-

The first time he'd met a dream, he hadn't understood the way something inside him ached, and he'd stared, confused, until he was gently reprimanded for it. The dream hadn't seemed to mind, waving at him, but when he'd tried to walk closer, intending to introduce himself, the both had been urged in opposite directions. He still remembered the confused look in the dream's golden eyelights, looking back...

It was then that he'd been told more about what he was. Told that dreams and nightmares sometimes tried to kill each other, and that it couldn't always be predicted whether it would happen, especially when meeting each other for the first time. Told that sometimes, they succeeded.

It was also when he'd first learned that dreams and nightmares usually came into existence together. That he was an exception, a nightmare with no dream. In fact... it was when he'd first learned... a lot.

It was also the last time he'd tried to get to know a dream, even after he chose his placement, and trained, waiting for his bitty. There had been dreams, both with nightmares and without, but he was the only nightmare without a dream. The other nightmares had moved on after a while, tired of waiting to be chosen, or just tired of having people want their brothers, but not them, and being the reason their dreams were passed over. Their dreams had always refused to be placed if it meant leaving their nightmares behind. When they left, they always left together.

When no one else had chosen them, their dreams had chosen them over and over again.

He'd... mostly avoided both. After a while.

Gyre sighs, gently rubbing a strange, dull ache, in that place where an eyelight no longer shone. "I've met other nightmares," He denies, quietly, "But no, we didn't exactly hang out together and compare magics."

"...If you have a point, get on with it."

There's a huff, and a general sense of annoyance from the demon. {You can feed someone's negativity, and make it stronger, and you can force them to feel a negativity of your choice, you can grow stronger from their negativity, and you can draw it from them as well. If you want to do something about his pain? Do it.}

Gyre is quiet, taking this in, and turning it over, weighing it.

Finally, he turns back to Soot. Take some of his negativity?

"...Well?" He asked, softly. Leaving the final decision to him.

The dust doesn't answer, at least not with words. He does approach though, after only a moment to consider, and then, surprisingly, he reaches for Gyre's hand. Cool, scarred fingers closing around his, and just... stay this way, if only briefly, before lifting the nightmare's hand to his chest, hate still dripping sticky black down his cheeks, and waits.

He doesn't need to be so close to feel the knot of rage and pain burning just beneath the surface, it was overpowering, evdn from a distance. But being this close, one corrupted hand resting over Soot's soul? It was... different.

Okay, Gyre thought, taking a slow, deep breath, here goes. Taking great care, he began opening his magic to the terrible anger, with it's roots of something twisted and bitter, winding deeper and deeper into what felt like his very design, the very magic that makes him. It had been biting and burrowing into itself, eating him alive from within for what felt like a very long time...

How old was he? Decades? Centuries? Did it matter?

Before he can think long on this, Gyre feels something else, deep in this mass of pain. Something familiar, and dark, and...

...and well, nightmarish.

Something cold settles inside him, as the significance of this sinks in. He swears he feels a shudder tracing across his soul. There was no question that this magic had come from a nightmare, but this...

Swallowing, he closes his eyes, looking more closely. The demon had said something about a killer bitty...

There.

His throat had gone dry, a trick in itself considering the circumstances. This didn't end with dust bitties. These magics had been taken from somewhere, someone, in a way that let them self sustain this way. It wasn't the kind of magic that a nightmare used, but the kind that made them nightmares in the first place. The magic that *made* them.

So somewhere inside the magic of this shaped, stripped, reshaped, and previously enslaved dust bitty, was whatever was left of a nightmare bitty's life-force, winding its roots deep inside him, every part of it seething anger, loss, and despair...

Just how many bitty types are being used, crafted and then stripped? Or, maybe worse? Was there worse?

...How much of this would lead straight back to the demon? To him?

His dust waits, watching, the drip, dripping of black tears whisked away as quickly as they can fall, except the ones that hit Gyre's arm. No, those... tingle.

"They took from you," Quietly, he says this, suppressed rage behind, held in tight control. "And took from other bitty types, to remake you." His gaze lifts, settling on Soot's with a look that many would shy from now. "Life magic taken from a killer bitty- and life magic taken from a nightmare bitty." The unspoken words, *like me,* hanging in the air.

And as a nightmare bitty, the magic responds to him. With great care, he begins to work it free, approaching the Gordian knot of stolen lives and magics, and coaxing it gently apart.

He can't help but wonder how many of his type they'd ended, to make chains like these...

...It feels, wrong. Like cold, clotting milk, being drawn into him. Little by little though, he claims it, every drop, every last spark of pain, and only when the last of it settles inside him like a bloating, rancid meal, does his hand fall away.

Soot sinks to his knees, as soon as he let's go, and remains there, shaking. The negativity inside him that had overfill his senses, leaving no room for anything else, a constant cacophany of anger and despair, had faded to a background 'noise,' and for the first time in his existence, there was room for more.

It would be a long time before Gyre's 'meal settled. It might take longer still for Soot to... a lot. Just a lot. And the killer's magic was still wound inside him...

The nightmare sits slowly, his socket closing. He had a lot of magic to process. He had a lot to process. But he had to know one thing, before he could process anything else...

"Was this our magic too?" He asks the demon inside him, still shaken. He knew the answer. He already knew. It wasn't just because the magic belonged to a nightmare that it had obeyed him, it was because it had been made to obey magic like his before...

{...Yes.} This was all he said, but the weight in that one word told Gyre far more.

I've had many, many 'masters,' the demon had told him, and they've taken my magic, and done things with it that if you knew, if you understood the true cruelty of the souls inside you, you would never sleep well again.

It was... so much. Too much. Maybe it really would be better if they just, stayed here, do nothing so terrible could be done with their magic again...

{It won't stop what they already do,} The demon points out, it's voice more dull and tired than he'd heard it before. {But sure. Sit here forever. That's definitely going to change anything.}

"...I'm a bitty. I can't-"

{You're a demon,} It corrects, {Just as I am.}

This time, Gyre doesn't respond.

A familiar weight settles back to back again, far sooner than he expects. Soot, still trembling, but there. Still beside him. Maybe still unable to feel joy or hope, but still, better. And able to choose his own loyalties.

The nightmare bitty remembers a dying slave, and a burning library, and his mage, his family, fallen, never to rise again. He remembers everything he'd lost, and everything that Soot had never had, and even a demon, imprisoned, by so many masters...

...And he begins to understand that it had never been the demon at all, that the world had needed protecting from.

----

[nova-ayashi]

[REVOSA] Magazine // Issue #8

As always this editorial is available to read within Second Life, as well! Head to the store and grab a copy!

[REVOSA] Magazine // Issue #8 08-16-23

ＣＭＤＲ Ｎｏｖａ 駅陰ヌ (nova.waifu) // Ｃrash::Ｎｏｖａ 永遠の Wu (nova.ayashi), REVOSA Productions. Store Landmark: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Neo%20Machina/177/172/25 Join the [REVOSA] x NEO MACHINA Discord server, today! https://discord.gg/2yfrCBDjnK Find me on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@cmdr_nova Other links: https://cmdr-nova.neocities.org

Section 1 - The Secret Society of Progeny

For many years, at least eight from what I can scrounge up online, Progeny has existed as a very secret vampiric roleplaying HUD-oriented game within Second Life.

In my previous issue, I spoke about Bloodlines, and the maybe so, maybe not so much pyramid scheme nature of it. I've since befriended and spoken to Mars Bracken himself, and I now feel more like Bloodlines is a passion project, developed to give Second Life some flavor. Who doesn't want to get paid for their hard work, anyway?

But that's beside the point. Today, and in this issue, we're going to talk about Progeny. There aren't a whole lot of things I can specifically speak about, since their system has so many laws, so much so to the point where if you ask a random Second Life resident if they've ever met a Progeny Vampire, the answer will likely to be a "No."

Progeny is so secretive, that their website is nothing more than a graphic on a black background.

If you saw two Progeny vamps fighting somewhere, you probably wouldn't even know that that's what's going on.

The PV system is very simple, but its society is expansive. If you were part of SL20B, you may have had the chance to visit their large chain of sims and have a look around. Something they rarely do, in that at all other times, they're completely closed off to visitors, requiring the PV group in order to visit.

Bites for blood require no permission, and all of this happens all of the time, and due to their laws I can't even speak very much on the topic of feeding. Only that it is VERY different from Bloodlines (not to discount BL, a system I very much also enjoy).

But what I can answer, to you, fellow reader, is, "How do I become a Progeny Vampire?"

It's simple! You can't buy the PV system, you can't find it on the marketplace. You can only become part of this society, by being bitten and turned. A service that I can offer, from myself to you, should you be interested.

Join the darkness, become part of this covert society, and I will show you the way.

Why reveal my identity as a Progeny Vampire, and offer my services to interested parties? That's also a simple question to answer. Revealing my identity is not against the rules, and actually finding a Progeny Vamp to induct you into the system is ... extremely hard. The only reason I was able to get my HUD updated (after years of forgetting I had ever been part of Progeny), is because of SL20B.

As a 400-something-year-old vampire, my ultimate goal is to strike off and build my own House. But you need willing souls in order to do so.

In order to join me, there is no fee. There is only your consent and your liege that I require. Feel free to use the information attached to his magazine in order to contact me. Notecards are preferred.

Section 2 - The Non-Secret Society of Bloodlust

On the topic of vampire or supernatural HUDs, and their systems, now we move onto a much newer system that goes by the name of "Bloodlust." A free system you can easily grab from the marketplace, and begin participating in.

Like a mix between Bloodlines and Progeny, you can grab the HUD, but the only way you can be turned is by finding other players. The difference from Bloodlines and Progeny, in Bloodlust, is that there are many, many races to choose from. You just have to find out how to be turned ... into that specific race.

The problem, or underlying issue, though, with Bloodlust, aside from the creator using cheap rip-off AI generated photos on the website, is that this system has no rules whatsoever.

That doesn't just mean that you can go around revealing all of the secrets of how the Bloodlust society and system works, but you can intrude on other users wherever you like, no matter where you or they are, and feed on them.

I have since made this a bannable offense on my sim until something is developed to keep Bloodlust players at bay.

The system is neat, but every aspect of it feels low-effort, cobbled together with frankensteined scripts ripped from other systems. You can feed, you can be a myriad of different races, but you have no privacy, can be attacked anywhere, including your own home, and if you die, you have to pay to resurrect. This is of course no different than other systems, but without rules, dying may just be completely out of your control.

Thought aggressive auto-follow scripted HUDs were annoying? You're going to hate the hell out of them if you meet a Bloodlust player.

A system built on an entire lack of rules and also consent, combined together, may as well be a system for abusive behavior. Which is exactly how Bloodlust is designed.

Progeny doesn't require you to ask people permission, but you definitely have to follow the rules, or you're out. Which is the perfect balance for a system that flies under the radar of every random person you meet.

If the creator behind Bloodlust is serious about adding to the network of supernatural roleplay HUDs, they should reconsider the lawless aspect of it, and also put some effort into design and making their system actually unique from others (I'm not convinced that Bloodlust isn't just a copy-botted rip of another system).

But! I absolutely challenge the creator of this system to prove me wrong, on any of these aspects ... while I'm banning dudes standing inside of my personal apartment who are drinking my blood with a system that has no laws or defenses.

Section 3 - Second Life Secrets // #2

Offering up a break from my talk about roleplay HUDs in Second Life, we now bring you the second SL secret in this series of editorials! And no, I'm not talking about the nasty lonely people who rip into others over on Virtual Secrets (the owner of which, is apparently banned from Second Life! haha).

In our last secret, we talked about Second Life's involvement in the popular show, The Office. But few may know that Second Life also made an appearance in CSI: New York, albeit, a bit more on the creepier side.

In the episode, "Down the Rabbit Hole," detectives are tasked with finding the killer of a woman, both the killer, or killers, and the woman, being linked to avatars in Second Life.

An investigation ensues where one detective creates an avatar to investigate within Second Life itself, trace IP addresses, and pursue suspects. Eventually, this leads to some political figures and hired killers, all centered around knocking people off one by one, strangely enough, via using SL as a method of meeting and contact.

As ridiculous as the premise may be, it's a pretty neat episode, and I'm not even a fan of cop shows.

Sure, you can't actually hold someone's hand in SL and then trace their IP address. You can't just suddenly know someone's home address, even with top-of-the-line police tech. And even chasing someone via running and flying in Second Life is a bit crazy too, because if you're a cop pursuing a murder suspect, you can certainly just ask Linden Labs for a user's actual phone number.

But seeing Second Life in popular media like this is fun, even if it was over 10 years ago when people still only used those ridiculous-looking playdough default avatars.

Section 4 - Nanite Systems

Back into the topic of active roleplay and game HUDs within Second Life, I spoke briefly before about the Nanite Systems robot roleplay HUDs in another issue. A very neat and cool system that involves turning your avatar into a robot, or android (or whatever you prefer to call it).

Within this system and utilizing a myriad of different cores, you can become a sex bot, a soldier, a service worker, a medic, and all manner of things you can imagine yourself as, being robotic, or cybernetically upgraded.

On the main sim, you'll usually find users of the system hanging out and chatting by a barrel of lubricant, and even sometimes there are live DJ nights, and if I recall, places to live, also? I'm not sure. Having a whole sim to myself sort of eclipses investigating these types of things.

New Eisa landmark: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Eisa/43/92/48

Currently, there's a new upgrade of the NS system available to test, in alpha, at the sim itself. Grab the Ares HUD for around 1200 or 1300 linden, and be one of the first to see it for yourself.

Radically redesigned, more intuitive, and even inject with a setup system where you can select your gender, pronouns, screen width and height, color themes, and your name!

I wanted to mention this here at the end of issue eight, because I am a huge fan of t0ri's work, and the direction she seems to be taking these systems is even cooler than what we had before.

If the next step is a log website that mirrors the usefulness of the Bloodlines profiles website, I think it would feel much like a game within a virtual world. Moreso than before.

And of course, if you're already a robot, you can access free remote charging and repair terminals at my sim, Neo Machina.

Thank you for reading.

[vhaenessavelaryon]

It had been a primal thing -- that visceral sound that had lept from her throat in a pure manifestation of feminine rage. That yowl, that feral sound -- it had left her throat raw, her voice guttural. Even as her vision narrowed to a tunnel, she could feel it. How it ripped past her red painted lips. As her cat-like, miss-matched eyes narrowed to furious slits -- down, down, down she had brought the bottle, until all she could see was red -- red in her eyes, red on his throat, red on the bottle. Red, rough fingers that clamped around her ankle, then hem of her water-like dress.

Vhaenessa had to spin around, her bottle uplifted again. It was cracked, already dripping with that same crimson that burned in her vision. Lifted it up to bring it down to again strike the very fingers that dared think they could touch her, let alone harm her. But then there was no need — as The Siren had raged red, boiled with it, there had been no need to make the blow to rip his grip from her.

No, that had come from another. Another series of screaming, a boot, a crunch, a crack -- and the need for Vhaenessa to slice his fingers from his hand was gone in an instant. Instead, one of the women who had joined the feral dance in the garden had done the job for her. There had been no time for thanks — no thought for it, even if there had not been blood thick in the air. Vhaenessa locked her eyes on the woman that had saved her. Though her gaze was livid, living anger -- the look she gave her was one that didn't need words. Could not be encompassed by a mere thank you -- because it was not one. It was a promise -- a promise that the debt would be repaid.

Vhaenessa had only been able to turn after, to slide her feline eyes to the screaming woman to give her that look, before there was a burst of Valyrian silver -- and the youngest daughter of House Velaryon had found her lithe body moving not of her own volition. Her head twitching, her lips moving back past her teeth in a snarl as it was her -- as it was her who made the final blow, her that drove the blade into his neck. Not the woman who pushed him over after Vhaenessa had been saved -- but her.

"Lyra!" Vhaenessa rasped, the rawness of her voice apparent again. The words were like claws, like talons. No love, no worry -- but pure and angry disbelief. The Siren flung herself forward once more, grabbing the Celtigar by the fabric of her dress to haul her away from the body. From the man Vhaenessa had attacked, that they all had -- but that Lyra had killed.

What was she doing here? She, who came from a family just as divine and gods-sent as her own? Lyra had sullied her hands -- and if her brother found out? What could happen? What could happen to her, her reputation? Vhaenessa’s didn’t care about anybody but herself -- but that primal force in her drove her to grab Lyra by the wrist, and yank her behind her, bottle still in Vhaenessa's other hand as she looked at the circle of females. "Are you a fucking fool? What are you doing?" She hissed behind her, only so that Lyra could hear -- hoping she would know what she meant, who she meant -- who would find his rage in the same red, boiling cauldron of Vhaenessa Velaryon's own. If Maximus found out his sister had been here...

They could speak, later -- when this was resolved. Because it needed to be resolved, first -- and so her hissing tone turned from Lyra, and back to Willow. She who had been attacked -- she who now declared how they would hide the blood on their hands.

"Not a word, from any of us," she agreed -- though while Willow's words were a warning, a threat, a promise -- Vhaenessa's were poison. "We swear it. Right here, on whatever gods you fucking pray to, or whatever life you deem valuable." Poison -- not a warning, not a promise. Not the same as Willow's threat. "Not a word."

Vhaenessa's words held death in them.

Her grip still like a vice on Lyra's wrist -- nails digging into her skin through the fabric of her dress -- Vhaenessa pointed the bloodied bottle to the side of the court yard. "There's an entrance to the West. We can go through the brush, and won't be seen." She knew it -- was one who knew the tunnels and seedy passage ways of The Red Keep like the back of her hand. With all her sneaking, with all her indulgences. Only then did she drop the bottle, drop Lyra's wrist with one more harsh look behind her.

Somehow, despite the chaos, Vhaenessa still rippled like water as she strode back over to the body. Reaching down, hooking her lithe fingers under one of his dead-weighted arms. To haul him in that direction -- him, whoever he was, who had decided he might put a woman's fate into his own grubby, horrible hands.

She looked up at the others, blood smeared -- dress, hands. "Well?"

@briannabrackens

♣️

the brackens were up to something that fateful night, with both the head and heart of stone hedge within the gardens attached the festivities attached to visenya's hill - though on two entirely different paths, and a considerable amount of space from one another. there was a case to crack, and whilst she had not expected to find herself fixating as much as she had on the case of the mysterious lady gold, she understood there was some greater scheme.

there was much to gain from exposing the treachery, for her house, for her brother, and for her. at least, that was what she thought.

it was ronan's role to catch her, though there was a reason brianna herself was in the gardens too: one that went beyond speaking with the mysterious dornish woman she had found herself getting on like a hosue on fire with. two sets of bracken eyes on the look for the walking bag of coin who would take the trap. and that was all the intrigue the night was supposed to hold for the clover that survived that night, keeping an eye and an ear out for anything strange. she would happily find herself running after any fleeing gossip writer, even if she needed to kick off her boots to do so.

she kept a shawl wrapped around the shoulders of her dress, ignoring the slight chill in the air that came from the night of kings landing. "'twas all anyone spoke of, when the king first announced his betrothal to yer princess. lorinda, i think her name be? loreena?" she uttered, finding herself in conversation with the lady devani toland. it seemed as though the woman needed to be caught up on what had occurred between casimir tully and loreza martell, and what tension that had created between dorne and the riverlands.

"even more of a stir when it broke off. heard rumours the conversation was a tense one." she pulled a slight face.

her eyes and ears were focused on trying to make sure she heard nothing strange. to ensure ronan was elsewhere in these gardens, confronting lady gold; and when she heard sounds of smashing glass and yells of not just pain but agony, it felt as though lightening had struck a bolt within her. her mouth opened slightly, her mind immediately jumping to the worst; it had gone terribly wrong. it felt as though her chest were caving in and she looked at devani, who too had heard the noise, and the lass of stone hedge reached down to raise her skirts and break out into an all-out sprint toward the sounds.

then there came a feral scream.

she had expected to turn and find her brother had been attacked. instead, she saw a seemingly ungodly amount of blood. the sight made the colour drain from her face, suddenly filled with images of it mixing with the rain of stone hedge's courtyard, fire ablaze, their men crying for their mother in the mud. she saw two women, one holding a bottle, and a man who was bleeding; bleeding heavily. she had to double take to realise she was looking at the witch of raventree hall, and her gaze instantly narrowed, her gut instinct being to blame her.

but then she noted the marks of violence upon willow, the redness on her face that would no doubt amount of bruising, and the glass that was on the floor. she remained frozen, feeling the lady of dorne coming beside her. then she saw him. slumped on the ground, still bleeding.

"w-what in seven fuckin' hells is this meant to be?" brianna asked, her voice clearly shaken; trying to ignore the sound of clashing swords at the back of her brain, and reminding herself that the darkness of the night was from the night itself, rather than the smoke and the wings of ceraxes. her eyes darted between both the women, though lingered on willow more, because she were a familiar face.

she should turn and leave, and she was about to; that was until the man's hands reached forward to grab the bottom of a woman's dress, and then her feet. as though he wished to drag her down to the ground. it was not willow, but the other one; the one with the bloodied bottle in her hand. there came a struggle, where he called her a wicked bitch - and suddenly, brianna found herself all but stomping over and violently bringing the full force of her boot on the man's hand once, twice, three times. something cracked.

"get off her. GET OFF HER. GET OFF HER." brianna added, becoming louder and more hysterical when faced with the reality of the animalistic urges of some men. how she realised in this moment she was not afraid of god, she was afraid of man. and in the panic, she raised her foot to boot the man directly in the face. his teeth came flying out, as blood and spit flew from his mouth. the force was enough to make him turn to lay limply on his other shoulder.

"i'll get help...i can get help."

@devanitoland

[candyk0rn]

“ The Only Hope For Me Is You.”

Part 1/4

Angst? On my page? Never.

Party Poison Version

CW: mentions of blood, death, gun use, and swearing

A/N: All my killjoy fanfic is solely based off of the albums and songs; not the comics

Y/K/N: Your Killjoy name

Reader uses gender neutral pronouns

“How would the Killjoys react to you dying?”

Party Poison:

It happened too quickly

It also happened when the group infiltrated the BL/ind headquarters

The Draculoids and Korce had caught up to everyone

Sparks were flying everywhere, blood soaring all around with how much was being spilt, but everyone fought valiantly

Until you’re ray gun jammed

You tried to pull the trigger, but to no avail

Nothing was shooting out of it

You had to take cover, you were extremely vulnerable

You fell to your knees, trying to forage for a ray gun a dead Draculoids could still have hold of

You searched, and you spotted a fallen BL/ind member with a ray gun still in the grasp of his hand

You rushed over, but were stopped in your tracks when you spotted Party being held to a gunpoint by none other than Korse himself

You couldn’t leave him, without him, The killjoys would most likely be overthrown and broken

You decided to hurry over, you could hear the murmurs of threats seeping out of Korse’s mouth

Party could see you walking towards him, to which his eyes widened a bit, trying to warn you to continue the fight without him

You swiftly tackled Korse from behind, and he quickly realized what was happening and attempted to strike you down

It was a fair fight, you were pretty strong

But,

He was armed

You feel a sharp pain in your abdomen, you wince.

Your vision dilates a bit before you feel your lower body start to quiver. ‘Shit’ you think to yourself. Normally, there would be people crowding around you to assist, however the fight was still in its prime. Even Party Poison had to continue fighting as you struggle to take cover behind a wall. You felt fatigued but eager, you needed to make sure your partners were safe. Until you heard silence. No more blasts, lights flashing, footsteps, no thuds. It all went silent. Suddenly you heard a few melancholy cheers; which with a sense of joy you realized came from the voices of Party Poison and Fun Ghoul. You would have done anything to stand up and rush to your companions, in fact you tried, but the pain was unbearable. You couldn’t yell or signal to them where you were. “ Where’s Y/K/N?” You heard a faint shout, the voice belonging to Jet Star. You heard footsteps and a few screams for your name. You raised your fist, and slammed it onto the wall beside you, a loud sound booming from it. “ They’re over here!” You listened to the hurried footsteps toward you and they all crowded around you. With curious eyes, Party carefully unzipped your jacket and lifted up the Hem of your shirt to reveal a gashing hole where your stomach should be. He kept a straight face to avoid freaking you out, but the others failed to do the same. “ Holy-“ Kobra began to gasp, but Jet shoved him to shut up. “ You’re gonna be okay, promise.” Party muttered, ripping off your sleeve to create a tourniquet around your abdomen. “ Doesn’t look like it..” you whispered, which received a grunt from Party. The others looked at you with heavy hearts and decided to walk off to check the surrounding area. “ You would have been vampire food if I didn’t come and save you, how heroic of me.” You say-almost sarcastically, but you need to cheer up the mood somehow. Party doesn’t even look you in the eyes. He feels nauseous, staring at the bloody gash that’s growing every second. “ You aren’t gonna throw a depressing fit, right? We saved the kid, that’s what matters” You whisper. That’s when Party looks up at you, “ Can you walk?” You almost let out a chuckle, which turns into a coughing fit. “ Do I look like I can walk?” He doesn’t smile. He instead quickly wraps his arms around you, and rests his head under your arm, using all of his strength to pull you up. “ Party Poison! Please, just leave me, It’s hopeless.” He stops, shaking under the pressure. “ I can’t leave you here.” He pleaded. It was pitiful. He had to keep up his strong facade, somehow. He slowly, very slowly, rests you against the wall, his hands bloody from holding you. He tussled his red hair, not able to look you in the eyes. You felt tired, you could barely move, not that you really wanted to anyway. Your breaths became slowed, your eyes droopy. Party noticed all of these things. You needed to say something, despite the pain and the way your throat was clogged.“ I love you.” You whispered. His head perked up, reveling tired, glassy eyes. He made his way to your gun holster, slowly picking up your gun with shakey hands. He held both of your hands, and wrapped your figures around the gun. It was a simple gesture, it was a sign of respect. He came to kiss your forehead, his hands resting on your cheek. You were dead.

Thanks for reading!

Taglist: @abbachioslipstick @beidousupremacy @jojoeverywednesday

[mlwritingprompts]

Submitted prompt: Not Standing Still in battle.

Chat Blanc AU.

Taking a couple of moments where Marinette gets nerfed by the plot, and throwing that Idiot Ball away from her, because that episode has more "marinette nerfing" moments than swiss cheese.

Once more, Gabriel being an incompetent idiot, because that's on par for this show, of course.

TW: Gabriel dies.

==

Scenario 1: Inside Emilie's cryochamber room/garden.

==

Just as Adrien was just one step away from cataclysming his father.

He stops, only asking one single question in a broken tone:

"Why?"

Gabriel smirks, and he moves his arm, summoning his cane to him...

And he immediately gets a strike to his head throwing him away, thanks to Marinette's yoyo, that was closer to him than his weapon, and his magical cane simply falls to the ground uselessly.

Marinette, instead of stopping, remembering the hard lesson she got during the scarlet moth stunt, immediately kept pressing, throwing her yoyo towards the terrorist, wrapping him up before he got a chance to even resist, and pulled him right in front of her, smashing his face with her elbows, and ripping off the miraculous from him.

She threw his unconscious body away, and looked towards the corpse/comatose body of Emilie and Adrien's shocked face.

Marinette sighed.

This will be a long day.

==

Scenario 2: Not even five meters apart.

==

Gabriel laughed in his heart, he had done it!

His akuma butterfly had made contact with Adrien's bell!

Now he can akumatise him into fighting and defeating Ladybug!

"Chat Bl- GAH!"

In that single moment of distraction where he focused on the newly made connection with his newest akuma, Marinette, who was literally not even five meters away from him, took this golden chance, and in less than a second, she was right beside him.

She used one hand to take hold of his miraculous, while giving him a brutal punch to the head with the other.

The connection was cut right away, as Gabriel was forcibly detransformed, and found himself crashing into the ground with no defensive suit, and was immeddiately knocked out from pain.

Seriously, what did he think would happen?

The process of making an akuma required focus and time, no matter how little with his ridiculously overpowered miraculous.

And he honestly expected he will be given said time, as if Marinette is an anime/cartoon character that will patiently wait for him to activate his last resort super attack, and not an actual person who is just plain tired of dealing with him.

Marinette glared at his unconscious body for a moment, before clenching her hands.

She moved toward him, her fury slowly reaching the point of eruption now that he no longer has a miraculous to control her with, barely recognizing that Adrien's akumatisation cut short had caused him to blank out from confusion.

Her yoyo, sharper and stronger than diamond, was spinning in her hand, and she attacked the very fragile undefended body of the terrorist that tormented her and the city.

[seaswalllow]

how about some techno and dream allyship

((ah yes... the server’s god and the blood god walk into a bar...))

((this wound up being a Whole Fic, christ, am i sorry JLKDSHLKJH))

trap

don’t trust him

where’s tommy? trap trap don’t trust him where’s dream what’s he doing-

“chat, shut up,” techno hisses softly. hefts the pickaxe over his shoulder, sharpened edges glittering in the dying sunlight. 

all the while, his eyes never leave the bustling boardwalk. ranboo down below look he has a trident? when did he get the trident there’s tubbo besides him-

chat continues to swirl about him, sticking to the shadows; neither they nor techno quite subside, though. staring down at the banners proclaiming today’s festivities, techno thinks that the muted dread congealing in chat’s voices, and the deja vu rearing its head is well deserved. 

l’manburg has never been terribly original about its bloodshed. 

techno chugs another invisibility potion in a well-practiced motion, and feels the silvery weightlessness settle into his bones. checks for his armor in his inventory, checks his pickaxe and crossbow, and settles back to watch from the roof. 

he doesn’t wait for long, as it turns out. 

dream dream dream rip his mask off see if it’ll choke him on his blood blood for the blood god he’ll try to use you you should leave you should fight-

the edge of his pickaxe digs into his back. techno takes in a measured breath. watches as punz flickers in the shadows at a distance, watches as dream settles to a stop in front of tubbo, a friendly hand resting on the young president’s shoulder. 

it’s too far to hear the fine details of their conversation, and dream’s mask doesn’t lend itself to interpretation. techno watches the way tubbo holds himself, too loose, too friendly- and the way that behind him, fundy and quackity watch dream with something just short of naked anticipation. 

dream sees it too, if the way his gestures land too close to the axe strapped across his back are anything to go by. 

trap this is a trap nothing good at a festival

tubbo turns, gesturing to the podium. ribbons and banners flutter about; techno sweeps his eye across the open platform. there will be no trapping another president on that ledge. 

dream turns with him, but the arc is too wide, and for a moment, techno feels the full weight of dream’s eyes on him, even as the voices explode into a flurry of whispering. 

he saw us he knows not safe get out of there 

“be quiet, chat. of course he knows we’re here,” techno mutters under his breath. “he sent for us as his glorified security detail.” 

with the way that the cabinet watches him like strays circling a villager, there’s reason to it. 

techno watches, hawkeyed, as dream follows the trio up to the podium. there’s ranboo, hovering around the edges, gripping onto the notebook like a lifeline. wilbur- ghostbur- isn’t far off, one hand fisted into friend’s blue wool, an unusually somber expression on his face. chat murmurs uneasily, and techno does not look forward to discovering if similar situations will draw out similar poisons within the dead- or if certain things stay dead. 

he sweeps his gaze elsewhere, noting the distinct lack of armor yet the uneasy atmosphere. there’s a poster that niki and puffy are hovered in front of, whispering

to his credit, tubbo is good at the facade. years of necessity have worn the mask of pleasantry and politics into him like a second face; he treats dream like an old friend, the faintest hint of tightness around his eyes the only indication of displeasure. 

or pain, perhaps. 

the first festival was hard to forget, after all, especially for someone who was but a child. 

tubbo is turning now, sweeping his arms out wide before snapping them back to his side; too many familiar mannerisms, too many old scars. 

techno follows his movements, and pauses. 

enchantments have a tell, he’s learned. some stronger than others; a faint heat shimmer, a lingering smell of ozone, a muffled hissing. 

there’s a haze lingering above the wooden planks that fundy and quackity are shifting in front of. 

what are they planning they going to blow this up are they trying to die they will spill blood we will spill it first

a gentle ping cuts through the rising swell of chittering. 

<dream> not yet. 

let them make the first move, techno reads between the lines, and he grits his teeth. there’s nothing else to do except to shift to keep them in his direct line of sight, and sweep for any other giveaways. exposed trails of torches, oddly shaped rocks beneath the waves that now fill in the crater-

the soft hiss of redstone fills the air, and techno whips to face tubbo, who has stepped up to the podium. 

then he speaks, and techno realizes, oh, sam or fundy definitely had some hand in this as tubbo’s voice echoes above the waves. techno, admittedly, does not hear a good portion of the speech as the voics hiss and swell with indignation. 

a celebration of l’manburg’s independence, of l’manburg’s freedom, of shaking off so many chains of blood and tyranny, tubbo calls it. hypocrisy, techno thinks, as his eyes trace the pillar where the anvil used to stand. a shinier, sweeter form of the iron fist hovering above them in threat. softer, perhaps, gilded with noble intentions, but nevertheless a threat.

but first, tubbo says to the audience. but first, before we can truly celebrate our freedom, there is one more chain to be cut. 

techno draws in a breath. carefully, carefully eases his hand to his crossbow. dream is stock still; a deer in headlights, chat whispers. a hunter waiting to strike, techno sees. 

trap trap they never wanted peace where’s phil where’s tommy trap RUN FIGHT FIGHT-

the planks have been cut away. there is a chest, there are axes glittering in the cabinet’s hands. we’re sorry, dream, fundy says. i’m not, tubbo amends. quackity is no longer blustering. a potion bottle breaks at dream’s feet, and although he does not flinch, draws his axe, techno can smell the sickly sweet rot of poison from here. punz looses a trio of arrows before he leaps forward, gunpowder filling the air as he throws down stack upon stack of dynamite around them, while netherite cracks out a discordant tune against steel, dream meeting fundy, axe for axe.

blood for the blood god, the tides roar around him. his armor glitters as he draws his crossbow. quackity is the first to see him. they savor the fear, the indignancy in his expression.

blood for the blood god, he roars, as he rains fire down. 

two in one for the hitlist, he hears quackity shout above the explosions. he thinks he hears dream laugh as the next axe blow shatters wood and steel. who would let you, alex? fundy is nowhere in sight, and there is blood dripping into the waves, blooming above the coral, an axe lying abandoned. 

 is this the hill you want to die upon, icarus? flying up to meet the sun, only to burn? he slings the crossbow over his back, hoists up his pickaxe to block quackity’s axe. twists, locking one side of the pickaxe’s tips around the axe, and sends it flying into the water, uses the momentum to complete the arc and sink the other tip deep, deep into flesh. 

there is fear again, deep, deep in quackity’s eyes. they’ve laughed about his hunts before. quackity isn’t laughing now as he wrenches his shoulder free of sizzling metal.

blood for the bl-

-blade, hold your fire. hold your fire, dream orders, and for a moment, they all balk at the icy tone cutting through the battle’s haze. techno slams a hoof into quackity’s leg, sends him to the ground with the distraction, and hefts the pickaxe as he watches dream. 

“i came to act as a security guard, not a negotiator,” he informs the masked god, and dream laughs from where he has an axe levelled to tubbo. chat swells, unsure of who to direct their ire to as the shock subsides. techno ignores them.

“lucky for you, the job description won’t involve too much negotiation. you see- they’re both about to die, aren’t they? they’ve burned up all but one of their lives. if they die, they die here, with nothing to their name but failure. if they accept it, they can hold on to that last life.” 

quackity opens his mouth, and techno wiggles the pickaxe on his shoulder ever so slightly. 

quackity is quiet. tubbo is shaking, and techno swallows down the bitter feeling that roils on the back of his tongue. he remembers his battles that young, when the bloodlust wasn’t tainting the fear and fury. 

“surrender,” dream says. “surrender, or he will put that pick through quackity for a final time, and i will burn this city to the ground and bury you in its ashes.” 

silence. 

silence, and then tubbo’s axe clatters to the ground. quackity surges up, and techno raises his pickaxe, and dream calls “hold your fire, blade-”  

-and techno slams the pickaxe’s hilt into his head. quackity goes down, and stays down, but he stays there at their feet.

dream shakes his head. 

“look, it was either that, or stab him. you don’t want that second option, apparently.”

“because they have surrendered,” dream points out. “they’re not a threat.”

“did he look like he was surrendered? dream, did going for my throat look like he had surrendered?”

“please, he could barely get to his feet. no way he’d be able to reach your throat on a normal day, anyways.” 

techno snorts. “i think whatever they tossed at you messed with your perspective.” 

why is he laughing danger danger kill them all all of them are d a  n g e r-

dream is laughing, and it dawns on techno as he watches tubbo’s pale expression that they didn’t understand just how far out of their depth they were, going after a god with a potion and three axes. 

then again, he reasons, they stopped seeing how out of their depth they were the first time they raised their axes against him. 

“felt a bit like being splashed with expired milk, honestly.”

techno hums, noncommittal. he hoists quackity up onto his shoulder. “you said you had a place for them?”

dream holsters his axe at his side, and draws an arm around tubbo. the posturing leaves the chat hissing, but techno watches, impassive, as dream hums “a very special place, indeed, where they can’t be a danger any longer.”

[ren-c-leyn]

FNF Story: Betrayer

 Another tale for @promptsforthestrugglingauthor‘s Friday Night Fights event. This week’s prompt is here, additionally, I used these 1,2,3 other prompts from their collection, this prompt by @thependragonwritersguild, this prompt by @clean-prompts, and this prompt by @corvidprompts.

Warnings: This piece is a heavy angst piece that mentions death in passing, some alcohol use, a curse, fighting, some blood, but nothing graphic or in any particularly descriptive detail.

  “I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it!” I stumbled forward, the world wobbling around me. My companion lay on the ground, breathing in shaking, labored heaves and surrounded by so, so much red. “You have to be fine, you have to!”

 But he wasn’t fine. the crimson pool grew and grew as the breathing slowed. No matter how much pressure I put on the wound, it wouldn’t stop bleeding. All the while, I heard a chorus of whispers surrounding us.

 ‘Why?’

 ‘Why did you betray us?’

 ‘What have you done?’

 ‘Why did you do it, why?!’

 ‘We thought you were our friend.’

I blinked back tears, trying not to listen, trying to stop myself from shaking as I focused on him, focused on trying to save him. Both those pale green eyes were going glassy.

 “Please don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t!” I begged, but they closed anyways.

 The whispers burst into hideous laughter and then it all went dark.

 I jerked out of bed, drenched in enough sweat that I may as well have just been caught in the rain. I clutched my own arms, breath ragged, trying to expel what I’d just seen. His hands fell on my shoulders, touch gentle and light, reminding me I was not alone.

“You’re gonna be okay. It was just a dream. I’m here,” he said.

 And I froze. My mind reeled, trying to figure out exactly when this... this creature got in here. It was hard to think with the pounding headache and blurry tears, so I just shoved him away and stumbled out of bed and downstairs.

 Bits of memory faded in and out as I wobbled closer and closer to the bottom of the staircase. Right. I was drunk. He helped me home. I was sobbing, something about the curse.... The curse.

 I stopped on the last stair before sinking down onto it. There was the obnoxious pounding of footsteps as he came down after me. He sighed.

 “You’re not ready to be up, yet,” he said gently before carefully grabbing my arm.

 “Get your hands off me!”

 “You’re sick, I’m not gonna just leave–”

 “I would sooner crawl back up these stairs on my hands and knees than lower my pride enough to ask you for help–so, again–hands. Off.”

 He let go and held his hands up.

 “I don’t understand why you won’t just let me help this once.”

 “I don’t trust you.”

 “Good. I don’t trust me, either.”

 I groaned at the sarcasm.

 “Infuriating as ever.”

 “Guilty as charged.”

 A tense silence passed between us as he stepped passed me and sat down on the rug in front of the stairs.

 “It’s only going to get worse,” he ventured after a few minutes went by. “And alcohol isn’t going to help.”

 “Don’t lecture me, I know. And...” flashes of the dream danced through my head, “I know what I need to do to fix it.”

 “Do you?” he asked.

 “To undo what has been done, I have to undo my betrayal. And I don’t need you getting in my way.”

 His expression soured.

 “Your death won’t undo it if that’s your plan.”

 “I’m not planning my own death.”

 He sat there blanked faced as I stood and slipped around him, heading to the kitchen. It must have clicked somewhere between my first glass of water and the second because I heard him screech in a way only he could.

 “You can’t do this!”

 “You can’t stop me.”

 “It’s stupid! You’ll die before you kill him! And another one will just take his place, that’s how power vacuums work!”

 I listened to him rant and rave for a few moments. Ironic that the traitor who helped the Empire take over was being advised by a traitor to said Empire now. We were always enemies, always on opposite sides, no matter who we decided to serve we were always against one another. Even now, even after he decided to pity me, we were still on the opposite side.

 Around the third glass of water, I felt alive enough to pass by him again to collect my weapons and armor. He grabbed my wrist and I ripped my arm away.

 “Touch me again and see what happens,” I growled.

 He threw his clawed hands up in the air.

 “Fine. But please take a moment to stop and think about this, think about it seriously. He’s guarded, he’s living in what is essentially a fortress, there’s magic on his side, and he’s only half mortal. Half mortal. Killing him is damn near impossible for warriors who have kept up their training and aren’t being slowly consumed by a curse.”

 “Well, it’s a good thing I’ve been using my downtime to think of smarter solutions than a duel, then, huh?”

 He shook his head, white hair fluttering about.

 “You’ve always been impossible.”

 “As have you, my old enemy,” I mumbled as I resumed walking to my little armory. ‘As have you.”

 He stopped protesting after that, just sat sulking on the bottom step of the staircase. Instead, he merely watched through silted eyes and a stony mask. Gargoyles, didn’t they have anything better to do than sit and judge?

 It took me the better part of the day to finish preparations, but I had ample time before the main event. I paused by the stairs, meeting his solemn gaze.

 “I’m not changing my mind.”

 “You rarely do. Act impulsively, yes, but change your mind after deciding to do something?” he snorted before his shoulders sagged. ‘I wished you would, though. There might still be other ways. Ways that you might, I don’t know, survive?”

 I shook my head.

 “Tried already. No. They won’t forgive me, not while my betrayal still stands.”

 “And so you rush to your death. Go then, my old enemy. I will bury you when it is over.”

 I couldn’t find any words. Not a snarky reply or even a simple thank you. Instead, I gave him a nod and started walking to the door.

 It was my last chance to make things right, my last chance to be honest. Better late than never, I supposed, but given how slow traffic was, it was looking like it might be never. I had hopped onto the farmer’s cart, thinking it’d be a faster trip. Turns out, it wasn’t. Horses and wagons filled the road to the city gates for as far as the eye could see and showed no signs of moving forward.

 A sigh escaped me as I felt another throb in my bones, another pulse of a headache. I know, Renard, give me a little more time. I’ll avenge you. What I helped them do to you. It didn’t change anything, but I felt better for the thought.

 Slowly, I forced myself out of the back of the wagon and began making my way forward, cutting passed farmers and merchants and travelers of all kinds until I was up at the front. Looked like the guards and some foreign nobles we arguing. I didn’t have time for it. Any of it.

 So, with a light push, I started a distraction. A brawl between the noble’s guards and the city guards would get ugly, no doubt, but who would notice me slipping by? No one. That’s who noticed me slipping by.

 The palace, or perhaps fortress was a better description of it, was also fairly simple. I just stood slightly behind and to the side of the first official looking person heading inside, and pretended to be their guard as we walked in together. Then, I promptly slipped away from him before he could notice we were being followed.

  The palace was at half staff, thanks to battles up north, so now was the best time to catch him. Risky and probably going to get me killed, yes, but the best time all the same.

 Finding the evil son of a lake serpent that killed Renard, that caused me to be cursed, proved to be the actual challenge. I listened around the servants, eavesdropped on the throne room, and just wandered around, searching for him. Eventually, I came across the war room and heard the unmistakable, booming voice of the Emperor. Wonderful.

 Terrible, I corrected myself as I realized that this was where most of the palace guard had been hiding. And they had spotted me.

 “Who goes there?” the woman demanded, scowling at me from beneath her spiraling horns.

 I blurted out my name. My full name. And she stood there, staring blankly at me. I smiled.

 “I come bearing critical information.”

 She opened her mouth, but the booming voice echoed out of the war room.

 “Let the spy in.”

 She looked back at the door and then back at me before making a sweeping gesture towards it. Not questioning my good fortune, I made my way inside.

 He stood tall, a hulking figure over the rest of the forms in the room. All were armed, but all made a conscious effort to keep their hands above the table. It would be a bad idea to get into a fight here, I assumed.

 How unfortunate.

 I placed myself right at his side, craning my neck upwards to look at him. He was as captivating as he had been back then. Quietly fierce and striking. His armor shined in the light of the crystals above his head, and his green eyes glowed ominously as he stared down at me.

 “It has been a long time.”

 “Indeed. Seven years to be exact.’

 “They have not done you well,” he noted.

 “But they have served me well,” I replied with a dip of my head, “and you as well.’

 “The information?”

 I grinned with a nod.

 “Yes, allow me to get the point, then. You’re true enemy is not in the north.”

 There was a collective of whispers and snorts from around the table, but I kept my eyes on him.

 “Interesting accusations. Show me your proof.”

 I gestured to the table and watched him lean over it again.

 “Look at the table, My Emperor, and see for yourself. Notice something odd about the attack patterns? How they all seem to conveniently benefit one person?”

 I didn’t know what the sea I was talking about, but it certainly seemed to get his attention as he leaned further down, inspected the placements of their colored flags with more scrutiny. I could almost reach it, now, that fabled soft spot.

 I slid a little closer to his side, making a show of gesturing to the flags.

 “If you look at where the boards of these territories, and the placement of the blockades, you’ll see that it seems to greatly benefit you’re general over there, as anyone moving through his land has to pay the fee....”

 “How dare...”

 “Silence.’

 The general shrunk down as the Emperor leaned a little closer to my direction, paying closer attention to the general’s boarders. Slowly, I raised myself onto my toes and reached for the dagger in my sleeve. He turned his head to look to me, to ask a question, and that’s when I struck.

 My dagger found that soft spot, but his hand also found my arm. I had just barely, barely broken the skin. I shook. So close. I had been so damn close....

 There was silence in the room. A thick, suffocating one as all stared at me in shock. As I stood in front of him, barely able to conceal the tremble of my legs, I wondered what made me think I was strong enough to challenge him in the first place. I guess the gargoyle had been right. I had sentenced myself to death, not freedom.

 His eyes burrowed into me, staring with that same intense glow and power that had convinced me to switch to his cause to begin with.

 “I always wondered when you’d do it,” the emperor said at last. “I always wondered when you’d turn on me, betrayer.” He twisted the dagger out of my hand and it clattered lifelessly to the floor. “It’s all you are in the end, all you’ll ever be, a betrayer. No loyalties, not even to yourself. The first opportunity to drive the knife in, you’ll probably take it.”

 “I should have taken yours sooner,” I tried to snarl, but it just sounded hollow.

 “So you could avoid your curse?” He clicked his tongue. “Wouldn’t have worked. It wasn’t Renard who cursed you. Wasn’t any of your old allies. No. You are you’re own curse. You always have been, always will be. No one hurts you more than yourself, but you only care now because there’s a physical manifestation of your corruption inconveniencing you.”

 “Killing me,” I corrected.

 “Betrayer, you’ve sentenced yourself to death, not the curse.” He swung me around by my wrist, handing me over to the guards. “Take the betrayer to the dungeons.”

 I didn’t fight them, didn’t have the strength too. And as the iron door swung closed, the words echoed around the inside of my skull.

 It’s all you are in the end, all you’ll ever be, betrayer.

~

Story taglist (ask to be added or removed.):

 @nemowritesstuff , @likelyfantasywriterspsychic,  @hannahs-creations, @writer-candy, @kaylewiswrites, @tenacious-scripturient​, @ofinkblotsandscript, @mischiefiswritten, @kespada, @silvertalonwriteblr, @inspiring-prompts, @greenwood-writes, @elkatheinkstained, @n1ghtcrwler, @writingiswilde, @say-no-to-negativity, @wordshavings

[red-doll-face]

can you do a consensual non con with Susie? If you’re not comfortable with it just ignore this

Im sorry it took so long to do this !! I spent so long agonizing over what to write that I have been gone for so long lmao. I’m not uncomfortable with the concept at all!! The consent is not clear so bls be careful reading this, it starts with dubious consent but ends with something like consent? So... idk. In all works including the legion or ‘high school’ aged character they are 18+

WC: 881

Warnings: dub/non con, or consensual non/con which could be seen as a type of fantasy or Roleplay between consenting adults,something like cunnilingus (?)Reader giving, nsfw content

Susie ‘The Legion’ x gn Reader

Pretty Little Black Eyes

From inside the locker you were hiding in, Your breathing was the only thing currently audible. You knew if your teammates knew you were in here, you’d be the butt of all of the locker jokes but your senses didn’t betray you. The terror radius crept in but you couldn't place from where. The killer was the pink-haired girl from the angsty mob, The Legion. She was smaller than most of the killers but that didn’t make her less capable of hanging you on the business end of a meat hook. Through the slats in the locker doors, you can see her gazing this way and that, trying to catch a glimpse. She stopped in front of the locker you were hiding in.

“I know you’re in there.” She murmured. Susie placed her ear against the doors and you put your hand over your mouth and nose to keep from breathing too loud. She giggled and scraped her knife across the chipping red paint of the tiny space you were hiding in. “Will you come out? What if I say please?” She tapped a finger on the little windows, trying to see inside of the darkness. “Please?... Ok, I’ll make you a deal. If you come out, I’ll let your friends go. All you have to do is do as I say. If you don’t agree I’ll rip you out of that locker and hang you up anyway. And then I’ll kill all of your friends.” She kicks lightly at the locker door. “Or how about I tell them you were in here?” You push at the door a little bit and she closes it again. “Are you gonna do what I tell you to do?” You swallow.

“Yeah, just let me out of here.” You open one of the doors. You shout against your will like someone just struck you. The Iron Maiden perk kicked in no doubt and now she’s free to down you and hook you. She tilts her head and bounces her knife in her hand and for a moment, you could have sworn she would strike and make you bleed all over yourself. Instead, she waits for something and that something comes, the Entity telling you that all of your teammates have gone. They had a key and after all the gens were done, had gone hunting for the hatch. Unfortunately, they hadn't gone hunting for you so you could leave with them. You looked at her and she hummed, putting a finger to her mask in mock-thought. Maybe they assumed you were dead anyway.

“Simon says…” She drew out the pause and you hoped she didn’t have anything too bad planned. “Stay still.” She nears you with the knife poised against your skin and you prepare for the sting of a cut along your flesh, you can imagine the blood and the pain. Her knife instead skims along with the fabric of your clothes, to the point that you think she may opt to cut it off of you. But a brilliant idea skates across her mind and her hands freeze. Then she brings her hand back.

“Simon says take off your shirt.” You can hear the smile in her voice. Susie is having fun humiliating you and you hesitantly peel your shirt upwards, pulling it over your head. You want to feel like you should shiver but you don’t. Your skin, if anything feels warmer, watching her head bob as she lowers it to gaze down at your naked torso. You can feel your face get hot as she comes closer to brush fingers down your skin. Goosebumps rise where her hands skim, blood-flecked over the top of her palm. It looked more like paint but you knew better than to think that was true. Susie seemed to forget her little game and brought her hands up to caress your face for a moment before stuffing her fingers in your mouth.

“Suck.” You were reluctant to obey but after an insistent nudge of her fingers into your mouth you obeyed her command. You can’t see her expression due to her mask but you know she’s amused at your humiliation. She wipes her fingers along your cheek, tilting her head and making a show of ‘thinking’ about what she wants before she shoves you to your knees and lifts her skirt. You feel your face heat up and you gaze up at her strange mask. She seems almost embarrassed herself but not enough for you to confirm it. Susie grinds against your face and perhaps to please her, your tongue dampens the front of her underwear as she rocks her hips against her face. She clutched your hair in a hard tug, nails grazing over your scalp. She tried to bite back a moan, failing and crying out, no one to listen but you and the crows. Susie gasps and pushes you back, she breathes and motions you towards the humming of the hatch. You quickly dress and rub your knees, trying to find the escape.

“Wait!” You turn to see the girl wring her hands for a moment. She starts but stutters, asking your name. You give it and she responds in kind.

“I’m Susie. See you later?” You quirk your lips and nod.

Thanks for requesting and I hope you like it!! I will be posting more often I think now that this has been scratched off the old req list 👍🏽💖🥴

[mimik-u]

Flower Child (Chapter 13): Blue (III)

Goodness, I'm nearly a year and a half late, but here we are—Chapter 13 of "Flower Child." First of all, I want to give my sincerest apologies for the delay... I mentioned this at the start of my fic "Facets," but the simplest and truest story is that my muse for writing Steven Universe and, well, writing in general petered out for a long time and has only recently returned. But, because it has recently returned, I wanted to begin to make good on a promise I made to you guys so many months ago—that one day, I would finish this story. So let's do this. <3 I'm ready now. 

(1) I read through the previous twelve chapters, lmao, and half-loved and half-hated my writing, but the point of that exercise, beyond getting acquainted with the plot of "FC" again, was to also do some quick grammar and flow revisions, so a few of the previous chapters should read just a little better than maybe they had before.

(2) Fun fact! Chapter 13 is pretty interesting because some portions of it were actually written over a year ago; it was an incredible challenge for me to work with what I had as a 2019 writer versus what I've learned as a 2020 writer.

(4) Someone asked on Tumblr a long time ago if there was a playlist I worked with in writing this story...

(5) And finally, and most importantly, this chapter is incredibly heavy, dealing with themes of suicidal ideation and extreme depression.

Please be cautious while reading if these are topics that are triggering to you!

i.

The shiny, black town car eased to a stop at the pull-through entrance of the hospital, drawing the gazes of passerby on the sidewalk. An older lady in a wheelchair, a group of what appeared to be college kids in scrubs, a scraggly-looking patient who’d obviously escaped the confines of his room to light a cigarette—they all stopped and stared as the back door of the overtly fancy car was pried open from the inside out, as a metal cane preceded a woman who quite looked like she needed it.

Blue Diamond unfolded into the light of day, trembling.

Because it was hard.

It was so hard.

To be here.

(To be.)

She wanted to collapse where she stood, dissemble and dissolve away one piece of herself at a time; she leaned heavily on the head of her cane and lit upon the sole pair of eyes that weren’t looking at her—or, really, her Lincoln. The man named Greg Universe stood next to the automatic doors with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the ground, all but boring a hole into it. When the sliding doors opened and closed at his backside, they appeared to be ripping into him, piece by miserable piece.

“I’ll call when I’m ready,” Blue murmured to her valet before shutting the door and slowly hobbling over to Greg.

Clank.

The onlookers glanced away as the town car drove off, resumed their lives and cared not for yet another broken person in their midst. The hospital was full of them as it was. Perhaps they were even broken themselves—very probably they were.

Blue Diamond did not care to know.

Clank.

I’m betraying her, she thought, she was always thinking. I’m leaving her behind. I’m betraying her. I’m—

Clank.

The clanking did the trick, catching Greg’s attention and only half-holding it. He lifted his head slowly and mustered a smile that must have been agony. It wobbled on his lips and very nearly disappeared in his bushy beard. It pulled at him—all over. He looked like a Picasso gone wrong, an abstraction of a man stretched too far.

“Hey, just in time.” He gave a shaky little laugh that rather sounded like a sob and then somehow kept talking, his entire physiognomy alive with his nerves. “Steven’s so excited to see you again. He hasn’t stopped talking about ya since this morning, which is kinda nuts because he was so tired yesterday, but this is a good thing, and so we should really go up and see him now because—”

She cut across him; it was a quiet act, a merciful one. “Greg.”

It was just his name, a singular syllable, a sound, but even that was enough.

Mr. Universe’s face fell into geometric disarray.

“No use hiding it, huh?” He half-wept, half-laughed again, scrubbing a hand over his face and bringing up his shirt to soak up what was left.

“No,” Blue Diamond whispered, her hands tightening on the head of her cane. “It’s scrawled all over you, I’m afraid.”

“Figures,” he said hoarsely. “I’m a mess.”

“No more than I am.” She pried one of her hands away from the other and gestured loosely at her entire body with a wry smile. “If you’re a mess, then I am a dereliction.”

It wasn’t a contest; it was the truth.

Four years of grieving had wasted her.

Blue Diamond was skeletal.

Broken.

Greg took this in and considered; his smile that really wasn’t a smile resolved itself into a quiet, aching sort of frown. It tugged his face downwards; it tugged at the hollows of her chest. She’d seen him only a little over a week ago, and yet today, he looked as though he’d aged a hundred years in the span of eight days. There were bags under his eyes and sunken dunes in his cheeks.

There was a little boy in a hospital bed.

There was a disease.

It was killing them both.

“How do I do this?” He asked the ground. “How did you—” But he stopped short; his breath hitched.

It was a highly personal question after all.

It was no short wonder that Blue’s cane didn’t snap beneath her grip.

“How did I do it?” She returned softly all the same. The slight breeze stirred the strands of hair poking out of her silvery braid.

Greg nodded mutely, the desperation in his face tangible. She could reach out if she wanted and touch his hurt, the very heart of it, and all of its dimensions. (She didn’t want to.)

“To be entirely truthful,” she murmured, “I’m not sure that I ever did.”

ii.

It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and it was also 2:38AM, the very moment when a police officer had the audacity to come to their door and tell two mothers that their daughter was dead, gone, and never coming back. His expression was a gathering bruise, and his words were like bullets, striking right between the ribs.

Blue Diamond couldn’t breathe.

In the darkness, she sat on the edge of Pink’s bed and dragged every mouthful of air inwards like it was painful; her chest heaved with the awfulness of it, the punctured horror of leaking lungs.

Her child was dead.

Oh, God.

Her child was gone.

Why, oh, why, oh, God, my God?

And she was never coming back.

Goddammit.

In the coagulated darkness, Blue clutched her daughter’s favorite sweatshirt close to her chest; it was black and ratty, full of holes and little tears. A small alien logo perched on the chest, grinning up at her from depthless eyes.

They used to fight over this particular number.

Constantly.

“You’re a multibillion dollar heiress.” Blue would pinch the bridge of her nose and try not to raise her voice above an acerbic whisper. “Would it inconvenience you to buy some nicer clothes?”

Pink was unsparing in her retorts, wicked and witty, face upturned in a haughtiness to match her mother’s own. 

“Would it inconvenience you to get off my ass, Mother? It’s just a sweatshirt.”

“Pink!”

And on and on. 

The fabric was cold between Blue’s long fingers, still scented with Pink’s favorite perfume.

They were going to bury her today, mere hours from now.

Last week, they’d been fighting over this shirt.

On and on and never again.

The funeral… mere hours from now… less than three… but how could that also be true when it was only 1:52AM and Pink Diamond was coughing her last, strangled breath on a dirty pavement outside a bar on 9th Avenue?

Blue Diamond hadn’t been there, but she forced the words on the detective’s report to come to life in the theatre of her mind’s eye anyway. By the time the paramedics had arrived, Pink was all but gone; she gasped, and she coughed, and her brown eyes marbled in one final supernova of emotion. They tried to resuscitate her, but the damage was too extensive.

She’d fought back, the officer had said. (He thought it was a consolation to them.)

The proof was caked in her nails and scratched all over her arms, but it’d been three against one.

She was a lion, and they were men; she was a twenty-one year old girl, and they were men.

In the darkness, unraveling, Blue Diamond’s face dripped onto the sweatshirt, onto the alien smiling up at her with a black sliver of a mocking grin. She did not register—she did not care to register—the slow creaking of the door opening inwards.

Amber light strained from the hallway to find and reach and touch her but didn’t quite make it. 

Yellow Diamond was a shadowy figure in the doorway.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she scolded, and yet, she moved into the room anyway—the hypocrite—her sharp heels muffled in the carpet. Stiff and forbidding, she came to stand in front of Blue, arms crossed over her chest, a frown crossed over her face. “It’s not healthy for you, Bl—“

But Blue cut across her. It was not a kind act; it was a precise incision—cold and surgical—three inches long and just as deep. “Our daughter is dead, Yellow.”

The shadowy figure recoiled but did not bite.

Even now, Yellow couldn’t bear to be seen as vulnerable, couldn’t bear to give one damn inch.

“I know that, dammit,” she muttered to the wall. “Dammit—do you not think I know that?”

But Blue had no pity for her, no shred of any emotion left except for the vicious tangle of grief; it tangled in her fingers, which sunk deep into Pink’s shirt, and it tangled in her cold eyes, leaking down her pale face and salting her anemic lips.

“Then act like it,” she hissed.

The exhortation bruised the air.

It demanded a reaction.

On its hands and knees, it begged for a response.

And yet, the shadowy figure said nothing. She didn't move her clenched fists.

She could not face Blue in the eyes.

Coward.

Hypocrite.

(Mourner.)

(Mourning.)

She simply left, staggering out of the room on precariously high heels, and Blue simply stayed, conflating the hours and the days and the minutes.

Later that day, they buried their daughter in a mausoleum, a gazebo—in a cemetery slathered in golden sun.

iii.

Greg explained the details as best as he could on the way up to Steven’s room. It was hard to find him a kidney because his blood type was O negative, which meant that he would only be able to receive a kidney from a Type O donor. And though he’d been on the waiting list for months now, and though he’d recently been moved to the top of the list given his worsening condition, it was still anyone’s guess as to when a kidney would become available.

(“If,” he could barely choke out, “we can even get one at all.”)

After slowly making their way across an expansive skywalk, they finally arrived at a pair of double doors labeled Truman Ward. The sun pierced through the tall glass windows and lit upon Blue’s sunken face, and Greg’s red eyes, and her metallic cane, and his wobbling lips—as though it was doing them a favor by doing so.

Greg reached behind her and pressed a button on the wall, alerting someone on the other side to their arrival.

“Listen”—he ran his hand along the back of his neck as the doors slowly parted open in welcome—“I’m going to go back to the room for a bit and see if I can get some paperwork done. Feel free to stay as long as ya’d like. Visiting hours don’t end ’til eight.”

Blue stared at him. 

Every moment—every hour, minute, and second with this child was precious nowadays, and here Greg was, lending her time out of his own.

She felt the gift of what he was offering deeply.

(She could have never found it in herself to be so generous with Pink.)

“Thank you.” She swept a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I… I appreciate you allowing me to visit him.”

But he only shook his head and urged her through the doors with a pinched smile.

“If he’s happy that you’re here,” he shrugged, “then I am, too.”

And with that, he waved a last goodbye, and the doors folded to a close again with her on the other side of them.

Room 11037.

Walking became a monumental task as the clinically white hallway stretched out before her, lengthened by her mind, twisted and contorted into an obstacle she had to surmount.

It should have been just a hall.

Clank.

The memory of Pink burned bright behind her eyelids, stained there permanently by principle but stamped in starkly with assistance from the harsh fluorescents overhead. She was laughing, always laughing, in these flashbulb reminiscences, her freckles coalescing and then expanding across the bridge of her nose like the bellows of an accordion.

Clank.

But it wasn’t just Pink, though it always would be.

Clank.

It was Steven now.

Clank.

A ghost she chased, as opposed to the one who perpetually haunted her (who mercifully, who cruelly stayed.)

Clank.

But he wasn’t a ghost just yet, right? He was still here and still fighting—did that not count for something? Didn't his heartbeat, the very state of its continued existence, teach her to hope?

Clank.

But hope was such an awful word—so empty, brimming with meaningless sensationalism.

Clank.

(Maybe it was the vestiges of her long dead religion, but she wanted to hope anyway.)

Clank.

Hope was such an awful word.

Clank.

Room 11037. 

The door was decisively closed. 

A tall woman with bicolored eyes leaned against it, her dark lips corkscrewed into a frown.

Blue Diamond vaguely remembered her from the cemetery but couldn’t quite place a name. She could place an expression, though, and was surprised to name the one on this stranger’s face as disdain. Disdain rolled off this mysterious woman in waves, from the resolute clench of her jaw to the iron way that her arms were folded across her chest. It burned in her eyes. It seemed to languish inside of her, seething just under a facade of smooth skin.

She was a monolith of quiet loathing.

Blue squared her rounded shoulders in a manner she thought to be composed; her hands trembled on her cane nonetheless.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” She asked it quite politely, even as the walls were harsh and white around them. She used to command rooms by the authoritative nature of her voice alone, and now she struggled to keep it together long enough to face a singular woman in front of a singular door.

“It’s not you specifically,” the woman replied, impressively put together, admirably composed. If her electric blue eye was cold, the brown one simply burned. Both were bruised underneath with tired shadows. “It’s what you stand for. It’s about the morals that Diamond Electric doesn’t have.”

“You’re an activist,” Blue surmised quickly, almost flippantly. Activists were challenging DE all of the time, and activists were always losing. Before Pink… she’d largely assumed that these sorts of protesters simply had no logical case. After Pink, she had had much more consuming thoughts on her mind than petty lawsuits against their multibillion dollar company.

“A Crystal Gem,” she corrected tersely, “but that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Her gaze slid subtly to the doorway behind her, and Blue understood her at once.

“Steven,” she whispered.

The woman nodded.

“Steven,” she agreed, and her voice cracked as she said it, splintering into thousands of little pieces and struggling to regroup. When she swallowed to compose herself, it was almost as though she was swallowing the shards. “He likes you, and I can’t… I won’t begrudge him that.”

In the way that she said it, it was almost like she was convincing herself most of all.

“There is an implicit but there,” Blue parried softly. “You won’t begrudge him that, but.”

Again, the woman nodded, the gesture slow and measured, as though she was working something out in the tiny motion. When her squared chin came up again, her mismatched eyes were bright, intense with quiet pain.

“But don’t hurt him.”

It was a reasonable demand, but the implication behind it stung immediately and anyway.

She inhaled sharply and scrambled to defend herself, to salvage the punctured wound, but the damage was already done. Her voice came out more broken than it did cold.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Maybe not intentionally,” the Crystal Gem said, shaking her head. “Most people never really intend to hurt someone… but it happens. We get caught up in our emotions. We get selfish. We get distant. And then we hurt people.”

It struck Blue Diamond at that very moment that she hadn’t even deigned to ask the woman’s name.

“So, all I’m saying is don’t hurt him.” She unfolded herself from the door and stepped aside. “He likes you.”

iv.

Two days after the first anniversary of Pink Diamond’s death, a doctor shined a light in Blue Diamond’s glassy eyes and waited for a pupillary response. When he received one—an involuntary but nonetheless reactive blink—he unceremoniously clicked off his pen light and straightened up into the unfriendly darkness once more.

In the sparse incandescence bleeding in from the hallway, Yellow Diamond cut a shadowy figure by his side, her usually tidy hair rumpled from all the times her fingers had become ensnared in it that day.

Her tie was loose, and lines had already begun to etch themselves beneath those hawklike eyes of hers.

Soon, they would become permanent fixtures, marked there by time and age and grief.

For now, though, they were only suggestions.

Hints of what was to come.

(So many sleepless nights.)

(How many haunted days?)

“Well?” Though the CEO tried hard to strangle her voice into a whisper, the sharpness of the syllable was still the loudest sound in the room. Subtlety had never quite been this woman’s strong suit; she wielded her words as though they were gavels to proclaim on the heads of all who dared to cross her path.

“Catatonic depression,” the doctor replied, just as succinctly, replacing his pen in the pocket of his lab coat. “The staring, the lack of movement, the loss of appetite, the elective mutism. All textbook symptoms that point to the fact that your wife is still grieving, Mrs. Diamond. Frankly, I’m worried for her health.”

The shadow on his left scowled at this diagnosis, and she fidgeted, and it was apparent by these two idiosyncrasies alone that she was scrounging deep for some incisive rebuttal against the truth that laid like a breathing corpse directly below her. 

“Then what, pray tell, do you intend to do about it?” Her voice exceeded its former intentions of quietness. “That’s the problem. Now what’s the solution?”

“Well, I admit her to the hospital and start her on an intravenous Lorazepam treatment. It’s a sedative. It’ll assuage some of her anxiety and relax her muscles to prevent spasming.”

“Yes, and then?”

They were talking about her as though she wasn’t even there.

It was a fair enough assessment.

“And then what, Mrs. Diamond?” The doctor stared at her incredulously, shoving both of his hands in his pockets. “With all due respect, I can treat your wife’s physical symptoms from sunup to sundown, but that’s not touching the heart of what is truly debilitating her. She’s grieving, ma’am, and she needs psychiatric treatment beyond what I can provide as a private doctor and you can provide as her spouse. We discussed this the last time I was here.”

“And the time before that—yes, I know,” Yellow Diamond laughed humorlessly, the sound half-mad in her constricted throat. “Because you stand there, like an imbecile, and tell me that there’s no underlying medical cause to this?!”

She jabbed an accusing hand at Blue Diamond, whose oceanic eyes were wide open and unseeing, silent tears slipping from the corners of them and falling sideways across her face. There was an untouched tray of food on her nightstand. There was a lankness in her unwashed hair. There were pill bottles accumulating like a grotesque collection next to the alarm clock.  

And there was an air, an atmosphere, an oppression of silent decay.

The funereality of it was undeniable.

An uncomfortable wooden chair stood next to the bed where Yellow Diamond had been sitting vigil for the past two nights since they had visited the cemetery on the day of the anniversary. 

Blue Diamond’s keening sobs had sliced the autumnal air.

Her daughter was dead.

Gone.

Never coming back.

She stared at nothing, it seemed to Yellow and the doctor; she languished in the visions of Pink that seized across her mind with every dripping second of consciousness. 

“Depression is an underlying medical cause, Mrs. Diamond.” 

The doctor’s voice softened. 

Minimally.

For the first time since the house call had begun, his lanky silhouette jerked a little, as though he wanted to place a hand on the CEO’s shoulder, but thought better of it upon seeing something forbidding in the other’s expression.

“And she’s tired, ma’am. You both are.” Look at you, his rust colored eyes seemed to say. You’re both historical wrecks to a long dead ghost. “You can’t take care of her alone…  moreover, you shouldn’t have to.”

But the doctor had finally overstepped one prying comment too far, and he must have known it immediately, because he took a step back from the golden eyes glowering at him in the darkness of that dusty bedroom.

Yellow Diamond’s entire face transformed, twisting itself into facets of shattered rage.

She was feral.

(Wounded.)

Apoplectic with fury.

(Grieving, she was inconsolable.)

Dangerous.

Goddammit, she was on fire.

“Do not ever deign to tell me what I can and can’t do when it comes to my wife,” she snarled, all pretense of quietness long gone, devoured in the hurricane of emotion. “Get out! OUT!”

“Mrs. Diamond, please—“

“I SAID OUT! OUT!” She shrieked, harshly shoving his shoulder with the flats of her palms. “GET THE HELL OUT!”

The doctor did not need telling again; he fled the room as the force of Yellow Diamond’s dismissal stoned his back.

Blue blinked slowly as a shaking hand suddenly clasped her arm in the wake of the carnage, the imprint of a steel wedding band carving itself into her flesh.

That hurts, Yellow.

She blinked again, the words swelling on her tongue and dying there unrestfully.

That hurts.

v.

The warnings of Steven’s guardian standing sentinel on top of her frantically beating heart, Blue Diamond turned the knob to Room 11037 and pushed inwards until the door reluctantly gave way to a sight she had forgotten to steel herself for in-between the guilt of moving on and the agonizing action of doing so.

Steven himself.

Dwarfed in a hospital bed.

A mere wisp of the boy who had sat with her on the balcony only three days ago and stuffed his face with little chocolate cakes.

Her prodigious mind working far ahead of her paralyzed body, she frantically tried to recall his text from yesterday, what it had said about his condition, if it had indicated anything about his current state at all. But he had only told her that he had passed out and ended up in the hospital again. The boy had said nothing about the extensive tubing and the wires that ribboned and scissored his entire body in streaming colors. Lines crisscrossed each other and tumbled over and under and around his blankets. 

She saw the bottom of an empty catheter bag at the edge of the bed.

And the bruises like angry embers pulsing up his arms.

Somehow, amongst all the other things she was absorbing at precisely the same time, she noticed that next to a vase of elegantly arranged sunflowers, there was an inelegantly arranged tray of hospital food.

Untouched.

He had texted not a word about the yellow pallor of his skin.

He had used exclamation points—exclamation points!—to indicate his excitement.

Blue Diamond could not shake the notion, the very absurd idea, that he had lied to her somehow, had drawn her here under false pretenses.

(This was not the truth. She had estimated at what she was getting herself into and crossed the line into getting herself into it anyway.)

“Hi,” Steven Universe said sheepishly, his cheeks flushing darkly. He was caught, and he knew it. “It’s good to see you again, Blue.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Blue’s plump lips parted slightly.

Two…

Her hand shivered on the head of her cane until the sound of it rattled the clinically quiet room.

Three…

She couldn’t do this again.

She wouldn’t grieve for another dead child.

One had been too much—one had almost killed her. 

Four…

God, and there were still days where she wondered if it still would.

Without thinking, desperate for relief, Blue turned away and braced her free hand on the door, drawing in harsh, ragged breaths that scratched at her beaten lungs, that bled them anew until they were leaking.

Who was she to believe that she wasn’t falling apart at her seams? How delusional was she to hope that a boy with a flower would be the difference between her saving grace and her inevitable dissolution? Was she so naïve to overlook the contours of his illness and think that his determination would be enough to save him from the eternal truth of this world? Was she so weak?

Death didn't discriminate between the old and the young, the sinner and the saint.

Pink Diamond was only twenty-one years old.

Steven Universe was a child.

“Blue!” Steven pleaded. “Wait, please don’t go. I—”

“I cannot look at you, Steven Universe," she cut across him, her voice low and fractured. Hot tears stood in her eyes, suddenly blurring her hand against the smooth door. “I’m sorry, but I cannot bear to see…”

“Can’t bear to see that I’m dying?”

He didn’t just refuse to mince the word; he stabbed it into her back so remorselessly that she gasped sharply. She glanced down at her chest and half-expected to see it lodged there, poking out, her beating heart speared on its tip.

“People can skirt around the word all they want,” Steven laughed bitterly, “but there’s no other word for it… without a kidney, I’m gonna die soon, Blue Diamond. I’m dying right now. I think I’ve been dying all this time. And everyone… all they wanna do… is look away from me. Pearl, Garnet, my dad…”

He sniffed.

“They keep looking away, and I’m so tired of it… I-I’m exhausted.”

The door felt cold against her palm.

Icy.

On the balcony, two days ago, she accused Yellow Diamond of shoving their daughter away in a drawer with the rest of her useless items.

In an arctic hospital room, Blue Diamond was ready to consign a boy to the same grave her daughter was buried in… 

… but dead children couldn’t talk.

Dead children couldn’t be tired.

They were simply dead.

“So, please, Blue Diamond… please don’t look away.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Her eyes were wide with the horror of everything, of it all, the senselessness, the depravity, the nihilistic revolutions of this awful, uncaring world.

“I had a daughter once,” she whispered to the door. “Her name was Pink Diamond, and she was… she is… my everything. She had a smile wider than this planet could ever hope to contain… and she very much liked to laugh.”

She had never talked about Pink to anyone other than Yellow before.

Even evoking her name felt like blasphemy.

Two…

A second passed, and no lightning fell from the sky to strike her dead; she supposed her own self-flagellation was the punishment and the eternal damnation alike.

“I looked away. Yellow and I both did. She wanted more from life, and we wanted to contain her life into… into a little box that could fit on the shelf with all our other trophies. She was our accomplishment, you see, our legacy.”

Three…

Blue Diamond’s hand fell away from the door, so she could bring it up to her mouth in a futile attempt to dam the sobs that racked her shoulders.

Four…

“We looked away. The night that she… she—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word aloud. She wasn’t brave like Steven. “We thought she was in her room, and I didn’t tell her that I loved her that night because we had argued… I thought I’d get the chance the next day or the day after that because we argued all the time. It was normal for us.”

On and on and never again.

When was the last time Blue Diamond had said those three words to her daughter?

These past four years, she had scoured her brain for the answer, but the answer was as elusive as the phrase was from her mouth.

For the simple truth of the matter was that she hadn’t said it very often.

In all her vast intellect, she had always assumed that it was assumed.

Implied.

Understood.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I love you, she could have said.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I didn’t want you to, she would have replied then. I wanted you to collect dust with all the rest of our awards and certificates. I wanted you safe, where I could see you. I wanted to quantify the entirety of your life and itemize the particulars. I wanted you to always be mine.

I love you.

I looked away.

An oxymoron.

A tragedy.

Five…

“So if I look at you, Steven Universe,” she murmured, screwing her eyes closed tightly against the pain, “really look at you, then I have to face that truth again—that I loved someone once… and I looked away… and now she’s… gone.”

And that was the immutable truth of the matter, the conclusion she circled around to no matter how many times the Earth continued to revolve away from the day since Pink Diamond had last existed on this world.

Four thousand revolutions later, and this would still be what it came down to in the end.

Her daughter’s blood was on her hands, staining them crimson, veining her lifelines with the guilt and the awfulness and the unbearable, crucifying shame.

And her daughter’s blood cried out, You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

And every time she so much as looked at her own palms, that was the only echo she saw written across their hollows.

Those last words.

Unanswered.

Unfinished.

Undoing and undone.

Six…

“But… I’m not gone yet,” Steven argued softly. His voice fought to be heard over all the machinery keeping him alive. “I’m here.”

He must have moved because blankets shifted somewhere behind her.

Dead children didn’t move.

Dead children weren’t here.

They were simply—

Seven…

Eight…

Nine…

Ten…

Do it, she commanded herself.

Look at him.

But Blue Diamond was frozen, and she was statuesque; she was a calcification barely anchored on the foundation of her cane. One false move and she would crumble entirely. 

The safest bet on her own survival was to limp away and dare not look behind her lest she turn to salt and dust. 

Someone else could clean up the carnage.

That woman who stood at the door—she’d do it—Greg Universe and the boy’s other guardians, too.

Don’t hurt him, that same woman had also said. He likes you.

Eleven…

Twelve…

Thirteen...

vi.

It was wash day. 

For nearly a year and half after Pink Diamond died, Yellow would force Blue out of bed every few days for a bath or a shower—usually a shower because it was becoming increasingly hard for the CEO to lift her wife in and out of the tub.

Today was a tub sort of occasion, though.

Date night with the Diamonds.

The presence of death was always with them, though, an intrusive third wheel.

With a slight groan, Yellow lowered herself into the warm water behind Blue, steam rising around their naked skin like curling smoke. Once upon a time, this used to be a favorite pastime of theirs, a chance to reacquaint themselves with each other and their bodies… but now the gesture was simply hygienic in purpose, asexual and quiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

“Is it too hot?” Yellow asked, her voice as gentle as she could wrangle it. Somehow, at the same time, it was still edged with the trappings of harshness. “I can add some cold water?"

She waited briefly for a reply that would never come.

Blue stared limply at her knees, pulled up awkwardly as they were to her chest. Her sensitive skin had already reddened in a couple of places where it was touching the water. There were pink fingerprints wrapped around her armpits where she’d been handled into the tub. 

“I think it’s too hot. You’re getting a rash.” A well-manicured hand flashed out from behind her ear and knobbed the far left tap. There was a quick murmur and then the steady hiss of cold water.

“There,” she humphed satisfactorily. “This’ll feel better.”

The running stream answered its assent.

Blue Diamond did not say a word.

She hadn’t in days now, maybe even weeks; time was irrelevant to her, and the words would not come. 

There was only a dullness in her head, numb and numbing, like an icy compress coiled tightly around her thoughts.

Yellow didn’t think so, but this was better than the alternative; this was the far superior solution to the problem, the pain, and the pervasiveness of the ghost who was their daughter Pink Diamond.

Because when the analgesic of her own catatonia faded, and some of the feeling tried to seep through, her chest would unfailingly tighten, a vice squeezing hard upon her weary heart.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her child was dead.

“I…” 

The sound came from behind her, guttural and choked, as though the speaker was fighting hard against the noise and losing the war.

“I’m so tired, Blue.” 

It was an admission, and it was a copout.

Both of them knew that Blue Diamond wasn’t registering a single word.

She heard them—yes, this was true.

But they came to her—they landed softly—like distant echoes; she did not feel the pain of them, the visceral agony; at the present moment, she did not even feel her own pain, the grief and the scalding water and the grief.

Because it was always the grief she was trying to repress.

Everything else was just ancillary.

“You don’t know, goddammit, you can’t know, how exhausted I am.” Yellow Diamond’s voice shattered in the tub.

And her entire body hitched.

As though to keep that from breaking, too.

“You exhaust me, Blue Diamond. You exhaust me every single day. And you don’t even know it, goddammit. Who are you? What the hell have you become?”

The question was delivered to her backside, where it slipped down her tall, curving spine and into the water, splashing there with the delivery of the tap. With a violence that was almost cruel, Yellow reached from behind her again and flung it back into an off position.

There was quietness then.

It was so still, that it was disquiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

Blue continued to stare blankly at her knees.

There were red patches on her skin.

Her child was dead.

After a moment’s hesitation, her breath heavy on the back of Blue’s long, slender neck, Yellow Diamond gathered her silvery hair gently in one hand and grabbed the comb on the side of the tub with another.

She was careful as she maneuvered its teeth through damp, lank strands.

She always was.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Blue.”

That was what Blue Diamond’s note would say merely a few months later.

I’m sorry and I’m sorry and I’m sorry.

Love always, Blue.

But that was the crucial thing, wasn’t it?

Sorry was not enough; love was not enough.

Because if love had been enough, Pink Diamond would still be alive. 

vii. 

In a hospital room pierced through with golden sun, Blue Diamond turned around and faced the light of day, her heavy braid swinging along with the slow, deliberate motion. 

She wasn’t looking away, Steven Universe.

She was staring straight at him—at his sunken face and his tubing and at the catheter bag and at the sunflowers.

The boy was dying, but he was not yet dead.

It wasn’t much.

At the very least, though, it was something.

He was not gone, even if he was going.

He was here.

In this moment, in this very ephemeral second.

The heart monitor on the wall attested to that; it counted his heartbeats; it pleaded with her to have hope.

(Hope was such an awful word.)

“Those are beautiful flowers,” she whispered. Her cane clinked against the tiled floor as she carefully drew closer to observe them better.

Their petals were tall and spiky, assaulting the air with attentiveness and regal magnitude.

They vaguely reminded her of Yellow.

With a light finger, she tried to prop up one that was beginning to droop beneath the weight of all its brethren, but the moment she withdrew her touch, it fell again, sighing listlessly. 

Poor thing.

“But not quite as pretty as that hibiscus you bequeathed me.”

Steven’s eyes, edged with the trace remnant of his tears, were wide and dark, full of velvet and silvery stars.

“You don’t still have it, do you?” He asked, incredulous and rather pleased.

He played a little with his hands on top of his blankets. 

He tried to tamp down his hope for an affirmative with an unconvincing casualness.

Blue Diamond’s smile bruised her lips.

“I placed it on my nightstand, sweet boy, so I could look at it everyday.”

It took a second, but the irony of that word choice was not lost on either of them.

viii. 

Yellow Diamond placed the failed suicide note on her nightstand for Blue to see and know that she saw. They didn’t talk about it afterwards.

How could they?

What was there to say?

It remained there for a few days afterwards, shriveled and guilty-looking next to the alarm clock; every time she opened her eyes, she would see it and feel its quiet condemnation. She would close her eyes against its glare and wait for sleep or numbness one to wrestle her into the dark. 

One day, she woke up, and the paper was gone again. 

The realization drew a frown across her wrinkled face.

When she thought about getting up to search for it, and mustered the appropriate will to get out of bed, apparently, many days had passed in the interim.

A month.

She only recognized this upon surveying her bathroom on her way to the toilet; she couldn't find her shaving razor anywhere.

One night—the day, the month, the year undetermined in the abscessed haze of her mind—a dull ache throbbed through Blue’s hip, growing in intensity and sharpness with each passing second that she laid on the wounded area.

There was a part of her, not entirely inconsequential, that invited the pain. For after all, suffering was the only victory the woman had left in the entire world; she wrestled with it nightly, and she embraced it. She made it her new lover and exchanged an oath that only death would do them part. She didn’t shoot herself, or cut herself, or swallow a handful of pills that would surely do the trick.

She laid on her bad hip and convinced herself that she deserved it.

But that night—whatever night that it was—the agony was unbearable, pulling at her all over.

With a groan that wasn’t voluntary, Blue wrested herself into some semblance of a sitting position and looked for her phone so that she could call Livia for an ice pack, but it wasn’t on the bedside table as it usually was… and since it wasn’t in its usual position, she had no clue where she had last left it.

If she wanted relief, she would have to brave the kitchen herself.

She wanted relief, and the guilt of it half-immobilized her.

So she sat there for a couple more minutes still and endured the stabbing ache before finally coaxing herself upwards into the dark night of the bedroom. 

Assuming her cane in one hand, Blue crept silently towards the door and out of it, where the hallway stretched out before her like a cavernous tunnel, all the lights extinguished. 

Even the telltale glow of lamp warmth that usually emitted from the study across the hall was gone out, which meant that Yellow had likely succumbed to sleep on the couch within. 

A twinge of something bothered Blue’s sternum at the thought.

She limped forward anyway and all the same, lifting her cane off the floor to keep from making noise; the wall was her guide in its stead, the pads of her long fingers moving along its smooth planes until she reached the end of the archway, where she immediately intuited that she wasn’t alone.

In the moonlight that wept into the living room through the tall windowpanes, Yellow Diamond was a stark figure sitting on the edge of the couch, leached of all her color. Her blonde hair, her silky pajamas, the leathery musculature of her corded neck—all of it was leveled by blinding whiteness.  

Illuminated.

Vulnerable.

Exposed.

When her wife swallowed, she could see every line in her powerful jaw working through the peristaltic motion. 

In the shadowed hallway, Blue Diamond stood still, even though the sharp pain in her hip demanded attention.

For this  moment, this night, this moonlit haunting did not belong to her—even though most of them usually did.

She understood, somewhere in the mire of her own head, that to disturb this scene would be sacrilege. So she watched, and she waited.

Yellow Diamond was holding something between her sharp, angular hands.

With a jolt, she realized that it was Spinel, a stuffed pink cat who had been Pink’s favorite companion once upon a time. Her left ear was still stained from the tea Yellow had once accidentally dripped on it during a princess tea party.

Washed it though they had—several times over—the spot was stubborn; Spinel had been permanently marked.

“S’okay, Momma,” Pink had only said, grinning up at them both from gapped teeth. She had hugged the toy to her chest. The affected ear brushed against the side of her freckled neck. “That just means she’s one of a kind."

Yellow’s fingers were wrapped around the cat’s plush stomach tenderly; she stared at it from depthless, ancient eyes. 

It struck Blue Diamond—then and there—that she wanted something more from this vignette; she wanted Yellow to say something. Selfishly, she desired a confirmation for what she had already so trenchantly inferred.

She wanted, she desired, she longed, she needed to know that her wife was broken, too.

It was a horrible hunger, an itch that felt terrible to scratch.

But Blue Diamond was voracious.

Sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, she could be cruel.

After a long while, though, Yellow Diamond only placed the cat down on the coffee table and stared out into the irradiated night with her hands templed below her sharp chin, lost in silent thought.

She looked older than she ever had in all of their collected years together.

She was only fifty-four.

ix.

They talked—for a long while—as the sun slipped away from the sky, sunset coming in fragments through the slats in the window blinds. 

Blue Diamond held Steven’s hand, the one that didn’t have so many IVs in it, and rubbed smooth circles against his wrist.

“Pearl does that, too,” he smiled at her softly through hooded eyes when she began. “It’s nice.”

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

He told her about his favorite show, which seemed to be about morose breakfast items from what she could vaguely surmise, and he talked to her, very quietly, about his disease.

It was rapidly progressing, far more quickly than his nephrologist had anticipated.

“Those chocolate cakes we shared on your balcony,” he admitted with the air of a child waiting to be scolded, “I may have accidentally puked them up in your toilet. Sorry..."

“It’s of no consequence,” she returned with a small, sad smile.

And this was very well true.

She wasn’t the one who had to clean it after all.

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

Blue told him about the sunrise yesterday, how all the colors had seeped together in a swirl of delicious color, and she talked to him, very quietly, about Pink.

“In the best of possible ways,” she mumbled, the sound caught in the column of her throat, “you remind me of her sometimes. She smiled at everything, even when there wasn’t exactly something to be smiled about.”

“That’s a very pretty way to put it.” Steven wriggled a thumb from beneath her palm to stay it against the side of her hand.

“Yes,” she nodded gently, “I suppose so.”

When it was time for her to leave—a team of nurses had come in to administer Steven’s evening medicines and check his vitals—she pressed a kiss against his forehead.

Very light and very soft.

“You didn’t look away,” he whispered against her cheek as she withdrew. His breath was sickly sweet with disease. “Thank you, Blue.”

She froze, meeting his eyes.

There was hesitancy, and there was consuming grief.

The scribble of guilt.

Scrawled all over her face.

“I wanted to, though,” she breathed. “If we're being technical... if we're being fair... I think the impulse counts against me.”

“But you didn’t.”

Steven’s chapped lips tilted into the beginnings of a smile.

“And that’s what matters, right?”

She brushed a stray curl off of his clammy forehead and thought about Pink and Yellow and all the things she did and didn’t do.

She loved them.

She looked away.

“Yes,” she told Steven Universe. 

Yes.

x.

Alone, Blue Diamond slowly crossed the skywalk, her silvery hair crowned in all the colors of the sunset, a phone pressed against her ear.

Her cane struck the tiled floor with each shuffled step forward.

Clank.

The dial tone droned rhythmically—bzzt and bzzt and bzzt.

Clank.

She felt her heart work its way up her throat, clambering up its fleshy rungs. The immensity of what she was doing transformed her nervous system into a network of beating, pulsing neuroses.

She was ready for this, and she was not.

She could do this; she half-hoped that she wouldn't receive an answer.

Clank.

And then—

“Blue?” Yellow Diamond’s low voice threw its instinctive panic across the line. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Because this was new.

And yet, achingly familiar.

So many years of having not sought Yellow out—all those weeks, days, and months—were well-established patterns that were not easily overturned and undone.

All those collective hurts—hundreds of them, thousands.

Four years of misery sat between them like four hundred thousand miles.

Blue Diamond swallowed thickly, stopping dead in her tracks as the spillage of people continued to swarm all around her like a package freed of its contents: doctors and patients and sundry other visitors. She was the eye of their storm, and yet, she was just another broken person in the midst of so many other broken people. She was separate from them, and yet, she was their intimate kin. The contradiction seemed untenable, unworkable like all the rest.

Her fingers tightened on the head of her cane.

“I’m… I’m fine, Yellow,” she began. “Please don’t worry. I just had to… I wanted to tell you something. Are you busy?”

On the other end of the line, somewhere in a giant, yellow skyscraper at the edge of Empire City, there was the sharp intake of breath.

And the hesitant beginnings of a fearful reply.

It was a start, though.

And that was what mattered, right?

Yes, Blue Diamond thought to herself.

Yes.

[samwpmarleau]

inside the pocket of your ripped jeans

2,500 words of me throwing hands with TVD’s post-S5 depiction of Caroline and Tyler’s relationship.

Inspired by this fic by @cbsnforeverandalways, this post by @zalrb, and @fredsythe’s salt.

It hits her at the oddest times. She could understand the faint sense of loss if it only happened on their anniversary, or when the moon is full. Stefan understands when she’s a little mopey on those days; after all, he has days like that of his own.

It’s when it happens on days that don’t have any significance that gets her the most, though; those, she can’t tell Stefan. Because he’d look at her all half-judgy, half-sympathetic, which makes her feel the entirety of the hundred-and-fifty-year age gulf between them. Not that she wants to examine it even to herself, granted.

It would be one thing if she knew when the missing him would strike her, but it comes on without warning.

She and Tyler will be talking, as acquaintances or friends are wont to do, and there’ll be a moment. This spark of magnetism between them that used to always be there (when it was allowed to be there). And she knows he feels it, too, because she can see it in his face, and that makes it worse, because that means it’s not a figment of her imagination. She tells herself it’s just them reconnecting, because they were friends long before they were lovers, but she knows it’s a lie.

Other times, she’ll flip through a photo album and smile rather smugly at her favorite photo of her and Stefan because they are just perfect together — but then she’ll see a picture of him and Elena and the dark beast of doubt and envy will pool in her stomach, and then she’ll see a picture of her and Tyler, and now guilt and wistfulness join the party. Because how can she be jealous of the way Stefan and Elena look together, the way they just fit, when she looks at her and Tyler and they just fit, too?

Still other times, she’ll be toying with her daylight ring and will flash back to the day her father had tortured her, when Tyler and her mom had come to her rescue and he’d slipped the ring back onto her finger. He’d practically been down on one knee then. She remembers reliving that moment later, once the pain of that day had passed, only in a much more scenic locale where Tyler would present her with a ring ring, not just the lapis lazuli. When he proposes, she’d thought then, not if — even back then, when their relationship was barely in its infancy, it had felt...permanent.

Caroline still doesn’t have a ring ring, but she has a wonderful boyfriend and a wonderful life that’s not with Tyler and that’s that.

She’s fine.

Really.

* * *

She dreams of him, sometimes.

She’ll fall asleep to a vision of dark eyes, and she thinks that they’re Stefan’s, which is acceptable. But when she falls truly asleep, it is not Stefan that she sees. She sees Tyler, smiling at her the way he never quite does anymore, a smile absent of betrayal and hurt, like she’s the sun his world revolves around. Even before they’d gotten together, when they were still just friends figuring out their supernatural identities, that smile had set her heart fluttering. She’d passed it off at the time as the usual jitters of being a new vampire.

She dreams of all the times he’d swept her off her feet, or pressed her up against the wall, or stared at her in that intense way he did right before he kissed her breathless. She dreams of falling into bed with him (or onto the couch, or on a desk, or…), every nerve alive, every inch of skin alight. Sex had never been just about passion for them (though there certainly was plenty of that), it was their way of connecting when words weren’t quite enough.

She dreams of them arguing, which they did often. But it’s not a bad dream — she’d liked that she could speak her mind with him, that they could call each other out on their bullshit and that he didn’t treat her like she couldn’t defend herself. She’d liked that instead of letting issues fester or keep secrets, they hashed things out and got to the bottom of them. She’d liked that no matter the problem, he never made her feel bad about herself.

When she wakes, there is always a moment where she fully expects to see Tyler lying beside her. Perhaps she’d kiss his chest, his neck, his jaw, his lips until he stirred awake. But it’s Stefan lying there, not Tyler, because of course it is, and for that brief moment there is an overwhelming sense of disappointment.

* * *

It’s trivia night, when their entire group is supposed to hang out together, but Elena, Matt, Jeremy, and Damon had all bailed, so it’s just Caroline, Tyler, Stefan, and Bonnie, with Bonnie and Stefan currently tied for the lead. Bonnie swears she hasn’t used her powers to get ahead. Caroline’s not entirely sure about that: she still bitterly recalls the incident in fourth grade when Bonnie swore she didn’t move the Ouija board pointer and then the next year revealed that in fact she had. She’s peeved about Stefan, too, because she doesn’t think it’s exactly fair when he has so many more years’ worth of trivia knowledge. Bonnie ends up winning the battle for first place, and thus becomes the mediator for Caroline and Tyler’s battle for third.

“We should probably just give Caroline the crown right now,” she snorts as she reads the card. “ ‘In The Real Housewives of Orange County, which housewife departed the show between seasons two and three?’ ”

With hardly a minute’s hesitation — and just a split-second before Caroline recalls the name — Tyler answers, “Jo De La Rosa.”

Bonnie and Stefan stare at him, dumbfounded. “Uh...correct,” Bonnie says. “How do you know the answer to that?”

“Just from around,” Tyler says with a wince. “It’s not like I watch that reality TV trash or anything.”

Caroline, huffy at having lost, objects, “No, I have it on good authority that you enjoy this ‘reality TV trash,’ Tyler Lockwood. You watched every episode with me.”

“Yeah, because at the end of each season you gave me a bl — ” He abruptly cuts himself off, glancing at Stefan. “—ueberry muffin.”

Caroline desperately hopes her blush isn’t visible. It was blowjobs she gave him in exchange for watching the show with her, not muffins. In fact, Tyler’s allergic to blueberries, and by the dubious expressions on both Bonnie and Stefan’s faces, it’s clear they know of that particular allergy and further don’t believe a word of Tyler’s fumbled explanation.

“Well,” Bonnie announces, “that’s my cue to leave.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Stefan offers.

Caroline waits until the door closes behind them, then remarks, “That was awkward.”

“It’s not like they don’t know we were together,” Tyler says, helping clean up the game. “What, does Stefan think all we did was make out or something?”

“No, but still.”

Tyler looks a bit perturbed at that, though doesn’t reply. She used to be able to read him like a book, but now she can’t decipher at all what he wants. What, is she supposed to talk about their sex life in front of their friends? In front of Stefan? That sounds like something pre-werewolf Tyler would do, not the selfless, sensitive Tyler she dated for over a year.

She doesn’t want them to part on bad terms, though, so she goes to give him a hug goodbye. She intends for it to be brief, but when they embrace, she finds herself unable to break it. As a hybrid, his vampire half cooled his body temperature to more or less that of any other vampire; she’d almost forgotten how warm werewolves get, and it sends a shiver down her spine. More than that, she’d almost forgotten (or perhaps willed herself to forget) just how good it felt to be close to him. He’s shorter than Stefan, but she kind of likes that her head rests next to his instead of against his chest, his pulse a temptation. His arms are tight around her, his hands low on her waist, and it feels…right.

She pulls away because that most definitely isn’t right, not anymore, but she makes the mistake of looking up at him. It would be dangerously easy to kiss him right now, if she wanted. And the way his eyes are dilated and his lips slightly parted, somehow she knows he would kiss her back. She blinks a few times to try to clear out the lustful fog, ashamed of the fact that despite the acrimonious way they ended, despite the fact that she’s now dating Stefan, she wants to kiss him.

She steps back more fully and says, “Well, drive safe.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

She watches him leave, and feels an odd sense of emptiness. Worse still, the sound of the door shutting triggers that deep-set déjà vu that she’d endured for so long; a closing door, after all, always followed a goodbye. A goodbye and not knowing how long it would be until she would see him again, or even if she would see him again. That’s not the case now, he’s not leaving for good, but it still makes her chest constrict.

A few minutes later, the door reopens, and her heart, not her head, leaps. Perhaps he’d forgotten something, or perhaps he’d returned for something else entirely that they would both surely regret. But that guilty, hopeful sensation falters when she sees that it’s Stefan who enters, evidently done fending off Bonnie’s gloating.

“Are you all right?” Stefan asks with a frown.

Caroline fixes her expression, waving him off. “You know me, I just don’t like losing.”

It’s an accurate enough statement, so Stefan accepts it. He helps her collect their empty beer bottles and puts the popcorn bowl in the kitchen. It was an aberration, she tells herself. It’s natural to still feel an attachment to your ex for a while, right? It means absolutely nothing.

She just wishes it felt like nothing.

* * *

Matt doesn’t have to repeat himself when he calls to tell her Tyler’s dead by Damon’s hand. She can hear just fine, thanks very much, and the information registers. It’s not the first time they’ve lost a friend and probably won’t be the last, and Tyler and Damon had always hated each other anyway, so really it was just a matter of time. She hadn’t even talked to Tyler in months.

“After everything we went through, I guess I just always assumed that he would be there,” she tells Stefan. It’s truer than she can express; even when he was gone, he was constant. He was white noise, always there even when he wasn’t, even if other things drew more attention.

She’s not sure whether Stefan simply doesn’t hear her or ignores her, for he switches focus from Tyler to Damon. She ends up comforting him when it was her ex-boyfriend who was murdered, and she wonders if that’s normal.

The first funeral is interrupted and so later they have an informal gathering at the empty carnival grounds. Everyone says nice things, but it doesn’t quell the pain.

“I loved him,” she says. God, she loved him. But Stefan’s here and she doesn’t want anyone to read anything into it, so to be safe, she qualifies, “You know, we all did.”

Talk then switches once more to Damon. Someone makes a casual remark about how Tyler’s not even the first Lockwood Damon has personally killed. They talk about how to save Damon, how they can bring Damon back from the brink, how lost Damon must feel, as though something like this is remotely out of character for him, and Caroline excuses herself to go throw up in the bushes.

She doesn’t get any time to herself afterwards; Stefan convinces them all to enjoy the carnival’s offerings, and then there’s the chaos with the twins, chaos in general, and life moves on because it has to. She figures she’s buried all of it — we hadn’t talked in months — until one day she’s doing some spring cleaning and empties out her jewelry box, systematically untangling necklace chains and setting aside rings to be polished. From the pile, she slowly pulls out an old charm bracelet, the silver now tarnished but its origin unmistakeable.

She runs her fingers over the charms — a paw print, a football helmet, a heart, a cheerleader, her initials. They were broken up at the time, Klaus’s sirebond in the way, but it was her eighteenth birthday so he’d gifted her the bracelet anyway. She stares at it, and stares, and stares, and the grief slams into her all at once. She clenches the bracelet in her fist, cries until she can’t breathe and then cries some more.

He’s dead. He’s dead.

Klaus had been mistaken when he said Tyler was her first love. It was Matt who fit that bill. Matt was the sweet, innocent love of youth, where everything seems both too much and not enough.

But Tyler…

We’re immortal, he’d said. He was wrong about that. She stayed immortal but he didn’t.

We will find a way, he’d said. He was wrong about that, too. They never found a way.

What if we don’t? she’d said. She was the one who was right. She, the eternal optimist, had become the pessimist, and she was right.

It would be silly, wouldn’t it, to still call him the love of her life? She’d thought he was at the time, because obviously. She was in love and their relationship at that point was a patchwork of goodbyes, sex, and yearning, filled to the brim with thoughts of, If we can only get past this hurdle, we’ll be home free, so of course she’d thought it would last. People always think love will last, don’t they, in the moment?

But here by herself in this great big house, she can admit the truth. What she has with Stefan isn’t just different, as for so long she’d assured herself. She’s content and comfortable with him, but it’s…less. She doesn’t feel complete when he’s near nor empty when he’s gone. The noise and worries of the world don’t fade when she’s in his arms. She doesn’t feel alive.

Because the truth — the truth she will admit now with the silver bracelet in her hand and her chest overflowing with sorrow — is that she gave away her heart a long time ago, her whole heart, and she never got it back.

And it doesn’t even matter because Tyler’s fucking dead, and she’s going to live forever. There will be no closure to be had, no apologies, no amends, no nothing.

I’m not moving on from anything, he’d said. I love you.

She polishes the bracelet until it’s gleaming, fastens it around her wrist, and thinks, I never really moved on either.

[countessklair]

hands - goblet of fire

in which the triwizard tournament goes very differently than anyone expects.

the lone champion dies, but the group survives.

maybe it shouldn’t have been like this.

but ever since the first task, when Fleur pulled out the Welsh Green, a newly realized fear set in around them. eyes darted over, hearts pounded as one as tiny figurines representing very real threats were cupped in too-young palms.

the cannon had sounded and Cedric was shaken, just standing at the exit with trembling hands, the roaring crowd and the roaring dragon beyond.

then, a hand wound through his, small and cool and trembling just as much. Fleur.

another hand landed on his shoulder, heavy, warm, a tremble in the palm. Viktor.

a third at his elbow, smaller, clutching, certain without any tremors.

Cedric looked over at Harry and wondered how awful the last three years had really been for the boy to give him that grave awareness in his eyes, eyes that were far older than any fourteen year old had a right to have.

three hands squeezed, and an equilibrium wove through Cedric’s gut.

he walked out of the tent and into the dragon's lair. 

Cedric was never certain, and yet he was certain that the others had the same kind of experience going to face the dragons. hands supporting, giving ease. 

all but harry, who had to face it all alone.

then the second task came around, and the four of them were standing on the platform above the black lake, looking for people who weren’t there, standing under the watchful eyes of adults who were using them to play out old feuds.

the look on Harry’s face threatened to kill Cedric. like none of this surprised him. like he was used to the threat of death and ruin, of the threat of a crowd turning against him at the slightest provocation.

Viktor had the same sort of look.

Cedric had to wonder if he was the only one who saw it, but then he looked at Fleur and knew she saw it too.

the adults had to back off as the four of them got ready to go up to their marks.

instead, the four of them drew in close together. Fleur reached for Cedric’s hand first, then Viktor’s. Viktor took Harry’s hand, and without even hesitating, Harry took Cedric’s.

for a few heartbeats, everything else fell away. the crowd, the onlooking school and ministry officials, the freezing weather, the lapping of the lake pushing closer and closer onto the dock in sickly beckoning waves.

for a few heartbeats, they all breathed as one in the silence between them. hands shook, knowing now what was at stake, the danger they were in. 

for a few heartbeats, they were fine. safe. whole.

then it was over when Karkarov ripped Viktor away, hissing something in Bulgarian that made him flinch.

the four of them took their marks and dove into the water.

Cedric was there second, only just after Harry, who was looking between Ron and Hermione with a panicked expression like this wasn’t a choice he wanted to make. Harry reached for Ron first only because he was closer, and then reached for Hermione as well and the merfolk charged

Cedric readied his wand, speeding forward towards them and ready to strike when suddenly Viktor charged through and chased them off, grabbing Hermione without a second thought.

and wasn't that horrible, that among three schools Hermione Granger was the one person he cared most about. people Viktor had known his entire life didn’t hold the trust and love that a girl he’d known five and a half months.

Cedric freed Cho and tapped his watch at Harry, who nodded in understanding. Viktor spared a moment to look Harry over, checking he was alive and relatively well, and then the two of them started speeding off towards the surface. 

quietly, Cedric was impressed with Viktor and Harry. the shark head charm was short-lived, and Viktor was lucky it’d lasted this long. and whatever Harry had done was, frankly, simply, impressive.

Cedric and Viktor raced to the top, something like relief and playful competition between them as the water got brighter, lighter.

neither of them looked behind them. 

why would they?

Harry was Harry Potter. and he was right behind them.

Fleur had proved she was capable, she wouldn’t be long behind them either.

Cedric reached the surface just before Viktor, Viktor’s charm expiring just in time for the Seeker to give Cedric a bright, playfully mock-angry laugh.

Hermione and Cho came to on the docks, coughing up lake water and a gag of herbs from their throats.

Cedric and Viktor were laughing, relieved and lightheaded. and then that ended when Fleur dropped down to her knees next to them with desperate eyes and no Gabrielle in sight.

Fleur never laid eyes on her sister before the Grindylows got her. Hermione’s eyes were wide and wet with tears as Cho tried to shush her, Ginny climbing down from above to join them.

Fleur and Viktor and Cedric huddled together at the very edge of the docks, hands winding together, hearts pounding as one, searching searching searching as Fleur keened in French.

Dumbledore wouldn’t let them die at the bottom of the black lake...right?

the clock had almost run out, the seconds ticking by closer and closer to the finish, and with three minutes to go Ron and Gabrielle breached the surface.

alone.

Fleur nearly dove right back into the water to get her sister, only held back by Viktor and Cedric’s hands and shushing words.

Gabrielle was wrapped in three towels as she reached the platform, teeth chattering in the wind and frigid water, and she was immediately sent to the medic tent when Viktor’s hand came away wet with blood and Cedric ripped back Gabrielle’s sleeve to reveal a nasty Grindylow bite.

and yet, even though her sister was lead away, Fleur fell right back in between Viktor and Cedric, hands finding each other and shoulders pushing together as they watched the water for Harry.

Hermione and Ron were muttering under their breath, things that made Cedric’s head spin.

“he survived Voldemort down in the dungeons first year”

“he survived the basilisk”

“he survived Tom Riddle and the diary”

“he survived rogue bludgers and falling from ten thousand feet”

“he survived a werewolf on the full moon”

“he survived the dementors at the black lake”

“he survived a dragon”

“he survived”

“he's fine”

“he's fine”

“he's fine”

one minute to go, the water surface broke sharply up and suddenly Harry landed, heavily, gasping, coughing, bleeding, on the deck.

as one, the three of them snatched towels and bandages from the people around them, wrapping them around Harry and shushing him when he could not bite back the pain any longer.

Fleur’s hands were white-knuckled, her fair skin almost blue from the chill, and she pressed her thanks into Harry’s temple, tears falling down her cheeks while Cedric shielded them from Rita Skeeter’s wretched camera and wicked tongue as Viktor barked an order at the Durmstrang students to shut her out.

Cedric grinned at her squawking as they complied.

Harry barely had his breath back when he asked, “Ron. Mione. Cho. Gabrielle.”

“Fine,” Viktor said beneath the roar of the crowd and the arguing of the judges, rubbing circles over Harry’s back to warm him, head dipped low so no one saw his mouth move. “All fine. Safe.”

“Thanks to you,” Cedric said, and Harry met his gaze.

Cedric’s throat went dry at the cautious hope in his eyes, the sheer exhaustion, the pressure to do everything, everything, the pressure of the Boy Who Lived living in those eyes and Cedric wondered how no one else had ever seen it.

and then Ron and Hermione pushed in beside them, their hands running over Harry, checking his body for injuries like they didn’t trust Harry to tell them about them, like maybe he would hide them from them, Ron and Hermione muttering darkly about the tournament and trading insults for the occupants of the black lake even as their voices softened when they spoke to Harry.

maybe it wasn’t just Cedric who saw those things weighing on Harry, dragging him into the dark like Grindylows into the muck at the bottom of a scottish lake.

the third task came around. 

the stands shook with the noise of the cheering crowd, the band, the happy scream of cannon fire.

and yet the four of them shook in fear.

Harry had warned them something was coming, something awful, something dark.

maybe if they hadn’t looked at him in these last few months they wouldn’t have believed him. maybe if they hadn’t seen him, really looked and seen him, seen in his eyes what had been done to him, what he had been forced to endure without breaking or bending or complaining, they might not have believed him.

but they had.

and they did.

and so they stood together, alone in the roaring crowd.

breathing.

shaking.

fearing.

Harry reached out first, and the rest of them followed through soon after, pulling in close enough they rested their heads together. 

“whatever happens,” Harry said solemnly, “don’t let your guard down. be ready to Apparate if necessary. just be ready.”

Viktor nodded, slow and steady. “be safe,” he growled as each of them met his eyes.

Fleur blew out a shaky breath, her veela eyes blinking rapidly to clear away the threatening tears. she pressed firm kisses to each of their temples and ordered them not to die.

Cedric held on tighter for a moment. “some game.”

Harry laughed bitterly, sending Dumbledore a look that Cedric didn’t even begin to understand. “some game.”

they were pulled away from each other then, and barely given a moment to breathe before the cannon sounded and Cedric and Harry were shoved inside.

Cedric encountered everything from acromantuals and redcaps to a sphinx and rapidly changing hedge pathways.

but nothing compared to when he turned a corner and stumbled on Harry and Viktor and Viktor turned to him with fogged over eyes and a deadweight stance and hurled a curse in a voice that didn’t sound like his.

Cedric managed to hit him with a stunning charm, and Viktor dropped to the ground.

Harry turned Viktor over to check his pulse and eyes and breathing, calling to Cedric as he approached, “he was bewitched”

“i know” Cedric said, panting, watching the hedge for threat and movement. “Fleur?”

"here” she panted, emerging from the other corner, blood dripping down her left cheek, eyes wild and fierce. 

Cedric swallowed, looking at the two of them. “how do you want to play this?” 

Harry looked up at him in confusion, head tilted oddly.

he didn’t get to ask whatever he was about to when all of a sudden the hedge around them came to life and tried to swallow Viktor whole. the three of them made noises of protests, reaching out and picking Viktor’s bulky body up, but they had no time before they were forced into action, running ahead of the hedge nipping at their running heels. 

they dodged newly forming corners and turns that suddenly closed off as they approached.

formulaic.

“it’s leading us somewhere!” Harry yelled.

that was what concerned Cedric.

Fleur spat something in French, her wand lighting up, and Viktor came gasping back to reality, falling into running step with them like it was second nature.

then, suddenly, they turned a new corner and the maze went silent and still.

they stood there, panting, eyes darting over one another critically, looking for injuries and the sources of the blood on their clothes.

“you” Fleur gasped, “were bewitched”

Viktor spat out blood. “Karkarov.”

Harry and Fleur snarled in fury, reaching for him to steady him when he wavered slightly.

Viktor wiped more blood from his mouth, meeting Cedric’s eyes. “you have a mean stunning hex.”

Cedric grinned wide.

they were nearly done now. they’d found one another, as planned. they just had to find the cup and get the fuck out.

that was when Cedric finally noticed an odd blue glimmer in the corner of his eye.

“Harry”

it was the cup. 

they ran for it as one, and Cedric had no doubt it was because they all wanted this to be over as soon as possible.

they skid to a stop in front of the cup, looking at each other.

“together,” they said as one. just like they planned.

“one,” Fleur said

“two,” Viktor said

“three,” they all said as they reached for the cup at the same time.

Cedric didn’t know what he was expecting, but the hook sinking into his gut and wrenching him back, his hand welding to the surface of the cup as the four of them were sent spinning into the air was not it. they landed hard, the cup falling away.

Cedric expected the cheering of the crowd or the trumpeting of the band.

nothing.

he looked up, freezing in place.

they were in a graveyard.

a very dark, creepy graveyard.

a ramshackle building and a large cold cauldron were the only things other than graves in sight.

something was waiting for them here.

“it’s a portkey,” Viktor said from where he was studying the cup, not touching it.

Fleur studied her surroundings very carefully, her head swiveling in an eerie way.

Cedric stood, motioning Viktor closer, something terrible in his gut. “keep close.”

“fuck,” Harry cursed.

Cedric looked over, and to his horror, Harry was shaking.

Harry, who didn’t tremble under threat of death or dragons, was shaking as he looked at a grave.

“Tom Riddle” he gasped, and the rest of them drew their wands, closing ranks.

a man melted out of the shadows, carrying a bundle.

the bundle in the man’s arms stirred as the cauldron suddenly came to life, fire flaring beneath its base.

“capture the spares,” a raspy voice called, although the man in front of them’s mouth did not move.

“no!” Harry screamed, leaping in front of them all, but he was tossed away by a curse from the man. 

three more men melted out of the shadows behind them, their eyes fogged over like Viktor’s had been, and all too quickly Viktor and Fleur and Cedric were on the ground without their wands, a strange man’s foot pressing heavily on each of their throats.

Harry was captured up against the largest grave, the one with the Reaper that the cauldron was positioned in front of. 

the first man unwrapped the bundle in his arms, revealing a horrid, unrecognizable, pale creature which muttered, “do it now, Wormtail!”

and the creature was put into the boiling cauldron.

The man, Wormtail, approached Harry.

“get away from him!” Cedric screamed, Fleur and Viktor also renewing their struggling against their captors.

Wormtail only gave them a glare before flicking his wand at them, and their voices went silent.

Wormtail began an incantation.

“Bone of the father unwillingly given.” a bone was lifted from the grave with the Grim Reaper, dropping into the cauldron.

“Flesh of the servant willingly sacrificed.” Wormtail drew a silver knife and cut off his right hand. he screamed in pain as his severed hand fell into the now roiling water.

then, Wormtail turned back to Harry with that same bloody silver knife. 

they all started to struggle, but could not throw off their captors.

“Blood of the enemy forcibly taken.” Wormtail cut open Harry’s sleeve, then dragged his knife deep along the veins in his forearm, the blood spilling free as Harry thrashed, unable to move away, screaming, the scent of burning flesh carrying over to them as Wormtail flicked the blood into the cauldron.

“The Dark Lord will rise again.”

the cauldron exploded, transforming into a dark fog that curled wickedly in on itself, something forming from within.

the mist settled, revealing...

Voldemort.

He Who Must Not Be Named.

The Dark Lord.

You Know Who.

the creature who stalked Harry’s every step, haunted his dreams.

Voldemort reached out and took Wormtail’s last whole arm, pressed his wand to the same forearm that Wormtail had mutilated on Harry, and called out a curse Cedric didn’t know.

the same symbol that had appeared at the world cup twisted into the sky, the maw of the skull opening as the snake writhed. from the open jaws came nine black trailing shadows that shot like comets towards the graveyard, and where they landed, revealed a Death Eater.

one by one, Voldemort named, berated, and unmasked them, cursing them and their line, twisting their bodies with his magic, laughing.

and then he caught sight of Harry.

at Voldemort’s mere touch, Harry screamed in pain, thrashing as violently as possible in his captured position, blood still dripping down his body and soaking the ground and grave beneath.

the spell Wormtail cast was too strong, though, and as much as they struggled, Cedric, Fleur, and Viktor could not get free.

Voldemort released Harry, forced him into a dueling position, hissing, serpent-like, that he would take back the fame and glory and power Harry had stolen.

Harry was tortured, toyed with, tossed between Voldemort and the Death Eaters, still fighting back.

he was shaking, bleeding, twitching from the last of Lucius Malfoy’s Crutiatus. 

then Voldemort caught sight of Fleur. 

“ah,” he sneered, floating like a wraith over to her, pressing death white, grimy, too long fingers to her blood-stained hair. “a little tarnished, perhaps, but still a good example. shall i show you, Harry, how i killed your filthy muggle mother?”

he lifted his wand to strike but Harry reacted first and Voldemort was forced back into the fight.

a silent pop echoed in Cedric’s ears and he looked over to meet Fleur and Viktor’s eyes in the glow of the duel.

“do nothing!” Voldemort screamed at his followers, and they froze in their steps, unable to move. “he is mine to finish!”

“one,” Fleur whispered.

“two,” Viktor hissed.

“three,” Cedric finished. 

as one they threw off their captors and took back their wands.

Fleur opened her mouth, her wand pointed at her own throat, and sang, something so terrible and dark the Death Eaters fell screaming to the ground, clutching at suddenly bloody ears.

Viktor pounded against the barrier between them and Harry, eyes furious and desperate.

blue ghostly figures stood beside Harry, their mouths moving with words they could not hear, Fleur still screaming as she backed up to join them, but Cedric could feel it would not last.

Harry met their eyes.

‘together’ he mouthed, and they nodded, ready.

Harry gave a decisive nod and the dueling lights, green and red, ceased, the blue wisps darting forward and swallowing Voldemort.

it took less than three seconds.

Fleur stopped screaming. Viktor and Cedric and Fleur caught Harry as he came towards them, their hands weaving together.

“accio!” Cedric called for the cup. 

it met his fingers and engulfed them all just as the blue wisps disappeared.

they landed even harder than they had landed in the graveyard, gasping, bleeding, shaking.

the fanfare of the band started up immediately, the roaring crowd soon after.

Fleur was the first to straighten up, her hands shoving at Viktor and Cedric’s.

“off off off” she called desperately, and they obeyed, panic bubbling in their chests when they realized Harry was not breathing.

Cedric’s knee accidentally came too close and he realized with a sickening sinking feeling that that sharp thing poking his knee was one of Harry’s ribs.

“POMFREY!” Cedric screamed as Viktor gently cradled Harry’s head in his lap and Fleur kept checking him for other injuries.

the crowd quickly went silent as the head nurse came forth from the crowd that had been descending on them.

“everyone stay back!” McGonagall called, but even she didn’t dare try to stop Ron and Hermione when they pushed through the crowd to fall next to Harry, sobbing, shaking, gasping.

Madame Pomfrey knelt down beside Cedric, reaching out to Harry.

as one, Viktor, Fleur, and Cedric covered his body with their own, and Fleur snarled, her face shifting features, going angular and cruel like her ancestor’s other forms. blood stained her chin and mouth, running down in rivulets over her throat, and Cedric wondered how horribly she’d ripped her vocal cords to give them time.

Madam Pomfrey met their gazes. “i need to see him,” she said softly.

they still didn’t move.

a soft hand fell on Cedric’s shoulder. “come on,” Hermione gasped wetly. “she can heal him.”

Ron was murmuring to Fleur, too low for Cedric to hear, though he could tell Viktor was listening as well.

but it was enough.

by inches, the three of them backed off, though only enough that she could work, pulling potions and bandages and splints from her bag and Harry didn’t respond once.

he didn’t respond when she relocated his left shoulder, or when she poured essence of dittany onto the deep cruel wound in his left forearm to seal it before he bled out, or when she pulled shards of glass and metal and bone from the cauldron and the graveyard from his body, one shard in his side so large it was a big as Cedric’s fist.

he still didn’t stir.

until she got to the broken rib poking through Harry’s side and raised her wand. “episkey.”

Harry came awake screaming, his hands clutching.

but they were there to catch him.

Fleur wiped blood from Harry’s cheek, Viktor rumbled words soothingly in Bulgarian, and Cedric clutched at Harry’s hand.

Harry’s eyes were wild. “he’s back”

the crowd was silent.

tears spilled over Harry’s cheeks. “he’s back. Voldemort’s back.”

then, Harry looked over them wildly. “you, are you...are you?”

Cedric watched Viktor and Fleur’s hands curl tight into Harry’s body. 

“fine.” Viktor said softly. “we’re alive.”

“Mione, Ron-”

“here,” Ron said, his hand wrapped tight over the sticky bloodslick skin of Harry’s left forearm, his palm covering the worst of the resulting scars from the cursed knife. “safe.”

Harry nodded, relief flooding his eyes before they rolled back into his head and he passed out.

“it’s nothing,” Madame Pomfrey said before anyone panicked. “this is normal. i have to get him to the hospital wing.”

but she didn’t move, not until Ron and Hermione, their hands dug deep into Cedric, Fleur, and Viktor’s clothing, pulled them all back from hovering over Harry.

Madame Pomfrey gently levitated Harry, and when his ripped, blood-soaked form rose into the view of the crowd there were gasps and screams and the flash of a camera.

Cedric’s blood boiled.

he stood, feeling Fleur and Viktor behind him as he stalked over to Rita Skeeter and ripped the camera out of her stupid photographer’s hands.

he threw it to the ground, and Viktor spat, “bombarda!” at it, making it explode in a shower of sparks.

Cedric met Rita Skeeter’s beetle-like gaze. “you stay away from Harry Potter,” Cedric snarled, “or so help me God I’ll kill you.”

Rita sputtered, mad as a hornet, until Dumbledore very calmly said, “i think the Daily Prophet has enough information on what has transpired for the moment. do feel free to retire to your rooms at hogsmeade.”

Rita Skeeter looked over the crowd, but found no one to support her. she jabbed a finger at Cedric. “you don’t know what an enemy you’ve made.”

Cedric felt a bloody smile curl over his teeth, relishing the way Rita paled. “oh yeah? try me.”

she scurried away, her photographer following.

silence reigned for a moment, and then a heavy hand fell on Viktor’s shoulder.

“you-”

Cedric and Fleur had spun around and shoved between Viktor and Karkarov at the same time, that same shift coming over Fleur’s face.

“you bewitched him,” Cedric spat, ignoring the look of genuine shock on Karkarov’s face. “you don’t get to touch him.”

“or what?” Karkarov sneered. “i do not fear you, boy.”

“no?” Cedric felt that same smile curl over his face. “do you fear her?”

Fleur snarled, an echo of that same energy she had when she’d screamed at the graveyard thrumming in the sound.

Karkarov went white and stumbled back, right into Alastor Moody, who’s grin was just as lethal as Cedric’s felt. “well now, Karkarov, what’s this i hear about a bewitching?”

“i will tell you later,” Viktor said, voice perfectly level, his hands twining through Fleur’s and Cedric’s. “tomorrow.”

Cedric grinned as Moody hauled Karkarov off.

suddenly, his father was in front of him, and most of the fight left Cedric. “hey, dad.”

his father was crying, looking at the blood, but he pulled him into a fierce hug regardless of it.

over his father’s shoulder, Cedric watched his mother approach Fleur, looking over her and Viktor. “you saved my son?”

“no” they answered together, voiced severe.

“Harry saved us all.” Fleur’s voice was raw, and new blood spilled over her lips as she spoke. 

Cedric thought it was a little funny how everyone but he, Viktor, Ron, Hermione, and his mother flinched as it did.

Viktor met his mother’s eyes. “Harry saved us all, and we saved Harry.”

there was a bit of a blur after that, movement and color and voices, time passing rapidly, but one constant was their hands finding each other’s over and over. 

until they were in the hospital wing, and Fleur was glaring at Ron for already stealing the spot on the small hospital bed next to Harry. Hermione and Viktor were speaking in low tones from their chairs next to Harry’s head, and Cedric was sitting on the other side, his chest draped over Ron and Harry’s legs.

one of his hands held Viktor’s and the other held Fleur’s. Fleur’s other hand held Ron’s, who in turn held Harry, whose other hand was in Hermione’s whose other hand held Viktor’s.

“honestly,” Ron murmured sleepily from his undoubtedly awkward position curled around Harry’s slightly snoring form. “just want one quiet year at hogwarts.”

Cedric chuckled, exhaustion pulling his eyes low.

there would be a reckoning.

he’d pissed off Rita Skeeter, who held the Daily Prophet in the palm of her hand.

Karkarov was at innocent, apparently, because Alastor Moody wasn’t Alastor Moody.

and Voldemort was alive.

but so were they.

so Cedric closed his eyes, focusing on the hands holding his, the heartbeats he could imagine beating in time with his own, and slept.

safe.

sound.

whole.

[floweringeclipse]

👞 – kicking them SPARRING BLS

it’s been a million years RIP this meme link i guess 

{ @hopewrought }

The blow to her chest had merely forced her to stagger back a half-step, but it’s the kick to her side that she didn’t see coming. It immediately sends the younger careening off to her side, shoulder and cheek planting into dirt and gravel. 

Even as she recoils from the aches her body’d just received, they don’t hurt as much as the realization of what she’d been doing wrong during this match against Bethany; Iris winces more from the berating she’s sure to get. 

She’d been too focused on her opponent’s fists and upper body movements. Legs and feet are just as much threats as the weapons or strikes that hands can deliver. 

A groan pushes past chapped lips as Iris shakes off her surprise and disappointment, and gathers herself into an upright position once more. “Lemme try again.”

[pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer]

Right of Law, Section XVIII

(Antroz tracks down Emsar, but her former aide is ready for her.  Meanwhile, Zaekura oversees the battle with the Vorox Hordika, struggling to take this surprise development into account.)

Folding her wings, Antroz landed atop her tower and immediately drew her sword.  She reached out, sensing Emsar within the building, and climbed through the nearest window before descending to the floor where she waited.  The Vortixx had a dagger in each hand, standing perfectly still as she watched the Makuta without making any attempt to hide.

“Emsar,” Antroz said, “I—”

Emsar hurled one of the daggers before she could finish, drawing another to replace it as she charged. Antroz stepped to the side, letting the knife hit the wall behind her; it ricocheted, hitting another wall before angling back towards Antroz.  She ducked, and the blade now flew at Emsar, who kicked it towards the ceiling and lunged, swinging carefully to avoid being in the path of the rebounding dagger as it bounced from ceiling to floor and back, slowly closing in on Antroz again.

Her Kanoka Blade daggers, Antroz thought as she wove around Emsar’s attacks.  She’s truly serious…

She activated her Dodge powers, focusing entirely on avoiding contact for the time being.  Emsar pressed on nonetheless.

“Listen to me, Emsar!” Antroz said.  “You are on the wrong side of this fight!  I understand you are shocked—it was baffling to me as well!  But the Great Beings are not worth defending!”

Emsar simply continued attacking.

“…You will not even hear my words?  Must I force you to heed me?”

Antroz snatched the rebounding dagger from the air and swung it forward.  Emsar dodged, and the knife ended up stuck in the floor.  Antroz next swung her sword in a horizontal arc: it was blocked by one of Emsar’s weapons, and suddenly it shrunk, the once fearsome sword turning into little more than a needle.  As this happened, Emsar kicked upward, missing, and another dagger slipped free from a sheath on her ankle.  Before Antroz could react, Emsar brought her foot back down, driving the weapon directly into Antroz’s shoulder; she then flipped backward to put more space between them, and…

Antroz shook her head. She tried focusing on Emsar, but now she could only vaguely sense where she was, some other psychic energy now pressing against her mind and disorienting her.  Ripping the dagger from her shoulder, she tried again only to receive the same result—and to her surprise, a small but intense burst of heat and light sailed past her head, incinerating the tiny bit of antidermis that had escaped from her wound.

“A Firework Revolver?” she said as she recoiled.  “I thought you didn’t like firearms.”

She heard Emsar’s voice, faint yet easy to understand: There’s nothing about this I like.

Emsar charged. Not wanting to risk her sword further, Antroz picked up the rebounding dagger in the floor to parry Emsar’s first strike.

Yes…

A faint glow surrounded the dagger.  It was ripped from Antroz’s hand by some unknown force, and that force then threw it against the wall to begin ricocheting once again.

Left shoulder!

The words came with an urgency that made Antroz react in reflex, guarding her shoulder.  Emsar instead dove for her right ankle.  Her dagger passed through the Makuta’s leg, but did not tear her armor—instead, it emerged with a small cloud of antidermis clinging to it.  Antroz swung her claw, and Emsar met her blow with the handle of her revolver, fending her off long enough to fire and incinerate the recently-freed gas.  Anger swelled in Antroz’s mind, and Emsar suddenly leapt back.

“…I see,” Antroz said, continuing to dodge the rebounding blade.  “A risky move, don’t you think?”

She heard Emsar’s laugh all around her.  I can’t exactly fight you normally, Makuta.  This is the closest thing to stealth I can use.

“I wasn’t aware you owned a Suletu dagger.  Seems you did manage to surprise me.”

Another dagger flew out.  Antroz dodged it, but it began to rebound as well.  Just as she moved to deal with the two bouncing blades, she became aware of Emsar right before her, making another successful cut.  This one did leave a gash in her armor; the rebounding blades nicked Antroz, prolonging her distraction, and the psychic interference began to lessen as she felt some kind of stress upon her newest wound.  The armor held where it was thanks to Alize’s earlier treatment, so Antroz swiped her claw—but Emsar realized the attack’s ineffectiveness just in time, and the strike missed.  The interference returned as Emsar fired her revolver, but Antroz moved forward nonetheless, holding her sword back to conceal the fact that it was steadily returning to its normal size.  When she felt she was close, Antroz made a sweeping slash, the interference fading as Emsar focused entirely upon ducking just under the edge and allowing her to level a Light blast at the Vortixx, knocking her into the wall.

“I have no desire to harm you, Emsar,” Antroz said as her foe recovered.  “This fight will accomplish nothing!”

Appearances are everything.

Emsar was back on her feet.  Antroz plucked the two rebounding daggers from the air and threw them at her.  With a swift movement, Emsar deflected them both, placing them in a telekinetic grip as she pressed against Antroz’s mind to disappear from her perception.

What do you mean? Antroz asked, pushing back.  You linked our minds, Emsar—at least explain the thoughts you have made known to me.

Emsar dropped down from above.  Antroz reached up to catch her, but all she grabbed was empty space; Emsar had visualized herself wielding the dagger she held psychically, producing a mental decoy to keep Antroz busy as the two blades dug into her armor.  The real Emsar came at Antroz from the side, using one of her daggers to cut away another chunk of antidermis so that she could dispose of it from a safer distance.

You put me in a bad spot, Makuta.  I’m just doing what I have to.

Antroz focused her Light power outward, producing a blinding flash.  Emsar shut her eyes just in time, and as she retreated further, she realized Antroz was making some sort of clicking sound.

Before she could figure out what was going on, the Makuta asked, Why do you believe that?  We gave you an opportunity to surrender peacefully.  For what reason must you turn our offer down?

An image came to Antroz’s mind: an image of the Great Beings.  It was lost in the psychic tides a second later, but it was enough to help Antroz understand.

If you don’t do your best to stop me…

I will be labeled a traitor.

Emsar’s throwing knives came at her again.  Again, Antroz caught them.

Appearances are everything.  I need to look committed, no matter how I might actually feel.  And, Makuta…

A vase hit the floor, shattering loudly.  Antroz winced.

You need to be more subtle for echolocation to be effective!

Emsar got in under Antroz’s guard, executing a double slash across her chest that caused a huge cloud of antidermis to spill forth, as well as shocking her into dropping the rebounding blades.  Antroz reacted in time to knock the daggers from Emsar’s hands, and then landed a punch that sent her tumbling back.  She moved forward in an attempt to pin her foe, but Emsar already had another blade drawn; she cut Antroz’s mask this time, causing it to shrink instantly, and rolled away in the confusion.  Now with the interior of the “head” of her armor exposed, Antroz kept a hand over it, and was more careful than ever to avoid the fireworks Emsar was shooting her way. The throwing knives began to rebound again.  Emsar increased the amount of interference she produced, and Antroz remained perfectly still.

Emsar.  Were it possible, I would take as long as is necessary to convince you to lay down your arms.

More fireworks came at her.  The rebounding blades moved in as well, but stopped short.

But you would kill me long before we reach that point.

The rebounding knives were sent up into the ceiling, and Emsar, who was halfway across the room, suddenly stopped and leapt back.

Ah, you magnetized them earlier.  Clever.

Antroz tapped into her power of Sleep, releasing it throughout the room rather than focusing on any individual point.

You know I’ve trained to shield my mind…what are you planning?

Antroz revealed nothing.  Emsar edged forward tentatively, not making a single sound as she touched two of her daggers together.  Bestowing a telekinetic grip upon one, she willed it to float up and aim at the hole in Antroz’s chest, spinning to make it harder to stop before shooting out like a bullet.  Just before it hit, Antroz disappeared.  Emsar could still feel her mind, and so remained on alert, becoming aware just in time to feel the Makuta’s claws closing around the back of her neck.

What?!

The Vortixx tried to retaliate, but gravity multiplied around her, and in a fraction of a second she was facedown on the floor, too heavy to move a single muscle.  Antroz breathed a sigh of relief.

How did you know where I was?  The interference…unless…

“You’ve become so adept at shielding your mind that you block mental attacks reflexively,” Antroz said.  “I had to use that against you.”

You attacked with Sleep…I automatically guarded my mind, and in drawing in my mental power to do so, I wasn’t able to jam your senses any longer.  Curses, I didn’t even realize…

“It’s over, Emsar. You tried your best—appearances were kept.  But now, Xia will belong to me once more.”

“…I suppose so,” Emsar murmured.  “Hardly surprising, really.”

Antroz gave a small smile.  “You feel somewhat relieved, old friend.”

“Do I, now?”

Antroz gently placed one finger against the back of Emsar’s head.  “I suppose it doesn’t matter.  For now, why don’t you rest?”

Slowly, Emsar’s mental shields peeled away, and Antroz’s powers cast her into a deep slumber. Antroz stood up and, after mending her armor a bit, carried Emsar over to the stairs and headed down.  As she walked, however, she sensed a great deal of distress hanging over the city, and reached out to sense how the battle was progressing.  What she felt made her stop dead in her tracks.

***

A Rahkshi of Teleportation deposited Zaekura on top of the wall before vanishing again.  The Glatorian stared at the oncoming horde of Vorox, still in shock.  Bitil approached her, saying, “Most everyone else is dealt with, so we should be able to martial our defenses well enough.  However…we’ve no idea what to expect from them now.  I know you told the Sand Lord none of them would be killed, but…given their disposition, subduing them may prove exceptionally difficult.”

Zaekura swallowed hard.

“We will do everything we can.  That is all I can promise.”

Bitil leapt down to the base of the wall, where a large squad of Rahkshi had already gathered. He gave a shout, and they charged into battle, and Zaekura dug her fingers into the brick as she wracked her brain for an answer.

The first attack came from the Vorox.  One in the lead had a Rhotuka launcher incorporated into their tail, and launched a wheel of energy at the sand immediately in the Rahkshi’s path.  Bitil hovered to avoid the terrain as it shifted suddenly, a wide patch of it turning to quicksand; a handful of Rahkshi were unable to react in time, finding themselves waist-deep upon taking a single step into the muck.  Weak blasts were hurled at the Vorox to break their front line, and the two forces finally met.  Gantra wrestled with one, his foe thrashing about wildly and sinking their fangs into his arm; he managed to secure their tail, at least, so he fought with all his might to maintain his hold.  Bitil flew overhead and used his Sleep power, causing a handful of the Vorox to simply collapse.  However, one suddenly leapt up at him, stinger stabbing repeatedly, forcing him to pull back.  From just behind the patch of quicksand, a Rahkshi of Darkness stood with their hands forward, moving them as if to section of an area of space.  Nodding, they pulled their hands back and clapped twice—immediately, the area ahead of them went completely dark, causing the Vorox within to growl in frustration.  More Rahkshi advanced to the edge of the darkness, ready to surprise their foes. However, they noticed too late that the Vorox’s eyes could still be seen burning in the shadows, and they pounced upon the Rahkshi before they had a chance to retreat.

“Come on, come on!” Zaekura said, now pounding her fist against the wall.  “There’s got to be something!”

“What are you getting so worked up about?”

She turned to find Ehrye, the Toa of Ice bound and sat against a section of wall guarded by a couple of Rahkshi.

“Sure they’re vicious, but your army should easily be able to wipe them out.”

Zaekura grunted. “We’re not going to wipe them out! What we need is a way to stop them without causing any real harm!”

Ehrye tilted his head. “Huh?  Why?”

“Because we’re not going to let anyone else die!  Now shut up so I can think!”

Below, Erad tranquilized as many Vorox as they could.  However, they eventually ran out of ammunition, and it was then that a Vorox with three tails leapt upon them.  With so many stingers pelting them at once, Erad was unable to hold the assault off entirely.  Azin appeared and kicked the Vorox onto their side so he could help his sibling up.

“Is that why you’ve rounded us all up?” Ehrye asked.  “I did think it was weird you didn’t just level the place when you got in.”

Zaekura turned the other way to shake her head, and in doing so caught sight of a partially destroyed catapult.  After a short pause, she said, “Maybe…Charla!”

Lady Zaekura?

“Contact Burfis, see if you can get her to the wall!  I’ve got something for her to fix!”

Right away!

Zaekura ran over to the catapult, quickly examining how the mechanism worked.  Once Burfis arrived, the Rahkshi joined her, setting her hands on the catapult and using her powers of Regeneration to begin repairing it.

“Great!” Zaekura said. “Charla, I’m going to launch some of these Eccentric Boulders at the Vorox—tell everyone down there what to expect, and that if they get the chance, I want them to split the rocks before they hit to lessen the chance of hurting the Vorox.”

I understand.  It shall be done!

Once the catapult was functional, Burfis and Zaekura rolled a boulder onto it and moved it into position.  The first shot was fired, sailing over the sand until a bullet from Erad broke it open; protodermis spilled out onto a group of Vorox below, forming a cage around them, freeing up several Rahkshi to deal with the rest of the pack.

“And…?”

The Vorox flailed against their bars.  Soon, pieces of the cage began to chip away.

“Great.”

Bitil flew over to the cage then, using his Sleep powers upon the imprisoned Vorox before they could break out.

“Well, I guess it’s our best bet right now…”

As she went for another boulder, a Rhotuka hit Bitil while his back was turned.  He teleported next to his attacker and knocked them out with a powerful punch, but upon landing, the ground beneath his feet instantly turned to quicksand.  Caught off-guard for a moment, Bitil was unable to defend against a blow from another Vorox.  Quickly, he teleported out and gave his foe a mild shock to incapacitate them, before tossing a plasma bolt up to shatter an incoming boulder.  Bitil looked over his shoulder to take stock of the situation. His Rahkshi were holding most of the Vorox at bay, but he could see a great number of them slipping past and continuing towards Xia.

“We can’t hold them all,” he said.  “Charla, tell the forces inside the city to be prepared: they’re about to make contact!”

A portion of the wall transmuted into quicksand.  As she pushed the catapult out of harm’s way, Zaekura said, “Darn it!  This isn’t going to be enough!”

A shrieking sound reached her ears.  Soon, a Vorox climbed up over the edge of the wall, setting their feral gaze directly upon Zaekura.  Burfis moved forward as she scrambled back—the Vorox lunged, but before they got very far, they stopped in mid-air.  Zaekura glanced aside to see a hastily-patched Krika headed their way.

“Goodness,” he said, “all this just when we thought we’d won?  Can’t anything be easy?”

Zaekura let out a long breath.  “Krika…do you have any ideas?  We can subdue some of them, but it’s slow going, and everyone’s already tired from securing the city.”

Krika faced the Vorox he had caught, gently spinning them with his magnetic powers.  “Truth be told, Lady Zaekura…we may have no choice but to use lethal force.”

Glaring at him, Zaekura leapt to her feet.  “No way! Why are you so hung up on that?”

“Please listen. I am aware we promised the Sand Lord to spare Xia’s Vorox, but this unforeseen complication changes things. We are not prepared to deal with these animals.  Given the circumstances, I am sure the Sand Lord can be made to understand.”

Zaekura turned back to the catapult, setting it up to fire again.  After loading the boulder, she stopped suddenly, and set her gaze upon the Vorox.

“They are like animals, aren’t they?” she said.  “Whatever happened to them, it made them more like Rahi than Glatorian.  So, maybe…”

Krika straightened the Vorox and set them down, saying, “Oh, a last-minute deduction. Always a treat.”

“Charla, where is Rusp?”

Rusp?  Let me see…he’s out fighting the Vorox right now.  Do you have orders for him?

Zaekura leaned over the wall.  Sure enough, down below she could spot a magenta Rahkshi riding atop a Kane-Ra, doing his best to catch the nearest Vorox with the lasso he carried. Grinning, Zaekura said, “Perfect! Tell him to try using his power on the Vorox!”

In the distance, Rusp looked up for a moment.  Then, tossing the lasso over his shoulder, he held both hands out towards the Vorox he was facing.  First, they stopped in their tracks, and then, slowly, they crumpled to the ground. Zaekura spun towards Krika.

“Yes, yes, I see now,” Krika said, snapping his fingers.  “Let’s test your theory.”

The captured Vorox’s struggle almost immediately ceased as Krika’s Rahi Control powers washed over them.  Blinking, they groaned as if in agony, and Krika gradually lessened his magnetic hold on them.  The Vorox fell to their knees, clutching their head, and continued to moan, and Zaekura cautiously approached them.

“Urrgh…wh…what…?” the Vorox grumbled.  “What…is this?”

“How curious,” Krika mused.  “I intended to place them fully under my thrall, but this isn’t quite what I was going for.”

The Vorox’s eyes met Zaekura’s—she could see clarity in them.  Coming still closer, she said, “I see.  Their minds aren’t gone completely!  You were able to quell this Rahi influence, and that let their original self resurface!”

Looking down at their claws, the Vorox said, “I can think again…is it over?  Am I free?”

They turned to Krika. With a dissatisfied hum, the Makuta said, “No.  I can still feel the Rahi within you fighting my power.  Once I release it, it will no doubt consume you again.”

The Vorox’s gaze fell. “…Oh.”

Zaekura looked back over the wall.  The Vorox in front of Rusp was crying into their palms as the Rahkshi knelt beside them.

“Please,” the Vorox said, “just kill me.”

Snapping back to attention, Zaekura said, “What?!”

“You don’t know how awful this is!  Having no control, just being ruled by savage instinct…I can’t stand the thought of going back to that!  I’d rather die than keeping living like a mindless animal!”

Krika sighed. “Truly dreadful.  You have my pity, Vorox.”

Zaekura just stared at them, her expression blank.

“You heard them, Lady Zaekura.  This mutation is a fate worse than death.  If we free them from it, I am certain the Sand Lord will bear us no ill will.”

She clenched her fists.

“And, even if she does, her alliance is not a deciding—”

“Shut up!” Zaekura shouted, her voice cracking over the words.  “Shut up, you idiot!  Screw alliances and agreements, that garbage isn’t what’s important!”

Krika grew silent. The Vorox watched her in confusion.

Tears started to form in Zaekura’s eyes.  “It’s not…we can’t just think of them like bargaining chips!  These are people! Innocent people who have had their lives ruined by the Great Beings, just like the rest of us!  I won’t kill them just for being victims!”

“That’s very noble of you,” Krika said.  “However, this Vorox specifically asked to be killed.”

Zaekura came up to the Vorox, crouching down and setting her hands on their shoulders. “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry this happened to you.  And I’m sorry we can’t fix it right now…but I’ll find a way. Whatever it takes, I’ll find a way to undo what they did!  You and all the others will be back to normal, and free to live your lives however you want!”

The Vorox was too stunned to reply.  Zaekura wrapped them in an embrace.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know how long it’ll take…I can’t imagine what that time will be like for you.  But I’m going to make sure its temporary!  Please…maybe it’s not right to ask, but please…”

The Vorox leaned into Zaekura’s shoulder.  After a long pause, they gave a muffled, “Alright…I…I’ll trust you.  Please…help me.”

“Wonderful,” Krika said.  “For the time being, I suppose we’ll have to place them in stasis.  Lady Zaekura?”

Zaekura stood and took a step back.  “…What’s your name?”

“Stidem,” the Vorox said.

“I promise I’ll cure you, Stidem.  I’ll put everything I have into making it happen.  You’re going to be free.”

Stidem nodded. Krika stepped forward then, generating a stasis field around them.  Zaekura wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked out to Rusp, who had an unconscious Vorox slung over his Kane-Ra steed.

“…Charla?”

Yes, Lady Zaekura?

“Tell Bitil and Antroz.  Their Rahi Control powers will help them subdue the Vorox, but they won’t be enough on their own.”

Of course.

Zaekura returned to the catapult.  “We have a plan to handle this, and without killing anyone.  It may not happen fast, but this is the final push: once we’ve captured all the Vorox, Xia will be ours.  See if that’ll boost morale.”

I’m certain it will!

Zaekura fired the catapult.  From not far away, Ehrye sat with wide eyes, constantly looking between her and the incapacitated Vorox.  He opened his mouth to speak, but realized he had nothing to say.  So he sat in silence, watching as Zaekura solemnly kept fighting.

***

From atop the tower, Zaekura looked out over the now-quiet streets of Xia.  Luckily, the city had sustained relatively little damage during the battle, and luckier still, they had successfully managed to avoid there being casualties on either side.  The first step on their road to victory had been taken.  Still, she found herself having no reaction to that thought whatsoever.  It simply was, and Zaekura was too numb to have any other opinion on the matter.

Antroz stood next to her, adjusting her mask quietly.  Zaekura asked, “So?”

“…It’s an odd feeling,” Antroz said.  “I can’t deny there’s an element of nostalgia in being back here.  I know we must look forward, not back…but there’s still so much uncertainty.”

“Yeah.  I thought I had at least half an idea of where we were going, but now I think it’s a bit less than that.  Huh…”

Zaekura turned to Charla.  Tired but still trying to be cheery, the Rahkshi said, “I am ready whenever you are, Lady Zaekura.”

She nodded. “Guess we’d better do it before I get cold feet…”

She took a moment to prepare herself as Charla reached out, brushing against the minds of everyone in Xia.  Soon she let Zaekura in—the Glatorian reeled a moment, the feeling of so many other minds connected to hers feeling unspeakably alien, but she quickly recomposed herself.

“People of Xia,” she announced.  “My name is Zaekura.  The battle is over, and my forces are now in control of this city.”

Waves of anxiety from the populace battered her.  She held firm against them.

“I understand that some of you may be concerned, but you have nothing to fear.  While you are free to remain here, you are also under no obligation to stay.”

The anxiety lessened somewhat.

“We aim to overthrow the Great Beings.  I am under no illusions as to how terrifying that prospect is, and I won’t force any of you to be a part of it.  Should you wish to leave Xia, no one will stop you—if you are concerned about the journey, we can even arrange an escort to ensure you arrive safely.  I do not demand allegiance from any of you.  Where you stand in this conflict, if anywhere, is something only you have the right to decide.”

The thoughts she felt began to churn, not entirely without fear but far closer now to reason.

“Take all the time you need to be sure of your decision.  I intend to have the city repaired and running as normal as soon as possible, so hopefully we won’t intrude inconvenience you much further.”

Zaekura paused. She felt there was something else she needed to say, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was.  Then, Antroz stepped forward.  Zaekura thought a moment, then nodded.

“My people,” Antroz said.  “I know your opinion of me is not what it once was, but please, listen to what I have to say.”

Some minds pulled back, but only slightly.

“These are confusing times we live in.  My whole life until now, I have taught you that loyalty to the Great Beings is sacred—that we must follow their commands without fail.  However…more important than loyalty and obedience, what matters most is that we each must strive to do what we feel is right.  Perhaps I failed to teach you that, thinking it would naturally fall into step with the will of the Great Beings.  I am sorry.  The truth is that the Great Beings are also fallible, and they are now, and have previously been, engaged in practices I can only deem repulsive.  Innocent people have been abruptly hauled away from their lives, never to be seen again, only for the circumstances of their birth.  Our leaders are working to suppress the truth, interested only in their own vision and those who align with it.  I thought they cared for the well-being of Spherus Magna’s people…but now they have shown they only desire subjects to rule over. People such as these, people who think themselves above morals and demonize any who dissent, are not fit to lead. If they are allowed to keep their power, they will only continue to abuse it.  I feel a certain responsibility to do what I can to prevent that from occurring.”

A tense quiet answered her.

“I have implored the Great Beings numerous times to mend their ways and resolve this matter peacefully.  They have consistently responded with anger and violence.  I detest that it has come to this…but again, I am compelled to do whatever I can.  So I cannot turn my back upon this matter, not until the Great Beings’ power is stripped from them or I am vaporized into naught but ether.  I do not seek to make this decision for you, only to explain the reasons why I have made mine.  You deserve to know the truth.  And now, you do.  That is all.”

Antroz stepped back. Charla checked with Zaekura once more before shutting off her power.  Zaekura opened her mouth to speak, but a sharp pain suddenly cut through her head, forcing her to stop for a moment.

“Are you alright, Lady Zaekura?” Charla said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean…not really, but, you know. I’m sure this isn’t anything to worry about.  Already over!”

Charla stared at her.

“Honest. Anyway, thanks Fangs—I was at a real loss and that was a pretty good closer.”

“Of course,” Antroz said.  “How shall we proceed, then?”

“Let’s see…the Rahkshi are already cleaning up what they can, but it’s going to be dark soon. Might be best if we save the big decisions for tomorrow.”

“I agree,” Charla said, “rest would serve you well.”

Antroz nodded, electing to stay behind as Zaekura and Charla went inside.  Reflexively, she swept the city telepathically, verifying that the perimeter was secure and taking stock of the general atmosphere. It was difficult for her to place exactly what she sensed: something between dread and relief.  She turned her head to the west as her own dread swelled. But, setting that aside, she then turned north, and focused again on her goal.  Planting her still-sheathed sword, Antroz dropped to one knee and bowed her head. Despite the uncertainty they all faced, Xia slept peacefully through the night.